Scandal In Sydney. Alison Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ was sharing a house with a guy who was drop-dead gorgeous. Stress was playing pretend lovers with Luke.

      She shouldn’t have come. This was a stupid deception, designed to protect a reputation she didn’t have and to add another level to Luke’s armour, but by coming here a layer of her own armour had peeled away.

      This farm … these horses …

      Luke.

      Okay, there was the problem. She was feeling what she had no right to be feeling.

      He was feeling it too, she thought, but …

      But she’d seen his panic when she’d been on Glenfiddich, and his reaction had scared her. He’d yelled at her through fear. Shadows of a dead wife.

      She was being dumb, she thought. This was an overreaction.

      It was an overreaction because she was scared.

      Because she was falling for Luke?

      Maybe falling for anyone would be scary.

      Growing up in her mother’s dramatic shadow, she’d never thought of romance. Of falling in love. Drama, emotion were to be avoided at all costs. She knew the devastation they caused and it wasn’t something she wanted.

      Her relationship with Charlie had been like a comfortable pair of old socks. They’d been friends at school, they’d fallen into dating and they’d kept dating until suddenly Charlie had woken up one morning and realised he was heading for marriage with the daughter of the town tramp. When he’d cut her adrift she’d been hurt and angry, but she hadn’t been heartbroken. Sometimes when she looked at romantic movies, seen friends marry, she’d felt like that part of her had simply not been formed. She’d been born without it.

      Now… What she felt for Luke.

      It was as if she knew him at some level she couldn’t possibly understand.

      She knew Luke’s story—between Gladys and the Harbour night shift she knew more than she’d ever need to know—but this went deeper than that. She’d instinctively joined the dots. Last night she’d said his fear for her was all about his dead wife and she knew it was. A lonely child, a tragic marriage … A man who walked alone.

      He made her feel …

      She didn’t know how he made her feel. She felt … She felt …

      She felt like she had cramps in her stomach, she decided. She felt like she needed to roll over in bed and put her pillows over her head, which was exactly what she did.

      Avoid stress? Ha!

      Luke worked with Tom, stringing wires between the fencing posts they’d put in the day before, then going on to rewire fences further along the creek.

      All the time he worked he expected her to come.

      She didn’t.

      ‘You two still fighting?’ Tom said at last.

      ‘We’re not fighting. She’s had gastro. She overdid it yesterday. She should spend the day in bed.’

      ‘Then why are you wiring fences?’ Tom asked bluntly. ‘With a woman like that in your bed.’

      ‘She’s in the guest bed.’

      ‘More fool you. She’s a good ‘un.’

      ‘There speaks an authority on all women,’ Luke said. ‘Curmudgeonly old bachelor that you are.’

      ‘Had a woman once,’ Tom said reflectively, astonishingly. ‘Liseth.’ He sighed. ‘I thought maybe I had a chance, that our family hadn’t stuffed me completely. But with parents like ours you don’t rush into relationships. Anyway, I got drafted; Vietnam War. I was stupid enough to tell her to go out with other guys while I was away. I met her twenty years later, married to a car salesman. I walked into the office and she was there. She told me about her husband and her kids. All very polite. Then at the end when her husband was shifting the car she turned to me and exploded.

      ‘I would have married you,’ she said. ‘In a heartbeat. Even if we’d only had those two months before you went overseas, it would have been enough.’

      ‘Tom …’ The vehemence of his uncle’s voice shocked him.

      ‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘I was a fool, like you were a fool with Hannah; but in your case the fool part wasn’t one-sided. So we’ve made mistakes, do we have to keep making them? Enough. All I’m saying, boy, is life’s short and she’s a good ‘un. Now let’s get this wire done. And I want to talk to you about my arm. I damn near dropped the chainsaw on Friday. I reckon I might have tennis elbow.’

      ‘Chainsaw elbow,’ Luke said, and the old man grinned.

      ‘You doctors have fancy names for everything.’

      ‘Hi.’

      The men turned and saw Lily at the edge of the clearing.

      Uh-oh. How much of the conversation had she heard? Just the end, Luke hoped, though the silence in the bush meant sound travelled.

      ‘I’m feeling better,’ she said. ‘I wanted to stretch my legs. And, no, Luke, I’m not about to ride another of your horses, even though I had to duck round Glenfiddich’s paddock so he wouldn’t see me. And I’m not here to interfere. I’ll keep on walking.’

      ‘Keep walking with Luke,’ Tom growled. ‘He’s done enough for one day.’

      ‘So must you if you have chainsaw elbow,’ Lily said, teasing a smile from the old man.

      ‘Nah, I’m fitter than the pair of you,’ he retorted. ‘You head off and do what a young feller and his lady ought to do.’

      Luke looked at Lily and Lily looked at Luke, and Luke put down his tools.

      What was it that a young feller and his lady ought to do?

      They walked slowly back to the house. She was walking a bit gingerly.

      ‘Your tummy’s okay?’ he asked.

      ‘Recovering nicely.’ Her tone said not to go there.

      ‘Rest this afternoon.’

      ‘You should tell Tom to rest,’ she said. ‘Not that he will when you’re around. He’s lonely.’

      ‘Tom—lonely!’

      ‘He’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He drives people away. I met Patty Haigh up on your north boundary fence when I was walking …’

      ‘Patty!’ Patty was the cheerful next-door neighbour who cooked and cleaned for Tom. She was the mother of seven sons. She was always ready for a gossip—not that he and Tom gossiped.

      ‘She worries about Tom,’ Lily said.

      ‘Tom’s okay.’

      ‘She СКАЧАТЬ