Lighthouse Bay (26 page)

Libby read these lines over and over. The mysterious woman—possibly a shipwreck survivor—had tried to find her sister. Libby’s imagination toyed with this idea while Bossy slept on beside her and the rain lightened and lifted. In the direst of circumstances, this woman had needed a sister “to love and guide her.” Libby found herself acutely and unexpectedly jealous. Such a relationship didn’t exist in her world, least of all with her sister. And nor would
it ever. Since she had become an adult, the only person who had ever loved and guided her was Mark. Somebody else’s husband.

Bossy stood and stretched, lightly leaped off the bed and padded away, no doubt in search of nocturnal adventures. It was getting late. Libby put the journal aside and switched off the lamp, but lay awake for a long time.

B
y Friday, Libby had been enormously productive. She had booked a photographer for the catalog, roughed out three designs to run past Emily, and blocked out her painting of the
Aurora
. Anything to keep her mind busy.

She could be rich. Juliet would hate her forever. Two and a half million dollars. Thirty days to respond.

The decision had a bearing on everything she did. When she worked on the catalog, she thought about how she wouldn’t have to worry about how quickly or slowly she gained new clients for her design business. When she painted, she thought about how she could do it full-time for at least a year. When she researched photographers on the Internet, she slid over to a French real estate site and looked at luxury apartments in Paris. She had missed Paris: its pace and sophistication. And when Juliet phoned to see if she would come over for dinner one night on the weekend, she’d had to refuse because she knew she couldn’t look Juliet in the eye until she’d made her decision.

Libby suspected that Juliet was wrong in her fear of Ashley-Harris: their eco-resort wouldn’t be competition. Nobody paid nine hundred dollars a night for a room at a B&B. It was a completely different kind of business.

But then all her rumination would start to feel very much like an elaborate justification for choosing money over family.

The nights were the worst. She could normally get to sleep, nurturing herself with guilty fantasies about painting in the light-flooded sitting room of her dream apartment in Montparnasse, but at 3 am the hot reality of her dilemma would prickle her awake and she would lie until dawn, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, the thirty days had become twenty-three days.

Libby was pacing the living room in her high heels and pencil skirt when she heard the Audi pull up. She waited until he knocked, then took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said.

“You look beautiful,” he said. He was dressed in a charcoal gray blazer and jeans, and smelled of expensive aftershave.

Her heart thudded. A date. She was going on a date.

Bossy slinked out of the hallway and froze, looking at Tristan.

“What’s wrong, Bossy?” she asked.

Tristan crouched and rubbed his fingers together, trying to coax Bossy over for a pat. But Bossy flounced straight past him and headed for the couch instead.

“Cats usually like me,” he said.

“Don’t worry.” Libby laughed. “I won’t read anything into it.”

Tristan stood again. “Are you ready?” he asked. “I’m keen to get going. I’m taking you somewhere really special.”

“Bye, Bossy.” She locked the door behind her and followed him up to the car. Once she had her seatbelt on, he started the engine and drove up the road past the lighthouse, onto the gravel shoulder, and then stopped the engine.

“We’re here.”

Libby smiled curiously. “Here?”

He got out of the car and came round to open her door. Then he popped the boot and pulled out two folding chairs and a picnic basket. “I wanted to impress you by taking you somewhere with
great food, great ambience and a great view.” He put down the picnic basket and straightened out the chairs, gesturing to one with a sweep of his hand. “My lady.”

She grinned. “Why thank you, sir,” she said, imitating a posh English accent not unlike Mark’s. “And what shall we be dining on this fine evening?”

Tristan opened the picnic basket and withdrew a plastic tablecloth, which he laid on the bonnet of the Audi. Then he pulled out a white paper bag of fish and chips, a bottle of champagne and two plastic champagne flutes. “Only the best. From the village.”

“The Salty Sea Lion?”

He poured her a glass of champagne. “Yes. Best fish and chips on the Sunshine Coast.”

They clinked their plastic glasses together.

“Here’s to the most beautiful view in the world,” he said.

Libby looked around. The sea at dusk was gray-blue. Sea mist obscured the headland to the south. The sky was soft blue and purple. “You might be right,” she said softly. She glanced up at the lighthouse. No candlelight in the window.

“Where do you live?” she asked Tristan, suddenly curious.

“I have a flat at Noosa, and a country house in the mountains behind Sydney. I don’t get there much these days.”

“Do we have knives and forks?” she said, searching through the white paper bag.

“Near my Audi? I don’t think so,” he said, laughing. “It tastes better with your fingers anyway.”

Libby pulled off a piece of crumbed fish and popped it in her mouth. Divine. Mark had never taken her on a date to eat fish and chips off his car bonnet. For a while, with the champagne bubbles going to her head and the novelty of the setting to distract
her, she forgot about her problems. They chatted about work and weather and lightly about their pasts and futures.

But then her mobile rang. She pulled it out of her handbag and the screen said “Juliet.”

She’d already turned down two calls and felt bad turning down a third, but she hit the mute button and slid the phone back into her bag.

“Anyone important?”

“My sister.”

“Ah. Juliet?”

“Yes.”

“You’re frowning.”

“I’ve got a big decision to make.”

“I know. I’m sorry, but you can’t talk it over with me.”

“Really? I can’t talk it over with anyone else.”

“Libby, I have handed the project over to Yann precisely for this reason. My business decisions and your personal decisions have to be completely separate. I know Yann has handed you a dilemma, but I can’t help you with it.”

“It’s only a dilemma because Juliet will think wrongly that she’d lose her livelihood.”

He made a motion, zipping his lips, and shook his head.

Libby sighed, refilled her champagne glass and sank back into her chair.

“All I’d say is that you are lucky to have such a decision to make,” he said softly. “You have great financial opportunities, and a family bond that means a lot to you. Some people have neither.”

She opened her mouth to ask him more questions, but then swallowed them. He was right. She was on her own.

The sea cooled around ten, and she hadn’t brought a jacket. He dropped her home, and walked her up the front path. She didn’t
know if she should ask him in. In her champagne-fueled state she found him devastatingly attractive, but reason told her to wait until she knew him a little better.

He made the decision for her. “I’d best get going. I have an early flight in the morning.”

“Away on business again?”

“Two weeks in Perth.”

Two weeks? She felt deflated but forced a smile. “That sounds like fun.”

“Can I call you?”

“Of course.” By the time he returned, she’d only have nine days to make up her mind. “I’d like that.”

He caught her cheek with his right hand, softly. Stroked her chin with his thumb. Her heartbeat drowned out all other sounds. Then he leaned forward and kissed her gently on the mouth. Her body responded by pressing against his. His tongue was between her lips.

It was the strangest feeling, to be kissing somebody else after all these years. Familiar but different. She couldn’t lose herself in the moment because she was too busy watching herself from outside, kissing somebody who wasn’t Mark.

Then came the sound of a car engine.

Libby snapped away from Tristan. Was it the men who had been hanging around her cottage? No. It was a police car. And here was Scott Lacey—a little softer around the middle since high school, but still instantly recognizable—climbing out with his hand on his belt. He stood there, hesitant now that he could see Libby was with Tristan, who had his arm around her waist.

“Scott?” she said.

“Libby? Is that you?” He strode forward now, offered his hand for her to shake. “You haven’t changed.”

Libby introduced Tristan, but he said immediately, “Yes we . . . ah . . . we know each other.”

Libby looked from Tristan to Scott and her stomach dropped. Scott was on Juliet’s side.

“I’ve been driving by every couple of nights, like I said I would,” Scott said. “I saw the car here and thought . . . ah, well. You’re okay.”

“I am. I am okay.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Libby and Tristan watched him go, Libby’s heart thudding dully. She groaned, leaning her head on Tristan’s shoulder. “He’s going to tell Juliet.”

Tristan looked as though he was about to say something but changed his mind. “I’m sorry I can’t help,” he said. “And I really do have to go. Dinner when I get back?”

“I’d love that.”

A quick peck on the cheek and he was gone. She went inside and eased off her high heels. She intended to shower, but somehow found herself curled on the couch with Bossy, drifting off. Her head spun, a cocktail of champagne and guilty thoughts.

T
he Saturday morning breakfast rush meant the smell of frying bacon and brewing coffee. Juliet always hit the ground running on Saturdays. Taking orders, making orders, clearing plates away, welcoming new customers where the old ones were sitting just a few minutes before. Her breakfasts were famous in town, famous enough for her to hire four staff on Saturdays to cope with the demand.

She was making coffee when Scott Lacey came in, in civilian clothes. At first she barely paid attention. She presumed Melody would find him a table and take his usual order, but then it became apparent he was hanging about near the coffee machine, trying to get her attention.

“I’m super busy,” she said to him over the hiss of the milk steamer.

“I can wait.”

“Go sit down. I’ll bring you something. Cappuccino and raisin toast?”

“Take your time.”

She was curious, but busy enough to put it out of her mind. In the first lull, she took his breakfast over and sat with him.

“Thanks, Juliet,” he said, spooning three sugars into his coffee.
A slanted beam of warm sunshine through the window lit up the gingery hairs on his knuckles.

“You’re always welcome, Scott. But what’s up?”

He shrugged. “I saw something you’re not going to like.”

A small, hot flick of adrenaline. “Really?”

He sipped his coffee, and it left a thin line of cocoa on his top lip. “I went past Libby’s place last night, as I’ve been doing since she called. And there was somebody there, so I got out to look.”

“Is she okay? She hasn’t returned my calls.”

“I think I know why. She was cuddling up with Tristan Catherwood.”

A coiling feeling in her stomach. “Cuddling up with . . . What do you mean by
cuddling up
?”

“I mean cuddling up. Kissing him. Passionately.”

“How does she even know him?” Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. Scott must surely be mistaken. It simply couldn’t be possible that her two biggest problems—Libby and Ashley-Harris—had somehow become entangled. This must be a bad dream. Scott considered her across the table, his green eyes steady and sad.

“I don’t understand,” Juliet said softly, helplessly.

“You don’t?” Scott asked. “She owns a property. And they need one.”

“But why . . .”

“I don’t know, Jules. You’d better ask her yourself.”

Juliet climbed to her feet. Rage flooded her hands and her stomach. She wanted to punch something, even if it meant breaking all her knuckles.

Scott grasped her wrist gently. “Hey, are you all right?”

“No,” she snapped, then realized she had said it too loudly. Several patrons had glanced up curiously. She drew the rage back into her body, into a hard ball under her ribs. “No, I’m not all right,” she said softly. “I’m an idiot. I should have known she’d never be any different.”

I
t was simple: Juliet would pretend she had no sister—then she couldn’t get hurt. Admittedly, this was difficult when Cheryl asked her, “Have you seen your sister again?” on the breakfast shift the next day, but Juliet found that responding with, “Can you please take this teapot to table six?” shut down the conversation swiftly. It was also difficult at night, as she lay in bed after the world had gone quiet except for the sound of the beating ocean, when her thoughts swirled around in an unhappy whirlpool.

But the most difficult time to pretend she had no sister was when her sister turned up, right on closing time, in carefully faded jeans and a lace shirt, and with her dark hair pulled back in a loose bun. Juliet noted that she had taken the time to put lipstick on to come down here and explain, and for some reason the fact hardened Juliet’s heart, as though the time taken primping herself was time taken away from feeling guilty.

But then, the twenty years in Paris was also time taken away from feeling guilty. Juliet tried to squash this feeling. She tried to be in the present, deal with the present.

Libby stood in the doorway a few moments, then said, “We should talk. I can see from your expression that Scott Lacey has spoken to you.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re an adult. You’ll make your own decisions.” Juliet’s voice was very loud in her own ears.

“You’re really angry, aren’t you?”

“No,” Juliet said, vigorously wiping down a table.

“Yes you are. You’re going to wear a hole in that table.”

Juliet straightened her back. “Okay, we’ll talk.” She strode to the front door of the shop and shut the bolt, switched off the lights so that the only light was coming from the kitchen. She didn’t want a visit from customers looking for a late takeaway coffee while she was having it out with Libby. She indicated the table closest to the kitchen and Libby sat down. Juliet took the last tray of dirty cups to the kitchen, then returned. For a moment, she considered her sister in the late-afternoon light. Libby had her face half-turned away, but Juliet could detect the guilt and the anxiety in her brow. Something troubled her, something big. And Juliet grew frightened, because perhaps there was more to this Tristan Catherwood business than a date.