Nobody but Him (17 page)

And he knew what he needed to do.
Fuck it.
Checking his mirrors, he executed a screeching u-turn.

The two pieces of bread Julia had slid into the toaster jumped up with a pop and she grabbed the butter from the fridge. As she smeared them with just the right amount of Vegemite, she took another look at the business card Ry had left attached to the glass jar with a rubber band.

Ry Blackburn

Managing Director

Blackburn and Son Developments

The type was dark grey, laid out simply on a thick white card, with a stylised art deco building on the left-hand side. He could have scrawled his number on a scrap piece of paper but, no, he’d left this and had written on it in a clear, strong hand,
Call me when you wake up
. And then underneath,
XX
. Nice handwriting, she noticed. Nice hands too, she remembered.

So they would speak later. Okay. That was good. That would give her plenty of time during the day to come up with some explanation for her behaviour last night. There were lots of hours in the day for her to rationalise it all away while she continued with the painting. She wouldn’t have made so much progress if it wasn’t for Ry. Julia still couldn’t get over the fact that he’d given up a day to help her. God, if it was up to her, she would have spent the day flopped on one of those white leather sofas in that magnificent house, simply luxuriating in the view or devouring a
good book. That pulled her up, made her think about the last time she’d devoured a good book. She couldn’t even remember.

Julia yawned generously and flicked on the stove to boil the kettle, holding her hands over the flame to warm them. Yesterday had been a strange day. She had to admit, discovering that her crass generalisations about Ry and his life weren’t true was a bit of a humiliating blow. So he wasn’t married to The Princess. That was number one with a bullet on her list of conversational highlights. She’d been completely wrong about that whole scenario, although it seemed Amanda had been working the room hard on that front. Poor thing.

Second on the list? Finding out that Ry had lost his father five years before. Julia had never met his parents but knew what it was like to feel that loss. She’d seen the flicker in his eyes when he’d talked about it, a shimmer of memory and pain and regret. And when he’d looked at her, she saw that he finally really understood what she’d gone through. For both of them there would forever be a before and an after. And the after felt like the earth had tremored and never quite settled back into place.

Third on the list? On this one, she had to admit she’d been totally, utterly, and embarrassingly wrong. The ugliest house in Middle Point was absolutely the most stunning house in Middle Point. One look inside the place and she totally understood why Ry simply had to have it.

A bit like the way he simply had to have her.

When she closed her eyes tight she saw him once again, standing in her bedroom doorway, ripping off his T-shirt.
I couldn’t wait.
She could so get used to looking at his glorious, muscled body, full of masculine strength and pulsating desire for her. And come to mention it, being shagged boneless by the fine owner of that magnificent body wasn’t bad either.

She chomped on her toast and at the same time became vaguely aware of the sound of a slamming car door, close by. It was unusual in the winter, when the beach was quiet and the esplanade had little traffic, so Julia glanced out her front window. The distinctive sound of crunching footsteps on gravel was followed by a demanding knock on her door.

When she opened it, she nearly choked on her toast.

Ry. In a dark grey, slim-cut suit that hung from his shoulders, and a light grey tie setting off a crisp white shirt underneath. His blonde hair was tousled, his eyes alive with energy and a half-smile on his lips created de
lectable crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

‘What the–’

Before she could move, much less come up with anything vaguely coherent to say, he’d enveloped her in his arms and crushed his lips to hers. Julia was bent backwards from the passionate force of his body and gripped the nearest thing she could to stop herself from losing her balance: his biceps. She felt every movement they made as they held her and she deepened the kiss in response, finding his tongue and teasing it with her own. His hands moved down her back and cupped her butt with a strong squeeze, urging her towards his hips. A thigh-quivering commotion started low in her belly and rumbled up to her chest, as she eased her hands up to his strapping shoulders and higher to the back of his neck, her arms around him in an eager embrace.

Only when Julia starting feeling light-headed did she tear her lips away from his. He reluctantly eased out of his kiss but not his hold on her.

‘I love the taste of Vegemite in the morning.’ Ry nudged her nose with his and squeezed her tight. She laughed and licked his lips, slowly and languorously. He sucked in a breath and pressed his impressive erection into her belly. Julia remembered every inch of how it had felt the night before and sighed.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Adelaide?’ She loosened one arm from his neck and tickled her index finger around the collar of his shirt. When she reached his tie, she walked her fingers slowly down the grey fabric to his belly and found him, firmly encasing the bulge in his trousers with her palm.

He moaned into her neck and thrust his hips towards her. ‘Yes. And, oh God, yes.’

She squeezed him. ‘Since you’re here, do you want to stay and have some breakfast?’

‘Chucking a sickie has never seemed like a better idea than right now. But my boss can be a total hard arse.’

‘I’ve heard he’s
really
demanding.’ She pulled his earlobe into her mouth, suckled it. ‘And that he likes to throw his weight around.’

‘Fuck,’ he moaned. ‘It’s killing me, but I really have to go.’ She reluctantly released him, dropping her arms to her sides.

‘Did you leave something here last night?’ Julia looked around the room, wondering what it might be that he’d forgotten. Ry’s eyes widened and he looked for all the world as if he’d just realised something big.

‘Yeah, I did leave something here. You.’

‘Oh.’ Julia swallowed hard.

‘And I forgot to kiss you goodbye.’

‘You came back just to kiss me?’ Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head to the side. It sounded like a line. But she didn’t care.

‘Hell yes,’ he replied as he took her in his arms again and gave her a final knee-trembling kiss.

It took Julia a minute to get her breath and put the top of her head back on. Ry checked his watch and gritted his teeth. ‘I really have to get going. Although you know there’s somewhere else I’d much rather be.’

Julia blew out a breath. This man was frying her senses, one kiss at a time.

‘I’ll see you on the weekend, I guess.’

‘Yeah, but JJ? Next time it’s my place.’ He grinned and reached into her hair to curl a tendril around his finger. ‘Six hours in that freaking bed and I need to book an appointment with my physiotherapist.’

All that she was left with when he got back into his car and drove away was his masculine scent lingering on her skin and a mouth that felt as if it had been stung. She raised her index finger and relished the warm buzz that remained on her quivering lips.

Oh my.

By lunchtime, Julia had made the SOS call to Lizzie, imploring her to come quickly bearing food and real coffee. The first coat of paint on the walls was already finished, thanks to Julia’s fizzing sexual energy, which had been awakened into near eruption by Ry’s return visit earlier that morning.

When Lizzie stepped into the house, her jaw dropped. ‘Wow. Just wow. It already looks totally different, Jools. What an amazing job.’ Lizzie handed over the takeaway coffee without taking her eyes of the freshly painted walls.

Julia sighed as she sipped, waiting for the caffeine to hit her system. ‘Yeah, it’s not too bad is it?’ She regarded it proudly. ‘I don’t know how long it’s been since Mum painted it, so it was way overdue. Stella thought a soft white was the way to go, keep it simple and beachy. And she’s going to lend me some things from her shop, maybe one of those huge framed fabric prints? It would look great on the back wall.’

‘The yellow and green one she has hanging behind the counter?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That will look brilliant. I can’t believe how much you’ve done so quickly.’

‘I did have some help.’ Julia tried to hide a grin. ‘Some manly assistance, if you will.’

There was silence from her friend and then a splutter.

‘
Excuse
me? Ry was here helping you?’ Lizzie eyebrows shot up and disappeared under her blonde bangs.

‘Yeah.’

‘Damn it. I can’t keep up with you two.’

‘There’s a little bit of news I need to update you on.’

‘I should bloody well think so. I brought the coffee. What exactly has been going on here while I’ve been slaving away at pub?’ There was a glint in Lizzie’s eye that meant she had an inkling.

Julia took a minute to think about how she should describe it to her friend.

‘Well, you might say … the drought has been broken, sister.’

‘You and Ry … ?’

‘Yeah,’ Julia sighed and then laughed at herself, ‘God, listen to me, I sound pathetic. It’s not as if I’ve never had sex before. Or never had sex with him.’ She felt a heat rise in her cheeks just talking about it.

‘You and Ry Blackburn …
had sex
.’ Lizzie emphasised the words for added effect. ‘The Ry Blackburn who sacked you from the pub the minute he laid eyes on you. The same Ry Blackburn you wanted to stay a million miles away from.’

‘Ah … yes.’

Lizzie sighed and her mouth lost its smirk. ‘Did you really think this through before you got down to the horizontal folk dancing?’

‘Yes. No. Not at all. It just kind of happened, really.’

Lizzie looked around for a chair to sit on and when she realised there wasn’t one, she dropped to the floor, cross-legged. She motioned for Julia to join her.

‘Jools, while I’m all for breaking a man drought, self-imposed or not, I don’t know if this will go down in history as one of your smartest moves.’

‘Lizzie, we are grown-ups who scratched an itch, that’s all it was.’

‘More like picked at a scab.’

Julia looked over Lizzie’s shoulder to the grey sky outside. She hadn’t expected her friend to react this way, to be this cautious, and it was confusing. She steeled herself to tell her friend the truth.

‘Me and Ry … it’s a long story.’

‘The best kind in my experience,’ Lizzie said, raising her eyebrows in expectation. ‘Damn, I wish we had some cake.’

Julia took a deep sigh and cast her mind back fifteen years. To the beginning.

‘You were away in London and I met Ry when I was working in the general store. He was so utterly gorgeous. I used to watch the door every time it opened, my heart racing, begging the universe for it to be him. There was something about Ry. He wasn’t as up himself as his mates. You remember what they were like.’ Julia rolled her eyes. ‘Those private school boys, driving their parents’ cars, partying all the time. More money in their pockets than I ever had. And didn’t they used to throw it around.

‘One day, when I had a day off, we ran into each other on the beach
and that was it really. He was older and I was smitten. It lasted a few months over that summer. It was so nice to feel happy for a change. Dad had died that May and Mum was still so sad. Maybe that’s why it was so intense, so fast. But when I got into university in Melbourne, he was furious at me for leaving. Didn’t want me to take up the offer. Said I should go to uni up in Adelaide and why the hell did it have to be somewhere a million miles away. He tried everything to get me to stay but … I … I couldn’t.’ Tears welled in Julia’s eyes at the memory. ‘So I drove off in my crappy old car and didn’t look back. I just wanted to get out of this town, leave all the Middle Point part of me behind.

‘I hadn’t seen him or heard anything about him for fifteen years before that night in the pub. When he sacked me.’

Lizzie’s eyes were watchful and Julia felt as if her entrails were being examined under a magnifying glass.

‘Let me get this straight.
You
broke up with
him
.’

Julia nodded.

‘You didn’t see him or hear from him in fifteen years.’

‘No.’

‘That probably explains his reaction when he saw you again.’

‘Yeah, it probably does.’

‘So I don’t get it. Why did you break up with him if you were so madly in love? Couldn’t you have worked something out? It’s not like Melbourne is the moon.’

‘We weren’t madly in love, Lizzie. We were just kids and it was one of those holiday flings you have when you’re young and you still look fabulous in a bikini. Remember what it was like down here in the summer when we were teenagers? If you looked across the road you could see young love blooming in the first week of December and hearts breaking by the end of January.’

Lizzie still looked as if she didn’t believe Julia. ‘So that’s all it was? Summer lovin’ like Sandy and Danny in
Grease
?’

‘If only I looked that good in black lycra.’ Julia laughed at the comparison. ‘I was young with big plans. I had to get out of here. I didn’t want to be stuck here in Middle Point, or even in Adelaide. I wanted to live in a big city, do something with my life.’

Julia couldn’t say the truth of it out loud — she had been determined not to turn out like her mother. Stuck in Middle Point. Surrendering to
pain and heartbreak. Second-hand clothes and struggle town.

Lizzie dropped her eyes to the floor. ‘Nothing wrong with
here
, Julia.’

‘Shit, Lizzie, that didn’t come out right. But Dad had died and it was just me and Mum and I didn’t see anything for me here. She wanted me to go too, encouraged me to apply, and when I got in she was so thrilled. It was all too easy for Ry. He’d already finished uni, knew he was going to go and work in the family business. He had everything right there in front of him, his whole life mapped out: the right school, family, money, a job. I didn’t have any of that. I just didn’t fit into that world or that life. So I left.’ It was hard to revisit that time, and just the memory made her stomach flip.