Nobody but Him (3 page)

More things had changed about him than just the width of his shoulders, she decided, as she walked along the empty streets of Middle Point. He’d moved on, created a life. Why wouldn’t he have? And lucky for Julia, she wasn’t the same person she was at eighteen, either. She’d come so far, left so much behind except, apparently, the memories of him that came crowding in now.

For fifteen years, she’d lived in another city eight hundred kilometres away and had felt safe in the knowledge that she’d never see Ry Blackburn again. She’d planned it well, knowing that after she’d escaped from Middle Point, the chances of turning a street corner in Melbourne and bumping into Ry were somewhere between none and Buckley’s. The odds were apparently not so good now she was back in her hometown.

What she couldn’t figure out was, what was he doing back here? And why the hell had he bought the Middle Point Pub? While she knew she could get some more answers out of Lizzie, Julia also felt torn. Did she re
ally want to know every gory detail about him, his wife and family and the labrador? Wouldn’t it be easier for both of them if she just did what she had to do and flew back home?

They were questions she would think about tomorrow. For now, she had to make sure she had a plan in place to avoid him for the rest of her stay. She wasn’t back for long, so how hard could that be? Staying away from the pub? Easy. The town of Port Elliot was only a few kilometres down the road anyway and she could simply drive right there, once she’d borrowed Lizzie’s car, and get everything she needed.

Julia smiled to herself. Crisis averted. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Jones. And don’t forget it.

She flipped up the collar of her vintage woollen coat to protect herself from the harsh wind and watched her breath cloud into the night air. After so many years in Melbourne, with its famed four seasons in one day, this weather didn’t really feel that cold at all. It was nothing like Melbourne cold, which seeped into your bones and settled there all winter. But that was a minor thing to cope with, considering everything else she loved about her adopted city. And soon she’d be back there. That day couldn’t come soon enough.

Julia’s footsteps crunched noisily on the gravel driveway as she turned into her mother’s place, and unlocked the front door. Inside she flicked on the light in the living area and took a look around.

She was about to make one of the hardest decisions of her life. What to do with this house now her mother was gone.

She shrugged off her coat, tossed it onto the orange vinyl sofa, toed of the horrible black flatties she’d borrowed from Lizzie and stopped to consider if she needed coffee or wanted wine instead. So maybe caffeine wasn’t the best idea, particularly when she was trying not to think so much, but reaching for a bottle of wine to calm down probably wasn’t wise either.

When she glanced at the little kitchen, a memory came back unbidden and she squeezed her eyes shut to try to suppress it. Her mother, standing in the small 1970s-inspired space, holding a cup of coffee, warming her hands against the bitter winter southerlies. Just remembering her mother’s smile, the way her blue eyes laughed, brought an ache to Julia’s chest and her eyes threatened tears. Again. It had been a year and she still saw her mother in every corner of every room. Since she’d been back in Middle Point, back in the house she’d grown up in, she’d been swamped with
memories, those perfect moments in time with her mother, the scents of her childhood and so many déjà vu moments that she was constantly overwhelmed and emotional.

Which was not going to help her do what she needed to do.

And once again, the words were in her head.

Make a decision, Julia.

She twisted the knob on the stove and pushed the lid firmly onto the top of the kettle. The electric plate on the stove glowed and reddened, and she spread her palms out, hoping it would warm her hands as well as the water.

Why was this so hard? She was a crisis management consultant, for God’s sake. Her high-powered Melbourne job involved advising high flyers and top end companies when they found themselves in delicate predicaments, when they were juggling calamity, corruption or scandal. She was used to making literally hundreds of snap decisions for people when they were too freaked out to think straight, when their reputations or share prices were on the line. She’d earned kudos for her calm, clear head and her dead-on instinct. She was worth every dollar she was paid — and she was paid a lot of them.

So what had happened? Since she’d been back, she’d been all at sea. All those personal virtues she was so proud of seemed to have vanished the minute she crossed the state border three days before.

It was a chilly, gusty dawn. Ry’s running shoes pounded the white wet sand as he took step after jarring step on his twelve-kilometre morning run from Middle Point to Goolwa and back. He’d started running a year ago. His GP had told him he needed to do something for his stress. Yoga, running, anything. He’d chosen running and it had worked, helped him cope with the pressure of work, and he’d been sleeping better too. That alone was enough to convince him to keep it up. Running on the beach was no hardship, despite the cold, because he was almost always alone at this time of the morning. The silence, the crash of the waves, the fresh air. He liked it a lot.

When Ry reached the steps to the lookout on top of Middle Point, he took them two by two in great, strong strides, twenty-five of them, until he hit the top one. As he caught his breath, he turned and took in the
view. Even in the winter, there was so much to love about the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. To the east, the ribbon of coastline snaked away into the hazy distance, the sea spray blurring the view like an Impressionist’s painting. Down in the water, surfers dotted the waves near the point, out further than swimmers would dare venture. No matter what time of year, the diehards wrapped themselves from head to toe in black neoprene and straddled their boards, waiting patiently for the best swells. Some people just loved this part of the world unconditionally and Ry was one of them. He’d learned to love it just as much as his parents had. While they’d always lived in the city, they’d spent holidays at Middle Point, coming down from Adelaide almost every summer when he was younger, paddling in the shallows as a toddler, bodyboarding as a kid, and then surfing as a teenager.

Surfing. It was something he hadn’t done in too many years to count. He needed to get back out there, now more than ever.

Shit. He’d hoped the run would serve to clear his head, to get rid of the crap that had kept him up most of the night.

Julia
.

The ghost who’d sashayed right into pub, in the cold heart of winter, in the town he was investing his time, energy and cold hard cash in. Except, she wasn’t a ghost or a memory or a bad dream any more.

Behind him, a vintage panel van started up, it’s engine croaky in the morning cold, and the sound of it shot him back fifteen years. When he’d watched Julia drive away, vowing never to come back. To Middle Point. Or to him.

So what the hell was she doing back here?

Ry launched himself down the wooden steps and back to the beach, his pace accelerating to meet his pounding pulse. In all those years he hadn’t seen her or heard from her once. Not once. He’d thought she was gone for good. Out of this town, out of the state, out of his life.

But all it took was to see her face again, that body hidden inside the black and white waitresses uniform, to bring back a sense memory of what it had felt like to touch her, to hold her, to make love to her. To be the centre of his world.

That world had come crashing down when she left. And he’d never forgiven her. Ry glanced at his watch and picked up the pace as he headed for
home. He’d been good at keeping his emotions in check in the past few years. He’d have no trouble doing the same where Julia Jones was concerned, keeping her out of his head.

One step in front of the other, one heartbeat, then another. Ry let the pounding of his feet take him over.

Where the hell am I?
Julia blinked her eyes open. A purple chenille bedspread. A venetian blind straining and failing to keep out the dull morning light. A 1960s orange-hued oil painting of a tropical sunset. A macramé pot holder hanging from one corner of the room, a bunch of dried lavender blossoming out of it.

She propped herself up on her elbows and yawned sleepily. She was surrounded by a house full of her mother’s stuff, none of which would add to its selling appeal. Julia knew she couldn’t put it on the market the way it was. If she decided to sell it. Who wanted 1970s beach décor anyway? All the new homes along the coast were white and Scandinavian in style, full of bleached wood furniture and reproduction Eames chairs, designer black and white prints hanging on the walls and artfully designed printed curtains. No one would want her mother’s orange vinyl sofa, which was sticky and sweaty in summer and arctic-cold in winter, or the scuffed teak veneer furniture that was dotted around the room. It would all have to go. But even the thought of dumping anything from the house brought a lump to Julia’s throat.

Over a breakfast of Vegemite toast and freshly brewed coffee, Julia did a quick bit of maths and realised that she’d lived away from the house and the town almost as long as she’d lived in it. The thought made her feel more disconnected than ever from the place she’d grown up in.

She’d broken up with it a long time ago, and maybe it was true what people said, that you could never go back. It had only been three days, but maybe she really didn’t know this house and Middle Point anymore. It was certainly likely that they didn’t know her, either. And what had she come back to, anyway? A place so markedly changed from her childhood that she barely recognised a house along the beachfront. The old shacks — and the families who lived in them — were almost all gone, pushed out by a spiral of increased property values, higher property rates and taxes and insatiable demand from city people with deep pockets and a desire for an
ocean view. They’d changed the place forever, in her mind, and for the worse.

Her phone rang and she picked up the call, while munching her toast.

‘Hey Lizzie.’

‘Hey Jools.’ Lizzie yawned. ‘You okay?’

‘I think I’m coping rather well with being made redundant, actually. I don’t miss that place at all.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know what that was all about. After you left, Ry was like a bear with a sore head for the whole night.’

Julia squeezed her eyes closed, hoping to blur the image of him that was freeze-framed in her head. Ry in pub. Handsome. Furious. Blonde. Distracted. Stone-cold sapphire eyes. This whole being back in Middle Point thing was going to be harder than she thought.

Especially since they had Lizzie in common. Why on earth did she think she could hide in her little house bubble and not hear his name or find out anything more about him?

‘Serves him right,’ she said. ‘The jerk.’

‘Jools, he’s not so bad. Hey, do you want to come over for a coffee? I’m going to suck up every spare minute of your precious time before you head back to the big smoke.’

Julia looked down at the coffee cup in her hand.

‘Love to. Give me a little while. I’m still waking up.’

‘Take all the time you need, Jools. I’ve got a day off and I am a total lady of leisure.’

Julia pulled her mother’s fluffy, white dressing gown tightly around her, comforting as well as warming her, as she listened to the morning radio news humming softly in the background. Julia was a news junkie, listening for any mention of clients in trouble or potential clients who might need their hand held while their world was crashing in around them. It was how she started every single day of her life, waiting for bad news.

She’d already had her Middle Point bad news, delivered to her in the form of a very handsome man with a forbidding scowl. And there was nothing she could do for her clients when she was so far away. So he leaned over, twiddled with the round knob and stopped when she found some music. Lizzie’s plan for coffee was brilliant. Julia knew that, for her, a whole day ahead with no work to do was a dangerous thing. It would
mean there would be too much time to think about her mother and too much time to think about Ry, what the hell he was doing back in Middle Point and how on earth they were going to avoid each other.

With the coffee mug warming her hands, Julia pushed open the front door and stepped out into the front garden, letting the familiar and comforting sound of the ocean wash over her as she took in the scene.

The views from the old place were worth a million bucks, literally. The beachfront location was fantastic for the scenery but devastating for the bank balance. It was a constant battle to keep up with even the most basic maintenance, a never-ending fight with the punishing winds and corrosive salt. The house was sixty years old, splashed pale green on the exterior from a decorating era long passed, with a front garden made up of random succulents and seaside daisies, which grew so abundantly along this part of the South Australian coast.

This had been the place of so many languid summers, of sunburn and salty air, of surfing and surfer boys. Julia glanced across the esplanade to a small grey building nestled in the vegetation and smiled at the memory. That was the place she’d had her first kiss, right there on the sand in front of that toilet block.
Oh, the romance
. Kevin Higgins was two years older and slightly drunk on wine cooler the summer she had turned fourteen, and she could still remember the shock of his tongue ramming into her mouth. Technique wasn’t his strong point, but he’d looked so cute in those low-slung board shorts that she couldn’t resist him.

Growing up, she’d known these streets so well, had known every house and the names of everyone who lived in them. The local kids roamed the streets in a giant pack, safe in knowing they weren’t more than three houses from someone’s place in case hunger or thirst overcame them. But Julia didn’t feel that comfortable familiarity anymore. Most of the old places she knew had disappeared, razed and replaced by modern holiday homes, in designer blues and yellows, all glass windows and sharply angled rooves.