Second Time Sweeter Read online

  ‘Well,’ Brodie said, turning around and pulling a funny face at the kids in the back seat as he manoeuvred the car into a tiny spot. ‘You know what you need to do. SP’s all on board with certification, and Sunshine like what they see. It’s all about the visits now, and the fair. How confident are you all the land is gonna pass?’

  Gen wrinkled her nose. ‘The DB got a survey done a couple of years back,’ she said. ‘It all looked really good then.’

  Brodie nodded as he turned off the engine. ‘So that leaves production.’ He gestured at the building in front of them, a low squat thing with Happy Herbs emblazoned across the front. ‘And that’s why we’re here. These guys are sure some slick outfit, and they did it all as a co-op. They can help you work through how to do it, and then you just need to get Sweet Pocket on board.’

  ‘Just that little thing then,’ Gen mumbled as she got out of the car and opened the door to help the kids out. She pointed at Will as he tumbled out, all pointy elbows and floppy hair. ‘You sure they’re gonna be okay with the kids?’

  Brodie beamed. ‘Trust me. They love kids.’

  As they entered the building through the side door, Gen’s mouth swung open. This was unlike any operation she had ever seen or imagined. The little entryway was plastered with a huge mural in Aboriginal dot painting-style. It featured pinks and reds and little wisps of gold. ‘Cool,’ Will enthused, going up for a closer look.

  ‘Don’t touch,’ Gen said, turning back to Brodie. ‘You didn’t tell me it was an Aboriginal enterprise?’

  He shrugged. ‘You didn’t guess by the address?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s a women’s collective,’ he said, leading her though the swing doors. ‘Come on. Ruby said to come straight through.’

  The inside of the premises was no less astonishing than the foyer. While there were clearly areas dedicated to drying, freezing, processing and packing supplements, there were also break-out spaces where women gathered and chatted, and open-plan meeting rooms that looked more like living rooms, complete with couches and, in some, easels and canvasses set up. As Gen looked around, a tall woman charged towards Brodie with a huge smile on her face. ‘Bloody hell,’ Gen muttered through gritted teeth. ‘Does everyone love you?’

  ‘Well,’ Brodie muttered back. ‘I don’t like to boast, but …’

  And then she was upon them. ‘Brodie, Brodie, Brodie Brown,’ she sang in the most lovely, musical voice. She was tall, slender and striking, long hair braided down one side Mockingjay-style. Gen was immediately, viciously jealous at the warmth that settled in the space between this goddess and Brodie. ‘It’s been too long.’

  ‘It’s looking good, Rosie,’ he enthused, wrapping the woman in a hug and taking, in Gen’s opinion, far too long to release her. When he did, they stared at each other a little longer.

  ‘Star of the damn class, now king of the damn world. What brings you to our humble home?’

  Brodie stepped back a little and smiled. ‘Humble? Yeah, right. There was never anything humble about you, darl, and looking around here I can see why that might be. The place looks amazing.’ He waved a hand in Gen’s direction. ‘I want you to give a friend of mine the rap on setting up a cooperative. Genevieve Jenkins, Rosie Saint.’

  The woman finally turned to Gen and her initial impression of striking beauty trebled. She was really something else. She had the raw power and presence of some Aboriginal women Gen knew from a community close to Sweet Pocket, but combined with a svelte, graceful sex appeal that made it hard to decide if she terrified or attracted you. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said, her face full of warmth. ‘Any friend of Brodie’s is welcome here.’ She leaned forward and kissed Gen’s cheek, giving Gen a taste of a full, sweet scent that she found hard to pin down. Bergamot? ‘Did he tell you how he helped us get the lease on this place?’ She gestured to the factory around them.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Gen said. ‘But I’m not surprised. He’s helping us out of a bit of a pickle back home as well.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘Of course he is.’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘You know Brodie.’

  Gen couldn’t decide if she loved this woman, or wanted to stab her. Gen did know Brodie, very well, or at least she had ten years ago, and she absolutely could not stand the idea of not knowing how this gorgeous creature knew him. Classmates? Ex-lovers? Current lovers?

  She grasped for something to say. ‘You smell amazing.’

  ‘Ah,’ Rosie said, tapping her nose again. ‘Essential oil. It’s an old herb my people used for ceremonies. We’re marketing it for the modern woman.’

  ‘Wow.’ Gen knew it made her sound like a teenager, but she couldn’t help it. Cool, cool idea. ‘I’ve never smelled anything like it.’ She looked around. ‘So it’s a perfume factory?’

  Rosie laughed, white teeth and huge smile almost hypnotising Gen. ‘Oh no, darl,’ she drawled in a lovely, deep voice. ‘Much, much more than that. Herbs for healing, herbs for the home, herbs for the body. You name it. It’s about capturing the wisdom.’ She winked at Gen. ‘And the love. And sharing it around.’

  Gen remembered her manners, shuffling her children forward. ‘My children, Beatrice and Will. Say hi, guys.’

  Rosie squealed with delight as the children shuffled forward to shake hands. Rosie knelt down, cooing and chatting, and her cries seemed to magically draw in other women from the factory floor and meeting rooms. Soon, half a dozen women of various colours, sizes and ages were gathered in the small meeting area, cooing and clucking over Gen’s children.

  ‘I told you,’ Brodie whispered as Gen was pressed back away from the kids.

  Finally, Rosie stood up again. ‘It’s good they found us,’ she said, smiling as she motioned towards the other women. ‘It’s a hard story to tell alone. Now—’ she clapped her hands at the women milling in the space, asking the children questions and marvelling over Bea’s red hair, ‘—shall we go to the Dreaming Room?’

  The women nodded and expressed loud agreement and Rosie led them off to one of the open spaces. As they followed, an older woman fell in stride with Gen, touching her hair as they walked. ‘Beautiful,’ she said softly, then pointed at Gen’s belly. ‘Your next one will have hair just like you.’

  Gen laughed and shook her head. ‘Thank you, but there’s not going to be a next one,’ she said. ‘I’m done.’

  The woman clucked her tongue. ‘The stars have already decided,’ she said, turning Gen to face her and touching her belly lightly. And then she was gone, and as Gen tried to find her in the little crowd that milled in the Dreaming Room to ask what she meant, the woman seemed to have disappeared into the air.

  ***

  ‘That was amazing,’ Gen said, and Brodie loved watching her red hair floating away on the breeze as they motored up the familiar country road.

  ‘You’ve been saying that for hours.’ He laughed. ‘Ever since we left.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Gen turned to him and smiled. ‘I know, I know, but I mean—wow! And I learned so much. I just love the whole idea of a new generation cooperative. Rosie knew so much about how they’re being used in value-adding to food production, like the Canadian examples she told us about.’

  Brodie made an encouraging noise just so he could keep listening to her talk some more.

  Gen was happy to oblige. ‘Those women were incredible. They started it all themselves, and from nothing. Just an idea, and look what they turned it into.’

  ‘Yep,’ Brodie agreed. ‘All it took was one woman to rope them together. They had all the right skills, all the right heads, all the right desires.’

  Gen chewed her lip and looked out the window. When she turned back, her face was very serious. ‘Rosie is amazing. How do you know her?’

  ‘We started at uni together,’ he said, remembering it like it was ten days instead of ten years before. ‘She helped me out.’ He thought some more, watching the car eat up the country miles. ‘We helped each other out, I guess. She was from a l
ong way away, homesick as hell, and I was …’ What had he been? Broken? Empty? All that and more. Rosie had been a friend, confidante and sister to him, all in one. He’d known she was hot as hell, even then. His mates had constantly ribbed him about how close they were. But for Brodie, the antidote to a broken heart had not lain in breaking someone else’s, and he knew enough to know that heartbreaking was all he would have been good for at that time. By the time he was healed, they were mates. And that was all they would ever be.

  ‘This weekend,’ Gen said, turning back to check on the sleeping kids again. ‘I know we had—’

  What? What was she going to say? I know the connection between us is as strong as it was the day I left? I know I can’t get you out of my head?

  ‘Cause he was sure as hell thinking all that and more.

  ‘I know we had a great time, business-wise.’

  He nodded, swallowing back disappointment.

  But she wasn’t done.

  ‘But also …’ She wound a piece of hair around a finger. ‘I just felt so comfortable being with you.’

  Really? Could he say the same? Comfortable wasn’t quite the word he would have used, even though there was an easy comfort in the way they interacted, just like there had always been.

  ‘And this weekend, what you’ve given me.’ She gestured in the back. ‘Us, this town—I’ll never forget what you’ve done.’

  Brodie looked in the rear-view mirror at the two sleeping children. He’d grown to like them so much over the course of the weekend. Bea, so flighty and feisty like her mother; Will, so careful and watchful, but so brave underneath it all. Gen had done an amazing job with them. He could see the scars of the last year on their little faces from time to time, especially Will, but for the most part they were coping, resilient. He would miss them once they got back to Sweetiepie.

  ‘I liked it too.’ He smiled at her, reaching across and squeezing her hand. ‘And what you’re doing for the town, it matters. It’s going to work, Gen, I know it.’

  ‘God I hope so,’ she groaned.

  He waited, trying hard not to say it, not to push it—trying to leave things at the delicate comfort they had agreed upon last night.

  Too hard, too late, too impossible. He took a breath.

  ‘I want to see you, Gen, when we get back to SP. I know what I said, about being friends. And I am your friend; I promise I always will be. But I want more as well. I want to be allowed to see you some more.’

  ‘More like what?’

  Was she freaking out? The last thing he wanted to do was scare her again, like he had ten years ago. He looked to her for a lead, but she wasn’t giving anything away ‘Look, Gen, I don’t know how or what might happen. I only know I want to start over, start things right. I’m not about leaping back into being seventeen again.’ Although, seventeen had felt pretty good. ‘Just starting slow.’

  She looked over at him and there was so much of the old Gen in the look—trust, openness, belief—that his tummy did a double-flip just looking at her. ‘I think I’d really like that, Bro,’ she said. ‘Let’s start over, if you think you can.’

  He nodded. ‘I think I can.’

  Chapter Nine

  The next step

  Mac was polishing a brand new V8 when Brodie pulled up. He didn’t turn around at first, and Brodie sat in his car trying to work through what he wanted to say to him. He hadn’t seen his ex-best friend for ten years, and they had some serious shit to discuss.

  First and foremost, he owed him an apology. It hadn’t been Mac’s fault that Gen had used him as a convenient prop in her escape plan ten years ago. And even if she had, as she claimed at the time, fallen in love with Mac, that wasn’t really Mac’s fault either. Brodie had been a hot-headed tool, and the fact that his heart had been rupturing in his chest at the time was absolutely no excuse for that particular brand of toolishness. Add the punch to the mix, and well, he had some heavy-duty apologising to do.

  Brodie took a deep breath and turned off the engine. Then there was the other thing. After this weekend, it was really the other thing that was spurring him on in this particular visit.

  Mac turned around from his polishing and squinted into the late afternoon sun to look at Brodie. ‘Nice ride,’ he said, gesturing to the Audi. ‘Not sure we carry your kind of thing here though.’

  Brodie moved forward and held out his hand. ‘Mac.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mac stopped in his tracks as his smile slipped from friendly salesman to get-the-fuck-off-my-lot. ‘It’s you.’

  Brodie extended his hands in a gesture of supplication. ‘It is.’

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  Brodie and Mac had been mates since their mothers had birthed them in neighbouring beds at the Green Valley Base Hospital. And Brodie had never really thought about the nature of their friendship, not until that day ten years before. As he had driven away from Sweet Pocket, his hand aching from the punch he’d landed, he’d revised everything he’d ever known or understood about Mac. He had relived every time Mac had copied his homework, let him take the blame for one of their stunts, or ratted him out to a teacher. He had decided, back then, that Mac was just the kind of low weasel who would make a move on his best friend’s girl, turn her head and take her away.

  Now he knew he had just hoped it was all Mac’s doing.

  Now he knew more about what had really gone down.

  Standing closer, Brodie could see the years hadn’t been kind to Mac’s particular brand of boyish cute. At seventeen, he’d been tall, dimply and blue-eyed, used to getting his own way, and charming in an easy-come-easy-go way. Now he looked kind of louche and faded—not old enough to be the kind of bald or fat you might hope for, but still kind of soft around the edges. He’d grown a contrived goatee, and Brodie for one thought it looked ridiculous, like he was trying to be some kind of hipster.

  Still, he was here to mend bridges.

  ‘Nice place,’ Brodie said, motioning towards the late-model cars on the lot.

  ‘Pays the bills,’ Mac said.

  Not all of them, Brodie thought, thinking about what Gen had said about her money troubles. But still. He shouldn’t assume that he knew what was going on between those two. You never did get an entirely unbiased view in these kinds of things. And truth be told, Mac probably deserved a fairer hearing than Brodie had given him last time. After all, Gen was the one who had a dodgy history with the truth.

  Brodie was fishing for another platitude when Mac motioned him up to the veranda of the little sales office and pointed to one of two deck chairs. ‘Beer?’

  Brodie looked at his watch. A little early but hey, it might make the conversation they were about to have easier. He nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  Mac disappeared inside the office and came back with two dripping stubbies. He sat down heavily. ‘So. Shoot.’

  Brodie took off his hat and twisted the top off the beer, allowing himself a swig before he settled it on the little table between them. ‘I’ve come to say sorry. For ten years ago. For going off at you. And for hitting you.’

  ‘I never made a move on her,’ Mac said. ‘Not while you two were together.’

  ‘I know that now,’ Brodie said. Then he considered the best way to say it. ‘In fact, she never said that back then either. She just said she’d developed feelings for you. It was me who assumed you’d courted them.’

  Mac spread his hands. ‘What can I say? She’s only human.’

  Brodie remembered something else about Mac then—the way Mac’s mother had always told Mac what a total catch he was, and how much Mac had swallowed it. It was one of the reasons Mac had always had such a hard time believing Gen might actually prefer Brodie.

  ‘Yep. You tiger.’ Brodie couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Mac studied Brodie as he took his own first swallow. ‘Alright then,’ he said, setting the beer down. ‘I accept your apology. It had to be hard, breaking up like that. I know you always thought—’

  �
�Yep,’ Brodie interrupted, not able to hear the words from Mac’s mouth. ‘I did.’

  Mac wiped hands wet from the beer on his khaki pants and then started picking at the label. ‘I never set out to take her,’ he said. ‘We just kind of hung out, then one thing led to another.’

  Okay, Brodie didn’t need to hear it, and he was pretty sure Mac had been a whole lot more intentional than that. And really, who could blame him, with Brodie off the scene, having whacked him in the jaw, and Gen so gorgeous, local and available?

  Alright, enough of this. Brodie had said his piece—at least his first piece. He’d been here long enough to remember what a weak Mummy’s boy Mac really was, and he’d heard enough to know he was never going to be able to be mates with Mac again. It was hard enough to think about him with Gen Jen, let alone have to watch him talking about her.

  ‘Anyway,’ Brodie said, hoping he was signalling a change of subject, ‘so I’m back over at Sweetiepie for the fair.’

  Mac groaned. ‘God, that bloody thing. You poor bastard. When’s the town going to realise it’s fucked without the Cow, and just roll over and take what Davina’s dishing out? Did Nelly talk you into it?’

  Brodie nodded. ‘Something like that. But Gen’s doing a great job on it. The town might get certified; they might be able to get out of the shit.’

  Mac rolled his eyes and took a long swallow of his beer. ‘Go Gen,’ he said.

  Brodie studied Mac, trying to read what was behind the casual bitterness in his voice. ‘What happened between you two?’

  ‘You asking permission to go back there?’ Mac’s mouth was a sick snarl.

  ‘I don’t see as how I’d need it.’ Brodie felt his punching fist curl in muscle memory.

  ‘True.’ Mac laughed, downing the last of his beer and disappearing back into the office. He came back with another and held one up to Brodie as well. Brodie shook his head. He was barely going to cope with sitting through this one. As Mac sat back down, he exhaled like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Ah, you know how it is, mate. Two kids, farm. I started thinking: is this really all there is?’