Second Time Sweeter Read online

  Brodie drummed his fingers on the driver’s door, then reached through and laid a warm hand on her shoulder. ‘You okay, darlin’?’

  Oh dear Lord, his touch almost undid her. She looked down at his big hand on her shoulder, and he looked at it too, as if it were some kind of gauntlet. His fingers were long and pretty, just like they always had been, but there was no dirt under his nails, no grease smudge on the back of his right hand.

  It didn’t matter. She still wanted to turn her face and lie it against his hand, feel his warmth against her cheek.

  The moment seemed to lie down on the ground and stretch, cat-like, before them, daring them to take longer to revel in the ferocious electricity that snapped and crackled between them. That whorey wench Time was in no hurry to speed this moment up, and neither was Gen. Her breath hitched inside her chest, as if she might shatter the moment if she exhaled. They both kept looking at that hand, but the temptation for Gen to look into Brodie’s eyes was too great.

  When she did, she saw pain and confusion there. And something else—pity?

  The sight snapped her out of the memory-lust-nostalgia that had kept her in its thrall.

  Genevieve nodded quickly, wanting it over. ‘I’m fine.’

  She could see that he knew she didn’t want to discuss Mac, as he’d always known everything about her, and he put her out of her misery, changing tack quickly. ‘So who’s—’

  Genevieve’s lush deepened to something less insipid and more rageful. She clenched her fists on the steering wheel. ‘Tell me you are not about to ask me who’s running the farm,’ she bit out.

  He held up his hands in front of his chest in a defensive gesture, grey eyes twinkling.

  ‘Never,’ he promised. ‘I was just going to ask who’s taking you to the Spring Fair Dance, now that arsehole you married has finally done the town a favour.’

  ***

  Brodie Brown lay back on the soft mattress of the old four-poster bed in what was now officially his aunt’s guest room. His basketball trophies still lined the antique dresser, and a sad little collection of high school photographs decorated the hutch above his desk. Even from here he could see the empty square where one photo had been brutally removed.

  ‘I hope you took your boots off before you flopped on that old thing,’ Nelly called to him from the kitchen. ‘Otherwise you’ll be doing the laundry tomorrow.’

  He grinned, and quickly and quietly slipped off his boots, sitting up a little so she wouldn’t hear the thunk as they fell to the floor. ‘I’ll be doing it anyway,’ he called back.

  ‘Too right,’ she agreed in that smoker’s rasp that made her sound like a seven-foot-tall trucker rather than the tiny slip of ferocity he loved so dearly. ‘Guest’s privileges.’

  He frisbeed his hat towards the little hatstand and let out a long whistle of self-appreciation as it landed perfectly on the top hook. ‘You know, Brodie Brown, you really should have gone to the States and played ball,’ he reminded himself.

  ‘First sign of madness,’ his aunt called from the kitchen. Then, after a slight pause, ‘Kettle’s on.’

  Jesus, more tea. He’d only been here a few hours and already he’d had his fill of tea. What he could really use after that meeting tonight, and the series of shocks it had delivered him, was a stiff whiskey. He smiled as he stared at the mottled ceiling, sure Nelly could be brought around to offer him some of the good stuff rather than another cup of goddamned tea. Then he frowned, and made a mental note to ask Nelly why she hadn’t had the painting done. He’d sent her the money for the job six months ago.

  But right now the ceiling was the least of his problems.

  He still wasn’t sure how or why he’d agreed to this, but Nelly sure had worked out how to get her way. She claimed he’d inherited it from her, and that was why he was such a shark in the boardroom, but he was too clever to buy that line. He could wheel and deal for a thousand years and he wouldn’t hold a candle to his mother’s older sister. What she didn’t know about manipulating people into doing what she wanted wasn’t worth knowing.

  But he needed to be firm with her. He was just here to lend some expertise, contacts and cash to the agricultural show, the gig they called the Spring Fair. The town was on its arse, his aunt’s farm included, and if he couldn’t find a way to help Sweet Pocket realise its dream of moving from old-school dairy to boutique organic darling, they were all up shit creek without a paddle.

  He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, trying to remember when he had last slept. He’d been up early in Sydney, hit the gym—it was hard to stay fit when your early-morning routine no longer involved fixing three fences and shifting the herd before school—then done three meets before jumping the aerial shit-shuffle that took him out to Sweet Pocket. And then there had been dinner and a million cups of sweet, milky tea before the goddamn P and C meeting that Nelly and The Stickler had insisted he attend.

  This whole thing would have been so much easier if Nelly would just let him help her out properly—out of the ball-and-chain farm that had sucked the life out of first his parents, and then her. He had told her he could help sell it. It might not get much as a going concern, but he could flog off the cattle and surely some dreamy tree-changers would pay for the valley view and the picturesque tumbledown cottage with the wild rose garden.

  And if they didn’t, it didn’t matter. Brodie had more than enough money to set his aunt up in some funky little joint in the big smoke, close to the galleries and the harbour.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to imagine it. If Nelly was in Sydney, he could visit and have dinner with her—that part sure would be nice. She was a great cook, but she was also a better dinner companion than almost anyone he knew. She’d been everywhere and done everything before his parents’ death had cut her wandering short, but she never complained about having to take on either her nephew or the farm. She’d be some kind of saint if she weren’t the worst tempered, most opinionated bossy boots he’d ever met.

  So yeah, it would be great to have her in Sydney. Dinner. Conversation. The rest was kind of hard to get a handle on. For a start, what the hell would she do there? The old girl didn’t know how to be idle. Problem was, Nelly didn’t actually want to move to Sydney, or sell the farm, despite how clearly he had spelled out all the benefits.

  Instead, Nelly had (somehow) talked him into coming back here and helping make the Spring Fair the kind of hit that would launch Sweet Pocket as the new organic dairy mecca, and save them all from having to sell out to Devondish Dairy (the corporation Nelly and most of the town called The Big Cow—a less-than-subtle reference to Davina Devondish, the head honcho of the outfit, and a woman whom Nelly claimed scarfed down more brie in a single evening than his hometown produced in a year).

  Now he was stuck in Sweet Pocket for a month—ferrying contacts around town, playing the local boy who just loves his roots, setting up meetings and using his PR resources to help sell the community as a haven of sweetness and purity.

  Which brought him to Genevieve Jenkins, sweet as honey but changeable as the tides. She had been the last person he’d expected to see in that meeting tonight.

  Sure, he knew she had kids. Nelly had made sure he knew exactly how many and what a great little mummy she made. But she had never seemed to him to be the P and C type. Maybe because whenever he’d looked at her ten years ago, all he’d been able to see had been those long milky-white legs, big boobs, green eyes and red hair. Those pretty little freckles, that kissable mouth, and that tiny little snub nose that had a way of wrinkling almost as expressively as her eyes.

  He should have looked harder, ten years ago, beyond the hair and the boobs. He should have seen that she didn’t really share his dreams at all. She didn’t want out of Sweet Pocket as badly as he did. She wanted to stay on her little farm, marry a boy who would stay with her, and have lots of dimple-cheeked, milk-fed Sweet Pocket babies.

  Well, now she knew what you got when you settled for a guy like Pete
MacDonald.

  Brodie could have told her he had no spine.

  Sure, they’d been mates, but then he hadn’t exactly been discriminating back then—his second best mate had been Wazza McLaren, whose favourite pastime had been drilling holes in the outside wall of the girls change room at the local swimming pool.

  Eighteen-year-olds just weren’t that discerning when it came to friendships.

  Anyway, he’d wanted to say something suitably vindictive when he’d stood by the door of her ute outside the school this evening. Something like:

  Guess that’s what you get for settling for the safe bet.

  Or maybe:

  Karma’s a bitch, baby.

  But he’d never been able to be mean to that girl.

  Even then, ten years ago, the day she’d told him.

  And tonight, sitting in that car, looking as if she were going to break as she’d said he’s gone, he left, all he’d wanted to do was take her in his arms and tell her it was all going to be okay. But what had he done instead, like the foolish boy the whole town had always known was mad for Gen Jen? Something worse. He’d asked her to the goddamn Spring Fair Dance.

  What kind of sap was he?

  He refused to answer that, even to himself. Because he knew exactly what kind of sap he was—had known it the minute he’d walked in there and realised who that was dressed as a giant cheese. The kind of sap who had never gotten over his high school sweetheart.

  He rammed the pillow over his head. What a shitty cliché.

  He stood up as he heard the kettle whistle. No electric kettle for Nelly; she liked the kind that sat on your stovetop, polished ’til it was shiny, reliable as the sunrise. He looked at his muddy boots and tried to decide what would be the worse violation—coming shoeless into Nelly’s kitchen, or coming to her table in those filthy boots. It was a close-run thing, but he was willing to take a chance in his socks, just this once. After all, it had been a long day, and he was doing her a favour. He was running his not-inconsiderable business empire out of Sweet Pocket for a whole month.

  Just so the Spring Fair would be a hit.

  Surely that deserved a free pass on the shoes. Just this once.

  ***

  Gen plucked the mail from the old letterbox, patting its peeling hide. ‘Sorry, Betty, darl’n,’ she said to the mailbox. ‘You’re going to have to wait for a touch-up. Bit busy right now.’

  She stopped, remembering how Brodie had always laughed at her habit of naming inanimate objects. Then she glanced at the collection of bills, CWA notices and junk mail as she headed back to the ute, shutting the gate on the way. The last one in the pile stopped her heart with a surge of gratitude that she wasn’t quite sure where to direct. Finally, she settled for a mental thanks be to the Patron Saint of Impoverished Ex-Wives.

  The letter was from the Child Support Agency.

  She slid into the ute, but left the door open so the light would stay on as she tore at the thing. Her fingers shook as a warm flood of relief washed through her system.

  Finally, the assessment was in. She could start to make some plans, maybe get Will into the clinic over at Sunbury. She knew from KD that Mac was doing well at the dealership, and God knew it had been a long time since the farm had turned any profit, so this could only be good news.

  At first, she thought it might have been a trick of the dim light. It had to be that, or maybe the stress of the last few years really were getting to her, because surely there was no way that this thin slip of mean-spirited bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo could really be saying what it seemed to be saying. She read it again, blowing her damp fringe out of her eyes, and moving her lips as she read silently, like she had when she’d first learned to read, and like she sometimes still did when she was stressed.

  Your ex-husband’s income for this financial year fell below the rate at which he would deemed eligible to pay child support above the minimum amount already being collected fortnightly and deposited …

  Already being collected? Hot prickles danced up and down Gen’s arms, and stars danced in front of her eyes as she studied the paper. She currently wasn’t collecting anything from him at all, aside from the makings of an ulcer.

  How could this be? Sally had seen him in that new Prado. It wasn’t possible. Girlfriends had told her about this stuff, but she hadn’t thought Mac would be the type. Something about how sub-contractors and business people could fudge income, make it look as if they were earning less than they really did, sometimes taking payment in other forms—accommodation, cars … She thought about that Prado and swallowed hard.

  When Mac had left, she’d thought it would be okay. He had been full of promises about how he would continue to take care of them. They had a consent order, for God’s sake. They’d both been clear that getting lawyers involved was the last thing they or the kids needed. Mac had agreed to pay support, and half of all the extras two little kids generated—swimming lessons, speech therapy, and the rest of it.

  But Gen had learned quickly that the things men say in the cool relief of walking away don’t always stick once a new girlfriend heats things up. She’d seen nothing from him, and a year of nothing was starting to take its toll.

  She shut the door softly, and put her face onto the steering wheel, feeling its cool smoothness against her cheek. She breathed in the familiar smells of the old car—leather, dust and vanilla from the little tree that hung from the rear-view mirror. The light flicked off and she was left with only the light of the moon, looking out the window. The first gate, the one closest to Betty the mailbox, stood on a small hill, and from where she rested she could see the moonlight playing out over the valley below. A small white-and-green house stood on the next rise, ringed by gum trees and decorated with bougainvillea bushes that climbed up over the veranda as if they wanted to peek in and see what was for dinner. She could see the milking sheds, and the near paddocks. Everything was bathed in a soft silvery glow, looking as it always did—pretty, peaceful, perfect.

  Except that it was all a lie. She couldn’t do it anymore. This piece of paper in her hand might as well have been a noose, because it spelled the end of her. Her milk was being squeezed out of the market by Devondish, who were pushing all the local farmers to make a new deal after the town had told them to jam their last offer up their arse. None of the big retailers would touch her stuff when she had tried to pitch it directly. She was too small, and they feared losing the Devondish supply. And now the smaller retailers were drying up too. Sweet Pocket hadn’t yet been able to earn the five-star organic certification it needed to move beyond the power of Big Dairy. Everything hinged on the Spring Fair for Sweet Pocket, but Gen had even more immediate problems.

  Like how she was going to buy next fortnight’s groceries without more child support.

  She breathed in hard, the smells of home—earth, warm cattle, the promise of rain—and reminded herself what her mother had always said, about something good being just around the corner.

  It sure felt right now like the next thing around the corner might well knock her off her feet if she couldn’t somehow find some firmer footing.

  She just needed to take one more breath, here in the quiet, in the moonlight, holding this thing in her hand and trying to make sense of what it all meant, before she gunned the engine again and pushed back up the drive to the house. Because once she got up there, she would have to smile, and pretend it was all okay. She would have to show nothing of what had happened, what the letter had said. They didn’t need to know—couldn’t know. This was hers to work out.

  As she stared out the window, listening to the sounds of the night creatures, chirruping and living their short lives, she allowed herself an extra minute to remember Brodie’s face. How concerned he had looked as he’d asked if she was okay, and then the way he had looked seventeen years old again as he’d asked her to the Spring Fair Dance.

  Had he meant it? Was he mad?

  She still didn’t even understand exactly what he was doing here
.

  But she did know one thing. Brodie Brown had looked exactly as he had the day she’d sent him away. Cocky and charming, stormy eyes and white smile tugging at her careful spirit, willing her to let go and let him have his way. She knew there was more to his careless charisma than the world saw. She had seen him the other way too, when his losses piled on top of him, his shoulders so tense with holding it all together that he looked like he might snap with the effort of it. It was why it had hurt so much to make him suffer another one.

  But there had been no choice.

  He was bigger now; he had filled out into manliness, and that was just his body. Then there was all he had done in the time since he had left, exactly like he had said he would. Bro Bro had left to take on the world, to make money and get as far from scratching at the fickle earth as he could. He must be twenty-eight now, and he’d done all that and more. But when he looked at her, they were seventeen again and a world of sweet heat filled up all the space between them.

  Did he feel it too, or was he just being kind to an old friend?

  Gen could only imagine how he lived in Sydney. He was rich, young and gorgeous. And he had that lazy, silky country boy thing that she knew from experience drove women mad. The way he looked at a woman when he wanted her—it scorched you to your toes, a visceral sexuality that smoked a room. Gen had worked for ten years to avoid thinking about Brodie Brown, what he might be doing and who he might be doing it with, but now she felt as if the brief encounter at the school had opened some kind of demented floodgate.