Maybe Raff should move. Why had he come back to Banksia Bay in the first place?
But Sarah was beaming a greeting—Raff’s sister—Abby’s friend—and Abby thought there were so many complexities in this equation she couldn’t get her head around them. Raff was caught as well as she was, held by ties of family and love and commitment.
His teenage folly had killed his best mate. He was trapped in this judgemental town, looking after the sister he loved.
For ten years she’d felt betrayed by this man but she looked at him now and thought he’d been to hell and back. There were different forms of life sentence.
And he’d lost … her?
He’d never had her, she thought fiercely. She’d broken up with him before the crash. If she even started thinking of him that way again …
The problem was, she was thinking. But the nightmare if she kept thinking …
Her parents … Philip … The way she felt herself, the aching void where Ben had been …
She was dealing with it. She had been dealing with it. If only he hadn’t kissed her …
‘You’re home,’ Sarah said. She was holding a silver box tied with an enormous red ribbon. ‘You took ages to answer. Raff said you probably weren’t home. He said you’d be out gall. Gall …’
‘Gallivanting? ‘
‘It’s what I said but I guess that’s the wrong word,’ Raff said. ‘You wouldn’t gallivant with Philip.’
She ignored him. She ignored that heart-stopping, dare-you twinkle. ‘Hi, Sarah. It’s lovely to see you. What do you have there?’
‘We’re delivering your present,’ Sarah said. ‘But Raff said you’d be out with Philip. We were going to leave it on the doorstep and go. But I heard Kleppy. Why aren’t you out with Philip?’
‘I had a headache.’
‘Very wise,’ Raff said, the gleam of mischief intensifying in those dark, dangerous eyes. ‘Dinner with the Flanagans? I’d have a headache, too.’
‘How did you know we were going out with the Flanagans?’ She sighed. ‘No. Don’t tell me. This town.’
‘Sorry.’ Raff’s mischief turned to a chuckle, deep and toe-curlingly sexy. ‘And sorry about the intrusion, but Sarah wrapped your gift and decided she needed to deliver it immediately.’
‘So can we come in while you open it?’ Sarah was halfway in, scooping up a joyful Kleppy on the way. But then she faltered. ‘Do you still have a headache?’ Sarah knew all about headaches—Abby could see her cringe at the thought.
‘Abby said she had a headache,’ Raff said. ‘That’s past tense, Sares. I reckon it was cured the minute Philip went to dinner without her.’
‘Will you cut it out?’
‘Do you still have a headache?’ he asked, not perturbed at all by her snap.
‘No, but.’
‘There you go. Sares, what if I leave you here for half an hour so you can watch the present-opening and play with Kleppy? I’ll pick you up at eight. Is that okay with you, Abby?’
It wasn’t okay with Sarah.
‘No,’ she ordered. ‘You have to watch her open it. It was your idea. You’ll really like it, Abby. Ooh, and I want to help you use it.’
So they both came in. Abby was absurdly aware that she had a police car parked in her driveway. That’d be reported to Philip in about two minutes, she thought. And to her parents. And to everyone else in this claustrophobic little town.
What was wrong with her? She loved this town and she was old enough to ignore gossip. Raff was here helping Sarah deliver a wedding gift. What was wrong with that?
Ten minutes tops and she’d have him out of here.
But the gift took ten minutes to open. Sarah had wrapped it herself. She’d used about twenty layers of paper and about four rolls of tape.
‘I should use you to design my police cells,’ Raff said, grinning, as Abby ploughed her way through layer after layer after layer. ‘This sucker’s not getting out any time soon.’
‘It’s exciting,’ Sarah said, wide-eyed with anticipation. ‘I wonder what it is?’
Uh-oh. Abby glanced up at Raff at that and saw a shaft of pain. Short-term memory. Sarah would have spent an hour happily wrapping this gift, but an hour was a long time. For her to remember what she’d actually wrapped.
There was no way Raff could leave this town, she conceded. Sarah operated on long-term memory, the things she’d had instilled as a child. A new environment … a new home, new city, new friends … Sarah would be lost.
Raff was as trapped here as she was.
But she wasn’t trapped, she told herself sharply, scaring herself with the direction her thoughts were headed. She loved it here. She loved Philip.
She was almost at the end. One last snip and …
Ooooh …
She couldn’t stop the sigh of pure pleasure.
This was no small gift. It was a thing she’d loved for ever.
It was Gran Finn’s pasta maker.
Colleen Finn had been as Irish as her name suggested. She was one of thirteen children and she’d married a hard drinking bull of a man who’d come to Australia to make a new start with no intention of changing his ways.
As a young bride, Gran had simply got on with it. And she’d cooked. Every recipe she could get her hands on, Irish or otherwise.
Abby was about ten when the pasta maker had come into the house. Bright and shiny and a complete puzzle to them all.
‘Greta Riccardo’s having a yard sale, getting rid of all her mother’s stuff.’ Gran was puffed up like a peahen in her indignation. ‘All Maria’s recipes—books and books—and here’s Greta saying she never liked Italian food. That’s like me saying I don’t like potatoes. How could I let the pasta maker go to someone who doesn’t love it? In honour of my friend Maria, we’ll learn to be Italian.’
It was in the middle of the school holidays and the kids, en masse, were enchanted. They’d watched and helped, and within weeks they’d been making decent pasta. Abby remembered holding sheets of dough, stretching it out, competing to see who could make the longest spaghetti.
Pasta thus became a staple in the Finn house and it was only as she grew older she realised how cheap it must have been. With her own eggs and her home grown tomatoes, Gran had a new basic food. But now …
‘Don’t you use this any more?’ she ventured, stunned they could give away this part of themselves, and Raff smiled, though his smile
