froze. She felt as though she’d been transformed into stone. And then she turned her head slowly to face her brother. ‘Why is he…?’ Her voice faltered and died.
‘Why wouldn’t he, Georgia?’ Lockie asked quietly, his gaze holding hers. ‘He’s my best friend and he’s just returned from the States.’
Georgia fought gallantly to pull herself together as she continued to gaze at her brother. And it was taking more than a little effort to still her galloping pulse, to dislodge the breath that had caught somewhere in her chest.
‘Jarrod hasn’t seen you yet,’ Lockie continued, ‘and when I told him you’d be home after nine-thirty he said he’d drop by.’
‘I see.’ Georgia took a calming breath. ‘And I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might not want to see him.’
‘You can’t live in the past, sis. Four years is a long time, and besides, you’ll have to face him some time.’
Four years ago she’d told him hell would freeze over before she’d want to set eyes on him again.
‘He’s changed a bit,’ Lockie was saying. ‘He looks older.’ He smiled a little awkwardly. ‘I told him he was getting quite long in the tooth.’
At that moment they both heard the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel verge in front of the house.
She couldn’t face him! You’ve had four years to recover from his duplicity, a cruel voice reminded her, and she drew a shallow breath.
‘Here he is now.’ Lockie stated the obvious and his long fingers gently squeezed her arm. ‘And, as I said, what’s past is past. It is, isn’t it, Georgia?’
She nodded resignedly. If only that were true. ‘I suppose it is,’ she agreed. ‘And we do have to get Morgan. It’s lucky he…Jarrod…’ the name almost stuck in her throat ‘…was coming over,’ she finished breathily.
Jarrod. There, she’d said his name. For the first time in four years she’d said his name, the sound of it so foreign…and yet so achingly, so hauntingly well-known.
Well-known? She almost laughed out loud. Well-known in what sense? In every sense, she told herself ruthlessly. How could she forget his name? Or him? Jarrod. Jarrod Peter Maclean. Uncle Peter Maclean’s only son.
‘Georgia?’ Lockie touched her arm again and she blinked, coming back to the present with a jolt.
‘Yes. We should go,’ she said softly, and moved into the hallway.
‘Right.’ Lockie sounded relieved and headed towards the open front door as a tall figure was taking the steps two at a time with long-legged ease.
‘Hi, Lockie.’ He smiled a greeting, unaware of Georgia standing like a statue behind her brother.
She made herself move, face him, and her entire body remained numb for just a few seconds. And then it seemed to take on a life of its own.
Her heartbeats accelerated, sending heated blood rushing through her veins. Her hands wanted to reach out to him, to follow the hard lines of his strong jaw, feel the smoothness of his freshly shaved cheek. And her lips longed to taste his again.
With no little effort she pulled her wayward thoughts away from their traitorous yearnings and made herself meet his gaze.
His blue eyes looked black in the dim light yet Georgia was sure she saw them flicker with the same awareness she knew she felt at the sight of him, and she quelled a moment’s heady delight.
‘Hello, Georgia,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m sorry to be calling at this hour but Lockie said you were working late tonight. Until now I’ve always seemed to miss you.’
‘And as it turns out it’s lucky you did turn up.’ Lockie broke into the heavy atmosphere that seemed to Georgia to be pressing in on them as they stood on the wide veranda. ‘Do you think you could run us down to Oxley? We’ve just had a frantic call from Morgan and she wants us to bring her home.’
‘Sure.’ Jarrod drew his gaze from Georgia and turned back to Lockie. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Morgan. She’s one big problem—’ Lockie began.
‘And we’d better be going. I did tell Morgan we’d be there in half an hour.’ Georgia took a stiff step forward. “That is, if you wouldn’t mind, Jarrod. We could get a taxi.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said easily as he turned to retrace his steps.
They were almost down the wide front steps when Lockie stopped. ‘I’d better leave a note on the door for Andy just in case he drops the van back before we return. I won’t be a moment.’ He returned to the house.
And Georgia could only continue on alone with Jarrod. Down the path. To the car.
JARROD was using one of the company station wagons, ‘Maclean Constructions’ emblazoned on the side, and he reached around to open the front passenger door for her.
Georgia’s nerve-endings were jangling and her stomach churned. She could barely stand, let alone move to get into the car. So she stood there, and after a tense moment of interminable length Jarrod seemed to relax, leaning back, one arm resting along the top of the door.
‘Lockie tells me your father’s up the coast. How is he these days?’
‘You mean, is he drinking?’ The words were out before she could draw them back and she sensed the tightening of Jarrod’s lips in the darkness.
‘No, I wasn’t asking that,’ he said levelly. ‘Peter told me your father hasn’t touched alcohol for years.’
For four years, Georgia wanted to tell him, but she had herself under control again. ‘He’s keeping fairly well,’ she said just as evenly. ‘He’s working on a house up there, renovating. He probably won’t be back for a month or so.’
‘Does he get plenty of work?’
Did they really care? Jarrod or his father? They’d certainly got rid of him from Maclean’s pretty quickly when he’d started drinking after Georgia’s mother had died seven years ago. No, that was unfair; Georgia acknowledged the critical voice inside her. It had been her father’s choice after his wife’s death to leave the engineering firm owned by his brother-inlaw. But neither of the Macleans had tried to stop him.
‘He gets enough to keep him going,’ she said aloud.
That same tension rose again, surging out of the darkness to engulf them, and Georgia’s mouth went suddenly dry. Did he remember the nights they’d spent together, the long talks, the drugging kisses, the way their bodies had moved as one to music only they could hear?
Her senses quivered anew, sending an arrow of pure desire hurtling through her heart. Was Jarrod feeling the same almost overwhelming temptation to reach out to her the way she wanted to reach out to him? Georgia
