A new job, a new—’
‘Your job? What is that?’ he asked, realising how little he knew about her now. ‘Did you study law like your father wanted?’
‘No, I didn’t. Don’t look so surprised—it was because of you.’
‘Me?’ No wonder her father had hated him.
‘You urged me to follow my dreams—like you were following yours. I thought about that a lot when I got back home. And my dream wasn’t to be a solicitor.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t think of anything less me.’
He’d studied law as part of his degree and liked it. But he wasn’t as creative as he remembered Sandy being. ‘But you studied for years so you’d get a place in law.’
‘Law at Sydney University.’ She pronounced the words as though they were spelled in capital letters. ‘That was my father’s ambition for me. He’d given up his plans for me to be a doctor when I didn’t cut it in chemistry.’
‘You didn’t get enough marks in the Higher School Certificate for law?’
‘I got the marks, all right. Not long after we got back to Sydney the results came out. I was in the honour roll in the newspaper. You should have heard my father boasting to anyone who’d listen to him.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’ Ben had no respect for the guy. He was a bully and a snob. But he had reason to be grateful to him. Not for ruining things with him and Sandy. But for putting the bomb under him he’d needed to get off his teenage butt and make himself worthy of a girl like Sandy.
‘At the last minute I switched to a communications degree. At what my father considered a lesser university.’
‘He must have hit the roof.’
Sandy’s mouth tightened to a thin line. ‘As he’d just been outed as an adulterer he didn’t have a leg to stand on about doing the right thing for the family.’
Ben smiled. It sounded as if Sandy had got a whole lot feistier when it came to standing up to her father. ‘So what career did you end up in?’
‘I’m in advertising.’ She quickly corrected herself. ‘I was in advertising. An account executive.’
On occasion he dealt with an advertising agency to help promote his hotel. The account executives were slick, efficient, and tough as old boots. Not at all the way he thought of Sandy. ‘Sounds impressive.’
‘It was.’
‘Was?’
‘Long story,’ she said, and started to walk towards the rocks again.
‘I’m listening,’ he said, falling into step beside her.
The wind had dropped and now the air around them seemed unnaturally still. Seagulls screeched raucously. He looked through narrowed eyes to the horizon, where grey clouds were banking up ominously.
Sandy followed his gaze. She wrinkled her cute up-tilted nose. ‘Storm brewing,’ she said. ‘I wonder—’
‘Don’t change the subject by talking about the weather,’ he said, stopping himself from adding, I remember how you always did that.
He shouldn’t have let himself get reeled in to such a nostalgic conversation. There was no point in dredging up those old memories. Not when their lives were now set on such different paths. And his path was one he needed—wanted—to tread unencumbered. He could not survive more loss. And the best way to avoid loss was to avoid the kind of attachment that could tear a man apart.
He wanted to spend his life alone. Though the word ‘alone’ seemed today to have a desolate echo to it.
She shrugged. ‘Okay. Back to my story. Jason and I were both working at the same agency when we met. The boss didn’t think it was a good idea when we started dating...’
‘So you had to go? Not him?’
She pulled a face. ‘We...ell. I convinced myself I’d been there long enough.’
‘So you went elsewhere? Another agency?’
She nodded. ‘And then the economy hit a blip, advertising revenues suffered, and last one in was first one out.’
‘That must have been tough.’
‘Yeah. It was. But, hey, one door closes and another one opens, right? I got freelance work at different agencies and learned a whole lot of stuff I might never have known otherwise.’
Yep, that was the old Sandy all right—never one to allow adversity to cloud her spirit.
She took a deep breath. He noticed how her breasts rose under her tight-fitting top. She’d filled out—womanly curves softened the angles of her teenage body. Her face was subtly different too, her cheekbones more defined, her mouth fuller.
He wouldn’t have thought it possible but she was even more beautiful than she’d been when she was eighteen.
He wrenched his gaze away, cleared his throat. ‘So you’re looking at a franchise?’
Her eyes sparkled and her voice rose with excitement. ‘My chance to be my own boss, run my own show. It’s this awesome candle store. A former client of mine started it.’
‘You were in advertising and now you want to sell candles? Aren’t there enough candle stores in this world?’
‘These aren’t ordinary candles, Ben. The store is a raging success in Sydney. Now they’re looking to open up in other towns. They’re interviewing for a Melbourne franchise and I put my hand up.’
She paused.
‘I want to do something different. Something of my own. Something challenging.’
She looked so earnest, so determined, that he couldn’t help a teasing note from entering his voice. ‘So it’s candles? I don’t see the challenge there.’
‘Don’t you?’ she asked. ‘There’s a scented candle for every mood, you know—to relax, to stimulate, to seduce—’
She stopped on the last word, and the colour deepened in her cheeks, flushed the creamy skin of her neck. Her eyelashes fluttered nervously and she couldn’t meet his gaze.
‘Well, you get the story. I wrote the copy for the client. There’s not much I don’t know about the merits of those candles.’ She was almost gabbling now to cover her embarrassment.
To seduce.
When he’d been nineteen, seducing Sandy had been all he’d thought about. Until he’d fallen in love with her. Then respecting her innocence had become more important than his own desires. The number of cold showers he’d been forced to take...
Thunder rumbled ominously over the water. ‘C’mon,’ he said gruffly, ‘we’d better turn back.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Though I suppose it’s too late now for my birthday lunch...’
