Feels Like Home (11 page)

His gaze dropped. ‘Look, if it's about yesterday, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have —'

‘It's not about yesterday. We probably should talk about that too at some point, but I have something else on my mind.'

He looked up her, his brow wrinkled in concern. ‘Is everything okay?'

She shrugged. ‘I guess so. I've been to see my mother at the home. She told me some things. Some disturbing things actually, about things she said to you after I'd left for New York.'

‘Oh, Jo. It was such a long time ago. Can't we just let it be?'

She shook her head. ‘I need to know what happened, Ryan. Surely you don't begrudge me that?'

He sighed. ‘You'd better come in, then. I've got work to do. We can talk while I sort some things out in here.'

She nodded and followed him through the glass sliding door into the small but immaculate clinic. Open timber shelves stocked with pet food and a few accessories lined one wall, a row of white moulded chairs sat against the other. A stack of timber pallets had been converted into a functional yet stylish reception desk. ‘Wow,' she said. ‘This is pretty swish. Did you do it all yourself?'

‘Bec sorted out the waiting area. I didn't think I needed one, but she was insistent. Doesn't get used that much to be honest.'

Why was she relieved to hear that it was his sister-in-law and not his latest girlfriend playing interior decorator?

Get a grip, Johanna.

‘The patient's out the back,' Ryan said, indicating she should follow him. He opened a door that led to a small treatment room, a fully equipped surgical theatre and finally to the animal accommodation. Excited barks greeted them as they entered the kennel room. ‘Hey, girl, you're looking better, aren't you? Come and say hello to Johanna.' He unlatched the enclosure gate and a gangly black labrador bounded towards her.

‘Hello there gorgeous. You don't look sick at all.'

‘Not now she doesn't, but a couple of days back she was on death's door.'

Jo bent down and scratched behind the lab's velvety ear. ‘Really? What's wrong with her?'

‘She's had parvo, poor thing. Hasn't been immunised.'

Jo shook her head, thinking that some people shouldn't be allowed to have pets. ‘Who does she belong to?'

Ryan shrugged. ‘She's a stray. I doubt that she's from anywhere around here. In fact I've named her Holly.'

‘Holly?'

‘Yeah, Holly the Christmas pup. Happens all the time. People get these cute pups as a Christmas gift but a few months down the track when the pup turns out to be bigger and more work than they bargained on…'

Jo placed her hand on her heart. ‘You mean she was dumped?' She knelt down and put her arms around the excited pup. ‘Oh who could do that to you, beautiful girl?' She looked up to see Ryan grinning at her. ‘What?'

‘Nothing. I'd just forgotten how much you loved dogs.'

‘Yeah, I really miss having a dog.'

‘You don't have one, then? Not even a little chihuahua? I believe they're very popular with you celebrity types.'

Jo laughed. ‘Don't be a smart arse. As much as I'd love a dog, I don't have one because I don't think it's fair to keep it cooped up in an apartment all day.'

‘Fair enough.' He shook his head. ‘You know I just can't imagine you over there.'

She stood up and brushed the dog hair from her jeans. ‘Oh? Why's that?'

‘No horse. No dog. Just doesn't seem right. You know, the past few days I keep thinking about when Tam was born. He was such a weak little foal. No one thought he would make it. But you refused to give up.'

Warmth spread through Jo's chest. He remembered. Ryan was the only person who understood how much that foal had meant to her. The only one who didn't think she was crazy for refusing to give up on him. ‘You backed me up. If it wasn't for you my dad would have put him down.'

His lips twisted into a wry smile. ‘I backed you up because I loved you, Joey. I didn't think Tam had a snowball's chance in hell of making it, but back then I would have tried to walk on water if you'd asked me to.'

The warmth spread up her neck to her cheeks. ‘That brings me to the purpose of my visit. I need to know what happened, Ryan. Why did you sleep with Carly so soon after I'd gone? Why were you so quick to throw our relationship away?'

He crouched down, ostensibly to pat the dog, but Jo knew it was so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye. ‘You were the one who left,' he said. He clicked his fingers. ‘Come on Holly, let's get you into the treatment room so I can have a proper look at you.'

Jo trailed behind him. ‘I'm not letting it go that easily. Please, I know it's been a long time, but it's important to me. We've never had the chance to talk about what happened. I think I need to so I can fully put the past behind me. Maybe we both do.'

Ryan slid a soft muzzle over Holly's head. ‘Can you hold her still for me? I need to take her temperature and she's not going to like it.'

Jo nodded and stepped forward to gently restrain Holly. She uttered some soothing words while the deed was done. Ryan was silent as he examined the dog, pausing to write a few notes on her chart as he went. When he was done he locked eyes with Jo. ‘If you insist on going over old ground, let's at least be civilised and do it over a coffee. I'll just let Holly out for a run in the exercise yard and then we can go back up to the house. Ella's at Mum's doing her homework so we can talk freely there.'

With Holly sorted and the coffee made there was no excuse to delay the conversation any further, although why she was insisting on having it was beyond Ryan. What point was there in bringing all the hurt back to the surface? She had a new man in her life now, wasn't that punishment enough for him? Did she have to go rubbing his face in the mess from the past?

‘Okay,' he said. ‘What do you want to know?'

Her deep brown eyes held his gaze. ‘Why? Why did you sleep with Carly behind my back?'

‘Jesus, Jo, it was hardly behind your back. You'd left me. Have you conveniently forgotten that part of the story?'

‘I hadn't left you. I'd gone overseas to study. That's hardly the same thing.' Her voice was steady but he sensed a simmering anger beneath the calm.

No way was he carrying the can for this. Sure he may have done something stupid, but she was rewriting history to make it seem as if she'd just gone away for a short break and he'd two-timed her in the interim. Was that really how she remembered it? If so she was delusional. ‘You seem to have forgotten that you'd just turned down my proposal of marriage and…'

‘And what?'

To hell with it. She wanted the truth, he might as well give it to her. ‘You broke my heart, Joey.'

She had the good grace to look contrite. ‘I never meant to hurt you, Ryan. I told you that at the time. I didn't want to get married or engaged just then. I was twenty-one for heaven's sake. At the time I didn't even know if I believed in marriage. It certainly never did my parents any favours. Is it really so hard to understand that I needed some time to decide what I wanted out of life?'

‘I wasn't proposing that we get hitched there and then, just that we made a commitment to each other. You couldn't do that. The thing is, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I figured you wanted the same thing. I couldn't see the point of waiting.'

‘We talked about this, remember? I told you I still loved you but I needed more time. You told me to take all the time I needed. That you would wait for me forever. Turns out our definitions of “forever” are somewhat different.'

The acid taste of anger rose in Ryan's throat at the assertion that he was the one who'd done the betraying. She was the one who'd left and hadn't had the courage to tell him it was over. ‘When I said that I meant it. That was before I realised you were never coming back. I mean what was I to think, Jo? As far as I was concerned we were on track to getting married. We practically lived together those first two years of uni. I can barely remember a morning when I didn't wake up next to you. And we'd talked about it often enough, but when it came to making a solid commitment you ran.'

‘I didn't run! I went away to study. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. We'd talked about me going, so I don't know why it was such a shock when I actually did. You were the one who encouraged me to follow my dream.'

‘Because I thought I was part of that dream, but I was wrong.'

‘You weren't wrong. What would make you think I was never coming back when I promised you I would?'

‘Your mother told me the truth.'

Her face was ashen. ‘What do you mean?'

‘After you left your mum invited me to afternoon tea at Yarrapinga.'

‘And you went?' Her tone was incredulous.

‘Of course I went. She was your mother. I wanted her to like me.'

‘But she hated you, you knew that. Why subject yourself to having tea with her?'

He shrugged. ‘I guess I was gullible. I thought maybe she was coming around to the idea of me being part of your life. I don't know. I missed you. I figured she missed you too and maybe we could bond over that.'

‘So what happened?'

‘She made it clear to me that you had no intention of ever coming home. She told me that you would never be happy with me but that you were too soft-hearted to break up with me to my face. She said you hoped we would just naturally drift apart, that I would find someone else while you were gone and that we could part amicably.'

Colour flooded into Jo's face. ‘Are you kidding me? You believed that? Come on Ryan. That's just…bullshit.'

Her anger hit him like a slap in the face. ‘Of course I didn't believe her at first. But she went on and on about how unsuited we were for each other, how you could never be happy in Linden Gully and how in all likelihood if we got married that's exactly where we'd eventually end up.'

‘But you knew what she was like. Surely you could see through her lies?'

‘Lies? Well, that's just it. They weren't lies were they? I'm not a bloody fool, Jo. Can you honestly tell me you would have been happy to settle here with me?'

‘I…well —'

He shook his head. ‘You might have for a time, but Katherine was right. Eventually you would have hated me for holding you back. And anyway, I would never have taken her words at face value. She had proof.'

‘Proof? What proof?

‘She showed me a heap of documents and articles you'd printed out about working visas, permanent residency and so on. I knew they were yours because there were notes in your handwriting scrawled all over the pages. Just admit it, Jo.'

Her face was now beet red with anger. ‘Admit what?'

‘That you were leaving me and you didn't even have the courage to tell me the truth.'

‘I'm not admitting any such thing, because it's not true. I made some notes about permanent residency. So what? They were for the future, Ryan. Our future. I wasn't just thinking about myself. I had no intention of staying there permanently without you.'

Ryan's gut clenched. If she was telling the truth then his mistake had been monumental, but he wasn't buying Jo's explanation. Katherine had made him believe that letting Jo go was the right thing, the honourable thing, to do. She'd told him he was holding Jo back, that she could never be happy in Linden Gully. He'd believed her because somewhere deep down in his heart he'd known there was a kernel of truth in what she'd said.

He looked into her eyes. ‘But why would you do that without talking to me? And for god's sake Jo, you knew there was no way I would move to America.'

Her eyes dropped and she began to fiddle with the rock on her finger. ‘I knew you weren't ready for that idea. Not then. And I didn't even know if I'd like it over there myself. It was all just forward thinking. Imagining a different future for us than the one you so clearly had your heart set on.'

‘That's the whole point, isn't it? You clearly wanted a different life to the one we'd talked about.'

‘You'd talked about, you mean. It was always you saying “when we get married…when we have kids…” I don't ever remember starting a conversation like that.'

Was that true? ‘I don't remember you ever disagreeing with me.'

‘Maybe I didn't. Maybe I had no idea what I really wanted back then, but I did know that I wanted you. I wasn't leaving you, Ryan, I was finding me. I always intended to come back.'

‘But you didn't come back, did you? You stayed there and made a life for yourself.'

She swiped a tear from her cheek. ‘Because you gave me no other choice. What did I have to come home to?'

Oh god, had he really let her go for no reason at all? He dropped his head into his hands. The magnitude of Katherine's deception, his gullibility and their combined consequences hit him like a blow to the chest.

All these years he'd hated her. Loved her yet hated her for what she'd put him through. And for what? She'd done nothing wrong. It was his stupid pride that drove them apart. Part of him had always refused to believe he was good enough for a girl like Johanna Morgan. So when she'd refused his proposal he'd been hurt. It seemed his doubt was not misplaced. Katherine's story only confirmed what he had feared all along, that Jo was not meant for the likes of him. She'd been pretending all this time, waiting for a better option to present itself.

Katherine had played him for a sucker.

Jo bit back the tears that stung her eyes. She didn't want Ryan mistaking her rage for sorrow, because right now every fibre of her being was consumed by a white-hot anger. It was probably misdirected. Ryan had been little more than a boy when Katherine had manipulated him out of their relationship. But dammit, he could have fought harder. Why didn't he have more faith in himself? In her?