Nobody but Him (21 page)

‘Bye Julia.’ The call ended just as the confusion in his head became a headache. Behind him, a door opened and a trickle of voices escaped into the hallway. Dan McSwaine stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him, his furrowed brow and narrowed eyes giving him away. He knew Dan would be wondering what the hell was going on. Ry had never been late for a board meeting in his life.

‘Everything all right, mate?’ Dan walked over to him.

‘I had to take a call.’ Ry raked his hands through his hair. ‘Are they ready to start?’

‘Don’t sweat it. They’ve cracked open a few beers and now they’re analysing their footy tips for this week’s round.’ Dan looked intently into his friend’s eyes.

‘Something’s got you spooked. What’s going on?’

Ry stared out the window over the city’s rooftops, shadowed and angular in the distance.

‘I know that face, Ry. Don’t tell me the bank’s said no to the finance on the Windswept deal.’ Dan began to pace the corridor but he kept his voice low. ‘Bloody hell, we’ve bent over backwards on this one. The vendor’s agreed to our price, we’ve signed all the paperwork. It’s almost done. We’re this close.’

Ry said nothing. Just stared out at the view. Dan stopped pacing and came to a halt beside Ry. He took a sideways glance at his friend and then crossed his arms over his wide chest.

‘And four Victoria’s Secret models are waiting back at my house for the celebrations to start. That’s two each. In lingerie. And wings.’

‘Huh?’ Ry turned to him.

‘Shit, Ry, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you? We’re about to walk into that board meeting and land this thing, so I’ve gotta know. What the hell’s going on with Windswept?’

‘Windswept is fine.’ Ry jammed his fists into the trouser pockets of his suit.

‘So the finance is secure? Everything’s a-okay with the bank?’

When Ry nodded, Dan let out a relieved sigh. ‘You’re giving me a heart attack here.’

‘Mate, settle down. It’s nothing to do with Windswept.’ Hell, he might as well admit it. Dan would find out sooner or later. ‘And it’s everything to do with a woman.’

Dan shook his head. ‘You pathetic bastard.’

They stood silently, taking in the last brilliant orange hues of sunset, the light catching and shimmering on the homes built into the Adelaide hills as the sun set over the ocean to the west. Dan bumped his shoulder to Ry’s.

‘Mate, you think you can put your dick away for just a little a while longer so we can get this sorted?’ Dan angled his head to the boardroom.

Ry laughed. ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’

Dan checked his watch. ‘If we play our cards right, we can be at the pub in just over an hour. If you buy me lots of beers, I’ll listen while you spill your guts about this woman.’

The two best friends rearranged each other’s ties. Ry got his head back in the game and took a dozen bold strides to the doors of the Blackburn and Son Developments boardroom. Swinging open the double doors, he entered and grinned.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get down to business.’

Two hours after presenting to the board of Blackburn and Son Developments and winning its agreement to create Windswept, Ry and Dan were propping up the heavy wooden front bar of a boutique pub in a little Adelaide laneway just around the corner from their office. They were crammed in with the hundred or so other Thursday night patrons, who were drinking cocktails and champagnes and designer beers, celebrating the end of another working day in the city’s business district.

‘Dan,’ Ry slurred, propping one polished black shoe on the brass footrest in front of him and loosening his tie. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you. Any of it.’

‘You got that right.’ Dan held up two fingers to the bartender, signalling for another round. ‘Windswept is going to win awards, you know that? Those plans are incredible. Remind me again, how many homes are we gonna build?’

‘Five hundred. And how many trees are we planting?’

‘Quarter of a million. We are fucking awesome,’ Dan shouted and clinked his glass with Ry’s before throwing an arm around his shoulder. Ry let himself feel proud of this moment. There were only three people in the world who knew how hard the past five years had truly been, the blood, sweat and tears — especially tears — involved in just surviving. In making it to this day and being able to celebrate and see a future. He’d have to call his mother and tell her the good news.

Another icy-cold beer appeared in front of Ry and he rubbed his fingers over the condensation, creating lines on the glass like a map.

‘Dan, what do you reckon Dad would say if he was here?’

Dan slapped him on the back. ‘Mate, he’d be buying drinks for the whole damn bar.’

Ry smiled wistfully at the memory of his father’s warm heart and generosity. He wished with everything he had that Charles Blackburn could be right alongside him to celebrate Windswept. But that wish was five years too late to come true.

Five years before, Ry’s father had just returned from emergency talks with the bank over the company’s debts. The global financial crisis had hit the property market — and Blackburn and Son Developments — hard, and Charles, his father, was trying desperately to stop the company from going under.

Ry sipped his beer and re-lived that night for the thousandth time. It was imprinted on him like a scar. It was always easier to put the pieces together afterwards, Ry knew, but he should have noticed his father’s distraction in the months beforehand. How hard he’d been working, how pale he’d become. That particular night Ry had noticed for the first time just how old his father looked, his cheeks sagged into slackened pockets of skin on his jaw, as if it didn’t have the energy to keep itself elastic anymore. The larger-than-life man he’d known was wearing a suit that looked two sizes too big. Ry realised later — much later — that Charles had been fighting so hard to keep the company alive, that it had sucked the life out of him.

His father’s face. Sweat on his forehead, glistening beads. Tugging his tie. A crash. His wine glass, his outstretched fingers. His gasping mouth.

Ry closed his eyes tight. He’d never been able to get rid of that picture of his father, collapsed on the carpeted floor of his executive suite, his silver glasses crooked on his nose, his face turning blue. He could still hear Dan’s frantic voice on the phone to the emergency services, and his own heartbeat thundering in his chest like the Town Hall clock as he searched desperately for a pulse at his father’s neck.

Dan bumped his shoulder. Ry hadn’t even noticed that Dan was still talking.

‘Mate, you are the reason we didn’t go under. You worked fucking hard to make sure it didn’t. You could have walked away, sold off what was left, fucked off and left us all, but you didn’t, Ry. You stuck and you saved as many jobs as you could at BSD. Including mine. That’s what you do. You don’t piss off when the shit hits the fan, you dig in, my friend.’

Ry shook off Dan’s description of his tenacity, his duty to the family firm and his bloody-minded pursuit of saving the company. It was what you did, nothing more, nothing less. It was what you had to do when your name was on the company right there alongside your father’s.

‘I had a little help from you, Dan.’

‘You sure as hell did. I’m the wind beneath your wings, brother.’

It had taken five years of hard slog to get BSD back to a position where it could invest again, and grow, and create jobs. That didn’t mean there weren’t times when he’d wanted to walk away, to hang up the shingle and just escape to the beach. He’d been close a couple of times but then he’d looked around the office at the people who relied on him, who turned up everyday to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, who had families and lives outside of the four walls they worked in, and he just couldn’t toss it all in. And now, finally, it felt as if they were on the verge of something really good. Something real.

‘So Ry, who the hell is this woman who’s got you thinking with your dick?’

Hell, he wondered, maybe Dan was right. Maybe that’s all it was between him and Julia, a purely male reaction to a sassy woman with a hot body. Like hell.

‘And furthermore, Your Honour, I have a supplementary question. Does she have a sister?’ Ry raised his eyebrows at his friend, knowing that as soon as he said Julia’s name the shit would hit the fan.

‘Mate … it’s Julia Jones.’

Dan stopped mid-sip and narrowed his eyes at Ry.

‘You are kidding me. The ball-buster?’

Ry stiffened at Dan’s expression. He may or may not have described Julia to Dan that way in the past, especially while wallowing after a few too many beers, but now it seemed so wrong, mean and totally untrue.

‘Her mum died last year and she’s down in Middle Point cleaning up the house to sell it.’

Dan said nothing, stared hard at his friend and shook his head in disgust.

‘What?’ Ry asked.

‘So now I get the sudden interest in the beach in the middle of fucking winter. Mate, don’t you remember what happened last time she dumped you? You drank too much and married Ellen. Who, by the way, is a really nice woman.’

He remembered that Ellen’s parents had been more interested in their marriage than the bride and groom had ever been. They considered Charles Blackburn’s son a decent catch. He and Ellen hadn’t quite agreed and were married and divorced inside of a year.

‘She is still a nice woman but we were a mistake.’

‘Bloody oath,’ Dan agreed. ‘It was a disaster from the first siren. You were still cut up about Julia Jones. We all knew it. Why the hell Ellen agreed to marry you I’ll never know.’ Dan finished his beer, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his suit. ‘But I know why you married her.’

‘Oh really? You been watching Dr Phil again?’

Dan laughed. ‘I tried to tell you then but what the hell did I know? Marrying one woman to forget another never works. Golden rule, my friend.’

‘Dan—’ he started and then held it. How the hell could he explain it to his best friend when he couldn’t make sense of it himself?

Dan sipped his beer. ‘Whatever gets you through the night, you know what I mean? But I was there the last time and it was fugly.’

‘Give me a break, I was a kid. But a lot of shit’s gone down in the past five years, you know it. Now, the Middle Point Pub and Windswept … that’s who I am these days. Hell, I’m thirty-five, Dan. This is about doing something solid, something real. And I reckon buying that pub has been the best thing I’ve ever done.’

A vision flashed behind his eyes. Julia in her hastily cobbled-together waitress uniform, her hair wild, her eyes laughing. A strange sensation warmed his gut and he felt a rush of blood.

‘She was helping Lizzie at the pub, covering a shift. That’s where I saw her again. You remember Lizzie?’

Dan rubbed his chin and cocked his head. ‘Can’t say I do. Is she single?’

‘I think so and she’s probably your type.’

‘A redhead?’ Dan perked up.

‘No, breathing. So, when I see Julia in the pub serving drinks, we recognise each other, even after all this time. And I don’t know why I did, but I kicked her out.’

‘What, like a bouncer?’

‘No, I got Lizzie to do it. I didn’t want to make a scene.’

‘Chicken shit.’

‘So then I find out the real reason she’s back in town is because her mother died, and I feel like a total arse-wipe. I’d met her mother. So I went over to her place to apologise and ended up helping her paint the house.’

‘Tell me you didn’t just say you helped her
paint the house
?’ Dan created quote marks in the air with his fingers. ‘Is that a new code for fucking that I haven’t heard? Man, I’ve been working too hard.’

‘No, there was no sex before the painting.’ Ry grinned.

‘You saying there was some action
after
? Jesus, no wonder you’re thinking with your dick. Bartender, get this man a shot of whisky!’

And then Ry realised something. Dan was wrong. He wasn’t thinking with his small brain on this one, wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than winning her over. And he knew exactly how to do it. He would dig in, he would fight for Julia, something he hadn’t really done when she’d walked away all those years before, when arrogant pride and youth ruled his heart. Something else kicked in this time.

‘I want to see where this goes.’ The determination in his tone surprised him and Dan too, judging by the look on his friend’s face. ‘It’s different this time. I know it. I’m not the arrogant shit I was fifteen years ago.’

‘What about her? She still a ball-buster?’

‘Stop it, mate. You’re talking about the woman I …’ Ry stopped the words, right on the tip of his tongue and instead grinned at his friend. He dug inside his suit jacket for his phone, tapped it a few times and pushed it to his ear.

‘Pack your wetsuit, Danny Boy. You are coming down to Middle Point with me tomorrow night. Boss’s orders. We’re going to celebrate Windswept. At my pub. Did you hear that? I own a pub.’

Dan sat his empty glass on the bar and shook his head. ‘Ry, it’s too freaking cold down there. And I’ve got plans for tomorrow night.’

Ry held up his finger to hush Dan.

‘Hey Lizzie? Yeah, it’s me. Can you hold a table for Friday night? For three? No four. Actually, make that five. We’re celebrating. I’ll tell you Friday. Roster yourself off ’cos I need you to be there too.’

He ended the call and dialled another number.

‘That one was about business. This one is about solving my woman problem.’

It was late, past ten o’clock, and Julia couldn’t believe she was already tucked up in bed, like a nanna, reading her mother’s favourite book,
Pride and Prejudice
. She’d found the tattered hardback in her mother’s bedside drawer and had brought it to bed with her. She felt tucked up and safe in her old room, protected from the wind and the rumblings of the ocean, warmed by memories of childhood and her mother. The afternoon had been gut wrenching, bagging up her mother’s things, cleaning out what needed to go in the rubbish. The task was made much easier because her mother wasn’t a huge collector of things. In a way, the place had stopped changing when her father died, which her mother had no doubt done on purpose, finding comfort in its familiarity. That’s why Julia had been so surprised to find her wedding dress stashed away in the wardrobe. She supposed her mother had dreams of seeing Julia wear it one day. Even though she’d encouraged her daughter to get out and see the world and make a life for herself away from Middle Point, didn’t every mother harbour a secret desire to see their children happy and settled with someone they loved who loved them back just as much?