Sand Jewels (The Wishes Series) (7 page)

12. FLOWERS

I loved September in Australia, and there was no better place to be than my cottage. My little garden burst with colour. I’d lost count of the different kinds of flowers on display.

One of the great parts of having Alex for a boyfriend was the fact that he was very handy in the garden. He mowed my lawn, pruned trees and kept my woodheap stocked. Even greater, I got to watch him do it. There was no sexier sight than Alex Blake swinging an axe, especially when he’d been at it a while and had taken his shirt off. For my own selfish reasons, I always asked him to do it on a Friday afternoon. It was a ploy that benefited both of us.

He wasn’t any help when identifying flowers, though. I picked a small purple flower, waved it at him and asked him what it was.

“I don’t know, Gabs,” he replied. “A purple flower?”

I smiled at him. “You are no help.”

Alex took the flower from me and tucked it behind my ear. “I know someone who could tell you what most of these are.”

I was delighted by the prospect. “Really?”

“Yeah.” His handsome face twisted a little. “She’s knowledgeable but difficult to deal with.”

The demon child. Surely not!

“Is she also moody and easily aggravated?”

“That about sums her up.”

I couldn’t imagine Charli knowing a thing about flowers, but I was prepared to humour him. “Do you think she’ll come here and tell me about them?”

He shrugged. “I can ask her.”

I wasn’t expecting to hear another word about it but Alex somehow got Charli to come through for me. Just an hour after leaving, he returned to the cottage, demon sister in tow.

I met them on the porch and the games began. Charli knew nothing of my relationship with Alex. As far as she probably knew, we weren’t even friends.

Alex looked understandably nervous. His biggest mistake was not giving me the heads-up by cluing me in on the story he’d spun to get her there. I was flying blind.

“Ah, I explained to Charli that you needed some help identifying the flowers in your garden,” he began. “We spoke about it the other day…. when you came into the café…. for coffee.”

For a man who was determined to keep our relationship a secret, he was doing a terrible job of it. He was also pleading with me to save him by rapidly blinking his eyes.

I stepped off the porch and started walking toward the garden. “I’m so glad you remembered, Alex,” I said casually. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

Both Blakes followed me. Charli still hadn’t spoken. I could feel Alex’s panic because of it.

I turned back to face them. “I really appreciate this, Charli,” I said sweetly.

Her shoulders moved as she shrugged. Her facial expression did not. “No big deal. What do you want to know?”

“Well,” I picked one of the small purple flowers. “Do you know what this is?”

“You shouldn’t pick them.” Charli shook her head. “It’s wasteful. Don’t pick them without reason. If you leave them where they are, you’ll get to enjoy them for longer.”

Feeling suitably chastised, I cleared my throat. “Do you know what they are?”

“They’re orchids,” she replied.

I glanced at Alex, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. I knew what an orchid looked like. The flower I’d picked was small and spindly – nothing like an orchid. I held off on the eye rolling but something in my expression still gave me away.

“They’re orchids, Mademoiselle,” she repeated, less pleasantly than before. “They’re native orchids.” She began pointing out other flowers, none of which looked particularly similar. “And so are those and those and those. The one behind your ear is called a Caladenia, but it’s still an orchid.”

I made a quick grab for the flower tucked behind my ear, wondering what she’d say if she knew her brother had put it there.

Alex was must’ve been thinking the same thing. I glanced past Charli to him, immediately noticing that he was blushing. I’d never seen him blush before.

“These are called Clematis,” continued Charli, pointing to a bush of tiny pink flowers at the edge of the rockery. “They can be pink, white or purple.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” she replied dully. “The Clematises belong here. They suit you.” The look on her face was strange, as if she regretted saying it.

I couldn’t help questioning her. “They suit me?”

“They signify mental beauty and art,” she explained in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

I stole another glance at Alex. He wasn’t blushing anymore. If anything, he looked as proud as punch.

The notoriously sullen girl managed to drop the demon act for the next fifteen minutes as we walked through the garden. I learned more than I could’ve learned in a whole season of researching it on my own.

Apparently, peonies signify shame and bashfulness. Daisies denote innocence and irises are what you send when you want to let someone know that you have a message for them.

“That is extraordinary, Charli,” I truthfully praised. “How do you know this?”

She briefly turned back to Alex before answering. “It’s just a hobby,” she said humbly. “Alex once gave me a book about flowers.”

He looked embarrassed again. I gave him the tiniest smile I could muster.

“Well, I think it’s an amazing talent,” I told her. “Do you have a favourite?” She pointed to the garden. “The tulips. They’re important in any garden. You should probably plant more.”

I turned to look at the sea of flowers behind me. The garden bed was full to the point of overflowing.

“I don’t think I have any room.”

“There’s always room for more tulips, Mademoiselle,” she replied.

It took all I had not to question Alex when I noticed him wink at her. I suddenly felt decidedly out of the loop but held my tongue. I’d probably pushed my luck to the limit where Charli was concerned. She’d been extremely helpful and borderline pleasant.

I thanked her instead – and Alex for no other reason than continuing with our stupid charade.

It was then that she floored me with a most unexpected offer. “You should come to our house some time soon,” suggested Charli. “Our tulips are having a great run at the moment.”

“Oh, I’d like that,” I stammered.

She shrugged. “Cool.”

Cool indeed. She’d unwittingly just given me permission to visit my boyfriend at his house for the very first time.

13. BELIEVING

I’d often wondered what Alex and Charli’s house looked like. There was something remarkably sordid about the fact that I hadn’t yet visited.

More than once I’d made Alex describe it to me. From what I knew, it was just a little bit bigger than the cottage and nowhere near as stylish. He’d seemed embarrassed when telling me that part but his demeanour soon changed when he explained how he’d spent two years bringing it back from ruin.

“It was a dump when I bought it,” he told me. “Charli was only little. It was hopeless trying to get anything done while she was there. I probably could’ve had it finished a year earlier if she hadn’t insisted on helping me paint.”

I smiled at his reminiscing and then I felt a little sad. At an age when most young men are out living it up, he was renovating a house with a toddler so they’d keep a roof over their heads.

“How old were you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Twenty-one or two.”

Stories like that made me want to never stop kissing him. It also made my mind spin in strange directions. I sometimes daydreamed, imagining a house full of kids with messy hair and cheeky smiles.

Reality usually dragged me back quite quickly. Considering I hadn’t even visited his home yet, planning babies was probably jumping the gun.

***

I managed to hold off going out there for a whole day. On Sunday morning I texted Alex and asked for directions. It was ludicrous that I didn’t know where he lived.

It took me fifteen minutes to get there. I would’ve made it in ten if I hadn’t taken a wrong turn and ended up at the front gates of an alpaca farm. Until then, I hadn’t even known there was an alpaca farm in Pipers Cove.

Eventually I bounced my small car up the rough gravel driveway and parked next to Alex’s Ute. I felt like a nervous schoolgirl heading to a blind date. Having Alex meet me on the veranda put me at ease the tiniest bit. I wanted to lurch forward and kiss him, and then remembered I had a part to play.

I wasn’t madly-in-love Gabs today. I was Mademoiselle Décarie who was supposed to be desperately keen to check out the tulip blooms.

I nervously smoothed down the back of my hair as I climbed the front steps.

“Relax, Gabs,” beamed Alex. “Charli’s not here.”

I took a breath for the first time since getting out of the car. “Where is she? She was supposed to be here to show me the tulips.”

He shrugged, still grinning. “She got a better offer. She’s at Nicole’s.”

I was almost relieved to hear that irresponsible, thoughtless Charli was back in pole position. For some reason, she was easier to deal with than the marginally sweet version I’d met with a few days earlier.

Alex gripped my waist and drew me in close, kissing me intently. “I still want to see the tulips,” I said, breaking free.

Keeping his hold on me, he straightened up and pointed down to the garden that sloped down the hill.

I blinked a few hundred times to make sure what I was looking at was real. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it on the way up to the house. A gorgeous sea of red and orange blooms covered a huge area.

“You planted them?” I asked in disbelief.

Alex let out a low chuckle. “Every single one of them.”

“Why so many?”

He tightened his hold and whispered in my ear. “Because fairies use them as beds for their babies.”

I’d been with Alex for nearly six months. In that time, he’d regaled me with a handful of stories that I assumed he’d made up to suit the situation. It always struck me that they rarely had happy endings. One particular story about a fairy feeding her lover crushed glass to kill him as punishment for breaking her heart had nearly reduced me to tears.

I’d never known what to make of it. I just put it down to quirkiness. It was almost shocking to find that his younger sister was on the same wavelength. It made me wonder which of them was to blame for the nonsense.

“Who told you that?” I asked, twisting in his arms. “Where do these stories come from?”

He winked at me. “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s the idea, Alex,” I huffed. “I’m trying to work out if you’re the crazy one or if it’s all down to Charli.”

“There’s nothing wrong with believing in something, Gabs,” he whispered.

“Do you believe?” I asked, still pressing for a straight answer.

He thought for a long moment, keeping his focus on my eyes the whole time. “I believe in giving little girls hope that magic is real. What’s life without a little magic?”

“You told Charli these stories?”

He infinitesimally smiled. “For a long time, I had nothing else to give her.”

***

My brother is four years older than me. We were close as children, grew apart as teenagers and closed the gap a little as adults. He now lives in Quebec with his wife. Both are attorneys, which seems to be a common career choice for Décarie men.

Obviously he’d had no hand in raising me, but he’d never felt the need to inject my life with moments of magic either. I couldn’t deny it. I was struggling to understand the bond between Alex and Charli. I wasn’t going to get any more information from him, so when he took my by the hand and led me inside, I vowed to use the opportunity to investigate some more.

He’d downplayed their quaint little house hugely. It was neat as a pin, nicely furnished and had a lovely homely feel.

I wandered to the centre of the lounge room, just as he’d done when checking out my cottage for the first time. “You made it out to be very different,” I chided. “I was expecting beanbags and milk crates.”

Alex dropped his head and smiled down at the floor. “Would you like a tour? I have an awesome bed.”

Not that I’d ever admit it to him, I was very curious to check out his bedroom. But I also wanted to see the rest of the house. We’d already covered the lounge room. We moved on to the kitchen. And then we were done.

“That about covers it,” he announced, walking us the very short distance to the lounge room.

“I love it,” I told him. “Thank you for showing me around. You’re a good host.”

He smiled, and finally began to relax a little. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

“I’m actually trying to cut back on coffee,” I revealed. “How about tea?”

He leaned down and chastely kissed me. “Coming right up.”

Alex left the room, leaving me to check it out properly. The side wall was completely taken up by a long bookshelf. The Blakes obviously weren’t readers. There was a tatty old copy of
Peter Pan
, an even tattier copy of
Robinson Crusoe
and a brand new French dictionary that looked as if it had never been opened. The irony was not lost on me.