Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep

Not at the moment. Not after reviewing the sales figures Richard had sent her.

‘You didn’t come near your mother for years and now, when her body is barely cold in the ground, you descend on her shop like a vulture. Like a greedy, grasping—’

‘That’s enough, Dianne!’

Connor again. Jaz didn’t want him fighting her battles—she wanted him to stay as far from her as possible. He wasn’t getting a second chance to break her heart. Not in this lifetime! But she could barely breathe, let alone talk.

Didn’t come near your mother for years…barely cold in the ground…

The weight pressed down so hard on Jaz’s chest that she wanted nothing more than to lie down on the ground and let it crush her.

‘You have the gall to say that after the number of weekends Frieda spent in Sydney with Jaz, living the high life? Jaz didn’t need to come home and you bloody well know it!’

Home.

Jaz started. She couldn’t lie down on the ground. Not out the front of her mother’s bookshop.

‘Now clear off, Dianne Keith. You’re nothing but a troublemaking busybody with a streak of spite in you a mile wide.’

With the loudest intake of breath Jaz had ever heard anyone huff, Dianne stormed off.

Didn’t come near your mother for years…barely cold in the ground…

A touch on her arm brought her back. The touch of work-roughened fingers on the bare flesh of her arm.

‘Are you okay?’

His voice was low, a cooling autumn breeze. Jaz inched away, out of reach of those work-roughened fingers, away from the heat of his body.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

But, as the spearmint of her gum faded, all she could smell was the mountains in autumn. She remembered how it had once been her favourite smell in the world. When she’d been a girl…and gullible.

She would be fine. In just a moment. If she could stop breathing so deeply, his scent would fade.

She cleared her throat. ‘It’s not that I expected a fatted calf, but I didn’t expect that.’ She nodded to where Dianne had stood.

She hadn’t expected a welcome, but she hadn’t expected outright hostility either. Except, perhaps, from Connor Reed.

She’d have welcomed it from him.

‘Dianne Keith has been not-so-secretly in love with Gordon Sears for years now.’

She blinked. He was telling her this because… ‘Oh! I didn’t sell him the bookshop, so his nose is out of joint…making her nose out of joint too?’

‘You better believe it.’

She couldn’t believe she was standing in Clara Falls’ main street talking to Connor Reed like…like nothing had ever happened between them. As if this were a normal, everyday event.

She made the mistake then of glancing full into his face, of meeting his amazing brown eyes head-on.

They sparkled gold. And every exquisite moment she’d ever spent with him came crashing back.

If she could’ve stepped away she would’ve, but the bookshop window already pressed hard against her shoulder blades.

If she could’ve glanced away she would’ve, but her foolish eyes refused to obey the dictates of her brain. They feasted on his golden beauty as if starved for the sight of him. It made something inside her lift.

The sparks in his eyes flashed and burned. As if he couldn’t help it, his gaze lowered and travelled down the length of her body with excruciating slowness. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes had darkened to a smoky, molten lava that she remembered too well.

Her pulse gave a funny little leap. Blood pounded in her ears. She had to grip her hands together. After all these years and everything that had passed between them, how could there be anything but bitterness?

Her heart burned acid. No way! She had no intention of travelling down that particular path to hell ever again.

Eight years ago she’d believed in him—in them—completely, but Connor had accused her of cheating on him. His lack of faith in her had broken her heart…destroyed her.

She hadn’t broken his heart, though, because nine months after Jaz had fled town he’d had a child with Faye. A daughter. A little girl.

She folded her arms. Belatedly, she realised, it made even more of her…assets. She couldn’t unfold them again without revealing to him that his continued assessment bothered her. She kept said arms stoically folded, but her heart twisted and turned and ached.

‘I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Connor.’ She needed him to stay away.

‘I—’ he stressed the word ‘—always do what I consider is right. You needn’t think your coming back to town is going to change that.’

‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted. ‘Like jumping to conclusions? Do you still do that, Connor?’

The words shot out of her—a challenge—and she couldn’t believe she’d uttered them. The air suddenly grew so thick with their history she wondered how on earth either one of them could breathe through it.

She’d always known things between them could never be normal. Not after the intensity of what they’d shared. It was why she’d stayed away. It was why she needed him to stay away from her now.

‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted a second time. She’d keep up this front if it killed her. ‘Like that sign?’ She pointed to the shop awning. ‘What is that…your idea of a sick joke?’

That frown returned to his eyes again. ‘Look, Jaz, I—’

Richard chose that moment to come bustling up between them, his breathing loud and laboured. ‘Sorry, Jaz. I saw you cruising up the street, but I couldn’t get away immediately. I had a client with me.’

Connor clapped him on the back. ‘You need to exercise more, my man, if a sprint up the street makes you breathe this hard.’

Richard grinned. ‘It is uphill.’

His grin faded. He hitched his head in the direction of the bookshop. ‘Sorry, Jaz. It’s a bit of a farce, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ she allowed.

Connor and Richard said nothing. She cleared her throat. ‘Where are my staff?’

Richard glanced at Connor as if for help. Connor shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered at the pavement.

‘Richard?’

‘That’s just the thing, you see, Jaz. The last of your staff resigned yesterday.’

Resigned? Her staff? So… ‘I have no staff?’ She stared at Richard. For some reason she turned to stare at Connor too.

Both men nodded.

‘But…’ She would not lie down on the ground and admit defeat. She wouldn’t. ‘Why?’

‘How about we go inside?’ Connor suggested with a glance over his shoulder.

That was when Jaz became aware of the faces pressed against the inside of the plate glass of Mr Sears’s ‘baked-fresh-daily’ country bakery, watching her avidly. In an act of pure bravado, she lifted her hand and sent the shop across the road a cheery wave. Then she turned and stalked through the door Richard had just unlocked.

Connor caught the door before it closed but he didn’t step inside. ‘I’ll get back to work.’

On that sign? ‘No, you won’t,’ she snapped out tartly. ‘I want to talk to you.’

Richard stared at her as if…as if…

She reached up to smooth her hair. ‘What?’

‘Gee, Jaz. You used to dress mean but you always talked sweet.’

‘Yeah, well…’ She shrugged. ‘I found out that I achieved a whole lot more if I did things the other way around.’

Nobody said anything for a moment. Richard rubbed the back of his neck. Connor stared morosely at some point in the middle distance.

‘Okay, tell me what happened to my staff.’

‘You could probably tell from the sales figures I sent you that the bookshop isn’t doing particularly well.’

He could say that again.

‘So, over the last few months, your mother let most of the staff go.’

‘Most,’ she pointed out, ‘not all.’

‘There was only Anita and Dianne left. Mr Sears poached Anita for the bakery…’

‘Which left Dianne.’ She swung back to Connor. ‘Not the same Dianne who…?’

‘The one and the same.’

Oh, that was just great. ‘She made her feelings… clear,’ she said to Richard.

Richard gave his watch an agonised glance.

‘You don’t have time for this at the moment, do you?’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, but I have appointments booked for the next couple of hours and—’

‘Then go before you’re late.’ She shooed him to the door. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She would be.

‘I’ll be back later,’ he promised.

Then he left. Which left her and Connor alone in the dim space of the bookshop.

‘So…’ Connor said, breaking the silence that had wrapped around them. His voice wasn’t so much a cooling autumn breeze as a winter chill. ‘You’re still not interested in selling the bookshop to Mr Sears?’

Sell? Not in this lifetime.

‘I’m not selling the bookshop. At least not yet.’

Connor rested his hands on his hips and continued to survey her. She couldn’t read his face or his body language, but she wished he didn’t look so darn…male!

‘So you’re staying here in Clara Falls, then?’

‘No.’ She poured as much incredulity and disdain into her voice as she could. ‘Not long-term. I have a life in the city. This is just a…’

‘Just a…’ he prompted when she faltered.

‘A momentary glitch,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll get the bookshop back on its feet and running at a profit— which I figure will take twelve months tops—and then I mean to return to my real life.’

‘I see.’

Perhaps he did. But she doubted it.

CHAPTER TWO

CONNOR met the steeliness in Jaz’s eyes and wished he could just turn around and walk away. His overriding instinct was to reach out and offer her comfort. Despite that veneer of toughness she’d cultivated, he knew this return couldn’t be easy for her.

Her mother had committed suicide only four weeks ago!

That had to be eating her up alive.

She didn’t look as if she’d welcome his comfort. She kept eyeing him as if he were something slimy and wet that had just oozed from the drain.

The muscles in his neck, his jaw, bunched. What was her problem? She’d been the one to lay waste to all his plans, all his dreams, eight years ago. Not the other way around. She could at least have the grace to…

To what? an inner voice mocked. Spare you a smile? Get over yourself, Reed. You don’t want her smiles.

But, as he gazed down into her face, noted the fragile luminosity of her skin, the long dark lashes framing her eyes and the sweet peach lipstick staining her lips, something primitive fired his blood. He wanted to haul her into his arms, slant his mouth over hers and taste her, brand himself on her senses.

Every cell in his body tightened and burned at the thought. The intensity of it took him off guard. Had his heart thudding against his ribcage. After eight years…

After eight years he hadn’t expected to feel anything. He sure as hell hadn’t expected this.

He rolled his shoulders and tried to banish the images from his mind. Every stupid mistake he’d made with his life had happened in the weeks after Jaz had left town. He couldn’t blame her for the way he’d reacted to her betrayal—that would be childish—but he would never give her that kind of power over him again.

Never.

She stuck out her chin, hands on hips—combative, aggressive and so unlike the Jaz of old it took him off guard. ‘Why did you change the sign? Who gave you permission?’

She moved behind the sales counter, stowed her handbag beneath it, then turned back and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’ She tapped her foot.

Her boot—a pretty little feminine number in brown suede and as unlike her old black Doc Martens as anything could be—echoed smartly against the bare floorboards. Or maybe that was due to the silence that had descended around them again. He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and told himself to stay on task. It was just…that lipstick.

He’d once thought that nothing could look as good as the mulberry dark matt lipstick she’d once worn. He stared at the peach shine on her lips now. He’d been wrong.

‘Connor!’

He snapped to and bit back something succinct and rude. The sign, idiot!

‘I’m simply following the instructions you left with my receptionist.’

She stared at him for a long moment. Then, ‘Can you seriously imagine that I’d want to call this place Jaz’s Joint?’ Her lip curled. ‘That sounds like a den of iniquity, not a bookshop.’

She looked vivid fired up like that—alive. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t felt alive in a very long time.

He shifted his weight, allowed his gaze to travel over her again, noticed the way she turned away and bit her lip. That was familiar. She wasn’t feeling anywhere near as sure of herself as she’d have him believe.

‘I’m not paid to imagine.’ At the time, though, her request had sent his eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. ‘Eight years is a long time. People change.’

‘You better believe it!’

He ignored her vehemence. ‘You told my receptionist you wanted “Jaz’s Joint” painted on the awning. I was just following your instructions.’ But as he said the words his stomach dipped. Her eyes had widened. He remembered how they could look blue or green, depending on the light. They glittered blue now in the hushed light of the bookshop.

‘Those weren’t my instructions.’

His stomach dropped a notch lower. Not her directions… Then…

‘I just requested that the sign be freshened up.’

He swore. Once. Hard.

Jaz blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Her tone almost made him grin. As a teenager she’d done all she could to look hard as nails, but she’d rarely used bad language and she hadn’t tolerated it in others.

He sobered. ‘Obviously, somewhere along the line a wire’s got crossed.’ If his receptionist had played any part in the Jaz’s Joint prank he’d fire her on the spot.

Jaz followed his gaze across the road to Mr Sears’s bakery. ‘Ahh…’ Her lips twisted. ‘I see.’

Did she? For reasons Connor couldn’t fathom, Gordon Sears wanted the bookshop, and he wanted it bad.

She sprang out from behind the counter as if the life force coursing through her body would no longer allow her to coop it up in such a small space. She stalked down the aisles, with their rows upon rows of bookcases. Connor followed.

The Clara Falls bookshop had been designed with one purpose in mind—to charm. And it achieved its aim with remarkable ease. The gleaming oak bookcases contrasted neatly with wood-panelled walls painted a pale clean green. Alcoves and nooks invited browsers to explore. Gingerbread fretwork lent an air of fairy-tale enchantment. Jaz had always loved the bookshop, and Frieda hadn’t changed a thing.

Therein lay most of its problems.

‘I’ll change the sign back. It’ll be finished by the close of business today.’

She glanced back at him, a frown in her eyes. ‘Why you?’

She turned around fully, folded her arms and leant against the nearest bookcase. To the right of her left hip a book in vivid blues and greens faced outwards—Natural Wonders of the World—it seemed apt. He dragged his gaze from her hips and the long, lean length of her legs. Way too apt.

But…

He’d never seen her wear such pretty, soft-looking trousers before. Mel would love those trousers. The thought flitted into his head unbidden and his heart clenched at the thought of his daughter. He gritted his teeth and pushed the thought back out again. He would not think of Mel and Jaz in the same sentence.

But…

Eight years ago he’d grown used to seeing Jaz in long black skirts…or naked.

And then she’d removed herself from his world and he hadn’t seen her at all.

‘Is that what you’re doing these days—sign-writing?’

Her words hauled him back and he steeled himself not to flinch at her incredulity. ‘Among other things.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘After graduation I took up a carpentry apprenticeship.’ He’d relinquished his dream of art school. ‘I run a building contractor’s business now here in Clara Falls.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘What about your art?’

Just for a moment, bitterness seeped out from beneath the lid he normally kept tightly sealed around it. ‘I gave it up.’

Her head snapped back. ‘You what?’

The madness had started the night he’d discovered Jaz in Sam Hancock’s arms. When he’d found out the next day that Jaz had left town—left him— for good, Connor had gone off the rails. He’d drunk too much…he’d slept with Faye. Faye, who’d revealed Jaz’s infidelity, her lies. Faye, who’d done all she could to console him when Jaz had gone. Faye whose heart he’d broken. When Faye had told him she was pregnant, he’d had no choice—he’d traded in his dream of art school to become a husband and father…and an apprentice carpenter.

He hadn’t picked up a stick of charcoal since.

‘Is that somehow supposed to be my fault?’

Jaz’s snapped-out words hauled him back. ‘Did I say that?’

He and Faye had lasted two years before they’d finally divorced—Jaz always a silent shadow between them. They’d been two of the longest years of his life.

It was childish to blame Jaz for any of that. He had Melanie. He could never regret his daughter.

Jaz’s eyes turned so frosty they could freeze a man’s soul. Connor’s lips twisted. They couldn’t touch him. His soul had frozen eight years ago.

And yet she was here. From all accounts a world-class tattoo artist, if Frieda’s boasts could be believed.

Dianne was right. Clara Falls had no need for tattoo artists—world-class or otherwise.

And neither did he.

Silence descended around them. Finally, Jaz cleared her throat. ‘I take it then that you’re the builder Richard hired to do the work on this place?’ She lifted a hand to indicate the interior of the shop, and then pointed to the ceiling to indicate the flat upstairs.

‘That’s right.’

She pushed away from the bookcase, glanced around. ‘Considering the amount of work Richard told me needed doing, the place looks exactly as I remember it.’

Her eyes narrowed. He watched her gaze travel over every fixture and furnishing within her line of sight. ‘Exactly the same.’ She turned accusing eyes on him.

‘That’s because I’ve barely started work in here yet.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘But…but your receptionist assured me all the work would be finished by Thursday last week.’

The muscles in his jaw bunched. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Positive.’

He didn’t blame her for her gritted teeth response. ‘I’m sorry, Jaz, but you were given the wrong information.’ And he’d be getting himself a new receptionist— this afternoon, if he could arrange it.

She pressed her lips so tightly together it made his jaw ache in sympathy. Then she stiffened. ‘What about the OH and S stuff? Hell, if that hasn’t been sorted, then—’

‘That’s the part I’ve taken care of.’

Several weeks ago, someone had filed an Occupation Health and Safety complaint. It had resulted in an OH and S officer coming out to inspect the premises…and to close the shop down when it had been discovered that two floor to ceiling bookcases, which should’ve been screwed fast to battens on the wall behind, had started to come away, threatening to topple and crush anyone who might happen to be below. Connor had put all his other jobs on hold to take care of that. The bookshop had only been closed for a day and a half.

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ What the hell… ‘Because it was dangerous, that’s why.’

‘Not that.’ She waved an imperious hand in the air. ‘Why is it your company that is doing the work?’

Because Richard had asked him to.

Because he’d wanted to prove that the past had no hold over him any more.

She folded her arms. ‘I should imagine the last thing you wanted was to clap eyes on me again.’

She was right about that.

She stuck out a defiant hip. ‘In fact, I’d guess that the last thing you want is me living in Clara Falls again.’

It took a moment for the import of her words to hit him. When they did, he clenched a fist so tight it started to shake. She glanced at his fist, then back into his face. She cocked an eyebrow. She didn’t unsay her words.

‘Are you insinuating that I’d use my position as a builder to sabotage your shop?’ He tried to remember the last time he’d wanted to throttle someone.

‘Would you? Have you? I mean… There’s that travesty of a sign, for a start. Now the delay. What would you think? You and Gordon Sears could be like that—’ she waved two crossed fingers under his nose ‘—for all I know.’

‘God, Jaz! I know it’s been eight years, but can you seriously think I would stoop to that?’

She raked him from the top of his head to his boot laces with her hot gaze—blue on the way down, green when she met his eyes again on the way up— and it felt as if she actually placed her hands on his body and stroked him. His heart started to thump. She moistened her lips. It wasn’t a nervous gesture, more…an assessing one. But it left a shine on her lips that had him clenching back a groan.

‘Business is business,’ he ground out. ‘I don’t have to like who I’m working for.’

Was it his imagination or did she pale at his words?

Her chin didn’t drop. ‘So you’re saying this is just another job to you?’

He hesitated a moment too long.

Jaz snorted and pushed past him, charged back down to the sales counter and stood squarely behind it, as if she wanted to place herself out of his reach. ‘Thank you for the work you’ve done so far, Connor, but your services are no longer required.’

He stalked down to the counter, reached across and gripped her chin in his fingers, forced her gaze to his. ‘Fine! You want the truth? This isn’t just another job. What happened to your mother… It made me sick to my stomach. We…someone in town…we should’ve paid more attention, we should’ve sensed that—’

He released her and swung away. She smelt like a wattle tree in full bloom—sweet and elusive. It was too much.

When he glanced back at her, her eyes had filled with tears. She touched her fingers to her jaw where he’d held her. Bile rose up through him. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’ He gestured futilely with his hand. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’

She shook her head, her voice low, and he watched her push the tears down with the sheer force of her will…way down deep inside her like she used to do. Suddenly he felt older than his twenty-six years. He felt a hundred.

‘I’m sorry I doubted your integrity.’

She issued her apology with characteristic sincerity and speed. He dragged a hand down his face. The Jaz of old might’ve been incapable of fidelity, but she’d been equally incapable of malice.

If she’d asked him to forgive her eight years ago, he would have. In an instant.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Am I rehired?’

She straightened, moistened her lips and nodded. He didn’t know how he could tell, but this time the gesture was nervous.

‘You won’t find it hard coping with my presence around the place for the next fortnight?’ Some devil prompted him to ask.

‘Of course not!’

He could tell that she was lying.

‘We’re both adults, aren’t we? What’s in the past is in the past.’

He wanted to agree. He opened his mouth to do precisely that, but the words refused to come.

Jaz glanced at him, moistened her lips again. ‘It’s going to take a fortnight? So long?’

‘Give or take a couple of days. And that’s working as fast as I can.’

‘I see.’

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I’ll get back to work on that sign then, shall I?’

The door clanged shut behind Connor with a finality that made Jaz want to burst into tears.

Crazy. Ridiculous.

Her knees shook so badly she thought she might fall. Very carefully, she lowered herself to the stool behind the counter. Being found slumped on the floor was not the look she was aiming for, not on her first day.