Chapter Fifteen
Lachlan forced himself to swallow the surge of jealousy that rose within him as he watched the sisters, wishing it was his arms around April. For some reason he just couldn’t figure out what was going on. April kept insisting that Marie was the reason she couldn’t be with him but here was Marie practically pushing them together. And still April didn’t want him. Maybe Ben was right, maybe all this was one sided and April was just trying to convince him she didn’t feel anything.
But he’d seen the look in her eyes when he’d arrived. And Marie said she’d been nursing a broken heart all week. He knew what that felt like; his own heart was at risk of shattering at any moment.
April turned away from the coffee, her eyes locking with his. There were tears but she didn’t seem to notice. For a long moment they stayed like that, staring at each other across the room, neither of them able to look away, neither of them saying anything. Then something changed, the look in April’s became unreadable and Lachlan felt his stomach clench.
“April,” Marie threw over her shoulder as she pressed the plunger down. “How about you and Lachlan head to the lounge with your coffees, I’ll finish up with dinner.”
Alarm registered across April’s face but Lachlan spoke up before she could protest. “Thanks Marie.” He didn’t dare look away. Instead he held her piercing green gaze, challenging her protest. Time alone with her, confined to a room so she couldn’t run away sounded great, but so far she hadn’t seemed to want to be alone with him and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity go to waste.
“Thanks Marie,” April eventually added. “I’ll stack the wood burner, it’s starting to feel cold already.”
At the sound of a cough, all eyes turned towards the kitchen door. “Is it safe to come in?” Ben asked hesitantly.
“Of course.” Marie blushed profusely and lowered her eyes. “I was just making coffee. Two sugars?”
“Uh, thanks.”
“April and I are going to stack the fire in the lounge,” Lachlan said standing up and walking over to April’s side. “Why don’t you help Marie with dinner?”
April’s eyes widened and she shot a panicked look at Ben, she must have just realised the two of them leaving the kitchen would mean also leaving Ben and Marie alone together. He wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to change her mind. “Don’t worry, Ben doesn’t bite. Marie will be okay with him.”
“Yes, go,” Marie agreed, handing them each a mug. Lachlan smiled his thanks and then grabbed April’s free hand and pulled her towards the doorway before she could change her mind.
While he sat and sipped his coffee, April set about stacking wood into the old cast iron burner. Ruthlessly he squashed down the feelings of inadequacy that her movements conjured. He’d never in his life stacked a burner or any fire for that matter. The closest he’d ever come to lighting a fire was igniting the gas on his barbecue.
He cleared his throat while he tried to locate his missing balls. All he wanted to do was talk to her, like the way they’d talked in Sydney, but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
Instead Lachlan found himself scanning his eyes over the lounge room, appreciating the simple functionality of her furniture and the lack of unnecessary crap his mother seemed to go for like too many cushions or lamps. In fact, the only decoration in April’s lounge adorned the wall above the fireplace and featured a canvas photograph of a couple smiling lovingly into each other’s eyes. The woman looked so much like Marie that Lachlan wondered if they were her parents.
“So how was your cousin’s wedding?” April asked when the silence had become unbearable. Still she didn’t look at him, instead she shoved some kindling between the wood and picked up a long box of matches.
“Good,” he said lamely. The last thing he wanted to do was tell her how miserable he’d been during the entire event. All he’d been able to think about was her and how she hadn’t been answering his calls.
They lapsed into silence again until she finally shut the door on the burner, a small fire rapidly growing within. She grabbed her mug off the coffee table and settled on the couch beside him. Not close enough to touch, but still sharing the same space.
When the silence began to stretch between them again, he took a long drink of his coffee then put his cup on the coffee table and cleared his throat. “So…” he began but drew a blank instead.
“So?” she asked, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly. “I guess I should thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“For coming to warn me about the video with Samantha.” She pressed her lips to the rim of her mug as she took a sip of her coffee. He forced his eyes away from her mouth.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“Of course I do. If I had just answered your call, you wouldn’t have felt the need to drive here, you could have told me all this on the phone.” Her head hung over her lap, and she stared at the mug in her hands.
He chuckled wryly. “Actually, if you’d answered I probably would have somehow screwed up the conversation and then would have driven out here anyway to try and make it right.”
“Still…” April hesitated then turned to face him, a pensive look on her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls.”
“Why?” he asked quietly. She frowned slightly so he clarified his question. “Not why are you sorry. Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
“It was too hard.” Her voice was barely above a whisper but her eyes were wide and determined. “I figured if I didn’t answer, you’d eventually get the message that there can’t ever be anything between us.”
And there it was, spoken out loud. She didn’t want him. He should accept it, move on. It was just as Ben had said, she didn’t want anything to do with him.
“So that’s it,” he said, his voice broke on the words and he cleared his throat before continuing. “Sydney was just a fling, a bit of fun while you were away?”
She looked away, but not before he caught sadness in her expression. “You don’t understand.”
“No. I don’t understand. Explain it to me.”
Not surprisingly, she didn’t speak. Lachlan reached out and grabbed her cup from her hand and placed it on the table, and then he took both her hands in his and waited for her to look at him.
“Just answer me one thing then,” he said quietly when their eyes met. “Have I been reading this all wrong? I mean, you keep telling me this can’t work out but then you look at me and I see something completely different in your eyes. Its making me crazy. Am I imagining that?”
Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t look away. She swallowed hard.
“No.” It was barely audible, but it was enough. He reached over and took her face between his hands. His kiss was slow, gentle, as if the mere act could sooth away his pain. With one hand, she caressed his cheek before wrapping her arms round his neck, running her fingers through his hair and triggering wave after wave of electric sensations through his body.
He brushed his tongue across her lips and she opened at once, inviting him in and instantly the kiss changed from gentle to demanding, from sweet to feverish. He was afraid that at any moment she would pull away and then it would be over; she wouldn’t allow him in again. Only she didn’t pull away. Instead she pressed herself up against him, demanding more of him and he willingly gave her everything he had.
Eventually, inevitably, they pulled apart and he leant his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. It dawned on him that they were sitting in her lounge room, Ben and Marie on the other side of an open doorway. He didn’t care. He grabbed for her hand and dragged it to his lips, pressing a kiss across the back.
“Can’t we at least try to work this out?” he said roughly.
“I wish we could,” she whispered, drawing him into a tight embrace and resting her head on his shoulder. The hug lasted until Marie called through that dinner was ready.
Some of the heaviness
had left Lachlan’s chest, but he knew that very little had changed. Although she’d let her guard down for a little while, April hadn’t yet explained why she kept putting walls between them. But Lachlan could be patient when he had to be and he was determined that, bit by bit, he would break down those walls until she finally decided not to build them anymore.
Dinner was wonderful. Marie had made a spicy chicken curry served on a bed of brown rice with a cucumber and pineapple side salad and April couldn’t have asked for a more impressive meal to serve up for Lachlan and Ben. Not that she wanted to impress them. Of course not. But who wanted to serve up simple meat and three veg when unannounced guests rocked up? Her only regret was that there would be none of her usual leftovers for lunch tomorrow, but that was a small price to pay to have Lachlan around.
It had been a mistake in the lounge. She should have insisted Sydney had meant nothing to her, that he meant nothing to her. She should never have allowed him to kiss her, should never have kissed him back. Instead she’d gone and made things worse and allowed him to get his hopes up. Again. He wouldn’t understand without an explanation and she couldn’t give him one. Damnit! It wasn’t meant to be this hard. She had to stop toying with his emotions.
“April, you were wicked in that video. The look on Samantha’s face when you practically called her an alcoholic was priceless,” Marie gushed, snapping April out of her thoughts. “I only wish I could show it around school and brag about it.”
“Yeah, you were brilliant,” Ben enthused. “I’ve wanted to tell the bitch off for years but you managed to put her in her place with class—it was perfect. It would have been epic to be there in person.”
“It wasn’t like that,” April insisted. “I was humiliated and so angry. I didn’t even remember what I’d said until you guys showed me that video today.”
“Admit it. You were amazing,” Lachlan smiled affectionately and she couldn’t help but grin in response.
“All right. All right. It was pretty cool. But seriously, it must have been all that makeup or something because it wasn’t me, I’m not normally that remarkable.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ben grinned and gestured to his brother. “You’ve got Lachlan here all tied up in knots and David was raving about you on the phone for ages. I’d say you’re more remarkable than you realise.”
She could feel the deep blush rising up her neck and Lachlan leaned over and kissed her cheek in affirmation.
“Who’s David?” Marie asked, a bemused expression on her face at Lachlan’s antics.
“David Anderson. The guy who made my dress,” April explained.
“You guys friends with him?” she asked Ben, which thankfully led the conversation away from her and into the childhoods of the two men sitting at the table. By the time dinner ended, Ben had Marie and April in stitches with stories and mishaps from the set of Clayton Downs, while Lachlan was more than willing to share some of their boyhood adventures. There was still awkwardness between Marie and Ben though, as if both were embarrassed about the pictures on Marie’s wall.
It surprised April that the brothers were so close despite a six-year age difference. She had always been close with Marie, but that had as much to do with her role as parent as it did with being a sister. She wondered if the two of them would have developed the same relationship if their parents had lived, or if the decade between them would have been too much of a hurdle to overcome.
After dinner, Lachlan insisted he and Ben do the dishes, so Marie made coffee while April went into the lounge to check the wood burner. Winter nights in Peters Junction were cold and there was nothing like a roaring fire to warm your bones.
They spent the rest of the evening teaching Marie how to play poker and using matches as betting chips until finally, when Marie couldn’t hide her yawn any longer, April sent her to bed and then went about getting sheets and blankets for the pull-out sofa bed. Lachlan came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, breathing deeply with his nose nestled into her neck.
“You smell so good,” he whispered against her skin, sending a tremor vibrating through her. She turned in his arms and leaned against his chest, relishing the feel of his thumping heart against her cheek. She inhaled his rich, earthy scent and it suddenly occurred to her that come morning, he would be leaving. With that depressing thought in her head, she pulled away and turned back to the linen closet.
“Help me carry these,” she said, placing the spare bedding in his arms and following him to the lounge. April quickly made the bed while the boys shuffled around the furniture, then she wished them good night before escaping to her bedroom located directly off the lounge room.
She dressed quickly into her pyjamas and climbed into bed, then lay in the darkness listing to the brothers as they organised themselves for sleep. Knowing that Lachlan would be sleeping on the other side of the door made her feel like a rabbit chasing a carrot on a string. She could see everything she wanted, but it was forever just out of her reach. The light went out under the door and April sighed her disappointment. For some self-destructive reason, she’d been hoping Lachlan would find his way to her room.
She lay in the darkness, silent tears streaking down her face. Sometimes, putting Marie first was difficult. Sometimes, she wished she didn’t have so many responsibilities or that she was a more selfish person who didn’t care about shirking those responsibilities. Guilt rose up within her at the thought. It wasn’t Marie’s fault. She shouldn’t blame her sister. The only one she should be blaming for this mess was herself.
The sound of the brothers whispering provided a brief distraction to her misery. By their hissing, it sounded as if they were arguing which only added to her sorrow. The last thing she wanted was to cause trouble between the brothers, because she had no doubt the argument was about her. Rolling over, she faced the wall and tried to shut them out, her tears continuing to wet her pillow.
A few moments later, all sounds from the lounge stopped until a slow creak echoed around her room as someone came in. She knew it was him before he reached the bed but couldn’t bring herself to order him out. For a moment he stopped, as if waiting for her to object, then he lifted the blankets and slid in behind her. He dragged her back against his chest and wrapped her protectively in his arms, one around her waist and one under her head, bent at the elbow so his hand came back to rest in her hair.
Still the silent tears fell, punctuated only by the occasional sniffle. Lachlan didn’t ask any questions and seemed content just to hold her, cradled in his arms. Safe. He kissed her head and slowly rubbed her forehead, his fingers sliding in and out of her hair. Back and forth, back and forth, until finally she fell asleep.