Loe raamatut: «First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush...»

For the Garvey clan (two-legged and four). Thank you for your years of friendship and your tolerance of my weird writerly ways.

To Liz for setting the bar so inspirationally high.

And to Rachel for keeping me sane and on the right path with this one.

PROLOGUE

Ten years ago, Perth, Western Australia

‘MARC, have you got a minute?’

Beth Hughes caught up with her best friend between classes and steered him away from the teenage throng doing a fast book change between fourth period and fifth. The rock that had taken up residence in her gut since she’d spoken to his mother seemed to swell in size.

Marc looked at her in surprise. Understandable, given the past few weeks of slow retreat on her part. If he’d refused point-blank to go with her she would have understood. A weak part of her wished he would. That would be easier all round.

‘Three minutes, Duncannon.’ Tasmin Major swanned past, a friendly smile on her Nordic face, tapping her watch. ‘Geography waits for no one.’

‘I’ll be there, ‘ Marc threw after her, trailing Beth around behind the water fountains, tension rich in his deep voice. She ducked between the back wall of the library complex and some badly pruned shrubs into a rubble-filled clearing she’d never visited before. The place others came to do their smoking. Their deep-and-meaningful conversations. Their making-out.

The location got Marc’s attention completely. His steps slowed.

‘Beth?’

Her pulse beat thick and fast, high in her throat, reducing even further the space for her breath. She sucked in a few mouthfuls of air and forced them down as she turned to face him in the privacy of the little space.

‘What are we doing, Beth?’ His face was cautious. Closed. She curled her fingers into a ball behind her. ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’

She stared at him, forcing air past her lips, hating how he’d taken to saying the word boyfriend. ‘Damien’s in fifth period.’

‘Where we should be. Or do grades mean less to you now that you hang with the beautiful people?’

Her eyes fell to the dirt he scuffed at his feet, heat invading her cheeks. ‘I needed to see you.’

‘You see me every day.’

In passing. ‘I needed to speak with you. ‘ She lifted her focus. ‘In private.’

A grey tinge came over him. His body straightened even more. Not for the first time, Beth noticed how broad he was getting. Those shoulders that had made the swim team captain seek him out a few months back. The way his jaw was squaring off. As if a switch had flipped on his sixteenth birthday and a man had started breaking out of the scrawny exoskeleton she knew as Marc. Maybe she’d left this too late …

Her stomach tightened.

‘You have to hide out to talk to me these days?’

She could have pretended to misunderstand but Marc knew her too well. ‘I don’t want to make trouble with you and Damien.’

‘I’m pretty sure McKinley’s already aware that we’re friends, Beth. I’ve known you since fourth grade.’

‘I don’t want … He might read into it.’

‘Then you might want to choose another location for this conversation. You do know what The Pit gets used for, right?’

Beth swallowed hard, her eyes dropping to his lips for a second. She forced them up. ‘I just wanted privacy.’

The second bell rang and urgent footsteps sprinting into classrooms petered out. Everything around them fell silent. Marc widened his feet and crossed his arms across his chest. ‘You got it. Every other student at Pyrmont High is now in class.’

‘I’m changing streams,’ she blurted before she lost her nerve. ‘I’m switching to B.’

Marc stared at her, his nostrils flaring. ‘You’re changing out of the classes we’ve been taking all year? Into McKinley’s stream?’

‘Not because of Damien—’

‘Right.’

‘I want less science. More arts.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since now.’

‘B-stream is soft, Beth.’

‘It has Literature and Philosophy in it. They’re unientrance subjects.’

‘You’re switching to avoid me.’

The rock in her gut doubled in size. ‘No.’

Yes.

‘Why?’

A throbbing started up behind her eyes. ‘This has nothing to do with you—’

‘Bull. You’ve been backing off from me since term started. What’s going on? No room for a mate in your busy new social schedule, Ms Popularity?’

‘Marc—’

‘I may not be as smart as you, Beth, but I can see which way the wind is blowing. Is McKinley threatened by me?’

She shook her head. Damien’s field of vision was far too narrow for him to notice how Marc was filling out, growing up. He had way too much going on in his life, in his world, to worry about what some science geek was up to. It never occurred to him that Beth would see Marc as anything other than a buddy. An old buddy. The expendable buddy she’d had until he came along.

And now Damien just expected that she’d switch camps. Just like she switched streams. But since that fed right into what she knew she had to do …

‘So that’s it, huh? That’s what you wanted to tell me—that you’re switching classes?’

Beth struggled to take in a breath. He made it sound so minor. But still so ugly. Her words grew tight. ‘It means we’re only going to have one class together.’

‘I know. The best thing about B is that it means only seeing McKinley once a week.’ He glared at her. ‘You’re that desperate to get away from me?’

She would like nothing more than to have Marc Duncannon in her life for ever. But, as it turned out, that wasn’t going to work. Guilt tore at her insides and thick shields shot up into place. ‘The world revolves around the sun, Marc, not you.’

His face paled and the guilt turned inward, digging into the flesh around her heart. The truth was Marc Duncannon revolved around Beth Hughes and always had. Or, more rightly, the two of them rotated in a complicated, connected orbit. Something both their parents felt was unhealthy.

For him.

If it was just his nut-job mother who thought it, Beth wouldn’t have given it another thought. But her own mother agreed and so did her father. And Russell Hughes was never, ever wrong. After a long and tearful conversation, Beth gave him her word that she’d cool things down with Marc for a while. See what happened. And she’d never broken her word yet.

‘If you’re not doing it to be closer to McKinley and you’re not doing it to be away from me then why are you doing it?’

‘Why can’t I just be doing it for me? Because I want to?’

‘Because you don’t make decisions like that, Beth. You never have. You plan stuff. You commit.’

‘So I’ve changed my mind. It happens.’

Not to you. It was written loud and clear all over his face. Could he tell she was lying?

‘What about uni? Biology?’

A fist squeezed deep in her chest. Damn him for not just letting her go. Why was he pushing this so hard? Forcing her to hurt him more. ‘That was your dream, not mine.’

He blinked, then stared. ‘After all this time? You’ve been on board with that for three years.’

She shrugged, faking ambivalence she absolutely did not feel. ‘Seemed like a good enough idea at the time.’

‘Until something better came along? Or should I say someone?’

‘This is not about Damien. I told you.’ He stepped closer and Beth retreated towards the library wall. When had he grown that big?

‘I know what you told me. I just don’t believe it.’ He towered over her. ‘We’ve been friends for eight years, Beth. Half our lifetimes. And you just disappear the moment a popular guy comes sniffing? Are you truly that desperate for affection?’

The library wall pressed into her back. She knew he’d be hurt, and she knew he lashed out when he was hurt. She’d seen him do it with his mother. ‘People change, Marc. We all grow up. Maybe we’ve just grown apart?’

‘I know you’re changing, Beth. I’ve watched you.’ His eyes glazed over, a deep russet brown, and skimmed her, head to toe. She’d never been more aware of the changing shape of her body. Then he sneered, ‘I just never expected you’d change into such a cliché.’

‘I’m just … I just need some space. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for so long we don’t even know how to be around anyone else. Or who we are if we’re not together.’

Lies, lies …

His snort was ugly. ‘Don’t dress this up as self-discovery. This is about the school jock making a play for the school tomboy. And you’re falling for it hook, line and sinker.’ He slammed two hands either side of her face and leaned into her.

She flinched and her heart raced at his closeness. No, this is about your mother asking me to cut you loose. Begging me to. She wanted to scream it into the face that she knew as well as her own. But she couldn’t. It would kill him to discover what his only surviving parent thought he was worth.

‘You could be anything you want, Marc. You don’t need me to be it with you. There’s a whole world for us to discover.’

He leaned in further. The tightening in her body where he touched it wasn’t fear. Marc was the only person on the planet she trusted implicitly never to hurt her.

‘What’s wrong with us discovering that together?’ he ground, his chest heaving with restraint. ‘We have history. A bond. What does McKinley have that I don’t have?’

No rock-tight bond. No complicated history. No parents pressuring her to put some distance between them.

‘I’m only asking for space, Marc. What’s wrong with that?’

His face twisted and he swore. ‘I’ve been giving you space for two years, Beth. Maybe if I’d done this back then I wouldn’t be standing here now getting the brush-off from my best friend.’

And then suddenly his mouth was crushing down on hers, his body pressing her into the hard limestone of the library wall behind her. Shock stiffened her against the hardness of his chest as his hands slipped down to tangle in her hair and hold her face still for the assault of his lips. She swam in his scent, in his angry heat, in his perfect, practised kiss. The unfamiliar slide of a blazing hot mouth over her own and the furious press of his body. And then the dizzying sensation of their flesh melding into one, his enormous hands sliding around to protect her head from the lumpy wall behind her, his mouth shifting and softening on hers.

And then—somehow—she was kissing him back. Her own mouth moved tentatively against his and her body pressed forward. A choked whimper cracked deep in her throat and Marc worked his tongue past her uncertain lips coaxing them open. His furnace-hot tongue twisted and danced around hers, intensity pooling around her, engulfing all. Her body whoofed to flaming life, hormones tangling and exploding like kindling around them.

Overwhelming and unfamiliar, something she’d never allowed herself to dream. To want.

Marc.

Suddenly Beth was free and Marc staggered back against the force of her desperate shove. She held up a shaking hand to stop him coming closer. His face darkened as he looked at her.

‘Does McKinley know you kiss like that?’ His chest heaved.

How could he know? They’d never kissed. She’d never kissed anyone. Until today.

She dragged her fist across her lips. ‘Don’t ever—’ do that again, make me feel that again ‘—touch me again.’ Her voice was husky and low and appallingly unfamiliar.

‘Beth …’

A world of emotions surged up and spilled over. ‘Don’t speak to me … again.’

His frown doubled. ‘You don’t mean—’

She lifted tortured eyes to him. ‘Why does it have to be all or nothing with you? I just wanted some space, Marc. Room for us both to discover who we are. That’s all. Did you think you could keep me all to yourself for ever?’

‘I know who I am. And I thought I knew who you were. But I guess not. ‘ He crossed the little clearing in two steps. ‘You want space, Elizabeth? Fine. Take as much as you need. If you’re that desperate, then have a good life with McKinley.’

And then he was gone.

Her best friend.

Like a kite in a wild wind, she’d tried to give him some rope, some height, but instead he’d ripped completely free and was gone. Her fingers trembled as they touched her swollen lips and she slid down the rough library wall until she huddled in a tearless, emotionless, empty heap.

CHAPTER ONE

Ten years later, south coast, Western Australia

WHO knew silence came in so many shades?

There was the deep, black silence late at night, under the West Australian stars, miles from anywhere. The earthy green silence of Beth’s shambolic warehouse studio, only broken by the splashes of colour from her latest artworks. There was the newly discovered, beige-coloured silence inside her head, where voices and thoughts used to clamour but had now all eased into a comfortable hum.

And there was this one …

The simmering red silence of a man who was not particularly pleased to see her. Not that Beth had imagined he would be. It was why she’d put this off for so long. The awful sound of nothing echoed through the heartbeat thumping past her eardrums. She cleared her throat.

‘Marc.’

He may have been half a house larger than the boy she remembered, but Marc Duncannon had two trademark giveaways and one was the way he stood when he was on guard, legs apart as if readying himself for a physical assault.

Muscular arms stole up to cross in front of a broad chest as he continued to stare wordlessly at her. Twisted humour raced in to fill the aching void inside where she wasn’t letting herself feel. While he’d grown a kick-butt chest in ten years, she was no bigger in that department than when he’d last seen her. Yet another disappointment for him.

Coming here suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. ‘Are you not even going to say hello?’

He nodded briskly, his lips tight, resenting opening at all. ‘Beth.’

One stony word, but loaded with meaning and breath-stealing in its timbre. More than she’d had from him in over a decade. A total contrast to the way he used to say her name. Beth. Betho. Bethlehem. They’d had their short lifetimes to come up with stupid nicknames for each other. He’d only called her Elizabeth once. The day he’d kissed her.

The day she’d ripped out his heart.

She swallowed past the lump threatening her air supply. Past the welling excitement that she was here—with Marc—again. ‘How are you?’

‘On my way out.’

Okay … She’d prepared herself to be unwelcome but it still felt so foreign radiating from him. ‘I just needed … I’d like a couple of minutes. Please?’

His hazel eyes darted away briefly but the miracle of any part of him moving seemed to thaw the rest of him out. His whole body twisted and he resumed loading equipment into his four-wheel drive. Beth risked closing the gap, but her breath got shorter with her distance from him, until she either stopped advancing on him or took her last living gasp.

Seeing him again would almost be worth it.

He threw words out like a shark net to entangle her before she got nearer. ‘You could stand there gawping or you could help me load the Cruiser.’

Beth scrambled to help, stunned by the gift of so many words in a row. It wasn’t friendly. But it wasn’t silence. And, given it was possibly the only chance she was going to get, she took it.

‘I went to your old house. Your neighbours told me where you were, ‘ she started to jabber. ‘I heard about your mum. What happened? You two were so close.’

Oh-so-familiar eyes lifted below hooded lids and glared at her. Intense and intensely … adult. ‘That’s what you’ve come all this way to ask?’

Her heart lurched. Marc didn’t do sarcasm when they were kids but it seemed he’d perfected the fine art in the years since she’d seen him.

‘No. I’m sorry …’ It was lame but what else could she say?

He turned to face her and straightened, frustrated. ‘What for, Beth? For turning up unannounced or for dropping off the face of the earth for a decade?’

How could she have forgotten what a straight shooter he was? She took a shaky breath. ‘That’s why I’ve come. I wanted to explain—’

He moved off again. ‘You’ll have to explain some other time. Like I said, I’m on my way out.’

She watched as he tossed a few final items into his dusty black Land Cruiser. A satellite phone. A first aid kit. A wetsuit. She frowned. ‘Where are you going?’

The hard glare he shot her from under the broad ridge of his brow should have had her quailing, if not for the fact that she’d developed immunity long ago, from exposure to much worse. Courtesy of her husband.

‘We’ve had a report of a stranding out at Holly’s Bay. I’m going to check it out.’

‘Stranding?’

‘A whale, Beth. It needs help. I don’t have time to entertain you.’

She fought the bristle his unkind words inspired. She was here to help her healing process, not to pass the time. Would she have put herself through this otherwise? ‘I just need a minute …’

He ignored her and moved around to the driver’s side door and yanked it open. ‘The whale may not have a minute. You’ve already slowed me down.’

She made her decision in a blink. It had cost her too much to come here today; she couldn’t let him just walk away from her. Who knew if she’d find the courage to try again? She sprinted around to the passenger side of the four-wheel drive and leaped in as he started it. Up close and in the confines of a cabin, he was bigger even than he’d seemed at a distance.

‘Get out, Beth.’

His voice certainly fitted the new him. Deep, rough. But still essentially Marc. That part tugged at her. ‘I need to talk to you. If I have to do that on the move, I will. Whatever it takes.’

He practically growled, ‘You’re wasting time.’

Anger finally broke through her carefully constructed veneer. ‘No, you are, Marc. Drive!’

Marc Duncannon concentrated on keeping his hands glued to the steering wheel, cemented there harder than clams on a reef. The tighter he held them, the less likely they were to shake, to give him away. He didn’t want her getting the slightest clue about how thrown he was.

Beth Hughes.

She was still the same lean, athletic build she’d been as a kid. It still suited her, even if it made him wonder how long ago she’d had her last meal. Same high brows, straight nose. Full coral lips. He would have recognised her even if she hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t heard again the soft tones he’d given up as a memory, but there was something very worn out about the way she held herself. The way her long dark hair hung, defeated, from a dead straight parting. As if she was doing her best not to stand out. Very un-Beth. She’d always been such a show pony.

Now she looked a little too much like his mother’s tormented appearance the last time he’d seen her. He clenched his jaw and leaned on the accelerator harder, flying down the long track leading from the homestead to the coastal highway.

His vehicle now reeked of Beth’s particular scent. That skin cream that, clearly, she still used after all these years. Coconut something. Chemical free. Cruelty free. The scent he associated with summer and beaches and bikinis … and Beth. The scent that would take weeks to fade from his upholstery.

The way it had taken months to finally force her from his mind. Or not, he realised as every bit of him tightened. Seemed it had only lain dormant. Buried deep. Two seconds in her presence and half a childhood of memories came flooding back.

So much for moving on.

He concentrated on the road ahead.

From the corner of his vision, he saw her twisted mouth, teeth chewing on her full lips. The old habit socked him in the guts. She used to do that when she was problem-solving or trying to outfox him. But back then she couldn’t sustain it and they’d break apart into one of her heart-stopping smiles. Not today. Her lips opened and she took a deep breath, ready to hit him with whatever it was she wanted.

‘Since when did you become a whale rescuer?’

Not what he was expecting. And why did she sound as rattled as he was? She had the upper hand here. It surprised him enough to answer. ‘It’s part of life on the south coast. And I’m the closest trained landholder.’

‘You train for this?’

‘Through experience.’

‘How many times have you done it?’

‘Five. Two last year. This stretch of coast is notorious for it.’

‘Why here, particularly?’

Small talk killed him. Especially with the one person he’d never needed it with. This was what they were now? Maybe never seeing her again was the better option. He shrugged. ‘No one knows.’

Silence fell, thick and muddy. He slowed the vehicle and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. They bumped off the asphalt onto a badly graded limestone track and headed towards the massive expanse of ocean. The crescent bay opened out before them like an electric-blue half-moon.

‘How long before we get there?’ she asked, voice tight.

He could practically feel her brain turning over. Her heart thumping. It vibrated off her and slammed straight into the waves of tension coming off him. ‘About one minute longer than you said you needed.’

She saw his sideways glance. Interpreted it correctly. ‘I needed to see you. To explain.’ She cleared her throat. ‘To apologise.’

Apologise? ‘For what?’

Her mouth thinned. ‘Marc …’

‘Friendships end, Beth. It happens.’ He used the casual shrug to shake free some of his tension.

Her eyes flared with confusion but then they hardened and blazed with determination he’d never seen from her. Adult Beth had some balls, then. ‘Nonetheless, I’ve come a long way to see you. I’d like to say what I need to say …’

The Land Cruiser bumped up off the track onto the small dunes and Marc manoeuvred them as close to the edge as he safely could. The white crescent shore stretched out before them, meeting the blue of the Southern Ocean. Next stop, Antarctica. Down on the sand, about twenty feet apart, two large, dark shapes rolled and buffeted in the shallows.

Two whales. Marc swore under his breath.

‘Your explanations will have to wait, Beth. I have work to do.’