him now, tracing his eyes, his nose, his lips with her quaking fingers brought it all rushing back. The intensity of first love, first passion. How he had loved her so completely and stood up for her at every turn. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on Flynn and Ellie. Hope Junction had been up in arms when their golden boy—son of third-generation landowners—had started going out with her. Not only did she not come from farming stock, but her mother had dumped her and her father hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see her born. Thankfully, the teenage Flynn had already developed both backbone and morals. He didn’t give a damn what the town thought. He saw past her situation to the real Ellie, and before long his dedication won over his parents and the rest of the town, too. Pretty soon Ellie was loved and accepted as if she were a fourth-generation local as well, and that was no easy feat. When Flynn had asked her to marry him, everyone was genuinely ecstatic. The only comments about them being too young came from girls Ellie’s age and she wrote off their gibes as simple jealousy.
“Oh, Flynn.” Sniffing, she looked down at the photo and tried to push away the millions of what-ifs that floated into her mind. What if things had been different? What if her mother had never asked to meet her in Perth? What if, for once, she’d put her own needs first and said no? What if Flynn had come with her to Perth as he’d said he would? What if she’d stayed and married him anyway? Would they be happy now? Would they have kids? Some would say her life in Sydney as an actress and celebrity was a charmed one, but her whole body ached with the thought of just how magical it could have been if she’d been living it with Flynn.
* * *
SUNDAY MORNING, FLYNN WOKE. His head throbbed and a heavy naked weight lay sprawled across his equally naked chest. This realization roused him like no bucket of cold water ever could.
Glancing round the lamp-lit room at his surroundings and then taking a closer look at the woman in his arms, he froze. Scenes of the previous night flashed one after the other. Cringeworthy and stupid didn’t even begin to describe what he saw and how he felt. He wanted more than anything to extricate himself from beneath Lauren.
Lauren? Had the drink stolen every ounce of his common sense? Again? He wanted to collect his clothes from wherever they’d landed, flee home, crawl under the bedcovers and stay there all day. He wanted to forget this nightmare had ever happened. But he saw one immediate problem with that tempting scenario. Lauren.
He’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have noticed the mammoth crush she’d harbored for him since primary school. But he’d been fastidious in avoiding her advances—at least until now. Because although she was fun and pretty—if you liked her kind of style—she was also a local. Flings had been few and far between in recent years, but any that Flynn did have, he kept far outside the boundaries of Hope Junction. Local girls were a no-go zone. It was safer and easier that way.
Lauren, on the other hand, was very local. And she was like most single women approaching their thirtieth year. Stars in her eyes when it came to weddings, babies and happily-ever-afters. But after all Flynn had been through with Ellie, he didn’t have a marrying bone left in his body.
He cursed himself and his lack of restraint, not so much for not resisting Lauren, but for getting so absolutely hammered that he thought hooking up with her was a good idea in the first place. He’d been dry for eight years now, and although his addiction was always in the back of his mind, he’d forgotten how much of a tool he became, and the kind of stupid choices he made, when he got drunk. It wasn’t pretty, nor something he was proud of.
Lauren shifted on his chest. She made a tiny noise like a mewling cat and opened her eyes. Their faces were so close he could do nothing but look straight into her eyes. She smiled like a Cheshire; he gulped like a minnow facing a great white.
“Feeling better this morning, Flynn?”
He couldn’t exactly give her the truth—that her face was the last thing he wanted to see first thing in the morning.
“Last night was something else,” she went on, crawling her nails up his chest and bringing the pads of her fingers to rest on his lips. He tried not to flinch. “But next time, let’s make sure we finish it off, hey?”
His heart skipped a hopeful beat at her words. Could it be possible they hadn’t actually had sex? He had to know.
“I’m...really sorry, Lauren, but my memory’s pretty hazy about last night. Did we...?”
“I should probably be offended that you can’t remember it.” She giggled and began toying with the flesh at his ear. He summoned all his self-control not to tap her hand away, raise his voice and demand she tell him the truth. Instead, he smiled the smile he’d been told, on many occasions, was a danger to womankind.
“Well?”
“You passed out before we got that far.” She laughed, then added something else. But Flynn didn’t take in these last words. He was too busy thanking the Lord for small mercies, promising he’d never touch another drop as long as he lived. But the reprieve didn’t last long. Lauren dipped her head and touched her hot, wet lips to his parched ones. A quick worker, she slid her tongue inside his mouth barely before he’d registered her kiss. Where, in other circumstances, his first thoughts might be of his morning breath, in this instance his only concern was how to escape her clutches. Hell, he’d be happy if he had bad breath and it scared her off.
He placed his hands on her bare shoulders and pushed her upward, looking away when her perky breasts thrust themselves into his line of vision.
“Sorry, Lauren, with the ram sale not far away, I really can’t afford to have a Sunday off. Work to be done, sheep to check on.”
“Damn sheep.” Her lower lip practically touched her chest, but she rolled over and scrounged around on the floor for her discarded clothes. If there was one thing a country girl understood, it was that nothing, no one, came before the farm.
Seizing the opportunity, Flynn scrabbled off the couch, located his shirt and boots and yanked them both on in record time. He knew he should stop and apologize to Lauren. He should explain he hadn’t meant to lead her on, that he hadn’t been thinking straight. But whatever way he put it, she’d be offended and upset. And the honest truth was that he just didn’t have the mental energy to deal with this right now. Not on top of everything else.
So without so much as a kiss on the cheek, he thanked Lauren for letting him stay and fled.
* * *
AFTER CRYING HERSELF to sleep, Ellie slept more soundly than she had in a long time. Maybe it was the emotion of the day before, maybe it was the jet lag, maybe it was the quiet of the country, but in the morning, it was only the sound of the kettle whistling that roused her. It was a noise she hadn’t heard in as long as she could remember. In her other life no one bothered with the time it took to boil a kettle. It was either Starbucks or the staff room machine, which percolated good, strong coffee twenty-four hours a day. It took a second for her to recognize the sound, and then she realized it meant Mat was already up and trying to fend for herself.
Ellie sprang into action. Her hand was on the door handle when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. That was no fancy nightie she saw, it was a wedding dress. Her wedding dress. A shiver ran over her skin and a despondent feeling returned to her chest. With what felt like a brick weighing her down, it was an effort to walk even the few steps back to the bed. She sat and stretched behind her to the row of minuscule buttons. If she kept on like this, she was in danger of returning to that dark place she’d gone to when she first left Flynn and gave up everything that mattered to her. A place so gloomy it had taken all her willpower to drag herself out. She never wanted to go there again. Besides, she was in Hope for Matilda, not to revisit past demons.
“Come on,” she said, urging her wobbly fingers to steady and coordinate. She’d done them up with only relative difficulty; surely the undoing would be easy in comparison. More twisting, more tugging, but it seemed the only thing likely to come undone was her arm socket.
“Argh!” What was meant to be a silent plea between gritted teeth came out loud and angry. She took a deep breath, concentrated,