an offhand smile, he held out a brown paper bag. ‘Some comfort food from the bakery.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ As she took the bag his fingers brushed hers and the brief contact sent a strange current shooting up her arm. Get a grip, Nell. Now wasn’t the time to become girlish and coy.
‘Take a seat in here,’ she said, indicating the cosy living room that opened off her front hallway. ‘I’ll make some tea. Or would you prefer coffee?’
‘Tea’s fine.’ Jacob ignored her instruction and followed her down the hall and into the kitchen.
Flustered, Nell rushed to fill the kettle. It felt so strange to have Jacob Tucker in here, leaning casually against her butter-yellow cupboard with his long denim legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his strapping chest.
He looked about him with absorbed interest. Or was that amused interest? Was that a smirk she detected? What was so funny? Why couldn’t he have waited in the living room, as she’d asked?
Lips compressed, Nell grabbed scarlet and yellow floral mugs from an overhead cupboard and set them on a wicker tray. She shot him a curious glance. ‘Is something amusing you?’
‘I was just revising my impressions of you. You haven’t changed as much as I thought you had. Yesterday you looked so different in that efficient suit and with your hair all pinned up, but today you’re more like the girl I used to know.’
His thoughts were so close to her own that she almost blushed. Her hand trembled as she reached for the teapot. Don’t be fooled. Remember, this isn’t a proper reunion. Jacob’s filling in time till we see Sam. Nothing more.
She turned and fetched milk from the fridge, filled a small blue jug. ‘I don’t think the girl you remember exists any more,’ she said quietly.
‘I guess looks can be deceiving.’
I should remember that, too.
Nell selected a pretty plate and arranged the biscotti he’d bought at the bakery, set it with the other things on the tray. Turning to him, she said, ‘Can you take this tray through to the living room? I’ll bring the teapot in a minute.’
‘Sure.’
As he left the kitchen, she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Behind her the kettle came to the boil.
* * *
One look at Nell’s living room and Jacob knew that something very important was missing from Koomalong, his Outback homestead. He’d paid a great deal of money for a top Brisbane decorator to furnish his home and she’d gone to enormous trouble to give it a ‘masculine edge’.
‘A man like you needs an environment that screams alpha male,’ the decorator had insisted.
He’d always lived alone, changing women as often as the seasons, so a ‘masculine edge’ had made sense. But, despite the expense and the Brisbane decorator’s expertise, the so-called alpha male decor hadn’t really worked for him. His place didn’t feel like a home; it seemed to belong in a glossy city magazine.
The Ruthvens’ cottage, on the other hand, felt very homelike indeed. There was something about Nell’s living room, about the lounge furniture upholstered in muted creams and dusty reds, that invited him in. The slightly cluttered casualness, the deceptively careless mix of colours and florals and stripes enticed him to relax, to feel welcome.
No doubt the cosy effect was completed by the marmalade cat curled in a sunny spot among fat cushions on the cane sofa beneath the window.
Jacob set the tray down beside a vase of red and cream flowers on an old timber chest that apparently served as a coffee table. A thick paperback novel had been left there and, beside it, elegant blue-framed reading glasses.
Nell wears reading glasses now.
He knew that shouldn’t bother him, but somehow he couldn’t help being saddened by such a clear marker of the passage of time.
The cat opened its pale yellow eyes and stared at him as he selected one of the deep and friendly armchairs and sat. Almost immediately, the cat rose, stretched its striped orange back, then leapt daintily off the sofa and crossed the floor to jump into Jacob’s lap.
As a general rule, he preferred dogs to cats and he eyed the animal dubiously as it balanced on his thighs, a small claw penetrating his denim jeans.
‘Don’t expect me to let you have this milk, mate.’
In response, the cat dropped softly into his lap, curled contentedly and began to purr, adding the final brushstroke to Jacob’s impression of Nell’s cottage as cosiness incorporated.
Unfortunately, he was particularly susceptible to cosiness. His childhood had been lonely. He and his mother had lived in a series of workers’ cottages on Outback properties and he’d longed for the permanence of a cosy family home. There had been several times during the past twenty years when he’d been on the brink of getting married simply so he could enjoy the pleasures of a comfy home and family life.
But whenever he’d come to the point of proposing marriage, something had always held him back—a vital, missing something.
‘Oh, heavens, Ambrose, what do you think you’re doing?’ Nell came into the room carrying a blue china teapot. ‘I’m sorry about the cat,’ she said. ‘Shoo, Ambrose. You should have sent him away, Jacob.’
‘I would have if he’d bothered me.’ Jacob watched the cat return to the sofa, tail waving sulkily. ‘Perhaps he’s mistaken me for your husband.’
A strange little laugh broke from Nell as she set the teapot down beside the tray. ‘No, I’m sure he hasn’t. Robert and Ambrose never got on.’ She looked flushed and avoided meeting his gaze, rubbed her palms down the sides of her skirt as if they were damp. ‘How—how do you take your tea?’
‘Black, no sugar.’
‘Oh, of course, I remember now.’
As she said this, she looked dismayed and he was dismayed too, suddenly remembering the camp fires down by the river when they’d made billy tea, hastily putting the fire out as soon as the water boiled so that the smoke wouldn’t give away their hiding place.
There was a tremor in her hands as she poured his tea and set the mug in front of him. She was nervous and he wanted to put her at ease.
‘This is a lovely home,’ he said. ‘Did you decorate it?’
Nell nodded and concentrated on pouring her own tea, adding milk and a half teaspoon of sugar.
‘You must have an artistic eye.’
‘Actually, I do seem to have a way with fabric.’ She smiled as she settled into the other armchair. ‘I make quilts and I sell them.’
‘You sell them?’
‘Yes. There’s quite a demand for my work, actually. It keeps me rather busy.’
Jacob swallowed his shock. But perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, apart from the gossip his mother gleaned from the social pages, he knew next to nothing about Nell Ruthven. He’d always supposed she was a carefree and idle society wife. One of those ladies who lunched.
But Nell Harrington, the girl he’d loved, had been crazy about poetry, an artistic soul.
‘Your husband must be very proud of you,’ he said cautiously.
Looking more nervous than ever, Nell picked up her mug of tea, then seemed to change her mind and set it down again.
‘How Robert feels about my quilting is irrelevant,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s not my husband any more.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘WE’RE divorced,’ Nell told Jacob in her quietest, most matter-of-fact voice. Even