and why wouldn’t you? But I will do Kylie’s wedding for cost, and Guy can’t stop me. I’ll just organise it from here.’
‘And the rest?’
‘He can have the society weddings. I don’t want them.’
‘They’re the only ones that make us money.’
‘We’ll survive. He paid heaps for the business-more than its worth. But I don’t want Guy Carver as my boss.’
‘There’d be worse bosses,’ Jack said, and Jenny sighed.
‘Just because the man has a Ferrari…’
‘What’s he driving Henry for?’
‘To wheedle his way into getting me to work for him,’ she snapped. ‘The man’s a born wheedler. I can see it.’
‘He doesn’t look like a wheedler to me,’ Lorna said. She’d been laying plates on the table, but now she stilled her wheelchair and turned to face her daughter-in-law. ‘Jenny, it’s been two years. We know you loved Ben, but maybe it’s time you moved on?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He looks quite a catch,’ Jack said, crossing to the door to look-hopefully-out. With a bit of luck there’d be time for a ride for him before dinner was on the table. ‘A Lamborghini at home, eh?’
‘You think I should jump him because he owns a Lamborghini?’ Jenny asked incredulously, and Jack had the grace to look a bit shamefaced.
‘I just meant…’
‘He just meant don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ Lorna said decisively. ‘I’m asking the man to tea.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Watch me,’ Lorna said, plonking a fifth plate on the table. ‘I just know the nice man will stay.’
The night was interminable. Jenny couldn’t believe he’d accepted Lorna’s invitation. She couldn’t believe he was sitting at her dining table with every appearance of complacency.
This was a man international jet-setters regarded as ultra-cool-the epitome of good taste. If they saw him now…
For a start he’d walked in the front door without even appearing to notice Lorna and Jack’s decorations. The Christmas after Ben had been killed, when Henry’s life had hung by a precarious thread, Lorna had decreed Christmas was off. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she’d declared. ‘I’m tossing all my decorations.’
Twelve months later she’d rather shamefacedly hauled out her non-tossed decorations. Jack and Jenny had been desultorily watching television, with Henry on the sofa nearby. They’d been miserable, but they’d fallen on the decorations like long-lost friends. That night had been the first night when ghosts and fear and sadness hadn’t hung over the house, and this year Henry had demanded his grandparents start sorting the decorations on the first day of November.
So there was a reason why the decorations were just ever so slightly over the top, Jenny conceded. She’d hauled Henry’s chair close beside her. He was leaning on her, still lit up after his ride in Guy’s wonderful car. He was tired now, but Jenny thought there’d be trouble if she tried to send him to bed. Lorna and Jack were chatting to Guy as if they were entertaining an old friend, and Henry was soaking in every word.
He had a new superhero.
As for Jenny…Jenny was trying to block out the flashing lights from the real-sized sled in the front yard. The house and the yard were chock-full of Christmas kitsch. She loved every last fluffy pink angel, she decided defensively, trying not to wonder what he was thinking of her. If Guy didn’t like them, then he could leave.
Guy Carver would be a minimalist, Jenny thought, watching Lorna ladle gravy over his roast beef and Jack handing him the vast casserole of cauliflower cheese. He’d like one svelte silhouette of a nativity scene in a cool grey window.
Jenny could count five nativity scenes from where she was sitting.
‘The decorations are wonderful, Mrs Westmere,’ Guy told Lorna, and Jenny cast him a look of deep suspicion as Lorna practically purred.
‘Jenny thinks maybe the front yard is a bit over the top.’
‘How could you, Jenny?’ Guy said, and cast reproachful eyes at her.
She choked.
‘Are you staying until Christmas?’ Jack asked, and Guy said he wasn’t sure.
‘Why I’m asking,’ said Jack, obviously searching for courage, ‘is that every year Santa comes to Sandpiper Bay.’
‘If you’re asking me to wear a Santa suit…’ Guy said, suddenly sounding fearful, and Jenny looked at Guy’s Mediterranean good looks and thought, Yeah, right. Santa-I don’t think so. ‘Then, no.’
‘No, no,’ Jack assured him. ‘We have a very fine Santa. Bill went to a training course in Sydney and everything. But the thing is that every Christmas morning Santa drives through the town tossing lollies-’
‘From the fire truck,’ Henry interrupted, which just about astounded Jenny all by itself. Normally when visitors came Henry was seen but not heard. Henry had been a happy, cheerful four-year-old when his father’s car had collided head-on with a kid spaced out of his brain on cocaine. Now Henry’s world was limited to hospital visits, physiotherapy clinics and his grandparents’ farm. For Henry to go with Guy tonight had been astonishing, and the fact that he was chirping away like a butcher’s magpie now was even more so.
‘See, there’s the problem,’ Jack explained, growing earnest. ‘The problem with Christmas in Australia is that it’s at the height of summer. In summer there’s fires. Last year the fire truck got called away. One minute Santa was up top, handing out lollies, the next he was standing in the middle of Main Street with a half-empty Santa sack while the fire truck screamed off into the distance to someone’s burning haystack.’
‘Goodness,’ Guy said faintly; Goodness, Jenny thought, suddenly realising where this was going.
‘Now, if you were here, young man, in your Ferrari…’
‘Santa could use your Ferrari,’ Henry said, suddenly wide-eyed. ‘Cool. Course it’s not the real Santa,’ he explained, while Guy looked as if he was trying to figure how he could escape. ‘He’s a Santa’s helper. Mum told me that last year. I sat in the back of our car and the fire engine came right up and Santa gave me three lollies.’
‘That was before it was called away,’ Jenny said, trying not to get teary. Too late-she was teary. Dratted tears. She blinked them away, but not before Guy had seen. She knew he’d seen. He had hawk-like eyes that could see everything.
‘Mr Carver’s going home before Christmas,’ she told Henry, feeling desperate. ‘Aren’t you, Mr Carver?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Guy told her. ‘And the name is Guy.’
‘You’re not seriously thinking of doing the Anna/Barret party?’
‘I’d need help.’
‘A party?’ Lorna intercepted, bright-eyed. ‘What sort of party?’
‘Anna and Barret’s wedding.’
‘Anna and Barret…’ Lorna paused, confused, and then confusion gave way to awe. ‘You don’t mean Anna and Barret?’
‘I mean Anna and Barret.’
‘They’re getting married? Here?’
‘If we can cater. If your daughter-in-law will come back as a member of my staff.’
‘Jenny,’ Lorna said, eyes shining. ‘How wonderful.’
‘It’s not,’ Jenny said. ‘He won’t do Kylie’s wedding.’
‘We can do Kylie’s wedding,’ Guy said.
She eyed him with disbelief. ‘As a Carver Wedding?’
‘I don’t think-’
‘Ha!’
‘She wouldn’t like my style of wedding.’
‘Anna wants pink tulle. Surely you give the clients what they want?’
‘If it fits into my-’
‘That is such an arrogant-’
‘Will you two stop it?’ Lorna said, stuttering in an attempt to get this sorted. ‘Jenny, you need to help
