It would be so much easier if Nina was just beautiful. Claire could just about get to grips with beauty. Falling hard and fast for a gorgeous woman was understandable, if annoyingly predictable. And if she was only beautiful, then convincing Scotty to call off the wedding would be the kindest thing for Nina, too – she deserved someone whose love for her was more than skin deep. If it was just about desire, the marriage would be disastrous for both of them.
Brains complicated things. If it wasn’t just physical attraction driving Scotty’s rush to say ‘I do’ – if he truly connected with Nina on a deeper level – then Claire had no business interfering. But Nina was a stranger to her. She couldn’t say whether or not that connection was there, at least not until she had spent some time with her.
‘Scotty, Claire,’ Nina called from the garden. ‘There’s two glasses of pink wine out here with your name on them.’
Claire needed to get to know the woman who had won Scotty’s heart. And with only twelve days until Nina was set to marry him, she had to start now.
CHAPTER SIX
Claire ladled another steaming spoonful of risotto onto Nina’s plate.
‘Oh, I really shouldn’t have seconds,’ Nina groaned, patting a nonexistent belly. ‘But you’re such an amazing cook, Claire. How am I ever going to fit into a wedding dress in two weeks’ time?’
‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be too late to have it altered,’ Claire replied, feeling oddly gratified that Nina had enjoyed the meal. ‘Not that you’ll need it.’
‘Actually, I don’t even have a dress yet.’
Gus’s fork clattered dramatically onto her plate. ‘Are you serious?’ she said. ‘Give me two minutes.’ She pushed back her chair and practically ran from the room.
‘It’s all happened so fast,’ Nina said, almost apologetically. She reached out and grasped Scotty’s hand. ‘I’ve been so busy with work – everyone in town wants a “yoga body” in time for Christmas – that I just haven’t had time to shop. And I don’t really know Bindallarah, so I wanted to wait until Scotty came back from his conference in Melbourne to get started on the wedding preparations. He’s been taking care of pretty much all of it, to be honest.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Scotty said, gently extracting his hand and picking up his fork. ‘There’s not much to do, really. We’re having the wedding up at Mum and Dad’s place, so it’s just a few hay bales and a trestle table.’ He flashed a cheeky smile and took a bite of his risotto.
An unexpected guffaw escaped Claire’s lips as a look of pure horror crossed Nina’s face. ‘He’s kidding, Nina,’ Claire said. ‘Trust me.’ It was typical of Scotty’s sense of humour to say something totally ridiculous, but with such a decisive air that nobody could tell if he was serious or not.
‘Although,’ Vanessa chimed in, ‘Cape Ashe Stud is so beautiful, it really wouldn’t take much more than that to transform it for a wedding.’
Nina looked vaguely embarrassed to have missed Scotty’s joke. ‘I hear it’s lovely. I look forward to seeing it,’ she said.
Claire frowned. ‘You haven’t been to Cape Ashe? It’s only ten minutes away.’
‘Uh-uh.’ Nina shook her head and took a sip of her wine. She didn’t meet Claire’s gaze.
Claire looked at Scotty, but his expression was unreadable. A thick silence descended. All she could hear was the shrieking of the cicadas in the fig trees that surrounded Vanessa’s back patio and the distant thunder of the ocean. She didn’t know what to make of the uncomfortable exchange. Why wouldn’t Scotty have taken the woman he was about to marry to his family home – especially when it was the venue for the wedding?
It occurred to her that she didn’t actually know where Scotty lived any more. Claire still pictured him in his bedroom at Cape Ashe Stud, but of course he’d left there at eighteen to go to university in Sydney. At uni he’d lived in the crumbling share house that she’d always joked wasn’t fit for human habitation and ought to be condemned. And after that – who knew? When she had rejected his marriage proposal and fled overseas, she told herself she’d forfeited her right to know where Scotty slept each night. He might have lived with another girlfriend. So far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask if there had been others, but she knew there must have been. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but in the fading evening light Claire was acutely aware that Scotty had something – that indefinable ‘it’. What had Jackie called it? Magnetism. That was it. Her heart rate quickened involuntarily as she watched his eyes glitter with the reflection of the bamboo torches Vanessa had lit to keep the mosquitoes at bay. She knew there was no way Scotty would have lacked female company between her departure and Nina’s arrival.
‘Scotty, are you living at Cape Ashe?’ she asked him.
He looked surprised by the question. ‘No, I haven’t lived there since high school. Chris is in the main house with his wife, Amber, and their little boy, Matty. Mum and Dad built a smaller place up on the ridge a few years back.’
‘Chris is married? Isn’t he, like, twelve?’ The idea of Scotty’s baby brother having a wife and a baby of his own seemed absurd. All these people she’d once known so well, all living lives she knew nothing about.
‘He’s twenty-seven. Only a year younger than you,’ Scotty said, chuckling. ‘He’s been married a couple of years. Remember, we tend to get hitched young in the bush.’
Claire shifted uncomfortably in her seat as Scotty’s meaning sank in. If she had accepted his proposal at twenty, they could have been married for eight years by
