That would never be enough, she understood now. Scotty had lied to her about the timing of his engagement, but Claire had been lying to herself about her feelings for him for years. She didn’t reach out to him on social media six months ago hoping for some friendly chitchat. She wanted him back. Jackie, Vanessa, Gus – they were all right. Everyone saw it except Claire.
Nor did she come back to Bindallarah only because she was alarmed by Scotty’s rush to the altar. He and Nina could have had a ten-year engagement and Claire still would have despaired at the match. She had appealed to him – to both of them – to cancel the wedding not because of some benevolent concern for their future happiness, but because of a selfish, craven fear for her own. She didn’t want him to marry anyone. Ever. She only wanted him to want her.
Everything Claire had said and done over the past week was an attempt to hide the truth from herself. Every decision she’d made then unmade, every time she’d flip-flopped on whether or not it was her responsibility to try to prevent the wedding from going ahead, every time she had resolved to move on with her life only to find herself consumed once again by thoughts of Scotty – it was all a trick. Claire had thoroughly bamboozled herself. In trying to stop Scotty from tying the knot, she had instead tied herself up in knots. How would she ever begin to untangle the mess she’d made of her life?
Claire reached Vanessa’s front door and raced inside. Ignoring Gus’s startled greeting, she grabbed her car keys from the hall table and returned to the street. She got into her car, turned the key in the ignition and pressed the accelerator flat to the floor. She had to get away from this town – away from Scotty and Nina, away from the wedding that was thundering towards her like a freight train, away from all of it.
She had begun to think she might have been wrong about Bindallarah, even started to imagine a peaceful, happy life in the town she’d once loved so much she’d been heartbroken to leave. But that was crazy. There was nothing for Claire in Bindy. Trying to imagine a future here with Alex or anybody but Scotty Shannon was folly.
Claire was lost without Scotty. That was the agonising truth from which she’d been working so hard to distract herself. She had loved him since she was fifteen years old and she wanted him, all of him, all to herself. Forever.
But she was too late. That was never going to happen. And so she had to go.
‘Mate, is Claire here?’
Chris looked up at Scotty and shook his head. He was on his knees, his arms submerged elbows-deep in a trough of sudsy water. It reeked of the antiseptic solution he was using to disinfect every item of horse tack at Cape Ashe Stud. With close to fifty horses on the property, it was going to take days, even with the help of the half-dozen stablehands he’d roped in. But there was no getting around it – it was the only way to prevent the Strangles that had nearly claimed Autumn from spreading to the rest of the stable.
‘Nah,’ Chris said. ‘She was here last night to check on Autumn, but she didn’t stay long. Have you tried her aunt’s place?’
Damn it. Scotty had been to Vanessa’s cottage last night, as soon as Nina had told him about her odd conversation with Claire at the yoga studio. It was Claire’s cousin, Gus, who said she might have come up to Cape Ashe.
‘How was she? Did she seem okay?’ Scotty asked.
Chris stood up and shook the water from his hands. He regarded his brother with suspicion. ‘She seemed a bit wound up, come to think of it. Not her usual chilled self,’ he said. ‘Why? You two have a blue or something?’
Scotty let out a long breath. ‘I don’t know, mate. Kind of. I saw her yesterday with Alex Jessop and . . . things are a bit weird.’
He wasn’t about to tell Chris that he’d kissed Claire less than forty-eight hours ago almost exactly where he now stood. Or that late yesterday he’d had a phone call from Nina, who seemed to think she’d said something to Claire that she shouldn’t have, though she couldn’t work out what it was.
He needed to talk to Claire, straighten this mess out. He’d let things go way too far.
Chris crouched down and plunged his hands back into the trough again. ‘So? Alex is a good bloke. You’re not jealous, are you?’ His tone was jovial, but when Scotty didn’t respond his eyes widened in surprise. ‘Wait, are you jealous?’
‘I’m not jealous,’ he said. ‘What I am is a bloody idiot.’
‘Whoa,’ Chris replied. ‘Do we need a beer for this?’
‘It’s ten a.m., bro.’
‘I didn’t ask what time it was.’
Scotty nodded and followed his brother down the driveway to the main house. Inside, Chris’s wife, Amber, was helping their son, Matty, build a tower out of Lego blocks. She gave him a friendly wave from the living room as Chris took two bottles of beer from the fridge and gestured for Scotty to take a seat at the kitchen table.
Sometimes it struck Scotty as absurd that Chris was younger by two years. Scotty had always thought of himself as focused and decisive, always ready to step up or step in, but really it was Chris who was the more mature of the two of them. Chris just got on with things. While Scotty had worked twenty-four-seven to establish his clinic, Chris had taken over Cape Ashe Stud on their parents’ retirement and quietly taken it to the next level. Shannon-bred horses were more highly coveted than ever before. His marriage to Amber was rock solid and drama free; along with Matty, they
