Authors: Elisabeth Rose
“No need to be sarcastic.” The bead curtain rattled as Viv pushed it aside and went into the workroom. Joelle followed her.
“It’s only a cup of coffee,” she said.
“I didn’t say a word.” Viv sat on the high stool by the bench and began twining ivy stems together. “Only three of these to go,” she said. “Trace should be back any minute. I’ll get her started on the flowers for the church, okay?”
“Fine.” Joelle watched her friend assembling the table centrepiece with deft fingers. Viv was thirty, one year married and apparently content to be under Joelle’s charge in the shop. She didn’t seem to have any ambitions beyond keeping this steady job and making Mark happy. Joelle had been appointed over her and she hadn’t minded one bit, she said. Joelle believed her.
Joelle found this lack of career drive perplexing. She didn’t want to remain in Sunshine Point managing someone else’s shop forever. She wanted her own shop or at least some sort of floral design business. Japan beckoned, China beckoned. The world beckoned.
Paul didn’t understand that either. He couldn’t see why she would want to give up the solid position she had for something nebulous and potentially poverty inducing. He didn’t have a creative bone in his body and had an imagination to match his sex appeal. He did know how to make money selling and buying real estate, however.
“It’s only fair to tell Paul,” said Viv.
“I don’t see why having coffee with someone needs to be reported to Paul,” snapped Joelle.
“Not that. How you feel about him.”
“I think I already have. Kind of. He asked me to go out with Adam and co on Sunday and I said it’s Mum’s birthday. He actually assumed we would automatically go with Adam as a couple—or Adam did, along with everyone else—and then he said he should come to Mum’s as if we’re an inseparable entity.”
“It’s not entirely his fault,” said Viv.
“I know. I’ve led him on without realising. Now he’s upset and angry.”
“Joelle. Grow up!” said Viv sternly. “You have to be straight with people.”
“I hate saying no when he’s so keen and enthusiastic. I enjoy going out with him but not…I just want to be his friend. He says he loves me,” she finished miserably. “I don’t like to disappoint him. But I did suggest he invite someone else for Sunday.”
“My God!” Viv shook her head. “Miss Tact strikes again. No-body likes disappointing people but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Just how far would you go? Marry him so as not to disappoint him?”
“No! We’ve already had this conversation. Anyway I think he’s got the message now.”
“You’d better make quite sure, Jo. Specially if you’re going to start seeing Fabio.”
“His name is Shay,” said Joelle. “And he’ll be here soon. Where’s Tracey?
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” muttered Viv.
Joelle was standing by the counter when Shay pushed open the door at four-sixteen. She looked up and smiled and his doubts about seeing her melted away.
“I’ll be right with you,” she said. She stuck her head through the bead curtain and he heard a muffled conversation finishing with, “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He held the door for her. Joelle paused outside the shop.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked.
“The café down there is fine.” She pointed to the left where a blackboard advertising a coffee and cake special stood on the footpath. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Lead on.”
He’d prepared his tactics in the intervening hours, sitting on a bench high on the headland overlooking the sea. Don’t offer information unless she asks. Be vague but truthful as far as was possible. The more he sat and thought about the situation the more unreasonable and difficult it seemed. Natalie and William had effectively ensnared him in their lie and the longer it was perpetuated the worse it would become. Dad was right. The burden was heavy already and could only become more and more crushing. Ripples spreading out in ever widening circles.
Leaving without meeting Joelle was an option quickly discarded. He wanted to sit and talk to her. He’d waited far too long to pass up this opportunity. She fascinated him and he wanted to explore her, discover any similarities they may share, personality quirks, likes and dislikes, tastes, passions. Everything he’d missed throughout his childhood. And that she’d missed albeit unknowingly.
Did she feel she was a good fit with her family, her sisters? The physical similarities were superficial at best. Already he could see she was nothing like Natalie despite the blonde hair and blue eyes. Her mouth curled up at the corners where Natalie’s was a straight line. Joelle’s eyebrows arched naturally. Natalie’s were plucked into submission.
She didn’t resemble William at all, apart from a slender build common to all of them. Her features were far more delicate. Had she questioned the differences? And what about the sisters? Were they alike?
“What brings you to Sunshine Point?” she asked as they began walking in the direction of the café.
“Family,” he said.
“Family you don’t know? You said you’d never met the woman you bought the flowers for.”
“The connection is distant. I’m trying to trace someone. Through my mother’s side of the family.”
They reached the café and Joelle stepped inside ignoring the outdoor tables with their shade umbrellas. Shay followed, glad she’d chosen indoors where there was less chance of being spotted. All he needed to complete the guilt was William or Natalie to see them together. He had to take the risk of being reported by the waitress. But so did Joelle, apparently. The girl was giving her some very strange looks.
“Hello, Jo,” she said. She placed menus on the table.
“Just a flat white, please,” said Shay. “How about you, Joelle?”
“Cappuccino please, Annie.”
“Sure.” Annie scooped up the menus and retreated to the counter where she eyed them both from behind the espresso machine.
“Friend of yours?” he asked.
Joelle shrugged. “We went to the same school. Not really friends. She’s younger, knows my sister, Melanie.”
Shay nodded. “I suppose everyone knows everyone pretty much here. My home town’s the same.”
“I thought you were a Sydneysider.”
“I live there now but I grew up in a little country town called Birrigai.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” She smiled. “Sorry.”
“It’s up north in the Tamworth area.”
“I’ve lived here all my life and I definitely want to leave.”
“Do you? Where do you want to go?”
“I want to travel overseas. Japan, mainly. I took Japanese at school.”
“To study Ikebana in Japan?”
Joelle gasped. “Yes, exactly. How did you guess?”
Shay smiled. “An educated guess. I put two and two together. Flower arranging plus travel to Japan.”
“I want to do that and I want to run my own business one day. I’d like to do something more artistic too…” She smiled tentatively as if she expected him to laugh at her dream. “Have you travelled much?”
“I’ve been to New Zealand.”
“I haven’t even done that,” she said.
“You can one day, you’re nowhere near thirty yet.”
“How do you know how old I am?” The smile faded as a cautious note entered her voice.
“I guessed again.” Shay cursed himself but maintained what he hoped was an inscrutable expression. “I’m a doctor, remember. I have a trained eye for the human condition.”
Joelle stared at him for a moment and he returned her gaze steadily.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty nine.”
“Are you married?”
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
“What about that guy in the shop?” Shay asked. He leaned forward slightly. The man had been angry with her. In love with her. Not good enough for her. He knew the type, brash, confident and clueless about anything other than making money.
“Paul?”
“He seemed upset.”
“He was a bit.”
Annie slid their coffees onto the table. “Anything else?” Her eyes rested on Shay and then swung to Joelle briefly. Almost accusing.
“No thanks,” he said. Joelle shook her head.
“Thanks, Annie.”
Annie sauntered away slowly.
“Annie doesn’t like you to have coffee?” he suggested.
“She thinks I’m Paul’s girlfriend,” she said. “Everyone does.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.” Joelle looked him straight in the eye and her gaze pierced him like a knife. William’s question resounded in his brain. “And what will she think?” At the time he’d been too distraught and disappointed to think much about it. Now he could see what William meant.
Joelle would see him as a man who was interested in her as a woman. He’d even encouraged her and he had been interested in her as a woman, very interested. Until he knew she was his sister. After that she became something else entirely, an untouchable woman as Lisa was untouchable despite the fact she wasn’t his blood relation.
Selfish and self centred. He hadn’t considered the situation, that angle in particular, from her side at all but what was she logically supposed to think? He’d read the look in her eyes when they first met. It matched his. And now she was telling him she’d busted up with her boyfriend and was available.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “It looked to me as though he was in love with you.”
“But I don’t love him,” she said. “He…smothers me.” She fiddled with the teaspoon.
Shay sipped his coffee. “Tell me about life in Sunshine Point,” he said.
Joelle stirred sugar into her cappuccino. “It’s quiet most of the time. Busy in summer of course.”
“What does your Dad do?”
“He was a schoolteacher, a principal, but he had a cancer scare last year and had to retire.”
“Is he all right now?” Explained the thinness and the fragile look of the man.
“Yes, so far. Mum works part time as a receptionist at a dentist’s. She cut back her hours so she can keep an eye on him. My sisters and I don’t live at home any more but we see them as much as possible.”
“How many sisters?”
“Two, younger. Bridget and Melanie. What about you?”
“Actually,” said Shay slowly. “I’m adopted. I have one real sister but two older brothers and a sister in my adopted family.”
“Did you always know you were adopted?” Strange how adoption fascinated people. Her face was alight with curiosity. Normally he didn’t offer the information in casual conversation.
“Yes. My parents always told me the truth. They’re big on that. Telling the truth.”
“What’s it like, being adopted?”
“I was lucky, they treated me exactly like the other kids. They’re wonderful people.”
“Have you ever met your real sister?” she asked softly, her blue eyes glancing up at him from beneath long lashes.
Shay hesitated. “I’ve wanted to find her my whole life. No-one knows who our father was. Our mother died having my sister and she was adopted when she was about two weeks old. I was a toddler.”
“How sad. So she’d be about my age.”
“Yes. About your age.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted,” said Joelle wryly. She picked up her coffee and held it with both hands, gazing thoughtfully at him over the rim.
Shay nearly choked on the mouthful he’d just taken. He managed to swallow and wiped his mouth on the paper serviette Annie had left.
“Why do you wonder that?” he asked.
Joelle put her cup down carefully. “Maybe it’s Melanie who’s adopted—except being older I know for a fact she isn’t.” She laughed. “We don’t like each other at all. Is that normal, do you think?”
“Probably. Siblings always fight. My brother Ben used to say he wished he were adopted because then he’d know he wasn’t really related to Lisa, our big sister. She was a real bossy boots.”
“But we’re adults now. It’s as if we’re from different planets.” The smile hovered about her mouth but how serious was she? Perhaps on a subconscious level she knew she didn’t naturally belong in that family. “I always felt Mum and Dad favoured her. She could do no wrong.” Joelle sighed. “They always tell me I’m jealous.”
Shay forced a laugh. “Could be something in that. What’s the age gap?” Careful now, after the age slip.
“Seven years.”
“Old enough to resent a new baby in the house after being the centre of attention for so long,” he said. “It’s common enough.”
“But there was Bridget in between and I looked forward to having another sister,” Joelle protested. “Bridget and I get on fine. She lives in England, though. I miss her.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a law that says you have to love your family,” he said with a grin. “There’ve been cases in the US where kids have divorced their parents.”
“I don’t want to divorce my parents.” Joelle laughed. “Just my sister.”
“What does she do?”
“Changes her mind a lot. She’s tried various courses.” She sighed. “Mel’s all right. Don’t get the wrong idea. I do love her underneath it all. She can’t find what she wants to do with her life. I’m lucky. I always knew from the moment I got an after school job at the shop when I was fifteen. I loved working with flowers.”
“You’ve done well,” he said. “Managing the place now.”
Joelle met his gaze and Shay had to turn his attention to the remains of the coffee in his cup. Her interest was too open. Too innocent.
She glanced at her watch.
“Have to go back?” he asked.
“Five minutes. I am the boss after all.”
“Have to set an example though.”
“True.”
“Thank you for having coffee with me, Joelle.”
“I enjoyed it, Shay. Thanks for asking.”
“I hope it doesn’t cause any trouble,”
“Trouble?”
“With what’s his name. Your boyfriend.”
“It won’t,” she said fiercely.
“If it does, tell him I was filling in time before I go back to Sydney and I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Won’t you?”
Shay met her gaze. Disappointment shone in her eyes. Her pretty mouth drooped. She was lovely, his sister. He wanted her to be happy in her love. Not with that Paul character, she deserved to be with a man who appreciated her talent and her creativity, one who wouldn’t stifle her.
“I can’t, Joelle.”
“Why?”
“I’ve done what I came to do,” he said. “Plus I had an unexpected bonus. I met you.”