Real Men Don't Break Hearts(2)

At least someone around here was glad to see him, Nate thought. These days he didn’t come down to Burronga too often, but people here had long memories. Years ago he’d been evicted from this very bar for underage drinking, and later he’d been thrown out more than once for starting a brawl. No wonder the dour bartender had looked askance at him when he’d first entered the pub. Despite his slick city suit, Nate’s bad reputation lingered on him like a rotten egg smell.

Mr. Cummings returned to the table with two whiskies and offered one to Nate. “Here’s to my glorious retirement in sunny Queensland, where I plan to do a lot of fishing and not much else.” He raised his glass. “And to your canny investment in one of Burronga’s finest buildings.”

I wouldn’t go that far, Nate silently quipped. He was well aware that he was paying top dollar for the heritage-listed, nineteenth-century former post office. Burronga was a prosperous midsize town, situated between Sydney and Canberra, with a growing population. But a brand-new shopping mall on the outskirts of town had depressed the price of retail property, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Mr. Cummings would have lowered the price if Nate had bothered to haggle.

Mr. Cummings gulped his whisky in one swallow, smacked his lips, and set down the glass. “Now,” he announced in a voice that wouldn’t brook argument, “why don’t we wander over to the building, and I’ll introduce you to your soon-to-be tenant?”

“Sure.” Nate stood and re-buttoned his jacket. He had an hour or so to spare before heading for Robbie’s house. His house, he ought to say, since it had been his for almost a decade, but he still thought of it as Robbie’s, even though his older brother had been gone all these years.

On his frequent business trips to Canberra he sometimes checked the house en route. He never stayed more than a couple of hours, but this time the place needed a thorough inspection, and he planned to stay overnight. For some reason he’d felt reluctant to go directly there. He’d arrived in Burronga midday Friday, but instead of heading straight for the house, he’d cruised around the area for a while, ended up at the Red Possum to kill some time, and by mid-afternoon had bought himself an old post office.

Talk about stalling.

They left the pub and stepped into a mild spring afternoon. Nate’s new property stood a few hundred meters up the road, at the intersection of what had once been a main coach road. They passed the electronics store where years ago he’d been busted for shoplifting. He pushed ahead until the two-story former post office came into sight. The ground floor had been converted into a shop, while the upstairs was a small apartment.

“You’ll only be dealing with one tenant,” Mr. Cummings said to Nate. “She rents the store and the apartment above it. Lovely girl. Took over the gift shop after her grandmother couldn’t continue. They’ve been my tenants for ages, and the girl works so hard. Terribly hard. It’s not her fault she’s behind on the rent.”

Nate slowed down. “Excuse me? She owes you money?”

Mr. Cummings started to blush. “Oh, not very much, and she’s good for it, I’m sure. Not that any of this will affect you,” he hurried to assure Nate. “I’ll take care of it with her directly.”

Yeah, but that still meant she was a lousy tenant. Damn. He didn’t want to make a fresh start in Burronga by evicting longstanding renters. Everyone would just shake their heads and say, Well, what can you expect from Nate Hardy? He wasn’t going to fall into that trap, but neither could he support a charity case. If the store owner couldn’t pay her expenses, then she had no right to be in business.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Nate said smoothly.

“Capital!” Mr. Cummings beamed at him again like Father Christmas.

Nate studied the front of the shop. He’d passed it a thousand times before but had never gone in. The Giftorium, it said in delicate gold script across the glass. The store window held a tasteful arrangement of the kind of stuff he’d never think of buying. Wind chimes, leaded glass lampshades, embroidered cushions, painted pottery. Clutter, that was all he saw. Dust-collecting clutter.

“So who is she?” Nate moved toward the glass-paned front door. “My new tenant?”

“Ally Griffin.”

Nate’s feet stuck to the pavement. A cold shock ran through him. “Ally Griffin?”

Mr. Cummings gave him a puzzled little frown. “You know her, then?”

“Y-yes,” he managed to choke out.

Ally Griffin. The last time he’d seen her was on her wedding day, when he’d had to tell her there wasn’t going to be a wedding after all. And now she was his new tenant? Oh, shit.

…

Ally leaned back in the chair and rubbed her throbbing temples. She hadn’t felt this pole-axed since…well, since she’d been left high and dry on her wedding day.

Tyler stood in front of her, incredulous. “You were supposed to marry Seth Bailey?” she demanded. “When? Why didn’t I know anything about it?”

“You must have heard about the wedding. I was the talk of the town for months.”

“It could have been after I left. What happened?”

Ally took a breath and crossed her arms. “Seth and I were together since we were fifteen. When we were nineteen, we wanted to get married. At least, I wanted to get married, and Seth said he wanted to get married, only it turned out he didn’t, because on our wedding day he never showed up at the church.”

“Wow.” Tyler let out a soft whistle. “He really did that? Just left you there waiting?”

“Yup.”

“It’s like something out of a movie.”

With a deprecating laugh, Ally stood from the chair and bent to gather the fallen bars of soap. She wished she hadn’t needed to sit down to recover herself. She didn’t want to give Tyler the impression that she still cared about her aborted wedding day. Because she didn’t. It had happened six years ago, and she wasn’t a silly nineteen-year-old anymore.

“It’s not a movie, because I’m well and truly over Seth.” She rose to her feet with an armful of soap. “It’s just that you gave me a shock when you said he was getting married.”

Tyler’s silver bangles chimed as she rested her hand on her hip, her expression narrowing. “He’s got some nerve wanting to get married here in Burronga.”

Sure, that was a slap in the face—Seth brazenly planning to have his wedding here. Again.

“Did you ever speak to him afterward?” Tyler asked, obviously unable to hide her curiosity.

“On the phone, a day after the non-wedding. And then I saw him a few weeks later when we had to return gifts and separate all our stuff.” She paused, emotion ambushing her as she remembered the last stilted meeting with Seth. She’d wanted to scream at him, to vomit out all her rage and hurt, but he’d shifted around, avoiding her eye, mumbling apologies, and she hadn’t been able to focus her fury. Everyone assumed being jilted at the altar would be her worst memory of Seth, but it wasn’t. That last meeting, when she’d finally seen her years of hopes crushed under the heel of reality, had knocked her like nothing else had.

“He apologized for embarrassing me in front of all my friends and family, but he said he was too young to get married, that he only realized it on the morning of the wedding and didn’t know how to tell me, and then he panicked and ran out. Spent our wedding day holed up in a bar an hour from here.”

“What a jerk!” Tyler’s face screwed up in disgust.

“Yeah.” Ally drew in a deep breath, indignation filling her with strength. “But the biggest jerk was the guy who talked Seth out of marrying me. His cousin, Nate Hardy. He’s the real jerk.”

“Nate Hardy? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of him. Was a teenage delinquent, right? What’s he got to do with Seth?”

“Seth always had a bit of a hero worship thing going there.” Scowling, Ally began to stack the soap on the counter. “Don’t ask me why. Seth never got into trouble the way Nate did. But when Nate started making it big in Sydney, Seth idolized him even more. And Nate and I never got along.”

Her frown deepened as she remembered how Nate had always riled her back when she was dating Seth. He was handsome as sin and already making lots of money doing something in finance. By all accounts he led a hedonistic life in Sydney—fast cars, glamorous women, penthouse apartments—a life she thought was shallow, materialistic, unenviable. Each time they’d met, which was as little as possible if she could help it, he had a way of looking at her that told her he knew exactly what she was thinking, a look that made her all too aware of her shortcomings. In his brazen eyes she’d seen an unflattering reflection of herself—unsophisticated, fuddy-duddy, countrified—and no doubt Seth had started seeing her in that light, too.

Once, when she’d found herself unavoidably alone with Nate, he’d asked her why she was with Seth. His breathtaking insolence had made her flush with anger, and she’d retorted it was none of his damn business before stalking off. She hadn’t told Seth about his cousin’s meddling, didn’t want to lend any credence to Nate’s insufferable audacity, and besides, Seth had a huge blind spot where Nate was concerned.