CHAPTER TWO

      MAEVE PARKED BENEATH the peppermint gum in the side yard of her cottage in the village of Mount Eliza, a half hour up the coast from Will’s place in Sorrento. The front door stood open in the vain hope of attracting a passing breeze, and her father’s worn work boots rested to one side of the mat.

      Good. Art was home. She wanted to have a word with him about his moving back to a place of his own. He’d recovered from the mild heart attack he’d suffered last winter, and although she loved him and enjoyed his company, they both needed to get on with their own lives.

      Maeve kicked off her boots and pushed through the screen door to enter the relative cool of the hallway. Wandin Cottage wasn’t as grand as some of the houses she worked at, but what did she or her father need with grandeur? He’d been a working man all his life and she preferred the outdoors to fancy decor.

      She slung her hat on a hook, picked up the pile of letters on the hall table and walked down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, which lay at the back of the house.

      Art stood at the stove, burly in a white T-shirt and brown work pants, with her frilly pink apron tied around his neck and waist. His hair had turned completely white after the heart attack, but his eyebrows were still black and bushy.

      Maeve came up from behind and gave him a hug. “Hamburgers again. You know you don’t have to cook for me.”

      “You can’t do a full day’s work, then come home and eat rabbit food,” he growled, flattening a sizzling patty with the back of his spatula. Then his habitual frown lightened into what for him passed as a smile. “Never thought I’d say it, but I like cooking for my daughter. It’s good having company over a meal.”

      Maeve forced herself to return his smile, though her heart sank. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

      “Sure, Maevie, love, but before I forget, Tony called. He wants to know if you ordered the paving blocks for the Cummings place.”

      “Thanks. I’ll phone him back later.” Maeve got herself a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and leaned against the counter, sorting the junk mail from the bills, dropping the flyers straight into the recycling box. “I did a landscaping quote for your boss, Will Beaumont, this morning.”

      Art flipped the burger and smashed down the other side. “You don’t say!”

      “He’s got a beautiful place on the cliff at Sorrento. The garden’ll be a lot of work, but it has great potential.”

      “After I was let go from my old job, not a soul wanted to hire a man in his fifties who’d had a heart attack. Will Beaumont did.” Art pointed his spatula at her. “You make sure you do a good job for him, you hear?”

      “’Course I will, Art. He thinks pretty highly of you, too.” She grimaced at the size of her nursery bill and moved it to the bottom of the pile.

      “Beaumont doesn’t waste time with a lot of manipulative bullshit about productivity and teamwork,” Art went on, stirring the onions frying alongside the hamburgers. “He respects a person’s ability to do a job and lets him get on with it.”

      Maeve barely heard him. Tucked between the quarry bill and the phone bill was a small green envelope addressed in the strongly slanting handwriting she’d never thought she’d see again. Graham.

      “And if something screws up he doesn’t hold it against you, just expects you to fix the problem,” Art rambled. “He doesn’t waste words, either. I can’t bear a man who rabbits on about nothing.”

      That outrageous statement shook Maeve out of painful memories of her brief marriage and made her smile.

      Art pointed his spatula at her. “He’d been a good ’un for you, Maevie.”

      “Don’t think so,” she said, taking a sip of her water. “He’s in the market for a wife.”

      Art turned off the heat under the frying pan. “All the more reason.”

      “Dad, forget it. Please.” Her life might be an emotional desert, but at least she’d more or less recovered her equilibrium. For a whole year after Kristy’s death she’d barely functioned. No one but her friend Rose knew all she’d been through. She was not ready for another plunge into matrimony and motherhood. Probably she never would be.

      “Okay, okay,” Art said. “These burgers are ready. Want to cut up some rolls?”

      Glad of an excuse to set Graham’s unopened letter aside, Maeve sliced hamburger rolls and slid them under the griller to toast. “There’s something lurking under the surface with Will,” she said. “Something I can’t quite put my finger on.”

      “Will Beaumont is the most straightforward bloke a man could hope to meet,” Art declared. He waggled his fingers at her. “I suppose you got one of your weird ‘feelings’ about him.”

      Maeve turned away from the fridge, her arms loaded with bottles of condiments. “I just got a glimpse. Not enough to go on. He’s missing something. Something to do with love.”

      Art snorted. “Will Beaumont missing out in love? I wouldn’t think so. You should see the way the girls on the production line follow him with their eyes when he walks by.”

      “I’ll admit he’s got sex appeal, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with love,” Maeve said dryly. “However, I could be wrong. He’s a hard one to read.”

      Art slid the hamburgers onto a plate and brought them to the table. “He’s been under a lot of pressure lately, always in a meeting with the accountant. There are rumors going around that the company’s in trouble financially.”

      “Really? He’s got a great big house and a Mercedes parked out front.” The memory of Will shoving papers into his briefcase—papers he didn’t want her to see—flashed through her mind.

      Art sat at the head of the table and fixed his hamburger with “the lot”—bacon, onions, a slice of beetroot, cheese, mayo, tomato and lettuce; then he topped the whole quivering mass with a fried egg. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked, before opening his mouth wide and biting deep.

      Maeve, who’d contented herself with lettuce and tomato, put her hamburger back on her plate and took a deep breath instead of a bite. “Do