Australian Affairs: Wed: Second Chance with Her Soldier / The Firefighter to Heal Her Heart / Wedding at Sunday Creek

She’d shifted their luggage and adjusted their seats to lie back and she’d just finished making pillows out of bundles of their clothing when Joe returned. He was empty-handed and Ellie, who’d been ravenous, felt her spirits sink even lower.

‘Don’t tell me this town’s also sold out of hamburgers?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.

Her stomach rumbled hungrily. ‘Are all the shops closed?’

‘Don’t know that either. It doesn’t matter.’ Joe’s sudden cheeky smile was unforgettably gorgeous. He held up a fancy gold ring, dangling keys. ‘I’ve booked us into the honeymoon suite in the best hotel in town.’

Ellie gasped. ‘You’re joking.’

Still smiling broadly, Joe shook his head. ‘Ridgy-didge.’

‘Can...can we afford a honeymoon suite?’

He shrugged, then slipped his arm around her shoulders, pressed a warm kiss to her ear. ‘We deserve a bit of comfort. We never had a proper honeymoon.’

It was the best of nights. Amazing, and so worth the extravagance.

All thoughts of tiredness vanished when they walked into their suite and saw the champagne in an ice bucket, a huge vase of long-stemmed white roses and chocolate hearts wrapped in gold foil on their pillows.

Like excited kids, they bounced on the enormous king-sized bed and then jumped into the spa bath until their room service dinner arrived. And they felt like film stars as they ate gourmet cuisine dressed in luxurious white fluffy bathrobes.

And, just for one night, they’d put their worries aside and they’d made love like honeymooners.

I shouldn’t be thinking about that now...

Ellie was devastated to realise that she was still as physically attracted to her ex as she’d been on that night. The realisation made her panic.

What a mess.

With a despairing sigh, she sagged against a veranda post. How had she and Joe sunk to this? She’d thought about their problems so many times, but she’d never pinpointed a particular event that had killed their marriage. It had been much the same as today. Ongoing bickering and building resentments had worn them down and eroded their love.

Death by a thousand cuts.

But why? How? How could she be so tense and angry with a man she still fancied? It wasn’t as if she actively disliked Joe.

She supposed they should have seen a marriage guidance counsellor years ago.

Joe had been too proud, of course, and Ellie had been too scared—scared that she’d be psychoanalysed and found lacking in some vital way. But if she’d been braver, would it have helped?

She probably would have had to tell the counsellor about her father’s death and how unhappy she’d been after that. Worse, she would have had to talk about her stepfather and how she’d run away from him.

Ellie didn’t actually believe there was a connection between Harold Fowler and her marriage breakdown, but heaven knew what a counsellor might have made of it. Even now, she still shuddered when she thought about Harold.

And here was the thing: it was the sight of Harold that Ellie couldn’t stand. Not Joe.

Never Joe.

Her mum had married Harold Fowler eighteen months after her father died, after they’d sold the farm and moved into town. Harold owned the town’s main hardware store—he was loud and showy and popular, a big fish in a small country pond. And a couple of years later he was elected mayor. Ellie’s mum was thrilled. She loved being the mayor’s wife and feeling like a celebrity.

Harold, however, had given Ellie the creeps. Right from the start, just the way he looked at her had made her squirm and feel uncomfortable, and that was before he touched her.

She’d been fifteen when he first patted her on the bum. Over the following months, it had happened a few more times, which was bad enough, but then he came into the bathroom one night when she was in the shower.

He was full of apologies, of course, and he backed out quickly, claiming that he’d knocked and no one had answered. But Ellie had seen the horrible glint in his eyes and she was quite sure he hadn’t knocked. Her mother hadn’t been home that night, which had made the event extra-scary.

And Harold certainly hadn’t knocked the second time he barged in. Again, it had happened on a night when Ellie’s mum was away at her bridge club. Ellie was seventeen, and she’d just stepped out of the bath and was reaching for her towel when, without warning, Harold had simply opened her bathroom door.

‘Oh, my darling girl,’ he said with the most ghastly slimy smile.

Whipping the towel about her, Ellie managed to get rid of him with a few scathing, shrilly screamed words, but she’d been sickened, horrified.

Desperate.

And the worst of it was she couldn’t get her mother to understand.

‘Harold’s lived alone for years,’ her mum had said, excusing him. ‘He’s not used to sharing a house with others. And he hasn’t done or said anything improper, Ellie. You’re just at that age where you’re sensitive about your body. It’s easy to misread these things.’

Her mother had believed what she wanted to, what she needed to.

Ellie, however, had left home for good as soon as she finished school, despite her mother’s protests and tears, giving up all thought of university. University students had long, long holidays and she would have been expected to spend too much of that time at home.

She had realised it was futile to press her mother about Harold’s creepiness—mainly because she knew how desperate her mother was to believe he was perfect. Harold was such a hotshot in their regional town. He was the mayor, for heaven’s sake, and Ellie was afraid that, if she pushed her case, she might cause the whole thing to blow up somehow and become a horrible public scandal.

So she’d headed north to Queensland, where she’d scored a job as a jillaroo on a cattle property. Over the next few years, she’d worked on several properties—a mustering season here, a calving season there. Gradually she’d acquired more and more skills.

On one property she’d joined a droving team and she’d helped to move a big mob of cattle hundreds of kilometres. She was given her own horses to ride every day. And, finally, she was living the country life she’d dreamed of, the life she’d anticipated when she was almost thirteen. Before her father died.

Whenever she phoned home or returned home for the shortest possible visits, she was barely civil to Harold. He got the message. Fortunately, he’d never stepped out of line again, but Ellie would never trust him again either.

Trust...

Thinking about all of this now, Ellie was struck by a thought so suffocating she could scarcely breathe.

Oh, my God. Is that my problem? Trust issues?

That was it, wasn’t it?

She clung to the railing, struggling for air. Her problems with Joe had nothing to do with whether or not she was attracted to him. The day they met remained the stand-alone most significant moment of her life.

She’d taken one look at Joe Madden, with his sexy blue eyes, his ruggedly cute looks, his wide-shouldered lean perfection and nicest possible smile, and she’d fallen like a stone.

But I couldn’t trust Joe.

When it came to coping with the ups and downs of a long-term marriage, she hadn’t been strong enough to deal with her disappointments. She’d lost faith in herself, lost faith in the power of love.

Ellie thought again about her father climbing a windmill and dying before he could keep his promise to her. She thought about her creepy stepfather, who’d broken her trust in a completely different way. By the time she’d married Joe...