The Man She Loves To Hate

‘But what do I say?’ asked Hannah, her eyes stricken and her expression piteous. ‘Cole, she’s my best friend. What do I say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘How would I know?’ Cole Rees didn’t know anything any more. He’d thought his parents’ marriage was solid. Not great, but solid. He’d thought his father walked on water. Reality had come as a shock. His father had been having an affair—for over a year now he’d been having an affair. With Jolie Tanner’s mother. His father had admitted it last night in a blazing row. His father wanted a divorce. Cole and Hannah had been upstairs but they’d heard it all. The accusations, the acknowledgement, and then the tears.

So many tears.

Jolie called out again, and Cole kept right on walking. Little Jolie T might have been just a kid but she was already a beauty. Hair the colours of firelight and big grey eyes that seemed to see everything. Jolie’s mother was one of the most beautiful women Cole had ever seen. Jolie would be the same. Just give her time.

And then Jolie was beside them on the footpath, those big grey eyes bright and her red ponytail bouncing. ‘Hannah, did you do the homework for the test?’

Hannah said nothing. Hannah shot him another pleading glance and Cole wished himself somewhere, anywhere, else.

Jolie had been in and out of their home since she’d been tiny. She wasn’t family but she was a part of Cole’s life—a part that he’d taken for granted and been used to. Hannah’s friend. Quirky. Funny. Always scribbling in a little notebook she never would show anyone. Cole had asked Hannah what was in it once. Pictures, Hannah had said, so he’d then had to ask the obvious. What kind of pictures?

All kinds, had been Hannah’s reply. Animals, people, colour. She drew everything.

Cole had found the notion oddly fascinating.

‘Han,’ whispered Jolie again, bringing Cole back to the present with a scowl. ‘Did you do your homework?’

Hannah shook her head to signify no, and then just put her head down and kept right on walking. Not a lot of homework happening in the Rees household last night.

Cole glanced at Jolie and saw the puzzled hurt in her eyes. Grimly he put his own head down and kept walking. Quickly. Silently. Trying to pretend that little Jolie Tanner wasn’t hurrying along beside them, trying to keep up with them, and wondering what on earth was going on.

That was the way the three of them walked to school.

Cole hated every step of it.

Something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Hannah wouldn’t talk to her, Cole had ignored her. Cole had disappeared once they’d reached the school buildings. Jolie had been hoping that once he’d gone, she might have more to say.

But Hannah wouldn’t even look at her.

‘Hannah, what is it?’ asked Jolie. ‘Say something.’

‘I can’t be your friend any more,’ she said in a choked voice, and Jolie looked closer. She was crying.

‘What?’ Jolie’s heartbeat tripled. ‘Hannah, what are you talking about?’

But Hannah had fled then, to the classroom, and by recess Sarah wasn’t talking to Jolie, either.

By lunchtime, not one of the girls Jolie and Hannah usually hung out with were talking to Jolie, and Jolie was beside herself. She went looking for Cole, and finally found him coming out of the library alone. He saw her. He tried to walk straight past her.

‘Cole,’ she said, scrambling to keep up with him. ‘Cole, there’s something wrong with Hannah. She won’t talk to me. She’s crying. Cole, she’s so upset. What’s going on?’ Jolie put her hand to his arm to slow him down and gasped as he wrenched violently out of her reach. ‘Please … I … I just want to know what’s wrong?’

‘Ask your mother,’ he said, and his voice sounded harsh and defensive. ‘And don’t touch me.’

Jolie blushed scarlet and put the offending hand behind her back. ‘I won’t touch. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’ And when he stared at her with burning green eyes, ‘Cole, please. I just … Hannah hates me and I don’t know why,’ she pleaded. ‘Hannah, and Sarah, and now Evie and Bree too. No one will even talk to me.’

‘Why should I care?’ he said finally. ‘Why should I give a damn about you and your problems? Just stay away from Hannah and stay the hell away from me.’

‘But why?’ she whispered, fighting the urge to flee. ‘Cole, I don’t know what’s wrong. Cole, please.’ She didn’t know how else to phrase her question. ‘What have I done wrong?’

CHAPTER ONE

Ten Years Later

JOLIE TANNER might as well have been carrying a dead body as far as level of difficulty was concerned. But there was nothing else for it, so she hauled and she shoved until finally the box was on the ski sled and strapped into place. So what if cardboard packing boxes weren’t meant to endure such treatment? This one didn’t have a choice.

Time to go. Past time to go, but Jolie turned back towards the cabin, her rubber-soled snow boots scrabbling for purchase on the icy step as she pulled the door closed and locked it. Everything was as it should be inside the cabin. Clean, tidy and utterly impersonal. Mission complete.

Climbing into the ski mobile’s driver’s seat, Jolie headed for the gondola next and went through the process of getting the box off the sled and into the waiting ski gondola, grimacing as the box took yet another beating for her efforts. From there she headed for the ski field control tower and parked the ski mobile in its spot beside the door.

The ski mobile rig was Hare’s. So too was the heavy coat he’d insisted Jolie put on before he let her head for the cottage. The two-way radio in her pocket was his too. It had crackled to life a few minutes ago with Hare in his official capacity of ski-field manager telling her to make swift with the time because the weather was getting worse, the last gondola ride down mountain was leaving five minutes ago, and she’d damn well better be on it.

Everything in its place, she unhitched the sled and stored it in the lock-up. Everything in its place—a little phrase Hare rammed home to every employee on the mountain. Everything where it ought to be or you could get the hell off Silverlake Mountain and go down and work the bars and restaurants and ski lodges of Queenstown instead.

‘Is it done?’ Hare murmured as she slipped into the control room and shut the door behind her.

‘It’s done.’ Jolie set the ski mobile keys on the key rack by the door, and the two-way back in its charger on the counter. She pulled the cottage keys from her pocket and held them out towards Hare. These ones had no hanging spot that Jolie knew of. ‘Mama said to give you these, as well.’

When Hare rubbed at one of his arms rather than take them, Jolie set the keys down on the counter. Frankly, she never wanted to lay eyes on them again. She could hardly blame Hare for wanting the same.

‘Never did sit right with me, that arrangement,’ muttered Hare.

‘Yeah, well, you’re not exactly in the minority.’ A truth for a truth and only for Hare. Everyone else got defiant and hostile silence—a defence mechanism that predated her teens. ‘But it’s done with now.’

Death had a way of finalising things.

‘How’s your mama holding up?’ asked the big man. ‘She at the funeral?’

‘No,’ said Jolie wearily. ‘Of course she’s not. She was heading out to walk alongside Lake Wanaka for a while instead. Reckons she’ll say goodbye to him there.’

‘She working the bar this evening?’ asked Hare and Jolie nodded.

‘Yes. You’re invited to come down and drink to the dead tonight, by the way. Discreetly, of course, but it’s on the house. It’s the wake you have when you’re not having a wake.’

‘She loved him,’ said Hare gruffly. ‘You give her that, if nothing else.’

‘I know. It’s just—’ Bitterness didn’t become her; Jolie tried her best to avoid it. But she’d just spent an afternoon removing all traces of her mother from James Rees’s self-indulgent life and remembering in the process exactly how much her mother had given up for him and what she’d received in return. ‘I know.’

Not Hare’s fault, Jolie’s foul mood. Not his fault that he’d been the unlucky employee charged with running herd on young Jolie that first time Rachel Elizabeth Tanner had gone up to the high cabin to be with her married lover. Not Hare’s fault he’d been stuck with Jolie every time after that until Jolie had deemed herself old enough to not need a babysitter any more.

Hare had taught her to ski, taught her the mountain and kept her safe from everything but bitter reality.

Nothing could keep her safe from that.