Something Borrowed

Jake... undressing her slowly.

Jake...his magnificent male body in superb control as he took her with him to a physical ecstasy, the like of which she doubted she would ever experience again.

A shiver reverberated through her.

‘You’re not cold, are you?’ Kate asked, frowning.

Ashleigh tried to smile. ‘No... Someone must have walked over my grave.’

Her friend laughed. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that. You know what, Ashleigh? I think you’re a big fibber. I think you believe in fate and superstitions and all those old wives’ tales as much as the next person. And I’ll prove it to you before this day is out. But, for now, sit perfectly still while I get these pins safely in. I don’t want to spear you in the ear.’

Ashleigh was only too happy to sit still, her whole insides in knots as a ghastly suspicion began to take hold. Was she marrying James simply because of his physical likeness to Jake? Could she be indulging some secret hope that, when James took her to bed tonight, her body would automatically respond the same way it had to his brother?

She hadn’t thought so when she’d accepted James’s proposal. Ashleigh believed she was marrying him because he was the only man she’d met in years who seemed genuinely to love her, whom she liked enough to marry, and who wanted what she was suddenly wanting so very badly: a family of her own. Sex had not seemed such an important issue.

Now...with her wedding-night at hand...it had suddenly become one.

Perhaps she should have let James make love to her the night he’d asked her to marry him. At least then she would have known the truth. Looking back to that occasion, she had undoubtedly been stirred by his unexpectedly fierce kisses. Why, then, had she pulled back and asked him to wait? Why? What had she been afraid of? As she’d said to Kate...she was hardly a trembling virgin.

Ashleigh mentally shook her head, swiftly dismissing the possibility that her body—or her subconscious—might find one brother interchangeable with the other. She had never confused James with Jake in the past. Others had, but never herself. The two were totally different in her eyes, regardless of their identical features.

They’d been in the same class at school since kindergarten, she and Jake and James, though the boys were almost a year older than her. The three had been great mates always, spending all their spare time together. It wasn’t till the end of primary school that their relationship had undergone a drastic change. The three of them had seemed to shoot up overnight, Jake and James into lithe, handsome lads, and Ashleigh into a lovely young woman with a figure the envy of every girl in Glenbrook.

By the time they had finished their first year in high school the more extroverted, aggressive Jake had staked a decidedly sexual though still relatively innocent claim on Ashleigh. She’d become his ‘steady’, and from then on James had taken a back seat in her life, even though she had always been subtly aware that he was equally attracted to her, and would have dearly liked to be in his brother’s shoes.

But she’d had eyes only for Jake.

How they had lasted till their graduation from high school before consummating their relationship was a minor miracle. Oh, they’d argued about ‘going all the way’ often enough, with Jake sometimes becoming furious with her adamant refusal to let him. But she had seen the way other teenage boys talked about girls who gave sex freely, and had always been determined not to give in till Jake had proved he wanted her for herself, not her nubile young body.

Ashleigh almost smiled as she remembered the first time Jake had made real love to her, the day after her eighteenth birthday, two weeks after they’d graduated. What an anticlimax their first effort had been. Jake had been furious with himself, knowing he’d been too eager, too anxious.

‘Too damned arrogant and ignorant,’ were his words.

Jake had gone out then and there and bought a very modern and very progressive love-making manual, then quickly became the most breathtakingly skilful lover that any mortal male could become, mastering superb control over his own urgent young body, thrilling to the way he’d eventually learnt to give the girl he loved such incredible . pleasure.

Or so Ashleigh had romantically imagined at the time. She should have known that it was just Jake being his typical obsessive self. She certainly should have begun to doubt the depth of Jake’s love when he announced in the New Year that he was going overseas—alone—for a couple of months. She’d stupidly believed his story about his rich Aunt Aggie’s giving him the holiday as a reward for his great exam results and insisting he go immediately, saying it would broaden his mind for his future writing career. He’d promised Ashleigh faithfully to be back in time to go to university with her in March.

But by March Jake had been in prison in Bangkok, awaiting trial for drug trafficking and possession, after trying to board a plane home with heroin in his luggage. Though greatly distressed, Ashleigh had flown over to support her boyfriend, certain he was innocent. The penny hadn’t dropped till after Jake had been found guilty and given a life sentence. He had looked her straight in the eye from behind those filthy bars and told her quite brutally that of course he was guilty. What in hell did she think he’d really come over for?

But it had been his subsequent personal tirade against her that had shattered Ashleigh completely. His cruelly telling her that he had grown out of their puppy love during his weeks abroad; that he found her blind faith during his trial suffocatingly laughable; that she was boring compared to the real women he’d enjoyed since leaving home and that he didn’t want to see her pathetic face again, let alone receive any more of her drippy, mushy love letters.

Ashleigh had returned home to Australia in a state of deep despair and disillusionment, having had to defer her entry into medical school till the following year due to her emotional state. In truth, she had almost succumbed to a nervous breakdown over Jake. Yet still some mad, futile hope had made her keep on writing to him. Not love letters. Just words of forgiveness and encouragement. Every day she had gone out to the mail box, hoping against hope for a letter back.

It had never come.

In the end, she’d crawled out of her crippling depression and gone on without Jake.

But the scars left behind from her disastrous teenage romance had plagued her personal life, spoiling every relationship she’d tried to have. Always she’d compared the man with Jake. His looks, his personality, his drive, his lovemaking...

They’d all failed to measure up. Which was crazy! For what had Jake done to her? Let her down. Let his family down. Let everyone down.

‘What made you come home to Glenbrook to practise medicine?’ Kate asked all of a sudden, startling Ashleigh from her reverie. ‘From what you’ve told me, you were doing well down in Sydney.’

‘Very well,’ Ashleigh agreed. ‘But the city can be a lonely place, Kate, without your family or someone special to share your life. I remember I spent my twenty-ninth birthday all alone, and suddenly I was homesick. Within a week I was back here in Glenbrook.’

‘And in no time you found James. God, life’s strange. There you were in Sydney for years, where there must be hordes of handsome, eligible men, and what do you do? Come home and find your future hubby in good old Glenbrook.’

‘Yes...’ Ashleigh recalled the night she’d answered an emergency call from the Hargraves home where Mr Hargraves senior had unfortunately suffered a fatal heart attack. It had been James who’d opened the door...

‘I suppose there’s no hope of you-know-who coming back to town, is there?’ Kate probed carefully.

‘I wouldn’t think so. It’s been over three years now.’

Three years since the Thailand government had unexpectedly pardoned a few foreign prisoners during a national celebration—one of them being Jake—and Ashleigh had still foolishly started hoping he’d come home to her.

Well, he had come home all right. For less than a day, apparently, his visit only to ask for money before he went back to the very country that had almost destroyed him! He hadn’t come to see her, even though she’d been home at the time.

One would have thought that such callous indifference should have made it much easier for Ashleigh to see other men in a more favourable light. But somehow...it hadn’t.

A type of guilt assailed Ashleigh. James deserved better than a bride who spent her wedding-day thinking about another man, especially his own brother.

She gave herself another mental shake. She wouldn’t do it any more. Not for a second! And if tonight there were fleeting memories of another time, and another lover, she would steadfastly ignore them.

I will be a good wife, she vowed. The very best. Even if I have to resort to faking things a little...

‘Well, what do you think?’ Kate asked after one last spurt of hair-spray.

Ashleigh swallowed, then glanced in the mirror at the way her wayward blonde hair was now neatly encased in a sleek French roll. ‘That’s great,’ she praised. ‘Oh, you’re so clever!’

‘You’re the clever one, Dr O’Neil,’ came her friend’s laughing reply.

A hurried tap, tap, tap on the bedroom door had both women glancing around. The door opened immediately and Nancy Hargraves, James’s mother, hurried into the room.

‘Goodness, what are you doing here, Nancy?’ Ashleigh exclaimed, getting to her feet. ‘Has something gone wrong? Don’t tell me it’s raining down at the park!’

The actual ceremony was to take place in a picturesque park down by the river, James having vetoed his mother’s suggestion they have the wedding at a church neither of them attended. Ashleigh had happily gone along with his idea of a marriage celebrant and an open-air wedding, choosing the local memorial park as a setting. Nancy, though not pleased, had acquiesced, warning them at the time that if it rained it would be their own stupid fault!

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ she muttered now in an agitated fashion.

Ashleigh was surprised at how upset James’s ultra-cool and composed mother seemed to be. Her hands were twisting nervously together and she could hardly look Ashleigh in the face.

‘Could I speak privately to Ashleigh for a minute or two?’ she asked Kate with a stiff smile.

‘Sure. I’ll go along and check that the others are nearly ready.’ The others being Alison and Suzie, Ashleigh’s cousins—the second bridesmaid and flower girl respectively.

‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hargraves said curtly.

Kate flashed Ashleigh an eyebrow-raised glance before leaving the room, being careful not to catch the voluminous skirt of her burgundy satin bridesmaid’s dress as she closed the door behind her.