LITMIR.BIZ

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and silver body-suit. She looked trim, taut and so sexy she took a man’s breath away. She also looked desolate. But, desolate or not, she also looked strong. She was cutting him out of this equation.

      ‘That’s not your problem,’ she told him. ‘Margot, your nephew very kindly gave me time out today—he fed me fish and chips and he gave me time for a snooze. So he’s being our ringmaster and he’s being kind, but apart from that … I need to cope with this on my own.’

      She’d been kneeling beside Margot. Now she rose. Matt held out his hand to help her but she ignored it.

      ‘I do need to do this on my own,’ she said, gently but implacably. ‘And I will. Thank you for your help, Mathew, and thank you for your friendship, Margot, but I need to go help pack up now. Mathew, you need to take your aunt home.’

       Mathew.

      My name is Matt, Matt thought, but he didn’t say it. Allie was resetting boundaries, and what right did he have to step over them?

      ‘She really wants to see those elephants.’

      Settled into his car, Margot was quietly thoughtful. They were halfway home before she finally came out with what was bothering her.

      ‘I know she does,’ Matt said. ‘But a six hundred mile round trip in a day is ridiculous.’

      ‘Since when did a little matter of six hundred miles ever get in the way of a Bond?’ Margot snapped, and he glanced at her and thought she looked exhausted.

      How much had tonight taken out of her?

      She’d turned away and was looking out of the window, over the bay to the twinkling lights of the boats at swing moorings.

      ‘You know, it doesn’t happen all that often,’ she said softly into the night, and he had a feeling she was half talking to herself.

      ‘What doesn’t happen?’

      She was silent for a moment. A long moment. Then …

      ‘I fell in love,’ she said at last, into the silence. ‘You’ve seen his photograph on my mantel. Raymond. He was a lovely, laughing fisherman. He was … wonderful. But my parents disapproved—oh, how they disapproved. A Bond, marrying a fisherman. We’d come down here for a family holiday and the thought that I could meet and fall in love with someone who was so out of our world … It was insupportable—and I was insistent but not insistent enough.’

      ‘You told him you’d marry him.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice was suddenly bleak. She stared down at her gnarled old hand, to the modest diamond ring that had been there for as long as Matt could remember. ‘We met just as the war started. I met him on the esplanade. The heel had come off my shoe and he helped me home. We went to two dances and two showings of the same picture. Then Father got wind of it and I was whisked back to Sydney. Soon afterwards, Raymond was called up and sent abroad. We wrote, though. I still have his letters. Lovely, lovely letters. Then, two years later, he came home—for a whole three weeks. He’d been wounded—he was home on leave before being sent abroad again. He came to Sydney to find me and he gave me this ring.’

      She stared down at the ring and it was as if she was looking into the very centre of the diamond. Seeing what was inside. Seeing what was in her heart all those years ago.

      ‘He wanted to marry me before he went back,’ she whispered. ‘And I wanted to. But my father … your great-grandfather …’ She shook her head. ‘He was so angry. He asked how I could know after such a short time? He said if we really loved each other it’d stand separation. He said … I forbid it. And I was stupid enough, dumb enough, weak enough to agree. So I kissed my Raymond goodbye and he died six months later.’

      She stared down at the tiny diamond and she shook her head, her grief still raw and obvious after how many years? And then she glared straight at Matt.

      ‘And here you are, looking at someone who’s right in front of you,’ she snapped. ‘Allie’s perfect. You know she is. I can see that you’re feeling exactly what I was feeling all those awful, wasted years ago and you won’t even put the lady in your car and go visit some elephants!’

      At the end she was practically booming—and then she burst into tears.

      In all the time he’d known her he’d never seen Margot cry.

      Bonds didn’t do emotion.

      He’d seen the engagement ring on her finger. He’d never been brave enough to ask her about it. Once he’d asked his grandfather.

      ‘A war thing,’ his grandfather had snapped. ‘Stupid, emotional whim. Lots of women lost their partners during the war—Margot was one of the lucky ones. At least she didn’t get married and have children.’

       One of the lucky ones …

      He hugged Margot now and found her a handkerchief and watched as she sniffed and sniffed again, and then she harrumphed and pulled herself together and told him to drive on—and he thought of those words.

       One of the lucky ones …

      A six hundred mile round trip.

      Allie.

      ‘You can do it if you want to,’ Margot muttered as he helped her out of the car, and he helped her inside, he made her cocoa, helped her to bed—and then he went for a very long walk on the beach.

      A six hundred mile round trip.

      Allie.

      Elephants.

       One of the lucky ones …

      Wednesday morning.

      Allie had plans for this morning, but none of them were good. She had a list from the realtors of all the farmlets that were available for rent in the district in her price range. She’d added combined pensions plus what she could feasibly earn as a bookkeeper minus what it’d cost to keep the animals and it wasn’t looking pretty. The places looked almost derelict.

      She thought of the lovely beachside cottage Henry and Bella had told her they were paying off, and she felt ill.

      They’d done this for her.

      Henry was being released from hospital tomorrow. They’d kept him in until he was over his virus, but she suspected the kindly staff of the small district hospital were also giving them a break. Tomorrow they’d be back in their caravan and they’d have to face their future.

      Maybe one of these properties was better than it looked in the brochure, she thought grimly. Ha.

      Deeply unsettled, she fed the animals early, then took the dogs for a long walk on the deserted beach. As she walked back to the circus a helicopter was coming into land on the foreshore.

      ‘Bond’s Bank’ was emblazoned on the side.

      Why?

      Maybe this was Matt’s … Mathew’s staff, she corrected herself. He’d said the circus could operate for two weeks but she was under no illusion. The circus belonged to him, lock, stock and barrel, and if he’d brought in a team to pull it apart …

      She felt sick.

      She stood back and watched as the chopper came to rest, as the rotor blades stopped spinning.

      It was a very small chopper for a team of financiers.

      Who was she kidding? she thought ruefully. Sparkles was a very small circus. Why would they need a team?

      But this small? Only one guy climbed from the chopper and that was the pilot.

      This had nothing to do with her, she told herself grimly.

      She walked back to the circus, giving the headland and the chopper a wide berth. She walked into the circus enclosure and Matt … Mathew … was waiting for her. Casually dressed. Smiling

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