And now, thanks to her, it’s back with a vengeance.
God help me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLAIR
“Your turn, Blair!” Finn announces, passing me the dice.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet, Finn kneels opposite me, and Gus is to the side. He’s appointed himself official game supervisor, which apparently means drooling on the Snakes and Ladders board and nudging the little counters with his nose.
“Hey, Gus, stop moving things around!” I say, rescuing my counter from his slobbery nose and putting it back where it belongs.
Finn giggles. “He thinks everything’s a toy.” Then, reaching over to scratch behind Gus’s ears, loyally adds, “But we love him anyway, even if he is silly.”
I roll the dice—two measly spaces—and land smack on a snake’s head. “Ugh!” Back home it’s chutes. Here it’s snakes. Just another minor cultural difference. Either way, it means I’m going back alotof squares.
Finn whoops with delight at my misfortune, then the front door opens with a creak. Both Gus and Finn snap their heads toward the sound. Gus is first to bolt for the hallway, paws skittering on the hardwood. Finn’s right behind him, abandoning our game without a second thought.
Lachlan’s low chuckle reaches me from the hallway, followed by, “Aye, hello to you too, you daft mutt. Miss me, did you?”
“Da, guess what!” Finn’s words trip over themselves in his rush to tell his father the big news. “Logan’s invited me to his house for a sleepover! Isla’s going to go too. There’s going to be a boys’ room and a girls’ room. Can I go? Can I?”
I step into the hallway to find Lachlan in his ferry captain uniform, Finn bouncing beside him like a human pogo stick.
“Douglas is taking tomorrow off to look after the kids,” I explain. “His parents can’t do tomorrow for some reason.”
Lachlan glances my way and raises an eyebrow. “Aye? And he seriously wants two more kids to look after? Four kids total?”
“That’s what I said, but Douglas assured me Logan and Rosie are easier to look after when they’ve got friends to keep them busy—and to stop them fighting with each other.”
“Rather him than me,” Lachlan mutters, but there’s fondness in it.
I notice he’s not quite looking at me, and there’s something careful about the way he’s holding himself. Controlled. Familiar. Frustrating. I thought we were past this after yesterday’s beach conversation.
Then again, something was off last night in the garage too. He’d been distant, almost twitchy, like he couldn’t wait for me to leave. Almost like he was... no, it couldn’t have been that.
“Well, Finn, I suppose that’s all right. Just so long as you don’t let Logan lead you astray. You know how he likes to get up to mischief. Be on your best behaviour for Douglas, please.”
“Woohoo!” Finn takes off down the hallway like he’s been shot from a cannon, pumping his fists in the air.
“I can pick him up in the morning,” I offer. “It’ll give me an opportunity to finally see inside Douglas’s house.”
Lachlan nods, his gaze skimming past me again. “Aye. Thanks, Blair. That’s good of you.”
The politeness in his voice grates. After all that progress yesterday—the apology, the honest conversation on the beach, the way he’d smiled at me—he’s putting the walls back up again.
It’s like one step forward, two steps back with this man.
From my window in the granny flat, I watch Lachlan, Finn, and Gus disappear down the lane toward Douglas’s house. Finn’s practically skipping with excitement about his sleepover, chattering away to his father about all the games they’ll play.
Twenty minutes later, I see Lachlan and Gus trudging back up the hill alone. Lachlan’s shoulders are set in that familiar tense line, and even from this distance, I can tell he’s wound tight.
I pace around the small space, Gerald the plant my only witness to my growing frustration. This hot and cold routine of Lachlan’s is driving me crazy. One minute we’re having breakthrough conversations on the beach, the next he’s keeping me at arm’s length like I’m radioactive.
Well, enough is enough. Finn’s not here to overhear whatever awkward conversation we’re about to have, and I’m done tiptoeing around whatever’s eating at him.
I march across the backyard and knock hard enough to make the door rattle. Lachlan opens it, surprise flickering across his face. He’s ditched the uniform for dark jeans and a soft grey henley that clings to his chest in ways that do nothing for my concentration.
