“The opposite to me.” Rob grinned.
“Yeah, well, I’m changing my business model. That’s why I wanted to work with you.”
Rob grunted approvingly. “Youhavechanged. So the building Amber’s cooperative rents from you—EarthFoods—that’s not going to be demolished now?”
“That’s right. My structural engineers are working on plans right now to upgrade and reinforce. To do whatever they have to do to make the building safe.”
Rob raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Thatisa change in direction. This will rock the Christchurch building scene bigger than the earthquake.”
“I intend it to. I want everyone to know about the changes I’m making.”
“And all this is because of our Amber?”
Our Amber?Rob’s sense of family possession over Amber jarred. She wasn’t their Amber, she washis. Or, at least, she would be his, because he couldn’t imagine life without her. Shehadto be his. And so he would show her that he’d reinvented himself; he’d show her that she could trust him, he’d earn that trust. He’d become the man she’d first fallen for.
“Amber!”Jim Connelly said, jumping up from the verandah where he’d been reading the paper in the warm afternoon sun. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
Amber ran up the last steps from the beach and petted Stanley and Boo, who’d been sleeping at Jim’s feet and hadn’t heard her approach. So much for being the guard dogs which Jim claimed them to be.
“I took a day off work.”
Jim’s glasses slipped down his nose as he looked over them in surprise. “You did what?”
Amber sat down and Boo jumped onto her lap and settled down for a good cuddle. “I took a day off work. Mental health day.”
“What’s wrong with your mental health?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing much. It’s just a thing you can do these days for sick leave. You know, you don’t have to be dying to take sick leave. If you feel stressed or burned out, you can take sick leave.”
“Why are you feeling stressed? What’s happened?” His eyes narrowed as he sat down. “Is this about a boy?”
“If you call David a boy, then yes it is.”
“I doubt even David’s mother called him a boy.”
“You happen to be right there. I’ve just come back from visiting a new friend, Zoe.”
“Who’s that? I haven’t heard of her before.”
“Zoe is David’s sister. And she was telling me that David has had to be a man since his mid teens because of what happened to their parents. To cut a long story short, after David’s mother died, their father lost the plot, and it was left to David to raise Zoe and their younger brother, Adam. You’re right, he hasn’t been allowed to be a boy since he was fourteen.”
“Good heavens!”
“I know. Tough, eh?” Amber felt the tears that she’d shed when Zoe had told her what had happened to their family, prick her eyes again. Zoe had told her how David had made sure they were kept together as a family and that Zoe and Adam had everything they needed to gain a good education and career, despite their father’s fall into alcoholism and subsequent disappearance. David had run the household like clockwork, everything regimented, everything controlled, because he’d had to. David had been scared to let anything slip, Zoe had explained. And that need for control had only been compounded by Zoe’s accident.
Jim pulled off his glasses and rubbed suspiciously watery eyes. “That explains a lot.”
Amber didn’t answer but, instead, rubbed Boo’s tummy as Boo lay, blissful, on her back, legs splayed in the air. “Yes.” She gently moved Boo onto the sofa and rose. “It might go some way to explaining why he wanted to use me to stop opposition to the demolition of the EarthFoods building.”
“He underestimated you.”
“Exactly. He thought I was some hippy pushover, to be wooed and used.”
Jim wriggled on his chair, obviously angry at the thought. “If I see that man anywhere near here again, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” interrupted Amber. “Make a scene? There’s no point, because I’ve told him I’m not interested in someone I can’t trust. And there’s also no point because I understand he’s moving to Akaroa, so you’ll be seeing him a lot, I should imagine. As will I, whether I want to or not.”
“He’s what? What the hell does he want to move here for?”
