‘She’s over it now, though?’ Jemma teased. ‘You demanded one too many hangover cures?’
‘We lost her a couple of years back.’
‘Oh.’ Jemma’s face became blank. ‘I’m sorry.’ As the mischievous lilt disappeared from her voice, even her posture altered and she became straight and tense.
‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’ Sam asked him, changing the subject. She’d never been known for her tact, but that open honesty was one of the things that made her so approachable … In wild contrast to Jemma, who now had her arms folded across her chest and her lipstightly compressed. Like she had a stick up her butt, Dad would say.
He rifled a hand through his hair, disconnectedly registering the fact that it needed a cut. ‘Ethan’s concerned the skatepark might be attracting trouble.’
‘Oh, no.’ Sam put down the coffee pot. ‘That’s awful! Though potentially more awful that we’ll have to admit Dave Jaensch was right.’
‘Yeah, that’s what’s got Ethan stewing. But it might have been a one-off, hoons from out of town just cruising by. Problem is, the kids at the park don’t know who they were, and Tara can’t remember.’
‘Tara?’ Sam hadn’t touched her food, although Jemma and Pierce were making inroads on their eggs. ‘I doubt she’s been to the skatepark since the opening.’
He took a deep draught of coffee while unpicking where to start. ‘The other week, when she left the pub with me? She was already off her face when she got there.’
Sam sliced her eggs with the side of her fork. Clicked her tongue. ‘With Charity’s sisters and friends coming up from the city to hang around with you, she’s desperate to look a bit more cultured. Lately she’s been trying to persuade everyone that she’s into cocktails. I guess she doesn’t realise they have more of a kick than Moscato.’
Even Sam saw Tara’s behaviour as somehow his fault. Jemma smirked at what seemed to be a gentle reprimand aimed at hisavailability.
‘She didn’t have a drink at the Settler’s, and Lynn wouldn’t have let her get smashed like that at the Overland,’ he said heavily.
‘True,’ Sam agreed.
‘It’s not like cocktails are hard to make at home, though?’ Jemma waggled her ever-present phone at him, probably indicating that the recipes were available on the internet.
Sam nodded. ‘Yeah, the girls make the odd run into the bottle-o in Murray Bridge.’ She leaned across to grind pepper on Pierce’s omelette, then chuckled. ‘Want to bet that this time they all swore off drink the next morning? Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. Remember those days, Hamish?’
‘Or still living them?’ Jemma teased.
At any other time, he might have been intrigued by the fact that she now deigned him worthy of conversation, but not this morning. He stabbed at the eggs with mechanical precision, although he wasn’t eating. ‘Tara said she hadn’t been with the other girls that night.’
Sam set down the pepper grinder with a clunk, a crease between her brows. ‘She wasn’t with Chloe? Or Charlee?’ Her expression cleared. ‘Ah, she obviously knewyouwere at the Settler’s, so …’ She made her eyes huge. ‘Woman had a plan, looks like it finally worked out for her.’ She paused, then continued in the face of his silence. ‘Or is that done and dusted already?’
Jemma snorted, judging him based on what Sam thought she knew.
‘Yeah. Nah.’ He pushed aside his plate. Hell, he’d expected sharing with Sam would be easier. ‘There wasn’t anything between us. I thought she was wrecked, so I figured I’d get her out of there, keep the whole mess a bit quiet. You know what this place is like for slamming you with a reputation.’ He tried to crack a smile, poke fun at himself, but the tension in the air was thick now.
‘You took her back to your place, though?’ Pierce had no reservations about sounding accusatory.
‘Ethan was there, too.’ He spread his hands wide, then dropped them as he realised it would look like he was pleading his innocence. ‘And he reckoned she wasn’t drunk—whichfits with her saying she’d only had one drink. He initially thought maybe she’d been slipped a mickey.’
‘Who is this Ethan?’ Jemma demanded. ‘What does he have to do with roofy-ing girls in pubs? Or wherever.’
‘He’s my mate,’ he responded tightly. Bloody hell, it hadn’t taken more than five minutes for Jemma to try to take control of the situation. And, much as he wanted to be shot of it, she wasn’t a local, so she had no right to jump into their business with her over-authoritative tone and abrasive attitude. ‘And he’s got enough personal experience to be rabidly anti-drugs.’ Or still fighting for his life against them, according to what he’d said the other day.
‘Personal experience? So he’s a druggie or he’s lost someone to abuse? Wait, is this the guy you pointed out at the working bee?’
He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. That’s not the issue.’
‘I warned you that Tara would get herself in trouble.’
‘Jesus, so now it’s on me?’ At least Sam’s attitude only implied as much; Jemma was perfectly happy to state it.
Pierce held up a hand to silence their argument. ‘Initially? You said Ethaninitiallythought she was drugged. But now?’
One elbow on the table, Hamish ground his palm into his eye socket. ‘Shit. Look, I could have this all wrong, but the thing is, Tara can’t remember parts of the day, but some of the kids spotted her talking to guys in a ute at the skatepark. And Ethan is certain that she showed all the signs of being on cherry. Short high, long comedown. Thing is, if she wasn’t roofied, she chose to use.’
