“Nonna,” Mariah sighed. “Mum left Dad because she came out, not because he didn’t feed her. They’re still good friends.”
“Yeah friends who share a daughter and live on other sides of the country.”
“Because Sara got a job offer in Perth,” Damien replied. “Of course Libby would move with her wife. Anyway Mariah just spent three weeks with them. We make it work, Ma.”
“Girls need a mother Damien.” Giovanna crossed her arms and held her son's gaze.
“She has two,” he replied tersely.
“One she lives with,” Giovanna gasped with raised hands in frustration. “You worry me.”
“Why don’t you volunteer for the Valentine Cove Bachelor Auction, Damien?” Donna asked. “Look what happened to your brother!”
“Noah and Bella would’ve started dating eventually, he’d been asking her out from the minute he moved here,” Damien huffed.
“I won’t deny that,” Noah said with a smug look on his face, placing his hand possessively around Bella’s waist. The way they looked at each other made me almost believe that true love existed.
“Maddie and I finally got together because of the auction too,” Brock said from the other end of the table.
I could see Damien’s face hardening, I knew how it felt to have family push you back into the dating world. His jaw tightened and his eyes focused on the marinated meat that he was placing onto the BBQ. The guy was in distress and no one else cared enough to do something about it. Before thinking it through, before thinking better of it, I opened my mouth.
“I don’t think his girlfriend would like it.” I regretted it the minute the words spewed out.
Damien shot me a confused look.
“Girlfriend!” Giovanna cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Yeah, ummmm,” Damien gave me a puzzled look.
“Because it’s new and we’re still working things out,” I said, sheepishly.
“You mean…?” Giovana pointed between us and I nodded. “Welcome to the family!”
I was engulfed in a hug from Damien’s mother and she started with a barrage of questions and I just stood there, unsure of which question to answer first and hoping that my lies wouldn’t contradict each other. Then I felt a big arm around my waist and Damien pulled me toward him.
“Mum, stop with the questions, we can chat over dinner,” Damien placed a kiss on my forehead. “Let me have a minute with my girlfriend.”
I let Damien drag me by the hand back to my little granny flat, my heart beating like a drum. I think I just made the biggest mistake since moving to Hartwood Bay.
Chapter four
Damien
Ilooked into Zoe’s big blue eyes and I struggled to maintain my frustration with her. Fuck knows what she was thinking when she told my family she was my girlfriend. It felt like we’d just created a huge mess, but I wasn’t going to deny it in front of my family who’d been pestering me about getting back into the dating world since my ex and I amicably parted ways.
I was supportive of Libby finding love. I knew early on that we didn’t share the same kind of love that my parents did, but I had been content with what we’d had. We were mates, in the same Oz Tag team, and in a small town where you just paired up with someone and stuck with them, I thought that was enough.
Mariah came along as a surprise and although we both loved our baby girl, it was the trigger for Libby to let me know that she didn’t think she was straight and she needed some time to figure things out. She moved to Canberra to be closer to her job, and I moved in with my parents who helped me look after Mariah.
Libby would come home on weekends, stay with her parents and take Mariah. One weekend she brought home a womannamed Sara and it hit me. Libby and Sara looked at each other in the same way my parents have looked at each other my whole life and I was happy for them.
Personally I was a little relieved. The friendship side of my relationship with Libby was always easy, we were mates. The romantic side always felt like hard work though and when I saw Libby and Sara together, I knew that relationships weren’t for me. Well, I didn’t rule them out completely, I just put them on the back burner because unless I could be with someone who I looked at like Libby did with Sara or my parents did with each other, it wasn’t worth the time or heartache. I had Mariah to look after and she was my number one girl from then on.
Over the years, my mum had tried to set me up with various women. Nice women. Pretty women. Women from her church or women from the Country Women's Association. There was nothing wrong with those women, but there was also nothing remarkably right about them either. I’d settled once for a lukewarm relationship and I didn’t want to do that again.
The problem with Zoe? She was gorgeous. Seriously stunning. The first woman to ever make my pulse race and my cock stir just by being in my vicinity. She was kind and generous. Great with Mariah and everyone loved her.
But she was only here in Hartwood Bay temporarily. Bella had mentioned that she’d moved here to take up a maternity relief position. One year and she’d made no plans beyond that.
