‘He didn’t reallydoanything—’
‘I bet he had a bit on the side—stashed away somewhere. I mean, no one really knows much about him, do they?’ Betty continued in a rather snippy tone that was a complete turnaround from her love-silly mood of moments before.
‘That’s true. A few of us have tried. I mean,wheredid he get all his money from to buy the hotel? He’s not very old, is he?’
‘Buy the hotel?’ Jenny cut in. ‘He’s just the bartender, isn’t he?’
The women’s fierce expressions began to slip.
‘Oh, dear. You didn’t know?’ Nola asked.
‘I just thought he—’
‘No, dear. He’s the new owner.’
How on earth had she not known this? She groaned silently; he must have thought her dismissive comments about doing his job were hilarious … not. Jenny shrivelled up inside at the memory.
‘I suppose that was never going to end well, was it,’ Betty said, shaking her head sadly. ‘Lies are never a good foundation to build love on.’
‘He didn’t lie—’ Jenny started, but the women had already decided that she’d been spurned and were now fuelled byindignation on her behalf. She couldn’t be bothered arguing—she was still trying to get her head around the assumption she’d made and what Nick must be thinking of her for doing so.
She paid for the coffee and the slice and retraced her footsteps back to the staff room. Just when she thought she’d been as dumb as she could possibly be …
The Gift of the Gab was a Barkley institution: a newsagent and a clothing store as well as a newly revamped gift and homewares shop. It had been owned by Shelly Mitchem for the last fifteen or so years and by her mother, Sandy, before her. It was aptly named, since the Mitchems seemed to be the first to know pretty much everything going on around town.
Jenny had had her eye on a new table lamp for the last few months and had finally decided to give in and buy it.
‘Apparently, Barkley is on the map,’ Shelly announced, nodding at the magazine on the front counter.
Jenny craned her neck to read the headline. ‘Wow.’ She picked up a copy of the magazine.
The two-page spread had a photo of the pub in all its renovated glory, along with two men, one of whom Jenny recognised as the chef. But it was the other man, leaning against the wall of the pub with a decided aura of rugged masculinity, who caught her attention.Entrepreneur Nicolas Mason, younger brother of prestigious businesswoman of the year, Sussanne Angelopoulos, is the brains and the brawn behind a new dining revolution—bringing fine dining and culture to the outback, the article read.
‘“Culture to the outback”?’ Jenny read out loud. They were hardly the outback. Reasonably remote because they were off the main highway now, but hardly the red, arid desert image Jenny would expect when outback was mentioned.
Shelly chuckled. ‘You know how it is—to anyone from a big city, anything more than five minutes west of them is considered the outback.’
‘How stupid do these magazine editors think people are?’ Jenny muttered.
‘Must be working, though.’ Shelly shrugged. ‘The motel in town’s booked out for the next few weeks and a heap of places over in Hamwell have been making group bookings at the pub. The phone’s been ringing off the hook, Marissa Woods was saying this morning. Seems like that young bloke might have been on to something after all, sinking all that money into his renovations,’ she mused, before tilting her head curiously as she looked at Jenny.
Jenny glanced down at the photo and cleared her throat, remembering Shelly was still watching her, waiting for her to pay. She hadn’t seen Nick since the kiss, and the memory sent an unexpected tingle through her.Oh, don’t be an idiot. This was not the place to be caught daydreaming about the hunky bartender … or rather, owner, Jenny corrected herself. She hadn’t even known who he was and there she was kissing the man in front of everyone, making a complete fool of herself.
She didn’t waste any more time chit-chatting with Shelly, positive the woman knew all the gossip and was hoping to get an inside scoop on something juicy and new. She was at leastrestrained enough not to come out and ask about it, which saved Jenny from further humiliation.
On the way out to her car, Jenny found herself thinking about the article. Sussanne Angelopoulos was Nick’s sister? She didn’t know a great deal about the woman but she had heard of her—mainly from glimpses of the name splashed across tabloids while she waited in line at the supermarket. She supposed that answered the question about where Nick got the money to buy the pub—then she silently reprimanded herself for making assumptions. For all she knew, he may have his own money. Just because Nick had a sister who’d once been married to some Greek business tycoon, it didn’t necessarily mean she funded his lifestyle. It certainly gave him a very interesting background story, though. She gave a small grunt; the gossip mill around town was going to have a field day with all this. By the end of the day the poor guy would surely have connections with the Mafia and own a private island somewhere in the Mediterranean.
‘FML,’ Savannah muttered.
‘What?’ Jenny’s brow furrowed as she looked at her daughter.
‘Fuck my life,’ Savannah elaborated with a surly growl.
‘Savannah!’ Jenny snapped, sending a meaningful glare as she nodded towards the toddler swinging her chubby little legs happily as she ate her Icy Pole at the table.
‘She isn’t even listening,’ Savannah said, rolling her eyes.
‘They take ineverything,’ Jenny hissed. Only the previous day, Jenny had heard her sweet little cherub of a granddaughter tell the cat to ‘get out of the bloody way’, when it walked out from the laundry as Sophie walked down the hallway. She’d winced later as she realisedshemay have been the one responsible for the toddler’s outburst, since she had said the same thing as she’d carried a full basket of laundry towards the back door and almost tripped over said cat.
