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‘Oh, look, about lunch…I really should be getting back to work. I left some things soaking that I need to check, and I really don’t think I can spare the time…’
He waited for her excuses to peter out before he tilted his blond head to one side and wheedled: ‘Oh, come on, you have to eat, don’t you? I know this fabulous little fish place down on Eastern Beach, we can be there in twenty minutes—’
‘You mean the place where you made the reservation?’ she said wryly.
He looked boyishly chastened, but his hazel eyes twinkled.
‘So you’d rather lunch here…sitting across the table from good old Ethan.’
She hadn’t thought of that. Her stomach curdled at the idea of confronting him again so soon…and in front of Peter, who was hoping his nephew would soon be engaged. She was a gullible idiot to have assumed that just because she had cleared the air over the past, she and Ethan were free to act on their attraction. Her fantasy of a relationship with him was a creation of her own emotional needs. The sad reality was that to Ethan she was just a physical itch to be scratched.
‘Or I could just have a sandwich while I work,’ she murmured, recalling how Dylan had played his own part in her painful disillusionment.
‘But think of all the fascinating conversation you’d miss,’ he said cunningly, plucking a mangled rose petal and a blade of grass off the back of her blouse and pressing them into her palm. ‘You could tell me all about you—and I could tell you all about Ethan…’
She didn’t remember the rest of his argument, which was extremely persuasive, but an hour later, after a short delay to refresh her soaking solutions and note down the times, Emily was hungrily forking up seared scallops and sipping cautiously at an excellent Sauvignon Blanc while she listened to Dylan talk about the change that had come over his brother after their parents’ deaths. Prior to that, he said, Ethan had always been up for a bit of fun, but, although he had risk-taking in his blood, he hadn’t possessed the impetuosity or sheer flamboyance that had characterised their father.
‘Ethan blames himself for the way Mum and Dad died,’ said Dylan, his mobile face more sombre than Emily had ever seen it, ‘because he was supposed to be with them that day. The three of them were flying down to a wedding in the South Island, and Ethan was going to pilot the plane because he was trying to build up his flight hours. But some problem came up at work that delayed him. He thought it wouldn’t take him too long, so they kept bumping the take-off time, but in the end he had to flag the trip altogether. By then it was quite late in the afternoon and the weather had started to pack up, but Dad being Dad wasn’t going to let a little low cloud stand in his way. He could have waited until the next morning, but he didn’t want to miss the stag party, and Mum was typically more worried about getting down there in time to have her hair done than a bit of bumpy weather—especially with her darling “Ace” at the stick.’
Dylan topped up his glass and toasted ironic fate. ‘Dad also knew that he was going to be bankrupt again in a few days. The receiver was poised to pounce on his assets, including his personal plane, and Dad wanted to get a last flight in—as it turned out it was literally his last flight,’ he finished with a sardonic wryness that made him sound for the first time like his brother. ‘They went down in rugged bush country—it took days to find the wreckage, but they’d both been killed instantly. Dad flew right into the side of a hill.’
‘Oh, my God, how terrible,’ said Emily, clutching her glass, imagining Ethan’s feelings on hearing the news that his parents’ plane was missing. She knew instinctively that he would have flown with the air search.
‘But your father—he ran an airline, surely he was an excellent pilot—’
‘Oh, sure, but even good pilots sometimes make bad decisions.’ He shrugged. ‘“Pilot error” the report said—for some reason Dad was trying to fly under the weather rather than using his instruments and must have got disorientated. Of course, Ethan is convinced that if he’d been up there with them it wouldn’t have happened, but he wasn’t instrument-rated himself at the time, so who knows? Ethan would never have even taken off with the cloud as low as it was, but Dad was a real gung-ho competitor and would have done it anyway just to prove that he could. Dad used to josh him about it, but Ethan has always been a cautious flyer, mainly because he doesn’t really enjoy it. I think he only took it up because Dad was disappointed not to have a son who wanted to follow in his footsteps.’
‘You don’t fly yourself?’ asked Emily, slightly surprised, for he certainly had the dashing air of someone who liked to seek new experiences.
‘Are you kidding?’ His grin was charmingly self-deprecating. ‘Always looked too much like hard work to me. Give me a fast car any day—just jump in, pick up your girl, and you’re off!’
She laughed, not wholly accepting his estimation of himself as a total lightweight, he displayed too much insight to be as shallow as he pretended. Which he proceeded to prove as he said:
‘After the crash Ethan gave up flying for a while—got a real bad case of the heebie-jeebies—but then he forced himself to go back to it…I think he saw it as a kind of penance.’
‘But surely he can’t really believe himself responsible for the crash—or decisions he had no part of—?’
‘Intellectually he knows he’s not to blame, but emotionally it’s an entirely different matter. I don’t know whether he’s more angry at Dad or himself for what happened that day.’ He sighed. ‘All I know is, since then he’s tended to have a vastly over-developed sense of responsibility towards the rest of the family.’
‘You mean you and Peter.’ She realised now why Ethan had come down on her like a ton of bricks when he had suspected her of conning his uncle.
‘He can be a pain in the neck sometimes—always seems to know what I’m up to, as if I’m sixteen rather than twenty-six.’ Dylan pulled a long face.
‘And, of course, you give him no reason to ever worry about you,’ she said drily.
He looked pious. ‘I consider it my duty as a brother to give his paranoia a thorough workout every now and then.’
‘Like teasing him about Carly?’ said Emily, who had been waiting to casually slip the name into the conversation.
‘Who?’
Dylan grinned as she tried to hide her frustration at his puzzled reply.
‘Oh, her…Carly Foster,’ he said, leaning forward, his elbows on the table, his voice sinking to a mock-confidential level. ‘A real fox. She and Ethan have been dating on and off for a few months now.’
‘On and off?’ Emily chewed a scallop without tasting it as she considered the phrase. It didn’t sound as committed as he had made it sound back at the house.
‘Well, they’re both busy people—but Carly’s pushing thirty, her biological clock is ticking, and most eligible bachelors in her price range tend to marry sexy young things who massage their egos rather than women who compete with them. She’s been trying to corral Ethan into realising what a perfect couple they’d make, but he’s proving far too elusive for her….’
