The Morning After The Wedding Before. Anne Oliver

away. Only a rumpled and food stained red tablecloth remained. And a few curious faces were aimed her way.

      ‘Emma …’ Stella trailed off, her gaze sliding over Emma’s shoulder.

      The back of Emma’s neck warmed. Her cheeks scorched. ‘Um … sorry.’ Was it possible to speak more than one word at a time? She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Needed some air.’

      ‘We were starting to wonder whether you two had slipped away without—’

      ‘Jake and I were just catching up.’ She collected her purse. ‘Mum, are you ready to leave? I’ve got some work to do before I go to bed.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, moving around the table saying her goodnights.

      ‘Can I get a lift with you?’ Stella reached for her own bag. ‘Ryan’s taking his parents home, and I want a couple of early nights this week.’

      ‘Sure.’ Emma steered clear of Jake, muttering a quick goodnight without looking at him, and from a safe distance on the other side of the table, then headed for the stairs.

      ‘You okay, Em?’ Stella asked beside her as they drove home. ‘You’re awfully quiet.’

      ‘Wayne came into the restaurant while we were there,’ she said, her voice tightening. ‘With his fiancée.’

      ‘Oh. Oh, Em. I’m sorry. You guys split up—what?—only a month ago?’

      ‘What did you expect?’ her mother piped up from the back seat. ‘If you mixed with the right people like your sister, instead of hiding away in that studio night after night, y—’

      ‘I’m not hiding.’ Emma sighed inwardly. Stella had nursed their mother, then fallen in love with a wealthy man; in Bernice Byrne’s eyes her younger daughter could do no wrong. ‘I enjoy what I do, Mum.’

      ‘Like you enjoyed cleaning other people’s toilets and stocking supermarket shelves after school too, I remember. Just another excuse not to meet people.’

      Emma pressed her lips together to stop the angry words from rushing out. Yeah, Mum? Where would we be if I hadn’t? In a rented bedsit on the wrong side of town. Not in Gran’s home, that’s for sure.

      ‘Mum, that’s not fair.’ Stella spoke sharply.

      ‘It’s not, Stella. But then, life’s not always fair—right, Mum?’ Emma glanced at her mother in the rearview mirror. ‘And sometimes it makes us hurt and lash out and say things we shouldn’t. So I forgive you. You’re not sorry about Wayne, Stella, and neither am I. And I don’t want to talk about it. Him.’

      ‘No, you’d rather kiss that good-for-nothing Jake Carmody behind the palms like some floozie,’ her mother muttered.

      Emma jolted, her whole body burning with the memory. And her mother, of all people, had obviously seen the entire catastrophe. Something close to rebellion simmered inside her and made her say, ‘Jake’s hardly a good-for-nothing, Mum—he has a well-established practice in business law.’ She couldn’t help feeling a sense of indignation on his behalf.

      The strip club aside, she knew enough about Jake to know he’d worked hard all those years ago, taking jobs where he could get them to pay his way through uni.

      Whereas Ryan came from old money. He’d graduated in the sciences and held a PhD in Microbiology—all expenses paid by Daddy. Then he’d volunteered his skills in Africa for a couple of years before hooking up again with Stella.

      From the corner of her eye she saw Stella shift in her seat and turn to look at her. Suddenly uncomfortable, Emma lifted a shoulder. ‘What?’

      ‘Jake kissed you?’ she said slowly. ‘Like a proper kiss?’

      ‘Not exactly.’ Emma couldn’t resist a quick glance at her mum in the mirror again. ‘Mum got it right. It was more like … I kissed him.’ As she relived that moment something like exhilaration shot through her bloodstream. ‘What about it?’

      ‘Ooh, that’s so … hmm … You and Jake?’

      Emma heard the smile in her sister’s voice, could almost hear her mind ticking over.

      ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if—?’

      ‘Not me and Jake. You know him. Every red-blooded female in Sydney knows him. Didn’t mean anything.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘No buts.’

      ‘Okay. But … The wedding will give you two time to catch up. You liked him well enough when we were younger, I remember.’

      ‘Yeah—in a galaxy far, far away.’

      ‘Not that far, Em. He lives in Bondi now. Only an hour’s stroll along the coast … if you feel inclined.’

      ‘I don’t. I won’t.’

      But she couldn’t blot him from her mind when she crawled into bed that night. She had been looking forward to seeing Jake again, even if it was only to assure herself she was well and truly over him.

      But she didn’t want to catch up with a seedy strip club owner who used women for his own purposes—both for his personal satisfaction and his burgeoning bank account.

      But, oh, that moment of insanity … his lips on hers, his hands tugging her against the heat of his hard, muscled body …

      And it was insanity. She stared up at the music room’s low stained ceiling and tried not to hear the thick elevated thud of her heartbeat in her ears. She could have kept it simple. A friendly few days in the company of a good-looking guy. But she’d kissed him like one of his Brandies or Candies … and she’d changed everything.