Why Resist a Rebel - By Leah Ashton Page 0,61

that always accompanied her progress across Unit Base.

She sounded totally normal. Totally like herself.

And why wouldn’t she?

She’d known they’d reached the end of their thing. Their fling.

Fling. Yeah, that was the perfect word. Disposable.

Love.

Ruby dug her fingernails into her palms as she jogged up the steps to her office.

No, it wasn’t love.

But still, it was the word she’d been waiting for him to say.

How silly, how delusional.

Besides, she should be angry with him. Angry with him for not understanding how far she’d come, and how important—how essential—her independence was to her. She could never give up her career, or her nomadic lifestyle. Not for anything, and certainly not for anyone.

At the doorway to her office she paused. Inside, her team were working busily away. They didn’t even look up, all so used to the frantic comings and goings of the office.

Everything was just as she’d left it. As if Paul had never called her into his office, as if she’d never stormed over to Dev’s trailer, and as if she’d never so vehemently refused his invitation.

And yet everything had changed. Right in the middle of all that, right in the middle of doing what she knew she’d had to do, what she’d known had been inevitable, she’d paused. For that one moment she’d reconsidered, she’d tossed everything up in the air that she’d worked so hard for, waiting on bated breath for Dev to say the words that would...

What?

Mean that she and Dev would live happily ever after?

No way. Ruby had long ago thrown away her dreams of a knight in shining armour, of the one man that would wake up in the morning and still want her—and then again the next day and for ever.

Love was for fools, for the foolish girl she’d once been.

It wasn’t for her.

Dev brought the hire car to a stop in the familiar driveway.

There weren’t nearly as many cars as his mum’s birthday party, but there were enough to let him know he was the last to arrive. Typical—his older brothers were always early.

The front door was unlocked, so he followed the buzz of conversation and squeals of children to the back of the house. In the kitchen both his brothers stood at the granite bench, beers in hand, talking to his mum as she busily chopped something. Beside Brad stood a woman he didn’t recognise—a girlfriend perhaps. Outside was Jared’s wife who he did recognise from the wedding photos his mum had emailed him years ago. Two children raced across the paving on tricycles, shrieking with exuberant laughter that made him smile. But the smile fell as the adults’ conversations stalled—his presence had undeniably been noted.

He strode with determined confidence to his mum and kissed her on the cheek.

Once again she looked thrilled at his appearance, as if she’d expected a no-show, or a last-minute cancellation.

Neither of which were unprecedented.

He was ashamed of his behaviour. The worst had been most recently—skipping the funeral, avoiding her calls. He’d been incapable of processing his own emotions, telling himself he’d be no use to his mum, that he’d just cause more tension, more trouble, more hassle. That his dad wouldn’t have wanted him around, anyway.

Which was all total rubbish, of course.

But well before that—the decade before that—he’d neglected his mum. His visits home to Australia were limited, and always due to work, never specifically to see her. Now he suspected it was because he’d wanted to completely box away and forget his family, a family he considered unsupportive and just completely different and disassociated from him. In his family he had always felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Not that he’d done anything at all to test that theory since he was nineteen.

Or at least, not until now.

A Sunday afternoon barbecue—a simple thing, and, he hoped, a step in the right direction.

His brothers were not exactly effusive in their hellos, but they were cordial enough. Samantha, Jared’s wife, and Tracey, Brad’s girlfriend, were much more welcoming—if not a little star-struck, despite doing their best to hide it. It made him smile. In this kitchen, where he’d been forced to eat his vegetables and load the dishwasher, he didn’t feel even the slightest bit like a movie star.

They ate lunch outside, the table piled high with barbecued everything—prawn skewers, sausages, steak, fish. Dev didn’t say much, allowing the conversation to happen around him.

‘I heard you’re filming in New South Wales,’ Samantha asked, catching his eye from across the table. Beside her, Jared eyed Dev warily.

He