* * *
Traveling back on his own had been harder than Raif had anticipated. First there was the physical evidence of their passionate lovemaking to contend with. Second was the physical memory of expecting her to be by his side when he worked in the kitchen or even here, at the helm of the boat. The houseboat was not large and yet it felt echoingly empty without Shanal there beside him. He couldn’t get away from it fast enough. What had taken them a leisurely few days to travel upriver, he accomplished in half the time, heading back down.
Mac was at the marina to greet him.
“Everything handle okay?” the older man said.
“Like a breeze,” Raif replied, tossing him the rope to tie off.
“Where’s your little lady?”
“Gone home with her fiancé,” he answered, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.
“Her what?”
“Yeah, Burton Rogers. You remember him?”
“Remember him, sure. Ever want to see him again? No. I couldn’t understand it when Laurel left you for him. I thought I’d raised her to have better judgment than that. But I think she was swayed more by what he could offer her than by who he was. I’ve always like to think that if she’d lived, she’d have eventually figured him out and left him.”
Raif just grunted in response. After all, what could he say? That he’d stood by and not fought back when she’d given him an ultimatum about marriage or breaking up? He hadn’t been ready for that commitment. But he certainly hadn’t been ready to lose her altogether, either. And the thought that his choice had driven her into Burton’s arms and from there to her death... No, he wouldn’t let himself think about that.
“What happened?” Mac asked.
Raif gave him a brief rundown once he was off the boat.
“And you let her go?” There was censure in the older man’s voice.
Raif wanted to vehemently deny it, but he couldn’t. “She was never mine to hold on to.”
Mac stared out at the slow-moving river. “You know, I never held with that saying about letting love go free. I’ve always thought that if you really want something, you gotta hunt it down and fight to keep it.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Raif concurred, picking up his bag. “And that’s just what I’m going to do.”
“That’s my boy.” Mac slapped him approvingly on the shoulder.
Raif drove back to his home in the Adelaide Hills in heavy rain, which meant he had to keep his concentration very firmly on the road ahead and not on his plans to get back Shanal, where he wanted it to be. But the minute he walked through his front door he was reminded of the last time he’d returned home, and who he’d had with him.
There was a note from his cleaner on the hall table:
I have hung the wedding dress that was on the floor in the guest room en suite on a hanger in the guest room wardrobe. Please inform me if you need the garment sent to the dry cleaner.
—H.
Raif cracked a wry smile. It would have been worth it to see the expression on his cranky cleaner’s face when she came across that little surprise. He went to the spare room to see the dress in question.
It hung in all its subdued glittering splendor on the rail, the layers of froth at the bottom almost filling the generous space of the wardrobe. Off Shanal’s body it lacked the power and substance it had carried when she’d worn it into the church last Saturday. It was nothing more than a pretty dress with maybe a few too many sparkles attached. He wondered if she wanted it back, and the dainty shoes set beneath it on the shoe rack.
A swell of impotent rage filled him, making him want to drag the gown from its hangar and cast it back on the floor where Shanal had left it. He swallowed against the urge to roar in disgust at the whole situation. The relief would be only temporary and yelling would do nothing whatsoever toward solving the problem. Shanal had chosen to go with Burton. Sure, there had been disturbing undercurrents between her and her fiancé—it didn’t take an honors student to figure that out. What they hadn’t said in front of him was certainly more interesting than what they had.
But how to get to the bottom of it, that was the question. Burton had to have some kind of leverage over Shanal. He just had to. Or did he? Maybe it was just that Raif preferred to believe that, since otherwise he’d be forced to conclude that Shanal had used him simply to make a point with her fiancé. He shoved the idea ruthlessly from his mind before it could bloom into anything else.