Underneath the table she’d noticed a couple of empty wine bottles. She picked one up, brushed the dust off with a tissue and stood it in the middle of the table where she hooked the bracelet around it. The label on the bottle had faded but she could still read the words Levallier Dell Chardonnay.

She fiddled with the unfinished bracelet for a while. There was nothing more she could do to it for now and she didn’t want to start another piece until she had found a new source of beads. The sun glinted off the gems and gave a glimpse of a cobweb effect around the neck of the bottle.

Keely looked at the bottle with new interest. She twisted the bracelet and pressed it flat then lifted it off and put it aside. The cloth was soon covered in wire and beads as her new project took shape. She became so absorbed in it that she didn’t realise the afternoon was slipping away until she felt a chill in the air. The sun had moved over the house, leaving her tucked away in her verandah arbour.

She sat back, stretched carefully and smiled at the beads draped around the neck of the bottle. She was relaxed and feeling good. Perhaps Euan had been right, the river was a good place for healing.

A soft scuffling noise caught her attention. She looked up through the curtain of foliage expecting to see Euan, but instead it was Flynn stepping quietly along the verandah. He was peering cautiously in through the glass doors. She remained still. He was obviously trying to avoid someone. Perhaps his father or, she thought, shifting silently on her seat, more likely me. Perhaps he’d only taken to peeping through doors since she’d arrived.

She watched him step inside then turned to her beads and packed them away.

“Damn him.”

She snapped the lid shut on the beads. It really had been comfortable staying here but Flynn had ruined her sense of peace. Euan had been very kind but his son was a different personality altogether and he was obviously avoiding her. There was tension between the two men and she was sure she had been the catalyst to make Flynn move out. Since that first morning when he’d burst into the bedroom, he’d kept away from the house and she’d only seen him in the distance.

She stood up and stuffed her things back into her pack. Flynn would just have to see that this pussyfooting around, as her mother would say, was all ridiculous. Anyway, Keely wouldn’t be staying for much longer.

She stepped through the sliding door and staggered back as she bumped right into him. Her pack was knocked from her hands and some of the contents slid out onto the floor.