Chapter 58

JADE

‘Not bad, eh?’ Dan asked, standing back and admiring his work. ‘Not how I imagined my kid’s wedding reception to be, but then nothing’s how I imagined it to be anymore.’

He looked to Jade as if he was hoping she could say something that would make everything OK. The best she could offer was putting an arm around his shoulders in a silent show of solidarity.

She had spent much of the previous day assisting Susan, Dan and their farmhands in erecting a white tarpaulin over a grassy stretch of the garden. They’d plugged speakers into a sound system to play music, unfolded wooden chairs and tables, and on these they laid linen table covers and placed pink and white posies in jam jars, arranging them in clumps. The next morning – a little over a month since she had arrived so unexpectedly at their farm – Jade was to become Mrs Kevin Williamson.

The venue Kevin had chosen for the ceremony was the old breezeblock church in the town nearest to the farm. It was unlike any other house of worship Jade had ever visited, and without the wooden crucifix planted in the ground by the road with the signpost reading ‘Baptist Church’, most passers-by would assume it to be a dilapidated storage building. Inside the altar was made from an old porch door on bricks, the seating consisted of faded-white patio chairs and the single window had been decorated with coloured tissue paper so as to resemble stained glass. But as derelict and shoddy as it appeared, there was a certain quirky charm to it.

Nothing about her life in the last few weeks had been ordinary, so why should the venue of her wedding be any different?

The ceremony was held in front of an intimate congregation, consisting of just Kevin’s immediate family, his last remaining grandparent, two cousins and some of their farmhand staff. Quite

selfishly, she hadn’t even informed her parents, but it had happened so fast and they wouldn’t have flown over anyway.

The ceremony was as brief as the time it took Jade to choose a dress from the slim pickings her suitcase held. As the elderly and affable reverend began reading passages from the well-thumbed pages of a Bible, Jade made sure to maintain eye contact with her husband-to-be, even when she could feel Mark’s eyes gazing at her.

She knew that if she so much as glanced at him, she’d have put the whole charade in jeopardy. As Kevin’s best man, he stood behind him in case his arms grew too weak to lean on his crutches.

However, Kevin was a stubborn soul and refused to remain seated.

He couldn’t stop grinning at Jade.

Her parents had texted her frequently during her trip, demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. If they could see her now, she thought, standing at the altar in a make-shift church about to marry a terminally ill man when she was actually in love with his brother, they’d have tried to talk some sense into her. She wouldn’t have listened, but she did feel a tinge of regret that they weren’t there.

Although it was merely part of the ceremony, when the reverend asked if there was any reason why the couple shouldn’t marry, a tiny part of Jade hoped that Mark might take it as a prompt to profess his undying love for her. But that only happened in romcoms and she knew she wasn’t going to get her happy ever after.

Once they’d been declared man and wife, Jade braced herself before she kissed her husband, under Mark’s watchful eye.

Jade had come to Australia by following her heart. But in marrying Kevin, she had followed her head – or, more specifically, her conscience. She had put someone else’s needs above her own and, for a moment, she allowed herself to feel proud of that selfless act.

However, it didn’t stop a little voice in the back of her mind from telling her she’d made a mistake. She’d married the wrong brother.

But there was little she could do about it now.