The House On Burra Burra Lane (25 page)

Then there’d be nothing in her world but her cat and an empty bed. Exactly the way she’d started out.

Outside, she mentally ran through the damage list. The shed roof had blown off, the doors were hanging by their hinges after all, but the walls stood solid and upright. The earth floor was muddy, but she hadn’t begun using it for storage because she was waiting for concrete to be poured, so all that was ruined was the base of the wooden walls and the legs of the makeshift work table.

The new porch attached to her kitchen was fully intact. Her kitchen had flooded and one of the cabinets had ripped from the wall and hung loose on its last remaining bracket, the contents tipped to the floor, smashed. The terrible sounds they’d heard— not his ghosts, just her kitchen cupboard.

Most of the flood water had run off through the skirting boards and she’d mopped the remainder with towels and the sheets, which would need washing. Another task. Another hour or two to keep her hands busy. They’d dry easily, the sun was out this morning as though it had only disappeared for a moment, not an entire day.

Her kitchen garden was boggy, still holding a deluge of slushy water. She’d buried three chickens. Done her best to check the remainder, more content to stay in their cubbyhouse than flutter or peck at the food she’d put down, but they seemed unharmed. She’d keep an eye on them, and if any showed signs of stress or injury … she’d have to take them to Ethan.

She swivelled in the mud, the worry of having to do that ballooning in her chest.

She breathed slowly, deeply, concentrating on getting herself together. She was no use to herself if she broke down. ‘I won’t,’ she murmured.

She turned and stumbled so fast when she heard a ute on the lane that she fell on her backside, her hands and the muddy earth cushioning her fall.

She grappled quickly to stand, wiping her hands on her thighs. It was too soon to see him.

Grandy’s ute turned into her driveway, with Julia driving and Grandy in the passenger seat.

Relief filtered through her.

‘How’re you doin’?’ Grandy called from his open window.

Sammy walked to the vehicle as it pulled up. Grandy got out of the car with the ease of a much younger man. His long body, obviously once thickened with muscle and grizzly strength, still held masculine power. He used his walking stick to lever himself upright, his large hand covering the curve of the handle. He breathed deeply, his chest expanding, and looked at Sammy, his watery blue eyes narrowed.

She’d always met him when he was sitting down, his substantial height and accompanying breadth understated. He wore his old-man power with pride still, but what a magnificent looking younger man he must have been.

Julia got out of the driver’s side as Grandy winked at Sammy. She smiled at him, and the reprieve she’d been given. Thank God it wasn’t Ethan.

‘How are you holding up?’ he asked.

‘Not bad. It’s good of you to visit.’

‘Got a big bet down on you, Samantha. Wanted to make sure you were okay.’

Sammy smiled grimly. ‘The shed roof blew off. The kitchen’s flooded but I’ve got the electricity back on.’ She nodded at Julia, who was dressed in an emerald-green track suit with a white T-shirt beneath the zipped jacket. Her nails were the same colour as her trendy ensemble. Her sneakers were dirty though. Even Julia couldn’t evade a little mud in desperate situations.

‘I’m doing the rounds,’ Grandy said. ‘Checking up on people and kin. Just came from Ethan’s place. He’s out though, at the farms. He’s kind of preoccupied.’

Sammy took her gaze to her hands and concentrated on pushing the mud from between her fingers until she found the courage to look up. Grandy’s features were too keen. The creases at the corners of his eyes deepened as he gazed into Sammy’s eyes, studying and processing. She swallowed, brushed away her uneasiness with a crooked smile. ‘My cat came home, I’m grateful for that above everything.’

Her nodded. ‘And yer chooks?’

‘It’s difficult to tell. I lost three, but the others seem all right.’

‘I’ll take a look for you,’ he said, walking around her. ‘If there’s any injured, I’ll pop ‘em over to Ethan for you. Save you a trip. Wouldn’t want you to have to go looking for him.’

She stilled as Grandy walked to her chicken coop with his long, careful stride, his cane used for his left leg. His big boots sank into the mud but didn’t hinder his progress.
Had he just told her he knew?

‘Sorry about Ethan.’

Sammy span around and looked Julia in the eye. Did the young girl know already that she’d argued with Ethan?
How did they know?
She swallowed. She had to use her head to absorb and adapt to any new problem.

Julia jabbed her chin upwards. ‘The other day,’ she explained. ‘When I said I was meeting him for a date that night.’ She paused, then rushed on quickly. ‘I was only having some fun, well, having Darren Collins on really, not Ethan. He was real angry with me.’

‘Ethan was?’ Sammy couldn’t imagine an angry Ethan. Then she remembered the tone of voice he’d used last night as he refused her marriage proposal.

‘Told me off, more or less, for letting you think he was meeting me. So I just wanted to say I’m sorry. He didn’t ask me out, he never would. Said there was someone else he wanted to be with.’

Heartache and lack of sleep seemed to rise from the bedrock of Sammy’s heart.

‘It was you, Sammy. Ethan wants you, he told me so.’

And Julia would have told others. Sammy forced her mind to race ahead. Her argument with Ethan wouldn’t be something easy to cover now. Speculation would be drawn and protracted as it escalated. Still, it was better than the truth. No matter how much Ethan had endured gossiping and chattering behind his back, he wouldn’t want the town knowing he’d slept with the new woman.

‘And I thought you two must have got it together yesterday.’

Sammy shot her concentration back to Julia.

‘I was on my way home after the storm, and I saw his ute sitting here at your place. About one o’clock.’

Sammy nodded. ‘He did come over. Then he left.’

‘Yeah, I know. He was at Darren’s mother’s house for while, tending her dog.’

Sammy moistened her mouth, unsure how much Julia knew. Nothing from Ethan, that was a fact she didn’t have to wonder about. And he’d only been at her place—in her bedroom—an hour, no longer.

‘It’s just that on my way back from Darren’s place I saw him here again … later that night. Close to midnight.’

Damn.

‘He drove out of here so fast I thought there must be a fire somewhere.’

‘He was called away,’ Sammy explained, lying one word at a time. ‘He had to go to the animals … his horses, and others, of course.’

‘Yeah.’ Julia looked quizzical. ‘I know. He was up all last night, out at the farms and then back to his surgery. There were quite a few injured animals.’

So they’d both been up all night. Except Ethan had had his work to keep him occupied. She shook herself out of that shamefulness. He was a man whose skill was needed, a man who would never shun his professional responsibilities.

‘I asked him if he’d been up to check on your place, and he said no, he hadn’t had time. I thought that was strange, given I’d seen him here twice.’

Pain bogged in her chest. She’d foolishly thought she would be the one to let the story of an argument leak. It looked like Ethan had already put his version out there, and that he’d made it sound like he hadn’t cared about how the house on Burra Burra Lane might have fared, or its owner. As though there were no pull for him in that direction.

‘Anyway,’ Julia continued. ‘I hope what I did hasn’t ruined anything between you—like, I hope you haven’t argued or anything over me.’

‘No, Julia. We haven’t argued over you.’

‘I’m not the only one to have seen his ute here yesterday. A few people are saying he spent the night with you. Well, what they mean is, slept with you.’ Julia looked remorseful more than interested. ‘Just so you know. Best to be armed to the teeth in this town when they start a rumour.’

It was a shot of friendship and Sammy took it. ‘Thank you, Julia.’ She hadn’t expected it from this particular source, but it was a comfort. Julia and Grandy had cared enough to visit her.

‘Can’t wait to get out of this place,’ Julia said, studying Grandy and the chooks. ‘Hard enough to get a boyfriend; look at the extent I had to go to, getting Ethan involved.’

Sammy felt sorry for her suddenly. It must be hard, being so young and so pretty, having nothing to do with her time other than change the colour of her nail polish and worry a boy about the possibility of a man.

‘Have you thought about doing a correspondence course, Julia? Something to do with the beauty industry, perhaps.’

One finely waxed eyebrow rose. ‘I’m not interested in any correspondence courses, that’ll keep me here. I was thinking about beauty therapy though. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t,’ Sammy said, hiding her surprise at the response. Julia was born for the beauty industry and undoubtedly had the talent for it. Her hair was fresh and shiny, her eyelashes false but perfectly glued in place. If it wasn’t for her mud splattered sneakers, Sammy would be questioning whether or not the storm had been a dream.

‘Thought I’d check out what’s on offer in Canberra next month,’ Julia said. ‘Can’t do it this month, got to keep Darren interested.’

Canberra
. ‘That’s a great idea.’ There was so much to finalise. She had her mother to worry about, and Oliver to appease. Canberra was the way to Sydney. ‘Julia, can I ask you a favour?’

‘Sure. What?’

‘I need a lift into town sometime soon. I need to go to Canberra and I don’t want to take my car, it’s playing up.’ If she was going to sneak out of town, she didn’t want to bump into Ethan, and didn’t want him seeing her car parked in town all day. Didn’t want him to know where she was going, or what she was planning.

‘Okay.’ Julia said. ‘What day? The buses go at nine-thirty each morning.’

E
than pushed through the door of the grocer’s and stood a moment on the walkway, letting the sun hit his face. The morning was quiet, nothing but the grocer’s and the petrol station open for business yet.

Five days. He hadn’t seen her for five days.

He gripped the wrapped kilo of sausages in his hand and glanced down at his side, at the tin buckets resting on metal stands in front of the windows, filled with bouquets of flowers. Daises, a lot of greenery and a few sad looking roses. None of them offering anything near the kind of apology he needed them for. It would take a truckload of flowers. A whole field.

She’d asked him to marry her. She’d said she loved him. No …
had
loved him,
had
fallen in love with him … what did she feel now? He couldn’t marry her. She wanted children—he didn’t dare contemplate bringing children into the world, hadn’t even considered it before Sammy. She’d felt enough for him to spend her life with him though. Unless she was goading him again. It might have been some female compassion—get the poor man back on track, he’s cracked, wired, lost it.

‘Back again, Ethan?’

He lifted a stiff hand to Mrs Tam across the street.

‘Need more petrol?’ she called.

He raised his chin as a response and turned away. So what that he’d been popping into town every few hours for the last five days. That was his business. So what that he had eight cans of spare fuel stored at the back of his house. He also had three cartons of beer from the Bar & Grill bottle shop, two bottles of whisky and a fine looking rosé sparkling wine Sammy might like. Why he’d bought that, he didn’t know—they weren’t talking so he couldn’t ask what she liked, and he didn’t drink much himself. ‘Stupid,’ he mumbled. Five days and not once had he spotted her car in town. That’s what he’d been looking for, he wasn’t about to deny it to himself.

He was poking around looking for another chance. God only knew what he’d do if he got one. He wouldn’t telephone her again. She hadn’t answered his calls or his messages. He wouldn’t find the words of explanation and apology now, in any case. Or he’d get angry if she didn’t listen, if she slammed the telephone down on him, or threw it across the kitchen the way she had when she’d spoken to her mother. He wasn’t going to her house either. No way would he put himself in the position of being told to leave.

He glanced down at the roses. He’d let too much time pass anyway, why would she listen to him now? He should have been knocking on her door the next day.

His poor darling.
What had he done to her?
He’d told her he loved her … hadn’t he? Had he said it? He couldn’t remember, his mind was scrambled.

‘You planning a war?’

He turned to the couple exiting the grocer’s behind him. ‘Mrs Capper, Mr Capper,’ he acknowledged the owners of the B&B at the end of Main Street. Or the beginning, whichever way a person was headed.

‘Or are you just planning a siege down on Burra Burra Lane?’ Rose Capper asked him.

‘Just a few supplies,’ he said, swallowing his discomfort and shifting the sausages to under his arm. ‘Nothing to get all antsy about.’ He’d bought enough tinned goods and meat from the grocer’s to see him through summer, and Rose liked a fight—not in a troublesome way, but she liked to voice her opinion.

Rose gauged him with a raised chin. ‘Just an observation. Keep your shirt on.’

Just as well they didn’t know the truth. That he’d taken a woman to bed, a fifteen minute drive from where he was standing, then left her. That he’d been taken over by a torrent of fear, a child’s nightmare, and a ghostly remembrance of something he’d prefer not to think about. Anger.

Mr Capper rolled his eyes. ‘If I were you, I’d stay single, Ethan. Believe me, you’d be better off in the long term.’

His wife hit him on the arm, but Mr Capper’s smile didn’t budge. ‘Come on,’ Rose said. ‘We’ll leave the man be. He’s got woman trouble to think about.’

That rumbled the irritation in his chest even more. Chances were the town had another tab running. Sammy didn’t deserve the gossiping his actions had placed on her, and he didn’t want them hanging over his head either. He turned on the walkway and stared at the street. She wasn’t his to watch over, and never likely to be, but that didn’t dampen the love and protection he wanted to smother her with. If he ever got that close again.