‘What about it?’
‘That’s why he doesn’t want us here, isn’t it? Why he won’t look at me.’
Billie, met her son’s troubled gaze. ‘Probably.’
‘Are we going to leave here now?’
‘We’ve always been going to leave here, Cally.’
‘But are we going to leave sooner?’
Billie nodded. ‘I think we should. Don’t you?’
‘But we’re not them.’ Her son’s hand had fallen to Blue’s wiry coat. ‘Can’t you make him see that we’re not them?’
Billie didn’t have a whole lot to say to Adam on her return from the kid’s bedroom. Her eyes looked troubled, her luscious mouth no longer tilted towards a smile.
‘Kid okay?’ he asked gruffly.
‘He’s fine.’
She went to the kitchen door and opened it wide. The wind was blowing from the east and the rain was nearly horizontal with the force of it but this side of the house was protected from both wind and rain. She stepped out onto the verandah as thunder rumbled and lightning split the sky into pieces. She didn’t jump or come back inside, just leaned against the wall and stood there watching.
‘You’re not scared?’ he asked before he could bite back the words.
‘No.’ She tilted her head towards the rain. ‘There’s plenty in this world that frightens me, Kincaid. But not this.’
‘The isolation doesn’t bother you?’
‘I get an eight-hour dose of the public most every day. By the time I get back out here I crave the isolation. Granted, it’s not what I’m used to but it’s exactly what I need.’
‘Lonely for the boy, though.’
‘The boy’s name is Cal.’ Billie turned to look at him and her eyes were sad. ‘Don’t sweat it, Kincaid. We’re leaving tomorrow. Living out here’s not working out.’
Adam waited for relief to pour through him at her words. He wanted her to leave; he’d wanted it from the start. But the relief he’d been counting on did not come.
‘Sometimes when the lightning hits the ridge it lights up the whole valley,’ he said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘You’re not scared?’
Billie smiled wryly. ‘You asked that before, and the answer’s still no. I don’t know what you see when you look at me, Kincaid. But you’re not seeing me.’
Maybe she had a point. ‘Storm’s easing,’ he said gruffly. ‘I better go.’
The storm was not easing, but she didn’t call him on it. Just walked him to the front steps and stood there with the rain spraying onto the verandah in gusts, wetting her clothes, wetting her skin. She crossed her arms in front of her.
‘Kincaid,’ she said softly when he was halfway down the steps. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
She knew.
Someone must’ve told her. He turned back and saw a compassion he didn’t want to see. Pity that he wanted no part of. And he let himself feel anger because it was better than feeling desire for her. He always had been good at denial.
‘What do you know about loss? What the hell do
you
know about loss?’
‘More than you think.’
They stood there like that for what seemed like an eternity, and the storm around them was no match for the one within. Anger and need, both of them finding focus on Billie Temple’s face and the exquisite smoothness of her skin, the length of her lashes and the soft curve of generous lips.
He wanted to taste her; he wanted her beneath him, wrapped around him. She was so close. And then she took a quick, shaky breath and his focus fixed wholly on her mouth.
No.
He backed off the steps, clinging to what little control he had left and this time she didn’t follow.
‘There’s no looking forward for you, is there?’ she said. ‘You only ever look back.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘Go home, Kincaid.’ Her voice skidded over his skin, low and weary. ‘Wanting you is a mistake – one I don’t feel like paying for. Go home and dream about your dead wife and son.’
When Adam pulled up at the cottage the next morning, Cal was sitting on the verandah with a row of bulging blue plastic bags in a row beside him.
‘You’ve come for Blue,’ said the boy in a voice stripped of emotion. Such careful words. Such a stark contrast to the haunting strains of violin music that drifted from the front room of the house, desolate and exquisite.
‘No.’ Not yet, at any rate. ‘I’ve come to speak with your mother. Is that her playing?’
The boy nodded.
‘Think I should interrupt?’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I figured. Hold the packing,’ he said, and rapped on the wooden boards beside the door and stepped inside. He found Billie in a bedroom, wearing baggy jeans and a yellow cotton top that only just skimmed her belt. Sunlight streamed in through the crack in the curtains and the bed was a mess of tangled sheets and pillows. She looked like she’d stepped out of bed and into the music and he thought about backing out of the room and taking his lame explanation for his behaviour last night with him.
But the music caught him and held him as it peaked, lingered, before drifting away on one last mournful note. She brought violin and bow down to her side, opened her eyes and there was no surprise in them as her steady gaze met his own.
‘You play very well,’ he said and she just smiled and shook her head.
‘Not really. You should have heard my parents play,’ she said as she set the violin gently on the bed and put her hands to the back pocket of her faded blue jeans. ‘Music owned them. Consumed them. It doesn’t own me.’
‘Your parents are dead?’
Billie nodded. ‘Car accident when I was seventeen.’
‘And your husband?’
‘I was never married. If it’s Cal’s father you’re asking about, he died too.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Seventeen.’ She eyed him steadily. ‘Heard enough?’
Not quite. ‘Who took you in?’
‘I got a job in a pub in exchange for board and below minimum wage. I got by. Gave birth to my son. Grew up. And set to building us a better life, one step at a time. I’m still building it.’
Adam looked around the room, at the couple of boxes of belongings, the blue garbage bags stuffed with clothes. She didn’t have much stuff. ‘Is this all you’ve got?’
‘Don’t judge me, farm boy. Until you’ve been hungry and homeless with no one to turn to, you don’t have the right.’ She looked tired. Vulnerable. Utterly feminine.
‘Stay.’ The word was out of his mouth before he knew it was even there. He took a deep breath. ‘Stay on here, if that’s what you want. If you think you can manage. There’s no need for you to go.’
‘Adam—
He waited.
‘I’m sorry for what I said to you last night,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Everyone grieves in their own way and at their own pace and I had no right to question that. You deserve better from me than that.’
‘About last night.’ What the hell could he say to her that would make any sense? ‘I wasn’t tracking very well last night. Caroline was very… needy, and I wasn’t always there for her. Last night, the circumstances, the similarities… I didn’t want you on that road in the storm and by the time we got home I was wound so tight I couldn’t see straight.’
Adam shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away from the understanding in those glorious brown eyes, looked at the window, looked at the walls, anywhere but at Billie. ‘Eyesight’s clearer now.’
‘What about your hearing?’ she said with the ghost of a smile. ‘If I remember correctly I also mentioned wanting you last night. Where does that fit into the grand scheme of things?’
Good question. Hard question; given his attraction to her. But he wasn’t ready. His head wasn’t ready for a ready-made family no matter how much his body protested. ‘The way I remember it you also said you wouldn’t be following through on that notion,’ he said. ‘We could always try being friends.’
‘Friends,’ she echoed. ‘And how many women friends do you have, exactly?’
‘You’d be the first.’
‘Doesn’t bode well, does it?’ Billie looked pensively around the room, her gaze lingering on the garbage bags. ‘I want a six-month lease with the standard out clause for both of us.’
‘Not very trusting, are you?’
‘You change your mind a lot,’ she said simply. ‘I want security for myself and my son. A better life than the one I left behind. That’s the master plan.’
Adam had entertained a master plan once. It had involved a handful of happy children, a loving wife and a thriving farm. Hard to say when he’d last believed in his ability to make such a plan happen. ‘I’m heading into town. You want a lift?’
‘Yes.’ Billie looked down at the clothes she had on. ‘I need to get changed first.’
Adam looked too and very quickly looked away. ‘I’ll wait outside.’
‘Yes, my friend,’ she said wryly. ‘That’d be good too.’
‘New season Granny Smith's from Puddledock,’ said Roly later that afternoon as he set the box of apples on the kitchen bench later that afternoon. ‘I had them delivered,’ he said to Maude. ‘Figured you might have a use for them.’
‘You want me to make apple pies for you, Roland Stuart, you’re going to have to ask,’ said Maude as she fished the topmost apple from the box and quartered and cored it in a flash. She handed a quarter each to Billie and Cal, and took a nibble of another piece herself. ‘Well, at least they’re sweet.’
‘Unlike some,’ muttered Roly and won from Maude a steely glare.
Roly turned to Billie. ‘Are your tyres still up?’
‘Yes.’ Roly had pumped them back up this morning, and so far, they hadn’t gone down again.’
‘We don’t often get those kind of pranks around here,’ he said with a handsome frown. ‘You park that car round the front where we can see it from now on.’
‘Will do.’
Roly turned back to Maude. ‘So… do you think you’ll have time to make up some apple pies in time for tonight?’
‘Not without help.’
‘I could help,’ said Cal.
‘Thanks, pumpkin. You can help me with the pastry.’ Maude fixed Roly with a stern gaze. ‘I could use some more help.’
‘I suppose I could give you a hand.’ Roly’s offer of assistance was substantially less enthusiastic than Cal’s.
Maude sized him up, folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘First you wash your hands,’ she said, with what Billie could only describe as sadistic pleasure. ‘Then you can start peeling apples.’
‘Ah, you know what? It’s pretty busy out front. Billie’s probably going to need my help.’
Maude stuck a paring knife into the nearest apple, and upended a huge cooking pot on top of the box. ‘You can take them with you.’
‘You’re a cruel woman, Maudie,’ said Roly. ‘You used to be such a sweet thing when you were younger. I think life sucked all the joy out of you and there’s nothing left but sourness.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Maude. ‘The thought of you standing there at the bar, peeling that big box of apples, just fills me with pleasure.’ She opened the kitchen door, winked at Billie, gave Roly a beatific smile, and waved him out.
Billie followed Roly out front only to find customers scarce and business slow.
‘Busy, you said,’ she commented dryly.
‘Bound to pick up,’ said Roly, eyeing the apples balefully.
‘You want me to do them?’ she said.
‘And give her even more ammunition? I don’t think so.’
Business stayed slow while Roly peeled and chopped his way through the apples, his actions swift and surprisingly deft. ‘I like to cook,’ he said. ‘Always have done. Even before Edna passed away I used to do a lot of the cooking. Never had quite the knack for it that Maude does, though. One thing that woman can do is cook.’
Billie was busy stacking bottled beer into the display fridge behind the bar when a woman in her early sixties wafted in on a wave of expensive perfume. She wore a beautifully cut mint green suit, a tailored white blouse and had a coiffed, grey-blond hairdo. She wore diamonds on her fingers and pearls around her throat. Big glossy pearls that had to be genuine because Billie couldn’t imagine this woman wearing anything that wasn’t.
‘Rrroland,’ the woman purred, her vowel sounds the product of a very expensive education. ‘You’re looking
so
well.’
Billie spared a glance for Rrroland and decided that he was looking distinctly uncomfortable, but, ‘Celia,’ he replied courteously, paring knife and half-peeled apple still in hand. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Actually, I’m looking for Maude.’
‘In the kitchen,’ said Roly. ‘I’ll get Billie to take you through.’ He motioned her over.
‘You must be Rrroland’s new girl,’ said the elegant Celia, offering up a frigid smile.
‘If you mean his new manager, then yes. Billie Temple.’ Billie held out her hand. ‘Are you here on business, Ms, er –?
‘Copeton. Celia Copeton.’ Celia ignored the hand. ‘I’m president of the Country Women’s Association. Maude missed last night’s meeting so I thought I’d drop by with the minutes.’
‘I’ll take you through,’ said Billie.
‘And stay there until she’s gone,’ muttered Roly in an undertone as Billie slipped past him. ‘I don’t want any bloodshed.’
Okeydokey, then.
Apparently, Celia knew the way. Billie followed her into the kitchen, baffled by the small town intrigues and figuring that one day in, say, twenty years time she might be up to speed on them.
‘There you are, Maude.’ Celia’s voice was smooth, cultured, and icy enough to freeze gin. ‘Rrroland said I’d find you in here. I have the minutes of last night’s meeting for you. Such a pity you couldn’t attend.’
‘Why, thank you, Celia.’ Maude’s voice was dry, very dry. ‘You can leave them on the counter.’
But Celia Copeton did nothing of the sort. Instead, she turned to Billie. ‘I hear you’re living out at Casey’s Ridge with Adam. You and your boy.’ Her pale blue gaze rested briefly on Cal who was busily cutting pastry circles at the end of the counter. ‘And his father is…
‘Dead,’ answered Billie curtly. ‘And yes, I’m renting the cottage.’ Which to her way of thinking was a far cry from
living out at Casey’s Ridge with Adam
. ‘It’s a beautiful spot.’
‘Oh, but you couldn’t possibly enjoy living all the way out there,’ said Celia with a delicate shudder. ‘I’ll ask around for you and see if there’s anything else available. Often it’s just a matter of knowing the right people. Of course, not everyone wants the bother of tenants who may prove completely unsuitable. A single mother with an unusual profession…’ Celia’s smile was sharp as a blade. ‘Let’s just say that people could be forgiven for reserving their judgment.’