‘Let’s,’ replied Billie. ‘But you don’t need to bother looking for accommodation on our behalf. We’re quite comfortable where we are. Was there anything else you wanted?’
‘No, just delivering the minutes from the meeting.’ Celia fussed around in her handbag, and finally came up with the papers. ‘I do hope you can make the next meeting, Maude. We need you on the show committee.’
‘I’ll be busy,’ said Maude.
‘Oh, yes. Your little job making pies.’ Celia Copeton wrinkled her nose and looked around the old but spotlessly clean kitchen. ‘I can’t imagine why you bother.’
‘No, probably not,’ said Maude. ‘Tell Roly to bring the apples in on your way out,’ Maude added, and turned away to tend to the simmering saucepan on the stove.
Celia Copeton didn’t like being relegated to messenger. She huffed, she primped, and with a glacial glare that encompassed them all she left, her court shoes clicking importantly on the wooden floorboards as she made her exit.
‘Phew,’ said Cal. ‘What was that smell?’
‘Vitriol,’ said Billie.
‘I daresay she came to look you over,’ Maude told her.
‘Then let’s hope she doesn’t need another look because I didn’t enjoy the experience,’ said Billie. ‘What a toxic woman.’
‘Every town has one,’ said Maude. ‘But our Celia’s a particularly fine example. Oh, and Billie? There’s something else you should probably know about Celia Copeton.’
Billie waited.
‘She’s Adam’s mother-in-law.’
With Cal settling well at school, Billie soon settled into her own routine. Drop Cal at school at eight-thirty, head for the pub, spend a couple of hours doing the restocking and the books and opening up, and then it was back to the cottage for lunch, returning at three and working through until eight, eight-thirty of an evening. Cal came straight to the pub from school, whereupon Maude would request his presence in the kitchen – more in the interests of feeding him than working him, and then he would head for the upstairs television room that Roly had set up in Cal’s honour.
Better than Sydney – less work, more time for play. Time to dream. She was trying very hard to stop dreaming of Adam Kincaid.
Sometimes she even managed it.
And then he turned up at the cottage just on lunchtime one afternoon and knocked on the wall beside the kitchen door; all country polite and thoroughly disheveled.
‘What have you been doing?’ she asked by way of greeting.
‘Fixing a windmill,’ he replied. ‘I was going to ask you to give me a hand.’
‘And now you’re not?’
‘Not when you’re dressed like that.’
She was wearing a sleeveless yellow sundress, one of her favorites because it was soft to the touch, cool against her skin and she knew she looked good in it. Adam, in comparison, was wearing battered boots, jeans, a T-shirt and his hands and forearms were smeared with traces of something dark and oily. ‘I could change clothes,’ she offered.
‘I’ll wait out front,’ he said with a smile that set her heart to racing.
‘What should I wear?’ she called after him.
‘The oldest clothes you’ve got.’
Something black, she decided. Black was a good color for dirty work; and she fished a black T-shirt and fitted black gym shorts from her wardrobe drawer.
‘And work boots, if you have them.’
She had black ankle high lace-ups. Close enough. Grabbing one of Cal’s caps from the wall peg in the hallway, she headed for the door.
Adam was leaning against the ute when his far too attractive tenant finally put in an appearance. Had he been walking anywhere he’d have stumbled over his feet. As it was he was hard pressed to keep his jaw from hitting the dirt and his tongue along with it.
Billie wore black. Black cap, snug black shorts and T-shirt, kick-ass black boots. The rest was skin.
‘What?’ she said when she reached him and he still hadn’t managed to utter a word.
‘Nothing.’
She followed his gaze, looked herself over as if trying to fathom what his problem was. ‘It’s the boots, isn’t it? They’re the only boots I have. I don’t have farm boots.’
‘It’s not the boots.’
‘Then what is it?’
Nothing a cold shower wouldn’t fix. ‘Nothing.’ He strode round to the passenger side and yanked open the door. ‘Get in.’
She got in.
‘So what’s wrong with the windmill?’ she wanted to know as he reversed up the drive and headed across the paddock towards the northern edge of Kincaid land.
‘The pump needs replacing.’ He fiddled with the rear view mirror and swallowed hard on his sense of impending doom. He’d needed the help, yes. He’d been impatient to fix the windmill and he’d known Billie was up at the cottage. Half an hour, that was all he asked of her. It had seemed a reasonable solution at the time.
A favour one might ask of a friend.
Adam slid her a silent, sideways glance and she smiled back at him in sunny fashion and his sense of doom got bigger.
Half-a-dozen silent minutes later they pulled up at the northern windmill – the small dam beside it containing not nearly enough water.
‘I haven’t had any stock in here for a while,’ he said as he opened his door and stepped out into a sea of knee-high spring grass. ‘Keep an eye out for snakes.’
‘You didn’t say anything about snakes!’ Dominatrix Billie paused in the process of getting out of the cab.
Adam grinned and slapped a shapeless felt hat on his head, a little bit of confidence returning as Billie’s waned. ‘Walk loud,’ he said and went to get his tools.
Billie watched with undisguised interest as Adam grabbed a handful of tools and followed an already tramped-down path to the windmill. He manoeuvred a large steel clamp around the centre pipe.
‘This is where I need your help,’ he said. ‘The pump I want to replace is attached to the end of this pipe. The pipe’s a hundred foot long and joined at twenty-foot intervals, so each time we draw up a twenty-foot length I need you to clamp the pipe just below the join so that I can unscrew the top length and take it off. I’ve already disconnected the pipe from the rest of the windmill.’
‘Right.’ It sounded easy enough.
Adam slipped on a pair of rough work gloves, planted his feet either side of the hole and took a firm grip on the pipe. ‘When I start lifting, I want you to loosen the clamp and let the pipe slide up through it. Don’t take the bolt out of the clamp completely, just loosen it and when I tell you to, you tighten the clamp back up, okay?’
‘Got it.’
And Adam started lifting pipe and Billie lost all focus on the job at hand.
She’d seen muscles on bouncers and muscles beneath suits but she’d never seen muscles at work before and the display was downright mouth-watering.
‘To loosen the clamp just use the spanner on the bolt and the nineteen mil ratchet on the nut,’ he said, dragging her attention back to the task at hand.
‘The what?’
‘Those two tools on the ground at your feet.’ Adam was starting to sweat; the muscles in his arms and neck stood out in bold relief and he was well on his way to being covered in grease. ‘Hold the bolt still with the spanner and unscrew the nut anticlockwise with the ratchet,’ he said, straining with the effort of holding onto the pipe.
‘Oh.’ Spanner to the bolt, ratchet to the nut. Finally she got the tools into position, held the spanner firmly and started pushing on the ratchet. The nut refused to turn.
‘The other anticlockwise.’
Right. This time the nut unscrewed, the clamp loosened and slid down the pipe and Adam started hauling pipe out of the ground in earnest. As more pipe emerged, Billie guided it up through the centre of the windmill and then they came to the first join in the pipe and Adam wanted her to ease the clamp over it and tighten it back up.
She picked up the spanner, fumbled it, and finally set it in place.
‘Anytime now would be good,’ he grated, straining with the weight. ‘Otherwise a hundred feet of steel pipe is going to be sitting at the bottom of a hundred-and-fifty foot hole.’
Oh. ‘So how would you get it out?’
‘I’d hire a six-inch scuba diver.’ And then a moment later, when she started unscrewing the nut instead of tightening it. ‘Manual labour isn’t exactly your forte, is it?’
‘I’m more of a conversationalist,’ she conceded cheerfully as she finally got her act together and tightened the nut. ‘Is that tight enough?’
‘God, I hope so,’ he said and released his hold on the pipe. Slowly.
The clamp held.
‘Phew,’ she said. ‘It’s hot out here.’ She’d tried not to get her hands too dirty but her palms were damp and a thin trickle of perspiration was making its way between her shoulder blades.
Adam was covered in sweat and grease and his incredulous gaze was long suffering as he got to work unscrewing the top twenty foot of pipe from the rest. ‘You are such a city girl.’
‘Oh, really? I think I’m adapting rather well to this lifestyle. I’d like to see you do as well in Sydney.’
‘I had a job in Sydney once, as a wool broker.’ Adam flashed her a heartbreaker’s smile. ‘I lasted three weeks.’
‘Why?’
‘Too many people.’ He finished unscrewing the pipe and laid it on the ground beside the windmill. ‘And bosses. Too many of those as well.’
‘Have it your way.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ he said with more than his share of wry charm.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked and Adam eyed the pipe remaining in the hole with not a lot of enthusiasm.
‘Now we do it again.’
By the third piece of pipe, Billie had clockwise and anticlockwise sorted out and the clamping caper under control. As the load grew lighter, so did Adam’s mood. He liked this kind of work, she decided. He’d been born to it.
‘Cal and this other boy, Rafael, have been practicing guitar together in the afternoons in the homework room at the pub,’ she said as Adam took a well-earned break from lifting pipe. He shed his gloves, wiped his hands on his jeans, flexed his arms, rolled his shoulders and Billie gave up trying to appear unaffected and resigned herself to enjoying the view. ‘Rafe’s amazingly talented for a kid who’s never had a music lesson. Now Cal wants to ask another kid who plays violin to come along so that I can teach her a melody line to play with the guitars. And then there’s this kid with a hand-drum.
That
one doesn’t play any other musical instrument at all. Colour me very afraid.’
‘What does Roly think?’
‘You mean about me teaching a group of noisy, hungry kids classic rock in the back room of his pub when I’m supposed to be working the bar?’
‘Yeah,’ said Adam deadpan. ‘That.’
‘I think he’ll need convincing.’
‘I thought you were persuasive.’
‘Not that persuasive.’
‘Ask him in front of Maude.’
‘Oh, that’s sneaky,’ murmured Billie, and Adam smiled, really smiled, and the day glowed suddenly brighter. A woman could get lost in such a smile. Helplessly, hopelessly lost.
Adam cleared his throat and Billie suddenly found the grass at her feet fascinating. She watched surreptitiously as Adam pulled on his gloves and got back into position to haul pipe.
‘Last one,’ he muttered. ‘No need to clamp. Just stay in position in case I start to drop it.’
Which he didn’t, as he lifted the final length of pipe out of the hole with the pump attached to the end of it and laid it on the ground alongside the rest of the pipe.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured. ‘That’s all I need from you.’
And then he sauntered over to the tray-back of the ute, popped the top off a water container and helped himself to the water within. He drank greedily, splashing water over his face, his hair, he damn near had a shower, and then he turned towards her.
‘Drink?’ he offered.
‘I’m not thirsty,’ she said. Much.
Maybe if she sat on her hands on the tail gate of the Toyota and counted the cows in the next paddock, the insane urge to run her hands all over her new friend and landlord would go away.
And wouldn’t that be a relief.
But he came over to where she was sitting and set a fresh bottle of water in her hands. ‘Drink,’ he said softly. ‘It’s hot and you’ve been working in the sun.’
Billie took the bottle from him, careful not to let her fingers touch his. She sipped at the water and then drank more deeply of it.
She handed him back his water, glancing as she did so at wet and clinging T-shirt and the outline of the muscles beneath. At the sprinkling of dark hairs on his forearms and then she let her gaze wander lower, to the waistband of his jeans and lower again. Her hands itched and her mouth went dry. Billie had been in sexual drought for so long now, and Kincaid was one long and lovely drink. Tempting, so tempting, just to reach out and take what she wanted and to hell with trying to figure out how this man would fit into her and Cal’s life and how they might fit into his.
‘I, ah, should probably be getting back soon.’ Billie cleared her throat and tried not to notice that the man wore button-up jeans and that those buttons were starting to show a little strain. ‘Are we done here?’
‘You want the smart answer or the foolish one?’
Was he leaning closer or just putting the water back in the ute?
Both.
‘Um, Adam? As a friend I’d just like to point out that being so close to you is starting to damage my calm.’
‘Seems only reasonable.’ His gaze skittered over her face, lingered on her lips. ‘Given the mess you’re making of mine.’
‘Because I remind you of what you’ve lost,’ she said raggedly.
‘That’s what I thought, at first.’ His eyes searched hers. ‘Not sure that’s it, Billie. I'm not looking to be a husband to anyone. Not looking to be a father. But I am looking at you, and I want what I see. Do you want what you see when you look at me, Billie? Because it seems to me you do.’
Pointless trying to deny it. ‘People don’t always get what they want, Kincaid.’ But her hands moved to his waist and slid beneath his shirt, finding skin hot and silky and it was
her
will that put them there, no one else’s.
Adam shuddered at her touch and then he went still.
His eyes were on her hands at his waist. His breathing appeared to have been interrupted and Billie felt a rush of power deep in her stomach and it twined around a shaft of pure desire. Adam’s hands slid over hers, big hands that gently circled her wrist as if to push her hands away, only he didn’t. Instead he encouraged her to slide her hands up and over the ridges of his stomach until they reached his chest.