by Rhyll Biest
The woman’s gaze shifted from Kat to the window. Her almond eyes widened. ‘Oh, yowza. That’s a lot of man.’ Though her voice was hushed with respect, the words tumbled out so quickly that they formed one long train, leaving Kat to unhitch each carriage to make sense of it.
‘I was just passing by …’ The excuse sounded lame even to Kat’s ears.
The woman smiled, winked. ‘No law against looking, is there?’
Unhitch, unhitch, unhitch. Alright then. ‘I’m Kat.’ She almost held out her hand to shake, caught sight of the rubber gloves the other woman wore and reconsidered.
The other woman nodded. ‘Phoebe.’ She cocked her head. ‘You must be the new RSPCA inspector?’
Unhitch, unhitch, unhitch. ‘That’s me.’ Big smile.
Phoebe raised her brows. ‘A little thing like you?’
She shoved down annoyance. ‘Yup, a little thing like me. What do you do at the wildlife sanctuary?’
‘I’m a wildlife carer.’ She looked down at her apron. ‘And sometimes, apparently, I can be talked into helping clean the enclosures.’
It was getting easier to unhitch each word from the other. Kat glanced at the abstract art on Phoebe’s apron fabric before her gaze returned outdoors once more. The calf gambolled, kicking up its heels as Luka slipped and fell in the mud with a splash. ‘One question, what’s a calf doing in a wildlife sanctuary?’
‘Freddy? He belongs to Rasputin, our wombat.’
A wombat and a calf? ‘They’re friends?’
Phoebe nodded. ‘It’s the bromance of the century. Split them up and they sulk.’
‘I guess there are weirder romances out there.’ Take her own, for example. She watched Luka get to his feet.
***
Luka let the water sluice over his head, washing the mud away. Sure he’d be sitting in the dunking booth within a half hour, but no one would appreciate it if he filled the pool with mud.
Whereas Kat had been full of appreciation for the way he looked.
He’d caught her, along with another woman, ogling him through a window as he and Nick had tried to clean up Rasputin’s boyfriend. What a warm, happy feeling that had given him—and an urge to nail her the second they got home.
Things had been better since he’d stopped trying to protect her. It was like biting into tin foil when she came home late without explaining where she’d been—frequently ripe with the perfume of felonies—but he let it slide without a word. It felt all wrong but he managed it. Just.
Because, oh man, was it worth it when they hit the sheets.
He liked her a whole lot outside the sheets, too, but found they didn’t talk an awful lot as neither of them was the chatty type. But just being in the same room as Kat—whether playing with Stumpy, cooking a meal, or knocking over some domestic chore—somehow filled him with a weird serenity. Which was insane, as she was the least serene person he knew. That girl knew almost every way known to mankind a person or animal could get sick or killed, and spent most of her time worrying about how to prevent it. He even kept finding hand sanitiser sachets stashed in her bra when he ravished her which was, admittedly, fun.
He turned the tap off and stepped out of the shower cubicle.
No, she wasn’t the serene type at all, and perhaps that was why he could relax, let his guard down, because she was always alert and had pretty much every situation imaginable covered in that gorgeous head of hers. Plus, it was a weight off his shoulders to find that rather than expecting him to protect her, she was protecting him.
When Sharon called asking him to fix her car, Kat had plucked the phone out of his hand and told the receptionist to find a mechanic. When Beth’s friend had called about yet another sheep stuck in the creek on her property, Kat had given her the RSPCA shelter’s phone number and told her to contact an on-duty officer. True she’d also threatened to set a pair of knitted koala booties on fire when they’d tumbled out of the bedside drawer while he was searching for a condom, but that had been a minor disagreement.
Fierceness was in her bones and she was fierce about protecting him. He towelled his hair dry.
But she was also a fierce student, pit-bull keen when it came to practising the techniques from de-escalation training. Sure, part of that was because ‘practice’ often led to sexy times, but Kat also seemed to find the training reassuring, like a hug, which seemed a little odd. He couldn’t work that out but the arrangement definitely worked for him. He liked a strong, capable woman, an equal.
Then there were other things. The night vision goggles in her garage. Like her nocturnal excursions he hadn’t been game to ask about them.
Nick emerged from the next shower cubicle, a towel wrapped around his waist, the fluorescent lights mercilessly exposing his heavily scarred body. He raised his nose to sniff the air. ‘I like that floral-scented soap you’re using, Miss Belovuk.’
‘I grabbed Kat’s by mistake.’ It had been dark when they left home.
‘A likely story. How’re things working out?’
The depth of his reticence to share details surprised him. He and Nick had hung out since school and there wasn’t much they didn’t tell one another or talk about. Except Mark’s infidelity. And the fact that Nick was in love with Stacey. ‘Fine. Everything’s good.’
‘Whoa, don’t overwhelm me with details, now.’
Luka’s jaw tightened. ‘What exactly did you want to know?’
Nick’s brows shot up and he scratched his beard. ‘Hey, I’m not asking for anything sordid, I just want to know if things are alright.’
Luka stared at his friend. What he really wanted to ask was whether Kat had helped Nick incinerate stuff as she’d claimed. But what if he didn’t like the answer?
‘Things are alright,’ he said.
Nick shook his head and dropped his towel to pull his clothes on. ‘Sure they are, because you two wild, crazy, oversharing extroverts are just perfect for one another.’
***
A few hours later, despite a mild headache, Kat smiled.
There was, as promised, fairy floss. And clowns, a merry-go-round and a jumping castle. And lots of stalls devoted to teaching people about the care of wildlife.
It was the most festive and pleasant side to Walgarra she’d glimpsed so far. True, the clown costumes were patched in places, and some of the paint on the merry-go-round was chipped, but it was the spirit of the thing that surprised.
People actually smiled.
Still, she was looking forward to putting her feet up in a couple of hours when the fundraiser ended, and she guessed that the others were looking forward to that too.
Evert was supervising the pony rides, Stacey reading tarot cards, and Kat collecting money for the dunking pool. A two-dollar ticket bought a player three tennis balls. The aim was to hit a steel bull’s eye hard enough with a tennis ball to make the person sitting in the dunking booth topple into the pool below.
When the council mayor had taken his hour-long turn in the dunking booth ticket sales had spiked. The town librarian, a woman of generous mammary proportions, had also been popular.
And now it was Luka’s turn. He stood by the booth, handsome in board shorts and sun shirt, and a growing number of women gathered to watch.
Kat patted the side of the dunking contraption, cleared her throat to assume a sultry voice. ‘Ready to get wet?’
He claimed a kiss before climbing into the booth. ‘I think I asked you the same thing just last night.’ He winked.
She pursed her lips. ‘Really, Officer Belovuk, I don’t know what to say. Let me hand you my knickers and I’ll be on my way.’
He grinned as she closed the door to the dunking booth between them, kissed two fingers and pressed them against the Perspex.
Back at the ticket counter she collected money from residents eager to see the local fuzz get dipped. They lined up to pelt their tennis balls and a storm of yellow hail soon flew Luka’s way.
Just as well he was a secure, self-assured
kind of guy, otherwise the speed and enthusiasm with which those tennis balls were being lobbed might hurt his feelings.
The thought left a smile curving her lips.
Whack! A second ball pitched—and there was a wind up and everything—by a sturdy teen boy hit the bullseye and Luka dropped into the pool. Kat stepped away from the ticket counter to help him climb back inside the booth. Droplets ran down his lean cheeks, dripped from his square jaw onto the sun shirt moulded over his magnificent pecs. He looked good wet. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about the fact that he was Iron Man material, capable of amassing a small fortune by endorsing nutritionally bankrupt breakfast cereal. She cast a longing look over his frame.
He caught the look, raised an eyebrow, but then his gaze drifted and something wiped his face blank. She followed the direction of his eyes and saw it.
A discarded cap lying on the ground.
Oh, Luka.
He’d told her about finding Mark Fairly’s cap before finding the body, how every cap was now a slap in the face.
All that guilt, carried around like an unborn baby. No, something much more permanent than a baby.
Sympathy forced her heart into a weird little tap-dance. Such was her inner commotion that when a small, dark object whizzed through the air at high velocity she mistook it for a swallow or a swift.
But when the golf ball-sized object smacked into Luka’s temple with a dull thud, the bloom of blood set her straight.
Shit. Oh, shit. He’d been hit by a rock.
His head rocked sideways before, eyes rolling up, he dropped face first into the water with a splash.
The air turned hot then cold before a sharp, cold blade of shock sliced through her.
Her hand went to her mouth. Someone in the crowed screamed.
Fuck.
Move, bitch, Galenka hissed.
She sprinted to the side of the pool. He could drown. He could have concussion. He could get brain damage. She didn’t bother with the steps, rather, vaulted over the side of the pool in a messy tangle of legs.
Her clothing dragged her backwards as she waded towards him but the grip on her sneakers helped her to gain some traction on the bottom of the pool. What if he’d already been without oxygen too long?
She grabbed two fistfuls of sun shirt and heaved.
Be alive. Be alright.
With her help he righted himself and gave several explosive coughs. Water in his lungs. She felt like she’d drowned along with him. What a crazy thing. She’d bet he’d pictured dying in a gun fight, or during a high speed chase, but never at a fundraiser in the dunking pool.
Fucking Stacey. Kat was going to rip her arms off. And Luka was never doing the dunking pool again. It was unhygienic, anyway. The brackish dam water really did stink.
‘You okay?’
His colour didn’t look good to her but maybe that was because of the diluted blood fanning his cheek. Or because he’d been hit in the head with a rock.
She took his hand, squeezed it so tightly her joints protested.
After a startled moment he squeezed it back. ‘Hey, it’s fine. Really. I’m fine.’ He kissed the back of her hand. Frowned. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘I can’t believe someone fucking stoned you.’ Fucking stoned him. On a nice, sunny day not too far from the jumping castle. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ She slung his arm over her shoulder to lead him to the side of the pool, all the time scanning the crowd, looking for anyone else about to throw missiles. If she spotted a threat, she would go for them, gouge their eyes out with her thumbs. It would be the last fucking thing they ever did.
She stared into strangers’ eyes. Was it you?
The man hurriedly looked away.
All she found was a sea of curious faces, more than a few tinged with schadenfreude, and one or two spectators with their phones raised to capture the moment. They were lucky they were out of reach, otherwise she would have helped them discover whether or not a mobile phone camera could be used for a colonoscopy.
A flash of black leather caught her eye and she strained to track its movement through the crowd. One of Grinder’s bikers?
Luka wavered and she braced against his shifting weight, lost sight of the jacket. Shit biscuits, he was heavy.
Fear sliced through her once more as she relived the moment he’d gone down. Knocked out cold.
Luka recovered enough to negotiate the pool steps on his own which was a good thing because there was no way she would have been able to lift him out of the pool. Not unless she had one of those ‘mother lifts car off child’ adrenaline moments.
She climbed out after him, her wet clothes weighing her down and making ridiculous sucking noises as she moved. Her socks squished in her shoes.
He stared at her feet. ‘I can’t believe you jumped in the pool with all your clothes on.’
And she couldn’t believe how funny his voice sounded, like he’d been strangled. Was he going into shock?
He looked pale, disoriented. And Jesus the cut on his head was bleeding everywhere, as if he’d been in a car crash instead of catching a rock with his head.
A high, strained voice interrupted her assessment.
‘Luka, oh my god, Luka.’
Kat tracked the hysterics to Sharon, who stood at the front of the crowd, a hand pressed to her throat, her face pale beneath her bright red beehive— almost as pale as the white scarf around her throat.
Scarf. Bandage. ‘Give me your scarf.’ Thank Christ for the receptionist’s fashionista tendencies, no one else in Walgarra would wear a scarf in this heat.
The receptionist blinked.
‘Give it to me.’ Kat held out her hand. She focused a look on Sharon that said if you don’t give me that fucking scarf right fucking now I’ll rip it off your annoying neck myself.
Sharon fumbled with the knot, handed it over, her gaze fixed on Luka.
‘Thanks, Sharon.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry ‘bout your scarf.’
For fuck’s sake. ‘Go find the ambulance officers,’ she told Sharon.
The receptionist hesitated, eyes still all over Luka.
‘Now!’
Luka frowned. ‘Don’t—’
‘Shut up.’ Kat folded the scarf
‘Excuse me?’
She pressed the folded scarf against the deep cut. It wasn’t sterile, which she would have preferred, but—regrettably—she didn’t have her first aid kit with her. ‘I. Said. Shut. Up. Now, sit down and hold that there.’
‘Why do I need to sit?’
‘In case you feel unsteady. Can you do that? Sit, I mean.’
He put his hand over hers. ‘Of course I can. Don’t worry, I’m fine.’
The wired energy zipping through her veins made her want to shake his hand off, which was wrong, but anger had left her jittery. ‘You’re not fine, you passed out, I saw it. You could have drowned.’
‘If I passed out it was only for a second. And I didn’t drown.’ His eyes met hers, and while she could have got lost in the confusing mix of regard and reassurance in his eyes, she didn’t like the look of his pupils, the way one appeared slightly bigger than the other.
Nor did she like the light sheen of sweat covering his too-pale face. ‘Are you arguing with me?’
‘Yes.’ His lips twitched. ‘There could be make-up sex in it for me later.’
Unbelievable.
She focused on the important question, since he seemed too dazed to do so. ‘Did you see the arsehole who threw the rock?’
He shook his head, winced. ‘No. Did you see anything?’
‘No, sorry.’ Aside from that flash of black leather in the crowd which she wasn’t going to mention. She scanned the crowd for signs of the ambulance officers. What the fuck was taking them so long? Blood had seeped through the folded scarf already. Uncertainty rattled her stomach.
‘Hey.’ He laid a wet hand on her shoulder.
‘What?’ Her eyes met his, their cool, grey, unruffled depths.
> ‘Thanks for jumping in the pool for me.’
His eyes were saying all kinds of crazy things, like ‘you’re the best’ and ‘I’m glad you’re around’. How could he possibly think that? She was the worst, the very worst. She looked away. ‘Any time.’
‘You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.’
She checked the crowd once more. Where were those fucking ambulance officers? ‘What’s that?’
He took several seconds too long to answer and she looked at him, expected to see him smirking or some such as he delivered a corny joke, but instead he looked confused and—if possible—paler than before.
‘Luka?’
He frowned, blinked rapidly several times, grabbed for her. The bloodstained scarf dropped to the grass.
‘Hey.’ He needed that scarf. About to retrieve it she froze as he slumped sideways, his weight dragging her with him. ‘Luka?’
His hands slipped from hers and it was her turn to grab at him. Shit, he was fainting or something.
‘Eyes open. Luka!’ She kept a grip on him until his body began to jerk and flop.
What the? Was he having convulsions? What did that even mean? Something fucking bad. What was she meant to do? ‘Somebody help me.’ She searched the reeling faces of the crowds of onlookers. ‘Someone help me!’
Instead everyone stared, so that her urge was to cover Luka. Even if she couldn’t help him she could shield him from those awful watching eyes stealing his dignity. But maybe her frantic need to foil the eyes of onlookers was less about Luka and more about herself. After all, no girl wanted a crowd of strangers staring at her right at the moment when her mask of uncaring sloughed off. Everyone could see that she cared far too much about the man on the lawn seizing.
The overpowering scent of trampled grass turned her stomach.
She held onto him and counted seven hundred and eighty seconds before two ambulance officers loped over, one pushing a gurney, the other carrying medical equipment.
