He arrived in the dining room, ready to work. He phoned suppliers, negotiated with delivery men, met with planners, and talked tough to the telecoms operator. He didn’t delegate anything to me he wasn’t neck deep in already himself.
I couldn’t figure out his motivation. Why did he care about a dusty hall in a faraway rural town in a country he’d never even visited before? And I mean, he really did care, it wasn’t just a case of flapping his cheque book and exercising his economic power.
He could have built a dozen or more community halls without it touching the sides of the interest on his wealth and without needing to be involved in the details. But he cared about what the Bangalow community wanted, he respected their desire to share the fundraising, and he listened with attention when Cathy fussed over just the right colour red or the mayor wanted to rebuild with heritage features.
Rush Dawson helps local community rebuild hall. It was a headline I’d not expected to see. Yet this was the same guy who deliberately hurt and humiliated his wife. Go figure. Fortunately I couldn’t care less about the ambiguities of Rush Dawson, what I cared about was spending his money well for a good cause.
And spend it I did. We had a mobile base station bought up the house so that all our phones worked and we had wireless internet access, the expensive kind, but all we could get at short notice.
On order we had a Winnebago decked out as a control room, dressing room and cashier’s office. We had portable toilets, and a ladies powder room, a huge transparent plastic marquee, temporary flooring, fairy and disco lights, a stage with a sound system, a temporary kitchen, tables and fancy fabric covered chairs, crockery, cutlery and drapery. We even had a colour scheme, fire-engine red and silver.
With internet access I could keep a regular check on the media. The story about the New Year’s Eve shenanigans had been replaced by a celebrity pregnancy rumour. Toby was pleased and the studio was placated. But the story about Rush and Harriet’s break up was still running strong with pictures of Harriet looking distraught and being comforted by her mother, and every time the story ran, there was a reference to marriage-busting, gold-digging me.
Roger Smyth had even dug up an old photograph of me at a movie premier event to run with the story. In that picture I was wearing a man’s style black satin tuxedo and looked nothing like the kind of lover a rich and famous man would choose.
Rush was keeping a sharp eye on the coverage as well, but instead of showing his pleasure at Harriet’s distress, he read each of the stories with a sort of grim determination which was at odds with the undoubted success of his strategy. He should have been pleased. Instead he just seemed, well, sad.
Late on another jam packed day, when Helen, Cathy and Brick had left for the night and Shane and Arch were in a huddle over musical arrangements, Rush and I were at the dining room table sharing a pot of coffee and a plate of berries Simon left us.
“Andi, can you pass that folder with the building quotes from the structural engineer.” I passed it over and poured us a top up.
Shane called, “Hey, I’m turning in. Night guys,” which started a round of goodnight calls.
“You can leave this to me you know,” I indicated the pile of papers.
“Can’t I help you get the development application completed tonight?” asked Rush.
“Have you forgotten I work for you, not the other way around?”
“I thought we were working together. I thought we were making a good team?”
I stabbed a blueberry with my cake fork. Unexpectedly we were a good team. We had complimentary skills, he was a visionary and I was an expert at the hard yards of making visions reality. His actor’s skills made him a great presenter, he was easy to listen to, but he wasn’t all talk, he was a good listener as well and he wasn’t worried about changing his mind if someone else had a better idea.
On a tight deadline, with a hundred different things to do at once, I’d expected to see his temper flare. I’d expected to be on the short end of his massive ego and sense of entitlement. I’d waited to see more of the man who could design a way to humiliate and scar someone he once loved and it didn’t happen. What I saw, was the man who could charm dogs and Chamber of Commerce presidents.
I’d even found myself enjoying his company. He was incredibly witty, well-read and interested in everything and everyone around him. He was attentive and considerate and fun. But he was also an actor and I’d seen close up how he could change character and it was worth reminding myself that what you saw with Rush wasn’t necessarily what you got.
“We’re not doing too badly,” I said.
“Helen said we’re like two enchiladas.”
“Helen said that?”
“Yeah.”
“Enchiladas?”
“I didn’t get it either,” he shrugged.
“Helen said we were like a couple of Mexican tortillas?” I was pretty sure Helen had never eaten an enchilada in her life.
“Yeah.”
I looked at him across the paper strewn table. He’d flipped the chair around and was sitting backwards on it resting his hands on the top of the chair back. He was barefoot, wearing old jeans with the knees ripped out of them and a loose fitting t-shirt. He didn’t have the sheer masculine brawn of Arch or the energy and flamboyance of Shane but he was undeniably sexy and I realised with a sudden shock, that I was deeply attracted to him and not in a silly schoolgirl way.
I missed sexy in my life. It had been a while since Matt, and we’d not exactly set the bedroom on fire and I’d wasted years suppressing my desire for Michael for fear of losing his friendship. How cosmically unfair was it that I was surrounded by all this masculine beauty and yet I was aching with loneliness? How insanely stupid was it that the one I was most attracted to was the man who’d demonstrated how easily he could be treacherous and cruel?
“Enchiladas eh,” I said.
“Yeah. Spiny enchiladas,” he shrugged again and lifted both palms up.
I realised I’d been staring quite intently at him and embarrassed, jumped up and made a sudden grab for the coffee pot, but I mistimed my lunge across the table and knocked it over. We both jumped up to rescue the files and papers on the table as it tipped and spilled fresh, hot, hazelnut scented coffee everywhere including both our hands.
“Bugger,” he used a word he’d learned from me and shook his hand.
“Ow, ow, ow, quick cold water,” I said, and we both hurried into the kitchen. At the sink, we held our hands under the cold tap water. We stood close, side by side as the water washed away coffee and the redness left by its burn. He was standing slightly behind me with his arm around me to turn the tap. I could feel his hips and legs against my side and his chest against my back as he lent forward. When I turned towards him he stepped back as though he’d been scalded again.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to crowd you,” he said.
“It’s ok. I was just reaching for that tea towel.” I dried my hand and then looked at his. He’d copped the worst of it. “Is that still stinging?”
“A little.” I stood close, held his hand, patting it dry with the towel.
“We’ve been wounded in the line of duty,” he said.
“All for a good cause,” If this was Shane or Arch I might have kissed him better.
“You don’t understand why I wanted to do this do you?” he said, tilting his head to look into my eyes.
“Not really, but it’s a good thing.” What would I do if he kissed me? Where the hell did that thought come from? We were standing too close. I could see he had the longest ever black eyelashes and specs of gold in his green eyes.
“You seem surprised I’d do a good thing,” he said.
I stepped back, I needed space, “Rush do you really want to have this conversation?”
“Yes I do.”
“Couldn’t we just leave it? We’re working well together. Do you want me to go back to feeling like I could poke your eyes out with a blunt stick?”
�
�Is that what you feel like doing?”
Best not to answer that. Standing so close to him I was confused about what I thought.
He filled the silence, “You should stop me. I can get carried away.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“If I said sorry now, would you be ready to listen?”
But the spell was broken, “Where’s that stick?” I said.
As I went back to the dining room to wipe up the spill it came to me, echidnas. Helen thought we were like a couple of spiny echidnas keeping our distance from each other’s barbs. Helen had always been a clever woman.
20: Hammock
I cleaned up and said goodnight to Rush. I was feeling restless and certainly not ready to sleep.
“Come here good lookin’,” called Arch from the hammock on the verandah. “Come talk to me.” I hadn’t seen Arch for much of the day. “Climb in, there’s room for two,” he laid aside his guitar and held the hammock folds open.
I slipped in next to him, well who wouldn’t, and he folded me against his side, his arm a muscular pillow for my head. It was so easy to feel at ease with Arch. I felt like I’d known him forever instead of less than a week. Why couldn’t it be Arch who was funding the re-build project instead of Rush? How much easier that would be, how much less confusing. With Rush my feelings veered wildly from disgust to physical attraction and made my head spin.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“I think we’ve got it under control.”
“It’s going to be a great night.”
“I still don’t get why it’s so important to Rush.”
“It’s important to Shane and me as well.”
“Yeah I know. You’re both neck deep in stuff to do as well, but I just don’t understand Rush’s motivations. He’s involved himself in every detail.”
“Yeah well, it’s what he’s good at you know.”
“He is good at it. He has half the town leaders eating out of his hands. Cathy Donaldson would lie down and let him walk on her. Helen thinks he’s the bee’s knees and Brick has really taken to him and to top it off, no one, no one, has breathed a word about you guys being here.”
“Didn’t he tell you about the Foundation?” asked Arch.
“No. The bank account I’m using is called the Scratch account.”
“Yep, well that’s the Foundation’s bank account. It belongs to the three of us.”
“The three of you?”
“Yeah. We set up a charitable Foundation and the Scratch account so we could do something good with the huge salaries and the money we get from endorsements on stuff.”
“What, the three of you put your money into a charitable foundation?” I exclaimed.
“Yep.”
“So this thing with the hall, it’s for all of you?”
“Yep.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, sitting and making the hammock pitch like a small boat in a storm. “I get why you and Shane would do this but I don’t really see where Rush fits in?”
“Seriously?” said Arch, sounding slightly annoyed.
“Seriously.”
“Hell, Andi you’ve got it in for him something awful. He’s not the bad guy you think he is. If it weren’t for Rush, Shane would have pissed his career away a hundred different times and when I got started I was a scared mouse. I had no idea what I was doing, how to manage all the attention, or what to do with the money. Rush is the real deal,” said Arch, frowning at me. “Hey, don’t look at me like I just stole your lunch money.” Which is a good description of what I was doing.
“He straightened Shane out, and I was smart enough to know that if I had him in my life I’d be less likely to screw up. Both of us owe our careers and probably our sanity to him. It was his idea to take the money we make and use it to do some good for people.”
“Rush’s idea? What sort of projects do you do?”
“We have an orphanage in Cambodia, a school in Namibia, we support eye surgery programs in Burma and a women’s clinic in Botswana. Geez, I can’t remember all the projects. Rush finds them, works out how we should fund them and makes it happen. Shane and I just pony up and do what he asks us, like now.”
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” I lay back down and looked up at two green frogs on the roof.
“Because we want to be able to choose what we do without any pressure. No fear or favour, you know, on our own terms.”
“Wow!”
“Yeah we’re pretty happy about it. You know, I didn’t want to make that last sequel, but with the money we built an irrigation system in Kenya. It means we can have a bigger impact on the world than giving people something to do on a Saturday night.”
“But with an agenda like that, why bother with the hall, it’s a tiny thing in comparison?”
“Because we can.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. We do what we want and we wanted do to this. It just felt right. Don’t be mad with Rush. He’s been a big grizzly bear, but he’s not normally like that, there’s more to it than you know. You’ve caught him at a very bad moment.”
“It’s really none of my business,” I said in a huff.
“Yeah well, I think we both know it is your business.”
I didn’t have a response for that, it was three days until the event and then it was all over. I’d organised the jet to be at Coolangatta to take them back to LA and everything would be back to normal, well almost everything. I’d been putting off thinking about Michael and ignoring his emails, which probably wasn’t all that mature.
“He’s getting to you isn’t he?” said Arch, with a big sloppy grin.
“Who?”
“You know,” he elbowed me and the hammock swung.
“Who? Do you mean Rush?”
“Yeah, you’ve been glued together for the last few days and I’ve seen how you look at him,”
“What do you mean, how do I look at him?” I said indignantly.
“Like you want to scratch his eyes out one minute and lick him the next.”
“I do not!” I sat up abruptly again, tempting sea sickness.
“Coulda fooled me girl.”
I slumped back down again. Was I that transparent? “I don’t know why I’m letting him get to me. I’m usually better at separating the personal from the professional.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
He chuckled, “I know why.”
“Why?”
“I think that’s for you to work out.”
“Ah, what I don’t need in my life is cryptic,” I sighed.
“I’ve been called many things but ‘cryptic’ that’s good, I like that,” he said happily, as though I’d just given him the biggest compliment.
“You’re going to make me ask you about him, aren’t you?” I said.
“Yep.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Ok.”
“I might never ask.”
“Ok.”
We lay in silence, if you discounted the mad racket from the cicadas and the funny barking of the green tree frogs. I was so comfortable with Arch it was like he’d been in my life forever and this was wondrous to me.
The effect of being the youngest of seven with six older sisters had shaped him into a man who was open and gentle and related to women with an easy respect and consideration. The more I saw of him with Helen, Elizabeth and Cathy the more you could see he simply adored women. He was as comfortable with the masculine zone of search and rescue as he was with discussing shoes and clothing. He was just as likely to be interested in martial arts as baking.
As I lay in his arms rocking gently I thought about how perfect it would be to fall in love with this man and I wished I had.
There was a big empty cartoon sound bubble floating above us. If it was possible to burst an imaginary balloon I’d have done it so this non conversation would have been over. As it was, I could feel the pressure of it bearing down o
n me. He broke first.
“You really don’t want to know?”
“I really don’t.” Well, I told myself I didn’t.
“Makes me sad.”
“Why, what does it matter?”
“I really like you Andi and I want you to be happy.”
“What has this got to do with my happiness?”
“You don’t know? You really don’t know? Get your eyes tested girl, it’s right in front of you.”
Now where had I heard a line like that before? Fortune cookie anyone?
21: Revelations
Next morning I woke early and headed for the pool, but the best laid plans are for chess players. Rush was down on the pool deck silhouetted against the pre-heat of early dawn. He was shirtless and wore loose fitting cotton drawstring pants. He moved through a series of standing Yoga poses, strong and steady in his movements, oblivious to me watching from the top of the path.
Each movement he made was complete and perfect from the placement of his bare feet to the energy in his fingertips. He moved to an internal rhythm, his body a melody of strength, flexibility and control.
I felt like I was trespassing, witnessing a private moment, like outside Jack’s on New Year’s Eve. I realised I should have gotten out of there the second I saw him. But I was compelled to watch, to experience this side of him, safe in the knowledge that this was an uncut, unpolished version of him. This is what he was like when no one was watching. It was glorious to see.
I had to acknowledge three things. One, my dislike for him had softened, two I found watching him and being with him a physical thrill and three all that was most disturbing.
I watched until he finished his sequence and when he bent to scoop up a towel I fled back up the path to put distance between the pleasant hum in my body and the knowledge that he put it there.
After breakfast with Arch, we found Rush in the dining room watching a video on his phone. He looked up when we came in.
“A video message from Anissa,” he said.
“Excellent,” said Arch. “About time.”
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