Long Hot Summer

by Victoria Purman

  Dylan had broken the ice. They all laughed about Zelda, even Alice.

  “And I need to apologise to you, Hannie,” Mandy said. “I invited you to live in the cottage because I was scared of being on my own.” Her voice faltered. “I’d already had the word from the doctors by then and I thought it would make me feel safer to have you around. I didn’t think about what you might want for your own future. About your business.”

  Mandy looked up, wide-eyed. “How did you...”

  “Your mother called me.”

  “I really was glad to help out.” Hannie reassured her. “It was never a chore.”

  “But you have to get on with your own life. And there’s something else I want you to know. I don’t believe anything Alice has said. All this rubbish about free-loading and wanting a cut of my will. What a load of rot. I know the truth about you, Hannie. You have a big heart. My problem has always been that I’ve known the truth about my daughter and I haven’t wanted to confront that.”

  Alice looked teary-eyed and guilty.

  “We’ve been having some heart-to-heart conversations and I think Alice has something she wants to say.”

  Hannie and Dylan exchanged glances. He raised an eyebrow slightly in her direction.

  “I’m sorry, Hannie. And I’m sorry, Dylan. For everything.”

  “We accept your apology,” Dylan said. He turned to Mandy. “You’re still going to sell up then?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Although it’s land value now, maybe even less, given the cost of demolishing the house and the cottage, disconnecting all the electrical and the plumbing and so on. They’re not safe the way they are and rebuilding would cost a fortune.

  “That’s someone else’s adventure now,” Mandy said. “I have good insurance so I’ll be right.”

  “And what about you, Hannie?” Alice asked sheepishly. “What are you going to do?”

  “I had contents insurance, and car insurance, and I’ve already spoken to the insurance company. Someone’s coming out to do a site inspection in the next few days, so I’m hoping I’ll have enough to replace all my jeweller’s tools and furniture and stuff.” She shrugged. “I’m looking at a space locally to set up a workshop and a retail space. Nothing I can confirm yet.”

  “So, I take it you’re staying here with Dylan?”

  “Yes. For a while, until I get things sorted out.”

  Dylan shot a glance at Hannie.

  There was no reply from Alice. Hannie guessed it would take her a whole lot longer to feel happy for Hannie. She tried to figure out if she cared. She wasn’t sure.

  They shared a glass of wine and then Alice and Mandy decided it was time to leave. “We’ll be back soon to have a look at the house in the daylight,” Mandy said. “I’m still not ready.” They walked as a group around to the back of the house to Alice’s car. “If I don’t see it in ruins, I can always keep that image in my mind’s eye that it’s still the same as it ever was. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Hannie said. “I understand exactly.”

  There was a final hug for Mandy before they left.

  Dylan and Hannie collected the glasses and bottles from the deck and brought everything inside. While Dylan loaded the dishwasher, Hannie washed the wine glasses and stacked them in the draining rack.

  Dylan locked the back door. Hannie turned out the lights, and they slowly walked hand in hand to the bedroom. They brushed their teeth in turn in the en suite, and when Hannie had taken the medication she’d been prescribed for her back, washed her face, and brushed her hair, she walked into the bedroom. Dylan was sitting on his side of the bed, shuffling through a pile of books on the bedside table.

  She slipped off her sun dress and her shoes, slowly, ever conscious of the stabbing pain she feared might return as her back was healing. She pulled back the blanket on her side of the bed and slowly, painfully slowly, eased her legs into bed. She then lowered herself on her pillow.

  Dylan reached over and pulled the covers over her.

  “Thanks,” she said ruefully. “I swear I’m going to make it up to you.”

  “Make what up?” Dylan got into bed and opened the pages of his novel.

  “This sex drought. I can’t believe it. We’re in the prime of the first flush of love and romance and all that, when the sex is supposed to be smoking and adventurous and so damn hot we might melt, you know, in that phase before it becomes normal and regular and old married couple boring, and look at me. I can’t do anything.”

  Dylan put his book down. “What do you mean ‘old married couple boring’?”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  He hesitated. “You think you might want to, one day?”

  Hannie waited. “To what one day?”

  “Get married. Get old and boring with me.”

  Her heart beat fast in her chest. “Are you proposing, Dylan Knight?”

  “Umm, I’m investigating.”

  “Keep asking questions then.”

  “Tonight, when Alice asked you if you were staying here with me, you said, ‘Yeah for a while until you got things sorted out.’ What things do you need to sort out?”

  “My workshop. The rest of my life. You know, those things.”

  “The rest of your life is here with me. Haven’t I made that perfectly fucking clear?”

  “I need to know that we’re still compatible sexually. What if all that hot sex we had before I hurt myself was just a fluke?”

  “That’s very important, to be compatible sexually,” he said.

  “Too bloody right,” Hannie replied.

  “I’ve got an idea.” Dylan pulled the blankets from her body.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He moved down the bed. “You don’t have to do anything. Just lie there.” He skimmed a hand down her thigh and stopped. “If it doesn’t hurt, can you move your legs?”

  She parted them, slowly, her breath catching on her lips anticipating what was coming.

  “That doesn’t hurt?”

  “No.”

  Dylan kissed her hip, the top of her thigh and then walked his fingers down, down, down, and teased her. “How’s that?” he asked, his voice so sexy she almost came right on the spot.

  “Not bad,” she murmured.

  “How about this?” He flicked her with his tongue and pressed down on her and she gasped.

  “Better. Oh. Trying not to move here.”

  When he slipped his fingers inside her, her insides clenched and warmed and exploded.

  After, Hannie decided that an orgasm was the best muscle relaxant ever invented.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Three months later, Hannie was well enough to live up to the promise she’d made to Dylan when they were lying in the tent at the Waters Gully evacuation centre during the bushfire.

  She jumped his bones.

  More than once, in fact.

  It took a little while to recover, but all those weeks later she was back on her feet in more ways than one. Her life was moving forward in ways she had only dreamed about.

  She now had a shopfront on the main road of Reynolds Ridge, thanks to Mel and Kaz. It turned out that they not only owned the shop that housed their organic cafe, but the whole building. They’d come to a fair arrangement for the rent and it was her workshop and retail space.

  “It’s a good fit,” Mel had told her when she handed over the keys. “Our coffee and food, your jewellery, and if we’re lucky, we’ll entice a couple of other people to rent out the two other shops. We might even get the ridge back on the map.”

  The bushfires had scared people away, everyone knew that. It happened both ways. Some people left the hills and never came back, knowing they didn’t have the mental strength to live through another fire that ferocious. For them, summers would always be a time of anxiety, not carefree days and nights. Others stayed away from the hills, even for lunches and trips to wineries, thinking they would let people recover.

  Mel an
d Kaz and Hannie knew that the best way for people to get back on their feet was to have customers.

  As it turned out, Mandy didn’t end up demolishing the buildings on her property. Almost as soon as a new “For Sale” sign had been hammered into the ground by the local real estate agent, a couple from Adelaide, a builder and an interior designer, had driven by and decided on a hills change. Which was like a sea change but in the hills, they’d explained to Hannie and Dylan when they’d met at the cafe. They were planning to renovate the main house as a home for themselves and their three children and then rebuild Hannie’s cottage as a bed and breakfast.

  That made Mandy and Hannie very happy. When the sale had gone through, Mandy had moved into residential care. Hannie visited her every week. It really was a lovely facility and although Mandy had always painted herself as a loner who liked her singular life in the hills, she seemed to be enjoying new friendships with the other residents.

  Hannie was still living at Dylan’s and it was beginning to feel more and more like her home every day. She felt so lucky that she didn’t have to leave Reynolds Ridge, a place she’d loved since she was born. Every night, she sat out on Dylan’s deck, looking out over the valley. As the weather turned, as summer became autumn and then winter, it rained and rained, soaking the scorched ground, and the burnt trees and shrubs all over the hills began to come back to life. New leaves sprouted, saplings grew, and flowers blossomed across the hills. It was one of nature’s miracles in a landscape that had been singed into blackness just months before.

  On his days off, Dylan had helped Hannie work on the interior of her shop. It needed some repairs and painting and together they’d transformed it into a beautiful retail space and studio. She’d found an old jeweller’s desk online and with the insurance money she received for her car and contents, she had purchased tools and the things she needed to reestablish herself.

  A month after the fire, when her back had settled enough for her to finally be able to drive again, Hannie went down to Semaphore and presented Beck with the reimagined piece of jewellery.

  Hannie had passed Beck a small white box and then waited. She loved presenting her pieces to clients this way. It made the moment more important. It somehow made them stop and wonder and guess about what was inside, it heightened their excitement about what was to be revealed and it gave Hannie a little moment to think about how much she loved the art of creating.

  When Beck flipped the box open, she gasped and covered her mouth with a hand.

  “Oh, Hannie,” she’d whispered. “It’s just absolutely perfect.” Three hearts, three diamonds, joined together forever. That was grandmother, mother and daughter. Beck had hugged her so hard, and Hannie knew it wasn’t just for the brooch. It was for all Hannie had lost in the fire.

  Ted had come home after a couple of nights at the vets and since then, with two new knees, he was an unstoppable, slobbering muddy hound. With the autumn and winter rains filling the creek, he was never more at home than when he was in it, and Dylan had almost stopped complaining about the muddy paw prints throughout the house.

  As for Dylan, they made up for lost time. They were still heavily into the first flush of love and romance and all that, and the sex was smoking and adventurous and so damn hot they did melt. Hannie was still waiting for it to become normal and regular and old married couple boring, but that seemed a long way off given the way he looked at her. Like she was the only woman in the world.

  And, with each day that passed, she loved him more.

  On this particular day, she was in her workshop, sketching out designs on a new piece she’d just won a commission for. Beck had shown someone the brooch Hannie had made and that someone had mentioned it to a neighbour who had contacted Hannie. For her, word of mouth was the best way to win business. Recommendations from the heart meant so much more to her. She was leaning over her sketch pad, drawing small circles and bigger ones, looking at the space between each and how the shapes might combine.

  The bell above the front door to her shop rang and she looked up.

  How was it that her heart still went crazy when she saw him?

  “Hey,” Dylan said.

  He walked through the shop, past the display she had set up with small pieces she’d made to give people an idea of what she could do, and came back to the rear, where her work space was set up. He was carrying a brown paper bag.

  She looked up to him and he leaned down and smiled before kissing her.

  “What are you working on?” He looked over her shoulder.

  “Just ideas at this stage. I’m trying to see if something catches hold.” She nodded at the brown paper bag in his hand. “What’s that?”

  “An apple muffin from next door.”

  “Is that for me?”

  He handed it over with a smile.

  “You know thinking makes me hungry.” Hannie opened the bag and sniffed the deliciously scent of it, apple and cinnamon and butter and brown sugar. “Mel and Kaz are amazing.”

  “They sure are,” Dylan said.

  Hannie looked up at him and noticed something was off. He seemed kind of serious or hesitant about something.

  “You all right?” She put the bag on her desk and reached for his hand. She tugged him closer and slipped her arms around his thigh.

  “Yeah. I’m good. It’s just that...” He stepped back from her so he could dig a hand into the one of the pockets of his jeans.

  He looked at Hannie solemnly. “I need your advice about something.”

  “Sure. About what?”

  He put a hand between them, flipped it over and opened his flingers. There was a ring in the middle of his palm.

  “Oh my god. That is gorgeous.” Hannie picked it up and held it up to the light. She reached for her new jeweller’s glasses and slipped them on. “This is a stunning piece. It looks early twentieth century and that is a beautiful red ruby sitting right in the middle there. I’d say it’s maybe half a carat. A gold setting. And, all around it, see here?” She ran a gentle finger around the gem. “They’re white Swiss-cut diamonds.” She slipped off her glasses and put them on her desk. “It’s beautiful, Dylan.”

  She went to hand it back to him but his hands were in his pockets.

  “You think you could do something with that?” he asked.

  She blanched. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not touching that. It’s absolutely perfect as it is.”

  “And so are you.” Dylan took the ring back and reached for her hand, urging her to stand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hannie Reynolds, will you marry me?”

  “Oh, my god.” She gasped. “That’s an engagement ring? That beautiful thing you’re holding?”

  Dylan chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But I was hedging my bets in case you didn’t like it. You’re an expert in this stuff and I didn’t want to get you something you thought was ugly.”

  “It’s not ugly. It’s magnificent.” She began to cry.

  “Come on now.” Dylan pulled her close, held her tight, wrapped her up in his love and held her close to his heart, a place she wanted to be forever.

  Hannie let her tears flow. How could she explain to Dylan that she was crying for everything she’d been through in the past four months? The troubles with Alice, Ted, the bushfires, losing her home, finding a new one, and finding such a strong love in the midst of all that? Life had thrown her up into the air like a kite and she’d landed someplace good.

  Better than good. Wonderful.

  She took a deep breath and pulled back a little she could show him how happy she was. “Yes, Knight. I’d love to marry you.”

  Then he laughed and there were tears in his eyes, too. “Do you have any idea of the pressure I was under? What if you hated it? What if I’d chosen something butt ugly, which had turned out to be cubic zirconia and not diamonds?”

  She kissed him. “I still would have said yes.”

  He kissed her right back, full of l
ove and joy and promises about a future they would share together.

  She slipped on the ring. It gleamed on her finger like a constellation of stars in the night sky. It was a little tight but she could fix that easily.

  “I’m so glad you came home, Knight.”

  “Me, too, Reynolds.”

  Dylan reached for her hand and kissed the back of it. Hannie didn’t know how it was possible to be happier than she’d been the past few months, but she was.

  She might have lost all her possessions in the fire, but she’d found something so much more important.

  She still had Ted. She had this new life.

  And she had found the love of her life.

  Her heart was right here in Reynolds Ridge where it belonged.

  The End

  The Hot Aussie Knights

  Headed by grandfather Leonard (The Legend) Knight, the Knight family is fire-fighting royalty in Australia. Two generations have followed in Leonard’s highly distinguished footsteps and nowadays, despite being scattered across the length and breadth of Australia, it’s the five Knight cousins who keep the Hot Aussie Knight legacy alive, working hard and playing hard, day and night.

  Book 1: Hot Mess by Amy Andrews

  Book 2: Burning Both Ends by Sinclair Jayne

  Book 3: Long Hot Summer by Victoria Purman

  Book 4: Burning Love by Trish Morey

  Enjoy an Exclusive Excerpt from the next book in the Hot Aussie Knights series...

  Burning Love

  Trish Morey

  Copyright © 2017

  Adelaide

  Caleb Knight slammed his locker door shut and slumped onto the nearby bench, letting his aching head flop into his hands. Sometimes life just sucked, though ironically, that seemed an honour reserved for the witnesses – the ambos and emergency services who were first on the scene. Along with the family, of course, the ones left behind. The ones whose lives hadn’t just been prematurely snuffed out because of some stupid, senseless, and ultimately fatal act.

  He closed his eyes but he knew the images would stay with him. There was no way he could unsee what he’d witnessed today.