by Amy Andrews
Yes, he thought as he made his way across the main street to Alf’s Garage, he had slipped into the routine of Skye’s only general practice easily. It was going to be a very pleasant time here indeed. The Helen factor was something he hadn’t counted on but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
It was hot outside. The summer sun high in the sky beat down on him relentlessly and shimmered off the bitumen in a haze as he waited for a couple of cars to pass. He looked up and down the main street with interest.
It was like a hundred other small towns he’d seen throughout rural Australia. Wide and a little potholed, there was a central strip for parking along which jacaranda trees had been planted to provide shade and a dazzling carpet of purple in October.
There were the required four pubs, one on every corner, their beautiful wrought-iron latticework decorating the wide verandahs and tin roofs of the solid two-storey structures. Locals strolled down the streets, taking respite from the heat under the shady shop awnings. A bakery. A butcher. A newsagent. A milk bar. The usual array of bread-and-butter services lining main streets everywhere in outback towns.
James spent ten minutes chatting with Alf and looking over his banged-up bike. Assessing the damage, he was amazed he hadn’t been more injured. He gave Alf the number of a classic Harley specialist in Melbourne and left reluctantly.
The bike was more than just something that had been bequeathed to him in his father’s will. More than just a connection to a man who’d always considered his son as some sort of cross to bear. The Harley was the bike his father had finally left on after years of a miserable marriage and as such symbolised freedom to James.
Freedom to be happy. Freedom to plot your own course. Freedom from blame. He’d never seen his father happier than the day he’d ridden away, the Harley between his legs.
His stomach grumbled and James decided to cross back over and buy a pie from the bakery. The one Helen had bought him yesterday had been amazing and he’d been craving another ever since. He spotted Helen walking by as he queued and he bought two on impulse.
He exited the shop and looked down the street in the direction Helen had been heading. He saw her in the distance and hurried to catch her up, his crutches a hindrance to speed. She stopped, turned right, opened a gate and disappeared from sight. When he finally drew level he saw it was an old hall. It stood on stumps, a rickety-looking staircase leading to an open door. The sign above the door read SKYE COUNTRY WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION. Helen was in the CWA? Wasn’t that for oldies?
He shrugged, opened the gate, swung down the short path and manoeuvred himself up the stairs, following her in. The hall was spacious inside, its bare floorboards and pitched roof causing the low murmur of voices to echo hollowly around the room. A raised stage at the far end was overlooked by a framed picture of the Queen.
About twenty elderly women sat on chairs arranged in a circle. Behind them a trestle table groaned with food. The voices cut off as he entered. The click-clack of dozens of knitting needles ground to a halt.
They looked at him. Helen looked up from her knitting as the silence stretched. Her heart slammed in her chest. What the hell was he doing here? Wasn’t it bad enough they had to live and work together?
‘I bought you a pie,’ he said, holding up the brown bakery packet, acutely aware of his very attentive audience.
Helen met his turquoise gaze, refusing to pay her hammering heart any heed. ‘Are you following me?’
He smiled. ‘Just repaying the favour.’
Elsie looked at Helen and saw the slight flush to her cheeks. She looked back at the stranger. He must be the missing locum Helen had been telling her about yesterday. Fine specimen of a man. ‘Do you know how to knit, son?’ Elsie asked.
‘No, ma’am.’ He shook his head. ‘My grandmother tried to teach me once.’ James smiled at the memory. His mother’s mother had always made him feel wanted. ‘She said I had two left thumbs.’
The women chuckled. ‘Well, never mind, bring that pie over here then and pull up a pew. Helen needs some meat on her bones.’
James gave Helen a doubtful look. He loved the sense of community in small towns and had been in enough to know that the CWA ladies were the queen bees. But he hadn’t been in town long enough to get a good sense of everything yet and he didn’t want to blow it in front of Skye’s matriarchs. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’
‘Nonsense,’ Elsie said. ‘We never knock back the company of a handsome young man, do we, ladies?’
There was a general murmur of agreement and James smiled. He acquiesced, making his way towards the circle, and the knitting needles started up again.
Helen pulled up a chair for him next to Elsie. ‘You’re really getting around on those things,’ she said testily.
He grinned and passed her the pie. ‘I’m getting better.’
She took the packet from him as he settled himself down. ‘Lucky for you I have a pie fetish.’
Too much information. The less he knew about her fetishes, the easier the next four months would be.
‘So, you’re the locum our cows upended in the bush,’ Elsie said with a twinkle in her eye.
James chuckled. ‘Apparently.’
Helen went around the circle and introduced all the ladies. She watched as each of them, none under seventy, primped and preened at James’s effortless flirting. The man was lethal.
She ate the pie, luxuriating in its rich meaty flavour, trying her best to ignore the conversation and the deep rumble of James’s voice as he spoke.
‘So, what are we working on, ladies? Is this a general knitting circle or is this a specific project?’
‘It’s for the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane,’ Elsie said. ‘We knit trauma teddies and bootees and bonnets for the little kiddies.’
‘That’s very admirable,’ he commented.
‘Keeps us occupied.’ Elsie shrugged. ‘Tell us a bit about yourself.’
James was used to the questions and gave the ladies a potted history of his time as an outback locum. He regaled them with his travel anecdotes and skilfully sidestepped any questions that got too personal.
‘He reminds me of Owen, don’t you think, Helen?’ Elsie asked.
Helen ignored the general murmur of agreement. ‘Not really,’ she said briskly.
‘Owen?’ James asked.
‘Helen’s father,’ Elsie said.
James saw the shuttered look on Helen’s face and gave a noncommittal ‘Ah.’ He knew how closely he guarded his own history. The last thing he wanted was to encourage these chatty women, even though he was curious.
Elsie also got the message loud and clear and changed tack. She was getting old. And Helen was like the granddaughter she’d never had. Helen had had such a tough life, Elsie would love to see her settled soon. And there was something about this man, about the way Helen was around him, that brought out the matchmaker in her.
‘I hope you’re looking after my girl, James. I do so worry about her living by herself.’
Helen almost inhaled the tea she’d been drinking. ‘Elsie,’ she warned, after she’d recovered from a coughing fit. ‘I don’t need anyone to take care of me.’
‘Nonsense,’ Elsie said. ‘Everyone needs someone. Isn’t that right, ladies?’ The circle backed Elsie’s statement vigorously. ‘You should both come over for tea one night. I make a mean lamb roast, isn’t that right, Helen?’
Helen shot an apologetic look at James as the other women agreed. She stabbed her knitting needles through the ball of wool. ‘We’d better get back,’ she said, standing abruptly.
James bit the inside of his cheek. He felt sorry for Helen. He’d been put on the spot so many times by so many elderly ladies at such gatherings he’d come to expect it. But Helen looked totally mortified, comically so.
They were out in the sunshine in under a minute.
‘I’m very sorry about Elsie.’
He laughed. ‘It’s OK. I think it’s some unwritten law that once you
get past seventy you have to embarrass as many of the younger generation as possible.’
Helen laughed, relieved that he didn’t seemed worried by Elsie’s attempts to matchmake. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘You and Elsie seem very close.’
She nodded. ‘She practically raised me.’
He looked down at her. ‘Your parents?’
‘My mother was…ill…a lot and my father…well, let’s just say my father didn’t cope well. I lived out at Elsie’s farm on and off for a long time and when my mother died I just…stayed.’
Helen’s childhood sounded as bleak as his. ‘That’s pretty amazing of her.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘She’s a pretty amazing woman.’
They continued on in silence for a little longer, James reflecting on his own barren childhood. ‘Do I really look like him? Your father?’
Helen stopped abruptly. ‘Elsie had no right to say that,’ she said sharply.
‘Do I?’ he insisted. ‘Everyone else seemed to agree.’
Helen sighed and eyed him critically, knowing from the stubborn set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to let it drop.
‘Yes and no. He has a dimple in his chin like yours. And you’re…’ She searched for a word that wouldn’t betray how utterly sexy she thought he was. ‘Handsome…I guess, like he is…’
James laughed, which emphasised his dimple. ‘Why, thank you.’
‘It’s probably more your persona. I think maybe she recognised the swagger, your confidence, the whole easy-rider look.’
‘Are you close?’
Good question. Helen started walking again. ‘I love him, sure. He’s this larger-than-life kind of guy who sweeps into town on his Harley every once in a while and we talk and we laugh and it’s just like old times, and then he starts to get that look in his eyes and I know he’ll be leaving and…sometimes that’s hard.’
‘Hard because you don’t know when you’ll see him again?’
They were nearly back at the practice and Helen stopped and looked up at him. ‘Hard because he chooses the road over me. Every time.’
She walked inside and left him standing on the pavement. The pain in her words grabbed at his gut. No wonder she had her feet planted firmly on the ground. He sensed her abandonment and it cut him like a knife.
Helen Franklin was definitely not a woman you could love and leave. She’d been through enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
HIS first week went well. The cumbersome cast was annoying and basic things such as walking, bathing and dressing were frustrating experiences, but his leg rarely ached any more. There had been the suspected influx into the practice and Thursday and Friday he was fully booked.
Living with Helen was an interesting experience. There’d been no more early morning incidents for which his sanity was grateful. In fact, outside work, he saw very little of her. A bit around the house as she flitted from one social engagement to the other but otherwise she was largely absent. He began to wonder if she was avoiding him.
She was polite, even invited him along to places, but he got the impression she was doing it only to be civil and the last thing he wanted to do was cramp her style. And the broken leg made everything just that little bit more difficult so he was content to stay at home. He loved to read and his enforced confinement gave him the perfect opportunity.
But even the most engrossing read couldn’t block out the distracting presence of her in the house. Even absent, she was everywhere. Her rose perfume permeated everything. The lounge chair smelled like her, the cushions. The bathroom smelled like her and the cabinet was cluttered with her things. The house was cluttered with her things. Photos and mementos and ducks. Lots and lots of ducks. Wooden ducks, ceramic ducks, bronze ducks.
‘Ducks?’ he had said.
She had shrugged dismissively. ‘I collect them. Have for years.’
A duck collector—definitely a homebody.
But it wasn’t just her stuff. It was more. The way she hung the teatowels on the oven handle reminded him of her. The vase full of flowers on the dining-room table that she picked fresh from the garden every few days reminded him of her. Her chirpy message on the answering-machine made it hard to forget he was living in her house.
At night he’d let the phone ring until the machine picked it up. He told himself it’d be for her anyway but he suspected it was more to do with enjoying the sound of her voice even if it was on a tape.
By the week’s end he was starting to go a little stir crazy, trapped in the house with her smell and her machine message and her bloody ducks. He wasn’t used to this level of inactivity. Not having his bike and not being able to physically go for a ride whenever the whim took him was frustrating. He didn’t like the feeling of being grounded. His itchy feet were almost as bad as the itch beneath his cast, which sometimes drove him quite mad.
Helen took pity on him on Sunday night. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Get dressed. You’ve got ten minutes.’
He looked up from his book. She was wearing jeans that clung to her legs and a lacy button-up shirt with a V-neck in almost the exact shade of her nightdress. He could just see a glimpse of pink lace at her cleavage and he wondered if it was the same pink bra she’d been wearing the day she’d dragged him off the side of the road.
Her hair was down and had been brushed until it looked like burnished wood—sleek and lustrous. Her lips shone with a clear gloss and her green eyes were emphasised further by lashes accentuated with a coat of sooty mascara.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Trivia night at the pub.’
James stared at her. He seriously doubted he could go anywhere with her looking like that and not want to touch her. Maybe staying home was a better tactic.
Helen stared down at him, waiting for an answer. ‘You need to get out and the team’s down a player.’
When he still didn’t do anything, she said, ‘You don’t like trivia?’
‘Um, no, it sounds fun.’
She waited for him to move. When he didn’t she gave an exasperated jiggle. ‘You suck at trivia?’
He laughed. ‘I can hold my own.’
‘Good, ’cos we’re winning. You now have…’ she checked her watch ‘…eight minutes.’
James felt the last semblance of his good sense slip. He really did need to get out of the house. And should the desire to touch the much-grounded Helen Franklin overwhelm him, there’d be plenty of people around to discourage what was most definitely a very bad idea.
He hauled himself upright, using his crutches. ‘Time me.’
Six and a half minutes later he swung into the lounge room. ‘Will this do?’
Helen’s breath caught in her throat. She always underestimated his impact. His height and width were striking. His body dwarfed the crutches, making them look like spindly matchsticks.
He was wearing baggy denim shorts and a blue polo shirt almost the exact shade of his turquoise eyes. He’d brushed his unruly locks into a semblance of order but still his fringe did that endearing flop. His aftershave wafted towards her and she was overcome with the urge to bury her face in his neck.
Do? He was going to treble the pulse rate of every woman in the pub. ‘Fine.’ She nodded and briskly looked away. ‘Let’s go.’ She grabbed her bag off the coffee-table. ‘Normally I’d walk but we’ll drive so you don’t have to hobble too far.’
Helen was relieved when they arrived at the Drovers’ Arms. James’s presence in the house was unsettling enough—in the close confines of the car it was completely unnerving. Last time he’d been in her vehicle he’d been a safe distance away in the back. Having him sitting beside her, his large hand resting on his leg in her peripheral vision, his spicy fragrance drifting her way was a real test. She clutched the knob of the gear lever tightly and kept her eyes glued to the road.
There was a fair crowd inside the pub and a country rock song blared from the jukebox. Helen was grateful for the noise and distraction. Her team mate
s cheered when they spied her and waved her over.
‘Do you want a drink?’ James asked as they passed the bar.
‘Diet cola,’ she said, and left him to it. She didn’t know how he was going to manage two drinks and his crutches and she didn’t care. She needed space.
Of course, she needn’t have worried. Glynis on the bar insisted on bringing the drinks to the table and fussed over him while he sat down. She batted her eyelids and patted James’s shoulder sympathetically, her crimson-tipped nails like an exotic bird flying high against the plain blue of his shirt.
Helen rolled her eyes. Glynis was the only other single woman in town. She’d been in to see James on Thursday with some vague symptoms and had left grinning like a Cheshire cat. Still, half the town had been in to see him with vague symptoms so she could hardly single out Glynis for her displeasure.
James had taken the seat beside her and she was very conscious of his heat, his smell as he sipped at his beer. She introduced him to the rest of the team and then Alf took the small stage used for visiting bands and other acts and the evening commenced.
Helen was impressed. James was good. As good as she was. In fact, better than her tonight. His solid presence beside her was very distracting. Why couldn’t he have been as dumb as a rock? He would have been much easier to dismiss.
Sure, she knew he was intelligent. He was a doctor. But she had often found that intelligence and general knowledge didn’t always go hand in hand. She’d met a surprising number of doctors and other supposedly intelligent people whose general knowledge was rubbish. His, however, was brilliant.
James was enjoying himself. It felt good to be socialising and everyone at the table had greeted him warmly. It was interesting to sit back and watch Helen interact with her friends. She was obviously well liked and, as leader of the team, no slouch at trivia either.
He motioned Glynis to bring him another drink. Beer was definitely required, sitting this close to her. When she laughed it went straight in his ear and her breasts bounced enticingly. Her arm rubbed against his occasionally and it took all his willpower not to slide his arm around her shoulders, glide his fingers through her hair.
