Happy Mother's Day!

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘So what about your family?’ he asked, after dabbing at the corners of his crumb-free mouth. ‘Do your parents still live around here?’

  Siena quickly ran her tongue around her teeth, checking for sesame seeds. ‘Um, oh, no. I was a late … surprise.’

  She was going to leave it there, but the fact that he had been brave enough to tell her about Dinah the night before made her feel it would be unfair not to be as honest. ‘There were complications and my mum, well, she passed away having me.’

  His eyes narrowed, brimming with such sudden flaring compassion that Siena leant back in her chair to escape it.

  ‘It must have been difficult, growing up without your mum.’

  Siena waved a hand over her face. ‘I survived. I had an older brother with the requisite eyes in the back of his head. Besides, you can hardly miss what you never had.’

  Whereas Kane would, she suddenly realised. The poor thing knew exactly what he was missing not having his sunshiny, incandescent mother on the scene any more. Siena’s heart reached out to the sweet kid.

  Stop it! Her heart did not reach. Not to handsome single dads with half-smiles and manly hands and cavernous grey eyes, and certainly not to their kids, even if said kids did not drink cola and their sticky warm hands felt so trusting and small in her own that she actually missed them like a phantom limb when they were gone.

  She rubbed her hands together to erase that sense memory and went back to picking at a piece of stray bacon with the end of her fork.

  ‘And your father?’ he asked.

  ‘My dad died when I was fifteen,’ she said, rolling her right shoulder to ease away the tension that always encroached during the rare times she talked of that part of her life.

  ‘How?’ James asked, not even pretending to blather inanities as others always had. If only she could be as accepting, but ten years and a heck of a lot of guilt, regret, recrimination and fast living later, the memory still felt as though it was eating her from the inside out.

  ‘I was a handful as a kid, and that’s putting it mildly. Dad had a big heart; I gave it cause to worry and one day it finally gave out,’ she said simply.

  ‘Rubbish,’ James said, catching her so unawares she didn’t even have time to get her back up. ‘You had no control over how much your dad worried about you, Siena, or how he chose to deal with it. Not a lick. Handful or angel child, his heart was built to worry about you and to love you, not to collapse because you learned how to swear a year or two before your friends did.’

  He had a smile in his eyes as he spoke, and for a second she almost believed him and the resulting weight off her shoulders made her feel as though she was levitating an inch off her chair. He was a parent. He had a troubled kid. He ought to know …

  But Kane was only eight, she remembered, returning to the squeaky vinyl seat with a thud. Not even yet a teen. She wondered if she ought to give James details on how much worse she had been, and how much worse Kane could get. But somehow she couldn’t convince herself to take the rare shine from those divine grey eyes.

  ‘And big brother Rick became your guardian, I take it,’ James said.

  Her mouth twitched. ‘He took to it like a croc to tropical waters. You may have noticed that telling me what to do is more of a vocation than a burden for Rick.’

  ‘That’s what big brothers are for.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

  He leaned forward, his head moving to within a bare foot of hers. ‘So if you are a determined nomad as your brother attests, what has brought you back home now?’

  Home. Siena waited for the word to make her nauseous. But the way the word sounded in James’s deep soothing voice, though there was a definite tingle in her stomach, for the first time since she’d hopped on the plane the day before she didn’t feel like throwing up.

  ‘I have an interview with Maximillian himself late this very afternoon.’ She looked at her watch and something twisted inside her as she realised they would soon have to head back so she could get ready.

  ‘Right. MaxAir’s head office is in Port Douglas,’ James said. ‘I was commissioned to do a piece for him for that house of his up there a couple of years back. That’s some pad,’ he said, his voice doing that low, intimate thing he was so good at that seemed to wash over every inch of bare skin.

  She leant back in her chair as far as she was able but she still felt his woodsy scent enveloping her.

  ‘Not a changing table, I would hazard to guess.’ It had never been any secret to anyone who had ever known him that Maximillian was gay.

  ‘Ah, no. So this meeting with Max,’ he said. ‘Has he brought you up this way to try to convince you to stay? I have met several executives of his who were lured up here for job opportunities who have never left. That seems to be his routine.’

  The cloud of warmth that had been slowly but surely curling around Siena faded out of sight. That was exactly what she was afraid of. Her crew had even put big money bets on it. ‘I don’t actually know what Max wants with me.’

  ‘What would be the ideal?’

  ‘Rome,’ she said, without even a hint of hesitation. ‘It’s the pinnacle. The top job. I want it so bad I can taste it.’

  Well, she couldn’t taste anything after her hot coffee but she could remember what it tasted like.

  A sudden shadow passed over James’s eyes and, knowing she had been the cause, Siena had to look away. She made a great play at looking at her watch. ‘And, speaking of Max, I actually should head back soon.’

  James motioned to the waitress for the bill.

  When Siena reached for her Visa card, which always lived in the back pocket of her jeans, he stayed her with a waggling finger. Siena watched it as if it was a metronome before putting her credit card away.

  ‘This is my treat,’ he said.

  ‘Wow, you’re a man of a different era,’ Siena said, trying to keep it light. ‘The guys I usually date offer to pay half plus the tip at best.’

  Date? Had she just admitted to James that she saw this as a date? Faced with a nice suit and a clean shave her sense had been left by the wayside.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, a smile tickling at the corners of his mouth as he forked over a couple of notes after glancing at the menu prices. ‘You can pay next time.’

  Next time? A wry smile? Oh, curses!

  James slid out of the bench seat and held out a hand to help her out of hers. She took it, proud that she kept her breathing to a pretty reasonable canter as his warm fingers closed about hers. He tugged her slowly until her legs were free of the table, and then he didn’t let go.

  He twisted his fingers until they were held together by the lightest touch, so that he could navigate an easy way for the two of them through the wide, empty aisles between sporadic tables.

  He looked over his shoulder at one stage, caught her eye and smiled again. Trapped by the genuine pleasure in his gaze, Siena couldn’t help but smile back, her cheeks growing pink and warm like a school girl with her first crush.

  Once they hit sunshine he put her big hat back on her head and tucked her hand through his elbow once more, drawing her against his warm body, and this time he left his hand curled over hers. His strong, callused, sublimely warm hand.

  I am leaving tomorrow! she screamed inside her head when he turned back to face the front. That was all she had to say. Saturday afternoon I will be on a flight to Melbourne and I have no immediate plans to return soon, if ever. But somehow she couldn’t get the words to form on her tongue.

  Because she’d had a nice time. A really, genuine, honest-to-goodness nice time. Talking, connecting, debating, retreating, learning interesting snippets about another person, a person who kept her on her toes and made her feel all warm and yummy and interesting and good, and encroaching on issues one would never usually get to on such a short acquaintance.

  But maybe it was the fact that she would be leaving the next day that made it all happen so fast. They didn’t have time to ski
rt any issues.

  And for all her friends the world over, the casual gentlemen with whom she wined and dined and talked superficial gossip, from elegant Gage to cheeky Raoul, the sky girls who could go days without sleep so they could get the most out of a New York layover, she felt as though if she added every fabulous outing together it would never add up to as much warm satisfaction as she had taken out of this irregular little lunch.

  In the future, if she was in need of a happy place to go to in order to settle her nerves when frustration kicked in, this would be it—palm trees, colourful shops, blue skies and a warm arm to hang on to.

  By the time they reached the Kuranda Skyrail station, she had almost convinced herself that maybe James could be her Cairns friend. If she came back here every now and again, maybe they could make it a habit of going out for coffee in weird and wonderful local haunts. It would be fun! More than fun; it would be lovely.

  But then snippets of his blog came swimming back to her like pieces of her own conscience.

  There are days when the thought of going outside the front door leaves me in a cold sweat.

  A guy who had got himself all dressed up to take her out for a cup of coffee wasn’t looking for fun, even if he had convinced himself otherwise. He wasn’t even anywhere close to looking for lovely. Whatever he was looking for, she didn’t have the capacity to give it to him.

  After a quiet, reflective trip back down the mountain to Cairns they again reached the pile of tyres at the front of Rick’s Body Shop.

  Siena pulled James to a halt. There was no way she wanted him taking her inside under the beady eyes of her brother. ‘Okay, so this is me.’

  James nodded, his eyes unreadable as he looked over every inch of her face. ‘Good luck with your interview,’ he said. ‘I hope the news is good.’

  But she knew from the glimmer in his eyes that his idea of good was pretty much the opposite of hers.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. Her natural restlessness tickled at her toes. The fact that this was goodbye made her even more fidgety than usual as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

  A slight smile warmed James’s serious face, then, without warning, he leant into her. Pure instinct took over as Siena stopped all semblance of bouncing and her eyes closed as she sank into the sensation of his warm smooth cheek against hers. His hand curled around her waist for balance. Hers fluttered to rest against his solid chest.

  ‘Thanks for coffee, Siena. I’ll see you again soon,’ he murmured, his deep voice humming against her ear, causing skitters of sensation down her whole right side.

  His lips pressed against her cheek, burning an imprint she feared no amount of scrubbing would make disappear, and then he pulled back.

  After one last keen look, as though he was committing her face to memory, he turned and walked away, leaving Siena feeling as if she wasn’t quite sure if she could remember how to put one foot in front of the other to get where she needed to go.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘SO HOW was your big date?’ Matt asked, through the flywire screen he was busy cleaning, as James came through the front door of his Apple Tree Drive home.

  James all but jumped out of his skin. ‘Don’t do that, mate! Seriously!’

  He threw his keys on to the hall table and continued through to the kitchen, where he buried his head in the fridge though he wasn’t quite sure what he hoped to find in there other than a place to hide from Matt.

  But, alas, that wasn’t to be. Matt’s head appeared over the top of the fridge. ‘Don’t leave me hanging.’

  ‘It wasn’t a date, Matt,’ James said, reaching for an apple he didn’t really want. ‘I just met her for coffee to thank her for patching Kane up yesterday.’

  ‘You could have fooled me, Jimbo. What with the jacket and all, if I didn’t know you were meeting with her, I would have thought you were off to a day with the investors.’

  James looked down at his outfit. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  Matt reached out suddenly. James ducked away but he was too late to stop Matt from swiping a finger along his cheek. Matt smelled his finger. ‘Aftershave. The good stuff. Did I also imagine you had left the ironing board open?’

  James stifled an oath and slowly bit into the apple as a big goofy smile grew on Matt’s lined face.

  ‘It’s okay, dude. It was an amateur’s mistake. Now spill. How did it go?’

  James slumped into a chair by the round kitchen table. It had been a day filled with many firsts—his first date in several years, the first time he had found a woman whose hand fitted into his as though it was made to be there, and the first time he had ever told anyone how much he hoped Kane was like him. Anyone …

  ‘It was strange,’ James admitted, trying the words on his tongue rather than on his fingertips, and finding they didn’t taste as sharp and hurtful as he had expected they might. ‘Terrifying, mystifying and enjoyable by turns.’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  ‘Fantastic?’ He shuffled higher on the chair. ‘Matt, I have no idea what I was even thinking. Kane still stays up talking through his day to Dinah before he goes to sleep, and every morning is still spent in hope he’ll go to school without some sort of hypochondriac complaint. I’m not sure he’s anywhere near ready for anything of this sort.’

  ‘In all those lame excuses you didn’t say one word about how you feel about this girl.’

  James let that comment lie.

  ‘Am I trying too hard? Trying to get back to the dating scene like it’s part of some twelve step programme to becoming a proper human being again? When really, maybe, I don’t ever have to go through it all again.’

  All that feminine mystique. All those girls’ nights out wondering if this time she might not come home at all. And all that pain in wondering that if he had done more to try to stop her, to tame her, to need her the way she needed him, everything might have turned out differently.

  ‘Okay. That’s a fair point,’ Matt said, straddling the chair next to James. ‘But answer me this: why now?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you been thinking about your twelve step theory for some time? Or is this the first time it has occurred to you?’

  James wasn’t entirely sure. He had touched on it in his blog, but it had always been a rhetorical argument. A question sent out into the void with no hope of a response.

  ‘I hadn’t really considered it in detail until now,’ he admitted.

  ‘You mean you hadn’t considered it in detail until you met her?’

  James let the words tumble about in his mind until he was pretty sure that was exactly the right answer. He dropped his face into his palms.

  ‘Fine. Then tell me why when she asked me about Dinah I said that she was incandescent.’

  Matt laughed so hard his whole body shook. ‘You told her Dinah was what?

  ‘Incandescent. It means—’

  ‘I know what it means. I also know that to be putting stuff like that out there on a first date you are either terrified of how much you like this girl or the complete opposite. And only you can know which.’

  Matt patted him on the shoulder, then stood and left him to his thoughts.

  His thoughts? His thoughts weren’t the problem. It was his conscience that was having trouble keeping up.

  ‘So how was your big date?’ Rick asked Siena when she came out of the body shop staff bathroom all dolled up in her now cola-free Dolce suit, looking and feeling much more like herself than she had in the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘It wasn’t a date,’ she said, as she ran a finger around the edge of her lips to make sure her lip gloss was picture perfect.

  She swung her Kelly bag into the cracked vinyl lounge chair in Rick’s office before following in its wake, letting her legs flop straight out in front of her and slinging an arm over her tired eyes.

  She heard Rick sit down in his bouncy office chair on the other side of his big messy desk.

  ‘If that nice James Dillon had
anything to do with it, that was a date,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t know what you two are playing at, Siena. He has a kid and he never did answer me properly about his wife.’

  She shifted her arm and glared up at him. ‘He’s a single dad, Rick. His wife died over a year ago, but I hardly wanted to bring that up while introducing you to the guy. God, Rick. What sort of person do you think I am?’

  ‘I see you so infrequently, Siena,’ he said, his face hard, ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Well, know that I would never date a married man, or actively not date one, as the case may be. And, to put your troubled mind at rest, I have no intention of throwing my terrible self at nice James Dillon either. I’m leaving tomorrow. There would be no point.’

  ‘So how about your fellow in New York? Why didn’t the fact you were leaving the next day stop you from hanging out with him?’

  She glared at him from beneath her arm to find him spinning a grimy old soccer ball on the end of his finger. ‘James asked me out because he is a kind man and I agreed because I have seen enough of your ugly mug for one visit!’

  Rick rocked back in his chair and watched her. ‘Here we go again.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You bounce about like a jumping bean while here, and bounce away before anything gets too settled. But this Dillon guy sees past the jumping bean, and that’s a rare quality. Probably more than you deserve.’

  And there he was—the Rick she had run from the minute she’d had the chance. She was shocked it had taken him all of twenty-four hours to tell her she was worthless.

  Siena’s blood quickly reached boiling point. Rick had cast off enough such throwaway comments at her as a kid that she had begun to believe them.

  But she had shown him that she was better than that. She had shown the world she was better than that. She had flown into town for a personal meeting with Maximillian, for goodness’ sake! If that didn’t show Rick that she was deserving, then she had no idea what would.

  Siena tried to sit up to defend herself but Rick threw the football at her and she slumped back into the couch, trapped and winded.