Christmas at Remarkable Bay

by Victoria Purman

  So, no, she didn’t have much faith or trust in the police.

  Even if they seemed nice and let you share Christmas dinner and laughed at your jokes.

  * * *

  At the end of the Pilates class, Mara stretched, watching as George walked up to the instructor and spoke with her. He had long legs as well as a nice arse. She turned away. She could hear his deep voice from across the room, bouncing off the polished wooden floors, and the friendly laughter of the instructor. She hadn’t caught her name. Kylie? Kelly? Something like that.

  Mara bent to grab her towel and her bag and when she was upright, George was standing in front of her.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Good class.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled back, trying to ignore the fact that something was now aching in her butt. A muscle, maybe?

  George threw his towel around his neck and propped his hands on his hips. ‘You do classes back in the real world?’

  ‘No. I’m a Pilates virgin.’ Shit. Mara’s toes curled into the wooden floor.

  George grinned and damn it if he didn’t look her up and down. ‘You might hurt for a couple of days. A swim could help.’

  ‘Well, that’s definitely on the agenda, given it’s summer and we’re at the beach and everything.’

  ‘For me, too. I thought I might head down this afternoon.’

  The rest of the class filed out the door, calling goodbye and waving to the instructor.

  ‘Well, see you around,’ Mara said.

  ‘See you.’

  She went straight to the bakery, joined the queue and bought an iced finger bun and a cornflake cookie. For breakfast tomorrow, she told herself, because cornflakes were a breakfast food right?

  Chapter Six

  Two days after her first—and last—Pilates class, Mara had decided to try some of the other activities Remarkable Bay had to offer. She’d already done a couple of day trips to the other towns on the south coast to indulge in some shopping, had read another two whole books, and had even gone into Victor Harbor to see a latest release movie in the lovely Art Deco cinema on the main street.

  Today, her bare feet were planted in the warm and glistening sands of the bay, and she was taking a moment to enjoy the ocean breeze in her hair and the warming sun on her face. She held a hand above her eyes and stared out beyond the waves breaking into frothy bubbles on the sand, way past the distant rolling ocean, all the way to forever. She closed her eyes and breathed it all in, the salt, the smell of sunscreen on her skin and the peace.

  She was about to tick off another first and she had to let Narima know. She quickly snapped a photo on her mobile phone. It was a surfboard, lying flat on the sand at Remarkable Bay, its fin stuck up in the air, curved in a point towards the waves. She sent it, then texted: Can you believe I’m about to take a surfing lesson?

  No, Mara couldn’t believe it either. She enjoyed the water, and even liked the waves, but wasn’t the strongest of swimmers. She wasn’t a regular at her local pool or anything, that was for sure. But this was good for her, she knew that. She knew that’s what Narima would tell her, anyway. She’d been emboldened by her holiday, by trying Pilates for the first time, and now she didn’t even care if she fell off that surfboard a hundred times and face-planted into the sand.

  She was really going to do this.

  Mara tucked her phone into her beach bag and then considered with some slight concern the wetsuit the surf instructor had handed her. Short-sleeved and short-legged, it had the logo of the surf school across the front, and it lay on the sand like a deflated black balloon. Mara wondered how on earth she was going to inflate it with her own body. It looked way too small. Perhaps they’d given her a child’s size by mistake. How was she supposed to get this on? Should she sit on the sand and pull it on that way? She held it up in front of her, examining every inch of its clinging neopreneness, and looked back over her shoulder to ask the instructor if there was a larger size.

  Which was when she saw George the Cop.

  ‘Hey.’ He held up a hand in a casual wave.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Mara replied. ‘We meet again.’

  ‘Something about small towns, right?’ He chuckled and took a step or two closer to her. Mara suddenly felt very exposed in her purple one-piece bathing suit. She looked down at her pale legs and then checked out his. They were so tanned he might have spent the morning in a spray-tan booth.

  ‘You a surfer?’ A pair of colourful board shorts hung loose and low on his hips but a black rash vest, which covered him from neck to wrists, clung to every ripple of muscle like a limpet to a rock. And there were plenty of rippling muscles under that fabric. He looked like he’d been poured into it.

  ‘Me?’ He laughed out loud. ‘Nope. Never. I’ve always been more of a football and cricket guy myself, but I saw the sign in the window of that Pilates studio after the class we did a couple of days ago and I thought, what the hell?’

  ‘Same.’ Mara breathed deep. Her ‘what the hell’ had suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. As in, what the hell am I doing staring at his abs? What the hell am I doing thinking I can surf? And what the hell am I going to say to the cop?

  ‘You having trouble with your wetsuit? You need a hand?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t ask for a bigger size in front of George the Cop, could she, so she lowered it and balanced on one leg as she attempted to slide her other foot through the leg hole.

  ‘Hey there, here’s a tip.’ One of the instructors had walked over to her, a big straw floppy hat on his head, a wetsuit on his tall and tanned body and a thin vest made out of safety material over it, which was emblazoned with the word ‘Blake’ and underneath, ‘Remarkable Bay Surf School’. ‘This is what the professionals do,’ he told her. ‘Roll down the top half so it’s inside out, and you’ll find it easier to pull on.’

  He waited for Mara to slide one leg through the leg hole and then politely stepped forward. ‘Do you mind if I do that for you?’

  ‘Oh, please. Go ahead.’

  Blake rolled down the wetsuit and held out a hand. ‘Grab my arm if you need the balance and, that’s it, slide that other leg through. When you’ve got both legs in, it helps to jump up and down and tug it upwards to get it on properly. It’s worth all this effort. It’ll keep you warm out there.’

  Mara looked out. It was summer in Australia. They were at the beach. She hadn’t been expecting the water to be cold. She shook off the thought, knowing she couldn’t back out now, and did exactly as he suggested. Miraculously, she managed to pull the wetsuit up to her waist.

  ‘You need a hand with the zip?’ Blake asked.

  ‘I got it.’ George had moved around in front of her and she was now performing the wetsuit manoeuvre in front of not one but two tall, tanned, dark-haired men. Wait until she told Narima about this.

  ‘Great,’ Blake said and clapped his hands together. ‘The lesson will kick off in a couple of minutes.’ Mara watched as he walked away and began a conversation with a young man in a neck-to-knee wetsuit. She did a double take. Then looked at George.

  ‘Isn’t that the kid from the pub? On Christmas Day?’

  George looked over. ‘I reckon it is.’

  Mara slid her arms into the arm holes and tugged the wetsuit up over her shoulders.

  ‘Turn around,’ George said.

  ‘What for?’ Mara asked.

  ‘I’ll zip you up.’

  ‘I can zip myself up.’ She reached one hand behind her and, miracle of miracles, found the long strap attached to the zip tab. She was halfway successful.

  She huffed. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She turned around and felt the tug of the zip up her back. Then one of his hands was in her hair, which reached halfway down her back, sweeping it over her left shoulder. The intimate touch sent a shiver up her spine and a warm tingle in places … whoa … in lots of places. Maybe she needed that cold water after all.

  When George was do
ne zipping her up, the warm neoprene enclosed her like a snug glove. She tried not to think about the way he’d touched her hair, about the fact that she was so close to all that muscle. He’s a cop, remember?

  She turned around to face him, cleared her throat. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Where’s your wetsuit then?’

  ‘I don’t need one.’ He looked out to the water.

  Of course he didn’t. He was Mr Tough Guy, wasn’t he?

  They turned at the sound of a whistle, the shrill noise competing with the wind and the crashing waves.

  Blake was blowing them all to attention. ‘Okay, I’ve got a couple of extra helpers here today given there’s so many of you. This is my cousin Connor and that’s his son, young Gus.’

  The man called Connor waved and Angas copied him.

  Blake blew his whistle again. ‘Okay, gather over here around us. We’re going to get this lesson started.’

  * * *

  As he ran that evening, along the curve of Remarkable Bay in the fading light of the day, orange and red streaks dazzling in the western sky, George dodged the rising tide and headed towards the spot he and Mara and a dozen others had had their surf lesson earlier that day. The memory made him grin. If he had to estimate the actual time Mara had spent standing upright on the board, he would put it at about two minutes. Out of a two hour lesson. By the end, she looked exhausted but exhilarated, judging by the size of her smile as she’d dragged her board out of the water and up the beach. George didn’t think anything could wipe that smile of pure satisfaction from her face.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her face.

  But he had to shut that down.

  His bare feet plodded through the sand and he picked up his pace, one foot pounding after the other into the dry sand, flicking it up behind him. Being a cop and being in a relationship were mutually exclusive, he knew that from bitter experience. And anyway, he had too much going on with Karen and her recovery. He owed his partner his life, and he was going to make damn sure that Karen got hers back, too. He couldn’t think about asking Mara out for a drink.

  He stopped abruptly, his feet digging into the sand in a skid. Since when had he been thinking of asking Mara out for a drink?

  Since he’d pulled her zip up and his knuckles had brushed against her bare skin. Since he’d weaved his fingers through her silky blonde hair, warmed from the sun. Since she’d run up the beach, looking like the happiest woman in the world.

  He hadn’t seen a woman smile like that in … hell, a long while. It had reached inside him and tugged something unfamiliar and buried deep; some kind of longing for the company of a woman. Someone who could make him smile and someone who could make him forget.

  Mara Blumberg. He couldn’t ask her out for a drink anyway, could he, considering he didn’t know where she was staying during her holiday in Remarkable Bay.

  But surely he wasn’t a cop for nothing. He had superior investigative skills to track her down, didn’t he?

  Nope. He wasn’t a cop on this vacation. He was just good old George Gray. A man on holidays. On his own. With a mutt for company.

  He turned around and headed back in the direction from which he’d come.

  He was a single man on holidays and it was two days until New Year’s Eve. And the way things were going, it would be him and the mutt on the sofa watching the Sydney fireworks explode over the harbour on the ABC.

  ‘Fuck that,’ he called into the wind as he ran faster. ‘I’m going to find Mara.’

  * * *

  Man, he’d love to be the local cop at Remarkable Bay.

  It took George all of ten minutes the next day to find Mara in the little beachside community. He’d wandered down to the bakery for a bun and a coffee and she was right there in the queue. It was only ten o’clock in the morning but it was already hot, and she looked cool in a long floaty dress that hugged her thighs when the sea breeze caught the floaty fabric. He was standing across the street, about to cross it, when he’d seen her and he’d stopped, waited, observing her. There were some things about being a police officer that he couldn’t escape.

  She wore a straw hat on her head and her shoulders were bare. Her long hair hung halfway down her back and the memory of it in his fingers, soft and silky and warm to the touch, set something thumping in his chest. The old bloke in the queue behind her must have said something funny, because she turned around, pressed a hand to the top of her head to stop her hat blowing off and flashed a smile at the lucky bastard.

  Boom. There it was again. That’s what he wanted. He wanted that smile aimed in his direction.

  George crossed the road and walked past the end of the queue, earning stares of rebuke from those waiting, until he reached her. She’d pulled her phone from her bag and was swiping the screen, her face a picture of concentration.

  ‘Let me guess. Chocolate donut or iced finger bun?’

  She looked up in surprise. ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Morning tea?’

  She studied his face as if she was trying to figure out how he’d guessed. ‘Iced finger bun. And it’s technically for afternoon tea because I’m taking it home for later.’

  A woman of restraint. That fit, he thought. A high school teacher had to be a model of propriety and decorum, of responsibility and respect. He looked down at the blue nail polish on her toes. Under all that prim and proper he guessed there was a woman with a wild streak.

  ‘Got plans for today?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’m doing the bird watching walk along the mangrove trail this afternoon.’

  ‘Really?’

  She looked slightly taken aback. ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘No, not surprised. How about those waves yesterday?’

  Mara’s face lit up. ‘That was so much fun, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I actually stood up on a surfboard. It was such an amazing feeling, like you’re bring dragged by some invisible rope into the sand. My best friend thought I was lying through my teeth when I called her last night and told her all about it. If only I’d had a GoPro strapped to the front of my board so I could provide the footage as hard evidence.’

  ‘I’m happy to be a witness. I saw the whole thing. I can testify that you did indeed stand up on the said surfboard for a maximum of …’ He checked her face for a reaction. ‘Two minutes.’

  ‘Hah!’ she gasped and playfully slapped his arm. ‘That is so not true. It was definitely more than that. It must have been at least … three minutes.’ He drank in her smile, feeling as if he’d had four shots already.

  They’d reached the front of the queue without realising it.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A young woman with purple hair and a nose ring raised her eyebrows in their general direction.

  George opened his mouth to speak but Mara muscled in front of him. ‘One buttered iced finger bun and …’ She turned to George. ‘What are you having?’

  ‘I’ll get my own. Don’t worry about it.’

  She huffed. ‘Please. You shouted me Christmas lunch. The least I can do is buy you a chocolate donut. It is a chocolate donut you want, right?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So that’s a finger bun, a chocolate donut and two iced coffees from the fridge. We’ll grab them on the way out.’

  Once Mara had paid, she met George out on the footpath. She handed him the brown paper bag with the donut inside and he handed her an iced coffee.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Hey, listen.’

  ‘Yes?’ She’d put her sunglasses back on and she looked at him over the top of the frames.

  ‘New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘That’s tomorrow night.’

  ‘So it is.’

  ‘There’s supposed to be fireworks in Victor Harbor,’ Mara said.

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ What’s so hard about this, you dumb bastard? Spit it out. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’ In the split sec
ond before he’d asked her, he’d decided that a drink wouldn’t cut it.

  Mara pushed her sunglasses back on her head, which pulled her long, wind-mussed hair back from her face. Her blue, blue eyes stared at him in what looked like total shock. ‘Dinner? With you?’

  ‘Yeah. Come over to my place. The place I’m staying at, I mean. I’ll cook dinner and then we can stand out the front and watch those fireworks.’

  As if in a daze, Mara opened the crumpled edge of the brown paper bag she was holding, reached inside for her finger bun and then took a huge bite. Her eyes didn’t leave his the whole time.

  ‘Dinner?’ She chewed and swallowed.

  ‘Dinner. And wine. South Australian, of course.’ He’d never waited this long for a response before when he’d asked a woman on a date. Not that he’d done that a lot lately. Try almost never in the past three years.

  Shit. He was asking Mara out on a date.

  ‘Like a date?’

  He leaned in and whispered in her ear. ‘Yes, like a date.’

  She finished the whole bun before she answered. ‘Okay. Sure. A date.’

  He pulled his phone from his back pocket. ‘What’s your number? I’ll text you the address.’ She recited her number and he added her as a contact. A moment later, she reached for her phone and looked at the screen.

  ‘George Gray,’ she said.

  ‘Mara Blumberg.’

  ‘Eight o’clock?’

  ‘Sure. See you at eight.’ She slipped her phone back in her handbag and walked away.

  What the hell had just happened? He had a date with Mara Blumberg in approximately thirty-six hours. He had work to do.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘And then I panic-ate an entire finger bun. Right in front of him.’

  Narima’s laughter was so loud it felt as if she were standing right next to Mara instead of being eighty kilometres away in Adelaide.