She moved under him and, still inside her, he felt her clench and tighten her hold on him. Don’t worry, Red. I’m not going anywhere.
‘This sort of thing doesn’t usually happen when a man comes to call in the morning,’ she said, running her tongue over her top lip, slowly, from right to left.
‘You just haven’t met the right man.’
Sam rolled off her and they lay side by side, flat on their backs. He propped a hand behind his head and Calla moved closer, resting a hand on his thigh.
Sam looked around the room. It was clean and simple, plain walls with framed paintings, drawings and sketches everywhere.
‘Are these all yours?’
‘Yeah.’
‘They’re incredible. Not that I know much about art. But they’re amazing.’
‘If you knew anything about art you wouldn’t think they were so amazing.’
‘Where’d that come from?’ He’d seen Calla doubt herself before. He’d met the glass-half-empty girl and had thought she’d put all that behind her. Where had this sudden jolt to her confidence come from?
‘They’re not very good. But I went to all the trouble to have them framed so I have to hang them somewhere.’
‘Don’t you have exhibitions and sell them?’
He could feel her stiffen in his embrace.
‘God, no.’
He moved his arm from under his head and reached around her shoulder, pulling her closer. He liked her bedroom. You could fade away in the middle of all the colours, in the crisp sheets, with a woman like Calla in your arms.
‘You been here long?’
‘A year and a bit.’ Sam looked around. After the chaos of her family, he could understand why she’d want a haven of her own. A peaceful place with no fighting or hurt seeping out of the walls to poison the atmosphere and the minds of children.
‘That was a good decision. It’s nice to have a stake in something,’ he said. ‘Gives you some security.’
‘That’s what I like about having a place of my own. I’ve just realised I’ve never asked you where you live,’ Calla said and, as she spoke softly, she traced a finger across his chest, from one nipple to the other, in and out the dips of his pecs. ‘It didn’t seem important when we were on the island.’
‘On the other side of the city. Not far.’
‘When did you get back?’
‘What’s today?’
‘Monday.’
‘I got back yesterday and went straight on to a night shift. Or I would have been here earlier.’ Sam kissed her forehead.
‘Did you bring my things from the cabin?’
‘Shit. Yeah. I got distracted when you answered the door. It’s all in the back of my car.’
‘Thanks,’ she murmured. When she pressed her lips to his chest, Sam forgot what the hell he was going to say next. Calla was probably thinking he’d lost the plot. If she was, she’d be right. It was too nice, this leisurely post-sex haze they were in. They didn’t have to be anywhere on this sunny Monday morning. Everyone else in the world was going about their business while they lay dreamily, happily, lazily, in each other’s arms.
‘When do you go back to work?’ Sam asked sleepily.
‘One week today.’ Calla lifted her eyes to meet his. ‘Do you have to work again tonight?’
‘Yep.’
‘That must be tiring. Working shifts.’
He shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’
‘I guess you do.’
‘I can be ready to go at all hours of the day or night.’
‘Oh, really?’ Calla murmured with a tease.
For fuck’s sake. This small talk was driving Sam crazy. Why couldn’t he just say what he’d come there to say? He turned on his side to face her. ‘Listen, I came here to say something, not just to have sex with you. The flowers, the wine. They’re my way of saying thank you.’
‘I thought the sex was a thank you.’
He grinned. ‘Well, that too. But I wanted to say something about Charlie, how you helped me with him.’
Calla looked at him with a question. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers.
‘You said something to me the other day on the phone. About Charlie. And it helped.’
One mention of the old man and her eyes lit up. That set off a small fire in Sam’s gut.
‘How is he? Did you have the big talk with him? How’d it go?’
‘Yeah, I did. That thing you said, about listening to what he wants? You were right. Although I had to sit through the whole story again of how he met Mum—’
‘The bikini and the broken dance floor?’ There was the killer smile he’d been waiting to see. It hit him like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus. Calla turned on her pillow and laughed. The light streamed through the front window and lit up her hair, so red and magnificent against the white pillow.
Sam chuckled. ‘Yeah, that. We came to a mutual understanding. I won’t hassle the crap out of him about selling Roo’s Rest and he won’t get pissed off at me any more for worrying about him.’
Calla spluttered and covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Oh no. He got his own way, didn’t he?’
‘Of course he did. And because I listened to you, and then actually listened to him, he finally told me the truth about why he doesn’t want to sell.’
‘He did?’
‘It’s my insurance policy, apparently, in case I ever have to leave the fire service.’
‘Oh, thank god.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘He told me. That day we went to Hidden Bay to see Jem and you got the call from Ben when we were at … Vivian Bay?’
‘Vivonne Bay.’
‘When we got to the pub, and I took Charlie outside to wait for you, he begged me to convince you to keep the place.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I didn’t want to tell you, Sam. He was upset and confused and I didn’t know if what he was saying was real or not. It didn’t feel like it was my secret to tell, or my place to get between you and your father.’
‘Well, fuck me.’ She’d probably figured out then that his sore back wasn’t just from old football injuries. What didn’t this woman know about him? Charlie had told her about his accident. He couldn’t possibly have told her the whole story, because no one knew it except for him, his workmates, his doctors and Christina. When the ceiling had collapsed on top of him in the house fire, he’d been knocked out. Almost killed. Rowdy and two others from his crew had pulled him clear. And he was still living with the consequences. But he was careful to keep his pain hidden. His kind of injury was easy to hide because people couldn’t see it from the outside. That made it easier to pretend it didn’t exist. He’d learnt the hard way that no good ever came from being honest about it. At work, it made people suspicious of him. At home, his parents had freaked out and his marriage had imploded. All the psycho-babble bullshit in the world couldn’t convince him that talking about it was ever a good idea.
‘So you said you’ve come to an agreement with Charlie. Does that mean you’re going to keep Roo’s Rest?’
The drowsy happiness he’d felt just a couple of minutes ago had drained from him. He felt tetchy. On edge. And Calla’s questions were twisting the knife he already felt in his mind, the one his old man had held there for twenty years. ‘It’s not mine to keep. It’s the old man’s.’
‘Yes … but when he’s gone. Will you keep it then?’ Calla’s eyes were wide and questioning.
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Calla shrunk back from him, put space between their naked bodies in the bed. For fuck’s sake, she looked hurt. He couldn’t figure out why. This wasn’t about her: it was his decision and one he would damn well make on his own.
‘Charlie gets to stay there until he dies. I’m checking on him every day and so is everyone else on the island. He’ll be happy while he’s alive. That’s what he wants, Calla.’
‘What will happen to Roo’s Rest?’
>
‘That’ll be up to the new owners, whoever they are. I don’t want the fucking farm. I’ve been telling him that since I was eighteen years old.’
Why the hell did he feel the need to justify himself to Calla? And why did she seem to be channelling Charlie? How had she got under their skin? He flicked off the covers, got out of her bed. Found his jeans, pulled them on. ‘I’ve gotta go.’
He didn’t look back at her. This woman knew too much about him and his pain. Everything he’d felt about her was just the sex talking, his dick pulling the strings. He knew what happened when people got that close. He’d made the mistake of letting her in, to his family, to his head. And, fuck, maybe even into his heart.
He didn’t want that. He couldn’t want her that way. He tugged on his shoes.
‘Sam!’
He looked back at her over his shoulder. She was sitting up, her hair a crazy halo of red curls, the sheet pulled up tight over her breasts. ‘What?’
‘Tell me the truth about why you don’t want Roo’s Rest.’
‘Because I fucking hate sheep, all right?’
He walked out the door.
Sam got in his car, slammed the car door as hard as he could. He didn’t put the keys in the ignition but simply sat there, cursing himself.
How had Calla done it? How did she know him? He didn’t want her in the middle of his family’s problems, in the middle of his. When people got close, they fussed and smothered you and their hearts broke a little when you were hurt. When your career was threatened, you found yourself having to cope with their disappointment and sadness as well as your own confusion and pain. And when you gave your heart openly, loved someone with everything you had, you got shat on from a great height.
He clenched his fingers into fists around the steering wheel. He needed to go back in there and kiss her. Make love to her again, feel her in his arms. And the need, the desperation that filled his lungs and thudded in his head, was overwhelming.
But he couldn’t. He didn’t want anyone to get that close again.
This had all been a huge, fucking mistake.
CHAPTER
42
Calla’s front door closed with its familiar click and a minute later there was the thud of bags on her front veranda, the roar of an engine, and Sam was gone.
Calla flopped back onto her pillow and pulled the blankets over her head.
She was in trouble.
This was not in her plan.
She couldn’t be in love with anyone.
This thing with Sam was all an accident. Of time, of fate, of circumstance. A confluence of events had brought them together on the island, and another set had put the distance between them now. What they had was only special on that magical place. The one full of mystery and change. On the island, they were both filled with the capacity to change and grow.
But back here, in their real lives, they were once again two people whose paths shouldn’t have crossed. If she’d seen him across a crowded pub, she would have turned away. The heroes were not her type and, anyway, he probably wouldn’t have looked twice at her, her wild hair and freckles and her paint-splattered clothes.
She’d had enough of accidental. She wanted easy and simple.
She wanted a man like Sam, just not him.
He was too hard. He had pain and family business that made her life complicated all over again. She’d been running a million miles an hour from complicated. There was something else about him, something he’d shut away, that rose up and hardened him when he was confronted. She’d seen it just now, the way he’d closed down, put a wall up between them.
And it was too soon. He’d been the first man to come along since her broken heart and she was vulnerable to suggestion. She couldn’t yet trust the decisions her heart made about men.
He’d dropped off her bags. He’d walked out. She didn’t have to see him again. There was no reason for them to meet for a coffee, have dinner. Fall into bed with each other.
It was over.
And despite everything she tried to tell herself, her heart ached at the thought.
She remembered the look on his face when he’d turned to her, just before he left. He looked pained by her question about Roo’s Rest. She knew there was something he was hiding. But you couldn’t make people do what they didn’t want to do. And if he didn’t want to share his secrets with her, it was up to him.
She wanted simple. She wanted easy.
Sam wasn’t.
She got out of bed, pulled on her clothes. Sam was already out of her bed: now she needed to get him out of her head.
Calla grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went to her studio. If it hadn’t been for mid-morning sex with the firefighter, she might have had this all done. She’d managed one coat on all the walls before Sam’s unexpected arrival. It needed another coat to eliminate the pink. She put the dried-out paint roller in a bucket to soak, fetched a fresh one, drenched it in paint, and swore loudly and satisfyingly as she attacked the walls again.
The next day, when the painting was done and dry, Calla repositioned the furniture and hung a few paintings of her own in there for inspiration. She sat on her stool, her easel in front of her. On it sat a small canvas, blank and new. To her left was a jar of clean brushes. Fine, wide and everything in between. Another jar of clean water. Alongside it, a steaming cup of coffee. A shoebox filled with silver tubes of acrylic paints. The colours were magnificent. Cerulean Blue. Primary Cyan. Green Gold. Titanium White. Oxide Green. Burnt Umber and Carbon Black.
Then Calla closed her eyes. She wanted to call up the image in her head.
She’d had the dream again last night. The same one she’d been having every night since she’d seen the place for the very first time. She wasn’t usually a landscape painter. She did people and architecture, still life and abstract. And oils had been her medium of choice; more serious, glossier — with each coat needing months to dry, she felt like a serious and scholarly artist when she embarked on a project with oils. They required deliberation and the pursuit of a well-planned aesthetic. There were no accidents in oils and, if there were, they needed a long time to fix.
This time, she went straight to her acrylics. This painting needed to be done in a hurry. With two hours of drying between coats, she could finish it in a couple of days.
She scrabbled around in her paintbox to find the right shade for the southern Australian sky that had so transfixed her. The silver tubes were calling to her, taunting her: Pick me! Pick me! She chose, picked up her paint board, squeezed the Cerulean Blue on to it and mixed it with a dash of Titanium White. She added and blended until she’d found it.
Calla dipped her brush into the paint. Lifted it. Stopped. She wanted to savour this moment. For so long, she’d let herself think too much about what might go wrong, rather than what might go right. What she might fail at, rather than what she might enjoy.
In every part of her life, she’d let herself be happy with second best. A teacher rather than an artist. A secret lover rather than a true partner in someone else’s life.
Secretly, she’d believed that was all she deserved.
She pulled in a deep breath, straightened her shoulders. ‘This is the first moment in the rest of your life, Calla Maloney.’
Her voice echoed in the room and she couldn’t get over the sudden feeling that, after years of wishing she had someone to share her life with, being alone was such a gift. This practice was about her, no one else. It was about the image in her head and the way she translated that onto the canvas. It was all up to her. And what an incredible feeling that was.
Her brush pressed against the canvas. Her heart was light.
Calla painted from memory, hurriedly and urgently. First, she blocked the colours for the sky and the grass and the water. The clouds would come later, as would the two ducks, sitting on the still water. She saw them in her mind before they fluttered away at the intrusion of two strangers to the idyllic scene.
The
dam on Roo’s Rest was coming to life with each brushstroke.
She hoped she could capture the spirit of the place and what it had meant to her.
What it had meant to Sam’s family.
She stopped, washed the blue from her brush. Listened to the suburban birds outside her window tweet and call in the trees. Rainbow lorikeets and mynas and wattlebirds. When she looked into the sky in the city she wouldn’t see pelicans soaring or wedge-tailed eagles hovering in pairs to protect their territory.
She found her tube of green gold. Squeezed some out onto her board and dipped her brush into it.
And painted.
CHAPTER
43
‘Stop it!’ Calla laughed. ‘Please, no more nappy stories. It’s disgusting.’
Rose sat on the sofa, propped up with a pillow behind her. She’d just finished feeding Flynn and had handed him over to his auntie. ‘You wait until you have a baby of your own. You’ll be just as obsessed as we are. First they’re slimy, then they’re mustard—’
Calla squeezed her eyes shut. ‘La la la la la. I’m not listening.’
The sisters’ laughter echoed in Calla’s living room. They were enjoying their peaceful Saturday afternoon. Rose had convinced David that he should get out of the house and take in a football match at Adelaide Oval and Calla was fitting in her long-overdue share of nephew cuddles. She loved holding him. Loved his wriggly arms and his burps and she felt as if she could stare at him for hours just to catch his first smile. He was such a lucky baby, she decided, to be born into a family that would love him and everything about him. And that made Calla think of Jem. She’d tried her best to bring them back together and he’d made his choice, but there was a part of her that was happy for him, relieved to know that he wasn’t alone. He had Jessie and Ella now, had settled down and created a family of his own. She was glad he hadn’t turned his back on that second chance, that he still saw enough value in having a family to take a risk on one of his own.
‘Do you think you’ll have a baby one day, Calla?’
Calla sighed. ‘It takes two to make a baby, Rose. And I am still stubbornly single, as you well know.’
Only We Know Page 26
