‘You sound like a decent landlord to me.’
When he held her gaze, Rosie got up to move away. ‘I’d better water down the garden.’
‘Already done,’ he said. ‘I did it before this morning’s training session.’
‘Now I feel guilty.’
‘No need. I’m earning my keep. And besides, I’m used to living in a bushfire area, so it becomes second nature … a bit like putting sunscreen on that skin of yours to protect it – I bet you rarely forget.’
Before she could get too uncomfortable thinking about him seeing her in her bikini earlier, he said, ‘You should come down to the fire station some time and see what goes on.’
Her fingers fell across her necklace. ‘Why?’
‘It might be fun, you never know. We organise regular open days.’
‘I’m keeping up-to-date on the bushfire plan and checking the app every day, but I’m not sure I want to be involved.’
‘Oh come on, you can see some of the odd people we get in, the tourists who haven’t got a clue. Last summer a lady came in with a cigarette dangling from her gob. She flicked ash too … middle of bushfire season. Bella told her, not too politely, to “put the damn thing out”.’
Rosie picked up the shopping list from the kitchen bench. ‘I’ll see.’ She smiled. ‘Do you need anything?’ She waved the list.
‘Why don’t you let me go? You went last time.’
‘I really don’t mind.’
‘Well at least let me come with you and help. We could take my pickup,’ he suggested. He must have seen her face because he added, ‘Okay, too rough and ready for you …’
She grinned. ‘I’ll drive. But you can push the trolley.’
Outside the house, Owen sniggered when Rosie climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘What’s so funny?’
He climbed into the passenger side. ‘Nothing, I’m just thinking the Hubba won’t do much for my street cred.’
She fastened her seat belt. ‘You can drive if it makes you feel any better?’
He held up his hands. ‘Oh no, being a passenger violates my self-respect as it is, but driving this thing?’
Rosie unlooped the hair tie from her wrist and twisted her hair off her neck in the summer heat.
‘I feel as though I’m in one of those revolting Barbie movies where everything is pink,’ he said as she pulled out of the driveway.
‘Oh, shut up and let me drive.’
*
All smiles after they returned from the supermarket, Rosie realised Owen was becoming a friend as well as a housemate. She’d never had a shopping trip like that with Adam, who usually wandered aimlessly, Blackberry in hand. The only time she ever got his attention was when she’d picked up something really naughty like her favourite ice cream, Maggie Beer’s Burnt Fig, Honeycomb & Caramel, or a slab of milk chocolate. Sometimes she deliberately chose something enormously fattening just to get his attention. It was a bit of a game. One day she’d dropped in a few slabs of chocolate, a bumper bag of lollies and a family-size pack of peanut M&M’s before he’d pulled her up on it. She didn’t even like nuts!
Owen had been a scream to go around the supermarket with. Like a big kid, he’d loaded four tubs of ice cream into the trolley and Rosie had told him to put some back on account of it being greedy and there not being enough room in the freezer, and she’d had to reign him in at the meat section when he tried to buy five different types of marinated red meat to put on the barbecue before total fire bans came into place. He’d argued his case that he was a firefighter in need of sustenance, and for one of the first times she’d found herself thinking of a firefighter’s heroic duty without being lost in a world of sadness.
Back at home, George wasn’t going to let them cross the threshold without first giving him the required level of fuss. They unloaded the car and he followed them inside, threading himself between Rosie’s ankles and then Owen’s as they unpacked.
‘Ice cream’s in the freezer, Stevens.’ Owen folded up the chiller bag.
‘Hey, it’s your ice cream, not mine.’
‘And I’ll bet you help me eat it.’
They were both grinning at each other when the doorbell chimed.
‘I’ll get that.’ Owen scooted off as Rosie pushed peppers into the chiller in the fridge, milk into the shelf on the door and dishwasher tablets beneath the kitchen sink.
As she balanced the last nectarine on top of the others in the fruit bowl, Owen reappeared minus the smile and the jovial mood. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’
Chapter Ten
The familiar warmth of Adam’s body enveloped Rosie.
‘This place is quite something,’ he said, arm around her shoulders as they stood in the kitchen and Owen unpacked the rest of the shopping. She’d introduced the two men, omitting the tales of trips to the supermarket with her housemate, a visit to the pub, a ride on the back of his motorbike.
‘It is,’ Rosie agreed.
‘I wasn’t sure I’d see you,’ Adam said to Owen. ‘I thought you’d be hot-footing it around the country buying up property.’ He hugged Rosie closer.
‘Not this week,’ Owen replied, halting any further conversation.
She separated the two men by taking Adam outside to see the garden and the pool. With his arm still round her shoulders, he nuzzled her cheek. ‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘I’m glad you came.’ She wondered if Owen’s presence had propelled Adam’s little surprise as she listened to him extoll the virtues of the garden, the backdrop, the pool, the cabana.
His blond hair shone beneath the sunlight as they stood beside the pool. ‘It’s quiet out here.’
‘It’s lovely,’ she answered, almost to herself. Should she mention the derelict cottage in Daisy Lane? Or should they go for a walk later and stumble upon it accidentally? That way she could judge his enthusiasm and hope it measured up to her own.
‘This town is a complete contrast to Singapore.’ He stood away from the glass surround of the pool and brushed his shirt sleeve for imaginary dust. ‘You wouldn’t believe the mayhem at rush hour or even in the middle of the day.’
She’d never shared his thrill of big buildings, a heavy layer of smog, the way people were unable to walk along and appreciate their surroundings. It wasn’t looking good for the little cottage on Daisy Lane.
Rosie stayed against the glass fence but reached out for Adam’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Adam – reliable, solid, Adam. He bent down to kiss her and she let herself melt into the familiarity of it.
‘What’s that?’ When they pulled apart, Adam caught sight of Bertie as the blue-tongue dragged its body across the top of the rockery and into the bush beyond.
‘That’s Bertie. He scared the life out of me when I first saw him, but I’m used to him now.’
‘But you hate wildlife.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not so bad.’
Rosie updated Adam on her part-time job: her duties, the people she’d met, how she was falling little by little for the small town.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you around.’
At the front of the house, Owen was standing beneath the shade of the open garage door, music blaring out. His arm plunged into a bucket of steaming soapy water and then dropped snowy suds across the paintwork of his Ducati. He rubbed vigorously at the headlight and didn’t turn round as Rosie and Adam left the house. Rosie felt sorry for the windshield he moved onto next – she sensed it was about to be scrubbed to within an inch of its life.
When Adam mentioned, again, that they were in the middle of nowhere, she bypassed Daisy Lane and they strolled towards the main street. They went via the lake that sparkled obediently, and even he had to concede that the setting was beautiful.
‘You’re smitten with this place, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘I suppose I am a bit.’
‘Holidays and weekend getaways are one thing …’ Here we go, thought Rosie. ‘… but the commute every
day would be hard.’
‘I know.’
‘And, can you honestly say you’d be happy living in a bushfire area?’
‘There hasn’t been an incident for years.’ A bumble bee wiggled its bum and dived into the centre of a flower as pink as Rosie’s Volkswagen.
Adam took Rosie’s hands in his. ‘I want us to get a place together too, but we may have to be realistic, start with an apartment nearer the city. In years to come we might decide we’ve had enough of all that, but for now it’s not practical to be as far out as this.’
‘You said that.’ She looked at the dried earth beneath her feet. Adam said plenty of sentences with the word ‘we’, but Rosie sometimes wondered whether ‘I’ would be a better fit.
‘Rosie, it’ll happen one day. It nearly happened before. We’d be in our own place by now if we hadn’t been outbid. But perhaps it was meant to be.’
‘So you’re happy we lost the apartment in St Kilda?’ She stood back, arms folded.
‘Of course not.’ He scooped her hair behind her ears. ‘What I’m trying to say is that we lost out on the apartment and soon after I got the overseas posting. But the good thing is that you’re not at our place alone, we’re both saving money and eventually we’ll be able to get a place together.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Show me some more of the town.’
They made their way to Finnegan’s café, where the little bell above the door chimed as they left the warm street for a cooler yet no less welcoming interior. Rosie waved over to Jackie, one of the kitchen staff at Magnolia House, who was sitting with her young daughter busy colouring the disposable tablecloth as her mum sipped on tea.
Bella didn’t waste any time coming over to their table to investigate the boyfriend.
‘Well, it’s a delight to meet you, Adam,’ said Bella after Rosie had introduced them to one another. She wiped down their table and swiftly laid out two sets of cutlery and napkins folded into triangles.
Rosie began to realise it mattered to her what Bella thought. Since she’d started going to Finnegan’s after work each day, Rosie had told the other woman all about her boyfriend. And now, the more she felt settled and at home as part of the community, the more she wondered how she’d feel in January when her time here would be up.
Adam’s crisp, beige chinos left him at odds with the other clientele – a man in the corner wore shorts and sandals, Jackie had on a floaty summer dress and Rosie wore a navy cotton shift dress.
Rosie ordered the scones with jam and cream and a pot of Earl Grey tea for them both to share, and when Bella went to fill the order, Adam said, ‘You didn’t even ask what I wanted.’
She looked at him. His top button was undone to show golden-tanned skin beneath, a five o’clock shadow creeping across his chin and up the sides of his face. It was different to his usual corporate image, and ordering for him was certainly something new. But Owen’s comment the other day kept cropping up in her mind at the oddest of times. He was right. She needed to step out of her comfort zone, and maybe this was all part of it.
‘You’ll love the scones,’ she said, grinning at Adam, ‘and I knew you’d say you wanted something healthier if I let you order.’
‘I need to watch what I eat after all these hotels and the flight,’ he said, patting his belly and smiling at her.
‘Time to take a risk.’ Uttering similar words to Owen’s made her feel alive, in control.
Adam’s hand found Rosie’s across the table. ‘You look happy. More relaxed than I’ve seen you in ages.’
She felt her insides flicker. ‘I am.’
The food and tea arrived, and Rosie took a huge, delectable bite of the still-warm scone, putting her thumb up in Bella’s direction when she looked over.
She caught the crumb at the corner of her mouth. ‘How long can you stay?’
Adam dotted a tiny globule of cream onto a piece of scone. ‘I’m heading to Sydney tomorrow.’
He’d done it again: thrown her world into disarray and then planned to saunter off. Her face fell and it didn’t go unnoticed.
‘I’m sorry. I know you think I work too hard and I’m obsessed by my job—’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘I’m not as obsessed by my job as I am about my girlfriend – the girlfriend I thought would be ecstatic to see me.’
His smile placated her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m disappointed, that’s all.’
‘We’ve still got tonight.’ He poured out two cups of tea and added sugar and milk to his own. ‘I’m assuming I can stay at the house?’
‘Of course, why wouldn’t you?’
‘Owen might not like it.’
‘He’ll be fine. He’s been pretty helpful at the house, actually.’ She didn’t mention that as well as Owen being at the house far more than she’d anticipated, he’d also become a friend. Not wanting to make Adam overly jealous, she added, ‘He’s a volunteer firefighter with the CFA, so he’s hardly ever home.’
‘You sound as though you’re fighting his corner.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She crammed the remaining piece of scone into her mouth before he could ask her anything else.
They walked back to the house chatting about Adam’s time in Singapore, how he’d got lost on his first day, the heat and the buzz of the city. And when they turned into Lakeside Lane, Rosie couldn’t help but laugh at Adam’s story of hitting the pothole earlier and spilling his bottle of Coke everywhere.
‘You learn to avoid that.’ She grinned. As they passed Daisy Lane, she decided it still wasn’t the time to show him the cottage.
Owen was in the same place, beneath the shade of the garage door, and raised a hand when they approached. The music was quieter now, and instead of vigorously scrubbing and sending suds everywhere, he dabbed a rag in a pot of wax and tenderly polished the paintwork in circular motions as though the bike had gone from being a beast that needed to be tamed to a delicate being in need of tender loving care. A can of WD-40 sat beside the front wheel, and another rag lay across the corner of a gleaming windshield that didn’t need the help of the sun for its sparkle.
Rosie nodded hello and left him to it, and a short while later she heard the engine purr into life and drive away from the house. She prepared and cooked dinner with Adam and they ate outside, conversation and wine flowing easily until they giggled their way upstairs for the night.
After they’d had sex, Adam took seconds to fall asleep. But as he lay there snoring softly, Rosie lay awake. She was still wide-eyed when she heard Owen’s bike turn in off the main road, make its way down the lane and crunch onto the gravel driveway. She listened to the internal door open and shut downstairs, the sound of boots being taken off and dropped on the floor, his feet as they took the stairs to bed.
Her eyes only shut when she’d seen his shadow block the landing light as he walked past her bedroom door.
Chapter Eleven
‘Perhaps Evel Knievel’s off fighting fires or saving the world this morning.’ Adam tucked into toast topped with mushrooms as he sat having breakfast on the deck with Rosie the next morning.
Rosie speared the last of her mushrooms with a fork. ‘Don’t call him that.’
‘It’s a joke. You don’t have to be so touchy.’
It was as though Adam had done something in her dreams because she almost resented his presence this morning. Maybe she was tired. Part of getting used to Adam each time he came back was that she had to share a bed. She’d taken a while to fall asleep last night and then when she did, every time he’d moved she’d woken up and found it next to impossible to get back to sleep.
She watched Adam sitting outside, in these beautiful surroundings with the lyrebird trilling its song and nothing much else for company apart from the rushing sound of the wind against the leaves of the gum trees. He was a businessman, and sitting in a Magnolia Creek country house in a suit and tie, he looked as though he was out of a New York film set where he should’ve been running into
the nearest Starbucks shouting for a ‘large latte to go’ and then dodging between big yellow taxis, his cup held aloft.
‘What time’s your meeting?’ She’d noticed him check his watch.
‘Not till this afternoon, but I fly late morning. I need to run through a presentation on my laptop while I’m at the airport.’ He slurped the remains of his coffee. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of days.’
Rosie hugged him. ‘Looking forward to it already.’
After Adam left for the airport, Rosie relished some alone time in the garden. Her shift at Magnolia House didn’t start until lunchtime, when she would be helping set up for a wedding this afternoon. She picked up the net beside the pool and swished its long pole through the pool water, finding therapy in the motion as she cleared the surface of leaves and a couple of dead cockroaches who’d met their fate.
The water was too tempting to ignore any longer, and after she’d fished out a twig she was afraid could block the filter and tipped the debris into the garden bin, she grabbed her bikini from where she’d left it in the laundry and ran upstairs to get changed. She checked the SunSmart app and slathered on a generous helping of sunscreen, impatiently waiting the requisite ten minutes for it to soak in before she could jump into the water.
Inside the pool’s modern square lines, she glided up and down, notching up thirty-two lengths in all. Satiated, she climbed out of the water and into the teardrop-shaped spa carved out at the far end in front of the gazebo. She pressed the square button to set the spa into motion and positioned herself on the longest seat with jets at the feet, behind the knees and two focused on her shoulder blades. As her breathing steadied into a more sedate rhythm, she rested her head back on the cream leather pillow, tilted her face to the sun and let the massaging waters, penetrating nozzles and millions of bubbles take her away.
Not long later, her eyes flew open when she heard an almighty splash behind her at the other end of the pool. She blinked as the foaming white waters of the spa splashed up at her, and she reached out for the sunglasses she’d left with her towel. When she turned she saw Owen rocketing up and down the length of the pool doing full tumble turns each time he reached the end. Length after length he swam, barely coming up for air, flashing the rose tattoo each time he lifted his arm out of the water and before his hand plunged in to do another stroke.
What Rosie Found Next Page 8
