by Lily Malone
But what did it matter if the house smelled relaxing and sweet when the place currently had the jackhammer vibe of a city building site?
Ella ducked through the screen door and raced into the kitchen to put the cheese platter on the kitchen table. Then she dashed for the laundry cupboard and the broom she knew was there. Running back out to where that bloody sander continued to roar, Ella extended the broom and jabbed Jake in the kidney. Well, she aimed for his kidney, but with the weight of the pole extended plus the full length of her arm, she miscalculated.
Ella jabbed Jake square in his butt, and he couldn’t have turned faster if he’d been a bear in the woods and she’d poked him with a broom. The mechanical roar died to a mechanical quiver before it cut out completely, and those midnight-blue eyes kind of speared her to the spot.
‘Ella?’
‘Jake. Hi. Sorry about poking you in your bottom. We’re doing a Groundhog Day here, though. You’re doing it again. You can’t do that now,’ she said, indicating the sander in his hand and the dust in the air.
‘I own the house, and you suggested the verandah posts needed sanding.’
He purred it nice enough, but danger danger alarm bells crashed in her brain.
‘You are completely right that I suggested sanding the posts, but you can’t do it now, Jake. I have a Home Open starting in exactly two minutes. I have wine. I have cheese. Can’t you come back later?’
‘You have a Home Open in Chalk Hill on a Friday night?’ His eyebrows shot high in surprise.
‘Yes. Didn’t you get my phone message? Didn’t you see the sign?’
‘Yes, I got your message. You didn’t say anything about a Friday Home Open. You said a whole heap about the neglected state of this property though.’
Oops. So the big lug of a bloke was house-proud. Who knew? ‘They were just a few suggestions, trying to give you feedback. And I told you about the Home Open.’
He shrugged. The age-old ‘doesn’t matter’ male shrug. ‘Who has a Home Open on a Friday night in Chalk Hill? The whole town goes to bowls.’
‘I’m trying something different.’
‘And look at them all lining up,’ Jake said, swinging around to the empty street.
‘They’ll be here,’ Ella said, spinning her broom like a ninja so she could sweep dust from where it had pooled near his feet. ‘Now please, can you do that later?’
Jake’s eyes narrowed. ‘You poked me in the arse, Ella.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I was trying to get your attention because you couldn’t hear me over the noise of that bloody thing …’
‘First you throw shoes at me. Now you hit me with a broom.’
Ella stood the broom between them like it might protect her with its magic powers. ‘Poked you. Let’s not exaggerate.’
A car slowed on the street and they both watched it, Ella with hope in her heart that maybe this time it would be the buyer.
The car passed and Jake relaxed. Ella swallowed her disappointment by glancing out at the gum trees towards the branches where she’d first seen Perkins III. Tears stung behind her eyes, and tears just wouldn’t do. Red, puffy eyes weren’t good for super-efficient saleslady mojo.
‘Tell you what? I’ll just finish this section here, okay? Then I’ll call it quits,’ Jake said, watching her closely. There was a rough edge to his voice, and his eyes wouldn’t leave her face alone. ‘I’m sorry about doing this today. I didn’t know you had this open thing planned.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, stepping away. ‘Maybe if you returned my phone calls we could talk about these things and we’d all be on the same page.’
She couldn’t quite believe she’d said it. That she’d risk it. Was that being rude or assertive in the real estate sales handbook? What would Bob Begg do?
Bob wouldn’t have the problem in the first place. Bob would have a schedule all laid out with dates written in on it, and he’d have got the client to sign off. Note to self.
‘That is probably a fair call,’ Jake said, after three seconds that took forever. He tipped his sander to her, and in his next breath he turned the device on.
While she had the broom in her hands Ella figured she might as well sweep the front path to keep herself busy and to get away from the noise. The late summer heat had caused Irma’s rose bushes to drop orange and yellow petals. Ella patiently swept those up along with a smattering of dead gum leaves and twigs the parrots had pecked and broken, concentrating with all of her soul as she wished for the sound of a vehicle.
Everything was quiet.
Too quiet. Even for Chalk Hill.
Had he finished sanding already? Ella glanced back at the house.
CHAPTER
7
Nanna would have torn strips off him had she been there, Jake knew. Nothing beat good manners in Nanna Irma’s book, and he hadn’t displayed any.
Here he was playing around with the sale of a house he had no intention of selling, and Ella was the one with the skin in the game.
His problem was with Abe, not Ella, and he’d behaved like a lout.
Jake switched off the electric sander. He watched Ella as he coiled the extension cord around his arm, but she didn’t notice him. Ella wouldn’t have noticed him if he’d started sanding the roses down to the gnarly old stumps, and it made Jake realise how much he didn’t like not being noticed by her.
It wasn’t the same as being ignored. Some of the women he’d known over the years went to great pains to deliberately ignore a bloke, treat him mean, keep him keen.
This was different. Not being noticed by Ella was way different to being ignored by her.
Jake laid the sander and cord next to the new doormat and stood straight. Ella’s brown hair was trapped by some kind of claw—one of those things a woman could twist and shove in her hair, and not a strand fell out of place. Her shirt was sleeveless and for the first time he let himself fully appreciate the glide of her arms, lithe and toned, as she swept the path, a sway in her hips as she moved, skirt tight against each thigh, as if she was singing songs in her head in a private back and forth dance.
She looked neat, tucked up and all put away, and it made him want to shake her out of her box and make her play all over again.
Jake opened the front door and stepped into the house. It was so quiet he felt like an intruder, which was crazy. He’d had his first sleepover in this house. The first time he’d stormed away from home, having told his mum he was running away, he’d come here; and the one and only day he’d wagged school at the age of twelve, he’d come to Nanna Irma’s and promised her he’d never wag school again if she wouldn’t tell his mum.
They cooked and ate pikelets and hung out washing wrung out from the old wringer in the washhouse that had been in the backyard way back then, and Nanna Irma never told. Jake kept his promise too.
Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, striking wineglasses that were impeccably clean. At least, until he picked one up to check for streaks and his dusty fingers wrecked the impeccability.
Jake thrust his hands under the kitchen tap and scrubbed in the cool water. Then he washed the glass and dried it with one of the paper napkins Ella had put out on the countertop.
He opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Chardonnay. Poured two glasses, took a plate and slid a wheel of soft cheese and some paper-thin crackers on it and then balanced all that in his hands as he walked back out Nanna’s hall.
He paused again where the verandah met the top step.
Ella’s head was tilted to the side, like her very soul depended on her hearing some secret the trees might whisper, broom motionless in her hands.
Jake sat.
He chewed his first cracker and cheese while he waited for her to notice him, and he’d picked up the wine to take a sip when Ella glanced over her shoulder and her eyes searched out his.
Jake tipped the glass to her. ‘You look like you could do with one of these.’
There was a moment where he thought
she would stay right where she was, thank you very much, because she hesitated long enough to check the street one last time. Then she smiled at him, a sweet curve of her lips, and came towards him on the path.
‘I don’t understand it. I thought someone would make an appearance just for the wine, if nothing else,’ Ella said, shrugging her shoulders like it was her fault no one had shown up.
‘I’m surprised Harvey didn’t tell you Friday afternoon was a bad idea for a Home Open,’ Jake said, bunting his arse across the verandah boards so Ella had room to sit beside him.
She inspected the verandah boards, for dust he presumed, and made a couple of strokes with the broom. Sawdust flew. He stood to get out of her way before she swept him too, taking the two wineglasses and the cheese.
Ella laid the broom against the wall near Irma’s front door. ‘Bob suggested I hold it Friday. Why is it a bad idea?’
Jake resumed his seat and Ella sat beside him, or not quite beside him; she left a healthy gap, back half-turned against the nearest verandah post. Jake put the cheese platter in the middle. Like Switzerland.
‘Cheers,’ Ella said. ‘To selling your nanna’s house. Any day now.’
Jake clinked his glass to hers. ‘Cheers.’ He didn’t add the bit about selling the house.
Ella took a long sip, then sniffed the wine in the glass and gave it a swirl. Her intensity made him chuckle.
‘What? It’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? Swirl and sniff?’ she said, staring up at him, all big brown eyes in a pale face. He was close enough to count a set of four dark freckles making a lopsided Southern Cross on her neck.
‘Sure. If we’re at one of my brother’s wine shows, maybe. Me? I just drink the stuff.’
‘I drink it too. I just like to appreciate it.’
‘Fair enough.’ Jake took a sip.
‘So you have a brother who’s a winemaker?’ Ella said.
‘I have two brothers. Brix makes wine over near Margaret River. Abe runs restaurants in Perth. He has a few actually, a new one in Broome. One in Dunsborough.’
A car cruised past. First car in ten minutes. Ella tensed as they watched it. Recognising the car, Jake waved. Lenny Balding.
‘So you still haven’t told me why having a Home Open on a Friday is a bad idea,’ Ella said, relaxing as the car passed.
Jake shifted his booted foot to get his leg more comfortable. ‘Most of the town goes to the bowling club on a Friday afternoon in the summer. It’s scroungers night.’
Ella screwed up her face. ‘What’s scroungers?’
‘Lawn bowls. Well, dunno how much bowls actually gets played, but it’s supposed to be the chance for a drink and a social game of bowls. Most of the locals go along and have dinner after at the club.’
‘Oh.’ Ella’s top lip tightened. Then she shrugged it off, picked up a cracker and a knife, and coated the biscuit with cheese. ‘Oh well. More for us, I guess.’
A magpie warbled from across the road, and another flew to the verge to join it. Next door, Helen Nillson turned on the tap to her rainwater tank and shifted a hose through her vegetable patch.
Ella checked her watch.
‘What time does scroungers finish?’ she asked.
‘Not before your Home Open does.’
‘Oh.’ Ella took another cracker.
Jake wondered where he should start, and when he realised he was contemplating how to draw her out in conversation, that made him wonder too. These weren’t things he consciously thought about.
When you knew almost everyone in town, you had common ground. He knew nothing about Ella outside of her being the real estate agent he didn’t want, and being a fan of swimmers, Kieren Perkins in particular, and that she had a young son who reminded him of a bolshy ram.
‘So what’s Sam up to tonight?’ he asked.
‘He’s home, I hope, and keeping out of trouble.’
‘You don’t mind him being home alone?’
She gestured with her wine. ‘It’s not like I have a choice. I can’t drop him with … my mum or anything.’ She hesitated, swallowed, and started again. ‘I don’t have that kind of support network here. It’s not for long. I’ll be home in half an hour and he has chores to get through after school. Homework.’
‘Homework on a Friday arvo is a bit rough on a kid.’
He’d meant it as a throwaway line, but Ella met his eyes and maybe she thought he was judging. Her gaze returned to the wine in her glass and her fingers twisted the stem.
‘Sam hasn’t really started off on the best foot at school.’ The admission came like it cost Ella an arm, and possibly a leg.
‘That’s just till he makes friends and gets used to the place.’
‘I hope so.’ She wouldn’t look at him. ‘He says there isn’t anything to do in this town. You’ve lived here most of your life. What did you do for kicks when you were growing up?’
‘I had two brothers. We made our own fun,’ Jake said.
The response didn’t satisfy Ella. ‘Kids who get bored get into trouble. That’s what his teachers said. That’s what was happening before we left Perth. He’d got caught up in a bad crowd. I wanted things to be different here, but they’re turning out the same.’
‘I grew up on a farm. There were always jobs to do. Sheep to move into a different paddock, lambs’ tails to dock, drenching, shearing, fencing. Hay to throw out off the back of our trailer, or the lucky one of us who got to drive the tractor towing the hay-trailer. We had chickens to feed, eggs to collect. The kids in town had BMX bikes, but we had dirt bikes. Never lacked for kids who wanted to come out to our place for a play … the motorbikes were cool. Dad made a track.’
Both of them glanced to their left as a white tradesman’s vehicle rumbled over Chalk Hill Bridge. Ella tensed again and Jake waved. Brent Mitchell, coming back from Pickles’ farm. There’d been a whole heap of tradies coming and going on Pickles’ farm. Word was he’d been expanding his dam.
‘Do you know every car in town?’ Ella asked, amusement a glint in her eyes.
‘Pretty much.’
‘Wow.’ She shook her head, smiling, and they listened to the magpies warble again.
‘So—’ he began, at the same time as Ella said, ‘So how—’
They both stopped whatever it was they’d been going to say.
‘You first,’ Jake said.
Ella ducked her head in that apologetic way. ‘I was going to ask, how is Perkins III?’
It threw him till he realised she meant Nanna Irma’s bird. ‘You make him sound like royalty. Percy is fine, thanks. Little bugger hasn’t got out again.’
‘Sam loved it the day we found him.’
‘He can come check him out one day, if you’d like.’ Quickly, he amended, ‘If he’d like.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t impose.’
‘It’s not an imposition. Cockatiels like company. I’ve been a bit grumpy lately.’
She laughed. ‘Why have you been grumpy?’
Because my brother needs money, a lot of it, and I don’t know why. ‘I’m a farmer and a businessman. That means I have sheep and my hardware shop staff to worry about and I can tell you that sheep are less hassle than staff. That’s enough to get a guy grumpy.’
‘Ten-year-old boys have the knack of making their mother grumpy too.’
He waited, but she didn’t elaborate. Had Sam ever told her about the rock-throwing incident? He didn’t want to ask if it got the kid in more trouble.
‘Why did you get in this game then?’ He indicated the house behind them. ‘Selling property?’
She took some time to compose an answer. Ella played her cards close to her chest.
‘I was in a bit of a flat spot, I guess you’d say, last year. The last few years maybe. It was time for a change.’
‘It’s as good as a holiday and all that,’ Jake said.
‘Our neighbour put his place on the market last year and the saleswoman came to our house to tell us there was a Home Open at t
he weekend and it might be tricky to find a park out front for that hour.’ She looked out at the zero number of cars lining Chalk Hill Bridge Road and smiled, a touch wistfully. ‘She was really nice. We got talking. Next thing I knew I’d called the real estate institute in Perth and asked them about the next intake for sales certification.’
‘And how did Harvey Begg get his hands on you?’
‘I rang him,’ she admitted. ‘I rang and asked. I made a hit-list of country towns because I thought it would be an easier start than the city. It’s pretty competitive up there. Harvey said he’d give me a go.’
‘Bet Bob loved that,’ Jake said.
Ella didn’t comment, but the corner of her lip twitched.
His wine was finished, and when Jake checked Ella’s glass, hers was too. ‘Would you like a top-up?’
She wavered, checked her watch, but she smiled and Jake was sure she was about to accept his offer and it surprised him how his heart did this bloom inside his chest … but then a vehicle engine rumbled from the street and Ella’s attention pinged like cut elastic.
Lazily, Jake looked up to see who it was, and he frowned at the Troop Carrier and plates because he couldn’t place it. The car’s orange indicator light began a rhythmic flick and the vehicle slowed. Jake reckoned the car might be older than him.
‘F,’ Ella said, sitting up like a circus seal. Jake almost expected her to clap.
‘F?’
‘Erik calls the car F Troop.’ Ella didn’t put her empty wineglass on the verandah boards, she pretty much slung it there, lucky not to break it. She was halfway down the cement path before Jake could blink.
‘Erik!’ she called, opening the gate and running to take the guy now getting out of the car into a hug that might damn near break the bloke’s bones. Jake wasn’t prepared for the iron fist that gripped his gut and gave his insides a twist.
* * *
‘It’s so good to see you,’ Ella said, pulling her ex-husband, ex-coach, but still very best friend tight to her chest. Erik Brecker had always been her happy place.
‘Sold any houses yet, Ella-my-Bella?’
