by Lily Malone
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t give up your day job, hey?’
‘Hey, remember when you need a referee?’ Jake said.
Her brow creased. ‘I don’t need a referee.’
‘Yeah. You might. You know, when you want another job.’ He tipped his chin at her.
‘Aww, you won’t sack me,’ Lisa laughed at him. ‘You want a flower for your swimmer lady, you know who to ask. If you get mean with me, I’m not gonna tell you what it’s even called.’
Jake made a lunge for the pot at her back, looking for the plant’s label. Lisa backed in front of the silver-white shrub, blocking it with her body, and shook her finger at him. ‘Oh no, you don’t.’
Ella appeared through the door from plumbing, stepping into the garden centre. Over Lisa’s square shoulders, Jake saw Ella’s hair bobbing with her steps, heard the gritty grate of her heels on the loose scree bitumen and he fell a little bit more in love with his famous swimmer real estate saleslady all over again.
Lisa whispered, ‘It’s called Moonlight. If she asks.’
‘You can keep your job, Leese,’ Jake said.
‘Why, thank you, Romeo.’
Lisa stepped back to let him pass, arms crossed, cocky grin on her face, and Jake thought, not for the first time, there was a reason he’d do pretty much anything for his staff. They were a good crew.
* * *
Jake was striding between a double-row jungle of potted plants towards his office when Ella saw him, and her step hitched. Each darn day he took her breath away that little bit more.
They locked gazes a long way out, and Ella’s heart bounced: one deep soft bounce that felt like she’d landed in a valley in a featherbed and wasn’t coming back up.
‘Good morning, Ella. You’re late today. I thought Henry might have given up. Unless this is a social call?’
He held one of his hands behind his back.
Ella stopped walking—it was safer in these heels—and dug out the pages of Henry’s latest offer from her handbag. ‘Not a social call, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’ He stopped too. ‘In that case, I guess there’s not much point giving you this?’
A grin spread across Ella’s lips; she couldn’t help it, standing there with her hand tucked in her bag, papers half out of her handbag, and Jake in front of her with a beautiful grevillea. One of those big tubular Queensland varieties, she’d guess, so silver the flower was almost white. Or was that so white it was silver?
‘Swap you, shall I?’ She held out the papers and he took them, and at the same time he pressed the flower stem into her hand: scratchy, prickly, slender grey-green leaves all branching from it. Ella sniffed the huge white-silver bloom.
‘Not sure it has much of a scent,’ Jake said. He hadn’t so much as glanced at the page. He was too busy staring at her.
‘What’s it called?’
‘Grevillea Moonlight,’ Jake said.
Ella arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m impressed you know.’
‘You’re supposed to be.’ He opened his palm towards the entry to the administration wing, ushering her in. Ella stepped into the momentarily darker breezeway and turned left to where she now knew Jake’s office lay. He followed a step or so behind her and her awareness of him felt like some live thing: an invisible network through the pores in their skin.
She didn’t get as far as Jake’s office door.
‘Ella?’
His hand touched her shoulder and she was in his arms before he had any chance to tug her close. She had sense enough to whip the flower to the side before it got crushed, before her mouth opened, her face tilted and she got the taste—oh God, the taste—of Jake’s lips moving over hers. His hands in her hair. Being slow-danced through his door, like sliding on air.
She got a close-up view of his eyes, all midnight swimming pool, before they closed to eyelashes. Big hands sliding up, down, up the skin of her arm, finding her ribs, her waist. Heat everywhere, and no time for breathing, and if she’d had to take a breath, she’d have to steal one of his.
So she stole it. A gasp of air that tasted only of him, taken with the crown of her head tucked against the spot where Jake’s jaw met his ear. Her lips touched his throat and she licked him there, felt the jut of his collarbone and tasted warm salt.
‘This is crazy,’ Ella muttered, as she blew that stolen breath onto his skin where she’d licked him and made him shiver.
‘I know. It’s great crazy, though.’ He tilted her chin and started again, lips on hers, softer now.
Kissing her to her knees, just like yesterday.
Kissing her to her knees, like the day before that.
Knees. What was scratching her knee? Something is crawling on my knee!
‘Spider!’ Ella squealed, pushing at Jake’s chest, kicking her left leg at the same time as she slapped at herself. ‘Get it off.’
‘Ella? Shit, Ella. It’s me you’re kicking. Relax. What’s up?’
‘Something on my leg,’ she got out between clenched teeth, flailing at her knee.
‘It’s the flower I gave you, honey,’ Jake said, laughing, and Ella’s brain finally computed exactly where she was.
She was sitting on Jake’s desk. On his desk! With her skirt rucked half up her open thighs and Jake standing between them, and the flower he’d given her gone from her hand, sliding half off the desk, with the spiky leaves and the less-spiky but still scratchy flower head brushing her bare skin.
‘Oh.’ Ella picked up the flower stem, twisted it in her fingers, looking at it.
Her free hand patted at her hair. She’d lost her clips. Dumbly, she looked for them on Jake’s desk or on the floor.
He knelt and picked one up. He took a step towards the door to get the other and stopped on the way back, staring at her like she was … like she was the sexiest darn thing he’d ever seen.
‘God, you’re beautiful like that,’ he told her, still staring.
His words made Ella feel bruised, in the softest, most gentle way.
And it got to her then. She lowered her head, breaking his gaze, and her hair tumbled across her face.
‘Don’t you dare hide, Ella Davenport,’ Jake said, stepping close. He caught the hair that was loose and tucked it behind her ear, pushing the clip against her scalp to tie it back in place. ‘Not from me.’
Ella sucked his words in deep and breathed them out again. ‘Okay.’
She closed her thighs, pushed her bottom forward on his desk until her feet touched the ground and then she said it again, stronger this time. ‘Okay.’
‘Good.’ Satisfied, Jake’s attention turned to the papers that were once again scrunched across his desk. ‘Now, do I need to look at these?’
‘Yes, please.’
Jake looked. Ella might have seen the merest twitch of his eyebrow, or hell, maybe he’d been about to sneeze. Maybe she imagined the whole thing.
‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’ Jake folded the pages and handed them to her.
‘Tell him your asking price.’
‘You got it in one.’
‘And you aren’t going to change your mind? You aren’t going to budge?’
‘I’m not.’
Ella pinched her thumb and index finger across her chin as she digested his words. ‘I really think this is as high as Henry’ll go. I think this is the best he’ll do.’
‘Okay. That’s fine.’
Ella nodded once. ‘And you don’t want to counteroffer at all? And you don’t need to talk to your brothers?’
‘No. The decision is mine.’
‘Can I borrow a pen, please?’
Jake gave her his pen and Ella spread the paper on Jake’s desk, smoothing all the scrunches as flat as she could. She drew two parallel lines diagonally across the top page, then inside the lines, in small capitals, she wrote NOT ACCEPTED and the date.
‘That’s it?’ Jake said.
‘That’s it. That’s the end.’
* * *
She didn’t turn right on the main street, which would take her back to the office. Instead, Ella turned left, then left again into Chalk Hill Bridge Road, taking the quickest route to Irma’s house.
Her For Sale sign sat boldly out on the grass verge, a proclamation of all her hopes and dreams. Ella slowed her car and parked behind the sign.
When she got out she stood straight, looking at the flaked paint on the weatherboards, the long straight cement path to the steps, the four panes of glass on the two front windows.
‘Someone will buy you one day,’ she promised Irma’s house.
Ella walked along the road thirty metres to her left, stepping carefully in her heels. Helen Nillson’s front gate squeaked shut behind her as she edged through.
A sprinkler misted over Helen’s vegetable patch where a black and white wagtail fluffed his feathers in the spray. The bird made Ella smile.
CHAPTER
22
Ella parked in the same place the next afternoon, tucking the Mazda between the For Sale sign in front of Irma’s house and the tree on the front verge. The shade fell across the car and she was grateful it would help keep it cool. Like Jake said, the week was hotting up. The weekend was supposed to be a scorcher.
There was another car outside Helen Nillson’s place today and Ella assumed it would be Helen’s son.
Stepping through the gate and up a path that was a mirror of Irma Honeychurch’s house next door, Ella waited after pressing the bell. Footsteps tapped towards her, then the door opened and Helen’s softly round face peered around the old timber.
‘Hi, Helen.’
‘Hi, Ella. Come in. Mick is here. He’s in the kitchen.’ Helen moved back, taking the door with her, and Ella stepped through. It was cooler inside, but not by much.
Once again it struck her how much the layout of Helen’s home mirrored Irma’s, except for the floors. The timber floor she loved in Irma’s house was covered in linoleum here, and it made a sticky thatch thatch noise under Ella’s shoes as she followed Helen through the house. Not that the stickiness was to do with any mess, though, as the place was spotless.
‘Mick, this is Ella Davenport, the one I was telling you about,’ Helen said, opening her hand to indicate her son, a mountain of a man overflowing the table in Helen’s kitchen.
‘How are you, Ella?’ Florid-faced, like his mother, Mick stood to shake Ella’s hand. ‘You’re the swimmer lady, Mum says.’
‘Swimmer lady,’ Ella laughed, touching her hand to her chest self-consciously. ‘I don’t know about that. Once a long time ago, maybe.’
‘Irene Loveday says you’ll be doing water therapy sessions for us oldies when they reopen the town pool,’ Helen said.
Small towns. ‘Oh gosh, I’m not sure about that, Helen. There’s a lot of water that’s got to go under the bridge on that idea first. It was just something that Harvey mentioned the other day … but everyone seems to know about it.’
‘That’s the grapevine in action, right there,’ Mick said. ‘I can’t say I miss that part of Chalk Hill.’
Mick sat in the seat next to his mother. Ella pulled out a chair opposite the Nillson pair and smoothed her skirt.
‘That looks a bit scary,’ Helen said, indicating the Begg & Robertson presentation folder Ella laid on the kitchen table. Inside were listing papers, marketing information and all the standard paraphernalia that went with listing a property for sale.
Mick sat a bit straighter.
‘I promise it won’t be scary, Helen,’ Ella said, before she directed her attention to Helen’s son. ‘I’m really glad you could come along, Mick.’
He opened his palms on the table. ‘No worries. I have to make sure Mum is comfortable with this. To be honest, I’m not sure how comfortable I am with this.’
‘Coffee? Tea? Water?’ Helen offered.
‘Oh, a glass of water would be lovely, Helen, thank you,’ Ella said.
Mick said he was fine as he was and, as Helen got up to bustle around her kitchen, Ella began. ‘So your mum ran through what I talked to her about yesterday?’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it from you again,’ Mick said.
‘Is it too hot in here? Should I open a window?’ Helen worried aloud.
‘You do whatever you like, Helen,’ Ella said, wanting the older lady to feel at ease. ‘I’m fine, but you suit yourself.’
‘Sit down, Mum. We’re all okay,’ Mick said.
‘I know it’s a big thing for your mum,’ Ella said, folding her hands in her lap and holding them hard to keep her own nerves in check. If everything went right today, she could have her first sale tomorrow. Maybe even tonight!
Her first sale! Tonight.
‘So, what I explained yesterday was that I had someone interested in Irma’s house next door, but not at the asking price that Jake put on the place.’
‘We said he’d never get that,’ Mick said, shaking his head. ‘Crazy. Who’d pay $649,000 for that?’
‘Well, I can’t talk about what Jake and his brothers are doing there, but I couldn’t get these two parties to meet anywhere near the middle. Jake wasn’t budging and the buyer wouldn’t go any higher, and I was trying to work out what to do and I suddenly thought, it’s worth going and speaking with Helen, just to see if you had any interest in selling this place.’
Neither Mick nor Helen said anything, but Helen’s gaze flicked from Ella’s face to the window, to the sink, to her sideboard table and the kitchen clock, and to the back of Mick’s hand stretched on the table, before returning to Ella’s eyes. The old lady had so many memories here, Ella knew. It made it hard to think about leaving.
‘So yesterday, your mum said that the family had been talking about her maybe down-sizing,’ Ella said. ‘Maybe moving to be closer to your sister? In Mandurah, wasn’t she?’
‘The garden’s getting a bit much for her since Dad died,’ Mick nodded. ‘Yes, my sister is in Mandurah and I’m at Mount Barker, but we’ve been talking about moving to Perth now the kids are getting older. One of my boys is doing well with his cricket and we’re sick of driving him up and back to Perth all the time. Really, we’ve only stayed down this way these last couple of years because of Mum.’
‘There’s a few jobs need doing, too,’ Helen said. ‘Back steps get slippery in the winter. This house is just about as old as me!’ She said it with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Mick said, ‘I bet your phone’s been running off the hook since that story about Pickles’ ski park, and doing up Chalk Hill Bridge Road—’
Ella lost her train of thought. ‘I thought his name was Fields. Why does the whole town call him Pickles? It’s got me stumped!’
Mick and Helen chuckled at the knowledge they shared a secret. ‘You tell her, love,’ Helen said.
‘Have you heard of dill pickles, Ella?’
‘They’re like little pickled cucumbers,’ Helen put in.
‘Yes, I’m sure I have,’ Ella said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten one, though. Are they like gherkins?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mick admitted. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had one. Mum?’
‘Beats me. Your dad would never eat anything if it was pickled. Not onions, not anything.’ Helen patted her tummy. ‘Upset his stomach.’
Mick took up the story, and Ella was glad they’d moved on from upset stomachs because the nerves and excitement in hers were doing their own kind of synchronised swimming.
‘No one remembers now if it was a teacher who called him Pickles at school, or whether it was the junior footy coach, or the other kids, or something. I dunno. But somewhere along the line someone put Dyl and Pickles together, and ever since he’s been Dyl Pickles. Everyone calls him Pickles. There would have
been a heap of people scratching their head reading that story in the paper about the ski park and thinking, who the hell is Dylan Fields?’
They laughed, and then Ella brought the conversation gently back to the sale. ‘So, what I was saying was, I rang the buyer last night to tell him Jake rejected his final offer, and I asked whether he would have any interest in another property on Chalk Hill Bridge Road, if I could find one for him. And he said yes, he’d think about it, if it was zoned the same.’
‘But he hasn’t even seen the place,’ Helen sputtered.
‘He doesn’t need to see it, Mum,’ Mick said, touching her arm.
‘Mick’s right, Helen,’ Ella said. ‘This might be hard for you, but this buyer isn’t interested in your house, not really. It’s the land he wants. They want to redevelop the property.’
‘What would he do with it?’ Helen said, as her gaze roamed again. Window. Sink. Sideboard table. Clock.
‘I’m not sure, Helen. The land is commercially zoned town centre. There could be shops, a restaurant, accommodation.’
‘Depends what they want to spend, I guess,’ Mick said. ‘Sky’s the limit.’
‘They still have to keep within the town building guidelines and planning strategy. They can’t go put a ten-storey hotel on here,’ Ella said. ‘But the land use options are fairly open with commercial.’
‘Okay,’ Mick said, drawing up his shoulders. ‘How much did this guy offer for Jake’s nanna’s place?’
‘I can’t tell you that, sorry,’ Ella said.
‘Surely you can give us a ballpark figure?’ Mick said, a stubborn edge hardening his jaw. ‘What do you think he’d pay for Mum’s house?’
‘I appraised your house just like I did next door. This lot is slightly smaller, but only by about fifty square metres. Your mum’s place doesn’t have a big shed, like next door. There’s an argument that next door has the better view of the bridge—’
‘You said the buyer isn’t interested in the shed or the house.’
‘True. But I’m just trying to explain how I’d come to an appraisal price. Given all the news to do with the upgrade to Chalk Hill Bridge Road, that definitely adds to the value here. So my appraisal would be between $479,000 and $499,000. That’s where I’d be thinking. Possibly even more than $500,000.’ Ella dug through her file and pulled the appraisal out, handing it to Helen.
