by Jennie Jones
She hadn’t responded to his offer to stay the whole twelve days with more than a pause and a stare. Jamie hadn’t known why he’d suggested it in the first place, apart from the compassion that seemed to have stuck to his innards like a fast-hardening bonding glue. He hadn’t reiterated the offer because he wasn’t one hundred per cent sure why he’d presented her with the notion in the first place. Not even twenty per cent sure.
‘Is there a bathroom?’ she asked.
‘Already renovated, you’ll be glad to hear. Hot water, the works.’ As long as she didn’t take up all the bathroom time with five-hour-long bubble baths. Not that he stocked bubbles, but he’d bet the right front tyre on the fourteen-tonner she had some in her luggage.
‘It’s the only bathroom?’
‘’Fraid so.’
She seemed a little deflated by this.
Jamie turned for the hall linen cupboard, opened it and pulled out a couple of sheets, a thin coverlet and a pillow. ‘I’ll nip in and shower now, while you unpack and make up your bed. Then the bathroom’s all yours. Here.’ He handed her the bed linen.
She put her carry-on down just inside the door of the spare room and took the linen off him. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Given the misery on her face and the tiredness in her eyes, it looked like she’d be catching the first bus out of Swallow’s Fall tomorrow morning after all. No doubt leaving the locals to deal with the mess she’d left alongside her hire car. ‘We’ll make better arrangements tomorrow. Make things more comfortable for you. I’ll shift those boxes.’
‘No need.’ She stepped into the room and looked back at him, over her shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘You have actually been very… You know — helpful.’
‘Goodnight, Kate.’ He almost said ‘sleep tight’ until he remembered he still needed to nip downstairs and lock up that nail gun.
****
Jamie sat on his king-size bed, forearms on his thighs, hands hanging. What was he doing? People had helped and coerced Megan, whether she’d wanted it or not. One thing Jamie recognised was the insistent, independent quality some women had. Megan had it. And Kate Singleton had it. By the fourteen-ton bucketful.
He stood, left the bedroom, walked across the hall and knocked on her door.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I open the door?’ he asked.
‘Um…’
He heard scrambling noises. Boxes being shifted, the scrape of a chair. Her suitcase being wheeled across the wooden floorboards. Was she trying to barricade herself in?
‘There’s no lock on the door, Katie,’ he called. ‘I can walk in any time. If I was going to do you in with my sledgehammer, I’d have done it by now.’
The door wrenched open. ‘If you wish to call me something other than Kate, please call me Katherine.’
She wore navy-blue pyjamas with white bunny rabbits on them. Shorts and a short-sleeved jacket style top. Didn’t quite match the starch in her voice. Jamie’s mouth curled in a smile. He looked down at her feet, half expecting the man-killers, but she was bare footed. Her toenails were painted the same pink colour as her fingernails. Same colour as the lipstick she’d worn.
‘Maybe I’ll call you Sweet-Katie.’ He grinned. Her face looked fresh and dewy, as though she’d just woken up. No make-up. She’d let her hair down too. ‘Or Katie-pie. Maybe Sugar-Katie.’
She pursed her mouth and Jamie tasted lemon.
‘Please leave my bedroom.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No can do.’ He hooked a thumb, indicating she get out of the spare room. ‘I’ll take this. You’re having my bed.’
Chapter 4
Kate woke with the sun warming her cheeks. She hadn’t closed the curtains on the windows in the bedroom last night because she’d loved the face of the moon shining in on her as she closed her eyes and prayed for sleep. Amazingly, she had slept. For eight hours by the look of her travel alarm clock sitting on Jamie’s bedside table.
She lifted herself to sit, propping herself up on the mattress with her hands behind her. The sheets smelled clean, but she’d fallen asleep with a slightly tantalising aroma of Jamie Knight. Stone walls, summer-dry fields and a surprising hint of lime. Not the mortar kind, the aftershave kind.
She pushed the covers back and stood, stretching her arms up to the ceiling, lifting her head and waking her body. Nice ceiling. More beams. In need of a touch up though, the grey-blue paint flaking here and there.
She checked out the rest of the room in the morning light. Large. At the front of the house. The navy-checked curtains on the four little square windows tucked neatly behind iron holdbacks. The walls were plastered and painted antique white, as was most of the house. A feature wall wouldn’t go amiss here and there. The wall behind the king-size bed would give the large room a stately feel if it was painted a darker blue-grey.
She wandered to one of the windows and took a look at the driveway. Both the excavator and the Knight Works ute were parked. He hadn’t gone to work yet.
She grabbed her lavender-coloured summer-light dressing gown, her toiletry bag, and headed for the bathroom. Last night she’d done nothing more than take her make-up off and freshen up a bit. This morning, she wanted more.
****
Water, hot and gushing from a powerful top mounted showerhead above, drowned her in pleasure. What a shower. Big enough for three. Big enough for Jamie to slosh all the stone dust and mortar and excavator grease from his six foot three body.
Stop that right now, Kate Singleton.
Oh alright. One more thought. All six wall-mounted jet sprays directed at his upper body, pulsating vigorously over those squeaky clean muscles.
Okay. Stop it.
She turned the shower off and stepped out of the large, damask-coloured tiled recess onto a dark-brown bath mat. Kate would change that for white. She’d have white towels and hand cloths stacked on the beechwood shelves. Maybe interspersed with treacle-coloured towels.
She combed through her hair in one of the mirrors above the double vanity. A His and Hers. Who would Mr Knight choose to share his bathroom? Funny he wasn’t married already. A good-looking guy, a successful business, a brilliant handyman on tap. There were women in the world who’d missed out. Kate wondered what Jamie had done wrong, until she remembered she wasn’t married either. And she hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? The Decision. Dang. She’d been so busy imagining Jamie Knight soaped up in his shower, she’d forgotten about The Decision. And if she wanted to get her life in order before she turned thirty, she only had a few days to do so.
This was day two of her twelve-day sojourn. So from which angle was she going to approach the problem? Holy heck, she still had no idea. And was she going to stay at Silver Bells House until she turned thirty?
****
Kate knew the best way to enter a room was to breeze in with a smile as though you owned it. Sadly, she didn’t own Silver Bells House but she swept into the kitchen as though she did anyway. Couldn’t quite drum up the smile due to the nerves tickling her insides.
He was at the bench, scraping butter on toast and looking scrubbed and sexy. And it wasn’t only his looks that tickled the nerves in Kate’s stomach. It was his quiet, Superman strength. The internal kind. Confidence, discreet but effortless. Intimate even. Wonder what would make him lose his cool? There had to be a forceful, gritty side to a man that big and that wide.
‘Good morning,’ he said as he looked up at her. His eyes widened for a second then he rotated a shoulder and looked away. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Probably better than you did,’ she said, tightening the belt on her dressing gown and wondering if perhaps he’d have preferred she was dressed. At weekends or on holidays, she rose early but never got dressed until late morning, working from home in her pyjamas or her dressing gown. ‘That’s one comfortable king-sized bed you have.’
‘Isn’t it?’ When he looked up this time, his features were impassive. ‘Breakfast?’
‘Toast woul
d be great. Thank you.’ Kate took a seat at the table, ensuring her dressing gown was safely wrapped around her legs.
The aroma of fried temptation wafted throughout the kitchen. Bacon.
‘Help yourself to coffee.’ He nodded at the pot on the table. ‘There’s tea, if you prefer.’
‘Coffee’s perfect.’ She poured from the percolator into a china cup and added a dash of milk from a china jug. Holy galoshes. A man who set the table. ‘Aren’t you going to work today?’ she asked him. ‘Please don’t worry about me. I’ll get myself organised. And I promise not to steal anything from your house.’
‘Thought I’d go to the homestead later. Wanted to make sure you were okay with your plans.’
‘Plans?’ she said with a derogatory huff at herself and her situation. ‘I’m full of them.’ All spontaneous and none of them currently working.
He put a plate of toast in front of her. Three slices. Did he expect her to eat all that?
‘Like what?’ he asked as he took a seat opposite her with his plate of bacon. And two eggs. Fried. And toast. Four slices. Superman needed sustenance, obviously.
‘I have a monumental decision to make which I’m dithering about,’ she told him and immediately wondered how she could have fallen into the trap of truthfulness with him. This must be a new side of her. She normally kept her plans to herself until ready to fling them at her world when they were in meticulous order. Maybe Jamie lived up to his surname. A modern day knight. He’d been particularly careful to ensure she wasn’t scared of him last night. Again, all that comfortable kindness with a dash of firm masculinity. ‘I’m going to test run a few things to take me out of my usual modus operandi and see what happens.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like not dieting.’ She cut a square of toast in half, pulled an opened jar of jam towards her and slathered jam over one piece. ‘Watch this.’ She bit into it and closed her eyes, squishing her shoulders up to her ears as the deliciousness of the blueberry jam and the hot dripping butter spread throughout her. ‘Yum,’ she said after she’d finished it. She pushed the plate away and picked up her coffee.
‘One half slice of toast is not dieting?’
‘You betcha. Did you see how much jam I put onto that?’
She took a surreptitious look at Jamie’s breakfast plate. Her stomach rumbled. Maybe tomorrow morning she’d have bacon too. One rasher, slapped between two slices of buttery toast. If she was here tomorrow morning.
Her mobile rang. Kate plucked it from the pocket of her dressing gown and checked the caller ID. ‘Oh, darn.’ Work. Not you know who but his assistant. She answered the call. ‘Kate Singleton, Singleton’s Sassy Sensations.’ She listened as conceited Sarah — pronounced Sahra — informed her they’d received her message yesterday about not coming back to the office and how shocked they were and had she changed her mind because work was piling up. Ms Up-Herself Sahra probably needed murdering too. She was undoubtedly in on you know who’s underhand doings. The personification of a young manager who thought she had more skills than she’d ever possess. ‘Well, you’re going to have to rattle the office cage without me,’ Kate said, cutting Sahra off in the middle of her tirade about timesheets and invoices and errant designers not turning up on time for shoots. ‘That’s right. Uh-huh. Golly, shall I repeat myself? I said I’m not coming back until after the holiday season.’ She punched End Call and put the phone down.
‘What’s going on?’ Jamie asked.
‘Nothing.’ That she wanted to discuss.
‘So you’re not going back to the city?’
‘Don’t know yet, I just said that to keep them guessing.’ And hopefully choking on the influx of telephone messages and emails piling up. Perhaps tempers would get so hot the office would ignite and annihilate Sahra and you know who in one roaring backdraft. Then Kate wouldn’t have to make The Decision and could walk away with half of the insurance money. ‘Well,’ Kate stood. ‘Excuse me. Think I should be able to get hold of Sammy by now.’ She pushed her chair under the table, picked up her mobile phone and walked into the hall.
She hit the selected speed dial and stood at the far end of the hall, next to what she presumed was the back door. It had little paned windows on the top half and gave Kate an excellent view of the gardens behind the house. She tapped the phone with her index finger as she listened to it ring, and ring and ring. Lovely garden. A whole paddock. Wouldn’t get that with a Federation bungalow in Sydney.
At last Sammy answered.
‘Okay, girlfriend — what’s going on?’ Kate asked.
‘Hi, Kate. How are you?’
‘I’m stuck in the country with an excavator-driving stonemason. I bogged my hire car. I don’t have that cute cottage all to myself. You remember? The one you said I was living in for twelve days. Instead, I’m stuck, Sammy. Stuck.’
‘Oh heck. I totally forgot. How dumb.’
‘Five miles high dumb, Samantha. That’s how dumb.’ Forgot? How could she forget?
‘Where are you now?’ Sammy said in a tone suggesting she was smiling.
‘I’m in Silver Bells House.’
‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Do you like the stonework inside?’
‘Oh, I love it. Peachy.’ Kate paused. ‘Was that a giggle?’
‘Now calm down, Kate. Let’s figure this out. What did Jamie say?’
‘He said I could stay a few nights until I get organised to get out. And then he said I could stay the whole holiday, if I really wanted to.’
‘Oh, did he now?’
‘Don’t go reading anything into that. He’s got the charm of a bulldozer.’ Not true, but she had to arm herself with something derogatory about him. He’d looked a lot yummier last night than her nearly thirty-year-old body had been happy about. She’d expected him to be fully dressed when she opened the spare room door. Instead, he’d looked like a freshly showered, virile machine. Bare-chested. Bare footed and bewitching. If she’d been able to take a photograph of him standing there in nothing but his tanned, stonemason’s muscly skin and his clean khaki trousers she’d have brought khaki out of the work-wear world and into the glittering arena of top fashion houses. ‘I daren’t stay,’ she said. In case she found herself unable to take her eyes off him. In case all that comforting protection stuff he possessed got to her and she forgot the reason she’d come to the country. To make The Decision.
‘Why not? You’ll hardly see him.’
‘Because… Because…’ Kate leaned her forehead against a glass pane in the back door and stared out at the garden. ‘Am I safe?’ she asked quietly.
‘From Jamie? Are you mad? He’s the most reliable man I’ve met — apart from Ethan.’
She hadn’t meant it that way. After her riotous thoughts in the shower about how he’d soap the dirt off his body she’d wondered if perhaps Jamie Knight might be unsafe from the clutches of Kate. ‘What’s his story?’ she asked.
‘Haven’t got a clue what his whole story is.’ Sammy paused. ‘But…’
‘Yes?’
‘I think he’s the retiring, reluctant type — and he’s shy.’
Kate considered this. Shy? At six foot three and built like a brick outhouse? ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Not my place to say.’
Kate nodded, her mouth tugging to one side. ‘Woman trouble?’ she asked, keeping her voice low. Had he been hurt in love? Maybe some woman had wounded him and he’d buried his poor stonemason’s soul in the country. In what should have been her holiday house.
Kate pulled a face. Jamie’s scenario wasn’t too far from her own. Lost and lonely, looking for…well, not love but some other word beginning with L if the alliteration in the sentence was going to work. If she did stay, perhaps she could help him. Ease him out of his misery. Be a good house guest and cheer him up. It would be something to do. He had been big-and-burly helpful, apart from the initial peeved tone, which she now understood the reason for. Woman trouble.
What kind of female troubled
Jamie Knight? The petite bouncy blonde? The Jessica Rabbit redhead? Or the executive brunette?
Kate squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t meant herself. Yes, she was a brunette and she happened to be an executive but she hadn’t meant herself. No way, José.
‘Promise me you won’t go digging for whatever it was that hurt him,’ Sammy said. ‘Be jolly and happy around him. Don’t push and don’t ask him personal questions.’
Was Sammy out of her mind? One of Kate’s best skillsets was figuring out what made people tick. She ran a fashion house, for God’s sake. Human beings ticked differently and in the fashion world you met all types of beings. Not always human. ‘Alright,’ she said to Sammy. ‘I’m feeling safer.’ About not ogling Mr Knight too much, and about being brave enough to concentrate solely on The Decision.
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Sammy said. ‘You probably won’t even see him. He’ll be out early morning and back late afternoon.’
‘I think I might stay then.’ Because where else was she going to go to get away from it all? She’d have to wait at least two more days due to the damage on her hire car anyway. Or get the bus into the next big town with hire car prospects. Talk about stuck.
‘Okay,’ Sammy said. ‘Your choice — but don’t forget that shooting star. It was magic. Magic happens when shooting stars appear, Kate. Don’t forget the star.’
Kate had forgotten about the shooting star. It had appeared in the night sky in New York and she’d made a wish. She’d also forgotten that she’d told her best friend about the star — and the wish.
‘You’re a fine one, telling me what not to forget, Samantha Granger. You’ve forgotten that you’re the one who forgot to tell me I’d have nowhere to stay for my magical twelve-day holiday.’
****
Jamie looked up as his house guest walked back into the kitchen. ‘Did you get hold of Sammy?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And… I do need to stay for a few days. I’ll call the hire car company now and ask them what they want to do. I suppose they’ll send a tow truck down.’
