The House On Jindalee Lane

by Jennie Jones

  She looked up when a movement outside the window caught her attention. Ryan was leaning a ladder against the front doors of the barn to install motion sensors. This gave Edie the creeps, but he obviously thought they were necessary. Perhaps he had found out something more about Marcus, but if he had, he wasn’t telling her.

  Edie took her focus off Ryan and tried to study her production notes but couldn’t concentrate. They hadn’t had an argument, they’d kissed, yet they were both behaving the way they did after a bout of misunderstanding. They were being polite and trying to act normal, but they kept catching each other’s eye, and when that happened it was like someone had lit a fuse between them. Edie turned away first every time, and felt Ryan’s perceptive gaze follow her. It was as though he’d silently agreed not to talk about the important stuff. She didn’t mean Marcus and his doings, or the reason for the motion sensors—she meant the kiss and Ryan asking her to remember that day as adults making new memories. All she had in her head were the old memories. It was like walking over a bridge that never ended. Why hadn’t she considered these changes in both of them before now—when she was hankering after him, oblivious to what it would really feel like to be wanted by him? It was as though all that love for him, and all the yearning, was nothing more than a fantasy she’d played out in her head. Although her heart had got wired up to the same brain patterns.

  She put her chin in her hand and found her gaze wandering to the window again. He was up the ladder, drill in hand.

  He was sleeping outside her bedroom door on an old sofa. She’d had hardly any sleep for three nights now. Each night when she closed her eyes, the only vision she had was of Ryan, sprawled on the sofa outside her door, and what might happen—and what she’d do—if he knocked on her door.

  Ryan switched the dishwasher on, then turned to glance at Edie who’d gone back to looking through the sound and lighting cues as soon as they’d finished their lunch.

  ‘So we’ve got a big rehearsal tonight,’ he said. They’d been rehearsing all week in the barn, tonight was the first time on the stage. He’d got the flooring on and Edie had painted it with a nonslip black paint.

  She nodded, but didn’t look his way. ‘It’ll be exciting, being on the stage at last.’

  He’d given her two days of privacy after their trip on his Harley. She’d said nothing about the kiss so he’d given her a further two days to think about what he’d said. Still nothing. It was as though she’d clammed up because she couldn’t make up her mind, or was scared to head into a conversation she wasn’t ready to have. But it had been four days and he couldn’t hold out much longer. She was attracted to him, he was sure of it. She couldn’t keep eye contact with him for a start. If he happened to be at the sink, she placed herself so that the bench or the table was between them. If he passed her in the house or in the barn, she made sure they didn’t get close enough for body contact.

  Maybe it was time to give her a little nudge. ‘You want to talk?’ he asked.

  She looked up and her expression changed from guarded to pleasantly enquiring almost instantly, but not fast enough for Ryan not to notice.

  ‘About?’

  He pulled the chair from the table, turned it and sat, his forearms resting on the back-brace. ‘Us. The kiss. What’s been going on between us the last few days—and your worry about me trying it again.’

  She smiled shyly. ‘Ryan,’ she said, then stopped—as though she’d lost her nerve.

  ‘What?’ he asked softly.

  She twisted her pen in her fingers then threw it down, as though it were a string of worry beads that wasn’t working. ‘It’s so weird, having you joke about this.’

  ‘You haven’t got there yet, that’s all.’ He hoped that was all.

  ‘I’m a bit of a coward,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her lashes.

  Dazzling, beautiful Edie. ‘I like you quite a bit, Dazzlepants.’

  He was rewarded with a glowing blush.

  ‘So are you going to try again?’ she asked quietly.

  Bingo. He’d got her to mention the kissing.

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Am I going to know when?’

  ‘That’s the best part. You won’t have a clue. So start twirling your bracelet, Glam-puss, because I’m going to be breaking through your defences.’ He said it with a grin, making it fun and easy, but he meant it.

  She smiled, but looked away.

  ‘Don’t you like me?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘But you can’t get your head around the idea of us being together in this new way?’

  She shot him a look. ‘I never imagined it happening at all.’

  ‘Do you think you might want it to happen, but can’t come to terms with it yet?’

  She bit her bottom lip so hard he wondered if she was trying to stop herself from giving him an affirmative nod.

  ‘There’s a lot of nonsense in my head,’ she said at last. ‘But I do like you … always have.’ She said it quietly, almost regretfully. As though she wasn’t sure what message she wanted to give him because she didn’t yet know herself.

  He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertips, wanting to assure her of her safety, of his love.

  No matter how much he wanted to tell her he loved her, let alone knock on her bedroom door each night as he lay on the sofa outside her room, he had to ease into things. ‘Here,’ he said, and fiddled with the knot on the lavender bracelet he was still wearing. ‘I only wore this for you, so you can have both.’ He took her wrist and tied his next to hers. He glanced up and offered her a grin. ‘For when you’re extra worried about the next time I might try to kiss you.’

  She hadn’t kissed him back with everything she had that day at the river. She’d been surprised that he’d taken things that far, but she had accepted the kiss. She’d parted her lips beneath his.

  That, and her cautiousness, told him so much.

  He wasn’t giving up.

  Ted guffawed loudly, although his bullfrog call sounded more like he was choking. His head bobbed above the top of the armchair he was sitting in as he slapped its padded arm throughout his croaking laughter.

  Edie stopped the rehearsal. ‘Ted, please,’ she called. They were on the stage, which was a tremendously satisfying feat. It was late though, because Simon had been called out on farrier business suddenly and Edie had to move their six pm rehearsal to eight. Then Ted had insisted on taking photographs of the rehearsal. Ryan had taken some too, so that Ted was also in the photos, and that had created more time wasting because Ted had been at pains to explain to Ryan—a man who could operate over forty weapon systems—the control of shutter speed and aperture.

  ‘Lovely though it is to hear your laughter, Ted,’ Edie said, ‘the corpse isn’t supposed to corpse.’

  Ted sat forwards. ‘Corpsing? What’s that?’

  ‘Laughing onstage, out of character, because you can’t keep a straight face. Don’t forget you’re dead,’ she added. ‘You can’t laugh.’

  ‘It’s him,’ Ted said, throwing a smile Simon’s way. ‘He makes me laugh.’

  In that case, Edie would make sure Ted attended every rehearsal of Act I and grew accustomed to being dead and not making a sound. It was the audience who were supposed to laugh at the comedy. Not the dead body.

  She glanced at Simon and threw him a warning director-to-actor raised eyebrow.

  ‘Sorry, Edie,’ Simon said. ‘Even I find these lines funny. Can’t help adding a bit here and there.’

  Except that it was Edie’s scripted lines he should be speaking. ‘The audience will also find it funny—if we ever get through a full rehearsal!’ She smiled as she said it, but Simon was interrupting with his ad-lib quips. No matter how amusing some of them were, he was abusing the script Edie had painstakingly written, and not without some experience. She’d been writing scripts for years. Not that she’d done anything with them until she put on Who Shot the Producer.

  ‘Let�
�s get back to it, people,’ she said. Simon wasn’t even on until Act II and although she loved that he was keen enough to watch Act I rehearsals, he ought not to interfere. They had so much to work through and she only had her actors each weekday evening and a few hours at the weekends. There were three weeks until curtain up so time was precious. ‘Ted, face forwards and keep still.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Ted said, and saluted before he took up his slumped dead body position.

  Edie stood downstage right as the leading lady, and had been letting her cast walk through Act I, bumping into each other now and then because it always felt smaller, or tighter, when you got onto the actual stage. She’d put gaffer tape crosses on the stage floor and had chalked out where everything was on a blackboard she’d scrounged from her mum, so that they found it easier to hit their mark. Upstage, downstage, centre stage, right- and left-stage.

  She threw a surreptitious glance at Ryan.

  Her hand went to the two bracelets on her wrist and she fiddled with the one he’d given her that afternoon.

  He hadn’t made his move on her yet and it had been hours since his challenge. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or continue being enthralled by the prospect, and thrillingly scared about wondering when it might happen.

  Since that time by the river something between them sang, underscoring the silence. She felt sure he was teasing her and was waiting for the moment he felt was right to take her in his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her.

  How she wanted it. Yet she ought not to … If she started something with Ryan and then left—well, that wouldn’t be fair, and since when had she ever imagined a scenario of Ryan wanting her, let alone her leaving him?

  Ryan spoke his next line then moved downstage left, opposite her, one hand in his pocket, a pencil behind his ear and his script in his hand. He was standing in for Tony in the leading man’s role, and also scribbling on his script. If anyone forgot where they were supposed to be at any given time, Ryan, as stage manager, would be able to tell them.

  He was a good stage manager. Probably all that map reading and tactical force stuff he’d learned how to do in the army. He wasn’t putting much oomph into the role of leading man, but she wasn’t worried about that. Tony would be glossy and debonair as the ex-Special Forces now private investigator who was in love with the leading lady.

  Edie glanced at her watch. They’d walked through this first act twice. Better get on with Act II and see how they coped with that.

  ‘Think timing, Ted,’ Edie said thirty minutes later, interrupting the flow of Act II scene two, which was not flowing, although she didn’t mind because everyone was doing really well.

  ‘I can’t speak it any faster,’ Ted said. ‘And if I go slower, we’ll be adding half an hour to the night.’

  ‘It’s not how fast you talk. It’s how you deliver a line.’

  ‘I’m delivering it!’

  Edie lowered her head so he wouldn’t see her smile.

  Ted needed help with where to move and how to deliver a line, but other than that she gave him very little direction. He was funny anyway, as Ted the ice-cream seller and as Ted the committee chairman waving his gavel at town hall meetings.

  Ted was wielding the town hall gavel now—as a pretend gun. She was amazed he’d brought it to rehearsals. He kept it in a padded box and stored it in the safe in the town hall. It was inscribed with his name and his role of committee chairman. Nobody ever got to see it unless he was banging it to announce the start or the end of a meeting.

  He looked fantastic in his ill-fitting jacket. Edie had borrowed an old one from her father. It came down to Ted’s thighs and he’d had to roll the sleeves under three times. But he lived and breathed the part in that suit jacket. This was the entire point of comedy—the character had to believe wholeheartedly in the truth of his situation, no matter how dumb. Ted wore that jacket with pride. He was the pugnacious detective—without even trying, really.

  ‘By the way,’ Ted said, turning to Ryan. ‘Have you got a real prop gun yet? I’m going to need one to practise with.’

  Ryan offered a smile. ‘I’ll check with my arms expert. She should have one by now.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ted said, then looked around with a bemused expression. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘You’re upstage right,’ Magdalena said, giving him a gentle shove. ‘The opera singer is downstage left.’

  Ted rolled his bulging eyes, but he had a smile on his face as he moved to the correct mark for the detective.

  Ted was smiling!

  ‘Don’t worry, Edie,’ Magdalena said. ‘We’ll get it right by opening night.’

  ‘I know you will,’ Edie responded. ‘You’re doing fabulously. That’s it, Ted. That’s your mark. After Simon has spoken his lines about where he keeps his horseshoes, you move menacingly towards him, crossing centre stage. And this is where you start to get annoyed at everyone who’s telling you it’s impossible to question the horse. Wave that gun around, Ted. Get furious!’

  ‘Righto!’ Ted said, pulling his shoulders back. ‘Thanks for all the tips, Edie. I appreciate them.’ He turned the gavel towards Magdalena. ‘And you can stop with your shoving and pushing. My director tells me where to go, not you.’

  Simon took up his lines and rehearsal continued. Edie still felt a niggling annoyance with him. Sometimes his jolliness was a bit too much, as though it was forced. He ordered Ted around quite a bit too, which, as Ted had pointed out to Magdalena, was Edie’s job as director. Still, Simon was good so she ought not to complain.

  Magdalena was already off the book. She’d learned her lines by heart and could even recite Ted’s. Edie made a note to remind Magdalena not to silently mouth the lines the other actors were speaking.

  Edie was overcome with love for her crazy cast who were playing her crazy characters in her wonderfully crazy play. She suddenly had so much love for her townspeople, it almost hurt her. She still felt uncertain, and fragile—and she’d never been fragile in her life—but maybe she was learning to cope with this new Edie. Or was it the old Edie?

  Ryan moved suddenly, while reading his line, and Edie remonstrated herself for having lost her concentration for a few moments.

  She turned to the stand-in leading man and met his eye, as she had for so many performances during the run nearly four months ago. But that had been Tony playing the part. Meeting Ryan’s dark brown gaze made her blood pump faster. He was so close she could smell the lime-scented soap.

  ‘But I adore you, Edwina,’ he said in his flat-toned, stand-in leading man’s voice.

  Edie dragged her eyes off his face and peered at her script, pretending to have forgotten her line—which she had! It took her a couple of seconds to find her place. ‘Adoration isn’t enough,’ she said as Edwina. ‘I need a man who loves me for who I am, for what I am.’

  ‘Then let me kiss you and prove myself,’ her stand-in leading man said.

  He stepped closer, and she had to force herself to stop from stepping back.

  Not only was she inhaling the lime-scent of him, now she was aware of his masculinity too. His presence, the warmth of his body. The texture of his pale blue shirt, open at the collar and revealing a strong neck and throat, and rolled up at the sleeves, his tattoo blazoned on his solid forearm.

  The last time they’d done this scene, Ryan had been out the back, sorting set props that Nick and Lily had dropped off, so she’d just written the blocking in his script for him. She’d totally forgotten about the passionate kiss the leading man gave the leading lady. It was so passion-filled that it made the penniless opera singer faint.

  She couldn’t remember what happened after that. Ryan’s presence was messing with her mind.

  She glanced up, hoping he was focused on his script. But he was looking down at her with amusement written all over his face, and as his back was to the others, they couldn’t see his expression.

  Her pumping blood roared in her ears. This was it. His unexpected move. Why
hadn’t she seen it coming?

  She’d kissed Tony plenty of times on stage. It was an act for both, obviously. She’d never worried about it. But this was Ryan, and he was being predatory on purpose.

  ‘It’s just a walk-through rehearsal,’ she said, feeling dizzy. ‘We can skip this part.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re making everybody else rehearse properly,’ he argued in his controlled tone, which was in no way teasing. The sexual tension downstage right was suddenly overwhelming.

  Her mobile buzzed in her pocket.

  Thank God!

  ‘I’d better get this.’

  ‘You don’t know who it is yet,’ Ryan said.

  She pulled the phone out. ‘Oh, it’s Tony!’ She gave Ryan a breezy smile. ‘Let’s take five!’ she told her cast. ‘Well done, everybody. Help yourself to coffee, the flask is on the props table. Ryan, you can go check your prompt corner.’ She waved him off the stage.

  He grinned and took a step back. ‘Nearly got you,’ he said in a low tone, filled with humour, which was meant only for her.

  Edie turned and rushed outside, heading for the kitchen, her face burning.

  ‘Tony!’ she said as she strode into the kitchen. ‘Glad you called.’ More than he’d ever know.

  ‘Edie.’

  She halted at the seriousness in her friend’s tone. No darling Edie as she’d expected. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Damien. Jonathon and I got the whole story out of him—or most of it.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Edie, it was Damien who told Marcus where you are. Marcus forced him to reveal your location. He has personal information on Damien and his lawyers threatened to use it against him if he didn’t give you up.’

  Edie tried to control her breath. ‘What personal information?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say. But he was in tears, Edie.’

  She closed her eyes as the thought of Marcus’s bullies leaning on Damien made her vision go hazy in anger. ‘I’ll come back. I’ll come back to Sydney.’ She’d make it right. Whatever Marcus had on Damien it had to be a lie. Damien didn’t do wrong things. He’d never been in trouble in his life. This was all Edie’s fault.