by Jennie Jones
She was a smart girl, not just a talented artist. He paused outside Kookaburra’s. Gem was a woman now. Fully developed, in mind, spirit and body. White-hot passionate and girl-next-door sexy. He bowed his head, hand on the door of the hotel. A hot package. Possibly too hot. Why couldn’t she have aged badly?
He pushed through the door of Kookaburra’s. It creaked shut behind him as his leather shoes sank into thick carpet.
So Dan had done it. He’d changed the capacious bar and grill into a full blown hotel. Smartly, too. When Josh had left, the place was a building site, closed while the upstairs bedrooms were renovated. Dan had kept the original wood for the bar and for the railings dividing the various areas. Same polished floorboards for the pub area, dark blue plaid carpet for the dining section, and straight in front of him was the man himself.
Josh nodded. ‘Hello, Dan.’ He held his hand out to Daniel Bradford, owner of Kookaburra’s and his previous employer. One of them.
Dan tipped his head to one side, the angle and the wry look on his face telling Josh all he needed to know. ‘Been a while,’ Dan said, his tone cynical.
Josh let his hand drop to his side. ‘Yeah, well.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Dan repeated. He glanced over to the registration desk where a young man was busy tapping on a computer keyboard. ‘You’re going to be a paying guest then, huh?’ he asked.
Josh paused long enough to study Dan and get acclimatised to the chill in the air. Older than Josh by a decade, they’d struck up a friendship all those years ago when Josh had worked nights as a bartender. Just him, Dan and Lily, tending bar and preparing and serving homemade meals. If he let it, the aroma of Dan’s chilli mussels would sweep over him in a cloud of spicy memories. Obviously Josh’s leaving so suddenly, or more likely his not having been in touch with Dan, or with anybody from town, had soured Dan’s memory of him. Maybe he should have asked Grandy that question about how much dust his return would kick up after all. No fatted calf on offer here, that was for sure.
Dan led him over to the registration desk. ‘Josh Rutherford. He’s room five. And look after him.’
‘Certainly,’ the young man said.
Josh wondered if it was relief warming the tension in his shoulders, or just the heat from the hotel’s old radiators. ‘Thanks, Dan.’
‘Don’t mention it. Every guest at Kookaburra’s is special.’ Dan nodded farewell and headed behind the reception desk and into the kitchens.
Right. Got it.
Three
When Gem entered Kookaburra’s, she was waved over to a booth the twins had secured for the girls’ group.
‘Am I early?’ she asked Jess and Jillian Tillman—soon to be Mrs and Mrs McWade.
‘You’re on time.’ Jess pushed a basket of ticket books towards her. ‘Sort those out. We can’t double up on colours. Some are for the speed-date and some for a raffle Dad’s thinking about organising.’
‘Not sure if Charlotte and Lily will make it,’ Jillian said, pouring a glass of sauvignon blanc for Gem and replacing the wine bottle in the ice bucket on the table. Most of the town’s women were older than Gem and the twins, but friendship had been struck up over sauvignon blanc and exercise. Except that they all liked yoga. Gem wasn’t in to yoga, not enough blast factor. Only Sammy Granger joined Gem in the boxing circuit class Gem held at the town hall in summer months; the only women, but that didn’t worry Sammy. Forty-five, three children, an international success with her landscape artworks, and still boxing fit and laughing with it. Still urging Gem to settle down.
Gem took a moment to envisage what the girls might have planned. Sammy wouldn’t be around tonight because she and Ethan had taken Lochie and Vivie to Canberra to buy a new horse. Sammy’s best friend, Kate, was in Europe with her husband and ten-year-old daughter, so Gem was released from her scrutiny. Dan wasn’t running the bar, so presumably he and Charlotte were at home in the old B&B they’d turned into their dream family house, playing games with their two kids before bedtime.
Gem took a surreptitious look around the pub area. No Josh. ‘So which coloured tickets are for the speed-dating night?’ She pulled a ticket book from the basket in front of her.
‘Blue. There are still some places left so you can buy yours now if you like—’
‘—since you haven’t yet.’ Jess finished her sister’s sentence, which wasn’t unusual.
‘So how are these marriages of yours going to work,’ Gem asked, ignoring their taunt, ‘if all four people have twin-bound mental telepathy? Won’t it be a bit like listening through the bedroom walls?’
‘Stop changing the subject. Tonight’s girls group is going to be all about—’
‘—how you haven’t had a date in the three years you’ve been home.’
‘Which we’re all concerned about. It’s not healthy.’
‘How long is it since you’ve been kissed?’
A movement caught Gem’s eye and she glanced to her left. Josh was walking down the stairs. She snapped her gaze back at the tickets in front of her.
‘We saw that,’ Jess said.
‘Oh, stop it, would you?’ Gem muttered, and picked up her wine glass.
‘We used to fancy him rotten,’ Jillian said, her voice lowered to a girls-only whisper. ‘We were jealous of the close relationship you had with him, Gem.’
‘We wondered if you were doing it with him and for how long.’
Gem almost spluttered the wine. She swallowed quickly.
‘I really wanted to do it with him,’ Jillian crooned.
‘Me too,’ her sister said.
‘Do your husbands-to-be know all this?’ Gem asked.
‘They were doing it with other women before they met us.’
‘So why shouldn’t we have been doing it with men before we met them?’
‘Point taken.’ Gem put the blue ticket book down and picked up the pink book. ‘You didn’t do it with him, though,’ she asked, looking up. ‘Did you?’
Both girls looked her in the eye, all serious suddenly. Gem’s heart pounded as she waited for the answer.
‘Did you?’
They both grinned. ‘Of course not!’
Thank God. It’d be unbearably strange to think that either of her friends had been in bed with her Josh.
As a fifteen year old, Gem’s adoration had turned to interest in how Josh wore his clothes and how his muscles were developing, how his mouth looked when he smiled or when he was concentrating. The strength in his upper body as he wielded beer kegs around Kookaburra’s or the gentleness in his large hands as he worked with pieces of wood, chiselling, carving, creating.
She’d also spent a considerable amount of time wondering if Josh was doing it with someone, and if so, whom? He used to drive his mum into Cooma every week for her hospital treatments. Sometimes she stayed overnight and Josh either didn’t come back to town or arrived very late. The way he looked now, she doubted he’d had any trouble getting it over the last decade. A tall, handsome man with deeply tanned muscles and money in his pockets. Women no doubt lined up.
Lily arrived, sat, took a clean glass and poured herself a wine. ‘Have we started on her yet?’
‘Please,’ Gem begged. ‘It won’t work.’
Any response or further discussion was cut short by the smell of stale beer wafting on the air.
‘Uh-oh,’ Jess said. ‘Grab your skirts, ladies, here comes Debonair.’
Gem flicked a look at Dave—a.k.a. Debonair, due to his lack of social refinement. His mate Pete—a.k.a. Polished Pete, for the same reason—wasn’t with him. Probably at the bar, tanking up. The pair had started coming into Kookaburra’s about a month ago. They worked at the wind farm. Most of the guys from the project were okay but these two went out of their way to look for trouble. Dan had already had to call in the police. Dave and Pete had given everyone a scare when they picked up Janie-Louise Barton one night, forcing her into their van. Fortunately, Nick Barton, ex-navy, had taught Janie-Louise how to defend her
self and she’d managed to get away. Debonair and Polished had got off with a DUI charge after some story about being drunk and not in charge of themselves—no harm intended.
Lily bristled, her eyes bright as she hung on to her anger. ‘Make him leave before I—’
‘Hello, girls,’ Dave said, thrusting his chest out like a peacock facing a flock of amenable peahens. ‘Hi, sexy,’ he said to Gem.
‘Piss off, Dave.’ The only way to deal with Dave and Pete was with an up-front reminder of how much they weren’t wanted in town—the only language they understood.
‘Friendly as ever. What’re you doing counting raffle tickets when you could be cosying up to me in the back of my van? You wouldn’t need a ticket, Gem, I’ll give it free of charge.’
‘I’d rather cosy up to a funnel web.’
‘Go back to the bar, Dave, like the poisonous little spider you are,’ Jillian said, shooing him with her hands while shooting a look of hatred his way.
‘Butt out, you skinny weirdo.’ Dave picked up a raffle ticket book and thumbed through it, his eyes on Gem. ‘Perhaps I’ll organise a raffle myself. With you as the prize.’
‘Hey!’ Jess stood at the same time as Jillian, who grabbed the ticket book off Dave.
The pub quietened.
‘Rumour is you’re looking for kisses, Gem.’
‘Yeah, from my rabbit, you bozo.’
He leaned across the table towards her and in a split second she understood that he’d changed from show-off to plain idiot. ‘I figure if you’re that desperate to be kissed, you’ll be up for whole lot more.’
Despite the inner warning, Gem’s temper flared. She stood and grabbed Dave by his shirt, pulling him over the table. Surprise must have been on her side—she’d been able to heave the bozo easily. She looked him in the eye. ‘Listen up, Dave—’
He’d lost his footing when she’d grabbed him but now he regained it—fast. ‘Listen up yourself,’ he said through gritted teeth, his face reddened with annoyance, or maybe embarrassment. He took hold of her wrists and squeezed them tight in his fists.
Gem’s heartbeat kicked. She didn’t want to admit to it but a tremble of something like fright ran in her veins.
Someone grabbed her from behind and yanked her backwards. Her feet left the floor. She struggled to get out of the arms around her, but the hold on her tightened. Pete? A fragrance she hadn’t inhaled for over ten years infiltrated her nostrils and her memory.
‘I think the lady said piss off.’
Josh.
Gem stilled, more from shock than any enjoyment of being in Josh’s arms and having him protect her.
Dave stepped back and straightened his shirt, eyeing Josh as he settled the collar around his thick neck.
‘We okay here?’ Josh asked him.
Dave lifted his hands. ‘Didn’t realise I was barging in on someone else’s property.’
‘I’m no-one’s property!’ Gem declared and started to struggle against Josh again.
He released her then tucked her behind him.
Gem immediately stepped to his side. ‘You’re a nuisance, Dave. Now like I said—go away and play elsewhere. Like on the highway.’
Dave shrugged, laughing it off, and his swagger back to the bar was slow and deliberate.
Gem glanced around the pub. People muttered a little, then got back to their evening. She straightened her shoulders and turned to Josh, glaring at him through eyes so squinted in mortification he blurred a bit. The whole pub had seen that! ‘Thanks and all, but I had him.’ She kinked the corner of her mouth. ‘Kind of.’
Josh raised his eyebrows with a barely contained look of humour. ‘I wasn’t saving you, Gem, I was saving him.’
‘What? I wasn’t going to kill him in front of witnesses.’
He shook his head, the half-smile still on his face. ‘Stop trying to be a tough nut.’
‘I’m not a tough nut,’ she told him, affronted, and a little bewildered. He looked fantastic in that masculine way a tall, tanned, built-like-he-was-made-for-lovin’ man possessed when he’d just performed some heroic deed.
She shook herself. Best if he kept thinking her a tough nut. ‘You must have forgotten how rough the country can get and how we girls know how to look out for ourselves. Too busy getting a tan, huh?’
Josh backed away, wry humour still present on his face, then made for the bar. Somehow, she didn’t think she’d fooled him one bit. She turned to the table. The twins and Lily looked gobsmacked.
Gem pushed the sleeves of her cardigan up, then decided she was too hot, so pulled it off and threw it onto the back of her chair. ‘So, where were we?’ she asked, sitting down and picking up the pink raffle-ticket book. ‘And what’s Ted going to raffle off this time?’
Jillian fanned herself with a paper napkin. ‘That’s what I call a romantic encounter.’
‘He had her in his arms.’
‘He rescued her.’
‘So the plan?’ Lily asked the twins.
‘Involve Charlotte soonest—’
‘—and advise Sammy when she gets back tomorrow.’
Gem rested her elbows on the table, head bowed. Her girlfriends would be throwing her Josh’s way at every opportunity. She’d be fending off their well-aimed intentions for the entire week he was in town.
She groaned and let her head fall into her hands.
How the hell was she going to fall out of love with him now?
On Monday afternoon, Josh flung his coat over his shoulder as he walked across the reception area of the hotel to Dan, who had a small keg of sherry under each arm. ‘Here, let me take one,’ Josh said. He hadn’t seen Dan last night in the bar and he hadn’t been around much this morning or after lunch either. He’d had breakfast at the hotel then gone back to his room to a pile of paperwork the trustees had sent him on the shop.
Dan raised an eyebrow and skirted Josh, continuing towards the bar. ‘Wouldn’t want you to get your shirt creased.’
It might have been a slight grin on Dan’s mouth or it might have been a sneer. What was it with people and his choice of clothes? City boy, Gem had called him. Josh wasn’t going to pick a fight with Dan—verbal or otherwise. Nor with anyone in town, so he turned for the door, resisting the urge to tuck his pale-blue business shirt into his dark denim jeans. He put his cashmere overcoat on and lifted the collar against the cold.
The afternoon snowfall hadn’t stuck to the road but he unpacked the snow chains he’d purchased on the way down here anyway, he might need them on his drive back into town. Once he got to the end of Main Street, southern side of town, the roads were country lanes. Bitumen, but a little rough in places. Or they had been. God only knew what he’d find now. All Seasons Road might be a six-lane freeway.
He had to go and see Ethan. They’d have returned from Canberra this morning and Edie would have told the Grangers of his arrival and they’d be wondering what was taking him so long to visit. He’d almost expected to see them in Kookaburra’s at lunchtime. He’d hung around the bar longer than he’d wanted to in case they’d come looking for him. But they hadn’t, and it had just gone four pm, so he knew they wouldn’t make the journey into town. Not with kids. They’d be doing family stuff and getting dinner prepared.
‘Heard you were back!’
Josh paused, then closed the car door.
‘Good to see you, Ted. How’s life?’ He walked over to Ted Tillman, owner of the stock feeders’ and the oversized plastic horse. Josh thrust out his hand and shook Ted’s. Ted was like a lonely bull in a field, agitated when he had nothing to do, but as goodhearted as a milk-calf if he had a task in hand. ‘You still town committee chairman?’
‘I am.’ Ted hooked his thickened thumbs into the belt loops on his brown corduroy trousers and inflated his chest. Until he released his breath, the waistband on his trousers was hidden by his belly.
‘Good to hear,’ Josh said. He nodded down Main Street. ‘Things are looking in excellent shape.’
‘They are indeed, and it’s not without considerable effort.’ Ted sniffed. ‘You might remember how attentive we are in Swallow’s Fall.’
‘I spent twenty-three years of my life here, Ted. I remember.’ Although he had to admit, he was no longer totally familiar with everything—the old green bus shelter was about the only thing in town that hadn’t changed.
‘Fastidious. That’s what we are in Swallow’s Fall.’
‘See your girls have taken over the grocer’s.’
‘Taught ’em everything I know about business. My girls are doing fine.’
‘Excellent to hear.’ Josh had always had soft spot for Jess and Jillian Tillman.
‘So where’ve you been?’
‘Here and there.’
Ted lowered his chin and his voice. ‘Sorry about your mother.’
A wave of love for his mother and tenderness for the care the townspeople showed those around them stilled Josh for a moment. Ted hadn’t been the first person to offer condolences. She’d been gone over eight years, yet they still wanted to share their respects. ‘Thank you, Ted.’
‘We held a memorial service.’ Ted nodded down the street towards the town hall, now fully refurbished.
‘Town hall looks fabulous,’ Josh said.
‘Fully operational. We can hold all sorts of functions now. Weddings, memorials, you name it, I can deal with it. I have it running smooth—like hot water through a copper pipe.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘Were you doing work of an organisational nature yourself?’ Ted asked. ‘When you were away?’
‘Kind of.’ Josh looked around for something that would change the subject. ‘You did well by my mother’s memory, Ted. Thank you again.’
‘Of course we did. She was one of our own, wasn’t she? Bit like you used to be.’
‘How’s Grace?’ Josh asked, referring to Ted’s wife.
‘Under the pump. She’s got two wedding dresses to make. Been stuck in the dining room with her sewing machine and pile of taffeta-whatsit for the last fortnight. I’ve had to cook my own dinner four times.’