The House At the End of the Street

by Jennie Jones

  Gem picked up her glass of sav blanc so that she had something to fiddle with. Her nerves were erratic and couldn’t be trusted—not after this afternoon’s near kiss with the love of her life.

  ‘You’ll hurt and embarrass the oldies if you don’t.’

  ‘Oh, thanks!’ How to Coerce your Friend in One Swift Move—her girlfriends had obviously read the book. Gemma stared at Jess and Jillian, snuggled up to the Misters McWade in the booth at Kookaburra’s. It was alright for them, they’d found their happy-ever-afters.

  ‘It’s only for one night, Gem,’ Lily said. ‘Go on. Do it. For Mrs Tam if nobody else.’

  Charlotte and Dan were sitting at the next table, ostensibly going through menus for the week. They were having trouble keeping their hands to themselves, giggling like kids and probably talking sexy to each other.

  Gemma was starting to feel a bit itchy in the presence of so many couples. She looked up and studied Josh while his back was to her. He was on his own up at the bar, sitting on the stool he always sat on. She’d caught him watching her, turning every now and then to glance at the booth.

  She wasn’t comfortable with the way she must look. Sitting at a table with her couple friends, no male companion at her side. She shifted on the vinyl seat. After today’s scorching moment, she didn’t want to talk to Josh and had ignored him when she arrived earlier. He’d been good enough to let her. He needn’t have done that but she presumed that since they’d been caught in close proximity, he’d remembered that around this town, gossip ranked higher than snowfall levels. And she wasn’t going for a repeat performance, even if it meant not kissing him—or anything else that kissing him would lead to. What was the point of having two days of magic only to have its loss boil your insides up in longing for the next fifty years?

  She had to be strong.

  ‘Did Josh tell you? He’s staying until the end of next week now. Mrs Tam told us.’

  Shit. ‘Why?’ Gem asked.

  ‘Business, I suppose.’

  ‘So back to the speed-dating,’ Jillian said.

  ‘Debonair’s not going to be there, is he?’ Gem asked.

  ‘No way,’ Lily said. ‘Ted refused him. It’s only the best, nicest people doing it.’

  Gem gazed at Josh’s back then quickly at the table as he turned. He was looking again, his scrutiny surreptitious but also annihilating. Was he passing judgement? Had he even been teasing her with a proposed kiss? Surely not. But what would she know? He’d changed; she’d changed. Perhaps it hadn’t been the heat of desire she’d felt between them but—

  She sighed in frustration. He hadn’t changed, he was the same, only more mature now, which made him even sexier. Damn it. He’d looked so good standing next to the scaffolding, Main Street with all its snow-white loveliness behind him. It had felt, for a second, as though their attraction to each other had come swooping through the distance and claimed them, the air between their bodies like a sudden heatwave in a snowstorm.

  She fought the desire flaring through her body by taking a deep breath, but the flush of it rose to her chest and up her throat. She pulled at the neckline of her red poncho and glanced around the bar. Couples everywhere: some with their kids in the restaurant, others in groups or snuggled up on the sofas around the open fire. Except for Josh. He might be sitting on his own but it was Gem who felt alone. Her eyes sought him again.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Josh was much better looking, to Gem’s mind, when he was out of his city clothes. He looked less stuffy in the black leather bomber jacket and T-shirt he wore tonight. He’d be a lot better looking again if he wasn’t wearing clothes at all. She swallowed hard, surprised at herself.

  ‘You’ve gone as red as your poncho.’

  ‘Come on, Gem,’ Jillian said. ‘Front up. Do it for the town.’

  Gem put her glass down. She was getting hammered into a corner and she was still too hot. She pulled the poncho over her head and draped it over the back of the seat. ‘Ted’s doing the organising, isn’t he?’ she asked, still attempting to put them off. ‘He’s not going to get disappointed if I don’t make up the numbers.’

  ‘Dad said it’s Mrs Tam’s event,’ Jess said. ‘Said he won’t be interfering much on the night.’

  ‘Mrs Tam’s doing the music,’ Jillian said. ‘And Dad’s given her the stopwatch.’

  ‘She’d be ever so upset,’ Lily said, ‘if she has to kick one man out because the numbers aren’t even.’

  ‘Oh, alright!’ Gem sat on her hands, the thought of Mrs Tam getting disappointed too much for her to bear. ‘I’ll sit in a chair and talk to half-a-dozen guys who don’t interest me.’

  Josh turned to the bar, pulling at his jacket and trying to ignore the not insignificant interest and appraisal of the people around him. Few of whom he knew.

  He’d forgotten to pin the ‘outsider’ tag to his jacket today. Gem knew everyone in town. Josh didn’t. He was at the bar all by his lonesome while she was embraced by her friends, looking cosy in the booth.

  He’d spent the rest of today in his room, working out what price he might get for his mother’s old house and possibly for the farmhouse, all the time wondering what he was going to do about kissing Gem. She’d glanced at him when she arrived earlier and he’d read her body language and the closed look on her face. It looked like she’d been doing a lot of thinking too.

  A fresh schooner slid along the bar towards him.

  ‘Nice work last Sunday with that idiot, Dave. Heard you kissed Gem too.’

  Josh looked up. ‘Did no such thing.’ He took the offered beer from Dan. ‘How’d you hear about it?’

  Dan guffawed. ‘Man, you really have been away a long time.’

  Josh lifted his chin in agreement. The gossip mill ran hot and hard. That hadn’t changed any more than the bus shelter had.

  ‘The guy’s bad news,’ Dan said.

  ‘I know, and she thinks she can handle herself.’

  ‘She can.’

  ‘Not when she’s faced with a hundred-kilo ape.’

  Dan leaned on the bar. ‘Still got a thing for her?’

  Beer sloshed over the rim of his glass as Josh spluttered to swallow. ‘I like her well enough,’ he said as calmly as he could.

  ‘Oh, yeah? Watch out for the town’s ladies and their enthusiasm about that. Know what I mean?’

  Was Dan offering an ounce of male comradeship here? Josh glanced down the bar to where a group of guys were playing pool. ‘You have much trouble from them?’ he asked.

  ‘Not often. Most of them don’t bother with Swallow’s Fall. Too quiet for them.’

  ‘Does Gem get much trouble from them?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dan said with a grin. ‘You’ve still got a thing. But don’t mess with her, Josh, unless you intend to see it through.’

  ‘Mess with her?’ He might want to rumple the sheets with her—he’d like to set sheets on fire with her—but that wasn’t going to happen. Unless she said it could, which, given her rejection of him tonight, he doubted. ‘She won’t see any trouble from me,’ he said, affronted that Dan thought he needed to protect Gem—and affronted by Gem rejecting him. Dan leaned on the bar. ‘Been over to your mother’s place?’ he asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  ‘Not yet. Tomorrow, maybe.’

  Dan smirked. ‘Heard you’ve been getting ripped off.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  Dan looked over Josh’s shoulder, as though something or someone had caught his eye. He brought his gaze back to Josh and pointed at him. ‘Don’t mess with her.’ He left to serve a customer at the far end of the bar.

  Josh put his schooner down. He wasn’t about to tangle with Gem’s emotions or her heart, he’d made up his mind on that the moment she walked into the pub and ignored him, although he’d love to get entangled with her—naked. Would that hurt her emotions? Only if she cared. What about yours, buddy? Yeah, it might hurt his.

 
He turned his mind to his mother’s place. The old house he’d been brought up in. He’d tried to rent it out at first, but he’d had no takers. He hadn’t wanted to sell, that had seemed disrespectful. So he’d let it sit, believing he was paying for it to be taken care of. Now, he knew it was Gem doing all the work.

  Needles of regret pierced his heart—regret for not having been around before his mother died; regret for not having faced Nigel Munroe and any repercussions of the man’s claim that he’d have Josh up in court for abusing his daughter. He’d nearly smashed his fist into Munroe’s face, so intense was his anger.

  He picked up his beer and sipped slowly. Josh had had a good relationship with his mother, but each had hidden hurts and wounds. He presumed it was a trait he’d inherited from her. Couldn’t say anything regarding his father. If his mother had worried about being a single parent she’d never shown it. Yes, he’d asked, Who’s my father? A good man, she’d answered each time. Nothing more.

  He hoped to God the man he no longer wished to know anything about hadn’t hurt his mother. He preferred to think the man hadn’t known about his son. That he’d had a fling and continued his life elsewhere. Maybe he’d been a traveller, like Josh. Or perhaps his mother hadn’t told the man about her pregnancy because she’d known that he wouldn’t cope. His mother had been so young—only seventeen.

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes. If things had gone the way he’d yearned for them to ten years ago, Gem might now have a child. His child. She would never have left town. She wouldn’t have got to Europe.

  ‘Move over, would you?’ Gem asked at his side. ‘You’re taking up all the space around the serving area.’

  Josh felt himself redden, his thoughts back to getting naked with her. He pulled his bar stool over to allow her space. ‘It’s a pretty lengthy bar. Plenty of room for everyone.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re about to ask me to kiss you.’

  She rested her arms on the bar, a twenty-dollar note in her hand, and looked along the counter away from Josh, but not before he saw surprise flash across her face.

  ‘Do you want me to apologise?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She looked at him. ‘You don’t sound it.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not. I liked being that close to you, Gem.’ He paused while that sank in. ‘But I thought you wanted the apology.’

  ‘Thanks but there’s no need.’

  ‘So why the tough-nut routine with me?’ Dressed in hip-hugging faded jeans and a long-sleeved hot pink T-shirt, Josh longed to strip her down to flesh he’d bet would be both soft and supple. He picked up his beer. She wouldn’t be amused if she could read his mind or if she caught him giving her the eye.

  ‘I suppose today’s little moment was bound to happen,’ she said. ‘Given the last time—’

  ‘The time we don’t talk about.’

  ‘Yeah, that time.’

  He looked at her while she waited for the bartender to come and serve her.

  ‘And we’re going to forget today’s time too,’ she said.

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you don’t live here and I do. So we don’t discuss it any more.’

  Josh wasn’t ready to not discuss it further yet, but he’d give her the space she wanted. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare key to my mother’s house, have you?’

  She looked aghast. ‘You haven’t got a key to your own property?’

  ‘I paid a caretaker to oversee it.’

  ‘Nobody’s been there.’

  ‘I realise that now. Mrs Tam told me no-one had been there except you.’

  ‘Hell, Josh. Where have you been all these years?’ She took a set of keys from her jeans pocket. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been paying someone. You’ve been ripped off.’

  ‘It looks that way.’ And he didn’t like to be reminded. ‘What are you doing cleaning it anyway?’

  ‘Support to Survive,’ she said, frowning as she thrust a key at him.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s an initiative the town put into practice some years ago. It means being kind and doing things for others.’

  ‘Without payment.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She chuckled suddenly. ‘Something you’re obviously not used to.’ A quick grin lightened her features. ‘Apart from getting ripped off by your caretaker.’

  He took the key from her and pocketed it. ‘How’d you get the time to clean my mother’s house and paint a mural when you’re at the shop all day, every day?’

  ‘I hire Lily’s daughter, Janie-Louise—when she’s around. Or sometimes Raphael will do a few hours for me. Sometimes I need a little time away from the shop.’

  She glanced at him. ‘Looks like you’ve had lots of time off and it sounds like you’ve been too busy getting your tan to take an interest in what was going on with your own properties in your home town.’

  ‘I was born here. I was raised here. That’s it. I don’t consider Swallow’s Fall my home town.’

  ‘So where is home?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘That’s just plain dumb.’ She turned to the bar again, rested her arms on it and sighed. ‘You really are weird, Josh.’

  ‘Thanks for the update. You’re not so normal yourself.’

  He wanted to know why she felt this town was her forever home, and yes, he wanted to know if there was any hope that she might leave town—with him.

  He put a hand on the bar to steady himself. Where the hell had that thought come from?

  ‘What happened to your mum and dad?’ he asked at last, not liking the silence humming between them, or the fragrance of her; the need to just kiss her and be damned.

  She glanced at him, surprise on her face. She shrugged. ‘Mum lives in Perth now. Dad swans around Queensland in his retirement.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘A bottle of sav blanc, please,’ she told the bartender who’d come over to them. She handed him her cash. ‘And a fresh ice bucket. His retirement and his millions,’ she added as she faced Josh. ‘He won two million in the lottery.’

  ‘Is that enough to retire on these days?’ Gem’s father wasn’t the sort to go without the best money could buy, which was one of the reasons his family had had to work when they were younger: his wife running the toy shop, his sons and Gem taking on before-school or outside-of-school jobs.

  ‘It is when your ninety-three-year-old aunt dies and leaves you her Queensland estate the next week.’

  ‘Aunt Gert?’ The old girl had to have been worth six million, minimum. ‘Did you and your brothers get something?’

  ‘Hey, lovely lady.’

  Gem spun around, a smile on her face.

  Josh put his schooner down, gearing up for whatever was about to happen next—like fending off another unwanted male admirer.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she said to Raphael. She indicated Josh with her thumb. ‘Have you met boy wonder here? Kate and Jamie Knight’s son,’ Gem said to Josh, indicating Raphael. ‘You remember Kate? Sammy’s friend?’

  Josh nodded. ‘Of course.’ Jamie Knight had moved into town after Sammy and Ethan got married but Josh had left town before Raphael’s appearance.

  ‘Raphael’s heading for uni next year,’ Gem said. ‘Business degree.’

  ‘Well done,’ Josh said. The young man must be an adopted son, his skin tone suggested Portugal, or Spain, although his accent was pure Australian and Josh guessed he’d been born in Australia.

  ‘You didn’t make it to uni, did you, Josh?’

  ‘Neither did you,’ he said. ‘Or did you?’

  ‘University of life. Made me who I am today.’

  Hadn’t it just. Josh gave her a smile that even warmed his bad mood. If they didn’t behave like the pot and the kettle they’d have kissed by now. Half-a-dozen times.

  ‘Hasn’t he got a fabulous tan?’ she asked Raphael, w
ho looked momentarily taken aback by the question. ‘Ask him where he got it.’

  ‘Gem.’

  Raphael must have felt the sting in the conversation because he stepped back and smiled at Josh. ‘See you later, sir.’

  Josh nodded. ‘It’s Josh.’

  Raphael left and Josh turned his attention to Gemma. She picked up the bottle and ice bucket the bartender had put onto the counter. ‘There, see?’ she said. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it? We had a nice little argument, a general catch-up on what I’ve been doing while you remained quiet about what you’ve been doing. Plus we’ve made a pact not to annoy each other again.’

  ‘Did we shake on the deal about not kissing? I’m so entranced by your wit and humour I’ve forgotten.’

  He grinned when she scowled, then turned his attention to his half-full schooner as she left. He’d finish the beer then get out of here.

  Gem saw Josh leave the bar and walk outside.

  Maybe she should be persuading him to leave town sooner. No matter how hard she fought it, she wanted to be kissed by him and she could only get over that problem if he wasn’t around.

  She found him standing at the end of the raised walkway, hands in his pockets, looking up at the stars.

  ‘Josh,’ she called as she approached. He turned and took his hands out of his jacket pockets.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s probably best if we get our business sorted out as quickly as possible.’ She snatched a breath and carried on before he could interrupt: ‘That way you can leave as soon as you like. In fact, I was wondering if perhaps you wouldn’t prefer for me to deal with your trustee people. Then you could leave tomorrow.’

  He’d been listening, she could tell by his thoughtful expression, although now she studied him properly, she wasn’t sure his contemplations had anything to do with what she’d just said.

  ‘What do you know about Grandy’s place?’ he asked.

  Gem’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The lonely homestead?’

  ‘Why d’you call it that?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s been empty since he died.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea. I presume he left it to Ethan. Most people just call it the house at the end of the street. Nobody even remembers it’s called Piralilla Farmhouse. What’s it to you anyway?’