by Jennie Jones
‘No thanks,’ she said, not bothering to hide the misery in her tone.
‘Are you getting maudlin? It’s only a broken ankle.’
‘It’s a posterior malleolus fracture.’ It was also her current favourite swearword. Malleolus. Sounded like a real put-down. You are nothing more than a malleolus posterior. She’d have to remember to use that on Debonair if he came to town again.
She leaned her chin in her hand. How was she going to make a quick fifty grand now? Nobody in town would let her do any painting and decorating with a cast on her leg. ‘I’m going to be stuck in it for your wedding, remember.’ The wedding was just shy of six weeks away. ‘I’m going to ruin the wedding photos.’
‘We’ll prop you up against a table so you don’t need the crutches.’
‘It’s not going to go with my big poufy 1960s dress. I’m going to look like an upside-down meringue with a massive cherry on my foot.’
‘We’re going to love you just the same.’
Another sigh escaped before Gem had time to swallow it. ‘I’m really miserable, Jess.’
‘Oh, Gemma. I’ll send Josh over.’
‘No!’
Damn it. Jess had already hung up.
‘Gem, it’s me!’
Gem shifted the curtain a centimetre to peek out the window. She’d hobbled to the bedroom to put some lipstick on then hobbled back, expecting him to knock on the toy shop door. Not that she was going to let him in, but lips without lipstick were like donuts without sugar. At least, that’s the excuse she was running with.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she called. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘It’s only nine o’clock.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Come on. Let me in. I need to apologise.’
‘You can do that tomorrow.’
‘I want to do it now!’
‘For God’s sake,’ someone called from across the street. ‘Let him in before he wakes up the kids in the next town.’
Gem winced. She pulled the curtain aside and lifted the old sash window. Cold night air frosted her skin. Josh stood beneath a street lamp, looking too damned fine for words in his black bomber jacket, jeans and hiking boots and a grin as wide as the Maclaughlin River. He pulled something from his behind his back—an ice bucket, gleaming like a silver saviour in the dusk. ‘I’ve got sav blanc,’ he said, smiling.
‘Come up through the back door.’ She slammed the sash closed, then breathed deeply. She could resist Josh—possibly— but not sauvignon blanc.
‘So,’ he said, emerging from the top of her narrow, closed-in staircase like a dark knight, ‘what have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Nothing. I was told to rest.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He put the ice bucket onto the table. ‘So what’s all that?’ He pointed to the corner of her small living-kitchenette area where all her artwork was stored.
‘Thought I might sift through my artwork while I was flat-bound, but I can’t get to the bottom boxes because of the heavy ones on top.’
‘That’s the way to rest.’ He peeled the top off the wine, unscrewed the cap and glanced up. ‘Where are your glasses?’
‘Well it’s quite a trudge to the pantry, but if you turn around you’ll notice the kitchen. They’re in the top cupboard, third from the right.’
‘Haven’t lost your humour. That’s good.’
Gem gripped the handles of her crutches as she watched him walk into the kitchenette and retrieve the glasses.
He poured the wine. ‘Shouldn’t you be sitting?’
‘I’m going to be sitting for the next six weeks.’ She lifted the end of one of her crutches. ‘Trying to get used to using these.’
‘Here.’ He put the glass down and stepped around the table. ‘Sit down, so I can make my formal apology.’
‘What for?’ She let him help her take the three steps to the chair. She braced for his touch but sure enough, as soon as his hands touched her torso, her jitters started.
He took the crutches and leaned against the table, next to her. ‘Shall I go down on my knees?’ he asked.
Gem pursed her mouth. ‘No apology needed. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I feel responsible though. You were a goner after that kiss—’
‘I was not!’
‘—and I should have made sure you were steady on your feet.’
‘I tripped.’
‘If it helps calm your temper, I was a pretty much a goner myself. Another second and I might have crashed down that ladder.’ He paused but Gem couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘Wasn’t a bad test kiss, was it?’ he said softly.
Not bad at all.
‘Want me to give you another?’
‘No. But there are two things you can get me. One’s light and the other is heavy.’
‘Okay.’ He peeled his bomber jacket off and threw it over the kitchen benchtop. ‘Where d’you want me?’
On the floor. On the sofa. Oh good god. Her eyes were drawn to the tattoos on his sculpted arms. She picked up the crutches, using them to lift her from the chair and distribute her weight before hobbling over to him. She picked up his arm, ignoring its weight and how firm his muscles were. ‘Nice tan.’ She pushed up the short sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘Excellent ink work.’
His tattoos were a band around his bicep. The pattern told a story as it spread upwards to his shoulder. His life story? The ink was dusty-blue and the artwork fine yet bold. Must have cost him. She could make out a bird in flight—land ahead; a compass—keep watch; and a star.
‘The North Star?’
‘Only star there is.’
Gem saw clipper ships in her mind, and cool flat oceans. Palm trees and coconuts and Josh, bare chested on the deck of a yacht. She swallowed. ‘There’s no anchor.’
‘Don’t need one.’
He’s not staying.
‘You really did sail around the world.’
‘And back.’
‘Why sailing?’
‘Because it was an ocean away from what I’d done before.’
‘Did you need to get away that badly?’
‘Gem.’ He dipped his face to hers and she could smell the sea and the oiled deck. ‘I left for many reasons.’
‘And you think you might definitely need to leave again?’ Even if she kissed him with her most proficient kiss? Not the one she’d used on him yesterday before she fractured her malleolus—that hadn’t been up to standard due to the shock of having Josh so firmly against her.
‘Yes.’ He said it quietly, reiterating a point about his leaving as though he’d understood the real plea behind her question. ‘I don’t belong here, Gem.’
‘Where do you belong?’
‘Nowhere in particular.’
‘Here and there?’
‘That’s the place.’
‘So if you don’t have a home, where are you going next?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She looked at the star on his arm. ‘If you keep heading north, wouldn’t you just end up back here again?’
He laughed. ‘But think what I’d see on the way.’
‘So it’s your back-up?’
‘It’s the needle on my compass.’
She tapped her breast bone. ‘The compass in here.’
He nodded. ‘I suppose my next adventure will call, wherever it is.’
‘And it’s definitely not here, is it?’ she asked with a forced chuckle.
‘No.’
Well, that was final.
‘I’d best be going after all,’ he said, taking his gaze off her. ‘You should rest.’
He looked a bit regretful at having been so honest with her. God—please don’t let him have read her silent plea for him to stay.
He shifted the boxes, pulling the heavier ones out and placing them on her dining table. Then he handed her a wine glass. ‘What was the other thing you needed?’
A lifetime with you. ‘Could you get me a wooden skewer? There’s a p
ack in the second drawer down, on the right hand side of the sink.’
He made his way to the kitchen. ‘Going to kill me by kebab?’ he asked, rifling through the drawers.
‘I need to scratch my little toe.’ Or maybe she’d stab herself in the heart.
She hobbled the few steps to the table and sat on a dining chair. Her bottom hit the seat hard. She lifted her pink cast to the cushion on the other chair.
‘Let me.’
‘No, thanks.’ Gem grabbed the skewer and moved him away with her elbow.
‘Thought they only gave coloured casts to kids.’
Gem closed her eyes as one of the itches in her life got scratched. ‘No. Whole range of colours available.’
‘Why pink?”
‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Is it on for six weeks?’
‘Probably.’
‘I am sorry, Gemma.’
Gem shrugged. If she’d known she was going to do her posterior malleolus before kissing him, she’d still have kissed him. ‘Go away,’ she told him, and fiddled with the crutches balanced against her leg.
Josh took the crutches from her, placing them within her reach against the table edge. ‘Okay, my ornery little invalid. Goodnight.’ He lowered his head and kissed her.
Stardust sparkled behind Gem’s closed eyes. He didn’t push the kiss, he was only touching her lips with his, and still he turned her into a flushed and trembling mess.
He took his mouth from hers and studied her. ‘I like this, Gem.’
So did she. ‘I’m only letting you do it to humour you.’
He smiled. ‘If you say so.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Humour isn’t the first reaction I get when I kiss you, Gem.’ He backed away. ‘Don’t drink all that wine. I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk more about the shop.’ He turned and jogged down the stairs.
Gem relaxed and sighed the sigh to drown all others. That North Star seeking sailor sure knew how to kiss. Feather light or deep and meaningful, his lips on hers made her want to superglue their mouths together for the rest of time.
She straightened. This was no time to dwell on her eternal love and burning desire for a man who was sailing north. Josh would want to see the books and that meant he’d soon discover all her financial secrets. The spreadsheet held pages of not only all the financials for the shop but also records of her own savings, a possible mortgage scenario she’d sussed out earlier in the year and the fact that she was short the cost of buying the toy shop by fifty grand, not just a few thousand.
She’d been happy to scrimp through life. Because her dream would cost her big dollars. She’d always known what she was saving for. Gem’s older brother, Tod, had got his inheritance from Aunt Gert last year when he turned thirty. Their father had even fought about that. Poor Ryan still had another fourteen years to go before he’d see his money—if they ever found him.
Her father must have looked through all her information when she sent him a copy of the monthly updates. He hadn’t thought to offer Gem some more of her inheritance. He hadn’t even mentioned the fact that she’d been sussing out a bank loan. He hadn’t congratulated her on saving so well either.
She picked up her glass of wine and looked through the window. The sinking sun still pushed watery rays through clouds heavy with the next downfall of snow. Swallow’s Fall at this time of year was intimate and warm, regardless of the bare, white-tipped branches of the claret ash trees, or the sludge piled up at the side of the walkway.
Perhaps she should ask to see Josh’s books. She’d definitely ask him why his trustees had refused to pay for the upgrade to the shop front.
An unhappy feeling settled over her. She’d always loved Josh and had mostly been without him. She’d get over him again one day. She’d have to.
Thirteen
Josh walked into the stables on Burra Burra homestead the next morning, his heart warming as he smelled the hay and heard the horses whinny as they sensed him. It was a privilege to see a working farm with its rough honesty. A privilege most of the people he’d spent the last years with would never know or understand.
There was a sudden scrambling noise on his right and he looked towards it. A bucket got kicked over and a horse brush was thrown into a kit box.
‘Hello!’ Edie ran to him. Josh stood for a second, taken aback, because the kid looked like she was going to throw herself at him. He opened his arms as she got closer, just in case.
Wham! She leaped and barrelled into him, knocking him backwards.
‘What a welcome,’ he said. Edie’s hair spun around her face, the smell of shampoo mingling with that of horse feed and straw.
‘I’m practising to be a gymnast,’ she said, jumping down and landing on both feet with a bounce in her knees, then going up on tiptoe, arms wide.
‘Thought you wanted to be a doctor.’
‘I do. I can be both, can’t I?’
‘Sure you can.’ He ruffled her hair. She didn’t seem to mind but then again, she looked like she’d just tumbled out of a wind machine: her jumper was torn at the neckline and the hemline, and her jodhpurs were stained with molasses. ‘What did I do to deserve the hug?’
‘Nothing. Mummy says you don’t need to do anything for a hug. And anyway, you’re family. You’re kind of like a cousin.’
‘I am?’ He supposed he was. He’d been close to the Grangers, Ethan in particular. He hadn’t expected Edie to rush him with such enthusiasm though. A chip off her happy mother’s block.
‘Come see Sho-Sho!’ Edie dragged him by the sleeve. ‘He’s mine. Well, he’s half mine. The other half is Vivie’s.’
Josh laughed. ‘Which half is yours?’ he asked as he gave the Australian stock horse his hand to blow on.
‘The stubborn end.’
Josh stroked the bay gelding’s neck. The stubborn end might be the brain end or the rear end; something in Sho-Sho’s eyes told Josh he might not always want to do as he was asked. ‘He’s five, six?’
‘He’s five and a half years old.’
Still a baby. ‘Where’d you get the name Sho-Sho from?’
‘His show name is Showman Showoff.’
‘Do you want to jump him?’
‘I’d like to. We’ve got an arena. Want to see it?’ She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
‘Love to. But show me who else you’ve got in here first.’ Five other horses either nosed in their hay nets or hung their heads over the stall, checking out the newcomer.
‘These are all ours. One for each of us, although Mummy doesn’t ride much and Vivie doesn’t want one, which is why she’s sharing mine. It’s until she comes around to the idea of being on something so big, Daddy says. Oh, and we’ve got one spare. The new one. Daddy said you’re a top-class rider.’
Josh stuck his fingertips into his pockets. ‘One time.’ Long ago.
‘Daddy said you trained a stallion once. He said no-one could go near it but you got it to toe the line. You nicknamed it Vicious Vic because of its nature. He said—’
‘Where is your dad?’ Josh interrupted, before he got pumped for more information about events he’d practically forgotten about.
‘Here!’ Ethan strode through the double doors, leading a grey mare.
‘How are you?’ Josh asked, shaking Ethan’s hand.
‘Good to see you,’ Ethan said. ‘Here, put her in her stall would you, Edie?’ His daughter took the reins and clicked her tongue for the mare to follow her. ‘How’re you feeling?’
Josh laughed. ‘Fine.’
‘And how’s Gemma?’
Josh whisked in a breath. ‘A bit miserable.’ Dan and Charlotte had driven her to the hospital in Cooma—she’d refused to let Josh take her, so he’d been left with nothing to do but worry. He’d texted Dan all afternoon and evening. His first relief came when Gem texted him a photo of her lower leg in a purple-pink cast. The message said: This is your fault. He’d texted her right back: I’ll look after your sk
ateboard until you get back. All he’d got in return was an emoji of a devil.
Ethan laughed. ‘Broken many women’s legs while kissing them?’
‘It’s an ankle fracture.’ It was already all over town that Gem had broken her leg while kissing Josh. Not much he could do to put that rumour straight, since it was pretty much true. He turned to indicate the stable block. ‘This is looking great. How many have you got grazing?’
Ethan indicated the paddocks outside. ‘Nineteen, plus ours. I have to keep them close, though, as I’ve only got part-time help at the moment.’ He laughed. ‘Actually, it’s always part-time help, dependent on which teenager wants a job and which decides shopping in Cooma holds more interest.’
‘You rotate the horses?’
‘Yeah. On the ten acres around the stables. And that creates a lot of work.’
Josh nodded. ‘It would.’ If they weren’t rotated, they’d eat it down to nothing and churn the grass to mud which would be damaging to both horse and land.
‘We could take on a lot more,’ Ethan said. ‘I want to be able to spell some, which would give us enough money to house the rescue horses and retire them here. Let them graze for the rest of their lives.’
‘So your biggest problem would be overstocking.’
‘Actually, no. I wouldn’t keep them here by the stables and the house. I’ve put one hundred acres aside for them. There’d be no land-use conflict—or at least, it’d be minimal.’ Ethan gave him a wry grin. ‘Just got to get someone in who wants to run it.’
‘Would you sell your land?’ Josh asked, disbelieving. Ethan had been born in the homestead, although it hadn’t been such an acreage then.
‘No way. But I’d lease it. To the right person with the right motives for moving to Swallow’s Fall.’
Josh laughed. ‘How many of those do you encounter?’
‘Not that many.’
‘Daddy!’
Josh followed Ethan to where Edie was brushing Sho-Sho. Ethan had the right ideas and fine intentions for the horses. But the right person would have to start from scratch. There’d be more than equine health and welfare to consider; there was biosecurity, environmental protection and productivity of the pastures—the management of the stocking rate against the capability of the land. More of a vocation than an occupation. Hard work.