Shelter

by Rhyll Biest

  Perhaps an inch to the left … no.

  Forward and right? Nope.

  Fresh sweat trickled down her face as claustrophobia cut with surgical precision through her bravado.

  The earth was surprisingly chilly against her back and her sweat turned clammy.

  Luka frowned. ‘Everything okay?’

  For a moment the dirt smelled coppery, like blood, and scalpel-sharp fear weakened her limbs.

  ‘Kat, do you need a hand?’ Luka’s tone was sharp.

  Worry. He was worried for her.

  Pull fucking head out of ass. Move! Galenka hissed.

  ‘I’ve got it.’ She twisted sideways and several shirt buttons popped off. The lattice teeth scored her shirt, clawing her before she wriggled free. Her ribs ached. She was free, though, thank fuck for that. And her recent tetanus injection. She pushed until only her hips remained to slide through. The hardest bit was done. Phew.

  She paused to celebrate and catch her breath and her eyes met Luka’s. ‘This is the crappiest re-birthing ever. I want a new doula.’

  Perhaps a grin lurked around his lips, perhaps not. ‘Be careful, there could be nails and who knows what in that dirt.’

  He really knew how to piss on a moment. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ She wriggled some more and put a hand over her face to defend herself as a small white bundle of dog lunged to lick her face. At least she wasn’t going to have to chase it around the enclosure, she was more in danger of being licked to death.

  ‘Shh, it’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.’ She took a moment to cuddle and reassure the smelly, matted terrier before passing her through the gap to Luka.

  It was an ungraceful performance wriggling back out and she was grateful that Luka was too focused on the furry bundle of matted dirt in his arms to witness her thrashing in the dirt.

  Once on her feet she took a moment to drink in the sight of the tiny Maltese terrier cradled in Luka’s big arms, his monster hand petting her oh-so gently. The dog stared up at him with adoring eyes that said ‘you’re my hero’.

  Typical, Kat was the one who’d crawled through the filth but the dog didn’t even look her way. It was like a metaphor for something. Her life, perhaps.

  ‘What happens now?’ Luka barely glanced at her unbuttoned shirt but she felt the air charge anyway. Probably just wishful thinking. There wasn’t anything sexy about her bee-sting breasts, and the dirt and crap she was now covered in had to be even more of a mood killer.

  ‘Stacey will treat her, make sure she’s healthy, and then I’d say she’ll shave, bath and de-flea her. Her coat’s a mess and she stinks.’

  The terrier gave Kat the evil eye.

  ‘Some people shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs.’ Luka played with the dog’s floppy ears.

  ‘True. I’ll put her in the pet crate.’

  He kept stroking the terrier as if reluctant to relinquish her.

  ‘We’ll look after her.’ Why she was reassuring him was beyond her, he was the big, tough cop, right?

  ‘Let me know how she goes.’ He handed the terrier over and Kat carried her to her car, got the dog settled in a crate. The dog instantly lapped up the water she provided from a drink bottle, making her suspect that it wouldn’t have lasted much longer without any.

  A whiff of male sweat alerted her to Luka’s proximity. He was standing very close for someone who just wanted to be friends.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  She looked up, caught a hint of predatory assessment in his gaze. Oh. Oh. ‘Missed me like a friend?’

  ‘No, not like a friend at all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nothing better to say came to mind as she took in the way his gaze ran over her with more than a tinge of speculation.

  ‘You look good covered in dirt.’

  Despite knowing that she had to take the dog back to base, that both she and he had work to do, and that flirting was a really bad idea, she casually brushed a smudge of dirt from his arm. His hot, sweaty, muscular arm. ‘You’re very dirty too.’ Innuendo much?

  His pupils flared. ‘What do you wanna do about it?’

  ‘Lend you some soap?’

  He leaned in. ‘Nothing else comes to mind?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Like what?’

  ‘A shared shower.’

  Oh, wow. Now didn’t that provide some fun visuals? Mostly of her pressed against her own shower screen, Luka behind her, his body slick with soap and water as he did things to her. Owned her.

  ‘Sounds like something that might require a lot of clean towels.’ Her voice came out scratchy, curse it. ‘But aren’t you the guy who said we couldn’t be anything more than friends?’

  His slow, heated inspection never let up. ‘I don’t think we can fight this, and you know what they say about RSPCA inspectors who sleep with cops.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That they’re very, very happy women.’

  Curse him and the sensuous slant to his lips and eyes filled with dark promises. ‘I don’t know anyone who says that.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

  That statement proved true when at five-thirty, after dropping the terrier off and finishing work, she opened the door of her house to him and after hitting the shower they didn’t make it as far as a bed, instead settling for christening her sofa as the last soft rays of afternoon sun set.

  Stumpy, crashed out on his dog bed in the laundry, never even woke.

  Kat traced the long pale scar running down the rear of Luka’s skull, and the one on his upper back that ran down his arm. ‘Did you get this at work?’

  ‘Nah, one’s from when my old man broke a bottle over my head. The other is from jumping through an open window to get away from him. There was a nail sticking out or something.’

  She grimaced as her stomach twisted. Christ, his childhood sounded as bad as hers. Another fun thing they had in common. ‘Nice. Was your dad a violent drunk or just an arsehole?’

  His lip curled. ‘I think he thought laying into me would vaccinate me against fear. Make me a man like him.’

  ‘Sounds fucked up.’ She eyed the scar on his arm.

  ‘It was. So was he. Could’ve been the war messed him up before they came here or maybe he was just always a mean prick. Or a bit of both. All I know is that I never want to be like him.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ She chewed on the thought that Luka could have responded by becoming a younger arsehole version of his dad, or a reactionary snag.

  He sure didn’t look like a snag.

  A snag is sausage. This is man not sausage, Galenka jeered.

  He wasn’t a macho jerk, either. ‘Were you born here or over there?’ She rolled onto her side to study him, the way the sun bled his eyes of colour.

  ‘Over here, but I had the wrong surname, my parents went to the wrong church, and I spoke Serbian at home. I might as well have been from Mars.’ He curled a tress of her hair around his finger, set it free again.

  Strange that the more she learned about him, the more in common they had. On the surface he had seemed so different from her, so alien. But like her he had a Slav background and a western upbringing, a foot in each camp. And he’d known violence in the home. ‘Did you get picked on at school?’

  ‘Some. Not after I hit a serious growth spurt at fifteen. But I used to start more fights than anyone else in town until a Police Youth Club trainer introduced me to competitive martial arts and de-escalation. What about you?’

  So he’d been the scrappy type. ‘I think the other kids had trouble deciding whether to pick on my red hair or my commie mother. Usually they went with the hair.’ She picked up a hank of it and twisted it around a finger. ‘I dyed it black at sixteen.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yup, I went full Goth. Would have got my face and body tattooed and pierced all over like Ruth’s if I’d had the money.’

  His eyes traced her features. ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

  ‘Oh? So you’re one of those guys who o
nly likes a blank canvas, huh?’

  He flashed a smile that left her giddier than oxygen therapy. ‘I’m a guy who likes your canvas, every bit of it.’

  The compliment made her squirm. She didn’t know how to deal with them, or the hydra of unworthiness, mistrust and shame they spawned. In the end she settled on an anaemic murmur of thanks.

  He tapped her lightly on the nose. ‘You don’t talk about your family, do you?’

  She blinked. ‘I try not to scare people.’

  He raised his brows. ‘That bad, huh?’

  Her throat tightened with beautiful lies waiting to be told. But she went with the truth instead. Or part of it, at least. ‘My mother was Russian.’

  ‘How did she meet your father?’ He played with her fingers.

  ‘She was a mail-order bride.’ And a woman woven from contradiction.

  His fingers stilled.

  Though unease already twisted and turned through her guts she kept things light by making fun of his surprise. ‘I bet you weren’t expecting that.’

  ‘You’re right. How did the mail-order thing work out?’

  ‘About as well as could be expected.’ For a woman who valued her independence yet was fully dependent on her husband in an unfamiliar environment. A woman hungry for the protection of authority—as demonstrated by her marriage to a police officer—and yet also afraid and defiant of it. Obedient one second, anxious, teary and fearful the next. And highly aggressive—if that was how you described guerrilla war waged on a husband.

  ‘I look a lot like her.’ I am like her. A stray bullet ricocheting between anxiety and aggression, constantly needing to test others’ loyalty to her. ‘Except for this.’ She bunched her hair. ‘The rangerism comes from Dad’s side.’

  ‘I love this.’ He kissed the hair she’d bunched. ‘So thank your dad for me. He’s Australian, I take it?’

  She nodded. ‘He was. From good convict stock who’d turn in their graves to know he’d become a copper. Spawned in Perth.’

  Still playing with her hair he frowned. ‘Why do you think he married a mail-order bride?’

  She looked away, smoothed the couch cover. ‘I think he wanted love but was afraid of it. So he looked for someone he could control, a woman who couldn’t leave him even if she wanted to.’ Funny how being afraid of love ran in the family.

  He paused in the middle of curling a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  It hadn’t been. Her mother had responded like the trapped animal she’d believed herself to be.

  ‘Why do you think he was so afraid of someone leaving him?’ He wrapped his arm tighter around her.

  ‘His mother walked out on his dad when he was a young boy so I guess that’s what he feared most.’

  ‘Still.’

  She nodded. ‘Still.’ A restlessness surged through her, made her feet twitch. Even though it was behind her, water under the bridge and all that, she felt the need to move away from the topic, like one avoided standing too close to a cliff edge for too long.

  Luka kissed her shoulder. ‘And what made your mother want to marry some guy from Australia she’d never met face to face?’

  Love. Ha-ha-ha. Of course not. ‘It was an easy way out of poverty. She grew up in a place called Irktusk. Big family. No jobs, no prospects. I think she was afraid she’d end up turning tricks for yak butter.’

  It was a mean joke but mean jokes were her thing, her way of coping.

  He glanced at her. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘My mother? Formidable. Strong. Her name was Marina.’ She pointed her toes, stretched. ‘I still remember the ‘good wife’ phase, when my mother believed that marriage would make her feel protected and secure. That having someone telling her what she could and couldn’t do would make her happy.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘After she decided that the iron regime of baking, cooking, cleaning, calisthenics and textbook mothering wasn’t worth it, she went off the rails completely. Spent most of her time drinking and plotting how to get even with Dad.’ Kat had always wondered what might have happened if her mother had invested half of that energy into becoming more independent by, say, learning to speak English.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The more unsure of herself she grew, the more she hated Dad. It was a beautiful disaster. Mix the isolation of a trophy housewife unable to speak English with rage and my mother marinated quite nicely in desperation.’

  Rubbing her shoulder, Luka grimaced. ‘How bad did things get?’

  ‘You don’t need to hear all that. But I always thought her anger was something to take the edge off the self-doubt that frightened her so.’

  He stroked her arm. ‘Don’t think about it now, let’s change the topic.’

  ‘What should I think about instead?’ She arched an eyebrow.

  He picked up her hand, placed it in his lap. ‘This.’

  ‘Subtle.’

  ‘I’m a subtle man.’

  ‘Don’t hang noodles over my ears.’

  His lips twitched. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘One of Russian’s crazier idioms. Don’t pretend the Serbs don’t have any.’

  He scratched his chin, the scrape of stubble audible. ‘I do like the saying ’I didn’t fall from a pear tree’ meaning ’I wasn’t born yesterday’.’

  She smirked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a saying, in Russian, to refer to someone mucking around and not doing their job. We say that they’re ’knocking pears out of a pear tree with their dick’.’

  He gave a soft snort. ‘Sounds painful.’

  She closed her hand around his length. ‘I don’t know, this feels solid enough to knock pears out of trees to me.’

  He drew a sharp breath. ‘You’re an expert on the subject?’

  She smiled. ‘An international expert, consulted by pear farmers from around the world looking to harvest their pears.’

  He glanced at her hand, placed his over it. ‘Try not to wear it out before pear season.’

  Chapter 19

  Kat paused by the open tinted window. She was meant to be helping set up for the fundraising day but she had to stop and stare.

  Why was there a calf at the wildlife sanctuary?

  And why were Luka and Evert half naked?

  In a small grassy yard fenced with wood railing, the two men—stripped to the waist—attempted to wash a calf covered in thick mud. Evert held a running hose while Luka struggled to restrain the unhappy beast.

  The view was almost obscene and made her lady junk rejoice.

  It was odd to think that though she’d spent most of her time with Luka naked since their rescue of the Maltese terrier, she’d never spent the whole night with him. Presumably he was worried about his dreams. Unless they’d stopped.

  Hard to know because they’d both been trying to fuck their problems away. Actual conversation could lead to revisiting all kinds of dangerous terrain that might derail their glorious bonking train. She’d continued to spy on Grinder in her spare time, and once or twice Luka had given her a sideways look when she’d arrived late for dinner and she’d had to suppress a sly smile.

  Then there’d been that evening when she’d arrived home, her cheeks flushed with the thrill of nefarious doings, her entire body cloaked with acrid, stinging smoke.

  Luka had raised his head at the dark aroma and had given her a sharp look before lowering the television volume. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I helped Evert incinerate some waste. Why?’ It was true, she had done that among other things.

  He’d stared—without a word—for so long and hard she’d feared he could see inside her, see the giddy love and terror in her veins, along with her bad Russian blood, a potent mix more flammable than the accelerant she’d used to baptise a bunch of motorbikes outside of Grinder’s.

  In the end he’d looked away, let it go, because he liked their train too much.

  Choo-choo.
>
  She grinned, drawn back to the present as the calf broke free and darted around the yard, head held high with indignation.

  Luka cursed, something vile and robust in Serbian. She loved it when he cussed in Serbian and he loved it when she swore in Russian. Sometimes they swore at one another in their respective languages just because it turned them on. Why, the other day she’d accused him of catching flying dicks—one of her favourite Russian idioms—instead of making dinner, and that had led to, well, more fabulous times on their favourite train. In fact, they’d ridden all stops.

  Luka’s gumboots splashed through muddy puddles as he chased after the calf and Evert’s hose hit him just as often as the animal, plastering his cargo pants against his skin.

  ‘Jesus Christ, hold it still, will you?’ Evert laughed.

  ‘I am, jerk-off, stop hosing me and hose the fucking cow instead.’

  ‘Calf,’ Evert corrected. ‘And I can’t believe you arrest people for a living. My mother could do a better job of restraining a calf, you soft cock.’

  ‘Shut up, your mother loves my cock.’

  Kat gasped but Evert simply laughed. ‘In your dreams.’

  The calf twisted and freed itself from Luka.

  Evert shook his head. ‘You’re as useless as tits on a kettle.’

  Luka raised a defiant middle finger, the trigger for what came next—the hose directed in his face.

  Kat covered her mouth with a hand. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to have a camera on hand.

  ‘Whatchyadoin’?’

  At first she attributed the question to Galenka, but when had that rogue started speaking with a broad Australian accent? She looked over her shoulder.

  The speaker was tall, with shoulders broad as an Olympic swimmer’s. Mischief lit slanting eyes in an Asiatic face, round cheeks filled with rude health beneath a red scarf tied Rosie the Riveter style. She wore rubber gloves, a floral apron smeared with filth, and a broad, broad smile that warned the world she could not be broken. Kat would bet her capsicum spray that the woman had smuggled a mooncake or two into the country in her time. Perhaps even that perennial favourite of Chinese traditional therapy, a silk worm faeces pillow.