by Jennie Jones
‘Mum’s probably already there. She walked into town earlier.’
***
Nick ambled around the small room of the library at the Town Hall while waiting for Lily, inhaling the musty storeroom atmosphere. It had sparsely-filled shelving units, a desk and a lone filing cabinet. Perhaps Lily was getting a bit tired of taking lifts from him. He ought to give her the car back this afternoon and stop messing with her, and with his own feelings.
‘So sorry I’m late!’
Nick turned as Lily bounced into the room, his entire being relaxing at the sight of her. She wore a sleeveless dress the colour of tall grass in summer, belted at her slender waist, her bare limbs tanned and shapely.
‘Have you been waiting long?’ she asked.
She carried a happy, carefree manner with her too and the total effect wasn’t lost on him. Lily, Lily, you beautiful woman. If he gave her the car back, he’d miss chances like this one. Opportunities to look at her in her moments of just being Lily.
‘I’m early,’ Nick said, forcing a regular smile to choke down the wondering one. Her hair had partly fallen from its pencil-hold and strands hung around her flushed cheeks. ‘Have you been running?’ he asked.
She laughed and put her hands to her head, demeanour still easy and perhaps a little elated. She’d never been like this with him before and he hadn’t expected it now, with them being alone.
His awareness of her feminine litheness and the sparkling aura she brought into the room heightened further when she pulled the pencil from her hair, shook her head and thick chestnut stands flew around her. He blinked rapidly, finding focus again before he lost sight of the halo of her hair. If he put his hands on her waist now, he’d be catching the tips of her hair between his fingers, that’s how long it was.
‘What an exciting morning!’ she told him, re-pinning her hair with the pencil. How the hell did one pencil hold up a glorious mane like that? ‘My mum and Ray want the children to visit them. They’re going to take them to Sydney for a few days. I haven’t told the kids yet — wanted to make a few arrangements first.’
‘That’s great.’
‘I’ve got them booked on the bus to Canberra tomorrow morning. Mum and Ray will be waiting for them with the Winnebago for the ride to Sydney. They’re going to do the zoo, the Harbour Bridge — and maybe a jet boat ride.’ She paused. ‘You didn’t go to the house to pick me up, did you? I didn’t think. I should have called you — although I don’t have your number.’
‘Well, we’ll have to fix that.’ He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and handed Lily a business card. ‘By the way — what’s your number?’
‘We only have the landline.’ She told him the number. ‘Aren’t you going to write it down?’
‘I’ll remember it.’ He stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. ‘I presume the kids’ll be going on the early bus tomorrow? I’ll come collect you all and drive you into town.’ Which meant he wasn’t going to give her the car back today or tomorrow. Maybe Friday.
‘Would you?’ she asked, eyes still bright. ‘They won’t have much luggage, but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and I don’t want them sitting on a bus, soaked.’
‘No problem.’
‘Is there any news on my car? Not that I’m desperate for it — and I’m not pushing you to hurry up and fix it.’
Nick smiled. ‘Nearly done. Probably Monday.’
‘Oh, that’s great. Thank you!’
‘Hey, look — if you’ve got time after we’ve waved the children off tomorrow, we could finish up here in the library. Or perhaps we can take a look at the back rooms in the hardware store. See what kind of heavy lifting I’ll be doing over there.’ And perhaps she’d have lunch with him, if he asked.
‘Good idea. Today and tomorrow are my days off.’
Nick knew that. He practically knew her every move, especially now that he’d been in her company so much during the week. ‘Perfect timing then. It’ll keep you occupied too. In case you start missing the kids.’
She laughed and Nick found himself saturated with the sound. Happy laughter.
‘That’s very astute, Nick. I will miss them. Although I think I’ve got enough going on to keep myself busy — if not distracted.’ She turned and started sorting herself and the gear she was obviously going to use for the inventory. A notebook, a pen and stickers for indexing.
Nick unwillingly took his eyes off her and lifted two boxes off a stack of five and put them onto the near-empty desk. ‘Shall we start with these?’
‘We’ll have to get someone in to run the library soon,’ she said, ‘if we keep taking delivery of books like this.’
‘Is there anyone who could do that?’ Lily wasn’t going to put herself forward, was she? She had enough on her hands.
‘Well, it’d be too much to expect Mrs Tam to run it. The petrol station alone is taking up most of her daytime, let alone the library and the museum. The shopkeepers in town are all saying how much better their business is these days.’ She paused. ‘And then they complain about not having enough time to chill out.’ She pulled a wry expression. ‘I think they kind of got used to having slow trade.’
‘What are you going to call your shop?’ he asked, pulling a pocket knife from his belt and slicing through the packing tape on one box, then the other.
She pulled an open box towards her. ‘The Turnaround Treasure Shop. Second-Chance Love,’ she added, as though talking to herself. ‘Oh, these are good!’ She picked up two books, drawing her brow in concentration. ‘Self-help for Anyone and Positive Thinking Works Wonders. We can start a new shelf if the box is full of books like this one.’
Second-chance love. Was there such a thing for the likes of him? Undying attraction to Lily seemed to be giving him licence to think there might be.
‘It’s a bit of an impossible dream,’ she said, a little self-mockery in her tone as she rifled through the box.
‘Why?’ Nick asked.
She shrugged. ‘Because it’s hard work chasing after all the dreams in life. But I’m chasing this one.’
‘Good for you,’ Nick said, proud of her. He bowed his head to the stack of boxes on the floor. He didn’t really have the right to hold such a bucket load of pride for the Johnson family unit but he appeared to be becoming a little dismayed that they had so much love he wasn’t part of.
‘But I’m a realist. I know that if I do get it it’ll be mostly determination with a little bit of luck.’ She glanced down at her notebook on the desk, then wrote something in it. ‘Nobody gets anywhere without a little bit of luck.’
Nick couldn’t agree more. ‘Then I wish you luck, Lily.’ If he could give her his share of luck he’d hand it to her on a silver platter.
‘Wait,’ she said suddenly. ‘How did you know about my shop?’
‘Andy told me about it when he was out at my place then Janie-Louise told me a bit more about it this morning. She’s got something for you. Something old you’re apparently going to make shine.’
Still bent over the desk, she raised her brow, looking for all the world like the most beautiful librarian he’d ever seen. ‘You and my daughter have any more secrets I’m not yet privy to?’
Damn. Nick grimaced.
‘You do?’ She straightened.
‘Sort of,’ he admitted. ‘Nothing too major.’ An outright lie, although no harm had been done and Nick had hopefully pressed a responsible attitude into Janie-Louise’s head.
‘Like what?’ Lily asked, eyes wide.
Okay, so this was what parenting was about, Nick decided. Telling each other things they’d learned about the kids. But surely Janie-Louise had a right to a little privacy of her own too? If there was a real parenting thing going on in a kid’s life, Mum would know some girly secrets — and Dad might have a few of his own that he kept from Mum. But in this case — he wasn’t Janie-Louise’s dad.
He picked up another box from the stack. ‘Um… I found her on All Seasons Road, cycling while reading
.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘It’s okay, honestly. Well…’ He faltered for a second, getting the mob of thoughts in his head in alignment. They weren’t his kids. He wasn’t part of their parenting unit. ‘Look, I think I impressed on her the importance of what she’d done wrong. I threatened to take the ereader off her if I found out she’d been reading and cycling at the same time ever again.’
Lily sighed, her shoulders sagging as she swiped a hand over her brow. ‘Thank you, Nick.’
‘It’s not that I wasn’t going to tell you — exactly.’
‘It’s all right. I understand. Thank you for watching out for her. I really appreciate it when anyone in town does that for my children.’ She looked up at him, eyes crinkled with a penitent smile. ‘I get worried about them. Too much so, mostly. I need to let go and let them find their own feet from their own mistakes but it’s so hard to do that when…’
‘When danger lurks at every corner,’ Nick said, putting the box down on the edge of the desk. ‘They’re fabulous kids, Lily. You’re doing a great job.’
‘Thank you.’ Her smile lifted.
God, she had a stunning face and right this moment she was giving him her unguarded smile. His favourite. He wanted more of them, and he wanted them aimed directly at him.
‘So you already had an ereader tucked away for Janie-Louise?’ he asked, and watched as she blushed and looked down at her inventory.
‘Yes. Sorry I didn’t tell you, I wasn’t sure when I’d be getting it for her but it turns out there was plenty of money to buy her one. I’ll return yours.’
‘Why don’t you take it for yourself?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Well, you’re going to have to, Lily.’
She raised an eyebrow at his sudden, stern-sounding remark, making Nick’s fake-serious expression crack. He gave her a quick grin. ‘I’m gifting it to you. If you don’t take it, I’ll be hurt and disappointed.’
A smile formed on her face as she listened to him, obviously knowing his now sheepish expression and tone was his way of joking with her. ‘You’re just being generous again,’ she told him. ‘You ought to stop that.’
Nick shrugged. ‘I don’t need it, Lily. If you don’t take it I’ll probably throw it in the bin.’
She laughed, shaking her head. He looked away and changed the subject, but had no intention of letting her off the hook. He would gift her the ereader. Hell, he’d give her a star if he could reach into the night and hook one for her.
‘How far off before you open the shop?’ he asked.
She relaxed into the change of subject. ‘Quite a while,’ she said with a sardonic yet resigned tilt of her mouth.
Exactly. So why didn’t you take my offer? Because she was an independent soul. Beautiful; spirit still there somewhere inside her but kind of trapped.
Would she even want to re-marry?
There was so much to consider beyond his attraction to the woman. His own marriage hadn’t lasted long. A sham from the start. Based on physical attraction and nothing else. His wife had divorced him after three years during which time Nick had only been physically in-situ with her for about six difficult months where she nagged about his abrupt deployments, time away from home and pretty much made him feel like an also-ran. He’d been glad to agree to the separation when he and the boys had been sent to Iraq.
‘I don’t have kids. Didn’t get the chance,’ he told Lily. ‘I’ve always been sorry about that.’
‘It’s the one perfect thing I’ve done in my life.’
‘Can’t be the only two perfect things,’ he told her, reminding her there were two great kids in her life. ‘You’re successful.’
She slapped a hand to her chest. ‘Me?’
Yeah, you, Nick thought. More than you know. Although he wasn’t sure if it was a case of her not knowing or a case of her denying herself — both the accolades and the finer things for herself.
‘I’m divorced, Nick. That’s not a success story.’
‘You’re not in any different a situation to many others. Sometimes marriages don’t work.’
Nick had done his best to right the wrong of marrying a woman he didn’t love but the struggle was over when she served divorce papers on him after he’d returned from Iraq. Relief had hit him fast. But the marriage debacle had also taught him he wasn’t the marrying kind. Not then anyway, not with his type of career. And now?
He knew how he’d handle a marriage now, or rather, he had a fair idea of what he expected of himself within a marriage. If he was going to take a relationship anywhere with Lily, ‘anywhere’ would have to lead to the full deal. Marriage. A lifetime. He wouldn’t have it any other way. It wouldn’t be fair on Lily to dip into her life now and then and he knew if he got a taste of her he’d want her forever, regardless of whatever settling-down worries were sitting in his gut. Surely he wouldn’t love her and leave her? Not now. He’d been out of the Navy for over two years. He’d settled, hadn’t he?
He turned to the boxes and began opening them. How could he chase Lily and ask her and her kids to become his impossible dream if he couldn’t answer that important question?
***
Lily flipped a page in her notebook and jotted down the box numbers as Nick hefted more, slitting them open and then stacking them in number order against a wall. He carried two boxes at a time. He’d also just taken his jumper off which meant she was on the receiving end of an eye-full of Nick Barton in military-green cargo pants and black T-shirt.
She’d been right about the muscles. His T-shirt was packed with them. They spread across the breadth of his shoulders and down his back. The front view tantalised her starved senses even more. He owned one of those chests that made a woman — a single woman with an intent to take up knitting as soon as possible — want to lean against it. Run the palms of her hands up and over it. Lily thought herself tall at five-eight; Nick was almost a head taller. If she rested her cheek on a firm pectoral muscle in order to listen to his heartbeat, her face would nestle at that most perfect place. The place where protection lived.
Not that she needed protecting, or comforting come to that. But when a man put his arms around a woman with intent to safeguard, it meant the woman could also slip her arms around the man in her life and show him a little comfort — and maybe security too, if at times he needed it. A real partnership deal. Care and provide, love and protect. Together forever.
Heat filtered through her body and with it an awakening awareness that this was a small room and she was practically locked in it with a very attractive man. She moved to the window to undo the old-fashioned lock on the sash. It wouldn’t open. It had been painted over at some point but she put her shoulder into trying to prise open the latch. It wasn’t only the dust in the room that tickled her nose or the warmth in the closed atmosphere that heated her skin. She’d inhaled the sweet smell of discovery, like a cascading, summer-drenched shower of rain. She’d been transported into one of the kissing books and was living a moment of romance on a page with an extremely handsome, sensual—
‘Here. Let me.’ Nick came up beside her and reached an arm over her shoulder.
Lily inhaled. He smelled of freshly washed clothes, the type hung out to dry on a washing line where the wind whipped mown-grass, eucalypt and morning freshness through them. She wondered what kissing that skin would be like.
Nick snapped the lock open and lifted the sash window, letting the autumn breeze flow into the room. Lily breathed in the cool air, hoping it would lower her temperature.
‘What was the first thing you did after discovering your marriage wasn’t working?’ Nick asked, as he moved back to the boxes at the other side of the room.
More intriguing than the substantial physique he possessed and the image of kisses that she couldn’t shake from her mind, was the conversation they were having.
‘Um…’ Lily took her focus off big work boots and long, sturdy legs anchored to firm, balanc
ed hips. ‘I didn’t do anything for a while. I had the kids…you know.’ She wasn’t asking him to understand why she hadn’t left. Not many people would understand. ‘I think I closed down. Didn’t go out much, didn’t further any friendships — except when I had to because of the children.’
‘I sort of did the same thing,’ he said. ‘After my divorce I shut myself off from relationships for a while. Even friendships.’
He was telling her things about himself. To further the unexpected friendship growing between them? Albeit a tentative growth. And… What had he just said? ‘You were married?’
He paused and smiled at her. ‘Does that surprise you?’
Lily shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Sorry. Of course not.’
‘My marriage didn’t last long. Three years — and most of that time I was away. We weren’t right for each other.’
‘Still — I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘I guess it was hard, being in the Navy. Going away a lot.’
‘It was, a bit. It wasn’t my ex-wife’s fault that things didn’t work out. Mostly mine.’
Lily desperately wanted to ask him if his failed marriage was one of the reason he’d come to Swallow’s Fall, and obviously she wanted to know if he still held feelings for his ex-wife but that would be prying — and she wasn’t sure where their friendship lay just yet.
She took her focus back to her notebook and pretended to review her list while her thoughts travelled. He did drive to Cooma and Canberra occasionally. Probably on knife-making business. Sometimes he went as far as Queensland apparently. He could meet a woman in any of those places. He might meet someone and start travelling back and forth, visiting her and growing a relationship. So it wasn’t as though getting re-married was an impossibility for him. But if he got himself a fiancée from one of the bigger towns or cities, he’d be hard-pressed to get her to move to Swallow’s Fall, population over the 100 mark but not by many. Unless he moved out of town.
Lily tried to erase the feeling that thought gave her. The town wouldn’t be the same without Nick around. For some reason she couldn’t figure — she wouldn’t be the same without him around either. They’d grown into a friendship these last few days but somehow, she figured it was only a progression of the knowledge they both shared: they’d known each other for a year, and if she’d let him kiss her at the Easter Bunny Ball, their friendship might have gone places long before now.