by Lily Malone
And the answer: “Well they’re not up my bum, Dean.”
Owen chuckled.
“Eleven and a half thousand dollars? Serious?” Liv rounded on him, fighting the bitter lump lodged in her throat.
“It’s a 650 Pantah, Olivia. It’s a collector’s item. I checked them out online and I know they’re rare. And this one? Well, she’s a beauty.” Owen’s eyes connected with hers, laughter danced a tango in those charcoal depths, and suddenly the laugh vanished and Liv wasn’t sure they were talking about the Ducati anymore.
“Why is that bike so special to you?” He asked in such an earnest tone, Liv felt a sharp prickle of tears.
“It was my brother’s bike. My father made my brother sell it. I don’t see how it matters. It doesn’t change anything.” She kept the shake out of her voice, but it took all her effort.
“He made him sell it? Why? Did your brother crash it?”
Her throat worked, but no sound came. This time she knew if she didn’t get away, she was going to cry. You couldn’t let the bastards see you cry. How many times had she said that to her brother over the years?
Liv ducked her head and turned away. “Enjoy the Duke, Owen. She’s a great bike.”
“What did he mean when he said you’ve been through a lot?” Owen called after her, but Liv was at the footpath now, where cars heading to the city picked up speed, and commuters on the homeward journey downshifted gears and dropped revs. Tyres splashed on wet roads. It was easy to pretend she hadn’t heard.
Chapter 2
Every muscle ached. The bone-crunching cold made it worse and Liv’s thoughts were as bleak as her steps. If a mugger decided to rob her now he could have snatched her bag without a fight.
She crossed the main road at the only set of lights and limped around the corner into Old Balhannah Road, trying to figure out what she would say to Ben. How did she tell him she didn’t have the Duke? How did she tell him the goodbye ride was over before it even began?
When her brother was alive, Luke and Ben rode to Mannum every weekend, riding double on the Ducati. Luke said they could be themselves up there. Just hang out. No one knew them. None of the local Redneck boys were there to give them grief.
Of course, Ben would chip in that it was really all about the cheesy bacon pies at the Mannum Bakery—how they were the best pies in South Australia—because he just had to be contrary.
Riding the Ducati to Mannum was the best way she and Ben could think of to say a final goodbye to Luke—Liv on the Duke, Ben on his Honda—it would have felt like Luke was riding with both of them, one last time.
She was the world’s biggest idiot for getting Ben’s hopes up, but it had never entered her head that someone else might buy the Duke. When she’d heard it was for sale, she’d thought it was fate.
Damn Owen Carson and his big black wallet.
Liv checked over her shoulder. The road was clear and she crossed near the new childcare centre. Kids hung tiny arms through the fence, noses pressed through bars, seeking the parents who would soon finish work and take them home.
“Hi, buddy,” she said to a boy of about three who looked as sad as she felt. He’d jammed his plastic spade through the bars and stood whacking it back and forth, crying, because he couldn’t get it out.
Liv stopped long enough to twist the spade upright so it slipped back through the bars.
“What do you say, Hamish?” said a little girl solemnly, to the now-happy boy.
“Fanks you.”
Liv felt her lips curve in a smile. “No worries buddy.”
The childcare centre sat on land that once belonged to the Hahndorf Private School. When they built the childcare, the playground had been relocated further up Old Balhannah Road.
She and Luke used to go to that playground most days after school. The private school playground had better gear than the public school where the Murphy kids went, and the private school kids didn’t hang around to taunt her timid little brother. Even way back then, children marked Luke as different.
Liv stared over the fence at the climbing frames and swings, see-saws, rungs and ladders—silent now and still, waiting for something to prod it into action.
A bit like my life.
Now where had that thought come from? She was happy enough in her life. Wasn’t she? She had her work. Her health. Her friends. Well. She had Ben.
It was hard to keep friendships when she worked around the clock. She’d just come through her second grape harvest season since starting her viticulture consultancy and that meant most weekends from February to May she was too tired to do anything more social than collapse into bed with a book.
Liv didn’t do movies or make-up or Facebook—she had more interest in cricket than clothes—and she’d been burned before. She’d lost count of the girls who only wanted to be friends with her so they could get closer to her gorgeous brother. As far back as high school women saw the ‘turning’ of Luke Murphy as a personal challenge.
Living with her parents didn’t help either. It was impossible to invite people around when her mother couldn’t stop herself following them around the house, a cloth in her hand to wipe beer bottle rings from the coffee table.
Dammit, Olivia. That’s enough. Get over yourself!
Before she had time to really think it through, Liv lifted the childproof latch on the playground gate.
Dumping her handbag near the swing, she sat in the seat and took the cold steel chains in her palms.
Rubber moulded to her backside, a tighter fit than when she’d had little-girl hips. She dug her heels into the ground and pushed backward. When she let go, she hurtled through air that seemed to wrap itself around her legs: a bittersweet blanket.
Luke used to love the swings. He’d spend hours on the flying fox. They would climb. Chase. Pretend. Imagine. Dream.
Liv filled her lungs with the mingled scents of cheese sandwiches and vegemite, apple cores and orange juice—ingrained leftovers from a lifetime of school lunchtime snacks. Head thrown back, wind whipping her hair, she felt her lips shape a smile.
****
Owen had watched Olivia’s pink beanie and muddy backside until both disappeared behind Dean Lang’s neighbour’s hedge. He could tell by the stiff way she walked that she hurt all over and he kicked himself for not offering her a ride. He was out of practice at that sort of thing. He’d been incommunicado too long. A summer season on Antarctica would do that.
He tapped the Pantah’s seat. “Baby, who wouldn’t want you?”
Lang returned in minutes carrying a plank almost as thick as one of his arms, and a sheaf of transfer papers.
Owen straightened the bike, kicked back the centre stand and pushed it from the lawn. The tyres hummed and picked up grit as he rolled it across the main road. When he looked to his right, the oak trees flanking the road formed an ever-lengthening tunnel of stark brown trunks. He saw no sign of Olivia, no flash of pink scarf through denuded trees.
Lang steadied the ramp and Owen loaded the Ducati on the back of his cousin’s ute.
“I’ll leave you to it then, mate,” Lang said, tucking the ramp under his arm and handing Owen the paperwork. “These are all signed.”
Owen took the papers and walked around the passenger side of the vehicle. He put the documents on the seat and pulled a stash of rope from the footrest. “I don’t suppose you have a phone number for her, do you?”
The corner of Lang’s mouth drooped. “Who?”
“Olivia,” Owen said patiently, tying the Ducati to the side rails.
Lang rocked his head back in a smile that showed too many yellow-stained teeth. “Ah.”
“I thought she could tell me about the bike,” Owen said, then as Lang continued his broad grin, added: “Service history. Stuff like that.”
“I guess she could tell you a thing or two, mate, but nah. I don’t know her number. Sorry. She’d be in the phone book though. She runs a business here. Livine. Something like that.”
“L
evi’s?” Owen tried to clarify, tugging at his knots. Rope slipped through his palm.
A truck rattled past, buffeting the air and he missed Lang’s response. The ropes gripped and held.
“She ain’t moving,” Dean Lang said, clapping his hand on the steel tray. “You got far to go?”
“Not far. My aunt has a vineyard out near Balhannah. I’m staying with her for the long weekend. I’m supposed to be helping her prune the bloody thing.” Owen gave his ropes one last tug. Lang was right. The bike wasn’t moving.
“You can have that job all to yourself, mate. I have enough trouble pruning Her Inside’s roses.” Lang held out his hand. “Have a good one, buddy. I hope she runs well.”
Owen shook the big man’s hand. “Yeah. Cheers. Thanks for that.”
Lang set off across the road with his makeshift ramp. ‘Her Inside’ must have lit the fire because fresh white smoke tumbled from the chimney like wisps of Santa’s beard.
Owen tried to think why a father would make his son sell his bike. Maybe he crashed it. Perhaps his old man thought he rode too fast. Owen knew plenty of parents who wrapped their kids in cotton wool. Plenty. Not his parents, mind. Stand up for yourself, son, had always been his father’s motto. Someone pushes you around, push him back harder.
Owen climbed in the ute, indicated out into the traffic and started up the main street. At Old Balhannah Road he turned, slowly, so he wouldn’t jostle the bike. He stole one last glance up the thoroughfare, just in case, but he saw no sign of Olivia and it gave him the sense he’d let something precious slip through his fingers.
Not a feeling he liked.
Life should be grabbed with both hands. Antarctica taught him that. Grab an opportunity and hold on like hell, because down there, you might not get another chance.
His aunt’s vineyard was about four kilometres out of Hahndorf on the bitumen. Margaret’s Folly, she called it. Owen’s Folly he called his offer to help her prune it. What he knew about pruning grapevines could be written on the back of the buzz-box Prius that cut the corner in front of him.
Owen straightened out of the turn. He couldn’t pick up speed like he normally would, traffic was too heavy. He was in prime kid pick-up time for the local mums.
He had half an eye on the traffic when a flash of pink stole his attention. Instinctively, he touched the brake.
Olivia Murphy was riding the flying fox in the Hahndorf school playground.
The tail of her scarf streamed behind her and each breath burst from her lips in a puff of white cloud. With her arms stretched over her head, the padded jacket hiked up to show him a delicious band of bare stomach, pulled taut and shining.
She reached the end of the run, turned on the platform, then re-gripped the handpiece and launched herself back the way she’d come.
Owen saw the muddy stain across her backside before her jacket pulled up again, revealing smooth, supple skin stretched tight above jeans slung so low on her hips, he could see the shadowy contours at the base of her spine.
“Shit.”
He stomped the brake just in time to stop turning the Prius into something he’d have to open with a can-opener. Its driver flipped him her middle finger then gunned her car into the childcare centre. The traffic freed and Owen breathed again. Releasing the brake, moving steadily forward, he craned his neck for a better view into the playground.
Liv turned and re-launched. He was closer now and he could see the smile on her face—a wide, stunning smile that seemed to spin across the metres separating them like a slow-motion chocolate wheel and land in the slot of his brain that read stop.
Owen indicated left and pulled into the carpark by the church.
He killed the ignition, leapt from the car and—spying a gap in the convoy of mums—darted across the road. With his palm on the cold steel of the playground fence, he launched his feet sideways, up and over, and landed in a sea of shrubs nowhere near as soft as they’d looked from the road.
“That will teach you to wear shorts in June,” Olivia called.
Owen looked up from the killer conifers in time to see her release the flying fox and drop to the ground. She landed stiffly on a bed of woodchips and the first thing she did was tug her jacket to cover her stomach. A blush pinked her cheeks. The tip of her nose was red and there was a rip in the knee of her jeans. She’d been crying.
All these separate bits of information buried themselves in his brain. He didn’t analyse them. He couldn’t think. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and he wanted to kiss away her tears and punch whoever made her cry.
“What are you staring at?” She challenged, digging in her pocket for a tissue and wiping her nose. “Did your cheque bounce?”
So I guess I know who made her cry.
He dodged away from the scrape of a twig way too close to his balls and moved forward more carefully until he reached clear ground. “Why did your father make your brother sell his bike?”
“Why do you care?”
Owen juggled his keys from his right hand to his left and wondered where to start without making her run a mile. If he made any sudden move, he thought she might bolt. “If the bike’s so special to your brother, why isn’t he the one trying to buy it back?”
Olivia stared out toward the school oval, where the school gardener rode a ride-on mower across the grass. Pain tightened her jaw. “Because Luke died three years ago, Owen.”
Shit. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged and stepped away, picking up her handbag from where it lay near the swings. The flying fox jigged overhead. “Why would you be sorry? It wasn’t your fault.”
“Then why do I get the feeling I’m on trial?”
“You must have a guilty conscience. Perhaps that’s about stealing my bike.” She adjusted her handbag more securely on her shoulder.
“How did your brother die?” Jesus, Owen. Ten out of ten for tact.
“In a road accident,” she said and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t worry. My brother didn’t stack your precious bike.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes you did. It was the first thought that crossed your mind.”
“Well, I—”
“Luke was driving home from his,” —she hesitated and her chin came up— “boyfriend’s place, and a carload of hoons overtook him on a double white line. There was a car coming the other way and it had to swerve to avoid the hoons and it ended up side-swiping Luke. He died in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, kicking himself on the inside. Sorry sounds so lame. “I hate drivers like that.”
“There’s no shortage of dickheads around here.” She cocked her eyebrow at him.
Owen had to laugh. “I hope you’re not counting me in your dickhead tally, lady. I helped pick you off the pavement, remember.”
She shifted a foot in the bark chips. The corner of her mouth twitched in a smile she quickly hid. “You did do that, I guess, before you paid an outrageous amount of cash for my bike. Okay... I’m sorry.”
Nothing about her looked particularly apologetic, but Owen was more interested in the colour of her eyes than her words. Were they grey-blue, or blue-grey?
“Didn’t you hear me before?” She asked, holding his gaze.
“What?”
“I said my brother was driving home from his boyfriend’s place.”
“Yeah.” Blue-grey.
“Luke was gay.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you care?”
“It’s a free world, Olivia. I’m the last person to judge.”
“You don’t have to pretend on my account.” Her eyes settled on Mark’s ute and from her expression, Owen got the distinct impression she’d like to scratch a key through the paint.
“If everyone’s a consenting adult, I couldn’t care less about your brother’s sexual preferences.”
Olivia seemed to consider that for a moment.
He didn’t blame her for being wary. If anyone knew how unfor
giving small towns could be, he did. He changed tack.
“What are you riding now?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Pardon?”
“What bike do you have now?”
“I’m not riding a bike right now. It’s been a while.”
“And you thought you’d get back into bikes by buying a collector’s item like the Pantah?” Owen flicked his thumb towards the Ducati. “Do you know how much power is in that thing?”
“I did and I do.” Her eyes narrowed into grey slivers. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Well… it doesn’t strike me as the best bike for—”
“Don’t you dare say for a girl,” she interrupted.
“— for learning on.”
“You don’t think I can ride it?” Olivia tightened her grip on the strap of her handbag and he had visions of her launching it at his head like an Olympic hammer-thrower.
“Whoa,” he held up his hands and took a step back. “Look, do you think we could start over? Maybe I could give you a ride home? I meant to offer back at the Lang’s.”
She flicked at the same chunk of dark hair that had felt so warm in his fingers when he brushed it from her eyes earlier. “Thank you, Owen, but I don’t need a lift. I live around the corner. I live with my parents. Rent around here costs a bomb and it’s easy for me here, with my work—” She hesitated. “What?”
“Nothing,” Owen said quickly. “I’m a bit surprised you live at home, that’s all. I couldn’t wait to get out of my folks’ place.”
She stiffened and her gaze dropped away. Rush hour had finished at the childcare centre and the road was quiet. “Like I said, it’s cheap rent. They’re away at the moment, they’ve gone to Melbourne.”
“Dean Lang said you run your own business. Levise, was it?” He asked, mentally adding ‘parents’ to the list of unmentionables. The Ducati. Her brother. Her folks.
“LiVine. It’s a viticultural services agency. Liv. Get it? Vine.” She gave him the slightest smile, enough to make his next breath catch in his throat.
“Yeah, I get it. So are you working tomorrow?”