“That... fucking... woman... I... can’t... even...”
Dylan put a hand on her shoulder. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”
Hannie spun around to look at him. “What was she doing here?”
“Spinning more of her bullshit.”
“What did she say?”
“Some of her conspiracy theories wouldn’t be out of place in some of the darkest places on the web.” He shook his head in disbelief. “She claims you’re trying to scam her family, that you’re only living on Mandy’s property to get cheap rent.”
Hannie was speechless. She’d heard all of that before, but to say it all to Dylan now? Alice was still trying to ruin things between them.
He cocked his head at her. “And the only reason you’ve been caring for Mandy is because you’re trying to ingratiate yourself into her good books so you can be left something in her will.”
“You are freaking kidding me?” The anger rose up in her throat and almost choked her. “She actually said that?”
“That’s when I told her to get the fuck out of my house.”
“Really?”
Dylan took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her towards him. “Yes, really. You think I’m going to stand here and listen to her crap about you?”
Hannie’s knees began to wobble.
He had her back. Between her mother and Dylan, she had people on her side, people who believed she had only ever wanted to help her aunt. Hannie looked up at the man standing in front of her, her defender. Her Knight in shining armour. When she’d been in love with him in high school, she could never have imagined the kind of man he would become. Loyal, honest, kind. Nice to dogs. The kind of man who looked at her and made parts of her tingle that hadn’t felt like tingling in a long, long time.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a couple of steps into his personal space. She laid her palms on his chest. She wondered if they were still covered with grains of sand.
“When I pulled up today and I saw you with her, I... I thought you might still be in love with her. That she might have come here to try to win you back or something.”
Dylan pulled Hannie into his arms and looked down at her with soft amusement in his blue eyes. “I was never in love with Alice.”
She slipped her arms around his neck, tilted her head up, and then he was right there, pressing his lips to her. And that was all it took for her to melt into him, to let the kiss dissolve any other thought in her head about everything else that had been on her mind the past few weeks. She closed her mind off to everything else but Dylan and the rush she was feeling in every part of her.
When they paused, decided to give each other a moment to breath, he searched her eyes and smiled.
“I’ve got condoms.”
She slid an arm down to his hand and tugged him towards the house.
Two steps into the kitchen, Hannie was tugging at Dylan’s T-shirt. When he’d helped her flip it over his head and tossed it on to the stone floor, she walked him backwards to the kitchen bench, closed in on him, pressed her body against his, and then touched her lips to his chest and ran her flicking tongue over a nipple. He tasted like salt and the beach and she closed her eyes and breathed him in.
“Hannie.” He groaned and he reached his hands up to hold her cheeks.
Oh, god. A Hollywood kiss. Hannie waited, savoured the moment, the gasp of breathlessness, the anticipation of his taste, his strength, his gentleness. And then they were kissing again and he pulled her to his bedroom.
The early evening sun filtered through the window, casting a soft, blurred light over the room. There was a bed, that was all Hannie needed to know, and he gently put her down at the end of it. She fell back on to her elbows. Then he stepped back, grinned like a man who was about to get laid, kicked off his shoes, stripped off his socks and then slowly undid the zip on his shorts. They fell to the rug and he was standing before her in his boxer briefs, the kind that clung to the tops of his thighs and his arse and his hips and his cock, hard and urgent and pressed against his stomach.
“Take those off,” she said. Her eyes dipped and she felt a throb low and strong at the junction of her thighs.
“Yes, ma’am.” And then he was naked and her heart thudded and stopped, and she took in every inch of him, lean and long and ripped.
He took two steps to the bed. She got on to her knees and flipped off her sun dress. His eyes drifted over her body and she thrilled at it. He kneeled on the bed and eased one strap off. He pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and she looked up at the ceiling, quivering with a moan that was on the tip of her tongue. Then his expert hands were on the other strap and he eased that off too, and pulled her one-piece down to her waist. He leaned down, cupped her breasts, and sucked in one nipple then the other, sending exquisite flickers of lightning to her toes and to the roots of her hair. She buried her fingers in his hair, short, rough, and then one arm was around her easing her down into the mattress and he’d stripped her too, and they were flesh on flesh, heat on heat, and the strength of him surrounded her, covered her, enveloped her. Her arms stretched over his strong back and she pressed her fingers into the corrugations of muscle she found there. She arched her hips into his and felt him, so hard.
“Hurry.” She breathed.
“Hold your horses, Reynolds,” he whispered into her ear.
He kissed a trail down the side of her neck, along her collarbone, down between her breasts, tickling his lips against her stomach and then, and then... she parted her legs wide and he buried himself there, and took her to the edge with a flick of his tongue and the exquisite pressure of his fingers. Her arms thrown back over her head, her back arched, and her hips bucking, she came under his touch and it was like a firestorm inside her, burning and exploding and, when she could finally breathe, she felt as if all her bones had melted inside her skin.
“You good?” He laughed.
She opened her eyes and saw him grinning at her from between her knees. “I’m...” She struggled to find the word. “I’m...”
He moved up her body and kissed her, fiercely, and she opened up to him, their tongues dancing, their lips tangled, his breath was hers and she wasn’t sure whose heart was beating inside her chest. He was hard against her, urging now and she reached down and grabbed his butt and pushed him against her. He pulled back.
He moved to the bedside table, which was covered by a lamp and a stack of books. He whipped open a drawer and then ripped the foil pack open with one hand and his teeth.
“Let me,” she said, feeling drunk on him.
He was back on top of her, his skin hot and as soft as velvet under her fingers. “Too late, darlin’.”
And with a thrust that she needed, wanted, craved, he was inside her and kissing her and she was kissing him back just as hard, a dance of two people who weren’t quite sure where this passion had come from, but craved each other like a fire needs fuel.
With a groan in her ear, Dylan came and his body slowly unwound, and his mouth was at her ear, whispering. “Reynolds.” He said it with a groan mixed with a sigh.
“Knight.”
He lifted his face from the crook of her neck to look at her. She held her breath. His look, his soft expression, the way he stroked her cheek, was more intimate than the sex. That realisation rocked her. She moved, cradling him more closely in the swell of her hips.
“You are...” He was lost for words. He exhaled and chuckled.
“So are you,” she said back.
For a long while, they lay entwined, neither wanting to move, to break this spell. There was a gentle breeze from outside, and they listened in wonder to the echoing, throaty call of magpies in the tall gums on Dylan’s property.
“Isn’t that a beautiful sound?” he said. “I missed that when I was living in Melbourne. I didn’t realise how much until I moved back.”
“Was it hard? Coming home, I mean?”
Dylan moved slightly, taking his weight from her and settling
next to her, his body still pressed against hers. She relished the warmth of his skin. He trailed a finger around her belly button, which made her laugh, and then he cupped one of her breasts, leaning over to kiss her nipple with wet lips.
“If you do that again I might come on the spot,” she murmured.
He grinned and took her whole nipple into his mouth, laving it with his tongue.
She laughed and pinched him.
He let go of her, kissed her breast, and looked into her eyes. “No, it wasn’t hard coming home. And it won’t be hard staying with you here.”
She would never forget this moment with Dylan.
This perfect moment.
Chapter Fourteen
For the next four days, Dylan was at work at the fire service at his station down in the city, working twelve hours shifts, and Hannie spent full days at her desk, catching up on the all the work she’d put on hold while her life twisted and turned in ways she couldn’t have imagined just a few weeks before.
The weather was mild, with days in the mid-twenties and nights cool enough to pull on an extra blanket, but everyone in Reynolds Ridge and surrounding towns knew the reprieve wouldn’t last. The Bureau of Meteorology had forecast that the heat and northerly winds would return, sweeping across from the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory in a giant arc, so she took the opportunity to get some things done. People living in bushfire areas checked the weather more often they checked their Facebook news feeds, to judge if today was the day they had to take extra precautions to protect their property, to make sure their petrol tanks were full, to ensure their animals could be evacuated if they needed to get out in a hurry and if they themselves should get in their cars, pack up their valuables and leave.
Hannie took the opportunity to take Ted to his vet’s appointment in the nearby town of Uraidla, and Hannie was relieved when the vet told her with a warm smile that Ted’s knee was now looking good and that he could be let off the leash to wander so he could get some exercise and restore muscle tone in his leg. It hard been hard, although necessary, to follow doctor’s orders when it came to restricting Ted’s movements, but it had clearly worked. As soon as they’d got home from the appointment at the clinic, she’d helped him down from the back seat of her four-wheel drive and Ted had trotted off immediately, sniffing every plant and shrub and tree around her cottage, his tail wagging as if he was smelling everything for the very first time. She loved seeing him so free after weeks of such restriction. He was relishing his freedom and Ted wasn’t the only one who was pleased that his medical treatment was over.
Hannie had called the hospital and tried to speak to her Aunt Mandy, but she’d been out of her room having some more tests at the time, so Hannie had left another message. When Mandy didn’t call back, Hannie wondered if she was getting the messages at all. So Hannie sent flowers and a card, wishing her aunt well and sending hugs and kisses from Zelda and the girls. Every day, when Hannie fed the animals, she checked over at her aunt’s house and wondered if Mandy would ever return to the place she loved so much. Alice had remained silent and uncommunicative, so Hannie figured Alice was still furious with her. She’d done a lot of thinking about the situation, and figured her best move was to wait to hear from Mandy. The balls were in her court on this one. It was her health and her life and her property.
To distract herself from thinking about Dylan and the sex she was missing out on, Hannie got busy at her desk. She put the finishing touches to the piece she’d designed for Beck, and worked on six other commissions she had waiting. She restored and polished a pair of diamond earrings. She’d created a bracelet from a vintage necklace, and crafted a ring with a row of diamonds from a few separate, much-loved but well-worn pieces. She made appointments with her clients to drop off the pieces and check fittings. She browsed the catalogues from a couple of gem dealers she knew and let her imagination run ahead of her. Thinking time was precious in a creative industry like hers, and she tried as hard as she could to clear her mind of everything else to let the ideas flow.
When she needed a break, she slipped on a pair of jeans and her steel-capped boots and hauled an extension ladder out from Mandy’s shed to clean the gutters on her cottage and on Mandy’s house. The high winds of the previous week had filled them with crisply dry, long and thin gum leaves, which had flown through the air and clogged downpipes. It would quickly become a hazard if there was a fire nearby, as the high winds could pick up burning embers that would flicker and fly through the air like glowing fireflies, and set the leaves alight. A fire in a gutter would in a matter of minutes spread and engulf a house. It was monotonous, albeit important work, and as she moved the ladder from place to place, climbed it, and flicked out the leaves with a heavy glove, her mind was full of Dylan.
She wondered if he was at the fire station and what he was doing. Was he involved in some training or educating some new recruits? Was he out in the truck at the scene of a car accident, reaching people from the wreckage or cleaning up fuel or chemical spills? Was he at the scene of a house fire, caused by a faulty air-conditioner? Or was he back at base, waiting, on edge, for the next call.
And was he thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him?
That first night they’d spent together, she hadn’t stayed, even though she’d wanted to. Ted was waiting for her and she’d had to go home and let him out for a pitstop, so it had been just past midnight, after Dylan made her the best toasted ham and cheese sandwich on the planet that they had sauntered out to her car.
He’d held her hand. It seemed so old-fashioned but it had felt so right. She hadn’t wanted to let go of him, and clearly he’d felt the same. When she’d been ravenously wolfing down the sandwich he’d made for her – sex always made her hungry – he’d pulled her into his lap and held her while she ate. As they’d been standing by her car, her about to leave, he’d slipped his arms around her and kissed her again, with a hunger she hadn’t ever felt in a man.
“You really have to go, huh?”
It had been almost pitch-black out there in Dylan’s yard, with only the light from the kitchen windows and the back door spilling out over the veranda. Above, there was a canopy of stars which looked as if someone had strung fairy lights from tree to tree. “It’s Ted. I left him inside.”
“Damn that hound,” Dylan said, smiling down at her.
“Hey. Don’t talk about my dog that way, Knight. He’s my most loyal companion.”
Dylan had chuckled. “Well, he better get used to the fact that he’s gonna have some competition there.”
She thought back to that moment, to the long, hot kiss that followed, and smiled.
She flicked a clump of dead gum leaves on to the ground and they fluttered and scattered on to the grass and gravel below. Dylan Knight. How was it possible that she was already crazy about him? She climbed down the ladder and picked up a rake, gathering all the leaves into a pile for depositing in the green bins. Just before she’d got in her car, Dylan had promised he’d see her on the last night of his four-shift stint.
That was tomorrow night.
And she couldn’t wait.
On the evening of the third day of his four-shift stretch, Dylan caught up with his twin brother Caleb. They worked in different fire stations in the city and were on different shifts, so seeing each other was usually a quick beer or a morning coffee in between night shift or long day shifts. But tonight, they’d actually managed to wrangle time enough for a meal at an old pub in Maylands, tucked away in the Adelaide suburbs between the city and the hills. It was an historic place, built of local bluestone, and had a great front bar, with walls covered with framed sporting memorabilia of local football and cricket legends.
Caleb came back to their table with a couple of beers and a bag of chips. “Here, open those.”
Dylan split the pack and they tucked in. “Salt and vinegar?” Dylan asked as he crunched a chip. “You know I hate salt and vinegar.”
“That’s wh
y I got ’em. Caleb looked happy and relaxed, and as fit as a professional athlete. His hair was cut in almost the same style, short all over, but his was brown and Dylan’s was blond. They weren’t identical, but there was no mistaking them as brothers. Both broad shouldered, strong, six foot three.
“So how’s tricks, little bro?” Dylan had always liked to rub it in that he was the older of the two and, while it was only by twelve minutes, he liked to think it gave him some moral authority over his slightly younger brother.
“Good,” Caleb said.
“Been out on your new bike yet?”
Caleb sipped his beer. “I love it. It runs like a dream. I did Mt. Lofty this morning, twice, and it didn’t skip a beat.” Mt Lofty was the highest peak in the Adelaide Hills and dedicated cyclists did the run a few times a week. “You should come with me next time. It’d do you good to get some fresh air.”
“What are you talking about? I live in the fresh air.”
“Cycling’s great. You should come try it.”
Dylan laughed. The hills had been full of cyclists a few weeks ago during the Tour Down Under, the international road race which brought world class cyclists to Adelaide. Each January, the city went mad for lycra. Dylan would never be one of them. Cycling just wasn’t his thing.
“You know what’s so good about being nonidentical twins, Caleb? It means we don’t have to like the same shit. Give me a run in the great outdoors any day. Or why don’t you come up to my place and help me clear some dead trees around the property? Lugging those around and chopping them up for firewood will give you a work-out.”
“I keep meaning to come up and have a look. How are things up there at Reynolds Ridge? What’s it like being back?” Caleb sipped his beer, and then leaned his elbows on the table.
“It’s almost stopped feeling like Mum and Dad’s house.” Dylan smiled. “It’s such a great part of the world. I can’t believe I stayed away so long.” From the corner of his eye, Dylan saw a message pop up on his phone. Was it Hannie?
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