Lake Hill

by Margareta Osborn

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, rubbing at his arm. The cold water had turned the tanned brown of his skin white. He thrust his hand back into the trough.

  ‘What’s happened to it?’ she asked.

  ‘The heifers have busted the float off the valve.’

  ‘Which means?’

  He looked at her blankly, then realised she was serious. ‘This orange ball here is a float – it controls how much water gets fed into the trough. The heifers sometimes push it around and it busts off or gets stuck, which means the water stays on and overflows.’

  ‘Right. Why do they do that?’

  ‘Why not? They’re inquisitive buggers.’

  Message to self, Julia thought: do not buy heifers. She would have no idea what to do with any of those plumbing bits.

  He must have read her thoughts because he said, ‘You won’t have to do this. You’ve got a couple of dams on your place for stock water.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that.’

  ‘Although you’ve got a solar electric fence around the boundary you’ll need to keep an eye on. Make sure there’s no shorts and it holds its power. You don’t want the cattle pushing through the wires.’

  Julia blanched.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s easy enough. You just need an electric fence tester. It’ll tell you where the faults are and if there’s enough charge to keep in your stock. We’ll show you how to use it.’

  She swallowed. ‘Thank you.’ This was going to be a new life in more ways than one.

  While they were talking, Rick had deftly reattached the round orange float and tested that the valve controlling the water flow was shut off. He stepped back and grinned at her. ‘All done. Simple, hey?’

  ‘It might be to you, but I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Yeah, you could. I think you could do anything if you set your mind to it.’

  His warm confidence in her made her stand up straighter.

  ‘My counsellor said something similar,’ she admitted. ‘She encouraged me to be brave and reinvent myself.’

  For the third time. The first and second times had been for a man. Now, finally, she was doing it for herself.

  ‘And you listened. Because here you are, the new owner of the Lake Hill Cafe and twenty acres.’ He smiled and grabbed her hand. ‘C’mon, I want to show you something.’

  He pulled her up a nearby rise. They were both panting when they reached the top of the rocky pinch. As Julia was enjoying his warm, firm hold on her hand, Rick gestured with a flourish of his free arm.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Incredible,’ she breathed.

  And it was. She could see for miles. Lake Grace shone like a flat-faced diamond against an azure sky that stretched towards the soaring mountains of blue-grey. A blue-grey very like the colour of Rick’s eyes.

  He nodded towards the east, where an iron roof glinted in the late afternoon sun. ‘There’s your new life. Welcome to Lake Grace, Julia.’

  Chapter 11

  Rick slammed shut the door to his mechanical workshop and strode across the gravel towards a green John Deere tractor. He’d been tinkering with a water pump but his mind wasn’t on impellors and leaking foot valves. Maybe some weed-spraying would take his mind off the woman who’d blasted back into his life like a 50-calibre bullet.

  He’d only seen Julia fleetingly over the past two weeks. The minute he’d got her car back on the road, she’d taken off. Back to Melbourne to ready her affairs, she’d said, so she could commence life here in Lake Grace. He didn’t want to feel excited about what her moving next door might mean. He’d tried to stamp down any lurid thoughts, but, like the afternoon shadows, they crept up on him and next thing he knew his brain would be full-on into the sweetest dream despite the fact he was wide awake.

  Shaking his head in disgust, he hauled his big frame into the cramped tractor cab, cranked over the engine and swung out of the homestead yard, heading towards distant paddocks where deep gullies ran down to the lake. They’d been smothered in blackberry canes when his father had been in charge of the Grange. The old man hadn’t seen the benefits to the farm or the environment of keeping them under control. ‘Only rubbish ground anyway,’ he used to say. Rick saw it differently. The now cleared gullies provided warm grazing for the cattle, protecting them from the fierce, cold south-westerlies that blasted the lake and its surrounds during winter and spring.

  But rather than bringing peace of mind, spraying the regrowth blackberry runners gave him hours to think. One minute he was wondering if just a taste of her would be enough to sate the hunger that had been gnawing at him since she’d rocked into town. The next, he was vowing to stay well away from the girl – correction, woman – who’d been his first love. He’d never forgotten her, but perhaps that was because she’d become something he couldn’t have.

  The emotions she’d evoked in him as an adult were exactly the same as when he was eighteen, and that had thrown him. Despite public conjecture, he hadn’t been seriously involved with more than a handful of women over the years since she’d vanished from Lakes Entrance. He was looking for a happily-ever-after his parents had never had, and not many women fulfilled that ideal.

  But Julia … what was it about her? He’d felt it the moment he’d seen her that first night in the pub. A kind of chemistry that had reached out and reeled him in. The intensity of it had made him react irrationally, jumping to conclusions about her without knowing the facts. He of all people should have known better. The press had done the same thing to his own family time and time again. Journalists eager for stories had made them up using supposition and innuendo, which the avid public swallowed as truth. He couldn’t believe he’d been guilty of the same with Julia.

  His only excuse was that he’d been spoiling for a fight that day because of the journo who’d tried to get under his guard that morning. The same day she arrived.

  And now here he was, thinking about her again. Shit.

  It was hard to believe she’d soon be setting up her life and business at Lake Hill, right next door to the Grange.

  Charlie was waiting when Rick drove the tractor into the yard at lunchtime. As he swung down from the cabin, the older man said, ‘Furniture truck’s arrived over yonder. Julia must be rentin’ the place till settlement.’

  Rick nodded.

  ‘Looks like a fair load of stuff.’

  He nodded again and walked towards the diesel bowser. Unhitched the refuelling hose, undid the fuel tank cap on the John Deere, shoved in the hose and pulled the trigger. Fuel gushed into the tank.

  ‘You’re scared, aren’t ya?’ said Charlie, leaning against the tractor’s rear tyre. ‘A big bastard like you, quiverin’ like a young pup on his first day in the yards.’

  ‘Shut up, Charlie.’

  ‘Mate, you need to understand that not every woman’s like Elsbeth.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You can’t make any woman who might threaten your peace of mind pay for your mother’s sins.’

  Rick gave the old man a hard-eyed stare. Charlie glared right on back and kept talking.

  ‘All I’m sayin’ is, it’s your decision how much you let your parents’ behaviour affect your own life. Too many of you youngsters these days blame everyone bar yourselves for your own predicaments. You, mate, have choices. You’re thirty-eight years old and financially secure, and you should be gettin’ married and havin’ some kids.’

  ‘Why don’t you just say what you really think?’

  ‘Someone’s gotta tell ya. May as well be me.’ And he didn’t look at all perturbed about it either.

  The problem was, Charlie was right. Rick had been running scared his whole life. But for the last two weeks he’d barely thought of anything except Julia. Did he really want this woman who threatened his peace of mind and confused the hell out of him living right next door, within hailing distance of the farm and his island sanctuary? His brain, conditioned to repel threats, said, Hell, no! But his heart was jumping
around his chest and saying, Yes, yes, yes!

  ‘And what’s more, you need to spread it around town that Julia’s alright,’ Charlie added. ‘She won’t make a go of the joint this early if you don’t. There won’t be enough tourists around until Christmas. You’re really gunna fuck her over if ya don’t do somethin’.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this right now, Charlie.’

  The tractor’s tank gurgled and Rick was relieved to see it was full. He pulled the hose from the tank and hitched it back on the bowser, all the while keeping his back to the other man.

  Unfortunately Charlie didn’t take the hint. ‘You owe her.’

  That stung. Rick swung around. ‘I don’t owe her anything.’

  ‘You do. She’s a nice lady, here for the right reasons, but you put the seeds of doubt in our heads the night she arrived. Now we don’t know whether to welcome her or not. We’ve got your back, Rick, but only if there’s a real threat.’

  He was grateful for that. His friends had been like a fortress wall closing in around him and Montana to protect their privacy. It wasn’t fair to use them like that when the only danger Julia Gunn posed was to his well-guarded heart. It wasn’t fair to her either.

  ‘Plus,’ said Charlie, standing there in a dirty ripped cotton shirt that was missing two buttons, and a pair of workshorts that had definitely seen better days, ‘I’m a coffee snob. I like a good brew and you bugger it up every time you make it on your new machine. The corner store buggers it up, and the roadhouse only has one of those flamin’ serve-yourself jiggers, which isn’t much better than instant. If I can get a great coffee within cooee, I’m in. But it’ll carry more weight with everyone if you do it.’

  Rick folded his arms and stared at Charlie. ‘So what do you suggest I do?’

  ‘Put the word out you’re okay with her and want us all to support the cafe. Hopefully her coffee and cakes’ll do the rest.’

  The old man was right. It would go much easier for Julia if he threw his weight behind her cafe, especially as he owned half the businesses in town, including the pub. Lots of word-of-mouth recommendations originated in its bar. Needing time to think about it, Rick hauled himself back up into the tractor. He’d forget about lunch and head on out again.

  ‘I’ll be here when you get back, so there’s no use runnin’, pal.’

  Persistent old bastard.

  ‘Well?’ Charlie prompted. ‘What’s it to be?’

  Rick didn’t answer. His mind was back on that rocky pinch two weeks ago with Julia. He remembered the determination in those arresting features. The vulnerability yet steadfast self-belief in those dark eyes. Be brave, hey? Her words not his. She was determined to make a new life for herself. And a voice in his brain was screaming, ‘Do the same! Take a risk. Give your heart free rein!’

  ‘I can wait here all day for your answer,’ Charlie said, lolling against the tractor’s massive rear tyre and chewing on a stick he’d picked off the ground.

  Rick gazed down at the top of his long-time mate’s felt-hatted head. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You gotta do more than that. She opens in a fortnight.’

  His heartbeat stepped up to a full-on percussion-led concerto. Happiness welled in him like a balloon, which perversely made him cranky with Charlie all over again.

  ‘How’d you know that?’ he said.

  ‘She told me.’

  He felt a spike of jealousy. ‘And when did you see her?’

  Charlie stared at him for a few seconds, then gave a smug grin. ‘On the road this mornin’. She was comin’ back early to get ready for the furniture truck. I offered to give her a hand – both of us.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  The old bastard was playing him. Rick forced himself to remain civil. ‘Does. She. Need. Help?’

  ‘Nah. Got enough removal blokes apparently.’

  Rick glared at Charlie, annoyed that he hadn’t been the one to see Julia this morning and that she didn’t want any assistance. And especially annoyed that his right-hand man could see right through him. That knowing grin was driving him fucking nuts.

  He keyed the ignition, and Charlie pushed himself off the tyre and took a step towards the cab door to push it closed.

  ‘Bit of advice from an old man,’ he drawled. ‘Give in to it, pal, and it’ll go a whole lot easier. Your heart knows what it wants even if that numbskull brain of yours doesn’t.’

  Then he slammed the door and sauntered off, whistling.

  Chapter 12

  Julia was so excited she was shaking. Or maybe it was just the coffee machine? It was making a foul noise. She stared at it in horror. It couldn’t play up, not today! Not on opening morning. But it continued to shake, rattle and roll – until it gave an almighty hiss and … died.

  Damn it!

  She stared at the machine that was meant to make the tall, short, skinny, mocha and latte coffees she intended to become renowned for. It sat there silent, all its lights out. She wasn’t sure whether to hit it or simply burst into tears.

  A rap at the french doors distracted her. She glanced up and there was Rick, a huge bouquet of flowers in his arms. Her saviour!

  She raced around the serving counter, then forced herself to slow down. She could deal with this herself. She just needed to channel Rupert’s calm demeanour in the face of a crisis. ‘What? The machine won’t work? Never mind, bring in another one.’ Except that was all very well when you lived in a city. But she was in the bush, hundreds of miles from the nearest supplier. Where was she going to find an espresso machine replacement way out here today? Panic set her heart racing again as she unclipped the chain and opened the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Rick and thrust the flowers, her favourite bright orange, into her arms. ‘Happy opening day!’

  That was it. She felt the tears coming. The machine breaking down, coupled with too many late nights stressing over all the tiny details she never would’ve imagined came with fulfilling your dream, and the argument she’d had with Clarence on the phone last night because he couldn’t understand why she’d chosen this backwater over the Esplanade in Lakes Entrance – it was all too much.

  Pull yourself together! You know it feels right.

  But a fat tear was already rolling down her cheek. She turned away so Rick wouldn’t see, but he grabbed hold of her and swung her back.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, concern deepening his voice.

  His big hands clasped her elbows, stopping her moving away, the flowers squashed between them. He was close enough for her to feel the solid warmth of his body. And he smelled so good.

  No! She could do this on her own. Hadn’t she told Clarence that last night? This was her dream and she’d make it work.

  She stepped away from Rick and moved around the bench to put its metre-wide strip of blackwood between them. ‘The flowers are beautiful, thank you.’

  ‘I said what’s wrong, Julia?’

  She fiddled with the bouquet, found a vase on a nearby shelf. She really needed that coffee machine working. She sighed and gave in.

  ‘The coffee machine’s bust.’

  To her disgust, another damn tear slid down her face.

  ‘Easily fixed.’ Rick pulled out his mobile and stabbed at the keyboard. ‘Charlie, it’s me. Can you scoot over to the island and grab my coffee machine?’ There was a rumble of words from Charlie, then Rick said, ‘Yeah, I’m hearing you – it does make shit coffee. But I also distinctly remember you saying it was the operator.’ Rick glanced over at Julia and rolled his eyes, which made her giggle despite her distress. ‘Okay, okay. Grab the one from the Grange if it means so much to you. See you in ten.’

  He walked to the door, calling, ‘Back soon,’ over his shoulder.

  Julia dropped onto a stool and waited. Her gaze swept across the newly stocked counter with fruit-laden muffins and freshly baked and iced cakes sitting under sparkling glass domes. Her menu was chalked on a nearby blackboard. S
he intended to change it each season, using whatever local produce she could acquire. Correction: her new cook would change it. He was due to arrive in two days’ time, but she was so anxious to open she’d decided to run on this selection of baked goods until then. Perhaps that wasn’t such a great idea, after all? Then again, if she could get by for a few days with whatever Rick was bringing, surely the sales rep who’d supplied the machine would be able to organise a technician to fix it or get her a new one?

  She forced herself to remain positive. She dragged out her mobile and started scanning for the rep’s number.

  Rick came back at exactly five to ten, and he and Charlie were carrying an even bigger machine than the one sitting on her bench.

  ‘What on earth …’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Rick. ‘It was in the main house. Charlie remembered it. As I mentioned, I rarely go inside these days, not since …’ He trailed off.

  ‘Where do you want it?’ asked Charlie, puffing.

  Julia quickly cleared a space. ‘Just here will do. Gosh, Rick, are you sure about this?’

  ‘Yep.’ He positioned the machine. ‘Can’t have you crying on your first day.’

  ‘She was cryin’?’ Charlie sounded aghast. ‘Plenty more things to wail about than a buggered coffee machine.’

  And didn’t she know that.

  ‘Righto,’ said Charlie. ‘Crank her up and make me a cappuccino.’

  ‘Please,’ said Julia automatically.

  ‘Please,’ they chorused, grinning.

  They really were incorrigible.

  Both of them had popped in at various times over the past couple of days, checking if she needed a hand. It was like they were trying to make up for giving her a hard time when she first arrived. And today it sounded as though half the town was coming to set her on her way. After Rick had put it around that she wasn’t a journo after all, that he trusted her, the walls of suspicion had fallen like the starting gates on race day. Rick had even put a swag of her promotional leaflets in the pub and up in the windows of all his businesses in town.