“Joe, I can’t—”
“You have to grow up sometime, Maz.”
The impatience in his voice had cut into her. “Oh right and you’re so mature.”
“I know what I want.”
“As do I.” And she wasn’t about to choose differently because Joe decreed it.
He had raked an agitated hand through his hair. “Marilyn—”
“Joseph,” Maz retaliated with his full name as they did when they were angry with the other. They had known each other since they were kids but it was only in the last eighteen months that knowledge had deepened into love. “Why do I have to change for you? Why can’t you adapt for me?” He could come and go to Sydney and she would see him off and welcome him back.
“I’m planning to go in a week and I’m not coming back.”
Right. I know where I stand. “I’m staying here.”
Joe shook his head. “So much for love.”
Idiot. “You have no idea what love is if I am the only one to make sacrifices.” Maz wasn’t against changes but they had to be reciprocal moves and not just one doing everything for the other.
“Is it a ‘sacrifice’?”
“It is if I give up what I want.” Couldn’t he see that? Maz wasn’t going to hold him back but neither would she beg him to stay. “It’s as important to me to be here as it is for you to go to Sydney.” The sudden silence that had followed her words had been deafening.
“Maybe it was only great sex between us.”
Bastard. “Maybe.” It was more and they had both known it but she hadn’t been about to fight his words. Joe’s need to go had been stronger than his need for her.
“So this is it?”
“Yes.”
And then he’d gone to her. Of all the women in the town, Joe chose Cheryl to fuck. That he was angry and tense, Maz could understand. That it was the town slut he took and made her scream with passion made Maz ill.
She wanted to scream in pain as she ripped every hair out of Cheryl’s peroxide blonde head. Maz was so angry she wanted to pull Joe off the slut and beat him with her bare hands. She knew she should have left the minute she found them together but it was like watching a train wreck. Ghastly and impossible to conceive of but unable to walk away from without wobbly legs. Why was she watching them? The only answer that came to Maz was maybe it was to understand that what she had with Joe was dead and that, like him, she needed to move on.
Chapter Two
Present day
“Only poofters use gyms,” Blue Green announced to all at the bar of The Naked Shearer Pub. His best friend Dusty Baker nodded in agreement.
Merlene Thomas, the barkeeper, rolled her eyes at the redheaded man’s statement. “Women have signed up already.”
“Exercise! What those women need is a bloody good—”
“Say it, Blue, and that will be another fiver for the swear tin.” Merlene picked up the tin and rattled it.
“Struth you’re a hard woman, Merlene.” Dusty shook his head.
“Well, you need to have a bit of decorum or you’ll be out on your bum. Besides it’s a matter of whether you keep your money for beer or shoot your mouth off and it goes in the charity tin. We’re looking after injured wombats this week.”
“Stone the flaming crows, Merlene, you and your bloody ratty wild animals. To think that’s where my hard-earned readies go.”
Merlene slammed the tin down before Blue. “Got a problem with that, sunshine?”
“Nah, just pull us a pint, ya old bag.”
Maz Adler smiled at the clients of The Naked Shearer Pub. She loved her job. There was never a dull moment. Least of all now. Amberwarra Falls, population of three hundred permanent residents and an unknown number of transient workers depending on the shearing and fruit-picking seasons, was getting a gym. It was the only thing everyone was talking about. Local boy made good Joe “Patto” Patterson had come back home to start up a fitness centre.
Maz’s mind flashed back to the hotel and Joe lying naked and erect on the bed. He was probably still a little annoyed with her. Okay, probably a lot. She was in two minds about that. While it was true she was fourteen years older and wiser, she had enjoyed her small moment of payback. It was dumb and childish but the cheesecake was delicious.
Seeing Joe again was something she had thought a lot about. In theory, he should mean nothing to her. Fourteen years was a long time and much water had passed under the bridge and her anger at him should have burnt out but it hadn’t. Maz was still pissed that he’d had sex with the town scrag, Cheryl. The vivid picture of them together still burned in her mind. The excited talk of Joe leaving town to seek his fortune had broken her heart and Maz had been more than happy when he’d left. Yeah, stuff it, he deserved what he got in the motel room.
“I don’t know why we need a gym.” Blue accepted the beer and slurped the thin head of foam off the top.
“To get fit, you mad bugger.” Merlene reached over the solid wooden bar and poked him in his beer gut.
Dusty was instantly on the defense. “Hey, that’s winter weight I need to live on.”
“Well, you’ll be living a long bloody time then.” Merlene turned her attention to Maz. “Patto’s been in the big smoke for a while. It makes you wonder why he’s coming home.”
Maz wasn’t about to answer that. Her boss knew only too well what had happened between them and speculating about Joe was not something she did anymore. It had to be at least a year since she had.
And then the word had shot around town. Joe Patterson was coming home. That in itself was big news. But a gym? While everyone knew Joe was a qualified fitness instructor and had traveled the world doing it, not one expected him to want to settle back in Amberwarra Falls. But that appeared to be what he was doing. He had bought a house and had come back to town.
“Big smoke? Upper Kumbucca West?” Dusty looked impressed.
Maz shook her head in amusement. Upper Kumbucca West had probably a hundred head more population and its only claim to fame over Amberwarra Falls was it had a two-hundred-year-old apple, shrunken with age, under a glass dome in the local library. It was from the first apple harvest and the townsfolk took it very seriously. “No, he’s been in Sydney.” That was all she wanted to know. Ignorance was easy to deal with.
Dusty nodded his head. “I went there once. More people than flies. I turned tail and came home. It wasn’t natural.”
“Nah, besides they all talk funny in big cities.” Blue gulped his beer down and slid the glass across the bar for another.
To the patrons in The Naked Shearer Pub, home was Amberwarra Falls. It was a six-hour drive from the city of Brisbane and surrounded by the vast nothingness of the Australian outback. The town had been founded in the early eighteen hundreds. The streets had been built wide enough for horses and carriages or the long road trains that passed through on the way to places like Alice Springs and Darwin.
The Naked Shearer Pub, with its painted fresco of a nude, grinning shearer with his Akubra hat placed strategically over his genitals, had been standing longer than the town hall, which had been built in 1850. Back then the local watering hole provided beer, news and companionship and no one cared much for politics. Maz’s family had served on the town council since its inception. There was always an Adler on the board or as mayor. Her Auntie Beryl, the last of her family, was on the council and few challenged Beryl when she wanted to do something.
As for Amberwarra Falls—well, there were no “falls” to speak of. Years ago, before the crippling drought, there had been a trickling stream of water that ran over a rocky outcrop down into Possum Gully. It had never been spectacular but it had drawn the odd tourist to stop and take a photo before moving on. But not now. There was nothing to see but red, rough rock and dust. Even the possums had left. There had been talk about changing the name of the town but that had been vetoed. As Beryl Adler, cultural guardian of all things local had said, “If we change the name we’d have to change the post
cards and we got them as a job lot.” That was true. They had six hundred and thirty-two left out of six hundred and fifty purchased. No one was about to throw those out due to lack of water.
“I still don’t know why he’s coming back to bung in a gym where Davo’s book emporium burnt down. Not like we need newfangled stuff like that.”
It hadn’t been so much an emporium as a dusty old shop that sold tattered old books, comics, newspapers and once a week the local poker game had been held in the back storeroom. It was on poker night that the store went up in flames. Many said it was the cigars the men liked to smoke. Others blamed a mosquito coil used to keep the insects at bay.
The real reason? The fire brigade found evidence a scented candle had been burning during the game. It was thought someone had knocked it over. Of course no man admitted to it mainly because being caught anywhere near anything scented and girlie was not something any of them wanted to claim.
“Yeah, we don’t need new stuff in the Falls.” Dusty always agreed with anything Blue said. They were mates since kindergarten. “Besides we’re already on the map.”
Maz rolled her eyes. She knew which map they were referring to. “That map is hardly prestigious.”
“Yeah, but if you look us up on gaggle—”
“Google,” Maz corrected Dusty.
“Same bloody difference.”
Merlene picked up and rattled the swear tin at him.
“Fair suck of the sav, Merle. Bloody’s not a swear word.”
“Cough up, sunshine.” Merlene waited for Dusty to pay up for his swearing.
“Jeez, you’re a mad cow. You and your bloody wombats.” Dusty threw a collection of coins into the tin.
“You used two ‘bloody’s.”
Dusty rolled his eyes and added a ten dollar note. “Happy now? Anyway, as I was saying, anyone can see the toilet block in Captain Cook Park got Amberwarra Falls fourth prize in the cleanest toilets in Queensland.”
Maz smiled and wondered how Captain Cook would feel about being a namesake of a park that held a toilet block that was the second biggest attraction to the now nonexistent falls. There was even a shiny brass plaque proclaiming they were fourth best.
“Yeah, dunnies are important if you pass through Amberwarra as there’s nothing for miles until Krogan’s Crossing.” Blue slapped some more money on the counter for a refill.
Merlene pulled the beer, flicking the tap with an expert hand. “And your Auntie Beryl does a roaring trade with her crocheted doll toilet roll cover stand that she’s set up just outside those toilets.”
“That’s right.” Blue thanked Merlene for the beer. “Beryl does big business for the Pioneer Women’s nag-fest group and no one gets past her without buying one.”
That was true. Auntie Beryl could sell toilet roll covers to aliens from Mars. It wasn’t so much she was a great salesperson or that the dolls were attractive. They weren’t. It came down to the fact that Beryl, at fifty-three, with her fake raven-black locks and large breasts and forceful voice, often stopped people in their tracks. She was like an aging kewpie doll, complete with Doris Day bow in her hair. Once stopped, they often walked away with at least one crocheted doll and a few less dollars in their pockets. No one said no to Beryl.
“G’day all.” Three generations of the Petersen family walked into the pub. They were a large clan who liked to do things together. Maz found that sweet. As much as she loved Beryl, she wished she had more family. Her mother, Mae, had passed away when Maz was a teenager and her father had been a shearer passing through town that her mother had taken a shine to. “She never could keep her legs together long if there was a charming man around,” Beryl had often told Maz as she was growing up in her care. “But she wasn’t a slut. She was passionate and wild and carefree. I think Mae got more out of her short life than most people dream of. Not that I would condone that for you, Maz. Your mother was just different.”
Maz just smiled and accepted Beryl’s words without querying her contradictory words. That was Beryl. She was a law unto herself.
“It’s a bit late for you lot to be out and about, isn’t it?” The Petersens were rarely seen at the pub after dark. They were sociable folk but only during the day.
“We had a bit of trouble at home,” Esther Peterson, matriarch of the family, reported as she came to a standstill at the bar. “Big Bill Baxter got drunk and invaded our house. Snakebite please, Maz love. And told everyone to piss off out of his home.”
Big Bill was a force to be reckoned with drunk or sober. He was six foot seven and built like a brick shithouse. “But it’s not his house.” Maz smiled as she poured three quarters of a schooner of beer, added a quarter of cider and a splash of black currant juice for the black snakebite.
Esther nodded, her faded cornflower-blue eyes alight with cynical amusement. “Yeah, but you know what Big Bill is like when he’s pissed as a newt. Besides we went to a screening of Gone with the Wind at the Coronet theatre. He’ll have buggered off by the time we get back home.” None of the Petersens seemed particularly worried about it.
“I love that movie.” Maz made a mental note to find time to go to the Coronet to watch it.
“Bloody hell. It’s him.”
Maz didn’t flinch. She knew in a heartbeat who “him” was. She had been waiting for the day when he walked into The Naked Shearer. Joe Patterson was now officially back in town and as much as Maz wanted to deny that and avoid him she knew that was going to be impossible. She grabbed a glass and began filling it with beer. It would work best if she acted as normal and made no more fuss than she had to. He was just like any other man.
Cries of “G’day, Patto” resounded around the room. He was still the local hero who almost made it to the Olympics in athletics. Maz only remembered him as the twenty-one-year-old boyfriend who screwed around on her.
“Are you okay, Maz?” Merlene gave her a worried look.
“Yes. Why?” She was so all right she was rigid with it.
“You’ve overfilled the glass and it’s running down onto the floor.” Merlene pulled the tap handle from her.
Maz looked down at her jeans leg. It was soaked with beer. She had been so tense she hadn’t even noticed. “Sorry.”
“No worries.” Merlene grabbed a cloth and was mopping up liquid on the countertop. “Do you want to go home?”
Oh yes. Running and hiding would be an excellent idea. The only problem was Amberwarra Falls was a small town and she would meet him sooner or later. “I have to face him sometime.” As Maz said the last word, the him in question appeared. Oh lordy. He’s still gorgeous.
“Put your tongue back in, darl.” Merlene nudged Maz’s arm.
Maz shook herself accordingly. They were over a long time ago and while lust was natural it was not to be acted on. Not with Joe.
“Maz.”
No one said her name like he did. She had never forgotten the low, husky timbre of his voice. And those lips…what they used to do to her. He had the ability to kiss for hours. Maz had always thought that more intimate than actual sex. It would make her feel all boneless and completely his. When Joe kissed her, she was his to do whatever he wanted. Maz gulped as she remembered how powerless she had been under those lips. Oh boy, focus. You were twenty, for god’s sake. You thought everything was exciting back then. Remember Cheryl.
“Joe.” She acknowledged him with a nod as if he was any other customer. I have to keep this together. Her plan had been to treat him like anyone else. Of course he wasn’t. This was Joe—her first and only lover. He had marked her for life. Other gorgeous men had come and gone in her life and Maz had thought “what if?” But unlike some of her peers she wanted more. Maybe that was old-fashioned. Maybe she was just picky. Until Joe came back to town Maz had been scared to name it. I’ve always wanted Joe. A sudden vision of her on his cock slammed into her mind. Whoa.
“W-what can I get you?” Hopefully she was the only one who noticed that stammer. On automatic, she picked up a gla
ss. She remembered what Joe drank. Maz had forgotten nothing about this man.
“Beer’s fine.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “You set me up, Marilyn.”
Uh-oh. Joe only ever called her that when he wanted to prove a point. Maz could see why he was but surely he could see why she did it? “Yes, I did.”
“Did it feel good?”
“Yeah, it did.”
Joe sized her up. “You must have loved me a lot to have done that. Do you still?”
“Nope.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” She placed the beer before him.
“So you go around sucking a lot of men’s cocks?”
Maz knew what he was trying to do and she wasn’t about to feel silly for what she did. “Technically I didn’t suck. I licked.”
Merlene came over to them. “Everything okay here?”
“I was just telling Maz how good she looked.”
“Thank you.” She could feel his eyes on her as she went about her tasks.
“Have you signed up for the gym?”
Maz snorted. She was no gym bunny. Her idea of working out was the mega crossword puzzle in the Amberwarra Sentinel and even then she rarely finished it due to lack of patience. “Nope.” Maz pulled another beer, for no one in particular, just to keep her hands busy. The head had too much creamy foam on it but too bad. That was the best she could do under the circumstances.
Joe smiled. “Why not?”
“I don’t like to sweat.” The minute Maz said it her mind went back all those years ago to when she had done some pretty hot, sweaty and naked things with Joe. Maz clamped her legs together tightly as the memory of hard, hot cock shot into her mind. “Besides I’m happy with how I look.” She wasn’t slim but then she wasn’t overweight. Maz had heard Dusty and Blue describe her as plump. She had rolled her eyes when she heard but Merlene had assured her that was the equivalent of “hot” in their language. That in itself freaked Maz out. While she liked the two older farmhands, she didn’t want them considering her at all.
Joe’s eyes did a slow perusal of her body. “You don’t want to tone up?”
Thigh High Page 2