by Trish Morey
There was no reprieve and no time to come down before he was taking her right back up again, his powerful thrusts urging her on to catch onto the second wave and ride that one too, all the way up to the dizziest of heights before, with one final thrust, the wave crashed beneath them and she clung to him as they fell together, spinning into the foaming wash.
Oh, yes, she thought with his sweat slickened body slumped over hers, this was what she wanted from Caleb. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It was good to be back in Ava’s bed. He lay on his back with Ava curled against him. He leaned over and kissed the dark curtain of her hair, breathing in her scent. It felt good. It felt right. And now his body was sated and his mind was resting. Blank.
Except for one tiny thing with long eyelashes and a cupid’s bow mouth.
When had he stopped wanting kids? When had that dream died? When he’d divorced Angie, or before, during those troubled years when the thought of bringing another life into their tortured world was anathema to him, even when she’d begged him and said it would help, that it would bring them closer together?
Why fuck up some poor kid’s life, he’d reasoned, when your marriage was already heading for the rocks? And then, in the aftermath, he’d been so relieved to put that era behind him, he’d forgotten.
He breathed in deeply and blew out on a sigh. On the air, he could smell the scent of frangipani flowers that she’d put in a vase by the side of the bed. Half of them had fallen off, some of them lying on the wooden bedside table, the edges of the snowy white petals turning brown. Alongside him, Ava stirred briefly and settled back into a doze. He was thirty-two already. Three quarters of the way to the big four-oh, when it all came down to it. If he was going to have kids before he was too old, if he was going to show them the tracks and cliffs and caves he and Dylan had scrambled over as kids, or take them on holidays before he was on a zimmer frame and too old to enjoy it, maybe he ought to think about it.
It would sure make Mum happy too. She’d be all over grandkids. Dad too, for that matter.
One day, he might want to think about it.
Idly, he stroked Ava’s arm with his thumb, thinking about her at the show. Ava was good with kids and they loved her. She’d smiled and chatted and sent every kid away happy. Their kids would look pretty cute too, he figured especially a girl. She’d be a stunner like her mum, no doubt.
Didn’t Ava want kids one day? He’d always assumed wanting kids was pre-programmed into women’s DNA, a bit like he’d always figured he’d have his own one day without knowing the detail. It would happen. It was the natural progression of events. Like Monday turning into Tuesday and not skipping direct to Saturday.
Not that there was any chance of having kids with Ava. Not the way she was determined to keep their relationship strictly at arm’s length, even while they were busy shagging each other stupid. It was some kind of miracle he was back in her bed at all. He could just imagine how she’d take the news he was even thinking about babies. He snorted and sighed again.
Still, shame.
Ava stirred at his snort. “Wha-?” she said, sleepily, blinking.
“Coffee?” he asked, his stomach rumbling up a storm and thinking it was almost lunch time.
She nodded, sweeping her long hair from her face as she sat up, “Mm, please.”
“Be right back, in that case.”
He eased out of the bed and watched as she stretched her arms up high, long slender limbs that moved with catlike grace as she stretched away her sleep and Caleb shook his head as he headed for the kitchen. Yeah, bloody shame.
Ten minutes later, coffee in hand, she showed him her studio with the artworks for the collection all on display. “What do you think?”
He walked in a circle on the spot, sensing the excitement in her voice and the way she held herself in her blue dressing gown, arms crossed as if holding her breath while she waited for his reaction. She needn’t have worried. He didn’t know a hell of a lot about art, but he knew what she had was amazing. Even the four of him in various stages of undress – including the one of him on the bed, where she’d included a sizeable slice of his butt cheeks—he couldn’t remember agreeing to that, but he was pretty impressed she’d managed that from memory—worked in with the whole. “You’ve nailed it, Ava.”
“I think so too,” she admitted, taking a sip from her mug. “Two weeks early too. That’s a record for me.”
“So what does your agent think?”
Her head tilted to the side. “What makes you think I have an agent?”
He shrugged, taking his time to look at each of the pictures in more detail. “I dunno. I assumed all artists had agents – to handle all the admin and organise stuff like exhibitions or something.”
“No,” she said tightly, rearranging the order of some of the paintings. “I had one. It didn’t work out.”
“Fair enough,” he said, wandering around the space, finding the one with the lemons she’d had trouble with that night and that now looked almost three dimensional, it was so real.
And just behind was stack of canvases stacked together, and what he saw there made him frown. He’d got used to Ava’s style, the detailed, precise brushstrokes, and this was something completely different. It was dark and ominous, the strokes of the paint like mad slashes across the canvas, and there in the centre – he peered closer – was a naked figure curled up in the foetal position on a bed, and, for the life of him, he’d almost swear it was Ava.
“I haven’t seen this one before.”
“What?” she said, looking around. “No!” She abandoned her rearranging, rushing to his side, wrestling the canvas away from him, turning it around and shuffling others behind it. More still lifes, he noticed the others were, and they were good too, though maybe lacking the same vibrancy as the others she’d included in the collection. But there was nothing like that first, mad one.
“Not that one. It’s rubbish.”
“The girl on the bed – she looked like you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tucked hair behind her ears, then wrapped her arms around her. “It was an experiment. I was trying something different.” She screwed up her nose. “It didn’t work out.”
“Fine,” he said with his hands in the air. It was no skin off his nose. He was only asking, even if it did look like her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s embarrassing for people to see work that isn’t up to scratch.”
And then she smiled, placing her hands on his naked chest and her lips curled up provocatively. “And now, I need to have a shower. Care to join me?”
There were times when Caleb didn’t think about whether to answer in the affirmative, and being asked by a woman to share her shower – especially when she was this woman – was right up there on the list. And Caleb decided that there were more important things in life than lunch and his rumbling stomach and the mystery that was this woman.
At least, for now.
Chapter Seven
Caleb had just finished sweating up a storm in the gym and was about to hit the showers when Mike gathered the shift together for an impromptu group meeting. A shower would have to wait. He slung his towel around his neck and joined Richo at the back of the group.
“Listen up everyone,” Mike said in his booming voice when everyone was present. “I’m sorry for the short notice but I’m looking for some volunteers to help out at a function tomorrow night.”
“That’d be right,” grumbled Richo, rolling his eyes in Caleb’s direction, clearly worrying about losing valuable time when he could be at the pub chatting up the ladies, but Caleb was too busy hanging out for what was coming next to react. Tomorrow night was Ava’s show, and he had a horrible suspicion...
“This is all for a worthy cause, I can assure you. Most of you will probably have heard of local Adelaide Hills artist, Ava Mattiske, who is also the face painter at the Ashton Show...”
Crap.
There were murmurings of recognitio
n. Caleb just stared at the floor. So much for nobody he knew being there. Then Richo elbowed him in the ribs and said loudly, “Hey, isn’t that your friend, the one who painted you as Peppa Pig?”
Chuckles rang out. Someone guffawed.
“Yeah, thanks for remembering that little detail, Richo.” But who wouldn’t remember, when the evidence was still stuck up on the noticeboard in the kitchen for all to see?
“Settle down, Peppa, settle down,” Mike continued with a smirk. “Anyhow, it turns out Ava’s having a big exhibition of her works in EJ’s Gallery and Café, and EJ’s had a word in her ear about how we came to his rescue the other month when his kitchen caught fire and so she’s kindly agreed to donate ten per cent of the proceeds from her artwork sales to the Burns Unit at the local Children’s Hospital. So I’ve told the gallery owner that we’ll turn out to rattle a few tins and support a local artist and this worthy cause, and he’s agreed to match the funds raised dollar for dollar. And so if you fancy buying yourself a painting to hang on a wall, I won’t go stopping you. Okay, so I need four volunteers...”
Caleb sighed. God, what were the bloody chances? “I’m in,” he called from the back, shoving up his hand.
Mike looked at him and frowned, checking something on his clipboard. “I thought you took yourself off the on call list for tomorrow night.”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, but I figure this’ll only go for a couple of hours and it’s for such a great cause.” Like keeping his identity secret for a start. He didn’t want anyone knowing he was the one in those pictures, and if he wasn’t on that roster and his mates turned up and found him out of uniform alongside Ava, that was going to look mighty suspicious. And he wasn’t going to not turn up at all, just to avoid being seen. Not when he plans for afterwards.
“Okay,” Mike said, putting down his name. “Who else?”
Tina put up her hand, swiftly followed by Matt, the rookie, and Caleb wondered if there wasn’t some young love going on down there.
“Anyone else?” Mike said, scanning the group.
“Aw, hell,” Richo said. “Put me down.”
“Excellent,” said Mike. “Thanks, all. Okay, back to work.”
Caleb turned to Richo, horrified that the one guy in the crew who knew him best, the one he spent the most time with in the gym and the one who had the best chance of recognising him in Ava’s paintings, even if headless, was going to be there. “You, donating your time for a worthy cause on a Friday night when you could be at the pub? What’s come over you?”
Richo shrugged. “Yeah, I thought the same thing at first, but I’ve never been to an art gallery. I reckon it might be a good way to meet some new chicks.”
Caleb just shook his head and headed back to the showers.
Great. Just great. Three guys from his station there on the opening night, with not one but four pictures of his naked body on display. Okay, so torso, rather than body. But Ava better have been right about nobody being able to tell who it was.
Now he was really sweating.
Caleb left the station after his shower, heading for a catch up with Dylan down at the Maylands Hotel, felt the sting of the sun in the sky and instinctively looked up at the hills, thinking of Ava, alone in her little stone cottage perched overlooking the Uriarra Gorge.
Summer was really turning up the heat, with no signs of relenting any time soon. The forecast looked ominous, with talk of catastrophic conditions looming across several areas of Southern Australia, and everyone at the station, it seemed, had one eye permanently checking the range of hills that bordered one side of Adelaide, simultaneously fearing the worst while hoping for the best.
In nineteen eighty-three, two years before Caleb and Dylan had been born, fire had ravaged the Adelaide Hills, in what had become known as the Ash Wednesday bushfire. Twenty-eight people had died that February day. There’d been other fires since then too, Cherryville in 2013 and Sampson Flat in 2015, and they’d caused plenty of grief and loss of property too. But in in the back of everyone’s mind loomed the memories of the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 where 173 people had perished, and the fact that since Ash Wednesday, there were more than two thousand new homes built by tree changers wanting to live in the Adelaide Hills amongst the bush that made it such a beautiful place to live, and that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Because one day, it would burn again.
He chewed his lip, thinking of her up there alone if the worst happened, glad he’d checked the diesel pump the other day but knowing that the sprinkler system he’d had her install and even the little retreat room behind her studio were sensible precautions but by no means silver bullets. When you were faced with monstrous bushfires, nobody was going to give a guarantee, whatever precautions you took. He’d talk to her about her bushfire plan, make sure she was getting right out of there if the forecast predicted catastrophic conditions. He didn’t want her taking any chances. Not with her life.
Caleb and the crew had a call out to a brush fence fire the next day, that, in the stinking hot and windy conditions, had quickly spread into an overhanging roadside tree and the two cars parked underneath it. By the time the first appliance arrived, the fence, trees, and cars were well alight and a carport attached to the house was in danger. To the pistol shots of car windscreen and side windows exploding, the crew got out the hoses and set to drenching the burning cars and fence, and towing a third car clear before it too could catch alight.
“That’s the third brush fire in the eastern suburbs in as many days,” said Richo when the flames had been doused and they were rolling up the hoses. “Reckon we’ve got ourselves a firebug on the loose.”
Caleb nodded. These kinds of fires always seemed to come in spates, made all the more worrying by idiots inspired to carry out similar copycat attacks. “I think our police buddies agree with you, too.” They were already on the case, interviewing the neighbours to seek out witnesses and, best of all, any neighbourhood security videos.
“Dylan’s crew got called out to one the other day. He reckons—”
“Hey,” Caleb interrupted, slamming the hose door, “when were you talking to Dylan?” He’d had drinks with his brother just last night and he hadn’t mentioned anything about having deep and meaningful conversations with any of his crew mates. The thought was decidedly discomforting. It was bad enough Richo had his phone number.
“Hey, don’t get touchy. He might be your brother, but he is allowed to talk to other people.”
“Yeah? Well, what else did you talk about? You didn’t call him up to talk about brush fence fires, I take it.”
“I didn’t call him up,” he huffed. “I dropped by my old station for farewell cake because one of the guys in my old crew was leaving and Dylan happened to be there. Is that allowed, Peppa?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry, forgot, should have said Peppa Pig. Won’t make that mistake again.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Richo.”
He snorted. “I know. That’s why you love me.”
If Caleb didn’t know his life couldn’t be in safer hands with Richo at his back, he’d almost think him a drongo, but Caleb knew how good his crew mate was on the job and that he just liked to come across as the clown. Every crew had to have one.
He shook his head. “Dylan’s welcome to you. Come on,” he said, shutting the last equipment door. “Let’s blow this joint.”
He drove the appliance back to the station, thinking about the conversation with Dylan last night, and got a wave from a busload of school kids they were parked next to at an intersection.
“Turn on your siren!” yelled one boy, standing at a window looking bug-eyed at them. Caleb flicked on the flashing lights for a second to give the kid a thrill and they waved as the lights turned green and they took off, and Caleb got back to the serious business of chewing over that convo with Dylan again.
Dylan hadn’t mentioned anything about talking to Richo, true, bu
t then he had been a tad distracted. Dylan must have checked his phone at least a dozen times. Boy, he had it bad for this Hannie chick. Although Caleb would bet the sex was nowhere near as good as what he and Ava shared. Talk about combustible.
Not that he could tell anyone.
The sex was as great as ever – bloody brilliant, in fact – and Ava had welcomed him back to her bed, but it was almost like their conversation the night of the Ashton Show had never happened. If he’d thought she’d loosen up, he’d been wrong. Instead, she’d gone back to being the way she’d always been, expecting him to fall in likewise.
And that wasn’t what he’d signed back on for. And while he didn’t know what was holding her back, he sensed it was yielding, that he was even back in the picture at all. And it was time to press her again.
And one day soon he might even get to take her out to the local pub for dinner, instead of eating in or getting in takeaway, so that nobody saw them out together and put two and two together. One day, they might go visit a winery or three, there were so many good ones he’d heard about in the hills that did tasting platters and wines, and then go to the fancy cheese shop in Hahndorf and buy some cheeses to go with the wine. Like normal people who didn’t have to skulk around in the shadows did.
One day, it’d be nice to take her out and show her off and say, yeah, this is my woman.
“Oi! Caleb!”
“What?”
“Where the hell were you? Mars?” Richo said. “It’s like trying to talk to a bloody statue.”
“I was thinking,” he growled. “You ought to try it some time. So what did you want?”
“Just wondering if you wanted to go out for a drink later tonight, after this art thing?”
“It’s an exhibition, not a ‘thing’.”