by Trish Morey
“Marry me, and let me love you forever.”
“Marry him, and put him out of his misery,” urged Richo.
“Shush,” said Tina.
Ava laughed. “You really mean it.”
“Of course, I mean it.”
“Then, yes, I will marry you.”
And Caleb pulled her into his arms and spun her around. “We’re getting married,” he said, “and you’re all invited.”
And there were whoops of joy all round.
Epilogue
June
The wedding was timed for the weekend following the annual National Firefighters’ Conference being held in Adelaide this year, which gave them an entire week to celebrate not only the upcoming nuptials, but all of the romantic developments that had happened in the Knight family since they’d last been together.
Ava was feeling slightly overwhelmed. Together, with Caleb, they’d shown everyone around the hotel function rooms of the Stamford Grand Hotel at the Adelaide beachside suburb of Glenelg where the wedding and reception were to be held the following weekend, before they’d headed to the cocktail bar to celebrate. Tonight it was standing room only, the generous seating nooks with their big leather chesterfields, cosy sofa booths and bar side seating alike, all overflowing with the after five crowd. In the corners of the ceiling were hung massive screens showing tonight’s AFL game between the local team, the Crows, and Melbourne, though if anyone could hear the commentary it was a miracle over the buzz of conversation, with the Knight group in one corner out all noising the rest, though it was fair to say it wasn’t Ava who was responsible.
Ava was too busy trying to keep up. Dylan and Hannie she’d met previously when the two couples had gone out for dinner together, and she’d taken an instant liking to the woman who would marry Caleb’s twin brother, Dylan, who looked so much like Caleb and yet not quite, a slightly different flavour of the same DNA. The Knight cousins and their partners had flown in from Brisbane and Melbourne today, and now she sat tucked up on one of the chesterfields between Caleb on one side and Dylan, who had his arm draped around Hannie’s shoulders, her arms crossed at the wrists on her knees, one ring amongst her chunky silver rings sparkling in the lights. Adjacent to them sat Logan, tall and broad-shouldered like the rest of the men, and Arabella, or Bella as she preferred to be called, with her choppy bob of blonde hair and gorgeous blue-green eyes, while on opposite sat a very pregnant Darington, or Dare as she told Ava to call her, her long body nestled with her feet up on the sofa against her fiancé, Lachlan, who preferred to be called Lock. If Ava managed to keep any of their names straight, it would be some kind of miracle.
“Who would have guessed it six months ago?” Logan said, raising his beer to the group. “All four of us hooked up and heading full steam towards the state of wedded bliss within the space of half a year.” He shook his head.
“And nobody,” Dylan added, “would have taken bets that my little brother, he who had sworn off marriage for life, would be first cab off the rank.”
Beside her, Caleb growled, but there was a smile underlying it. “You only got a ten-minute head start, bro, because I move a whole lot faster.” He squeezed Ava’s shoulders and smiled down at her and Ava was warmed by the love in his eyes. “And with good reason.”
Lock coughed. “Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but you’re not actually going to be the first cab off the rank.” He wrapped Dare’s hand in his as he smiled over at her. “We’ve already tied the knot.”
“What?” yelled three Knights in unison.
“When was this?”
“When were you going to tell us?”
“Why weren’t we invited?”
Lock laughed and held out his hands. “Settle down, you lot. Dare and I made it official while we were back with Dare’s family in the States in March. We were planning on doing it again over here sometime.”
The first beer coaster hit him smack in the middle of his forehead. “You bloody better,” said Caleb.
The second thwacked him on the ear. “Bloody nerve, not even telling us,” said Dylan.
The third knocked over his glass, spraying what was left of his beer down one leg. Logan laughed, along with everyone else. “Bloody well deserved that too. Reckon it’s your shout, you secretive bastard.”
“It’s funny,” said Dare, in her soft southern accent when the laughter and the ribbing died down again. “It’s almost like Leonard was sprinkling fairy dust down on us all the day of the memorial service.”
“Who are you calling a fairy?” said Lock, putting his hand on her swollen belly. “How do you reckon these two got in there, divine intervention?”
“Please,” said Logan, holding up one hand, a look of distaste on his face. “This is getting perilously close to being too much information!”
“And this is a family show,” agreed Dylan, nodding wisely.
“Indeed it is,” Caleb said, clutching her hand in his. “What do you reckon, about your new family, Ava? You reckon you can put up with these turkeys?”
Surrounded by four fine specimens of the masculine kind where broad shoulders and chiselled cleft chins abounded, and shirts and trousers moulded to every movement of muscle beneath, it was like sitting in the midst of some kind of testosterone soup. Even the pregnant Dare, angular and strong featured, with her shock of platinum hair in a closely cropped style, exuded power and strength, while the other women, she thought, lent the broth sweetness and spice, not to mention a whole lot of bling given the number of engagement rings on show, and made it whole.
She smiled at them all, soon to be her new family, or a part of it at least. Caleb had warned her about all the various uncles and aunties and the thirty to forty cousins heading to Adelaide next week for the celebration, the concept of such a huge family unknown to her with numbers that made her head reel.
“What I want to know is, is everyone in the Knight family as buff as you guys?”
“They wish,” said Dylan.
Dare snorted. “Not likely.”
Logan just folded his arms behind his head, making his shirt buttons cling on for dear life, and laughed.
“Then, seriously, I’m honoured to find a place in this family, and I want to thank you all for making me feel so welcome.”
The group cheered and toasted Ava and the soon to be wed couple, after which the toasts kept right on coming. For Logan and Bella, for Dylan and Hannie, and for Dare and Lock who had beaten them all to the punch line.
“Oh,” Dare said, her hands clutching her belly.
“What’s wrong?” said Lock, frowning beside her, ready to spring into action.
She sat herself up, stretching out, her black tube dress clinging to her baby bump. “Your babies are kicking up a storm in there, that’s all.” And they were and for a moment the group was enthralled, watching the moving skin-scape of Dare’s belly under the stretch fabric of her dress.
“It’s the footy,” said Caleb, looking up at the screen. “I reckon you’ve got a couple of potential Crows players there.”
Lock growled. “Carlton, more like.”
“We ought to toast these two,” said Logan, lifting his glass again. “To the two newest members of the Knight clan.”
So they raised their glasses again and then they raised them to Leonard, because even if he hadn’t sprinkled fairy dust down on them from on high, long ago together with their grandmother, he’d sure set the wheels in motion for what was happening now.
Caleb’s round was next so he took himself off to the bar and Lock went to give him a hand while Dare, Dylan, and Logan took a bathroom break. Then Hannie decided they needed some food to go with all the drinks and took Bella in search of dips and fries, leaving Ava to mind the seats.
It was densely packed at the bar and Dare was back first. She sat herself down next to Ava, her athleticism obvious in the way she controlled her descent, even against a shifting centre of gravity. “It drives me crazy, I swear. I managed all of ten drops, y
et the way my bladder was pressing on me, I was expecting Niagara Falls. You’re an artist, I hear,” she continued without missing a beat. “My mum is an artist.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Visual. Sketches a lot of life stuff.”
Ava nodded. “I get that.” Right now she was itching to sketch Dare’s face. Up close, her features were even more striking, the high and wide cheekbones, the straight line nose and the arched brows over aquamarine eyes, and then the unexpected lushness of her mouth in the midst of all those angles. “I bet she loves drawing you.”
Dare gave a very unladylike snort. “Don’t worry, she’s got much more interesting stuff to sketch. I saw the picture you did of Caleb, Dylan passed it on. You’re good. And, uh”—she looked around, only continuing when her eyes fixed on Caleb and Lock, just starting to make their way back from the bar—“who knew my cousin was quite so ripped?”
Ava laughed. As far as she could tell, all the Knight males were ripped and, aside from her baby bump, Dare was obviously keeping herself fit and toned.
“Dang,” she said, her hand on her belly, “here we go again. I swear these little guys are going to kick their way out. I don’t know if I can take another nineteen weeks of this. Mind you, kicking their way out is probably preferable to doing a John Hurt on me.”
“Who?”
“Oh, you know, the guy in Alien who gets infected with the thing growing inside him?”
Ava must have looked blank.
“Oh, well, you probably wouldn’t want to think about having babies anyway, if you had seen it. Though there are times I wonder if the way it isn’t supposed to happen naturally isn’t worse. Ooh, that was a big one.” She looked over at Ava. “Do you want to feel them moving?”
Ava was shocked. To put her hands on Dare’s bump seemed almost an act of intimacy and she’d only just met the woman today.
“Here,” said Dare, making the decision for Ava, taking one of her hands and placing it against her belly.
The fabric was warm against her skin, warmed by the body beneath, but as for movement, she waited and could feel nothing. And then came a cluster of kicks, the staccato beat like a series of firecrackers going off, followed by a movement that felt like one of the babies had stuck out a knee or an elbow and tumbled over right under her hand.
She blinked up at the woman. “Amazing.” It was all of that and more. It was wondrous. And then it went quiet under her hand and she took it away.
“Are you and Caleb planning on having kids anytime soon?” Dare asked, reaching over the table for her glass of water. “It’d be great if our kids could play with your kids, when we could get together that is. Melbourne’s not that far from Adelaide, only an hour’s flight.”
“I don’t know,” Ava said honestly. “We haven’t talked about it.” He knew she had doubts and he understood why and he wasn’t asking anything of her what she wasn’t sure she could give.
“I didn’t want kids,” Dare continued. “At least, I didn’t think I did. Then these two happened along and now I can’t wait to see their faces and hold them in my arms. Funny how things can change when you least expect it, huh?”
And Ava thought about the dark place she’d been, and of the loneliness of her self-imposed isolation, and how now it was like living in a lighted world, where there was so much to experience and so much to feel, and thought, wasn’t that the truth?
Caleb and Lock returned, bearing two trays filled with drinks and a fresh jug of iced water for Dare, the muscles under their rolled up sleeves clearly never off duty. And as Dare got up to head back to Lock, an idea started forming in Ava’s mind.
“You look deep in thought,” Caleb said, as he plonked himself down next to her in the seat Dare had just vacated. “Penny for them?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking that when I sketched those pictures of you, I had no idea that there was a whole battalion of Knights who’d look so good on the page.”
“Damn straight,” said Logan, returning to the group just ahead of Dylan.
“Yeah, and way more deserving than Caleb too,” his twin said, banging his fist against his chest. “We know you must have needed a barrel load of artistic licence with that one. Time for the real deal.”
Ava smiled, loving the competitiveness between the brothers and their cousins, loving the way they could bag each other when it was clear that respect ran deep. “I’m already itching to sketch Dare.”
“Really?” She looked at Lock. “Wow, that’d be so cool. But when?”
“Why not this week while you’re all at conference? It’s not like our wedding isn’t already organised, there’s nothing to do but wait now until the big day. Do you guys have to be at the conference all day every day?”
They all looked at each other before Dylan spoke first. “There’s a couple of sessions I don’t need to be at.” Dare and Lock looked at each other and agreed.
“And me,” added Logan. “Once my presentation is out the way Wednesday, I’m home free.”
“But what would you do with the pictures?” Lock asked. “Do we just hang them on a wall when they’re done?”
“I don’t know. Maybe auction them like Caleb’s? Raise money for charity? What about the Bushfire Appeal?”
“A calendar!” Caleb said. “Featuring all of us. We could be the next firefighter calendar, not with photos this time, but sketches.”
“But no buttocks,” Ava promised, really getting excited now. If there was something that got her enthusiasm going, it was a new creative project, and she felt that same zing of energy she’d felt when she’d hit on sketching Caleb’s back. “You’d have to have your pants on at least.”
Dylan shook his head. “But there’s not enough of us for a full twelve months.”
Ava counted them off on her fingers as Bella and Hannie returned. “But there’s Caleb, Logan, Dylan, Lock, and Dare, and I could do one with both of them too, so that’s half the year covered.”
“I can round up a few of the troops,” Caleb said. “I reckon Richo will be in like Flynn for starters. I’ll talk to Mike, our station manager, see what he reckons, whether it’ll work. But I can’t see why it wouldn’t.”
Ava hit the ground running. Caleb rounded up his crew, so she had Matt, Tina, and Richo, and even Mike put up his hand, and Dylan pulled in a couple of his crew to make up the twelve.
It was a very rowdy bunch that got together the next Friday night in the cocktail bar after the wedding rehearsal, waiting to check out the sketches, cheering as each was revealed. There was Caleb bare chested, thumbs hooked in his low slung pants, and Dylan kneeling on the ground with Hannie’s Labrador sitting between his legs. Dare was standing hands on hips and wearing a bandeau over pants, the licking flames of her bold tattoo embracing the smooth tight round of her baby bump. A bare chested Logan balanced an axe in his wide grip, while Mike struck a blow for the fifty-somethings, square jawed and stern, the curls of his chest hair greying on a body surprisingly buff, though Caleb searched for him to see his reaction and saw he wasn’t there – he’d slipped off to one side, pressing his phone hard to his ear.
One by one the sketches were revealed to cheers and applause but it was the picture of Richo that got the most laughs, posing with a hip height spraying hose.
“What?” he said, his arm tight around Gillian on his lap, when Tina snorted.
“I’ve spoken to headquarters,” Mike said, back with them after the last picture had been revealed and the laughter and cheers had died down, “and I want you to know they’re behind this project one hundred percent as a fundraiser for the Bushfire Relief Appeal. Ava’s going to work up the finals and then it’s off to the printer.”
More cheers and clinking of glasses ensued. “There’s only one thing left to decide,” he added, “and that’s a name for the calendar.”
“Beefcake on Parade!” yelled Dylan.
“Firing Up,” suggested Matt.
“Richo with his Favourite Thing,” cal
led Tina, and the mob descended into fits of laughter again and even Gillian laughed this time.
“I’ve got a suggestion,” Ava said, when the laughs died down, for once having no trouble figuring a title for a collection. “I think it should be called Brothers Forged in Fire, because even if you’re not a Knight or don’t have the tattoo, isn’t that what you all as firefighters are?”
It was unanimous and there were cheers all around.
It took five minutes for the din to die down before Mike raised his hand and asked for silence again.
“But headquarters had some even better news they want me to share with you all. The results of the investigation into last year’s Victorian bushfire has just tonight been released – and drum roll please, because, as we damned well knew should be the case, Leonard Knight has been exonerated of all charges!”
Everyone was up cheering and back slapping then, the Knight brothers and cousins and their firey mates and even the soon to be Knight women.
“To Leonard Knight!” cried Caleb in the midst of the din, holding up his glass.
“To Leonard!” everyone toasted, and the legend lived on.
Later that night Caleb was standing behind Ava on the balcony of their suite overlooking the ocean, his arms wrapped lovingly around her body, and if there was a chill in the air, neither of them felt it. Tomorrow they would be married here, in the ballroom overlooking the beach while tonight the sky above was inky blue, a big moon sending a ribbon of gold across the ocean. Meanwhile, a big corner spa bath was filling in the en suite.
“You really are something special,” Caleb said. “Clever. Gorgeous. Not to mention sexy as hell.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to her throat, breathing in the lemon scent of her hair, his hands scooping low around her hips, his thumbs edging close to her sex.
She made a sound like a purr, and angled her head to give his mouth free reign. “I do believe the feeling is mutual.”
“You know the guys are all crazy about you. They already were, but you’ve really won them over with this calendar idea.”