by Jennie Jones
‘Don’t you start,’ he said. ‘You’re spending far too much time with Imelda.’
Adele grinned.
‘So when did you meet your publisher boyfriend?’
‘I think you might be pushing your luck, Tom,’ Adele said.
‘Hey, whose decision was it to come out for dinner? Who paid for the meal? Now all I’m getting is flak.’
‘What’s flak?’ Ali asked.
Tom peered at her. ‘It’s when you’re in battle, and women are shooting at you from every which way. Don’t you forget that, when you grow up. Don’t back a man into a corner. It’s dangerous for the man.’
‘You could just run away,’ Ali said.
‘Oh, great. You too?’
‘Me what?’
‘Women,’ he muttered in despair. Then he winked at Ali. ‘Watch this. This is how men charm the socks off women.’ He cleared his throat and placed a big hearty smile on his face. ‘Imelda. I must say, you’re looking particularly mellow this evening. Oh, and—since when have you had a publisher friend?’
Imelda concentrated on her grandson. She eyed him, taking her time, then her mouth kinked in a semi-smile, semi-grimace. She opened her mouth to speak and the look on her face said she was about to tick him off. ‘Since—’ she began, in a grandmother-knows-best tone.
Tom cut her off. ‘Okay, don’t say it.’ He raised both hands in surrender. ‘Since none of my goddamned business.’
Ali giggled. Imelda grinned, and Adele smiled.
‘Don’t swear,’ Imelda told him.
Ali nodded agreement, looking up at Tom.
He scowled at her. She laughed, put her hand up to cover her mouth then turned her attention to her crayons and the drawing.
Tom leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.
‘Women,’ he mouthed silently to both Imelda and Adele.
He was such a big, gruff man but right this moment, beneath the frown and the grimace, he looked content to be swamped and overpowered by the women around him. In fact, he looked like a big happy dog with a damn big bone.
***
‘So what did you do last night?’ Tom asked, piling the gardening tools next to his pickaxe in the wheelbarrow. ‘Since you didn’t have me around to make suggestive suggestions.’
Adele had refused his offer of a late-night get-together after all, thinking it wise. She smiled as she gathered a woven-plastic garden rubbish bag, folded it and tucked it under her arm with the others. They were going to make a start on the house frontages. Imelda had asked them to last night, on the walk home from the pub. ‘I went to bed early.’
‘Don’t mention the three-letter-word to me. You refused my offer of a fireside chat. I had to go to bed all miserable.’
‘There’s no need of a fire. Weather’s getting warmer even in the evenings, with summer on the way.’ Adele straightened and arched her back, which had got a few kinks in it from simply carting all her garden tools—some her own, some borrowed from Imelda—to the front of her house. She’d done so much physical work in the last couple of weeks. No wonder her body, unused to manual labour, was feeling the effects. She lifted her face and closed her eyes, letting the spring sun bathe her cheeks. ‘What a beautiful day.’ When she didn’t get a response, she opened her eyes and found Tom staring at her, a contented look on his face.
‘I wanted to put my arm around you last night,’ he said. ‘On the walk home.’ He smiled his droll smile. ‘Maybe cop a feel.’
Adele spluttered a laugh and threw the garden bags at him.
He caught them against his chest. ‘So which house are we starting on? Don’t say mine. I’m not doing mine.’
‘Why not?’
‘I like it untidy.’
He dropped the garden bags onto the gear in the wheelbarrow, lifted it by its handles, and waited.
Adele pulled her work gloves out of her back pocket and slipped them on. ‘Let’s start in the middle and work our way out.’
He grumbled, but not with words, just a low groan. Adele suddenly remembered what Cath had told her: that the middle house was the one Imelda had brought Tom up in.
Instead of asking him why he wasn’t keen on starting with her chosen house—that would be intrusive, since he wouldn’t know that she knew anything about him and his street—Adele walked past him and headed for the gate of the middle house, deciding to approach it from a different angle. ‘Weren’t you brought up in this house?’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Cath Foster mentioned it.’
‘Why?’
Adele stopped and turned to him. ‘Stop sounding so ferocious. She mentioned it when we were talking about Ali, and about the street, and about how I was settling in.’
‘So do you know who this publisher friend of Imelda’s is?’
‘You’re really narked about not knowing, aren’t you?’ She picked up the garden bags and pushed through the rickety gate.
‘I’ve lived with her practically all my life,’ Tom said, ‘and I never knew anything about any publisher.’
‘She’s got a few secrets.’
‘Like what?’
Adele shook one of the bags out, and dropped the others on the soil at her feet. ‘Like she hasn’t told me, but I’m guessing. She’s really artistic, you know.’
Tom swung the gate open and propped it with a brick. ‘I’d like to put this pickaxe through this house,’ he said, picking up his weapon of destruction and bouncing the wooden handle in his hand.
‘I’m sorry, Tom.’ Adele straightened. ‘Would you like to work on another house?’
‘No, it’s all right.’ He hefted the pickaxe and slung the handle over his shoulder. ‘Sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘For being an ass. Yeah, Imelda is kind of artistic in an old-fashioned way. I hadn’t thought about it before.’
‘We get used to seeing what’s in front of us,’ Adele said. ‘We don’t see what’s behind the everyday façade. Do you have an idea of what Imelda was like as a young girl? A young woman?’
‘Before she married? Not a clue.’
‘I saw three pottery vases that she made. Handmade and hand painted. They’re beautiful, Tom. She had talent.’
‘Jesus.’
He looked stunned but keen to hear more, so Adele took the chance. ‘She denied making them, but I knew she had, so when I pushed her to admit it she said, “not me. The me I once was”.’
Tom let the pickaxe fall from his shoulder, until the tip of the axe rested on the footpath. ‘She used to draw with me,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid. I didn’t think anything of it, but she’d add to my drawings. I drew planes and cars, and she’d put a tree or butterflies and rabbits into the scene. Not the sort of stuff I took any notice of because I was more interested in correctly depicting the alloys of my fast car.’ His smile suggested he still might, on occasion, sketch pictures of his fast cars.
‘You draw too, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘In your job?’
‘Not art though. Engineering.’
‘It’s still a skill. It’s still art.’
He looked away. ‘I suppose so.’ He turned for the wheelbarrow. ‘Makes me wonder whether my mother had any talents.’ It was mumbled, but Adele heard it. She also heard the undertone of pain, or maybe unease.
‘Tom,’ she said, pulling her gloves off and taking a step down the broken concrete pathway of the house he’d been brought up in. ‘I have to tell you something. I can’t not tell you, since we’re …’
‘Since we’re kissing and cuddling—when we get a chance?’ He straightened, and faced her, his shoulders relaxed and his eyes smouldering with humour and … sex appeal. Which he’d done on purpose, to change the subject, or maybe to just change the tone of the conversation.
She gave him a soft smile.
‘Okay,’ he said, relenting. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s about your mother.’
His smile faded and for a second he looked dumbstruc
k, then he shifted his weight until he stood with his legs planted wide, as though to steady himself; readying himself for what she was about to say.
‘It’s nothing really,’ she said, ‘and I’m not prying, I just can’t not tell you what I found out because I get the impression that it’s something that’s not talked about. Not by you or Imelda, nor by the townspeople.’
‘What is it?’ he asked again.
Adele took a breath before beginning. ‘One of the vases I found in the box Imelda brought to the society—the box labelled with Rose Douglas’s name—was wrapped with a sheet of old newspaper. I picked it up to study it because there was a photograph of the pub.’
‘And?’
‘It was about your mother. About the house that caught on fire. And about the speculation that you were in the house at the time. And that she left you.’
His eyes darkened and his features fell from wary to stunned. ‘What?’
Adele paused, gauging him a bit longer. ‘I thought you knew,’ she said in a small voice, but her words weren’t needed because it was horribly obvious to her now that he hadn’t known.
‘They said she left me in a burning house?’
‘Oh, God.’ Regret surged inside her.
He pulled his work gloves off and threw them into the wheelbarrow. ‘Do you still have the newspaper?’
She nodded, feeling like a thief and a nosey-parker. Any amusement in his tone had gone. He sounded like a businessman now. One who was being thrown—what had he called it last night? Flak.
Chapter Ten
‘Show me,’ he said.
‘It’s at the house.’ She couldn’t back out now, she’d started this, but she couldn’t move.
He stepped back and lifted his hand to show her the way down the street. ‘I want to see it.’
‘I’m so sorry, Tom, I thought you knew.’
‘It’s all right. But I want to see it.’
‘Okay.’ Her voice had gone from normal to slight to practically inaudible. She walked past him and headed for her house. They didn’t speak, not until they got through the front door and Adele led him into the living room where she’d stored the society’s boxes, and pulled the folded sheet of old newspaper out of a drawer in her bureau. Even that small act filled her with embarrassment. It looked like she’d kept it; hidden it so that she could pour over it any time a sticky-beak moment came over her.
She handed it to him, trying to overcome her guilt while he unfolded it, opened it up fully and read.
Her heart was hammering. She stood still, but couldn’t stop wringing her hands.
After a minute, he paled. A few moments later he finished reading and looked up, staring into thin air.
‘I thought you knew,’ Adele said again softly.
He hauled in a breath. ‘Jesus.’ He turned his head to Adele. ‘Imelda never told me this. Why wouldn’t she tell me?’
Adele lifted a shoulder. He sounded so torn. ‘Perhaps because it was only supposition.’
He smiled, scornfully. ‘I don’t think so though. Do you?’
What answer should she give? What answer did he need most? The truth, probably. She couldn’t bring herself to lie anyway. It was all so odd. He didn’t know anything about his mother. There had to be some reason for the speculation she’d left him to burn to death. She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, Tom. I don’t know enough.’
‘What else do you know?’
‘Nothing—only that you were brought up in the middle house. I’m sorry I suggested we start work on that one. I could see straight away that you didn’t want to.’
He turned to the window and flicked at the curtains. They were closed, in order to keep the midday sun out of the room and off the stored memorabilia stacked by the window.
‘I don’t much feel like breaking concrete anymore, no matter which house front.’
Adele walked to him and put her arm through his. ‘I only kept the newspaper because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. It didn’t seem right.’
He pulled his arm from her grasp, put it over her shoulder and tugged her into his side. ‘Imelda’s been talking about Katrina recently. She’s promised to give me the true story but she said she needs a bit of time to get the words right.’
Surely it wasn’t true. Surely his mother hadn’t left him in the house. Adele pressed her hand against his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He bent and kissed her. He smiled gently when he lifted his mouth from her. ‘First kiss of the day,’ he said. ‘I really wanted to grab you earlier but we were out in the street.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘No. I’m just heading back to the subject matter that interests me the most.’
‘That’s not true. You’re hurting.’
‘Ah—don’t worry about it. It’s some sort of rejection shit, that’s all. Nothing I can’t deal with.’
Adele wasn’t so sure about that. ‘I know all about rejection, Tom. It’s not easy to live with it, or get over it.’
‘You?’ he asked. ‘How did that happen to you? Or should that be, who made it happen?’
It was her turn to offer a scornful smile. ‘My father.’ She paused, not having discussed the next issue since before she’d had Ali. ‘And the man who is Ali’s father.’
‘Oh, shit.’ He pulled her fully into his embrace. ‘Jesus, Adele, we’re a pair of sorry bastards.’
‘Don’t swear. And neither of us are bastards.’
‘Well, I am, but you know what I meant.’
‘We’re fighters,’ she told him.
‘Damn right.’
His chest was warm. Being against him was like lying on a hot sandy beach, the sun kissing your cheeks, the sea breeze flowing over your body and blowing away your troubles. ‘Ali’s father wanted me to have an abortion.’
His chest rose as he inhaled, and his arms tightened around her but he didn’t speak. She kept her cheek pressed to him. ‘He didn’t stick around. He wasn’t in the Air Force, he was someone I met at a party. I was twenty-two. I hadn’t had many boyfriends, and I liked the fact that he wasn’t under my father’s command. I liked his unruliness. It was a trait I hadn’t been allowed to show.’
Tom leaned his chin on the top of her head.
‘My father was disgusted.’
‘With the guy?’
Adele blew out a laugh. ‘With me.’
‘Don’t tell me he kicked you out.’ He released her, held her upper arms and studied her, his dark blue eyes full of concern. ‘Tell me you left.’
‘I wasn’t so brave.’
‘Why not? Look at you now.’
She gave a little shake of her head. ‘I wasn’t brave, Tom. I wasn’t allowed to be.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘He was about to be posted overseas again, and I’d overheard a telephone call. He said he was going alone. He also said he wouldn’t need the house the base had leased us. He was going to kick me out. I knew. I had enough money for a flight out of Perth. I took …’ A pinch of humour gripped her. Maybe she had been a little brave. ‘I took the first flight out.’ She smiled and nodded when Tom frowned. ‘I did. I arrived at Perth’s little domestic airport and booked myself on the first flight out.’
‘To Sydney?’
‘Yep.’ And hell, now she’d gone over it again, she was damned proud.
He chuckled, the sound reverberating in his chest. ‘I like it. There’s no way I’d have believed there wasn’t a bit of attitude inside you somewhere.’
‘Oh, it’s there. It just doesn’t come out very often.’
‘And you’re okay now?’ he asked. ‘Are you over it?’
Not likely. Not in a million years, but she could hide it. ‘Ah—don’t worry about it,’ she said with the same kind of lilt to her voice that Tom had used when he’d said it. ‘It was just one of those rejection things.’ He smiled at her, a cocky grin. She lifted her hand and put her palm against his cheek. ‘What about
you?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to ask Imelda about what happened?’
‘When I find the courage.’
‘Do you want the newspaper?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I, Tom. I can’t hold onto it. Not now.’
‘Put it in the box of memorabilia. Just leave it there. Whatever happened, it was part of the town’s history.’
‘Tom, you need to—’
‘Adele.’ His fingers dug into her arms with a little pressure. ‘I’m fine. I’m big enough to get over it. What I can’t understand is how we’ve both told each other so much in the last twenty minutes. And how the talking came so easily to us. We’ve pretty much bared ourselves.’
‘We’re a little lost, Tom, that’s all.’
He ran his hands up and down her arms, all the while pinning her with his eyes. ‘So what do two people do? When they’re a little lost, and perhaps a little lost in each other. What do they do next?’
Her breath hitched and her pulse hammered on her wrists. Tom didn’t have to explain further. She knew what two people, lost and very much attracted to each other, did next. They took more comfort from each other, and they went to bed.
Out of all the times she’d wrestled with her feelings and her emotions and dismissed the idea that she was falling in love with Tom, now was the time to face her insecurities and own up.
We both need comfort, she told herself, but that was only one more way of not facing the truth. They were deeply attracted to each other. She could see it in Tom’s eyes and feel the heat of her own attraction for Tom flood behind her eyelids and bank in her chest.
He waited for her to speak, studying her.
‘My knees have gone weak,’ she said at last.
He smiled gently, and took hold of her. ‘You’re a lightweight. I can hold you.’
Her hands found their way to his shoulders. ‘Tom—I want to, but I don’t want to.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m frightened.’ He had no idea what this was doing to her, physically or emotionally. Physically, the man in front of her could fix the problem simply by touching her—all over, everywhere, every secret place of womanhood. She had no doubt he’d drive her carefully to heights she’d never before scaled, but emotionally, she’d be drained. And she didn’t want to drain Tom. If she did this now, she’d have to hide all feeling from him other than the natural responses to sensations and pleasures they’d give each other and take from each other. She’d have to hide that she was falling in love with a man who just needed comfort from a woman he was deeply attracted to.