A Place With Heart

by Jennie Jones

  Jack wasn’t going to get any more out of her; she’d told him all she knew. He moved on. ‘Thanks, Rosie. So how are you getting on with your niece?’

  ‘Hah!’ Rosie went behind the counter and opened the cashier till. ‘Some niece. Miserable little mite.’ She paused, and met Jack’s eye with a serious expression. ‘Not that I blame her, of course, just saying.’

  ‘Certainly can’t blame the kid,’ Jack said with a smile of acknowledgement.

  ‘She hasn’t changed her name either.’

  ‘So, she’s still going by …’

  ‘Frances Fellows,’ Rosie supplied, with a kink of her mouth. ‘I know,’ she said, eyebrows raised. ‘You’d think she’d want nothing to do with either of the Fellows, especially after her dad knocked her unconscious.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought too.’ Jesus Christ. This was a punch in the gut. ‘What’s her dad’s name again?’

  ‘Michael,’ Rosie said, stringing it out in a disdainful manner. ‘Not that I ever knew him. I don’t remember him being around. I was younger than Frances is now.’

  ‘Frances isn’t getting along with Jax too well, is she?’

  Rosie shrugged. ‘Jax is all mummy bear and the little tortoise is all teenage aggro.’

  ‘I think perhaps Frances is doing it tough. Try to be nice to her, Rosie.’

  ‘I’m doing my best. She’s not easy to get along with.’

  ‘Can you give a bit of your best for Jax too? For my sake.’

  ‘Your sake?’ Rosie’s expression indicated he now had her full interest. ‘Take her out or something, would you? She’s totally uptight.’

  Jack stepped closer to the counter. ‘Is she seeing anyone? Or has she been with someone recently? Don’t want to step on some guy’s toes.’

  ‘She doesn’t date at all,’ Rosie said, pulling out notes from the till and counting them with a lick of her finger. ‘She hasn’t been out with anyone in years.’

  Jack didn’t know why this news filled him with sadness. Why hadn’t she taken care of her own needs now and again? She worked too damned hard. She did a lot for others. She ought to have had some fun or romance. Everybody needed that. ‘She’s not as strong as you think, Rosie.’

  ‘Jax? She’s the strongest woman I know. Stubborn, too.’

  ‘Do something for me. Give her a break.’

  Rosie placed the cash back into the till and looked up at Jack. ‘I love her. What do you think I am, some fluffy chick who doesn’t give two tosses about the sister who brought her up?’

  Jack’s heart warmed.

  ‘I am gorgeous,’ Rosie said with a quick flirty smile, ‘but I’ve got a brain too. I just use it differently to those around me.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jack agreed. Rosie had changed since he’d last seen her. Maybe Davidson was more of a settling influence on her than he’d reckoned on.

  ‘Since I’ve agreed to do something for you,’ she said, ‘what do I get?’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Rosie smiled her most tempting smile and even threw in a flutter of her long eyelashes, which had to be fake. ‘Can you change David’s shift next week? I’m going to book a manicure, a facial and a full body massage in Kalgirri on Wednesday, and I thought it’d be nice if we both stayed overnight and had some city fun. He’d only need two days off.’

  Jack considered his best response. ‘I need him to run a few officers around. General policing. Guarding the community. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ she said, with a mocking frown.

  Jack forced a smile, tipped his cap and left the café.

  The smile fell from his face as soon as he hit the street. Michael Fellows. What had he done, and when? How and why had he knocked his child unconscious and had he done the same to Jax at some point?

  He pulled his mobile out of his shirt pocket and rang her.

  ‘You okay, sweetheart?’ he said as soon as she answered and before she had time to speak.

  There was a pause. ‘Jack, you’ve got to stop—’

  ‘Will you come out with me?’

  A longer pause.

  ‘I want to take you out,’ he said, turning his back to the street and stepping into the alley between the café and the newsagent’s. ‘I want to walk up Sunset Mountain with you and hold your hand when we get to the steep bits.’

  ‘Jack …’

  ‘I want to drive out to Maria Downs with you,’ he said softly, ‘and pick you a big bunch of wildflowers.’

  ‘That’s illegal.’

  ‘I’ll risk it.’

  He stepped further away from the rumble of traffic on High Street. The smell of fried food and coffee lingered in the evening air but all Jack inhaled was the sweet scent of Jax’s perfume. Just the way he remembered it. ‘I want to see you smile at me again. Our smile, Jax. You know the one I mean.’ Goosebumps rose on his skin. ‘That smile we share when we look at each other and the world around us disappears. Don’t tell me you don’t know which smile I mean. It’s still there.’

  He heard her swallow, as though she had a lump of emotion in her throat.

  ‘Come out with me. Be with me.’ Let me in.

  He waited for her response, his breath coming deeply.

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I want.’

  He hung up before she had a chance to give him a negative.

  He headed for the cop shop. First, he was going to run a check on Fellows, then he was going to call a close friend who worked alongside child protection.

  Fourteen

  ‘You don’t have to do the washing up every night,’ Jax said to Frances as she slid a covered bowl of coleslaw into the fridge.

  The telephone conversation with Jack two hours earlier was still running wild in her mind. It had only been sheer willpower that had got her through the evening rituals of feeding the animals and making dinner. She’d had to force down each mouthful of steak and salad. She hadn’t been asked out very often in her adult life, but the way Jack had asked fuddled her brain. He’d used that deep, velvety voice to tell her he wanted to help her over the steep parts of Sunset Mountain and illegally pick her a bunch of wildflowers.

  The latter was easily the most romantic declaration she’d ever received.

  She turned to the sink and smiled at Frances’s back. ‘Although it’s great that you do help out. Thank you.’

  Frances glanced over her shoulder. ‘You don’t have an accoutrements holder.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A thing to hold the scourer and the dishcloth.’

  An accoutrements holder? Where had she got that long-winded word from? ‘Would you like me to buy one?’

  Frances gave one of her I-don’t-care shrugs but the entire, short conversation had Jax worried. The child never needed to be asked to clean up and she put everything neatly away, too neatly.

  ‘How did your afternoon at the stables go?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. Billy fed the horses and I watched.’

  ‘Was Billy friendly?’

  ‘He was all right. He showed me how the Bluetooth thing works in his car while we drove out there, and he’s got some okay music to play. But he only uses his own car when he can’t get the work ute. He says fuel’s too expensive.’

  ‘Billy’s got a good heart, Frances, but don’t get too involved with him. His older brothers are troublesome.’

  ‘Was it them who knocked your fence down?’

  ‘We don’t know. Probably not. More likely it was boys out joyriding and they’ll be long gone now.’ She still thought it was the Baxters, and so did Jack, but he hadn’t spoken to them as far as she knew. Why wouldn’t he have done that by now? Surely it was the first thing a police officer would do. Unless he knew something she didn’t.

  ‘Why does everyone have such a big issue about Billy being bad?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Everyone?’

  Frances dried her
hands on a small towel and folded it tidily before hanging it—precisely placed next to the tea towel—on the steel handle of the range oven. ‘Officer Donna. Jack. You.’

  ‘Jack?’ Jax’s heart skipped a beat. ‘When did Jack talk to you about Billy?’

  ‘He was at the stables just before I left. He did a police check on Billy’s car. Probably because it’s got so much duct tape on it to hold it together. He told Billy not to drive fast and that if he did, I was allowed to tell him off.’

  It was a relief to know that Solomon, Donna and Jack were keeping an eye on Frances. It was also amazing that they were having what felt like a normal conversation. Except it wasn’t normal. There was something going on and Jax wanted to know exactly what. ‘Did Billy get you brochures from the youth centre?’

  Frances squared her shoulders and faced Jax. ‘He didn’t get any for me. He didn’t even offer to. I lied.’

  Jax couldn’t see any of the usual huffiness on Frances’s face, so why was she admitting this? ‘Why did you lie?’ she asked gently.

  ‘To annoy you.’

  Or to make a statement about how she felt about having been dragged out here to live with a mother she didn’t know or want. ‘Frances,’ Jax said softly. ‘You could never annoy me.’

  Frances seemed surprised by this.

  ‘Would you like to join the youth centre?’ Jax asked, wondering if she did have an interest in the place after all.

  Frances shook her head.

  ‘Would you like to at least go see it, when there’s nobody there, and talk to the person who runs it?’

  ‘I’m going next week. Jack asked me.’

  Jack again. Her heart gave a warning beat this time. Was he getting close to Frances in order to discover more about her? ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wants me to read through a speech he’s giving about drugs, so I can tell him if it’s in our “kid” language or if he’s going to make himself look stupid.’

  Jax pushed her fingers into her worn, faded, much-loved pink jeans. Jack would never appear stupid, and as a police officer he’d know how to handle young people and he’d know how to make them sit up and listen without going in hard.

  ‘You’ll have to drive me into town that day if that’s going to be all right,’ Frances said. ‘Or maybe Jack will come and pick me up.’

  ‘I’ll take you. I’ll happily take you.’ She took a breath. ‘You might be in town a bit more often actually.’ She pulled out a chair from the pine table and sat. ‘With Rachel gone for the next few weeks, I can’t let Rosie take all the responsibility for running the café.’

  This got Frances’s immediate attention. ‘Are you going to tell me I have to work there? Because I don’t want to. I’ve met plenty of people now. I don’t need to meet any more.’

  She sounded almost frantic at the thought. Were people staring at her? Asking her questions? ‘I wasn’t going to tell you that. There’s no need for you to get a job.’ In the future, yes, it would be good for her to get a part-time weekend job, but not now, when she had so much adjusting to do. ‘But I need to work,’ Jax said, putting emphasis on herself. ‘I’ll need to be at the café three full days a week. I can’t have you here on your own. Before you arrived, I started clearing out one of the small back storerooms. I’ve painted it and hung curtains on the window. It can be your room. Your own room.’ She rushed on with her explanation because Frances’s mouth had opened and her eyes were full of the wariness Jax didn’t want to see anymore. She didn’t want her child to hurt so much. ‘We’ll get a desk and a new laptop for you. And we can take Bella.’ She smiled encouragingly. Bella had stayed inside last night and when Jax had got up early to attend to the dogs this morning, she’d peeked inside Frances’s room and discovered Bella asleep on the bed. ‘She’ll have to stay outside the café of course. But there are animal areas at the back, so she’ll be fine.’ She stopped talking. That was it. That was the deal. Would Frances take it without a fight?

  ‘Are Kirby and Winston going to be sleeping on the verandah tonight like they were last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jax said. She’d tethered them both on long leashes so they could get up to pee on the lawn or sniff around before settling back on the dog beds. But they’d know if someone was sneaking around, and being tied to the house, they’d feel the need to protect and they’d bark.

  Frances looked away, chewing on her lip. ‘They’re Bella’s friends.’

  ‘I know.’

  Frances didn’t say anything else but Jax wondered if she was thinking about how nice it might be if all three dogs stayed friendly together, in the house.

  She wasn’t going to push it. ‘We’re moving the bull tomorrow,’ she said, standing. ‘So we’ll need to be in town by eight o’clock.’

  ‘Can I go to my room now?’

  Jax nodded, and let her go. Was she settling a little? She had made friends. Billy, and Jack. What else could she, Jax, do for her? The hairdresser was coming out for her monthly visit next week. Maybe Frances would like to get her hair done, and her nails.

  She scribbled a note on a pad on the table, reminding herself to book it in anyway. If Jax asked for some support, Rosie might cancel her trip to Kalgirri and they could all three of them get their hair and nails done. Jax, Rosie and Franca—Frances.

  Jax heard a dog barking outside and moved from the table to peer out the window from behind the curtains. Another dog gave a yip, then there was silence. Was there someone out there watching the house? It felt like it, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. Was it Jack? Was he out there?

  She felt instinctively that he’d visit her tonight to tell her again how much he wanted to see her smile at him.

  It gave her a thrill that he found her attractive, more of a thrill than she’d ever felt about any other man. And she did yearn to be with someone for the rest of her life—someone to have and to hold, someone to share smiles with. But she had to decide whether she had the courage to tell him about Michael and about how she’d let Frances go.

  Her mind was a clutter of advice. Positive: let someone in. Negative: you’ll get your heart broken. You could fall in love with Jack in an instant if you let yourself.

  She wanted to heal all the pain, for herself and especially for Frances—more than ever for Frances—and Jack was here in town, so tall and strong. He’d listen and he’d help. He already was by befriending Frances …

  It can’t be Jack.

  Would she have accepted him if nothing had changed; if Frances hadn’t been wounded by Michael and Linda? Would she have opened her heart and taken that big bunch of illegal flowers and whatever else he was offering? Would she have met up with him sometimes, every few weeks or months, and slept with him? Is that what he wanted? A part-time lover; someone to get all sexy, even romantic with, then go back to work until the next time their paths crossed.

  But then he’d leave the area altogether. He’d be shifted out of Kalgirri and go back to Sydney.

  It was too far to go just for sex.

  Jack was so full of rage he could hardly see straight. The light from the desk lamp glowed in the otherwise darkened office at the station, but his vision was blinded with images he didn’t want to see.

  He’d discovered what Michael Fellows had possibly been up to with a sixteen-year-old girl who worked at his accounting firm. It was a dog’s breakfast of a situation for the police. There was nothing incriminating to go on, just a few text messages with nothing solid to show real intent. But instinct would suggest to experienced police officers and officials that Fellows had been grooming the girl for sexual contact.

  Given that instinct, and even though Fellows had got away with it, Jack wanted to know that the man was at least being observed, which is why he’d called an old friend, Vicky Lucas, a detective now working with a child protection squad in Geelong.

  ‘And?’ he asked after she’d filled him in on what had happened to Frances.

  ‘Jack,’ Vicky said patiently. ‘It’s not as though y
ou haven’t seen a lot worse.’

  He didn’t care. This was little Frances, the kid with the funny haircut and eyes like her mother’s. This one was personal.

  ‘Once Fellows thumped her unconscious he came out of his rage, according to a number of eyewitness neighbours and also the cops and the paramedics at the scene. He was all over the child, frantic at what he’d done.’

  Jack didn’t give a shit. He’d done it.

  ‘Neighbours confirm the other man started it. He was pumped, and yelling over the fence that Fellows was a pervert. Fellows obviously didn’t see his daughter behind him and she copped a punch.’

  To the head.

  Fortunately, there’d been no long-term damage, other than concussion and five stitches to a cut on her forehead.

  ‘We followed it through ourselves,’ Vicky said, ‘but no witnesses wanted to give a statement. They didn’t want to be involved, so both men got a disorderly for fighting, and that was that.’

  Jack already had that information from the check he’d run. It was information on Frances that he wanted. ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Due to the text messages the parents contacted the police about, and then this incident, he was questioned thoroughly. We had his full cooperation. His record is clean; he hasn’t done this before—’

  Except he had. With Jax. Undoubtedly. This is who had hurt her. Michael Fellows.

  ‘—or at least, we don’t know that he’s done it before,’ Vicky continued. ‘We can’t take it any further.’

  ‘You’re watching him?’

  ‘He punched his kid—you bet we’re watching him.’

  They wouldn’t have someone on his tail 24/7 though. They didn’t have the resources. They’d only be watching for any alert that might come up on the system if he stepped out of line again. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Queensland. He upped and left his wife and kid without a backward glance.’

  ‘Then the step-mother didn’t want the kid either,’ Jack said, ‘and Isabelle Brown got custody of her daughter.’

  Vicky sighed. ‘I can’t say too much about that. Although I’m guessing you’d like me to.’

  ‘No. It’s okay. I don’t need to know.’ He’d find out for himself.