His grin confirmed he had already known that.
“Tabby?”
He shook his head. “Sam. She told me this story about the two of you. You were sixteen and you’d gotten someone’s brother to buy you a box of wine and…”
“No!” Nicole pressed her hands to her ears. “Stop!”
“…and you drank about half of it on your roof because your dad was downstairs running a silent mediation workshop…”
“Stop!”
“And then you decided you had to go to McDonalds, or you’d die—”
“It was KFC, thanks very much.”
Noah cackled. “The dirty bird.”
Nicole put her thumbs in her ears again.
“And then you ate twenty-six nuggets?”
“Twenty-eight,” she said with all the dignity she could muster.
Noah laughed. He laughed and laughed and banged the steering wheel.
“Are you done?” she said, trying and failing not to smile.
“Almost.” He rubbed his eyes. “The impressive part was you didn’t throw up afterward.”
“It was sheer spite, Sam said I was going to, so I didn’t. I did feel sick for about a week, though.”
Noah gave a loud, contented sigh. “Great story.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks. What about you? What’s your worst teenage drinking story?”
He glanced across at her and she knew she’d trodden on a landmine. While she was staining her teeth burgundy with boxed wine, he’d been a fully patched member of a bikie gang. She doubted his worst drinking story was one he wanted to tell. Or one she wanted to hear.
“Sorry.”
“S’okay.” His eyes were fixed on the road. The air between them had crystalized slightly.
Nicole cast around for a different subject. “Do you cook? Like dinner?”
His smile returned. “Yeah.”
“Really? What do you make?”
He shrugged. “Stir-fries, curry. I do pretty good lasagne.”
“Really?” She was amazed. She hadn’t expected him to say yes, let alone mention lasagne. “Who taught you to cook? Your mum?”
His mouth twisted and she could have slapped herself. She’d just stepped on the same ‘Noah’s family was heavily involved in a bikie gang, he did not have a conventional childhood’ landmine again.
“Forget it. I don’t know why I said that. My mum didn’t teach me to cook. She left when we were little, but even when she was home, she never made anything. Dad cooked.”
She could feel Noah watching her and she kept her eyes on the road.
“I taught myself to cook,” he said. “I had to.”
Something in his voice tugged at her heart like a balloon string. “Because no one cooked for you?”
“Because I had scurvy.”
“What?”
He smiled. “I had scurvy. Like what pirates get.”
“What? How?”
“We only had toast at home; pizza, and fish and chips at the clubhouse. When I was twelve, all my teeth started coming loose and I had a headache all the time. I went to the doctor and he told me I had scurvy.”
Nicole gasped. “No!”
He grinned and extended his left forearm toward her. She saw the tattoo that took up the greatest part of the skin was a mottled black pirate ship. “Secret’s out.”
“What did you do?”
“Doctor told me to eat vegetables, so I did. Raw ‘til I figured out how to cook them. Wasn’t too hard.”
Nicole couldn’t smile, she was still too horrified. “What did your parents say?”
“Mum wasn’t much of a mum. Dad wasn’t much of a dad. They didn’t give it much thought. In fairness, they didn’t look after themselves any better than they looked after me.”
“Did they have scurvy?”
He gave a funny little laugh. “Nah. It was 90s. Everyone in the clubhouse was into Coronas. I guess the lemon slices saved ‘em.”
Nicole shuddered, then felt ashamed. She’d drunkenly eaten more than two dozen nuggets, who was she to judge anyone? “I guess I’m glad you didn’t all have scurvy.”
Noah smiled. “They’re not together. My parents. They split when I was fifteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
He inclined his head, though it was clear he didn’t consider the event a tragedy. He didn’t seem eager to discuss it further, and for once, Nicole understood. There were few things she hated, like talking about her runaway mother. She pointed to the traffic lights. “It’s the next left from here. Down by the water.”
A heat warmed her right thigh. Noah had put his hand on her leg. She glanced at him, but his eyes were on the road. Nicole wanted to cry then, not because she was sad, but because the hot weight of his hands soothed her in ways that didn’t make sense. They travelled the rest of the way in silence, Noah’s palm on her leg. Nicole watched the world whir past, the quiet in her brain so luxurious, she was disappointed when they finally got to The Lighthouse. Noah pulled into the car park and turned off the engine. They stayed sitting, watching the sunset stain the ocean like a painter’s daydream.
Noah’s hand tightened on her thigh. “Stunning.”
“I love the ocean.”
“Not what I meant.”
Nicole ducked her head. His compliments were still a little jarring, especially since she wasn’t wearing makeup. “The painting over your kitchen table is as beautiful as the view here.”
“Nah.”
“I mean it!”
Noah’s smile was kindly. “Thanks, baby, but there’s no chance. Art can’t ever come close to life. It’s too bright and big and you can feel the energy pulsing through every part of it. All I can do is reflect it, talk about how magic it is. A good painting’s a sunbeam in a box; the real world is the whole fucking sun.”
Nicole didn’t think she’d ever heard him say something so heartfelt. Or long. She stared out at the ocean and realised he was right, the world was alive, shifting and melting in a way a painting wasn’t. His were beautiful though. The most beautiful she’d ever seen.
“Ready for food?” she asked.
“Yup.” But he made no move to undo his seatbelt, instead staring at the restaurant, a big glowing white Tudor building. “We’re a long way from KFC.”
She smiled. “We are, but that’s not a bad thing. Want to go in?”
“Do you?”
There was a little too much emphasis on his words for it to be a throwaway question. He was asking something else, about her, about them.
Nicole smiled. “Yes. I want to have dinner with you in The Lighthouse.”
He raised their joined hands to his mouth, but he didn’t kiss the back of her palm. He kissed the daisy chain her dad had tattooed into her wrist when she was eighteen. Nicole’s heart blew out to twice its normal size. “You like it?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He shook his head, gave her hand a final squeeze and opened the driver-side door. Nicole watched him go, wondering what it was that he kept trying and failing to say.
She’d told Noah he wouldn’t look out of place, but once they were inside it was clear her Nostradamus skills were a little off. The hostess, Debbie, gave him the kind of side-eye that said she’d already punched the first two zeroes of the emergency number into her phone.
“You here for work, Nicole?” she asked.
Nicole squirmed a little, knowing the easiest thing was to say yes. Debbie knew Aaron. Answering her question meant saying a lot more than she’d intended. She looked at Noah, his expression blank, and her first thought was that he wouldn’t care if she said ‘yes.’ Then she remembered how he’d looked in the van, how rude Mrs Harris had been, how he hadn’t chosen to grow up in a bikie club, or be hugely tall or get scurvy. She took his hand, that warm, rough lifeline that had brought her to Adelaide. “Here for fun, actually. Can we please have a table for two?”
Debbie’s face was smooth as cream. “Sure.”
But Nicole was
sure she was mentally adding ‘if you insist.’
“I’m sorry,” she said when they were seated. “Debbie shouldn’t be so snotty to you.”
“Doesn’t matter. Want champagne?”
“I…yes.”
And he told the waiter rushing up behind her to bring them a bottle of Moet like it wasn’t anything. And when it arrived he didn’t look remotely out of place holding a long-stemmed glass. In their upscale surroundings, his size and tattoos had taken on a rebellious glamour. He might have been a football player relaxing in the off season with his overdressed girlfriend. She noticed a few women watching him with mixed curiosity and attraction and felt a prickle of jealousy.
He’s mine, she thought, we just had sex on my old bedroom floor.
“Toast?” Noah asked, his green eyes glinting as though he knew what was on her mind.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“To you,” he said, tapping his glass to hers. “And your tattoo.”
Nicole looked down and was shocked to see the daisy chain looped around her wrist. She’d grown to…not hate it, but resent it. Resent its hippy-dippy prettiness, the way it made her a girl with tattoos who wasn’t remotely as cool as her sisters. For the first time she looked at it and thought maybe it suited her. She tapped her champagne glass to his and they both drank. Their waitress returned and Noah ordered them both deep fried, soft shell crab.
“That’s a bit old school, ordering for your date,” Nicole teased.
“You wanted something else?”
She didn’t, but she stuck her tongue out at him anyway. A thought occurred to her. “Oh my god, it’s getting late and we haven’t booked a hotel yet.”
Noah said nothing, but the look he gave her made her feel like her skin was on fire.
“I guess there’s, um, lots of places in town,” she corrected. “It can’t be that hard to find one. We can look after this.”
He nodded, his gaze like gleaming jade.
Nicole drank deeply from her glass, tasting nothing. A hotel room, a big blank bed where she and Noah could explore the hungry thing between them. Their waiter brought warm brown bread and a big dab of salted butter. She ate, letting the richness wash across her tongue.
Noah watched her. “Christ, it’s hard not to look at your mouth.”
She laughed. “So stop staring and eat!”
He smiled and did just that. Conversation between them flowed as quickly as the wine. They talked about the sports they’d played in school—football for him, netball for her.
“We’re so heterosexual,” Nicole said. Noah laughed.
When their waiter slid her crab in front of her, she saw the young man clocking her daisy chain. She nodded and Nicole knew what he was thinking; that she and the big tattooed guy shared a common thread after all.
And we do.
The wine she’d drunk bubbled inside her. She could have sworn she saw the same brightness in Noah. And here they were, eating a nice meal in a nice restaurant, talking and smiling, ignoring the heat that would have them tearing their clothes off later. Nicole looked down at her daisy tattoo and dredged up some of Sam’s courage. “There’s something real between us, isn’t there?”
Silence, but when she looked up, Noah nodded, his mouth tight.
“Can you…maybe say that? I’m sorry, it just feels like maybe you don’t mean it.”
Noah put down his knife and fork. “Nikki, if this goes places, you gotta know that…”
“You can’t talk about personal stuff?”
He inclined his head.
“Why?”
“Million different reasons.” He shook his head like he was getting rid of a cobweb. “Remember how you asked why I don’t show my paintings?”
“Yes.”
“This is the same thing. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just…”
“Painful?”
Noah nodded.
“Okay.” Nicole licked her lips, thinking around the dilemma. “But you’ve told me a little about your past. You’ve told me I’m beautiful.”
“That’s just facts.”
“Shh, please be serious.”
“I am,” he said, picking up his cutlery. “I just don’t know if I can say what you need.”
Nicole picked up her own knife and fork and they ate for a while. Her crab was puffy and delicious. She’d eaten almost half when Noah spoke. “You seem happy.”
She looked up to see he wasn’t eating, just staring at his plate.
“I am.”
Noah nodded slowly, then cleared his throat. “Anything to do with me?”
She felt like her heart was going to burst, because in that moment a stone-grey cloud rolled back and she could see it. A future between the two of them.
“Everything to do with you,” she said. “You know what you make me feel?”
A raised brow.
“Steady.”
The brow rose even higher.
“It’s a good thing,” she said, abandoning her knife and fork and reaching out to touch his hands. “For ages, as long as I can remember, I’ve been up and down and up and down all the time. I want everything to be perfect and I try so hard to make it that way, sometimes I feel like I’m about to collapse. But being with you never makes me feel like that. You make me feel like I have my feet on the ground.” She laughed as she realised the contradiction in her words. “Not when I think about your past, but when I’m with you, here and now, I feel so steady.”
Noah stared down at their hands. “That’s a good thing?”
“Totally. If I was like dizzy and stupidly nervous, I’d be sure it was just infatuation, but it feels like there’s something else here. On my end anyway.”
Self-conscious, she sat back, tucking her hands into her lap like she was interviewing for a dream job. And maybe she was.
Noah looked up, knocking her sideways with his strange, contradictory beauty. “You saying you’re not infatuated with me?”
“No,” she said primly. “I said it’s more than that.”
“Good.” He picked up his knife and fork. “It’s more than that for me, too. Eat your crab.”
Nicole hesitated, wanting more reassurance and knowing it wasn’t something she could or should ask for. She picked up a crab leg and crunched. “Control freak.”
“You’ll find out what makes me a control freak after.”
Heat swirled through her and she chewed on autopilot, wondering if she’d be able to swallow another bite with so many butterflies in her stomach. She contemplated putting the rest in Tupperware, and if the crab would survive until Melbourne, when Noah pulled out his phone, swearing when he saw the name flashing up. Silver Daughters Ink.
“You got your phone on?” he asked.
She felt a stab of panic. “No, I turned it off so Tabby wouldn’t track my phone. Why? Do you think Sam and Tabby know we’re together?”
“Looks like it. I never get work calls this late.” His forehead furrowed. “I’ve got a heap of messages; I didn’t notice them coming in.”
“From who?”
“Tabby. Paula.” He swore under his breath again.
“What? What do they say?”
She knew she should keep her voice down but she had a bad feeling, and being drip-fed bad news wasn’t helping.
“It looks like your ex called.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah and, uh…”
Noah’s face took on a strange pallor, as though his human colouring was being sucked out with a straw. He stared down at his phone as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Noah?”
“We need to go,” he said, standing up. “Right now.”
One look at his eyes and she knew there was no question of staying. She’d be getting her crab to go after all. She stood up, thinking wildly of what could be wrong. “What happened? Is anyone hurt?”
“Yeah, Paula. My housemate. It’s a long fucking—look, let’s just go, okay?”
And he wal
ked toward the register at the far end of the restaurant without another word, leaving Nicole in the dregs of what she’d thought would be a night to remember forever.
I’m pretty sure it will, a nervous Tabby told her.
Hold tight, Nix.
But for once the voice of her sisters wasn’t the slightest bit comforting.
Chapter 16
“Are you okay?”
He nodded curtly. “Yeah.”
Frustration licked its way up Nicole’s wrists. She didn’t want to be demanding, but they’d been in the car for twenty minutes. He’d smoked two cigarettes and said exactly nothing. She wanted to switch on her phone and call everyone, but would have felt patronizing, like asking a child to read a picture book, getting impatient when they struggled with words and snatching it out of their hands so you could tell them about the rainbow fish. Still, she couldn’t wait forever.
“Noah,” she said in her best accountant voice. “What did the messages say?”
He shook his head. Not like he was saying no, but like he didn’t know where to start. He wasn’t speeding, but he was sitting right on the speed limit, his hand groping for his cigarettes.
“We can start small. Paula, your old housemate’s involved?”
“Yeah.”
“And Tabby and Sam met her?”
He stuck the smoke in his mouth and ignited. “Yup.”
God, she wasn’t seeing the connection on this one. “How and why is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know how to get it out, Nikki. It’s a fuckin’ mess.”
“It’s okay.” She touched Noah’s thigh. He tensed then relaxed, or at least grew less stiff. She groped around for a change of subject. Something that would calm him down and reinforce the connection they had to one another. “You know how I didn’t like you calling me Nikki at first?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s because my mum used to call me Kitty. After she left, I made sure no one called me that anymore. I know ‘Nikki’ doesn’t exactly sound like ‘Kitty’, but it’s the same ballpark.”
“I can stop.”
So Steady: Silver Daughters Ink, Book Two (Silver Daughters Ink Book Two) Page 20