скачать книгу бесплатно
When they arrived back at the manse the kitchen was in chaos. Simon figured out that Louisa had cajoled Maeve into helping her assemble the Christmas tree and mounds of tinsel and baubles lay scattered across the kitchen table and cheesy Christmas tunes were playing in the background.
The manse had a big old lounge room but he knew every year Louisa put the Christmas tree up in the kitchen because that was the place everyone seemed to gravitate to—and this year was no different.
Simon loved the informality of it, unlike his mother’s colour-co-ordinated precision, and he enjoyed the bemused expression, mixed with a little embarrassment left over from their kiss, on Tara’s face as she looked round at him.
‘Excellent timing, Simon,’ Louisa said, as she handed him an armful of tiny star-shaped bulbs on a wire and a huge black plastic bag. She gestured vaguely to the screen door and he inclined his head to Tara and opened the door for her. The long post and rail veranda looked over the street and then the lake.
‘Outside is where it really happens.’ Good to have something to fill the silence between them. Awkward-R-Us. He waved the roll of bulbs at Tara and set about repairing the damage he’d done by kissing her.
‘This is the start of the outside contingent. My job is to help Dad put these up when I’m home.’ He pulled a little stepladder along behind him until he reached the end of the veranda and climbed up. Started to hang the tiny lights as far as he could reach before he climbed down again.
Tara was still looking bewildered and maybe still a little preoccupied from their kiss at the lake. He was sorry she was feeling uncomfortable, but he knew for a fact he wasn’t sorry he’d kissed her. He wanted to do it again. Instead he carried on the conversation because she sure wasn’t helping. ‘These go along the top wooden rail. You can see them from down the street. Looks very festive.’
‘I imagine it does.’ She closed her eyes and he realised she was doing one of those breathing things he’d seen her do before and when she opened her eyes she was the old Tara again.
She smiled, so she must be okay, and he felt inordinately relieved. ‘I’m not experienced at decorations. Put a few up in the ward last year when I worked Christmas week. Santa Claus was a big hit with the mums and their new babies.’
Now, there was a fantasy. Maybe he could dress up as Mr Claus and she’d sit on his knee. Naughty Simon. ‘Santa has potential for lots of things.’ He could feel the smile in his voice and packed that little make-believe away for later. Then he realised that, of course, she’d missed out on family Christmas for most of her life too. Not a nice thought. ‘I’m guessing he didn’t visit the home?’
She looked at him with disgust. ‘Don’t go there, Simon. I’m fine. They looked after me and I was never hungry. Lots of kids can’t say that.’
Okay, he knew that, but there was more to being cared for than food in your belly, he thought as he hung each loop of Christmas lights over the tiny hooks under the eaves, and winced again at how easy his own childhood had been.
He glanced towards the kitchen, where his sister stood watching Louisa tweak the tree.
Maeve had been loved and cared for and told she was wonderful since the day she was born. A lot of the time by Simon because he’d thought the sun shone out of his youngest sibling. Though that wasn’t doing him much good at the moment.
He remembered his father saying Tara was tough. He guessed she’d had to be. ‘Okay. Moving on.’ And he tried to. ‘As you are inexperienced I will explain. You, Mrs Claus, have to hold the big ladder while I put the star up.’
‘Louisa has a star?’ The look she gave him made up for everything. She appreciated him backing off. Okay. He’d avoid the orphanage topic but he still planned to make this Christmas special.
‘Yep. In the bag.’
Tara undid the string and peered in. ‘A blue one. Looks three feet tall?’
He was going down the stairs to the lawn. ‘Goes on the corner of the roof.’ He pulled out a large metal ladder from behind a water tank stand, and the long ladder reached all the way to the top of the roof.
Simon sneaked a look at her face, saw excitement growing as they put up the decorations, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.
She was loving this!
The thought made his heart feel warm and a feeling of delighted indulgence expanded in his gut. ‘Louisa has everything Christmas. It started after she married Ned. Grandfather discovered she’d always wanted Christmas decorations and each year he bought something even more extravagant for her collection. She has a whole nativity scene with life-sized people for the front lawn, and all the animals move.’
‘Now, that is seriously cool.’ Tara’s eyes shone as she looked at the ladder. Then she frowned as she looked back at him. ‘If you can climb that and not worry, then parachuting would be a cinch.’ She crossed over to him, carrying the star, and waited for him to put his foot on the bottom rung.
He looked at her but ignored the parachute comment. ‘Hmm. The decorations are cool, but not when you have to assemble them and put them up, then pull them down every year. I could live without the ladder climb.’ He grinned at her and knew she could tell he didn’t mind. ‘Dad usually does it but he asked me to start. Louisa likes it up before December and that’s tomorrow.’
He sighed, glanced at the ladder and held out his hand. ‘Better get it over and done with. At least there’s clips up here for the star. It just snaps into a slot and the wiring is already in place. It will be exciting for the little girls when they come home.’
She grinned. ‘You’re a wonderful grandson. And brother.’
He edged up a step at a time. ‘Don’t think so. Sometimes I only see them once a year at Christmas.’
She raised her voice. ‘They said you write to them.’
He stopped. Looked down at her. ‘I send a pretty card or a funny postcard every now and then. They phone me on Sundays if I’m not working.’
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have someone do that. Imagine if Simon did that for her? Her whole world would gain another dimension, and then she stopped herself. Smacked herself mentally. He was just a nice guy. A nice guy who seemed to like kissing her?
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u4458ba54-093b-5c04-b4a4-5700fe238f16)
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY was Tara’s birthday. She hadn’t mentioned it, so he hadn’t, but he’d quietly arranged a cake at the place where they were going to breakfast after the jump.
He’d learnt something as a brother of four plus two sisters. Women loved surprises.
He didn’t even know why he was looking forward to Tara’s adventure when he hated the whole concept of risk, except now he wouldn’t miss it because it involved Tara. He hoped he wasn’t getting too caught up in the whole Tara fantasy. It wasn’t like it was a date.
She’d started off quiet, and he’d wondered if she was sorry she’d asked him. In truth, the discussion had been before he’d kissed her, but then as they drew closer to the jump zone she became more animated.
He glanced across at her face, eyes shining, a huge grin on her face, and she squirmed in her seat like the kid she’d never had the chance to be. This was a whole new side to the woman he considered the most self-sufficient young woman he’d met, and he savoured her little bursts of conversation in a new way from his previous lady friends.
She had her own ideas, often contrary to his, on work, on politics, on sport even, but was always willing to listen to another point of view.
He’d rarely enjoyed a conversation so much. He could have driven all day with her beside him instead of doing what he’d come to do. Watch Tara jump out of a plane.
When they arrived Simon followed Tara from his car and almost had to run to keep up. Now, that was what he called eagerness to embrace the experience. He might even be starting to get her interest, even if he didn’t share it.
He’d read the skydiving webpage when he hadn’t been able to sleep last night. It had been intriguing with the way they mentioned ‘changing your life with a jump’, though he couldn’t see how Tara’s life needed changing in that way. She was the most centred person he knew to be around.
Apparently, sky-diving freed you of the minutiae of the everyday that could cloud the joys of living.
Okay, rave on, yet the expression had resonated with him and made him wonder with a startling moment of clarity if that was what he did.
He organised and pre-planned as much as he could, as if he could keep all the facets of his world—in his mind he could picture pregnant Maeve, so that included his sisters—in order and safe from the possibility of harm.
He glanced up as another plane droned overhead into a scatter of puffy clouds in the blue sky. Safe from harm? Well, that went out the window with skydiving. Literally.
Simon shrugged and guessed he could imagine the small stuff didn’t matter when you were hurtling at two hundred kilometres an hour through those clouds before your parachute opened. If it opened. He shuddered and increased his pace.
Inside the flimsy building—how much money did they spend on this operation anyway, and just how safe were they?—Simon’s gaze travelled around suspiciously until he realised what he was doing and pulled himself up. Tara would be saying he could draw bad luck with negative thoughts, and despite his scepticism he refocussed on the woman he’d brought here, and just looking at her made his mind settle.
She was grinning like there was no tomorrow. He jerked his thoughts away from that one as she beckoned him over.
‘Simon?’
Her expression puzzled him—eager, mischievous, with just a touch of wariness. ‘They could squeeze you in if you wanted to change your mind.’
‘And you’re telling me this because?’
Her eyes glowed with excitement and for a minute there he wanted to take her outside this building and back her up against a tree and kiss the living daylights out of her. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you jump with me? Do it spontaneously.’
He blinked. One pleasant picture replaced with another he didn’t fancy. ‘Like spontaneous combustion. One whoosh and I’m gone?’ She was dreaming. ‘Then who would do all the things I do?’
Her voice lowered and she came closer until suddenly there seemed only two of them in the room. ‘Stop thinking about everyone else for a minute. Do it for yourself. Be irresponsible for once and find out what it feels like. Change your life.’
There’s nothing wrong with my life, he thought, but he didn’t say it. Just stared into those emerald-green eyes that burned with the passion of a zealot. The woman was mad. ‘Nope. But thank you. You go ahead and have your instructions for insanity and I will arrange breakfast for afterwards when you land on the beach.’
‘They say it’s the closest you’ll ever get to flying on your own.’
‘I read that.’ He’d actually done a bit of almost-flying when he’d kissed a certain someone the other day. He was barely listening as he soaked in her features. How could he have ever thought this woman was average?
She looked at him for a moment and then leant forward and kissed him quickly on the lips. ‘Okay.’
Then she was gone, leaving an echo of her scent and the softness of her mouth that vibrated quietly in the back of his mind and all the way down to his toes. And a tiny insidious voice poked him with a thought. Imagine if it did change the way you lived. Not his work but his private life.
His lack of trust in relationships. The business of assembling scenarios so he could be sure he had all his bases covered. The worry about minutiae, like it said in the brochure. Possibly left over from the time he’d realised his own father had been totally unaware of him—when he should have checked if he had a son!
No way. He shut the thought down. Not today. But unconsciously, as he leant against the wall and watched her follow the instructions of Lawrence, her ‘chute buddy’ coach, he paid more attention as they prepared her for the way she left the aircraft and the way she had to bend her legs and point her toes as they landed.
He watched her tilt her head back, exposing her gorgeous tanned throat. Apparently that was so when you hurtled out of the plane your head didn’t slam backwards and knock out the person who was going to pull the ripcord. Good choice. Tilt head. He could just imagine her. Wished he could see her do it. He grinned and looked away. No, he didn’t. At least he was calmer than he’d thought he’d be, watching all this.
Simon glanced at the cost of the extravagant packages that could come with the jump and doubted she had enough for the whole experience to be filmed, captured in photographs as well and saved in a bound volume. He wandered discreetly over to the sales desk, enquired, and hoped like hell she wouldn’t mind if he paid for the video/album package to arrive in the mail. He ensured Lawrence switched on his high-definition camera. It was the next best thing to being a fly on the wall without having to actually be there. And she’d have a permanent memento of the event.
She hopefully wouldn’t take it up full time if she loved it. Simon found himself smiling as he drifted back to the doorway, where he leaned while he waited for her to finish her induction.
Then it was time for her to go. Go as in jump.
Tara bounced across the room with her harness all strapped between her legs and over her shoulders. Plastic wind protection goggles sat on top of her head and she radiated suppressed excitement like a beacon in a storm.
The two other people in her group seemed to radiate less exuberant anticipation. Right there with you, buddy, Simon thought with some amusement, and appreciated again that Tara did bring a sparkle into his day. As long as she didn’t want him to join her he was quite happy to stand on the sidelines and enjoy the show.
Tara barely felt her feet on the floor. She couldn’t wait for that moment when they tumbled out. She glanced back at her older instructor who carried the chute that would float them to the ground again and wanted to hug herself with excitement. Or have Simon hug her.
She glanced at Simon, who watched her with a whimsical expression on his face. It was so cool he’d come with her. Even if he didn’t want to jump, and it had been a pretty big spur-of-the-moment ask, he still looked fairly happy. She’d been a little afraid of that. That he’d radiate stress vibes and doomsday foreboding but he’d surprised her with how calmly he was taking it and how supportive he was.
She had an epiphany that maybe real men didn’t have to do crazy things to be in tune with her. Look at her last man. He’d been crazy and had turned out to be a loser of the highest order so maybe the opposite worked.
She knew for a fact that Simon was far from a loser but she also knew she wasn’t looking long term for someone like him. People like him spent their lives with prim and proper doctors’ wives, not someone who wanted to seek thrills and drift from town to town like her. People like Simon hadn’t been brought up in orphanages and foster-homes.
But you could kiss those people. The ones you weren’t going to marry. It was a shame she’d enjoyed it so much because the idea of kissing Simon again intruded at the wrong times—like that mad moment when she’d asked him to jump and then kissed him.
But she wasn’t worrying about that now and peered ahead to the tarmac where their little plane waited patiently for them. Excitement welled in her throat as they all paused at the gate and the actual jumpers farewelled their ground crew.
‘Good luck. You look beautiful.’ Simon’s words took her by surprise and she could feel the smile as it surged from somewhere in her over-excited belly.
‘Thank you. So do you.’ She grinned at him and he leaned in and kissed her firmly on the lips so that she knew she’d been kissed. For the first time the ground felt a little firmer under her feet and the haze she’d been floating in sharpened to reality. Luckily, that made it even more exciting.
The next fifteen minutes was spent crammed into the plane as they climbed in a slow spiral up to fifteen thousand feet. She sat perched on the lap of her chute buddy and surprisingly time seemed to pass very quickly with the hills towards Lyrebird Lake in the distance and the white sand of the beach underneath them.
They were going to land on the beach below the lighthouse and apparently Simon would already be there with the ground crew waiting for them to land.
Her chute buddy was fun and kept saying how relaxed she looked. But this wasn’t something she was afraid of.
Finally they reached fifteen thousand feet, the roller door slid back along the roof and the cold wind rushed in.
He’d told her it was one degree outside but it would only take thirty seconds to get back to warm air, but she doubted she’d have time to feel temperatures as they hurtled through the clouds.
The boy next to her, now securely strapped to his chute buddy, cast an imploring look at the safety of the plane and then, with one wild-eyed glance at the occupants, disappeared.
‘Let’s go, Tara,’ Lawrence shouted in her ear, and he edged his bottom and Tara as well, balanced on his lap, towards the opening and swung both their legs out until their backs were to the plane. Below them the ocean and the beach curved below under the scattered clouds.
She pushed her head back into Lawrence’s shoulder and then they were out. Wind rushed past their faces, she had a brief glimpse of the plane above them in the sky and then they were facing the ground with the wind rushing into her face and her hands clenched tightly on the chest straps.
Funnily, even in that moment, she could see Simon’s face. She grinned at the image and stared out into the vacant air in front of her. ‘Woo-hoo.’
Simon had watched the plane disappear into the clouds.
Fifteen minutes later he watched the blue parachute as it came into view, imagined the grin on her face, the joy in her eyes and found himself very keen to see her feet touch the ground. Though no doubt she’d be wanting the descent to last for ever.
At the last minute he pulled his phone from his pocket and videoed her landing. She waved as she sailed past, and he chuckled out loud. This had been fun and he’d been dreading it.
She landed smoothly on her bottom with her feet out in front of her, strapped like a little limpet to her chute buddy, and with a couple of snaps of the buckles she was free to stand and twirl around with excitement. He grinned as he watched her.
Later when he took her to the little restaurant on the river for a late breakfast she couldn’t stop talking, reliving the experience, and he watched her shining eyes blink and frown and widen as she told the tale of her tumble from the aircraft, the whoosh of the parachute opening and the moment when she’d seen him watching her land.
Then he watched her eyes widen wistfully when a birthday cake was carried across the room and she glanced behind them to see where it was going. But his breath caught in his throat when he saw her eyes fill with tears when she realised it was hers. What was wrong? Had he done wrong?
He’d upset her and he didn’t know why. ‘It’s yours. For you. Happy birthday, Tara.’
She just sat there staring at the lit candles as they burnt merrily. The candles started melting and began to dribble wax down onto the cake. Spluttered and dripped. Still she didn’t blow them out.
‘Blow them out.’
She looked at him. Her eyes still looked haunted. Then she whispered, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Quick.’
The waitress and chef who had followed the cake out were looking at each other, not sure what was going on, as they waited to sing like they did every time a cake was ordered.
Then she blinked, shook her head and blew them out. Almost defiantly. Certainly with ample power. To her horror, she even blew wax onto the tablecloth. Blushed and glanced at the waitress and her ‘Sorry’ was drowned out by the lusty singing of ‘Happy Birthday’. Then she did cry.
The waitress and the chef bolted back to the kitchen and Simon handed her a napkin. Tara hid her face in it.
‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’
With startling clarity he suspected what was wrong. ‘Have you ever blown candles out on a cake before, Tara?’
She glared at him. ‘Not since I was six. As if you couldn’t tell.’
