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“Do you usually go in bare feet?” he asked evenly, obviously choosing to ignore her comment.
“Hardly.”
Her laughter mixed amusement with discomfort—discomfort caused by both the Claire Heaslip gaffe and her heated response to his gaze on her legs, on skin laid bare by the dress’s abbreviated hemline.
“Chantal would have a stroke if I turned up barefoot. I took them off because I was contemplating walking.” She retreated to the far side of the car and retrieved the shoes from the passenger seat, grimacing as she slipped them on. “These are not your ideal walking shoes.”
No kidding, his silence seemed to say. To a man dressed functionally in jeans, T-shirt and boots, her cocktail ensemble probably looked way over the top. Which it suddenly felt. While she silently bemoaned her lack of judgement in trusting Kree’s fashion advice, Zane went into work mode, studying the lay of the car, fetching the truck. Before he hooked it up, he glanced her way. “You want me to drop you at your sister’s before I start here?”
“No. Chantal said she would send someone.”
Not just anyone, but Dan the Dentist, handpicked as suitable husband material. She pictured him in a sober suit and tie, brown hair neatly parted and combed into place, and she imagined the evening ahead, as flat and colourless as that image.
She looked at Zane O’Sullivan and one word came to mind. Technicolor. Before she could think of all the reasons why she shouldn’t, she took a deep breath and spoke quickly. “I’ve changed my mind. Could I hitch a ride back to town with you? Would you mind?”
He gave her a look, which, between those shades and the straight set of his mouth, she found impossible to read. “Doesn’t matter if I mind or not. I’m not leaving you out here.”
Ten minutes later Zane cursed his sense of chivalry. Enjoying the thought of what she could or could not possibly be wearing under that silky wisp of a dress was one thing. Thinking about taking it off her was another altogether. She was Principal Goodwin’s daughter, Mayor Goodwin’s daughter, for Pete’s sake. Definitely not the kind of woman you imagined naked.
Not in the way he was contemplating. With those fey hazel eyes warm with wanting, all that dark glossy hair cloaking his pillow, and those generous curves covered only in smooth pale skin…and him.
Hoo, man.
Zane shook the heat from his vision, then attempted to apply all his attention to the road. But how could he concentrate with the hint of her perfume—something as softly fragrant as a spring dawn—drifting in and out of his senses? Not to mention how she kept peeping looks at him from behind her dark glasses. Another five minutes of this and he would likely break out in a sweat. Or do something dumb, like invite her for a drink. Or something truly moronic like skipping the drink and taking her straight to his room.
He almost snorted out loud. Julia Goodwin’s expensive finery decorating the floor of his cheap hotel room? Keep dreaming, bud!
“I’m sorry I dragged you out,” she said eventually in her softly voiced, carefully phrased way. “No doubt there are places you would rather be on a Friday night.”
She had that right, but the one uppermost in his mind—his room, his bed—he kept to himself. “Yeah, but I doubt the Lion’ll run dry before I get back.”
“You were having a drink?”
“I was about to. Bill had already had several when he got your sister’s message.”
“So that’s why you’re here.” He felt her studying him, more openly this time. “Thank you.”
Zane shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“No, it’s Bill’s job. I know you help him out whenever you’re in town….”
Her voice trailed off, inviting him to answer her unasked question about what brought him to town. Why not? Talking to her was safer than fantasising about her. “I’ve got a week or so to kill, so I thought I’d give Bill a break and see how Kree’s doing.”
“She didn’t mention you were coming.”
“Last-minute decision.”
“Oh. Have you seen her yet?”
“I only got in this afternoon and figured she’d be busy. Besides, I’m never at my best in a hair shop.”
“Don’t let Kree catch you referring to her salon as a hair shop,” she said with a smile, which froze almost instantly. “Although I wish you had gone in, because now you’ve missed her. She’s gone away for the weekend with Tagg. Her boyfriend. He lives over in Cliffton.”
“Then I’ll see her when she gets back. How is she?”
“She’s Kree.” The smile returned. “Busy, full-on, happy.”
“You mean, manic?”
Her smile grew to a soft appreciative chuckle, and Zane found himself turning to catch the laughter on her face. It transformed her from pretty to stunning, and he found himself staring—again—and wondering how he never noticed that before, back when he lived in Plenty.
Probably because he’d never been close enough to see her laughing. Hell, he remembered times when she had crossed the street to avoid him, and if she ever had looked his way, it was with the kind of curious, wide-eyed fascination usually reserved for viewing aliens. Which pretty much summed up how this town had always made him feel.
Right now he felt her watching him with a different kind of fascination. She had gone very still, the laughter fading from her lips. Her focus seemed to shift to his mouth. His lips tingled with heat. Uh-uh, no way. She was the dinner-and-dating-and-home-to-meet-Daddy type, not the straight-into-bed type. And absolutely not the front-seat-of-the-truck type.
He dragged his eyes back to the road and his mind back from the gutter, pressed a touch harder on the accelerator and searched for a diversionary topic of conversation.
“You’re all dressed up to party.” He waved a hand in the general direction of her itty-bitty dress. “So why did you decide to go home, instead?”
“I didn’t really want to go in the first place.” She shifted her shoulders uneasily. “Do you think running my car off the road is a good enough excuse to cancel? I mean, it’s not as if I crashed, or hurt myself….”
“Why do you need an excuse? If you didn’t want to go, you should’ve said no.”
“Chantal doesn’t recognize the word.”
“Maybe she needs to hear it more often.”
A small frown puckered her brow, and Zane wondered how right he’d got that. Then he told himself it wasn’t his problem. That wasn’t why he had asked her about the party. He was making small talk, that was all. He absolutely did not want to know if, for example, she was letting down some suit-and-tie type by not turning up.
“Back when you were hooking up to the car, I rang Chantal to say I’d decided to go home. She didn’t sound happy. I suspect she might send someone to fetch me.”
“If you weren’t at home, that someone wouldn’t be able to fetch you.”
“Not home?” Her softly incredulous laugh brought his gaze back to her mouth, made him think of intimacies he had no business with. “In case it escaped your attention, there are not a lot of hidey-holes open on a Friday night in Plenty.”
“There’s the Lion. You could come down for a drink, shoot some pool,” Zane suggested casually, not because he expected her to accept. Not because he wanted her to accept. For a long moment she stared at him, surprised, but obviously considering his invitation. He felt his body quicken. Then she shook her head and looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll have to pass this time.”
This time. As if he was in the habit of asking her every other day. But as he downshifted to cross the railway line, he shrugged and cut her a look. “Your loss.”
Julia looked out the window. They had reached the edge of town. In a couple of minutes she would step down from the truck, toss him a careless “See you later” and know that later might be another twelve years. She felt a deep, totally inappropriate sense of disappointment. Her loss indeed.
Of course, she could always change into some jeans and walk down to the Lion. She could saunter up alongside him and say, “Hey, Zane. You want to shoot some pool?”
Then she could watch the whole bar population either A: burst into spontaneous laughter, B: keel over with shock, or C: call for the men in white coats.
Julia Goodwin sauntering up to a public bar? That isn’t going to happen, she concluded fatalistically as he turned the corner into Bower Street and pulled up alongside number fourteen. When he reached for his door, she leaned across to stop him. “There’s no need to get out.”
She felt him still, and when his gaze dropped to where her hand rested on his forearm, she was suddenly aware of more than his stillness. His skin felt warm—no, hot—and slightly rough, with its smattering of hair. It also felt incredibly hard, and she realized with a start how long it had been since she had touched a man’s bare skin. And how much she missed that sensation of heat and strength, of leashed masculine power.
The moment stretched out, silent and thick with awareness, until she reclaimed her hand, dragging her fingers a little because she couldn’t stop herself. Telltale heat rose from her neck to her ears, and she silently thanked Kree for making her leave her hair down. At least she had got that part right!
She cleared her throat, unable to look at him in case he had misinterpreted that touch as some sort of come-on. “I just wanted to say thank you, and sorry for interrupting your night, and I hope you catch up with Kree soon.”
“I’ll call her at work on Monday.”
“Mornings are usually quietest, especially Monday. She might even be able to take a half day.” She reached for the door. “See you later, then.”
“What about your car?”
Julia blinked, and he hooked a thumb back over his shoulder.
Ah, that car! How could she have forgotten? “It’s my mother’s, actually. I don’t have a car at the moment, so she loaned me hers while she’s overseas. My parents are in Tuscany.” And why am I telling him all this? She clutched her evening bag with unsteady fingers. “What did you need to know about the car?”
“D’you want Bill to fix whatever needs fixing, or just do up a quote?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“Yes…what?” he asked slowly, and she felt that same intense scrutiny she had felt out by the roadside. Her ears burned with heat as she scrambled for an answer to the simple question.
“Yes, please.” Good grief, could she have said anything more stupid? She bit her lip, then tried again. “Yes. Please have him fix whatever needs fixing. Bill does all our work—there’s no need for a quote.”
Quitting on that positively eloquent note seemed like a good plan, so she opened her door and slid down to the curb, but before she closed the door she forced herself to smile up at him. “I really can’t thank you enough for bringing me home.”
“You’ll get the bill.”
Julia shook her head. “I wanted to thank you, personally.”
“Buy me a drink sometime.”
She stared up at him, one part of her brain screaming, How about now? while another urged her to smile, offer something politely meaningless such as, Yes, we must do that sometime, and walk away.
Oh, but she didn’t want to listen to that safe, sensible, good-girl voice. For once she wanted to do something a little bit bad. Ordinarily one drink wouldn’t qualify as even vaguely bad, but she had a strong feeling—a hot, dizzying feeling—that a drink with Zane O’Sullivan wouldn’t be ordinary.
“I think I would like…” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, moistened her lips, then realized she had lost his attention. He was frowning into his side mirror, while his fingers drummed against the wheel.
“Looks like you have a visitor.”
She stepped back just far enough to see the gleaming white Volvo that had pulled up behind them, and the gleamingly groomed man who stepped from the driver’s seat. He looked solid and respectable and, yes, dull.
She heard the tow truck kick over and felt such a jolt of panic, she had to stop herself from leaping at the window. Instead she stepped onto the running board and somehow above the thud of her heart she heard herself say, “I really would like to buy you that drink sometime.”
Perhaps he saw the nervous tension in her face. Or perhaps he was looking right by her at Dan the Dentist waiting patiently on the verge. With those impenetrable lenses, it was impossible to know. Whatever he saw, it caused one corner of his mouth to kick up wryly. It also caused him to shake his head and say, “Thanks, but I’m thinking that’s not such a great idea after all.”
Of course he was right.
She stepped down from the window and away from the truck, and as she watched it pull away, she felt a weighty gloom settle over her.
Drinks with Zane O’Sullivan might not be such a great idea, but that didn’t make a dinner party with Mr. Solid and Respectable sound any more palatable.
Two
In the end she didn’t go to Chantal’s dinner party. Instead she shared a considerably less formal supper, sitting at her kitchen table, with Dan. He wasn’t as dull as she had imagined. In fact, he seemed nice, in a comfy, companionable way. When he sheepishly admitted that Chantal had browbeaten him into attending her party, Julia decided she could like him.
She certainly liked how her concentration remained fixed on the conversation, instead of straying to his lips. She enjoyed the complete absence of breathlessness and butterflies, and she positively loved how she could read every expression on his open face.
If she ever went for a drink with Dan she wouldn’t consider it bad, and touching his arm would be simply that. Touching his arm. It wouldn’t remind her how long it had been since a man’s arms embraced her, or how many nights she lay awake wondering if she would ever be held that closely again.
If Dan reminded her of a mild autumn morning next to Zane O’Sullivan’s midday summer heat, then so much the better. Summer had never been her favorite season.
After she waved Dan goodbye, she told herself she liked a man who fit her homely decor, as Dan surely did. As Zane wouldn’t. He would fill her kitchen with his size and his maleness. He definitely would not look at home. Nor would he succumb to Chantal’s velvet-steamroller tactics, as Dan had done, although that was a moot point.
His name would never grace one of Chantal’s guest lists.
For a start, he dressed for work in rugged denim instead of fine Italian suit cloth, and second, he didn’t have a prestigious address. In fact, if he even owned a home, Kree hadn’t mentioned it. He lived wherever his work as a heavy-machinery mechanic took him—most recently the mines in remote West Australia—and he didn’t stay anywhere long. His seven years in Plenty had probably been the longest he had lived in one place.
As she propped open her bedroom window and breathed the heady scent of moonlight and roses, Julia recalled how the O’Sullivan family arrived in town. What a stir they’d created in the conservative community—two rebellious preteens and their mother, old before her time and carrying more baggage than could ever fit in the beat-up van that died slap-bang in the middle of Main Street.
That was how they arrived, and they’d stayed because they couldn’t afford to leave.
Julia remembered the hushed talk—ugly rumors of a shadowy strife-filled past—and she remembered how most of the township had ostracized them. A smaller part had adopted them as its charity du jour. Not an easy introduction to a new community, especially for adolescents, and they’d each handled it differently.
Kree had built a brash facade, stuck her snub nose high in the air and refused to accept that she couldn’t belong. She battled to win not only acceptance but popularity, too, while her brother…well…Zane never won any popularity contests, because he’d refused to enter.
Some said he would have joined his father behind bars if Bill hadn’t given him a job at the garage, first pumping gas after school and then full-time. But as soon as he completed his apprenticeship he’d left Plenty—and those Claire Heaslip rumors—behind.
It seemed as if he had been moving ever since.
Why he’d chosen that lifestyle was not her concern, Julia told herself as she settled into bed and punched her pillow into shape. She had no business thinking of Zane O’Sullivan at all. She should be thinking of Dan—nice, comfortable, settled Dan—who had left with a promise to call her during the week.
Unfortunately, with her eyes closed and the summer air embracing her in its sultry caress, the mild dentist didn’t stand a chance. Instead she remembered the supple strength of a man’s arm beneath her fingers, the movement of snug white cotton over the casual shrug of broad shoulders, hair glinting with gold in the sun’s dusky light.
And with startling clarity she recalled one simple scrap of conversation.
Zane had been hooking the truck to her car when he’d asked how it ended up in the drain. When she told him the sequence of events, magpies and all, he didn’t shake his head critically or fix her with the scathing look she’d expected. He simply murmured, “Accidents happen,” and carried on with his task.
Julia slipped from wakefulness into sleep with that neutral, nonjudgmental phrase in her mind and a small smile on her lips.
Six days later, Zane stood on the neatly mown verge outside 14 Bower Street, juggling her car keys from one hand to the other. Distracted first by the touch of her hand and then by the arrival of Volvo Man, he had barely glanced sideways at the place on Friday night. Today he saw the truth of Kree’s excited exclamation when she had moved in last summer.
“You wouldn’t recognize the old Plummer place!” she had practically screamed down the phone line.
A gross understatement, Zane decided.
Julia had transformed the rundown weatherboard cottage, painting it some soft shade of blue and framing it with a garden. He wasn’t big on descriptive labels, but right after pretty and peaceful, he thought of welcoming. He could almost imagine the old house itself smiling gently as it opened its arms and beckoned, Come on in.
Houses with arms? Houses that beckoned?
