Only We Know (14 page)

‘Dad? You home?'

Calla hung back, waited and watched from the grass in front of the house. She didn't feel quite right intruding on this father–son reunion and, considering what Sam had said, the presence of a stranger might unsettle him even further. The front door opened slowly.

‘Who's that?'

‘It's Sam, Dad.' Sam opened the door and held out a hand to his father. Calla thought it was a weirdly formal way to greet your own father.

‘Oh, Sam. How are you, son?'

‘Good, Dad, I'm good.'

Charlie stepped outside, let the screen door creak shut behind him. He might have matched Sam's height when he was younger, but he was a little stooped over now. He wore newish-looking jeans and a big, baggy home-knitted jumper. On his head, a knitted beanie in the red, blue and yellow colours of the Adelaide Crows hid the spiky, white-grey hair that Jem had painted in the picture. Despite the hunch in his posture, he appeared to be sturdy rather than frail and, while his shoulders weren't as wide as his son's any more, Calla guessed that once upon a time this old man had been a strapping young country boy with a strong jaw and a smile that could make girls go weak at the knees.

‘You want a cup of tea?' Charlie asked, his voice old-man croaky.

‘Sure,' Sam replied. ‘Sounds good.' He turned back to Calla and motioned that she should join him. ‘Any chance you've got some coffee, Dad? Calla doesn't drink tea.' As she walked towards the house, and stepped up to the veranda, she let herself imagine why Sam had remembered she was a coffee girl.

‘Well, well, well. Who's this you've brought with you?'

Both men turned to her. Sam's resigned smile couldn't compete with Charlie's beaming grin. The resemblance between the two men was striking.

‘Dad, this is Calla. She's from Adelaide and has got herself into some car trouble. I'm giving her a tour of the island.'

Calla hesitated but then did it anyway. She stepped towards Charlie, opened her arms wide and hugged him. ‘It's so lovely to meet you, Mr Hunter. Your property is amazing. The views are incredible.'

‘Please, love, call me Charlie.' Calla felt his strength in the hug and when he relaxed his grip he held her at arm's length and took in her face. She swore there was a sparkle in his eyes that hadn't been there a minute before.

‘Are those your dogs? I've never met a real farm dog before.'

Charlie whistled and the animals leapt onto the veranda and scurried to his feet. ‘Boxer and Banjo.' He made a different whistling noise and the dogs bolted off into the scrub on the western side of the house, running at a million miles an hour.

Calla laughed. ‘They're in a hurry.'

‘They think they're chasing a possum. They fall for it every time.' Charlie winked at her. ‘Did you say coffee, young lady?'

Calla reached forward, looped her arm around Charlie's and replied, ‘Why I'd love one.'

‘Come inside where it's warm. I've got a fire going.'

CHAPTER

18

Although Sam was watching it all play out before his very eyes, he was still finding it hard to believe. It had taken the redhead all of two minutes to sweep Charlie off his feet. The grumpy bastard was putty in her hands. All it took was a beaming smile and a flash of her sparkling green eyes and the old man was a goner. The tease in her voice? The long hug? The mention of the dogs? His old man had been played like a violin.

And she'd accused
him
of using charm to win women. That happened to be true but he didn't need it to be thrown back at him like it was a bad thing.

And to be fair, what man, what heterosexual man with a pulse, wouldn't be charmed by her?

Calla had kicked off her boots and she and Charlie had moved inside to the kitchen. Through the closed front door he could hear his old man's laugh bouncing around inside the small house. Sam shook his head. If Charlie could get his thoughts into any order that made sense that morning, he'd probably already leapt to the conclusion that Calla was Sam's girlfriend, and that she'd been invited back to Roo's Rest to meet her prospective father-in-law. It wasn't such a crazy leap of logic. Sam had only ever brought one other woman back to the island.

Christina had had her own PR firm, a go-getter attitude and long legs to match. She'd arrived at the fire station one day to organise some publicity for the Australian Professional Firefighters' Foundation, which was promoting its annual Firefighters' Ball with a photo shoot for the newspaper. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the
tap tap tap
of her stilettos on the concrete floor as she walked through the huge open doors at the front of the station, where the trucks and support vehicles exited. Every head turned at the noise — every bloke in the place was highly attuned to the presence of a woman in high heels — and there she was. Sam realised later, much later, that that was just the way she liked it. Rowdy had roped him in to the photo shoot and, while Sam usually hated all that shit, he couldn't say no to the cause. The Foundation raised money for the local children's hospital's burns unit and provided support to professional firefighters and their families. It was a no-brainer — and an honour — to give some of his time. Within thirty seconds, the PR woman with the legs and the heels and the low-cut silk top had them doing anything she wanted. Rowdy was loving it. Sam felt like a bit of a dick. She'd positioned them in front of a fire truck, their dark-blue uniforms bold against the red and the chrome, their arms crossed tight over their chests like football players in a team photo, and had them smiling broadly for the camera.

‘Look handsome!' Christina had called to him from her position behind the photographer, who waited, framed, and then snapped a shot.

Then she called out, ‘Hang on.' She'd tap-tap-tapped over to Sam and moved close. She looked up into his eyes with a wide-eyed and clear invitation and then slowly ran her fingers through his hair. ‘You're a little messy, firefighter.'

He met her gaze with an invitation of his own. ‘That's the look I was going for.'

‘Mmm,' she'd murmured and licked her lips, ‘maybe after this we can muss that hair the old-fashioned way.'

Christina had stepped back slowly, her hips swaying playfully with every step, and that was the beginning of it all. A year later, they were living together and life was good. They were about to head overseas on holiday; Sam had hatched a plan to propose to her in London so they could get married over there, which made sense as she had family in Kent. He knew that would mean his parents would miss out on being at the wedding, so a month before the trip they'd flown back to the island to see them. It hadn't gone well. It was June and it had been pissing down with rain, which wasn't unusual, but Christina took it as a personal affront. She hadn't brought the right coat and continually complained about the cold. Sam had wanted to show off the island to her, all the spectacular spots he'd loved growing up, but she'd spent the weekend indoors, sulking. And she'd flat out refused to stay overnight at Roo's Rest, so they'd had to drive back and forth to a bed and breakfast place in Penneshaw. Of course he was so smitten with her that he hadn't seen any of these things as a portent that the whole relationship would turn into a clusterfuck.

His failed marriage had pretty much ruined him for anything serious with a woman since. He didn't miss it. He'd dated a few women, really nice women, but never let them get too close. He understood now the things about his job that made relationships hard. Christina hadn't been willing to go through the hard times with him. Some of his mates had supportive and happy partnerships, but he didn't believe any more that he would find someone who'd stand by him when the going got tough.

So there was just him. It had been just him for a long time.

Sam took a deep breath, let the smell of grass and earth seep into his lungs and his senses. It was so visceral, that smell, that he absent-mindedly glanced down at his fingers to see if there was rich, damp dirt under his nails. There were happy memories of childhood, from times filled with love and boyhood boisterousness. But there was also a deep sadness, and that flowed back into him too. More sadness than a family of four should have to bear.

He tried to shake off all those memories like the dirt on his boots as he kicked at the veranda post. He gave up, toed them off and walked inside in his socks.

He looked around and whispered, ‘What the fuck?'

The room was a hive of activity. Calla was across the large, open living area running a sink full of hot water, judging by the rising steam. She'd shed her coat and seemed to have a tea towel tucked in to the front of her jeans. She was elbow deep in suds and scrubbing something with great energy. On the big, old wooden kitchen table, three mugs were set out in a row, each with its own spoon at a jaunty angle. Charlie was sitting at the head of the table, a habit he'd never broken, even though there was no family to be head of any more.

‘Here you go, mate.' Charlie slid one of the mugs along the table to his son.

Sam walked over and sat down in slow motion. He couldn't remember the last time the grumpy old bastard had ever called him ‘mate'.

‘Cheers, Dad.' He wrapped his fingers around the steaming mug, took a sip and looked around the room. It hadn't changed one bit since Sam was a kid. His old man's weathered leather recliner chair was positioned in the same spot. To his left, he could look out the window to the west to take in the ocean and the track from the main gate to check out who might be coming to pay a visit. To his right, the TV. The coffee table was covered with the same lace doilies his mother had loved, and on the wall nearest the kitchen were a dozen family portraits and photos of the Hunter family going back one hundred years. All of them were hanging askew, probably knocked by Charlie's shoulder as he'd ambled past. Sam's mother would never have allowed them to hand so crookedly. It was another reminder of how many years she'd been gone.

Everything about the place was like stepping back in time. Except there had never been a redhead in this house.

He sipped his coffee and looked over to Calla.

She was looking right at him with her eyebrows raised. ‘Sam?' She nodded surreptitiously in Charlie's direction. ‘Charlie's invited us to stay for lunch. Why don't you grab the stuff from the car so we can put it all away? You bought some long-life milk, didn't you?'

Sam pushed his chair back and got to his feet. ‘Sure.' He wondered if he sounded as confused as he felt. ‘I'll be right back.'

Calla somehow convinced Charlie to take his coffee out on the front veranda to sit in the warming sun with the dogs while she and Sam tidied up and made lunch. Ten minutes later, the fridge and cupboard were stocked with supermarket supplies and the jams and pickles they'd bought at the craft shop back in Penneshaw. Calla had helped Sam put things away and, based on the concern in her green eyes, she'd been as taken aback as he had at just how little food was in the cupboards. While he stacked tins of tomato soup next to crackers, biscuits, rice and pasta, another spear of concern washed through him: was Charlie forgetting to eat now, too? Physically, he looked older. The skin on his hands was baggier. There were hollows in his cheeks that Sam didn't remember, and that shake in the old man's hands as he held his coffee? That was unfamiliar too.

‘Sam, where are your dad's clean tea towels?' Not only had Calla washed all the dishes and scrubbed down every bench top, the cupboard doors and the sink, she'd opened the door of the oven and was now peering inside it.

He had to think. ‘In the bottom drawer by the fridge.' He crossed the kitchen and pulled open the drawer. ‘Or not.'

‘Oh.' Calla was beside him, staring down at the empty space.

Sam pushed it closed with his foot and turned to her. He reached over and tugged on her makeshift apron. She looked kind of sexy in it, her face flushed, her curls a little wild from the wind outside and the work. ‘You don't have to be doing this, you know.'

‘You're right. I don't have to. But he needs some help. This place is getting on top of him.' Calla averted her gaze from his, opened the cupboard under the sink, pulled steel wool out of a box and dampened it in the sudsy water.

How blind had he been that everyone else could see it but him?

Calla began scrubbing the hobs. He watched her and got a hint of what she meant. What should have been silver was a dull brown. He took a closer look. Her fingers were covered in the pink bubbles from the steel wool. He moved behind her, looked down over her shoulder and leant in close. She smelt like flowers and the curls of her hair tickled his nose. Where had her smile gone? Something was seriously wrong when the old man got all the charm and the flirting and all he got was the cold shoulder.

Calla stopped scrubbing when he came closer. Sam looked down where their bodies were touching and fought off the insane idea to thread his arms around her waist, spin her around and kiss her. It took a whole lot of self-control to fight off that thought.

He stepped back and occupied his hands by jamming them into the pockets of his jeans. That was the safest place for fingers itching to touch her.

Calla didn't turn back to him, just stared at the dirty stovetop. ‘Why don't you go outside and talk to your father?'

‘Right. I forgot. You want me to ask him about Jem.'

Then Calla turned and, in the small space between Sam and the stove, her breasts brushed up against him. When she sucked in a breath, they pressed harder. When her eyes darted to his lips, he decided it wasn't in his best interests to give her any more space. He wanted to push back against her, to feel her body. To discover with his hands the shape of her, the feel of her underneath her warm jumper and those jeans. He'd seen her bare breasts and it wasn't enough. He wanted to feel the soft skin in his hands, wanted to take a nipple into his mouth and watch her face when he sucked on it.