Only We Know (23 page)

‘What's wrong?' His answer was fast and serious.

She tried to summon the most matter-of-fact tone she could to hide the stupid and the stranded and the sad. ‘I'm sorry to call you, Sam.'

‘Where are you, Calla? What's happened?'

‘I'm still at the pub. The thing is … I can't drive your car and I don't know the way to walk back to the cabin in the dark. I don't care about getting wet but I'm worried I'll get lost and fall off a cliff and be eaten by sharks. I need you to come and get me.'

‘I'm coming.' He hung up.

Calla dropped the phone in her lap. Rested her head on the steering wheel and waited.

Stupid, stranded and sad. Oh how she regretted getting on her high horse and accusing him of being an arrogant arsehole. It was especially ill-advised considering she'd just had to ask for his help.

The street was as quiet as the pub had been, not surprising given it was a weeknight. It was a few minutes before another couple of patrons left the pub and drove away in their car, up the main road towards the inky dark. Calla had a moment of city jitters and locked the doors.

She tried not to count the minutes. She listened to the rain and wondered if she should ring Rosie to tell her what had been going on. But when she checked the time and saw it was ten-thirty, she realised it was way too late to be ringing a pregnant woman. Everyone else on the island was probably safely tucked up in bed too. Had Sam been in bed? She shook off the thought. She wondered if Jem and Jessie would be asleep. They probably were, with a new baby in the house, trying to snatch some shut-eye wherever they could so when the baby was awake they could be awake too, gazing lovingly into its eyes, sucking up all the joy and happiness in the world for themselves when other people would give anything to have just a little for themselves. Calla swallowed the bitterness she felt at just knowing that little piece of information about Jem's life. His happy life, his life without her and Rosie. His life without his sisters.

Calla almost jumped out of her skin when her phone rang. It lit up the cabin and vibrated against her leg. She snatched it up.

‘Sam?'

‘It's me.'

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm right here.'

Calla looked at the side window. It had fogged up with her breath but she saw a shape. She wiped the condensation away with her sleeve and there he was, bending down to look at her. He wasn't smiling, but he wasn't scowling either. Her pulse picked up and pounded behind her eyes.

‘Hi,' she said and lifted her free hand to wave at him.

‘You all right?' His voice was coming down the line, bouncing off a tower god knows where, but she watched his lips move and the echo of his voice outside the car looked like bad lip-syncing.

‘I'm okay. Perhaps a little drunk. And embarrassed.'

‘Don't be,' he said. ‘I'm glad you didn't go wandering off into the dark by yourself. You could have been attacked by feral turkeys.'

Calla laughed. It felt so good to laugh with him again. ‘Feral what?'

Now she could see his smile through the window, as if it were lit by a million stars. ‘I'm not kidding. There are hundreds of the bloody things around Penneshaw. They're mean.'

She added this one to the list. On top of everything else he'd done, Sam had rescued her from being attacked by wild turkeys.

Calla dropped the phone on the passenger seat and unlocked the doors.

Sam opened the driver's side and reached for her hand. She put hers in his and slid out of the four-wheel drive. Her boots crunched on the road and when she looked up she could see he was soaking wet. His clothes were dripping and clinging to his shoulders and chest, his arms and thighs, and he'd pushed his sodden hair back off his forehead.

‘Oh. Shit. I didn't think … Damn it, you're soaked through. You must be freezing.'

He shrugged and shivered. ‘I'm an island boy: don't worry about it.' There were droplets of rain on his eyelashes and dripping from his nose and Calla wanted to wipe them all away, one by one.

‘You ran here, didn't you?' His hoodie was sagging from his shoulders. His soaked jeans were clinging to his thighs. His runners were waterlogged.

‘Nah. I caught the bus.'

‘You ran here in the cold and the dark and the rain.'

Sam shrugged it off. ‘It's what I do. I'm a professional hero, remember? I get paid to rescue damsels in distress.' He took her cheeks in his hands. His fingers were icy and wet but that wasn't why Calla was shivering.

‘I'm sorry for what I said before,' he said, looking into her eyes. ‘I was way out of line.'

‘Me too.' Sam was looking at Calla so intently that her heartbeat thudded that little bit faster. Like, heart-attack faster.

‘I'm trying to understand what's going on with you.'

‘When I understand myself, I'll let you know.'

And then his smile was back. The rain came down harder and Calla could feel the wet soaking into her hair and her shoulders. Water dripped off her nose and splattered her glasses. Sam looked fuzzy and streaky.

‘Shall we get in the car?'

Calla didn't want to walk away from this conversation. There was something she wanted him to understand.

‘Here's the thing about me, Sam, that I want you to know. I stick by people. I do. Even when I'm the one who ends up getting hurt. Even when it's my heart that gets broken. I don't give up. I'm not a runner.'

‘I know. You can't be. You'd get lost.'

They stood in the darkness for a moment, lost in each other.

‘Lucky I found you, Red.' He reached for her hand.

‘Thank you for coming to get me,' she said.

That sexy grin was back. ‘I bags the first shower. I deserve it, don't you reckon? Running all this way, dodging wild turkeys, to get to the damsel?'

She found her own sexy smile to flash back at him in the rain. ‘I was right. You are an arrogant arsehole.'

CHAPTER

29

Sam lay awake, his fingers linked under his still-damp hair. It wasn't the thin and scratchy blanket that was keeping sleep away, or the fact that the bed was a double and too short by about two feet. His feet, specifically. It wasn't the fact that he'd had an adrenaline rush like a drug surging through him when Calla had called, thinking that something serious had happened to her. And it wasn't the two-kilometre run — in the rain — back to the pub to rescue her, either.

It was purely and simply, infuriatingly, the fact that she wasn't in his bed.

When they'd returned to the cabin, they'd taken turns in the shower. He'd been the perfect gentleman and let her go first. Which meant he'd been forced to listen to her singing. Her sweet voice echoing through the cabin only served to remind him that they weren't skin to skin. The water splashing on the tiles was like percussion, and when he listened closely he recognised it as one of the Motown tunes she'd chosen from his iPod when they first drove out to Roo's Rest.

He'd waited in the kitchen, his wet clothes in the washing machine, a towel wrapped around his waist, cradling a coffee in his hands to thaw him out. The coffee was a weak-arse substitute for the warmth he really wanted. Skin to skin, her body on his, all around him, invading him. Her breath on his cheek as she came, panting, begging, saying his name.

They'd lost their chance. She was going home in the morning and the idea of a goodbye-and-see-you-round-fuck had lost some of its lustre after their fight. There was something more between them now than one night could assuage. He knew too much about her, liked her too much, to fuck her and then say goodbye.

Sam rolled onto his side, pulled the blankets up around his ears. He really needed to sleep. Usually, the crisp and clear Kangaroo Island air knocked him right out, but something was different this time. He felt tension coiling in almost every part of his body. It was the Charlie situation: that was all. He knew it was crunch time. It had to be. He couldn't keep making this trek back over the water to check on him. The old man had to be somewhere safe.

Tomorrow would be a long day. He'd drop Calla off at the ferry first thing, and then drive out to the old man's place, see how he was doing.

Tomorrow would be a long and lonely day, he realised.

Nice knowing you, Red.

Calla listened to the whirr of the fan heater as it pumped warm air into her bedroom and tried really, really, stupendously hard not to think about what Sam had said back at the pub.
It had better be about fucking me …

It was all she could think about now. Sam's kiss. His hard body. His mouth. The chest she'd already seen naked. Pity she hadn't been thinking about sex back then or she would have taken a lot more notice. And now he was a few metres away, in bed. Probably naked. She threw an arm over her eyes to block out the light from the clock radio on her bedside table. She squeezed her thighs together to fight off the tension building there. The tension could build as much as it liked, because all that flirting in the rain, all that discussion about spending the night together, had come to nothing.

The moment had passed. The truth was, she'd got cold feet. And it wasn't just from being soaked to the bone by the rain. She was going home in the morning and, while the idea of spending her last night with Sam sounded like maybe the best thing to ever happen to her, she feared she might never get over it.

The Greek chorus of doom inside her head began singing a song she knew well.

He's not going to fall in love with you.

Those words hurt but she wanted them to. She had to keep her perspective about the handsome Sam Hunter. So they'd kissed. Big deal. She'd been kissed before. And she knew she could walk away from his mouth and his sweet words. Tomorrow, this adventure would be over. Sam had to stay and convince Charlie to leave Roo's Rest, and she would go back to Adelaide. Whatever magical effect the island was having on her would be undone when she crossed the water and got back to her real life. Her
simple
real life, in which she could shed all her old skin and memories and heartbreaks and start afresh.

It was about time Calla Maloney did what made her happy. It was about time she started to live the life she should have been living all these years.

And she was absolutely, positively certain that that life should involve real love, not accidental lust. Not desperate love. Not last-chance love. Not one-night lust.

And if she had to wait forever for it, she would.

Because she was already planning her new life, and it was going to start tomorrow.

Calla woke uncharacteristically early. As she worked her eyes open, bright morning light streamed through the curtains in her holiday-cabin bedroom. The fan heater was the only sound she could hear. She listened for any signs of life on the other side of her bedroom door. It was silent. She slowly got out of bed, speared her feet into her Ugg boots before they hit the cold floor, and covered her pink flannelette PJs with her black cardigan.

She opened the door slowly. There was no sign of Sam. The living area and kitchen were empty and his bedroom door was still closed. Then she saw him outside on the small deck. He was scrolling through something on his iPad and drinking a coffee.

She didn't want to talk to him yet, wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to say.
Thank you
didn't seem nearly enough for what he'd done and how he'd helped her. So she bought some time, went to the kitchen, put the kettle on and made herself some toast. When it was smothered with just the right combination of butter and Vegemite, she took her coffee and sat on one of the sofas in the living area. She watched him through the window while she ate. His back was to her, his big navy coat keeping him warm, his dark hair unruly.

Calla wondered about his real life in Adelaide, tried to pick where he lived, what he did when he wasn't working. He clearly liked to cook. Liked wine. Running. He had a fondness for classic Aussie rock with a side of American oldies thrown in, and was divorced. There was a loyalty to his father that, despite his grumbles, seemed real and true. He had a way of talking that sucked you in like a well-written mystery novel, in his deep and rough voice that sounded like sex. He liked to joke and tease, and laughed warmly at other people's stories. When he listened to you, he zeroed in on your eyes as if his were laser beams.

She sighed. Not a lot there to hate. When the right woman came along for him, he'd be a catch. Having Sam Hunter in love with you would be like winning the man lottery.

When he stood up, pushed the chair back and turned, Calla tried to look absorbed in her coffee. She sipped it and realised it had gone stone-cold. The sliding door squeaked open and Sam stepped inside. Over his shoulder, the sky looked enormous and blue, not troubled by a single cloud.

‘Morning.' He walked over to the small kitchen and put his cup in the sink.

‘Morning,' she replied, trying to sound bright. Morning perky. It didn't come naturally.

‘Sleep well?'

Calla turned to him. ‘Yes.' No.

‘You're up a little earlier than I expected.' Sam glanced at his watch. ‘The next boat back to Adelaide leaves in two hours.'

‘Oh, right.' Calla felt a rush of relief flood her chest. Not sleeping with him had been for the best. She'd made the right decision last night. For if she had given in to what she'd felt, she'd be sitting there right now going over each word of that brush-off. She would have mulled over every syllable, picked them apart and taken them to heart. This way, in the cold light of the morning after the night in which she didn't have sex with Sam Hunter, she could see he was simply trying to be kind and helpful. ‘I'd better get packed then.'

‘Wait.'

They were so far away from each other, he in the kitchen, she in the living room, that she couldn't quite read the expression on his face.