Only We Know (8 page)

Staying with Calla also meant he could delay dealing with his old man. After the day he'd had, he just wasn't in the mood for a fight. Keeping company with a gorgeous redhead was a much better option from where he stood.

Sam let the hot water sluice over his tired eyes, and it massaged his tense shoulders as it ran down his back. He tried not to think about the accident, about every other accident he'd attended. He'd seen things that would curl the hair of ordinary people. They were the images that, luckily, were never broadcast on the TV news or printed in the newspaper. He'd stopped being surprised years before about what he'd seen on the job. What a smashed-up car could do to the bodies inside it. The tragic and sad ways people killed themselves. What burning flesh smelt like. They were things that firies never discussed, not even with each other. Some lucky bastards had wives or partners, families, at home to help them forget about what they'd seen and done. Some talked about it, shared it with people who loved them. He'd tried it when he'd been married to Christina, but any hint of downloading what had happened at work had been met with stony silences and a turned-up nose and then, finally, contempt. He'd felt the huff of boredom and frustration whenever he mentioned anything that had happened on shift, when he'd tried to tell her about a shitfull day or explain why he wasn't in the mood to go out for dinner. She hadn't wanted to know anything about that part of him or his life. He'd learnt that very early on in their fucked-up marriage.

Sam cranked off the shower and stood in the wet silence. The echoing drips were like a heartbeat in the cold room. He rubbed his palms briskly over his hair, flicking off the moisture. He grabbed a towel, gave his hair a quick dry, and tucked it around his waist.

He knew he was better off alone. He'd discovered that about himself years before, too.

He would stay until morning to make sure Calla was all right and then go and deal with his old man.

When the music stopped, Calla pulled her earphones out and switched off her iPod. She turned to the window and noticed it was dark. Outside, there were no streetlights or lights from any passing cars to illuminate the outlook. She pulled herself to sitting and reminded herself where she was. On Kangaroo Island. Stranded in the company of a firefighter with a hero complex.

And in desperate need of the bathroom.

That plan she'd had to simplify her life? It had struck a major snag. She'd been trying to shed men, not attract them like metal shavings to a magnet.

Calla rubbed the worry from her eyes and pulled back the heavy blankets. She wondered if she could perhaps click her heels together and miraculously return home. In a blink, she could be in her own bed. With her own pillow. With her woollen quilt pulled over her head. Without a firefighter and his sexy grin on the other side of the door.

Without finding Jem. She shook off the thought.

Calla closed her eyes. Nothing about the trip so far had felt right. The nausea-inducing journey over on the ferry, losing her glasses, the car accident, meeting Sam.

Everything had been an accident so far, in every sense of the word.

Calla pulled herself up and turned, planting her feet on the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting for the disorientation in her head to settle. When it finally did, she stood slowly, stretched and yawned, worked out the pain in the small of her back, no doubt from the unfamiliar mattress, and gathered her emotional strength. She grabbed one of the blankets from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders like a huge pashmina.

She padded in her thin socks to the bedroom door and opened it.

The light from the living room made her blink. When she stopped, she tried not to look shocked.

Sam was standing two metres from her, wearing nothing but a hand towel and a smile.

CHAPTER

12

‘You're awake,' Sam said.

‘Yes.'

‘Shower's all yours.'

‘Thanks.'

It wasn't the best zinger she could come up with but, in the circumstances, was that a surprise? The man was wearing a towel. A very small towel. Calla looked him up and down and wondered how the hell it was staying up. It gripped his body, one end barely tucked in where it doubled over low down at his hipbones, and there was a lot of thigh on show. A whole lot of lean, tanned thigh on those long, long legs. Perving wasn't creepy, she tried to tell herself, it was simply appreciation. She was a woman, after all, and he was a handsome man, with most of his body on show. His wet body. She could appreciate it without it meaning anything. And anyway, he was probably used to it, she thought. No doubt he had to bat women off like flies. And that surely must have engendered a certain arrogance about being handsome and brave and heroic and all that other firefighter stuff. Calla could see that for what it was and was not going to play to the cliché. Instead, she would invert it. She let him see her eyes wander slowly up and down his body. It's what he deserved if he was going to stand there without moving or looking the slightest bit embarrassed.

‘There'd better be some hot water left for me,' she said.

Sam smiled, shrugged his shoulders. ‘A cold shower never hurt anyone.'

There were droplets of water in the dusting of hair between his pecs and some had caught on his eyelashes.

She faked a yawn. All that handsome half-nakedness was boring, right? ‘What's the time, anyway?'

Sam checked his wrist. He wore a waterproof watch, of course. ‘It's seven. How you doing?'

He wanted to have a conversation
now
?

How was she feeling? Not good. In fact, she was feeling completely overheated and discombobulated. She was totally distracted by his body. Who wouldn't be? There were muscles there that she hadn't ever seen on a man's body in real life. What were those bits around his hips and how did they get so muscled and pronounced? And those shoulders … she guessed they'd grown that strong from carrying people out of burning buildings while carrying thirty kilograms of equipment on his back. He had nice arms; he definitely had nice arms. And when she looked closer, she could make out slightly raised veins running from elbow to wrist.

‘Sorry … what?' Calla's eyes pinged back to his. He seemed to be waiting for an answer to something.

Of course she'd totally lost her train of thought.

‘I asked you how you were feeling. Did the rest work? How's that headache?' Sam propped his hands on his hips. The towel moved slightly and Calla lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

Did she still have a headache? The ache in her head was gone but had been swiftly replaced by one somewhere lower. ‘I'm feeling better, actually.'

‘That's good. Glad to hear it.'

‘I'll just …' She pointed past him to the bathroom. She needed to end this conversation now. She really needed to stop looking at him.

Please be dressed when I return.

‘I'll grab my things and have a shower, too. I think I need to warm up more than anything.'

‘Sure.' Sam smiled and looked at her in a strange way.

She walked by him. He smelt like soap. He smelt like wet man.

Unfortunately, that was Calla's favourite kind.

Sam had tossed on some clean clothes and decided he had to do something about the raging hunger he was feeling. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and it was now dinnertime.

Calla was still in the shower. Had been for twenty minutes. He tried not to think about it. Definitely didn't need to think about the redhead, naked and soaped up.

His phone rang and vibrated on the kitchen bench. He smiled when he saw the name on his display.

‘Rowdy. What the fuck do you want?'

‘Yeah, I love you, too, Crash.' Behind his best mate's voice, Sam could hear laughter and music. ‘Where the hell are you? I'm at the pub and you're not here. Didn't we have a date?'

‘Fuck. No, sorry. I'm on KI.'

‘Everything all right with the old man?'

‘Nah. Not really.'

‘He's worse?'

‘His doctor's been on my back about it. One day he's going to trip over on the farm somewhere and get eaten by sheep. Stupid fuckers that they are. And he's still driving.'

Neither of them had to mention how many times they'd been to car accidents in which oldies had mistaken the brake for the accelerator and ploughed into something or someone. On the island, that something would most likely be a tree. In the city, he'd attended jobs in which cars had rammed into shop fronts, crushing tables and chairs and, horrifyingly, people. Once, it was a childcare centre. More memories he tried to push down. Sam hadn't even attempted to have that conversation with his old man. Trying to take Charlie's car away from him would be like lobbing a hand grenade into his life.

‘When you heading back?'

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced over to the bathroom door. That was always a complicated question but things had got a little trickier now that he'd taken on a redhead with suspected concussion and no means of transport.

‘I'm not sure. I'm driving out to Roo's Rest tomorrow to see the old man. Depends how that goes.' Sam had been in this position before. Every time something worrying happened he'd fly over to KI, hire a car and drive out to see his father. They would fight, Sam would leave in a stubborn rage about his father's intransigence and Charlie would refuse to wave as he stood on his front veranda and watched his son drive away.

Sam didn't have high hopes for anything different this time.

‘Well, I'll have a beer for you. Or maybe two. Hell, I'm on a break and I'm letting my very short hair down. And, Crash,' Rowdy lowered his voice, ‘just let me say, there are women here. New women.'

Sam shook his head. Rowdy had more luck with women than almost anyone he knew. He looked to that bathroom door again. ‘And here I am all on my lonesome. Wait a minute … since when have you needed a wingman, anyway?'

‘You know what it's like. They travel in twos. Hey, that's given me an idea …' Rowdy laughed down the line and Sam had to join in. His mate was shameless. And, somehow, he got away with it every time.

‘As I said, here all alone. Don't rub that shit in.'

‘Hey, give me a call when you get back. Good luck with the old man.' Then Rowdy whistled down the line. ‘Gotta go. Two blondes are checking me out. They look incredibly thirsty. See ya.'

Sam ended the call. His best mate was drinking in a crowded bar over in Adelaide, in the company of gorgeous women. He was in a rented cabin in what passed for his hometown with a bolshie naked redhead, dinner in the fridge and an unopened bottle of wine on the kitchen bench.

When he thought about where he'd rather be, his answer surprised the hell out of him.

Calla had taken her yoga pants and a warm jumper into the bathroom with her so she wouldn't have to repeat Sam's performance and parade around in a towel. That would have been a little over the top. More than provocative, she'd decided. She didn't need Sam to be getting any ideas about what this arrangement was, and she so wasn't going to fall for the firefighter thing. So she went for the passion killers: her Ugg boots. They were a necessity in this climate, she decided, and she didn't care what Sam or anyone else said.

When she closed the bathroom door behind her she found Sam in the kitchen. He was fully clothed, which was a relief, in a forest-green, warm-looking knit jumper and black jeans. His hair was still damp and he looked clean and scrubbed.

‘Did that warm you up?'

‘Yeah, it did, thanks. There's a washing machine and a dryer here. I've shoved my clothes in. Do you want to clean yours too? I know they got kind of dirty …' When you were trying to save people's lives. She wanted to say it, but didn't.

‘Let me grab them.' A minute later, their clothes were mingling in the frothy suds. Calla didn't want to think about what kind of underwear he wore and how it would be tossing and turning with hers. Her sensible undies. His … boxers? She looked him up and down. She couldn't tell. And then once again tried to stop thinking about it.

Sam had returned to his spot in the kitchen and smiled at her across the kitchen bench. ‘You hungry?'

Calla could feel her stomach rumbling but wasn't sure if it was for want of food. Something about this scene was strange and confusing. What was going on? Sam looked like he was settling in. First the lift back to cabin, then the shower in her bathroom. He was definitely wearing fresh clothes, so he must have unloaded a bag from his car. Now their dirties were rubbing against each other in the washing machine.

And he was in the kitchen — her kitchen, albeit her temporary one — asking her about dinner?

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

‘I've had a look through your shopping.'

Calla felt her face flush. Judging by the way he was built, he was probably a wholegrain bread kind of guy (if he hadn't sworn off carbs entirely), ate activated almonds (whatever the hell they were) and was right into the latest super foods. No one who looked like he did could possibly eat like a regular person. And what had she bought from the supermarket to sustain her? Comfort food, mostly. If ever an occasion had called for such solace, this trip was top of the charts. With a bullet. Which all made her feel slightly defensive about her food choices.

‘Listen. It wasn't a well-thought-out plan, I admit. I was still feeling quite queasy at the time, as you well know, after that boat ride. I didn't have much of an appetite yesterday and I didn't have my glasses and I could barely see the labels.' Each excuse sounded more pathetic than the last.

‘You didn't seem to have much trouble finding the chocolate.' Sam smirked.

Calla held up a hand. ‘I will never, ever apologise for chocolate.'

He smiled. ‘I wouldn't dare ask you to. Pull up a chair. I grabbed some things from my car. On the menu tonight we have tomato soup from the tin and baked potatoes.' Sam flipped the tin of tomato soup in the air and caught it without even looking. Calla realised he was looking right at her instead.