Drawing back so she could see his face, Nina said, ‘I got a red fruit roll-up!’
‘You had two red fruit roll-ups today? What did you do, trade your sandwich?’
She grinned. ‘No, just one roll-up!’
‘So the highlight of your entire day was that you got your favourite colour roll-up in your lunchbox?’
‘Yes!’
Dean laughed and lowered her to her feet. ‘Well, that makes the whole day worth it. Maybe you’ll get one tomorrow too.’
She squealed, hugged him around the waist then ran around the desk and pitched herself at Ethan, who made a sharp, pained sound as she collided with him.
Dean turned to hug Rowan, then smiled at Ben, who’d remained by the door and was looking for his mother.
‘I think your mum decided to pick you up today – she mustn’t have seen you. I’ll give her a call.’
Ben straightened. ‘But I thought you were going to drive the Cadillac.’
Another memory elbowed alongside the one of Alice in the storeroom: Ben, eyes as round as coins, watching the lobster-red Cadillac XLR-V two-seat open-air roadster rolling into the garage yesterday afternoon, and Dean promising Ben could come along for the after-service test drive today. Ben had spoken in whispers until Alice had taken him home, as if a loud word would change Dean’s mind.
Which Dean wouldn’t do. This was hardly the moment to be asking Alice for a bit of patience, but he wanted to keep his promise. He nodded, smiled slightly, and said, ‘Okay. Let me see what I can do.’
Stepping into his office and closing the door for privacy, Dean tugged his mobile from his pocket and thumbed through the contacts for Alice’s number.
She answered after two rings, and he was ready to interrupt her.
‘Look—’ she began.
‘Are you driving or parked?’
‘What?’
‘Driving or—’
‘Parked!’
‘Okay. Ben slipped past you. He’s at the garage.’
She swore quietly before saying, ‘Can you ask him to wait out front?’
‘Listen, I promised him a test drive in the Caddy and I’m not too keen on breaking his heart. I reckon he’s waited all day for it. Howsabout I drop him off home around five o’clock?’
A beat of silence, then, ‘Is he okay with that?’
Dean opened the door, stuck his head out and called Ben’s name. ‘Your mum can pick you up now or I can drop you off after a drive in the Caddy.’
‘Caddy!’
Dean pushed away from the doorjamb, closed the door again and smiled. ‘You hear that?’
‘Nicely put.’
A flicker of concern nudged his heart into a slow trot. ‘I didn’t mean to make him choose. I just didn’t want to break my promise.’
‘Okay.’
‘He’s got a key?’
‘Of course.’
Now that the responsible adult part of the conversation was out of the way, he bumped the topic onto more dangerous ground. ‘About that kiss . . .’
‘I have to go.’ She might have considered hanging up, but manners kept her on the line for just a little longer. ‘Thanks for giving Ben a lift. Bye.’
The call ended.
No doubt about it, tomorrow was going to be awkward as arse.
When Ben was talking about cars, he barely took a breath between sentences. For the last forty minutes he’d been gushing about the roadster. ‘Do you need a special licence to drive a car that doesn’t have a roof?’ he asked. The long-awaited drive was over and Dean was giving him a lift home.
‘Nope.’
‘How good were the seats? I was so warm!’
‘The steering wheel’s heated too.’
‘No way! That’s awesome.’
Never mind the luxury, the high-performance Magnetic Ride Control and the incredible torque – the car had won Ben over by keeping his butt warm. Dean laughed and turned the headlights on. Darkness fell faster this time of year and with the near-constant rain they’d been having, the sky was often full of grey thunderclouds. It was only a little past five but already the roads were shrouded in thickening shadow.
‘So you’re getting on fine now with Ro and Neenz?’ Dean asked. In the seat beside him, Ben’s answer was a noncommittal shrug. ‘You’re not?’
‘Yeah, I am and Rowan’s friends are cool.’
‘And Nina’s?’
‘She doesn’t have any friends.’
Dean checked over his shoulder and concentrated on overtaking a car-and-trailer combo coasting thirty k’s under the speed limit. ‘You mean any who you like?’
‘No, she doesn’t have any. At all.’ He patted an irregular beat on his knees and watched the other car move past his window. ‘I mean, she might, but I only see her by herself.’
They drove in silence for a few minutes, Dean trying to process what he’d just learned and Ben unaware that he’d rocked Dean’s foundations. When Ben next spoke, it wasn’t to console or explain, it was to offer directions.
‘Just past that weird tree. Yeah, that road. We have a yellow letterbox.’
But there was no car in the carport at the house with the yellow letterbox. The curtains were drawn and the front light was on, something Dean did when he wasn’t expecting to return when the sun was up.
‘Where’s your mum?’
‘Out.’
‘You know what she’s doing?’
‘Uh huh.’ Ben reached for the button of his seatbelt and hesitated when Dean moved to stop him.
‘Now hang on a second. Do you know when she’s coming back?’
‘Late.’
‘How late?’
‘I’ll be in bed.’
‘What are you having for dinner?’
Ben lifted and dropped his shoulder. ‘I dunno, whatever’s there. Mum leaves me stuff.’
‘You sound used to this. Your mum go out a lot?’
‘Yeah. It sucks.’
‘What are you going to do tonight?’ Dean couldn’t believe he’d got this far with Ben when he was asking so many questions, but the kid seemed patient enough to answer them.
‘TV. Maybe homework.’
‘Uh-huh. Listen, what do you think about having dinner at my place with me, Rowan and Nina? There might be a few more people too, I can never be sure, they come and go, but we’re having spaghetti and watching a movie.’
Ben turned in his seat, his eyes bright with interest and disbelief. ‘Really? I’m in!’
‘Call your mum and ask if that’s okay.’
‘It’s okay—’
‘Benjamin, I’m not taking you to my house without your mum okaying it. Cops have a term for that.’
‘I’ll text her.’
‘Tell you what, because I’m not sure I trust that you actually will, why don’t you go inside, check that nothing’s on or open or what have you, and I’ll call her.’
Ben shoved the passenger door open and toppled out. He left his backpack on the floor of the car, doubtlessly thinking this meant Dean couldn’t leave. He ran along the driveway, thundered up the verandah steps and clumsily let himself into the house with a key he’d buried deep in his jacket pocket.
Dean pulled out his phone, went to his most recent call and dialled Alice’s number again. It rang out and clicked over to voicemail.
He cleared his throat and said, ‘Alice, Dean again. We’re at the house, you’re not and I’ve invited Ben to dinner. Call me back and let me know if that’s okay. He’s pretty keen. Not that I’m trying to . . . you know. Make you feel like you have to say yes, or anything. So . . . we’re just going to sit in the driveway until I hear back from you. It’ll be Ro, Neenz and I. Maybe Ethan and Sam. Uh . . . maybe Cal and Liv too, who knows. I can drop Ben back here.’ When he recognised that he was rambling he hung up without saying goodbye. Then he stared at the lit screen until Ben barrelled outside wearing jeans and a hooded jumper, carrying a bottle of soft drink and a packet of salt and vinegar potato chips.
‘Mum says it’s good manners,’ he explained, responding to Dean’s quizzical expression. ‘Thanks for having me.’
‘I haven’t heard back from your mum yet. Everything locked?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Off?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Got your key?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay. Now we wait.’
But his phone didn’t ring. It buzzed. The text message simply read
OK
. Dean stared at it for a moment, asking himself why he was surprised she’d decided not to speak to him considering how things were at the moment, then tossed his phone into the centre console. ‘We’re on. Let’s roll.’
Ben whooped, and Dean left the empty house behind them.
Chapter Seven
There were too many ways to tell time in the reception of Foster’s Garage: the disc rotor clock, the time on the bottom right of the computer monitor, the desk phone display; not failing to mention the constant string of customers, each of whom came in announcing the booking time of their service.
She should have dealt with Dean yesterday – immediately following that disastrous knocking together of mouths. If she were being pedantic, it hadn’t been a kiss at all. At the very least, he hadn’t kissed her back, so it didn’t count.
Alice didn’t want to overthink that aspect of her situation; her boss failing to respond when she happened to be pressing her mouth to his was the least of her problems. Apparently she was not only leagues away from being someone Dean Foster would lock lips with, but she was showing signs of being a depressive.
It could all be cleared up in moments if she only confessed to working two jobs, but she didn’t want to admit that things were financially dire, nor did she want to have to work through endless sticky questions about priorities, fatigue, work performance and budgeting. That side of her life was no one’s business, and the last thing she needed was Dean swooping in thinking he could fix everything.
If he’d been around twelve years ago when she’d walked out on her now ex-husband, who’d promptly walked into the one-bedroom flat of his girlfriend, then maybe life would be different. But as things stood, Alice was doing the best she could, and if it meant people thought she was depressed or inexplicably tired, so be it. Better those assumptions than knowing she was broke, wired and hardly getting to spend any time with her son.
She was doing okay – besides the aspects of her life that resembled a train wreck. A completely kissable level of okay, despite yesterday’s evidence to the contrary.
It had been building slowly. After watching him resolve things with their kids and seeing how good he was with Ben every afternoon, her heart had made a little room for him. When he’d stripped his wet shirt off her body had ached. Then there were the countless little things he did for her and his staff throughout the day, the boundlessness of his love and compassion for his family and friends. Dean appeared every bit the good guy. So she’d kissed him.
Sort of.
And now the man was a ghost. It was past ten o’clock and Dean hadn’t shown up for work. Danny said he’d gone to pick up a bunch of parts, despite having an enthusiastic high school kid on call for such tasks, and Alice was forced to mull over her situation alone while shuffling the team’s schedules around to compensate for the boss’s absence.
She jumped when Ethan banged through the door, coming in from the warehouse. He was on his mobile and his voice was strained.
‘I’ll just split myself in three then, shall I?’ he said. And then to Alice, ‘Damn it, Alice, are you trying to melt my skin off?’
The heater was on a toasty twenty-three degrees, the only reason she’d dared to shrug out of her heavy jacket. Of course it was stifling for him – he was stalking around getting hot under the collar – but she was sitting still, only moving to fidget and answer the phone. She crossed her arms to tell him this was her domain.
There was a tool belt strapped around Ethan’s waist, no-nonsense steelcaps on his big feet and a fresh cut on his arm. Blood was smeared where he’d rubbed it. He was probably the tallest man Alice had ever seen – if he wasn’t seven foot, he was close, and he was all angles and strong features just like his brother.
Ethan dropped a folder onto the desk and tugged his jumper off with his free hand. Alice saw a hard stomach, a chest dusted with dark hair and the flash of a nipple, then his navy T-shirt fell down.
Now blessed with having seen both Foster men’s naked chests, Alice was able to compare. Although Ethan was muscular and lean, seemingly always glistening with sweat and wood dust, she preferred Dean’s more solid build. It hinted at stability and strength.
Because there was always a slick of oil on Dean’s forearm or grease under his nails, she’d expected him to smell dirty, like oil or petrol, but in the brief moment that she’d been within a breath of him she’d thought of libraries and old books. It wasn’t the obvious association to make with a mechanic, but to her mind it suited him. When she’d visited some of the grand state libraries she’d felt the same thrill of promise and stories waiting to be read, of vast knowledge, quiet reflection and reverence. She thought of closed books, old chapters and new pages.
Free of his jumper, Ethan dropped onto one of the customer chairs. ‘Look, I’m not trying to screw you around when I say I can’t get there,’ he said into his phone. ‘I’m here, I’m supposed to be somewhere else – it’s a mad day.’ He waited, listened. ‘Take a few pictures on your phone and send them to me.’ Another pause. ‘You have a what phone? You Luddite, get one of the Gen Ys to do it then. I’ll approve subject to that. Okay, cheers. Bye.’
Ethan ended the call and opened his mouth to say something to Alice, but was interrupted by his ringtone. He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath and answered. ‘How exactly do you run this place when you’re not even here?’
The frayed threads of Alice’s concentration knitted themselves together. She slouched forward in her seat, effectively hiding her face behind her computer screen, and listened.
‘Don’t you pay that Hicks kid to run errands?’ Clearly not caring too much about the answer, Ethan moved the phone away from his ear and pressed a button. Dean’s voice charged out of the tiny speaker as Ethan set his mobile down on the seat beside him and started unlacing his boots.
‘— clear my head. Listen, I was thinking about what you said yesterday.’
‘About running out of things to do unless I get some more instructions?’
‘Well, I have some instructions. Requests, actually.’ There was a beat of silence that seemed louder than the words – as if Dean was steeling himself to continue. ‘I’ve marked out an area in the garage that I thought we could fix up.’