Happy Mother's Day! (30 page)

‘You’d have to pay more than you would think,’ he admitted. ‘That one is actually commissioned for the forthcoming son of a ridiculously prominent Aussie actor, which I’m sure would never have happened if my pieces didn’t cost so much.’

‘Is that a polite way of telling me I couldn’t afford one?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, his throat tickled by bubbles of laughter. ‘Though you would have to get in line.’

She lifted one eloquent eyebrow in a very convincing show of antipathy. But, rather than putting him in his place, it only made him realise that he liked that dextrous eyebrow of hers almost as much as he liked those disorderly curls.

‘Since I began working from home I’m embarrassed to admit that the Dillon label has taken off exponentially by way of its sudden scarcity,’ he said, leaning his own hip against the bench, mirroring her stance. ‘My business manager is in heaven as it has meant he can put prices on each piece which, since I am rarely at the showroom, I cannot veto.’

‘Okay,’ she said, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. ‘I get it. I probably couldn’t afford one!’

Again he laughed, and again he revelled in the feeling of using his lungs for more than just taking in oxygen for the first time in all too long.

‘But doesn’t being home all the time drive you nuts?’

‘Nope. I can work my own hours and there’s a permanently
open intercom in the wall in case Kane needs me. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

He didn’t go so far as to admit that in the last few months his life had so come to revolve around Kane’s moods that he was pretty certain he could have turned the intercom off and known if and when Kane was distressed anyway. Even
he
knew that would put a damper on the whole chatting to a regular girl like he was a regular guy thing he had going on.

‘Yeah, I don’t know,’ she said, her two front teeth nipping uncertainly at her lower lip. ‘I wonder if I was staring at the same four walls all the time I might not go a little batty.’

‘Don’t the insides of your planes begin to look alike?’ he asked.

She seemed to think about it for a second before she said, ‘Nah. Not when you add two hundred new faces per plane to the mix.’

‘Fair point. So how long have you been flying high?’ he asked, suddenly needing to prolong this thing, this feeling, this whatever it was that was making him feel so loose as long as he could.

But he soon cringed as her right eyebrow flickered and threatened to shoot skyward. It had been so long since he’d had to ingratiate himself to someone new he was obviously pretty rusty. Had he said something wrong? Had it sounded like some sort of chat-up line? But he wasn’t trying to chat her up. He was just chatting.

She blinked up at him, her mouth twisting as she warily weighed his words. ‘Seven years,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve never met a live one in the real world before. I had kind of reached the conclusion you guys were all well-trained robots
kept in some warehouse up Max’s Port Douglas headquarters,’ he said before he had even tried the words out in his head.

Note to self—think before you talk.

Siena looked down at her bare feet, her shaggy curls flicking over her head. ‘Do
I
look like a robot?’

‘Oh, no. You seem plenty real to me,’ he said. And, okay, that time he meant every ounce of flirtation wholeheartedly. How could he not? It felt so darned good.

When she looked back up James was awarded a lopsided smile brimming with appreciation for his efforts and somewhere deep down inside him something shifted. Big time. Not at all prepared for such a shift, he tried to shift it back. But it was too late.

As James struggled internally, her eyes narrowed as though she was trying to figure him out. Or perhaps she was just trying to place him. Maybe they
did
know one another. Maybe that was all this shifting sensation was. Not attraction but familiarity. He was about to ask if they had met before, but even he knew that would absolutely sound like a line.

‘Firstly,’ she said, spare hand now firmly on her jutted out hip, ‘I am not just any old
flight attendant.
I am one of the top Cabin Directors on MaxAir’s international corridor. And secondly, the only reason I am in this get-up, rather than my favourite Dolce suit, pristine make-up, without a wind-up key sticking out of my back, thank-you very much, is because some kid spilt cola all over me on the plane up here from Melbourne. Please tell me Kane-o doesn’t drink cola.’

Kane-o? What was this woman on? Whatever it was he wanted some.

‘He doesn’t drink cola,’ James repeated like a good little acolyte, eternally grateful he had thought before saying that
last
gem out loud. ‘Matt showed Kane the cola and coin trick and Kane is now petrified of the stuff. He’s more scared of cola than he is of the dark.’

As he had really hoped they would, her bow mouth kicked up at the corner and her ocean-green eyes sparkled. Damn it, but she was lovely.

‘Excellent,’ she said, nodding so hard her curls bounced about her ears before settling in messy disarray, framing her flushed cheeks.

‘Excellent,’ James repeated, his voice sounding heavy and languid in the hot air. Was the air hot? The air-conditioning was on but it sure felt hot.

The room went quiet as the two of them ran out of things to say. James searched for a conversation topic but he could find nothing. His mind was too full with the warring tangle of magnetism and self-reproach for daring to go there in the first place.

‘So, is the tow-truck on its way?’ Siena asked, setting the glass on the sink with such care he wondered if she had read his mind. She tugged on her ear. ‘You were on the phone a minute ago.’

‘It’s on its way.’

Siena felt awash with relief at the news. She didn’t want to have to call Rufus, Max’s complimentary driver, charming, chatty and playful as he was. Not. But it was time to go.

Mostly because after accidentally reading James’s blog she now knew why those cool grey flecks shrouded his once happy eyes. And, rather than making her feel further estranged from his situation, she felt … moved. Moved enough to stay cooped up in his suburban kitchen trading wisecracks when she should have been busy getting on with her day. The truth
was she itched to see what would happen if that half-smile of his morphed into the real thing.

But that didn’t matter, because in two days she
would
be on a plane back to Melbourne—either to bury herself in the employment section of the newspaper or, if she was able to convince Max of it, packing her bags for a move to Rome—the furthest place from Cairns she could imagine.

It suddenly occurred to her that she was mirroring James’s stance exactly, or he was mirroring hers, casually leaning against the kitchen bench, hands leaning inches apart along the sink’s edge, knees pointed to one another. Yep, it was way past time for her to go.

‘Excellent,’ she said again, clapping her hands together nice and loud to break through the loaded silence. ‘I’ll wait outside. Must make sure they take the car where I want it to go lest my brother kill me.’

She backed away towards the front door, thinking that might be goodbye, but James followed, watching her with those dark, sombre, but really quite lovely eyes of his. She again felt the atypical thread of longing and attraction tugging her through the midriff.

Uh-uh. Nope. No way …

She skipped over to the piano, grabbed her tipped-over handbag and then made a beeline for the front door.

In her haste she tripped backwards over a rug at the front door. James reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her upright until they stood nose to nose.

While her balance steadied her breathing pace rocketed away. James’s workman’s grip was strong. Her wrist burned from his touch. She caught a waft of wood shavings and cedar oil. The guy smelled of tradition and family and home.

A flash of memory caught her off-guard. Her dad used to insist the dining table remain polished to a high shine. She’d always had the feeling her mother had liked it that way and he had continued the tradition after she was gone. It had been one chore she hadn’t minded, the smell of cedar so delicious, the act of running oil over a smooth surface calming, productive, helpful, always eliciting a pat on the head from her dad when the deed was done.

The memory, the scent, the house, him—it was all so heady she felt herself swaying.

James’s grip tightened, his other hand reaching around to rest lightly at her waist. But, rather than adding to her confusion, his gallantry only honed her focus. She didn’t need some guy to save her when she fell. She had picked herself up enough times to know she could do it fine on her own.

‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice a giveaway throaty whisper.

She twisted her hand from his grasp, spun about on now sturdy legs and bounded out the door, grabbing her shoes as she shot past but not stopping to put them on.

As the green monster came into view her footsteps slowed as she saw how badly she had messed up. The whole bonnet was crushed and twisted. The smell of burnt oil scorched the air. Surely it was a write-off.

Insurance was the least of her problems. With the money from the sale of the house she could afford to fix it, or buy ten new ones. The problem was Rick. He’d spent a lifetime calling her irresponsible, antagonistic, the type to shoot first and ask questions later, and within half an hour of being home she had rashly taken a drive straight to the one place she had so purposefully avoided all these years. She had gone and proved him right.

As she neared the car she realised the damage went further. Before she had hit the tree, the beast’s tyres had trampled one of a group of small rose bushes. Siena had planted those rose bushes with her father on a warm spring day. She remembered his crinkling hazel eyes smiling down at her as though she was his little princess. The memories crowding her were too much.

‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ she whispered, her sudden sorrow deeper than concern for a couple of squished roses.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ James said from right behind her.

She flinched as his nearness drew her from her reverie. Cedar oil, family, home.

‘Truly,’ she said, turning to him, but backing away in the same move, choosing to believe the apology had been for him alone. ‘I took an advanced gardening class a couple of summers ago. You’ll be able to replant the bush, if that is any consolation.’

She didn’t offer to do so. Offering to clean up Kane’s wound had only created more problems than it had fixed.

James crouched down and pulled a perfect rose from under the tyre. Its stem was squished at the base but the flower was unblemished. An iceberg rose. Cool. White. Perfect.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘You liberated it; you may as well take it.’ He held out the flower, tipping its beautiful head towards her so that she caught a whiff of the soft perfume.

Siena baulked, the gesture so intimate and inadvertently romantic she had no idea what to do.

She saw the moment that James hesitated too. His eyes zeroed in on the rose, then back to her again, the cool grey depths burning with some unknown memory.

Had she hurt his feelings by not simply taking the damn thing? Was he remembering a similar moment with his wife?
Either way, she couldn’t handle seeing the ache behind his eyes as she couldn’t dampen down the mirrored ache it created in her.

She planted a big wide grin upon her face, then reached out and snatched it from his hand.

‘Thanks, James. I was the one who plucked it, of sorts, so it is rightfully mine.’ She held the velvet-soft petals to her nose and sniffed. ‘Mmm. Gorgeous.’

At that moment a small red hatchback turned into James’s driveway and pulled to a halt. James leapt back from her as though he only then realised he had been standing on a bed of hot coals.

A lanky fiftyish guy with long grey hair tied back in a ponytail unfolded himself from the tight front seat. His eyes twinkled and a huge lopsided grin creased his craggy face.

‘Morning, dude!’ he said, loping up to James and slapping him on the back.

James rocked stiffly on to his toes and back on to heavy flat feet. His lips thinned and he couldn’t look the newcomer in the eye. ‘Hey, Matt. Kane’s on the trampoline if you want to say hello.’

Matt’s bushy grey eyebrows rose. ‘On a school day? Again?’

It hadn’t even occurred to Siena that it was a school day. It was … Thursday? She never had any idea what day it was. Her roster was always different, rotating three days on, two days off. Unlike the time in her life when things like school and weekends and bedtimes had mattered, the
day
no longer meant a thing.

But to a guy with a school-aged son.?

‘He wasn’t feeling well,’ James said.

Stomach aches, sore throat, headaches
—Siena remembered all too clearly from James’s blog.

‘Well, naturally that’s why the trampoline would hold so
much attraction for him,’ Matt said under his breath before turning a sudden, beaming, unevenly toothed smile in her direction. ‘Now, who might this lovely young flower be?’

He glanced at the rose twirling in her hand, then looked from Siena to James and Siena again with a big goofy grin on his face. If he had reached out and nudged James with his elbow she would not have been surprised.

I almost ran over his kid with my car!
she wanted to scream, loathing the fact that she wasn’t the only one thinking that there was something curious happening between her and the man looking resolutely anywhere but at her.

‘Siena Capuletti,’ she said, saving James the trouble. ‘Driver of the big green monster wrapped around James’s tree, at your service.’

She held out a hand and Matt gave it a hearty shake.

‘Siena used to live in this house when she was younger,’ James added, finding his voice again.

‘Well, I am sure pleased to meet you, Siena. Any relation to Rick Capuletti? The mechanic in town?’

‘He’s my brother,’ she admitted.

‘Right on! Tell him O’Connor said hi.’

‘Shall do,’ Siena promised, though she had a feeling that Rick wouldn’t hear much through the steam pouring from his ears.