12 Days At Silver Bells House (3 page)

‘I can recompense you for fuel and your time.'

He frowned. ‘No need.'

‘So could you give me a lift?'

Nothing, except that deep, now forbidding frown.

He took a breath. ‘Looks like I'll have to.' He climbed onto the metal traction thingies on the excavator, her large suitcase in one hand, her wine under his other arm.
So strong
. ‘I can take you to the house,' he said as he stored her luggage behind the driver's seat. ‘Then we need to talk.'

Talk? About what? She hadn't envisaged sharing her wine with him as they chatted about world peace under the stars. She just wanted a lift.

Kate noticed three man-size pedals attached to long levers, sitting to the left of the driver's seat. ‘Is it like driving a car?' she asked as she passed him her carry-on.

He didn't answer her question. He'd put her suitcase behind the seat, and placed the box of wine beside it. Her carry-on went in next, on top of the wine.

Then he got out and held out both hands for Kate to step onto the traction thingies. Before she had time to wonder about how high her slimline dress would ride up her legs and how much thigh he'd get a look at, he'd taken hold of her outstretched arms and pulled her up and onto the digger.

‘Good heavens,' she said, teetering on the balls of her feet so her heels didn't get caught in the metal rollers. Had he needed to be that vigorous?

‘You're going to have to perch on your suitcase — behind me,' he said. ‘You need to hold onto my shoulders, please. And don't tell anyone I did this.' He pulled her up into the cab and — quite forcefully, Kate thought — coerced her into the cab behind the seat.

‘Did what?' she asked, squeezing herself behind the seat, twisting her legs to one side and perching on the suitcase.

‘Gave you a piggy-back in my fourteen-tonner.' He hauled himself up into the seat and closed the cab door. ‘My insurance wouldn't cover it.'

He turned the key in the ignition and all the lights came on. Then he released a handbrake and Kate grabbed the back of his seat in case they shot off. But nothing happened until he moved one of the long levers with a pedal attached and…they were off. She was rather charmed by the thrill rumbling through her. Who'd have thought she'd get to ride in a fourteen-tonner?

‘What a view from up here. I can see over the hedges. Spectacular.'

He mumbled something.

Kate leaned forwards over his shoulder. ‘What did you say?' She angled her face so that her ear was next to his cheek.

‘Hold onto my shoulders,' he said.

Touchy. She straightened, as much as was possible. Her head was tilted forwards and her body twisted to one side in order to fit. She gripped the back of his seat.

Kate listened to the rackety noise in the cab. Perhaps Mr Bigger & Bigger
was
a little deaf. He hadn't answered any of her questions directly.

She drummed up some sweetness. ‘What a lovely excavator,' she called above the drone. ‘You must be so proud.'

He moved his head slightly as though about to look at her, but apparently changed his mind. He studied the road ahead.

‘How do you move the big arm?' she asked, pointing to the digger's big arm.

No response.

Kate sighed. It might take hours to get to the cottage. She wondered how fast they were going and whether or not his fourteen-tonner was at full steam ahead.

She sat back and shut up. For at least thirty seconds.

Maybe he only spoke man-talk. She could do man-talk. Singleton's Sassy Sensations had done hundreds of shoots on industrial sites and in car yards, making tall, lanky male models look dirty and oily enough to sell jeans and boxer shorts by the millions. She slapped her hand onto the knob of an unused lever at his right hand side. ‘How many to the litre?' she asked him.

He grabbed her hand and held it firmly up and away from the lever. ‘Don't touch anything,' he said, sounding peeved.

She pulled her hand out of his. Just her luck. In the bleak midsummer with Excavator-man.

After another ten minutes he turned the excavator onto the No Through Road track and Kate's heart bounced like a puppy off the leash as they drove uphill. She leaned forwards slightly, in case the additional weight to the front of the cab helped ensure the bloody fourteen-tonner didn't topple backwards.

‘Oh, look.' She pointed through the side window to a row of stones of various shapes and sizes, all neatly stacked between A-frames and string plumb lines. ‘Somebody's building one of those dry-stone country walls. Isn't is fabulous?'

She didn't expect a response, but got irritated by the lack of one anyway. ‘Is something wrong?' she asked snappily.

‘I'm just trying to work a few things out,' he ground out.

She ignored him after that and concentrated on her future destination. Her heart swelled like an inflatable pillow. A remote country lane, shaded with gum trees. The eucalyptus aroma up here, high on the hill, mellowing her vexed frame of mind. She sighed. Twelve days of nothing coming right up. Yes, siree.

‘Oh, my God.' She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Look. Look — we're here. That's the house.'

Stunning
. Such potential. Two-storey, old-stone, weathered and wonderful. Slightly European in design, which was a surprise but it blended into its surroundings with ease. The front portion of the house jutted out from the back part with a dynamic sloping roof on the left and a shorter slope on the right.

‘Holy moly.'

Six square windows, each of different size, suggested cosiness and contentment waited for her. And someone had switched the lights on inside. How thoughtful. Two coach lights, one either side of the sturdy pale-blue wooden door were also lit, shining a welcome on the arched, stone paved portico.

‘Oh, it's just dripping in gorgeous.'

‘Thank you,' he said, loudly and resolutely.

Kate leaned forwards to check his features. Why would he thank her? He glanced her way.

Kate sat back, not wanting to be held captive by that serious frown, and took another look around. Oh-oh. A monster white ute with tyres as big as a bear was parked on the driveway. On the side of the monster ute were the words:
Knight Works
.

She fought a sudden agitation and looked out of the other window. Did Excavator-man live in the area too? Maybe there was a hut around the back, and Sammy and Ethan had kindly allowed him to stay there while he was digging their ditches.

Her heartbeat knocked against her ribcage. She didn't like the idea of sharing her patch of country with Jamie Knight.

‘What in bejeezus is going on here?' she asked.

‘Bejeezus?' he asked, quizzically. ‘Where are you from? Ireland?'

‘Sydney.'

‘So what's with all the…Never mind.' He switched everything off in the cab, opened the door and got himself out. ‘Come on then. Home sweet home.'

As though in a dream, Kate levered herself out of the confined space and put her arms out to him.

‘Don't lose your shoes,' he said as he swung her onto the metal rollers. ‘I haven't got time to fix the traction because of a four-inch spike.'

What had happened to the country manners?

He jumped off the excavator, reached up for her, took hold of her waist and swung her off the rollers and onto the ground.

Kate's body was taut and her brain seemed to be sparking. ‘Where are
you
staying?' she asked.
Oh, please, God, don't let him say it. Don't let him say it
.

‘Where do you think?'

Excavator-man's constant, low-drawled, unhelpful responses were beginning to get on her executive nerves. ‘This is my holiday home,' she told him in the brusque tone she used when one of her newcomer designers got too big for her wedges. ‘It's my twelve day getaway. Thank you for the rescue and all that, but I hope to God you're not staying here too.'

‘I'm afraid it's worse than that.'

Like how much worse? Wasn't there supposed to be a choice?
Do you want the good news first or the bad
?

‘I don't know what's going on here,' he said steadily, ‘but Silver Bells House isn't a holiday home. It's mine. I own it. And I don't take guests.'

Kate's mouth wouldn't work. It was open, because the warm evening air partied with her tongue, but…
What had he said
?

She swallowed the air and salivated her mouth. ‘I thought you were the ditch digger.'

‘I am. I'm also the owner of Silver Bells House.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since four weeks ago.'

‘But what has… I mean why did…' She shrugged her shoulders to her ears. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Neither do I, but there's been a mistake.'

‘Sammy doesn't make mistakes. Are you sure she didn't mention me?'

He shook his big, workman's head.

‘Not even a little? As in, “Hi, Mr Knight, my best friend is coming to stay at your house”.'

‘Not even a smidgeon.'

‘I thought you worked for Ethan.'

‘Correction. I accepted Ethan's contractual offer to build the new stone veterinary surgery. I'm a stonemason.'

‘But I thought you were a…' Workman passing through. She ploughed on, not caring what he thought about her rapid-fire questions. ‘Why did you buy this house? Are you a local?'

‘I liked it. And I'm now local number eighty-eight.'

‘Well I like it too, and it's supposed to be my twelve-day retreat from everything your flippancy is reminding me too much of.'

‘Too bad.'

She released her shoulders which were still stuck up around her ears, and pulled them back. He hadn't gone at all male-affronted at her questioning, which she admired. The man had tenacity. And her holiday house. ‘I need to call Sammy.' Except Sammy, her
once
faithful friend, would still be thirty-thousand feet high. ‘Don't bother getting my luggage out — you'll have to give me a lift into town.' And she wasn't about to say please.

‘In the excavator?' he asked with a wry lift of his eyebrow.

In his wheelbarrow if need be. ‘I'll stay at the B&B.' She'd stayed there for the night of Sammy and Ethan's wedding, along with Verity Walker, Sammy's difficult mother. ‘The

Cappers',' she said. ‘They own the B&B. They know me.'

‘The B&B is closed,' he informed her. ‘The Cappers have gone west to visit their son.'

‘Closed?' It couldn't be. Where the bloody hell was she going to stay? ‘I need to talk to Sammy.' Not that giving Sammy a good talking-to about this fiasco would leave Kate with anywhere to sleep, unless she curled up for the night in the waterless, powerless homestead on Burra Burra Lane. ‘What am I going to do?' Goddamn the country. No hire cars. No taxis.

No bloody room at the inn
.

‘You won't reach Sammy and Ethan until tomorrow.'

‘I know that!' Okay, so her own tenacity had worn thin.
Was
there a wheelbarrow? She turned from him to take a look, already envisaging herself pushing it all the way down All Seasons Road. In the dark. No streetlights because
this was the bloody country
.

‘Obviously, you'll have to stay here.'

Kate spun to him so fast she nearly tripped as the heel of her sling-back twisted beneath her. Which annoyed her even more. She never tripped. She was the
steady at heights
kind of stiletto-wearing executive. ‘Stay here?' she demanded as something horribly like panic bubbled inside her chest. ‘I don't know you. I know nothing about you. You might be a ditch-digging murderer. Is that why you bring your fourteen-tonner home each night? So you can dig holes to bury the unsuspecting visitors?'

Oh, now he decided to smile.

‘I brought the excavator back because I don't need it up at the homestead tomorrow, and I've got a job I want to use it for here. At my house. Silver Bells House. Jamie's house.'

If she hadn't already been given a shoe-about-to-break warning, she'd have stamped her stilettoed foot on the slab paving.

‘Stop quaking and come on in,' he said. ‘Looks like we'll be getting to know each other.'

He needn't have made it sound like he'd been forced into sharing his house with his mother-in-law.

****

Kate tried to keep the panic at bay and her temper under boiling point but the softer senses inside her speedily came to the fore when she stepped inside the house.

The wall on her left was mellow-yellow stone, like the outside. Must be a foot thick. The wall on her right was plastered and painted a French-linen colour. Two plastic builder's buckets, a set of trowels and a red wheelbarrow — ah! there it was, her possible transportation — sat in the hallway to one side of the pale-blue front door. He must have been re-pointing the stone wall in the hall, Kate thought, noting the slight difference in colour between the old grouting and the new, but that was probably because the new needed time to dry out and weather.

Kate's apartment in Sydney was modern and functional but one day she planned on finding the time to buy and do up one of the Federation bungalows still to be found in the Sydney suburbs so she knew a thing or two about renovation.

Jamie left her suitcase in the hall, at the base of a reddish-brown wooden staircase with wrought iron railings.

‘Okay, come on through.'

She followed his big, broad back into the kitchen and any stony parts still in her heart melted like chocolate chips in a warm bakery.

Dark floorboards again, like the ones in the hall and on the staircase. They probably went throughout the house. Plastered walls in antique white, one feature wall with a big window left as stone above a square white-enamel sink, surrounded by black granite bench tops. An old blackened range stood in a stone-encased alcove. It must work; there wasn't another stove in the room. The ceiling gave the room its greatest appeal. Breadth and length. Thick, squared beams painted in dove-grey ran the length, fitted and slotted into crossing beams. The entire space was countrified with flare. Not feminine, not entirely masculine.