12 Days At Silver Bells House (19 page)

‘Jamie, you can't expect me to…'

‘You don't want to deny me my boyfriend rights any more than I intend to deny you your girlfriend rights.'

‘Jamie!'

He stopped in the doorway and Kate bumped into his back. He turned to her, his gaze twinkling down in humour.
Humour
! Where had he found humour? This was a dead serious situation. He wasn't playing the game. He was cheating, big time.

‘Oh come on,' he said easily, with a shrug for emphasis. ‘We haven't argued. This won't be make-up sex; it'll just be the same type of sex we had the day before yesterday, yesterday and this morning.'

The amazing type. But this time he'd be doing it with love on his mind.

‘And anyway,' he said with another shrug — and a smile.
A goddamned smile
! ‘There aren't any clean sheets on the spare room bed. Wouldn't want you to have to sleep on a bare mattress. What kind of loving boyfriend hoping for more would that make me?'

Huh. Right. Kate straightened her shoulders, looked him in the eye and with a contemptuous flick of her ponytail, breezed past him into the bedroom.

She'd never felt so nervous about undressing in her life. She slipped her shorts down her legs, but kept her knickers on. As she was taking her top off she caught sight of Jamie. He'd undressed. Totally. And didn't seem to be bothered by any shyness.

Kate undid her bra, dropped it onto his chest of drawers as Jamie wandered — naked — over to the bed and pulled the coverlet back. He plumped up the pillows.

Well. If Jamie could do it, so could Kate. She slipped her knickers off, dropped them on top of her bra and walked to the bed.

He pulled the cover back, her side, but didn't look at her.

Kate slipped in the bed and lay there. She desperately wanted him to hug her and tell her he'd been joking. That he had an overwhelming fondness for her, but of course he didn't love her. It was too soon to fall in love. Nine days. What madness.

‘Actually, Katie,' he said on a yawn. ‘How about we just sleep, eh? It's been a pretty tiring couple of days.'

Tiring
? Tired didn't come into the equation of Jamie saying he
loved
her. She'd never get to sleep.

‘Are you going to blame me for not fulfilling my
lover
duties?' she asked, feeling suddenly affronted and disappointed all at once.

‘Lover, huh?' he asked. He closed his eyes, settling his big workman's head on the pillow. ‘That's a nice thought.'

He had his eyes closed
? When she was naked next to him? And what about the term
nice
? What sort of word was
nice
? Surely he meant wonderful, amazing…even
fine
would be better than
nice
.

‘Of course I'm not going to blame you,' he said, opening his eyes and aiming his gaze right at her. ‘Not for anything. Anyway. Turns out I've run out of condoms.' He flipped onto his back, hooking her with his arm and snuggling her into his shoulder. ‘So let's just cuddle.'

Run out
? Kate tried to settle against him. She took a big, muddled-thought breath and sighed it out as though about to fall asleep. As though her mind wasn't racing. As though her mouth wasn't itching to open and tell him she had two emergency condoms in her suitcase. Emergency as in — in case it happened. Which it hadn't since she'd placed them into the elasticated side pocket of her suitcase some six, seven or ten months ago.

He sighed deeply, as though settling in nicely for a good night's sleep.

‘Jamie,' Kate whispered.

‘Mmm?'

Her mind played war games. Missiles fired in her brain. Tell him. Don't tell him. Go to sleep.

‘I've got two,' she said quietly. ‘In my suitcase.'

He turned from his back to his side and hauled her in against him, both arms around her naked, suddenly-warmed body. ‘Well,' he said softly, kissing her lips with his toothpaste-tasting opened mouth. ‘Isn't that just finger-lickin' lucky?'

****

Goddamn him — he'd got her.

Kate shoved the top right-hand drawer back into its chest. He had a whole box of condoms. A whole box of forty!

Forty
? Holy smokin', devious, summer air and lime smelling….
man
! Typical. Just wait until she got him in front of that Exasperation board again. She'd pop him into oblivion.

Or would she? The thought of forty nights with Jamie sent shivers down her spine.

She felt so many things for him. Masses of…
adoration
. Heaps of tenderness. Bucket loads of friendship. Almost…almost… She shook her head. Not quite love. Not quite. It was too soon.

‘You still up here?' he asked from behind her.

‘Yes,' Kate answered, and opened the curtains on one of the windows. ‘I was just tidying up.' She moved the next window and flung the curtains apart.

‘Are you hiding?'

He was right behind her. He'd crept up on her. He turned her to face him and tilted her chin up. He bent and kissed her mouth softly then brushed the fringe from her forehead. ‘I don't want you to make the wrong decision.'

‘I can't even think straight after last night.'

‘That's why I want you to take your time. Think about you, Kate, not me. I want you to read yourself properly, from the inside out. All you've done so far is skim the surface. You think you've found yourself but there's more.'

‘I don't think I want to talk to you about it.' She still felt too raw and confused.

‘That's fine too. Now stop moping and come on downstairs. We've got to make up a plate of food for tomorrow's festivities.' He released her and moved to the door.

Kate yanked the top drawer of the chest open, pulled out a pair of rolled up workman's socks and lobbed them at his back. ‘I don't want to go anymore.'

The socks bounced off his shoulder and onto the floor but he ignored them and continued out of the door and down the hallway. ‘Come on, Contrary-Katie,' he called. ‘Come give me a hand.'

Kate crossed her arms and leaned a hip against the chest of drawers. ‘I like you a lot,' she yelled after him. ‘But you can't expect me to
you know what
this quickly.'

No response. Kate slammed the drawer closed and stomped after him.

****

Kate walked cautiously towards the landline telephone in the kitchen. She didn't recognise the number on the ID… Dang! Of course she didn't. It wasn't her phone. Wasn't her house. She punched the caller ID number into her mobile in case it was business and Jamie needed to call them back. He had taken a few business calls on his mobile, but nobody had rung on the landline. Not since Kate had arrived. And he'd gone into town for foodstuffs for tomorrow's Christmas Eve present-giving gig.

She picked up the telephone and pressed the answer button. ‘Hello, Knight Works. Jamie Knight's residence.'

‘Oh — you sound lovely.'

She did
? So did the young female voice on the other end of the phone.

‘I'm afraid Jamie isn't here,' Kate said. ‘Can I take a message?'

‘I know he's not there, that's why I'm calling you. It's Kate, right?'

‘Right.'

‘I'm Megan.'

Oh, my goodness! Kate clutched at the bench top.

‘Jamie's sister.'

‘Yes, hello. How are you?' Damn. Kate winced. Perhaps she wasn't supposed to ask that question.

‘I'm fine. Pretty good. Jamie told me he's fallen in love with you.'

‘Um…' There it was again — the
love
word. ‘Yes,' Kate said softly. ‘He told me too.'

‘I just called him now, on his mobile, so I knew he wasn't at home.'

‘You're calling to talk to me,' Kate said, worry at the upcoming conversation gnawing at her stomach. Was she going to have to admit to Jamie's sister that she didn't love Jamie enough? That love was there, bobbing around deep inside her somewhere. But that she felt so much pressure to get everything troubling her right that her emotions had crashed into a brick wall and were currently sinking in knee-high mud and getting showered in all sorts of parrot poop.

‘Can I be open with you?' Megan asked. ‘Since we might — you know — be sisters soon.'

Oh dang. Kate squeezed her eyes closed. ‘Of course.' Here it came.
Do you love my brother
?
Will you cherish him forever
?

‘I bet Jamie's told you all about me,' Megan said. ‘And my illness.'

Kate forgot her own fears and straightened her spine. ‘Yes, he told me, Megan.'

‘What I've got is a mental illness, you see. I realise it although I've only just managed to say so.'

‘You're the bravest,' Kate said softly.

‘There's more to the world than I thought, Kate. I'm beginning to see other people. Those around me, you know? The family I'm staying with. I bet Jamie's told you where I am.'

Kate said, ‘Yes, he did.' Megan didn't seem to mind. Truthfulness, Kate reminded herself. So long as it didn't harm.

‘Well, you see — these people I'm staying with, I'm finding out that they have tough things to deal with too. Like ordinary things which are tough. Hard work — you have to get up early on a farm.'

‘I know.' Kate didn't know what happened on a farm other than what she'd read about it being a twenty-four-seven job. A struggle. A hardship that somehow every farmer and his or her family loved and endeavoured for.
And where was this conversation heading
?

‘I've missed out on so much over the last four or five years,' Megan said. ‘And I don't want to miss the next decade. Know what I mean?'

‘I do.' Kate thought of her business and her lost
raison d'être
.

‘I look back now…' Megan paused, the silence filled with what were obviously challenging thoughts for the young woman. ‘I realise how well I did. At school, at college. I got good grades even while feeling desperate about myself.'

Oh, you poor darling
. To be so alone with this illness.

‘I didn't think I was good enough.'

‘You are good enough. For anything you want to do.'

Another silence. Kate held her breath.

‘Jamie missed out too.'

Kate swallowed.

‘My brother missed out because he was helping me.'

‘He wouldn't have had it any other way, Megan.'

‘I know that. That's why I love him the extra special bit. That's why I don't want him to miss out on anything else. You…'

‘Me?' Kate asked, almost breathless with panic now.

‘He loves you.'

Kate clutched the phone, blinking through a cloud of confusion. What was love? A condition of the heart, supposedly. Nobody had ever said anything about bells ringing and snowflakes falling, making your skin tingle in a cascading ripple of pleasure. Like when you came in from out of the cold and sat bare-foot in front a roaring fire, wiggling your toes and getting all warm and content. Or about wanting to help decorate and do up a stone house with a sloping roof and a paddock for a back garden. Or learn how to roast a chicken. That wasn't love. Love was supposed to hurt so bad you couldn't think straight, not sit around choosing colour schemes in your mind for bedrooms or think about how many cushions the Chesterfield would hold. Or whether or not tarragon and lemon peel would be a tasty topping for a roast chicken.

‘Kate,' Megan said, breaking into Kate's condition of the heart. ‘It's none of my business,' she said, ‘but I do hope you love him right back. That would be great.'

‘It's not always easy, Megan… I mean—'

‘Oh, I'm not pressuring you, Kate. Honestly. But he's never been in love before — that I know of.'

Please stop saying the
love
word
. ‘I have a lot of business problems at the moment.' Sounded worse than pathetic. Look what this young girl had gone through and Kate was blathering on about business problems? ‘But I do like Jamie. So very much.' So much it hurt. The pressure was building inside her now. To get something right. What did Fat Jacques matter? It was Jamie she should be gunning for. ‘He's the best man I've ever met,' she told Megan. ‘He loves you very much.'

Megan laughed. ‘Sometimes too much.'

There was no way on earth Jamie Knight could love too much. To be under the spell of his eternal love would be magical.

‘Thanks for talking to me,' Megan said. ‘I've got to go, I have pig feeding duties to attend to.' She laughed, as though the remark was some personal joke.

‘It was lovely to talk to you, Megan. Thank you for calling me. I know how much Jamie means to you.'

‘Bye, Kate. Hopefully I'll get to talk to you again. Maybe see you one day.'

Maybe. ‘I hope so too. Bye, Megan.'

As she ended the call Kate's mobile rang. She checked the ID on the vibrating, lit-up rectangular face. Fat Jacques.

Perfect.
And you know what, Jacques Burch
? Kate said to herself as she picked up her phone.
You can have it
.
You can have the lot
.
I've made my decision
.

She pressed the Answer key. ‘Kate Singleton.'

****

Jamie closed the front door and paused. The atmosphere in the house was as sharp as a razor. The walls felt all shook up. Any second now he imagined the roof might cave in. He looked up to the landing at the sound of a door slamming, then a chair or something being scraped across the floorboards, then the rollers of…a suitcase?

He took the stairs two at a time. From the racket going on, he half expected to see the fourteen-tonner fired up in the bedroom. Instead, he found Kate.

‘What's happened?' he asked.

‘Fat Jacques,' she said, and threw her white pumps into the open suitcase on the bed.

‘What's he done now?'