Blood Ties (22 page)

As I sat up yawning again, noting it was time to get ready for my run, I saw a shadow at my window. Jake noticed the line of my glance and saw the shadow too. He stalked over to the window angrily and pulled the blind up. There was the unmistakable sound of someone pushing through the foliage, their feet crunching on the gravel I’d deliberately laid under every window in our house so I could hear anyone trying to break in.

“
Piss off, Denny!
I won’t tell you again to stop looking through Tessie’s window! I’m going to thump the Christ out of you if I catch you again,” he shouted out the window as his younger brother made his hurried escape down the side of my house. “Jesus, that shits me!” he fumed. “How many fucking times do I have to tell him?”

“Do you think he saw anything?” I asked, disconcerted, arms across my breasts, feeling vulnerable. I didn’t want anyone, let alone a Bycraft, watching Jake and me during our private time together. He turned to me and his anger disappeared. He came over and put his arms around me, drawing me tightly to him.

“No,” he said soothingly, stroking my hair. “The blind was down. I’m pretty sure he only got there too. He might have heard us talking. That’s all.”

“I wish your family would leave me alone,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

“We don’t seem to be able to,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s just something about you that gets all our blood boiling, one way or another, for good or bad.” And he touched his lips on mine, and we kissed slowly for a long time until I felt better about everything.

Needing oxygen, I pushed him away. “I’m going for a jog. Do you want to come?”

“Nah, I might go around to Finn’s place and collect the coop. Now I’m awake, I might as well make an early start on it.”

“Okay, I’ll make you some breakfast when I get back from my run.” I turned to start gathering my running gear.

“Tessie,” he said, serious again.

I looked up, “Hmm?”

“Take your spray or even your gun with you today.”

“I can’t run with that stuff on!” I scoffed. “I’m not scared of Denny. He’s never tried to hurt me before. And I’ll have my knife with me as usual.”

“At least take your mobile. Please Tessie.”

I sighed and humoured him. “I always do, honey-boy. There’s no need for you to worry. Romi will probably join me and the Sarge said he might too.”

“What?” He was immediately riled. “I’m getting sick of that man already. It’s bad enough that Abe’s always sniffing around you. I don’t want another man doing the same,” he complained, pulling on his jeans.

“Don’t be stupid, Jake. That’s a horrible expression. He’s not ‘sniffing’ around me. He’s just coming for a jog,” I said irritably, twisting myself into my sports bra.

Anger rising, he said, “Don’t you call me stupid.” He was very insecure about what people thought of his intelligence, and I guess that people did tend to dismiss him because of his great beauty and because he was a Bycraft. It was a sore point with him that I’d been to university and he had dropped out of high school after grade ten to start a carpentry apprenticeship that he’d never finished. “And don’t you get too friendly with him, Tess,” he warned.

“Don’t you start telling me who I can and can’t be friends with, Jacob Bycraft,” I retorted, instantly in fine fettle.

“Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you?” he snapped.

“Yes, I am,” I snapped right back at him.

“Well, maybe you can fix the fucking chicken coop yourself then.”

“All right, I will. I don’t need your help,” I said defiantly, and to twist the knife some more I added, “I’ll ask the Sarge to help me instead.”

He glared at me, hurt by my comment, threw on his t-shirt and stalked out of the bedroom and the house, slamming the front door behind him. The sound of his ute revving up broke the morning peace and he roared off down the driveway.

Men!
I thought angrily as I did up my shoelaces. After a quick visit to the bathroom and a drink of juice, I jogged slowly down to my gate and spent the next few minutes stretching while I waited. I had a lot of pain from my bruising and didn’t think that the jog was going to be pleasant. I watched as the Sarge’s car came driving down the long straight road, but I could see that he wasn’t alone. Romi was sitting in the front seat, a huge, ecstatically happy smile on her face. If it had been any wider, her head probably would have split in two.

He turned into my property and parked off the main driveway on the patchy, neglected lawn. Romi rushed over to me, floating on air. “My bike got a flat tyre and I thought I’d have to push it all the way to your place and then Finn came along like a white knight and rescued me and gave me a lift here and the BMW is so nice and did you know that the seats are real leather and he listens to some really cool music and we passed Jakey on the way and he looked really angry when he saw us and he didn’t even wave back at me and . . .” She finally paused for a breath, sucking in some much needed oxygen.

“That’s nice,” I said dismissively, in a stroppy mood. “You ready to go?” I greeted the Sarge tersely, unfairly feeling that he was to blame for my fight with Jake. I jogged off straight away back towards the intersection for Beach Road.

Normally I was a sociable jogger, happy to chat or more typically merely listen to the endless stream of self-absorbed teenage consciousness that issued from Romi’s mouth. This morning though, I fervently wished that I was by myself so I jogged harder than the other two, pulling ahead, leaving the poor Sarge to cop the whole earful of Romi’s starry-eyed chatter. She was a beautiful girl and I loved her like a little sister, but she was an idealist with overly romantic views of life and people. She thought Jake and I were Romeo and Juliet. And this morning I could have cheerfully strangled her.

Evidently the Sarge thought so too because after a while with her, he also accelerated. Though I tried to run even faster to get away from him, I was aching everywhere from the bruising and was suffering a great deal of pain to run at all, let alone at the rate I was pounding the street. He finally caught up to me.

“How are you feeling today?” he panted.

“I’ll live,” I said, trying to speed up again, but I couldn’t. Romi, fuelled by her teenage crush, had caught up to the both of us and none of us talked for a while because I was setting such a cracking pace.

The beach part was tough and I ran on the soft sand even more than usual to the groans and complaints of the others. I ignored them both and bent on pushing all my emotional angst into physical pain, I drove myself to breaking point. The others didn’t have to follow me. I wasn’t making them.

When we returned to my house, we were all exhausted.

“Tessie, you’re like a demon today. What’s the matter with you?” asked Romi thoughtlessly.

“I didn’t force you to come with me!” I turned on her. She flinched at my unexpected anger, which made me feel like a monster. I rubbed my face with my hands, walked over to her and hugged her tightly. “Sorry sweetie, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I had a fight with Jake this morning,” I whispered in her ear, girl-to-girl, no one else to know.

“Oh Tessie, you two will work it out. What did you fight about?” she exclaimed in a very loud voice which the Sarge was sure to hear. Now I wanted to strangle her even more. She obviously didn’t understand the concept of girl-to-girl. I was going to have to have another long discussion with her. Abe was an admirable guardian, but he was nowhere near a mother figure.

But instead I plastered on my bright face and offered to make them breakfast. They both accepted and on automatic, I went to the kitchen to make a fruit salad and piles of toast. I had run out of eggs, which made me think of my little chooks. Which made me think of the chicken coop. Which made me think of Jake again.

I wasn’t sure if he was coming back but planned on making enough for him anyway. Romi went off for her shower while the Sarge offered to help in the kitchen. I set him to chopping fruit while I thought about the angry words Jake and I had exchanged. I couldn’t tell you if the Sarge spoke to me once then because I was totally lost in my own thoughts. Jake and I didn’t fight much and it wasn’t like him to get angry so easily. Usually he was the calm, easy-going one of the two of us. I just couldn’t work out what had made him so heated so quickly. I felt sick in my stomach with emotion and wasn’t sure if I could even eat.

When I heard Jake’s ute driving up around the back and his familiar steps walking up the ramp to the kitchen door, I abandoned my preparations, flinging my knife carelessly on the bench and ran to the back door to throw it open. He stopped in the middle of the ramp and I stood at the door. He smiled up at me.

“Tessie.”

I released my held breath and closing the door behind me, met him on the ramp where I hugged him fiercely. “I didn’t know if you were coming back, honey-boy.”

He pulled away and looked at me. “Of course I came back. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, babe. You were right, I was being stupid. Did you have a good run?”

“I worked Romi and the Sarge like slaves. They both hate me now.”

“That’s my girl.” He gave me a mischievous smile. “Guess what I’ve got in the back of my ute?”

“The chook house!”

“Just as I promised. And by the time you get home tonight, it will be ready for your girls to move in.”

“It has to be the best chicken run in the whole of Little Town, Jakey. And Big Town too,” I insisted.

He sighed patiently. “Yes Tessie. I’ll make sure. You know how much I love Miss Chooky.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. If I left it to you to find the perfect accommodation for her, she would end up in a covered pot simmering on the stove with some onions and carrots.” He smiled, but didn’t deny it. I relented. “Okay then, come for breakfast. You must be hungry.”

“Not yet,” he said and pulled me off the ramp, jamming me up against the wall of the house and kissing me hard. We were there for a while and eventually I mustered up the willpower to push him away. “I love you, Tessie,” he said seriously, his amber eyes burning into my gray ones.

“I love you too, babe,” I said lightly, kissing him on the nose and smiling. “I’m supposed to be making breakfast now.” I rushed back to the kitchen to find the fruit salad beautifully chopped and assembled in a bowl in the fridge and the bread burnt to charred squares sitting in the toaster. “Sorry everyone,” I said sheepishly and threw the charcoal in the bin, put more bread in the toaster, forced Romi to make tea and coffee and asked a freshly woken and badly hungover Dad to get out the butter and spreads.

“Lots of coffee for Dad please, Romi,” I teased, kissing him on his forehead.

“Those old bastards wouldn’t go home last night,” he complained, wincing in the morning light. “They kept making me have another drink, then another and another.”

Amused, I asked, “Oh, so they forced you to drink too much, huh?” He was adamant that they had and that without their evil presence he would have retired the previous evening at a virtuously early hour, like the saintly creature that he was. I didn’t bother to smother my disrespectful snort.

Jake gobbled his breakfast, in danger of choking, not speaking to anyone, wanting to get started on the coop straight away. He asked Dad if he wanted to help, slightly hesitant. Their relationship still remained somewhat tentative, though they were growing closer every month. Although my father despised the Bycrafts, and with good cause, he had admitted to me on more than one occasion that he liked Jake personally and acknowledged that he was a good man and a loving boyfriend who made me very happy. And really, there couldn’t be a person on earth who wouldn’t grow to love Jake the more they knew him – he was just that kind of guy.

Dad agreed willingly. “Sure, Jakey. It might help take my mind off my pounding head.” Jake beamed at him with happiness.

“Poor Dad,” I sympathised and fetched a couple of paracetamol tablets for him to take with his coffee. We both knew that he shouldn’t be overindulging at this stage of his cancer, but it was fatal and I often thought,
what the hell, let the poor guy have some fun while he still could
.

The Sarge had been quiet all morning and took his leave then, politely offering to give Romi and her bike a lift home, an offer that of course she happily accepted. He turned to me and raised his eyebrows in question, checking if that was okay with me, and I nodded to him in agreement. I was sure Abe wouldn’t mind now that he’d spent some time with the Sarge and knew him a bit better. Personally, I had no problem with him giving Romi a lift, instinctively trusting him for some reason that I couldn’t understand because I usually found it took me a long time to start trusting people. I promised to drive the patrol car to the station, then quickly cleared up and jumped in the shower, groaning with dismay when I saw the purplish marks appearing over my torso. I hoped I would be healed by the time of the fun run.

Later, dressed in my uniform and ready to head off to work, I popped out the back to say goodbye to the two busy men. I stopped for a minute to watch them first, taking pleasure in witnessing their camaraderie and mutual respect as they worked together. Jake had never had a decent father figure in his life. I think he enjoyed time spent with Dad and was always deferential and helpful. In return, Dad had a taste of what it would have been like to have a son. He took great joy in instructing and guiding him, Jake respecting his life experience and carefully soaking up all his advice. Sometimes I thought I sensed a deep hunger in Jake for some kind of a mentor and worried in my less self-confident moments if he valued Dad’s company and opinion more than mine. Dad was possibly the first adult male in Little Town who had engaged him for any length of time in conversation without instinctively telling him to clear off simply because he was a Bycraft.