Holding Out for a Hero

For my very own hero, Mark, who has never slayed a dragon, leapt a tall building in a single bound or caught a bullet in his teeth, but would if I asked him. 

It had been two years, eight months and twenty-three days since Ella Lucas had last done the horizontal rumba. And even then it hadn’t been very good.

With the powerful Harley throbbing between her legs, she was acutely aware of every asexual minute. The machine pulsed against her, taunting barren places, reminding Ella of her depressingly sexless existence. Was it possible to orgasm on the seat of a Harley?

Alone?

She revved the engine.
Lock up your husbands, Huntley, Rachel’s daughter is back in town.

Her red lips twisted in a bitter smile. Nearly two decades since she’d been in her hometown and it was still driving her nuts. Seventeen years she’d spent in this speck on the map trying to do the right thing, trying to be her mother’s opposite, playing the good girl. Until she’d cracked under the pressure of it all and just walked away. And still they tarred her with the same brush. It had taken them all of forty-eight hours to make her feel like that powerless and frustrated teenager again.

So today she was determined to give them what they’d always wanted. Proof. Real proof. Something sound to gossip about once she’d hightailed it out of this one-horse town. Something to truly damn her. Something for them all to nod sagely over and say,
See, we were right, the apple never falls too far from the tree.

And she intended having a damn fine time doing so too.

Ella thundered into Huntley’s main street. Remnants of some teenage sixth sense alerted her to the twitching of curtains as she flashed by. No doubt their owners were staring open-mouthed, their disapproving frowns mirroring their judgmental minds. The sun beat down, heavy on her shoulders, and the black tar of the main street shimmered in her wake. It could have been any of a hundred main streets in outback Australia—wide, with a strip of central parking down the middle. Evenly spaced pepperina trees cast much needed shade over the sweltering vehicles.

A monument to the fallen from the Great War took pride of place in the center of the street. Her great-grandfather’s name was engraved on the white marble. Her mother, who had never known her grandfather, had taken particular pride in that. Ella had been chosen to lay the wreath there the Anzac Day she was in seventh grade and her great-grandfather’s name had jumped out at her as she’d placed the wreath of red poppies at the base. How she had envied Grandpa Lucas his fleeting freedom from mediocrity that day.

Four pubs dominated the corners of the main intersection, their corrugated roofs and wide verandahs complete with fancy wrought-iron lacework unchanged in over a century. The bank, the chemist, the beige austerity of S.J. Levy’s law practice, the drapers and the Huntley café—complete with the same blue-and-white striped awning from her childhood—stood exactly as they’d always been.

It was like entering a time warp. Not even the advent of two-dollar shops had infected the Huntley streetscape.

People stopped dead on the footpath as she passed, their heads turning to track the path of the noisy motorcycle. Business owners stared askance through their shop windows, craning their necks to see if a marauding biker gang had moved into town.

Ella ignored them all. She was on a mission. She was a successful career woman who had long ago cast off the shackles of Huntley. Her blood thrummed through her veins as she parked the bike and dismounted, her reckless mood ratcheting even further.

The townsfolk still hadn’t moved as Ella took off her helmet and hung the sleek black dome on the handle bars. She shook out her untethered hair. It fell in careless disorder around her shoulders, just like in a shampoo commercial, and she smiled to herself. She’d always wanted to do that. Sadly, biker moll was as far removed from her ponytailed school marm persona as was possible—she was as nerdy today as she’d always been.

But Huntley didn’t know that.

She heard the scandalised whispers of two familiar old biddies, who were drinking lemonade on the rickety wooden church pew that had sat outside the Crown for as long as anyone could remember. Ella wondered if the good citizens of Huntley had ever stopped to ponder the irony of religion and sin so intertwined.

The town was so quiet she could have heard a bee flap its wings in the next state. Good. She had their attention.

She heard the rasp of her denim clad thighs as she turned resolutely toward her target, squared her shoulders and strode past the women on the pew. “Afternoon, Miss Simmons, Miss Aberfoyle,” she said, not bothering to wait for an acknowledgment. She pushed the pub door open and for a second wished it was one of those swinging doors she’d seen in a hundred Wild West movies. She’d ridden into town for a showdown, hadn’t she?

It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust from the bright spring day to the dim interior of Huntley’s oldest liquor establishment. The patrons inside the pub stopped mid-conversation to stare at Ella. The only sound was Smokie crooning about living next door to Alice from the jukebox in the corner.

Ella didn’t bother to look around. She knew he was in town and exactly where he’d be. She’d seen him at the funeral yesterday, standing in the distance under the lilac canopy of a blooming jacaranda. Like his father before him, Jake Prince was behind the bar.

She approached the bar, coming to a halt beside Mrs. Coleman, Huntley’s librarian, decked out in her twin set and pearls and perched primly on a stool sipping a lemon, lime and bitters.

“Jake.”

Jake regarded Ella Lucas for a moment. She’d changed. Matured. He guessed twenty years would do that to you.

God knew these days he felt ancient.

He’d seen her quiet dignity at the funeral yesterday in the face of Huntley’s glaring hypocrisy and admired the hell out of her for it. The townsfolk had been there in full force, their ghoulish delight at Rachel finally being put asunder barely disguised. She had weathered it all with a mellow poise that had called every faux mourner to account.

But time, it seemed, hadn’t erased her troubled blue gaze. Or the way it still clawed at his gut in some form of primal recognition. How often in the years they’d all but silently co-existed had he related to her torment? Understood the caged misery of her gaze?

Her eyes were still telling him the same old story. She wanted out.

Oh, Lady, you’re preaching to the choir.

He picked up a hot glass from the rack and casually dried it off. “Ella.”

A beat or two passed. Neither of them said anything and everyone in the pub inched slightly closer.

“I’m so sorry about your mother’s passing.”

Ella nodded, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. He’d be about the only one who was—she wasn’t entirely sure she was sorry herself. The harshness of the concession almost sucked her breath away. What kind of a daughter was she? What kind of human being?

Disgust with herself intensified her grief, strengthening her purpose. “You still the bad boy around here, Jake?” She was proud of the way it came out. Her voice was steady. Clear.

“No way, ma’am,” he drawled, channeling his best country yokel. “Model citizen these days.”

So
not what she wanted to hear. Her stomach fluttered as her bravado wavered, her gaze flicking to Mrs. Coleman. How the hell was she going to pull this off in front of the elegant octogenarian who had taught her how to use the Dewey Decimal System? Her plan had seemed so simple when she’d come up with it back in her mother’s house, with its memories and a hostile teenage brother goading her.

She took a deep, fortifying breath, determined to show them all. “Your dad still keep rooms in this establishment?”

Jake stopped his ministration with the glasses to look at her carefully.
What the fuck?
She was in jeans and a cute little gingham shirt that didn’t even show any cleavage but there was a directness in her gaze that left him in no doubt what she wanted. Desire slammed into his groin and he gripped the glass a little harder.

“Sure.”

“What do you say? Wanna give everyone round here something real to talk about?”

Ella ignored the gasp from a rapt Mrs. Coleman. Her heartbeat thundered through her head. She felt thirteen years old again, as awkward beneath his scrutiny now as she’d been the night he’d picked her to slow dance with him at the only school disco she’d ever attended.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His rugged face—still screaming “bad boy” despite his protestations—was completely impassive. Why didn’t he say something?

Jake regarded her for a few more seconds, the desperation in her gaze compelling. He glanced around at his patrons, all waiting with bated breath on his next move. He knew not a single one of them understood the demons that drove her. But he did.

He put the tea towel down and reached behind him to remove a key from the board. “Mind the bar, Kel,” he said to the peroxide blond staring at them.

The irritating noise of the barmaid’s gum chewing was suddenly silenced and Jake knew that Huntley was judging him. Them.

But when hadn’t they?

He turned back to Ella. “Ladies first.” He gestured.

Ella’s legs were shaking as she passed the gobsmacked spectators, ducking through the archway near the jukebox and turning left to head up the stairs. She could feel Jake’s gaze on her ass and Huntley’s reaction vaporized into nothingness. She wished she’d used the flab-buster Rosie had bought her last year for body sculpting instead of alternative art for her office.

Jake overtook her at the top of the stairs, striding down the corridor to room seven. He inserted the key in the lock, pushed the door open and strode inside.

“What’s this about, Ella?” he asked, turning.

Ella kicked the door shut after her and launched herself at the wall of his chest. She heard the intake of his breath at her impact and ignored it. The man was a star footballer—had been for years—he could certainly hold his own with a girl.

“Ella.”

She raised herself on her tippy toes, awkwardly mashing her lips into his, stopping his protest. Her hands dragged his neck down, her fingers moving to the back of his head, delighting in the charcoal spikiness of his buzz cut.

Jake wrestled her hands from his neck and pulled his mouth away with difficulty – mostly because he didn’t want to. Hell, Ella Lucas had certainly graduated with honors in the kissing stakes. She’d come a long way since the sweet innocence of the brief shy press of lips she’d granted him at the end of that particularly memorable dance at the Huntley High disco.

There was nothing sweet about Ella Lucas’s kiss now. It was hot and hungry. Intense. Greedy. He could taste her desperation and a yearning that struck him straight in the solar plexus. He held her at arm’s length, the sound of his breathing falling harshly between them. “Ella, don’t let them get to you. You were always too classy for this town.”

Ella growled in frustration, struggling against his hands, straining to get closer. “Damn it, Jake. I’m not a kid. I know what I want.”

“No, you don’t.”

Jesus Christ! Why did this town always think it knew what was best for her? She pushed against his bonds. “Yes, I bloody do. I’m thirty-four, Jake. I’ve been making up my mind for a lot of years.”

“This isn’t about you and me. And you know it.”

Ella almost laughed in his face. “I want to have sex with you, Jake. Since when did you give a shit about a woman’s motivation?”

Good point. But Ella was different. He didn’t know why. She just was. She always had been. The only girl in his fifteen miserable years in this town that had barely looked at him.

And he wasn’t foolish enough to believe this was about sex either. It was about hate and frustration and grief and they both knew it. He felt her muscles flexing, straining against his hands and her caged lust surged towards him on a waft of pheromones that almost bought him to his knees. But someone had to be mature here.

It was a shock to realize it was going to have to be him. “It’s okay. No one has to know it didn’t happen,” he said in his very best placatory voice. “We’ll just hang here for a bit then go on down.”

Ella could see he was determined to be honorable Jake and couldn’t believe he’d choose to develop a conscience on the one day she needed him to be the screw-anything-that-moved Jake of tabloid fame. She gritted her teeth.

“I don’t want to hang.” His gentle restraint on her arms was way more exciting than it should have been and she was over his whole protesting-too-much bit.
Time to step it up. “I want you to fuck me. Quick and hard. And when you’re done with that, I want it long and slow.”

Jake swallowed. Her crude request had a predictable effect. Little Ella Lucas—science geek, math nerd, teacher’s pet—who had barely said boo to him all those years they’d weathered Huntley’s gossip, could speak dirty with the best of them.

“What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Is your
injury
more extensive than first thought? Can you not
perform
?”

Ella had heard talk yesterday that Jake was back in Huntley resting up his “groin”. For a man whose groin, according to the tabloids, seemed to rest very little, it must be a frustrating experience. She could help him with that.

Jake shot her a sardonic half smile. “I can perform just fine.”

Ella smiled. “Excellent.”

“You’ll hate yourself for it later,” Jake sighed.

Ella stopped struggling. Of course she would—she just didn’t do casual sex. But this was bigger than her.

“Jake Prince, in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve buried my mother, inherited a teenage brother I never knew existed and discovered that the entire town thinks I ran off with the school principal at the age of seventeen. If I’m going to be damned for my loose ways then you better believe I want to at least reap the benefits.”

Jake, feeling the resistance in her muscles ebb, let her go warily, relieved when she stood placidly, making no attempt to move closer. He’d been long gone when the scandal had rocked Huntley but he’d heard the rumours over the years on his brief sojourns home. “You’re angry.”

“No, Jake—I’m furious.”

He shrugged. “I guess you have a right to be.”