So Far Into You (5 page)

She shouldn't go on a picnic with Seth, she had work to do. They needed the money and White Knights paid well. But she sure as heck didn't want to stand here on this awful rickety porch, looking at weeds in the driveway while the boys next door ogled his car … she had to get him out of here.

Remy cleared her throat. ‘It won't get us in trouble? I mean … I signed the memo. You know … the workplace relationships one.'

‘Blake calls it the
no bonking in the barrel hall
policy.' He was teasing, and it was gentle, but even then she could feel the heat creep up her cheeks. ‘We're not in the office now, and it's just a picnic. Don't worry about the memo, okay?'

Remy glanced down at her clothes. ‘Am I okay like this?'

‘You're fine.'

‘You're a liar.'

The boys from next door tired of ogling Seth's car and Remy saw them file back inside. The dog sat on their porch, nose on his paws.

‘Can I bring anything?' she said, wracking her brains for what was in her fridge.
Coles brand cheddar, anyone?

‘I've got it covered.'

‘What about shoes?'

He joined her in checking out her feet. ‘Have you got any walking shoes?'

She nodded. There were joggers on the porch. She left them outside so she wouldn't track sand through the house. Remy slipped them on her feet, not bothering with socks.

‘Do you need to leave a note?'

‘My mum's working. She won't be back till late.'

‘She works Sunday?'

‘Yeah,' Remy said.
Stacking supermarket shelves pays time and a half on a Sunday.

He waited for her to elaborate and when she didn't, he said: ‘Okay then. Let's go.'

***

‘What does your mother do?' he asked, once she was buckled in the car and they were driving. He'd thrown the plastic bag with the jacket into the back seat.
Thrown it.
Remy was mortified.

‘She trained as a nurse. She used to work at the Margaret River Hospital before she had me.'

‘She doesn't do that now?'

‘She lost her confidence. She thought hospital technology had passed her by.'

He drove for a while and Remy tried to think of something that might change the subject from her mother's work, and wasn't about
his
work.

She settled for: ‘Have you seen Blake today?'

He nodded.

‘How's his head?'

‘Not as bad as it should have been.'

‘I bet he'd been for a surf.'

‘He had. Hey, Remy?'

‘Yes?'

‘How about we don't talk about my brother.'

Her gaze leapt to his face. His hands on the wheel were relaxed but there was something tight about his jaw. He asked: ‘Why don't you want to tell me what your mother does?'

Remy blew out a noisy breath. ‘She works in the supermarket. She stacks shelves. Night shift.' Her tone added an inaudible,
so there.

‘What was the big deal about telling me that?'

She shrugged. ‘There's no big deal.'
We just don't broadcast it to everyone. I don't tell everyone I spin phone sex fantasies for a second job, either.

Seth turned right onto Caves Road and soon after, turned left into the driveway that led to one of the area's boutique guesthouses. The gravel road split into three, one of which turned hard left and uphill into the accommodation. The other two forked off the path ahead. Seth chose the left fork and started up the hill. Soon they were driving in an avenue of white-trunked Tasmanian blue gums. At the crest of the hill the road narrowed, before it curled down the other side.

‘We should have brought my ute,' Remy said, as the GTR hit a pothole and muddy water flew.

The track got narrower and more rutted, before it finished at a gate where a sign said private property. There was a small flat area of grass by the track and Seth parked. They both got out of the car.

They were under tall, thick peppermint trees that flanked a meandering stream. The gurgle of the water and the whistle of birds were all she could hear. Everything smelled like rain.

‘It's pretty.'

‘That's the Ellen Brook.'

‘Is it private property?'

‘That place there is,' he indicated the gate. ‘Where we're going, it's all National Park.'

He fished his picnic box out of the back of the car and put the contents in a backpack that he slung over his shoulders. ‘Come on, we go this way.'

He nodded toward a narrow bridge that crossed the stream and opened into a paddock beyond.

***

Seth glanced at Remy. Most of the time her gaze was on the bush by the track as she walked easily through the thick yellowish sand, even though they tramped steadily uphill. Sometimes he'd catch her taking a deep breath in, like she was sifting all the sights and scents of the bush through her lungs, and she'd smile as she'd breathe out.

‘Look out, Seth.'

She'd said that a couple of times now, because he'd been watching her and not where he was going and he'd been about to trample some little plant she thought precious. ‘You get any closer you'll step on that cowslip.'

She pointed out a dainty yellow flower. An orchid, she told him, a triple-header. She said it with something close to reverence.

He felt like he could talk to her for a year and there'd still be more to learn. She intrigued him and he didn't know why. So what if she was easy to look at? So what if she glided at his side, natural as the stream slipping beside them.

He'd known plenty of stunning women with a walk that could stop traffic. Those women didn't have him contemplating making a call to Rina to ask if she would go to Bordeaux this week in his place.

Seth didn't believe in fairytales. The only thing he'd ever loved at first sight was a Monaro and when he'd loved that car, he'd been seventeen.

‘There's a double spider orchid.' She'd stopped a few steps behind him with her finger on the stalk to display it. He felt almost guilty for missing it.

‘Yeah. It's beautiful.'
So are you.

‘You didn't even look at it,' she admonished him. ‘It's so fleeting, wildflower season down here. You can miss it by a week. We're so lucky to see this.'

He stepped over a log that had crashed on the path during last year's controlled burns and held out his hand to help her.

‘I'm okay. Thanks though.' Her gaze was on his face in that second before she returned her attention to the track and the bush and the flowers.

‘When did you last take a girl on a bushwalk and a picnic?' She asked him.

He didn't have to think about it: ‘I took a girl called Leeanne to a waterfall at Moses Rock.' He'd kissed her there, spread out on the blanket while the casserole he'd made cooked in a camp oven. He'd been damn proud of that casserole.

‘Did you kiss her?'

‘I did.'

‘Did you like it?'

‘It was okay.'

‘Did she like it?'

‘She let me do it again.'

Remy blushed, and found a bunch of donkey orchids to show him.

‘What about you?' he said. ‘Who was the last man you kissed?'
Don't say Blake.

‘I don't think I've ever kissed a man.'

That got his attention fast, but there were another couple of bushwalkers heading their way up the path. The man used a stick like a ski pole, pushing the ground as he came through the sand. The lady had her camera pointing off into the bush. They were slow walkers.

‘When we get round that corner down there, there's a spot where we can get off the track and have something to eat,' Seth said.

‘Sounds good to me. It's so beautiful in here. Thanks for showing me this place.'

‘No problem,' he said.

‘Pretty, isn't it?' the bushwalking woman said as she passed.

‘Beautiful,' Seth agreed.

Remy said, ‘Stunning.'

The path turned into deep shade where the trees changed from tall jarrah and marri to peppermints shot through with creepers and ferns, and the earth smelled rich and green. There were arum lilies everywhere, white heads popping up like a thousand swans. They were noxious weeds in the South West—conservationists hated them—but they were so pretty when they were like this, Remy couldn't find it in her to hate them.

Seth put his hand behind her back to guide her and Remy all but jumped out of her skin.
Hell and Tommy.

‘I didn't mean to frighten you. I was going to say, it's this way.' He led her off the track and into the bush, through a faint path in the arum lily forest.

Remy tried to still the racing hum of her heart. The small of her back felt warm where his hand had pressed. She could feel the imprint of his fingertips on her skin.

He didn't frighten her, but her body's response was kind of terrifying all the same.

She'd had crushes before. In school and in university. At uni it had been Mr Southby. He was tall and slim. He had kind eyes behind his glasses and a passion for vineyard ecology that overflowed every lecture he taught.

This was different. This was bone-jarring, stomach-clenching different and it made each breath skip from her lungs faster than the one before it, until her head and heart felt so loose parts of her might fly right off.

‘It's just here,' Seth said.

Remy followed him around yet another gnarled peppermint trunk. He stepped back to let her pass, held out his hand to show her, and asked, ‘What do you think?'

The Ellen Brook cut about fifteen metres beneath them, snaking to the sea. They were standing in front of three vast peppermint trees growing so close, it was hard to see which boughs belonged to which giant.

Seth pulled off the backpack, spread the blanket and sat with his back against one of the trunks.

Remy hadn't finished staring at the dell. The creek rippled where water cascaded through tangled snags and leaves. Orange and black butterflies flitted in the patches of filtered sunlight, and a dragonfly zinged forward and back. Birds sang songs Remy didn't know.

Seth snapped the lid off the dolmades and offered the plastic container up. She took one with a mumbled thanks, biting into the spiced rice mix.

‘It's beautiful here. How did you find this place?' She looked for a spot to sit that wouldn't make her feel she was crowding him. He was so big, legs spread loose like that, and the blanket was so small.

‘My old man knew of it.'

Remy chose another dolmades. Chased it with an olive stuffed with chilli and feta. On the second olive, she smoothed a patch of blanket and sat, shuffling backwards until the tree met her spine.

‘Blake said you like fishing, and you shoot a mean game of pool.'

Remy slathered the cracker with too much brie, and chewed. ‘It's not fair, you know. I don't know anyone who could tell me stuff about you at all.'

‘Ask me something.'

She thought about it. ‘Why don't you ever smile?'

‘I smile.'

‘No you don't. You hardly ever smile at all. Everyone is scared of you. When you joined that plank walk yesterday, you could have knocked all those people over with a feather.'

‘I like to think I'm hard but fair. You can't get too friendly with employees in my job.'

Remy laughed. ‘And you don't think this is friendly?'

‘This is different. I want to get to know you better and I don't have a lot of time. I'm supposed to fly to Bordeaux on Tuesday.'

‘Bordeaux,' she breathed. It sounded so far away. It made
him
sound so far away.

‘It's in France,' he supplied.

‘I know where
Bordeaux
is.'

‘Sorry. Course you do. I keep comparing you to my brother. I'm never sure if Blake knows what day it is, let alone what country I'm talking about. His head's always somewhere else, but you,' he paused, searching for the right word. ‘You seem so grounded.'

Paying off debts to a loan shark does that to a girl,
she thought, but she didn't say it.

‘So where do you see yourself in five years, Remy?'

Not selling phone sex as a second job while my mum's working night shift, that's for sure. Not living in a weatherboard rental with holes in the flyscreen and bills on the fridge.
‘I'd like to be a senior viticulturist somewhere, I guess. I'd really like to be my own boss. Have my own vineyard.'

‘Land costs a lot down here.'

‘It does.' Unspoken between them was the knowledge the cost of the land would most likely kill Remy's dreams.

‘What about the fishing. What's the biggest fish you ever caught?' He asked quickly, as if he regretted bringing money into their glade.

‘I caught a Samson fish on a friend's boat in Geographe Bay. That was years ago. I mostly fish for herring off the beach. I'm not fussy. Fresh fish cooked in butter in a pan when they're just out of the ocean. That's pretty special.'

Remy had grabbed a cracker and was about to slap brie on the wafer-thin biscuit. Her hand shook and the cracker split. Seth caught one of the broken pieces. Reaching for Remy's hand, he added his half of the cracker to hers, making the biscuit whole. Then he took the morsel from her and held it toward her lips.

Remy leaned forward and bit the cracker. It split immediately, showering crumbs across his stomach and the blanket, and she laughed as she took it from him and put the second half in her mouth.

He let her finish chewing. He waited till she stopped laughing. He helped her wipe crumbs from his shirt and from the purple butterfly stitched on her jeans. Then he put his hand on her cheek and drew her face toward his.

As kisses went, it was very gentle, very soft, but not so quick as to be over before it started. If soft could equal thorough, that's how Seth kissed. He made every cell inside her sigh for more.

She pulled back for a moment to meet his gaze. His eyes were dark and deep and filled with more questions than she wanted to answer.