Southern Star: Destiny Romance (5 page)

Stella led the way out to the porch, and waited while Blaze forced the door shut and locked it.

‘Well, this is the ute.’ She handed Blaze the key. ‘It’s pretty good to drive, and has everything you need out here. Four-wheel drive, of course, sat nav, four airbags. The upholstery’s not leather but it’s comfortable.’

After giving Blaze the paperwork to sign and taking her credit card details, Stella kept up her lively chatter about the car, her boyfriend and life in Meriwether on the drive into town, asking just the occasional question about Blaze. For the most part, though, Blaze was free to enjoy the woman’s uncomplicated company and concentrate on the poorly maintained road.

On the outskirts, Stella directed Blaze through the centre of town to a development of modern townhouses. Pulling up outside, Blaze made a note of the address, and thanked her again.

‘I really do appreciate the personal service. And actually, I was wondering if you could help me some more. While I’m here, I need to reconnect the power to the house, and also make some enquiries about hiring a carpenter or builder to work on the house. Who should I see?’

‘Oh, well, the first is easy. Coast Energy has a small office in the shopping centre in town. Second level. Just head back the way we’ve come and you’ll pick up signs for the shopping centre. As for builders, probably the best place to ask is the timber yard.’ She pulled a scrap of paper from her bag and sketched a map. ‘Here, follow Marshall Street out of town and you can’t miss it. Lalor Family Lumber. It’s only about three kilometres. If no luck there, give Mac a call. He’s sure to be able to recommend someone.’

‘Thanks, I’ll try the timber yard.’

Blaze would rather stick a finger in her eye than ask Macauley Black for advice.

Feeling as if she had made a genuine friend, Blaze waved goodbye, drove back to town and found a shady spot in the shopping centre car park. With her sunglasses concealing half her face, no one paid any attention to her until she got inside, but there she was quickly aware of some double takes and speculative glances.

The shopping centre had been built after she’d left for the States, so it was unfamiliar. But Stella was spot on about the electricity supplier, and within five minutes, she had a promise that power would be on by the time she was home. The customer service assistant even smiled and wished her a good day without the slightest hint that he’d recognised her.

Next stop was the telecommunications provider, and then the florist to order a thankyou arrangement of pink roses, magenta gerberas and white button chrysanthemums for Stella. The florist clearly did recognise her, but was too professional to mention it. Liking the deep orange lilies on display, Blaze bought a bunch for Sweet Springs along with a dozen small pots of cheerful pansies, before venturing into the supermarket. Being mid-afternoon, it was quiet, and she enjoyed the novelty of doing her own grocery shopping.

She picked up cleaning products and kitchen supplies, food staples and fresh produce, along with tasty-looking ready-made lasagne and cannelloni dinners, and chose freshly ground coffee purely on the basis of the label. The bored check-out chick didn’t even look at her as she rung up the groceries, and it was the same next door at the bottle shop, where Blaze bought three bottles of a moderately expensive red wine, and one of champagne. A fresh start deserved a celebration!

It occurred to her that she should have shopped for groceries after a visit to the lumber yard, given the heat, so she added a cool bag for the chilled produce. She loaded up the car, and set off with Stella’s map on the passenger seat. Lalor Family Lumber was impossible to miss, and she enjoyed the double take performed by another motorist as she got out of her car. The man was so distracted, he nearly drove into a pile of timber.

The office was in a long, low-slung building that smelled wonderfully of freshly-cut wood. No one was at the desk, so she wandered for a few moments until someone cleared their throat behind her. She spun to face a middle-aged woman with a bad dye job and dissatisfaction worn deep into the creases beside her mouth. The woman’s eyes flared instantly in recognition, and her expression hardened with dislike.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi. I’m looking for a reliable carpenter or builder to help me restore a house.’

The scowl remained.

‘It’s the old Sweet Springs homestead out of town,’ Blaze continued. ‘Someone told me you might be able to recommend a tradesman.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help.’ A smirk turned up the corner of the woman’s grim mouth as she gave Blaze an odd look.

‘I’m happy to pay the going rate.’

‘I’m sure you are, but don’t make no diff. The tradespeople around here are all contracted to the new Lantana development up the coast.’ She sniffed. ‘And besides, folks around here are choosy about the kind of people they do business with.’ With that, she turned her back and disappeared into the warehouse.

Stunned, Blaze just stood there. The woman’s overt hostility was quite different to what she’d encountered in Hollywood. There, the insults had been delivered in whispered asides, insinuations and knowing looks. Deliberately, she released a breath. Clearly, her tribulations – even though they’d originated on the other side of the world – were generating equally strong reactions here.

Either way, she wasn’t getting anywhere standing here. Her once-crisp white linen shirt, knotted at the waist above a pair of cropped cotton pants, was beginning to lose its battle with the warmth of the afternoon. Time to head back home, where hopefully the fridge she’d cleaned so diligently this morning would be humming and ready to store the groceries she’d bought today.

Determinedly putting her unpleasant encounter with the face of Lalor Family Lumber behind her, she returned to the utility. As she swung out of the parking lot, she saw that right next door was a smaller warehouse with a big sign: Pampered Pets. On impulse, she turned in through the gates and parked close to the door so she had to spend as little time as possible without air conditioning. The store was quiet and well-signed, and within ten minutes, she was wheeling a jumbo bag of dry pet food, a dog bed, blanket and pack of frozen marrow bones to her car.

Her canine visitor of this morning had probably simply been a stray, and she’d never see him again. Not that she cared, much. But if the dog did reappear, there was no harm in being hospitable. None at all.

The February damp seeped through the thin walls of the down-market apartment building on the Los Angeles fringe, a few seedy miles from Venice Beach. It consisted of four levels of poky units, not quite hopeless enough to be called a slum – not yet, anyway – but the single lift functioned only on exceptional days and the stink of cheap, overcooked food clung to the narrow corridors.

Most of the tenants worked but at poorly paid jobs so this was all they could afford, and most of them accepted their fate without rancour. That’s life, they’d say with a shrug when an eighteen-year-old car simply gave up the ghost, or when hours for their cash-in-hand factory job were cut, or when decades of smoking and poor diet delivered a fifty-three-year-old neighbour to the morgue. No one expected anything better, and they got exactly what they expected.

For the inhabitant of Apartment 37, the choice of accommodation was more about convenience than necessity.

The faceless apartment had served its purpose. Here, no one cared about when you came and went. They didn’t care if you were legal. They didn’t even care if you were armed, because everyone was. It was easy to slip under the radar. But now it was time to move on. Maybe the next resident would appreciate the neatly folded blankets, the alphabetised paperbacks on the bookshelf and the pleasing way the cheap art on the walls had been lined up, but probably not.

Two large, inexpensive canvas travel bags sat by the door trimmed in faux leather. A bulky winter coat was slipped on, then a woollen hat pulled low over the brow and a scarf tugged high over the chin. Conversely, the bags contained not one item suitable for the North American winter.

Goodbye LA. Queensland, here I come. Phase two is in motion.

Beyond the waterhole closest to Sweet Springs and partly concealed among the soft green drape of willows, Macauley Black slouched in his smooth-worn saddle. Beneath him, the large horse stamped and snorted in impatience at the pause in proceedings.

‘Easy, True.’ Mac slid a hand down the charcoal neck, his eyes still on the crumbling homestead. With the glow of the evening sun painting it in vivid technicolour tones, it didn’t appear quite the wreck it had last night. Light glinted on the intact downstairs window panes, and a colourful cushion was tossed casually on the ancient wooden recliner sitting on the rickety veranda. A recent-model Holden ute sat outside the house, its opalescent gleam still visible under a thin layer of red dust.

Small things, but today there was life where yesterday there was none. You had to give the woman some credit for making the best of things, he thought.

In the room at the very top of the house, beneath the steep slope of the tin roof, mellow lamplight shone. She had power, then, so he could wait to tell her about the back-up generator in the barn.

As Mac watched, he wondered what Blaze Gillespie was doing up there. She’d driven up not fifteen minutes ago, just as he was approaching the waterhole from the far side. Looking as though she’d just stepped out of a salon, she wore a white shirt knotted sexily at the waist to reveal a sliver of skin when she leaned into the trunk of the car. It was a simple outfit of shirt, pants and flat sandals – not unlike that worn by most of the women who lived in the area, but somehow she made it look a million dollars.

For some reason, he hadn’t announced his presence, satisfied instead to observe while she carried three boxes of groceries and supplies into the house. She made a final trip for a bunch of trumpet-like flowers wrapped in brown paper. Moments later, she’d appeared at the kitchen window to run water into a vase containing the flowers. Then she’d disappeared from view, and ten minutes later the light upstairs had been switched on.

He fantasised that, at this very moment, Hollywood’s scarlet woman was stripping off that sexy shirt and stepping beneath the shower spray. His cock hardened against the leather saddle, and he shifted to relieve the pressure, cursing under his breath and trying to remind himself that she had not yet been cleared of killing her Hollywood boyfriend.

He got his riotous body under control, but not without effort, which infuriated him. For God’s sake, he didn’t even like the woman! But then, what had liking to do with lust? Still, at thirty-six he was damn old enough to get a grip on his gonads.

He’d done the neighbourly thing and checked she was settling in. She had power, transport, food – all the basics. She didn’t need him and he sure didn’t need her. Women like Blaze Gillespie were trouble, and Macauley Black didn’t do trouble. Not even when it was packaged in the sexiest face and body ever placed on this earth.

Urging True away from the waterhole, he gave the horse its head and it took off across the paddock, flying over field and fence until he was back on Rosmerta land. They slowed to a trot and then a walk, following the well-worn path home, their sweat drying in the warmth of the waning sun.

‘I’m looking for someone to restore a turn-of-the century house.’ Holding the newly installed study phone to her ear as she stared at her laptop, Blaze considered the smart home page for Classic Homes, which specialised in top-of-the-line renovations. ‘The budget isn’t an issue – within reason, of course – but I need someone to come out and quote for the job as soon as possible.’

‘Where, luv?’

‘Sweet Springs. It’s a property about fifty minutes out of Meriwether.’

‘Fifty . . . you gotta be kiddin’, love. I can’t spare the time to blow me bloody nose, let alone drive all the way out there.’

Blaze said a curt goodbye, and redialled the next and last builder on her list. Thomas Vine & Son Building Services, to explain what she needed.

‘Jeez! Sweet Springs, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You that movie star, then? Heard you’d been swannin’ around town like you owned the place. Well, I’ll have you know —’

Blaze resisted the temptation to abuse her new phone by slamming down the handset, but she cut Thomas Vine or son off before he could finish his rant, which made her feel better.

‘Shit.’ She leaned back tiredly in the creaky leather chair. Since getting her wifi internet connection up this morning, she’d spoken to all seven of the local building contractors, and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Either they were too busy with other contracts, weren’t inclined to drive more than ten minutes to cost a job or, like Vine, were bloody bastards. If Blaze guessed right, someone had been whispering in the man’s ear, like that woman from the timber yard.

She could always phone Macauley Black and ask his advice, as Stella had suggested, but that was a last resort; beyond last. And she wasn’t quite there yet.

Still, she had made progress of sorts. The landline phone and laptop were working. She had a car. The top of Gramps’ desk was clear of paper – although everything was stacked in piles until she had time to sort through it – and last night she’d actually cooked an edible omelette for herself using a recipe from an old cookbook of Gram’s that had been published in 1947.

And – she peeked out of the study window overlooking the front porch to admire her work – she had planted two half-barrels of yellow and white pansies out the front, and another two on the back veranda. It was amazing how much more welcoming plants made the place.

Now the heat was abating a little, it was probably time to water them. Wandering into the kitchen, she filled her new watering can and lugged it outside. Carefully, she showered the young plants until they’d had a good drenching.

After eating her dinner outside while listening to the regular nightly symphony of frogs and cicadas, she was just about to go inside and clean up the kitchen when a soft growl from behind her had her spinning around. Her throat squeezed tight in fear as ghostly amber eyes gleamed in the dusky light, and a shadow slunk slowly up the steps towards her. Backing up towards the door, reaching behind her for the handle, she watched as the dog from yesterday morning approached with a limping gait. As she held her breath, it stopped a few feet from her, and sank down on to the veranda as though exhausted. Dropping its head to its paws, it whimpered pathetically.

‘Oh, you’re just an old sook, aren’t you?’ Blaze murmured. ‘I think your growl is worse than your bite, but since we don’t really know each other, I’ll keep my distance. Wait there. You look like you could do with something to eat and drink, and I can help you out with that.’

Careful to close the screen door behind her, Blaze raced into the kitchen, plunked the empty watering can down, and found the bowl she’d used previously. She filled it, took it out and placed it slowly in front of the dog, which didn’t budge from its position.

‘Okay, not exciting. But I have something else.’

She dashed back inside, grabbed another plastic bowl, snipped open the bag of dry dog food and poured a mound into it. She switched on the veranda light and eased the screen door open. Walking a cautious semi-circle around the dog, she placed the food in front of the animal and retreated to the chair.

The dog just stared at her, occasionally emitting one of his low and less-than-ferocious growls, until Blaze pushed the bowls closer and retreated.

This time, the dog sniffed, shuffled forward and lapped a little of the water. His head came back, tongue out and a look curiously like a lopsided grin spread across his face. Blaze nodded encouragingly, and the animal investigated the food bowl, touching the crunchy pieces with his nose until satisfied they weren’t dangerous. He took a cautious mouthful, chomped, looked at Blaze and swallowed. Within moments, he’d emptied both bowls and sat back, tongue lolling and tail flicking.