The House On Burra Burra Lane (6 page)

His tone had lifted, his large hand covered hers in a friendly enough manner, but it was deeply warm. Everything about him and around him encompassed her. The scent of the outdoors clinging to his oilskin coat, the evocative air of his patience, his quiet implication and the hint of intimacy being offered. The thought of anything above that was immediately too heady to contemplate. It had only been a few weeks since her fight with Oliver.

She pulled her hand from under his, and offered it to him for a handshake. ‘Can we be friends, Ethan?’

After a beat, he smiled. He took hold of her hand. ‘Of course, I hope we already are.’

‘I
like hearing you laugh, Ethan,’ Sammy said. ‘It suits you. I just wish you’d gauge the timing.’

He leaned back against the cross-fence in his field, elbows on the top rung, boots on dewy grass.

‘I like the choice to be mine,’ he said. ‘Along with the situation.’

Sammy grinned. ‘You look like a bear who’s caught a salmon. I might be petrified, you know.’ Which was partly true.

‘Don’t be frightened. They like you.’

Just as well, but Sammy couldn’t read the body language of her current companions. Six large horses had nosed Ethan out of the way, head butting him to one side. Now they regarded her with velvety fishbowl eyes and eyelashes that looked fake.

‘The big one closest to you is the leader,’ Ethan said. ‘Look at his ears, he’s listening to you.’ He pushed from the fence and walked through the crowd, tapping each horse on its rump, moving them off. ‘Put your hand to his nose so he can smell you.’

‘What’s his name?’ Sammy asked when the horse blew onto her hand.

‘Goliath,’ Ethan said as he came to her side. ‘He likes you, Sammy.’

‘It’s you he likes, I just happen to be standing next to you.’ She raised her face and saw sunlight and peace on Ethan’s. He suited the place he stood: outdoors. At home stroking Goliath’s big head. Comfortable, kind, and patient. He had more patience than she’d ever possess.

The porch roof was gone, waiting for its new canopy. Straight-as-an-arrow floorboards had been stacked, ready to be placed in a framework he’d built for the new deck.

Had he been born with patience, or had he learned it? He appeared at ease, which suggested peace. But she had the impression still waters ran deep. There was a waterfall cascading inside him somewhere, but someone or something had turned off the tap and all that gushing water was trapped. He was too solitary most of the time. Too unperturbed, but she didn’t know if it was a trait, or a rule.

‘Your horses love you, Ethan.’ She smiled when he laughed. Liked being the reason for his pleasure.

‘Just like the rabbit,’ he said. ‘She loves me too.’

The sight of Missy the rabbit sitting in Ethan’s hand had brought tears to her eyes. Such a big man showing as much respect to a small animal as he showed Goliath.

‘Are you a fisherman?’

‘Sometimes. Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ She saw him so clearly by the river. Stilled with concentration as he watched for brown trout. She didn’t have the tolerance to throw a line and wait until something jiggled it, but she could see herself watching Ethan do it, sitting on a picnic blanket, relaxed next to his deliberation.

‘I don’t get enough free time to fish the river.’

‘No,’ she agreed. He was busy, but never appeared pushed to hasty. He just managed everything.

‘I’ll take you fishing if you want me to. The MacLaughlin recovers, despite the drought.’

‘No need. I’ll get around to doing it one day.’

He’d helped her take up the crumbling boundary wall around the kitchen garden and stack the bricks; deep red, with bubbles of cream tumbling through. He was going to teach her how to rebuild the wall. He wasn’t charging her for any of these jobs. He’d said it was just something he was doing as he passed, on his way from porch to shed. He’d bought her sturdy workman’s gloves which were so stiff they laughed together at her inability to bend her fingers in them. He’d stretched and softened them in his hands before they began digging and clearing, uncovering the gravel pathway winding from shed to house.

They hadn’t touched on anything more intimate than a first flush of closer friendship this last week, but it was calming knowing he was around, checking her down-gutters and rain tanks. He’d taught her how to use some of the tools she’d been collecting too.

‘I hope that chainsaw is still in its packaging,’ he said, butting into her very thoughts.

‘It is. But I’m dying to fire it up and trim the hedge at the back. I want to see the stretch of river.’ It was more of a long stream than a river, but she wanted to see it from the house.

‘We won’t be using a chainsaw to trim a hedge, Samantha. Don’t touch it. I mean it. You’re not to use it until I’m convinced you know how to handle it—and yourself.’

‘Tool snob.’

He looked caught between astonished and embarrassed. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s easy for you to be bossy when I’m surrounded by your wild beasts. I notice you didn’t mention this in front of the guinea pig.’

He smiled. ‘I needed better back-up.’

She pulled a face but the sense of protection in his authority warmed her. A glimpse of the cascading waterfall, or perhaps the surprising dominance came from the dark cave sitting behind the falls. There were many levels of concentration in the looks he gave her with his secretive sky-blue eyes, and one look in particular kept surfacing. Sometimes, the daylight in his gaze deepened when he looked at her, making her think of long steamy nights, and the way young Julia had looked at him. She didn’t always want to meet that gaze, didn’t know if there would be a reciprocal luminosity in her own. It wasn’t the way friends were supposed to look at each other.

Two afternoons this last week he’d been called out to farms or back to his surgery, and she’d missed him in those hours before sunset. The recollection unsettled her now as she stood beside him and his horses. She was here on her own. It was good to have a friend close by, but not acceptable to rely on support. That might put her back too many long-fought-for paces.

‘I’ll be good with the chainsaw but rubbish at fishing. No patience.’

‘You’d do well enough. You have patience in your hands and your heart. You just need to learn to transfer it to everyday tasks.’

She pulled another face.

‘Come on. I’ll drop you home.’

She patted Goliath one more time and followed Ethan for the short walk to his surgery.

Ethan had finished for the afternoon. The porch roof was in place, and a job well done. He hadn’t been called to his surgery this Saturday, for which he was grateful, and regretful.

He washed up at a plastic-piped valve feeding from a tap outside the shed. He’d driven through the gate on Burra Burra Lane most days for two weeks and hadn’t expected to be confounded by more than the house, but something inside him wanted out. Brooding notions about some place he could forget his doubts and find enough security to contemplate the strange new thoughts about his future.

He purposefully took his mind to the work he was here for. He’d pour concrete once he’d stabilised the shed walls. He could screed it himself. He’d already calculated the cubic metres he’d need to order.

He knocked the dirt off his boots on the shed doorframe, stepped outside and lost all thought of work as the sun hit his face.

She’d be outside, not in the house, it was too beautiful a day. She’d be fixing something, intent on the task, whatever it was. Must be hard on her, slaving in the daytime, surrounded by tools she didn’t know how to use but willing to pick them up and figure it out. When he left her at night as the sun went down, she was ready to go to work again with her drawings. She’d shown him some of her other artwork and he’d been baffled at the skill. Her portraiture art was sensitive and emotive, and she had an eye for absolute detail with the landscapes.

He spent his evenings checking on any animals in the surgery, and taking the walk to the field to rug the horses. They seemed grateful for his company while he worked around them, refilling water troughs from the small creek running down the hill in the next field, taking his time and trying not to think about Samantha Walker at her dining room table, head bowed, pencil in hand.

He recognised skill, particularly when it involved a person’s hands. He used his own for crafting wood and tending animals. He’d learned how to correct youthful impatience to careful approach, and believed there was artistry in what he did.

It was good to have a friend, he reminded himself, pushing the idea of more behind him. He’d intentionally led them down a path towards easy friendship since that night in the bar but it was hard not to yield, and give the prospect of his new friend’s body further contemplation.

He didn’t have to look far; she was painting the tall fence running along the side of her kitchen garden. The fence was leaning towards her, propped up with thick, rotting pickets.

Gravel crunched under his boots until he hit softer earth.

She turned, large paint brush in hand, arm stretched high, hair flying in the wind. She looked like the person he’d wanted to be a few minutes ago. Carefree.

She wiped her free hand on a cloth hooked in her pocket. ‘Hello.’ Paint splattered to the grass from the brush in her other hand.

‘Aren’t you doing that the wrong way round?’ He took the brush off her and smoothed its wet edges over the pot. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to fix the fence and then paint it?’ He handed the brush back.

‘Not enough money, my friend, but a paint job makes it prettier on the eye.’

He shoved his hands into his pockets to stop himself from brushing back the tendrils of hair falling on her cheeks. ‘Well, my friend, it could be you’re wasting your time. The fence is likely to collapse before you’ve got to the end with your paintbrush.’

‘At least I’ve made it look better on its last legs.’ She dipped the brush into the pot, sloshed the excess over the rim and lifted it to the fence panel.

What was it about her that made him want to do so much for her? It wasn’t as though she wasn’t capable, smart, and willing. She drew it out of him without asking. He’d kept himself absorbed in his work all these years so he wouldn’t feel responsible for others; interfering in their lives and trying to fix things for them. He hadn’t offered anything but a polite, professional distance to anyone since he’d returned to town. Withdrawn, they called him. It had taken enormous effort on his part to have them think that way. After a while, they’d accepted him and recognised he’d come back a different man. But every time he was around Sammy, the memories of his aggressive older brother snaked through his mind, along with uncomfortable thoughts about the woman Ethan had brought home as his wife … to the house Sammy lived in. He’d made a terrible mistake, marrying that girl. Her carelessness had ended in her death along with his brother’s, regardless of his good intent to set them both on a better path. He didn’t want Sammy tarnished by his history. She was making the house a home again. She was out of bounds for gossip and supposition. She deserved a chance.

‘How about you let me fix the fence tomorrow, then you paint it?’

‘Can’t let you do that, you’re doing more than I can pay for already.’

He’d had no inclination to push or prompt a reaction from any woman after his wife had left him but he’d been sent skimming sideways by his response to Sammy. He wanted a reaction from her—a woman-to-a-man reaction. Sitting quietly by the fire with her in the bar that first night, talking to her, looking at her, had put him into a soft frame of mind. A loving frame of mind, he supposed. She hadn’t accepted the offer he’d made when he’d dropped her home. He’d made a joke of it, but he would have taken her to bed that night.

He wanted to nudge her again, test the water and put an end to his misery but he couldn’t ask for a few evenings of pleasure. It wouldn’t be enough for him anyway and it wouldn’t be fair on her. He’d leave her. He’d have to.

If the abusive traits of his brother and his father were inside him, then he was damned sure he wasn’t going to let them out— but he’d seen it happen—men who had no control over what they did. If he got lost in Sammy …

He looked up at her. ‘I want to help you. I don’t want your beautiful hands to get hurt.’ He closed his mouth. Not only had he made a stupid comment about her lovely hands, he’d overstepped the boundaries but the palms of his hands itched to touch her, stroke her, pause on her slender curves and pull her into him. He stepped back.

‘I’ll have to get used to blisters, Ethan, if I want to see results.’

‘Well, Miss Walker, everything you do is done well, but it seems a bit arse-about-face.’

She laughed, wiped a splash of paint off her cheek with the back of her hand.

‘How about we sit down with a beer and write out a plan for you? Then you can do things in order.’

‘I’m not an ordered sort of girl. I get an idea and take off with it.’

‘I know.’

‘Well then, you go get a beer from my old fridge, if it’s still working, and I’ll finish my paint job.’

‘Let me fix the damned fence, Samantha.’

She paused, lowered the paintbrush. ‘Am I making you mad?’

He stopped himself from taking the brush from her hands, and looked down at the paint dripping onto the grass instead. ‘No. I just like to do things with the least complication.’

‘I’m not a perfect person, and I’m complicated too.’

He couldn’t hold his interest any longer.
Why was she here alone?

‘I’ve been told I’m odd and that I don’t make myself clear,’ she went on, ‘so I’m sorry if I’ve made you angry. I didn’t mean to. I don’t want you to think badly of me.’

‘Why the hell would I think badly of you? What are you talking about?’

‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘Old nonsense.’

He took his hands from his pockets, found he had nothing to do with them and shoved them back. ‘Who says you’re complicated?’ She’d said ‘odd’ which was a strange word to use.

‘My mother.’ She straightened. ‘And some guy I knew.’

A few words of explanation, nowhere near enough. ‘What guy?’