Thigh High (2 page)

Joe‘s eyes narrowed in acknowledgement of her words. “So you found out about Cheryl.” It was not a question.

“That you screwed her after making me feel guilty? Oh yeah. I never forgot.” Maz snatched up her car keys and opened the door and took the plate of cheesecake from the startled room service attendant. She was dressed in only a black slip and no shoes but Maz didn’t care and she wasn’t about to stop and deal with Joe any longer than she had to. She had done what she’d planned. He had made her feel stupid all those years ago and now it was her turn.

“Welcome home, Joe.” Maz walked out the door.

—

Fourteen years ago.

Maz Adler felt like her body had turned to stone. She couldn’t move. Her feet were fixed to the spot. She couldn’t speak as she watched the man she loved, his hard, lean body highlighted in the moonlight as he moved with a masculine grace that made her hold her breath. The woman beneath him moaned and clutched his shoulders, her legs wrapped around his waist, meeting him thrust for thrust.

This was sex at a raw, basic level and for one moment Maz wondered if this was how she looked with Joe. It was abandoned and wanton and the smell of sex overpowered the frangipani tree the two lovers lay under.

Joe’s taut butt, rising and falling as his cock plunged in and out of the woman, had Maz mesmerized. It was the last thing Maz expected to see. Two naked people in a special place where she and Joe had made love. It was just so wrong yet Maz couldn’t move. Her Joe was fucking another woman and she wanted to scream at him to stop but the power of speech had also left her.

But then, was he “her Joe”? Her mind spun back to three days ago when she had been the woman in his arms and everything had been right in her world.

“We will be together forever,” he had whispered against her lips as his cock had sunk deep into the wet core of her body.

“I love you, Joe.” To love another man as she did this one would have been impossible. Some things a woman just knew. This man was always meant to be hers.

“There is no other woman for me but you, Maz.”

Clearly bloody not
. Of course Maz knew the other woman he held in his arms. She had wanted Joe for a long time and now she had him—on her, in her. That he had taken what she offered so quickly after their argument stung Maz to the core. Maybe she had needed to see this to realize it was really over.
Did he ever really love me
? But then, that argument had answered that question and Maz knew she was pretty stupid to have come searching for Joe after that.

“Come with me to Sydney.” Joe’s eyes had been bright with dreams and the promise of adventure. He had been twenty-one and everything had seemed doable to him.

Maz, at twenty, had been content with her life. “My home is here in Amberwarra Falls.” It was the town she grew up in, the town she loved. Maz had never planned to leave. That Joe would, had never occurred to her.

He had taken her hands in his. “I need more.”

“Aren’t I enough?” Maz had meant it to sound like a joke but the serious look in his eyes had made the words come out in a panic.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Joe had wanted her to leave with him. Maz had loved her life and her man and she was being forced to choose between the two. “I don’t want to leave.” Maybe it was naïve and parochial of her, but Maz had no need to conquer other worlds. She had been content with the world she was in.

“I can’t stay.” Joe’s hand had tightened on hers. “If you loved me you would come with me.”

Maz had pulled on his hand until hers was free. “That sounds like an ultimatum.” At twenty she hadn’t known a lot about life, but Maz had been aware that nothing good came from forcing another’s hand.

“It’s what I feel.”

What Joe was telling her was he felt she didn’t love him unless she packed up and followed him like some lovesick simpleton who could not conceive of her life with anyone but him.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t love you enough.” Even as she had said the words she had known they weren’t true.

Joe had sighed. “What are you scared of in the outside world, Maz?”

“I’m not scared of anything.”
Am I? Am I scared to leave home?
She hadn’t believed so. It was more a feeling that she knew where she belonged.

“I can’t say here in this town.”

“Joe, I can’t—”

“You have to grow up sometime, Maz.”

The impatience in his voice had cut into her. “Oh right and you’re so mature.”

“I know what I want.”

“As do I.” And she wasn’t about to choose differently because Joe decreed it.

He had raked an agitated hand through his hair. “Marilyn—”

“Joseph,” Maz retaliated with his full name as they did when they were angry with the other. They had known each other since they were kids but it was only in the last eighteen months that knowledge had deepened into love. “Why do I have to change for you? Why can’t you adapt for me?” He could come and go to Sydney and she would see him off and welcome him back.

“I’m planning to go in a week and I’m not coming back.”

Right. I know where I stand
. “I’m staying here.”

Joe shook his head. “So much for love.”

Idiot.
“You have no idea what love is if I am the only one to make sacrifices.” Maz wasn’t against changes but they had to be reciprocal moves and not just one doing everything for the other.

“Is it a ‘sacrifice’?”

“It is if I give up what I want.” Couldn’t he see that? Maz wasn’t going to hold him back but neither would she beg him to stay. “It’s as important to me to be here as it is for you to go to Sydney.” The sudden silence that had followed her words had been deafening.

“Maybe it was only great sex between us.”

Bastard
. “Maybe.” It was more and they had both known it but she hadn’t been about to fight his words. Joe’s need to go had been stronger than his need for her.

“So this is it?”

“Yes.”

And then he’d gone to her. Of all the women in the town, Joe chose Cheryl to fuck. That he was angry and tense, Maz could understand. That it was the town slut he took and made her scream with passion made Maz ill.

She wanted to scream in pain as she ripped every hair out of Cheryl’s peroxide blonde head. Maz was so angry she wanted to pull Joe off the slut and beat him with her bare hands. She knew she should have left the minute she found them together but it was like watching a train wreck. Ghastly and impossible to conceive of but unable to walk away from without wobbly legs. Why was she watching them? The only answer that came to Maz was maybe it was to understand that what she had with Joe was dead and that, like him, she needed to move on.

Chapter Two

Present day

“Only poofters use gyms,” Blue Green announced to all at the bar of The Naked Shearer Pub. His best friend Dusty Baker nodded in agreement.

Merlene Thomas, the barkeeper, rolled her eyes at the redheaded man’s statement. “Women have signed up already.”

“Exercise! What those women need is a bloody good—”

“Say it, Blue, and that will be another fiver for the swear tin.” Merlene picked up the tin and rattled it.

“Struth you’re a hard woman, Merlene.” Dusty shook his head.

“Well, you need to have a bit of decorum or you’ll be out on your bum. Besides it’s a matter of whether you keep your money for beer or shoot your mouth off and it goes in the charity tin. We’re looking after injured wombats this week.”

“Stone the flaming crows, Merlene, you and your bloody ratty wild animals. To think that’s where my hard-earned readies go.”

Merlene slammed the tin down before Blue. “Got a problem with that, sunshine?”

“Nah, just pull us a pint, ya old bag.”

Maz Adler smiled at the clients of The Naked Shearer Pub. She loved her job. There was never a dull moment. Least of all now. Amberwarra Falls, population of three hundred permanent residents and an unknown number of transient workers depending on the shearing and fruit-picking seasons, was getting a gym. It was the only thing everyone was talking about. Local boy made good Joe “Patto” Patterson had come back home to start up a fitness centre.

Maz’s mind flashed back to the hotel and Joe lying naked and erect on the bed. He was probably still a little annoyed with her.
Okay, probably a lot.
She was in two minds about that. While it was true she was fourteen years older and wiser, she had enjoyed her small moment of payback. It was dumb and childish but the cheesecake was delicious.

Seeing Joe again was something she had thought a lot about. In theory, he should mean nothing to her. Fourteen years was a long time and much water had passed under the bridge and her anger at him should have burnt out but it hadn’t. Maz was still pissed that he’d had sex with the town scrag, Cheryl. The vivid picture of them together still burned in her mind. The excited talk of Joe leaving town to seek his fortune had broken her heart and Maz had been more than happy when he’d left.
Yeah, stuff it, he deserved what he got in the motel room.

“I don’t know why we need a gym.” Blue accepted the beer and slurped the thin head of foam off the top.

“To get fit, you mad bugger.” Merlene reached over the solid wooden bar and poked him in his beer gut.

Dusty was instantly on the defense. “Hey, that’s winter weight I need to live on.”

“Well, you’ll be living a long bloody time then.” Merlene turned her attention to Maz. “Patto’s been in the big smoke for a while. It makes you wonder why he’s coming home.”

Maz wasn’t about to answer that. Her boss knew only too well what had happened between them and speculating about Joe was not something she did anymore. It had to be at least a year since she had.

And then the word had shot around town. Joe Patterson was coming home. That in itself was big news. But a gym? While everyone knew Joe was a qualified fitness instructor and had traveled the world doing it, not one expected him to want to settle back in Amberwarra Falls. But that appeared to be what he was doing. He had bought a house and had come back to town.

“Big smoke? Upper Kumbucca West?” Dusty looked impressed.

Maz shook her head in amusement. Upper Kumbucca West had probably a hundred head more population and its only claim to fame over Amberwarra Falls was it had a two-hundred-year-old apple, shrunken with age, under a glass dome in the local library. It was from the first apple harvest and the townsfolk took it very seriously. “No, he’s been in Sydney.” That was all she wanted to know. Ignorance was easy to deal with.

Dusty nodded his head. “I went there once. More people than flies. I turned tail and came home. It wasn’t natural.”

“Nah, besides they all talk funny in big cities.” Blue gulped his beer down and slid the glass across the bar for another.

To the patrons in The Naked Shearer Pub, home was Amberwarra Falls. It was a six-hour drive from the city of Brisbane and surrounded by the vast nothingness of the Australian outback. The town had been founded in the early eighteen hundreds. The streets had been built wide enough for horses and carriages or the long road trains that passed through on the way to places like Alice Springs and Darwin.

The Naked Shearer Pub, with its painted fresco of a nude, grinning shearer with his Akubra hat placed strategically over his genitals, had been standing longer than the town hall, which had been built in 1850. Back then the local watering hole provided beer, news and companionship and no one cared much for politics. Maz’s family had served on the town council since its inception. There was always an Adler on the board or as mayor. Her Auntie Beryl, the last of her family, was on the council and few challenged Beryl when she wanted to do something.

As for Amberwarra Falls—well, there were no “falls” to speak of. Years ago, before the crippling drought, there had been a trickling stream of water that ran over a rocky outcrop down into Possum Gully. It had never been spectacular but it had drawn the odd tourist to stop and take a photo before moving on. But not now. There was nothing to see but red, rough rock and dust. Even the possums had left. There had been talk about changing the name of the town but that had been vetoed. As Beryl Adler, cultural guardian of all things local had said, “If we change the name we’d have to change the postcards and we got them as a job lot.” That was true. They had six hundred and thirty-two left out of six hundred and fifty purchased. No one was about to throw those out due to lack of water.

“I still don’t know why he’s coming back to bung in a gym where Davo’s book emporium burnt down. Not like we need newfangled stuff like that.”

It hadn’t been so much an emporium as a dusty old shop that sold tattered old books, comics, newspapers and once a week the local poker game had been held in the back storeroom. It was on poker night that the store went up in flames. Many said it was the cigars the men liked to smoke. Others blamed a mosquito coil used to keep the insects at bay.

The real reason? The fire brigade found evidence a scented candle had been burning during the game. It was thought someone had knocked it over. Of course no man admitted to it mainly because being caught anywhere near anything scented and girlie was not something any of them wanted to claim.

“Yeah, we don’t need new stuff in the Falls.” Dusty always agreed with anything Blue said. They were mates since kindergarten. “Besides we’re already on the map.”

Maz rolled her eyes. She knew which map they were referring to. “That map is hardly prestigious.”

“Yeah, but if you look us up on gaggle—”

“Google,” Maz corrected Dusty.

“Same bloody difference.”

Merlene picked up and rattled the swear tin at him.

“Fair suck of the sav, Merle. Bloody’s not a swear word.”

“Cough up, sunshine.” Merlene waited for Dusty to pay up for his swearing.

“Jeez, you’re a mad cow. You and your bloody wombats.” Dusty threw a collection of coins into the tin.

“You used two ‘bloody’s.”

Dusty rolled his eyes and added a ten dollar note. “Happy now? Anyway, as I was saying, anyone can see the toilet block in Captain Cook Park got Amberwarra Falls fourth prize in the cleanest toilets in Queensland.”