What Rosie Found Next (13 page)

He waited for her to continue.

‘Over the years since Mum left, I’ve done whatever I could do to keep my life stable, without surprises, and since Dad died I craved safety and security all the more. I guess it was my way of coping without my parents around. It’s the sort of hurt I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’

He gulped as she told him more about her relationship with her mum and the closeness she had with her dad before he died.

‘Are you angry with your mum for leaving you?’

Rosie shook her head. ‘What’s the point? I’d have been angrier if I hadn’t been happy with Dad, but we were so close that he took away the pain of living without Mum. I saw her regularly, and in a way I realised she was becoming a better person out of the marriage.’

He had to hand it to Rosie, understanding like that. He doubted he would’ve done in her position.

A small smile crept across Rosie’s face. ‘The family Dad helped to rescue wrote to the fire station to say thank you and to pay their respects. It helps lessen the pain to know my dad wasn’t only my hero but other people’s too.’

‘Why didn’t you explain all of this when I told you about my biological father?’

‘Talking about it is still painful, Owen. It’s only been eighteen months.’

She turned to face him and he held his breath at how close they were, bodies almost pressed against one another. He was acutely aware of the heat from her thigh against his own, her breasts beneath her T-shirt almost in contact with his chest.

‘Now do you see why I was so upset about the necklace?’ she asked, relaxing her head against the pillow.

‘Of course I do.’

Her hand rested on her neck. ‘I remember what it felt like when his strong hands fastened the chain around my neck.’ She laughed. ‘You wouldn’t think a firefighter could be so strong yet have hands that put on delicate jewellery and played beautiful music, would you?’

‘I guess not,’ Owen whispered in the still of the night.

Lost in thoughts of her past, she told him, ‘He could make the cello sound weighty and powerful, like he was, yet pure and sensuous too.’

Smiling now, she said, ‘You know, you remind me of him. You’re a similar build, tall, broad shoulders. Brave.’

‘A wicked sense of humour …’

‘I’m not sure about that.’ She giggled, but the smile soon faded. ‘I remember the knock at the door – the knock every relative of anyone in the fire service, police service or armed forces dreads, the knock at the door that changes your life forever. From that day I never wanted to put myself in the same situation, never knowing what was around the corner.’

Owen lay there, disorientated by the emotional intimacy.

‘Now I understand the reluctance to talk about your music degree.’

Her eyes sparkled in excitement, enhanced with the sheen of tears. ‘Dad and I would play our cellos for hours. We were pretty good.’

‘Modest,’ he teased, pushing her on the arm.

‘I wanted to play for him one last time, at his funeral, on his cello.’

‘Bloody hell. You’ve been through the wringer.’ He shook his head. ‘What piece did you play?’

‘Bach’s Cello Suite Number One, Prelude in G Major.’

‘I’m sure it was beautiful. I, of course, have absolutely no appreciation for classical music and have no idea at all what that piece sounds like.’

They both laughed, and when she stopped she turned onto her back and looked at the ceiling. ‘You were playing it in the kitchen the night you cooked me lasagne.’

Finally, an explanation for her mood change that night when he’d given her a glass of red wine thinking she was just uptight and needed to well and truly relax.

‘I spent hours practising the piece,’ she said. ‘I was frustrated because no matter how much I tried, it never sounded as perfect as it did when he played. My efforts felt clunky, a long way from the beauty he was able to coax out of the instrument.’

‘I’m sure a lot of that was in your imagination.’

‘It probably was.’ She shrugged.

‘So you haven’t played since?’

She shook her head.

His voice soft, Owen said, ‘What happened to the cello?’

‘It’s in Mum’s attic. I sold mine, but I kept his.’

‘You’ve never been tempted to play it again?’

Rosie exhaled. ‘I can’t even listen to cello music, remember.’

He waited a moment, and then, ‘When did you get the tattoo?’

‘Not straight away.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not the best with needles.’

He was pleased to detect the note of humour in her voice.

‘I went on holiday with a friend the month after the funeral and got the tattoo on a whim. But I’ve never regretted it. Adam wasn’t too pleased when I told him, but I think he felt he couldn’t say anything, not when my dad had just died.’

They lay there without talking, the sounds of their breathing and their thoughts keeping them company.

‘It’ll soon be Christmas,’ said Rosie after a while. ‘My dad was always big into Christmas.’

‘You never spent Christmas with your mum?’

‘A few times, when Dad was working, but she never got as excited by it as he did.’

Owen clasped his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling as they lay side by side.

She watched the ceiling too. ‘The Christmas before he died, Dad and I got really silly and wore winter cardigans, woollen scarves and gloves despite the summer weather. He made mulled wine and we had tacky Christmas crackers with appalling jokes in the middle.’ She giggled. ‘We played Christmas carols on the cello too. When I get my own place, I’ll have the real tree, the big Christmas dinner and the mulled wine. Even if it’s forty degrees outside.’

‘You’ll need air conditioning, then.’ He grinned. ‘So where will this dream house be?’ He turned on his side to face her again and didn’t miss the twitch of her mouth as she stopped herself from saying something. ‘Come on, out with it. Have you seen somewhere?’

‘I couldn’t possibly say.’

‘Oh come on, Stevens. You can’t leave it at that.’

‘Okay, okay. I’ve seen somewhere.’

‘And …’

‘Well, it’s a house I’d love, but it won’t ever happen.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t afford it and besides, Adam will never go for it. I don’t think he’s ready for life in a small town.’

The mention of the boyfriend halted the conversation for a moment, but not for long.

‘It’s in Daisy Lane,’ she said.

‘Around the corner from here?’

‘Yes.’

‘I never realised there was much down there any more. I don’t think I’ve been down there since I was a kid. I pretty much leave the house and, at the end of the road, turn right for the city or left for the main street in Magnolia Creek.’

‘I discovered it when I was out exploring one day. It’s so quiet down there, and the house could look amazing.’

‘Have you mentioned it to Adam?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I guess I didn’t want him to shatter the illusion.’ She paused. ‘This is embarrassing to admit, but in my dreams I’ve renovated the lounge, I’ve put in a character fireplace with a beautiful surround, and a claw foot bath in the brand new bathroom. I’ve even decorated a Christmas tree to stand in the window.’

‘You live in your own little world, don’t you, Stevens?’

She frowned. ‘I’ve done the finances in my head and it really is a dream. Sometimes we need those though.’ She turned to face him. ‘So enough about me. Tell me a bit about the
real
Owen Harrison.’

If she’d been a girlfriend, lying next to him in the middle of the night, Owen would’ve taken this as his cue to run a mile. But this was Rosie and she was different.

‘It’s late. Another time.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’ She lay back, eyes on the brink of giving up their quest to stay open.

He watched her for a while, with every intention of going back to his own room, but sleep grabbed him too and didn’t let go until the morning.

Rosie stretched out her legs and met someone else’s. Eyes heavy and swollen from the tears last night, she turned to face Owen. Tiny creases fanned out from the sides of his shut eyes. She’d never noticed them before. Her fingers wanted to trace the lines, reach out and feel the muscular arm thrown across the pillow behind his head. The sheet covered his bottom half, and she watched his chest rise and fall with his breath. Her eyes moved down to his stomach and the smattering of dark hair diving down his abdomen and into the sheet below.

When Rosie looked at his face again he’d opened his eyes. She jumped.

‘Were you checking me out me, Stevens?’ he asked sleepily, awake enough to grin though.

‘I was—’ Her iPad chimed and she leapt out of bed, the pain in her knee almost gone after keeping her weight off of it during the night.

Owen sat up, fully alert, the sheet falling that little bit further. ‘Is it likely to be Adam?’

She nodded. She saw on the iPad that she’d just missed a FaceTime call from him. Suddenly she was aware of her barely-there T-shirt and the man in her bed who wasn’t her boyfriend.

‘Rosie, nothing happened.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you see it that way if you were Adam?’

‘You’ve got a point.’ He grinned, his stubble darkened from the overnight growth. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and shuffled towards the doorway, calling over his shoulder, ‘Call him back, Stevens. We’ll pretend this never happened.’

Rosie looked at the closed bedroom door, FaceTime chiming again but unable to bring her out of her trance as she thought about how she’d fallen asleep with another man. When the iPad quietened she looked in the mirror. She touched a hand to the red marks on her neck that didn’t look anywhere near as angry as they had last night.

When the iPad chimed again, she answered the call, angling the device so her neck wasn’t in the picture. She couldn’t face telling Adam about what had happened, not yet. She’d cried all her tears last night and right now she didn’t want to relive her ordeal.

Instead, she smiled at Adam and listened about a presentation he was preparing, the dire food at a client dinner the previous night, and for once she couldn’t even summon the energy to worry about what his work life meant for her personal life. The only thought on her mind now was that last night she and Owen had crossed both a physical boundary and an emotional one too. When she first met him, she’d thought him arrogant, over-confident and selfish. She’d thought he looked after number one, never mind anybody else. But she didn’t think that any more. Not since she’d spent the night alongside him, sharing her innermost thoughts. She’d seen a softer side to him and so, after she’d finished talking to Adam and heard Owen ride away on his Ducati, she decided she needed to know more about the secret being kept from him.

Last night had been about her. Today, it was about him.

She thought about digging the box up and showing Owen what she’d found, but she didn’t want to hurt him, so she left the house in search of finding answers some other way.

As she walked along the lane and turned left towards the main street, the floral salute of sweet-smelling purple-blue blooms from the jacaranda trees and a sense of determination was enough to carry her past the spot where she’d been attacked last night and all the way to Finnegan’s café.

Bella was wiping down a table in the front window, an empty cup and saucer in her opposite hand, until she saw Rosie. ‘What on earth happened to you?’ She gestured towards the red mark on Rosie’s neck, and when Rosie stepped into the café, past the tables, Bella saw the plaster on her knee – Owen had cut a pretty generous square from the roll of Band-Aid.

‘I was mugged last night.’

‘Oh my God!’ Bella dumped the crockery down on the nearest table and pulled Rosie into a hug as she told her the whole sorry story of her journey home from the pub.

‘We should’ve walked you home, we shouldn’t have left.’

‘Stop it, Bella. I’ve walked that way plenty of times and I’ve always been fine.’

‘Why didn’t Owen walk you home?’

‘Carrie turned up and I didn’t want to intrude.’

‘When I see that boy, I’ll—’

‘No, Bella. He didn’t do anything wrong, I sneaked out without him seeing me. It was Owen who found me when he walked home himself. He called the police, stayed with me while I made a statement.’ She didn’t add that he’d stayed all night with her too.

‘I’ll whip up some fresh scones, jam and cream. On the house, I insist.’

‘No, it’s fine, really. I’m over the shock now.’

‘I’m not!’

Rosie grabbed Bella’s arm before she could escape to the kitchen. ‘The scones can wait. I need to talk to you about something.’

‘Oh no, the mugger didn’t try anything else did he?’

‘No.’ She smiled gently. ‘Apart from a grazed knee and marked neck, no necklace and a few dollars lighter with the loss of my purse, I’m fine. Thankfully I’d left my credit card and other paraphernalia at home.’

‘Well then, what’s so important you can’t take pause for my scones and homemade jam?’ Bella joked.

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Why don’t you try?’

‘I had an email from Jane.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I found something.’

‘Found something where?’

Rosie took a deep breath. ‘I found a box, buried in the garden at the house.’

When Bella’s face fell, Rosie knew that in her search for answers, she’d come to exactly the right place.