Brooding Rebel to Baby Daddy Page 11

  Her gaze locked onto his. Beautifully baffled. Rich, mellow hazel. Flecks of grey and gold. The colours of the trees behind her. Of home.

  Rafe, buddy, he thought. If you don’t rein this in, you’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble.

  But it was too late. It had always been too late where she was concerned. The connection between them was inescapable.

  If they were on opposite sides of the planet, or not. If they had a child together... Or not.

  “Rafe?” she whispered, disoriented. “What happened to Sydney? Dubai? Janie mentioned London. I expected... I don’t know... That you’d be gone. A while.”

  “Mmm,” he said, taking the time to drink her in in a way he hadn’t let himself do, not properly, since her return. “Thought the same myself.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “This.” He moved in, slid a hand behind her neck.

  When she didn’t demur, he pressed her gently against the side of the car.

  When she didn’t push him away, or call him out for complicating things, he leaned in, slowly, deliberately, his entire body aching in protest until—with the people of Radiance his witnesses—his lips met hers.

  She stilled at the contact for half a second, before he felt her give. Moving to meet him. Melting in his arms.

  Then her hands delved slowly into his hair, sending shards of heat down his spine. And he knew he wasn’t alone in this. In the connection, or the missing. In the disarray, or the realisation it was what it was. Change or not, they were who they were.

  Yet the kiss remained slow. Tender. Tinged with yearning.

  Their lips brushing. Lingering. Tasting. Sipping. Offering. Relearning the shape of one another. Lost in a kind of hazy bliss, yet teetering on a knife’s edge. As if it could tip over into an inferno any second.

  A few seconds later the kiss gentled, and they pulled apart.

  Sable’s eyes took several moments to flutter open. The surprise, the wonder, the heat in her gaze, the way she remained plastered against him, struck something deeply primal inside.

  Inevitable.

  “What was that for?” she asked, but there was no castigation in her tone. Merely wonder.

  “I heard they’ve been mean to you.”

  “They?” she asked, her eyes still not quite focussed.

  Rafe cocked his head towards the old men on the park bench outside the barber, then the women with their noses against the window of Wanda’s Cakes and Stuff.

  “The wool-store lady, thing?” She waved it off. “I’ve been on the receiving end of far worse.”

  “Janie told me about the photograph.”

  Her brow furrowed before smoothing out as she began playing with a loose thread in his shirt. “Oh. That. That kind of thing used to happen all the time. I hated it, but had become...accustomed.”

  He tried to imagine having to inure himself to having strangers come at him, in vulnerable moments, and sell the spoils for entertainment. “How do you get used to something like that?”

  “It’s fine. Well, not fine. I used to smile and try to move on. This time I felt like taking her phone and dropping it in my drink.” She shot him a smile that he felt, right in the solar plexus. “But it was clarifying. Made me realise I didn’t belong in that space, and neither did I want to. Which made me really think about what I did want. And...here I am.”

  “That doesn’t make it right, what Trudy and Wanda pulled. This was your home, once upon a time. You are one of us, no matter where in the world you might be.”

  She blinked up at him, her eyes coming over a little glossy. Before she swallowed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. They’re just looking out for you. Which makes me appreciate how far they’ve come. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of those women have shrines to you in their basements—”

  And from one blink to the next her gaze cleared.

  “Hang on a second. Is that why you kissed me like that, in front of the whole town? Because you were trying to protect me? Just like our first kiss all over again?”

  Was it? Partly. And partly because he couldn’t not kiss her. Which was becoming a problem. One he was apparently willing to take on.

  “I can look after myself, Rafe,” she said, her face mutinous. “I’m not your responsibility.”

  But he refused to be pushed away. Not without the chance to have his say. He tucked her in closer. She glared up at him. But made no move to disengage. Her finger was still playing with the loose thread near his heart.

  This push and pull, this constant humming tension, it had been their hallmark. For their relationship hadn’t happened overnight—it had been built over years. Layers and layers of discovery and demand, differences and insecurities, trust and surrender. Some of which had been swept away by her departure, but not all. The foundations had been too well laid.

  That foundation had been the one thing that had kept him upright when she left. For all that her leaving had shattered him, the fact that she’d been in his life at all was the reason he’d come as far as he had. She’d seen such good in him, with her ability to see beauty in places others saw only despair.

  Would he ever have been able to realise his dream without her?

  Without him would she be able to realise hers?

  Her finger slid out from the grip of the cotton and laid over his chest. Her fingers curling gently against his shirt. He felt his heart thump, once, twice, a solid, sure, steady decided beat. A response he’d learned to trust when he’d had nothing else to rely on.

  And he heard himself say, “Yes.”

  “Yes? Yes, I can look after myself?” Her eyes widened. “Or yes, as in...?”

  Rafe glanced over Sable’s shoulder to find the over-sixties walking group standing in a clump, gawping at them. The men in the barber shop had now spilled onto the footpath as well. Bear was out there, trying to hustle them all into The Coffee Shop, but they were all far too immersed in the show playing out before them.

  “Can we go for that drive?” Rafe asked.

  “Don’t you have to get the car to Melbourne?”

  “I’ll get someone else to finish the trip. In a bit.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shall we?”

  She nodded, her eyes still wild and wide, her head bobbing like a marionette. When he moved her aside just enough to open the passenger door, she spilled bonelessly inside.

  While Rafe felt as if the next hour might well determine the course of his life from that moment on. Not only regarding the possibility of a child out there in the world, but the woman who’d stormed back into his life.

  * * *

  With the roof down, the wind was bracing. But Sable barely noticed for her mind was all a spin as Rafe drove out of town, up into the hills, round and around, till she lost her sense of direction.

  Rafe, elbow resting on the windowsill, a finger sliding back and forth over the seam of his lips, his other hand relaxed on the wheel, had a faraway look. Serious.

  Her heart clutched as a wave of tenderness, of heat, swept over her. Followed by a swift chill as the word Yes swam through her head like a fever dream.

  For a second there she’d thought he’d meant... But no. Maybe? She’d thought her arguments were very convincing, so why not?

  Sable risked another glance. What was he thinking about? His grocery list? Maybe he was still mulling over how he could make sure the people of Radiance treated her right.

  For he was a protector at heart. Always had been. Protecting Janie from the mess she’d been born into. Protecting the memory of his mother, a woman she’d never heard him speak ill of, even while the pain of her departure was written over every line in his face. Even protecting his father, mostly from himself.

  He’d kissed her, it seemed, to protect her too.

  But it hadn’t fel
t that way. It had felt as if a storm that had been brewing for days had finally broken. It had felt like coming home.

  And this time, no single part of her leapt up and said, Stop! We can’t! Too complicated!

  Because for a few beautiful moments it had been such pure relief to slip back to a much simpler time. When she was an anonymous girl who loved nothing more than taking photos of things that other people neglected, and falling for the brooding boy next door.

  Sable coughed on her thoughts. Then coughed some more.

  Rafe shot her a look. “You okay?”

  She gave him a thumbs up, even though she wasn’t sure that was entirely true.

  She’d only been caught up in a memory of feeling, not actually feeling those feelings, right? For surely the worst time to realise you were falling in...something with someone, was not the time to have a baby with them. How twisty was that?

  Were her crumbling defences inevitable, or was she self-sabotaging? Was this whole thing a prime example of her putting herself in a “situation doomed to fail”, as her ex’s enabling therapist had so kindly put it?

  “I’m just going to put the car away,” Rafe said, slowing as the edge of his property appeared. They’d come around the back way, not past her mother’s house.

  “Sure,” Sable squeaked, then cleared her throat, not sure where “away” might be.

  They trundled down his driveway, though he didn’t stop at the Airstream, instead hooking a left, past a large copse of elms, and liquid ambers in all their autumn glory, which was when she realised where they were heading.

  In the direction of the old barn.

  A thrill of anticipation—and trepidation—shot down her spine. If she was worried about how her memories were mixing dangerously with the present, the barn would show her exactly where she stood. For, while she might have blocked out their first not-real kiss, she’d not forgotten a single moment they’d spent in the loft atop the crumbling old ruin.

  Memories flooded in so thick and fast she could barely keep up. Holding Rafe’s hand as they ran inside to get out of a rainstorm. The scent of old hay. The ladder to the loft. Fake candles making the place look so cosy and romantic. The days and nights spent snuggled up together in their secret place, debating over what their future might look like.

  Only when they rounded the trees it was to find the barn was no more.

  While it took her head a few moments to take in its replacement—a massive two-storey utilitarian building the size of a small aeroplane hangar—Sable’s heart got there all too quick. Squeezing so hard she let out a small noise. Like an ache she couldn’t contain.

  It should have been less of a shock, for the thing had been held together by branches of the trees growing through it, littered with cracks in the walls, panels torn away by weather, the frame rotted over time. She wondered when it had finally collapsed. Or had Rafe torn it down too? Had he exorcised her from his life, the way he had his father?

  Heart now beating in her ears, she watched in silence as a massive roller door in the side of the building opened with a loud rumble.

  Rafe eased the car inside. And whatever trepidation and concern had been flickering about inside her disappeared as shock overtook it all.

  Sensor lights flickered on revealing what amounted to a car collector’s paradise.

  Rafe pulled into a space beside an old Bentley. Beside that sat a deep red vintage Ferrari. A gleaming Mustang crouched beyond that. And another. Early models, seriously rare. Car after spectacular car. Some covered in tarps. Others gleaming under the bright lights.

  Gaze absorbing all there was to see, she noted a workshop. Down the far end a small office and kitchenette and bathroom. The ceiling was a mile above, held there by a criss cross of metal beams, except at the far end where a second floor had been built in. At the top of a set of thin stairs leading to a closed door.

  She swallowed. If memory served, that was also where the loft had been. Their loft.

  The car door opened with a snick beside her and she looked up to find Rafe, hand out. She took it, tingles and warmth coursing up her arm. She gently disentangled herself before he figured out, by some kind of osmosis, that she was going all gooey on him.

  Then she glanced across to the far wall and saw it. In the same pressed tin as the Radiance Restoration sign, a series of big letters across the workshop wall saying, The Barn. And her knees nearly went out from under her.

  Recovering, as well as she could, she asked, “What is this place?”

  Rafe laughed, all deep and rumbly, a boot scuffing the polished concrete floor. “The shop is where the bulk of the work is done. This is my display case. I bring clients here from time to time. Temperature and humidity controlled. Special air-conditioning units for dust prevention.”

  “Wow. The contents must be worth more than the land they’re sitting on. Please tell me you have excellent insurance.”

  “An eye-watering amount.”

  “Are they all yours?”

  “Some,” he said with a quiet smile. “A few are here early for the Pumpkin Festival car show. I started it a few years back, with Stan’s help, now Janie runs it every year. It’s become one of the biggest in the country. Others are ready to be shipped off to their owners. That one,” he said, pointing to the tomato-red Ferrari that looked just like the one out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “is heading to a tech billionaire type from Silicon Valley. The two Mustangs are a his-and-hers pair we brought up to scratch after finding the husks in a shed in Dubbo. Prince Alessandro Giordano of Vallemont choppered in to see them when he was here visiting with his new bride, an Aussie girl from just down the way.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He laughed, cheeks pinking, just a smidge, as he ran a hand up the back of his neck. “Now I feel like I’m showing off.”

  “As well you should! It’s very impressive, Rafe. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved here. Even if you did have to pull down our barn to do it.”

  She shot him a sideways glance right as his face flickered. His jaw worked. But he said nothing. Shutting down right before her eyes.

  “So the Pumpkin Festival, hey?”

  “Mmm.” A beat, then, “So you’ll be here then? Still?”

  “I guess that depends.” Blood suddenly beating in her ears, she looked up, held his gaze, and said, “That depends on you.”

  She waited for him to give her an inkling, some clue of what he was thinking, fully expecting him to shut down completely. To go all stoic and statue-like, when instead he held out a hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  Blood still surging, she took his hand. Fingers gripped protectively around hers, he drew her around the bulk of the cars till they stopped before a smaller lump under an old tarp.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  He tilted his chin. “Have a look.”

  She bent, found the edge of the tarp and lifted one corner. The hint of small white-walled tyres, with daisy badges on the wheel rims, was all she needed to know what was beneath.

  She whipped the tarp away with a flourish to find a 1972 VW Beetle. Matt black paint dulled by time. Peace-sign-shaped gearstick in need of a polish. With its amateur finish, lack of polish, the dents not quite beaten out, it stood out among the cars behind her like a field daisy in a bouquet of red roses.

  She’d been sixteen, maybe, when they’d hauled the VW frame, muddy and filthy and busted, out of the creek that traversed the gully behind their houses, after Rafe had seen the striking photograph she’d taken of the thing. The juxtaposition of progress and nature, of death and regrowth, gloomy greys and fresh greens, going on to become her schtick.

  And, oh, the days, months, years she’d spent happily watching over him as he’d rebuilt the thing from scratch. Rebuilding—as she’d only later found out—for her.


  Sable laid a hand on the cool metal, and every emotion she’d spent the past several days trying to keep at bay overflowed. A longing for the simplicity, the surety of those days, so strong it made her sway.

  She moved to the driver’s side. Hooked her fingers under the handle. It opened with a clunk. Breathing in the scent—new and old mixing into a heady cocktail—she slid inside. The leather seat squeaked as she sank into it. Her hands wrapped around the hard steering wheel.

  When, a few moments later, Rafe hopped into the passenger side, their gazes caught.

  “You kept it.”

  He closed his eyes and leant back against the head rest. His large body barely fitting in the small space. “Seems so.”

  “Why?”

  “Thought about letting her go over the years, but couldn’t seem to do it.”

  “Why?” she asked again, the word rough, full of questions she should not be asking. As it opened her up to more than complications. It opened her up entirely.

  Rafe tilted his head to look at her. And said, “You know why.”

  Sable’s heart leapt. Her belly dropped. And the rest of her no longer knew which way was up. “Rafe,” she said, when she had no idea what else there was to say.

  Turned out, he did. “Okay, then.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The answer is yes. To your request. I’ll help you. I’ll help you have your child.”

  “Oh, my God! Oh, Rafe!” She all but crawled across the seat to throw herself into his arms, hanging on for all her might.

  Slowly, inevitably, his arms went around her too. His big hands sliding around her back, his face buried in her hair. The shape of him was so achingly intimate. The heat, the overwhelming surety that with him everything would be all right. It felt like...well, it felt like pure happiness. And even while she knew better than to trust it could last, she let it infuse her, let herself enjoy it, another warm memory to tuck away and bring out on cold lonely nights.

  When she pulled back, tears now streaming down her face, she found herself laughing. “Thank you. More than I can possibly say. Now I had a great doctor in LA, but still have to find some here. Or Sydney or Melbourne. Whatever suits you. A good one. The best. Whatever it costs. And I’m paying every cent. We’ll need lawyers too, for the contract—”