Hamish stuck his phone back in his pocket. ‘Because once she’s no longer unattainable, I won’t want her anymore.’
‘Sounds like she was being the dead opposite of unattainable to me. Pass the Stillsons.’
Hamish handed over the wrench, then stretched his neck from one side to the other. He’d slept badly the last few nights, turning the conundrum over in his mind. It had seemed very much like Jemma was giving him both permission and invitation. Yet just when he’d been about to lean in and taste the salt of her skin, he’d hesitated. Easy comehad always meant easy go: short, fun relationships that he was happy to move on from. But in that second, with only centimetres between them, he’d realised that he wanted this game to last a whole lot longer than a quick bounce in a parked car—or even an energetic night in some city hotel.
‘Nope. She likes to make it sound like she’s a straight shooter, but she’s more complex than that. No way she flipped from being an ice queen to giving me the come-on without a good reason.’
‘Not doubting your infallible attractiveness to the opposite sex, are you?’
‘Dude.’ Hamish slapped a hand to his chest, striving to look wounded. ‘You don’t think the guys are hot for me, too?’
Lachlan pushed to his feet, running grease-stained hands down his jeans. ‘Don’t know about that. But if you’re actually thinking of a future beyond getting a bit, sounds like maybe my little brother is finally growing up. Right, hook this back up to the winch.’
Hamish raised his voice as he dragged the chain to the winch. ‘Thing is, Pierce seems genuinely concerned about Jemma’s safety. I reckon maybe I should go to her function thing tonight.’
‘You can’t, mate. Not if she told you to back off.’
He grunted. Lachlan was right, of course.
‘Besides,’ his brother continued, ‘this way you can come to Juz’s gig and keep an eye on Tara yourself.’
‘True.’ Besides, who did he actually owe a duty of care? A woman he’d just met who seemed well able to look after herself or the girl he’d known all of her life, who’d maybe hit the brick wall so familiar to country kids? Small towns could be a claustrophobic prison and for a girl, there was probably even less chance of parole. He remembered the feeling well, the boredom and rebellion, the longing to kick over thetraces, while imagining city life had so much more to offer. It was something that most country kids had to grow through—or, like Sharna Fischer, move away from.
Justin’s place was buzzing. While it was usually the younger crowd who hung out in his whitewashed shed, it seemed the district had turned up for the CFS fundraiser, the crowd dotted by the bright orange overalls of the volunteer firefighters.
Hamish raised a hand to Juz, who tossed him a beer from the row of eskies lined up against the wall the girls had decorated with strands of small lights. He peeled the top from the bottle as he strolled to the back of the huge stone implement shed. As usual, Wheaty was as far from the forty-four-gallon drums filled with blazing mallee roots as it was possible to get.
‘Every man and his dog, right?’ Hamish said, nodding at Wheaty’s service dog, Trigger, who was at the stonemason’s feet. Various other kelpies and blue heelers roamed the shed, and there were at least a dozen on the trays and tubs of the utes parked outside.
‘Mate.’ Wheaty lifted his bottle in greeting. ‘Yep, good to see a decent crowd.’
There’d been a time not long ago when Wheaty would have avoided the gathering and wouldn’t have had anything to do with the CFS. That had been before Gabrielle arrived in Settlers Bridge, though. ‘Should help the coffers.’
‘Reckon so. You and Lachy going to play tonight?’
Hamish patted the broad, tooled leather guitar strap that crossed his chest. ‘Nah. Just thought I’d bring her out for a good whiff of barbecued onions.’
‘Nothing like that smell for getting the stomach rumbling, is there?’
‘Wouldn’t have thought yours ever got a chance to complain, with both Pierce and Gabby cooking for you. Speaking of, is Gabs here?’ he said as an excuse to survey the room. He snorted softly at the irony. First time ever that he was looking for Tara, instead of the other way round. Normally she’d be only metres from him or Justin.
‘Over by the dessert table,’ Wheaty said, lifting his chin to the end of the shed, where a trestle table was covered with cling-wrapped plates and trays. ‘Gotta love it when the CWA turn up. Between them doing the desserts and the Lions Club manning the barbie, should be a good one tonight.’
‘Yeah. Maybe we should always have them along,’ he said as Justin joined them.
‘You want to start hanging with the service clubs?’ Justin replied. ‘Showing your age, man.’
‘Look, I’m not going to rule it out. The Lions brought their own barbie, so I reckon there’s less chance of food poisoning than usual.’
‘Hey, don’t diss my barbie,’ Justin protested. ‘I keep telling you, that layer of grease is all that’s holding her together.’
The stone water tank on Justin’s block was the only swimming pool in the district, so his place had become their regular hangout when they were teens. Over the last decade, they’d all kicked in, purchasing a solar blanket for the tank to raise the water temperature a touch above freezing, and fitting out the shed with an old fridge, a couple of rickety kitchen tables—one of which had been repurposed for table tennis—and vinyl seats ripped out of a school bus that one of the guys had found in the wrecker’s yard. They’d partitioned off an area for the girls to strip out of their wet swimming togs and, last year, Daniel had turned up with an old pooltable Ant donated from the Overland. Now the clacking balls punctuated the chatter and laughter that echoed through the shed as more locals piled in.
‘You probably should use the cash from the empties to put toward a new barbecue,’ Gabrielle said as she joined them, carrying two paper plates filled with a selection of scones, cream puffs, cheesecake slice and brownies. ‘You’ll get plenty tonight.’
‘Yeah, I put out a couple of extra drums,’ Justin said. He recycled the bottles from the drums every few months, putting the money toward gas for the barbecue.
Gabrielle gave Roni Krueger a one-armed hug as she, Matt and their twins arrived at their end of the shed. ‘I’ll just put this on the table,’ Roni said, brandishing a Tupperware container as her kids ran off to join a group of rugrats.
