She would never have expected anything more than part-time with Brodie, but there was always that smidge of hope.
Hope. She kicked a stone. It felt like life with Brodie might involve a lot of it. Swept along by that persuasive smile, hoping he didn’t let you down.
“Maeve,” he said, standing next to her on the shoreline, “You don’t have to look so worried.”
She glanced at him, was it that obvious?
There was that smile. She shouldn’t have looked.
But she was looking. The forest around them fell suddenly silent. She was seeing the way the corner of his mouth curved, the slow blink of his dark feathery lashes, the hypnotic lure of his sky-blue gaze. She remembered. The way his arm reached like it was right now, so close, the way she leaned slightly toward him, pulled by an invisible thread of simple want, desire to let his palm touch her cheek, to kiss and be kissed like that one fateful night, to relive a moment carved so memorably in her mind it sent a shudder down her spine.
Then she saw the long black thin legs on his shoulder. “Brodie, there’s a spider on your shoulder. Oh, my goodness!” She gasped.
Brodie froze, then, glancing to his right to see the massive black spider edging its way to his neck, he went literally bananas, swiping at his T-shirt, dancing about in horror. Yanking his T-shirt off over his head and hurling it to the floor he then turned and raced into the water, diving in and fully submerging himself.
Maeve could only watch his reaction in shocked amusement.
He surfaced, said, “Do you think it’s gone?”
Maeve, still stunned at the reaction, said with a laugh in her voice, “I would imagine so.”
Brodie exhaled, pushed his hair out his face, said, “That was close.” He shuddered. Then started out the water.
“You really don’t like spiders, huh?”
“Hate them.” He shuddered again. Tanned torso glistening with water, endearing vulnerability on his face as he shook out his T-shirt. No pretense at machismo, no front. As he was about to put his T-shirt back on, he paused and said, “I might get a different one.”
“Brodie,” Maeve said, “I think the poor thing is long gone.”
“I’m not taking any chances.” He chucked her the T-shirt, unable to cope with even holding it.
She walked back to the cabin, slightly behind him, carrying the shirt still warm from his skin, thinking what a lucky escape they’d all just had.
ChapterTwenty-One
Brodie got in his car with a smile on his face. In his rearview mirror, he watched Maeve’s silver Volvo reversing up the craggy slope to the main dirt track, Zoey strapped in the back, her window open and her hand waving. The top was down on his Aston Martin and he sat looking sideways, waving back at intervals and occasionally pulling a silly face. It reminded him of getting into a car on tour, girls screaming and waving. He’d do something stupid like a cheesy double thumbs-up and stick his tongue out and they’d go even wilder. He’d loved the adoration at the time, he was a teenage boy, who wouldn’t? But it wasn’t something he craved any longer, it was a relief not to have to scour the bushes for paparazzi or hide behind a baseball cap every time he ventured downtown.
But with Zoey, the adoration was almost addictive. The hero-worship. It made his chest puff and his ego inflate from the feeling that he’d got the whole parenting thing nailed. He couldn’t see Maeve because of the sun reflecting on the windscreen, but he imagined her eyeroll if she could see inside his head to his thoughts.
Maeve.He recalled the moment by the river. He’d like to kill that darn spider. Although, he probably should be thanking it. Not a good idea to get mixed up in anything with the mother of his child. That would make things far too complicated for Brodie’s liking.
When the Volvo got to the main track, Zoey shouted, “See you later, alligator!”
Brodie cupped his hands and called, “See you on the moon, you big baboon!”
Zoey left cracking up and he was certain he saw a hint of a smile on Maeve’s face as they drove away, something that left him feeling more smug than it should.
He turned and looked back at the wooden cabin, the reflections of the pines on the river, the rolling clouds over the mountain, and felt a warmth suffuse his body that he wasn’t used to feeling.
It brought back more memories of being a kid, of coming here and messing about with his brothers—but also memories of being at home, of his mom making pancakes in school holidays. Being on the couch in PJs when it was snowing outside. Basketball in the sunshine. Days when he was too young to be any use on the ranch except for feeding the chickens.
It made Brodie pause, wrist resting on the steering wheel as he thought about the bits he had enjoyed as a kid. He’d endured the bulk of the farm work, but there were bits he’d liked: the horses, playing polo with Logan—and he’d liked riding the quad bikes with Jack and the camaraderie of big events like branding or round-ups. It was the bits between the work itself that he liked. Lying down on the grass in the scorching heat when exhaustion set in and getting one of his brothers to chuck a bucket of water over him, talking about girls they fancied at school when riding back from some mundane task or another, cracking open an ice-cold Coke after cleaning out the stables. All the bits once the job was done. Or maybe all the bits when his dad wasn’t there.
With a sigh, Brodie started the engine and drove away, cautious over the rocky ground with his car, but strangely less precious about it, as if the space in his head for worrying about such fripperies was getting smaller now that it was half consumed by the idea of a child’s life.
The thought made him shudder, fish around inside himself for the person who cared about the damage a rock might do to the chassis.
Then he hit the open road and it started to rain and he was distracted by trying to get the roof to close. It was a good segue. Him now tucked up in the dark enclosure of his car, music blaring over the noise of the wipers, the sun making a rainbow in the rearview mirror, which, if he still wrote songs, might be something he’d add in as symbolic of something he couldn’t quite name. And something that, if Ethan were around, he’d cut out as trite cliché. The thought made Brodie smile sadly to himself. Then he stopped and phoned his brother Noah to see if he wanted to go to the Firestone for a drink.
