‘These are delicious!’ Ben said around a mouthful of crumbs.
‘I’m glad you like them,’ Bel said, only feeling slightly guilty for not mentioning that Dean had actually made them, not her.
‘We love them. Can you make some more?’ Ayla asked.
Bel swallowed before mustering a confident smile. ‘Absolutely. But maybe not today. I’ve used all the butter. Okay, now that we’ve done afternoon tea, it’s homework time,’ she said, rolling her eyes at the groans that followed. ‘I know. Homework sucks. But we have to do it.’
‘I wanna do homework,’ Lucy said.
‘You’re in preschool,’ Ivy told her. ‘You don’t get homework.’
‘I wanna do homework,’ Lucy repeated, her bottom lip beginning to tremble as she looked up at Bel with big, devastated eyes.
‘You can do some homework too,’ Bel assured her, clapping her hands at the small bodies slowly climbing off bar stools to retrieve their school bags.
It took a further thirty minutes to set everyone up with their books and find something to keep Lucy occupied, but eventually everyone was on task and the routine was back on track.
‘Aunty Bel, I don’t know what I have to do,’ Ben said, his head resting in his hand as he dug a hole in the paper with his pencil.
‘Let me see.’ Bel took his book, suspecting he wasn’t even really trying. She did feel bad for them—they’d been sitting at a desk in school all day and now all they wanted to do was run outside—but Em’s chart on the fridge said homework until four-thirty.
She began reading the instructions at the top of the printed page Ben had glued into his book—crooked—and frowned. She read it again.Okay, this is strange.She tried reading it a third time and felt a flutter of panic. The kid was in kindergarten, it shouldn’t be difficult! And yet, as she read through the rather detailed and long instructions, she found herself completely confused. How was a five-year-old supposed to understand these instructions when even she couldn’t even make sense of them?It can’t be that hard.
She glanced at the clock on the wall and felt sweat beads break out on her forehead. It was almost four-thirty …
‘Okay!’ she said in an overly bright tone. ‘Pens down. We’re going outside for a play. We’ll finish homework later.’
Four little voices chorused happily as they slid off their seats. They were out the back door before she even had time to call out to be careful. Bel dragged Ben’s book closer, trying not to panic. She was a grown adult. Surely Emma wouldn’t have left her in charge of her children if she didn’t think she could figure out something as basic as Year One homework.
Bel smiled as she followed the kids into Emma’s room and watched them scramble up onto the huge bed. This was her favourite part of the day.
Ivy rubbed her face against her arm as she snuggled in. ‘You smell like Dean,’ she said.
‘Really?’ She decided to play dumb and hope for the best. ‘Okay, where were we up to?’
It didn’t take too much arm-twisting to get Bel to read a couple of extra chapters—she was enjoying the story as much as the kids were—but with Lucy struggling to keep her eyes open, she called it a night and hustled them all into their own beds.
‘Aunty Bel, your shirt is inside out,’ Ayla said sleepily as Bel walked into her room.
Crap! Really?‘I must have been in a rush to get dressed this morning. Silly me.’
She dragged her shirt up over her head as she undressed to take a shower and gave it a sniff. Itdidsmell like Dean. A few images of the events which had taken place mid-morning flashed briefly through her mind. She’d done her best to stay busy and not think too much about it, but now, with no kids to distract her, it was difficult to keep the thoughts at bay.
It had been like something out of a romance novel—a moment of uncontrollable lust, in the kitchen of all places. She’d never even imagined stuff like that happened in real life, and here she was, living it, and with a wholesome country boy no less. Things like hot kitchen sex always happened with bad boys, not farmers. Or so she’d thought. Clearly Dean didn’t play by the rules of stereotype.
Bel stepped under the stream of hot water, lathered up her hair and did her best to ignore the tiny little aches, lingering reminders of the day’s events.
The next day, Bel’s phone started to ding and ping constantly. She didn’t have time for the distraction, with a number of invoices to send out and a few jobs she was working on. Irritated, she eventually put it on silent.
When she picked the phone up a few hours later, she shook her head at the crazy number of notifications lighting up her screen, and tentatively opened her Instagram app.
The numbers of shares on her post about Elvis had exploded. The Federal Police had also gotten in on the act,playfully bantering with other law enforcers and taking the whole tongue-in-cheek post one step further by tagging ASIO.This is getting out of hand.
That night, after Emma had spoken with the kids before bedtime, Bel took the phone.
‘Bel, your post is all over the internet!’ Emma cried.
‘I know,’ she groaned.
