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  When she finally pulled her mouth from his so she didn’t hyperventilate, Sam loosened his grip, brought his hands to her cheeks and angled her head up so she could look him right in the eyes. She couldn’t break his gaze, and stared right back at him until he smiled. She sighed and smiled too. And then they laughed. Laughed so loud the sound of their voices floated across the water and came back to them with a happy echo.

  ‘Oh boy,’ she managed, with another laugh on her lips. She stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and then teased them through his dark, wild hair.

  ‘Why the fuck did I wait so long to do that, Red?’ Sam’s voice was gruff and breathless and it shot straight to Calla’s groin, which was on the edge of a meltdown as it was.

  Before she could answer his question, they were kissing again, his lips on hers, his tongue roaming her mouth, sending her reeling somewhere between This is such a bad idea and How am I going to ever live without his kiss?

  That plan Calla had to simplify her life? To swear off men for a while? She was just going to have to rip it up into a million shreds of paper and make a collage out of it.

  There was no going back from a kiss like that.

  She willed her legs to keep her upright as they walked back to the car.

  Sam gripped the steering wheel tighter and used every bit of self-control he had to keep his eyes out front on the endless white line and not on Calla. His knuckles were white from the exercise. If he gave in to what he really wanted to do, he’d pull the car over to the side of the road and drag her into the back seat.

  This was nuts. Him and the glass-half-empty redhead sitting next to him? The one he’d pegged as a chicken, who had just challenged him to shut up and kiss her, a throaty demand that’d shot straight to his dick?

  He took a quick glance at her legs and saw fidgeting hands. She was pulling at a cuticle, then teasing it with her teeth. Which made him think about what he wanted to do to those lips. Damn it. Who the hell was she? This cautious woman he’d rescued had thrown her arms around him and kissed him like the apocalypse was about to strike. She’d tasted good. She’d smelt good. Her hair felt soft and his fingers twitched at the memory of it between his fingers. And it had been over almost as quickly as it had begun.

  They were on their way back to Penneshaw to the pub to talk to his cousin and grab dinner and, later, back to her holiday cabin. Once Charlie had given them the clue about Ben, Sam knew they were one step closer. So, after setting him up with food and some TV news, they’d said their goodbyes and driven away from Roo’s Rest.

  When they’d returned to the house from the dam, Charlie had looked at his son with a raised eyebrow and a knowing grin. Sam was relieved Calla hadn’t seen it. He didn’t want her to feel embarrassed in front of his dad, and who knew what the hell he might say in front of her? He’d probably assume things about the two of them that weren’t true. Not that she had any reason to be embarrassed about anything. And Sam wasn’t married — any more — taken or otherwise spoken for. They were two single adults. Free to do whatever they wanted without being hung up about consequences or what other people thought. He didn’t have time for guilt, and he had no reason to feel it, with her or anyone else.

  Shit. He’d assumed she wasn’t married, taken or otherwise spoken for, but he’d never asked. Until that afternoon, he’d never had a reason to. Her phone calls home were to her sister, not a man. Or at least that’s the way it had seemed. He glanced at her hands. She wore rings on both fingers, but they looked like costume jewellery rather than anything official.

  Maybe Charlie had the whole thing sussed. Sam could have sworn he had been laughing to himself as they’d driven away. He’d looked in the rear-view mirror to see his dad standing on the veranda, slapping his thigh. Did he know what he’d been doing when he suggested Sam show Calla the dam? Had Sam been outmanoeuvred by an old man with dementia? Shit. He’d been played.

  They were halfway back to Penneshaw before Sam realised they’d barely said a word to each other. He turned down the music and reached over to rest a hand on her thigh. She looked at his fingers. And that move became a caress and then he left his hand there, feeling her muscles move and quiver underneath his touch as the car jostled on the road.

  ‘Red.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You got someone back in Adelaide? Or anywhere else for that matter?’

  Her eyes were wide, her lips parted on a thought. Those eyes, those magnificent green eyes, shone at him.

  ‘No.’ When she shook her head, her curls danced.

  ‘Good.’

  Sam returned his gaze to the road.

  ‘Well … what about you?’

  ‘No.’

  When Calla laid her hand on top of his, so soft and warm, he knew exactly what he was going to do when they got back to the cabin. And it had nothing to do with cooking dinner. He wanted her. That kiss was just the entrée. And he was desperate for main course and dessert.

  CHAPTER

  23

  ‘Sam.’

  Ben’s booming voice rang out like a foghorn when Sam and Calla walked into the pub. Sam lifted his chin in hello and looked back to Calla, waited for her to catch up with him. When she did, he placed a gentle hand on the small of her back to guide her over to Ben and the big bar. Sam tried not to notice the enquiring look in his cousin’s eyes, at the appearance of a beautiful woman and specifically at her appearance with him.

  ‘Twice in three days, mate. You looking for a job or something?’

  ‘Why, Benny? You need a hand running the place? Getting a bit old for this caper?’

  Ben guffawed and slapped a hand on the bar. ‘I’m younger than you, old man.’

  Sam shook his cousin’s hand. ‘So, how about a free beer?’

  ‘Only if you tell me all about your lady friend.’ Ben leant over, shooting Calla a huge wink. ‘Champagne on the house for you if you tell me your name.’

  ‘It’s Calla,’ Sam said. There was an edge to his voice and he didn’t care if Ben heard it.

  ‘And I’ll take beer instead of champagne, if you don’t mind.’ Calla held out a hand. ‘I’m Calla Maloney. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Ben. Sam’s cousin. I come from the handsome side of the family.’

  ‘I can tell.’ Sam heard the tease in Calla’s voice and he took a step closer to her. Just enough for Ben to get the message. Which was: In your dreams, pal.

  ‘Calla ran into me on Hog Bay Road the day of the accident. Totalled her car. I’ve been stuck with her ever since.’

  Ben grabbed a couple of cold glasses and filled them. ‘Shit, that was a bad one. The cops reckon the two poor bastards on the motorbike were French tourists. Sometimes they forget they’ve got to drive on the opposite side of the road Down Under and … bloody hell. Still, woulda been quick. Worse ways to go.’

  Calla’s fingers tightened like a vice on his wrist. He knew what it was about. He’d conveniently hidden the truth of the accident from her. Why upset her any more than she’d already been? He felt her fingernails digging into his skin. While it would have been incredibly hot if they were being dragged down his back in a slow trail, right now they were making him uneasy about the conversation they were undoubtedly about to have.

  ‘I heard you were there, Sam. That you helped out.’

  Sam shook it off. ‘Not much I could do. It was a bad one.’

  Calla released her grip and stepped away from him. He should change the subject. ‘Listen, Ben, can you take a break for five minutes? There’s something we need to ask you.’

  Ben checked his watch. ‘Sure, grab one of the tables over by the front window and I’ll be with you in half a sec.’

  Sam reached out to take both beers but Calla had scooped up her own. They walked over to the front window. He was finding it hard to take in the ocean views what with the pair of furious green eyes staring like lasers at the back of his head. He pulled out a chair and sat. Calla did the same, deliberately opposite him. She put her
glass on the table and turned her steely gaze to him.

  He leant back against his chair, crossed his arms.

  ‘Were you going to tell me about the accident?’ she asked quietly.

  Sam rubbed his jaw. Took in the view for a moment and then turned back to her.

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  Calla considered his words. She lifted her beer and drank half of it in a series of long gulps.

  Man, he was in love.

  ‘Why weren’t you going to tell me?’

  He felt a tightness in his jaw. ‘Why would you want to know?’

  ‘Because … damn you,’ Calla whispered across the table, ‘do you think I couldn’t handle knowing the truth? I’m not some precious flower, you know. I can look after myself. I have for a long time and I don’t need you, Mr Professional Hero Firefighter, to come over all macho and shield me from life.’

  Sam got the feeling this was about something more than the accident. Calla had dropped her eyes to the table and sat staring at the wet rings left there from the beer.

  He leant forward. ‘Yes, I did want to shield you from seeing what I see when I’m doing my job. What’s wrong with that? Road accidents are blood and broken bones and death and hosing someone’s brains off the road. If shielding you from that makes me an arsehole, then yes. I’m an arsehole. Why would you want to know about any of that?’

  Calla pulled herself upright, crossed her arms. Sam wanted to kick himself. He’d said too much. He’d gone too far. Some hero he was.

  ‘Fuck. I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching for her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  She pulled her hands away and met his eyes. ‘Have you really done that? The … the brains thing?’

  Sam nodded, rubbed the back of his neck.

  ‘God. That’s so horrible.’ Calla’s eyes glimmered with tears.

  ‘There’s a reason most of us don’t talk about it, Calla. And that’s because it’s fucking awful.’

  Calla leant in closer, reached for his hands. When his fingers met hers, she gripped tight. ‘You’re a fuckwit, you know that?’

  ‘Professional hero to fuckwit. That’s a fall from grace.’

  ‘Don’t you think I could have helped you if you’d told me about what really happened? I heard you that night, pacing the floor. I saw the light on. Heard the kettle boil. You didn’t sleep, did you?’

  He’d tried not to wake her. Had tried to sleep but the adrenaline buzz wouldn’t settle. Sleep never came easily to Sam after an accident like that. The hiding, the ignoring, and the burying so deep down that no one could know what he was holding in, even him: that all came loose in the dark. Inside his head was a jumble of dead teenagers, burnt kids, body parts. No one could know how much he’d seen and tried to unsee.

  ‘Sam?’ He’d been looking directly into Calla’s eyes but she’d become indistinct, far away. Her auburn hair was a red smudge at the back of his vision, her green eyes a smear. And now, as she came back into focus, he could see those eyes were soft and troubled.

  There was a scrape of chair leg against the floor. They broke the look when Ben said, ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ Sam said.

  ‘No, nothing,’ Calla said.

  Ben flipped his chair backwards and sat down, crossing his arms on its back. ‘So what did you want to ask me? What’s the big mystery?’

  ‘It’s my mystery, actually,’ Calla admitted, squaring her shoulders. ‘I need to ask you about someone.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ Ben said. ‘But I have to warn you. I’ll need a DNA test before I admit to anything.’

  ‘Funny,’ Sam said. ‘We’re not here about mystery kids, I promise. A couple of days ago we were in that craft shop around the corner and I bought a painting.’

  ‘Look out.’ Ben laughed. ‘Those old ladies will fleece you.’

  ‘I’ll tell them you said that,’ Sam said with a laugh.

  ‘It’s a portrait,’ Calla said. ‘In oil. A beautiful portrait, actually.’

  ‘Yeah …?’ Ben looked from Sam to Calla, sounding as confused as he looked. ‘What, you want my opinion on it?’

  ‘The portrait. It’s Charlie,’ Calla said.

  ‘Right, Uncle Charlie. Yeah, I know who he is. No mystery there. Look, is the Spanish Inquisition gunna go on much longer? Should I get us some more beers?’

  Sam was about to speak but Calla beat him to it. ‘It was painted by an artist called J. Maloney.’

  Ben looked at Sam. ‘You sure she’s not a cop? This feels like CSI: Kangaroo Island.’

  ‘Mate, cut a long story short, J. Maloney is her brother. Calla’s been looking for him for two years.’

  ‘Hell,’ Ben said, stroking his chin. ‘Two years?’

  Calla straightened, and Sam could see that, beneath the move, her confidence was faltering. He knew better than anyone that it was hard to talk about family secrets, about the blurry and often unfathomable reasons families splinter and fall apart. She’d told him nothing about why she and her brother hadn’t spoken in so long. He figured if she wanted him to know she would tell him. But her own words came back to him: I could have helped you if you’d told me what really happened.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Yeah. It’s a long time.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Ben said. ‘This isn’t a bad place to hide, you know, if you want to fall off the map. We do get people coming over on the boat because they want to run away from the world and whatever’s troubling them. We get all kinds.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. To find Jem,’ Calla said.

  ‘We went to Roo’s Rest to talk to the old man about who painted him,’ Sam said.

  ‘And Charlie told us that he was here at the pub and a young bloke took his photo.’

  Calla reached into her handbag for her phone. She found the image and held it in front of Ben. ‘Do you know this face? That’s Jem. Have you seen him here in the pub?’

  Ben laughed, slapped a hand on the table. ‘You’re kidding. This J. Maloney and this Jem … they’re Jeremy?’

  ‘What?’ Sam said.

  ‘What?’ Calla said.

  They looked at each other, then back at Ben.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Ben said with a huge grin. ‘He’s really your brother?’

  ‘Yes. He’s my little brother.’ Calla closed her purse. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘It just got shorter, sweetheart. I know Jeremy. He’s my brother-in-law.’

  CHAPTER

  24

  Fate should be winning the lottery or getting the perfect job or finding the man of your dreams when you weren’t even looking.

  Fate should not involve vomiting and losing your glasses and car accidents and men with hero complexes.

  Fate was throwing Calla for a loop and she didn’t know what to do. What was it about this damn island? She’d felt slightly off kilter since the moment she’d landed. Hell, since the minute she’d stepped foot on the boat back at Cape Jervis. And now the swirling, nauseating, pitching and rolling stomach was back. She wished she hadn’t slurped down that glass of beer quite so quickly. It sat like a gurgling pool in her stomach and she hoped it would stay there.

  Calla had to hear the words again. Had to know Ben wasn’t joking. She didn’t know him but had already worked out that it was his style. Ben the Joking Barman. Ben her … brother’s brother-in-law?

  ‘What did you say, Ben?’

  ‘He’s your what?’ Sam asked at the same time.

  Ben reached for Sam’s glass and helped himself to a sip of beer. ‘Well, they’re not married, much to mum’s disgust, but he’s with Jessie. He’s the father of her baby, Sam. You remember she had a baby, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ Sam said. Someone had sent him a photo of the new mum and her squinting baby but he didn’t remember the bloke in the photo, if he was in it at all.

  ‘A baby?’ Calla murmured, still not believing what she’d heard. Oh shit. The brother she’d thought might
be dead, homeless, poor, destitute, mentally ill — or a combination of most of those things — had, all this time, been living on the island creating what sounded like a very nice life, thank you very much. And she’d been worried about him? Something boiled up inside her and overflowed. Right at that minute, her need to find Jem had become a burning determination. She had to find him so she could slap him, the little shit. She’d spent two good years of her life worrying herself ill about him, only to find out he sounded perfectly happy. He’d found a partner and they had a baby. A life. A future.

  And what did she have? She’d lived with the guilt about what had happened to her brother and that wretched emotion had cast dark clouds over everything in her life. It had ruined her judgement about who she thought she was and what her own life could be like. Her foundations had shifted from under her; she had felt unsteady and dislodged from her life and, after that rupture, she’d grown reckless and had sought solace for the hurt in the wrong place, with the wrong man. By choosing to give her love to someone who could never really love her back, she’d only created more heartbreak for herself, not less.

  Calla closed her eyes against the feeling that the world was closing in around her. Images spinning, her heart pounding, Josh breaking up with her, the car accident, the pain behind her eyes and the desperate, recurring wish that the past two years had never happened.

  She felt Sam’s hand on hers, squeezing her fingers, and she took in a deep breath.

  ‘You got an address for Jessie, Ben?’

  Ben stood, patted Sam on the shoulder. ‘They’re down at the fishing shack at Hidden Bay. I know you’ve been away a long time, mate, but don’t tell me you need directions.’

  Calla dropped her head into her hands. She needed to get out of there. She needed some fresh air and time to think. She stood. Then Sam did too, rounded the table. He reached for her, took her elbow. ‘You don’t look good.’ There was concern in his low voice, and she quivered at the affection she could hear in it. She needed to walk. Needed to reconsider her plans about her bloody brother.

  ‘I need some air,’ she said, fighting the constriction in her chest and the squeeze on her lungs. She pulled her bag onto her shoulder.