Long Hot Summer Page 3

  She checked her bedside clock. It was one a.m. It was no use. She was way too revved up to sleep. And she had to admit it had about ten percent to do with what had happened to her aunt and ninety percent to do with Dylan.

  Dylan Knight. The boy next door. Well, from the property next door to be absolutely correct. Dylan, his brother, Caleb and Alice and Hannie had grown up within two kilometres of each other, the edges of their family’s properties meeting at a point deep in the gully under Reynolds Ridge. The Knights and the Reynolds had been in the area for generations; an uncle four generations ago had named the ridge after himself, so every generation since had claimed a connection with the area. All three families had been involved in the same community organisations, the same fundraising drives for the local fire service, the local hospital, and they had all gone to high school together.

  Which was where Dylan Knight had taken one look at Alice, standing in the line at the school cafeteria, flicking her long blonde ponytail in a graceful arc as she swivelled to avoid his eye, and had been smitten. Hannie had seen it with her own eyes. Not that she hung around with Alice at school, even thought they were cousins and had grown up together. She and Alice had inhabited vastly different teenaged worlds. Hannie had spent her lunchtimes in the library because it was easier than trying to make friends, and Alice had spent her lunch times sauntering around the school yard revelling in her power and popularity.

  Alice had been the “It Girl”. She was born beautiful and charming and just... well, everything she’d ever done was just perfect. And, without saying it, the kids at school had given up their power to her. If Reynolds Ridge High had been a 1980s movie with Molly Ringwald in it, Alice would have been the “Queen of the Teens”. Her hair was always just the right blonde and so smooth. She always had lots of friends and was invited to parties every weekend. Hannie was, by contrast, the geeky library kid who continually pushed her glasses up her nose. Except there had never been a magical movie makeover for Hannie in the final reel. She had continued to be geeky, book-obsessed, and mostly friendless, until she started her first job and met Beck. They had immediately sensed something alternative about each other and, finally, Hannie had found a friend.

  Alice’s high school years had been blessed by having won Dylan’s attention. They were the perfect couple. By contrast, Hannie had spent her whole high school life feeling invisible to the boy she was secretly in love with.

  She was worse than the girl next door to him. She was the kid next door. So she’d tried not to stare. Tried not to cry when she saw characters on TV shows named Dylan. Tried to develop gigantic crushes on other boys like that sweet guy Trevor Haines from her class, but it had all been in vain.

  That night of the party, when they were all about to go their separate ways after high school, she’d tried not to overreact when Dylan had asked her to dance.

  He was being kind to her because he felt sorry for her, because no one else had asked her and it was the last time they would all be together and they’d been neighbours forever and he was being the nice boy next door, that was all.

  Hannie hadn’t really started to fall out of love with Dylan Knight until the moment Alice had caught them, her face in his hands, his lips on hers, her hands around his waist, clinging to him as the thrill of her first kiss had vibrated in every part of her. Hannie still heard Alice’s screams and accusations in her head when she imagined that moment.

  Dylan had torn his lips from hers, sworn under his breath, then grabbed Alice’s hand and taken her outside to calm down. The next week, he’d left for Melbourne and Hannie hadn’t seen him since.

  And now, fourteen years later, he was back. He wasn’t that teenage boy anymore, oh no. He’d grown into his height and his shoulders were far broader than she’d imagined. And he didn’t have adult crinkles around his eyes back then.

  As for Hannie, she’d drifted between jobs until she’d found her passion in jewellery making. Except for a short stint living in the city because it was something she thought she should do, she had always remained connected to Reynolds Ridge. She knew these roads and tracks like the freckles on the back of her hand.

  And now Dylan was back and Alice was close by.

  Hannie hadn’t noticed a ring on his finger the night before when they’d been chatting around the kitchen table. Although that didn’t mean anything. She wore a ring on the ring finger of her left hand – one of her own, of course – and she wasn’t married. Had never been married. Had had a boyfriend for five years in her twenties. She’d broken up with him just after he’d proposed marriage. The problem was she couldn’t imagine a future with Andrew, no matter how lovely he was.

  Hannie kicked off the sheets. The glowing clock reminded her that it was way too late to be tossing and turning. What was she – sixteen again? No. She was double that age now. She was thirty-two years old. Thirty-two sensible years old. Too old to be feeling like a lovesick teenager.

  She had to get a grip. She stomped out of bed to go to the toilet. When she reached the kitchen, she stopped to pat Ted. He was stretched out on the slate tiled floor, and didn’t move, except for his tail which thumped a dull rhythm. She didn’t like confining him to the kitchen, but it was on the vet’s strictest orders.

  “Listen now, Ted,” she’d said when Hannie had picked him up the day after his surgery. “No running around. You let that knee heal, you hear?” So Hannie had to confine him on a long leash to stop him from bolting out of the house and heading up to Mandy’s for a treat. He was one smart dog.

  And he was her best friend.

  He was all the distraction she needed right now. Him and Mandy. She had no room in her life to be diverted by a pair of fine arms and a smile so warm it melted her insides like a blow torch. She couldn’t go back to wanting Dylan because with the wanting came the guilt for what they’d done.

  She had a life now, one she loved, and she wasn’t going to let it be thrown off balance by the return of Dylan Knight.

  Dylan sat on his front balcony, cradling a whiskey in his hands. His bare feet were propped up on the wooden railing and he’d slouched back in a canvas deck chair, angling himself so the stars were all he could see. The sting in the heat of the day had left with the sunset, and he sat patiently waiting for a hint of gully breeze. He arched his neck. Was that it? There was the faintest rustle in the leaves in the gums surrounding his property and it stirred memories, too.

  “You’ll sleep fine tonight with that breeze,” his father had always said when he’d thrown open the windows after a scorching summer’s day. “Let the outside in.”

  He’d forgotten this view, how beautiful Reynolds Ridge was. The apple and cherry orchards were laid out before him like a pinstripe suit, in straight and organised lines up and down the valley; nearby, the national park, home to birds and ’roos and koalas. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it until he’d come home. When he’d moved to Melbourne fourteen years before, he’d lived in the city while he undertook his training and had then worked at a suburban station, tackling house fires and vehicle accidents and oil spills and businesses up in flames. When the devastating bushfires had hit Victoria a few years back, he’d volunteered along with hundreds of his colleagues, trying to save properties and lives. He’d been glad to get back to his station after that. The city seemed safer after what he’d seen.

  But duty – and family – had called him home to Adelaide. His folks needed him, and some people who weren’t twins would think it was weird, but he liked being closer to his brother, Caleb. The last time he’d seen him had been two weeks before, at their grandfather’s funeral in Brisbane. Len Knight, a man who had been Australia’s chief fire officer and the patriarch of a fire fighting family which spanned states and nations, had died suddenly of a heart attack. Some thought he’d died with a broken heart; a heart crushed by attempts to blame him for all that went wrong during the devastating fires in Victoria a few years before. Dylan didn’t know what was true. All he knew was that his grandfa
ther was dead, and his grandmother was now a widow. The entire clan had gathered for his funeral to honour and remember him; to reflect on the legacy of the man who had inspired all of them to remember that there was strength in unity.

  Dylan and Caleb had flown up to BrisVegas together and, in a pact after the funeral, the two of them, along with their cousins Logan and Dare, had honoured their grandfather in the best way they knew how.

  Dylan glanced at his left bicep. The tattoo was still raised and red and a little tender. It said, in cursive script, “Brothers forged in fire.”

  He shook his head. It was such a fucking stupid thing to have done, but the memory of it, the camaraderie of doing that fucking stupid thing with his brother and their cousins, made him grin. He glanced at his watch. It was one a.m. Too late to ring Caleb and stir the shit out of him over the damn tattoos. He remembered that Caleb was on early shift this week and wouldn’t wake him just to talk.

  Something caught his eye from across the valley. A light flicked on at Hannie’s place.

  Hannie Reynolds. Wasn’t she a surprise?

  It had been a long time. High school. That was the last time he’d seen her. Yeah, that night of the party. How could he forget?

  As he searched the sky for the stars of the Southern Cross, he tried to decide what it was about Hannie now that had him thinking about her, sitting out here in the dark. If he should be thinking of any woman, wouldn’t it be Alice? But he wasn’t thinking about Alice. He’d got over Alice the day he’d broken up with her, a week before that party. They’d been together as kids, then young adults and when she’d pushed and pushed about going to Melbourne with him, to be there by his side when he was training, he had to end it. She wanted a fantasy about being the perfect couple with a perfect life.

  He’d realised his fantasy was about someone else.

  Hannie Reynolds.

  The kid from the property next door. The first time he’d really become aware of her was the football incident.

  It had been winter, and he and Caleb had some mates from high school over to kick the football around. Their school team had won their game the day before and, fuelled by dreams that they might all get to play for a national side when they were a little older, they spent hours out in the low paddock, kicking that damn football to each other, kicking goals between an old tree stump and a young gum sapling. The back fence was the boundary and out of bounds meant whoever kicked the ball had to scramble down into the mud of the creek to retrieve it.

  He’d kicked another goal and instead of landing in the creek, the football had soared over it into the Reynolds’ property and into the branches of a scrabbly gum. When he’d looked over, he’d seen Hannie standing in the tall, green grass.

  “Hey, Reynolds,” he’d called. He’d cupped his hands around his mouth so his voice could carry across the creek. “The ball. It’s in that tree.”

  She’d looked up into the branches. She stuffed something in the pocket of her big, puffy jacket and then walked over to the tree, reached up and shaken the branch. The faded red oval-shaped ball had fallen and she’d expertly caught it. Dylan had been jogging closer to the creek, anticipating she would throw it over to him. He was twenty feet away, the creek and the barbed wire between them.

  But damn if Reynolds didn’t throw the ball back to him. She’d moved away from the gum tree, giving herself a straight line across to Dylan’s parents’ property. She held the ball in her hands, dead in front of her. She took a step, then another, then starting into a slow jog and in a smooth motion he’d seen a thousand times but never from a girl, she dropped the ball on to her foot and kicked the hell out of that red leather. Dylan’s eyes had lifted as the ball soared into the sky, cherry red against the winter clouds, and it turned over and over, long end over long end, way over Dylan’s head. When it landed thirty feet beyond him, he heard his mates start cheering. They’d quickly snatched up the ball and kicked a goal at the other end of their makeshift oval.

  Dylan didn’t turn to see what was going on with the game.

  It was a long moment before he raised a hand, a wave to say thanks. She had given him the slightest of nods and turned back to the house. He wished he’d complimented her on that kick. These days, a young girl could turn a kick like that into a professional football career.

  But Hannie wasn’t that young girl anymore. The black hair she’d always worn short and punky, with a rainbow of colours streaked through it, was now long and curly, swept up on top of her head in a loose kind of ponytail. There was a calmness about her that had been reassuring, given what had happened to her aunt. She wasn’t a hothead, Hannie, or a panicker or a drama queen. Mandy was in good hands.

  Which made him think of her hands, long and elegant, and the jewellery she’d been wearing. Two big, fat chunky rings, one on each middle finger, in unusual designs with a black stone in each.

  He pulled himself up. He’d been there – what – half an hour – and he’d managed to take in all this detail about Hannie Reynolds from next door?

  Nah, he wasn’t interested. Not interested interested. She was someone he’d grown up with that was all. Someone from the good old days. The older he got, the more nostalgic he felt about people he’d gone to school with and grown up around. Like Trevor from the next town who was now Tania. Suzie, the shy girl from the school drama productions, who was now making films in Hollywood. Pete and Amanda, high school sweethearts who he’d run into in the local supermarket, who were blissfully happy parents to six kids. He was interested in that kind of stuff.

  His mind went back to the party and that kiss. Their first. Their only. That night, he’d realised how much time he’d wasted being with the wrong girl. So he’d done something impetuous and stupid. He’d kissed the right girl. And it wasn’t just his memory playing tricks on him. Hannie had kissed him right back. She’d opened her mouth and flicked her tongue against his, wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself against him.

  Then Alice had screamed across the school hall and Hannie had frozen in his arms.

  “Hannie Reynolds! What the fuck are you doing?”

  He’d called Hannie the next day before he’d left, leaving three messages, but she didn’t ever call him back. And she hadn’t answered his emails, either.

  No, he wasn’t interested in Hannie Reynolds. They were neighbours once more, it seemed. And that was all they would be.

  While he’d broken up with Alice on terms that were hardly friendly, he’d always liked her mother. He was relieved Mandy hadn’t been seriously injured in the fall on her front steps. He’d always liked her and now, older and wiser, her plain-speaking, no-nonsense manner made him wonder where Alice’s ambitious attitudes had come from.

  Hannie shared some of the same DNA as her cousin but she wasn’t anything like Alice.

  He upended his glass and swallowed the whiskey down. He stood, leaned over the railing. In the distance, lights from the little stone cottage at the bottom of the valley twinkled.

  Then they flicked off and it was dark.

  The stars above glowed bright in the summer night sky.

  His mind drifted back to something his cousin Logan had said at their grandfather’s wake. They’d been drinking to his memory when Logan had piped up and said, “To getting laid and fighting fires.”

  The fire fighting part of this life was taken care off.

  Dylan decided he should probably check on Mandy tomorrow. See if she was okay, it she was keeping up the ice and the paracetamol. And if he happened to run into Hannie when he was doing that? He was a professional firefighter. He could handle anything.

  Chapter Four

  Hannie pulled herself closer to her jeweller’s table and slipped on her magnifying glasses. Double lensed with very high magnification, they looked like something out of a steampunk costume exhibition, and they were the perfect tool to get a really close look at the stones in Beck’s grandmother’s ring.

  There was a whimper from her feet. She looked dow
n.

  “You want a pat, huh?” She leaned down and rubbed Ted’s ears, then reached for the small ceramic bowl she kept on her table which contained small pieces of dried liver treats. She flipped one in the air and Ted expertly snatched it.

  That would keep her hound happy for a little while, so she returned to her examination and as she rotated the piece, catching the light in the carats, she tried to imagine what she could create. A brooch, perhaps? A pendant for Beck’s daughter, Bella, to wear when she was older?

  Nothing came to mind. She couldn’t settle her thinking. Usually, she could slip on her glasses and immerse herself in her work, in the fine filigree and the stones and the gold and silver. Something was off today. She tried a new approach. She put the stones down, leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and tried to let her imagination take over. It helped when she was designing. She always started in her mind’s eye, not on paper. She tried to see the refraction of the light; tried to decide – gold or silver – and tried to match a piece with the personality of its prospective owner. Were they traditional? Quirky? Minimalist or housewives of New Jersey?

  Beck sat firmly in the quirky category but there was no way to know what her daughter would be like. Quirky sometimes skipped a generation, didn’t it? Alice and Mandy were a perfect example of that. Mandy was all country calm and practicality, no-nonsense with a wit like a razor. Alice was haughty, stifled, pretentious, and tense. Hannie couldn’t remember her cousin ever cracking a joke.

  Ted growled and sat upright. Hannie glanced down at him and then heard footsteps.

  “Hey.”

  Her jeweller’s glasses made everything look stretched out of proportion and fuzzy but she didn’t need to see clearly to know it was Dylan.