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  She eyed Sam up and down. What kind of a man was he? And how the hell could she answer that question in so short a time? She had to reluctantly admit that the odds were in his favour, what with the jacket and the lollipop and how he hadn’t been angry about her hitting his car. And the rescue and the caring for her.

  Calla tapped a finger to her chin. ‘You may well be trustworthy, but you are still a stranger.’

  ‘Fair enough. C’mon, hit me. What do you want to know about me?’

  Calla thought about his offer. There were a million questions going off like firecrackers in her head but she didn’t want him to know that. ‘Let me see. How did you know what to do back there, at the accident? The first aid and all that stuff?’

  ‘It’s what I’m trained to do.’

  ‘And you’re trained for …?’

  ‘I’m a firefighter back in the real world.’

  ‘A firefighter,’ Calla repeated slowly. She hoped it hadn’t come out too dreamy. Should she imagine what he would look like in a uniform? If he was handsome in jeans and a hoodie, what would he be like all decked out for work?

  ‘Station Officer Sam Hunter of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service. At your service.’ He smiled. ‘Ma’am.’

  Calla waited for him to salute her. ‘Well. That explains a lot.’

  ‘What else do you need to know? Ask away.’

  What else did Calla need to know about the man who was standing in her cabin and ordering her around? Where should she start? ‘Criminal record?’

  ‘I got caught smoking once behind the PE sheds at school. Does that count? I have a valid Criminal History Check. According to the police, I’m totally trustworthy.’

  Calla tried not to snort.

  ‘Listen, Calla, I’m perfectly happy to continue the twenty questions later, but I really think you should rest.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I will go and lie down.’ She threw her hands up in the air in mock surrender and turned to walk to her bedroom. ‘There’s a box on the sink with supplies from the supermarket and there’s some stuff in the fridge. Help yourself to anything you want.’ She yawned. ‘We kind of missed lunch, didn’t we? Not that I’m the slightest bit hungry.’

  When she stopped at the bedroom door, she looked back over her shoulder. He was watching her.

  His gaze lingered and he cocked his head to one side. ‘Got any paracetamol?’

  ‘Yes. You need some?’

  ‘Not for me. For you. Take two.’

  Calla rolled her eyes. ‘Do you ever stop telling people what to do?’

  He smiled that sexy grin again. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m going,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a shower when I wake up.’

  ‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Hey, do you mind if I jump in? I need to clean up.’ He looked once again at his filthy clothes.

  She looked once again at his strong body. ‘Go ahead. There’s a spare towel on the bed in the second bedroom, I think.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Calla closed the bedroom door behind her with a loud thud and let out a deep breath.

  She pulled off her clothes, tugged on a fresh T-shirt from her bag and slipped under the covers. She pushed her earphones into her ears and chose some slow jazz. And as she slowed her breathing, deeply in and deeply out, she could only think one thing: stay far away from the handsome firefighter.

  CHAPTER

  11

  What the hell was he doing?

  Sam wrestled with the ridiculously tiny guest soap in the shower and cursed when it slipped through his fingers to the tiled floor. When he bent over to retrieve it, he hit his head on the wall on the way up. The soap wasn’t the only thing too small for someone his height. He leant over and ducked his head under the hot water to let it soothe the knock.

  The whole day had been a headfuck, in more ways than one. He felt exhausted, bone weary. This trip back home was supposed to end with his old man doing what his son told him to and finally moving into a nursing home without a fight. If he ever got to Roo’s Rest, that is. It wasn’t supposed to involve meeting a redhead or being first on scene at a double fatality. He’d done his job out on the road that morning. And now, he was naked and wet in one room and she was on the other side of the door. There was something wrong with that picture, he decided.

  When she’d gone into her room to lie down, he went out to his car, grabbed his bag and tossed it on the bed in the second bedroom in preparation for setting up camp for the next twelve hours.

  He had no ulterior motive for staying, although it would be too damn easy to have one. The truth was, he was still worried about how much she’d been knocked around by the accident and by what she’d seen. His plan (and he was hoping she would agree to it without him having to describe in detail what a concussion did to a person’s brain) was to crash at her cabin and examine her in the morning to make sure she hadn’t been concussed — or worse. Her old bomb was too ancient for airbags and who knew if she’d hit her head. She was alone on the island and he couldn’t leave her. It was as simple as that. He’d feel better knowing she’d had a good night’s sleep, and he’d make sure he was there first thing in the morning to see that for himself.

  Staying with Calla also meant he could delay dealing with his old man. After the day he’d had, he just wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Keeping company with a gorgeous redhead was a much better option from where he stood.

  Sam let the hot water sluice over his tired eyes, and it massaged his tense shoulders as it ran down his back. He tried not to think about the accident, about every other accident he’d attended. He’d seen things that would curl the hair of ordinary people. They were the images that, luckily, were never broadcast on the TV news or printed in the newspaper. He’d stopped being surprised years before about what he’d seen on the job. What a smashed-up car could do to the bodies inside it. The tragic and sad ways people killed themselves. What burning flesh smelt like. They were things that firies never discussed, not even with each other. Some lucky bastards had wives or partners, families, at home to help them forget about what they’d seen and done. Some talked about it, shared it with people who loved them. He’d tried it when he’d been married to Christina, but any hint of downloading what had happened at work had been met with stony silences and a turned-up nose and then, finally, contempt. He’d felt the huff of boredom and frustration whenever he mentioned anything that had happened on shift, when he’d tried to tell her about a shitfull day or explain why he wasn’t in the mood to go out for dinner. She hadn’t wanted to know anything about that part of him or his life. He’d learnt that very early on in their fucked-up marriage.

  Sam cranked off the shower and stood in the wet silence. The echoing drips were like a heartbeat in the cold room. He rubbed his palms briskly over his hair, flicking off the moisture. He grabbed a towel, gave his hair a quick dry, and tucked it around his waist.

  He knew he was better off alone. He’d discovered that about himself years before, too.

  He would stay until morning to make sure Calla was all right and then go and deal with his old man.

  When the music stopped, Calla pulled her earphones out and switched off her iPod. She turned to the window and noticed it was dark. Outside, there were no streetlights or lights from any passing cars to illuminate the outlook. She pulled herself to sitting and reminded herself where she was. On Kangaroo Island. Stranded in the company of a firefighter with a hero complex.

  And in desperate need of the bathroom.

  That plan she’d had to simplify her life? It had struck a major snag. She’d been trying to shed men, not attract them like metal shavings to a magnet.

  Calla rubbed the worry from her eyes and pulled back the heavy blankets. She wondered if she could perhaps click her heels together and miraculously return home. In a blink, she could be in her own bed. With her own pillow. With her woollen quilt pulled over her head. Without a firefighter and his sexy grin on the other side of the door.

  W
ithout finding Jem. She shook off the thought.

  Calla closed her eyes. Nothing about the trip so far had felt right. The nausea-inducing journey over on the ferry, losing her glasses, the car accident, meeting Sam.

  Everything had been an accident so far, in every sense of the word.

  Calla pulled herself up and turned, planting her feet on the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting for the disorientation in her head to settle. When it finally did, she stood slowly, stretched and yawned, worked out the pain in the small of her back, no doubt from the unfamiliar mattress, and gathered her emotional strength. She grabbed one of the blankets from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders like a huge pashmina.

  She padded in her thin socks to the bedroom door and opened it.

  The light from the living room made her blink. When she stopped, she tried not to look shocked.

  Sam was standing two metres from her, wearing nothing but a hand towel and a smile.

  CHAPTER

  12

  ‘You’re awake,’ Sam said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shower’s all yours.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  It wasn’t the best zinger she could come up with but, in the circumstances, was that a surprise? The man was wearing a towel. A very small towel. Calla looked him up and down and wondered how the hell it was staying up. It gripped his body, one end barely tucked in where it doubled over low down at his hipbones, and there was a lot of thigh on show. A whole lot of lean, tanned thigh on those long, long legs. Perving wasn’t creepy, she tried to tell herself, it was simply appreciation. She was a woman, after all, and he was a handsome man, with most of his body on show. His wet body. She could appreciate it without it meaning anything. And anyway, he was probably used to it, she thought. No doubt he had to bat women off like flies. And that surely must have engendered a certain arrogance about being handsome and brave and heroic and all that other firefighter stuff. Calla could see that for what it was and was not going to play to the cliché. Instead, she would invert it. She let him see her eyes wander slowly up and down his body. It’s what he deserved if he was going to stand there without moving or looking the slightest bit embarrassed.

  ‘There’d better be some hot water left for me,’ she said.

  Sam smiled, shrugged his shoulders. ‘A cold shower never hurt anyone.’

  There were droplets of water in the dusting of hair between his pecs and some had caught on his eyelashes.

  She faked a yawn. All that handsome half-nakedness was boring, right? ‘What’s the time, anyway?’

  Sam checked his wrist. He wore a waterproof watch, of course. ‘It’s seven. How you doing?’

  He wanted to have a conversation now?

  How was she feeling? Not good. In fact, she was feeling completely overheated and discombobulated. She was totally distracted by his body. Who wouldn’t be? There were muscles there that she hadn’t ever seen on a man’s body in real life. What were those bits around his hips and how did they get so muscled and pronounced? And those shoulders … she guessed they’d grown that strong from carrying people out of burning buildings while carrying thirty kilograms of equipment on his back. He had nice arms; he definitely had nice arms. And when she looked closer, she could make out slightly raised veins running from elbow to wrist.

  ‘Sorry … what?’ Calla’s eyes pinged back to his. He seemed to be waiting for an answer to something.

  Of course she’d totally lost her train of thought.

  ‘I asked you how you were feeling. Did the rest work? How’s that headache?’ Sam propped his hands on his hips. The towel moved slightly and Calla lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

  Did she still have a headache? The ache in her head was gone but had been swiftly replaced by one somewhere lower. ‘I’m feeling better, actually.’

  ‘That’s good. Glad to hear it.’

  ‘I’ll just …’ She pointed past him to the bathroom. She needed to end this conversation now. She really needed to stop looking at him.

  Please be dressed when I return.

  ‘I’ll grab my things and have a shower, too. I think I need to warm up more than anything.’

  ‘Sure.’ Sam smiled and looked at her in a strange way.

  She walked by him. He smelt like soap. He smelt like wet man.

  Unfortunately, that was Calla’s favourite kind.

  Sam had tossed on some clean clothes and decided he had to do something about the raging hunger he was feeling. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and it was now dinnertime.

  Calla was still in the shower. Had been for twenty minutes. He tried not to think about it. Definitely didn’t need to think about the redhead, naked and soaped up.

  His phone rang and vibrated on the kitchen bench. He smiled when he saw the name on his display.

  ‘Rowdy. What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘Yeah, I love you, too, Crash.’ Behind his best mate’s voice, Sam could hear laughter and music. ‘Where the hell are you? I’m at the pub and you’re not here. Didn’t we have a date?’

  ‘Fuck. No, sorry. I’m on KI.’

  ‘Everything all right with the old man?’

  ‘Nah. Not really.’

  ‘He’s worse?’

  ‘His doctor’s been on my back about it. One day he’s going to trip over on the farm somewhere and get eaten by sheep. Stupid fuckers that they are. And he’s still driving.’

  Neither of them had to mention how many times they’d been to car accidents in which oldies had mistaken the brake for the accelerator and ploughed into something or someone. On the island, that something would most likely be a tree. In the city, he’d attended jobs in which cars had rammed into shop fronts, crushing tables and chairs and, horrifyingly, people. Once, it was a childcare centre. More memories he tried to push down. Sam hadn’t even attempted to have that conversation with his old man. Trying to take Charlie’s car away from him would be like lobbing a hand grenade into his life.

  ‘When you heading back?’

  Sam rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced over to the bathroom door. That was always a complicated question but things had got a little trickier now that he’d taken on a redhead with suspected concussion and no means of transport.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m driving out to Roo’s Rest tomorrow to see the old man. Depends how that goes.’ Sam had been in this position before. Every time something worrying happened he’d fly over to KI, hire a car and drive out to see his father. They would fight, Sam would leave in a stubborn rage about his father’s intransigence and Charlie would refuse to wave as he stood on his front veranda and watched his son drive away.

  Sam didn’t have high hopes for anything different this time.

  ‘Well, I’ll have a beer for you. Or maybe two. Hell, I’m on a break and I’m letting my very short hair down. And, Crash,’ Rowdy lowered his voice, ‘just let me say, there are women here. New women.’

  Sam shook his head. Rowdy had more luck with women than almost anyone he knew. He looked to that bathroom door again. ‘And here I am all on my lonesome. Wait a minute … since when have you needed a wingman, anyway?’

  ‘You know what it’s like. They travel in twos. Hey, that’s given me an idea …’ Rowdy laughed down the line and Sam had to join in. His mate was shameless. And, somehow, he got away with it every time.

  ‘As I said, here all alone. Don’t rub that shit in.’

  ‘Hey, give me a call when you get back. Good luck with the old man.’ Then Rowdy whistled down the line. ‘Gotta go. Two blondes are checking me out. They look incredibly thirsty. See ya.’

  Sam ended the call. His best mate was drinking in a crowded bar over in Adelaide, in the company of gorgeous women. He was in a rented cabin in what passed for his hometown with a bolshie naked redhead, dinner in the fridge and an unopened bottle of wine on the kitchen bench.

  When he thought about where he’d rather be, his answer surprised the hell out of him.

  Call
a had taken her yoga pants and a warm jumper into the bathroom with her so she wouldn’t have to repeat Sam’s performance and parade around in a towel. That would have been a little over the top. More than provocative, she’d decided. She didn’t need Sam to be getting any ideas about what this arrangement was, and she so wasn’t going to fall for the firefighter thing. So she went for the passion killers: her Ugg boots. They were a necessity in this climate, she decided, and she didn’t care what Sam or anyone else said.

  When she closed the bathroom door behind her she found Sam in the kitchen. He was fully clothed, which was a relief, in a forest-green, warm-looking knit jumper and black jeans. His hair was still damp and he looked clean and scrubbed.

  ‘Did that warm you up?’

  ‘Yeah, it did, thanks. There’s a washing machine and a dryer here. I’ve shoved my clothes in. Do you want to clean yours too? I know they got kind of dirty …’ When you were trying to save people’s lives. She wanted to say it, but didn’t.

  ‘Let me grab them.’ A minute later, their clothes were mingling in the frothy suds. Calla didn’t want to think about what kind of underwear he wore and how it would be tossing and turning with hers. Her sensible undies. His … boxers? She looked him up and down. She couldn’t tell. And then once again tried to stop thinking about it.

  Sam had returned to his spot in the kitchen and smiled at her across the kitchen bench. ‘You hungry?’

  Calla could feel her stomach rumbling but wasn’t sure if it was for want of food. Something about this scene was strange and confusing. What was going on? Sam looked like he was settling in. First the lift back to cabin, then the shower in her bathroom. He was definitely wearing fresh clothes, so he must have unloaded a bag from his car. Now their dirties were rubbing against each other in the washing machine.

  And he was in the kitchen — her kitchen, albeit her temporary one — asking her about dinner?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve had a look through your shopping.’