So Far Into You (3 page)

He put the heater on, and between that and his jacket she stopped shivering. After that, she noticed little things: like the scent of his jacket and how the inner lining felt so silky on her skin, the vibration of the car on the road, the confident way he drove.

‘So,' Seth said, turning the heater off.

‘So, what?'

‘So, I'm curious about what's going on between you and my brother. So, I'm wondering if you're going to tell me your address any time before we get to Augusta.'

‘Well … I live up past the old hospital. If you drop me at the hospital, I can walk the rest of the way.'

‘And you and Blake?'

She didn't answer and his left hand tapped the steering wheel, just once, like it had done something bad.

‘Blake is a good friend. Most of the kids I went to school with have all moved away from Margaret River so it's been good to find a mate here. We hang out at the beach. I mind Occhilupo. It's nothing more than that. I know the company's rules, Mr Lasrey.'

‘Call me Seth,' he said again. Then his dark eyes flashed a question: ‘Who is Occhilupo?'

‘Blake's puppy. Blake doesn't like leaving him behind while he surfs, so I puppy-sit.'

‘Puppy-sit,' he snorted, more to himself than to her. ‘Why does Blake buy a puppy if he's planning to join the Pro Tour?'

‘I thought that was a secret.'

Seth said: ‘He must have mentioned something. My mother knows about it. So tell me, what do you think about it?'

‘The puppy or the surfing?'

‘The surfing.'

Remy thought it through. She didn't want to tell tales out of school but she did think it was important Blake's family knew how serious he was about his surfing. ‘I think he should do what he wants. He said it's always been a dream. What about you? What do you think about it?'

‘It's a pipedream.' His voice was flat.

‘I've seen him in the surf, he's really good—'

‘That's not enough. Do you have any idea how many
good
surfers there are in Margaret River?'

Remy held her ground. ‘I do, and I think you're underestimating him.'

‘He's too old.'

‘Twenty-two is
not
old. I'm twenty-three.'

Seth laughed. It was short and sharp and not particularly pleasant. ‘Most of the guys, if they're going to get a start on the tour, they're in their teens.'

Remy couldn't answer that.

She liked going to the beach with Blake, but once he joined the line-up she couldn't tell him from the other surfers in the water. She liked watching the surfers ride the waves but she could only handle so much of that before she lost interest. That was when it was nice to have Occhy to take for a walk.

After a time, Seth changed the subject. ‘Do you know who Occhilupo is?'

‘Of course.' She did know,
now.
‘Mark Occhilupo was Blake's idol.'

‘He had so many posters of Occhy in his bedroom when he was a kid.' He smiled and Remy decided it made his face so much nicer. ‘Did you know who he was, or did Blake have to tell you?'

‘I knew,' she said indignantly.

Seth eyed her across the car. ‘Liar.' Then his gaze returned to the road.

They were inside the town boundaries now and he'd slowed crossing the bridge. It was Saturday afternoon and town was busy with tourists, like always. Judging by the puddles over the road and the height of the river, the storm had hit hard here too.

Seth stopped on the main road and waited for oncoming traffic before he could turn up Tunbridge Street. ‘Where did you say you live?'

I didn't.
‘Just drop me at the Old Hospital. I'll walk from there.' The houses opposite the Old Hospital were actually quite quaint.

‘I am not dropping you at the Old Hospital. It's still miserable out there. Just give me directions.'

‘It's fine. I like the walk.'

‘Barefoot? Or would you put those shoes back on for the hike?'

‘Oh, fine.'
Hell and Tommy.
‘If you turn right past the hospital, then first left. I live up there. There's a big hedge out the front.'

‘That wasn't so hard now, was it?'

Actually, it was excruciating. The houses on her street weren't any kind of quaint and her place was the worst of the lot. It was right at the end of the cul-de-sac and it might as well have had a sign out the front that said: renovate or detonate, or just plain kill me now.

‘Here?' Seth said, slowing as Remy pointed to the overgrown photinia hedge.

Next door's blue heeler barrelled out to the adjoining fence, barking at Seth's car. A soccer ball bounced after him.

Remy started to shrug out of Seth's jacket, but he said, ‘Keep it till you're inside. You can bring it to the winery on Monday.'

‘It's a long weekend.'

‘Then Tuesday.'

‘Are you sure?' What if she snagged it on the doorway? What if there was a break-in? That jacket would be the most expensive item in her house.

‘I'm sure. I have to get back to the festival to present a trophy, so if you don't mind …'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry. Why didn't you say?' Remy scrambled out of the passenger seat, clutching the jacket around her throat, clutching her shoes as the wind tried to spirit them away. ‘Thanks for the lift, I really appreciate it. I'll look after the jacket, I promise.'

‘See you when I'm looking at you,' Seth said.

Remy watched his car turn in the cul-de-sac and speed back down the hill. She watched till it turned the corner, trying to snap her brain away from the scent and warmth of Seth's car, into the reality of misty-grey slush and puddles.

Next door, her neighbour screamed at the two boys who'd chased after the soccer ball and the dog. ‘You kids! Get the hell
out
of the rain.'

They were ten and twelve, those kids. The youngest on the verge of turning sullen, the eldest: already there. She was sure they'd kicked their ball after the blue heeler so they could get an eyeful of Seth's car. Cars like that never turned up this street.

The not-quite-sullen kid waved as Remy snuck between the fence and the Dual Cab. The other kid ignored her. The dog growled.

***

Seth drove north with the window open and Tchaikovsky loud in the speakers. The icy air cleared his head. The music filled it. Clear or fill—he didn't care. What he needed to do was keep Remy out.

Every time she'd breathed in, right there on the seat beside him, he could have sworn the air in the car moved. Like she was the moon, and he'd been sucked into her gravitational pull.

Seth scrubbed a hand through his hair. Maybe he needed that holiday more than he'd thought, or maybe he had the worst case of jetlag in living history. An hour with this girl and she'd seriously messed with his head.

He thought about what she'd said: about Blake, about the puppy. Then he thought about
how
she'd said it. She had a wonderful voice: slow, soft, considered.

Seth gave up on the icy air—all it was doing was freezing his nuts—and buzzed up the window.

He needed to talk to Blake, see where his brother's head was at, but he believed Remy when she said there was nothing going on between them. She was a good kid with a kind heart, he was sure of it. Nothing trained a man to judge character like running his own business.

Yeah. And if I keep calling her ‘kid' long enough I might even believe it.

Thank God he'd had a jacket to throw over that ‘kid' or he might have crashed his damn car trying not to stare at the way her nipples fought the fabric of that pink dress.

Seth slowed near the park. The crowd had thinned and it wasn't hard to find a slot for the GTR near the marquee. All he had to do now was get in, present his father's trophy and get out.

***

‘You're home early,' her mother said, as Remy shucked Seth's jacket from her shoulders and draped it over a kitchen chair, fussing at the sleeves to stop them creasing. ‘You're just in time for the second half. Eagles are up.'

Lexie Hanley had a plate of sliced apple and cheddar cheese on her lap. A glass of cheap and cheerful white wine balanced against her thigh. In the pot-belly stove, the fire glowed low and the room was cosy enough that Remy didn't miss the jacket's warmth. Losing the silky texture and the divine Seth smell was a different matter.

‘So, how did it go? Did you get hit by that hailstorm? I thought our roof was going to blow off for sure. I couldn't hear the game it was so loud.' An advert came on and she tore her eyes away from the television. ‘Oh my goodness, love! What happened?'

Remy waved her soggy, grass-stained shoes at her mother. ‘We got caught in the storm. Go on, you can say I told you so, I know you want to. You didn't want me to go to the festival with Blake.'

‘I told you so.'

Remy stuck her tongue out and Lexie laughed. ‘Get changed, love.'

Once the dress was in the washing basket and she'd brushed the grass off her shoes, Remy made herself a hot chocolate. Chocolate appealed to her more than sauvignon blanc.

‘Did you have a good time?' Lexie asked, turning the volume lower. ‘It's such a long time since you went out and did something for yourself. You've been working so hard.'

‘So have you, Mum. Hopefully after a year or two of this, we'll have paid Doug Mulvraney back. It won't be like this forever.'
I won't have to work two jobs forever.

Remy put a cushion over the hole in the worst side of the orange couch and sat next to her mother, tucking her feet beneath her. She'd put a pair of thick socks on because her feet refused to feel warm.

‘Seth Lasrey was at the festival. He gave me a lift home,' she said.

Lexie's eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you went with Blake?'

‘I did. He had a few too many drinks and we got caught in the storm because my foot got stuck when I was trying to do the plank walk'—she didn't have to look at her mother to know her eyes were goggling—‘and Seth was kind of … there, and he just offered to bring me home.'

Lexie scowled at the jacket draped on her kitchen chair. ‘So I guess that's his?'

‘He lent it to me. I got soaked.'

‘Please tell me it's not Armani?'

‘I think it might be.'

Lexie let out a low whistle. ‘Make sure we lock the doors tonight.'

‘Like a locked door would keep anyone out of this place. They can just climb through any window.'

‘That reminds me, love,' Lexie said. ‘The property manager rang this afternoon about the flyscreen—'

‘She rang on a Saturday?' The property manager hadn't returned her calls all week. It was hard to imagine her ringing on the weekend.

‘She apologised for not getting back to you. She said the landlord has been interstate and she hasn't been able to get a hold of him. She said that he'd authorised her to get a handyman around here on Monday afternoon and she asked me to remind you not to try fixing it yourself.'

‘At least the job gets done if I do it.'

‘I know, love. But last time you almost fell off the roof when the gutter broke, remember?'

‘I remember. If they hadn't taken so long to get someone around here, I never would have had to get up there in the first place.'

Lexie took another sip of her drink. The final quarter was about to start. Remy had half an eye on the muscled men in short shorts but it wasn't the footballer's bodies that slid through instant replays in her head.

Hell and Tommy.
Remy shivered as her mind ran away with her … until she pulled herself up short.

He's the boss, Rem.
Fantasy was all it could ever be.

She needed this job. Lasrey Estate paid the bills and kept food on the table and fuel in the fire. Any kind of affair with her boss was a one-way track to a termination letter.

When her father died, he'd left gambling debts: dogs, horses, even money he'd borrowed from Mulvraney to speculate on a hot stockmarket tip or three. All their married life, Lexie said, Wayne Hanley had been a sucker for a get-rich-quick scheme. Sharks like Mulvraney preyed on men like Wayne. Remy and her mother had found out the hard way, those debts didn't stop at the grave.

Chapter 3

Seth woke late Sunday morning and in the time it took him to work out the hum on the roof was rain, his thoughts turned to Remy—

He swung his feet out of bed, pulled on trackpants and a shirt, made coffee and toast, hands flying. Turned on the radio, sang along, did anything to keep his mind off—

He slurped his coffee, spluttered as it burned his tongue.

Seth drank the brew staring over the vines, standing on the blackbutt flooring in the front room of the log cabin that was as much a home as he had anywhere in the world. This time of year the bright green growth spiked up from the trellis like a punk's haircut.

The cabin had been built for his mother's parents, so Joe had somewhere to get Grandma and Grandpa Hindle out of his way. When Ailsa's parents hadn't been using it they let it to friends. When he and Blake were young there'd always been people here. Seth's father built the cottage on the prettiest spot on the farm. Up on a small hill, flanked by jarrah and marri trees. The front room and deck overlooked the vines and the small blue dam where they'd fished for marron when they were kids. Back then the dam had a canoe in it that leaked. He and Blake were forever bailing it out. The canoe hadn't been there for years.

In the skies to the west, remnants of yesterday's storms rolled through. They lacked the intensity of Saturday. The rain fell straight, melting on the roof rather than hurling against it.

He wondered how Blake's head was this morning, grinned as he bit into another slice of toast. Little brother was probably out in the water. Blake always reckoned nothing cured a hangover faster than a surf. Except sex.