Storms Over Blackpeak (19 page)

There was a knock on the glass. Luke opened the door.

‘Here you go.’ A woman in a snowy parka — Mrs Gordon, presumably — thrust a folded blanket at him. ‘It’s going to be a pretty rough night. You and your girlfriend might want this.’

‘Thanks,’ Luke said.

Cally couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit pleased that he didn’t bother to correct her. She liked that someone thought she might have an actual boyfriend. One she went places with. One who wasn’t ashamed to be seen with her. Maybe, just for one night, she could make believe that she was a girl like Ella and Valentina.

Luke put the blanket down on the bed. On top of it, Cally saw, were a torch and a box of supermarket candles. He looked at his watch.

‘You want to grab some dinner? We could see if they’ve got a table back at the hotel.’

Dinner? Her little fantasy was progressing nicely. ‘The restaurant,’ she pointed out, ‘is probably going to be full as
well.’ Not to mention pricey. ‘We could just eat here at the pub. That way we don’t have to go anywhere.’ She shivered as a wave of hail hit the glass. ‘It’s not much of a night to be out on the road.’

‘Well, in that case,’ he said, glancing down at his pinstriped trousers, ‘I think I’m a tad overdressed. Do you mind if I get changed first?’

Turning his back on her, Luke crossed to the sofa and rummaged in his bag. Cally averted her eyes as he began to strip off his business shirt.

‘Won’t be a second,’ he said briskly.

Involuntarily, she turned her head towards the sound of his voice. Well. That looked every bit as good as she’d always suspected it would. She looked away again quickly as Luke’s spectacularly shirtless back headed for the bathroom.

‘Sorry,’ he said, a minute later, causing her to catch a glimpse of the equally impressive front view as he re-emerged, in jeans this time, a sweater clutched in his hand. ‘I forgot to take a T-shirt.’

Oh, fuck it, you only lived once. Cally stole another glance as he pulled the T-shirt over his head. Halfway through putting his sweater on, Luke turned. She pretended, rapidly, to be engrossed with her phone.

‘Still no service?’ he asked.

She shook her head, hoping her hair would hide her blush. ‘Not a bar.’

‘Right, then.’ Unearthing a luscious-looking wool scarf from his bag, he started to wrap it around his neck. ‘Shall we?’ He stopped, looking Cally over with a critical eye. ‘Are you going to be warm enough?’

She nodded, unbuttoning the hood of her oilskin. Leaving her warmest clothes at Glencairn was looking like it had been a mistake. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Here.’ Luke handed her the scarf. ‘You take this.’

‘No,’ she protested. ‘It’s yours.’

‘Please. I insist. I don’t want you passing out from exposure between here and the bar.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, I’m less likely to get a schooner thrown at me without it.’

Despite his efforts, Luke didn’t exactly blend in with the rest of the diners in the pub, Cally thought, as a gobsmacked teenager who didn’t look old enough to be in a bar managed to wipe off a table for them in the corner. Mind you, a guy with his looks would stand out in a crowd whatever he was wearing. Quite a few women, she noticed, were staring at him. One of them, caught out by Cally in the process, dropped her gaze guiltily. Cally unwrapped Luke’s scarf from her neck, trying not to notice how good it smelled, and stowed it out of harm’s way in her jacket pocket.

‘Do you know what you’d like?’ he asked her. ‘I think we have to go up and order.’

Having selected the cheapest thing on the menu board, Cally watched heads turn as Luke made his way back to the bar. Oh God — of course, he was going to have to pay as well. Snatching her jacket off the back of the chair, she hurried after him.

‘Here,’ she said quickly, fumbling her card out of her wallet.

Luke looked amused. ‘No, this is on me.’

Cally stared up at him.

‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said. ‘If we’d left when I said we were going to, you wouldn’t be stuck here.’

‘I don’t mind.’ Cally felt herself blushing again as Luke’s beautiful green eyes softened. Jesus, she was just as bad as the girl who’d wiped the table.

‘Let me get this,’ he said gently. ‘You can get the next one, okay?’

She hesitated. How likely was it there’d be a next one?

Luke nodded over her shoulder. ‘Go save our table before it disappears.’

Cally gave in. A few minutes later, Luke rejoined her, two glasses of wine in his hands. ‘I was going to get a bottle,’ he said wryly, ‘but there wasn’t much of a list. I took a punt and went for the white and dry.’

In dazzlingly short order, given the crowd, the waitress brought their food. ‘Here you go,’ the girl said, batting her eyelashes at Luke as she placed two enormous oval plates down on the table. ‘Bon appétit.’

‘Thanks,’ Luke grinned.

Cally watched the waitress float off, nearly tripping over a young family’s nappy bag as she headed back to the serving hatch.

‘Well,’ Luke said, pushing his knife and fork together some time later, ‘I can honestly say that’s the best ham steak I’ve had in many a year. If not ever.’

‘You haven’t eaten your cherry,’ she teased him.

He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘You want it?’

Swallowing her last chicken nugget, Cally shook her head.

‘So.’ Luke looked around the pub. ‘Now what? Shall we have another drink?’

‘Sure.’

‘Another glass of wine?’ he asked.

They looked at each other.

‘Yeah, okay, maybe not.’ He looked around again. Across the bar, a pokie player hit jackpot. ‘You know,’ Luke said, ‘I’ve got a pretty decent bottle of scotch in the car. How about we get out of here and crack it open?’

Despite the onslaught of freezing air, Cally breathed a sigh of relief as the pub’s door swung shut behind them. God, it was nice when all that noise stopped. Wrapping Luke’s scarf around her again, she peered out into the fast-swirling dark.
It was still snowing, and the wind, if anything, had increased.

Luke put a hand to her elbow. ‘Come on.’ Together, they made a dash for the distant lights of the motel units’ verandah, the blizzard driving hard into their faces.

‘Watch out.’ Luke caught her as she almost stumbled over one of the rocks that had once marked the path, but were now half-buried in snow. His hand remained in the small of her back, steadying her against the wind as they made it out of the darkness and into the relative shelter of the units.

‘Bloody hell,’ he laughed, brushing snow from his exquisite coat. ‘I think we should have called for a sled and some huskies.’

Inside, the heater was still working overtime, and the unit was now something resembling warm. Opening the door again briefly, Cally gave her jacket a quick shake and went to hang it up in the bathroom.

‘You want to watch some TV?’ Luke asked, as she came out. He cast a dubious eye over the geriatric set in the corner. ‘If that thing still works.’

‘Okay.’

He picked up the remote. Before he could work out which button to push, the unit was plunged into darkness.

‘Right.’ Luke’s face, lit by his phone screen, appeared out of the blackness. ‘I’d say that calls for a drink, wouldn’t you? I’ll go and find that bottle.’

As he moved towards the door, his phone beeped. ‘Well, I guess you win some, you lose some,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’ve got cell service back.’

The power surged on again in time for Cally to see his expression harden as he read the screen.

‘Is everything okay?’ She made a dive for the torch on the bed as the lights flickered again.

‘Fine,’ Luke said brusquely. ‘It’s a message from Ella.
She’s not going to make it tomorrow night.’

Oh … Cally was still trying to think of the right response when the power went out again. She waited hopefully for it to come back on. It didn’t. A beam of light traversed the floor as Luke, using his phone as a torch, navigated the darkness to the door. Hurriedly, she switched on the torch in her hand.

Luke shaded his eyes against it. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, his voice flat and his mind clearly elsewhere. Shrugging his coat back on, he disappeared out into the storm.

In his absence, Cally searched the unit for candlesticks. Or something to use as candlesticks. Who gave you candles with nothing to put them in? She was just about to give up and use the pair of chipped eggcups she’d found in the kitchenette cupboard when it occurred to her, more out of desperation than hope, to check the bedside cabinets. Ah! There was one. And yes, on the other side of the bed, its mate, still bearing the stubs of their last use. Thankfully, there was a box of matches in there, too. Setting a candle on top of each cabinet, Cally lit the stubs and stood back to judge the effect. They looked very pretty. But rather like she was trying to seduce someone. The coffee table, perhaps, might be a better idea. Although the sofa was too small to share, so one of them would have to sit on the bed in the dark …

Before she had settled on an alternative arrangement, Luke walked back in, a bottle in his hand and another under his arm. Unfazed, seemingly, by Cally’s seduction scene, he set one bottle down in the candlelight on his side of the bed and held the other towards her.

‘I found this,’ he said, turning the label of the champagne bottle to the beam of her torch. ‘I figured we might as well drink it. It’s cold.’

‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ Imagining the
celebration he’d been planning for Ella’s return, Cally’s heart went out to him.

‘You know,’ Luke said tightly, ‘I can’t think of a single reason not to.’

She searched his face as best she could in the candlelight. With a little half-smile, he raised his eyebrows at her.

‘I’ll go find us some glasses,’ he said.

‘I’ll get them,’ she offered. ‘I know where they are.’

As Cally returned with the best the unit had to offer — two tumblers — Luke swung his legs off the bed and sat up to take them from her. ‘Perfect,’ he grinned. ‘This place is all class.’

She settled herself on the other side of the bed, slipping off her boots and wrapping the duvet around her cold feet. Without the heater on, the temperature was starting to drop already.

‘I guess we won’t be needing an ice bucket,’ Luke said, as the champagne cork plunked. Expertly, he filled the tumblers to the brim. ‘There we go.’ As the bubbles subsided, he handed a glass across the bed to her. ‘Cheers. Here’s to …’ He sighed. ‘Something.’ He touched his glass to hers.

Taking a sip, Cally shivered. Now, she thought, would be a good time for her to say something. Anything, pretty much. ‘Thanks for dinner,’ she managed.

‘Anytime,’ Luke laughed. ‘It’s the cheapest date I ever had.’

Feeling suddenly very small, she huddled her feet a little further into the duvet.

‘It was also,’ he added, in a kinder tone of voice, ‘one of the nicest.’ In the near-darkness, he sought out her eyes. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’

She shivered again.

‘Here.’ Pulling his half of the duvet out from under him, Luke folded it across her. ‘Wrap yourself up. It’s freezing in here.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll take the blanket.’

Gratefully, she drew the duvet around her, watching as he shrouded himself in the blanket and, retrieving the bottle, refilled his empty glass.

‘Are you warm enough now?’ he asked, leaning over to top hers up.

‘I’m all right,’ she lied. ‘Are you?’ It seemed unlikely, given how thin the blanket was. Cally wondered if her jacket was dry enough to put back on. Luke, she noticed, was still wearing his.

‘You sound like you’re shivering,’ he said.

‘So do you.’

‘Okay.’ Luke put his glass down. ‘I think we’d better pool our resources.’

She totally agreed. Opening up the duvet, she shuffled closer to him as he rearranged it around them both and wrapped the blanket over the top. God, that felt better already. Under the covers, their knees met.

‘So,’ he said, a smile in his voice, ‘I probably know you well enough to ask this now. What’s Cally short for?’

Ugh. ‘Callista.’ Cally pulled a face.

‘You don’t like it?’ Luke sounded amused.

She shook her hand. ‘It was my grandfather’s fault, apparently.’

‘He was a big fan of
Ally McBeal
?’

‘He was an astronomer,’ she smiled. ‘Callista — Callisto, actually, but Mum drew the line at that, thank God — is the fourth moon of Jupiter. She was seduced by him, you see.’

‘Ah.’ Luke downed another mouthful of wine. ‘How did that work out?’

‘Badly,’ Cally nodded. ‘He got her pregnant. She’d sworn
to remain a virgin, and when her mistress Diana found out, she turned her into a bear.’

‘That’s a pretty rough day.’

‘It gets worse.’ Cally sipped her champagne. ‘Jupiter’s wife found out about the affair and tried to have the bear killed. So to save her, Jupiter turned her into a star and set her in the night sky where nobody could touch her.’

‘Those old gods.’ Luke refilled their glasses again. ‘So Jupiter could turn a bear into a star, but he couldn’t stop a woman getting pregnant? Surely it would have been easier if he’d just used a little protection.’

‘It would have been easier,’ Cally said bitterly, ‘if he’d just left her alone. He didn’t really want her anyway. He was bored, that was all.’

There was a long pause.

‘Are you really sure,’ Luke asked gently, ‘you want to go back to Glencairn?’

‘Not even slightly.’ She took a larger swallow. ‘But I think — I think I have to. Just to … I don’t know … to say goodbye, or something.’

Silence reigned again.

‘Callista,’ he said, tactfully shifting the subject back to safer ground, ‘is a very pretty name. It suits you.’

Cally laughed. ‘You know, that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’

‘It shouldn’t be.’ Luke’s voice was serious. Putting his glass down, he turned towards her, laying his hand lightly on her arm. ‘You are something very special. Something extraordinary. You should know that.’ He searched her face. ‘Do you? At all?’

She stared at him wordlessly.

‘I want you to promise me that you’re not going to let anyone —
anyone
— make you feel like you’re worth less
than a Valentina.’ Luke held her eyes as his hand moved to her shoulder. ‘Will you do that?’