What Rosie Found Next (6 page)

Her voice competed with the rumble of the engine. ‘I’m not sure about this!’

‘You’ll be fine.’ He pulled away. ‘Now give Stephanie a wave.’

Rosie didn’t wave – she daren’t let go of Owen – but she couldn’t help but giggle as she watched Stephanie glower at them, bright red lips pursed as the Ducati manoeuvred its way out of the car park.

On the open road, the bike vibrated beneath her as her body pressed against Owen’s. The wind lifted the strands of any hair not held down by the helmet, and the air cooled with the speed as they headed back to the house.

Owen’s height made him look skinnier than he actually was. With her arms wrapped round his waist, her mind flitted back to the day she’d seen him wearing only a towel, and she was pretty sure Adam had never made her tummy flip like this, even when they’d first dated. Then again, maybe it was the difference between a cad and a responsible, reliable man. This was a frisson of excitement that wasn’t meant to last.

She leaned with Owen as they turned into Lakeside Lane, and second nature allowed him to skilfully avoid the pothole. She found herself disappointed that they were home already and wished they had further to go. There was something about being on the back of a bike, on an open road, the wind blasting all your cares away.

When they came to a standstill on the driveway, Owen flipped open the pocket on the sleeve of his jacket and pulled out the remote control to open the garage.

‘So was it as bad as you thought it would be?’ he asked as the garage door creaked open.

She tried to act as casual as though she did this every day. ‘It wasn’t bad at all.’

‘Sometimes you’ve got to step outside your comfort zone, Stevens, and take a chance.’ They locked eyes. ‘You never know what might happen.’

Rosie followed him in through the garage as he parked the bike, and she wondered whether he was right for the second time this evening. Was she so set in her ways, striving for safety and security, that she’d closed herself off to what else life could offer?

Rosie went straight up to bed when they got inside the house. Owen sprinkled a few biscuits into a bowl for George and freshened up his water supplies as the cat came running at the sound of the cupboard opening.

When Rosie had climbed onto the back of his bike tonight, he’d expected her to be terrified, but once they were on their way she’d taken the challenge in her stride in the same way as she’d coped with him, her unwanted houseguest. When life threw her something unexpected, it seemed Rosie was a girl who adjusted and made allowances, fitting around other people.

After he’d made a fuss of George and turned out the kitchen light, Owen paused at the foot of the stairs and watched the strip of light beneath Rosie’s door go out. She’d been welcoming and friendly once they’d got over their middle-of-the-night meeting and she’d been a distraction, but he still needed answers and hadn’t forgotten the real reason for being here in town. He hadn’t had much chance to look around the house with her there. Her shifts had fallen on days when he’d either been out of town or busy working and he was getting anxious. He needed to take this opportunity to delve a little deeper, find out what his parents were hiding.

He decided to try his luck in the shed and see if he could find anything amongst the paraphernalia inside. He rummaged through a carton of tools, packets of seeds stashed in a box, an old tea chest containing nothing more than old books that hadn’t made the grade for the inside shelves. He pulled out boxes full of surplus plant pots, he even looked beneath a tool bench that hadn’t been used in years, but apart from a cricket bat and deflated soccer ball, nothing.

He perched on the tea chest, arms resting on his legs. Yet another fruitless search. If only his mum hadn’t seen the article fall from the bookcase that day. Given the reach of internet searches, it could’ve given him all the information he needed. Hearing his parents’ conversation that night had not only confirmed there was something going on, but it had confirmed the secret was specific to him. There had been no mention of ‘the boys’ as she often referred to them, only him by name. This wasn’t about Tom, or Ben, and that made him feel isolated and determined not to let it go until he found what he was looking for.

With Rosie asleep upstairs, Owen continued his search inside. He checked the bookshelves in the lounge room, climbing up on a set of steps so that he could check the very top but there was nothing. He doubted he’d find anything in the kitchen, but he rooted through each and every cupboard, looked beneath platters, in recipe books in case papers were hidden in those, even lifted up saucepan lids.

He felt as though he was losing his mind.

He tiptoed up the stairs to get the key to the study and then came back down and started on another drawer of folders and papers in the filing cabinet. He was truly amazed at the amount of bumf his parents had hoarded over the years as he waded through everything from old utility bills and insurance details, to information on family healthcare plans.

When he came up with nothing, again, he leant back in the chair. He looked up at the pictures on the walls of him and his dad in their uniforms, father and son team, and another black-and-white photograph of his grandad. He hadn’t told Rosie about any of this, shown her any of the pictures that told a lot of his life story. He assumed she hadn’t been in the study either if her confusion about his pager was anything to go by, but he’d pushed the boundaries with her tonight and perhaps it was time to stop doing that. Something about Rosie told him she was trusting, and any deception, no matter how playful he intended it to be, wouldn’t be something she’d thank him for. And that mattered to him.

After he’d been through one more drawer, tiredness got the better of him. Upstairs in his bedroom he dug out a fresh T-shirt and a pair of jeans, ready for his early morning training session, and climbed into bed. The rain pitter-pattered lightly against the window pane and the smell of the wet outside drifted in through any cracks it could find. Owen stared up at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head. Rosie was the first girl he’d ever wanted to let close to him, but what was he playing at? She was temporary. Plus, she was spoken for, and had the need to settle down … a need he had never shared.

Turning onto his side to get some sleep, Owen also knew he needed to find out more about himself before he could let anyone else in.

*

Owen was up and out before Rosie the next morning. He arrived home filthy dirty from practising lifting techniques in the mud brought on by last night’s rain, and there was still no sign of her. He dragged out a lonely slice of quiche from the fridge and a tub of sliced up watermelon. Halfway through a slice of the pink fleshy fruit, he realised why he hadn’t seen her. She was in the pool.

He moved to the doors leading out to the deck but kept inside the doorjamb as Rosie swam lap after lap. She was a good swimmer and those petite limbs were stronger than they looked. At the far end she hoisted herself out of the water, her face tilted to the sun as she scraped her long red hair away from it and sent water droplets flying around her body, stunning in an emerald bikini. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her.

He pulled back in case she caught him looking, but when he looked out again she was making her way up to the house. Should he pretend he hadn’t seen her?

Too late.

‘Owen?’

‘Hey.’ He stepped onto the deck casually as though he’d only just got there.

Rosie grabbed the white towel from the back of an outdoor chair and wrapped it protectively around her torso. ‘You’re filthy. Where’ve you been?’ Her chest rose and fell slowly as she got her breath back.

‘Same place you’ll find me every Sunday morning when I’m around in Magnolia Creek.’ He was distracted by the glimpse of a tattoo kissing her right shoulder blade and poking out from the top of her towel. Her hair must’ve masked it when she’d climbed out of the water.

‘And where would that be?’

‘Training.’

‘Are you trying to take the Commando’s
place on
The Biggest Loser
?’ She giggled.

‘Something like that.’ He turned and went back through the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, ‘There’s something I want to show you. Come on.’

Rosie looked down at her towel. ‘Can I at least get dressed first?’

‘Relax, I’ve seen girls in their swimmers before. I’m not going to jump you.’

Rosie rubbed the towel over her hair to stop it dripping, and he tried not to look at the body she’d had to reveal in order to do so.

He unlocked the study and Rosie followed him inside. She noticed the largest photo on the wall first. ‘It’s you.’

He stood next to her as they looked at the shot taken of a whole CFA crew standing beside a truck, filthy post-call-out.

‘You’re a … firefighter?’ Her words caught in her throat.

‘You’re shocked,’ said Owen.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not that.’ Her hand rested on her collarbone as though searching for the necklace she must’ve removed before the swim.

‘I’m a volunteer firefighter for the CFA – the Country Fire Authority. It’s pretty important around here.’

‘I’m sure it is.’ The colour still hadn’t returned to her cheeks. ‘And I know who the CFA are.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

He watched her, frozen on the spot as she looked at the picture again.

‘Training sessions run on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, so I go to as many as I can when I’m here. And then there’s this thing.’ He held up the pager he’d pulled from his pocket, ‘This allows Magnolia Creek CFA to get me whenever they want. I’m on call 24/7.’

Her hand dropped to her side again and her top teeth bit down on her bottom lip.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked. ‘Why are you smiling? Is it the bright yellow uniform, the hat?’

‘I thought it was a girl, or girls, summoning you at all hours when your pager went off.’

He’d really kept her on her toes, hadn’t he?

Rosie covered her face with her hands. ‘It makes perfect sense now.’

‘I’m impressed you thought women were so desperate for me that I needed a pager.’

She grinned. ‘I wondered why you took so many showers at really odd times of the day.’

It was his turn to smile. ‘I clean myself up at the fire station before I come home, unless it’s a training session like today, but nothing beats your own shower, especially in the summer and if I’ve been out on the bike.’

‘Oh God, you’ll never let me live this down now.’ She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me in the first place?’ she asked.

‘Honestly? I enjoyed watching you try to figure it out yourself. You don’t like to be surprised, do you Stevens?’

She cast her eyes to the floor and pulled her towel tighter as Owen moved to another photograph of a woman manning a desk, a phone in her hand. ‘Do you recognise her?’

She peered closely. ‘Bella?’

‘She’s a volunteer in the non-operational team and organises us all.’

‘Wow, it’s a real community isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘She arranges training schedules, makes sure Facebook and Twitter are updated with any bushfire dangers and organises open days for the Magnolia Creek fire station.

‘That’s me and Dad.’ Owen pointed at a picture where they stood, side by side, helmets tucked under their arms and posing for the camera. ‘And this one is a training session. The heat of the day was unbearable, but we trained using hoses, got soaked and it was the best fun we’d had in ages.’

‘Who’s this?’ Rosie pointed to the black-and-white photograph on the opposite wall.

‘My grandad. He was the one who started us off in the world of the CFA. He was in a brigade further north, but Dad always wanted to follow in his footsteps, and I guess I wanted the same.’ He was close enough to smell the chlorine on her skin and see a lone drip run across her collarbone before it dived into the towel beneath.

‘You’re all tall,’ Rosie observed.

‘It’s not genetic.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Michael is the only dad I’ve ever known, but he’s not my biological father.’

‘Oh.’

‘Now don’t start feeling sorry for me, Stevens.’ Her eyes held a watery sheen. Owen hoped it wasn’t pity. ‘My biological father died when I was really small. I never knew him anyway, so it wasn’t a huge loss for me when I found out.’

She seemed shocked and he let her digest what he’d told her.

‘It must’ve been hard on your mum,’ she said eventually.

‘It probably was.’ Not that she’d talked about it with him. It seemed another area of her life she’d closed off to him.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Rosie.

‘I couldn’t tease you any longer.’

She smiled, her cheeks colouring. ‘I’d better get dressed.’

He pulled the study door shut behind them, and without turning to watch her walk up the stairs, said, ‘Nice tattoo, by the way.’

Rosie’s skin was dry from the swim that morning. She showered and rubbed a light layer of moisturiser all over her body. She thought about Owen’s revelations earlier, embarrassed at the conclusions she’d jumped to about the pager.

In those first few days at the house, she’d thought Owen spoiled, using this place as a base while he made his money in property. But she could no longer think that when he was giving his time and risking his life for his town, voluntarily. His job was so different to Adam’s, whose work was safe in both the financial and the physical sense. Those were amongst the reasons she’d been drawn to him.

Downstairs Rosie rinsed out her bikini in the laundry sink. She flushed at the memory of Owen seeing her in so little and spotting her tattoo. Unwittingly, she’d revealed a lot more of herself to him just as he had to her.

She hung the bikini over the drying rack when a tapping sound coming from outside caught her attention. Back in the kitchen she watched as Owen hammered a nail into the fence at the foot of the garden. She’d mentioned that a couple of panels were loose, but she hadn’t expected him to get to the task quite so quickly.

‘Hey,’ he called when he looked up towards the house and noticed her watching. He looked hot from yanking those fence panels back into place and holding them there.

As he made his way up to the house, wiping his brow on his forearm, Rosie opened up her iPad and checked the FireReady app, but Magnolia Creek was still as safe as it had been since she’d arrived.

Owen filled a glass with ice-cold water from the dispenser in the fridge-freezer door.

‘What do you do with the CFA when there are no incidents in Magnolia Creek?’ she asked watching him gulp the liquid down thirstily.

Refreshed, he answered, ‘Magnolia Creek is small, but so is the next town and the one after that. My callouts since I’ve been back have both been out of town. We’re often drafted from here as a strike team.’ He refilled his glass.

‘A strike team?’

‘It’s a team made up of the same resources.’ He smiled at her interest and leant against the bench, sipping from a second glass of water. ‘Members of the CFA are volunteers, so they aren’t always available. Many have full-time work or family commitments. Take me as an example. I’m often out of town or out of the state, occasionally out of the country, so I wouldn’t be able to take every call and it’s the same for lots of members. Sometimes a strike team becomes necessary for the gravity of a situation too.’

‘Were you ever tempted to be a full-time firefighter?’ Rosie pushed a glass beneath the ice dispenser in the freezer and let the ice cubes crash out. They cracked when the water cascaded over the top of them.

‘What’s this, twenty questions?’

She smiled sheepishly.

‘Relax, I’m teasing you. I was too into the property business to ever want to give it up, so I never considered anything other than volunteering. It’s hard graft too, I don’t know how people do it full-time.’

‘What made you volunteer? Was it because of your dad?’

‘I used to go down to the fire station with him, and as soon as I was old enough I joined the junior brigade.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Eleven … I think. It’s a long time ago now.’

‘It must’ve been fun growing up doing things like that.’

‘It was. We learnt about using the radio, the buttons not to click on the truck.’ He chuckled. ‘We had races to connect and disconnect hoses – we got each other soaked in those games. Being part of it kept us all out of trouble anyway.’

‘So how did you get into the property investment business?’

‘When my parents renovated this place, I was always talking to the builders, plumbers, electricians. I was fascinated by how they could take something rundown or very ordinary and turn it into something beautiful. I left school, found work in a real estate agent’s and my interest spiralled from there. I bought my first place in my early twenties, and now I have twenty-three properties in total.’

Her glass of water paused mid-air. ‘That’s pretty impressive.’

‘I learnt a lot with the agency, everything from how to identify the latest hotspots to the rules and regulations of tenants’ right, landlord insurance and basic accountancy. I did a short course to learn more about tax, property law, negotiation skills.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘I’m hoping to go over to Europe – the UK perhaps – and invest over there too.’

It was her turn to hesitate as his words reminded her that this arrangement was only temporary. She was letting herself fall into the new world of Magnolia Creek, having someone around her all the time.

‘Going to a different country to work would be hard,’ she said. ‘Especially when the risk is all your own.’

‘What’s life without a little risk, Stevens?’

Her chest tightened as he looked at her, but then she frowned. ‘Hang on a minute. Did you say you have twenty-three properties?’

‘Correct.’

‘You own twenty-three houses, yet you have nowhere to live?’

‘Now you put it like that, it does sound kind of ridiculous.’

She giggled. ‘So why buy so many properties? Surely it’d be easier to manage fewer, bigger places.’ Rosie tore off a piece of kitchen towel to mop up the water than had pooled beneath her glass as the icy contents warmed.

‘Having lots of smaller places makes sense. Then if one, or a couple, aren’t rented out for a period of time, I don’t lose all my income.’

‘Good strategy.’

‘I allow pets too.’

‘Most landlords wouldn’t.’

‘And that’s exactly why I decided I would. I thought I’d see how it went and if it proved a bad decision then I’d make changes to my future tenancy agreements. There are stipulations – you can’t have four German Shepherds in a one-bedroom top-floor apartment for example, and if the pet is causing trouble with regards to neighbours, then it’s an issue.’

‘You sound like a decent landlord to me.’

When he held her gaze, Rosie got up to move away. ‘I’d better water down the garden.’

‘Already done,’ he said. ‘I did it before this morning’s training session.’

‘Now I feel guilty.’

‘No need. I’m earning my keep. And besides, I’m used to living in a bushfire area, so it becomes second nature … a bit like putting sunscreen on that skin of yours to protect it – I bet you rarely forget.’

Before she could get too uncomfortable thinking about him seeing her in her bikini earlier, he said, ‘You should come down to the fire station some time and see what goes on.’

Her fingers fell across her necklace. ‘Why?’

‘It might be fun, you never know. We organise regular open days.’

‘I’m keeping up-to-date on the bushfire plan and checking the app every day, but I’m not sure I want to be involved.’

‘Oh come on, you can see some of the odd people we get in, the tourists who haven’t got a clue. Last summer a lady came in with a cigarette dangling from her gob. She flicked ash too … middle of bushfire season. Bella told her, not too politely, to “put the damn thing out”.’

Rosie picked up the shopping list from the kitchen bench. ‘I’ll see.’ She smiled. ‘Do you need anything?’ She waved the list.

‘Why don’t you let me go? You went last time.’

‘I really don’t mind.’

‘Well at least let me come with you and help. We could take my pickup,’ he suggested. He must have seen her face because he added, ‘Okay, too rough and ready for you …’

She grinned. ‘I’ll drive. But you can push the trolley.’

Outside the house, Owen sniggered when Rosie climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘What’s so funny?’

He climbed into the passenger side. ‘Nothing, I’m just thinking the Hubba won’t do much for my street cred.’

She fastened her seat belt. ‘You can drive if it makes you feel any better?’

He held up his hands. ‘Oh no, being a passenger violates my self-respect as it is, but driving this thing?’

Rosie unlooped the hair tie from her wrist and twisted her hair off her neck in the summer heat.

‘I feel as though I’m in one of those revolting Barbie movies where everything is pink,’ he said as she pulled out of the driveway.

‘Oh, shut up and let me drive.’

*

All smiles after they returned from the supermarket, Rosie realised Owen was becoming a friend as well as a housemate. She’d never had a shopping trip like that with Adam, who usually wandered aimlessly, Blackberry in hand. The only time she ever got his attention was when she’d picked up something really naughty like her favourite ice cream, Maggie Beer’s Burnt Fig, Honeycomb & Caramel, or a slab of milk chocolate. Sometimes she deliberately chose something enormously fattening just to get his attention. It was a bit of a game. One day she’d dropped in a few slabs of chocolate, a bumper bag of lollies and a family-size pack of peanut M&M’s
before he’d pulled her up on it. She didn’t even like nuts!

Owen had been a scream to go around the supermarket with. Like a big kid, he’d loaded four tubs of ice cream into the trolley and Rosie had told him to put some back on account of it being greedy and there not being enough room in the freezer, and she’d had to reign him in at the meat section when he tried to buy five different types of marinated red meat to put on the barbecue before total fire bans came into place. He’d argued his case that he was a firefighter in need of sustenance, and for one of the first times she’d found herself thinking of a firefighter’s heroic duty without being lost in a world of sadness.

Back at home, George wasn’t going to let them cross the threshold without first giving him the required level of fuss. They unloaded the car and he followed them inside, threading himself between Rosie’s ankles and then Owen’s as they unpacked.

‘Ice cream’s in the freezer, Stevens.’ Owen folded up the chiller bag.

‘Hey, it’s your ice cream, not mine.’

‘And I’ll bet you help me eat it.’

They were both grinning at each other when the doorbell chimed.

‘I’ll get that.’ Owen scooted off as Rosie pushed peppers into the chiller in the fridge, milk into the shelf on the door and dishwasher tablets beneath the kitchen sink.

As she balanced the last nectarine on top of the others in the fruit bowl, Owen reappeared minus the smile and the jovial mood. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’