Page 1 of Don't Bite the Boy Next Door
1
I can’t smell him from where I hide in the tree line, mercifully, but I know that if I did, I wouldn’t still be hiding. I’d be inside, killing him.
I lost the scent of the one who left the flowers on my doorstep a few kilometres ago, but I kept walking. The lure of the outside, of nature and the night, was too great to resist after weeks of barricading myself inside my home.
Only now, staring in consternation at the old Spencer homestead, around five kilometres as the crow flies from my house, I find I have something else to worry about.
I hadn’t known the one I feared was living this close.
When I’d moved in 18 months ago the agent assured me the farm had been subdivided because the last owner, old farmer Spencer, had no family who was interested in farming the, once extensive, property.
“Then, who is this?” I mutter, watching the man’s dark head bent over the sink as he washes dishes, his face in shadow.
But I’m kidding myself – I know who it is. It’s the man I ran from in the woods all those weeks ago –him, the Irresistible.
The one whose blood and body calls to mine.
From where I hide, studying him, I notice he has broad shoulders, even as he hunches over the sink, and his hair is crew-cut. He’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt and jeans. Nothing remarkable about him at all, so far. But like I say, I can’t smell him here.
He finishes washing the dishes quickly but takes a long time to dry the plates with a tea-towel, before placing them in overhead cupboards.
I can see through the curtain-less kitchen window that the place could do with a paint job inside as badly inside as it needs it outside.
As he turns from placing the last dish in the cupboard, I get a good look at his face and gasp. I’d only seen a glimpse of him in the woods the fortnight past when I’d freaked out and ran home, but I’d done my eyes a disservice. I could look at that face forever.
‘He looks as good as he smells. He. Is. Beautiful.’
“Why? Why have you come here to ruin my life?” I moan quietly.
As if he hears me, he looks up to where I stand behind a large cedar.
I back further into the shadow.
Frowning, he leaves the kitchen, and I hear his firm footsteps on the timber floors of his home. I have the same floorboards in mine, but they are covered with hand-made runners and large patterned rugs and don’t reverberate as much as his do. It almost sounds like his house is a large echo chamber, devoid of furniture, his footsteps are so loud.
I wonder, briefly, if he has moved in so recently that he hasn’t had time yet to furnish. It would make sense; his house is four times the size of mine, and in as much disrepair as mine had been when I purchased it. I’d walked by many times in the past year and peered through missing windows to the interior, noticing its dilapidated state with sadness. In some places even the weatherboards were just hanging by a nail, if that.
If he meant to stay, he had more things to worry about than furniture.
I flit further back into the trees as he lets his dog out the front door, and it makes a beeline towards me, barking loudly. It’s a small, furry little bitzer, and reminds me a bit of Tramp from the kid’s story. Charlotte would call it a paperless mongrel.
Turning, I sprint towards home before the dog can sniff me out, my thoughts keeping pace with my feet as I remonstrate myself.
‘Stupid, stupid to risk his life by following him. You suspected the flowers were from him. Why? Why are you so selfish?’
Reaching my porch, I collapse into the swinging seat to cry out my rage and despair.
I don’t want to kill anyone. I haven’t in so many years. It would be tragic beyond imagining if I was to do it now, to someone who was potentially fated to be my mate.
I screw up my nose and shake my head as my thoughts bend in that direction.
‘No, I don’t want to tempt fate by trying to love this man. Irresistible or not. I’m too weak, I’ve shown that time and again. Too weak. If he would just stay away from me, and if I can just stay away from him...’
But even as I think this, I recall Pru’s words during her last call, when I’d convinced her not to come, that I was fine.
“Irresistibles are drawn to us too, not as much as we are to them. They just somehow want to be near us, despite their best intentions,” she’d said.
And now it seems she may be right; my neighbour might have already fallen into this thrall, although we have never spoken. Three times now, he had come to my home in the daytime.
