Life, every day of it, mattered.
He had the snowflake lights up and the giant metal Christmas beetle sculptures strapped to the trees in the pub’s garden, and was wandering about with a spool of green tinsel, wondering if it would look awesome or tacky looped along the fence, when he noticed the woman collecting a takeaway coffee from the cart. A stranger. But then, that was not uncommon here in Clarence. The pub was in reach of a day trip from the coast—just, if a three-hour return trip didn’t daunt you—and had amassed the sort of online reviews that attracted day-trippers:Local avos so freaking good and make sure you buy a bottle of the avo oil; a one star for not offering a Japanese fermented vegan breakfast (thanks for that, Annabel_94); and his personal favourite:Shout out to Will, the bar guy with mad biceps. Why thank you, yes, he had been working out.
But his thoughts were running away from him. Where was he? Oh, yes. The woman. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other. Not tall, not short. Not fair, not dark. Not thin, not plump. He was going to have to settle on some actual description soon because he couldn’t stick with this what-she-was-not stuff much longer, but the thing was … she was a little hard to see.
Which made no sense, especially as he had twenty-twenty vision. To put it another way, she had this sort of air about her which said, to put it bluntly,piss off.
Was she socially awkward? An introvert? It was at times like this that an almost-doctorate in psychology was a real pain in the bum. The terminology in his brain just didn’t know how to turn itself off.
But you know what didn’t need a psychologist’s terms? His man brain … because when she finally stopped hunching over her mobile phone and looked up so he could really see her?
Oh. She was … sweet looking. And terribly, terribly sad. She had darkish red, curly hair that hadn’t seen a hairdresser in some time, she wore a pair of leggings that were as tight as a dry wetsuit, and a T-shirt the colour of one of those purple passionfruit that threatened to take over the beer garden if he got a little lax on the secateurs.
Also—and this was even more interesting than the snug pants and the passionfruit T-shirt—she looked a little familiar.
Will hooked the wheel of tinsel over his arm and headed her way to say g’day. Someone from school, maybe? He’d lived in Clarence the first twenty years of his life, so he’d attended the local primary school and then the local high school, played footy in the local team. His oldies lived in a community up in the hills circling the town, where families came and went, keen to grow veggies and live off the grid, until they weren’t.
Had she been a kid up at Bangadoon, perhaps? Had they picked eggplant together in tie-dyed clothing and commiserated with each other about being the kids of nutters who denied their unlucky children access to television, the internet and polyester?
The woman had finished whatever phone call she’d been making and was wandering in a distracted fashion along the path to a small table by the fire pit. Will had almost caught up with her when she gave a little shriek and her feet skidded out from under her.
The path that Fergus hadn’t managed to de-green, Will presumed, as he leapt forward to get his arms under her before she hit the ground.
‘Oof,’ she said, looking up into his face.
He would have liked to say oof, too, because she did not weigh nothing, and not only was the path mossy, it was wet and slick with some fool detergent Fergus must have thought was required. No wonder she’d slipped. Will slipped, too, and ended up with one knee smashed into the ground, a female body in his arms and some alarmingly necessary-feeling part of him goingpiiiinnnggin the back of his upper thigh. Crikey, it hurt.
But Will had two sisters, which meant he had a comprehensive knowledge of the sort of male utterances that piss women off. Saying ‘oof’, like their weight was unbearably heavy, just after you’d picked them up? Major piss-off moment.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, trying not to sound like he was gritting his teeth.
She was staring at him. Like,reallystaring. It was kinda hard not to notice on account of the fact her face was about six inches from his and they were currently breathing each other’s breath.
‘You,’ she said.
Um … Will wasn’t sure what that implied, but whatever. She was clearly okay. She couldn’t have hurt herself because he—and his wildly hurting leg—had broken her fall, so it was time to get up.
If he could. Which he was beginning to doubt.
The back-of-thigh ping had now worked its way up and down and around in a fairly seismic fashion, and if she didn’t get off his bent knee she was going to topple them both over.
She must have read his face, because a nanosecond later she was pushing herself up to her feet and staring down at him.
‘Did youtripme?’ she said, a frown of incredulity or something very like it on her face.
‘What?’What?‘No. I was coming over to say hello, and I saw your shoe skid, so I … caught you.’
She looked doubtful, so he pressed on. ‘I’m Will,’ he said. ‘Will Miles.’
‘Is that so.’ She said it like she didn’t care what his name was. Not school, then—he was one of the good guys at school—and not a fellow eggplant picker, he was guessing. Eggplant picking bonded kids in ways that didn’t founder; just ask any one of his siblings.
He flashed his best hottie-bartender-with-biceps smile. ‘I thought you looked familiar. I’m just not placing you …’
She pushed a wayward curl behind her ear and took a very long time to reply to what was surely an innocuous question. Well, an implied innocuous question.
‘I’m Carol Wallace’s great niece. I spent my summer holidays here with her when I was a kid.’
‘She didn’t tell me she had visitors coming.’