Caleb closed his eyes and thought about a baby who’d never know his mother and a man who’d lost his wife yesterday, and who wanted to thank the man who, in spite of his best efforts, had watched the wife die and hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to prevent it.
Christ. What a job. Because, while he knew he’d done everything possible to extract the woman from the wreckage in the fastest possible time and the best possible result, he also knew he’d be forever plagued with thoughts that things might have ended up better if he’d done things differently.
“Caleb? You there?”
His voice, when it came, was thick with the tangle of emotions. “I’m here.”
“Good. Only I see you’re down to volunteer on the barbeque at the CFS stall at the Ashton Show next weekend? You still good for a couple of hours in the morning taking care of the sausage sizzle?”
“You wouldn’t be trying to change the subject, would you?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, before, “Well, yeah. Maybe.”
And Caleb snorted and thanked Christ for mates who knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of news like Mike had just delivered, bittersweet news that reminded them all over again about the tragedy of the day before, and how to give them something else to think about.
He put down his mobile and lay back in bed for a minute, listening to the chorus of birdsong in the surrounding bush, the magpies and parrots and kookaburras all trying to outdo each other in their enthusiasm to greet the new day.
So it was almost time for the local hills show again? Ava would be there too, painting kids’ faces to raise funds for charity, like she’d been doing the first time they’d met. Heck, was it a year ago already? Bloody hell, that had gone quickly. He’d bet neither one of them had thought they’d still be seeing each other after this long.
He had Richo to thank for meeting Ava, not that he was going to about to tell him any time soon, because then he’d have to tell him about Ava, and Richo would bang on about it when there was really nothing to tell. But it had been Richo who’d volunteered to help out the CFS stand at the show a couple of years back, and then last year he’d roped Caleb in to help with the sausage sizzle, to give the local CFS guys a chance to spray a few hoses and give the local kids a ride around the footy oval on their appliances.
Local kids with faces painted, so they looked like butterflies or spidermen or cats or dogs. Faces painted by Ava. And, in a lull in the traffic, he and his mates on the barbeque had drawn straws to see who should get his face painted to drum up business. He’d drawn the short straw, and his colleagues had happily sent him off, but as it had turned out, he’d won the best prize of all, because he’d sat there with his eyes closed and every stroke of her brush had been a direct hit to his groin.
By the end of it, he’d been nursing a hard-on so debilitating, he’d had to stay sitting down and making small talk about the weather for fifteen minutes while she painted the next kid’s face.
Butterflies, he’d had to tell himself, think about butterflies or fairies, pixies or kittens. Told himself to forget about the whisper soft yet carnal stroke of her brush on his skin.
And afterwards, when she was packing up her table and chairs and paints in the back of her small hatchback, he’d dropped over and asked for her number, and she’d told him she wasn’t looking for a relationship. “Neither am I,” he’d said. “So how about we settle for sex?”
She’d cocked her head and asked him if he was always this direct, and he’d realised, hell no. Which was probably what had got him stuck in his go-nowhere marriage for long after its use by date, and why he was doing things differently from now on. Forget happy ever after, he’d figured. He’d settle for happy every now and then.
And so far, it was proving to be the right decision.
Somewhere across the valley, an old man koala was grunting up a storm, advertising his machismo. Damn straight, Caleb thought, looking at the sheet tenting over his own equipment. He only had to think about Ava to get a hard-on. He pulled on his jeans to go find her.
The dark layers of the sky were peeling back to shades of pink and blue, the air crisp and cool outside. He sniffed at the air, instinctively testing for smoke and finding none, but Ava he found right where he suspected he would. She was in the studio feverishly working, her painter’s shirt tail barely covering her naked ass, her golden skinned legs long and bare below, and swaying evocatively this way and that as she worked. He didn’t interrupt her. He knew better than that, at least before he came bearing a pot of coffee.
Ten minutes later he was back. Her movements were slower now, her brush adding tiny detail after detail, before she took a step back, looked at her still life arrangement and the canvas on the easel, and put down her brush.
“Good morning,” he said. “How’s it going?”
She spun around, the golden highlights in her eyes almost luminescent, her whole face lit up. “I think I got it!” she said. “It was flat before, and lifeless, but then I worked out what was wrong.”
He moved closer to study the painting behind her, the jug and the brightly coloured lemons against
