‘I will talk with him.’
‘Thanks. That would be great. I knew I could count on you.’ Ella stood on tiptoe and kissed Erik’s cheek.
‘So I will get out of your hair. Where do I find Sam and your house?’ Erik asked.
Ella gave him directions and checked her watch. ‘I’ve got twenty minutes to go here, then I’ll be home and we’ll get some dinner started. Okay?’
‘I cook spaetzle. I have been shopping.’
‘You don’t know how much I’ve missed your spaetzle.’
Erik climbed into F and executed a wide circle on Chalk Hill Bridge Road, slowly revving the lumbering Troopie back towards the highway.
Knowing Erik was here for the weekend made her feel lighter already. She’d missed him. He’d been part of her life for longer than anyone except her parents, but they’d taken years to get over their disappointment at Ella ‘throwing away’ her Olympic dream. It was only after Ella told them her marriage was over that her parents had started to thaw.
When she’d told Jake earlier that she didn’t have a support network here, she’d failed to mention she hadn’t had that support network anywhere. Her parents had made that clear.
Ella pulled open the gate and walked up the garden path.
‘See you later, Jake,’ Helen said. ‘Bye, Ella.’
Ella looked up and waved at the old lady now retiring to her own side of the rosemary, but her step hitched at the sight of Jake striding across the dry expanse of summer lawn. His long legs outpaced her own, t-shirt all tugged up at the front, and it meant she got an eyeful of flat, lean abs, muscles moving slow and easy with each stride.
His face wasn’t easy, though. There was a tension in his jaw that made Ella worry. Had Helen told him some bad news? Maybe Helen had recognised Erik.
Stop assuming the worst. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘No one’s hurt?’
He looked properly at her then. ‘Why would anyone be hurt?’
‘You look a bit … like you have things on your mind.’
‘Just thinking about stuff.’
The house probably, and why she hadn’t sold it. ‘Looks like people just can’t stay away from scroungers night, like you said.’ She made her voice bright and confident. ‘I’ll stay on a bit longer, Jake, just in case someone comes late. You don’t need to wait around, though. I can pack up from here.’
‘No problem,’ he said, stopping short of the steps to let her go first.
Ella got a glimpse of tomatoes and eggplants tucked in the fold of Jake’s shirt before her mouth went dry. Directly south of the tomatoes, a smattered line of fine dark hair vanished into Jake’s work pants.
It was silly to feel self-conscious when she stooped to pick up the empty wineglasses and the plate of crackers and cheese, but she hadn’t counted on how her skirt would ride up her thighs, showing a little more leg than she’d intended, and she hadn’t counted on Jake staying at the base of the steps, which put her stooped bottom and thighs closer to his eye level, and she hadn’t counted on any of it, really. Skin. Abs. Jake.
She took a few deep breaths to steady herself before she rose, balancing the crackers on the plate. She’d come back for the wineglasses in a separate trip because the way her head was spinning now, she’d be sure to drop them.
‘You’re a bit of a dark horse then, aren’t you, Ella Brecker?’ Jake said behind her, and Ella whipped around.
CHAPTER
8
Hiding in plain sight.
Jake couldn’t get the phrase out of his head.
According to Helen Nillson, his overly-determined, overly-enthusiastic and way-too-pretty property consultant, Ella Davenport, was half of one of the biggest scandals in Australian swimming in the last decade. Mr Erik and Mrs Ella Brecker. The coach and his protégé.
To think he fancied himself as a guy who paid attention to detail.
‘Don’t you remember the story, Jake?’ Helen said, eyes twinkling at the pure joy she got in passing on gossip, especially fresh gossip.
‘Can’t say I do.’ He watched Ella and Erik out on the verge and decided there was nothing old about Helen’s eyesight. It was Jake who’d been blind.
‘Ella Davenport was a freestyler. She came out of nowhere in the 2006 Aussie swimming titles to make a couple of finals, and everyone was saying she’d be a big chance at the Beijing Olympics. But she got pregnant and then she married her coach. There was a huge hoo-ha at the time, I remember it from my magazines, but she kept saying they were in love and they must have been married, lordy it must be ten years at least now. That’s pretty good going this day and age if you go by the statistics.’ Helen touched a plump finger to her chin and stared at the sky. ‘I wonder if he’s moving here too? Maybe they’ve split up?’
‘She’s not wearing a ring,’ Jake said. Yep he’d noticed. So had half the single blokes in town. Plus she was using Davenport, not Brecker.
‘Anyway, he’s coached a heap of big names and I always remember him because he’s only got the one arm.’ Helen prattled on, glancing skyward again. ‘I’m trying to think how he lost it? I don’t think it was a shark or an accident, or anything like that. I think he was born that way. What do you call that? You can’t call it disabled these days.’
‘Person with a disability is the politically correct term, I think, Helen,’ Jake replied.
‘He won a heap of medals in the Paralympics over
