Jake’s gaze rested on her face. ‘He won’t mind me drinking his beers?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Okay. A beer sounds great.’
Ella poured her wine, grabbed Jake’s beer and shut the fridge. ‘Bottle or glass?’
‘Bottle is fine.’
‘Can I get Percy something to eat, Mum?’ Sam asked.
‘He has some seed in his cage,’ Jake said. ‘Clip the door so he can go in if he gets tired or thirsty and he’ll be fine.’
Ella checked that Sam and the bird were clear of the back door, then pushed it open with her toe and slipped through. Jake followed, closed the door and took the beer bottle from her, clinking it with her glass before he tipped back his head and took a hefty swallow.
She sat on the side of the table facing into the backyard and Jake sat opposite, looking back at Ella’s rented house. As suburban rentals go, it was solid enough, but it was a far cry from the amazing view they’d shared yesterday at Jake’s place. He took a long drink from his beer and when he’d finished, he examined the label.
‘That’s not bad,’ he said. ‘Germans know what they’re doing with beer.’
Ella sipped her wine. She would have liked to tell Jake about her conversation with Henry Graham last night, but this didn’t feel like a work situation.
‘And cars,’ Jake said, a half smile tugging the corner of his lips.
‘Pardon?’
‘Germans know what they’re doing with beer and cars.’
‘Oh.’
The longer she sat there trying to think up conversation, the harder it became to think of something interesting to say.
Ella shifted her weight, turning a right angle on the bench so she could bring her right foot up on the seat beside her, hugging an arm around her knee.
‘Washing machines, dishwashers …’ Jake said, putting the beer bottle to his lips.
It was Ella’s turn to smile. ‘Wurst, Kransky.’
Jake’s mouth went from being sealed around the bottle to a chuckle, and he put the bottle down.
Ella relaxed.
That was when Jake pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, and met her eyes with an intensity that was a shock all of its own.
‘I’m a simple man, Ella,’ he said. ‘I haven’t wanted to get to really know a girl in a long, long time. With you? I have so many questions. I want to know everything. I want to know about when you were a girl. Were the kids mean to you at school? Did you love your parents? Do you have brothers or sisters? What was it like to swim fast as a fish?’
It made her tummy get tight like those almost forgotten days when she’d stood poised on the blocks, shaking out her arms, staring at the black line on the bottom of a pool that went forever.
The starter’s gun was seconds away but she’d been ready and waiting for this moment all her life.
‘I want to know what makes you happy and sad, and what gets you out of bed in the morning, and I’m thinking about every single thing I could do to you that would make you want to stay in that bed every morning with me.’ Jake said.
No time for anything now but to suck in one last breath and put it all on the line.
Dive. Go.
CHAPTER
16
‘Gosh.’ Ella swallowed.
‘That’s all you can say? Gosh?’ Jake had to laugh. He’d anticipated something a little more enlightening than gosh.
Ella jiggled her knee on the bench. ‘Well, you throw something like that at me … out of the blue.’
‘Not so out of the blue. You know I’m interested. I told you that yesterday. I told you I had an ulterior motive for bringing that darn Houdini bird to work—it was all so I could bring him out here today. The bird and the bike. I like you, Ella. I want to get to know you better. Spend time with you. I want you to know me.’
She hugged her knee tighter into her chest. ‘I’m really, really lousy at this, Jake.’
This, Jake took to be him and her because she waved her hand between them, then she laughed and it was a sad and frustrated sound, but it was special to him because it was something.
‘I was never much good at talking to boys. I spent all my time in a swimming pool. I didn’t go to parties. I never stayed up late or snuck out of training to do something teenage-y and normal. The one time I did—’ she stopped short.
‘What?’ he prodded.
‘It was a disaster.’
‘See, I want to know that too. All the disasters.’
‘No, you really don’t. My life is one big disaster.’
She’d clammed up on him again, and he let it go. She could have her secrets. If she’d let him, they had all the time in the world to discover each other.
Jake put his hand across the table, reaching towards her, palm up. It took a very long time, but finally Ella let go of the stranglehold she’d had around her knees and reached her left hand into his.
He closed his fingers around her palm, felt soft, cool skin and squeezed.
She picked up their joined hands and not-very-gently bashed his knuckles on the weathered timber, and that was something too: confusion, anger, emotion.
‘You think I’m pushing you,’ he said.
‘You are, and I’m buggered if I know why. I mean look at me.’ She banged her other arm across her chest, warming up. ‘I’m a failed swimmer who got knocked up and missed the Olympics: the biggest swim of my life. I married a man I shouldn’t, and I feel like shit now because he loves me but I don’t—’ her voice broke and the crack scraped at Jake like a knife across bone. ‘I can’t. I can’t do that anymore with Erik. I can’t be Ella Brecker anymore. She feels like such a liar.’
The grip Ella had on Jake’s fingers got tighter and tighter, till her fingernails were like a vice.
Jake sat back. He had to. The intensity rolled off her.
‘All my life
