If her boss got any more excited, he’d pop a blood vessel.
‘Where’s Bob at, Gina?’ Harvey called towards the front office.
There was a pause as Gina consulted her calendar, or roster, or whiteboard—wherever she kept her information on the staff comings and goings. ‘He’s doing an appraisal on a farm out Rocky Gully way. He said he’ll have lunch while he’s out and should be back about one.’
‘Okay,’ Harvey mumbled.
Because she hadn’t spent the amount of time in the area, not like Harvey or Gina, the news about the road didn’t grip Ella quite so tight, but she’d been in real estate long enough to know this was a game-changer. All the people she’d spoken to in her time in Chalk Hill lamented the long distance they had to travel if they wanted to get to the south coast, whether for the beaches or the towns. When she, Erik and Sam went to visit the Tree Top Walk at the weekend they’d had to go almost all the way to Mount Barker, then south on the Denmark to Mount Barker road, then west on the South Coast Highway.
Sure, there were unsealed roads that could get north–south, but they were little better than goat tracks; you had to really know your way to get through, and those tracks could get bogged up in winter.
The water ski park changed lots of things. All the local kids would want to give it a try; Sam would want to be first in line— and Sam’s swimming wasn’t anywhere near strong enough for him to be safe in a ski park.
He’d need lessons.
She should have given him lessons. It was her duty as his parent.
Now she had a ski park being built near her new town, a town with people she was growing to love, and those people had kids and grandkids, nieces and nephews, all who’d be keen to check out the water ski park.
Like it or not (and she definitely didn’t like it), Ella felt a growing sense of responsibility to the parents and children of this town she called home.
Was there anyone in Chalk Hill better qualified to teach people how to swim than her? She doubted it.
CHAPTER
19
By any stretch of the imagination, Jake had to agree it had been one helluva day. First Ella and that kiss. Then Henry’s new offer. And then the story in the newspaper about Pickles’ dam and the new road.
Extending Chalk Hill Bridge Road had always been talked about, but these days it was almost more like one of those urban myths. Every now and then a journalist would breathe life into the story, like when someone revisited the idea about building a massive pipe to pump water from the Northern Territory to irrigate southern Australia; or someone aired the idea about building a huge bank of solar panels out in the desert to power the cities. It got talked about but it never happened.
Joining the two east–west highways with a north–south intersection at Chalk Hill had been laid out in most strategic plans he’d ever seen for Chalk Hill, Rocky Gully and the south coast, but till now nothing concrete had ever been passed. Too expensive. Not a priority. Not enough traffic.
Pickles was on to something with his water ski park. Clever bugger.
Jake put the glass of rum and Coke to his lips and drank, letting ice chink the rim as he gazed through the two gums towards his dam and the distant hills. There were clouds tonight. Gonna be an amazing sunset. A touch more lime would be good in his drink, and he gave the wedge another generous squeeze.
Inside, the house phone rang, but Jake ignored it. He was pretty sure, nah, he was definite, it would be Abel. Abe would have seen the paper, well, the online version at least, and there’d be big dollar signs in gold hot pants dancing in his brother’s mind.
Jake stretched his neck to the right, then left, raised his shoulders to his ears, relaxed and took another sip of his drink. That extra lime made it perfect, and he let out a satisfied sigh.
Satisfaction didn’t last long.
Bloody Henry Graham.
Henry wasn’t going away. Not now this news about the road had broken. He’d seen Ella’s face when he’d pushed the offer back at her. He’d seen the hope she’d tried so hard to hide go out like a light.
If Abel would come clean about why he needed money so much, Jake could be done with it, but he couldn’t help Abe if his stubborn mule of a little brother wouldn’t let him in. It wasn’t fair to Ella, this bloody charade over selling Irma’s house.
Ella. That kiss. The way she’d touched her lips afterwards, like she thought he might have stolen them away.
Jake nudged the shrunken wedge of lime with his finger, then touched his finger to his tongue and winced at the sour taste. At least it stopped a bloke dreaming about his girl and how she tasted like apples when he kissed her.
Jake sat a little longer, looking out over the farm. Jess came to sit by the table after a while and Jake rubbed the dog’s back with his foot, and kept rubbing till the gnaw in his stomach told him he was hungry.
Nita had left him a lasagne in the fridge on Sunday afternoon. That woman didn’t know how not to cater for him, but he was glad for it and grateful. She’d never stop thinking she owed him for pulling Ollie out of the town pool nine years ago, and he’d not yet been able to convince her otherwise.
* * *
‘This is getting a bit like Groundhog Day,’ Ella said to her boss when she walked into work the next morning and found Harvey in the door of his office holding four
