‘I get that.’ He did. Kind of. ‘But I don’t know why you didn’t want to teach him to be safe in the water. Why didn’t his father teach him? I’d have thought Erik would have leapt at any opportunity to teach his son to swim.’
‘I—’
‘Where’s my lunch?’ Sam interrupted, Ollie a step behind, the two kids arriving like a cyclone. They shoved at each other and jostled through the picnic basket.
Ella’s gaze slid away, and the moment was gone.
‘My turn for a swim, I reckon,’ Jake said, standing and brushing breadcrumbs from his board shorts. He put his hand out to help Ella from her chair. ‘Coming in?’
She didn’t take his outstretched palm. ‘I’ve had my swim for the day.’
‘I could throw you in, but I think you might get angry. I don’t think I’d like you when you’re angry. Not in the water.’
He was rewarded with a smile.
‘You know where I am if you change your mind,’ he said.
Jake took a few running steps and dove off the end of the jetty, feeling the shock as the cold water hit him at depth, sculling underwater as far as he could before coming up for air. Up here it was warmer, and he floated first on his stomach and then on his back, staring up at the blue sky, feeling good about the world.
Jake heard the splash as a vibration in the dam, and shifted his weight to be vertical in the water.
Ella swam towards him, and his heart did that goofy balloon thing.
She ducked her head before she reached him, coming up with a practised flick to get the water out of her hair, all slicked-back and beautiful.
‘Thought you’d had your swim for the day,’ he said.
‘A girl can change her mind.’
‘My t-shirt looks good on you,’ he said, reaching for her.
Ella backpedalled, swift as an otter.
The shirt clung to her body like nobody’s business. Man it just … it clung.
‘I was getting too hot sitting up there.’
‘Hot day,’ he agreed.
‘You can’t stay out here too long, Jake. You’ll get burned on a day like this.’
‘Okay, Mum.’ He edged closer.
She splashed water at him, kicked away, and he got the message and stopped. Would she ever stay?
But Ella stopped too, floating just beyond his reach. ‘What would be involved in getting the town pool up and running? Harvey seemed to think it would be simple?’
‘I guess a call to council would be the first step,’ he said, thinking about it.
‘Would it get used, though? We’re heading into autumn in another few weeks, then winter.’
‘Too cold for it in winter without some kind of heating. When the football club got it started, I reckon they had some kind of solar cover that kept it a bit better than freezing, but the footy players used it as an ice bath anyway.’ He thought it through a bit more. ‘If we could get some kind of cover over it, that would be ideal.’
‘You mean a shade sail or something?’
‘No, a proper structure. Build a structure around it, heat the water, so it can be an all-weather thing.’
‘Do you mean like showers, toilets, change room facilities? Lifeguards? A pool manager? That starts getting expensive, Jake.’
He nodded and gently finned himself nearer her. ‘There’d be sponsors interested, though. We could apply for a grant. There’s that royalties for regions thing and, to be perfectly honest, I think it’s a safety issue too, now that Pickles has this plan in for a water ski park. Kids around here need lessons. The school can’t do swimming lessons because of the distance to the nearest pool at Mount Barker. Forget about the ocean.’
He was close enough to touch her now.
‘That doesn’t look very comfortable for swimming,’ he said softly, reaching for his way-too-big t-shirt where it floated near her thigh.
‘It’s not. It’s bloody uncomfortable, actually.’
‘You could take it off.’
‘Yeah, course I could. You, me in the raw and two young boys. That’s a great plan.’
He chuckled agreement, but his gaze scanned towards the gazebo where the two boys ate lunch in the shade, feet dangling off the deckchairs. They weren’t paying any attention to the adults in the water.
Jake hooked his fingers in the t-shirt material and heard Ella’s next breath come out on a shiver.
‘Jake …’ She put her hand on his wrist.
Stop? He waited. He didn’t think so.
Jake’s heart pounded a tattoo under his ribs. He moved his hand to the skin of her thigh, treading softly back and forth in the water to keep buoyant. Her skin was all wet silk and cool glide, and he ran his palm higher. Then it was his turn to shiver because he realised something huge.
‘You haven’t got any knickers on, Ella Davenport.’
‘They were wet.’
‘Like that makes a difference if you’re gonna jump in a dam.’
He eased his finger from the bone of her hip towards her belly button. They were very close in the water now, close enough for his knee to knock hers, her thigh to nudge his. Forward and away, forward and away, in long lazy kicks.
Jake’s hand drifted lower, his fingers tangled in the first neat hairs of her pubic mound, and Ella groaned, ‘God, Jake, what are we doing?’ but her hand came off his wrist, and she slung that arm up and over his shoulder, the other sculling the water at her side.
His eyes were on hers when her thigh nudged his and his universe waited on the next kick of her leg. Her big brown eyes widened when his hand slipped lower still, searching for that sweet, wild place at her centre, and when he found it with one slippery, warm stroke, it jolted Jake like nothing ever had.
He kissed her to smother the noise Ella made as she unravelled in the water on his fingers.
‘I’m falling for you, Ella. I’m falling hard.’
