Harvey rubbed his palms again and leapt the threshold into his office as if he were twenty years younger.
Bob put out his hand to Ella. ‘Friends?’
She shook it. ‘Friends and colleagues who look out for each other, I hope. There’s so much I can learn from you, Bob. You’ve been living this industry most of your life and I’ve only just started.’
With that, Bob and Ella let go their hands, and Bob returned to his office. Ella could see his smile as he settled in his chair.
‘Good ole me, hey?’ Harvey crowed from his desk. ‘Boss of the bloomin’ year.’
* * *
‘You won’t believe what Harvey did,’ Ella said, as they carried lunch across the highway to the benches in the Chalk Hill war memorial and garden park, and she told him about her morning’s conversation with Bob.
Today, the bench they normally sat on was occupied by a group of four grey nomads—Jake could see two caravans with Victorian plates parked not far away—so he steered Ella towards another bench without such a great view of the Porongurups. The bench was in the sun, but the day wasn’t hot and sun could be tricky to find sometimes in the Chalk Hill winter.
Ella lifted her face to the warmth and stretched like a cat.
Since the night of the bonfire, Jake had met Ella for lunch most days, unless she had a viewing or appointment that meant she’d grab lunch on the run.
He’d learned that a turkey, Jarlsberg cheese and cranberry sauce baguette was her favourite healthy thing for lunch (sometimes with baby spinach leaves), although she was partial to the bakery’s soup of the day if it was pumpkin. Her favourite unhealthy thing for lunch was a pulled pork pie and a Coke.
He agreed with her on that, with the addition of a hedgehog slice and coffee instead of Coke.
He knew why she liked disco music so much—because she used to sing it in her head when she was swimming—and that Bad Girls was her favourite album of all time. He’d even listened to it with her, one night after Sam had gone to sleep, jiving around her lounge room with Ella laughing in his arms.
He knew the girls at school had teased her for having green hair from chlorine in the pool and that they’d called her Smella. That was why she’d dyed her hair blonde way back then.
He knew her favourite flower was a grevillea called Moonlight.
He knew he loved her and he wanted to wake up with Ella’s hair loose and messy on the pillow beside him, every morning of every day of his life, because his life had always been about the simple things.
Ella picked open the plastic wrap around her baguette. That was when Jake noticed she’d redone her pale pink nail polish. The colour that made him think about—
‘Jake? Are you listening?’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I said Erik will be down this afternoon and he’s offered to look after Sam for me, if I had any last-minute pool things to do …’ She licked cranberry sauce from the pale pink tip of her finger and smiled her beautiful smile at him, and Jake was lost.
‘Jake?’
‘You can’t sit there, looking like that, and expect me to have a coherent thought, Ella. It’s expecting too much of a mere male.’
Her smile was for herself this time, a small secret feminine curve of her lips that told him she knew exactly what she did to him, and she liked it.
‘I said Erik is down tonight; he’s coming for the pool opening tomorrow. I thought we could christen the pool, you know, before every man and his dog shows up tomorrow.’
Jake’s mind dove straight to the christen the pool part. ‘Christen as in …’
There hadn’t been much christening of any kind going on, in any place. Between her house (which had Sam in it) and his house (with Abe), and both of them working, finding time for christening beds or kitchen tables, or anything at all had been bloody impossible.
‘A swim, Jake. A swim. The chlorine levels tested perfectly yesterday; it’s all good to go.’
Oh. Christen the pool, literally. ‘You mean go for a swim?’
‘Don’t sound so enthusiastic,’ Ella laughed. ‘I thought we could be first to use it, you know. For swimming in.’
‘That’s a bit boring, isn’t it?’
‘Well, you’ll get to see me in my bathers. I bought them new. The top comes down like this,’ Ella motioned with a finger. ‘It has teeny straps here and here. And the bottoms come up like this.’ She lifted her hip and traced an imaginary mark on her outer thigh.
Something about tops and bottoms finally registered in his brain. ‘You bought a bikini.’
‘I did. I’ve never owned a bikini. If I’m going to start swimming again, I wanted something that isn’t one-piece and functional.’
‘Good girl. I knew there was a reason I loved you.’
Ella leaned forward and kissed him on the nose. Jake wasn’t having any of that, because not only did he know about her favourite disco music and favourite baguette, and that she would smoke this favourite new bikini, he also knew her favourite way to be kissed.
So he did that till she purred, and until the four grey nomads on the other bench clapped in appreciation and one of the ladies spilled the tea she was pouring from her thermos.
CHAPTER
37
When was the last time she’d stood on the blocks of a swimming pool, staring down at the glistening water and those thick black lane lines?
It would have been a few weeks after the Nationals that year, after Marshall quit Erik’s squad and the group got back into full training, ready for the long lead-in to Beijing Olympic trials.
Before she discovered she was pregnant with Sam and quit swimming for good.
Behind her, Ella heard the pool doors open and she turned.
‘Hello, you,’ she greeted Jake. Gorgeous, handsome, wonderful Jake
