Shivering, because it was so bloody cold when the evening air hit them as Ella closed and locked the pool doors, and they ran with their kit bags banging against their legs to Jake’s car.
Sitting on towels in the front seat, hair wet and dripping. Cold to the bone now, but hot where his hand gripped her thigh and rubbed higher.
‘What about Abel?’ Ella asked as Jake screamed the Landcruiser out the bowling club gates.
‘Don’t worry about him.’
Tyres met bitumen.
Jake’s fingers delved beneath the bikini. Ella already knew what he’d find. She was achingly slick and wet from way more than water.
He swore under his breath as his fingers traced her folds, slipped and slid, and Jake kept driving, eyes always on the road.
The vehicle shuddered to a stop. Jake was out of the driver’s door before Ella could get her eyes open. Then she realised where they were, and got the giggles.
Jake flung the passenger door wide, then thrust his hand past her to dig in the glove box.
‘Still got Nanna’s old key,’ he said, finding the brass key with a flourish.
‘You’re kidding me?’ Ella said, giggling again, laughing so her shoulders shook. ‘What will Abe say? Isn’t this place his new flash restaurant now?’
‘He won’t find out. We won’t leave any wet spots. Come on.’
If there was one thing she would never have thought she’d see herself do when she listed Jake’s nanna’s house for sale at the start of the year, it would be to make love to her grandson inside it.
This was definitely not something Bob Begg would do.
‘Ella, come on, honey. Stop laughing so much,’ Jake said.
‘What about Helen Nillson?’ Ella whispered. ‘She’s renting her house back till they find one for her in Perth. She’ll see us!’
The light was on next door. So far, she hadn’t seen a curtain quiver.
‘Tell her to grab her binoculars. Let’s give Helen the most fun she’s had in years,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
Ella grabbed his hand, held tight and they ran together. She glanced back as Jake fumbled with the lock, and in the glow of the streetlight she could definitely see wet spots on the path. Two sets of footprints.
That made her giggle again.
Jake got the door open.
‘We kept the old bathroom intact. Hot water’s on. I’ll find you a dry towel.’
She followed him, but he didn’t flick on lights.
‘I can’t taste you when all I can taste is chlorine, Ella. And I have to taste you,’ Jake said, his voice thick as home-grown honey, husky with intent.
Ella stopped laughing.
There wasn’t a lot of room in Jake’s nanna’s shower but the water pressure was good, and they made do. Ella knew those facts like she knew her own name. She knew every inch of this house, or at least the old parts that had always been there and still remained.
Jake dried her so tenderly, running the towel down her legs, down her arms, buffing every last drop from her shoulders, tummy and back. Then he used the same towel on himself before he pulled her close and kissed her crazy.
‘Now you taste like my Ella.’
He did all this with an erection no towel could hide and that he made no attempt to cover anyway. Why cover something that was always meant for her?
The newer parts of the Honeychurch house—the front rooms built beneath the extended verandah, filled with overstuffed couches and a myriad of chairs—were foreign to her and she didn’t want Jake to put on any lights, but she didn’t want to bang her shins into anything either.
‘Abe spent a fortune getting mood lighting for this place. I can turn ’em down real low.’
‘No way,’ she squeaked, thinking of Helen and her curtains.
‘Stay there then,’ Jake said, sitting her on one of the couches as he crept away through the house.
Ella felt the building creak and groan with Jake’s movements. Drawers opened, cupboard doors closed and there was more swearing.
‘Dammit, Abe, what didja do with those candles?’
Ella wasn’t cold anymore. She felt ripe and loved, and the knowledge warmed her all the way through, even to the damp tips of her hair.
She heard and felt Jake’s return as he moved through the house. She saw his shadow before she saw him. The bright light of a lit tea candle in a glass came into the room first, sending very interesting shadows over Jake’s body.
‘So resourceful, Jake Honeychurch,’ she teased.
His midnight eyes shone with a new light. ‘I am when I want something.’
He put the candle on the floor, then knelt by the couch, his skin golden in the candlelight.
‘I love you, Ella. I don’t say it as much as I should but I want you to know it. You and Sam together. You mean the world to me.’
‘You don’t need to say it, Jake, I feel it every day.’ She put her hand on her heart.
‘Then let me show you.’
He joined her on the couch, skin and hair damp under her fingers as she ran her hands over him.
‘Showing me sounds mighty fine.’
Ella let him push her back.
The room smelled of packing materials and dry-cleaned couches, leather, candlewax, timber polish and paint, and then Ella smelled only Jake as he joined her on the couch.
That would be her memory of the Honeychurch house from now, and for always.
CHAPTER
38
The whole town came out on Saturday for the opening of the new Chalk Hill Pool.
Irene Loveday and the planning committee had gone all out. They’d organised the town band to play music, the P&C to man a cake stall fundraising for the school, some farmer’s son had been commandeered to walk up and down the driveway road leading kids on pony rides, and the kids not lining up to ride the pony romped instead on a bouncy castle set up under the trees.
For Sam, four weeks into the plaster cast and with the novelty of it well and truly worn off, nothing about the day was a whole
