“If he thinks—Are you kidding me?” Mortified, all the way to her very toes, she’d made to shove him away.
But Rafe had only held her tighter still. Warm and protective. Even then. “Stop fighting me,” he’d ordered. “He’s trouble, Sable.”
“You’re trouble.”
Another crooked smile. Another arrow to her heart.
“The difference is, I’m only trouble for anyone who tries to mess with you. Don’t you ever forget that. Okay?”
Feeling tingly from the kiss, achy from the knowledge Rafe had only kissed her to protect her, Sable had rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”
From there the memory blurred at the edges, bleeding into a hundred other summer nights. A hundred other delicious kisses.
“I can’t believe I’d forgotten,” Sable murmured, her thumb tugging at her bottom lip.
Or more likely she’d blocked it out. A talent she’d inherited from her mother.
“Flattering,” Rafe rumbled.
She shot him a look to find him leaning against the side of the slippery slide, watching her. Expression still guarded, but there was a little crack there now, a glint. Subtle as it was, she felt it. Like stepping out of the shade into a patch of sun.
“I got a black eye for my efforts,” Rafe said.
Sable pulled a face. “You did not.”
The hairs on the back of Sable’s neck sprang to attention as Rafe pushed away from the slide, his moves slow. Measured. Focussed.
“After I saw you home,” Rafe said, “waiting for you to shimmy through your bedroom window being one of my favourite pastimes, Jimmy and his mates came around. My father was home. So was Janie. He had her hold the money as he took bets. Took three of them to hold me down for Jimmy to get one good hit.”
Sable’s chest rose and fell. If Ron Thorne was still alive today, she’d give him a black eye. “Rafe...” she breathed.
But the telling tightness in his jaw took her back. When it came to his father Rafe had never wanted sympathy. Or help. She wondered how good it had felt to tear down the bastard’s house.
“Hang on,” she said. “I remember. I couldn’t track you down for a few days. I thought you were avoiding me, because of the kiss. Then I refused to go to school, in case you showed up at home. When my mother found out I was skipping, she shrugged and went off to some herb festival in Yackandandah for three days.”
Rafe’s father had not been a nice man. But her mother’s lack of warm and fuzzies had left their own marks too, like an old break that made itself known when the weather turned. She found it hard to trust when people seemed to like her. Constantly held her breath, waiting for them to snap.
Her ex-partner’s therapist—the same one who’d told his client to come clean about his indiscretions, his lies, so that he might feel cleansed—had told The Chef that he believed Sable had “mother issues” that meant she deliberately put herself in situations that were doomed to fail. As if that excused The Chef’s behaviour. As if she’d asked for his dishonesty.
As if she found it a secret thrill when those who professed to care for her spun her out to the ends of their fingertips...and simply let go.
Shivering, she tucked her cold hands into the warmth of her fluffy feathery coat.
Was that what she was doing here? Hoping Rafe might still be the one person she could count on to catch her before she spun completely out of reach?
No. It wasn’t. This, coming here, was her way of catching herself.
“You okay?” Rafe asked.
She nodded.
Rafe tossed his empty coffee cup in a nearby recycling bin, and strolled away towards the fairgrounds, giving Sable a moment to collect herself. To rev her engine. To focus.
She took a deep breath and looked up. Looked around her. Letting the uniquely wondrous landscape of this place infuse her with the energy she needed. And it didn’t disappoint.
Right now, the fairground looked like something out of a Stephen King novel with the dormant contraptions looming over them beneath the low-slung pale blue sky. The Chair-O-Plane chairs drooping sadly. The horses’ faces on the carousel pulled back in heightened emotion as if they’d been turned to stone mid gallop.
Sable didn’t realise she had the box Brownie camera in hand until her finger slid over the shutter button. The pad rough beneath her fingerprint. The box cumbersome as she shifted it to waist height.
Muscle memory coming to the fore, she set her feet a little wider, softened her shoulders, let the camera sink into her hand, then squinted to look down through the small viewfinder. She moved so that the spindles of the Ferris wheel peeked perfectly through a gap between a clump of orange leaves overhanging above and rows of evergreens in the distance.
She tilted the box a fraction, knowing it always shot high, took a breath, held it...
Then let the camera drop, till it caught on the cord around her neck.
She shook out trembling fingers. Blinked back into focus. And blew out a long slow breath through a small gap between her lips.
How long had it been since she’d taken a photograph because it called to her? Her reputation had led to commissions. Portraits. Fashion gigs. She’d been paid an obscene amount of money to shoot a famous rapper’s dogs in an abandoned tyre yard. All of which was as far from those that had started her career as possible.
Her inspiration had waned correspondingly. Her ability to tap into her instincts disintegrating. Her confidence with it. She’d never been sure if it was age, waning talent, the different light, the lack of time, her lifestyle...
Or if she’d simply lacked her original muse.
Sable looked around to find Rafe over by the carousel. He’d hiked the sleeves of his black top to his elbows. Raked his dark hair off his face. He played with something he’d plucked along the way.
Sable’s hands went to the camera once more. Gingerly at first, before the
