“An eye-watering amount.”
“Are they all yours?”
“Some,” he said with a quiet smile. “A few are here early for the Pumpkin Festival car show. I started it a few years back, with Stan’s help, now Janie runs it every year. It’s become one of the biggest in the country. Others are ready to be shipped off to their owners. That one,” he said, pointing to the tomato-red Ferrari that looked just like the one out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “is heading to a tech billionaire type from Silicon Valley. The two Mustangs are a his-and-hers pair we brought up to scratch after finding the husks in a shed in Dubbo. Prince Alessandro Giordano of Vallemont choppered in to see them when he was here visiting with his new bride, an Aussie girl from just down the way.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
He laughed, cheeks pinking, just a smidge, as he ran a hand up the back of his neck. “Now I feel like I’m showing off.”
“As well you should! It’s very impressive, Rafe. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved here. Even if you did have to pull down our barn to do it.”
She shot him a sideways glance right as his face flickered. His jaw worked. But he said nothing. Shutting down right before her eyes.
“So the Pumpkin Festival, hey?”
“Mmm.” A beat, then, “So you’ll be here then? Still?”
“I guess that depends.” Blood suddenly beating in her ears, she looked up, held his gaze, and said, “That depends on you.”
She waited for him to give her an inkling, some clue of what he was thinking, fully expecting him to shut down completely. To go all stoic and statue-like, when instead he held out a hand.
“Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
Blood still surging, she took his hand. Fingers gripped protectively around hers, he drew her around the bulk of the cars till they stopped before a smaller lump under an old tarp.
“What’s this?” she asked.
He tilted his chin. “Have a look.”
She bent, found the edge of the tarp and lifted one corner. The hint of small white-walled tyres, with daisy badges on the wheel rims, was all she needed to know what was beneath.
She whipped the tarp away with a flourish to find a 1972 VW Beetle. Matt black paint dulled by time. Peace-sign-shaped gearstick in need of a polish. With its amateur finish, lack of polish, the dents not quite beaten out, it stood out among the cars behind her like a field daisy in a bouquet of red roses.
She’d been sixteen, maybe, when they’d hauled the VW frame, muddy and filthy and busted, out of the creek that traversed the gully behind their houses, after Rafe had seen the striking photograph she’d taken of the thing. The juxtaposition of progress and nature, of death and regrowth, gloomy greys and fresh greens, going on to become her schtick.
And, oh, the days, months, years she’d spent happily watching over him as he’d rebuilt the thing from scratch. Rebuilding—as she’d only later found out—for her.
Sable laid a hand on the cool metal, and every emotion she’d spent the past several days trying to keep at bay overflowed. A longing for the simplicity, the surety of those days, so strong it made her sway.
She moved to the driver’s side. Hooked her fingers under the handle. It opened with a clunk. Breathing in the scent—new and old mixing into a heady cocktail—she slid inside. The leather seat squeaked as she sank into it. Her hands wrapped around the hard steering wheel.
When, a few moments later, Rafe hopped into the passenger side, their gazes caught.
“You kept it.”
He closed his eyes and leant back against the head rest. His large body barely fitting in the small space. “Seems so.”
“Why?”
“Thought about letting her go over the years, but couldn’t seem to do it.”
“Why?” she asked again, the word rough, full of questions she should not be asking. As it opened her up to more than complications. It opened her up entirely.
Rafe tilted his head to look at her. And said, “You know why.”
Sable’s heart leapt. Her belly dropped. And the rest of her no longer knew which way was up. “Rafe,” she said, when she had no idea what else there was to say.
Turned out, he did. “Okay, then.”
“Okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “The answer is yes. To your request. I’ll help you. I’ll help you have your child.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, Rafe!” She all but crawled across the seat to throw herself into his arms, hanging on for all her might.
Slowly, inevitably, his arms went around her too. His big hands sliding around her back, his face buried in her hair. The shape of him was so achingly intimate. The heat, the overwhelming surety that with him everything would be all right. It felt like...well, it felt like pure happiness. And even while she knew better than to trust it could last, she let it infuse her, let herself enjoy it, another warm memory to tuck away and bring out on cold lonely nights.
When she pulled back, tears now streaming down her face, she found herself laughing. “Thank you. More than I can possibly say. Now I had a great doctor in LA, but still have to find some here. Or Sydney or Melbourne. Whatever suits you. A good one. The best. Whatever it costs. And I’m paying every cent. We’ll need lawyers too, for the contract—”
Rafe stopped her there, with a staying hand. “I have provisos.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. The edges of her bubble of pure happiness starting to wobble. “Such as?”
“I never wanted kids. You know that. I was also nineteen when I made that declaration. Janie was a nine-year-old wildling, still under my care, my father was in as dark a place as he’d ever been and I had no clue if my mother was even alive. Back then, family was a four-letter word.”
