“Right,” she said, shaking her head. “Of course.”
What kind of work? Should she ask? Or save it? For next time. For she’d make sure there was a next time. As many next times as it took till the right moment arose.
To ask him to father her baby. Then watch her walk away again.
It started to drizzle. Sable pulled the collar of her coat together.
Rafe stepped down onto the concrete and slowly walked past her. She had to look up to watch him pass. Catching his scent over that of the smattering of fine rain. Soap, diesel, and clean warm male.
Before she even knew what she was doing she closed her eyes and drank it in.
“You in town long?” he asked.
She opened her eyes to find him beside her. Close enough to touch.
“For now.”
He gave her one last look, so dark and deep she had no hope of discerning what it held. And he said, “Then I guess I’ll see you ’round.”
She nodded. Then watched him amble down the alley and out onto the street.
The drizzle created a halo around the solar-powered street lights as they flickered to life as the afternoon gloom set in. Sparking off Rafe’s dark hair, his strong shoulders, the water flicking off his boots.
“Hot damn,” Sable swore beneath her breath.
“You said it, honey.”
Sable spun towards the voice, hands raised, as her mother had taught her. “Men are dangerous. To body and soul. Protect yourself.” Only to find Bear coming out of the door by the steps on which Rafe had been sitting.
He had her camera and a huge rainbow-coloured umbrella, which he tipped over her head.
She tucked herself in beside him, even as she shot him a glare. “Were you listening that whole time?”
“Not the whole time.” His expression was so innocent Sable had no choice but to laugh.
Then, “So how long are you sticking around? This time?”
Sable gave Bear a look. “Whose side are you on here?”
“No sides. All sides.” He put big hands up in surrender before he slipped back inside his shop, leaving her with the umbrella.
When she looked back Rafe was leaning in the window of what looked like Old Man Phillips’ rusty old Oldsmobile—only in the intervening years it seemed to have been given the fairy-godmother treatment, painted sparkling blue with silver wings down the side.
Once Old Man Phillips drove off, Sable watched for another minute or two as the traders of Laurel Avenue each popped their heads out of their shops to wave to Rafe. Back in her day they used to lock their doors when they saw him coming.
No pot belly, no bald patch. And he’d clearly made good. It was as bewildering as it was mesmerising.
Sure, to the very marrow of her bones, she would not get the same felicitous reaction, Sable pulled her collar up around her ears and began the long walk back home.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER A LONG afternoon spent working beneath a Stingray at the Radiance Restorations workshop, Rafe opened the front door to the Airstream to find his sister in the small kitchen, headphones clamped over her ears, dancing as she stirred some kind of horrid-smelling goop.
He snuck up on her and jabbed her in the side.
Janie screamed, and spun on him with her ladle, painting the ceiling with an arc of homemade vegetable stock.
“What the heck, Rafe?” she said, tugging out her earbuds. “If that had been a knife—”
She stopped before another word came out. Her eyes widening. The colour leaving her cheeks. Not the first time a knife would have been brandished in threat by a Thorne. Though, thankfully, not by either of them.
And not in this space. This pristine, fully modernised, impossibly expensive tiny house of Janie’s.
He’d had every intention of walking away from Radiance himself after knocking down his father’s house. Letting the blackberries eat the lot alive. Till Janie—eleven years old, all knees and elbows—had looked at him and said, “But it’s our home.”
Next day he’d made a deal with Old Man Phillips to take the dilapidated Airstream off his hands, pimping the older man’s Oldsmobile for free in exchange.
For Janie it had been therapy. Scrubbing, panel beating, building, surrounding herself with warm colours, soft fabrics. Comfort. A true home.
Leaving Rafe no choice but to make peace with the town. To stop slouching in the hopes no one would notice him, stop scowling the way they expected a kid of Ron Thorne’s to scowl, stop refusing to make eye contact lest he see abhorrence in their eyes. To stop pining for the girl who’d left him in her dust. To become his own man.
Unthinkingly, Rafe took the ladle from Janie’s hand and tasted the cooling mixture. He coughed as the tart taste hit the back of his throat.
“Give it.” Janie grabbed the ladle right on back. “It’s super healthy. And a work in progress. Besides, I had no idea you’d be back here for dinner.”
Even while several years down the track, Rafe had built himself his own little sleepaway spot on the property, he often slept on the couch in Janie’s van when he was in town. She liked playing hostess. Liked looking after him for a change.
And he let her. For while she was an adult now, which she was at pains to constantly remind him, the way she still bit her fingernails to the quick, and preferred staying in her little cave than being anywhere else, reminded him of all she’d had to overcome.
No matter how grown up she was, he’d always be her big brother.
“I thought you were flying to Sydney this arvo to give the final okay on the Pontiac,” said Janie.
Rafe leaned his backside against the edge of the kitchen bench. “I was.”
Janie glanced through the small window facing the overgrown forest blocking any view of the neighbour’s house. “But you just had a sudden urge to stick around, hey? Did news get around I was making soup, or—”
“So you had a visitor,” said Rafe, not bothering to pretend a certain someone wasn’t
