Only We Know (7 page)

She let out a bone-shaking sigh. Her lips, which had been pulled so tight, softened and trembled.

‘Hunter. Sam Hunter.'

She shook her head ruefully. ‘I so don't need to be stuck with you.'

If it was meant to be a joke at his expense, he wasn't seeing it. She wasn't laughing. ‘I'm all you've got, sweetheart.'

Calla pushed back the coat and dropped it onto the passenger seat. When Sam realised she was getting out of the car, he held out a hand to her and she took it. She stood slowly, nervously, as if she was expected something to hurt. She took another look over the accident scene and then turned her back on it.

‘I'm sorry about your car,' she said.

‘Don't even worry about it. Worse things have happened to that vehicle.'

She lifted her chin. ‘You asked where I need to be. I've rented a cabin back at Penneshaw. I need to get back there, I guess. Have a hot shower. And a drink.'

Sam took his car keys from his pocket. ‘Let's go.'

CHAPTER

9

Calla was ten kinds of exhausted and shattered; she could feel it in every nerve ending and in every bone in her body.

As they pulled up in the driveway of the cabin, it began to rain again, the heavy purple clouds smothering the horizon, and it was chillingly cold. What Calla really wanted to do was dive into a hot shower so the pulsating water could soothe her head and her shoulders, and let it wash away everything about the day, which already felt twenty-four hours long, even though it was only the early afternoon. Her emotions were frayed, her plan to find Jem was looking as trashed as her car, she could barely think straight and there was a strange man in her cabin.

‘Hey, Calla. Where do you want this stuff?'

Sam was standing in the middle of the room, his eyebrows raised in a question. He was holding a big overnight bag, the one she'd filled with her art supplies. She'd packed it for the trip, believing she might have some time to sketch and paint, to capture the rugged and wild scenery she'd seen on the web when she'd booked her ticket. She'd hoped that maybe being on the island would knock down the creative brick wall she'd been staring at for two years.

‘Calla?'

‘Sorry, what was that?'

‘Where do you want this?' Fatigue had clouded Sam's eyes and he was covered in dirt and grime. Something black was smudged up one side of his face. His navy hoodie was covered in dust and there were grass stains on his knees and something that might have been grease smudged on his right thigh. There were rips in the denim on both his knees. Calla looked him up and down, still smelling fuel and dirt and wet grass. And that's when she realised how tall he was. Taller than she'd taken the time to notice before.

‘Here. I'll take that.'

Sam sighed and smiled at her. ‘I'm pretty filthy. Sorry if I dirtied up your stuff.'

Calla huffed. ‘Please. Don't worry about my things.' She rested the bag against the dining table and dropped her coat on the washing machine in the laundry. ‘After what happened this morning … and the state you're in.'

Sam flicked a glance to his jeans. ‘Nothing that won't come out in the wash.'

‘Thank you for bringing me back here.'

‘What else was I going to do? Leave you out there in the wet and the cold with that car?'

Calla covered her eyes with her hands, trying not to think about the moment when she slammed into the back of him. ‘My car. Do you think it can be fixed?'

Sam shrugged. ‘I don't know. The cops are having it towed to the garage here in Penneshaw. We can check it out tomorrow. Why don't I swing by in the morning and pick you up and we can go and have a look?'

Tomorrow? There would be no tomorrow with Sam Hunter. This had to end tonight. All this nice and kind and heroic was confusing Calla.

She shook her head. ‘It's a twenty-year-old bomb, Sam. I've never spent much money on it and I don't reckon I'll start now. Looks like I'm in the market for a new car. Well, new to me.'

Sam yawned. ‘We'll see.'

It was infectious and Calla followed. ‘I'm really sorry about running into you.'

‘You mean in the supermarket or on the road?'

‘Funny. Both.'

‘It wasn't your fault. I had to park my vehicle across the road that way to secure the accident scene. I didn't want anyone else coming up over the hill and running into us.' He stepped closer. Calla could smell something metallic.

He looked into her eyes, unblinking. ‘How's your head? Any headache?'

‘Yes,' she said.

Sam came closer again. He took her glasses from her face, then peered into her eyes. Up so close and without her glasses, all she could see was a blur of chocolate. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to the right. He lifted a hand to her face and gently pulled her left eye open. She startled and tried to pull back.

‘Don't move, it's okay,' he said. With his other hand, he cupped her cheek to keep her still. Something, the way she'd seen him take control out there on the road, the calm way he was examining her, made her trust him.

‘What are you doing?' she murmured as she dropped her head backwards slightly. His fingers were surprisingly warm on her skin.

‘Any blurred vision?'

‘Yeah,' she murmured. ‘But that's because you took my glasses off.'

‘What about your chest? Any pain there?' And he was so close now she could feel the warmth of his body, had become aware of his strength, how broad and tall he was compared with her.

Pain?
Only in my heart, she wanted to say, but that's completely unrelated to the accident. Calla glanced down to her breasts and when she flicked her eyes up again she noticed his were fixed firmly on her jumper.

‘The seatbelt. You might have some bruising,' he said quietly.

For a half a second she wondered if he was going to pull up her jumper to check for himself. Damn it. The idea sent her pulse racing. ‘Are you a doctor, Sam?'

He released his fingers from her eye and she blinked over and over to stop the stinging. He didn't step back. ‘No, I'm not a doctor.'

‘You're not?' Calla instinctively held up her palms to push him away. When they hit a solid wall of muscle, she swallowed hard.

He dropped a hand to her wrist and held it. ‘We need to get you to bed.'

CHAPTER

10

Sam had rested Calla's glasses on the kitchen bench when he was looking into her eyes like an optometrist and she snatched them up and shoved them on. One of the arms got stuck inside her ear and she swore as she fumbled with them until they were on properly. With her 20/20 vision restored, she could see that the whites of his eyes looked like a roadmap, bloodshot and tired. His black lashes framed his dark pupils and she was tempted to count the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

‘What did you say about bed?'

‘You need to lie down. To rest,' Sam told her. ‘You've just been involved in a vehicle accident. I'm not taking any risk that you've got a concussion. Believe me, you'll thank me in the morning.'

Calla pushed herself away from him. ‘I'm fine, really.' Hell no, she wasn't fine. Adrenaline was still coursing through her system and she felt wired and emotional and shaky. But she'd been trying to hold it all in so she didn't expose all that emotion in front of Mr Cool As A Cucumber.

‘I'm perfectly okay. I do
not
need a nanna nap. And anyway, it's the middle of the afternoon, for god's sake.'

‘I don't want you to sleep,' he said firmly. ‘I want you to rest. Got some music you like? How about you plug in your earphones and just stop talking for a little while? Do some deep breathing. Whatever. Just chill.'

She pulled her lips together in annoyance.

Sam narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you ever do what anyone tells you?'

‘Not usually and especially not when that
anyone
is a complete stranger.'

‘Well, now,' he smiled, ‘I'm not a complete stranger.'

Calla looked him up and down. ‘I beg to differ. At the moment, all you are is a guy I've run into three times during the past twenty-four hours. And you haven't been all that friendly. In fact, the first time we met you pushed me.'

Sam lifted a hand. ‘Wait a minute. I
pushed
you?'

‘On the boat. You shoved me towards the door.' Calla tried not to remember how much her stomach was roiling at the time.

‘Wait a minute. I gently urged you in the right direction so you didn't vomit inside the cabin and cause a chain reaction among all the other passengers. I've seen it happen and, believe me, it's not pretty.'

Calla continued, ticking off the items on her fingers. ‘Then the second time I saw you, you tried to bribe me with lollies. The third time you invaded my quiet morning coffee. And the fourth time … well, you know what happened then. This isn't going all that well, so far.'

Sam looked like he was trying not to smile. His mouth didn't budge but his eyes shone down at her. ‘I'm totally trustworthy, I promise.' He held a hand to his chest.

Calla sighed. She'd made so many mistakes with men that she didn't trust her judgement any more. She'd thought Josh had been a good man.

She eyed Sam up and down. What kind of a man was he? And how the hell could she answer that question in so short a time? She had to reluctantly admit that the odds were in his favour, what with the jacket and the lollipop and how he hadn't been angry about her hitting his car. And the rescue and the caring for her.

Calla tapped a finger to her chin. ‘You may well be trustworthy, but you are still a stranger.'

‘Fair enough. C'mon, hit me. What do you want to know about me?'

Calla thought about his offer. There were a million questions going off like firecrackers in her head but she didn't want him to know that. ‘Let me see. How did you know what to do back there, at the accident? The first aid and all that stuff?'

‘It's what I'm trained to do.'

‘And you're trained for …?'

‘I'm a firefighter back in the real world.'

‘A firefighter,' Calla repeated slowly. She hoped it hadn't come out too dreamy. Should she imagine what he would look like in a uniform? If he was handsome in jeans and a hoodie, what would he be like all decked out for work?

‘Station Officer Sam Hunter of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service. At your service.' He smiled. ‘Ma'am.'

Calla waited for him to salute her. ‘Well. That explains a lot.'

‘What else do you need to know? Ask away.'

What else did Calla need to know about the man who was standing in her cabin and ordering her around? Where should she start? ‘Criminal record?'

‘I got caught smoking once behind the PE sheds at school. Does that count? I have a valid Criminal History Check. According to the police, I'm totally trustworthy.'

Calla tried not to snort.

‘Listen, Calla, I'm perfectly happy to continue the twenty questions later, but I really think you should rest.'

‘Okay, okay. I will go and lie down.' She threw her hands up in the air in mock surrender and turned to walk to her bedroom. ‘There's a box on the sink with supplies from the supermarket and there's some stuff in the fridge. Help yourself to anything you want.' She yawned. ‘We kind of missed lunch, didn't we? Not that I'm the slightest bit hungry.'

When she stopped at the bedroom door, she looked back over her shoulder. He was watching her.

His gaze lingered and he cocked his head to one side. ‘Got any paracetamol?'

‘Yes. You need some?'

‘Not for me. For you. Take two.'

Calla rolled her eyes. ‘Do you ever stop telling people what to do?'

He smiled that sexy grin again. ‘Nope.'

‘Okay, okay, I'm going,' she said. ‘I'll have a shower when I wake up.'

‘Good,' he replied. ‘Hey, do you mind if I jump in? I need to clean up.' He looked once again at his filthy clothes.

She looked once again at his strong body. ‘Go ahead. There's a spare towel on the bed in the second bedroom, I think.'

‘Cheers.'

Calla closed the bedroom door behind her with a loud thud and let out a deep breath.

She pulled off her clothes, tugged on a fresh T-shirt from her bag and slipped under the covers. She pushed her earphones into her ears and chose some slow jazz. And as she slowed her breathing, deeply in and deeply out, she could only think one thing: stay far away from the handsome firefighter.

CHAPTER

11

What the hell was he doing?

Sam wrestled with the ridiculously tiny guest soap in the shower and cursed when it slipped through his fingers to the tiled floor. When he bent over to retrieve it, he hit his head on the wall on the way up. The soap wasn't the only thing too small for someone his height. He leant over and ducked his head under the hot water to let it soothe the knock.

The whole day had been a headfuck, in more ways than one. He felt exhausted, bone weary. This trip back home was supposed to end with his old man doing what his son told him to and finally moving into a nursing home without a fight. If he ever got to Roo's Rest, that is. It wasn't supposed to involve meeting a redhead or being first on scene at a double fatality. He'd done his job out on the road that morning. And now, he was naked and wet in one room and she was on the other side of the door. There was something wrong with that picture, he decided.

When she'd gone into her room to lie down, he went out to his car, grabbed his bag and tossed it on the bed in the second bedroom in preparation for setting up camp for the next twelve hours.

He had no ulterior motive for staying, although it would be too damn easy to have one. The truth was, he was still worried about how much she'd been knocked around by the accident and by what she'd seen. His plan (and he was hoping she would agree to it without him having to describe in detail what a concussion did to a person's brain) was to crash at her cabin and examine her in the morning to make sure she hadn't been concussed — or worse. Her old bomb was too ancient for airbags and who knew if she'd hit her head. She was alone on the island and he couldn't leave her. It was as simple as that. He'd feel better knowing she'd had a good night's sleep, and he'd make sure he was there first thing in the morning to see that for himself.