The Turnaround Treasure Shop (5 page)

He nodded. ‘Sure. Easy. I'll do it this evening.' He looked around him then, as though searching for something. His gaze settled on Lily's four-wheel drive parked at the side of the house. It had once been her mum's and when new it had been dark brown, like leather. Now it was so old it was orange. Twenty-five years in the sun, wind and snow had burnt the colour off.

‘Your car's not running?' he asked, walking over to it.

Lily followed, embarrassed. It had been fine until three weeks ago when it had died in the night. All by itself. One day working — or rather, chugging — and the next day, zilch. No cough, no splutter, no tick-tick-ticking over.

‘Would you like me to take a look?' he asked, studying the orange bonnet.

‘No need, it's dead.'

He looked over his shoulder and into her eyes and Lily's heartbeat bumped.

‘Are you sure?' he asked.

Was she sure her heart was beating irregularly? Or was she sure she'd read something in his gaze she recognised? A
zing
. Like the one from 12 months ago when he'd leaned in to her, bowed his head and almost kissed her.

She blinked, shook herself mentally and took her gaze off Nick Barton, helpful townsperson, friend to her daughter, fixer of bicycles. It would be too easy to hero-worship a man like Nick. Too easy to imagine…all sorts of interesting scenarios.

‘Got the keys?' he asked, heading for the driver's door.

‘In the ignition,' Lily said. She'd half prayed someone would steal it.

Nick leaned inside and turned the ignition. Nothing. He took the keys out, popped the bonnet and walked to the front of the vehicle. He peered at the engine, reached into the mechanical fray and fiddled with something. Then something else.

‘Fuel pump,' he said. ‘Bit more work needed than a buckled front wheel but not impossible.'

‘It's not dead?' Lily asked.

‘Well, the battery's flat.' He smiled at her, and the ease he'd shown her daughter, the fun of a jokey moment, shone on Lily. ‘And the vehicle's definitely geriatric,' he said, obviously holding in a laugh. ‘But these 80 Series fourbys are reliable. I think it might just have forgotten to take better care of its waterworks.'

Lily raised an eyebrow.

‘I'm pretty sure it's likely to be the fuel pump relay,' he said.

‘Which is fixable.' Which would cost.

He nodded. ‘I'll come back tomorrow and tow it to my place. I'm afraid I left my tow ropes in my workshop.'

Lily almost got to stammer ‘No' but her concern must have showed on her face because he spoke again, quickly.

‘I like tinkering with engines. You'd be doing me a favour if you let me have a look at it.'

He'd be doing Lily the favour, and she knew it. And he knew she knew it. So how did she handle this? Blasé? Defeated? She didn't do ‘blasé' and she was used to fighting ‘defeated', so she tilted her head to one side, as though considering his offer.

‘You normally do your engine tinkering as a job, Nick,' she said, cautiously gauging his expression as she spoke. ‘For paying customers.' She didn't have to elaborate the point that she couldn't pay him. He knew.

‘Sometimes I slip in the odd gesture. It's not a big deal.'

He watched her, and Lily knew he wouldn't look away until she answered. She hated that car. She needed that car. Her children needed her to have the car.

She nodded. ‘Thank you. I'd be grateful.' As if he didn't know that.

He pressed his lips together and with a nod of acknowledgement, looked away.

‘Hey!'

Lily turned at the sound of Andy's voice.

‘What's happening?' he asked, breaking into a run up the driveway.

‘Nick's going to fix our car,' Janie-Louise said. ‘And my bike.'

‘Cool.' Andy's smile sparkled like a newly minted dollar. ‘Can I help?' he asked Nick.

‘Of course.'

‘I'm sure Nick won't want you hanging around,' Lily told Andy, breaking the bad news with an apologetic smile.

Sure enough, his features fell.

‘Actually,' Nick said. ‘I wouldn't say no to a second pair of hands.' He walked over to Andy and held his hand out. ‘So thanks. I'd be grateful for the help, Andrew.'

Andy took Nick's hand, features back to bright.

Nick shook her boy's hand as though Andy were a man. And how did he know to call him Andrew? She could see the guy-stuff going on between them. Pursed mouths and quick nods of understanding as rapport built. Grown-up-man stuff. Her mother's new husband had always shown respect and a genuine fondness for her children, but he was 50 years older than Andy. Nick was a fit, skilled younger man.

How well had her children got to know Nick? Why hadn't she noticed? Because she'd shied away from him. Hadn't wanted to notice anything about him because she fancied the hell out of him.

‘Stay for pizza,' Janie-Louise said.

Lily shot a look at Nick, breath held.
Please say no
. She felt awkward enough already. Having to make conversation with him over the dinner table scared the hair off her head. ‘Yes, do,' she said on a smile. A tight smile, but he wouldn't know that.

He looked from Janie-Louise to Lily and held her gaze.

Damn. He did know.

‘Thanks, but I'd better be going.' He turned for the ute. ‘I'll come over early tomorrow morning, around six thirty, to tow the car.' He looked over his shoulder at Lily. ‘Shall I hang onto these?' he rattled the car keys in his fingers.

Lily nodded.

Nick got into the ute, closed the door and leaned his arm on the open windowframe. ‘And as I'll be here that early, I might as well give you a lift into town.'

‘Great,' Janie-Louise said.

Great. Another favour. How many was that now? Janie-Louise had obviously answered on her mother's behalf — she was unlikely to be up at six thirty in school holidays.

‘I'm used to walking,' Lily said.

‘No need if I'm here anyway.' Nick fired the engine, lifted a hand to Lily without looking at her directly, then winked at her children. ‘See you tomorrow.'

The kids waved him off then turned for the house.

‘He's cool,' Janie-Louise said.

‘And smart,' Andy answered. ‘I can't wait to see all the interesting bits of the engine. It'll be good research for an up-and-coming machinist.'

The children went into the house and Lily kept her focus on the now empty driveway winding down her back garden until it became the paddock and the pastures beyond that. She wrapped her arms around her body as a sigh escaped her.

The last 10 minutes had held the most dialogue between Nick and herself in the entire time he'd been in town. Neither had kept the other's gaze for long during this exchange, apart from the
zing
moment when Nick had held her focus, eye to eye over the orange car bonnet. According to the kissing books, that could mean he was attracted to her.

She squeezed her eyes closed. What an impossible fantasy. She had nothing to offer a man like Nick. Unless he had a partiality for a hardworking, blushing woman in a jam with two children and little money. They had nothing in common. She really ought to take up knitting and forget the kissing books.

She turned for the house and her family pizza-Sunday but her mind wasn't ready to dismiss thoughts of Nick Barton that quickly.

Had he ever been married? Uncommon for a good-looking catch like him not to be. He'd been in the Navy though. Probably hadn't had time to get married. A 20-year man, according to SFS —
Swallow's Fall Speculation
— as Lily liked to call the gossip mill. He looked to be in his late thirties, probably around 38. Four years older than Lily. So both around the same age. Both had green eyes. Lily halted by her back door and pondered this. Her eyes were plain old green, his were dangerous green. Lily's nature said
careful
. Nick had
dare me
written all over him, no matter his quiet, serious exterior; and all that masculine boldness was visible in his eyes.

No wonder she trembled so much when she saw him. And no wonder he hadn't dared her again, after the Easter Bunny Ball.

Lily froze at the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside the house, her back on the carpet of the living room, her body stretched out in her final yoga-relaxation pose. She glanced at the wall clock. Six a.m. Nick wasn't supposed to arrive for another half-hour.

She shot up, nearly twisting her ankle as she tripped over the yoga mat. The kids were still asleep. This time of the day was Lily's. She practised her yoga, waking herself up slowly, enjoying a cup of coffee before the morning fray started with school lunches and yells of, ‘Mum, where's my shirt?' or ‘Have you seen my hairbrush?'. In school holidays the children slept in till eight or later.

By the time she got to the back door she could hear car doors opening and closing. She unlocked the door and pulled it open. ‘Hello,' she called to Nick's back.

He turned, and froze.

‘You're early.'

He nodded, still staring fixatedly in her direction, but not at her. Sort of at her head. Or even above it. Lily couldn't tell, even from the distance. ‘I can walk into town, if you like.' She shrugged and offered him an apologetic smile.

He walked towards her slowly, hands at his sides, his boots eating up the dew on the grass and leaving ghostly footprints. ‘I'm early,' he agreed. He tipped his head, indicating the car behind him. ‘Just wanted to…get the…'

Lily glanced at her four-wheel drive. He'd backed his ute to the front of her vehicle.

‘I'll let you get on with it,' she said. ‘I'll walk to work.'

He seemed to come out of his reverie then and shook his head. ‘No. I'll wait for you. I just…'

His eyes seemed glazed, and he had his chin raised, mouth compressed, as though trying to get his focus — or keep his focus.

‘I'll go get your vehicle hooked up.' He blinked a couple of times. ‘Your car…to mine.'

Lily waited for him to finish whatever sentence he was stumbling over.

‘I mean…I'll go. Get the car.' He thumbed behind him, blinked a few more times as if his eye sockets were burning and turned away from her. ‘Take your time.' He moved to his big silver ute, yanked open the driver's door, flipped the seat with a massive thud and pulled out a tow rope.

Lily tugged at her lower lip with her fingers as she moved inside the house and quietly closed the door. Why had he seemed so out of sorts? She ran a hand over her head. Was her hair bed-head messy? It was still loose, tumbling over her shoulders and down her bare arms.

She walked into her bathroom, got a look at herself in the mirror, and froze.

She wore her yellow yoga shorts — the short ones that needed the drawstring re-threaded. The ones that kept sliding off her hip bones. And her pale blue satin top — the one with the dipped neckline and shoe-string straps. The one that no-one ever saw her in. No wonder he'd been uncomfortable. She looked close to naked.

***

Fully dressed in her waitressing uniform, Lily wriggled on the leather bucket seat, sinking her bottom into its soft depths. So this was luxury. The Orange Bullet, as the children had christened her old four-wheel drive currently being towed behind the king of vehicles, had hard knobbly seats. Once leather, now worn to a thin, papery skin like an onion and patched with duct tape.

She closed her eyes as Nick drove down the dirt driveway. She'd much rather pay someone from out of town to fix the Orange Bullet but that wasn't possible because she couldn't afford to, and wouldn't allow her mother or her stepfather to cough up financial assistance. So she was in the position of taking a generous offer from a neighbour. And that was life.

She opened her eyes. ‘This is very kind of you.'

‘No kindness involved. You need something, I happen to be in a position to help out.'

‘Yes, but I can't pay you for the repairs or the parts, so I was thinking…' Lily swallowed.

He gave her a look, brief but penetrating, before studying the track ahead again. ‘You were thinking about what you could do for me. To repay me. Yes?'

‘Yes,' she said, then swallowed a second time. Could he read her thoughts because they were visible on her features before she'd even spoken? She hoped not because she was also struggling not to run her eye over him. He was taller than Lily and much bigger in build. He was a masculine powerhouse and she wouldn't mind taking a closer scrutiny of the muscles he had. A surreptitious scrutiny, obviously.

‘Maybe I could do something in return,' she said. Perhaps cook him up a freezer-full of home-produce meals from the vegetable garden she maintained at home and from the meat that her farming stepfather had said was nothing but her due since he'd joined her family.

‘No need, Lily.' He spoke quietly, almost throwing the words away, as though he had an issue with taking so many thanks.

Lily looked ahead and sank further into her seat.

When they reached Main Street, Nick pulled over outside Kookaburra's and Lily slid out of his ute. ‘Thank you for the lift.'

‘I'll get to work on the car today.'

‘Honestly, Nick, I'd like to repay you in some way. If there's anything you think of that I could do for you, I'd like to do it.'

He looked at her for what felt like a month. ‘Maybe,' he said in a quiet tone. ‘Maybe.'

***

Lily entered Kookaburra's and let the early morning atmosphere sink into her skin. The padded armchairs and wooden barstools around polished barrel tables in the bar to her right, the open fire and the still-warm embers from the night before. The pristine starched white tablecloths from the restaurant on her left, and the new-carpet smell of the small reception area and the wide staircase leading up to the top floor rooms in front of her.