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James’s grip tightened, his other hand reaching around to rest lightly at her waist. But, rather than adding to her confusion, his gallantry only honed her focus. She didn’t need some guy to save her when she fell. She had picked herself up enough times to know she could do it fine on her own.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice a giveaway throaty whisper.
She twisted her hand from his grasp, spun about on now sturdy legs and bounded out the door, grabbing her shoes as she shot past but not stopping to put them on.
As the green monster came into view her footsteps slowed as she saw how badly she had messed up. The whole bonnet was crushed and twisted. The smell of burnt oil scorched the air. Surely it was a write-off.
Insurance was the least of her problems. With the money from the sale of the house she could afford to fix it, or buy ten new ones. The problem was Rick. He’d spent a lifetime calling her irresponsible, antagonistic, the type to shoot first and ask questions later, and within half an hour of being home she had rashly taken a drive straight to the one place she had so purposefully avoided all these years. She had gone and proved him right.
As she neared the car she realised the damage went further. Before she had hit the tree, the beast’s tyres had trampled one of a group of small rose bushes. Siena had planted those rose bushes with her father on a warm spring day. She remembered his crinkling hazel eyes smiling down at her as though she was his little princess. The memories crowding her were too much.
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ she whispered, her sudden sorrow deeper than concern for a couple of squished roses.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ James said from right behind her.
She flinched as his nearness drew her from her reverie. Cedar oil, family, home.
‘Truly,’ she said, turning to him, but backing away in the same move, choosing to believe the apology had been for him alone. ‘I took an advanced gardening class a couple of summers ago. You’ll be able to replant the bush, if that is any consolation.’
She didn’t offer to do so. Offering to clean up Kane’s wound had only created more problems than it had fixed.
James crouched down and pulled a perfect rose from under the tyre. Its stem was squished at the base but the flower was unblemished. An iceberg rose. Cool. White. Perfect.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You liberated it; you may as well take it.’ He held out the flower, tipping its beautiful head towards her so that she caught a whiff of the soft perfume.
Siena baulked, the gesture so intimate and inadvertently romantic she had no idea what to do.
She saw the moment that James hesitated too. His eyes zeroed in on the rose, then back to her again, the cool grey depths burning with some unknown memory.
Had she hurt his feelings by not simply taking the damn thing? Was he remembering a similar moment with his wife? Either way, she couldn’t handle seeing the ache behind his eyes as she couldn’t dampen down the mirrored ache it created in her.
She planted a big wide grin upon her face, then reached out and snatched it from his hand.
‘Thanks, James. I was the one who plucked it, of sorts, so it is rightfully mine.’ She held the velvet-soft petals to her nose and sniffed. ‘Mmm. Gorgeous.’
At that moment a small red hatchback turned into James’s driveway and pulled to a halt. James leapt back from her as though he only then realised he had been standing on a bed of hot coals.
A lanky fiftyish guy with long grey hair tied back in a ponytail unfolded himself from the tight front seat. His eyes twinkled and a huge lopsided grin creased his craggy face.
‘Morning, dude!’ he said, loping up to James and slapping him on the back.
James rocked stiffly on to his toes and back on to heavy flat feet. His lips thinned and he couldn’t look the newcomer in the eye. ‘Hey, Matt. Kane’s on the trampoline if you want to say hello.’
Matt’s bushy grey eyebrows rose. ‘On a school day? Again?’
It hadn’t even occurred to Siena that it was a school day. It was … Thursday? She never had any idea what day it was. Her roster was always different, rotating three days on, two days off. Unlike the time in her life when things like school and weekends and bedtimes had mattered, the day no longer meant a thing.
But to a guy with a school-aged son.?
‘He wasn’t feeling well,’ James said.
Stomach aches, sore throat, headaches—Siena remembered all too clearly from James’s blog.
‘Well, naturally that’s why the trampoline would hold so much attraction for him,’ Matt said under his breath before turning a sudden, beaming, unevenly toothed smile in her direction. ‘Now, who might this lovely young flower be?’
He glanced at the rose twirling in her hand, then looked from Siena to James and Siena again with a big goofy grin on his face. If he had reached out and nudged James with his elbow she would not have been surprised.
I almost ran over his kid with my car! she wanted to scream, loathing the fact that she wasn’t the only one thinking that there was something curious happening between her and the man looking resolutely anywhere but at her.
