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‘I’d better be there when this arrives or Rick will blow a gasket,’ she called out. ‘Thanks for the lemonade, though. And thank Kane for the tour of your workshop. It really was a delight.’
The driver hauled his bulky frame into the high cab and she could have kissed him, though he was much further down the evolutionary scale than the types of guys she usually saw than even James.
‘Ready to go?’ he asked.
‘You bet.’ More than you know, she thought, for although Siena was experiencing stomach flutters of the first order, she was free as a bird and the Dillon house was already a cage to the men who lived there.
Matt gave her one last wave before heading indoors.
James wasn’t so easily swayed.
As the tow-truck diver pulled away, she watched James in the side mirror all the way to the corner. Standing there in his tired jeans and his dusty T-shirt, with his lean muscled arms hanging loosely at his sides, he didn’t move.
As she travelled down the long, gently winding road, he stood on the footpath, beside his squished roses, watching her go.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘SO ARE you sticking with this airline gig?’ Rick asked when they were alone in the kitchen after an early dinner that night. ‘Or have you come to Cairns to give Max the flick?’
Siena sat back at the kitchen bench nibbling on a fingernail and flicking through a pile of junk mail while the twins ran out the last of their energy, Tina put baby Rosie to bed and Rick put the leftovers into freezer bowls.
‘Of course I’m sticking with it,’ she said, her feet jiggling as they rested on a bar at the bottom of her stool. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You always did get bored pretty quick.’ His thick dark eyebrows shifted skyward, willing her to argue as she distractedly flicked through the pages of some magazine. She slammed the magazine shut and sat on her hands.
‘I have a low attention span. It’s not just me; it’s the bane of my generation. You wouldn’t know about that being that you are so much older.’ She shot Rick a bratty smile and he scowled back.
‘When did you go so grey, Riccione?’ she asked, throwing his proper name in his face, her diabolical inner teenager taking over.
‘It appeared overnight the day after you ran away,’ Rick said, his terrorising older brother mechanism kicking in as though it hadn’t been dormant for seven years.
Deep breaths, she thought. Happy place …
‘I think you actually care about this job, sis.’
She knew by the look in his eye that Rick was thinking it was because some of his guidance when she was younger may have rubbed off. Rubbed the wrong way, more like.
‘Unbelievably, my wayward little sister cares for something other than the wind at her back.’
‘What, me? Care?’ she said, holding a hand to her heart. ‘Never!’ But care she did. She really didn’t want to have to tell Max no.
‘So now we’ve exhausted work, how are things on the boyfriend front?’ he asked. ‘In cousin Ash’s last email he mentioned you had a fellow in New York the last time you visited him on a layover. But the last I heard you were hot and heavy with some guy in Paris.’
She watched him closely to see if he was sending her a sideways barb that the two of them hadn’t communicated by phone or email for months. But his question seemed genuine. She bit down the thought that it was her own guilt for not keeping in touch that was niggling at her.
‘Not a fellow as such,’ she said. ‘Gage and I share an obsession for home-made gnocchi and he knows exactly where to find the best Italian in New York. And with Raoul in Paris it’s all about good coffee. I have discovered I have a knack for cultivating casual friendships made in heaven.’
Something crashed in the next room followed by a slowly increasing wail of a twin who had done something wrong. Rick threw a tea towel over his shoulder and went to find out what was going on. But at the doorway he stopped and turned.
‘There is one problem with having a guy in every port, Piccolo.’
Siena’s chin raised an inch. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, knowing she couldn’t stop him from telling her anyway.
‘There comes a time when there’s no safe place left to run but home.’
Rick pushed his way through the swing doors and Siena was left alone with nothing to do with her clenched fists but unclench them.
Siena’s mobile phone buzzed, giving her an outlet. She waited for a name to appear on her screen but it was an unfamiliar mobile number.
