Page 135 of Happy Mother's Day!


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And a big brother thing. And a Rick thing. And a thing that sets my teeth on edge and makes my skin crawl so bad I just want to scratch and scratch until it goes away. Or I go away …

If James didn’t realise that she was one half of a fruitless, ruinous, dysfunctional family and run for the hills rather than stand there looking so darned handsome, she would be very much surprised.

‘Was there something you wanted from me?’ she asked, turning to James, willing him to just leave and get it over with.

But the light that had been so absent in James’s cool grey eyes since Rick had arrived on the scene had suddenly flared to life while she hadn’t been paying attention. Siena bit her lip, wishing she had phrased her question differently.

‘Well, yes, actually. I was heading out for a coffee and I thought perhaps you might join me as thanks for cleaning up Kane’s wound yesterday.’

‘A wound? My spoilt little sister working in a service industry seemed out of character enough, but now a real flesh and blood wound?’ Rick said. ‘Well, I never.’

Siena turned her back on her brother and shoved a hand through James’s looped arm. ‘Thanks, James. That would be nice. The coffee they serve in this place is criminal. Please tell me someone in this town knows how to make a real cappuccino.’

Without a backward glance, Siena turned James Dillon on his heel and, trying her best to ignore the heavenly scent of his woodsy aftershave, she marched him out the front door.

‘I would watch yourself, mate,’ Rick called out. ‘She is as much of a hazard off the road as she is on it.’

It was all Siena could do not to grab one of the tyres piled up at the front door and fling it at him.

When she waved her hand back at her brother James thought he caught sight of a rude hand signal but he couldn’t be sure. But even the concept was enough to create a flicker of laughter deep in his chest. A flicker was good. A flicker was promising. A flicker was more than he had felt in such a long time.

Which was why, even after making the decision not to come looking for her again, the minute the words had poured into his blog he had back-pedalled.

Those blog pages were his truth. The things he couldn’t admit to anyone, not even himself. From the start he had always felt that if he lied on the page it would be defying the very point of the thing. And if his blog said to give it a chance, then he was willing to give it a chance.

As they turned out on to the main street, James could not help but notice the warm energy vibrating through his arm from where her soft hand clenched his elbow. He hadn’t been imagining it the day before. Something chemical, or electrical, or biological happened to him when they came into close proximity. And who was he, a simple cabinet-maker, to argue with science?

But, now that he had confirmed it, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do next. He hadn’t really thought past the asking.

He’d sent Kane off to school despite another ‘headache'. He’d come to her, he’d asked her out and she’d said yes. Heck, those quacks would have fallen over themselves to see the progress he and Kane’d made in one single day!

He risked a glance at Siena. She had done something to her hair and the curls were smoothed away into a sassy bob. She wore make-up that made her eyes seem dark and deep, but no matter how she might be trying to hide beneath the flight attendant construct he knew that in a crowded room she would still stand out to him like a red umbrella in a sea of black.

Despite the warm feelings buoying him just being with her again, it didn’t blind him to the fact that she wasn’t a happy camper. Her brow was furrowed and her full lips stretched tight. She didn’t look as if she was prepared for a nice coffee date. She looked like a kid playing spin the bottle who had ended up paired with her cousin. He reluctantly let her arm slide through his.

‘Hey, Speedy Gonzales, where are we going?’

She slowed and only just seemed to remember he was there. ‘Oh. Sorry. Is there somewhere along here we can grab a bite? I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, and I kept refusing Rick’s goons’ offers of cheese and crackers and now I could eat a horse. And if I don’t have a proper coffee in the next five minutes I won’t be worth knowing.’

He had somewhere in mind but it would take longer than five minutes to get there. He weighed up the fiery temper of hers that he had just witnessed firsthand with the thought of having her in his company for longer than it would take her to throw down an espresso. Her company won out.

‘Would you trade a mediocre takeaway coffee and a muffin now for a great cappuccino and the world’s best bacon and eggs a tiny bit later? I promise it’ll be worth it.’

Her focus shifted until he was caught in the intense light of her gaze. ‘You’re a man of mystery today, aren’t you, Mr Dillon?’

‘That I am. So what do you say?’

After a few moments of unintentionally enticing lip nibbling, she nodded. ‘Great. Follow me.’

Fifteen minutes later, with their appetites subdued, they were queuing to board the famous Skyrail—a seven and a half kilometre cableway of over one hundred small, round, glassed-in capsules that could take six at a time up to the mountaintop town of Kuranda. And Siena was so hyperactive he wasn’t sure he ought to come through with another coffee at the other end.

‘I can’t believe I’d forgotten all about this thing,’ she said, jumping from one foot to the other on her high red heels, as they came closer to the front of the queue. ‘It opened only a couple of years before I left. I would beg and beg and beg Rick to bring me up here, but he never did as he’s afraid of heights, which is half the reason I begged and begged.’

She shot him a cheeky grin. ‘You met him. He deserved it, right?’

‘I’ll say.’

A local in a khaki uniform helped the two of them into a small swinging capsule suspended from a fist-thick overhead wire, locked the glass door and told them to remember to ‘smile at the frog’ once they reached the other end.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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