Meant-To-Be Mother

chapter FIVE


THE next morning Siena sat in the lounge of her brother’s body shop flicking unseeingly through grease-stained three-year-old car magazines.

After a restless night—dreaming repeatedly of a certain handsome carpenter sweating and straining as he bent over a workbench wearing naught but man-sized Osh Kosh denim overalls as he carved the words ‘TODAY I MET A GIRL’ into a baby changing table—she had woken to find a note from Rick saying he had found her dry cleaning ticket, taken it and would pick her outfit up for her on his way to an on-site job that morning.

After much hand-wringing at the fact that her interfering brother had wiped out the plans she had made to keep herself busy before Rufus was due to pick her up around one o’clock, she had wasted some time dolling herself up for her afternoon interview—hair blow-dried from a pert side parting and flicked at the ends, and make-up of the smoky eye, pink-cheeked and natural lip variety—and dressed in her jeans of the day before, beige and green layered tank tops and her red high heels, ready to change into her suit the minute it arrived back into her waiting arms, and caught a cab to the auto-mechanic to wait.

And wait. And wait.

‘Siena?’

She turned, expecting to find another of Rick’s kindly grease monkeys offering her another cup of undrinkable coffee while she waited, only to find the handsome carpenter himself standing by the couch.

She leapt to her feet. ‘James!’

At her enthusiastic reaction, James’s mouth kicked into a brief smile. Still only a half-smile but she swore she caught a glimpse of neat white teeth. Her heart rate doubled in an instant.

Gone were the dusty black T-shirt and worn jeans of the day before, and in their place he wore a white T-shirt, a lightweight grey linen jacket and dark grey trousers, all of which brought out faint streaks of blue in his silvery eyes. With one hand in his trouser pocket and his cheeks freshly shaved, the guy looked as if he had walked straight off the Spanish Steps.

‘What … what are you doing here?’ she asked, her voice rising.

‘Matt told me where your brother worked,’ James said, running a quick nervous hand over his short hair. ‘I came on the off-chance you might be here. Or, if not, that they might tell me where you were. But you are here. So … here you are.’

‘Here I am,’ she agreed. Her heart leapt in her throat and she mentally slapped it down because, though he had no idea that she knew why he was there, she knew. And the reason terrified her to the soles of her Jimmy Choos.

‘Piccolo,’ her brother’s voice boomed out from the office behind reception. ‘Are you here? I’m heading out to pick up your suit now. I’ll be another half hour at least. Do you want some cheese on crackers to get you by before lunch?’

Siena felt disaster looming. If Rick caught her with a guy there would be no living it down. But she was her own worst enemy on that count as her pause brought the bear from his cave, wiping his grease-stained hands on an old rag that looked dirtier than he was. ‘Siena?’

When he saw her standing with James, the two of them looking equally guilty and nervous and unsure, he slowed. ‘Well, what have we here?’

Siena grimaced at Rick before damping down her nerves, turning on a polite smile and introducing the two men. ‘James, this is my big brother, Rick Capuletti, the owner of this fine establishment. Rick this is James Dillon—’

‘The furniture guy,’ Rick finished, flapping his rag at James.

‘That’s me.’

‘Right. Right. With the big fancy showroom in town. My wife begged me until I bought your signature lamp tables. She had seen them in some celebrity magazine. Cost me a bloody packet.’

Siena looked back at James in redoubled surprise. The beautiful Queen Anne, art deco fusion lamp tables in Tina’s lounge room were his design? The changing table in his workshop had been gorgeous. Delightful. But those lamp tables were beautiful. More than beautiful. They were works of art.

He smiled at Rick but the light barely reached his eyes. Hmm. Could it be that the glimmer and blue flecks and half-smiles weren’t for everybody? She couldn’t even begin to hide her mischievous delight.

‘Pleased to meet you, Dillon,’ Rick said, holding out a hand then retracting it when he saw how dirty it still was.

James saluted him. ‘Consider it shook.’

Rick grinned, taking in Siena in its beaming light. ‘How do you two kids know each other?’

Siena could barely contain her groan. Here we go, she thought, knowing he was about to start acting like a doting over-protective father. He couldn’t help himself. All his life. Even when her poor dad had been alive.

She sucked in a deep breath, knowing the next few would not come so easily as she began to suffocate under his rigid attention. ‘The boy who I swerved to miss when I crashed the green monster was James’s son,’ she blurted.

‘It turns out I bought your old family home,’ James added, and Siena cursed under her breath for not cutting him off before she saw that titbit coming.

It would hardly take a rocket scientist to figure out that she had been cruising by the place on purpose. And after she had told him in no uncertain terms seven years before that she would never step foot in the place again as long as she lived.

She was fast learning that never was a much longer time than she had anticipated.

‘Are you sure?’ Rick asked, prolonging the agony. ‘From what I remember, it went to a lady. Campbell? Diana Campbell?’

‘Dinah,’ James said, admirably keeping his voice even, but Siena could sense his whole body tightening.

She couldn’t bear to look at either of them. She could all but hear the echo of the train wreck on the horizon.

‘Right. So you have a son, eh?’ Rick asked.

‘I do. Kane. He’s eight.’

‘I have two boys. Twins. And a new baby girl. A joy, aren’t they?’

‘They can be,’ James said, his voice sliding back into its normal gentle rumble.

‘So you’re married, then?’ Rick asked. ‘Ah, no. I’m not. Not any more.’ ‘Divorced?’

‘Rick!’ Siena cried. It seemed that staring at her toes wasn’t making it all go away.

Rick held up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay. Fine. I am sorry,’ he cried, his loud voice booming across the reception area.

‘Rubbish. You’re a meddlesome pain in the neck.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Riccione! Enough. He is so dramatic,’ she said by way of apology, while still glaring at her brother, who glared right back. ‘It’s an Italian thing.’

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.

‘Smile at the what?’ Siena asked and then her mouth dropped open as the concrete base slid away from under them and, just like that, they were hanging suspended over the rainforest. ‘Holy heck!’

As she gripped on to her seat, her eyes huge in her face as she peered out the three hundred and sixty degree windows at the view unfolding as their capsule swung up the mountain, James leant back against the hot glass, crossed his arms and simply watched her.

She turned to him, her eyes questioning, and he couldn’t help but smile back. ‘We put on quite a show up here for the tourists,’ he said.

‘You can say that again. Wow, this is amazing! How long does it take to Kuranda?’

‘Non-stop? About thirty-five minutes,’ he said, which was a little longer than the ‘tiny bit later’ he had promised her.

He waited for her to explode at being kidnapped, which was pretty much what he had resorted to, unsure as he was that she was as far along in this attraction thing as he was, but she just nodded and continued to shift and shuffle to get the best view.

Their capsule swung back and forth with her movements. If she had been half as energetic as a teenager, he was sure big burly Rick Capuletti would have been green about the gills by that stage.

They bumped and trundled their way up the mountain in silence, masses of ferns and vines, hot red flame trees, towering conifers and thick dark rainforest vegetation sliding away secretively beneath them. When the grand Barron River peeked through the foliage, twinkling silver in the late morning sun, James spoke up.

‘Get your land-legs back on. We’re almost there.’

Siena looked back at him with a relaxed smile. Her cheeks were pink from her time in the sun and, for the first time since he had met her, she seemed loose-limbed and relaxed.

‘If you tell me they’ve torn down the markets and those odd hippy shops to make way for a strip mall and condos I will take back everything I’ve ever believed about the snail pace progress of this place,’ she said.

The tickle of laughter that had threatened earlier bubbled to the surface as he actually chuckled. ‘Don’t get too excited. You’re still more likely to be able to pick up some weird herbal concoction at the markets than you are to find a Starbucks or McDonald’s.’

‘Great,’ she said, beaming so suddenly that James’s next breath lodged in his throat. ‘I know just what to get Rick for Christmas!’

When their capsule reached the other end, a guide reminded them to ‘smile at the frog', which turned out to be a frog-shaped camera. They did as they were told. Siena leaned in towards him, her shoulder brushing his as she smiled amiably until the flash went off.

Caught up in the heady feeling of companionship, James took a hold of Siena’s dangling hand and wrapped it back into the crook of his arm and led her into town. She didn’t argue or pull away, and when he glanced at her again he found the furrowed brow was clear. His cheek twitched into a self-satisfied smile.

She could stay that relaxed if she just allowed herself to live on tropics time, he thought.

James ducked into one shop alone and came out with a big floppy sun-hat to ward off the hot North Queensland sun.

‘You can’t,’ she insisted when he gave it to her.

‘I must,’ he said. ‘It cost five bucks, and remember I overcharge. Besides your nose is pink.’

Though it was a size too big, she gave in and slapped it atop her neat bob and he was sure she walked closer as they continued to window-shop.

Nestled in amongst the brightly coloured shop fronts selling tie-dyed clothes, local artwork and bric-a-brac sat Sloppy Joe’s—a rundown café that looked as though the town had been built around it.

When they wandered into the empty room, the couple sitting smoking something sweet at the front table peeled themselves from their chairs. One pulled out a notepad and the other ambled into the kitchen.

‘Busy day?’ James asked the waitress, tongue firmly in cheek.

‘Too busy for my liking,’ the waitress agreed, then grinned at him through her chewing gum and pointed to a booth in the corner.

‘Do you think the people in this place know what a cappuccino is?’ Siena whispered, pulling off her hat and ruffling a hand up the back of her hair, which was beginning to curl despite the effort that had obviously gone into keeping it smooth.

‘We’ll soon find out.’

‘Do you come here often?’ Siena asked, her inquisitive eyes darting about the room, taking in the bright paintings for sale on the dark walls, the unswept concrete floor and slow-moving ceiling fans pushing the humid heat around the room.

‘Not for ages. My grandad was a cabinet-maker before me and he ran a stall at the markets up here. He swore by their all-day breakfast. But that was a while back.’

‘Did he teach you everything you know?’ she asked, sliding into the vinyl booth, which squeaked as she sat.

‘Not everything,’ he said. Again he heard a note of flirtation which was unintended. Okay, so maybe this time it was.

Maybe he wanted to know if she realised that he had taken a huge leap in inviting her out for coffee. The night before he’d confessed to her about Dinah, and he was all but sure she wasn’t oblivious to the effect she had on him.

Siena blinked back at him. His whole body warmed under her direct gaze before she grabbed the jar of sugar and twirled the cut glass distractedly around and around between her palms.

‘What can I getcha?’ the waitress—who looked as though she had probably worked there back in the day—asked when she arrived at their table.

‘Two cappuccinos and two breakfast specials?’ James asked.

‘Perfect,’ Siena said shortly, all her earlier ease dissipated. Something had definitely spooked her. She wasn’t the same free and easy girl from the day before. Now she looked as nervous as he felt.

The waitress gave them a smile and a wink, before tucking her notebook in the waist of her skirt and her pencil back behind her ear and sauntering off to the kitchen.

And then they were alone. Alone. On a date. Of sorts. James and a girl. A woman. A lovely woman. A woman who was obviously for some reason second-guessing being there with him.

As Siena looked about the room, her skittish glance landing on everything but him, he wondered what the hell he had been thinking when he’d woken up that morning.

But, since he had always been pathologically intent on making the best of things, he asked, ‘What did you call your brother earlier? Rigatoni?’

As intended, the sideways barb at her brother brought about a flash of a smile. She shoved the sugar back against the wall and started flicking through the pile of paper napkins.

‘My brother and cousin and I were all named after towns in Tuscany,’ she said, ‘where our parents were all born. Rick is Riccione. My cousin Ash is actually Asciano, and I am, well, Siena.’

He had to stop himself from reaching out and laying a hand over hers to stop her fidgeting, but her nerves were all of a sudden running so hot he had the feeling she might spontaneously combust if he tried.

‘It’s a beautiful name,’ he said, trying to get a reaction from her that wasn’t born of nervous tension. She was giving off so much energy that even his usually solid on the ground feet tapped beneath the table. ‘It suits you.’

Her mouth curled in what was meant to be a smile, but to him it seemed more of a sort of grimace, and he felt himself deflating.

He’d made a huge mistake.

He’d been reading into things she had said and done that simply mustn’t have been there. Maybe she was just a really good listener and it had been such a long time since he’d talked to anyone about his life, bar his blog. Just because he felt things, new things, deep down things, when he was with her, didn’t mean she felt the same way.

He’d gone way out of his comfort zone, relying on gut instinct rather than on what he had been told by experts would be best for him and Kane, and it seemed his instincts weren’t what they used to be.

He was fast thinking that science left a lot to be desired when Siena suddenly looked his way. Like a heat-seeking missile that had found its target, their gazes clashed, jolted, and told James a lot more about the situation than either of them were likely to admit aloud after such a short acquaintance.

He felt as though fireworks were going off in his stomach. And he knew then that he hadn’t in fact been thinking a whole lot when he’d woken up that morning. Not with his head, anyway.

Siena couldn’t look away. It was the train wreck thing again. James’s eyes were still masked by a layer of melancholy, but there was an almost grim determination behind them today. As if he had seen a way through the sadness and had latched on for all his might.

And, though she was deadly afraid that he mistakenly thought that she might be the way through, nobody had ever looked at her that way before.

She was the delinquent little sister, the aggressively ambitious worker or the exotic Aussie stranger in town for one night only. Reflected in his soulful eyes she saw herself as so much more.

No. Nope. Na-uh. Bad news.

She never should have used him as an escape route from Rick, after he had confided in her about Dinah and especially after reading what he had written in his blog the night before.

But she had been so caught up in his scent and the feel of her hand hooked into his strong arm and the promise of a trip on the Skyrail that she had blissfully forgotten that James was not a casual friendship guy.

He was a guy with roots and responsibility and a family, and she was a walking disaster. A destroyer of families. A deserter. Too much hard work. And someone who could not be trusted to take on the responsibility of someone else’s life.

She had to turn him away, gently but in such a way that he knew it was for the best. So she said the one thing she knew would do it.

‘Tell me more about Dinah.’

She waited for him to hang his head in sadness, but his deep grey eyes remained clear and locked on to hers.

Okay, so maybe if she shut up he would gush and blather on about Dinah for an hour and a day like newly divorced people she knew tended to, then after a while he would realise he had been blathering and he would be embarrassed by said blathering and he would slink away after their coffee and never seek her out again.

‘What in particular would you like to know about her?’ he asked, taking a measured sip of still water, but with his eyes never leaving hers.

Okay, so not so much blathering. Instead of blathering his sensuous mouth kicked up at one corner. The wretch knew she was really asking about Dinah because she was actually interested in him.

‘I … I saw her photo on your piano when I was snooping about the house. I’m a snoop. There. I admit it. It’s a terrible habit of mine. Incurable. Immoral. But that’s just me. Anyway, there was a photo of Dinah. She seemed much like Kane,’ she said, and was quite pleased with her save, especially since she was able to make herself seem completely irresponsible into the bargain. ‘What was she like?’

‘Dinah was …’ He looked at the ceiling for a few moments as he searched for the word. ‘Incandescent.’

Siena felt her stomach drop to her knees.

Incandescent? Did the guy seriously say incandescent? Well, if he had been punishing her for masking her attraction to him by using the dead wife card, he sure didn’t pull his punch.

Nobody had ever called her incandescent before. Cute, maybe. Single-minded, sure. A pain in the ass, often. But incandescent? What kind of man even thought to search for a word so beautiful? A creator of exquisite, inventive, deliciously cedar oil scented works like the man who had invited her out for coffee and then taken her on a ride through the sky, that was who.

‘Kane does look like her,’ he continued, finding something outside the window suddenly fascinating.

She wanted to grab him by the chin until he looked back at her again, all sparkling and almost smiling.

‘I have always thought Kane’s temperament was much more like mine,’ he continued. ‘Maybe that’s the bane of the adoptive dad, searching for personality traits that aren’t really there.’

‘He seems a really … nice kid,’ Siena said, choosing her words more carefully as she dragged herself up out of a pit of sudden unseemly jealousy. ‘I’m sure that’s a great deal thanks to you.’

Nice? Yep, nice was a good safe word. But, even as she lauded herself for her vocabulary brilliance, James looked back at her, his mouth kicking up at one corner, and he gave her a short nod, accepting her words as though they were a high compliment, which of course they really were.

Argh!

Their food arrived and Siena could have hugged the over-tanned wrinkly waitress who had obviously seen too much Far North Queensland sun in her lifetime.

She drank the cappuccino in one hit to reorganise her nerves and regretted it instantly. Firstly, James had been right, it was delicious, on par with those she’d had in Rome. And, secondly, it scalded her mouth so that the juicy-looking bacon and eggs on her plate would now no doubt taste like burnt taste buds.

Excellent.

James ate his meal without dropping a crumb. She tried to do the same and failed. She always ate too fast, had too much sauce or too much bread left at the end and at least one dollop of tomato seeds that missed her plate altogether. But James seemed to understand how to do everything in the perfect time with perfect portions.

He even had a sip of no doubt lukewarm cappuccino left to spare at the end.

‘So what about your family?’ he asked, after dabbing at the corners of his crumb-free mouth. ‘Do your parents still live around here?’

Siena quickly ran her tongue around her teeth, checking for sesame seeds. ‘Um, oh, no. I was a late … surprise.’

She was going to leave it there, but the fact that he had been brave enough to tell her about Dinah the night before made her feel it would be unfair not to be as honest. ‘There were complications and my mum, well, she passed away having me.’

His eyes narrowed, brimming with such sudden flaring compassion that Siena leant back in her chair to escape it.

‘It must have been difficult, growing up without your mum.’

Siena waved a hand over her face. ‘I survived. I had an older brother with the requisite eyes in the back of his head. Besides, you can hardly miss what you never had.’

Whereas Kane would, she suddenly realised. The poor thing knew exactly what he was missing not having his sunshiny, incandescent mother on the scene any more. Siena’s heart reached out to the sweet kid.

Stop it! Her heart did not reach. Not to handsome single dads with half-smiles and manly hands and cavernous grey eyes, and certainly not to their kids, even if said kids did not drink cola and their sticky warm hands felt so trusting and small in her own that she actually missed them like a phantom limb when they were gone.

She rubbed her hands together to erase that sense memory and went back to picking at a piece of stray bacon with the end of her fork.

‘And your father?’ he asked.

‘My dad died when I was fifteen,’ she said, rolling her right shoulder to ease away the tension that always encroached during the rare times she talked of that part of her life.

‘How?’ James asked, not even pretending to blather inanities as others always had. If only she could be as accepting, but ten years and a heck of a lot of guilt, regret, recrimination and fast living later, the memory still felt as though it was eating her from the inside out.

‘I was a handful as a kid, and that’s putting it mildly. Dad had a big heart; I gave it cause to worry and one day it finally gave out,’ she said simply.

‘Rubbish,’ James said, catching her so unawares she didn’t even have time to get her back up. ‘You had no control over how much your dad worried about you, Siena, or how he chose to deal with it. Not a lick. Handful or angel child, his heart was built to worry about you and to love you, not to collapse because you learned how to swear a year or two before your friends did.’

He had a smile in his eyes as he spoke, and for a second she almost believed him and the resulting weight off her shoulders made her feel as though she was levitating an inch off her chair. He was a parent. He had a troubled kid. He ought to know …

But Kane was only eight, she remembered, returning to the squeaky vinyl seat with a thud. Not even yet a teen. She wondered if she ought to give James details on how much worse she had been, and how much worse Kane could get. But somehow she couldn’t convince herself to take the rare shine from those divine grey eyes.

‘And big brother Rick became your guardian, I take it,’ James said.

Her mouth twitched. ‘He took to it like a croc to tropical waters. You may have noticed that telling me what to do is more of a vocation than a burden for Rick.’

‘That’s what big brothers are for.’

‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

He leaned forward, his head moving to within a bare foot of hers. ‘So if you are a determined nomad as your brother attests, what has brought you back home now?’

Home. Siena waited for the word to make her nauseous. But the way the word sounded in James’s deep soothing voice, though there was a definite tingle in her stomach, for the first time since she’d hopped on the plane the day before she didn’t feel like throwing up.

‘I have an interview with Maximillian himself late this very afternoon.’ She looked at her watch and something twisted inside her as she realised they would soon have to head back so she could get ready.

‘Right. MaxAir’s head office is in Port Douglas,’ James said. ‘I was commissioned to do a piece for him for that house of his up there a couple of years back. That’s some pad,’ he said, his voice doing that low, intimate thing he was so good at that seemed to wash over every inch of bare skin.

She leant back in her chair as far as she was able but she still felt his woodsy scent enveloping her.

‘Not a changing table, I would hazard to guess.’ It had never been any secret to anyone who had ever known him that Maximillian was gay.

‘Ah, no. So this meeting with Max,’ he said. ‘Has he brought you up this way to try to convince you to stay? I have met several executives of his who were lured up here for job opportunities who have never left. That seems to be his routine.’

The cloud of warmth that had been slowly but surely curling around Siena faded out of sight. That was exactly what she was afraid of. Her crew had even put big money bets on it. ‘I don’t actually know what Max wants with me.’

‘What would be the ideal?’

‘Rome,’ she said, without even a hint of hesitation. ‘It’s the pinnacle. The top job. I want it so bad I can taste it.’

Well, she couldn’t taste anything after her hot coffee but she could remember what it tasted like.

A sudden shadow passed over James’s eyes and, knowing she had been the cause, Siena had to look away. She made a great play at looking at her watch. ‘And, speaking of Max, I actually should head back soon.’

James motioned to the waitress for the bill.

When Siena reached for her Visa card, which always lived in the back pocket of her jeans, he stayed her with a waggling finger. Siena watched it as if it was a metronome before putting her credit card away.

‘This is my treat,’ he said.

‘Wow, you’re a man of a different era,’ Siena said, trying to keep it light. ‘The guys I usually date offer to pay half plus the tip at best.’

Date? Had she just admitted to James that she saw this as a date? Faced with a nice suit and a clean shave her sense had been left by the wayside.

‘Nah,’ he said, a smile tickling at the corners of his mouth as he forked over a couple of notes after glancing at the menu prices. ‘You can pay next time.’

Next time? A wry smile? Oh, curses!

James slid out of the bench seat and held out a hand to help her out of hers. She took it, proud that she kept her breathing to a pretty reasonable canter as his warm fingers closed about hers. He tugged her slowly until her legs were free of the table, and then he didn’t let go.

He twisted his fingers until they were held together by the lightest touch, so that he could navigate an easy way for the two of them through the wide, empty aisles between sporadic tables.

He looked over his shoulder at one stage, caught her eye and smiled again. Trapped by the genuine pleasure in his gaze, Siena couldn’t help but smile back, her cheeks growing pink and warm like a school girl with her first crush.

Once they hit sunshine he put her big hat back on her head and tucked her hand through his elbow once more, drawing her against his warm body, and this time he left his hand curled over hers. His strong, callused, sublimely warm hand.

I am leaving tomorrow! she screamed inside her head when he turned back to face the front. That was all she had to say. Saturday afternoon I will be on a flight to Melbourne and I have no immediate plans to return soon, if ever. But somehow she couldn’t get the words to form on her tongue.

Because she’d had a nice time. A really, genuine, honest-to-goodness nice time. Talking, connecting, debating, retreating, learning interesting snippets about another person, a person who kept her on her toes and made her feel all warm and yummy and interesting and good, and encroaching on issues one would never usually get to on such a short acquaintance.

But maybe it was the fact that she would be leaving the next day that made it all happen so fast. They didn’t have time to skirt any issues.

And for all her friends the world over, the casual gentlemen with whom she wined and dined and talked superficial gossip, from elegant Gage to cheeky Raoul, the sky girls who could go days without sleep so they could get the most out of a New York layover, she felt as though if she added every fabulous outing together it would never add up to as much warm satisfaction as she had taken out of this irregular little lunch.

In the future, if she was in need of a happy place to go to in order to settle her nerves when frustration kicked in, this would be it—palm trees, colourful shops, blue skies and a warm arm to hang on to.

By the time they reached the Kuranda Skyrail station, she had almost convinced herself that maybe James could be her Cairns friend. If she came back here every now and again, maybe they could make it a habit of going out for coffee in weird and wonderful local haunts. It would be fun! More than fun; it would be lovely.

But then snippets of his blog came swimming back to her like pieces of her own conscience.

There are days when the thought of going outside the front door leaves me in a cold sweat.

A guy who had got himself all dressed up to take her out for a cup of coffee wasn’t looking for fun, even if he had convinced himself otherwise. He wasn’t even anywhere close to looking for lovely. Whatever he was looking for, she didn’t have the capacity to give it to him.

After a quiet, reflective trip back down the mountain to Cairns they again reached the pile of tyres at the front of Rick’s Body Shop.

Siena pulled James to a halt. There was no way she wanted him taking her inside under the beady eyes of her brother. ‘Okay, so this is me.’

James nodded, his eyes unreadable as he looked over every inch of her face. ‘Good luck with your interview,’ he said. ‘I hope the news is good.’

But she knew from the glimmer in his eyes that his idea of good was pretty much the opposite of hers.

‘Thanks,’ she said. Her natural restlessness tickled at her toes. The fact that this was goodbye made her even more fidgety than usual as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

A slight smile warmed James’s serious face, then, without warning, he leant into her. Pure instinct took over as Siena stopped all semblance of bouncing and her eyes closed as she sank into the sensation of his warm smooth cheek against hers. His hand curled around her waist for balance. Hers fluttered to rest against his solid chest.

‘Thanks for coffee, Siena. I’ll see you again soon,’ he murmured, his deep voice humming against her ear, causing skitters of sensation down her whole right side.

His lips pressed against her cheek, burning an imprint she feared no amount of scrubbing would make disappear, and then he pulled back.

After one last keen look, as though he was committing her face to memory, he turned and walked away, leaving Siena feeling as if she wasn’t quite sure if she could remember how to put one foot in front of the other to get where she needed to go.