Noah flashed a megawatt grin. “What are you doing in here, Rubes?” He approached the horse and knelt in front of her.
Seeing Ruby, my heart rate dropped into the ‘somewhere above average’ range. “She was in her paddock this morning.” I watched as Noah’s long fingers gently stroked her neck, while he whispered to her. I was sure I heard her purr, but then that could have been coming from me.
“You have to double check the gate,” Noah reminded me. “If it’s not latched properly, it can come open.”
“It was latched properly. I did it exactly as Wally showed me and I even double checked it.” After the Goatie incident, I hadn’t taken any chances with the gates.
Noah’s brow creased. “I’ll check it when I take her back.”
“I know I have a lot to learn around here, but I can lock a gate.” I gave him a wry smile. “I’m still confused about how she got into the house.” I looked up the hallway. “I definitely locked the back door when I went out with Wally.” I pulled the key from my pocket and waved it toward him.
Noah left Ruby where she was and made his way to the kitchen with me hot on his heels. Stopping to check the lock from both side of the door, he said, “It’s broken.”
He pointed to the splintered timber where the lock had once been. “Someone or something’s rammed the door.”
I dropped the knife onto the table and stepped closer to him.
“Did Ruby do that?” I asked, as the hair on the back of my neck rose.
Noah scratched the stubble shadowing his chin. “Maybe. I don’t know why she would, though.”
I had my back to the hallway, facing Noah as he turned his attention to the door jam, listening as he explained the way the timber had splintered. I was so engrossed in his masculine scent, the deep baritone of his voice and the fact that this close I could see the dark flecks in his gorgeous blue eyes, that I didn’t hear the sound of four hooves tap tapping their way toward me. It was only as Ruby head butted me from behind that I squealed and fell forwards. Thankfully, Noah caught me before I landed face first on the floor, but in my panic to save myself I reached out and grabbed anything that would help. It happened to be his shirt and we both heard the sound of fabric ripping as it gave way to my force.
When I regained my composure and straightened myself up, I was faced with very toned pec muscles, Noah’s olive suntanned skin glistening in the mid-morning heat. Blood rushed to my face, I just wasn’t sure if it was from being mortified I’d torn his shirt, or a hot flush caused from the desire which was now inundating my system. Noah was even sexier without his shirt on. Go figure.
I released the shirt from my hands and did my best to straighten it back up, stroking his chest to put the fabric back into place.
“I only have 351 days to go. In case you’re counting.”
A soft groan escaped his lips.
Noah eventually removed my hands from his chest (for some reason they didn’t want to do it on their own) and then helped me clean up after Ruby.
Ruby was presently back in her paddock (and it seemed the lock on her gate was indeed unlatched—humph). And she had left quite a mess in the bedroom in her wake. A mess I had dry heaved cleaning up.
Noah laughed as I pushed the bedroom windows open and turned the fan up to high.
“How long before I get used to the smell of a farm?” I asked, gagging.
He shrugged. “I was born on a farm, so I honestly can’t answer you.”
“How did you end up here?” I asked, curious to his story.
“Mum and Dad used to own a property in Victoria. They decided to move to Queensland about ten years ago and purchased a small property on the other side of Mt Lockhart. When they heard Matilda was selling two thousand acres and a house, they jumped at the chance to buy it.”
“What happened to the property they had?”
“We still own it. I was supposed to have the house over there but once Mum passed and Dad couldn’t cope, I decided I needed to be here. It’s pretty much my life now.”
“Oh okay.” Silence filled the space between us as I studied him.
“Girlfriend?” The word came out just above a whisper.
“Not at the moment.” He smiled.
Interesting.
“You?” He tilted his head and gave me a sideways look.
“Nope, no girlfriend.”
Noah gave a soft chuckle and my belly flipped. “I mean do you have a boyfriend?”
“It’s complicated.”
Noah raised an eyebrow.
I sighed. “There is this one guy but he’s in the police force and Westport keeps him very busy.” I didn’t add that I always felt like I was second to his job and he barely had the time to chat let alone have a proper date. Warwick was a good man. He was just dedicated to his profession.
“Not an easy way to keep a relationship going.”
I sighed again. “Tell me about it.”
“What about your family life?” Noah picked up the bucket that he’d shoveled Ruby’s droppings into. “Where did you grow up?”
“Born and raised in Westport.”
“Parents?”
“Dad runs a training center for businessmen. And Mum’s an interior designer. Both of them are very competitive and successful in what they do,” I added. “Which makes it harder for me when everything I’ve ever tried has failed miserably.” I picked Matilda’s dressing gown from the floor and opened the dark timber wardrobe. The overwhelming smell of mothballs hit me. I gave the fan a minute to dispel the smothering scent, then looked for a coat hanger.
“Geez Matilda sure did own a lot of clothes.” I flipped through the hangers searching for an empty one. I stopped flipping as a pretty pink shirt caught my eye. For a moment the smell of the moth balls was replaced with the fragrance of Chanel number five. I lifted the shirt toward me and inhaled the scent of the woman I never knew.
Noah had stopped in the doorway to the room and I noticed him staring at me in the mirror.
“She smelled nice,” I whispered, holding his gaze.
“That’s her perfume on the dresser.” He nodded toward an old-fashioned crystal atomizer. I tended to keep my visits into Matilda’s room to a minimum as I felt like I was invading her personal space, but on the few occasions I had come in here I’d noticed it but never stopped to study it.
Now curiosity about my great aunt got the better of me, and I placed the shirt back in the wardrobe and picked up the perfume. The sun caught the cut crystal of the bottle and sent prisms of color bounding around the room, as the aroma surrounded me.
Noah moved in close, inhaling deeply. “She once told me that as she aged, she couldn’t do much about the way she looked, but she could make sure she smelled bloody good.” His grin exploded as he remembered Matilda, and I found myself joining him. The earlier awkwardness caused by the fire had long gone and in its place, I felt the flame of friendship kindle.
“The character trait must run in the family.” He smiled.
“Well, if you like the smell of smoke, I smell fabulous right about now!” I laughed.
I placed the atomizer back into its place on the dresser and stepped out of his zone remembering I needed to call Warwick and see exactly where things stood between us.
I went to hang the dressing gown up in the wardrobe when a sparkly box on the floor of the wardrobe caught my eye. I hesitated before picking it up.
“It belongs to you now. Why don’t you see what’s inside?” Noah suggested.
“It feels like I’m sneaking into her room while she’s out.”
As I spoke the wind picked up and the clothes on the hangers swayed, revealing more boxes in the wardrobe. They were all about the size of a shoe box, all sparkly pink, and all tied with a white ribbon.
Clifford ran in between us and sniffed at the boxes enthusiastically. Before either of us could stop him, he’d knocked a box onto the bedroom floor, spilling its contents about our feet.
I gasped as about a hundred black and white photos stared back at me.
Noah picked up a photo. “I think this is Matilda when she was younger.” His brows furrowed as he studied the image.
Taking the photo from him, I recognized Matilda’s smile. “She looks so happy.”
“There’s writing on the back of it.”
Flipping the photo over I read, “New Year’s Eve, 1953.”
We looked through more of the photos that were scattered across the floorboards.
“She was really beautiful when she was young.” Noah flipped another over to see what was written on the back.
“How old would she have been in this photo?” I asked, taking it from him.
“Twenty-nine.”
“How do you know that?”
“She was born in 1924.”
“I can’t believe you knew that.”
He nodded. “Her birthday was on the 8th of August.”
Shock slapped me hard. “No way!”
“What?”
“That’s my birth date.”
“Huh. Interesting. So, you share the same name and the same birthday as your great aunt.”
I looked over at Noah as he knelt beside me, handfuls of Matilda’s photos scattered around him. He had no connection to me or my family, yet he had far more of a connection to Matilda than we’d ever had.
I sat cross legged on the floor mulling this new information over in my head. “A great aunt who I never knew existed, yet she left me an estate worth millions of dollars.”
“Are you sure your family maybe have mentioned her and you’d just forgotten?”
“No. When I told my Dad, he said he didn’t know her.”
Noah scooped up a handful of the photos and placed them back into the box. “I guess stranger things have happened.”
I held onto a few photos and looked at them again. “Matilda was wearing a key on a chain around her neck in every one of these photos.”
Noah took the photos from me, his nose scrunched. “I remember that key. She never took it off. I asked her about it one day, but she told me to mind my own business.”
“What happened to it after she died?”
“I have no idea. When I found her, I called Sergeant Doyle Canon and he came straight over.”
“You didn’t call an ambulance?” I interrupted.
I know I would have if I was there.
“The closest hospital is in Westport.”
“What happens in an emergency?”
“We have a doctor in town and we have Tim. He owns a helicopter and will get you to Westport faster than any ambulance will.”
“Oh, well that’s good to know. So, what happened after the police got here?”
“Oh, um, Doyle did the official thing and the undertaker eventually turned up and took her away.”
“I wish I’d known about her. I would have gone to her funeral,” I said, quietly.
“There wasn’t one.”
Another wave of shock hit me. “So, what happened to her?”
Noah shrugged. “I don’t know. She was cremated but other than that you should ask Doyle.”
That was a good idea.
Once we’d cleaned everything up and placed the room back the way Matilda had left it, Noah offered to show me around the farm.
“Hop on when you’re ready.” He handed me a helmet, as he straddled the dusty quad bike.
“Why aren’t you wearing a helmet?”
“I’ll get helmet hair,” he replied with a grin. “Ever been on a bike?”
I used my fingers to pull my hair into a low ponytail. “I once dated a guy who rode a motorbike, but it was a long time ago.”
“I’m sure you have a lot of fond memories,” Noah coaxed.
“Hmmm, I’m not sure my mum would agree.”
“So, your mum didn’t like you on a bike, or didn’t like the guy who rode the bike?”
“Mum didn’t like the fact that I ‘borrowed’,” I air quoted, “her favorite platform heels and used the exhaust as a footrest. Let’s just say that the heels and the exhaust were permanently joined after that ride.”
Noah laughed. “I bet the owner of the bike wasn’t too happy either.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much the end of that relationship. It didn’t matter though. Mum grounded me for so long, the guy would have been old and senile before I could have seen him again.”
Noah looked at my white strappy sandals with the thin cross strap that curved around my ankle.
“What?” I may have temporarily retired the heels but it didn’t mean my shoes needed to be ugly.
“Are they plastic?”
“Nope and anyway I promise to keep them well away from the exhaust.”
“Hop on, then.”
I climbed on the back of the bike, and with that, Noah hit the start button. The bike roared to life and the vibration traveled through the seat and tickled areas which hadn’t been tickled in quite a while.
“Put your arms around me and hang on tight,” Noah commanded.
Oh boy!
By the time we’d made it around the perimeter of Dun Roamin’, I was one very contented girl. The fact I’d had to keep my arms firmly pressed against Noah’s hard abs stirred feelings which could have caused a lot of frustration to a woman who hadn’t had male contact in a long time, but the vibration of the quad bike sorted that situation out. I just hoped Noah thought the rose in my cheeks was caused by the wind whipping through my hair.
“So, this um...is the um, dam, is it?” I asked as Noah pulled the bike to a stop and killed the engine. My hands accidentally rode up inside his T-shirt and the heat of his skin zipped all the way to my nether regions. I really wished he would restart the bike up—quickly.
“Sure is,” he said, holding out his hand so that I could remove myself from my position in heaven.
Bugger.
Reluctantly accepting his offer and getting off the bike, I removed the helmet and gazed across the water.
To be honest the view didn’t compare to the one in Westport where the aqua blue river twinkled its way into the ocean, but considering we were in the middle of acre after acre of black soil with the copper head of the sorghum crop bouncing in the breeze, the water was a welcome sight.
Shame it hadn’t been around this morning when I’d needed it to put out a fire.
“Nice spot.” I moved to the bench seat beneath the tall paperbark tree, and plonked my tush on the timber slats.
“I’d often find Matilda out here staring toward the horizon,” Noah said, sitting alongside me. “This was one of her favorite places.”
“I can see why she liked it here.”
“This place gets in your blood.”
We fell silent and the sound of nature exhaling danced across the water, leaving ripples where it had touched the surface. A duck slowly glided by, seemingly not having a care in the world. A crow cawed in the distance and the sun settled on my skin, warming me.
“It’s so quiet out here. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to this,” I said, my voice just above a whisper.
“You learn to find the peace in it.”
I turned to face him, as he looked into the distance. His eyes were soft, a smile playing at the edge of his full lips. I wasn’t sure I could ever get used to the quiet, but I sure could get used to the view. And the loneliness disappeared whenever Noah was within my reach.
I jolted at my thoughts, and spun away before he caught me staring at him. I had a lot to deal with in the coming months, adding a man to that equation would only complicate things. No, I just needed to learn to ride a quad bike. That would definitely suffice for now.
“So, tell me about your life before you moved here,” Noah prodded.
“I told you earlier.”
“No, I want to know more. I’ve only ever visited Westport for day trips. I want to know what it is you love about the place. I’d love to know why you opened a bakery.”
My stomach twisted at the thought of my old life. The life that had changed in such a short space of time. “Okay, but if I tell you, you have to promise you’ll tell me all about you.”
And that’s what we did.
I recounted the years growing up in Westport as an only child, I told him about my family, my friends and about my hopes and dreams for my bakery. Then I listened with bated breath as he recounted how he too grew up as an only child, I learned about his life on the farm and his dreams for the future.
By the time we had both stopped talking, the sun was starting to set below the crop and my stomach was telling me it was dinner time.