It made a nice domestic scene, her mother and the gorgeous Liam Sinclair sitting at the table. But it was unrealistic. Clover turned to the fridge, trying to calm her frayed nerves in the cool interior. She retrieved the ingredients she needed and dumped them on the sideboard.
‘Need any help?’
Clover shivered as the velvet of his voice brushed the sensitive place in her mind. She almost sighed in pleasure, but instead she placed a hand at her hip and faced him. ‘Any good at making salads?’
He eyed the vegetables she laid on the bench. ‘Only if you tell me how to chop and combine.’
‘You’ve never made a salad?’
He had the good grace to look sheepish. ‘Toast is my specialty. But I’m up for a lesson.’
The infectious grin he sent her made her want to return it. Feeling her mouth pull, she turned her attention to the lettuce. What was it about him that made her react so immediately, so fully? She was becoming attuned to every nuance about him. The way he stood when he watched her — and she knew he did when he thought she wasn’t watching — the way he lifted his brow when he didn’t agree with her, the way his lips curled in that secretive, seductive twist that had her insides leaping in agreement.
She glanced at her mother at the table. She had a silly smile on her face, and was watching Liam with bright doe-eyes. Clover knew she was reading too much into the situation. She didn’t want to give her mother false hope. She knew her mother only wanted her happiness at heart, but she was pegging it on the wrong man. Clover saw the little signs that told her, her mother was getting that little bit worse every day. Soon she would have to think about home help. She wouldn’t be able to leave to the café knowing her mother might need help one time and have to wait hours for her to come home.
But none of that was Liam’s fault. Maybe, while she was at home and away from business, she should give him some slack. After all, she told Holly it would be advantageous to get to know him, and this was her chance.
With a soft sigh, she handed the lettuce to Liam. ‘Tear up the pieces and give it a wash.’ She found one of the better salad bowls in the cupboard and handed it to him. ‘Then put them in the bowl.’
He took the bowl. ‘Isn’t there more to a salad than lettuce?’
‘I’ve got the rest,’ Clover said. In the time she’d cut the rest of the vegetables, he’d be finished with the lettuce. Clover set to work on the tomatoes and cucumber while Liam started.
She watched him work awkwardly on the lettuce from the corner of her eye. There was nothing fluent about any of his movements. He turned the vegetable like he didn’t know which way was up. Clearly, he was lost. ‘What are you doing?’ She couldn’t help but ask.
‘Stripping the lettuce. Like you said.’
‘All you have to do is shove your thumb into the middle of the lettuce and pull it apart.’
‘Right.’ He wiggled his thumb into the centre. ‘Now what.’
‘Rip it apart.’ Clover made the movements with her hands.
Liam copied. The lettuce disintegrated. Leaves scattered over the bench and the floor. ‘There’s a slug on my hand!’
‘Those slugs are back in the garden, Mum,’ Clover called, looking over her shoulder at her mother. ‘Have we got any more snail bait?’
‘Where do I..? Do you have a paper towel..?’ Liam said.
‘Just wash it off.’ Clover turned the tap on. There was a horrible clunk, as though a long metal pipe had bust open in the middle of the wall. The tap groaned and shuddered. The water coughed and then nothing. ‘Oh no! I think the pipe’s burst.’
Clover watched the tap in dismay. She knew the pipes had been a long time without service, but she was hoping for a few more months of use. Now it was going to cost a fortune to fix. In these old homes, it was likely the entire plumbing would need to be replaced. That was money she didn’t have.
‘They’ve done well for a century,’ Gloria said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Clover bit back the well of tears that threatened to fall down her cheeks. With the last ounce of her will, she bound them back so that when she faced her mother, her eyes were dry. ‘They have. I’ll ring a plumber in the morning. We’ll have to use the tank tap.’
Then, remembering the slug on Liam’s hand, Clover tore some paper towel to wipe it off. Without thinking she took his hand, scooping off the slug with the paper. She wasn’t ready for the jolt that travelled through her hand and continued up her arm. She gasped, eyes flying to his. He frowned, looking as though he was thinking about a question he had no answer to. He didn’t blink, but watched her through serious eyes. There was a small furrow between his brows as he considered her. It was all she could do but stare back at him.
The warmth from his skin permeated into her bones, sending with it a tantalising thrill, a murmur of awareness, a realisation that she wasn’t immune to him at all. That her body called for his touch, his smell…his taste.
The blood pumped a number of beats in her ears as the world dissolved around her, and all she was aware of was Liam, strong and tall and vibrantly male, and how overwhelming the urge was to melt into him and leave her senses free to roam. The need to touch and explore became irresistible. Before she would cave in and make a fool of herself, she tried to remove her nerveless fingers from his grasp and realised with a start that he wasn’t letting her.
His long, slender fingers wound around hers in a firm grip. Her hand, so small by comparison, sunk neatly into his grasp. Welcomed it, as though it was always meant to be. The gentle pressure coupled with skin on skin was mesmerising. Her gaze dropped to their linked hands. The sizes so suited.
His hand was free of calluses, the skin unmarked by hard physical work or the normal wear and tear of everyday living. Hers by comparison…the multitude of fine white scars leapt out at her. He wouldn’t be used to hands like these. Worker’s hands. Hands used to manual labour. That wasn’t what he was about. The differences in their hands went more than skin deep and the bluntness of that realisation had her taking her hands from his and sliding them behind her back.
‘We need a bucket,’ she said. Her voice was low and husky. She cleared her throat, looking for the kitchen bucket she used to collect scraps for the chickens. She’d washed it last night and it was still drying on the sink.
She refused to look at Liam. Didn’t want to see the same realisation in the cast of his eyes. Didn’t want to be seen as a charity case, as those with money couldn’t help but notice. If there was a class system in Australia, they represented two of them, the divide between them too large to pretend they could close. ‘I…I’ll be back in a minute.’
She took the bucket and went out through the back door. She filled the bucket with the cool fresh water from the rain tank she’d installed during the drought. At the time it was her contribution to restricting water use from the Thompson Dam. She left the wire handle over the tap and let the water run into the bucket.
Looking up at the night sky, she put her hands on her lower back and stretched backwards. She closed her eyes, enjoying the peace she found in her backyard. The gentle cooing from the chickens’ coop told her they had returned to the warmth of their house for the night.
Snowbell appeared on the porch, walking intently towards her. The cat rubbed up against her, her tail wrapping about Clover’s leg. With a slight smile, she picked the animal up and cuddled it, rubbing her chin on her silky fur.
Those same fingers that left such an impression on her found Snowbell’s head. Like the contrary animal cats were, Snowbell meowed, pushing her head into Liam’s palm. Just as she’d felt the urge to do a few minutes ago. She wouldn’t give in to feeling jealous of a cat.
‘We never had pets when I was a boy.’
Clover watched him, surprised. ‘I thought every child had a pet of some sort.’
He gave her a twisted smile. ‘Dad didn’t want the furniture wrecked.’
‘Sounds like you didn’t really have a house you could live in.’
Liam shrugged. ‘We weren’t there very often.’
‘We?’
‘My younger brother, Connor and I. He’s two years younger than I am. Didn’t matter, we made boarding school home enough. You don’t know what you don’t have.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Clover said.
There was a pause in the conversation where neither spoke. The sound of the night was filled with Snowbell’s purring. There was a comfort sharing a quiet moment, like this. It was a gentle moment. A very domestic moment. Liam Sinclair wasn’t a man that did domestic.
There she was going again. Thinking too much. She manoeuvred Snowbell and placed her in Liam’s arms. ‘There, get your pats in now. Make up for lost time.’
Liam held the cat awkwardly in his arms. The cat had stopped meowing. An ominous sign that his awkwardness was rubbing off on the cat. And the cat had sharp claws. ‘Just put your hand here, and hold her there.’ Clover arranged his arms and hands so that the cat was at a more comfortable angle. Snowbell settled into his arms and with a rub on her head, continued to purr. Clover looked at her traitorous cat from the corner of her eye.
‘So, you don’t have a favourite childhood meal, and you didn’t have a pet. What did you have in your childhood?’
Liam glanced at her and dropped his gaze back to the cat. ‘We had a nanny. She was pretty good. She took us to all the places kids like to go. Every summer we’d go to the Gold Coast and spend a week at the fun parks.’
Clover raised her brows. ‘That must have been fun.’ His childhood didn’t seem to be all doom and gloom. In fact, it seemed pretty privileged. A week at the Gold Coast in peak time didn’t come cheap.
A brief smile lit his face. ‘Connor and I ran amok. We got the best times coming down the water slides at Wet’n’Wild.’
Clover thought about her childhood holidays from school. Although they were nothing as grand as Liam’s, she didn’t think she missed anything. She did simple things with her parents. ‘One summer Dad and I planted those plum trees over there.’ Clover indicated the row of large, leafless trees at the fence line. ‘They don’t look anything now, but they have the best crop of Blood Plums that I know of. I spend a couple of week preserving everything I can from them.’
‘What sort of preserves?’
Most men she knew didn’t care what she made. She looked at Liam closely, but he seemed genuinely interested. ‘Heaps of jams. Plums with various flavours. Some spicy, some sweet. Nan left me her recipes and I use those. They might be old, but they’re good.’
‘Things like that usually are. We had lots of jams. Right out of the supermarket.’
‘Nothing wrong with those.’
No, but…sometimes I think it would have been nice…’ He shook his head, a sentimental smile on his mouth. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Go on. Tell me.’ He looked so…lost. Almost wounded.
‘Well…Dad is a busy man. You don’t build an empire like Sinclair and Sons without putting in the time.’
‘He never came with you.’ It was a crystal clear statement. She felt his hurt. People never get over the rejection of a parent. It was a pain that never went away. She would know. She turned her head so he wouldn’t see the shine in her eyes.
‘But, Connor and I had each other at least.’
‘You sound close. What about your mother?’
‘We are close…and she died when I was five. It was an aggressive cancer.’
‘Oh. I’m so sorry.’ She knew that pain too. It was still as sharp as it was five years ago. ‘My father…’
Liam watched her. Waited. Prompted. ‘Yes?’
She didn’t know what had come over her. Maybe it was the clear, freezing night. Maybe it was the serenity of Snowbell’s purring, or just maybe it was the fact he was telling her something personal that took away the scary billionaire mantle he wore during work hours. But he was reaching for her. Offering himself in some small tiny way, and she didn’t have it in her to reject the offer. ‘My father. He…he died, too.’
‘It’s harsh.’ He murmured. So softly. Understanding laced his tone. He didn’t offer condolences. He knew they didn’t work too well, and were only said when someone didn’t really know what to say.
‘It was heart failure.’ Her voice sounded thick in her ears. Raw. His death was something she hadn’t gotten over yet. He had died at the hands of big business. She stared at the row of plum trees until she could focus through the tears. In a few short moments, Liam had made her want to cry more times than she had in the past five years.
‘Now wonder you love this house so much. So many memories.’
His voice touched her in a way that had her insides shaking. It was complete understanding without the judgment. ‘I can’t list the amount of people who have told us to sell and move on.’
His fingers moved smoothly over the animal’s head, massaging the cat behind her ears. Snowbell leant her head into his hand, maximizing the stroke. Liam’s well manicured fingers slipped through her soft fur. The cat’s eyes drifted together as she lost herself in his touch. If that was the reaction he could elicit from a cat, imagine what those hands could do to her body. She shuddered, imagining his hands leisurely trailing over her arms, her back… over her breasts. The bucket overflowed, water poured to the ground.
Clover turned the tap off and took the bucket off the handle in a neat, swift movement. ‘Ready for dinner?’
Liam put the cat at his feet and followed her back through the door. Clover dodged her mother’s questioning look as she settled the bucket in the sink, making a concerted effort to keep her attention locked on the vegetables.
She sighed. No matter how personal the moment, it hadn’t really changed a thing. He was who he was and did what he did, and she was struggling to keep her hold of her dream, and her house. Maybe knowing the enemy wasn’t such a good idea after all.