From: Lonely_In_Longreach
To: Solitary_In_Sydney
Subject: RE: Here I come!
Dear Sarah,
Sorry for the delay, it’s been a busy week. You didn’t scare me at all. I respect your honesty. As you know, I’m a widower and I’ve been out of the dating game for a long time. I’m ready to get back into it and see if I can find romance. Maybe with you. We’ll see.
I’m excited that you’re coming to Longreach. I can’t wait to meet you either. I do know Maddie McRae, she’s best friends with my son Levi. She told me she’d invited a journalist, but I had no idea it would be you. I couldn’t believe the coincidence! What are the chances? I reckon it’s down to fate if you ask me.
Maddie has invited me and Levi to your welcome dinner. She thinks it’s a good idea for you to meet some locals. As I’m the local in question, I agree.
I haven’t told Levi that I’m online with a view to finding a new relationship. I don’t know how he’d go thinking I’m replacing his mother. So, if you don’t mind playing things low-key at dinner, just until I can talk to Levi and he can get a chance to meet you. Hell, until I get a chance to meet you.
Can’t wait,
Sam
Sarah had been all Maddie talked about for days. Sarah-this and Sarah-that. Her constant chatter was driving Levi nuts. He’d had a headache since Thursday and had solemnly considered whether or not underage drinking might help.
In the end, he’d given in. Or was that up? Either way, he did what he always did and Maddie got her way. It was too late to stop things, and he suspected he had no power to do so anyway. Not a pleasant thought. Maddie, a force of nature at the best of times, had successfully railroaded him. He knew the exact moment she’d done so.
They’d been in her bedroom on Wednesday, studying for a geography exam, of which Maddie could not see the point.
‘I still don’t get why the low life expectancy of babies has anything to do with the geography of Swaziland.’ Maddie threw her pen down on the bed and leaned back into the mass of cushions. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
‘If you say one word about me needing glasses, Levi Costello, I will hurt you very badly,’ she growled.
‘Okay, okay.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘What I was going to say was the problem isn’t with the geography, you know, like the land itself. Geography is also about stuff like urbanisation, services available to people, how far they have to travel, how the environment impacts them. Stuff like drought or floods.’
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. ‘I still don’t get it,’ she said after a little while.
He sighed. ‘Okay, Mama Swazi lives in the countryside and can’t get to the hospital because it’s in the city and there’s no health care service available to her.’
‘That’s the geography of urbanisation.’ She squinted at him as if reading the answer off his forehead.
‘Yes. And then let’s say there’s a flood and the roads get washed out so she can’t get there anyway, even if she wanted to.’
‘That’s the geography of the land.’
‘That’ll do,’ he said, exhausted from trying to explain the same thing to her for hours.
‘I still don’t get what the teacher wants us to do for our assignment.’
Levi put his head in his hands and groaned. He didn’t think the assignment had been that complicated until he tried to work on it with Maddie. She could be bright about some things and then, sometimes … well …
‘I’m going to do how the drought here in Longreach has impacted farming methods and changed the way some people have lived for generations. Why don’t you do something on how the drought has made young people look to the cities for their futures and how that impacts the town?’
She lit up, her smile like dynamite blasting through his frustration. ‘Levi, you are a genius.’
She got excited then and started chattering a mile a minute. Made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut. He let her rabbit on while he scrolled through some pictures of solar farms he’d found online. Looked like they were farming on Mars but he knew he could go out the back of his farm and it would look exactly the same. He liked the idea of his dad being a solar farmer. Kind of cool.
‘Oh my God!’ Maddie sat bolt upright on her bed as if zapped by electricity.
‘What is it?’ He was all attention; the probability of disaster rated highly these days.
‘I got an email from Sarah Lewis.’ Maddie’s eyes glowed as she hooked her hair back behind her ears.
‘Really?’ He inched closer from where he sat on the floor. ‘What does she say?’ he asked cautiously.
Maddie perused the email. ‘Let me read it to you.’
When she was done Maddie clapped her hands together and squealed. ‘See? I told you Fate would intervene.’
‘How is that fate?’ Levi said morosely.
‘She’s definitely coming out here and she wants to come and speak at our school. If that’s not Fate, what is?’
A surge of annoyance rushed through Levi, making his skin prickle. ‘All that has nothing to do with fate, and everything to do with you meddling in other people’s lives. Like you always do.’
‘I do not.’ Maddie’s voice rose an octave with indignation.
‘Yes, you do.’ Levi snapped shut the lid of his laptop, ready for an argument. ‘You came up with the ridiculous scheme to find my dad a girlfriend so that I can go with you to university in Sydney. Not fate, you.’ He punctuated his point with his index finger. ‘And you were the one who put up the profile on Outback Losers or whatever it is.’
‘Outback Singles,’ she muttered.
‘Whatever.’ He dismissed the website with a flick of his wrist. ‘Fate didn’t do it. You did.’
‘Yeah, but Fate brought us Sarah.’ She closed the lid of her laptop and moved it aside, meeting him halfway on the battlefield.
Levi snorted in the way he knew always annoyed her. ‘Right, fate was waiting for you to put up a fake profile of my dad so it could deliver him the girl of his dreams.’
‘Woman, not girl.’
‘Jesus, Maddie.’ Levi threw up his hands. ‘You can’t be serious about going through with this.’
‘Why are you always so budget, Levi?’ she snapped. ‘Always settling for second best. Why not take a chance on achieving your dream for once?’
‘University in Sydney is your dream, not mine.’ As soon as the words left his lips he wished he could take them back. Of course he wanted to go to Sydney with her. He couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t contain Maddie McRae.
‘Is that so?’ She narrowed her eyes at him, as if daring him to say it again. He was not that stupid.
He ran both hands through his hair. ‘Look, I do want to go with you, only this plan of yours is asking for trouble. We still have a couple of years and maybe Dad will find someone by then. He’s started dating again and that’s a good sign, right?’
This time Maddie snorted with unladylike zeal. ‘You have got to be kidding me. When was the last time anyone date-worthy came through town? You can’t leave these things …’
‘Up to fate?’ He ducked as she threw a cushion at him.
‘Can I remind you that I have a track record of successful matchmaking? You’ve witnessed every one of them.’
Levi threw the cushion back at her and she batted it away with her hands.
‘Get over yourself, Maddie. All those people already liked each other. You hardly did anything to make it happen. Drop a few hints. Invite them both somewhere and then not show up so they’re left together. Amateur stuff.’ He could see her face getting redder and redder yet he couldn’t stop. ‘What you’re doing now is outrageous. You’re manipulating people, letting them believe something that’s not true to get something you want.’
‘I can’t believe you said that.’ She looked genuinely horrifled and he waited for her to crown him with a pillow. Instead she slid off the bed to sit next to him. ‘I cannot believe you really think that of me.’
He reddened in turn, not realising he’d thought about the situation in quite that way until the words were out of his mouth.
‘Do you want me to stop? Do you want your dad to be lonely for the rest of his life? Do you want to stay here while I go to Sydney and have a fantastic life living by the beach?’
Levi wanted to say yes, they should stop before they got into trouble. That he didn’t think his dad was that lonely, and explain that while he wanted to go to Sydney with her he hated the thought of his dad growing old alone. Missing his mum.
Like he did.
Instead he simply stared into her eyes, the colour of the sky at dawn, and said nothing at all.
‘Well?’ she said, giving him no quarter. ‘I need to hear you say it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think the way we’re going about things is wrong. I don’t want to get into trouble. I don’t want you to get into trouble. The parents are going to go spare when they find out what we’ve done.’
Maddie inched closer, invading his personal space and stealing all the oxygen. She shrugged one shoulder provocatively. ‘What if they don’t find out? What if we get away with it? By the time they find out they will have fallen in love. They won’t care. They may even find it funny.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Levi managed hoarsely.
‘Love can do strange things to people,’ she said.
He was feeling strange right at the moment.
Then she delivered the deathblow, one he had not yet recovered from and had doubts that recovering from this kind of death was even possible.
She kissed him.
Square on the lips for, like, the longest time.
Her lips were the kind of soft impossible to imagine without experiencing it. The scent of her—flowery shampoo, bubble gum, and Impulse body spray—overwhelmed his senses as his world narrowed down to the sensation of her lips against his and her hands resting lightly on his leg. He was sure the imprint of her palms would be burned into his skin for eternity.
His universe began to spin counter clockwise and tip sideways. With eyes tightly closed, he had concentrated on staying upright, sure that once he opened his eyes again the world would have changed forever.
And he’d been right.
Three days had passed and he now found himself sitting in the Star Cinema watching an early session of some awful chick flick, way too close to Maddie for comfort, while his dad dropped Miss Kempton at the airport at the same time Sarah was due to arrive. Maddie hummed with excitement while he sank further and further inside himself, wanting desperately for something to happen to save him from the Armageddon he knew waited for him down the road.
Maddie’s shoulder brushed his and all the muscles in his body bunched tight, as if trying instinctively to draw him away from her. He couldn’t be near her without thinking about the kiss. Without his body betraying him in embarrassing ways. Levi didn’t want things to be this way with Maddie. He rebelled against the change to their friendship, to the loss of the easygoing camaraderie they’d always shared.
He didn’t have a name for what they were now, but he didn’t like it. Mostly because she didn’t seem to notice anything had changed at all.
Maddie watched the cinema screen with distracted interest. She could barely contain herself. In moments, her greatest matchmaking enterprise would be well and truly underway. Nerves clutched at her belly. The stakes were incredibly high. She’d done her homework, gone over her plan a zillion times looking for the flaws and the cracks. As long as she stayed on her toes, nothing should go wrong.
She’d worked her backside off finding potential interviewees for Sarah. Then Sarah would be grateful to her and stay longer in town. Her mum and dad had an extensive network of friends to draw from. Adults always liked talking about the old days so everyone had agreed. She’d also drawn up an itinerary for Sarah’s stay including a few outings with Mr C in case he needed a little prodding along. While she had absolute faith in Fate it didn’t hurt to have a backup plan.
Right at this moment, Miss Kempton was getting ready to board the flight to Brisbane. She was pretty enough in her own way. Maddie could see what Levi’s dad found attractive in her. But wait until Mr C got a look at Sarah. Miss Kempton couldn’t compare.
She sighed, happily perched on the edge of something momentous. She should consider a career as a professional matchmaker. Maddie made a mental note to Google career opportunities when she got home. No point having a natural talent and not using it.
Levi shifted in the seat next to her, trying to fold himself into a corner. An impossible feat given the lack of space a cinema seat offered. He’d been acting weird since she’d kissed him. Kissing him might not have been the smartest thing she could have done upon reflection, and she’d done a lot of that over the last few days.
Firstly, how could she get Levi to be normal again? Taking the kiss back couldn’t be done. They could only move forward. If she could find a way to get him to move past the incident. He acted like she revolted him, pulling away from her every chance he got. The physical withdrawal wasn’t the worst of it. He’d spoken in monosyllabic grunts ever since their argument. She missed their conversations, the banter and joking. She missed him.
Secondly, why had she kissed him? Big question without an answer. Her heart totally belonged to Liam Newson. He represented the magical future awaiting her in Sydney. Levi was her best friend. Or he used to be. Kissing him had crossed the line. She knew that. Up until that moment in her bedroom she’d never considered kissing Levi. Never. Why had she done it? No reason she could think of except the moment had demanded it. One minute she’d been arguing with him and the next she’d found her lips on his, a sweet tingly sensation moving seductively through her body like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
Would kissing Liam be like that too? Or better? Maddie indulged herself in her favourite fantasy, closing her eyes and conjuring Liam up. They stood on Bondi Beach—she’d looked up pictures of Bondi online so she could better imagine it—Liam slipped his arms around her waist and drew her towards him until their hips fused together. He brushed her hair back from her face, his eyes tender with love, and then he lowered his head. As their lips met Liam … morphed into Levi! Maddie snapped her eyes open, pushing the disturbing image out of her mind. Since when did kissing Levi become a thing?
She crossed her arms and slid a little further down into her seat. The hands of her watch, barely visible in the half-light, told her Sarah’s plane must have landed by now. After getting her hire car, Sarah would drive the short distance to town and book in at the motel.
Maddie intended to call in on her way home from the cinema and invite Sarah to dinner with her family, including Levi and Mr C. The trickiest part was the first proper meeting and everything hinged on Levi staying cool.
What if Levi betrayed her and didn’t follow through on their plan? She studied him, his face partially illuminated by the flickering light of the movie screen. He might be angry enough. Try as she might she couldn’t recall any time in their history when he’d been angry at her. Annoyed, yes. Frustrated, for sure. But angry? Never.
If he was willing to destroy their plan, then he wouldn’t want to come to Sydney with her either. Suddenly a life without Levi in it loomed large in her imagination. The sensation of instability shook her. He wouldn’t go that far, would he? He wouldn’t abandon her like that. Not Levi.
Maddie worried her lip with her teeth while her thoughts tumbled around in her head. She’d always been good at two things, people and solutions. Levi was her people. She would find a solution to this. She had to.