Man About The House

‘Don’t bother washing them,’ he told her. ‘Just rinse them and shove them in the dishwasher.’

‘I don’t mind doing them. I enjoy standing here and looking out at the beach.’

‘Yeah? Gee, Meaghan and I always thought it was more fun being on the beach, which is why Mum got the dishwasher in the first place.’

‘True.’ She sent him another of her breath-defying grins. ‘But, since I never saw a beach until I was sixteen, I don’t consider having to look at one from this distance any real hardship.’

Brett knew his curiosity showed, but rather than voice it he merely crossed to the kitchen linen cupboard and, pulling out a dishtowel, joined her at the sink.

‘It’s so incredibly beautiful. It must have been wonderful growing up here?’

Though she phrased the words as a question, her attention was fixed firmly on the other side of the ceiling reaching window, and her enraptured expression as she surveyed the surrounding cliffs, crags, sand and surf suggested she’d merely been uttering her thoughts aloud. Clearly she was in awe of all that lay between them and the horizon.

It was, be supposed, only natural that growing up here had bred a familiarity which to a degree had immunised him against the natural beauty the scene presented, but for some reason Joanna’s reaction to it urged him to look back and try to see it through less jaded eyes. When he did it was as if each new wave that rolled in and collapsed on the beach carried a precious but too long ignored memory of the past.

His father teaching him and Meaghan to swim. The Christmas he’d been given his first surfboard and had been practically tied to a chair to get him to stay out of the water long enough to eat dinner with the multitude of relatives who’d turned up for a hot turkey dinner. He remembered how they’d all been politely appalled when his ‘radical’ father had served up salad and exotic seafood instead. James McAlpine, whose motto had been ‘Tradition is for the gutless and uninspired’, had been highly amused by the predictable reaction, yet he’d still produced an alternative menu of baked vegetables, roast turkey and pork with all the traditional trimmings.

Growing up. Brett had at times been embarrassed by the fact his parents had rejected most of the middle class values embraced by his peers’ families and teachers, who’d viewed his upbringing as being at best unconventional—especially after his mother was arrested at an anti-nuclear rally. Yet now, from the distance of maturity, he could appreciate that James and Kathleen McAlpine had provided their children with a loving and secure environment that went far beyond their material comforts and liberal views on discipline. They’d taught love and tolerance by example, and yet while firmly adhering to their own beliefs had never tried to force feed them to their children.

Yeah, he thought, gazing out at the beach but seeing much more. It had been wonderful growing up here.

As his eyes drifted to the outcrop of rocks at the northern end of the beach yet another time-locked image floated through his mind. One that not only made him smile, but kindled a desire to snatch a piece of the past. But this time, unlike this morning, when he’d dug out his old wetsuit and board, he felt like sharing it

‘Joanna,’ he said, ‘have you got some ratty old jeans and a pair of runners?’

CHAPTER FOUR

THE mid-morning July air was cool but not cold as they picked their way over moss-covered rocks still damp from the earlier tide.

‘Okay, now I know why you wanted me in old clothes and sneakers,’ Joanna said. ‘But where exactly are we going?’

Brett waited until she’d sussed out the width of the rock pool which separated them and then agilely leapt over it before pointing to the wall of rock rising on his right. ‘In there.’

‘We’re going to climb the cliff?’ Her tone questioned his sanity.

‘Nope.’ He pulled at a weedy overhanging scrub growing from wide ancient cracks in the upper rockface to reveal a metre-wide cavity at its base. ‘We’re going to crawl into it.’

Shooting him a sceptical look, she crouched to inspect the cave entrance, then frowned over her shoulder at him. ‘It’s pitch-black. We can’t go in there.’

‘Sure we can...’ He fished out the penlight he’d tucked in his back pocket. ‘We did all the time as kids.’

‘Presumably you were somewhat smaller then,’ she said, her gaze running pointedly over him. ‘The only way you’d get in there now would be flat on your belly.’

‘You got it.’

Watching her mentally assimilate this was a fascinating exercise. A tiny ‘V’ formed between her perfectly arched eyebrows as she flicked her gaze back to the cave’s entrance; a moment later she started to worry her bottom lip with her teeth.

‘Is it safe?’ she asked, without looking at him.

‘Rock-solid.’ he said glibly, then added, ‘High tide is hours away.’

He dropped onto his knees beside her. ‘When we were kids we used to have time trials to see who could get in and out quickest. The record was less than five minutes.’

‘Did you hold it?’

‘Yep!’ He grinned. ‘Until my mate Jason broke it. The sub-five time is his. How’s the hangover?’

‘Shh!’ She scowled. ‘I’m hoping if I ignore it it’ll go away.’

He laughed. ‘So how do you want to do this; you want me to lead?’

‘Who said I wanted to do it at all?’

‘No one.’ He grinned again. ‘But you have very expressive eyes, Jo, and right now they’re practically sparking with anticipation.’

A faint flush hinted at her being pleased by his comment, but she produced a wry smile. ‘How do you know it’s not fear?’

‘Gut instinct,’ he responded, privately acknowledging there was a fair bit of sparking going on inside him too. Except in his case he ruefully suspected it owed itself more to Joanna’s face being within easy kissing distance rather than the thrill of reliving a boyhood escapade. Damn, but she was beautiful! And yet amazingly she seemed completely unaware of the fact. Too bad he wasn’t.

‘Brett...I asked you a question?’

Yes, she had. He knew because he’d watched her mouth move. Trouble was, what he’d been imagining those lush little lips saying had deafened him to what they’d actually said. There was probably only one chance in a zillion that a reply of, You bet I want to make love to you! wouldn’t catch her off guard.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ he asked, downshifting his hormones to a lower gear.

‘Once we’re in there,’ she said, pulling a stretchy band from around her wrist and hastily securing her hair into a ponytail at the top of her head, ‘how long will it take us to get to the other side?’

‘There is no “other side”.’

He watched her mull this over, then again check out what from where they were appeared to be only a narrow tunnel. ‘So you’re saying we crawl in forwards and then have to come out backwards?’

He shook his head. ‘After thirty metres or so the tunnel opens up into a huge cave.’

‘So we come out the way we went in?’

He nodded.

‘What’s in the cave?’

‘Nothing.’

Joanna’s excited grin created contradictory feelings within him. Most women would have questioned the point in undertaking an exercise which offered no real rewards, and perversely he now half wished Joanna would throw a hissy fit at the whole idea and refuse to take part on the grounds of putting her fingernails at risk. But it seemed Joanna Ford’s shy-sexy persona hid a streak of adventure. Discovering she possessed yet another quality the women in his past had lacked was as bothering as it was pleasing. It had him sensing he’d put himself between a rock and hard place even before he’d eased onto his stomach and prepared to snake his way into the damp darkness of the tidal cave.

There was a noticeable but not dramatic drop in temperature within the rock tunnel; the air held the distinct smell of salt and the hard sand-crusted surface beneath his body was still damp from the last high tide. Clasping the flashlight in his right hand, Brett snaked his way forward on his elbows and forearms without once having a problem with the tunnel’s vertical clearance. Although width-wise it was an occasional squeeze.

‘Don’t you dare get stuck,’ a muttered voice warned from behind him in one such instance.

‘No worries,’ he assured her. ‘How’re you doing?’