They parked their barrow on the veranda and went to check on Amina. She was fast asleep, as was Danny, curled up beside her. Luka was by their bedside, calmly watchful. The big dog looked up at them as if to say: What’s important enough to wake them up?
Nothing was. But the foils had to come off.
‘I can take them off myself,’ Julie said, but dubiously, because in truth they were now overdue to come off and, by the time she took off every last one, the fine foils would be well overdone. What happened if you cooked your hair for too long? Did it fall out? She had no idea, and she had no intention of finding out.
‘I’ll take them out,’ Rob said and looked ruefully down at himself. ‘Your beautician, though, ma’am, is filthy.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, your client is filthy too. Can you imagine me popping into a high-class Sydney salon like this?’
‘You’d set a new trend,’ Rob told her, touching her foils with a grin. ‘Smoked Sputnik. It’d take off like a bush fire.’
‘Of course it would,’ she lied. She’d reached the bathroom now and looked at the mirror. ‘Ugh.’
‘Let’s get these things off then,’ he said. ‘Sit.’
So she sat on the little white bathroom stool, which promptly turned grey with soot. Rob stood behind her and she watched in the mirror as he slid each foil from her hair.
He worked swiftly, dextrously, intently. He was always like this on a job, she remembered. When he was focused on something he blocked out the world.
When he made love to her, the world might well not exist.
He was standing so close. He smelled of fire, of smoke, of burned eucalyptus. His fingers were in her hair, doing mundane things, removing foils, but it didn’t feel mundane. It felt...it felt...
Too soon, the last of the foils was gone, heaped into the trash. Her hair was still spiky, looking very red. Actually, she wouldn’t mind if it was green, she thought, as long as she could find an excuse to keep Rob here with her. To stretch out this moment.
‘I can...’ Her voice wobbled and she fought to steady it. ‘I can go from here. I’ll shower it off.’
‘You need a full scalp massage to even the colour,’ Rob told her, but his voice wasn’t steady either. It was, however, stern. ‘I’m Amina’s underling. She’s given us orders. The least we can do is obey.’
‘I can do it by myself.’
‘But you don’t have to,’ he said, and he bent and touched her forehead with his mouth. It was a feather touch, hardly a kiss, just a fleeting sensation, but it sent shivers through her whole body. ‘For now, just give in and forget about facing things alone.’
* * *
So she gave in. Of course she did. She sat perfectly still while Rob massaged her scalp with his gorgeous, sensuous fingers and her every nerve ending reacted to him.
He was filthy, covered with smoke and ash. If you met this man on a dark night you’d scream and run, she thought, catching his reflection in the mirror in the split second she allowed herself to glance at him. For she couldn’t watch. Feeling him was bad enough...or good enough...
Good was maybe too small a word. Her entire body was reacting to his touch. Any more and she’d turn and take him. She wanted...
‘Conditioner,’ Rob said, only the faintest tremor cutting through the prosaic word. ‘Amina said conditioner.’
‘It’s in the shower.’
‘Then I suggest,’ he said, bending down so his lips were right against her ear, ‘that we adjourn to the shower.’
‘Rob...’
‘Mmm?’
‘N...nothing.’
‘No objections?’
‘We...we might lock the door first.’
‘What an excellent idea,’ he said approvingly. ‘I have a practical wife. I always knew I had a practical wife. I’d just forgotten...’
And seemingly in one swift movement the door was locked and she was swept into his arms. He pushed the shower screen back with his elbow and deposited her inside.
It was a large shower. A gorgeous shower. They’d built it...well, they’d built it when they were in love.
It was wide enough for Rob to step inside with her and tug the glass screen closed after them.
‘Clothes,’ he said. ‘Stat?’
‘Stat?’
‘That’s what they say in hospitals in emergencies. Oxygen here, nurse, stat.’
‘So we need clothes?’
‘We don’t need clothes. If this was a hospital and I was a doctor, that’s what I’d be saying. Nurse, my wife needs her clothes removed. Stat.’
‘Rob...’
‘Yes?’
She looked at him and she thought she needed to say she wasn’t his wife. She should say she didn’t have the courage to take this further. She was too selfish, too armoured, too closed.
But he was inches away from her. He smelled of bush fire. His face was grimy and blackened. As was she.
The only part of her that wasn’t grimy or blackened was her hair. Crimson droplets were dripping onto the white shower base, mixing with the ash.
How much colour had Amina put in? How had she trusted a woman she didn’t know to colour her hair?
Rob was standing before her, holding her.
She trusted this man with all her heart, and that was the problem. She felt herself falling...
Where was her armour?
She’d find it tomorrow, she told herself. This was an extraordinary situation. This was a time out, pretend, a disaster-induced remarriage that would dissolve as soon as the rest of the world peered in. But for this moment she was stranded in this time, in this place...
In this shower.
And Rob was tugging her shirt up over her head and she was lifting her arms to help him. And then, as the shirt was tossed over the screen, as he turned his attention to her bra, she started to undo the buttons of his shirt.
Her hands were shaking.
He took her hands in his and held. Tight. Hard. Cupping her hands, completely enfolding them.
‘There’s no need for shaking, Jules. I’d never hurt you.’
‘I might...hurt you.’
‘I’m
