for a volunteer engineer. When we were done, they offered me a paying job.’
‘That’s quite a story,’ she said. ‘I wondered how you’d got into your line of work.’ He felt her eyes on him but he kept his straight ahead on the road. ‘The thing is, you don’t look like a do-gooder type.’
Her comment so surprised him, he took his hands off the wheel for a second and had to quickly correct the swerve of the car. ‘And what does a do-gooder look like?’
‘Not like he could be an actor or a model. Not like...like you.’
He laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like when people need help.’
He knew he hadn’t been hit with the ugly stick so didn’t demur with false modesty when people commented on the fortunate combination of genes he’d been blessed with. Your looks you were born with. He’d learned it was the personality you developed that counted. Lizzie, for example, was turn-heads lovely but it was her energy and warmth that had drawn him to her. Camilla had been older than him, eye-catching rather than beautiful, but her smarts and confidence had drawn him to her.
‘Is that why you do it? To help people? When a guy like you could do anything he wanted?’
‘What else?’ He went to shrug but winced at the resulting pain in his shoulder. ‘That first project—the camaraderie, seeing people rehoused so quickly, it was a high. I wanted more.’
The tsunami had cured him of his adrenalin-junkie taste for extreme sports. The surfing on five-metre waves, the heli-skiing on avalanches, the mountain biking off the sides of mountains. After seeing real disaster he no longer wanted to court it in the name of sport.
But recently he’d been wondering if he had replaced one sort of thrill for another. The thrill of being called to dangerous sites of recent catastrophes, the still present danger, the high of being needed. It was a rewarding life. But he gave up a lot to do it. Regular hours, a permanent home. Of course that made for a convenient excuse to stay single. But Lizzie was the last person he wanted to discuss that with.
‘It must be dangerous and uncomfortable at times,’ she said. ‘I admire you. I don’t think I could do it. The world is lucky to have people like you.’
He liked that she got it. Seemed that Lizzie took people for what they were.
‘When it all boils down to it, it’s a job the same as any other,’ he said. ‘Not, perhaps, one I’d want to do for the rest of my life. But one I’ve been glad to do while I can.’
‘I don’t believe that for a moment. It’s like a calling.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, not wanting to be drawn further into a conversation that might have him facing awkward truths about his motivations.
He distracted Lizzie by pointing to a flock of multi-coloured rainbow lorikeets hanging upside down off the branches of an indigenous grevillea bush. They were intoxicated by a surfeit of spring nectar from its spiky orange blossoms. When he and Ben had been kids, they’d found the sight of drunken parrots hilarious. He was gratified when Lizzie found it funny too. And tried not to be entranced at the sight and sound of her laughter.
* * *
Lizzie carefully stacked her finds into the back of Jesse’s SUV, feeling more excited about the café than she had since she’d arrived in Dolphin Bay. Jesse had driven her through unsealed roads that twisted through acres of bushland to a property where the parents of one of Jesse’s old school friends had a beekeeping business.
On the spot she’d bought honey harvested from bees that had feasted on blossoms of the eucalypts growing in the adjoining national park and named for the trees: Spotted Gum, Iron Bark, River Gum.
Jesse seemed bemused she’d bought so many jars. ‘This is liquid gold,’ she explained as he slammed shut the door of the boot. ‘Each honey has a particular flavour and they’re not always available. I’m thrilled to bits. It’s also considerably cheaper buying it direct from the farmer.’
‘Your head is buzzing with ideas on what to cook with all this?’ he asked.
She smiled at his joke and he met her smile with one of his own. When she’d first climbed into his car this morning she’d felt tense and on edge in his company but had gradually relaxed to the point she felt she could have a normal conversation without being choked by self-consciousness. ‘You could say that. I love to cook with honey but I also like to drizzle it over, say, baked ricotta for breakfast.’
‘Ricotta cheese for breakfast! A hungry man coming into the café won’t think much of that.’
‘How about served with a stack of buttermilk pancakes?’
‘With a side of bacon?’
‘With a side order of bacon,’ she said.
‘Much better,’ he said. ‘I like a big breakfast to start the day. I might become a regular customer while I’m in town.’
There was something very appealing about a big man with a hearty appetite. She remembered—
No! She would not even think about Jesse in relation to other appetites. Not for the first time she thanked heaven that her time with him at the wedding had been interrupted. She might have been very, very tempted to go much further than kisses and that would have been a big mistake of the irredeemable kind. Mere kisses were easy to put behind her. Though not without a degree of regret that they could never take up where they’d left off.
‘Why not?’ she said lightly. ‘I guarantee we’ll have the best breakfasts and lunches in town. If you’re still hungry after one of my breakfasts I’ll give you your money back.’
‘Is that a challenge?’
‘An all-you-can-eat challenge? You’ll just have to wait and see the food, won’t you?’
‘What about the coffee? A café will live or die on its coffee.’
‘The beans they’re ordering for me through the Harbourside are single origin beans from El Salvador and Guatemala. Fair trade, of course. I have no quibble with them.’ Her voice trailed away at the end. She’d decided not to complain too much about anything to Jesse in case it found its way back to Ben and Sandy.
He turned to her. ‘You don’t sound as confident about the coffee as you do about the food.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Just an edge to the tone of your voice.’
It was scary how quickly he’d learned to read her. Was that the Jesse way with women? Or a genuine friendship building between them? Still, she decided to confide in him—this was just business. ‘You’re right. We’ve got a state-of-the-art Italian coffee machine. But I’m not sure how good the girl is we’ve employed to use it.’
‘If she’s no good, employ someone else,’ he said, again displaying the ruthless business streak that surprised her.
‘Easier said than done in a place like Dolphin Bay. There’s not a lot of need for highly skilled baristas; as a result there aren’t many to call upon.’
‘I’m
