The Turnaround Treasure Shop by Jennie Jones Read Free Book Online

offered him an apologetic smile.
    He walked towards her slowly, hands at his sides, his boots eating up the dew on the grass and leaving ghostly footprints. ‘I’m early,’ he agreed. He tipped his head, indicating the car behind him. ‘Just wanted to…get the…’
    Lily glanced at her four-wheel drive. He’d backed his ute to the front of her vehicle.
    â€˜I’ll let you get on with it,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk to work.’
    He seemed to come out of his reverie then and shook his head. ‘No. I’ll wait for you. I just…’
    His eyes seemed glazed, and he had his chin raised, mouth compressed, as though trying to get his focus — or keep his focus.
    â€˜I’ll go get your vehicle hooked up.’ He blinked a couple of times. ‘Your car…to mine.’
    Lily waited for him to finish whatever sentence he was stumbling over.
    â€˜I mean…I’ll go. Get the car.’ He thumbed behind him, blinked a few more times as if his eye sockets were burning and turned away from her. ‘Take your time.’ He moved to his big silver ute, yanked open the driver’s door, flipped the seat with a massive thud and pulled out a tow rope.
    Lily tugged at her lower lip with her fingers as she moved inside the house and quietly closed the door. Why had he seemed so out of sorts? She ran a hand over her head. Was her hair bed-head messy? It was still loose, tumbling over her shoulders and down her bare arms.
    She walked into her bathroom, got a look at herself in the mirror, and froze.
    She wore her yellow yoga shorts — the short ones that needed the drawstring re-threaded. The ones that kept sliding off her hip bones. And her pale blue satin top — the one with the dipped neckline and shoe-string straps. The one that no-one ever saw her in. No wonder he’d been uncomfortable. She looked close to naked.
    ***
    Fully dressed in her waitressing uniform, Lily wriggled on the leather bucket seat, sinking her bottom into its soft depths. So this was luxury. The Orange Bullet, as the children had christened her old four-wheel drive currently being towed behind the king of vehicles, had hard knobbly seats. Once leather, now worn to a thin, papery skin like an onion and patched with duct tape.
    She closed her eyes as Nick drove down the dirt driveway. She’d much rather pay someone from out of town to fix the Orange Bullet but that wasn’t possible because she couldn’t afford to, and wouldn’t allow her mother or her stepfather to cough up financial assistance. So she was in the position of taking a generous offer from a neighbour. And that was life.
    She opened her eyes. ‘This is very kind of you.’
    â€˜No kindness involved. You need something, I happen to be in a position to help out.’
    â€˜Yes, but I can’t pay you for the repairs or the parts, so I was thinking…’ Lily swallowed.
    He gave her a look, brief but penetrating, before studying the track ahead again. ‘You were thinking about what you could do for me. To repay me. Yes?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, then swallowed a second time. Could he read her thoughts because they were visible on her features before she’d even spoken? She hoped not because she was also struggling not to run her eye over him. He was taller than Lily and much bigger in build. He was a masculine powerhouse and she wouldn’t mind taking a closer scrutiny of the muscles he had. A surreptitious scrutiny, obviously.
    â€˜Maybe I could do something in return,’ she said. Perhaps cook him up a freezer-full of home-produce meals from the vegetable garden she maintained at home and from the meat that her farming stepfather had said was nothing but her due since he’d joined her family.
    â€˜No need, Lily.’ He spoke quietly, almost throwing the words away, as though he had an issue with taking so many thanks.
    Lily looked ahead and sank