A Home Like Ours by Fiona Lowe (inspirational books for students .txt) 📗

It broke Mum’s heart. She died a few months later.’

‘When was that?’

‘Five years ago.’

‘Did you come to Boolanga for a river change?’

She looked into his craggy face and read care, kindness and a complete lack of judgement. The fact he’d only ever been accepting of the women in the park drove her to tell him, but niggling doubt remained. In her experience, it was one thing for people to ‘help the underprivileged’ and feel good about it in the process. It was another thing entirely to have an underprivileged person inside your friendship group.

He’s great with Jade.

He fathers her.

The thought that Bob might turn his paternalistic tendencies towards her was enough to change her mind. But was their friendship worth anything if she withheld the truth when he’d only ever been open and honest with her?

Does it matter?

For the first time in years, she knew that it did. ‘It’s a bit of a long story.’

He squeezed her hand again. ‘I’ve got the time to listen.’

‘Okay.’ She took in a deep breath and started talking. ‘I’ve only been in Boolanga three years. I was fifty-four when Mum died and I hadn’t worked since before Nicki was born. I was excited about upskilling and I went back to uni and added a graduate diploma in community services to my arts degree. I’d had so much experience as a user of community services, I figured I was the ideal person to work in them as a provider. The study was invigorating and I really thought it was my time to shine.

‘The reality hit when I tried to get a job. No one wants to hire a fifty-five year old.’ She kept her gaze on his face, watching him carefully. ‘If you own your own home, JobSeeker might keep you afloat, but it doesn’t when you’re paying rent in Melbourne. First my fridge died, then I got pneumonia and fell behind in my rent. I sold everything I didn’t need but it wasn’t enough to keep me in my flat.’

Bob’s eyes widened and he closed them for a moment, breathing deeply. When he opened them, the same warm look he usually gave her remained, but something else had joined it. ‘You’re telling me you’ve been homeless, aren’t you?’

‘I slept in my car for six months, including my first few weeks in Boolanga.’ She sighed. ‘I’m half homeless now.’

‘You’re not.’

‘Pfft! I am from where I’m sitting. God, I’m sharing with a baby and a twenty year old who’s currently floating on air and incapable of putting anything away!’

‘Exactly,’ he said firmly. ‘It sounds like family to me.’

‘Jade and Milo are not my family.’

Bob laughed. ‘You want her to go to uni—’

‘So she can have a better quality of life.’

‘Exactly. And in some ways you’re both pretty similar so you bicker like mother and daughter.’

‘It’s nothing to do with a mother–daughter dynamic. You try living with a twenty year old!’

‘And despite your best efforts to keep your distance, Milo’s snuck into your heart. It scares the hell out of you.’

His words rained down, unwelcome and unwanted. ‘Stick to gardening and cycling, old man.’

‘Did you know you only get acerbic when you’re scared?’

His gentle indulgence of her tantrum only made her angrier. ‘I’ve survived sleeping rough, buster. As if a toddler’s going to break me.’ Except after her crying jag, the words rang hollow, stealing the oxygen from her fury. ‘I really hate it when you’re right.’

‘Lucky it doesn’t happen often then, eh?’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘Does Jade know about your sleeping rough?’

‘Yes.’ She shot him a wry smile. ‘I used it as a lesson.’

He laughed. ‘Classic mother move. Have you told her about Nicki?’

‘Not yet. Perhaps I should.’ Her heart contracted and swelled at the same time. ‘Thanks for using her name. It’s nice hearing it again.’

‘Too easy.’

The bang of the wire door sounded and Helen pulled her hand out of Bob’s before Jade or Lachlan could notice. The last thing she needed was Jade misinterpreting empathy for something else.

Hah! Good one, Helen. As if!

And thank God Bob’s hand-holding was one hundred per cent empathy because it had been so long since she’d been intimate with a man, everything was probably rusted shut. An unwanted pang of regret curled under her ribs. She stiffened and blew out a long breath to move it on. It refused to budge.

Jade didn’t trust feeling this happy even though she wanted to. Since the Harry Potter movie, she and Lachlan had talked every night, either in person or on the phone. Helen made herself scarce, but the fact she was in the unit and Milo was in Jade’s room put the brakes on anything other than cuddling on the couch. Not that Jade had any objections to that. There was something incredibly hot about old-school pashing and restraint.

Lachlan’s mouth nuzzled her neck, sending a tingle of pure desire arrowing through her. She pressed her legs together so fast the bakery box she was holding wobbled.

‘We better get back before we drop lunch,’ she said.

Lachlan groaned and raised his head. ‘Just give me a sec, okay.’

She laughed and kissed him again.

‘Not helping!’

‘You know, if you invited me over to your place you might just get lucky.’

‘Yeah?’ His eyes lit up, then sobered. ‘That means we need a babysitter, and that means we’re pretty much telling Helen and Bob we’re having sex, and he’ll tell my mother.’

A protective streak shot through her. ‘Are you ashamed of me?’

‘God, no!’ He gently cupped her cheeks. ‘You’re smart and gutsy and gorgeous. It’s just most adults don’t usually have their family chiming in about their sex life. It’s embarrassing.’

‘It’s better than them not caring at all.’

He didn’t look like he believed her so she moved to kiss him, but as she leaned in something flashed in her peripheral vision. Her lips grazed his as she turned her head to see a ute cruising past slowly. Macca!

She leaped back from Lachlan so fast the bakery box sailed into the air.

He caught