Chapter One
Bob Saunders dumped a handful of screws on the counter in front of Sutton and then patted his pockets, looking for his wallet.
“Just the screws, Bob?” Sutton asked, counting them up before pushing the buttons on the ancient cash register to ring up the sale.
He grunted in reply as he retrieved his wallet and flipped it open. The leather was worn and faded and was probably as old as Bob, which was somewhere north of sixty.
“Judy wants the handles on the kitchen cabinets repaired. I don’t know what’s wrong with them, they seem fine to me.”
“Did you have a look at the new cupboard door hardware we got in?” Sutton asked, leaning her hip against the dusty counter. “Maybe Judy was hinting that she’d like an update?”
Bob grunted again. “If I put new hardware on those doors, next she’ll want me to paint the doors and then if I paint the doors, she’ll want new counter tops. I’ll just take the screws, thanks Sutton, my girl, and don’t you go mentioning those new handles to Judy, you hear? I’ll know who to blame if I’m in here next week looking at paint.”
Sutton laughed as she took Bob’s money. If his wallet was anything to go by, the Saunders’ kitchen probably hadn’t had an update since they built it, which was the year Bob and Judy got married. If Sutton saw Judy in town, she would most definitely tell her about the new door handles. It was her civic duty, after all.
Sutton swiped the screws into a paper bag and folded over the top before handing it to Bob.
“There you go, Bob,” she said. “Now don’t go working too hard on repairing those kitchen cupboards.”
Bob grunted yet a third time before waddling out the door, the bell above tinkling a cheery goodbye.
“Morning Sutton,” Trevor Wilder said, stepping up to the counter.
“Morning Trevor,” Sutton replied with a smile. “Do you need help finding something?”
“Need to order some fancy new light fixtures,” he sighed. “Mitch said you might have a catalogue I can give the guy to look at?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sutton replied, reaching under the counter to retrieve a stack of brochures from various companies. “Do you know what you’re after?”
“Hell if I know,” he replied, removing his cap and running a hand through his hair. “It’s for the chap who just bought the restaurant. You know, him? Alexander Nuendorf.”
“Is that the big house Daniel is working on?” Sutton asked, trying to sound casual. It was normal to ask about her brother’s best friend, right?
“Yep, that’s the one. He’s got all these fancy ideas to go along with his fancy name. Says they’re ‘modern’ and ‘energy saving.’ I just think it’s an excuse to throw some of his big-city money around. ‘Course, Mitch is all over it like a dog in heat. Says it will move us into the twenty-first century or some shit. Don’t know why he’d want to do that. The twenty-first century hasn’t been all that great so far.”
Sutton grinned as Trevor flipped through the brochures. Mitch was Trevor’s son and together they ran Wilder & Sons Electrical Contractors—Hope Springs’ only electrical contractor. Trevor was always coming in and complaining about Mitch, but she knew he was actually secretly proud of his son and the way he wanted to improve the business. It wouldn’t do to say it out loud, though.
“Why don’t you just take those with you,” Sutton said. “You can show Mr. Nuendorf and then let me know which ones he wants to order.”
“Righto then,” Trevor said, gathering up the brochures and tucking them under his arm as if he didn’t want to be seen carrying them.
Sutton smothered a smile. Hope Springs was a lot of things, but progressive wasn’t one of them. Not that she minded living in the small town. It was all she’d ever really known, and she had no desire to go anywhere else, not for anything more than a holiday at least. Hope Springs had everything she needed. Her family was here and so were her friends. There were enough shops to get whatever she needed, and if she wanted something she couldn’t buy locally, there was always the internet. She was all about internet shopping. It was one of the best parts of her life.
Hope Springs also had what Sutton considered the perfect weather. It was a pleasant mix of seasons—not too hot in the summer and not too cold in the winter. There was enough of a change in temperature between the seasons that it actually experienced four seasons throughout the year but unlike Melbourne, didn’t suffer from four seasons in one day.
Take, for instance, the current March weather. The days were getting shorter and there was a pleasant nip in the air in the mornings, but the days were clear and bright and warm. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn and soon Main Street would look like an autumnal postcard. It was her favourite time of year and she couldn’t wait to hear the crunch of leaves under her boots.
“You good, Sutton?” Doug asked, coming out from the back room.
“All good,” Sutton replied with a smile. “Going for your morning walk?”
Doug nodded and waved over his shoulder as he left the hardware store. Doug Barnes owned the store and had given Sutton a job when she was still in high school. It was a good job and Sutton enjoyed working there. There was no stress and no pressure, and it left her with enough time to pursue her other interests. When she wasn’t working at Hope Springs Hardware, she sewed…for herself and for profit. Not that anyone in the town knew about her side hustle, and she would just as much prefer it to stay that way. Sutton didn’t think Hope Springs was ready for their favourite daughter to have an online business selling the types of things she sold. Most of the town still saw her as the two-year-old tow-headed toddler who’d lost both her parents. They said it took a village to raise a child, but Sutton thought Hope Springs may have taken it a little too far…literally. Besides, they didn’t treat her brother, Tony, the same way they treated her. Not that she had a terrible childhood by any stretch of the imagination, she just felt a little…cloistered. Like a nun. Sutton rolled her eyes. Exactly like a nun, with the whole purity and virginity to go with it. Not that she hadn’t tried to dirty her image up a bit, it was just hard to do when the entire town thought of themselves as her surrogate parents and her brother played the over-protective sibling thing like he was up for an Oscar nomination.
Thank all that was holy for her vibrator. Was she still a virgin if she used a vibrator? She hadn’t even gotten past second base with a real, live human, thanks to her brother’s interference. She’d turned to a vibrator in desperation. She was twenty-four—nearly twenty-five—after all. A girl had needs and if the men in the town were too chickenshit to face her brother, then she was going to take the matter into her own hands. And she had.
Still, a warm body would be welcome. Sutton was pretty sure the whole experience would be completely different if she had more than just the secret fantasies of her brother’s best friend. Not that Daniel would ever look at her as anything other than Tony’s little sister. There was that one kiss…but they’d both been pretty drunk and what happens at a B&S Ball, stays at a B&S Ball. Also, she didn’t think it counted if he kissed her just to shut her up. It had been an effective tactic to end the argument they’d been having, if only it had led to something else. Unfortunately, after it happened, Daniel treated her like it had never happened at all. Meanwhile, Sutton had been using it as happy-time fodder ever since. It was five years ago, but she still remembered it—and the way it made her feel—like it was yesterday.
Growing up together, Sutton had plenty of memories of Daniel, but the B&S Ball had changed things for her. Up until then, he’d just been Tony’s mate. She and Trina had followed Tony and Daniel around like little lost puppies a lot of the time, much to the boys’ disgust. But the night of the B&S Ball, Sutton had gotten a glimpse of the man Daniel had grown into. All six feet of him. She remembered his hard chest under her fingers and the feel of his lips on hers. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine all of that minus the clothes. She’d seen Daniel shirtless and in board shorts enough to extrapolate what he would look like now; acres of rich dark skin her fingers itched to touch with the added benefit of hard muscle honed by his years as a builder, his close-cropped, dark, curly hair soft under her fingers and those dark eyes seeing into her very soul. Yeah, it didn’t take much for Sutton to imagine Daniel in the altogether.
The bell over the door tinkled as someone stepped into the store, and Sutton shook herself out of the lust-filled daydreams she’d wandered into. Nothing good would ever come of her daydreaming about Daniel while she was at work. Sometimes Sutton thought the entire town could read her mind, which was why her fantasies and her online business stayed in the privacy of her room where no one could stumble onto them.
Daniel straightened from where he was bent over the building plans and stretched. This house was turning out to be more of a pain in the arse than he’d expected it to be. Oh, he knew Alexander Nuendorf was going to be a difficult client, Daniel just hadn’t realised how much of a difficult client. Fortunately, Daniel had had the foresight to build in cost contingencies. With every change the finicky restauranteur made, Daniel added a charge to the final price. It was what he called the arsehole tax—not to his client’s face, obviously.
***
“Hey boss, do you know when that delivery is arriving?” Sam Tucker, one of Daniel’s tradies, asked.
“It’s not here yet?” Daniel asked, squinting into the sun before checking his watch.
“Nope,” Sam replied.
Daniel sighed. “It’s probably still at Doug’s,” he replied. “Let’s have smoko and then I’ll head back into town to pick it up.”
“Smoko!” Sam bellowed to the other tradies working on different parts of the monster house they were building.
Daniel quirked a smile and shook his head. Despite the name, smoko was not a smoke break, or at least it wasn’t on his job site. He had a strict no smoking policy, but most of the guys didn’t smoke, anyway. Smoko was code for tea break, or lunch break, or any break at all, really.
The guys grabbed their eskies out of the back of their trucks and sat around in a circle under a tree. Cold cans of Coke were opened, or in the case of Sam, a cold bottle of Gatorade, and various lunches were unwrapped. Daniel joined them, reaching into his own esky for cold, leftover pizza. The lunch of champions. Sometimes he had to admit he preferred cold pizza over hot, especially if it had pineapple on it. The local pizza shop had even added his own pizza creation to their menu—barbecue chicken and bacon with pineapple. Best damn pizza around.
“You still seeing that chick from Colac?” Sam asked.
Damo laughed. “You should know the boss man better than that,” he scoffed. “Love ‘em and leave ‘em, right, boss?”
Daniel shrugged and grinned. “There are so many fish in the sea, why should I tie myself down to one?”
The guys laughed and Daniel grinned smugly. He wasn’t about to admit it to these buffoons, but he was getting a little sick and tired of the dating scene. Not that he was ready to settle down, god no. He just…he was just bored, he supposed. His weekends had become a montage of different women, all blending into one. He didn’t sleep with them all, even if that’s what most of the town believed. Even so, it was becoming a bit tedious.
He used to love the game. The hot look across a crowded bar. Those first opening lines of dialogue. That first kiss. Daniel couldn’t deny he loved women. He loved their soft skin and their delicate scent, and the way they felt pressed up against him. Yeah, he loved women, but he was bored with the current routine. Which was why he hadn’t been out on a date for a couple of weeks. He was taking a break, but that didn’t mean he had to tell the guys about it. He had a reputation to uphold. He was Hope Springs’ very own Casanova, a moniker he’d worked hard to earn. But even Casanova deserved a break, right?
“Your old man still looking for someone to help out on the farm?” Damo asked.
Daniel nodded. “As far as I know,” he replied before taking another bite of his pizza. “You know someone looking for a job?”
“Maybe,” Damo replied.
Daniel just nodded in reply.
His father ran sheep, both for meat and wool. Both of Daniel’s older brothers worked on the farm, and their father had been holding out for Daniel to give up his construction business and take his place on the farm alongside his brothers. Daniel had no plans to do so, and his father had finally bowed to the need of another farmhand and started looking for someone to fill the shoes Daniel should have been wearing. Something his father never let him forget. Daniel had no desire to make his living on the farm. He could shear a sheep if push came to shove, but Daniel’s interests lay in creating things and building things and hammering and sawing and plastering things. Something his father could never understand.
Daniel started in the building trade when he was sixteen. He dropped out of school and took to the life of a tradie like a duck to water. His father hadn’t been happy, but his boss loved Daniel like a second son. When Col retired, he’d asked Daniel to take over the business and Daniel jumped at the chance. No, he’d never be a millionaire, but that didn’t bother him. He was happy with the money he made and the work he did. Sure, the building industry could have its ups and downs, but so did farming and any of the other myriad of industries in country Australia.
Life could be hard out in the bush, although Hope Springs was hardly the back of Burke. It was just a couple of hours’ drive to Melbourne if he needed to escape the small town claustrophobia and there were heaps of small towns scattered around if he needed a change of scenery. Besides, these little country towns were blooming with cottage industries; breweries and distilleries, just to name two. And then there was the whole AirBnB phenomenon. With the recent travel restriction still a bright memory in people’s minds, a whole host of city folk were taking the opportunity to travel in their own country rather than vacationing overseas. A lot of those tourists ended up pulling up stumps and moving to the smaller, more remote towns, and Hope Springs was one of them.
The Springs was seeing a bump in population and that was good for him and his business. New homes and renovations were his wheelhouse, and he’d been busier than ever. Busy enough that he’d built his own house. It was supposed to be a spec house, but when the economy tanked, it was easier for Daniel to move into it. Of course, he’d needed a loan to build it—another thing his father had disagreed with—but he was able to offset the cost of the mortgage by having a housemate. Besides, what type of advertisement was it for a builder to not have his own house? It was a little bit of short-term pain for long-term gain, or so he kept telling himself. The house was an investment he knew would pay off one day, despite the doom and gloom of his father’s predictions.
Daniel swallowed the last of his Coke and crushed the can. He stood and tossed his rubbish into his esky and then hefted it into the back of his truck. That was another expense his father had disapproved of, but a tradie needed a ute and the Ford Ranger was perfect for his needs. Just like the first ever ute built in Australia, it satisfied a bloke’s needs—take the wife to church on Sunday and take the pigs to market on Monday. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have either a wife or pigs; the sentiment was the same.
“You heading into town, then?” Sam asked as he shut the tonneau cover on the back of his truck.
Daniel nodded. “Yeah. You need anything from the hardware store while I’m there?”
“Say hello to Sutton for me,” Sam said with a wink, earning a scowl from Daniel. Sam laughed and held his hands up in surrender. “Settle down. We’re just friends. She partnered with me in pool the other night. We won. I owe her a drink.”
“Just make sure that’s all it is,” Daniel growled as he climbed into his truck. He pulled his phone out and sent a text to Tony.
D: Need to keep an eye on Sam and Sutton.
T: What?
D: They played pool the other night. He said he owes her a drink.
T: Yeah, well that better be all he gives her
D: I already warned him. I just thought you’d want to know.
T: Thanks, man. I’ll keep an eye on the situation.
Daniel tossed his phone into the console and started the truck. He wouldn’t have been doing his duty as a best friend if he hadn’t let Tony know about Sam’s comment. They’d made a pact when they were kids that they would always look out for Sutton, and Daniel kept his word. As far as he knew, between him and Tony, they’d scared off any and all potential boyfriends and Daniel would keep doing so until Tony said it was time to end it. That’s just what friends did, even if Sutton hated him for it.
Chapter Two
The bell above the door jangled as Daniel stepped into the hardware store. The old shop had barely changed in Daniel’s lifetime, despite Sutton’s best efforts to modernise it. At least it was cleaner than it had been before she started working there, and a customer could actually find stuff when they were looking now. Old Doug used to just toss stock wherever the hell he felt like it with no rhyme or reason. He argued that he knew where everything was, but that didn’t help if a customer was trying to find something.
Daniel could’ve done business with one of the large chain hardware stores a few towns over. He probably could’ve even got better prices and proper deliveries if he did, but as a small-town boy he knew the value of shopping locally. Besides, he knew how he’d feel if someone in town went to Colac or Camperdown for a builder. They were a small town, and they needed to look after one another.
“Afternoon Daniel,” Doug said, looking up from his newspaper as he sat in his armchair behind the counter.
“Hey Doug,” Daniel replied. “I’m just chasing up my order. Has it come in yet?”
Doug blinked and then made a noise in the back of his throat before answering. “Best check with Sutton,” he replied. “She’s out the back,” he added with a toss of his head.
Daniel nodded and made his way around the counter toward the door with a ‘staff only’ sign stuck to it.
“Squirt! Are you back here?”
The back of the hardware store was really just a big shed. It had been the original building back when the town was established, and the shop front had been added sometime in the early nineteen hundreds.
“Squirt!” he called again, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.
Large rows of racks piled with lumber and other hardware stock ran the length of the shed. The bare incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling did little to light the area. There were pinholes in the corrugated iron cladding the building and they let in bright spots of sunlight, looking for all the world like stars sprinkled across the dark ceiling. It was dusty and dirty and made him smile. If these walls could talk, he was sure they’d have a tale or two to tell. Bushrangers and bullock trains and maybe even Clancy of the Overflow had passed through Hope Springs back when it was a fledgling outback town, and this building had been one of the first to see it all.
Not that the corrugated iron currently worn by the building was original, but it had been around long enough to have stories of its own, that was for sure. It was one of the reasons Daniel loved living in Hope Springs and why he would probably never move away. There was history here, history that was passed down by the lifelong residents of the town, and he was part of it.
“Yo! Squirt!”
He thought he heard a sound coming from the back corner of the shed and he headed in that direction. Hopefully, Sutton was packing up his order and he could be on his way back to the job site without losing too much time. That was the last thing he could waste on this job. It was already going to be late and over budget, thanks to all the changes the client wanted. If Daniel could minimise the overtime as much as possible, he would.
Daniel turned his head as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and came to a dead stop. His mouth went dry and his body stiffened as he took in the sight before him. A shapely arse was in the air and waving around in a dance to music he couldn’t hear. Tight, pale pink overalls stretched across the globes of flesh, giving him the perfect view of what said flesh would look like without clothes on. His fingers itched to touch and hold and cup and grasp. His dick perked up, hardening with thoughts of rubbing against the soft flesh while his fingers gripped hard enough to leave prints.
The oddness of seeing such a sight in the back of the hardware shed couldn’t pierce through the fog in his brain. His eyes were glued to the shapely derriere, while drool flooded his previously dry mouth. Yes, he was drooling over the pale pink overall-covered arse.
The person connected to the drool-worthy flesh suddenly straightened and turned around, catching him mid-ogle. It took him a minute to get his eyes to move and when they did, they took a leisurely trip up across a trim torso, crested a pair of petite breasts, skated across soft, pink skin and up a slender throat. A small pink tongue poked out to swipe a plump bottom lip, and then his eyes met the brown ones he was not expecting to see in a million years. It was such a shock that he was sure his brain went offline for a moment before rebooting with a sluggish whir.
“Daniel?” Sutton said, tugging earbuds from her ears, her brow furrowing as he continued to stare at her.
What. The. Fuck?
Daniel felt like he needed to wash his brain in bleach to remove the image from it. Not because it was unpleasant. It was so far from unpleasant it wasn’t even in the same postcode. No, he needed to rid his brain of the image of Sutton’s arse because it was Sutton. Sutton Sharp. Tony’s little sister. His best friend, Tony’s little sister. There was no way he should have had any sexual thoughts about the girl who was like a sister to him. Okay, so she hadn’t felt like a sister to him for a few years now, not since that ill-advised drunken kiss at the B&S Ball, but the kiss aside, thinking about sliding his cock into her from behind while he gripped her hips hard enough to bruise was the absolute last thing he should be thinking about when it came to Sutton.
Sutton was off limits.
Sutton was Switzerland.
Wait. No, that didn’t make sense. But nothing made sense to his poor shocked brain right then.
When had Sutton gotten curves?
When had Sutton gotten boobs?
Okay, he knew the answer to that one. The boobs made the debut appearance at that damned B&S Ball. He’d practically had to beat off every bachelor in the place that night, much to her disgust. It had ended up in an argument, and he’d ended the argument by slamming his lips down on hers in a hot kiss that haunted him for days after.
So, yeah, he knew when the boobs developed. He’d just conveniently blocked them out for his own sanity. Sutton was one of the guys at best and a little sister at worst…except the reaction his body had just suffered was nothing like it should have been if she was just one of the guys.
Sutton waved her hand in front of his face and he cleared his throat, dragging his eyes away from her and down to the dirty concrete floor beneath his boots.
Shit.
He couldn’t even remember why he was here, or where here even was.
“Yo, Daniel,” she said, and even her voice had a weird effect on his body.
How many times had he heard her call his name? Too many to count. They saw one another regularly and talked frequently. Not only was she Tony’s sister, but she was his point of contact at the hardware store most of the time. But her voice had never given him an eager and panting woody before.
Daniel turned away. He had to get out of the shed and breathe some fresh air; air that wasn’t tainted by her flowery scent. What was that smell? Jasmine maybe, or orange blossom? It reminded him of his mum’s garden on a warm summer evening.
He shook his head. Nope. Not going there. He refused to assign her scent a name or to acknowledge it whatsoever.
“Daniel, wait? Were you looking for me?”
God, why couldn’t she just let him leave?
“Did you come to pick up your order? I was just getting it ready for delivery.”
“Um, yeah,” he managed to grate out.
“Oh, okay. So do you want to take it with you?”
“Uh, can you get Doug to deliver it,” he said, still not turning around to face her. “I, uh, I just remembered I needed to be somewhere.”
“Um, sure,” she replied.
He felt her hand on his arm and he flinched, his feet coming to a sudden stop as if they were stuck in cement. Electricity arced up his arm and struck right in his chest, causing him to suck in a surprised breath.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yep,” he ground out. Her hand was still on his arm and he knew he should shake it off, but he couldn’t.
He was fucking screwed.