Instead of going back to the kitchen, Stella continued on to her own room. She needed a moment, and couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t say the wrong thing to Ava if she went back just yet. She seized on the basket of unfolded clothes as if they were old friends waiting for her. She’d brought them in from the long wire line this morning and put the basket in here to tidy when they’d run out of time as Ava and Zac arrived.

As the familiar task of sorting and folding soothed her agitated hands, her mind cast back, trying to remember if she’d even thought about the future when she’d first seen Noah. Probably not. She’d been too busy kissing him.

Oh my.

It had been a nurse’s party, Svelte Stephanie’s birthday, and the cowboy Stella had gone with hadn’t been the fun she’d thought he’d be and they’d drifted apart. She’d looked around for new faces. There’d been a police conference on in town and she remembered how Stephanie had always known how to gather fresh men to her parties.

Stella remembered that rush of attraction when she’d caught sight of Noah, taller than the others, his head above the crowd, his smiling eyes meeting hers across the room. She’d asked Stephanie, catching her arm as she’d gone past, ‘Is he single?’ The next thing she knew, he’d been beside her with his gray eyes smiling at her, and at her zip-up full-length denim jumpsuit, though even then it had been ten years out of date. Her mouth curved at the memory. He’d made her feel incredibly beautiful with that one long look and they’d shifted closer to each other. There was something wonderful about a really tall man and your nose in his chest.

Stella sighed again as the memories poured in now that she was allowing herself to think.

They’d moved out of the noise of the crowded room, the lounge room of a ground-floor flat not that far from the one she had now, a little on the edge of town and near the often dry Todd River, and they’d leaned against the courtyard fence and stared at the myriad stars. And talked. And finally, he’d put those big arms around her and pulled her closer and kissed her, and she could still remember her incredulous delight.

Nobody had ever kissed her like that, as if she’d been waiting for just the right man. Noah’s mouth and lips had had the perfect pressure, his tongue the perfect erotic feather. It was her first enjoyable kiss after a small net of fish-mouthed fumblers that had left her unimpressed and unawakened. And in that moment, she’d thought she’d found her home with Noah.