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Ella, who hadn’t left Jake’s bed since he’d thrown her there the day before, reluctantly prised herself out of it to get to school — she made it just before the bell. Bernie raised an eyebrow when he noticed she was wearing the same clothes she’d worn the day before and Ella’s cheeks flamed as he gave her a wink.

The day flew and she was heading to training before she knew it. Seeing Jake back at the Hanniford oval was a sight for sore eyes. The team greeted him like he’d risen from the dead and Ella winced as Cam gripped his coach in a rib-crunching bear hug. Jake laughed and ruffled Cam’s hair in that manly way sports stars had perfected and got straight down to the business of putting the Demons through their paces.

Considering the man hadn’t slept a wink last night, he was firing on all pistons, which was just as well, given the final series was only a few short weeks away.

When Jake drove Ella and Cameron home after training, there wasn’t any question in his mind that he wouldn’t follow her inside. He was totally hooked. A more manly man might have cared that she had him firmly by his testicles.

Jake didn’t.

After years of musical girlfriends, he was more than ready for the One.

The dogs greeted them enthusiastically as they walked up the front path. Cerberus almost wriggled out of his skin, he was shimmying so much, and Jake gave him some extra love. They detoured around the veranda, following the aroma of cigarette smoke and found Daisy, Iris and Rosie in their usual spots at the chipped linoleum table.

Daisy watched him through the thin smoke curl of her cigarette. “Well, look who the cat dragged in.”

“Jake!” Rosie leaped up from her chair and gave him a big fan-girl hug. He noticed her not too subtle eyebrow raise at Ella before she said, “We missed you around here.”

Jake pulled out of her embrace and inspected the black miniskirt, black army boots with long black socks pulled all the way up to her knees, black Drac Sucks T-shirt, blood-red lips and studded dog’s collar around her neck. “Well hey Miss Rosie, we missed you too.”

Rosie and Simon had been to every Demon’s game and Jake had watched her go from scary semi-Goth chick to an even scarier Stepford-wife with suppressed semi-Goth tendencies over the course of the last six months.

He knew which Rosie he preferred.

Rosie gave him a sad smile. “Never change for a man, Jake. Never.”

He nodded. “I’ll take that on board.”

“So,” Daisy said, dragging on her cigarette, “haven’t seen you around here for a while.”

Jake glanced at Ella. “You will now.”

Daisy stared for a moment then gave a nod of approval. “Good.”

Jake grinned and switched his attention to Iris. “Hello, Iris. Are we all still doomed?”

She gave him a solemn shake of her head, gripping her tarot deck hard. “I’m afraid so,” she murmured. “It’s getting closer. The cards never lie.”

He put his arm around Ella’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll get through it.”

Ella, whose heart skipped several beats at Jake’s declaration of solidarity, locked her knees so she wouldn’t swoon into a dead faint at his feet. They hadn’t talked about it but it looked like Jake was sticking around. Her pulse fluttered madly and she barely stopped herself from breaking out into a happy dance.

She certainly couldn’t concentrate much on the conversations that followed as they all sat on the veranda chatting about the footy competition and the house and the school. Mostly that was due to Jake’s blatantly sexual gaze seducing her from across the table. She was excruciatingly aware of it on her body.

On her face. Her mouth. Her cleavage.

All she could think about was excusing them and picking up where they’d left off at dawn and she wondered how long they’d have to sit here. A while yet she supposed given it wasn’t quite five o’clock.

In a million years she never would have pictured herself with a Huntley native, someone who was privy to her past, warts and all. And certainly never with Jake.

But instead of running scared, suddenly she was pleased for the shared background. Pleased that they understood each other in ways many couples didn’t. Pleased that she didn’t have to explain or justify herself.

Ella was gripped with the certainty that if they could overcome their pasts, they could certainly have a future.

A faint creaking of the front gate set the dogs, who’d been lying placidly, into a frenzy. They took off barking as though a poltergeist had arrived on their doorstep.

“Oh good,” Rosie said standing. “That’ll be the journalist.”

“Journalist?” Jake and Ella said simultaneously.

“Rosieee.”

Everyone stilled as Simon’s shaky voice carried toward them, just audible above the row of canine disapproval. The dogs had obviously bailed him up and, as Rosie had spent all last night maligning him in their presence, it didn’t sound like they were about to let him pass.

“Simon,” she murmured.

“Rosieeeeee?” The plaintive call came again.

Rosie looked at her aunts and then at Ella and Jake. “I don’t think I can face him.”

Ella stood and held out her hand. “I’ll come with you.”

“Me too,” said Jake.

“We all will,” Daisy and Iris said in unison.

They cut through the cool, central hallway of the house and emerged into the late afternoon sunshine to see Simon pinned on the ground by Genghis, his big paws on Simon’s chest, his top lip lifting in a don’t-think-I-won’t-do-it growl.

The other dogs had adopted their alpha stances. Except for Cerberus, who did a dithering wiggle between wanting to be with the pack and loyalty to Simon, who’d fed him countless titbits from the table.

Once a stray, always a stray.

“Rosie,” Simon called. The relief in his voice was palpable. “Thank God.”

Rosie stood on the steps and crossed her arms, drumming her fingers against the sleeve of her T-shirt. Jake, Ella, Daisy and Iris formed in behind her – a formidable welcoming party.

“He’s not going to help you,” she said.

“Please, Rosie. Call them off. I need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

Simon’s head fell back against the grass. “Rosie.”

Rosie gave it a moment or two more before she called the dogs away. They backed off but sat alert at Rosie’s feet on the step below, putting themselves between her and Simon.

Except for Cerberus, who continued to dither in the middle.

Simon picked himself up and brushed at his jeans and shirt to remove the grass. Rosie watched him with a heart that was thumping like a clanging bell. He looked so gorgeous. So Simon. All neat and pressed — ironed jeans, for crying out loud — in his obviously designer clothes.

But she wanted him anyway, even though he was out of her league, even though he was her total opposite. Even though his mother was a heinous snob with way too much influence and he lived in an ugly monolith by the river.

Oh God — she sucked at being strong where men were concerned. She reached behind for Ella and drew strength from the squeeze of her hand.

Simon looked up at Rosie, taking in the posse behind her. “Do you think I could talk to you alone?”

Rosie shook her head. God, if they were alone, she’d jump his bones for sure. It had been just over twenty four hours but her libido didn’t care that she wasn’t the woman he wanted her to be.

“Anything you want to say to me, you say to all of us.”

He paused. “You look good,” he said tentatively.

“I know.”

Simon swallowed. “It was wrong of me to watch you changing and not speak up.”

Rosie knew she couldn’t let him take the fall for that one. She shrugged. “It was my choice. It was wrong but it was still my choice.”

“It was wrong of me to let my family crap interfere in our relationship.”

Rosie nodded. “Yep. That was wrong.” She tapped her foot. “What else?”

“I’m sorry for not understanding about the house. I’ve never had this -” he gestured to Rosie’s silent family. “It’s a new thing for me.”

Rosie nodded again, giving him another concession. Simon’s place, his family, were colder than permafrost.

Encouraged by her nod, Simon took a few steps forward until his foot rested on the bottom tread. Genghis growled and he halted.

“I used my contacts and spent all night in the council archives.” He glanced at Daisy and Iris who leaned forward a little, hope mingling with the suspicion in their gazes. “The woman who sold the house lied. I can only guess that a devout Christian woman like her, who’d been running a respectable Christian boarding house for six decades, didn’t want anyone to know the origins of the house. It’s significantly older — late eighteen hundreds. A woman called Anne Palmer had it built. Purpose built as a brothel, called Annie’s. It was quite well known at the time, by all accounts.”

He paused letting that clanger settle in as everyone exchanged shocked looks.

“Oh God,” Ella whispered clutching at her throat and it was Rosie’s turn to squeeze her hand. She knew exactly what her friend was thinking. That she’d run away from one whorehouse to find shelter in another.

“Apparently there were rumours that a famous bushranger, Slippery Shamus O’Grady, frequented the establishment and used it to stash his hauls. He and Annie had a thing but apparently she double-crossed him, took off with his loot. She and the loot were never seen again.”

Jake frowned as his brain sorted through the information. “So this means...?”

Simon nodded. “If this house...” He paused and looked at Rosie. “Your home...can’t get heritage listing, then no building is safe.”

It took quite a few moments for realization to dawn. When it did, all Rosie wanted to do was leap off the stairs straight into his arms but it all seemed too good to be true. And she was done with rushing in to things.

“Really?” she asked.

Simon smiled. “Really. I have the papers in the car to get the ball rolling.”

Rosie did a little jig that looked like Riverdance meets Marilyn Manson. Her eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.” And she put out her arms, saying, “Genghis, heel,” before falling straight into his.

Everyone was talking at once and hugging each other, standing on the steps, making plans, just being happy and grateful and thankful that their beloved home was safe. It wasn’t until the dogs started barking that any of them tuned into the car doors slamming and the gate opening and a small crowd of people surging toward them.

“What the fuck?” Rosie said, staring at the eight people that Genghis’s pack had bailed up. Several of them had kick-ass cameras with long lenses that were madly clicking away. She’d been expecting a journalist, not the paparazzi.

“Genghis, heel,” Daisy commanded. The dogs retreated to their original position on the stairs in front of their humans.

“Oh, this is bad,” Iris murmured. “Very bad. It’s beginning.”  

A flash flared and then another. “Can I help you people?”

Daisy demanded as she clutched her sister’s hand.

Jake’s arm tightened around Ella’s waist as the reporters drew nearer all shouting questions at once and she turned in time to see his mouth flatten into a thin line.

Genghis growled. “Whoa!” Rosie said above the hubbub, holding up her hand. “One at a time. I’m expecting a Steve Pennyworth from the Brisbane Herald.”

A middle-aged man stepped forward. “That’s me.”

“Jenny Jones, gossip columnist. Is this your girlfriend, Mr. Lewis, sir?”

“John Wells. Investigative journalist for the Sydney Mail.

Long time no see, Jake.”

Ella blinked as three reporters thrust mini tape-recorders at the group and four photographers, who it seemed weren’t important enough for introductions, continued to snap shots.

John Wells was different however. The other reporters were like dogs straining at their leashes but John was cool and calm.

Ella frowned. John Wells? Wasn’t that the name of the reporter Jake had told her about?

“Mr. Lewis, sir.” Jenny leaped into the pause after the intros. “It’s a matter of record that you aren’t seeing anyone yet there was a rather intimate photo of you and this woman,” she indicated Rosie with a slightly distasteful air, “in a local paper recently at a football match and here you are together again. There are many women out there who would be interested to know your relationship status.”

Rosie bristled at the journalist’s disdain. “Now hang on a moment.”

Simon placed a calming hand on Rosie’s arm. He knew how this went. He knew Jenny was baiting him and that the wisest thing to say was no comment. He’d grown up around media advisors and could have recited the correct response in his sleep. But today was not the day for political correctness.

Not anymore.

“Rosie and I are seeing each other. We have been for six months. In fact, we’re getting married.”

Rosie’s head just about spun of her shoulders as she blinked up at him. “We are?”

Simon nodded. “We are.”

Rosie grinned and then turned to the reporter. “We’re getting married.”

More clicking of cameras as the other journos, even Steve Pennyworth, who’d come here about the battle for their home, sniffed a bigger story.

A political story.

“And where do you plan on settling?” Jenny asked.

“Well, seeing as how his mother’s going to disown him when she sees this,” Rosie grinned, “he better come and live here.”

The reporters laughed. It was patently obvious to them all that Simon Charles Henry Lewis, political royalty, would never live in such a rundown dump.

Except John Wells didn’t laugh. And that made Jake nervous. They needed to stop this now.

“What about you, Ella?” Blake asked. “You must be pleased with how the Demons are going, making the finals. This is the kind of publicity your beleaguered school needs, right?”

“Don’t answer that,” Jake murmured.

Ella squeezed his hand. “It hasn’t hurt,” she admitted.

“Quite a coup for an acting school principal,” Blake continued. “You must be looking forward to the finals. You have a lot riding on it.”

“Don’t answer that,” Jake repeated.

He’d gotten too close to these people over the last six months and he loved them and their quirky ways but they were like lambs to the slaughter. No idea how the media machine could twist things. He glanced at Iris rubbing her arms, eerily tuned into her foreboding.

“I’ll just be pleased when it’s all over and we’ve hopefully won. I’m not really into sports, deep down I’m just a maths geek who’s trying to keep her school open for the kids.”

“What do you say to that, Jake?” John Wells butted in. “Is she just a maths geek? You and Ella go back a long way, don’t you?”

Jake felt a finger of fate crawl up his spine but kept his face appropriately grim. “No comment.”

“I don’t suppose while I’m here you’d like to name the woman who you alleged Tony Winchester raped all those years ago?”

Jake watched all the other journalists lean in a touch closer. “No comment,” he repeated.

“What about you, Ella? You and Jake are obviously close, any pillow talk you care to share?”

If Jake hadn’t been holding on to Ella he may just have stormed down and shoved John’s photographer’s camera right down John’s smarmy mouth. She gasped and he gave her waist a squeeze for reassurance.

“No comment,” Jake repeated, his voice rough with contained anger. “Press conference over.”

The reporters all surged forward again yelling questions, well and truly on the scent of something big as Jake retreated, dragging Ella with him and ushering Daisy and Iris away too.

Genghis growled and they faltered.

“Mr. Pennyworth, you can come up,” Rosie said over the din and then moved back into the house, a bemused reporter and his photographer following in their wake.

Ella woke to the drift of Jake’s hand on her hip, stroking down her thigh and then wandering back to her waist. She smiled and murmured, snuggling her butt into his groin and an impressive erection. “Are you the Energizer Bunny?”

He chuckled, his hand drifting higher, capturing the swell of a breast, brushing across her nipple. “Pretty ever-ready yourself,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.  

She turned in his arms but a thundering belting on Ella’s door interrupted them.

“Ella!” Rosie called and pounded again.

He groaned into her neck. “Rosie, I swear to God,” Jake called. “I don’t care how good your mushrooms are, I’m not letting her out of bed.”

Ella suppressed a laugh. For the first Saturday in months there was no footy match and they intended to stay right where they were until Jake’s presence was required at the Demons’ training session later this afternoon.

“You have to get up,” Rosie called. “It’s the papers. It’s ...pretty awful.”

Ella’s eyes flew open, the post-coital fatigue vanishing as Jake’s hand stilled on her breast. Iris’s fretting last night returned and settled like a lead weight in her stomach. She sprang out of bed, threw Jake’s clothes at him and hastily pulled on some of her own, shoving her hair into a shabby ponytail.

Both dressed in under a minute, he reached for the door handle and Ella covered his hand with her own. “Before we go out there, I just want you to know that I am truly sorry about bringing this down on your head. If I could go back and undo it, I would. Do you think John Wells has uncovered Trish?”

“I don’t know.” Jake brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It’s done now, anyway. Maybe, as Trish says, it’s time.”

Ella nodded, a knot of dread twisting in her stomach, knowing it was all her fault. Jake was going to be raked through the muck again and she’d been the instigator.

They hurried down the hallway and walked out onto the veranda, cigarette smoke and despair embracing them in equal measure. Four faces looked back at them in varying shades of grimness.

“Oh God,” Ella said, her heart thumping as she saw Rosie’s red-rimmed panda eyes. Simon couldn’t even maintain eye contact. Daisy and Iris already had a slug of sherry in their glasses. She sank into a chair and her hand shook as she took the Sydney Mail from Daisy.

SUBURBAN SECRETS the massive front page headline screamed. And underneath in slightly smaller print - THE COACH, THE GEEK, THE GOTH AND HER LOVER. A full-sized photo of them all standing on the stairs took up half the page.

Ella felt sick as her gaze dropped to the first paragraph in smaller but still bold print. The byline read, John Wells.

In a run-down house marked for the scrap heap in an inner-city suburb of Brisbane, an urban pantomime plays out. The cast of characters? Interesting, to say the least. An ex-footy star, an up-and-coming member of a political dynasty, two aging circus freaks, the daughter of a small-town hooker and a wanna-be Goth.

Ella gasped. “Oh. My. God. I don’t believe this.”

Jake, who was reading over her shoulder, was slightly less wordy. “Fuck.”

The report went on, in the vilest details, about their lives under the rather loose guise of fallen celebrity and political deceit. It chronicled Ella’s connection to Jake through Huntley and her mother’s sordid history, making much out of the irony of Ella trading one brothel for another. It repeated the old rumour that Ella had run away with her high school principal and questioned her moral integrity.

It even challenged the appropriateness of her being a role model for school children and her ability to raise her fifteen-year-old brother.

Simon was slammed for keeping his relationship with Rosie, a third-generation carnie with Goth tendencies, to himself.

“What kind of political wife would she make?” it questioned. “At least she could attend all the state funerals.”

The article also speculated on Simon’s connections. Would he use his influence to save his fiancée’s home?

Daisy and Iris were painted as some feed-the-birds, grumpy old ladies turning down multi-million dollar deals to buy their property just to piss off their neighbours.

But Wells hadn’t stopped there. He’d done a little more digging and found that the sisters had never lodged a tax return. Suddenly they were tax evaders in the order of Al freaking Capone.

Ella glanced up from her death grip on the paper. “You two seriously haven’t ever lodged a tax return?”

Iris and Daisy traded a look. “Never could wrap my head around those damn forms,” Daisy said, pouring herself another slug of sherry.

Ella returned her gaze to the page to discover that even their beloved animals had copped it. Apparently the reporters had been menaced by a pack of mangy, unruly, unregistered dogs. There was a picture of Cerberus mid-wriggle, obviously ecstatic at the attention and she wanted to cut John Wells’s heart out of his chest.

She threw the paper on the table, her stomach perilously close to losing whatever contents might still be residing in there. “I feel sick.”

“Fucking. Bastard.” Rosie stabbed her finger at Wells’s byline.

“He’s good,” Simon said. “It took me well into the night to dig through the archives to find out the stuff about Annie’s.”

Jake shook his head. “He’s probably just got it off Pennyworth.”

The Huntley stuff, however, would have taken some digging.

They all sat and stared at the paper like it was a toxic stain. “Can he...can he say that stuff?” Ella asked into the growing silence.

When Rosie had alerted them to the paper Ella had been prepared to pick up the pieces for Jake. She’d had no idea that the media machine she’d embraced would turn around and kick her in the teeth.

Jake nodded. “Unfortunately. Most of the facts are essentially true. And he’s been really careful to wrap the more outrageous things in phrases like its rumoured and sources say.”

“I don’t care,” Simon said. “I’m going to sue him anyway. And when I’ve finished with him, my mother will move in for the kill. If she hasn’t put out a contract on him already.”

As if on cue, his mobile rang for the fifteenth time that morning. His mother. Again.

“How does she know to ring right after you’ve uttered her name?” Rosie asked.

Simon shrugged and hit the end button. Again.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked as he plonked himself in the chair next to Ella, his hand sliding onto her shoulder, his thumb stroking her collar bone.

Ella felt like her head was going to explode. Prior to today, the only people outside of Huntley who knew her story were the people sitting at the table. Now the whole nation knew her shame.

“Not really.” She cradled her face in her hands for a moment and then looked at him. “I don’t think I’ve got anyone but myself to blame though.”

“No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “This stuff is inexcusable. I’m really sorry you got dragged in.” His hand moved to her nape and he drew her head onto his shoulder. “I’m really sorry everyone here got in the middle of it all,” he said, addressing the table.

Ella lifted her head. “What does he hope to gain from this?”

Rosie frowned. “Notoriety?”

“Circulation,” Simon said.

Jake shook his head. “He’s hoping to flush me out. Piss me off enough that I’ll give him what he wants in exchange for him backing off.”

Ella smiled at him. “He doesn’t know you very well.”

But she did. She knew Jake Prince was his own master and didn’t dance to anyone else’s tune.

“What are you going to do?” Daisy demanded.

“Nothing. For now. I’m not going to feed this monster any more morsels.” Jake stood. “I have a finals series to win and the Schools Cup to claim. And I will not let a slimy toe-rag like John Wells distract me.”

But after that was done, he wouldn’t rest until John Wells was writing the fluffiest-cat-in-show stories for some two-bit rag in outer Whoop-Whoop.