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Her Knight in the Outback
Nikki Logan
She didn’t know she needed rescuing! Eve Read doesn’t need help from anyone. She’s searching for her missing brother and doesn’t want any distractions. Yet sharing her burden with mysterious leather-clad biker Marshall Sullivan is a relief, and soon Eve can’t resist the sparks igniting between them! Meteorologist Marshall spends his life on the road, but there’s something about Eve that makes him want to stay put… Has Eve finally found what she’s been searching for all along?
How long had it been since she’d touched someone like this?
All that hard flesh Eve had seen on the beach—felt on the bike—pressed back against her fingers as they splayed out across his chest. Across the shadowy eagle that she knew lived there beneath the saturated cotton shirt. Across Marshall’s strongly beating heart.
Marshall was right. They weren’t going to see each other again. This might be the only chance she had to know what it felt like to have the heat of him pressed against her. To know him. To taste him.
All she had to do was move one finger. Any finger.
She’d never meant to enter some kind of self-imposed physical exile when she’d set off on this odyssey. It had just happened. And before she knew it she’d gone without touching a single person in any way at all for…
She sucked in a tiny breath. All of it. Eight months.
Only one way to find out.
Eve trailed her butterfly fingers lightly up to his collarbone. Beyond to the rigid definition of his larynx, which lurched out of touch and then back in again like the scandalous tease it was.
Strong fingers lifted to frame her face—to lift it—and he brought her eyes to his. They simmered, as bottomless as the ocean around them, as he lowered his mouth towards hers.
Her Knight in the Outback
Nikki Logan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
NIKKI LOGAN lives on the edge of a string of wetlands in Western Australia, with her partner and a menagerie of animals. She writes captivating nature-based stories full of romance in descriptive natural environments. She believes the danger and richness of wild places perfectly mirror the passion and risk of falling in love.
Nikki loves to hear from readers
via nikkilogan.com.au (http://nikkilogan.com.au) or through social media. Find her on Twitter: @ReadNikkiLogan (http://twitter.com/ReadNikkiLogan) and Facebook: NikkiloganAuthor (http://facebook.com/NikkiloganAuthor)
For Mat
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#u6f21b13c-f87a-5471-9940-10d7bda1f669)
With enormous gratitude to Dr Richard O’Regan for his help with the pharmaceutical aspects of this story, which were integral to its resolution. And with deepest respect and compassion for the families of �The Missing’.
Contents
Cover (#u72044c2d-5d6f-5b54-bcff-086892ef45e4)
Introduction (#u2b730d96-51f4-56f8-8d0c-2d7e549d36dd)
Title Page (#ud455ab12-ffd6-5c2c-bb54-b5e25642545b)
About the Author (#u6936c1a8-fcff-5af3-9800-4babe1613391)
Dedication (#ua9c13141-786d-57fa-a3cb-05e20cdda134)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u6f21b13c-f87a-5471-9940-10d7bda1f669)
IT WAS MOMENTS like this that Evelyn Read hated. Life-defining moments. Moments when her fears and prejudices reared up before her eyes and confronted her—just like a King Brown snake, surprised while basking on the hot Australian highway.
She squinted at the distant biker limping carefully towards her out of the shimmering heat mirage and curled her fingers more tightly around the steering wheel.
A moment like this one might have taken her brother. Maybe Trav stopped for the wrong stranger; maybe that was where he went when he disappeared all those months ago. Her instincts screamed that she should press down on her accelerator until the man—the danger—was an hour behind her. But a moment like this might have saved her brother, too. If a stranger had only been kind enough or brave enough to stop for him. Then maybe Travis would be back with them right now. Safe. Loved.
Instead of alone, scared...or worse.
The fear of never knowing what happened to him tightened her gut the way it always did when she thought too long about this crazy thing she was doing.
The biker limped closer.
Should she listen to her basest instincts and flee, or respond to twenty-four years of social conditioning and help a fellow human being in trouble? There was probably some kind of outback code to be observed, too, but she’d heard too many stories from too many grieving people to be particularly bothered by niceties.
Eve’s eyes flicked to the distant motorbike listing on the side of the long, empty road. And then, closer, to the scruffy man now nearing the restored 1956 Bedford bus that was getting her around Australia.
She glanced at her door’s lock to make sure it was secure.
The man limped to a halt next to the bus’s bifold doors and looked at her expectantly over his full beard. A dagger tattoo poked out from under his dark T-shirt and impenetrable sunglasses hid his eyes—and his intent—from her.
No. This was her home. She’d never open her front door to a total stranger. Especially not hours from the nearest other people.
She signalled him around to the driver’s window instead.
He didn’t look too impressed, but he limped his way around to her side and she slid the antique window open and forced her voice to be light.
Sociopaths make a decision on whether you’re predator or prey in the first few seconds, she remembered from one of the endless missing-person fact sheets she’d read. She was not about to have �prey’ stamped on her forehead.
�Morning,’ she breezed, as if this wasn’t potentially a very big deal indeed. �Looks like you’re having a bad day.’
�Emu,’ he grunted and she got a glimpse of straight teeth and healthy gums.
Stupidly, that reassured her. As if evil wouldn’t floss. She twisted around for evidence of a big damaged bird flailing in the scrub after hitting his motorbike. To validate his claim. �Was it okay?’
�Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.’
That brought her eyes back to his glasses. �I can see that. But emus don’t always come off the best after a road impact.’
As if she’d know...
�Going that fast, it practically went over the top of me as it ran with its flock. It’s probably twenty miles from here now, trying to work out how and when it got black paint on its claws.’
He held up his scratched helmet, which had clearly taken an impact. More evidence. She just nodded, not wanting to give an inch more than necessary. He’d probably already summed her up as a bleeding heart over the emu.
One for the prey column.
�Where are you headed?’ he asked.
Her radar flashed again at his interest. �West.’
Duh, since the Bedford was pointing straight at the sun heading for the horizon and there was nothing else out this way but west.
�Can I catch a lift to the closest town?’
Was that tetchiness in his voice because she kept foiling him or because hers was the first vehicle to come along in hours and she was stonewalling him on a ride?
She glanced at his crippled bike.
�That’ll have to stay until I can get back here with a truck,’ he said, following her glance.
There was something in the sag of his shoulders and the way he spared his injured leg that reassured her even as the beard and tattoo and leather did not. He’d clearly come off his bike hard. Maybe he was more injured than she could see?
But the stark reality was that her converted bus only had the one seat up front—hers. �That’s my home back there,’ she started.
�So...?’
�So, I don’t know you.’
Yep. That was absolutely the insult his hardened lips said it was. But she was not letting a stranger back there. Into her world.
�It’s only an hour to the border.’ He sighed. �I’ll stand on your steps until Eucla.’
Right next to her. Where he could do anything and she couldn’t do a thing to avoid it.
�An hour by motorbike, maybe. We take things a little more easy in this old girl. It’ll take at least twice that.’
�Fine. I’ll stand for two hours, then.’
Or she could just leave him here and send help back. But the image of Trav, lost and in need of help while someone drove off and left him injured and alone, flitted through her mind.
If someone had just been brave...
�I don’t know you,’ she wavered.
�Look, I get it. A woman travelling alone, big scary biker. You’re smart to be cautious but the reality is help might not be able to get to me today so if you leave me here I could be here all night. Freezing my ass off.’
She fumbled for her phone.
His shaggy head shook slightly. �If we had signal don’t you think I’d have used it?’
Sure enough, her phone had diminished to SOS only. And as bad as that motorbike looked, it wasn’t exactly an emergency.
�Just until we get signal, then?’ he pressed, clearly annoyed at having to beg. �Come on, please?’
How far could that be? They were mostly through the desert now, coming out on the western side of Australia. Where towns and people and telecommunications surely had to exist.
�Have you got some ID?’
He blinked at her and then reached back into his jeans for his wallet.
�No. Not a licence. That could be fake. Got any photos of you?’
He moved slowly, burdened by his incredulity, but pulled his phone out and flicked through a few screens. Then he pressed it up against Eve’s window glass.
A serious face looked back at her. Well groomed and in a business shirt. Pretty respectable, really. Almost cute.
Pffff. �That’s not you.’
�Yeah, it is.’
She peered at him again. �No, it’s not.’
It might have been a stock photo off the Internet for all she knew. The sort of search result she used to get when she googled �corporate guy’ for some design job.
�Oh, for pity’s sake...’
He flicked through a few more and found another one, this time more bearded. But nothing like the hairy beast in front of her. Her hesitation obviously spoke volumes so he pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, simultaneously revealing grey eyes and slightly taming his rusty blond hair.
Huh. Okay, maybe it was him.
�Licence?’
A breathed bad word clearly tangled in the long hairs of his moustache but he complied— eventually—and slapped that against the window, too.
Marshall Sullivan.
She held up her phone and took a photo of him through the glass, with his licence in the shot.
�What’s that for?’
�Insurance.’
�I just need a lift. That’s it. I have no interest in you beyond that.’
�Easy for you to say.’
Her thumbs got busy texting it to both her closest friend and her father in Melbourne. Just to cover bases. Hard to know if the photo would make them more or less confident in this dusty odyssey she was on, but she had to send it to someone.
The grey eyes she could now see rolled. �We have no signal.’
�The moment we do it will go.’
She hit Send and let the phone slip back down into its little spot on her dash console.
�You have some pretty serious trust issues, lady, you know that?’
�And this is potentially the oldest con in the book. Broken-down vehicle on remote outback road.’ She glanced at his helmet and the marks that could be emu claws. �I’ll admit your story has some pretty convincing details—’
�Because it’s the truth.’
�—but I’m travelling alone and I’m not going to take any chances. And I’m not letting you in here with me, sorry.’ The cab was just too small and risky. �You’ll have to ride in the back.’
�What about all the biker germs I’m going to get all over your stuff?’ he grumbled.
�You want a lift or not?’
Those steady eyes glared out at her. �Yeah. I do.’
And then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he grudgingly rattled off a thankyou.
Okay, so it had to be safer to let him loose in the back than have him squished here in the front with her. Her mind whizzed through all the things he might get up to back there but none of them struck her as bad as what he could do up front if he wasn’t really who he said he was.
Or even if he was.
Biker boy and his helmet limped back towards the belongings piled on the side of the road next to his disabled bike. Leather jacket, pair of satchels, a box of mystery equipment.
She ground the gears starting the Bedford back up, but rolled up behind him and, as soon as his arms were otherwise occupied with his own stuff, she unlocked the bus and mouthed through the glass of her window. �Back doors.’
Sullivan limped to the back of the Bedford, lurched it as he climbed in and then slammed himself in there with all her worldly possessions.
Two hours...
�Come on, old chook,’ she murmured to the decades-old bus. �Let’s push it a bit, eh?’
* * *
Marshall groped around for a light switch but only found a thick fabric curtain. He pulled it back with a swish and light flooded into the darkened interior of the bus. Something extraordinary unfolded in front of him.
He’d seen converted buses before but they were usually pretty daggy. Kind of worn and soulless and vinyl. But this... This was rich, warm and natural; nothing at all like the hostile lady up front.
It was like a little cottage in some forest. All timber and plush rugs in dark colours. Small, but fully appointed with kitchenette and living space, flat-screen TV, fridge and a sofa. Even potted palms. Compact and long but all there, like one of those twenty-square-metre, fold-down and pull-out apartments they sold in flat packs. At the far end—the driving end—a closed door that must lead to the only absent feature of the vehicle, the bed.
And suddenly he got a sense of Little Miss Hostile’s reluctance to let him back here. It was like inviting a total stranger right into your bedroom. Smack bang in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
The bus lurched as she tortured it back up to speed and Marshall stumbled down onto the sofa built into the left side of the vehicle. Not as comfortable as his big eight-seater in the home theatre of his city apartment, but infinitely better than the hard gravel he’d been polishing with his butt for the couple of hours since the bird strike.
Stupid freaking emu. It could have killed them both.
It wasn’t as if a KTM 1190 was a stealth unit but maybe, at the speed the emu had been going, the air rushing past its ears was just as noisy as an approaching motorbike. And then their fates had collided. Literally.
He sagged down against the sofa back and resisted the inclination to examine his left foot. Sometimes boots were the only things that kept fractured bones together after bike accidents so he wasn’t keen to take it off unless he was bleeding to death. In fact, particularly if he was bleeding to death because something told him the hostess-with-the-leastest would not be pleased if he bled out all over her timber floor. But he could at least elevate it. That was generally good for what ailed you. He dragged one of his satchels up onto the sofa, turned and stacked a couple of the bouncy, full pillows down the opposite end and then swung his abused limb up onto it, lying out the full length of the sofa.
�Oh, yeah...’ Half words, half groan. All good.
He loved his bike. He loved the speed. He loved that direct relationship with the country you had when there was no car between you and it. And he loved the freedom from everything he’d found touring that country.
But he really didn’t love how fragile he’d turned out to be when something went wrong at high speed.
As stacks went, it had been pretty controlled. Especially considering the fishtail he’d gone into as the mob of emu shot past and around him. But even a controlled slide hurt—him and the bike—and once the adrenaline wore off and the birds disappeared over the dusty horizon, all he’d been left with was the desert silence and the pain.
And no phone signal.
Normally that wouldn’t bother him. There really couldn’t be enough alone time in this massive country, as far as he was concerned. If you travelled at the right time of year—and that would be the wrong time of year for tourists—you could pretty much have most outback roads to yourself. He was free to do whatever he wanted, wear whatever he wanted, be as hairy as he wanted, shower whenever he wanted. Or not. He’d given up caring what people thought of him right about the time he’d stopped caring about people.
Ancient history.
And life was just simpler that way.
The stoic old Bedford finally shifted into top gear and the rattle of its reconditioned engine evened out to a steady hum, vibrating under his skin as steadily as his bike did. He took the rare opportunity to do what he could never do when at the controls: he closed his eyes and let the hum take him.
Two hours, she’d said. He could be up on his feet with her little home fully restored before she even made it from the front of the bus back to the rear doors. As if no one had ever been there.
Two hours to rest. Recover. And enjoy the roads he loved from a more horizontal perspective.
* * *
�Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ Eve muttered as she stood looking at the bear of a man fast asleep on her little sofa.
What was this—some kind of reverse Goldilocks thing?
She cleared her throat. Nothing. He didn’t even shift in his sleep.
�Mr Sullivan?’
Nada.
For the first time, it occurred to her that maybe this wasn’t sleep; maybe this was coma. Maybe he’d been injured more than either of them had realised. She hauled herself up into the back of the bus and crossed straight to his side, all thoughts of dangerous tattooed men cast aside. Her fingertips brushed below the hairy tangle of his jaw.
Steady and strong. And warm.
Phew.
�Mr Sullivan,’ she said, louder. Those dark blond brows twitched just slightly and something moved briefly behind his eyelids, so she pressed her advantage. �We’re here.’
Her gaze went to his elevated foot and then back up to where his hands lay, folded, across the T-shirt over his midsection. Rather nice hands. Soft and manicured despite the patches of bike grease from his on-road repairs.
The sort of hands you’d see in a magazine.
Which was ridiculous. How many members of motorcycle clubs sidelined in a bit of casual hand modelling?
She forced her focus back up to his face and opened her lips to call his name a little louder, but, where before there was only the barest movement behind his lids, now they were wide open and staring straight at her. This close, with the light streaming in from the open curtains, she saw they weren’t grey at all—or not just grey, at least. The pewter irises were flecked with rust that neatly matched the tarnished blond of his hair and beard, particularly concentrated around his pupils.
She’d never seen eyes like them. She immediately thought of the burnt umber coastal rocks of the far north, where they slid down to pale, clean ocean. And where she’d started her journey eight months ago.
�We’re here,’ she said, irritated at her own breathlessness. And at being caught checking him out.
He didn’t move, but maybe that was because she was leaning so awkwardly over him from all the pulse-taking.
�Where’s here?’ he croaked.
She pushed back onto her heels and dragged her hands back from the heat of his body. �The border. You’ll have to get up while they inspect the bus.’
They took border security seriously here on the invisible line between South Australia and Western Australia. Less about gun-running and drug-trafficking and more about fruit flies and honey. Quarantine was king when agriculture was your primary industry.
Sullivan twisted gingerly into an upright position, then carefully pulled himself to his feet and did his best to put the cushions back where they’d started. Not right, but he got points for the effort.
So he hadn’t been raised by leather-clad wolves, then.
He bundled up his belongings, tossed them to the ground outside the bus and lowered himself carefully down.
�How is your leg?’ Eve asked.
�I’ll live.’
Okay. Man of few words. Clearly, he’d spent too much time in his own company.
The inspection team made quick work of hunting over every inch of her converted bus and Sullivan’s saddlebags. She’d become proficient at dumping or eating anything that was likely to get picked up at the border and so, this time, the team only found one item to protest—a couple of walnuts not yet consumed.
Into the bin they went.
She lifted her eyes towards Sullivan, deep in discussion with one of the border staff who had him in one ear and their phone on the other. Arranging assistance for his crippled bike, presumably. As soon as they were done, he limped back towards her and hiked his bags up over his shoulder.
�Thanks for the ride,’ he said as though the effort half choked him.
�You don’t need to go into Eucla?’ Just as she’d grown used to him.
�They’re sending someone out to grab me and retrieve my bike.’
�Oh. Great that they can do it straight away.’
�Country courtesy.’
As opposed to her lack of...? �Well, good luck with your—’
It was then she realised she had absolutely no idea what he was doing out here, other than hitting random emus. In all her angsting out on the deserted highway, she really hadn’t stopped to wonder, let alone ask.
�—with your travels.’
His nod was brisk and businesslike. �Cheers.’
And then he was gone, back towards the border security office and the little café that catered for people delayed while crossing. Marshall Sullivan didn’t seem half so scary here in a bustling border stop, though his beard was no less bushy and the ink dagger under his skin no less menacing. All the what-ifs she’d felt two hours ago on that long empty road hobbled away from her as he did.
And she wondered how she’d possibly missed the first time how well his riding leathers fitted him.
CHAPTER TWO (#u6f21b13c-f87a-5471-9940-10d7bda1f669)
IT WAS THE raised voices that first got Marshall’s attention. Female, anxious and angry, almost swallowed up by drunk, male and belligerent.
�Stop!’
The fact a gaggle of passers-by had formed a wide, unconscious circle around the spectacle in the middle of town was the only reason he sauntered closer instead of running on his nearly healed leg. If something bad was happening, he had to assume someone in the handful of people assembled would have intervened. Or at least cried out. Him busting in to an unknown situation, half-cocked, was no way to defuse what was clearly an escalating situation.
Instead, he insinuated himself neatly into the heart of the onlookers and nudged his way through to the front until he could get his eyeballs on things. A flutter of paper pieces rained down around them as the biggest of the men tore something up.
�You put another one up, I’m just going to rip it down,’ he sneered.
The next thing he saw was the back of a woman’s head. Dark, travel-messy ponytail. Dwarfed by the men she was facing but not backing down.
And all too familiar.
Little Miss Hostile. Winning friends and influencing people—as usual.
�This is a public noticeboard,’ she asserted up at the human mountain, foolishly undeterred by his size.
�For Norseman residents,’ he spat. �Not for blow-ins from the east.’
�Public,’ she challenged. �Do I need to spell it out for you?’
Wow. Someone really needed to give her some basic training in conflict resolution. The guy was clearly a xenophobe and drunk. Calling him stupid in front of a crowd full of locals wasn’t the fastest way out of her predicament.
She shoved past him and used a staple gun to pin up another flier.
He’d seen the same poster peppering posts and walls in Madura, Cocklebiddy and Balladonia. Every point along the remote desert highway that could conceivably hold a person. And a sign. Crisp and new against all the bleached, frayed ones from years past.
�Stop!’
Yeah, that guy wasn’t going to stop. And now the McTanked Twins were also getting in on the act.
Goddammit.
Marshall pushed out into the centre of the circle. He raised his voice the way he used to in office meetings when they became unruly. Calm but intractable. �Okay, show’s over, people.’
The crowd turned their attention to him, like a bunch of cattle. So did the three drunks. But they weren’t so intoxicated they didn’t pause at the sight of his beard and tattoos. Just for a moment.
The moment he needed.
�Howzabout we find somewhere else for those?’ he suggested straight to Little Miss Hostile, neatly relieving her of the pile of posters with one hand and the staple gun with his other. �There are probably better locations in town.’
She spun around and glared at him in the heartbeat before she recognised him. �Give me those.’
He ignored her and spoke to the crowd. �All done, people. Let’s get moving.’
They parted for him as he pushed back through, his hands full of her property. She had little choice but to pursue him.
�Those are mine!’
�Let’s have this conversation around the corner,’ he gritted back and down towards her.
But just as they’d cleared the crowd, the big guy couldn’t help himself.
�Maybe he’s gone missing to get away from you!’ he called.
A shocked gasp covered the sound of small female feet pivoting on the pavement and she marched straight back towards the jeering threesome.
Marshall shoved the papers under his arm and sprinted after her, catching her just before she re-entered the eye of the storm. All three men had lined up in it, ready. Eager. He curled his arms around her and dragged her back, off her feet, and barked just one word in her ear.
�Don’t!’
She twisted and lurched and swore the whole way but he didn’t loosen his hold until the crowd and the jeering laughter of the drunks were well behind them.
�Put me down,’ she struggled. �Ass!’
�The only ass around here is the one I just saved.’
�I’ve dealt with rednecks before.’
�Yeah, you were doing a bang-up job.’
�I have every right to put my posters up.’
�No argument. But you could have just walked away and then come back and done it in ten minutes when the drunks were gone.’
�But there were thirty people there.’
�None of whom were making much of an effort to help you.’ In case she hadn’t noticed.
�I didn’t want their help,’ she spat, spinning back to face him. �I wanted their attention.’
What was this—some kind of performance art thing? �Come again?’
�Thirty people would have read my poster, remembered it. The same people that probably would have passed it by without noticing, otherwise.’
�Are you serious?’
She snatched the papers and staple gun back from him and clutched them to her heaving chest. �Perfectly. You think I’m new to this?’
�I really don’t know what to think. You treated me like a pariah because of a bit of leather and ink, but you were quite happy to face off against the Beer Gut Brothers, back there.’
�It got attention.’
�So does armed robbery. Are you telling me the bank is on your to-do list in town?’
She glared at him. �You don’t understand.’
And then he was looking at the back of her head again as she turned and marched away from him without so much as a goodbye. Let alone a thankyou.
He cursed under his breath.
�Enlighten me,’ he said, catching up with her and ignoring the protest of his aching leg.
�Why should I?’
�Because I just risked my neck entering that fray to help you and that means you owe me one.’
�I rescued you out on the highway. I’d say that makes us even.’
Infuriating woman. He slammed on the brakes. �Fine. Whatever.’
Her momentum carried her a few metres further but then she spun back. �Did you look at the poster?’
�I’ve been looking at them since the border.’
�And?’
�And what?’
�What’s on it?’
His brows forked. What the hell was on it? �Guy’s face. Bunch of words.’ And a particularly big one in red. MISSING. �It’s a missing-person poster.’
�Bingo. And you’ve been looking at them since the border but can’t tell me what he looked like or what his name was or what it was about.’ She took two steps closer. �That’s why getting their attention was so valuable.’
Realisation washed through him and he felt like a schmuck for parachuting in and rescuing her like some damsel in distress. �Because they’ll remember it. You.’
�Him!’ But her anger didn’t last long. It seemed to desert her like the adrenaline in both their bodies, leaving her flat and exhausted. �Maybe.’
�What do you do—start a fight in every town you go to?’
�Whatever it takes.’
Cars went by with stereos thumping.
�Listen...’ Suddenly, Little Miss Hostile had all new layers. And most of them were laden with sadness. �I’m sorry if you had that under control. Where I come from you don’t walk past a woman crying out in the street.’
Actually, that wasn’t strictly true because he came from a pretty rough area and sometimes the best thing to do was keep walking. But while his mother might have raised her kids like that, his grandparents certainly hadn’t. And he, at least, had learned from their example even if his brother, Rick, hadn’t.
Dark eyes studied him. �That must get you into a lot of trouble,’ she eventually said.
True enough.
�Let me buy you a drink. Give those guys some time to clear out and then I’ll help you put the posters up.’
�I don’t need your help. Or your protection.’
�Okay, but I’d like to take a proper look at that poster.’
He regarded her steadily as uncertainty flooded her expression. The same that he’d seen out on the highway. �Or is the leather still bothering you?’
Indecision flooded her face and her eyes flicked from his beard to his eyes, then down to his lips and back again.
�No. You haven’t robbed or murdered me yet. I think a few minutes together in a public place will be fine.’
She turned and glanced down the street where a slight doof-doof issued from an architecturally classic Aussie hotel. Then her voice filled with warning. �Just one.’
It was hard not to smile. Her stern little face was like a daisy facing up to a cyclone.
�If I was going to hurt you I’ve had plenty of opportunity. I don’t really need to get you liquored up.’
�Encouraging start to the conversation.’
�You know my name,’ he said, moving his feet in a pubward direction. �I don’t know yours.’
She regarded him steadily. Then stuck out the hand with the staple gun clutched in it. �Evelyn Read. Eve.’
He shook half her hand and half the tool. �What do you like to drink, Eve?’
�I don’t. Not in public. But you go ahead.’
A teetotaller in an outback pub.
Well, this should be fun.
* * *
Eve trusted Marshall Sullivan with her posters while she used the facilities. When she came back, he’d smoothed out all the crinkles in the top one and was studying it.
�Brother?’ he said as she slid into her seat.
�What makes you say that?’
He tapped the surname on the poster where it had Travis James Read in big letters.
�He could be my husband.’ She shrugged.
His eyes narrowed. �Same dark hair. Same shape eyes. He looks like you.’
Yeah, he did. Everyone thought so. �Trav is my little brother.’
�And he’s missing?’
God, she hated this bit. The pity. The automatic assumption that something bad had happened. Hard enough not letting herself think it every single day without having the thought planted back in her mind by strangers at every turn.
Virtual strangers.
Though, at least this one did her the courtesy of not referring to Travis in the past tense. Points for that.
�Missing a year next week, actually.’
�Tough anniversary. Is that why you’re out here? Is this where he was last seen?’
She lifted her gaze back to his. �No. In Melbourne.’
�So what brings you out west?’
�I ran out of towns on the east coast.’
Blond brows lowered. �You’ve lost me.’
�I’m visiting every town in the country. Looking for him. Putting up notices. Doing the legwork.’
�I assumed you were just on holidays or something.’
�No. This is my job.’
Now. Before that she’d been a pretty decent graphic designer for a pretty decent marketing firm. Until she’d handed in her notice.
�Putting up posters is your job?’
�Finding my brother.’ The old defensiveness washed through her. �Is anything more important?’
His confusion wasn’t new. He wasn’t the first person not to understand what she was doing. By far. Her own father didn’t even get it; he just wanted to grieve Travis’s absence as though he were dead. To accept he was gone.
She was light-years and half a country away from being ready to accept such a thing. She and Trav had been so close. If he was dead, wouldn’t she feel it?
�So...what, you just drive every highway in the country pinning up notices?’
�Pretty much. Trying to trigger a memory in someone’s mind.’
�And it’s taken you a year to do the east coast?’
�About eight months. Though I started up north.’ And that was where she’d finish.
�What happened before that?’
Guilt hammered low in her gut for those missing couple of months before she’d realised how things really were. How she’d played nice and sat on her hands while the police seemed to achieve less and less. Maybe if she’d started sooner—
�I trusted the system.’
�But the authorities didn’t find him?’
�There are tens of thousands of missing people every year. I just figured that the only people who could make Trav priority number one were his family.’
�That many? Really?’
�Teens. Kids. Women. Most are located pretty quickly.’
But ten per cent weren’t.
His eyes tracked down to the birthdate on the poster. �Healthy eighteen-year-old males don’t really make it high up the priority list?’
A small fist formed in her throat. �Not when there’s no immediate evidence of foul play.’
And even if they maybe weren’t entirely healthy, psychologically. But Travis’s depression was hardly unique amongst The Missing and his anxiety attacks were longstanding enough that the authorities dismissed them as irrelevant. As if a bathroom cabinet awash with mental health medicines wasn’t relevant.
A young woman with bright pink hair badly in need of a recolour brought Marshall’s beer and Eve’s lime and bittes and sloshed them on the table.
�That explains the bus,’ he said. �It’s very...homey.’
�It is my home. Mine went to pay for the trip.’
�You sold your house?’
Her chin kicked up. �And resigned from my job. I can’t afford to be distracted by having to earn an income while I cover the country.’
She waited for the inevitable judgment.
�That’s quite a commitment. But it makes sense.’
Such unconditional acceptance threw her. Everyone else she’d told thought she was foolish. Or plain crazy. Implication: like her brother. No one just...nodded.
�That’s it? No opinion? No words of wisdom?’
His eyes lifted to hers. �You’re a grown woman. You did what you needed to do. And I assume it was your asset to dispose of.’
She scrutinised him again. The healthy, unmarked skin under the shaggy beard. The bright eyes. The even teeth.
�What’s your story?’ she asked.
�No story. I’m travelling.’
�You’re not a bikie.’ Statement, not question.
�Not everyone with a motorbike belongs in an outlaw club,’ he pointed out.
�You look like a bikie.’
�I wear leather because it’s safest when you get too intimate with asphalt. I have a beard because one of the greatest joys in life is not having to shave, and so I indulge that when I’m travelling alone.’
She glanced down to where the dagger protruded from his T-shirt sleeve. �And the tattoo?’
His eyes immediately darkened. �We were all young and impetuous once.’
�Who’s Christine?’
�Christine’s not relevant to this discussion.’
Bang. Total shutdown. �Come on, Marshall. I aired my skeleton.’
�Something tells me you air it regularly. To anyone who’ll listen.’
Okay, this time the criticism was unmistakable. She pushed more upright in her chair. �You were asking the questions, if you recall.’
�Don’t get all huffy. We barely know each other. Why would I spill my guts to a stranger?’
�I don’t know. Why would you rescue a stranger on the street?’
�Not wanting to see you beaten to a pulp and not wanting to share my dirty laundry are very different things.’
�Oh, Christine’s dirty laundry?’
His lips thinned even further and he pushed away from the table. �Thanks for the drink. Good luck with your brother.’
She shot to her feet, too. �Wait. Marshall?’
He stopped and turned back slowly.
�I’m sorry. I guess I’m out of practice with people,’ she said.
�You’re not kidding.’
�Where are you staying?’
�In town.’
Nice and non-specific. �I’m a bit... I get a bit tired of eating in the bus. On my own. Can I interest you in something to eat, later?’
�I don’t think so.’
Walk away, Eve. That would be the smart thing to do.
�I’ll change the subject. Not my brother. Not your...’ Not your Christine? �We can talk about places we’ve been. Favourite sights.’ Her voice petered out.
His eyebrows folded down over his eyes briefly and disguised them from her view. But he finally relented. �There’s a café across the street from my motel. End of this road.’
�Sounds good.’
She didn’t usually eat out, to save money, but then she didn’t usually have the slightest hint of company either. One dinner wouldn’t kill her. Alone with a stranger. Across the road from his motel room.
�It’s not a date, though,’ she hastened to add.
�No.’ The moustache twisted up on the left. �It’s not.’
And as he and his leather pants sauntered back out of the bar, she felt like an idiot. An adolescent idiot. Of course this was not a date and of course he wouldn’t have considered it such. Hairy, lone-wolf types who travelled the country on motorbikes probably didn’t stand much on ceremony when it came to women. Or bother with dates.
She’d only mentioned a meal at all because she felt bad that she’d pressed an obvious sore point with him after he’d shown her nothing but interest and acceptance about Travis.
*facepalm*
Her brother’s favourite saying flittered through her memory and never seemed more appropriate. Hopefully, a few hours and a good shower from now she could be a little more socially appropriate and a lot less hormonal.
Inexplicably so.
Unwashed biker types were definitely not her thing, no matter how nice their smiles. Normally, the eau de sweaty man that littered towns in the Australian bush flared her nostrils. But as Marshall Sullivan had hoisted her up against his body out in the street she’d definitely responded to the powerful circle of his hold, the hard heat of his chest and the warmth of his hissed words against her ear.
Even though it came with the tickle of his substantial beard against her skin.
She was so not a beard woman.
A man who travelled the country alone was almost certainly doing it for a reason. Running from something or someone. Dropping out of society. Hiding from the authorities. Any number of mysterious and dangerous things.
Or maybe Marshall Sullivan was just as socially challenged as she was.
Maybe that was why she had a sudden and unfathomable desire to sit across a table from the man again.
�See you at seven-thirty, then,’ she called after him.
* * *
Eve’s annoyance at herself for being late—and at caring about that—turned into annoyance at Marshall Sullivan for being even later. What, had he got lost crossing the street?
Her gaze scanned the little café diner as she entered—over the elderly couple with a stumpy candle, past the just-showered Nigel No Friends reading a book and the two men arguing over the sports pages. But as her eyes grazed back around to the service counter, they stumbled over the hands wrapped around Nigel’s battered novel. Beautiful hands.
She stepped closer. �Marshall?’
Rust-flecked eyes glanced up to her. And then he pushed to his feet. To say he was a changed man without the beard would have been an understatement. He was transformed. His hair hadn’t been cut but it was slicked back either with product or he truly had just showered. But his face...
Free of the overgrown blondish beard and moustache, his eyes totally stole focus, followed only by his smooth broad forehead. She’d always liked an unsullied forehead. Reliable somehow.
He slid a serviette into the book to mark his place and closed it.
She glanced at the cover. �Gulliver’s Travels?’
Though what she really wanted to say was...You shaved?
�I carry a few favourites around with me in my pack.’
She slid in opposite him, completely unable to take her eyes off his new face. At a loss to reconcile it as the under layer of all that sweat, dust and helmet hair she’d encountered out on the road just a few days ago. �What makes it a favourite?’
He thought about that for a bit. �The journeying. It’s very human. And Gulliver is a constant reminder that perspective is everything in life.’
Huh. She’d just enjoyed it for all the little people.
They fell to silence.
�You shaved,’ she finally blurted.
�I did.’
�For dinner?’ Dinner that wasn’t a date.
His neatly groomed head shook gently. �I do that periodically. Take it off and start again. Even symbols of liberty need maintenance.’
�That’s what it means to you? Freedom?’
�Isn’t that what the Bedford means to you?’
Freedom? No. Sanity, yes. �The bus is just transport and accommodation conveniently bundled.’
�You forget I’ve seen inside it. That’s not convenience. That’s sanctuary.’
Yeah...it was, really. But she didn’t know him well enough to open up to that degree.
�I bought the Bedford off this old carpenter after his wife died. He couldn’t face travelling any more without her.’
�I wonder if he knows what he’s missing.’
�Didn’t you just say perspective was everything?’
�True enough.’
A middle-aged waitress came bustling over, puffing, as though six people at once was the most she’d seen in a week. She took their orders from the limited menu and bustled off again.
One blond brow lifted. �You carb-loading for a marathon?’
�You’ve seen the stove in the Bedford. I can only cook the basics in her. Every now and again I like to take advantage of a commercial kitchen’s deep-fryer.’
Plus, boiling oil would kill anything that might otherwise not get past the health code. There was nothing worse than being stuck in a small town, throwing your guts up. Unless it was being stuck on the side of the road between small towns and kneeling in the roadside gravel.
�So, you know how I’m funding my way around the country,’ she said. �How are you doing it?’
He stared at her steadily. �Guns and drugs.’
�Ha-ha.’
�That’s what you thought when you saw me. Right?’
�I saw a big guy on a lonely road trying really hard to get into my vehicle. What would you have done?’
Those intriguing eyes narrowed just slightly but then flicked away. �I’m out here working. Like you. Going from district to district.’
�Working for who?’
�Federal Government.’
�Ooh, the Feds. That sounds much more exciting than it probably is. What department?’
He took a long swig of his beer before answering. �Meteorology.’
She stared. �You’re a weatherman?’
�Right. I stand in front of a green screen every night and read maximums and minimums.’
Her smile broadened. �You’re a weatherman.’
He sagged back in his chair and spoke as if he’d heard this one time too many. �Meteorology is a science.’
�You don’t look like a scientist.’ Definitely not before and, even clean shaven, Marshall was still too muscular and tattooed.
�Would it help if I was in a lab coat and glasses?’
�Yes.’ Because the way he packed out his black T-shirt was the least nerdy thing she’d ever seen. �So why are my taxes funding your trip around the country, exactly?’
�You’re not earning. You don’t pay taxes.’
The man had a point. �Why are you out here, then?’
�I’m auditing the weather stations. I check them, report on their condition.’
Well, that explained the hands. �I thought you were this free spirit on two wheels. You’re an auditor.’
His lips tightened. �Something tells me that’s a step down from weatherman in your eyes.’
She got stuck into her complimentary bread roll, buttering and biting into it. �How many stations are there?’
�Eight hundred and ninety-two.’
�And they send one man?’ Surely they had locals that could check to make sure possums hadn’t moved into their million-dollar infrastructure.
�I volunteered to do the whole run. Needed the break.’
From...? But she’d promised not to ask. They were supposed to be talking about travel highlights. �Where was the most remote station?’
�Giles. Seven hundred and fifty clicks west of Alice. Up in the Gibson Desert.’
Alice Springs. Right smack bang in the middle of their massive island continent. �Where did you start?’
�Start and finish in Perth.’
A day and a half straight drive from here. �Is Perth home?’
�Sydney.’
She visualised the route he must have taken clockwise around the country from the west. �So you’re nearly done, then?’
His laugh drew the eyes of the other diners. �Yeah. If two-thirds of the weather stations weren’t in the bottom third of the state.’
�Do you get to look around? Or is it all work?’
He shrugged. �Some places I skip right through. Others I linger. I have some flexibility.’
Eve knew exactly what that was like. Some towns whispered to you like a lover. Others yelled at you to go. She tended to move on quickly from those.
�Favourites so far?’
And he was off... Talking about the places that had captivated him most. The prehistoric, ferny depths of the Claustral Canyon, cave-diving in the crystal-clear ponds on South Australia’s limestone coast, the soul-restoring solidity of Katherine Gorge in Australia’s north.
�And the run over here goes without saying.’
�The Nullabor?’ Pretty striking with its epic treeless stretches of desert but not the most memorable place she could recall.
�The Great Australian Bight,’ he clarified.
She just blinked at him.
�You got off the highway on the way over, right? Turned for the coast?’
�My focus is town to town.’
He practically gaped. �One of the most spectacular natural wonders in the world was just a half-hour drive away.’
�And half an hour back. That was an hour sooner I could have made it to the next town.’
His brows dipped over grey eyes. �You’ve got to get out more.’
�I’m on the job.’
�Yeah, me, too, but you have to live as well. What about weekends?’
The criticism rankled. �Not all of us are on the cushy public servant schedule. An hour—a day—could mean the difference between running across someone who knew Travis and not.’
Or even running into Trav himself.
�What if they came through an hour after you left, and pausing to look at something pretty could have meant your paths crossed?’
Did he think she hadn’t tortured herself with those thoughts late at night? The endless what-ifs?
�An hour afterwards and they’ll see a poster. An hour before and they’d have no idea their shift buddy is a missing person.’ At least that was what she told herself. Sternly.
Marshall blinked at her.
�You don’t understand.’ How could he?
�Wouldn’t it be faster to just email the posters around the country? Ask the post offices to put them up for you.’
�It’s not just about the posters. It’s about talking to people. Hunting down leads. Making an impression.’
Hoping to God the impression would stick.
�The kind you nearly made this afternoon?’
�Whatever it takes.’
Their meals arrived and the next minute was filled with making space on the table and receiving their drinks.
�Anyway, weren’t we supposed to be talking about something else?’ Eve said brightly, crunching into a chip. �Where are you headed next?’
�Up to Kalgoorlie, then Southern Cross.’
North. Complete opposite to her.
�You?’ His gaze was neutral enough.
�Esperance. Ravensthorpe. With a side trip out to Israelite Bay.’ Jeez—why didn’t she just draw him her route on a serviette? �I’m getting low on posters after the Nullabor run. Need an MP’s office.’
His newly groomed head tipped.
�MP’s offices are obliged by law to print missing-person posters on request,’ she explained. �And there’s one in Esperance.’
�Convenient.’
She glared at her chicken. �It’s the least they could do.’
And pretty much all they did. Though they were usually carefully sympathetic.
�It must be hard,’ he murmured between mouthfuls. �Hitting brick walls everywhere you go.’
�I’d rather hit them out here than stuck back in Melbourne. At least I can be productive here.’
Sitting at home and relying on others to do something to find her brother had nearly killed her.
�Did you leave a big family behind?’
Instantly her mind flashed to her father’s grief-stricken face as the only person he had left in the world drove off towards the horizon. �Just my dad.’
�No mum?’
She sat up straighter in her seat. If Christine-of-the-dagger was off the table for discussion, her drunk mother certainly was. Clearly, the lines in her face were as good as a barometric map. Because Marshall let the subject well and truly drop.
�Well, guess this is our first and last dinner, then,’ he said cheerfully, toasting her with a forkful of mashed potato and peas. There was nothing more in that than pure observation. Nothing enough that she felt confident in answering without worrying it would sound like an invitation.
�You never know, we might bump into each other again.’
But, really, how likely was that once they headed off towards opposite points on the compass? The only reason they’d met up this once was because there was only one road in and out of the south half of this vast state and he’d crashed into an emu right in the middle of it.
Thoughtful eyes studied her face, then turned back to his meal.
* * *
�So you’re not from Sydney, originally?’
Marshall pushed his empty plate away and groaned inwardly. Who knew talking about nothing could be so tiring? This had to be the greatest number of words he’d spoken to anyone in weeks. But it was his fault as much as hers. No dagger tattoo and no missing brother. That was what he’d stipulated. She’d held up her end of the bargain, even though she was clearly itching to know more.
Precisely why he didn’t do dinners with women.
Conversation.
He’d much rather get straight to the sex part. Although that was clearly off the table with Eve. So it really made a man wonder why the heck he’d said yes to Eve’s �not a date’ invitation. Maybe even he got lonely.
And maybe they were now wearing long coats in Hades.
�Brisbane.’
�How old were you when you moved?’ she chatted on, oblivious to the rapid congealing of his thoughts. Oblivious to the dangerous territory she’d accidentally stumbled into. Thoughts of his brother, their mother and how tough he’d found Sydney as an adolescent.
�Twelve.’
The word squeezed past his suddenly tight throat. The logical part of him knew it was just polite conversation, but the part of him that was suddenly as taut as a crossbow loaded a whole lot more onto her innocent chatter. Twelve was a crap age to be yanked away from your friends and the school where you were finding your feet and thrust into one of the poorest suburbs of one of the biggest cities in the country. But—for the woman who’d only pumped out a second son for the public benefits—moving states to chase a more generous single-parent allowance was a no-brainer. No matter who it disrupted.
Not that any of that money had ever found its way to him and Rick. They were just a means to an end.
�What was that like?’
Being your mother’s meal ticket or watching your older brother forge himself a career as the local drug-mover?
�It was okay.’
Uh-oh...here it came. Verbal shutdown. Probably just as well, given the direction his mind was going.
She watched him steadily, those dark eyes knowing something was up even if she didn’t know exactly what. �Uh-huh...’
Which was code for Your turn next, Oscar Wilde. But he couldn’t think of a single thing to say, witty or otherwise. So he folded his serviette and gave his chair the slightest of backward pushes.
�Well...’
�What just happened?’ Eve asked, watching him with curiosity but not judgment. And not moving an inch.
�It’s getting late.’
�It’s eight-thirty.’
Seriously? Only an hour? It felt like eternity.
�I’m heading out at sunrise. So I can get to Lake Lefroy before it gets too hot.’
And back to blissful isolation, where he didn’t need to explain himself to anyone.
She tipped her head and it caused her dark hair to swing to the right a little. A soft fragrance wafted forwards and teased his receptors. His words stumbled as surely as he did, getting up. �Thanks for the company.’
She followed suit. �You’re welcome.’
They split the bill in uncomfortable silence, then stepped out into the dark street. Deserted by eight-thirty.
Eve looked to her right, then back at him.
�Listen, I know you’re just across the road but could you...would you mind walking me back to the bus?’
Maybe they were both remembering those three jerks from earlier.
�Where do you park at night?’ He suddenly realised he had no idea where she’d pulled up. And that his ability to form sentences seemed to have returned with the fresh air.
�I usually find a good spot...’
Oh, jeez. She wasn’t even sorted for the night.
They walked on in silence and then words just came tumbling out of him.
�My motel booking comes with parking. You could use that if you want. I’ll tuck the bike forward.’
�Really?’ Gratitude flooded her pretty face. �That would be great, thank you.’
�Come on.’
He followed her to the right, and walked back through Norseman’s quiet main streets. Neither of them spoke. When they reached her bus, she unlocked the side window and reached in to activate the folding front door. He waited while she crossed back around and then stepped up behind her into the cab.
Forbidden territory previously.
But she didn’t so much as twitch this time. Which was irrationally pleasing. Clearly he’d passed some kind of test. Maybe it was when the beard came off.
The Bedford rumbled to life and Eve circled the block before heading back to his motel. He directed her into his bay and then jumped out to nudge the KTM forward a little. The back of her bus stuck out of the bay but he was pretty sure there was only one other person in the entire motel and they were already parked up for the night.
�Thanks again for this,’ she said, pausing at the back of the bus with one of the two big rear doors open.
Courtesy of the garish motel lights that streamed in her half-closed curtains, he could see the comfortable space he’d fallen asleep in bathed in a yellow glow. And beyond it, behind the door that now stood open at the other end of the bus, Eve’s bedroom. The opening was dominated by the foot of a large mattress draped in a burgundy quilt and weighed down with two big cushions.
Nothing like the sterile motel room and single country bed he’d be returning to.
�Caravan parks can be a little isolated this time of year,’ she said, a bit tighter, as she caught the direction of his gaze. �I feel better being close to...people.’
He eased his shoulder against the closed half of the door and studied her. Had she changed her mind? Was that open door some kind of unconscious overture? And was he really considering taking her up on it if it was? Pretty, uptight girls on crusades didn’t really meet his definition of uncomplicated. Yet something deep inside hinted strongly that she might be worth a bit of complication.
He peered down on her in the shadows. �No problem.’
She shuffled from left foot to right. �Well...’night, then. See you in the morning. Thanks again.’
A reluctant smile crossed his face at the firm finality of that door slamming shut. And at the zipping across of curtains as he sauntered to the rear of the motel.
Now they were one-for-one in the inappropriate social reaction stakes. He’d gone all strong and silent on her and she’d gone all blushing virgin on him.
Equally awkward.
Equally regrettable.
He dug into his pocket for the worn old key and let himself into his ground floor room. Exactly as soulless and bland as her little bus wasn’t.
But exactly as soulless and bland as he preferred.
CHAPTER THREE (#u6f21b13c-f87a-5471-9940-10d7bda1f669)
�THIS BUS NEVER stops being versatile, does it?’
Eve’s breath caught deep in her throat at the slight twang and comfortable gravel in the voice that came from her left. The few days that had passed since she’d heard his bike rumble out of the motel car park at dawn as she’d rolled the covers more tightly around her and fell back to sleep gave him exactly the right amount of stubble as he let the beard grow back in.
�Marshall?’ Her hand clamped down on the pile of fliers that lifted off the table in the brisk Esperance waterfront breeze. �I thought you’d headed north?’
�I did. But a road train had jack-knifed across the highway just out of Kal and the spill clean-up was going to take twenty-four hours so I adjusted my route. I’ll do the south-west anti-clockwise. Like you.’
Was there just the slightest pause before �like you’? And did that mean anything? Apparently, she took too long wondering because he started up again.
�I assumed I’d have missed you, actually.’
Or hoped? Impossible to know with his eyes hidden behind seriously dark sunglasses. Still, if he’d truly wanted to avoid her he could have just kept walking just now. She was so busy promoting The Missing to locals she never would have noticed him.
Eve pushed her shoulders back to improve her posture, which had slumped as the morning wore on. Convenient coincidence that it also made the best of her limited assets.
�I had to do Salmon Gums and Gibson on the way,’ she said. �I only arrived last night.’
He took in the two-dozen posters affixed to the tilted up doors of the bus’s luggage compartment. It made a great roadside noticeboard to set her fold-out table up in front of.
He strolled up and back, studying every face closely.
�Who are all these people?’
�They’re all long-termers.’ The ten per cent.
�Do you know them all?’
�No,’ she murmured. �But I know most of their families. Online, at least.’
�All missing.’ He frowned. �Doesn’t it pull focus from your brother? To do this?’
Yeah. It definitely did.
�I wouldn’t be much of a human being if I travelled the entire country only looking after myself. Besides, we kind of have a reciprocal arrangement going. If someone’s doing something special—like media or some kind of promotion—they try to include as many others as they can. This is something I can do in the big centres while taking a break from the road.’
Though Esperance was hardly a metropolis and talking to strangers all day wasn’t much of a break.
He stopped just in front of her, picked up one of Travis’s posters. �Who’s “we”?’
�The network.’
The sunglasses tipped more towards her.
�The missing-persons network,’ she explained. �The families. There are a lot of us.’
�You have a formal network?’
�We have an informal one. We share information. Tips. Successes.’
Failures. Quite a lot of failures.
�Good to have the support, I guess.’
He had no idea. Some days her commitment to a bunch of people she’d never met face to face was the only thing that got her out of bed.
�When I first started up, I kept my focus on Trav. But these people—’ she tipped her head back towards all the faces on her poster display �—are like extended family to me because they’re the family of people I’m now close to. How could I not include them amongst The Missing?’
A woman stopped to pick up one of her fliers and Eve quickly delivered her spiel, smiling and making a lot of eye contact. Pumping it with energy. Whatever it took...
Marshall waited until the woman had finished perusing the whole display. �The Missing?’
She looked behind her. �Them.’
And her brother had the biggest and most central poster on it.
He nodded to a gap on the top right of the display. �Looks like one’s fallen off.’
�I just took someone down.’
His eyebrows lifted. �They were found? That’s great.’
No, not great. But at least found. That was how it was for the families of long-timers. The Simmons family had the rest of their lives to deal with the mental torture that came with feeling relief when their son’s remains were found in a gully at the bottom of a popular hiking mountain. Closure. That became the goal somewhere around the ten-month mark.
Emotional euthanasia.
Maybe one day that would be her—loathing herself for being grateful that the question mark that stalked her twenty-four-seven was now gone because her brother was. But there was no way she could explain any of that to someone outside the network. Regular people just didn’t get it. It was just so much easier to smile and nod.
�Yes. Great.’
Silence clunked somewhat awkwardly on the table between them.
�Did you get out to Israelite Bay yet?’ he finally asked.
�I’ll probably do that tomorrow or Wednesday.’
His clear eyes narrowed. �Listen. I have an idea. You need to travel out to the bay and I need to head out to Cape Arid and Middle Island to survey them for a possible new weather station. Why don’t we team up, head out together? Two birds, one stone.’
More together time in which to struggle with conversation and obsess about his tattoos. Was that wise?
�I’ll only slow you down. I need to do poster drops at all roadhouses, caravan parks and campsites between here and there.’
�That’s okay. As far as the office is concerned, I have a couple of days while the truck mess is cleared up. We can take our time.’
Why did he seem so very reluctant? Almost as if he was speaking against his will. She scrunched her nose as a prelude to an I don’t think so.
But he beat her to it. �Middle Island is off-limits to the public. You can’t go there without a permit.’
�And you have a permit?’
�I do.’
�Have you forgotten that this isn’t a tourist trip for me?’
�You’ll get your work done on the way, and then you’ll just keep me company for mine.’
�I can get my work done by myself and be back in Esperance by nightfall.’
�Or you can give yourself a few hours off and see a bit of this country that you’re totally missing.’
�And why should I be excited by Middle Island?’
�A restricted island could be a great place for someone to hide out if they don’t want to be discovered.’
The moment the words left his mouth, colour peaked high on his jaw.
�Sorry—’ he winced as she sucked in a breath �—that was... God, I’m sorry. I just thought you might enjoy a bit of downtime. That it might be good for you.’
But his words had had their effect. If you needed a permit and Marshall had one, then she’d be crazy not to tag along. What if she let her natural reticence stop her and Trav was there, camping and lying low?
�I’ll let you ride on my bike,’ he said, as though that made it better. As if it was some kind of prize.
Instantly her gut curled into a fist. �Motorbikes kill people.’
�People kill people,’ he dismissed. �Have you ever ridden on one?’
If riding tandem with a woman in the midst of a mid-life crisis counted. �My mother had a 250cc.’
�Really? Cool.’
Yeah, that was what she and Travis had thought, right up until the day it killed their mother and nearly him.
�But you haven’t really ridden until you’ve been on a 1200.’
�No, thanks.’
�Come on... Wouldn’t you like to know what it’s like to have all that power between your legs?’
�If this is a line, it’s spectacularly cheesy.’
He ignored that. �Or the freedom of tearing along at one hundred clicks with nothing between you and the road?’
�You call that freedom, I call that terror.’
�How will you know until you try it?’
�I’m not interested in trying it.’
He totally failed at masking his disappointment. �Then you can tail me in the bus. We’ll convoy. It’ll still be fun.’
Famous last words. Something told her the fun would run out, for him, round about the time she pulled into her third rest stop for the day, to pin up posters.
�There’s also a good caravan park out there, according to the travel guides. You can watch a west coast sunset.’
�I’ve seen plenty of sunsets.’
�Not with me,’ he said on a sexy grin.
Something about his intensity really wiggled down under her skin. Tantalising and zingy. �Why are you so eager for me to do this?’
Grey eyes grew earnest. �Because you’re missing everything. The entire country. The moments of joy that give life its colour.’
�You should really moonlight in greeting-card messages.’
�Come on, Eve. You have to go there, anyway, it’s just a few hours of detour.’
�And what if Trav comes through in those few hours?’ It sounded ridiculous but it was the fear she lived with every moment of every day.
�Then he’ll see one of dozens of posters and know you’re looking for him.’
The simple truth of that ached. Every decision she made ached. Each one could bring her closer to her brother or push her further away. It made decision-making pure agony. But this one came with a whole bundle of extra considerations. Marshall-shaped considerations. And the thought of sitting and watching a sunset with him even managed to alleviate some of that ache.
A surprising amount.
She sighed. �What time?’
�How long are you set up here for?’
�I have permission to be on the waterfront until noon.’
�Five past noon, then?’
So eager. Did he truly think she was that parched for some life experience? It galled her to give him all the points. �Ten past.’
His smile transformed his face, the way it always did.
�Done.’
�And we’re sleeping separately. You know...just for the record.’
�Hey, I’m just buying you a sunset, lady.’ His shrug was adorable. And totally disarming.
�Now go, Weatherman—you’re scaring off my leads with all that leather.’
Her lips said �go’ but her heart said stay. Whispered it, really. But she’d become proficient in drowning out the fancies of her heart. And its fears. Neither were particularly productive in keeping her on track in finding Travis. A nice neutral...nothing...was the best way to proceed.
Emotionally blank, psychologically focused.
Which wasn’t to say that Marshall Sullivan couldn’t be a useful distraction from all the voices in her head and heart.
And a pleasant one.
And a short one.
* * *
They drove the two hundred kilometres east in a weird kind of convoy. Eve chugging along in her ancient bus and him, unable to stand the slow pace, roaring off ahead and pulling over at the turn-off to every conceivable human touch point until she caught up, whacked up a poster and headed out again. Rest stops, roadhouses, campgrounds, lookouts. Whizzing by at one hundred kilometres an hour and only stopping longer for places that had people and rubbish bins and queued-up vehicles.
It was a horrible way to see such a beautiful country.
Eventually, they made it to the campground nestled in the shoulder crook of a pristine bay on the far side of Cape Arid National Park, its land arms reaching left and right in a big, hug-like semicircle. A haven for travellers, fishermen and a whole lot of wildlife.
But not today. Today they had the whole place to themselves.
�So many blues...’ Eve commented, stepping down out of the bus and staring at the expansive bay.
And she wasn’t wrong. Closer to shore, the water was the pale, almost ice-blue of gentle surf. Then the kind of blue you saw on postcards, until, out near the horizon it graduated to a deep, gorgeous blue before slamming into the endless rich blue of the Australian sky. And, down to their left, a cluster of weathered boulders were freckled by a bunch of sea lions sunning themselves.
God...so good for the soul.
�This is nothing,’ he said. Compared to what she’d missed all along the south coast of Australia. Compared to what she’d driven straight past. �If you’d just chuck your indicator on from time to time...’
She glanced at him but didn’t say anything, busying stringing out her solar blanket to catch the afternoon light. When she opened the back doors of the bus to fill it with fresh sea air, she paused, looking further out to sea. Out to an island.
�Is that where we’re going?’
Marshall hauled himself up next to her to follow her gaze. �Nope. That’s one of the closer, smaller islands in the archipelago. Middle Island is further out. One of those big shadows looming on the horizon.’
He leaned half across her to point further out and she followed the line of his arm and finger. It brought them as close together as they’d been since he’d dragged her kicking and cursing away from the thugs back in Norseman. And then he knew how much he’d missed her scent.
It eddied around his nostrils now, in defiance of the strong breeze.
Taunting him.
�How many are there?’
What were they talking about? Right...islands. �More than a hundred.’
Eve stood, staring, her gaze flicking over every feature in view. Marshall kept his hand hooked around the bus’s ceiling, keeping her company up there. Keeping close.
�Trav could be on any of them.’
Not if he also wanted to eat. Or drink. Only two had fresh water.
�Listen, Eve...’
She turned her eyes back up to his and it put their faces much closer than either of them might have intended.
�I really am truly sorry I said that about your brother. It was a cheap shot.’ And one that he still didn’t fully understand making. He wasn’t Eve’s keeper. �The chances of him being out there are—’
�Tiny. I know. But it’s in my head now and I’m not going to be able to sleep if I don’t chase every possibility.’
�Still, I don’t want to cause you pain.’
�That’s not hurting, Marshall. That’s helping. It’s what I’m out here for.’
She said the words extra firmly, as if she was reminding both of them. Didn’t make the slightest difference to the tingling in his toes. The tingling said she was here for him.
What did toes ever know?
He held her gaze much longer than was probably polite, their dark depths giving the ocean around them a run for its money.
�Doesn’t seem a particularly convenient place to put a weather station,’ she said finally, turning back out to the islands.
Subtle subject change. Not. But he played along. �We want remote. To give us better data on southern coastal weather conditions.’
She glanced around them at the whole lot of nothing as far as the eye could see. �You got it.’
Silent sound cushioned them in layers. The occasional bird cry, far away. The whump of the distant waves hitting the granite face of the south coast. The thrum of the coastal breeze around them. The awkward clearing of her throat as it finally dawned on her that she was shacked up miles from anywhere—and anyone—with a man she barely knew.
�What time are we meeting the boat? And where?’
�First thing in the morning. They’ll pull into the bay, then ferry us around. Any closer to Middle Island and we couldn’t get in without an off-road vehicle.’
�Right.’
Gravity helped his boots find the dirt and he looked back up at Eve, giving her the space she seemed to need. �I’m going to go hit the water before the sun gets too low.’
Her eyes said that a swim was exactly what she wanted. But the tightness in her lips said that she wasn’t about to go wandering through the sand dunes somewhere this remote with a virtual stranger. Fair enough, they’d only known each other hours. Despite having a couple of life-threatening moments between them. Maybe if she saw him walking away from her, unoffended and unconcerned, she’d feel more comfortable around him. Maybe if he offered no pressure for the two of them to spend time together, she’d relax a bit.
And maybe if he grew a pair he wouldn’t care.
�See you later on, then.’
Marshall jogged down to the beach without looking back. When he hit the shore he laid his boots, jeans and T-shirt out on the nearest rock to get nice and toasty for his return and waded into the ice-cold water in his shorts. Normally he’d have gone without, public or not, but that wasn’t going to win him any points in the Is it safe to be here with you? stakes. The sand beneath his feet had been beaten so fine by the relentless Southern Ocean it was more like squidging into saturated talcum powder than abrasive granules of sand. Soft and welcoming, the kind of thing you could imagine just swallowing you up.
And you wouldn’t mind a bit.
His skin instantly thrilled at the kiss of the ice-cold water after the better part of a day smothered in leather and road dust, and he waded the stretch of shallows, then dived through the handful of waves that built up momentum as the rapid rise of land forced them into graceful, white-topped arcs.
This was his first swim since Cactus Beach, a whole state away. The Great Australian Bight was rugged and amazing to look at right the way across the guts of the country but when the rocks down to the sea were fifty metres high and the ocean down there bottomless and deadly, swimming had to take a short sabbatical. But swimming was also one of the things that kept him sane and being barred from it got him all twitchy.
Which made it pretty notable that the first thing he didn’t do when he pulled up to the beautiful, tranquil and swimmable shores of Esperance earlier today was hit the water.
He went hunting for a dark-haired little obsessive instead.
Oh, he told himself a dozen lies to justify it—that he’d rather swim the private beaches of the capes; that he’d rather swim at sunset; that he’d rather get the Middle Island review out of the way first so he could take a few days to relax—but that was all starting to feel like complete rubbish. Apparently, he was parched for something more than just salt water.
Company.
Pfff. Right. That was one word for it.
It had been months since he’d been interested enough in a woman to do something about it, and by �interested’ he meant hungry. Hungry enough to head out and find a woman willing to sleep with a man who had nothing to offer but a hard, one-off lay before blowing town the next day. There seemed to be no shortage of women across the country who were out to salve a broken heart, or pay back a cheating spouse, or numb something broken deep inside them. They were the ones he looked for when he got needy enough because they didn’t ask questions and they didn’t have expectations.
It took one to know one.
Those encounters scratched the itch when it grew too demanding...and they reminded him how empty and soulless relationships were. All relationships, not just the random strangers in truck stops and bars across the country. Women. Mothers.
Brothers.
At least the women in the bars knew where they stood. No one was getting used. And there was no one to disappoint except himself.
He powered his body harder, arm over arm, and concentrated on how his muscles felt, cutting his limbs through the surf. Burning from within, icy from without. The familiar, heavy ache of lactic acid building up. And when he’d done all the examination it was possible to do on his muscles, he focused on the water: how the last land it had touched was Antarctica, how it was life support for whales and elephant seals and dugongs and colossal squid and mysterious deep-trench blobs eight kilometres below the surface and thousands of odd-shaped sea creatures in between. How humans were a bunch of nimble-fingered, big-brained primates that really only used the millimetre around the edge of the mapped oceans and had absolutely no idea how much of their planet they knew nothing about.
Instant Gulliver.
It reminded him how insignificant he was in the scheme of things. Him and all his human, social problems.
The sun was low on the horizon when he next paid attention, and the south coast of Australia was littered with sharks who liked to feed at dusk and dawn. And while there had certainly been a day he would have happily taken the risk and forgotten the consequences, he’d managed to find a happy place in the Groundhog Day blur that was the past six months on the road, and could honestly say—hand on heart—that he’d rather not be shark food now.
He did a final lazy lap parallel with the wide beach back towards his discarded clothes, then stood as soon as the sea floor rose to meet him. His hands squeezed up over his lowered lids and back through his hair, wringing the salt water out of it, then he stood, eyes closed, with his face tipped towards the warmth of the afternoon sun.
Eventually, he opened them and started, just a little, at Eve standing there, her arms full of towel, her mouth hanging open as if he’d interrupted her mid-sentence.
* * *
Eve knew she was gaping horribly but she was no more able to close her trap than rip her eyes from Marshall’s chest and belly.
His tattooed chest and belly.
Air sucked into her lungs in choppy little gasps.
He had some kind of massive bird of prey, wings spread and aloft, across his chest. The lower curve of its majestic wings sat neatly along the ridge of his pectorals and its wing tips followed the line of muscle there up onto his tanned, rounded shoulders. Big enough to accentuate the musculature of his chest, low enough to be invisible when he was wearing a T-shirt. It should have been trashy but it wasn’t; it looked like he’d been born with it.
His arms were still up, squeezing the sea water from his hair, and that gave her a glimpse of a bunch of inked characters—Japanese, maybe Chinese?—on the underside of one full biceps.
Add that to the dagger on the other arm and he had a lot of ink for a weatherman.
�Hey.’
His voice startled her gaze back to his and her tongue into action.
�Wow,’ she croaked, then realised that wasn’t the most dignified of beginnings. �You were gone so long...’
Great. Not even capable of a complete sentence.
�I’ve been missing the ocean. Sorry if I worried you.’
She grasped around in the memories she’d just spent a couple of hours accumulating, studying the map to make sure they hadn’t missed a caravan park or town. And she improvised some slightly more intelligent conversation.
�Whoever first explored this area really didn’t have the best time doing it.’
Marshall dripped. And frowned. As he lowered his arms to take the towel from her nerveless fingers, the bird of prey’s feathers shifted with him, just enough to catch her eye. She struggled to look somewhere other than at him, but it wasn’t easy when he filled her field of view so thoroughly. She wanted to step back but then didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was affected.
�Cape Arid, Mount Ragged, Poison Creek...’ she listed with an encouraging lack of wobble in her voice, her clarity restored the moment he pressed the towel to his face and disguised most of that unexpectedly firm and decorated torso.
He stepped over to the rock and hooked up his T-shirt, then swept it on in a smooth, manly shrug. Even with its overstretched neckline, the bird of prey was entirely hidden. The idea of him hanging out in his meteorological workplace in a government-appropriate suit with all of that ink hidden away under it was as secretly pleasing as when she used to wear her best lingerie to section meetings.
Back when stupid things like that had mattered.
�I guess it’s not so bad when you have supplies and transport,’ he said, totally oblivious to her illicit train of thought, �but it must have been a pretty treacherous environment for early explorers. Especially if they were thirsty.’
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