Chapter 35 – The Wrong Man
Amanda and Mark talked for maybe an hour that night. When he looked at her she felt like she had his total attention, his eyes looked at her with such penetration. It made her a bit giddy and breathless, she would not let him get away tonight without something more.
She asked him what he was doing back on the island and where he was off to next. He said he was just back for a day to service the new air conditioners he had installed a week ago, make minor adjustments and ensure that all were working well. Tomorrow he would return to the mainland when he finished. Then after a night in Airlie Beach he was off early the next morning to go prospecting for opals in central Queensland, a place he had been told about which was promising. He would spend ten days to two weeks out there, the length depending on what he found. When that was done he would go further west, across to the NT where he was booked to do a few weeks of station work, contract mustering cattle.
She kept asking him questions about his life and what it was like out in “The Outback”, as he called it, was it like the American Wild West.
Finally, after about her tenth question, he turned to her and looked at her with eyes that bored straight into her soul.
“If you really want to see it you can come with me for a week or two. It won’t be exciting. I will be digging for opals. It is hard work. And once I leave here I won’t be coming back this way anytime soon. So if you get bored I can take you a four hour drive to the local town to catch a bus if you want to leave. Or, when I am finished, I can take you on to Mount Isa from where you can catch a plane. Or, if you really want to stay on longer you can come on with me to the NT and see a couple real cattle stations at work. When that is finished I will bring you to Alice Springs or Katherine which are the nearby towns. By then I am sure you will have had more than enough of the Outback and you can leave from there.
There was something implacable and hard in his eyes when he said those words that it gave her a little shiver. It was as if he had laid down a challenge to her, a challenge for a trip and a challenge for control. She liked challenges and she liked control.
She nodded, now exerting her own control. It could be interesting. “What do I need to do if I decide to come?
He shrugged, dismissive; as if now regretful he had made an offer, but not willing to go back on his word if the challenge was accepted.
“I will be catching the last ferry back to the mainland tomorrow. If I see you on the ferry I will take it you are coming with me.”
With that he stood up and nodded a good night.
Amanda sat there for a further five minutes, feeling wildly exhilarated, thinking how the strangest things in life came when least expected. She was determined to accept his challenge; she would be on the ferry. She would give notice tomorrow saying she was leaving at the end of the day, that a job offer had come up on the mainland that was too good to refuse and she needed to start immediately. They would make up her pay by the end of the day and she would be gone.
She would say nothing of her plan to travel to the outback with Mark. It would be fun. She knew, despite his challenge, that she could control him, the same way as she had always managed with other men.
Next day the ferry was well over half way across the water to the mainland before she saw him. She was starting to wonder if he had done this just to tease her. But, sure enough, there he was. He looked down at her gear in her bag, picked it up and carried it to the car deck, dropping it onto the back of a white four wheel drive.
“This is my car,” I assume you are coming with me.”
That night he booked them into a five star resort at Airlie Beach. He did not ask her whether she wanted to share. He simply told her of his plans for them to enjoy a final night of civilisation before heading out the back of nowhere. He carried her bag up the room, a palatial apartment looking far out across the beach to the islands in the distance. It had a huge bed, a separate lounge areas, a bathroom with a Jacuzzi and a wide terrace with a table and chairs.
He took two beers from the fridge and offered her one.
She nodded and thanked him.
After they had both had two drinks and were feeling mellow, he suggested she might like a bath and that after that he planned to go and eat in a new restaurant in the town if she would like to accompany him. It was not quite a dinner invitation, more a take it or leave it offer, he was going and she could come along too if she wanted to.
She accepted with alacrity, and decided that tonight she would wow him with her sexiest dress. She asked if he needed to use the bathroom for the next half hour.
He said “No, It is all yours.”
She took out her favourite soft silky dress, bought on her trip to Paris, turquoise colours that shimmered as she walked. She did her make up to blend and match, then slipped the dress over her head and walked back out onto the terrace.
He looked up, she could feel the sexuality exuding from herself and knew it hit him full in the face as she stood there.
‘Wow, I wonder who the lucky man will be who gets to take that dress off you at the end of tonight.
She gave him a lazy smile and said. “I thought that might be you.”
A week passed. The sex, beginning with that first night was wild. This man was insatiable and brought her pleasure beyond what she had known before. And she knew she turned him on big time too.
However the trip itself was not exciting, truth be told. It was like the badlands of America; at least the way she had seen them on TV, she had never been to those places.
The first day had been OK; they had driven down the coast to a town called Mackay, then turned inland through hills. After a few hours they had come to a town called Emerald. Mark told her it was in the heart of the good cattle country of the Great Divide of Queensland.
It was a pleasant bustling town and they stopped there for night in a local hotel where they had taken a room and resumed their sexual romp along with beer and steaks for dinner
On the first night when they had come back to their apartment at Airlie Beach, after undressing Amanda and fondling her in the most sensual and intimate way Mark had produced a condom. She had decided she did not want this so had told him she was on the pill and this was not required, even though it was not true. Not that she thought she would get pregnant, she was pretty sure it was past that time of the month.
But she wanted all the leverage she could get if it came to a battle of wills with this man. It occurred to her that there might be leverage if she was to fall pregnant or even claim to be, that was if she wanted to get control of this man. She was not quite sure yet but the thought of keeping this man and bending him to her will seemed exciting.
Mark had her captivated, he was so goddamned sexy and wild, not just in bed but in everything he did. She had felt a lump on his arm one night and she had got him to admit it was from a bullet wound, it came from a time when he was a mercenary in West Africa he told her.
She asked if he had ever killed someone. He said, “Yes, quite a few times.” She found that fascinating too, there was a ruthlessness to him that was unlike anyone she had been close to before. It gave her little chills sometimes but she was sure she had his measure.
He was consistently kind and gentle. So far she had not asked him to do anything major as a favour. However he had anticipated and done lots of little things for her, even before she realised she needed them. He had done them with a smile as if he liked doing things to please her.
She liked this kind and gentle way that he treated her. She felt sure, if she insisted, that he would fall into line with her other wishes.
The day they left Emerald they had visited a little town called Ruby, named after the gems. In the town he had gone to a shop that advertised things bought and sold. The man who worked there was an old miner. He had made Amanda a cup of tea while he and Mark talked alone at a corner table. After a while the man started showing Mark small things that must be gems though from where she
was sitting she could not see.
At first Mark shook his head but after being shown some more he nodded and pulled out a roll of money. It looked like lots. He counted out a big pile and gave to the man. It looked like several thousand dollars.
Then Mark nodded to her that they were ready to go. As they walked out Mark showed her what he had bought, two rich red rubies, each the size of a large pea. The colour of them was like the glow of a fading sunset or a dying coal from a fire, a very deep red.
Their beauty was striking. Amanda could imagine one set on a chain between her breasts. This thought made her smile as she looked up at Mark. He was looking at her intently and said. “Perhaps I will give you one of these when you go; the colour matches the fire in your heart.
She smiled back, thinking, That is good, I would like that but I do not plan to leave you anytime soon.
Mark put the rubies in a little pouch of other stones. She could not see what was in there. But it rattled and looked heavy; as if there were lots of other jewels, worth lots and lots of money. That was good, that would give money for their life together that she had started to plan.
She just had to bring him back to a city, civilise him a bit, dress him in good clothes. After that he would really wow all the people they met. She decided it was her life’s mission to rescue this man from the Outback and turn him into something civilised. It felt like a noble calling. But first she must build more trust and affection with him, before she tried to direct him to the places she needed to go.
She had heard, back in America, that when one first caught a wild horse one needed to smother it with love and affection until it trusted you. Then when you had its trust you could take control.
That was her sense of how it would be with Mark. She was glad she had been driven to come to Australia as, without this, she would never have met this amazing man.
She was not sure if it was love, there was certainly lots of lust. But she really did feel something deep and special for him.
The only trouble was that, after they left Emerald, they had really come to the middle of nowhere. Now it was getting boring. She was not sure how many more days she could stand of this wasteland.
She did not mind helping a bit but the digging work was hard. She soon got sore hands and a couple times little blisters started to come. After that she stopped digging. There was not really anything else to do out here. She had gone for a few short walks, but there were no proper footpaths, and the grass was spiky to walk through and full of prickles.
Mark had also warned her to be really careful as the country was full of old mine shafts, some of which were really hard to see in the long grass. He did not want her to fall down one and injure herself. And even when she went off walking, wherever one went the scenery did not change, just more horrible rocky hills, with stunted trees and dead grass. No paths, no views, knees scraped and toes stubbed on rocks and rough ground was all she got. So now she mostly sat in the shade, trying to pass the time.
Mark seemed happy enough to let her rest, it was not really hot, and he had set up a comfortable bed and chair for her to use. But there were so many hours in the day to pass, they never seemed to end.
She was tired of the birds in the trees that squawked, she was tired of no hot showers to wash herself properly, just a tin of warm water from the fire and a cup to rinse with. She was tired of the same boring food cooked in a frying pan on the fire every day. She had read the two books she had brought. Mark did not seem to have any interesting books, just a few books about Australia that looked more like text books. She could not even get on the internet out here to amuse herself. It was way past any place where there was an internet connection for her tablet and she was tired of just playing games with herself on it.
She checked the date. It was now seven days since they had left that last town, Longreach, not that it was anything, a flat and dusty little hole. It must have taken three of four more hours of driving south west from there until they came to this place. She could not name any other places of civilisation nearby.
All that was here were scrubby tree things that Mark called mulga trees, other non-descript scrub and endless rocky hills. The only signs that other people were ever here were old mine shafts and bits of abandoned equipment rusting in the sun.
The first day she thought it was beautiful in an arid ‘badlands’ way. Now she was over that kind of beauty, in truth it was ugly. She had also not understood, before they came here, that no one else lived here.
Mark told her the nearest places with regular people were two cattle stations each about twenty miles in opposite directions. He did not offer to take her to visit. They occasionally sighted another prospector in the far distance, or saw the dust of a car or truck on some distant road. But that was it, the total of humanity.
For the rest of the time it was just him and her, stuck in the middle of this endless empty desolation. As fine as the collection of opals was going, and Mark said it was going really well, she was over it.
Mark was giving her progress reports each time he came up to the surface, usually every two to three hours. He told her the hole he was working in was not quite a bonanza but it had a lot of good stuff. He now had a four gallon drum half full of the bits of rock he dug up.
They did not look like much to her, but he showed her flashes of colour amongst a dark rock he called ironstone and said that, when these bits were cleaned up, there was plenty to sell in here, at a conservative estimate at least ten thousand dollars worth. Last night he had suggested that it would take another three or four days to finish his digging and then he would head north-west to Mount Isa
That was all fine and she could see it was good money for a week’s work. But rock was just bloody rock and it was getting seriously boring. She thought they should stop now, cash it in and go back to the coast. Then, if he wanted to come back out and dig up some more, he could come while she stayed and minded their nice place by the sea. She had pictured a place they would buy, a place with other people to talk to.
She decided that when he had finished work tonight it was time to start to exert control, to demand that he bring them both back to the place from whence they came, that they must leave tomorrow, not drag it out for another week to two.
He had told her a couple times that if she got too bored he would take her back to Longreach and from there she could catch a bus.
But she would not let him just to leave her there and vanish from her life. He needed to stay with her and continue to mind her the way he did so well. That was where a baby would be really useful. She did not have one growing inside her yet but she would find a way to convince him that one was on the way. Even if it was not yet quite true it could be by the time it really mattered.
Of course there was one other card she could play too, it was to say that she would go to the police and cry rape and abduction, that she had gone to Airlie Beach and met up with him and she had innocently gone back to his apartment only to be raped and then forced to come with him in the dead of night to this God forsaken place.
It was bluff but he did not know that. So if he tried to leave her off somewhere that would be her fall back. She had his name and his vehicle number plates, she could tell him it would be easy for the police to run him to ground if he left her and tried to shoot through.
Going to the police was the furthest thing from her mind; she did not want any risk that they would contact the Americans to find out about her. If they did that it could even result in them deporting her to face charges back home. But Mark did not know that. So it was yet another lever to pull if she thought he would try and give her the slip.
However she did not want to go there, to use threats. She really liked him and wanted to stay with him in a nice place. She wanted to keep having him around. So the other was last resort stuff to have in her back pocket should the need arise. She felt confident he would listen to sense and it would not come to that.
She felt so sure of her
self, that she could control this situation. But at times she thought of glimpses of his hard implacable eyes and there was a tiny seed of fear too.
Lost Girl Diary Page 38