by Janine Grey
‘Do I want to hear this?’ Fin asked in a low voice.
‘Full disclosure,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have let things drift along. After my dad died, my best friend suggested that George was the solution to all my problems. If I married him, my life would be settled. And it was one of those light-bulb moments that everyone talks about – an instant of perfect clarity amid the fog of grief. I could see my life playing out as an endless loop of conservative clothes, perfect hair and boring charitable functions.’
He laughed. ‘So instead you chose steel-capped boots, helmet hair and a beer at the Helton Hotel with Mick.’
Her mouth twisted in a half-smile. ‘You made it quite clear you thought I was Little Miss Perfect the first time we met.’
His eyes warmed. ‘You look better with a bit of opal dust on your face.’
Eliza’s heart squeezed at the tender look in his eyes. ‘I called things off with George, and I know I hurt him. A few weeks later there’s an article in one of the gossip rags, courtesy of his sister. She really tore into me. That night in the restaurant demonstrated that she hadn’t got it out of her system.’
‘And you took over the business,’ Fin asked. ‘Just you?’
‘Yes, although the name was all that was left, apart from one client, your great-uncle. I took it because I was all out of options and there was the opportunity to get out of Sydney for a while, escape the headlines.’
‘None of it was your doing, Eliza.’
‘I know.’ And she did, sort of. ‘But I accepted things when I should have questioned. I went along with things because it was convenient and comfortable and so perhaps I deserved some of what happened. I led the life of a pampered princess – accepted it as my right – but it was all an illusion.’
‘If we hadn’t been dumped on by life, we probably wouldn’t be here,’ Fin mused. I’d be sitting in an office, bored out of my skull —’
‘And I’d be staring out of my ivory tower in Sydney,’ she finished. ‘And now we’re – what are we, again?’ She asked the question lightly, but it vibrated between them.
‘Together? Making it up as we go along?’
As if drawn by invisible string, they each leant forward. Lips touched, breaths sighed. They drew slowly apart.
‘The last days have been hell. Everything reminded me of you. Lighting a camp fire . . . Hell, showering I’ve been riddled with images I couldn’t get out of my head,’ he told her softly. ‘I kept imagining . . .’
He stopped, as though he thought himself foolish, and his eyes alighted on a pile of Eliza’s work documents. Perched on the top were her dark-rimmed reading glasses. His eyes crinkled at the corners.
‘Well, well, Miss Mayberry,’ he murmured. ‘You are a dark horse.’ He picked them up and slid them onto her nose. ‘Now that’s how I imagine you when you get that serious look on your face. Wearing these and nothing else.’
‘We – I can’t provide a camp fire,’ she stammered, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. ‘But there’s a deep, old-fashioned tub with plenty of potential.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘Do we have to wait for tonight?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘Hygiene is crucial in the outback. Bathing morning, noon and night is highly recommended.’
He looked at his watch, stood up and held out a hand. ‘It’s past noon. We’d best get on with it.’
*
Eliza stirred on the pillow, then stretched like a cat, one vertebra at a time, and opened her eyes to meet the heat in Fin’s. He lay on his side, head propped on his right hand, while his left lay on her belly. He let his fingers drift north to circle her breast, spiralling closer and closer to the nipple. He flattened his palm across the sensitive tip, his calluses abrading her nipple. He watched her eyelids flutter, and felt fresh arousal tug at his groin.
‘Your eyes go dark when we make love,’ she whispered. Her left arm was raised, and she curved her hand around his cheek. Her mouth curved in a lazy smile as she rubbed his stubble. ‘I like your beard, the way it scratches wherever you kiss me.’ She glanced down at her body, and his fingers followed her gaze back to her belly and lower to her inner thighs, which bore his brand.
Fin brought his hand up to her chin, which also wore the marks of his beard, and her mouth crushed deep pink from the pressure of his mouth. ‘I was a little rough,’ he admitted. A fingertip traced her lower lip.
‘Maybe I like rough,’ she said, her eyes glowing a deep, mysterious blue.
‘I’m not sure the bath tub did,’ Fin replied. ‘I don’t think it’s seen that much activity in a while. Old Pauly probably wasn’t much for hygiene.’
Eliza wrinkled her nose. ‘Rae Turpin at the estate agent’s office said he’d moved away for a more comfortable retirement and left her to clean up the mess here.’
‘Hmmm.’ Fin frowned. While he was in town he’d dig around a little more. It still seemed odd that Pauly had left without giving any clear idea of where he was going. A thought struck him. Perhaps Pauly had been made the same offer Fin had to get off the land. It would explain the sudden windfall. He quickly rejected the theory. If the old man had simply sold up, why the great mystery? No, Pauly had been up to something. That was the only answer Fin could come up with to explain why he’d shot through without explanation.
‘What?’ Eliza asked, looking at him curiously.
‘Nothing.’ He had far more interesting possibilities in front of him. Fin ran his fingers down her neck, returning to tease and taunt her breasts.
‘I’ve been thinking . . . about how this could work. Us, I mean.’ Her breath grew ragged and he watched her eyes lose their focus and her lids flutter.
‘Yes?’ He drew random, lazy patterns on her flesh that contrasted with the intensity he could feel rising in both of them. Eliza shifted a little on the old iron bed as though controlled by a higher power.
‘Stop, I can’t think when you do that. Can’t speak.’
His hand stilled. ‘Are you sure you want me to stop?’
It took her less than three seconds to change her mind. ‘No, don’t stop.’
Fin uttered a low laugh. ‘So what are you thinking? Apart from how it feels when you take me deep inside you?’
‘Fin,’ she warned, her voice unsteady. ‘I was thinking something . . . That you could stay here at weekends, and I could come out to the mine occasionally during the week to help.’ Her voice rose and fell as his fingers stroked and probed. ‘That way we wouldn’t cramp each other’s . . . style.’
‘All right,’ Fin said. ‘But there’s a rule.’
‘A rule?’ Her body arched as his fingers sank deep.
‘That we do this – And this –’ He opened her thighs and slid down her body. ‘Whenever we can.’
When he touched his mouth to her, she gave another little moan, arching up to him. ‘I’ll have to give it some serious consideration.’
Rising to fit his mouth to hers, Fin brought an end to their conversation. Everything in him was focused on the restless movements of her body so that he was only dimly aware of the press of her fingers against his shoulders as he entered her.
Already he knew that she trembled when his fingers stroked her neck, and cried out when he angled his thrust the way she liked. This time with her, he discovered that her body fluttered around his when he thrust hard and then stilled inside her. He could feel the tiny ripples, spreading out to embrace them both. And he held them both still, resisting the rising storm until they were sucked up together into the eye of the tempest.
*
Living with someone she still didn’t know well took some adjusting to, even if it was only some of the time. To Eliza, the cottage immediately seemed half the size when Fin was in occupation, or perhaps it was just that it felt more intimate because of what they were doing in it.
She blushed as she drew the tray of almond cookies from the oven. Before Fin, she’d never thought of herself as particularly sexual. More than once she’d been called an ice queen
in her teenage years when she’d refused to put out.
She’d had a couple of long-term boyfriends prior to George, but she was beginning to see now that they’d all been made from a similar mould: happy for her to set the pace and none-too-demanding when it came to sex, or anything else for that matter.
Her sex drive became turbo-charged whenever Fin was in the vicinity, something she wasn’t yet entirely comfortable with. Fin laughed like a lunatic the night before when she’d asked, two hours after he drove in from the mine and as they lay breathing heavily on the bed after sexual interlude number three, whether their appetite for each other was normal.
When he’d stopped gasping, she’d rolled on top, hands gripping his arms.
‘Well, how many times is normal for you?’ she’d insisted.
He was still smiling. ‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
A familiar look of annoyance crossed his face that appeared whenever he had to discuss a topic he didn’t want to. ‘On a lot of things: the circumstances, how I feel. Do we have to talk about this?’
‘But on average?’ she persisted.
‘Twice a day, maybe.’
‘You’ve only been here five hours and we’re up to number three.’
‘But we only see each other a couple of times a week so we have to fit fourteen into two.’
At that, she’d sat back, her legs straddling his waist, and gawped at him. ‘That can’t be right,’ she told him, and watched him burst into a fresh round of laughter.
She’d never been with someone who found her so amusing. Right now, he watched her with a smile playing about his lips as she slid the cookies onto a wire rack to cool.
‘Do I need dental insurance before I eat one?’ he asked, a reference to her first attempt at baking the previous weekend. It might have been easier to munch on rock.
She blew a lock of hair that had come loose from her ponytail off her face. ‘I think these are better. Try one.’
He plucked one from the tray and nibbled cautiously. His eyebrows rose in surprise and he crunched more heartily into it. ‘Not bad,’ he managed around the crumbs.
Eliza took one for herself, tasted it and felt a burst of pleasure. No need to mention that Maggie had shared a foolproof recipe. ‘It is good. I think I’m going to be an excellent baker. Maybe I’ll join the Country Women’s Association.’
‘Miss Mayberry, when you get a twin set and perm to go with those spectacles of yours, you’ll fit right in, although I’d keep quiet about the tattoo.’
She slid onto his lap, looped her arms around his neck and they shared a crumb-infused kiss. ‘I don’t think you need a perm to join these days. But if that’s a sacrifice I have to make, I’ll do it.
Fin curved his hand possessively around her ponytail and pulled it teasingly. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything to your hair.’
She knew how much he liked her hair loose around them as they made love. Quite often she would wake to find him sliding the slippery strands through his fingers, focused intently on his task.
‘That’s up to Jean-Luc,’ she said. ‘I’ve always put my hair entirely in his hands.’
‘I’ve never trusted the French.’
She tilted her head and their lips almost touched. ‘I have to be in Sydney next week on business so I’ll have my hair cut then. But Jean-Luc is unlikely to make drastic changes.’ When his hand tightened in her hair, she added, ‘I’ll be gone four days. You’ll be at Ruin Flat. You won’t even know I’m gone.’
‘I’ll know,’ he growled, tugging her in for a long, leisurely kiss.
Eliza reluctantly extricated herself, knowing that if she didn’t they would end up spending the entire day in bed. Their habit of staying inside with doors and shutters locked for long periods had brought more than a sly grin or two from Mick and Rae, while other townsfolk stared at them on their rare public appearances as though they were some kind of exotic species.
After spending the week attached to her phone and laptop, Eliza was feeling a little stir-crazy, and she’d convinced Fin that a drive and picnic were required. They drove south, her ute kicking up great plumes of red dust in their wake until they reached the sealed road. They followed the Darling River as it wended its way towards Bourke.
It was a dazzling spring day. The showery night before had deposited only a little rain, but the earth had responded.
Native wildflowers, just waiting for the slightest encouragement, were beginning to poke through in swathes of brilliant purple, sunny yellow and crisp white.
‘Fin, look!’ She got out and stared in wonder at the way the land had been transformed.
He came and stood by her. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he agreed, but when she turned to him he was watching her face and not the scenery.
She laughed and spread out the picnic rug on the banks of the river, which flowed steady ever onwards.
‘When I’m in Sydney I’m going to arrange to rent out my flat,’ she told him when they sat in silence at the end of their meal. ‘I don’t want to leave here next month. I’m going to ask Rae to lease the cottage until the end of the year, and then – Well, after that, who knows?’
‘Okay.’
She glanced at him, figuring now was as good a time as any to tell him about her father’s stake in the mine. It had been on her lips a dozen times over the past three weeks, but something had always happened – usually involving the removal of clothes – to make her forget.
Apart from that, his unwillingness to discuss the mine continued, along with his resistance to her spending time there. To Eliza, it signalled that progress wasn’t all he’d hoped. Whenever she broached the topic of spending a day at Ruin Flat with him he made excuses, and she’d accepted them because her KinSearchers workload was increasing slowly but steadily. Nevertheless, she’d seen the pretty but small opals that he brought into town to sell, and understood enough to know they would do little more than keep him in supplies and petrol from week to week.
She knew he worried for his mother. To her mind, if he wanted a solution then the offer for Ruin Flat could provide it.
When she gently said his name, it took him a moment to respond and she knew he was a million miles away.
‘Hmmm,’ he responded absently. He smiled at her and reached up to toy with a strand of her hair.
‘Have you thought any more about the offer you had for your claim?’
‘What?’ he asked, his eyes half-closed. ‘Oh, that. I’m not selling.’
‘Mr Weaver mentioned that he’d gifted his stake in the mine to you and your mother.’
‘He did,’ Fin muttered, his mouth losing its relaxed curve. He didn’t sound happy about his great-uncle’s actions. ‘He insisted on signing over his stake. I made it clear I intend to compensate him for it when I can. Anyway, why are we talking about this?’ He pushed back his hat, eyes narrowing as they rested on hers and she wondered if he could sense the secret she was keeping. ‘I thought we were supposed to be enjoying some time out. Why are we talking about the mine? I’ve said it’s not for sale and that’s that.’
‘We are enjoying the time out.’ Except that he was sitting up now, looking anything but relaxed.
‘Are we?’
Eliza knew she could front up about the mine’s ownership and try to convince him it didn’t have to change anything, or beat a strategic retreat and leave that battle for another day. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. She knew all too well that when Fin said he didn’t want to talk about something, he meant it, and she really didn’t want the day to end with a fight.
‘Yes.’ She leant down to him, her hair a curtain around their faces. When she kissed him, it took a second for his lips and eyes to soften. Pushing his hat away, she tangled a hand in his hair as she sprawled across his body, his muscled arms a band around her shoulders, his thighs hard beneath hers.
Before she went under, she had the fleeting thought that sooner or later they were going to have to talk about her stake in th
e mine. She could only hope that later wouldn’t turn out to be too late.
CHAPTER 12
Fin knew he was dying, his throat so dry and swollen he could barely breathe. The water was all gone, the lamp long dead. Time was running out. But he had to get back to her. He had to find a way out. Desperately, he began to crawl on his hands and knees but in the dark he couldn’t see which way he was going. He was disoriented, confused. At one point, he heard a sound and called out. But his voice just bounced uselessly from wall to wall, echoing endlessly. He was alone: just him and the dark —
The screech of a bird broke the early morning silence, hurling Fin abruptly from his dream. His heart was thumping at double time, his lungs burning as he panted, trying to take in more oxygen. His hand fumbled for the bottle of water next to his sleeping bag, found it and managed to lift it to his mouth.
He choked on it, but finally the coughing subsided and he collapsed back on his sleeping bag, staring up at the domed canvas roof and wondering where the dream had come from.
He smiled mirthlessly. He spent so long in the mine each day it was probably no surprise he was dreaming about it. On the cusp of November, a whole month early, the weather had moved abruptly from balmy spring to full-on summer. During the day, there was no other place to go than below ground. At night, like some nocturnal animal, he would crawl out of his burrow, blinking in the last of the light.
Finally, though, he had something to show for his efforts. A glimmer in the far reaches of the top level had led to a small seam of darkish opal. Not what he was looking for exactly and far from flawless, but still. He’d had the devil of a job to get it out intact, but he had it now, wrapped in tissue. He suspected it was worth several hundred dollars, which took a little of the pressure off. If he was lucky, and if he lived cheaply and simply, it would take him through the summer months. It was not much but right now, apart from his stubborn stupidity, it was all he had to prop up his flagging hopes.