by Rhyll Biest
Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty — Skye
Rhyll Biest
www.escapepublishing.com.au
Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty — Skye
Rhyll Biest
Welcome to the heart—and heat—of Australia…
They say that no one has secrets in a small town—these women prove them wrong.
Eight brand-new stories from some of Australia’s hottest writers in Australia’s hottest genre. From the bar stools of the local pub to the wide open plains of the biggest stations in the world, these tales travel the dusty roads to the heart of Australia and the women who understand how to work hard—and play even harder.
In the latest in the wildly successful Secret Confessions series from Escape Publishing, the women of Down & Dusty invite you into their lives—and their bedrooms.
After five years in the city earning her veterinary degree, Skye Malone is happy to be heading back to Milpinyani Springs, and her best friend Bret. Sure, her crush on him is still at epic proportions, but she managed to ignore it this long, and a good friend is a valuable commodity in a small community like theirs. But Bret spent the last five years growing up, and suddenly Skye’s girlhood infatuation evolves into something much stronger and much more dangerous—an adult woman’s desire.
Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty
Reading order
1. Casey—Rachael Johns
2. Lucky—Cate Ellink
3. Kelly—Fiona Lowe
4. Brooke—Eden Summers
5. Clarissa—Mel Teshco
6. Skye—Rhyll Biest
7. Maree—Elizabeth Dunk
8. Frankie—Jackie Ashenden
About the Author
Rhyll Biest is an Australian romance author published with Harlequin Australia, Ellora’s Cave, Momentum and Mischief. She also writes for the romance blogs Heroes and Heartbreakers and Momentum Moonlight. Her recent romance novel, Unrestrained, is published by Harlequin Australia. Her latest project is a fantasy romance with demon roller derby and lots of sexy times.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Escape Publishing, Tracey O’Hara and the other Down & Dusty authors for their work on this series.
To my colleagues, who provide much inspiration and who never begrudge sharing a saucy veterinary story with me.
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Episode 6—Skye
Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…
Episode 6—Skye
‘What did you expect, anyway, Skye? For Bret to jump nude out of an ice-cream cake to welcome you home?’ She muttered the words as she cycled the long, dusty driveway from her parents’ house to Bret’s place, each breath sticking to her nasal passages and filling her mouth with dust. That’s how dry it was, too dry to breathe, though it was only nine in the morning. And too dusty to be opening her mouth to talk to herself, which she did too much of anyway. Another sign she was doomed to perish a bat-shit crazy, cat-hoarding spinster.
Yet the driest, dustiest thing of all was her heart and the parched feeling of being forgotten. So dry it made her feel like she might blow away with a strong gust of wind, just like the eroded topsoil stinging her eyes and clogging her nose.
How could he have forgotten about today, when she’d drawn a big red felt-pen circle around the month of January, and the date, and that had been in June. And since then she’d spent every scrap of time not devoted to studying to imagining—like the overly-needy twit she was—their joyous reunion. It would be a slumber party for two on his verandah, where they’d scoff pizza and cake and guzzle soda until they burst while she spilled every last detail about the magic of learning to de-sex cats and suture puppy ears, and what it was like to master a syringe.
And what really stung—no, hurt worse than a bite to the boob from a badly schooled pony—was that he’d always been the only one who never forgot about her, despite her near magnetic attraction to the peripheries of gatherings and red hot allergy to casual conversation.
A hot wind tugged at the old Batik wrap-around skirt she’d donned, the worn cotton fabric flipping up at the front as she pedalled, revealing a good deal of thigh. A good thing there was no one around to see it. Though people tended to look right through her, forget she was there, so why would they notice her thighs?
At the front garden she stopped and dismounted, left the bike on its side in the brittle grass fringing the square house on stumps with its cheery red corrugated roof. The long wood verandah welcomed her, an old friend that caught every breeze that stirred and made it a perfect place to sit after a long ride, as she used to with Bret.
Mostly she’d read, or pretended to read, and let Bret talk. Of the two of them he was the chatty, outgoing one, while she was mostly happy just to absorb his words. As a kid she hadn’t opened her mouth much because of her snaggly teeth, but even now, as a fully-grown adult and orthodontic success story, she didn’t run her mouth overmuch, preferring to fade into the background and wait until she decided someone was okay before talking.
A worn wood board creaked underfoot as she reached the top of the stairs. She paused, frowning at the drawn kitchen curtains. Why were they drawn? Was he away on business? Ill? Shacked up in town with some gal with great fetlocks that he planned to start a whole new type of breeding program with?
Don’t be silly.
Yet she hesitated before knocking on the door. What if there was someone in there with him? A female someone? Or more than one?
This house was, after all, now a bachelor man-cave since Bret’s dad had retired to the coast. And she’d been away a long time, so it was entirely possible that Bret now aspired to frat-house levels of debauchery—though that big a change seemed wildly unlikely.
But if he had changed, really, what business was it of hers if he did spend his free time jelly wrestling with every team of big-breasted strippers whose promotional bus crashed in Milpinyani Springs? Why should that matter to her as his good friend, his best buddy since they were both knee-high to a quarter horse? Hell, if she were any sort of real friend she would have brought him an extra stripper.
And more jelly.
Because he deserved all the big-boobed strippers in the galaxy just for being her friend. She didn’t actually know why any grown man would seriously want to be friends with a boring, near-sighted nerd like her who read the Australian Veterinary Journal every month from cover to cover and got excited about things like marker vaccines that allowed the differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals.
And she knew people in a town the size of Milpinyani Springs had to be talking about them given all the time they spent together whenever she came home on vacation, and the way it must look that neither of them was dating anyone else.
Everyone had to be talking.
Everyone except her and Bret.
Last holidays when she’d bumped into him in the kitchen while they were making brownies, and her boob had grazed his arm, he’d actually winced. Like she’d been wearing a barbed-wire bra—electrified wire by the way he’d flinched.
Though he seemed to like boobs in general—so it had to be just hers that were not welcome.
But neither of them could talk about it, not her, not even to apologise for attacking him with her boobs, and not him to explain how unwelcome her boobs were.
So that left them … nowhere.
She rolled her eyes at herself. Shut up, brain, and stop being so dramatic. Just knock on the door already.
Her rap on the wood sent a flake of peeling paint drifting to land on the rubber foot mat between her greying runners. Jeez, time for a little home renovati
on, Bret.
A dog barked from behind the house. Molly. The kelpie had been seven last Skye had seen her, so she was getting on now at twelve. Perhaps Bret was out the back feeding her.
She retraced her steps and circled the house, waved to the figure standing in the flatbed of a utility truck a few hundred metres away. Molly barked again from where she lay supervising in the shade of a tree. Skye needed to be more like Molly and stop with the neediness. Only pretty girls got to be needy, not smart-but-plain girls. Cosseted lapdogs slept indoors and did little more than look cute, whereas working dogs ran all day and slept outdoors. Skye knew which she was. Low maintenance.
Keep that in mind.
Holding a hand up to shield her eyes against the sun, she squinted at Bret’s distant form. At school he’d been her knight, her champion, turning on any bullies with feet and fists to defend the quiet, skinny girl with crooked teeth and a book forever glued to her hand. And it had seemed like that at some point or other, everyone at school had teased her.
Except for Bret. Not him.
Molly’s barking and grizzling intensified as did her dance—a jumping, twisting, leaping jig that rattled her chain—as Skye neared the spot where Bret was unloading hay—sans shirt—from the utility truck to store in the nearby shed.
She ran her hands over Molly’s coat in greeting, but not before she’d registered the way Bret’s muscle-corded arms and powerful mile-wide shoulders gleamed with a healthy sweat she had no trouble imagining licking off him.
Her body did its own little jig at the sight of him, and a tight, weird, squirmy heat flashed through her—like she’d swallowed an electric eel.
She didn’t even know where those sorts of thoughts came from, the thoughts about licking sweat, they were so not her, so had to be his fault. He made her think those thoughts by looking the way he did, in particular by sporting an etched wishbone of muscle that rode his hips and formed a deep V that disappeared down the waist of his worn jeans.
The nerve of it. No man should have a wishbone thing like that, practically an invitation written in muscle for a girl to pull and make a wish.
No prizes for guessing what the wish would be—for his jeans to fall off, of course. So that, whoops, just like that he’d be naked.
A girl could dream, couldn’t she?
Skye’s wicked eyes made a feast of him as he wrestled another bale of hay into submission and threw it to the ground. She stared at the bale, transfixed, as a very unseemly thought popped unbidden to mind—of how she’d love him to wrestle her into submission, to pin her down with his strong body and do things to her that she couldn’t even admit she wanted.
The electric eel coiled tight in her belly.
Dammit, it was plain unfair the way his whole body was a veritable red carpet rolled out for dirty thoughts. That left her to do the right thing by ignoring the terrifying effect his size and strength had on her libido, so that they could continue their happy existence in Friendsville on the River No-touching, which was nowhere near Upper Lewd or Boningsville.
Risking a friendship like theirs over sex would be like giving away bread during a famine in the hope of getting caviar.
Just plain stupid and greedy.
No, the dark, secret crush she sat on had to be handled like a time bomb. A time bomb made from poorly defined yearnings and sexy dreams that could explode at any second—scattering needs and desires sharp and dangerous as nails—all over her face and their friendship, ripping them apart.
A shame there was no bomb disposal unit for that, which left her sitting on the thing and hoping for the best.
She smiled as Bret jumped from the back of the utility truck with lean ease and stood brushing his hands on his jeans, broad smile dazzling white against his tan face. Handsome from the dirt-encrusted tips of his boots to the battered Akubra shading his face. Jesus, Mary and Jiminy Cricket, who the hell looked like that outside of some model in a Calvin Klein ad?
Actually, his body was stronger, more commanding than that of a model, though he remained as smooth-chested as in his teens, a fact which her fingers itched to verify. She swallowed to moisten her suddenly dry throat. ‘Hey, stranger, long time, no see.’
‘Skye Mad Dog Malone.’ Tall and rangy, he towered over her as she avoided looking too directly at the gleaming body built for hard work that he was practically shoving in her face. Instead she focused on his gaze, a complex wash of blue, brown, grey and green so deep that she could practically do backstroke in it, the unparalleled amazingness of his eyes fringed by dark, thick lashes that were still a source of envy to her after all these years.
He might set her time bomb ticking dangerously loud, but her heart still felt a whole lot less dusty and dry after taking a dip in that deep gaze of his and hearing his bottomless voice wrapped around the ridiculous nickname he’d bestowed upon her.
Yes, she was mad, but ‘Mad Dog’, really?
‘I thought you were back next week, Mad Dog. Did I fuck up?’
‘Nah, I came home a little early to check on you and Miss Molly.’ She registered the wag of the kelpie’s tail at her name.
‘She’s missed you, so have I.’ The corners of Bret’s eyes crinkled before he swept his hat off to run it and a brawny forearm across his dripping brow.
She frowned—not at the way his hard-packed, stripped-down torso rippled with the movement, his taut muscles flexing in a purely unintentional tease, but at his hair, his once thick, beautiful midnight hair hacked brutally short.
‘Jeepers, what happened to your hair, Rapunzel?’
He grimaced. ‘Ticks. From a dead roo I pulled out of the dam. Had to remove one from my head, but couldn’t find it without cutting most of my hair off first. Stupid, hey?’
She shook her head, kept her tone playful, though the thought of him trying to remove a tick from his head on his own stabbed her right through the heart. Were there even tweezers in the world big enough for his enormous paws to operate? She could imagine him fumbling and swearing. She forced a sassy grin. ‘So you’re wearing ticks as hair accessories now? I must say, it’s a real wonder some girl hasn’t snapped you up yet.’
He smirked. ‘Like you can talk. You still dabbing cow poop behind your ears to attract all the young farmers?’
She scowled. Damn her short arms so very unsuited to pregnancy testing cows. ‘That was one time. Plus, I meant to do that.’
‘Oh. You meant to put it there.’ He pointed a long, tanned finger at her. ‘Liar.’
Lifting her nose, she folded her arms. ‘Yes, just to see if you would notice.’
‘Notice?’ He raised dark brows.
No-o-o-o, why did she have to say that? There was nothing for him to notice about her except the time bomb of lust ticking so loudly it was a wonder he couldn’t hear it. Though sometimes it felt like he might figure it out, her crush, just by the way she blinked or blew her nose.
To cover her gaffe, she flapped a hand at the half unloaded ute. ‘Do you want me to help you finish up here?’
‘It’ll keep. Come in for a coffee.’
She nodded and nearly sagged with relief when he picked his t-shirt off the side of the utility truck and pulled it on.
Thank goodness, now there was at least a millimetre of fabric between her and disaster. But as she sailed towards the house, buoyed by relief, his next words struck like an iceberg.
‘Got a hug for me?’
Like the Titanic, she foundered. Hugs were dangerous. A hug could turn into a kiss, stroke or caress as quickly as airline cutlery could turn into a weapon, all it took was a slight lapse in coordination and a hand could slide to a buttock instead of staying on the safe territory of a back. Or what if her face got pressed against his chest and she just had to kiss or nuzzle it? That would never do.
What she really needed was a guidebook called How to Hug Without Accidentally or Intentionally Groping Your Gorgeous Friend.
Not that she wanted to grope him. Just her stupid body did. Her brain was total
ly above that sort of thing.
Bret waited, eyes patient, and it occurred to her how it would look if she didn’t hug him. Like she was the worst friend in the world.
She could survive a short visit to Hug Land, a sojourn into enemy territory as far as her war on lust was concerned, but an essential part of her Be A Good Friend campaign. Throat dry and lumpy, as if she’d swallowed a moccasin, she held out her arms. ‘Sure.’
In a heartbeat his powerful arms enfolded her, the force with which he pressed her against his hard chest taking her by surprise. Seemed like he’d needed a hug. And it was all working out fine rather than setting off sex time bombs and lust landmines like she’d expected. Though probably because their hug was the chastest kind in the world, the nothing-touching-below-the-waist kind that you gave your granny or your sister.
Or it seemed that way at first.
But as it went on, and the heat of his big body penetrated hers, she realised her mistake. Now she didn’t want to let go, didn’t see why she should have to, given that his body felt amazing and his t-shirt smelled like lemon fabric softener and something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something sharp, even a little coarse, that dissolved her knees to broth.
Just as the tension of waiting for him to order her to detach herself grew unbearable, his stomach growled, and he released her with a laugh. ‘Sorry.’
She blinked and recalibrated, sutured on a happy smile. ‘That long since breakfast, huh?’
His lips curled into a rueful grin. ‘I haven’t managed breakfast yet. Got carried away with moving the hay before it got too hot.’
She shook her head. ‘And I thought I was absent-minded.’
He grinned. ‘No comment, Mad Dog. Let’s go eat. You wait here, Molly.’ He filled the kelpie’s water bowl with fresh water from his drink bottle and Skye was proud of herself for resisting the urge to ogle his rear when he bent to pour it. See, her brain was in control, not her knuckle-dragging body with its low-IQ hormones, or her even dimmer heart.