After what seemed like an eternity of panting, pulling and swearing, she finally managed to free the wheel, which was so heavy she almost dropped it. Okay, she did drop it, but controlled the fall by keeping it between her and the car, so Jay didn't see.
Once it was on the ground she rolled it like the world's heaviest hula hoop around the side of the car to the wheel it had to replace. There she leaned it against the gravel rampart edging the road and found herself staring at the flat tyre with still no idea of how to switch one wheel for the other. Sure, she knew she had to lift the car up and loosen the bolts so the wheel would come off, then fasten the new one in its place, but all she had was a towel. No way did she want to drive down this road without four tyres firmly fastened to the car, stuck tighter than barnacles on a whale's bottom. This was impossible. Not even Jay could change this tyre. She'd be better off heading back to the main road or the nearest community to ask someone for help, or at least a jack to lift the car. May as well ask to borrow a spanner, too, while she was at it.
The electric window whined down, setting Xan's teeth on edge even before Jay's head appeared.
"How much longer will you be with that tyre?" Jay asked. "Just that the beer's too warm to drink now, so I don't have much else to do. I could help, you know, if it'll speed things up a bit. I swear I won't tell anyone at the resort. It'd totally ruin my rock star reputation if they knew I actually did a bit of work occasionally. Though I suppose there's worse things to be caught doing than knowing how to change a tyre."
Xan wanted to tell him where to stick his offer, but she was hot and tired and more than a little fed up. "Sure you can help," she snapped. "Find me a jack and a spanner, and this'll go a hell of a lot faster."
Jay stared. "How'd you get the wheel off the back without tools?"
Xan held her towel aloft.
"Fuck me. Little Miss Know-It-All is Little Miss MacGyver, too. If I find the tools for you, will you tell me how you did it? A towel. Fuck!"
Xan didn't have the energy to respond in kind. Instead, she just nodded.
Jay cracked open his door and headed straight for the back of the car.
"Nothing in there but water and my magic towel. I already checked," she said, not moving from her rampart perch.
Jay wasn't listening, as usual. He leaned into the boot and Xan heard him shifting the water casks over the crackly plastic boot liner. Fine. Let him find out for himself.
After a few minutes, Jay gave up, closing the back of the car. Xan waited for him to reach her before she started to say, "See? I told you – "
Something clinked on the gravel beside her. A roll of black canvas, strapped together like a lumpy swag. Jay unrolled it along the top of the rampart, revealing a selection of tools including a jack and...a whole selection of wrenches. She could have kissed him.
Instead, unable to stop herself, Xan burst into tears.
"How about I make a start on that tyre while you...um...do whatever you need to do,' Jay said awkwardly, dropping to his knees at her feet. No, beside the tyre, Xan corrected herself, sniffling.
"I don't know how to change a tyre. Or the thing about hangovers and watermelon. I don't know everything," she whispered.
Jay looked up at her, his expression rueful. "Angel taught me about the watermelon. It's all about alcohol and dehydration and electrolytes and shit. Tyres...well, the first time I changed one, Jo did most of the work. We were between towns on a family road trip Dad made us take. I think we were fourteen or fifteen. The tyre blew on this patch of two-lane highway. Not a house in sight for miles, and one of us complained about stopping and how boring the trip was. Not sure if it was her or me. Not that it mattered. He made us both get out and fix that fucking tyre. Jo broke half her nails and I ended up scraping my hands raw on something. Couldn't play guitar for a week when we got home. But we got that fucking tyre changed, and I'll never forget it. Want me to show you, so you'll know what to do next time?"
Xan wanted to nod, but she forced herself to ask, "What will I have to do to repay you? I've already agreed to dance with you at your friend's wedding."
Jay coughed out a laugh that sounded more human than his usual brash chuckle. "Fuck, if you stop crying, that's more than enough for me. I never know what to do with crying women. Jo's fault. The only time she cried was when she was hormonal, but if you tried to comfort her, you were just as likely to get a kick to the groin or a punch in the face. So I wanna help, but I also don't want to get kicked or punched, if you know what I mean. If you don't try to kill me, that'd be awesome."
Xan laughed through her tears. "You're so full of shit, Jay. Is any of that true?"
He shrugged. "Don't believe me, then. But ask Jo. She'll tell you. She gave me a black eye once. Angel laughed herself sick when she found out."
Xan wiped her face with her hands. "Where did you find the tools?"
"Under the boot liner. There's this bit where the carpet's cut so you can pull it up, and there's a cavity underneath. On a normal car, that's where the spare tyre is, too, but on a four-wheel-drive, there isn't enough space for the tyre and the tools, so just the tool kit goes in there. We didn't find them, either, until Dad told us where to look."
Xan met Jay's gaze, looking for some sign of the arsehole she was so used to. He looked like a normal bloke, maybe even a good man, who was telling the truth. "All right. Show me," she said finally.
Jay tipped his imaginary hat. "Yes, ma'am."
THIRTEEN
Jay made surprisingly short work of the tyre change, even as he explained to Xan what he was doing. She insisted on helping him stow the tools back in their hidey-hole, so she'd know where to look next time. Back home, she'd never owned a car new or expensive enough to have an onboard tool kit. She wasn't even sure if her ancient hatchback had had a spare tyre.
When they climbed back into the car, Xan wasn't sure what to say. Just thanking him didn't seem enough, but she also couldn't shake the feeling that he had an ulterior motive in helping her. In her experience, Jay was never nice. So why now?
They drove in silence for some time, until Xan caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. It looked like...flames. No, it couldn't be. Then she saw more, licking at a clump of grass as tall as the car. "Is that a bushfire?" she asked, her stomach starting to churn once more. She'd heard stories of the swathe of destruction Australian bushfires left in their wake, but she's never seen one. She never wanted to, either.
Jay barely glanced at it. "Not yet. Only the grass is burning, so it's just a grassfire. You said the volunteer firies were burning off today, so that's probably all it is. They know what they're doing. They won't let it get out of hand."
This didn't soothe Xan's tummy at all. If anything, it awoke a flock of butterflies that made her feel even worse. Still, onward she drove, knowing that the sooner they left this road, the safer they'd be from fires of all kinds.
A dark shape darted across the road with a flash of orange, barely clearing the roof of the car.
"What the fuck?" Jay shouted, staring after it.
"What?" Xan asked, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the road. "What was it?"
"A bird. A big, black bird carrying a branch that was on fire." Jay rumpled his hair with one hand. "Fucking creepy is what it was."
Too many beers, too early in the morning, Xan thought, concentrating on the road instead of Jay's drunken hallucinations. Birds didn't carry flaming branches.
"Another one!"
Xan saw the flicker of orange move as the bird flew low across the road.
"That one dropped the branch," Jay remarked.
Smart bird, Xan thought, fighting the steering wheel as the rutted gravel tried to force her onto the wrong side of the road.
Jay stayed mercifully silent for a while, as Xan negotiated a series of blind bends. There was smoke in the air, blending with the dust, reducing visibility even more than usual. Not for the first time this morning, she wished she was flying over this instead of drivin
g through it.
"I wonder if that's a third bird, or it's just one flying arsonist," Jay remarked.
This time, Xan slowed down to watch the bird. This one dropped its branch onto a clump of grass, which smoked for a moment before it flared up into glowing flame.
The dry grass here grew as high as the car, in what looked like a hedge all along the road. It went up like paper. One moment, everything was flaxen yellow; the next, a wall of roaring, searing orange.
Fire. Fire was all Xan could see, on both sides of the road. Red and orange above and below, so she couldn't see anything else. Could feel the flames crisping her skin...
She slammed the car to a stop. She couldn't drive in this. Couldn't go anywhere when she couldn't see, and the heat...
"What are you doing?" Jay asked. "Xan?"
"Fire. Can't drive through the fire," she said. And she couldn't. Just...couldn't.
"You have to. You have to keep driving," Jay insisted.
"Can't," she repeated. Orange. The whole world was orange. And she was a duck, about to become crispy...
"Xan. Either you drive or I do. I'm not dying in a fucking fire in the middle of nowhere."
"Can't. I can't and you can't."
"Fuck that. Move over."
Jay grabbed her round the middle and hefted her into his lap. Before she could protest, he squirmed out from under her, climbing over the park brake into the driver seat.
"Seat belt on, Xan." She felt him reach across her, then something clicked before a band tightened across her chest. Seatbelt. Yes.
Jay gunned the engine, sending the car skidding a little in the gravel. "You don't wait out a bushfire. You outrun it or you die. Angel survived a bushfire with that psycho. I'll never hear the end of it if I can't do what he did."
What? None of that made sense. Jay never made sense.
The car bumped over the ruts, faster than Xan would have driven. Good thing she had a seatbelt on, she thought muzzily.
"Like a fucking tunnel of fire!" Jay whooped, sending the car down the middle of the road like he owned it. For the moment, he did.
Xan clung to her seat, wanting to close her eyes, but not able to tear her gaze away from, yes, the tunnel of fire that thrilled Jay but terrified her. Jay was right. She could actually die on this road. And of all the people to die with...Hades would probably take her along with Jay, damning her by association. She'd let an unlicensed driver drive her car. A work car. Through an inferno. If she made it out of this, she'd buy a lottery ticket. Who was she kidding? She was going to die. Dead girls didn't buy lottery tickets.
But the road wore on, with Jay swerving, revving the engine and cheering every k of the way. And then...orange gave way to green. Scrubby green, but green, nonetheless. Somehow, Jay had carried her through the fire. A miracle, for sure.
The car bumped from gravel to tarmac and Xan almost cheered as loud as Jay, or she would have, if any sound had come out of her mouth.
The smooth northern end of the Cape Leveque Road rolled beneath them, and Jay accelerated to match the speed limit. He wasn't that bad a driver, she had to admit. Naomi must have caught him on a really bad day.
Xan didn't relax until she saw the sign warning them about the turnoff to the pearl farm. It wasn't home, but it was near enough. Just a short boat ride back to the island. Where there wouldn't be any fires, Xan swore.
Just before the turnoff, they met a barricade blocking off the road, manned by...
"I thought you'd learned not to do stupid things on the roads, but this makes drink-driving through a school zone look harmless. Did you even see the road closure signs?" Constable Naomi Nelson demanded.
"Nope!" Jay said cheerfully. "Unless you mean the ones about cows and crocodiles. We didn't see any this time."
"We?" She peered into the car. "Xan? You let this idiot drive?"
"She's feeling a bit under the weather. I told her she shouldn't have tried that delayed shipment of sashimi, but she wouldn't hear of it. Had to make sure the quality was good enough for the guests," Jay jumped in before Xan could speak. "We had to stop a few times along the way 'cause she was feeling sick. She really wasn't up to driving, and the fire got pretty hot out there. Close to the road, too."
"That's why the road's closed," Naomi snapped. "If you've moved the barricades, you'll lose more than your licence. Putting people at risk by opening a closed road..."
"I said I never saw a barrier. There wasn't one. We...had to stop. A lot. We've been on the road a while."
"Xan?"
Xan managed a weak smile. "The road was open when I drove onto it. No barricades. We just...got delayed."
Naomi frowned. "You do look pretty green. Are you feeling okay?"
No. She'd nearly died in a fire and been saved by a madman who was now lying to cover for her. Whatever pills Jay had given her had worn off some time during the drive, so her headache was coming back with a vengeance, probably fuelled by all the smoke she'd inhaled during that hellish drive.
The police officer's frown deepened. "I should arrest him and extend the time until he can get his licence back, but it's barely a hundred metres to the driveway, and that's private property, so he doesn't need a licence..." She turned to Jay. "Have you been drinking?"
"No," he lied.
"Do you think you can drive this vehicle to the farm office, without crashing into anything?"
"Sure," Jay drawled.
"If I catch you driving again before you get your licence back, I'll have you in court, I swear." And with that, she waved them on to the pearl farm turnoff.
Xan huddled in her seat. On the one hand, she wanted to stick her head out the window and shout to Naomi that Jay was lying, but then who would be the liar? Sure, she hadn't been sick, but she had been incapacitated. If he hadn't forced her out of the driver's seat...she might be dead.
Jay pulled the car to a halt in the pearl farm's staff car park.
Not a moment too soon. Xan threw open her door and lurched out of the car, staggering toward the oasis of green lawn shaded by palm trees. She made it to the bottom of the steps before she was forced to double over, vomiting up her breakfast until nothing but bile came up.
FOURTEEN
Erica found Xan on the grass, her head stuck between her still shaking knees. "Jay sent me out here to see if there was anything I could do for you," Erica said, after staring at Xan for some time.
"Water would be nice," Xan croaked. Water to extinguish the blaze still crackling in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
"Yeah, I already thought of that. Here."
Xan raised her head to accept the glass Erica offered. Her mouth was so dry she wasn't sure any of her first gulp made it down her throat, but by the bottom of the glass, enough had trickled down for her to dare clear her throat. "Thank you."
"Pleasure. I'll get you some more, if you like. I just refilled all the coolers in the garden, so it's nice and cold." Erica offered her hand to help Xan up. "You know, you'd be better off inside in the air conditioning. It's coolest in the showroom. You could even stretch out on the couch – no tourists yet today until the tour group this afternoon. And you could see Kenji's latest creation – inspired by you, he says."
Xan accepted her assistance and staggered to her feet. "Who's Kenji?"
"Shou's brother. He kept going on and on about that time you took him snorkelling in the resort's lagoon, until Kenji decided to design some jewellery to match what Shou saw in the water. He wanted to name it after you, but Issie talked them out of it. So now it's the Island Romance Collection, or it will be, if Kenji's designs sell. There's only the one so far, but she's a beauty. We put her in the cabinet in the foyer, right beside our highest quality pearl strings." Erica grabbed Xan's arm. "Do you need me to help you inside? You don't look so good."
"I'll do it," said a new voice. Jay.
"Why aren't you sick?" Xan snapped at Jay before her brain caught up with her. Too late.
"Because I didn't eat that dodgy sashim
i. Told you not to," Jay lied easily. "Now, you want me to carry you inside like a bride, or be a gentleman and just let you lean on my arm as much as you need to?"
"I'll go get some more water," Erica said, excusing herself.
"I can walk," Xan said. "If you really want to be helpful, just...walk next to me, and catch me if I look like I'm going to fall over." She wouldn't fall, she swore, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a quiet word with Jay about what he'd done while no one else was in earshot. Not out here, though – inside the pearl showroom, once she was comfortably ensconced on the couch.
Jay held the mother-of-pearl-handled door open for her, releasing a blast of cold air into the humid garden. Bliss. Xan shuffled inside, closing her eyes to relish the instant coolness as the door closed behind them.
"So that's what Shou thinks you look like, is it? Bit abstract, if you ask me," Jay said.
Xan opened her eyes. Riveting her gaze just the way it was supposed to, sat a pearl ring. Bathed in spotlights from several angles, the small circle of gold managed to outshine even the perfect necklaces on either side of it. Except...it wasn't a circle, not really. Crafted of heavy gold, the ring curled into a wide band made up of coral branches, all twisted together to cradle an enormous silvery-white pearl so lustrous Xan fancied she could see her own reflection in it. "Beautiful," she breathed, walking forward to take a closer look.
Like the pearl strands, this piece was priceless, meaning only people like Jay or the resort's other celebrity guests could possibly afford it. No surprises there. The detail the jeweller had crafted into every unique strand of coral must have taken hours to get just right. A work of art like this didn't deserve a name as ordinary as hers. No, Island Romance was a much better name. Some rich couple who came to the island, fell in love and spotted the design in the neighbouring pearl farm would snap it up, along with the rest of the matching collection, whatever that was.
"So you like pearls?" Jay asked, interrupting her train of thought.
The Rock Star's Wedding Page 5