Runaway Bride

by Barbara Hannay

  Standing in the centre of his cell, Damon watched Bella walk to her bunk and sit carefully on its edge. She took off her cap, removed an elastic band, freeing her hair from its ponytail. Her hair fell to her shoulders in soft pale waves. Damon watched. She looked fragile. Delicate and beautiful. So brave. He knew it was fanciful, but she made him think of a fairy-tale princess locked in a tower.

  She sent him a valiant little smile and waved to him. He tried to smile back, but he doubted he could cheer her. Then with a surprising air of purpose, she lay on her bunk, on her back with her arms by her sides and her eyes closed.

  No doubt, she was probably trying to relax, which was sensible. At least she’d accepted that no one would wave a magic wand and set them instantly free. Damon admired her strength. After the stress she’d been under recently, with worries about her family and her broken engagement, this disaster must be the final straw. He hoped she was going to be okay.

  His head was crammed with self-recriminations, with what ifs and if onlys. But in reality, Damon knew he had few options. His one glimmer of hope was the fact that their arrest was based purely on suspicion. Surely, when the constable’s superior turned up, their case would be investigated properly and the truth would be discovered.

  In the meantime, he had no choice but to be patient. Which meant he should try to relax, too. Not easy when he was mad as hell and plagued by guilt. This bizarre predicament was his fault.

  If only he hadn’t had that prior conviction.

  If only he’d asked the car-hire people more questions before he’d signed up for the damned car. If only he hadn’t agreed to Bella coming on this trip.

  But regrets were a waste of head space.

  Damon knew that, and normally he didn’t give them the time of day. Right now, he couldn’t get past them.

  Lying on her bunk, eyes closed, breathing slowly, Bella tried to keep her fears at bay. She’d learned a little about meditation in yoga classes and now she tried to summon everything she knew about calming her whirling thoughts. She was trying to relax in the cloud pose.

  Imagine I’m floating, soft and light as a cloud …

  In almost no time her eyes flashed open. She tried several more times to ‘float’ without much luck.

  Instinctively, she turned towards Damon’s cell. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk, leaning forward, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. She knew he was tense, could see the strain in his shoulders and in the tendons standing out on his tanned forearms.

  She remembered how closely those strong arms had held her once, remembered the blissful thrill of his lips on hers, the way his mouth had traced patterns of hot desire over her skin.

  Without warning, her pleasant memories were overshadowed by darker thoughts. She was reliving the time Damon was arrested, remembering how he’d been the talk of the town and her parents had forbidden her to see him again, even after he was released.

  Oh, God, the pain of it. Using Kent as her messenger, she’d managed to smuggle a note to Damon, then she’d stolen out late at night for a secret tryst with him on the creek bank. She’d been determined to make love to him that night, but to her horror he’d told her it was over between them. He’d asked her to forget him.

  Even now, the pain of that night brought tears to her eyes. At the time, no matter how hard she’d cried and protested Damon had insisted he was wrong for her.

  The next day he’d gone away without making contact again. Bella had wanted to die.

  She’d been such a mess.

  Later, much, much later … she’d told herself that everyone suffered unbearable heartbreak over their first boyfriend. The longing for what you couldn’t have was always the worst kind of hurt. In time, her broken heart had gradually healed, or at least she’d thought it had.

  Yet here she was again, all these years later, lining up like an addict for another, dangerous dose of Damon Cavello.

  As the day wore on the heat in the cells grew more intense and Damon’s feelings of guilt grew heavier, squeezing the very air from his lungs.

  Their situation was ludicrous. He and Bella had set out on this trip to find an elderly couple, who almost certainly couldn’t cope alone with such a long journey. Charging like the cavalry, they’d come up the highway, ready to help, in any way necessary.

  What a joke.

  Silently, Damon let out a string of swear words, but he felt no better for it. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed Bella to become once again entangled in his sorry, trouble-jinxed life.

  Hadn’t he caused her enough problems when they were young?

  He’d been such a problem teenager, endlessly fighting with his heavy-handed father. Perhaps he should have recognised then that his old man had been badly hurt when his mother left. Easy to say now, but who could put a wise head on young shoulders?

  At the time he’d been turbulent, questioning everything, and his dad had become increasingly strict. Instead of knuckling under and conforming, instead of going the please-the-parent route, like most kids … Damon had rebelled.

  Once too often, as it turned out.

  A movement in Bella’s cell dragged him out of his dark memories. She’d risen from her bunk and was walking to the sink, where she filled a paper cup with water. As Damon watched her she turned and sent him a worried smile. She lifted her cup in a salute.

  Despite the brave gesture, her green eyes were wide with fear, and her mouth was distorted as if she was battling not to cry. She came to the bars that separated their cells.

  ‘I don’t care if it’s not allowed,’ she whispered. ‘I need to talk to you. I can’t just sit here in the naughty corner until tomorrow.’

  Wishing like hell that he weren’t so helpless, Damon went over to her. A glance back to the window in the far door showed that their guard was currently elsewhere.

  ‘I can’t bear this,’ Bella said, gripping the bars.

  ‘You know we’ll be okay.’ He doubted he could reassure her, but he had to try. ‘We just have to wait it out.’

  ‘How can you be so patient?’

  This was a surprise. He’d been worried he was setting her a bad example. ‘I don’t feel very patient. I feel like head-butting my way out through that concrete wall.’

  ‘Well, you’re acting very calm. I was half expecting you to flare up.’

  ‘True to my reputation?’

  She managed a small smile. ‘I guess.’

  ‘I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since high school. I’ve been in enough bad situations I’ve finally worked out it’s not worth provoking people in authority.’

  Even so, Damon realised that his hands were gripping the bars so hard his knuckles were white. He was damn angry. ‘I went out of my way to co-operate with this fellow. We would have been all right if I hadn’t had that prior.’

  ‘I think it’s crazy to hold something like that against you now. You were too young.’

  ‘In the eyes of the law I was an adult. I was eighteen.’

  ‘Only just.’

  Bella’s pretty eyes brimmed with sympathy, a sympathy Damon was sure he didn’t deserve. But she’d always been like that—concerned and understanding, always ready to defend him. In their teens, she’d been his good influence. Sweet and funny, she’d calmed him down.

  He drew a sharp breath, wondering if she’d also been thinking about their past. He’d been so crazy in love with her then, and he’d never again felt that same rush, that sensational, over-the-top burst of passionate longing.

  Hell. He shouldn’t be remembering this … but he couldn’t help recalling Bella’s eagerness, the way she’d kissed like there was no tomorrow and begged him to make love to her. And yet … while he’d been wild in most other respects, with Bella he’d been cautious. He’d been worried about her reputation. In a tiny town like Willara, you couldn’t buy condoms or get a prescription for the Pill without everyone knowing …

  So he’d had it all carefully planned to be perfect … Then his ongoin
g war with his dad had ruined everything.

  Damon fingered the puckered scar on the back of his right hand, a legacy from the time his dad had whipped off his police belt and whacked him hard, forgetting about the buckle end.

  Bella was looking at the scar, too, and frowning. ‘Where is your dad now?’ she asked.

  ‘Brisbane.’

  ‘Still in the police force?’

  He grimaced. ‘Yeah. Unfortunately. No doubt he’ll hear about this little escapade and it’ll confirm his worst fears.’

  She let out a huff of annoyance. ‘I still can’t believe the police are taking any notice of something that happened so long ago. I know you didn’t want to tell that constable it was your father who arrested you, but it might have made a difference.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Damon gritted his teeth. It was pointless to rake through the past, but now he wished he could reach back through the years and knock some sense into his teenage head.

  Problem was, even when he’d turned eighteen, his father hadn’t let up. In fact he’d become more of a stand-over merchant. He’d even put a stop to the eighteenth birthday party they’d planned.

  ‘I never did understand how that other arrest happened,’ Bella said. ‘The last time we met—’

  She stopped abruptly, clamped a hand to her mouth as her eyes glittered with sudden tears.

  ‘Bell.’ Damon’s voice was choked as he remembered the pain of that last, desperately difficult meeting. He’d always known he’d hurt her—but he’d had no choice. It killed him to see that she’d carried the hurt all these years later.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, blinking. ‘I’m okay. It’s just that I had to rely on Willara gossip back then to find out what had happened. Everyone was talking about it, but they all had different stories.’

  Damon shot another glance back to the empty window in the far wall. ‘It was the dumbest thing I ever did.’

  ‘If it landed us here,’ Bella said with gentle determination, ‘I’d like to know what really happened.’

  She gave a sad little smile, which he returned as best he could.

  A sigh escaped him. ‘You probably remember how mad I was with my old man for grounding me.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I was mad, too. We had such a fabulous party planned.’

  ‘Yeah. So the night after my birthday and the non-event party I simply grabbed the keys to a car Dad had impounded in the police yard, and I took it for a burn.’

  Damon shook his head. ‘Smart move, I know. Dad chased after me, of course, and brought me back, and we got into a row about how serious it was. I tried to make out there was no harm done, but I had to be a smart aleck. Said something stupid like I thought the family car was the only vehicle I wasn’t allowed to drive.’

  ‘That would have gone down well.’ Bella rolled her eyes.

  ‘Made him madder, of course. He puffed up like a strutting turkey and said he was going to teach me a lesson I’d never forget. He called the constable in and told him to book me for unlawful use of impounded property.’

  Bella sighed and looked away. Damon half expected her to tell him that she would have known all these details if they hadn’t split up so abruptly. Walking away from Bella Shaw was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he’d known he had no choice. She was better off without him.

  ‘But you were let off,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah—I defended myself in court. Showed remorse, and the magistrate gave me a suspended sentence.’

  Thinking back on it, however, Damon knew that his old man had been right about one thing. He’d never forgotten that lesson. It was one of the reasons he was trying so damn hard to keep his cool now.

  A noise behind them brought him whirling round. A tall, grey-haired senior sergeant strode through the watch-house doorway, with the constable trailing behind him, eyes lowered as he unhappily clutched a bunch of keys.

  The older policeman went straight to Bella’s cell. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Shaw, I’m Senior Sergeant Jemison. Rod Jemison. I’d like to clarify a couple of matters relating to the car you were driving.’

  ‘It’s all been a terrible mistake.’ Bella’s voice shook as if tears weren’t far away.

  The senior sergeant frowned, then took a step back while the constable unlocked her door. ‘Take a seat in my office, Miss Shaw,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  At last, Damon thought. Someone with authority. And this new senior officer hadn’t told the constable to watch Bella, so he clearly didn’t see her as a fugitive. He’d offered his first name, too, which had to be a friendly overture. Things were looking up.

  So play it cool, Cavello …

  ‘Mr Cavello.’ Through the metal bars, the officer fixed Damon with intelligent blue eyes. ‘One quick question.’

  ‘If it’s about my prior—’

  The other man held up a hand to silence him. ‘It’s much simpler than that. Are you the Cavello who sends news reports from Afghanistan and the Middle East?’

  Damon nodded. ‘My press pass is in the wallet your constable confiscated.’

  Rod Jemison shot his constable a sharp, sideways glance. ‘Get him out of there, while I sort this out.’

  Half an hour later, Bella and Damon were once again standing on the edge of the highway.

  Seesawing between emotional exhaustion and an uprush of relief, Bella thought her knees might give way. Even so, she couldn’t hold back a grin.

  ‘Free at last!’ she shouted, then laughed at her exuberance. ‘Anyone would think I’d been incarcerated for months instead of half a day.’

  To her surprise, Damon slipped an arm around her shoulders, gave her a hug, even brushed a soft kiss on her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through that.’

  His kiss was gentle, hardly touching her, yet Bella could feel it vibrating all the way through her. ‘Don’t feel bad. I’m fine,’ she said, sending him a shaky smile. ‘At least I am now it’s all over.’

  The temptation to give Damon an answering kiss was overwhelming. She wanted to be impulsive, to wind her arms around his neck and lose herself in kissing him—the way they used to.

  Don’t go there. Don’t get carried away. Just in time she remembered all the reasons she had to hold back. Damon would leave again soon, just as he’d left last time. She’d had enough problems recently. She couldn’t risk more.

  Instead she told him, ‘You were right, Damon. We just had to be patient.’

  Their release had been unbelievably quick once the senior sergeant had taken charge. They’d been asked to sit in the office, and Damon had explained yet again that he’d hired the car from a service station in Willara, and that he’d paid with his credit card.

  In response, Sergeant Jemison had used his mobile phone to dial straight through to his Willara counterpart, who was, sure enough, at the races.

  Within a matter of minutes, an announcement for the car-hire agent had been broadcast over the racecourse PA, the fellow had been located, and he’d confirmed that Damon rented the car legitimately and in good faith. Apparently two backpackers with very poor English had hired the car at the Gold Coast and driven it for several days beyond their time limit before abandoning it at Willara, because, technically, it was a stolen car.

  The car-hire fellow in Willara had been slack with his paperwork and the car had shown up in the police system as stolen. But it was soon very clear that Bella and Damon had been innocent victims.

  So now they were officially innocent and standing on the edge of the highway, in the middle of nowhere, with no mode of transport.

  Bella had half expected an apology from the police, but the sergeant was quite firm.

  ‘You were pulled up in a stolen vehicle and one of you had form,’ he’d said. ‘Of course you had to be detained and I have to impound the car until this is sorted out.’

  ‘You mean we’re stuck here?’ she’d cried, horrified.

  ‘I can drive you back to Rockhampton first thing in t
he morning, and you’ll be able to hire another car there. But for tonight, I’m afraid your best bet is the motel down the road.’

  Not a great option, Bella thought as she eyed the drab, rather faded nest of buildings on the far side of a dusty paddock. It was now late afternoon, but the sun was still very fierce and the motel’s metal roof was baking in the sun.

  ‘I hope it has air conditioning,’ she said as she hefted her bag over her shoulder.

  Damon nodded. ‘Air conditioning and a good mattress and we’ll be ready to face the world again.’

  ‘Two good mattresses,’ Bella corrected.

  His eyes flashed as their gazes connected, and she felt a fierce jolt in the centre of her chest.

  ‘Two mattresses, of course,’ he said with a quiet, unreadable smile. ‘In separate rooms.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem. By the look of this place, we’ll be the only guests.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DAMON was wrong.

  The motel was, they soon discovered, a favourite, low-budget stopover for truck drivers and travelling salesmen. Although most of the patrons hadn’t arrived yet, the place was almost fully booked out for the evening. There was just one vacancy.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else?’ Bella winced at how nervous she sounded, but she was practically hyperventilating at the thought of sharing a room with Damon.

  ‘Just the one room, but we can offer you an extra-large room with twin beds.’ The motel proprietor’s tone implied they were exceptionally lucky to be offered this and should be excessively grateful.

  Damon set an extra hundred-dollar bill on the counter. ‘Are you quite certain you can’t find another room for Miss Shaw?’

  The proprietor eyed the bribe forlornly and his fingers twitched as if he longed to take it. ‘Honestly, mate, I’d love to help, but apart from that one room we’re chock-a-block tonight.’

  Damon frowned. ‘Is there any other accommodation around here?’

  ‘The next motel’s another hundred clicks up the highway. I can ring them if you like—’