by Mandy Magro
Ryan instinctively reached over and lightly touched her arm. ‘No worries, we all have them.’
Her breath snagged as she flinched away from him. The moonlight shining through the windscreen allowed him to catch a glimpse of a shadow flicker in her hazel eyes. Her face paled and she bit her bottom lip.
He tugged his hand back to the steering wheel and gripped it tight. ‘Sorry.’ He sucked in a breath and blew it out slowly, weighing up his next question. ‘Does your bad day have anything to do with those bruises and that cut on your neck?’
‘I’d rather not talk about that either.’ Her voice was soft, shaky and distant, as if she’d gone back to the place where it had happened. She trembled enough for him to notice.
Ryan’s jaw clenched as his own painful memories tried to possess him. ‘Right, well, I’ll take that as a yes. And for the record, I’d love to rip the bloke’s legs off and shove them down his throat, the scumbag. People that think it’s acceptable to hurt another human being, especially a woman, physically or emotionally, are the lowest of the low.’
‘How do you know it was a bloke who did it?’
‘Gut instinct.’
She clasped and unclasped her hands. ‘You got pretty good instincts.’
‘They’re usually spot on.’
They fell silent for a few moments until Ryan could calm himself enough to speak without anger lacing his tone. He knew first hand the impact violent bullies could make, not only on their victims but on everyone around them. If he had it his way he’d lock them in a dungeon and throw away the key, let them die a long slow painful death. ‘So, Miss Mysterious, is it too much to ask your name?’
She remained staring out her window. ‘Tilly.’
‘Got a last name, Tilly?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s a first.’ He glanced sideways. ‘Nice to meet you, Tilly No-last-name. I’m Ryan Hunter.’
‘Well, hello there, Ryan, nice to meet you too.’ Tilly tried to smile and then turned back to look out the window. ‘So how much further is it to Moonstone Valley?’
‘A couple of hours … give or take.’ Although he was looking forward to cooking something at home for his dinner, Ryan made the assumption that Tilly and her sidekick would probably be in need of food sooner rather than later. He sensed that if he asked if she’d like to stop she’d say no, so he did the next best thing. ‘I’m going to pull in at the next town for a feed, if you don’t mind. After skipping lunch I’m Hank Marvin.’
She spun back to face him, her wisp of a smile sending his heart into a canter. It felt good to be able to make her smile, no matter how small it was. ‘You’re what?’
‘I’m starving. Sorry, I’m a bit of a shocker with the slang. Goes with the territory.’ He looked down at Huckleberry who was now asleep on top of Tilly’s cowgirl boots and snoring loudly. ‘We can get him some food from the roadhouse too, if you like.’
‘That’d be great, thanks.’ She rubbed her belly. ‘I’m Hank Marvin too.’
‘We’ll be able to remedy that real soon.’ Ryan chuckled at her attempt to mimic him. ‘So what brings you to Moonstone Valley of all places? You got family there?’
‘Nope.’
‘Friends?’
‘Nope.’
‘A job?’
‘Nope.’
‘Far out, you don’t give much away, do you?’
She smiled sadly. ‘I’m going there to spread my mum’s ashes at Sapphire Beach, and then, if I like the place and if I can find a job, I might hang around for a while. The way she described it to me over the years, it sounds like heaven on earth.’
‘Sorry to hear you’ve lost your mother, Tilly.’ She looked as though she’d been to hell and back and, to top it all off, she’d lost the one person who clearly meant the world to her. He couldn’t bear to imagine losing his mum.
‘Don’t apologise, it’s not your fault she’s gone.’
‘How’d she, you know …’
‘Die?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Lung cancer. She was only forty-three.’ She shook her head as she picked at something beneath her fingernails. ‘Stupid cigarettes … I kept telling her she needed to give up but when she finally decided to it was too late. She lasted all of five weeks after the doc told her the bad news.’
‘Really? That’s harsh.’
‘Yup, I’ve learnt life’s harsh.’
‘Was your mum from Moonstone Valley?’
‘Now that’s a story I don’t mind telling you.’ She gave him a sassy smile. ‘No, she and the bloke who got her pregnant with me met in Byron Bay at some hippy retreat when she was nineteen. Apparently Mum fell in love at first sight with …’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t know if I can say the same for my superficial father, especially after what he did to her. Anyways, they decided to hit the road, destination unknown, two free souls with no responsibilities and all that. They stopped off at Sapphire Bay for what was supposed to be a night. Two weeks later they were still camped near the beach in Mum’s Kombi van. Everything was going great until Mum discovered she was pregnant. She couldn’t wait to tell him, thinking he’d be over the moon like she was, but instead he told her he didn’t want kids and she should get an abortion.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yup, it devastated her. Mum reckons she waited until he went for a swim and then she took off and never looked back. Neither of them had told each other their last names—it had been a thing at the hippy commune to not base a person’s character on their heritage, or something weird like that—so there was no way for him to find her, or her him. It broke her heart, leaving him behind, but she told me there was no way she was going to get rid of the life growing inside of her.’
‘Tilly, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I’d cope knowing my father had said something like that about me, and also knowing there was no way to find him if I wanted to meet him to set things straight.’
‘There’s nothing you can say to make it any better, so best not to say anything at all really. I hate the man, even though I’ve never even met him, and to be honest, I never want to. He can’t take back what he did to my mum, or what he said about me. What’s done is done and all that.’
‘I can understand that, completely. If it were me, I’d feel the same, but I think there’d be a part of me that would always wonder what he was like and if he regretted what he did.’
Matilda took a few moments to answer. ‘I won’t lie, I do wonder, but that’s as far as it goes.’
‘Aha.’ Ryan sensed she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. He suspected there was a small part of her, which she didn’t want to acknowledge, that wanted to come face to face with her father so she could slay the demons that haunted her. What child wouldn’t? ‘Do you know if he still lives in the area?’
‘Who?’
‘Your dad.’
‘Oh, sorry, thought we’d finished talking about him.’ She shook her head. ‘I doubt it. Why would he have stuck around after Mum left, especially when he had nothing to stay in the area for? Mum mentioned he’d always talked about wanting to end up in Western Australia, so my guess is that’s where he’d be.’
The tears welling in her eyes were ripping at Ryan’s heart. The heartache clearly ran much deeper than she was letting on. Although he believed it would be good for her to mend a wound that had left a gaping hole in her heart by finding her father, even more so now she’d lost her mum, he didn’t want to push the subject any further. By the sounds of it, it would be a lost cause anyway. ‘Do you have somewhere to stay in Moonstone Valley?’
‘Not yet … I was hoping to get a room at a hotel or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Or I can sleep on the beach if it comes to it.’
He couldn’t take her to Moonstone Valley and just drop her off in the middle of the street to fend for herself. Especially now he knew some of her heartbreaking background. What kind of man would he be to do that? ‘You can stay with me …’
Matilda’s
expression and the worry lines on her forehead told him she thought he meant in his bed. He quickly rephrased. ‘I have a spare room at my house. You’re welcome to stay there until you figure out if you want to stay in Moonstone Valley or not.’
‘Oh right, thanks, but please don’t feel you have to put me up. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.’
‘I don’t feel I have to and I have no doubt you’d be very capable of taking care of yourself.’ It was his turn to shrug now as he sensed the cracks in her self-protective wall getting bigger. If only he could break through them he might be able to help that little bit more. ‘I don’t see the sense of you sleeping on the beach when I have a perfectly good room doing nothing, that’s all.’
‘Do you live by yourself?’
‘Yep. I got a place on the outskirts of town. Just a little two-bedroom cottage. It was the old workers’ quarters that I’ve done up over the last couple of years. It’s not much, but it’s all mine.’
Matilda went quiet then said, ‘That’s very kind of you. Can Huck stay there too?’
‘Of course he can—that’s a given.’
She brought her gaze to his. She blinked faster as if warding off the tears. ‘I’d love to take you up on your offer, thanks, but as long as you let me pull my weight and give you some money towards board.’
‘Deal.’
She was smiling widely now and her shoulders seemed to relax. Silence hung in the cab, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
‘So what’s your favourite food, Tilly?’
‘You really like to talk, don’t you?’ Her tone was light and a little playful.
‘I live in a box for most of the time, on my own, so when I have company in here I like to yack a little, yes.’
‘A little?’ She grinned wickedly.
‘Okay then, a lot.’
‘Chilli and chocolate.’
‘Together?’
She nodded. ‘Sometimes.’
Ryan screwed his face up. ‘Yuk. That’s disgusting.’
Matilda smiled. ‘Have you tried it?’
‘Nope, and I have no plans to.’
‘Don’t mock something until you have. It’s actually really yummy.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘Oh, and seafood, I love seafood.’
‘Cool, me too.’
Slowly moving her feet so as not to wake Huckleberry, Tilly tugged off her boots and then folded her legs beneath her. ‘What’s your favourite food?’
‘A lamb roast with all the trimmings—potato, pumpkin, sweet potato and peas, covered in a minty gravy.’ He rolled his eyes in pleasure.
‘Really. I’ll have you know I cook a mean roast lamb.’
‘I don’t know if I can take your word for it.’ Ryan cocked one eyebrow. ‘You’ll have to prove it.’
‘You’re on, buddy.’
Ryan gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Favourite music?’
‘Definitely country, without a doubt, and some stuff from the seventies.’
‘Me too, which artist is your favourite.’
‘Hmm, that’s a hard one. I love Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Slim Dusty but for more of the modern stuff I’m kinda crushing on Chris Stapleton at the moment. His voice is so deep and husky, and his southern drawl …’ She looked skywards, her hands going to her chest. ‘Oh my God.’
Without a word Ryan reached out and turned his stereo back on, Chris Stapleton’s husky honky-tonk voice filling the cab with his tune ‘Whiskey and You’.
Matilda’s eyes widened. ‘Are you freaking serious, this is my favourite song of his. The lyrics are so deep and so heart wrenching at the same time.’ She smiled. ‘Can you turn it up?’
‘Sure can.’ For the next half hour, until they reached the roadhouse, the pair of them sang the lyrics to every song, word for word, as they watched the landscape pass them by.
CHAPTER
3
The roadhouse was a hive of activity, packed with truckers, travellers and locals alike, most tucking into their yummy meals. Matilda tried to ignore the hunger gnawing at her empty stomach like a wild creature as she sat and looked across the table at this virtual stranger, a seemingly salt of the earth kind of bloke. Even though they had only just met she felt more at ease with him than any other man she’d been around before. She realised this almost immediately because she’d never opened up about the way her mother and father had met to anyone, ever, not even Troy. It intrigued and worried her that she felt so comfortable in Ryan’s company. What was different about him? Was he genuinely being nice to her or did he have an agenda? Was she just desperate to feel cared for by someone? She felt like slapping herself for letting her guard down after everything she’d been through. What was wrong with her? Had she finally lost her marbles after all the years of emotional and physical abuse? She should know better than to allow a bloke to peek over her protective walls. They all ended up wanting the same thing or hurting her in some way, emotionally, mentally or physically—or in Troy’s case, all three. Although she had a good reason for what she’d done this morning, would Ryan have given her a lift if he knew? She wasn’t too sure. She still couldn’t believe it herself—it all felt so surreal.
Despite wanting to remain detached from Ryan, or any man for that matter, she had to silently admit that this do-good trucker was very appealing in a rugged, gallant kind of way. She couldn’t deny he’d been her knight in shining armour so far, the only difference being he was more a ringer type and his horse was a rig. With a strapping six-foot frame, tousled sun-bleached hair falling over his forehead and dimples that deepened every time he flashed his megawatt smile, he reminded her a little of a young Matthew McConaughey. And there was no overlooking his broad shoulders that pulled his work shirt taut every time he shifted in his seat as he quietly spoke on his mobile phone. The Celtic-looking tattoo on the side of his neck gave him a bad-boy edge and added to his magnetism—she had always loved a man with tattoos. Unlike Troy, who always stank of stale alcohol and cigarettes, Ryan smelt of the earth and hard work and what she could only describe as ‘man’, and all in a good way. What struck her the most, though, were his intensely expressive eyes that were the colour of a cloudless blue sky. Although he had a cheery disposition, there was a certain kind of sadness in them that struck a chord deep within her, one she didn’t want to acknowledge for fear of connecting too deeply with him. That was the very last thing she wanted. She wasn’t going to risk being vulnerable again because it wasn’t worth it. She’d learnt the happily ever after she’d always fantasised about didn’t exist. She would be civil and appreciative to him for picking her up and offering her a place to stay, but that was as far as it went.
With the phone call now ended Ryan inhaled the last of his black coffee as though it was water on a hot summer’s day, then leant his forearms on the red and white chequered tablecloth. ‘Sorry ’bout that, my little brother likes a chat.’
‘Must run in the family,’ Matilda playfully replied before taking a sip from her Coke.
Ryan tossed a sachet of sugar at her. ‘Oi, I have feelings you know.’
Matilda ducked it like a pro. ‘Do you now? I didn’t think men had them?’ She tried to keep her voice happy-go-lucky but she meant every word as a hint of sarcasm crept in.
‘Some of us do, believe it or not. We’re not all tarred with the same brush.’ His smile faltering for a split-second, Ryan caught her gaze and lingered there, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
Matilda instantly regretted putting him in the same box as every other man she’d ever had the bad luck of meeting, but she couldn’t help herself. She could see his jaw clenching as he eyed her injuries, making her wonder what he would think of the ones he couldn’t see, the internal emotional ones Troy had scarred her with—emotional abuse was as bad as drawing blood from a person by hitting them. She could almost hear Ryan’s brain ticking as he rested back in his seat and folded his arms without saying a word, perhaps trying to piece together the fragments of what she had told him.
‘No probs. I never let a woman foot the bill when we have a meal together—it’s just one of my things.’
Matilda couldn’t stop the warmth that filled her heart with his simple gesture. So chivalry wasn’t dead after all. Even though it was only a burger and chips, she had never had a meal bought for her, not that she was going to tell Ryan that. She feared it would make her sound pathetic, which in a lot of ways she felt she was. It angered her that she hadn’t had the strength to leave Troy until now. She used to be so headstrong before she met him, but when she got caught up in the turmoil of it all and with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, she hadn’t seen any safe way out until fate had given her one. ‘That’s very gentlemanly of you, but just to put it out there, this isn’t a date.’
‘Doesn’t matter … I’m a bloke and you’re a woman, end of story.’ Ryan unfolded his arms and drummed the table with his fingers. His brows arched in the middle as if in deep thought. ‘So, Tilly, I was thinking about the whole job thing … and thought I might be able to help you find one.’
‘Were you now.’ Matilda propped her elbows on the table and her chin on her hand. ‘You’re an ideas man, I’ll give you that.’
‘Yep, sure am. Can’t help myself. I’m a typical Gemini, or so my mum says.’ He folded his hands on the table. ‘Anyhow, my brother just called to fill me in on how things are going at the farm, and how Mum’s plodding along after everything …’ He faltered but regrouped quickly. ‘Anyway he mentioned that one of the barmaids in town has handed in her notice and apparently Greg, the publican, is putting his feelers out for someone to replace her. I don’t know if you’re keen on doing bar work but I can vouch for him being a top bloke with him being like an uncle to me, and word has it he’s great to work for.’
Matilda sat up straighter, excitement filling her. ‘Oh, wow, yes, I’d definitely be interested.’