‘If that’s your attitude, then you’ll just have to help out dressed as you are,’ he said, staring down at her as if from a great height. ‘Not that it’ll make things any easier, because I may have trouble keeping my mind on my work, but it’ll certainly set the scene for afterwards, once the work’s done and the fun can begin, won’t it?’
His eyes dropped from her own to the gaping neckline of the robe, then one hand lifted from her waist to run a swift caress across her breast before deftly twitching the robe taut. Holly felt her nipple swell immediately, responding with Pavlovian certainty to his touch.
‘Or maybe we could just leave the dishes for now,’ he said, voice soft in her ear just before his lips touched the lobe in a light, thistle-down kiss.
‘Or maybe you could just put your hands back in the sink where they belong,’ Holly snapped, putting both hands against his chest and shoving him away with an ease she immediately knew was only because he’d allowed it. Surprisingly, he obeyed, and when she moved in beside him, tea-towel in hand, she found herself wondering why. Had he indeed come to the kitchen from Ramona’s bed, as she’d first thought?
Holly found herself, ludicrously, attempting to sort out the scent of Ramona’s perfume from the heady aroma of the dish soap, her own perfume and Wade’s own, personal and highly distinctive aroma, tangy and distinctly masculine.
Surely if he had ... well ... there would be some evidence, she found herself thinking. Or would there?
‘Stop thinking and start drying,’ said a dry voice to her right. ‘The best thing about doing dishes is that you shouldn’t have to think.’
Holly looked down to find that she’d been just standing there, dish-towel in hand, for ... how long? Long enough for Wade to have got ahead of her, and now he lounged easily against the edge of the sink, watching with sardonic amusement as she rushed to catch up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, speeding up her movements and wishing he’d look somewhere else, at somebody, something else, and not just amuse himself by surveying every movement of her scantily clad figure.
For the next half-hour, they worked silently, side-by- side and yet as if they were divided by some invisible barrier. Wade now seemed less angry, but submerged in his own mind, his strong fingers sliding through the routine without any evidence of conscious thought.
Holly, by comparison, might have looked as if she was doing the same, but in fact she was becoming increasingly sensitised to his presence beside her in a situation that was strangely domestic, uniquely comfortable.
Then, almost without warning, it was finished. The final handful of cutlery emerged from the sink, the dingy soap-suds disappeared in a gurgle that seemed loud in the silence of the room, and Wade was stepping. away from the sink.
‘I’ll start packing now,’ he said simply, and without any further gesture, proceeded to do just that. Holly finished off her drying, then silently began to help him, and again they , worked without speaking until all the rented utensils were stowed away and ready to be returned.
Wade stood there for a moment afterwards, noticeably swaying for a second before he shook his head in extreme weariness. ‘There, That’s done, thank God,’ he muttered, then turned to Holly. ‘And whatever else they say about us, we’ll make marvellous housewives someday, my girl, at least in the kitchen. Do you think you’ll be able to sleep now — now that all this is out of the way?’
Holly, stricken by the tiredness in his face, by the deep lines and the sunken eyes, answered with a question of her own. ‘Never mind me. How long is it since you’ve slept? You look as if it’s been days.’
‘Has been,’ he replied. This is ... what ... Saturday morning? Feels like a Monday morning, but then ... well ... I had a good sleep on Wednesday night, I think it was.’
‘You ... you’re mad. Quite mad,’ Holly raged. ‘Going without sleep that long and then having the nerve, the utter stupidity, to stand up here all night and wash dishes!’
‘Like somebody said, they had to be done,’ he replied with a slow, gentle grin. ‘I rather enjoyed it, actually. Helped me to relax, which I usually have trouble doing after a party. Sometimes I don’t know why I have parties at all; I invariably have this kind of reaction.’
‘So what was your excuse on Thursday night?’ Holly found herself demanding, immediately aware that it was absolutely none of her business, and yet...
‘Driving,’ he replied simply. ‘Thursday, Thursday night and all day Friday.’
‘From Marble Bar? That’s not a two-day trip, surely.’
‘It is the way I came,’ Wade replied wearily. ‘I had things to do in Newman and Mount Tom Price and Yarraloola on the way, which sort of complicated the route a bit.’
‘Things that were so important you couldn’t even stop and sleep? Or is life out here so much in the fast-lane that people are expected to go without indefinitely?’ Holly snorted, knowing she must sound like a fishwife, but unable to halt the truly astonished anger she felt.
‘Sometimes it gets a bit hectic, is all,’ Wade replied stifling a yawn to do it. ‘And I didn’t go entirely without sleep; I managed to catnap here and there along the way.’
‘Probably while you were driving,’ she replied. ‘And then you’ve got the nerve to criticise me for staying up to do a few dishes.’
‘Certainly. I’m used to it, for one thing. You’re not; and what’s more, you’ve barely had time to get acclimatised. I’ll have five hours sleep and be back to normal, but you, young Holly, will sleep the clock around. Just wait and see.’
‘That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ Holly cried. ‘It isn’t me who’s standing there swaying like a drunken sailor, and it isn’t me who’s obviously dead on their feet.’
‘And it wouldn’t be Wade, either, if you’d stop harping at him,’ said a new voice, and both of them turned to see Jessica standing just inside the doorway. Wrapped in an old towelling gown, she shook her head in obvious exasperation as she surveyed first one, then the other. Then she looked at the stacks of rental cutlery and crockery.
‘You’re both mad. You’re as bad as each other,’ Jessica muttered. Clearly, she’d had a relatively good night, having slept from ten o’clock until — Holly realised — almost six. ‘Here you are, screaming at each other like a couple of stray cats about something neither of you can change, and without enough sense between you to go to bed where you both damned well belong.’
Both of them stared at her, astonished by the outburst, but it was Wade who recovered first,
‘What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?’ he demanded, quite ignoring Jessica’s indignation. ‘I suppose you thought you’d steal a march on Holly by getting stuck into these dishes while we were all asleep?’
‘1 am up,’ Jessica replied firmly, ‘because I’ve had enough sleep, and because the noise you two have been making for the past few minutes would wake almost anyone. As for the dishes, it wouldn’t have hurt me to make a start on them, although since it was your friend Ramona who insisted on having them in the first place, I would have thought it perhaps fair if she’d at least helped to wash up.’
‘And I was going to, of course, but surely it could have waited until a more civilised hour,’ said yet another voice, and Ramona strode into the room, her slender body wrapped in a peignoir so sheer it was almost indecent, her long blonde hair only slightly rumpled from sleep.
‘Goodness,’ she sighed, putting one hand up to cover a yawn. Her eyes strayed across the neatly stacked party equipment and then to the three figures who stood staring at her in honest surprise. ‘Is this what all the racket’s been about? Have you two been here all night, doing that?’
Nobody replied, and Ramona shook her head distractedly. ‘Mad, you’re quite mad,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t understand any of this; I’m going back to bed.’
‘What a splendid idea; I wish I’d thought of it,’ Wade muttered in a sarcastic voice, with an equally sarcastic glare at Holly. Then he walked out, prac
tically on Ramona’s heels.
Holly said nothing as Jessica gently steered her into her own bedroom, pointed significantly towards the bed, then left without another word.
Half-determined not to sleep. Holly threw herself on to the bed and picked up a book she’d been reading. It was still on her lap when she woke with a start and immediately looked to the bedside clock.
Five o’clock! She was congratulating herself when a glance out the window told her unmistakably that it was five o’clock in the morning and that she had, just as that damned Wade Bannister had predicted, slept the clock around.
Hardly daring to believe it, Holly rushed through her toilet, threw on a pair of shorts and a top, then hurried to the kitchen as quickly as she could without making her haste obvious.
‘Hi there, sleeping beauty. Ready for some breakfast?’
And no mistaking the smugness, the unholy gleam of laughter in those pale green eyes. Her immediate retort: ‘You didn’t beat me by much’died unspoken as she looked round to find that all the rental equipment was gone and that Wade was obviously the person who’d returned it. Which meant he must have been up and mobile sometime during the day before.
‘1 think perhaps just some coffee. I’ll get it,’ she finally managed to say, unwilling to meet the challenge in his eyes.
‘You’ll have breakfast, although if you really can’t bear my company you can wait and have it with Jessica,’ was the grinning reply. ‘And don’t say you’re not hungry, because it just wouldn’t be believable considering how long you’ve been asleep.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you sometimes to be such a know- it-all?’ Holly replied ruefully as she poured a cup of coffee and then, defiantly, walked over to sit down across the table from Wade. ‘Obviously not as much as it bothers you,’ he replied carelessly. ‘I see that a good long rest hasn’t done anything for your disposition, not that I expected it to.’
‘There’s nothing- wrong with my disposition except that it doesn’t like being picked on first thing in the morning,’ Holly retorted. ‘You, of course, have no such problem. I’m sure you had your five hours of sleep, worked a full day, made all sorts of money, or progress, or whatever it is you do, and then went to bed at midnight last night to have another five hours of sleep.’
‘Oh, stop being so bitchy,’ he replied with less than his earlier cheerfulness. ‘If it’s any consolation, I slept until two o’clock yesterday afternoon, got the rental stuff returned, put Ramona on the plane to Perth, and then slept from four o’clock until about fifteen minutes ago, which doesn’t put me’ very much ahead of you.’
What to say to that? Holly could think of nothing, so she concentrated her attention on her coffee cup, wishing that maybe, someday, she’d learn to keep her mouth shut. The two of them were still embraced in a rather strained silence when Jessica entered the room.
She stood there for a moment, looking from one to the other as they offered good mornings, then replied with a wry grin. ‘Well I suppose it’s an improvement over yesterday’s slanging match, but you’ll have to do better than this if I’m to feel comfortable leaving the two of you alone tomorrow,’ she said.
Holly was at first startled, then remembered that Jess had indeed made arrangements to return to Perth the next day for her final tests. Wade merely growled into his coffee cup, now empty, and rose to get himself a refill. They were all at the table before he finally spoke.
‘We’re not going to be alone,’ he said. ‘1 think Holly ought to go with you.’
Holly’s ‘Oh, yes,’ and Jessica’s quieter but far more determined ‘No!’ collided in mid-air, and Wade caught his cue with astonishing dexterity.
‘Which gives me the casting vote, I think,’ he said with a satisfied grin. ‘And I say she goes.’
‘Too bad.’ Jessica’s mouth had firmed and her eyes blazed with determination. ‘Because I say she stays. You know very well that I’ll be away perhaps as long as a week, and you just cannot take that long away from your field trips at this time. Also, and please. Holly, don’t be upset by this, but I really would prefer to handle this alone. Having you along would not be the comforting factor we’d both like; it would only upset me because you’d be worrying.’
‘Ignoring, of course, the fact that we’d both be worrying here,’ Wade growled before Holly could speak. ‘Damn it, Jess, there’s no reason at all why Holly shouldn’t go, except for your damned stubbornness.’
‘There is every reason. 1 am going to be under strain enough without having to worry about what’s happening here,’ Jessica replied without turning a hair. ‘So if you’re really as concerned as you profess to be, you will please, please just do as I ask. I’ll be much happier knowing everything here is under control. Now please let’s drop this discussion. I know that both of you have the best of intentions, but I want Holly to stay here and that’s that!’
Holly herself was about to interject, but the rising colour in her aunt’s face and Wade’s barely perceptible gesture of warning stopped her. It was left for him to acquiesce for both of them, and he did it not too grudgingly.
‘All right, have it your own way,’ he agreed. ‘Provided I get regular progress reports and you promise to behave.’
‘Agreed,’ said Jessica, and immediately changed the subject so that they spent breakfast discussing Wade’s general travel plans for the coming week. After the meal, he disappeared into the garage, where he spent the entire day servicing the truck he used for bush travel. Holly and Jessica tidied the house, doing last-minute laundry and packing but not — as if by tacit agreement — discussing the upcoming tests or Holly’s futile wish to accompany Jessica.
At dinner that night, all three were quieter than usual, and they all went to bed earlier than usual in preparation for Jess’s early-morning departure. In the morning, the quietness was exchanged for a more cheerful, companionable attitude, but it was a slightly forced cheerfulness that none of them really tried to push.
It was only after they’d waved away Jessica’s plane that Wade relaxed his temper enough to show Holly how deeply he felt about the whole circumstance created by her aunt’s independence.
‘I’m going to have to leave this to you,’ he said as the plane disappeared into the incredible blue of the Pilbara sky. ‘If you like, we’ll have you on the next plane, and once you’re on the spot, I doubt if there’s much Jess will be able to do about it.’
‘Except fret and get all upset,’ Holly replied after a long silence in which she thought about Wade’s incredible proposal. ‘And she would. Lord, but I’ve never seen such infernal independence. No, I guess I’d better do as she says and stay here.’
‘You wouldn’t have to let her know you were there,’ he mused. ‘I reckon I could arrange that. And at least then you’d be close at hand, just in case.’
‘And what happens when she telephones at some ungodly hour and I’m not here? I don’t think she’d accept your excuses.’
‘There wouldn’t be any, because I hadn’t intended to be here,’ he replied. ‘But of course that would only add to her worries, wouldn’t it? Damn the woman! I’m sorry. Holly, because I understand how much you’d prefer to be with her, but I just can’t see a way to manage it.’
‘Neither can I, so we’ll just have to string along with her wishes. For now, anyway. I gather from what you just said that you’re planning another trip away.’
‘Soon as I get you home,’ he replied. ‘But it won’t be a long one; I should be back tomorrow night or the day after, sometime. You’ll be okay?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I can worry here just as easily as in Perth, as Jessica said.’
‘Well try not to; I’ve already made sure she’s in the best possible hands, and I’ll be leaving you some phone numbers, in case she decides to get sneaky and not tell you everything she should. If I’m delayed for any reason, you’ll be able to get the information first-hand.’
Once they were home, Wade lost no time in loading up his vehicle an
d getting ready for the journey. He left Holly with a list of phone numbers, far more money than she could imagine ever needing, and instructions on how and where to charge most of the things she might need.
‘You’re taking a chance there,’ she said. ‘I could easily leave you with a stack of bills and a ruined credit rating.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he retorted, anger shivering behind his eyes for just an instant. Then he advised her to go off and play at being a tourist, leapt into his vehicle, and was away without even a proper farewell. No touch, no kiss, no gentleness, except for an unfathomable glance and the hint of a departing smile. Holly didn’t know if she’d wanted him to kiss her goodbye or not, but she missed the gesture.
It almost seemed. Holly thought after he’d gone, as if Wade’s attempts to have her accompany Jessica were more because he didn’t want her in his house — or alone with him? — than because of her own wish to be with Jess. And yet why should he feel that way’? Not, surely, because of that ridiculous incident in the Perth airport?
And certainly it wasn’t because he feared her trying to seduce him; if anything it would be the other way round. Not that she considered that a problem; Wade Bannister was most unlikely to force his attentions upon her without some encouragement, and that was something he just mustn’t have. It was simple as that.
Except, she knew that she really didn’t feel much like being alone. Not now, not with Jessica’s stubbornness and unresolved tests hanging like an albatross on her mind.
But what else to do, except perhaps take Wade’s advice and play tourist for the rest of the day? Which didn’t really appeal either. Tomorrow she might take his advice, but not today.
So she stayed at home, wrote several long overdue letters to friends in England, idly wished there was some housework left to be done, and found time going from tedious to boring to horribly boring as she began to experience for the first time the true isolation and loneliness that Port Hedland could offer.
In the evening, she went for a long walk, then tried to concentrate on television while she waited for Jessica to phone an all too brief call, and tried to keep her mind from being too aware of the absent Wade Bannister.
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