by Giulia Skye
The wind picked up, warm and sticky from the heated earth below. He regarded her with interest. “What makes you so disgustingly cheerful this morning?”
She laughed, so different now to the crumpled woman of last night. “A good cry, I suppose.” She filled her lungs, then let it all out again. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
She’d apologized several times last night too and each time he’d told her there was no need. He was about to say it again when she turned to him.
“Tell me,” she said. “Have you ever done anything so completely insane and out of character that after you’ve done it, instead of feeling mad, you feel—I don’t know—normal? Like for the first time in ages you’re seeing things clearly, just as they should be?”
Like jumping on a plane with just the clothes on his back?
Adam stared at her, speechless that she’d put into words how he’d felt that morning soaring over the Pacific at thirty thousand feet.
“No, of course, not.” She shook her head, not understanding his silence. “Never mind, I’m not explaining it very well.”
Oh, but she was. She’d hit the nail on the head, rammed it through the wood and out the other side. He stared down at her, and when he finally realized that she was gazing right back at him—a line of confusion marking her brow—he cleared his throat and snapped out of his astonishment. “How long have you been up here?”
She checked her wristwatch. “About an hour.”
“That’s a lot of thinking time.”
“Yeah,” she smiled, looking happy and somewhat girlish. “I feel much better today.” She hugged her knees and looked out at the view. “You were right about Zac.”
“Zac?” He sat down beside her. “Is that the dickhead you were crying over last night?”
“He’s not a dickhead, but yes. Zac is his name.” She picked up a stone and lobbed it over the trees. “Maybe I am hurt that another woman’s got what I once had. And we tried for a baby for over a year, so yeah, it’s weird for me knowing he’s got one with someone else.”
It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to mention that he could have been trying for over a year with this other woman too, but he knew Evie still believed the dickhead wouldn’t have had an affair. Whatever. She was clearly still in love with him and had turned blind to his faults. He’d seen it countless times before with his father’s women.
“I was so disappointed that he didn’t want to come to Australia with me. I thought we could rediscover ourselves out here. I was prepared to put the effort in to rekindle our relationship, but he wasn’t.” She sighed. “So, yes, he’s moved on. I’ve accepted it, but … well. It’s hard being so far from home, and he should have told me he and Teagan were expecting a baby, you know? I thought we were still good friends.”
“Well, there you go. Men and women can’t be friends after a relationship, no matter how nicely they break up.” Adam declared it like a fact of life—a fact that she should already know and one she couldn’t do anything about.
She turned to face him. “Spoken like a man who’s never been friends with an ex-girlfriend.”
Adam shrugged, tossed his own stone over the edge. “What’s the point?”
“Shared interests? Companionship? The fact that at one point you liked one another enough to be together.”
Adam screwed up his brow. “The only reason women want to be friends with men after they’ve split up is because they hope that one day they’ll get back together again, and vice versa.”
“No. I wanted to be friends with Zac because I loved him as a friend.”
“And yet, he got another girl pregnant as soon as—shit.” He reached for her. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
Evie looked down at his large hand on her knee. Some truths were never easy to hear. “You don’t know Zac, and you don’t know me,” she told him.
He slowly removed his hand. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She returned her gaze back to the view. “Yesterday Zac emailed me to say that they hadn’t told me because they didn’t want to upset me while I was traveling.”
“So why not wait until you got back home?”
Evie shrugged. “I think one of our friends must have found out and forced him to tell me. Or maybe he just felt guilty. Who knows?” She shook her head, like she knew there was no point investigating it any further now. “It is what it is.”
A few minutes passed, then Evie suddenly straightened her back, like she’d just read to the end of an old heavy book and slammed it shut. She tapped out a tune on her knees. He recalled she’d done the same when they’d set off from Broome.
“What?” he asked. She had a funny look in her eye, too.
“What do you mean, what? I didn’t say anything.”
“I can hear that brain of yours working away, so give. I know you’re thinking something.”
She smiled sheepishly at him. “You know, some days I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster—”
“Oh, please.” He groaned. “If this is about that dickhead again, save it for one of your girlfriends.”
“He’s not a dickhead.” She suppressed a smile at his blunt honesty. “But no, it’s not about him. It’s about me.” She tapped on her knees again. “You know I told you last night I had food poisoning several weeks ago? Well, I’ve also been very homesick.”
He groaned again.
She ignored him. “I’ve been so homesick that on many occasions, I’ve almost booked my return flight home. I’m all ready to scrap my plans, but then I see this.” She held out her hands again as if she were about to grab the world. “I see this, and I think I’m going to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Ask you to drive me through the Kimberleys.”
CHAPTER 10
The wind flicked Adam’s hair. “You want to hire me?”
Evie nodded. “To do it properly, yes. Not the whistle-stop tour you had in mind, Adam, with that half-hearted offer of a lift to Darwin to help cover your fuel costs. I don’t want a lift. I don’t want to fly through the Kimberleys like you flew up the west coast. I want to take my time; I want to live and breathe it. I want to explore. I want to experience.” She took a deep breath, beamed those wide eyes at him. “You’ve no wallet, your cash will quickly run out, and you have six weeks before your friends come back. My tour will take four. I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a week, plus all the camp fees and fuel.”
“Four hundred dollars.”
“I’ll go halves with you on a jack and a new tire, too. It’ll cost more than I’d planned to spend but what the hell.” She was giggling now, excited. “I can afford it and I know you need the money.”
“Evie, look …” He didn’t want a job, or her money. “Four weeks is a long time.”
“What else did you plan to do until your friends return?”
“Well, I was going to …” Oversee divorce proceedings and counterclaims to Saskia’s defamation charges, dodge bounty hunters, and try to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. “I was going to drift with the tide, ya know.”
“So that’s perfect, then. You can still do that.” She beamed. “Except, I’m in control of the tide, if that makes sense. I’ve got itineraries, but you can take your pick. Do as much or as little as you want once we get somewhere. I’m pretty independent. I just need a high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle and someone to accompany me.”
Adam stood, ran his hand along his bristly jaw. “I thought we abandoned that idea.”
Last night, they’d agreed to stick to the highway where possible to get to Darwin, only taking in the easier detours along the way. He’d thought it would take a few days, a week at the most. But a month? On one hand, he was pleased with the offer—What better way to keep low?—but on the other, he’d have to sustain a lie, be on all the time, watch what he said and did, and he wasn’t sure he could be bothered. It wasn�
��t the time-out vacation he’d been imagining.
Adam was about to tell her no, when he caught a flash of that same fragile look her eyes had been glazed with last night when she’d been crying. It was at odds with the way she sat, so straight and sure of herself.
“It will cost some to get the truck checked over and to fix the tire,” he said. “Like we said last night, we’d also need to buy a few more spares. Those tires aren’t cheap and I’ve read that there are some really bumpy tracks out there.”
“You’re worried about the money, aren’t you?”
Yes, but not in the way she was thinking.
Ever since he’d picked her up in the café, he’d been contemplating how much to offer her in exchange for her signing a confidentiality agreement that would ensure her silence. He didn’t want this outback adventure turned into something tawdry, splashed across the gossip rags.
MY OUTBACK NIGHTS WITH EX-OLYMPIAN
Who knew the twists the media would come up with? And no doubt Saskia would have a field day using their lies and exaggerations against him in the divorce. “All my cards were stolen, remember?”
“But I’ve got my cards and I’m happy to pay.”
“You wanna get in debt over this?”
“As if.” She dismissed his concern with a short, sharp pfft. “I know how to handle money.”
Adam scratched at his beard. It was gritty with dust and God knew what.
“Fuel’s expensive in the Kimberleys, Evie.” He didn’t want to say yes to her offer, but what was keeping him from saying no? “And I bet those camp fees and permits you keep talking about are, too.”
“I’ll worry about that.”
She was serious about this, and the more he thought about her idea, the more he knew it would be an excellent cover for him. He’d be hidden away in a very remote area for a good chunk of time. Traveling through the outback would put distance between him and the media, and give Saskia’s bounty a chance to lose momentum. He’d also be able to shave off this damn itchy beard and grow it back to this length by the time they reached Darwin.
“So? What do you say, Adam?”
As she waited for his answer, her large brown eyes seemed to grow even bigger and rounder.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Evie squealed in delight and before he knew it, his face broke out into a dopey grin. It had been a while since he’d made anyone this happy and she looked cute. Which was a very sobering thought. After his naked-Evie dream, he’d be better off not thinking such things. He held up a finger to silence her.
“But there are conditions.”
Evie stilled, her eyes widening. “Like what?”
“Firstly, we’ll take it week by week. I’m not committing now to a full month.”
He saw her mind working, digesting it. “Okay, but there will be sections where I’d require some notice if you no longer want to continue. We’ll be hours from the main road, or a town, so you’ve got to give me warning. I’ll need to replan.”
“Fair enough. Secondly, no more wandering off by yourself.”
She folded her arms. “Is this some alpha male thing?”
“Nope. It’s common sense. We’re responsible for each other out here and remember, I’m a city boy. This is new territory for me. I’m confident driving off-road and handling the truck, but I’m an outback amateur so accept this at your peril.”
She’d been about to speak but then closed her mouth, something like surprise flickering over her face. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Is there a third condition coming up?”
“Yes.” And he took great delight in telling her this one. “No more going on about that dickhead.”
Her mouth opened again, but she closed it and gave him an as-if-I-would look instead. He grinned at her, somehow knowing it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him, yet again, that her dickhead ex wasn’t a dickhead, thus breaking rule number three as soon as it had been decreed. He waited for it, but she must have known what he was playing at because she swatted his taunting away.
“Adam.” She grinned, showing all of her pearly-white teeth. “We are going to have an absolute ball.”
He doubted it. But then again, he doubted everything. Including that they’d last the full four weeks together. They had yet to get off the damn highway, and there was a chance they wouldn’t even make it out of Derby without him turning into a sack full of dollars in someone’s eyes.
“We better get back to the truck. It’s time to face the music.”
“What do you mean?”
He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Well,” he sighed, “it’s pretty embarrassing being caught without a car jack.”
“It’s not your fault your friend’s cousin took it out.”
“But I should have checked.”
Evie shrugged. “But we wouldn’t have found this amazing view if you had.”
“You’ve changed your tune since last night.”
“We all deal with things in our own way.” She flashed him a sweet smile. “And we all overlook things sometimes.”
But not everyone’s oversights had a high chance of becoming headline news. “So you trust me to drive you through the outback?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she said, getting to her feet. “You don’t strike me as being totally hopeless, and now that I know a bit more about you, you seem nice enough.”
And that’s when Adam realized why he hadn’t given her an immediate no way to her silly job offer. Evie was a refreshing dose of simplicity and sincerity. The campground woman had described her as a nice girl. So far, from all accounts, she’d been right but he suspected there was more to Evie than just being nice.
She had guts. She’d confronted him last night when she believed he’d been up to no good, had one flip out moment but recovered and got herself back on track within minutes. She’d been scared in the dark but had gone out the next day to seek out a view. She seemed practical and sensible, and didn’t need an entourage to help her live out her life.
He’d heard talk of the myth, so could it be that he’d actually come across one of those rare women who didn’t make a fuss?
Evie followed Adam down the rocky path feeling pretty pleased with herself. This adventure would cost far more than she’d ever budgeted but like she’d told Adam, she could afford it—just about—and wasn’t traveling all about these little what-the-hell gambles that were there for the taking?
This was her time.
And for the first time in several weeks, she’d regained control of it.
“Tell me about these itineraries you keep mentioning,” Adam said as he led the way back to the truck.
Behind him, Evie’s eyes naturally took in the view of his broad shoulders and how his shorts stretched alternately against his bum cheeks as he walked. “I’ve got a few of them. There’s a couple of things I’ll need advice on from the tourist office in Derby, like road conditions and all that, so I’ll plan to go this afternoon.”
“You always plan to make a plan?”
“It’s the way my brain works. I like to know what I’m doing, and I like having something to work toward. When we get to Derby, there’s a few things I’ve got to cost up, and I’ll need to make a list of fuel stations at the Darwin end.”
“Sounds like you need a list of all the lists you need to make.”
She could tell he was finding her entertaining again. “Don’t you ever plan anything?”
“Nope. I sway with the breeze and drift with the tide.”
Evie snorted. He so clearly didn’t, and if he ever did, it was by no means intentional. “How did your wallet get stolen?”
“A thief took it.”
“Ha ha. Like I said, you’re not completely hopeless …”
“Okay, I was on the beach in Monkey Mia. I went for a swim, when I got back, it was gon
e.”
“Did you report it to the police?”
“No, I didn’t think they could do much about it. I just cancelled my cards and drove up here.”
“Drifting with the tide and swaying with the breeze?”
“Yeah. It’s a tough life but someone’s gotta live it.”
“You’re full of it,” she told him, enjoying the banter. She’d already assumed his wallet had been stolen due to some act of carelessness or incompetence on his part. He struck her as disorganized and too laid back for his own good but not as a victim of crime.
They reached the steep incline of rocks that she’d had to scale on the way up. Adam vaulted down, gracefully landing with bended knees, but without his build and height, Evie wasn’t confident in doing the same. She lowered herself to a sitting position then bottom-shuffled to the edge, her knees level with his eyes.
“How tall are you?” she asked.
“Six four.”
She looked to the drop below. “I’m sure it wasn’t this high coming up.” She tried to extend a leg so she could use a nook in the rock as a foothold. Her attempt was awkward and clumsy. How was she going to get down without looking ungainly after his display of athletic prowess? She was already half-Neanderthal. “It was much easier going up,” she squeaked.
“That’s often the way. Remember that next time you want to go exploring by yourself.” He took a step back to give her some space. “Now, are you going to jump or what?”
Evie looked at him, her horrified expression giving him his answer.
“Here,” he said, and she caught the twitch of his lips. Great. Even her fear amused him. Adam placed his big hands around her rib cage and plucked her off the rock. He then set her on the ground in front of him, his amusement fading as his eyes roamed over her. “How tall are you?”
“Five three.”
“That’s … kinda little.”
And he was big, so big and broad that she couldn’t help but stare up at him, aware that his strong hands were still on her, his thumbs only inches away from her breasts. Her stomach flipped, tugs of excitement and lust that heated her up inside, despite knowing she’d be wise to stymie any growing crush she had on this man.