a shame to break up the party.” She didn’t add that she was reluctant to exchange the cozy atmosphere of the homestead for an isolated camp where danger lurked around every corner. She’d told Blake she was seeing the assignment through, and she wouldn’t back down now.
He glanced around. “Some of this mob will still be here for breakfast. In the outback, you stay or go according to your own schedule.”
She placed her coffee cup on a table, stood up and stretched. “How come you’re so bright-eyed and bushy tailed?”
He winked, sending a jolt to her insides. Probably the result of too much late-night caffeine, she decided. “Years of staying out all night catching crocodiles,” he said.
She shuddered at the thought of meeting one of the prehistoric monsters in the dark on their own territory. “Sooner you than me.”
The Jeep stood waiting on the edge of the lighted circle. “Would you like to drive?” he asked.
Her tired smile told him she appreciated the choice, but she shook her head. “I haven’t driven one of these before.”
“In daylight, I’ll give you lessons. Or we can take your rental car if you prefer.”
“I’ll leave it here as we agreed. Your vehicle is better equipped for this terrain.” And she was almost out on her feet, so she’d probably run them off the dirt roads into a creek, whatever they were driving.
She was blearily aware of joining Blake in making their farewells, and then they were driving away from the homestead into the star-studded blackness. The Jeep rocked in sync with the corrugated road and she was soon nodding.
“Are you asleep?” he asked when she had been silent for some time.
She forced her heavy lids open and lifted her hair off her nape with two hands. “Are we there yet?”
He laughed, the luxuriant sound resonating through her. “You sound about thirteen.”
Her tone was husky as she said, “You’re half-right.”
“You’re twenty-six?”
“Twenty-seven next month. I was speaking figuratively.”
“You’ll have to tell me what day and we’ll celebrate.”
“Most men don’t bother remembering such details.”
“I’m not most men.”
Tell me something I don’t know, she thought. Out loud, she asked, “So when’s yours?”
“I don’t know.”
She gave a start. “How can you not know your birthday?”
“It’s a long story.”
She straightened. “You started this, and we don’t have anything else to do right now.” Nothing they should be doing, at least. What the late hour and the isolation suggested, she was better off not thinking about.
His voice reached her out of the darkness. “To know your birthday, you need to know where and when you were born.”
The Jeep tilted forward as it topped the rise. “I get it. You don’t know because you were left on a stranger’s doorstep when you were only a couple of weeks old,” she said, quoting her research. Thirty years ago, his story had been front-page news.
“If you know so much, why ask me?”
Recoiling from the resentment in his voice, she said, “I wasn’t sure if your mother ever got in touch with you again.” Her research hadn’t been able to confirm that detail.
“If she tried, I wasn’t there to meet her.” The harshness in his tone rejected any possibility.
“By then, I suppose you’d moved to the outback?”
Blake gave a hollow laugh. “Eventually. After my first foster parents found out they were having their own child and I became surplus to their requirements. I decided if I was that unlovable, I may as well act the part, getting myself chucked out of a succession of foster homes.”
She swore colorfully, earning an answering murmur from him. “My thoughts exactly. Then I came up against Des and Fran Logan, who refused to give up on me.”
His voice held no trace of self-pity so although her heart ached for him, she felt bound to match his steadiness. “Des is a good man.” He’d made Blake into a good man, too, when the outcome could so easily have been different.
“Now it’s your turn,” Blake said.
She shifted uncomfortably. Turnabout was fair play, but she hated talking about herself. It was probably why she’d become a journalist—so she could probe other people’s histories without revealing too much of her own. “Not much to tell. Father and mother, both doctors, currently working on a research project in Vanuatu. Two older brothers, one a computer whiz kid, the other a money market expert. They’re married with kids, but they still think it’s their mission in life to protect me from absolutely everything.” They’d been horrified when she told them about this assignment and had tried to talk her out of coming; they backed off only when they saw her resolve hardening instead of weakening.
“Because you were abducted from a public event when you were six,” Blake put in.
She strove to keep the aversion out of her voice. “How did you find out?”
“Like you, I believe in doing my homework. I wanted to know why a city girl would voluntarily maroon herself in the outback for a month.”
“It’s my job,” she said, sounding defensive despite her best efforts. “Your research must have told you I was with my abductor for all of five hours before the police found me and took me home. The poor old woman had dementia and thought I was her little girl, who had to be in her thirties by then. While I was with her, we watched cartoons and she fed me ice cream. I thought it was pretty cool.”
“The way I thought being left on a doorstep was cool,” he commented.
“Maybe I do want to show my family they don’t need to protect me all my life. So what?”
Blake drove into the camp and cut the engine. The sound was immediately replaced with the buzz and rustle of nocturnal life. He let his hands slide off the wheel and turned to her. “First rule of handling a new species—find out what makes them tick.”
A sensation of raw need coiled through her, urgently pushed away. “For the record, I’m not a new species, and there’s going to be no handling involved.” The very idea made her throat feel dry and her hands go damp. Blake’s unexpected substitution for Nigel had thrown her, she told herself. Yet Nigel’s words had never made her heart beat this fast.
Thinking of what Blake might do with more than words drained the last of her strength. If she hadn’t been sitting in the car, she’d have sunk to the ground. Lifting her into his arms, Blake would have found her mouth, and the needs she’d been tamping down all evening would have flared into fiery passion.
She blinked hard, struggling back to full wakefulness. What was she doing, imagining herself in Blake’s arms? Just because she hadn’t found Mr. Right yet didn’t mean she was ready to fall into the arms of the first man who came along, even if he was a walking, talking female fantasy.
The fantasy unfastened his seat belt and reached into the back to retrieve his holdall and tropical sleeping bag. He’d collected both from Sawtooth Park after meeting Cade at the airport. At first, the prospect of his company had reassured her; now, she wondered if having him around was such a smart idea, given the way he made her feel.
“Out here, city girl is an introduced species,” he continued. “You’re checking out the new environment and uncertainty is making you defensive. You’ve spotted a promising male and you’re instinctively making overtures to attract his attention, but you’re uncertain if it’s the right thing to do.”
Was