house like that had to have a family in it. It had no wife, as far as she’d found out, but maybe a girlfriend. Parents.
More obstacles. More people to judge her. More strangers for Molly.
She guided her car over a sequence of cattle grids into Minamurra’s lush heart. Beautiful gardens offset the trappings of a working station: heavy equipment, sheds, stables, beat up four-wheel drives. They must have tapped straight into the aquifer to have this kind of green in the middle of a Kimberley dry season. She pulled to a halt in the shade of two towering kurrajongs standing like sentinels at the base of old timber steps that cut up through the turfed knoll leading to the house. She left the engine and air-con running, and crossed to Molly’s door.
As she cut around the front of the car, her eyes slid sideways and followed the long steps upwards just in time to see a tall figure emerging from the house onto the veranda, sliding a hat onto his head and staring curiously in their direction.
Lea held her breath.
Reilly Martin.
The last time she’d seen him he’d been sprawled naked across the motel bed in a deep, exhausted sleep as she’d snuck out into the dawn like a thief. Pretty apt, as it turned out.
She bent down and kissed Molly through the open window and asked her to sit tight for a bit.
Not only was Reilly not expecting anyone, he definitely wasn’t expecting anyone with legs like that. What was she doing—trying to climb in the back seat through the window? It looked like the car was trying to swallow her.
Or was she just trying to make a memorable first impression? She wouldn’t be the first woman to drive all the way out here to try her luck: a waste of their fuel and his time.
He had nothing to offer them. Not these days. They came expecting Reilly Martin the national champion. King of the Suicide Ride. They left cursing him and kicking up dust in their haste to be gone. The in-between had grown too predictable. Too painful.
If this one turned around with suitcases in her hand, he would go back inside and lock the door. Bush code be damned.
She turned.
No suitcases. His spine prickled and he squinted against the afternoon sun, trying to place her as her coltish legs carried her up the steps towards him. There was something about her. The higher she climbed, the more backlit she was by the sun blazing fiery and low in a deep-blue west Australian sky, until she was the best part of a rose-edged silhouette. Quite literally the best part. With her T-shirt tucked into her jeans, she was pure hour-glass, and she moved towards him like one of his best mares.
This was no circuit-chaser.
‘Hey,’ the silhouette said softly.
Only his dirt-crusted boots stopped him from flinching backwards from the hoof to the belly that was her voice. One word, one syllable, from the apparition approaching and he knew in an instant. The soft voice was burned into his memory, like his diamond-M marked the flesh of Minamurra’s horses.
It was her.
It was hard to forget the woman who’d made you feel as cheap as a motel television.
It had started as sex—a typical, sweaty, body-rush circuit encounter—but it hadn’t ended that way. Not for him. There’d been something so raw about her. She’d been almost frantic at first, and he’d had to gentle her like a skittish brumby, using his voice, his body, his strength.
It wasn’t until she’d looked up at him with those old-soul eyes that he’d realised just how lost she was. The look from the bar. Like a fish that knew it was miles from its nearest water, but was determined to stay on dry land even if it killed it.
The look had intrigued the heck out of him.
After that, she’d swung right into the spirit of things. Admirably. It had been a long, memorable nineteen hours holed up in that motel. He’d never in his life been so ensnared by a woman, by her body, by her quiet, empty conversation, by the something that had called to him in the bar. It had been the first and only time he was a no-show for an event. But dropping his place on the ticket had been worth it.
She’d been worth it.
And then he’d woken up to an empty bed and her share of the room rental lying on top of the TV. No phone number, no for-warding address, not even a ‘sorry’ note. No matter how many trophies he had, how many newspaper clippings, how many fans, she’d been a painful reminder of what he was really worth.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. That was hardly about to change now.
His heart hammered against his moleskin shirt as she paused on the top step.
‘Do you know who I am?’ The same nervous quality, underlain with a huskiness that took him straight back five years to that room.
Like he could forget. But he wasn’t giving her that much. He tipped his akubra up and squinted at her, swallowing carefully past a dry tongue. ‘Sure. Lisa, right?’
She stepped forward into the shade of the veranda and he caught the tail end of an angry flush. ‘Lea.’
‘Sorry. It’s been a while. How’ve you been?’ Dropping back into casual circuit-banter came all too easily. He’d learned early how to make conversation with strangers; it was a survival tool in his family: meaningless, empty conversation while your guts twisted in on themselves.
Her breath puffed out of her. ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’
Apparently, the lovely Lea wasn’t as gifted in the ‘meaningless chat’ department. He followed her glance back to the tinted glass of her car. A haze of emissions issued from her exhaust. He frowned. Was she so eager to be gone that she’d left her motor running? He finally noticed how sallow she was beneath the residual blush. Almost green, in fact.
That, combined with the getaway car, finally got his attention.
He looked at her seriously. ‘We can talk right here. There’s no one in the house.’
‘I…Your parents?’
‘Don’t live here.’ Why would the beautiful people choose to hang out in the depths of outback Western Australia? Visit, absolutely. Live and die here, nope. That was fine with him.
‘A, um, girlfriend?’
His eyes dropped to her lips briefly. ‘No.’
She glanced around at the stables and yards. ‘Station hands?’
‘What do you want, Lea?’
Her back straightened more than was good for a spine.
Sorry, princess; a few great hours do not entitle you to a thing.
Okay, a night. And part of a day.
She glanced back at that damned car. ‘I…It’s about that weekend.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I need to talk to you about it.’
Despite her obvious nerves, he felt like needling her. It was the least he could do. ‘It’s five years too late for an apology.’
The flush bled away entirely. ‘Apology?’
He leaned on the nearest veranda-post, far more casually than he felt. ‘For running out on me.’
Her colour returned in a rush. ‘We picked each other up in a bar, Reilly. I didn’t realise that entitled either of us to any niceties.’
Oh, yeah, he much preferred her angry. It put a glint in her eye only two degrees from the passionate one he remembered. ‘How did you find me?’
The anger turned wary. ‘You were the talk of the town that weekend. I heard your name somewhere, remembered it. I looked you up in the championship records.’
Her enormous pupils said she was lying. Why? Damn her, that he still gave a toss.
‘Which