if Leo’s agenda was questionable.
‘Ah Sadie, come in.’ Tabitha smiled. ‘I’d like you to meet someone.’ She nodded her head towards Kent. ‘This is your photographer, Kent Nelson.’
Sadie turned automatically, her gaze falling on broad shoulders before her brain registered the name. She blinked.
‘The Kent Nelson?’ she asked his back, the image that had affected her a few months ago revisiting.
Kent shut his eyes briefly. Great. A groupie. He turned as Tabitha said, ‘The one and only.’
Sadie was speechless. Multi-award-winning, world-acclaimed photojournalist Kent Nelson was coming with her to the back of beyond to take photos of a reclusive celebrity?
She almost asked him who he’d pissed off but checked her natural urge to be sarcastic.
Kent was pretty damn speechless himself as one look at Sadie Bliss blew his mind. And his was not a mind easily blown. Tabitha was smirking in his peripheral vision so he hoped he wasn’t staring at her like a cartoon character whose eyes had just popped out on springs because, try as he might, he was powerless to pull his gaze away from all those curves.
Curves that started at her pouty mouth and did not let up.
Sure, she’d tried to contain them in her awful pin-striped suit but they looked as if they were going to bust out at any moment. They looked as if they had a mind of their own.
Bliss? Very appropriate. A man could starve to death whilst lost in those curves and not even care.
Great. Just what he needed. Three days in a car with a rookie reporter whose curves should come with a neon warning sign.
Sadie looked at Tabitha with a scrunched brow. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand...Kent Nelson is the photographer on my story?’
‘We-e-ll-ll...’ Tabitha wheedled. ‘Plans have changed a little.’
Sadie could feel the pound of her pulse through every cell in her body as a sinking feeling settled into her bones.
They wanted to take her off the story.
Give it to someone else.
Sadie cleared her throat. ‘Changed?’
She was determined to act brisk and professional. She might not have scored this story on merit, but she intended to show everyone she had the chops for feature writing. And if Ms Tabitha bloody Fox thought she wouldn’t fight for her story, then she was mistaken.
Sunday On My Mind, the country’s top weekend magazine supplement, was exactly where she wanted to be.
And if she had to write one more best-dog-in-show story she was going to scream.
‘We want you to do two stories. The feature on Leonard. And another.’ Tabitha flicked her gaze to Kent briefly before refocusing on the busty, ambitious brunette who had been bombarding her inbox with interview requests for the last three months. ‘On an outback road trip.’
Sadie held herself tall even though inside everything was deflating at the confirmation that the story was still hers. She didn’t even allow herself the tiniest little triumphant smile as Tabitha’s words beyond ‘two stories’ sank in.
‘A road trip?’
She looked at Kent, who was watching her with an expression she couldn’t fathom. She was used to men gawking at her. Being lumbered with an E cup from the age of thirteen had broken her in to the world of male objectification early. But this wasn’t that. It was brooding. Intense.
He was intense.
She’d seen pictures of him before, of course. The night of the exhibition there’d been a framed one of him taken on location somewhere in a pair of cammo pants and a khaki T-shirt. His clothing had been by no means tight but the shirt had sat against his chest emphasising well-delineated pecs, firmly muscled biceps and a flat belly.
His light brown hair had been long and shaggy—pushed back behind his ears. His moustache and goatee straggly. He’d been laughing into the lens, his eyes scrunched against the glare, interesting indentations bracketing his mouth.
He’d held a camera with a massive lens in his hands as if it were an extension of him. As a soldier carried a gun.
The whole rugged, action-man thing had never been a turn-on for her—she preferred her men refined, arty, like Leo—but she’d sure as hell been in the female minority that night in New York.
Hell, had the man himself been there, she doubted he would have left alone.
But looking at him today she probably wouldn’t have recognised him if they’d passed in the street. Gone was the long hair and scraggy goatee that gave him a younger, more carefree look. Instead he was sporting a number-two buzz cut, which laid bare the shape of his perfectly symmetrical skull and forehead. His facial hair had also been restricted to stubble of a number-two consistency, emphasising the angularity of his cheekbones and jaw, shadowing the fullness of what she had to admit was a damn fine mouth, exposing the creases that would become indentations when he smiled.
If he smiled.
The man sure as hell wasn’t smiling now. He had his arms folded beneath her scrutiny and Sadie became aware suddenly she was watching his mouth a little too indecently. Quickly, she widened her gaze out.
Unfortunately it found a different focus. The way his folded arms tightened the fabric of his form-fitting, grey turtle-neck skivvy across the bulk of his chest. The bunch of muscles in his forearms, where the long sleeves had been pushed up to the elbows.
‘Yes,’ Kent said smoothly, interrupting her inspection. ‘A road trip.’
He watched as Sadie took that on board with eyes as remarkable as the rest of her. Finally he understood what people meant when they talked about doe-eyed. They were huge, an intense dark grey, framed with long lashes. They didn’t need artfully applied shadow or dark kohl to draw attention—they just did.
His gaze drifted to the creamy pallet of her throat, also bare of any adornment. In fact, running his gaze over her, he realised Sadie Bliss was a bling-free zone. No earrings, no necklaces, no rings.
In stark contrast to Tabitha there was nothing on Sadie’s person that sparkled or drew the eye.
Not an ounce of make-up.
Not a whiff of perfume.
Even her mouth, all red and lush, appeared to be that way all on its own merit.
Sadie cleared her throat as his gaze unnerved her. An odd little pull deep down inside did funny things to her pulse and she glanced at Tabitha to relieve it.
‘From Darwin to Borroloola? That’s like...a thousand kilometres.’
Sadie did not travel well in cars.
Tabitha shook her head but it was Kent who let loose the next bombshell. ‘Actually, it’s Sydney to Borroloola. You can fly from Borroloola to Darwin and then back to Sydney once the interview is done.’
Sadie forgot all about the funny pull, Kent’s celebrity status and the good impression she was trying to make with Tabitha. ‘Are you nuts?’ she said, turning to face him. ‘That would have to be at least...’ she did a quick mental calculation ‘...three times the distance!’
Kent remained impassive at her outburst although it was refreshing to hear a knee-jerk, unfiltered opinion for once instead of one couched in the usual kiss-arse afforded to his level of celebrity. Tarnished as it was.
Did she honestly think he wanted to spend three days in a car with her? But he knew Tabitha well enough to know that she was an immovable force when her mind was made up.
‘Three thousand, three hundred and thirteen kilometres to be precise.’
Sadie felt nauseated at the mere thought. ‘And we’re not flying because...?’
Kent