As much as Kate dreaded the trip with Rory, she could only be secretly thankful that he’d been here. Otherwise, with Charlie gone, she’d be embarking on this dash with the elderly mechanic due for his own retirement soon. Old Bob would have been little help in a real emergency, with his flaring arthritis and his hearing aid that never worked.
The driver’s door opened and Rory climbed in behind the wheel—all six feet four of him—and Kate had to shake her head at her preposterous predictions this morning. So much for expecting Rory to be unfit from too many late night doughnuts and morose from his work; there was no doubt this guy was still seriously gorgeous, with a wicked twinkle a long way from surly.
Suddenly Kate was glad she had to stay in the back with Lucy because Rory’s broad shoulders seemed to stretch halfway across the seat in the front and no doubt she would have been clinging to the passenger door to avoid brushing against him.
When he turned his head for one last check to see they were settled, his teeth showed white like a damn toothpaste commercial, Kate thought sourly, when he smiled at their patient. He didn’t smile at Kate. ‘You ready for your Kimberley Grand Tour, Lucy?’
The bronzed muscles in his neck tightened and his strong arms corded as he twisted, and Kate couldn’t help the flare in her stomach or the illicit pleasure of just looking for a long slow heartbeat at this man from her past. No wonder she hadn’t been able to forget him.
What she had forgotten was how aware she’d always been of Rory’s presence and now, unfortunately, he’d hardened into a lean and lethal heart-breaker of a man who’d be even harder to forget. She wished he’d never come back.
She sank into her seat, glad of the dimness in the back to hide her momentary weakness, but even there she could pick up the faint teasing scent of some expensive aftershave, something the Rory she’d known would never have owned. The cologne slid insidiously past her defences and unconsciously she leaned forward again to try to identify the notes.
He looked at Kate. ‘Did you get a chance—’ he frowned at the startled look on her face and hesitated, then went on ‘—to let them know at the homestead you’d be away?’
The slow motion ballet of his mouth as he spoke ridiculously entranced her and, after another of those prolonged thumps from her chest, her hearing finally caught up. She blinked as his words registered. Stupid weakness.
‘Yes.’ That’d been a staccato answer so she softened the one word with a quick explanation in case he thought her unnecessarily terse. ‘I said I’d be at least a day late coming back, if not two. They’ll tell my father.’
She looked away from him and decided then and there that it would be best if she didn’t look directly at the source of her weakness again. Don’t look at Rory.
Her teeth nibbled at dry lips as she pondered her worst fear out loud. ‘That would be as long as we don’t get more rain and end up flooded somewhere along the track for a night.’
The road they were about to hit was known as the last great driving adventure in Australia. It was enough of an adventure just being on it with Rory, let alone if they got caught up in the middle of a flood.
He nodded. ‘It’s a possibility. Let me know if you want me to stop more often so you can check Lucy out. I don’t expect to get much speed up or you’ll both be thrown all over the truck.’
He turned back to face the front. ‘We’ll drive until after the first major crossing…’ he paused as if he was going to say something but then went on as if he’d changed his mind ‘…and stretch our legs.’ He started the engine.
‘Sounds fine.’ But all she could think of was how much she wanted to get going so this agonising exposure to Rory could be over with.
Kate checked Lucy’s stretcher safety belt, forced a smile for her sleepy patient and buckled her own belt. She’d take it one hour at a time and not think about that talk she’d have to have on the way home. But it was hard when she had to decide what and how much to tell him.
Maybe she could leave him in Derby and drive the truck back herself. The idea had merit but, unless Rory had changed more than she expected, he’d be unwilling to send her off on her own.
The wind whipped the scrubby grass and stunted gums at the side of the road as they drove towards the distant ochre ranges and lifted the red dust they stirred into the now grey-black sky behind them.
At least the wind would shift the dust cloud more quickly when the road trains drove past, Kate mused, and, as if conjured, Rory slowed their vehicle and pulled close to the edge of the road to widen the distance between them and an oncoming mammoth truck.
The unsealed road was an important transport access for the huge cattle stations that lay between the infrequent dots of civilisation.
Road trains were three and four trailer cattle trucks that thundered backward and forward across vast distances. These road monsters didn’t have a chance of stopping if you pulled out in front of them.
Even overtaking a road train going in the same direction was difficult because the dust they stirred was so thick that visibility was never clear enough to ensure there wasn’t other traffic heading your way, and the risk far outweighed the advantages.
Kate remembered pulling over and brewing a cuppa instead of following one heading towards Derby in the past. She was thankful this one was travelling in the opposite direction.
This truck sported a huge red bull bar that flashed past Kate’s opposite window and three steel-sided pens filled with tawny cattle rattled after it. She sighed with relief when the dust was blown away by the ever-building wind and they could move on.
An hour and a half of corrugations later, they came to the first of the major rivers they’d have to cross, the Pentecost. There was barely any water over the road, a mere eighteen inches, but that would change as soon as the storm hit. Then they’d be stuck on the other side until it went down.
Kate caught a glimpse of a silver splash from the bank ten metres back from the road and shivered.
Thank goodness the height of water was easy to see because Kate had no desire to watch Rory walk the Pentecost to check the level.
Not that anyone walked across here. The Pentecost was populated with wildlife and a saltwater croc might just decide it fancied a roll with him. The name saltwater crocodile didn’t mean these creatures needed to be near the sea. They were quite happy to eat you a couple of hundred kilometres inland in freshwater. Even with her dread of the ‘talk’, that wasn’t how she wanted to avoid Rory’s company.
Rory slowed the truck for the descent into the river bed, changed into low range and then chugged into washed gravel to crawl though the wide expanse of water. Once across, they steadily climbed out the other side until back on the road and trails of water followed them as the truck shed the water they’d collected.
She looked up front through the windshield to where they’d stop. Her stomach dropped. Not here!
Ten years ago, Rory and Kate had set up a picnic at sunset out here to enjoy the glory of the Pentecost River and the distant ranges. That night before Rory left he’d wanted a place that wasn’t her father’s land and this was where they’d come. A point on the triangle of vast distances people thought nothing of travelling.
The memory was etched indelibly and Kate felt the soft whoosh of time as she remembered. That sunset had been as deeply coloured as a ripe peach with the magnificent sandstone escarpment of the Cockburn Range in the distance. She blushed red-ripe herself at that memory because that evening she’d set out to seduce the diffident Rory and they’d both got more than they’d bargained for.
That was their round-bellied boab up ahead.