She nodded. ‘After Mum died, we were all rather lost … Dad, Paddy and I. But your grandmother was wonderful for Paddy. She went out of her way to cheer him up.’
Damon smiled. ‘She has a talent for cheering people up. I’m glad she was able to help. She mentioned that your father was very low.’
‘He was. He started drinking too much. Drowning his sorrows. It was really awful, actually.’
‘You were away, working in Brisbane, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, and I didn’t realise how quickly Dad was going downhill. He was neglecting the farm. He wasn’t paying bills. When I realised how bad things were, I started coming home on weekends, and Kent helped out on the farm. Mending fences. Ploughing. Kent was fabulous, actually.’
Damon slanted her a piercing glance. ‘Is that when the two of you became close?’
‘Yes.’ She looked away, then said carefully, ‘I’m not sure if you ever knew, but Kent’s always looked up to my father. You probably heard that Dad saved Kent from drowning when he was a kid?’ Damon nodded.
‘Kent felt that he owed him a huge debt. He became very worried when Dad started the heavy drinking. Then Dad developed heart failure. He’d been literally drinking himself to death.’
‘And Kent wanted to help.’
‘Yes.’
‘By marrying you?’
The fierce intensity in Damon’s voice made her shiver. ‘More or less.’ She rubbed at her arms. ‘Kent suggested we should get engaged, and suddenly it seemed to be the answer to all my problems. He and I would be living next door to Dad. We could keep an eye on him, get him to AA meetings and help him to run the farm.’
‘And there’d be grandchildren for your father to dote on. A reason for him to go on living.’
Bella drew a sharp breath. ‘That was what we hoped.’
After a beat, Damon said, smoothly, ‘It sounds like a great plan. Dare I ask what went wrong?’
Oh, help. This was the hard part.
There was no way she could explain to this man who set her heart spinning at fifty paces about their lack of chemistry. ‘We—ah—realised that gratitude isn’t a good basis for a happy marriage,’ she said quietly.
Damon’s clever grey eyes narrowed. ‘And it was an amicable decision?’
‘Of course.’
But suddenly she’d had enough. She’d told Damon far more than she’d intended and she didn’t want this clever reporter probing too deeply. ‘This isn’t an interview, Damon. If you don’t mind, I’m done with answering questions.’
With that, she yawned dramatically and closed her eyes.
Damon drove on, and it wasn’t too long before Bella’s head slipped sideways. Her cap fell off revealing the soft, pale gleam of her hair. A strand escaped and fluttered gently like a golden streamer. As her head tipped farther he caught sight of the thick fringe of her eyelashes behind her sunglasses. Yes, she was definitely asleep, and he was flooded by a surge of protectiveness.
He thought about the story she’d just told him. There’d been no sign of self-pity in her voice, but he’d found her tale incredibly sad. Bella, the fun-loving, sexy and adventurous girl he’d known, had been loaded with too many responsibilities and worries.
Reading between the lines … these worries were the reason she’d been prepared to sacrifice herself in a passionless marriage. The thought of Bella trapped by duty enraged him.
But … damn it. This was so not the way he wanted to feel. An emotional reconnection with Bella Shaw was definitely not part of his plan.
He forced his focus to the blue bitumen road stretching ahead, and to the wider, lighter blue of the sky arching above. Purposefully, he inhaled the scents of dry earth and the eucalyptus wafting in on the fresh, clean air.
For him, the allure of an open road had always been strong, and if he weren’t so concerned now about Violet and Paddy he would have absolutely loved this journey. Each bend in the road was a new possibility, a chance for adventure. He was always at his happiest when he was travelling with no clear destination.
At heart, he’d never changed. He was a gypsy, a nomad.
And he was quite sure that, for a nomad like him, it had been a mistake to come home.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Bella woke she was aware of a strange blue-grey light outside. She saw stands of tall pine trees flashing past. And she saw the back of Damon’s dark head.
The back of his head? That didn’t seem right. She blinked and tried to sit up, but she was held down by her seat belt. Her neck was stiff and she realised that her seat had been lowered into the reclining position. And the car had a roof.
When had that happened? She couldn’t remember.
Beneath her cheek, there was something soft and pillowy—a man’s sweater with a faint hint of Damon’s exotic cologne had been rolled up to cushion her head.
She yanked on the lever that raised her seat. ‘What time is it?’
Damon smiled. ‘Hey, there.’
Yawning, she reached for her water bottle and took a few sips. That was better. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked again. ‘Have I been asleep long?’
‘It’s almost five.’ He pointed to the clock on the dashboard.
‘Wow. I’ve been asleep for a couple of hours, then.’
‘More than a couple.’
Sleepily, Bella took another look at their surroundings. There was something about the light that didn’t seem right for five o’clock in the afternoon. It should have been all golden and coppery and sloping in low from the west. She shivered and frowned as a terrible thought struck. ‘Damon, it’s not five o’clock in the morning, is it?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘No! It can’t be.’ Shocked, she sat up straighter, and pulled her jacket more closely around her. Wait a minute. Where had her jacket come from? She turned to Damon. ‘Did you get this jacket out of my bag?’
‘You were getting goose bumps on your arms.’
She rubbed at the stiff spot on her neck. ‘But I can’t have been asleep all night.’
‘You were exhausted, Bella, and you needed to sleep. You’ve had a huge twenty-four hours.’
‘I know. But don’t tell me you’ve been driving all night?’ ‘I felt fine.’
‘Damon, you shouldn’t have. You should have stopped.’
She was beginning to feel quite angry. Guilty, too. They were supposed to share the driving. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t planning to stop?’
‘It wasn’t planned. It just seemed like a good idea to let you sleep and push on.’
‘But we could have stayed in a motel.’
He cocked a questioning eyebrow. ‘Were you anxious to spend the night in a motel?’
‘In separate rooms, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Faint amusement shimmered in his eyes.
Bella could feel her anger rising to the boil. ‘Anyone with any sense knows you have to have adequate rest on a long road trip.’ She should have guessed something like this might happen. Damon Cavello had always been a risk taker.
They rounded a curve and she shot an angry glance at the view of vast plains stretching ahead, soft in the morning light,