It was a horrible way to see such a beautiful country.
Eventually, they made it to the campground nestled in the shoulder crook of a pristine bay on the far side of Cape Arid National Park, its land arms reaching left and right in a big, hug-like semicircle. A haven for travellers, fishermen and a whole lot of wildlife.
But not today. Today they had the whole place to themselves.
‘So many blues...’ Eve commented, stepping down out of the bus and staring at the expansive bay.
And she wasn’t wrong. Closer to shore, the water was the pale, almost ice-blue of gentle surf. Then the kind of blue you saw on postcards, until, out near the horizon it graduated to a deep, gorgeous blue before slamming into the endless rich blue of the Australian sky. And, down to their left, a cluster of weathered boulders were freckled by a bunch of sea lions sunning themselves.
God...so good for the soul.
‘This is nothing,’ he said. Compared to what she’d missed all along the south coast of Australia. Compared to what she’d driven straight past. ‘If you’d just chuck your indicator on from time to time...’
She glanced at him but didn’t say anything, busying stringing out her solar blanket to catch the afternoon light. When she opened the back doors of the bus to fill it with fresh sea air, she paused, looking further out to sea. Out to an island.
‘Is that where we’re going?’
Marshall hauled himself up next to her to follow her gaze. ‘Nope. That’s one of the closer, smaller islands in the archipelago. Middle Island is further out. One of those big shadows looming on the horizon.’
He leaned half across her to point further out and she followed the line of his arm and finger. It brought them as close together as they’d been since he’d dragged her kicking and cursing away from the thugs back in Norseman. And then he knew how much he’d missed her scent.
It eddied around his nostrils now, in defiance of the strong breeze.
Taunting him.
‘How many are there?’
What were they talking about? Right...islands. ‘More than a hundred.’
Eve stood, staring, her gaze flicking over every feature in view. Marshall kept his hand hooked around the bus’s ceiling, keeping her company up there. Keeping close.
‘Trav could be on any of them.’
Not if he also wanted to eat. Or drink. Only two had fresh water.
‘Listen, Eve...’
She turned her eyes back up to his and it put their faces much closer than either of them might have intended.
‘I really am truly sorry I said that about your brother. It was a cheap shot.’ And one that he still didn’t fully understand making. He wasn’t Eve’s keeper. ‘The chances of him being out there are—’
‘Tiny. I know. But it’s in my head now and I’m not going to be able to sleep if I don’t chase every possibility.’
‘Still, I don’t want to cause you pain.’
‘That’s not hurting, Marshall. That’s helping. It’s what I’m out here for.’
She said the words extra firmly, as if she was reminding both of them. Didn’t make the slightest difference to the tingling in his toes. The tingling said she was here for him.
What did toes ever know?
He held her gaze much longer than was probably polite, their dark depths giving the ocean around them a run for its money.
‘Doesn’t seem a particularly convenient place to put a weather station,’ she said finally, turning back out to the islands.
Subtle subject change. Not. But he played along. ‘We want remote. To give us better data on southern coastal weather conditions.’
She glanced around them at the whole lot of nothing as far as the eye could see. ‘You got it.’
Silent sound cushioned them in layers. The occasional bird cry, far away. The whump of the distant waves hitting the granite face of the south coast. The thrum of the coastal breeze around them. The awkward clearing of her throat as it finally dawned on her that she was shacked up miles from anywhere—and anyone—with a man she barely knew.
‘What time are we meeting the boat? And where?’
‘First thing in the morning. They’ll pull into the bay, then ferry us around. Any closer to Middle Island and we couldn’t get in without an off-road vehicle.’
‘Right.’
Gravity helped his boots find the dirt and he looked back up at Eve, giving her the space she seemed to need. ‘I’m going to go hit the water before the sun gets too low.’
Her eyes said that a swim was exactly what she wanted. But the tightness in her lips said that she wasn’t about to go wandering through the sand dunes somewhere this remote with a virtual stranger. Fair enough, they’d only known each other hours. Despite having a couple of life-threatening moments between them. Maybe if she saw him walking away from her, unoffended and unconcerned, she’d feel more comfortable around him. Maybe if he offered no pressure for the two of them to spend time together, she’d relax a bit.
And maybe if he grew a pair he wouldn’t care.
‘See you later on, then.’
Marshall jogged down to the beach without looking back. When he hit the shore he laid his boots, jeans and T-shirt out on the nearest rock to get nice and toasty for his return and waded into the ice-cold water in his shorts. Normally he’d have gone without, public or not, but that wasn’t going to win him any points in the Is it safe to be here with you? stakes. The sand beneath his feet had been beaten so fine by the relentless Southern Ocean it was more like squidging into saturated talcum powder than abrasive granules of sand. Soft and welcoming, the kind of thing you could imagine just swallowing you up.
And you wouldn’t mind a bit.
His skin instantly thrilled at the kiss of the ice-cold water after the better part of a day smothered in leather and road dust, and he waded the stretch of shallows, then dived through the handful of waves that built up momentum as the rapid rise of land forced them into graceful, white-topped arcs.
This was his first swim since Cactus Beach, a whole state away. The Great Australian Bight was rugged and amazing to look at right the way across the guts of the country but when the rocks down to the sea were fifty metres high and the ocean down there bottomless and deadly, swimming had to take a short sabbatical. But swimming was also one of the things that kept him sane and being barred from it got him all twitchy.
Which made it pretty notable that the first thing he didn’t do when he pulled up to the beautiful, tranquil and swimmable shores of Esperance earlier today was hit the water.
He went hunting for a dark-haired little obsessive instead.
Oh, he told himself a dozen lies to justify it—that he’d rather swim the private beaches of the capes; that he’d rather swim at sunset; that he’d rather get the Middle Island review out of the way first so he could take a few days to relax—but that was all starting to feel like complete rubbish. Apparently, he was parched for something more than just salt water.
Company.
Pfff. Right. That was one word for it.
It had been months since he’d been interested enough in a woman to do something about it, and by ‘interested’ he meant hungry. Hungry enough to head out and find a woman willing to sleep with a man who had nothing to offer but a hard, one-off lay before blowing town the next day. There seemed to be no shortage of women across the country who were out to salve a broken heart, or pay back a cheating spouse, or numb something broken deep inside them. They were the ones he looked