‘Good morning, Sophie.’
‘Morning.’ Her answer was accompanied by a darting look that came and went as she shrank her shoulders to avoid contact.
He had to bite back a smile. Becoming a habit those smiles. Very strange. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ Another flick of her eyes and he relented and shifted his chair a few inches away to give her some space. Her delightful shoulders actually sank with relief and he wondered why he was playing with her. He wasn’t normally pushy.
‘Did you sleep?’ It seemed she could talk easier too.
Now how reluctantly had she asked that? He bit his lip. ‘No, not really. The symphony of the night seemed especially loud.’
She raised those stern brows of hers. ‘Kept awake by nature? Poor you. Well, it is a wilderness park.’ She tossed her head. ‘Sure beats the heck out of traffic noise.’
Maybe she didn’t need sympathy. She could stand up for herself. So they ate their meal in silence as Odette continued to flirt with William.
Levi rubbed his chin as they all stood to leave because, funnily enough, her lack of enthusiasm for the flight made his skin itch.
‘Odette?’ he said, and his sister turned back.
‘Look after Sophie. Remember, she’s not comfortable, so no stunts.’
Odette raised her eyebrows at him and saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’
Sophie sent him a semi-grateful look over her shoulder as she dragged her feet to follow the other two to the helipad.
Levi frowned to himself as he went the other way. He needed to concentrate on the paperwork he had to get through before they returned to Sydney, but the ridiculously blue Kimberley sky outside the window invited sacrifice. Odette was too pregnant to be pilot. And Sophie looked unhappy.
Unhappy was too mild a word. Sophie didn’t know how she’d agreed to this.
Now Steve, the resort manager, had shooed Odette away from pre-flight checks. ‘I can’t let a pregnant lady do that,’ he said with that tilted smile that prickled right up Sophie’s nose. There was something about him that reminded her of someone but she couldn’t connect the impression.
She’d never had much to do with the people from Xanadu and apparently he’d been here for a few years and very close to the late owner. She wished he’d mind his own business though.
To make matters worse, just before take-off, Levi appeared and decreed he’d pilot instead of Odette. Suddenly Sophie could have stayed behind. Talk about bad luck.
Everyone was looking out for Odette. Which was a good thing, but Sophie wondered if it was too late to look out for herself. Now the new seating arrangements meant she’d be up front next to Levi. This kept getting better and better. Not.
The front helicopter seat was as bad as she’d imagined. She shrank back into the stiff leather, semi-frozen, not quite believing she’d agreed to this, when Levi reached in from the outside to click her belt into place. His hands pulled the belt firmly across her and snapped it shut. Talk about space invasion. This whole expedition was crazy and way out of her comfort zone. How the heck had she found herself next to him in a doorless chopper with only the seat belt between her and certain death?
And on that note, surely there should have been more seat belts or harnesses or something? One belt didn’t seem enough.
Odette and Smiley chatted happily, ensconced in the rear out of sight and out of earshot. Once they got going, she thought bitterly, they’d be safe in their own little world.
Levi climbed in and she squashed herself back against the seat. He pointed to the bulky headphones hooked on the central support in front of her, and indicated she put them on.
‘Can you hear me?’ His metallic voice made her jump, and she looked across at him and glared. He nodded and she nodded facetiously back. He frowned, then went on. ‘It’s automatically switched to receive, so for you to be heard by everyone else just press this button to speak.’
He withdrew his attention from her and glanced in the back. ‘You guys all buckled up?’
Odette’s voice crackled. ‘Roger.’
Levi glanced around the deserted helipad and began the pre-flight sequence. ‘All clear,’ he said to no one in particular and started the rotors.
The next few minutes Sophie missed as her eyes were tightly shut. The distant noise through the headphones grew louder and she felt the shudder from the flimsy craft right through the backs of her knees, then the first sideways swish of movement through the air and then back the other way.
She opened one eye. It was too hard not to look. They swayed a little from side to side as they edged higher and she could see the downdraught from the rotors beating the bushes below.
Then she could see the river at the bottom of the gorge, the roof of the homestead, the tops of the trees, and it was all a little intriguing, though she still pushed herself deep into her seat. She tried to relax her shoulders but the fear she’d fall out kept her rigid in the chair.
They climbed higher, and despite the lack of doors, she was protected from the wind by the bubble of the front windshield, and actually it didn’t feel too bad.
She opened the other eye. There was a Perspex floor in front of her feet. What sort of sick person designed a helicopter with a see-through floor? If she’d had eyes in the bottom of her soles she’d be able to look through the Perspex to the ground.
Basically she was standing on a thin edge above certain death. Her eyes closed at the vertigo of that thought, then opened again to risk a glance towards Levi as he concentrated on the dials at the front of the cockpit. What was he looking at? Was everything OK? She studied the instrument panel herself for something familiar. Maybe she’d even find a reassuring needle. Shame the guy wasn’t more into smiling but at least he was taking the danger of the situation seriously.
Knots—they were doing eighty knots, and that was faster than miles per hour, so fairly fast. Fuel—there were seventy gallons of fuel; tank was full anyway. Guess that meant if they crashed she’d die in a ball of flame.
She looked away. Maybe don’t read the dials. They’d climbed higher while she’d been contemplating the manner of their deaths, and she could look down on the escarpment now.
This was pretty amazing. And when she looked back, carefully, towards the homestead and the serpentine river, it made her appreciate how remote the properties were out here.
She’d flown on jets from Perth to Kununurra but they’d been much higher and she’d never really noticed individual stations, though mostly because she’d chosen the aisle seat and not the window.
‘We’ll fly up and over the waterfall on the property.’ Levi’s voice crackled through the headphones. ‘Odette likes that and then over to Lake Argyle. We’ll pass over a couple of stations William asked to see, then in over the Bungles and back out over the Kimberley diamond mine and home.’
He was telling her this because…? Her stomach sank. She pushed the button to speak. ‘Sounds like a long flight. Do we land anywhere?’
His teeth flashed. He couldn’t possibly be concentrating enough on his job if he could smile about it, she thought sourly. ‘Anywhere you want,’ he said.
She resisted saying, Here, but not by much, and just nodded and turned away to glance at her watch. They’d be home in a few hours. She hoped.
Actually, the next hour passed fairly quickly. The waterfall looked surreal from above with sparkling drops at the side of the main body of water