by Amy Andrews
Sadie’s pulse spiked at the silky note in his voice and the way his gaze seemed to flick, ever so briefly, to her mouth. It was tempting but she doubted he’d go for truth. And she was damned if she was going to dare this man to do anything.
‘Maybe once we’ve got to know each other a little better?’ she retreated.
Kent pulled his gaze away from her, startled at the thought. He didn’t want to know Sadie Bliss. A sign flashed by and he grabbed a mental hold. ‘I spy with my little eye,’ he said, ‘something beginning with petrol station.’
Sadie kept her eyes firmly on the indicated services ahead. She scrunched her brow. ‘You know you’re only supposed to say the first letter, right?’
He ignored her sarcasm. ‘Pull in, I’m starving. Breakfast seems a very long time ago.’
Sadie had been starving for the last three days. ‘We’ve only been in the car for three hours,’ she pointed out.
‘I need snacks,’ he said. ‘And you can use the facilities.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Sadie said rolling her eyes as she indicated left. ‘But my days of enforced toileting ended a long, long time ago. You may have women in your life with weak bladders but, I can assure you, mine is made of cast iron.’
‘So it’s just your stomach that’s weak?’ he enquired drily.
Sadie shot him a look as she prepared to park. ‘Really? You want to annoy me now? As I’m parking your tank in this itty-bitty car space?’
Kent assessed the one remaining, very narrow car space. She made a good point. ‘Nope.’
Sadie turned back to the job at hand as she nervously pulled the car into the middle of three parking bays. The heavy steering was fine for wide open spaces but it felt as if she was trying to grapple a huge metallic beast into a matchbox as she centred the vehicle.
It was gratifying to get a grunt of respect from Kent.
He flung his door open as soon as she killed the engine. ‘You coming?’
Sadie shook her head. ‘I’m good.’
‘You want something?’
She shook it again. ‘I brought some snacks with me.’
Sadie watched him stride to the sliding doors of the service station, pleased to be released from his company for a few minutes. His jeans gently hugged his bottom and the backs of his thighs without being skin tight. His T-shirt was loose enough for the breeze to blow it against the broad contours of his back. And his limp, barely discernible, added an extra edge to his rugged appeal.
A blonde woman with a baby on her hip coming out of the sliding door as Kent went in actually stood for a moment admiring the view. She seemed perplexed for a second after the closing glass doors snatched him away. As if she couldn’t remember why she was standing in the car park gawping at a closed door.
I hear ya, honey.
He was back in a few minutes loaded down with enough carbohydrates to exceed his recommended daily intake from now until the end of his days. She felt hyperglycaemic just looking at them.
‘Here,’ he said as he passed her a packet of Twisties. ‘I got one for you, too.’
Twisties? Dear God, he was going to eat Twisties—her one weakness—right in front of her. She passed them back.
‘Thanks, I’ve got these,’ she said, waving a celery stick at him.
Kent grimaced as he opened his packet. ‘You’re going to eat celery? On a road trip.’
He had a way of emphasising celery as if it were suet or tripe. ‘It’s healthy,’ she said defensively, and was about to launch into a spiel about the amazing properties of the wonder food when the aroma of carbohydrates wafted out to greet her like an old friend and she momentarily lost her train of thought.
How could that special blend of additives and preservatives smell so damn good? Her stomach growled.
Loudly.
Kent raised an eyebrow. ‘I think your stomach wants a say.’
Sadie stuffed the celery into her mouth and started the car to stop her from reaching over and lifting a lurid orange piece out and devouring it like the Cookie Monster. ‘It’s because I listen to my stomach too damn often that I’m as big as I am,’ she muttered testily as she reversed.
Kent eyed her critically as he buckled up, thinking she looked pretty damn good to him. He shook his head. Women in the western world amazed him. Their lives were so privileged they had nothing but trivialities to worry about. He really didn’t have the patience for it.
‘Please tell me you’re not going to eat celery for three days.’
Sadie gave him an exasperated glare. ‘What’s it matter to you?’
He bugged his eyes at her. To think less than two years ago he had been in the thick of a combat zone and now he was talking to a madwoman with a weak constitution but an apparently strong bladder about celery of all things.
‘I think it’s making you cranky.’
Sadie flicked her gaze to the road, then back at him. He had orange Twistie dust on the tips of his fingers and his lips, which just went to show perfection could be improved upon. She wondered what he’d taste like beneath the flavours of salt and cheese.
Her stomach growled again and she started to salivate.
And not for celery.
Maybe not even for Twisties.
‘No,’ she denied, looking back to the road. ‘You and your damn Twisties are making me cranky.’
‘I guess that means you won’t want any M&M’s either?’ he enquired.
Sadie almost groaned out loud. How on earth did he keep in such magnificent shape? She could feel the fat cells on her butt multiplying just by looking at the familiar chocolate snacks.
‘Thank you,’ she denied primly. ‘I’ll stick with my celery.’
Kent shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said as he threw a Twistie into the air near his face and caught it in his mouth.
The crunch thankfully drowned out another resounding growl from her belly.
By the time they’d crossed the state border and arrived in Cunnamulla, Sadie was definitely ready to call it a day. She was tired and over her strong, silent travelling companion, who had snacked all day, read, slept, listened to music and devoured two pies and a large carton of iced-coffee for lunch, whilst disparaging her pumpkin and feta salad with a Diet Coke.
All with only the barest minimum of conversation.
She wanted a shower. Then a bed.
The welcome glow of a vacancy sign cheered her enormously. ‘This okay?’ she asked him.
Kent nodded. ‘As good as any, I guess.’
Sadie parked the car in front of the reception and she and Kent went inside, the night air already starting to cool.
‘Two rooms, please,’ Sadie said to the middle-aged woman behind the desk.
‘I’m sorry, we only have one left,’ she apologised.
‘Oh,’ Sadie murmured, her shoulders sagging.
The woman looked from Sadie to Kent, then back to Sadie, and brightened. ‘It has two doubles, though?’
Kent opened his mouth to tell the woman they’d go elsewhere but Sadie, standing tall again, butted in. ‘We’ll take it.’
He blinked at her. ‘I’m sure there are other hotels here that will have two separate rooms,’ he said to her.
‘I’m sure there are,’ Sadie agreed wearily. ‘And if you want to go and track them down I’ll wish you luck. But I’m exhausted. My butt is numb. The thought of getting back in the car again makes me want to cry. So I’m going to stay right here, if it’s all the same to you.’
Kent looked down at her doe eyes, the lashes fluttering against her cheek. She did look pretty done in and she had driven all day without complaint.
‘Fine. I can sleep in the car.’
Sadie cocked an eyebrow. She doubted the confines of his back car seat would be very accommodating for a man of his proportions. ‘I’m an adult. You’re an adult. There are two beds. I promise not to wake up in the middle of the night and try to seduce you.’
Kent gave her a grudging smile. His first for the day. ‘Well,
now you’ve just taken all the fun out of it. And you, going to the trouble of bringing your frilly negligee.’
Sadie blinked, surprised to discover that beneath all that guarded silence, a sense of humour lurked. ‘Well, will you look at that,’ she murmured. ‘He does know how to smile.’
Kent suppressed another smile. ‘Don’t get used to it.’
Sadie absently massaged her neck, too tired for this conversation. ‘Fine, tough guy, sleep in the car. Just don’t moan tomorrow when you have a crick in your neck.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve slept far rougher.’ Being embedded with active forces in the Middle East on several occasions had been far from luxurious.
Not that he’d slept much then.
Or now, for that matter.
Sadie sighed. ‘Well, bully for you, He-man.’
Kent was so surprised by the nickname he actually laughed this time. He’d never been called that before, at least not to his face, and it was bemusing. ‘Did you just call me a he-man?’
Sadie felt his laughter undulate through every muscle in her body right down to her toes. It might have taken her all day but it had been worth the wait. ‘I call it as I see it.’
Kent opened his mouth to deny it but Sadie was looking up at him with long, sleepy blinks and he had the wildest urge to see what she’d look like between motel sheets.
He turned to the woman behind the desk, who’d been watching their exchange like an engrossed spectator at a tennis match. ‘Where do I sign?’ he asked.
THREE
The room was clean but basic. A bar fridge, a television, a bathroom. And two very hard-looking double beds. Still, they beckoned, more inviting than a Bedouin tent, and right now Sadie wouldn’t have swapped it for the Waldorf Astoria.
‘I bags the shower,’ she said as she threw her backpack on the bed closest to the bathroom and delved through it for some clean clothes.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ Kent asked plonking himself on the other bed and flipping through the information folder placed next to the fluffy towel folded into a fan with a wrapped bar of soap strategically placed in the centre. ‘They serve bar meals until eight.’
Sadie was starving. But not as much as she was sleepy. She was used to denying herself food. Sleep not so much. Sleep was as vital to her as air.
And woe betide anyone who deprived her.
‘Nope,’ she said, picking up her towel.
‘Celery again?’ Kent asked.
He wasn’t sure how much she’d brought in that fridge bag but there seemed to be an endless supply of it today. Every time he opened a packet of something or rustled a wrapper more appeared.
Sadie was too exhausted to make a pithy comeback. ‘Too tired. Need to sleep,’ she muttered, closing the bathroom door even before the last word was out of her mouth.
Kent heard the shower turn on and fell back against the bed. It felt like a rock and he literally bounced a little. The back seat of his vehicle would have been softer. But then it wouldn’t have had a hot, busty, naked woman just three metres and a wall away.
Getting wet. Getting soapy.
He felt heat bloom in his loins and placed the open information folder over his face.
Sadie Bliss was a bad idea. No matter what her body, her delectable smart mouth, her quick wit or her name might suggest.
He didn’t need a psych consult to know he was still pretty messed up. He’d had nearly two years of being held ransom by his body and the surgeons and physios had pronounced him cured—or as cured as he was going to get. But it was pretty dark inside his head still. He’d put off tackling the psychological fallout from the accident, thinking and hoping that time would heal as it had his physical ailments.
But it hadn’t.
So, he really didn’t need a fling with Sadie Bliss. Or, more importantly, she didn’t need a fling with him.
He wasn’t in a good headspace.
And she was too chatty, too pushy.
Too young.
He didn’t have a right to screw with that.
What he needed to do was get back to what he was good at—taking pictures. Use his art as therapy. As a way back to the rest of his life. Then he could worry about the Sadie Blisses of the world.
He heard the taps shut off.
Pictured her reaching for her towel...
He sat up and pulled his shirt off. The room was stuffy and he suddenly felt very hot. He wondered over to the air-con panel and flicked it on. Then he picked up the phone on his bedside table and placed an order with the woman at the desk. He prowled to the bar fridge, pulled out a bottle of beer, parked his butt against the cabinet, cracked the lid and took a fortifying gulp.
The harsh metallic rattle from the shower curtain being pulled back rang like chimes of doom around the room.
Lord. Just how thin were these walls?
And then came a blood-curdling scream.
Sadie had never seen a spider so huge in all her life. She saw the odd tiny creature scurrying around her flat but she was pretty adept at wielding a can of insect spray, and it seemed the local population of creepy crawlies had put the word out to avoid Sadie’s abode at all costs.
But this thing, hanging on the back of the door as if it were the mother ship, was a monster. It was big, and hairy and very, very ugly.
There was a belting on the door followed by, ‘Sadie!’
The spider didn’t even move at the noise so near its epicentre—yes, it was big enough to have an epicentre—and nor did Sadie. ‘Kent!’
‘Are you okay?’ he demanded through the door.
‘Big, big, big spider,’ she called.
Kent looked at the door in disbelief. A spider? Her horror-flick scream had scared ten years off his life. Did she have a clue how very trivial a spider was in the grand scheme of things?
Now, some of the things he’d seen—they were worth screaming about.
‘Bloody hell Sadie, I thought you were being murdered.’
‘If this thing gets hold of me, I’m sure it’ll have a good go,’ she yelled.
‘It can’t be that big.’
‘It is,’ she said, anchoring the towel more securely under her arm.
And it was between her and her clothes.
She eyed her pyjamas hanging on the back of the door. Had the spider crawled over them? She shuddered at the thought.
Just how long had it been in here watching her?
‘I think it’s one of those bird eating suckers,’ she announced.
‘The ones that are only found in South America?’
Sadie shook her head. ‘Not any more.’
‘Sadie...’
‘Okay, I know, I’m sorry. I’m a horrible girly, city-chick cliché. But truly it’s huge and spiders just plain creep me out.’
Kent leaned his forehead against the door. He’d been landed with a car-sick, celery-eating, arachnophobe.
Who’d have thought that would come in such a fine package?
‘What do you want me to do?’
Even through the door Sadie could hear his exasperation. Could sense his impatience with her girly theatrics. But it was easy to judge when you were on the other side of the door—the safe side. ‘I want you to come in here and kill it!’
Kent sighed. The fact that she was being held captive in the bathroom by a spider didn’t bother him a bit—eventually she’d have to figure it out herself. And if he only had faith she’d do it silently he’d leave her to it.
But a day in a car with Sadie Bliss had told him she didn’t really do quiet contemplation. ‘Are you decent?’
Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘Why? Do you think the spider cares?’ she yelled.
He took a breath. ‘I’m coming in.’
‘Easy, very easy,’ Sadie ordered. ‘It’s on the back of the door and I do not want to see how far that thing can jump.’
Kent opened the door slowly whilst Sadie watched his progress, her eyes peeking out over the edge of the shower curtain she’d pulled ar
ound herself for extra protection as if it were an invisibility cloak.
Kent glanced her way, two doe eyes and the top of her head the only things visible as she eyeballed the back of the door. ‘You know it’s more scared of you than you are of it, right?’ he murmured as he slowly opened the door further.
Sadie didn’t take her eyes off the terrifying arachnid. ‘I doubt it.’ It looked like something from an ancient Roman arena.
Once the door was almost all the way open and Sadie could no longer see the hairy critter she relaxed slightly. She looked at Kent, realising for the first time he was shirtless. His broad chest and flat abdomen, complete with a light smattering of hair that arrowed down behind the band of his low-slung jeans, filled her vision.
It was truly a sight to behold.
Why was it again she’d never been into buff men?
For a moment she almost forgot she was being terrorised by a mutant spider.
Almost.
‘Right,’ she whispered, dragging her gaze off his chest to the other terrifying object in the room. ‘I’m going to climb out of the bath and walk very slowly towards you. Once I’m safely out of the room you can do your he-man thing.’
Kent wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for Sadie to come out from behind the curtain. But he sure as hell wanted to see the creature that had Little-Miss-Curves all het up.
‘Okay,’ he whispered dramatically back, her dirty look bouncing easily off his shoulders.
Sadie quietly pushed back the curtain and gingerly stepped out of the bath. She could feel Kent’s gaze on her and couldn’t figure out which animal to keep her eye on the most.
She gripped the towel more firmly to her body.
Slowly she sidled along the wall furthest from the door, edged around the vanity basin where her toiletry bag sat. When she drew level with Kent she realised they were just one hotel towel and a pair of Levi’s from being naked. His bare, broad shoulders and his spare stubbled face filled her vision. He smelled of Twisties and beer.
Who’d have ever thought that could be such a potent combination?
‘Thank you,’ she murmured as he fell back against the front of the door to allow her to squeeze past.
And it was a squeeze. Her body brushed his as she slipped from the room and Kent felt the caress of towelling against his chest all the way down to his groin. For a moment he stood still and did nothing; the impact of her eyes, her mouth, her bare creamy shoulders and the damp tendrils of hair framing it all was temporarily paralysing.
