by Amy Andrews
Kent glared, feeling exasperation rising in his throat threatening to choke him. Why couldn’t women just take a compliment in the spirit it was intended?
‘All I’m trying to say,’ he said, swallowing hard against the lump, trying to get the conversation back on track, ‘is you really need to eat better. You could get sick.’
Sadie wasn’t prepared for such a left-field comment. For a man who obviously thought her figure concerns didn’t rate compared to bigger global issues—which of course they didn’t—his apparent concern for her was unexpected.
And he did look concerned. It softened the beautiful harshness of his mouth and her mind went blank for a moment as she tried to remember why she was so het up.
She sighed as her brain came back on line. ‘Look, I’m fine. I promise. It’s just...complicated, okay? And it’s really none of your business. So can we please drop it?’
She did not want to get into this with a man as accomplished as Kent. How could he possibly understand what was personally at stake for her over seeing Leo again? How much she had to prove.
Kent held her gaze, the appeal luminous in her large grey eyes. Her back the hell off polite considering their recent exchange.
Complicated he understood.
And she was right, it wasn’t his business. And what did he care if some crazy chick in well-to-do Australia chose to forgo food that millions of women would lay down their lives for just so they could feed their children for a few more days?
‘Sure,’ he agreed, pulling the metal covering off his cooked breakfast as he inhaled the rich aroma of meat and onions. Sadie Bliss was a transient connection in his life. If she chose to starve, then so be it. He sure as hell wasn’t.
He’d been in too many places where food was scarce to not appreciate the bounty in front of him.
He picked up his fork and tucked in.
Sadie resolutely tried to ignore Kent annihilating his coronary-bypass plate with gusto. But it smelled so damn good it was hard to concentrate on anything else. Add to that his naked chest and it was a regular double feature. She tried to follow the news programme but what was going on in her peripheral vision was much more interesting.
After a while, though, she became aware of something else. Kent, eating with one hand, gently massaging his injured ankle with the other. He seemed engrossed alternately in his meal and the television so she didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it.
She slid surreptitious looks his way. The ankle looked pretty smashed up and the top of his foot had a chunk missing, a smooth shiny piece of bright pink skin lay over top as if it had been grafted. He looked her way and caught her watching.
She held his gaze. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.
Kent frowned for a moment, wondering what she was talking about, then realised he was rubbing his ankle. He’d overdone it slightly with the run and it was suffering a little this morning.
Normally he would have told her to mind her business but her simple enquiry caught him off guard. Too often people asked him what had happened, pried and pushed for all the gory details.
But not Sadie Bliss.
She’d simply asked him if it hurt.
He looked down at the foot he’d come so close to losing on several occasions, his fingers massaging the ridged scar tissue, the dips and planes of the deformed joint. ‘It aches sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just habit really.’
Sadie nodded. Weren’t they all just creatures of habit?
FOUR
‘So, where to today?’ Sadie asked as she vaulted up into the passenger seat an hour later.
The roads, now they were hitting the outback proper, tended to be long stretches of straight with very few curves or bends so she figured she was safe to take the passenger seat again.
‘Mt Isa,’ Kent said as he pulled out of the hotel car park. ‘It’s about thirteen hours. That’ll leave only a nine-ish-hour drive tomorrow to Borroloola.’
Sadie nodded. ‘I’ll give Leo a ring from the hotel tonight and let him know to expect us.’
Kent quirked an eyebrow. ‘Leo?’
Sadie mentally chastised herself for the slip. But she smiled at Kent calmly and said, ‘Mr Pinto.’
Kent wasn’t buying it. ‘Leo’s very...familiar,’ he pushed. ‘I hear he’s only Leo to his friends.’
Sadie looked out of the window as they left the last of Cunnamulla behind. ‘Is he?’
Kent considered her deliberate evasion, intrigued despite himself. Which was just as well. Seeing that thong last night had tripped some kind of switch in his head. And he didn’t like where it was taking him. Maybe the Pinto/Bliss conundrum would give him something else to think about other than Sadie oozing curves and sex all over the passenger seat.
‘Thirteen hours is a long time to stay silent, Sadie Bliss. I bet you can’t even manage two.’
Sadie looked back at him, ignoring his deliberate baiting. ‘Why do you say my name like that?’ she diverted.
‘What? Sadie Bliss?’
She listened as he said it again, rolling it around his tongue like a particularly delicious morsel. She imagined what that tongue could do to certain parts of her anatomy and muscles deep in her belly went into free fall.
He shrugged. ‘Sensational byline. Very rockstar. Is it real?’
Sadie rolled her eyes at the familiarity of the question. ‘Yes. Just like my boobs and my lips it’s one hundred per cent real.’
Kent flicked a glance at her. She was glaring at him with exasperation. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said because, no matter what, there wasn’t one iota of that conversation he was going anywhere near.
Sadie deliberately ticked down the minutes until two hours were up before turning to Kent and yanking on his ear bud.
‘Let’s make a deal,’ she said.
Kent raised an eyebrow. ‘Bet that was the longest two hours of your life.’
‘Nope. Two minutes in a bathroom with a mutant spider was much longer.’
‘Okay, so let’s see if we can go another two, shall we?’ he suggested as he located his swinging ear bud.
Sadie shook her head. ‘We’re not going to sit here all day and not talk to each other again.’
Kent flicked a glance at her, then back at the road. ‘We’re not?’
Sadie shook her head. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
Kent shrugged. ‘It was working for me.’
She folded her arms. ‘Have I mentioned how very annoying I can be when I set my mind to it?’
Kent didn’t doubt it. He remembered how she’d harped on about the spider last night until he’d hunted the poor thing from the room. ‘You mean you haven’t set it already?’
She ignored him. ‘We’ll just agree on a subject and stick to the boundaries of it.’
He eyed her warily. ‘Like what?’
She shrugged. ‘How about starting at the beginning? Our childhoods?’
Kent considered it for a moment. It was a safe topic. No skeletons to hide. It could be a good trade for some peace and quiet. He reached for a packet of potato chips he had left over from yesterday. ‘Okay,’ he agreed, opening them as he drove along. ‘But then I get silence for the rest of the day.’
Sadie shook her head, ignoring the aroma of carbohydrates, leaning forward to grab the carrot sticks she’d chopped earlier. ‘For another two hours,’ she bargained.
Kent tapped his fingers on the wheel. ‘Mid-afternoon.’
‘Lunchtime,’ she returned without even taking a breath.
‘After lunch,’ he clarified.
Sadie considered it for a moment. It was better than nothing. She nodded at him and then launched straight into it. ‘So, what’s the Kent Nelson story?’
Kent kept his eyes trained on the road as he munched on chips. ‘Not a lot to tell.’
She laughed at that and Kent blinked as he realised he hadn’t heard it before. Her laughter was deep and throaty and he found himself utterly intrigued. It wasn’t tittery or tinkly or musical like
so many of the women he knew. It was full roar, like the rest of her. So few people, especially the places he’d been, laughed with every fibre of their being.
But Sadie Bliss did.
It was strangely soothing in the cocoon of the cab.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Of course not. World renowned, multi-award-winning photojournalist who’s been in every war zone on the planet in the last decade. But nothing here to see, folks, move along?’
‘Okay, how about not a lot I want to talk about?’
Sadie regarded him for a moment. His jaw was clenched just beneath his cheekbone, his brow was scrunched. ‘We made a deal,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh, well, in that case...’
She didn’t miss the sarcasm in his arid tone but she wasn’t going to be put off by it either. ‘Tell me about your parents. I’d appreciate a tale of divorce and woe if you have one?’
Kent glanced at her to gauge her sincerity. She seemed fairly matter-of-fact. ‘’Fraid not. Two parents, both still together and very much in love. An older sister. Standard Australian suburban upbringing.’
Sadie liked the sound of that. ‘They must be proud of you,’ she murmured.
He shrugged. ‘Worried mostly.’
The minute he’d taken off for the Middle East over a decade ago his family had worried. He didn’t know how many times his mother had called the foreign affairs department if he missed a scheduled call in, but he was pretty sure she had a direct line at one stage.
And then, since the accident, they’d been even more concerned.
‘I suppose you were an angelic child,’ Sadie mused. ‘Straight As. House captain. School newspaper. Valedictorian.’
Kent burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. She was so far wide of the target she was practically off the page. ‘No. I think my mother once described me to one of my many school principals, in my presence, as a horrible little shit.’
Sadie blinked. At the admission and his laughter. It was just as delicious as last night. Low and easy, it transformed the spare planes of his face into a pallet of lines and creases. It softened his mouth and twinkled in his eyes. ‘And were you?’
He glanced at her. ‘Guilty as charged.’
Sadie wasn’t quite sure what to say. He certainly didn’t look contrite. He’d just described an idyllic childhood—one she would have killed for. What on earth had motivated him to behave in such a way that his own mother would disparage him?
‘Because they didn’t understand you and you were trying to prove something or some other lame excuse that horrible little boys make to justify their behaviour?’ she asked sweetly.
Kent laughed again but it was more brittle. ‘No. I guess I just always craved adventure. Wanted to know what was beyond the end of my street. Outside my town. Over the sea. On the other side of the world. I’m afraid I became a bit of a hell raiser as I chafed against the bonds of my perfectly nice, domesticated, suburban life.’
Somehow Sadie could imagine that. Especially with the whole buzz cut and bristles he had going on. It seemed more in line with the whole he-man thing than the safe middle-class life he’d just described.
‘So you what? Broke some rules, got caught shoplifting, maybe smoking behind the bike sheds? Some trouble with the cops?’ She snuck a look at him. ‘Caught a venereal disease?’
Kent almost choked at her suggestions. ‘Hell, no,’ he spluttered.
‘No to the venereal disease?’ she asked innocently.
He pierced her with a quelling look. ‘No to any of them.’
‘Well, what then?’ she demanded.
Kent looked back to the road as Sadie’s mouth pouted the question at him. ‘I wagged school. Constantly. Spent my time at the arcade or swimming at the local creek. I did crazy things like jumping off buildings and sticking my hand into an ants’ nest and climbing to the top of an electricity pylon.’
Sadie blinked. ‘Why would you do those things?’
Kent looked at her. ‘Because someone dared me to.’
‘Oh.’
She’d never really understood boys. She hadn’t had a brother—or not one that she’d known as she was growing up anyway. And her father had always seemed a bit of a mystery to her. The same went for the men she’d dated. Even the ones she’d slept with. She’d understood them as sexual beings but the rest was a mystery.
Even Leo, probably the least he-man guy she’d ever known, had this stubborn male pride about him.
Ego, she supposed some psychologists would call it.
‘They sound kind of dangerous.’
Kent nodded, his eyes fixed on the road. ‘I always had something in plaster. My poor mother became an expert at taking out stitches. A couple of times she even threatened to put them in herself, with no local anaesthetic.’
‘Maybe she should have?’ Sadie suggested.
He chuckled. ‘I do believe my father proposed it on several occasions.’
‘So...rattling around in war zones? That took care of the adventure cravings?’ she asked. She was pushing it but it was a natural segue and he finally seemed conducive to being pushed.
‘Yes.’ Kent sobered a little as he realised he’d answered a question that had strayed off topic.
‘Are you going back?’ she asked.
There was a beat where he looked as if he was going to answer her and Sadie held her breath. Then he reached into his chip packet, pulled one out and tossed it into his mouth.
He glanced at her. ‘How do you know Leo?’
Sadie gave him a grudging smile. He’d retreated back behind his line. And she had absolutely no intention of coming out from behind hers.
They were back to the beginning again.
An hour later Kent pulled the vehicle into a petrol station to stock up on more calorie-laden essentials. They’d passed that time in silence again, his MP3 player firmly plugged into his ear canals.
He hadn’t asked her any questions about her childhood and Sadie felt a little miffed.
Surely he was a little interested in her childhood?
‘I bought extra,’ Kent announced as he dumped a plastic bag between them.
She was wearing pretty much the same type of outfit as yesterday—cut-offs and a loose polo shirt. He wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to achieve in denying her curves the artistic outlet they deserved but he’d hate to see them starved into oblivion.
Sadie shot him a sweet smile through gritted teeth as the vehicle got back onto the highway. ‘Imagine my surprise,’ she said as she bit into a carrot stick with a loud crunch.
Of course the crunch of breaking wafer biscuit as he bit into a chocolate bar was far more satisfying. Especially followed by a waft of something sweet.
Chocolate?
Sugar...
A smear of caramel clung to that beautiful full lower lip and Sadie turned away from the decadent scene. Kent Nelson eating a chocolate bar should come with an obscenity warning!
She munched on a handful of carrots sticks and ignored him for a while. They staved off the grumbles but were hardly satisfying. Kent licking his lips in her peripheral vision did not help.
‘So, you want to hear my story now?’ she asked.
Kent didn’t look at her as he shook his head. ‘Not really.’
Sadie blinked at his rejection. The implication that she wasn’t remotely interesting stung. And besides, she needed to keep him talking, not least of all because the silence was driving her crazy. ‘But you told me yours.’
He shrugged. ‘I like hearing mine.’
Narcissist. ‘It’s only polite to listen to the other person’s story, you know? It’s called conversation.’
Kent eyeballed her. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way you’re letting this drop, is there?’
Sadie gave her head a firm shake. ‘Nope.’
He took a deep breath. Fine. ‘So tell me, how was it growing up? Blissful?’
Sadie ignored the wisecrack. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard it before. She lo
oked out of her window at the dry yellow-green scenery flashing by. ‘Not so much, as it turned out. My dad up and left when I was twelve and got himself a new family. With his secretary. Spreading the bliss...as you do.’
Kent whistled. ‘Ouch.’
Sadie nodded. Ouch all right. She still remembered the day he’d left. Coming home from school to her mother crying. Trying to comprehend what had happened. That her father had been so unhappy he’d left her. Just walked away. The years of trying to hold onto him, trying to make him love her all for nothing.
‘Do you have a relationship with him?’
‘Of sorts,’ she murmured. ‘I have two half-brothers. Twins. I see them, ergo I see him.’
Kent thought about how close he was with his own father. ‘That seems kind of...distant.’
‘Well...I never really quite measured up. He was a bit of a jock who’d wanted a boy. Someone he could take to the footy and the cricket. And—’ she lifted a shoulder ‘—he got me. Who liked to read. And draw. And daydream. I’m afraid I was a bit of a disappointment. I spent a lot of years trying to be who he wanted me to be but I never quite got there and then the twins came along and...’
Kent nodded. ‘He had someone to take to the footy.’
Bingo. ‘Yes.’
Not even the engine of the Land Rover, loud by modern standards, could drown out the wistful note in Sadie’s voice. ‘And your mother?’
‘Mum’s great. She’s been a rock. Through everything. She could have become bitter, but she wasn’t. She just got a part-time job and supported me in everything I wanted to do. When I went to art college she took on a second job to pay my tuition.’
Kent looked at her. ‘Art college?’
Sadie nodded as she transferred her attention back to the blur of the outback. ‘I wanted to be an artist for a while.’
She shook her head even as she said it. What had she been thinking?
Kent flicked his gaze to the road, then back to her. ‘What medium?’
Sadie ironed the flat of her palms down the fabric of her fake cammo cut-offs. ‘Painting.’
‘What happened?’
She twined a finger into her hair. I met Leo. ‘I wasn’t really that talented.’ She shrugged. ‘I dropped out.’
