by Nikki Logan
‘Then how do I get it off?’
‘Like this.’
She lifted her hand and moved her lips close to where a rivulet of dark honey ran down her wrist. As he watched her tongue came out and caught it, tracing it back up her wrist to its source. His body responded immediately.
Are you freaking kidding me?
‘It’s the best bit,’ she purred. ‘You wanted some energy.’
Ah, no... Energy was not going to be a problem now. His bloodstream was suddenly awash with adrenaline and a dozen hormones designed to get—and hold—his attention. But he followed her lead, sucking the honey off his own fingers one by one, watching her do the same to hers. The warm, sweet goo stuck to his lips—and to hers—exactly as his gaze was bonded to Laney. He fully exploited the opportunity to watch her without her knowing.
He closed his mouth around his own finger as she did the same with hers, the real sweetness merging with the imagined sweetness of what her lips were doing as they made steady work of the honey.
If he timed it just right it was almost as if their two mouths were meeting each other through the sticky goodness. His imagination just about exploded over how amazing that might be.
‘Nice, huh?’ Stasia said from behind him, reminding him that the two of them weren’t actually alone in a dark place, kissing the heck out of each other.
‘Yeah.’ He stumbled back a half-step, breaking Laney’s spell. Hopefully she’d chalk that deep husk in his voice to honey appreciation.
‘It’s jarrah,’ Laney said. ‘From the state forest bees. Nothing quite like it.’ Her ponytail tilted. ‘Have you had enough?’
Nope. Nowhere near. ‘Just about.’
He finished the stickiest bits off and then joined Laney at the wash-trough to scrub the rest free. His body cried out at the wasted opportunity. And he’d never taste honey again without remembering the past few minutes.
And Laney.
‘So now what?’ he asked, when he was sure his voice would hold.
‘I wondered if you’d like to see more of the property? To understand its scope?’
Her simple suggestion was saturated with pride. And of course he did. But he would have said yes to just about anything that would have meant more time with Laney.
‘That sounds like a bigger job than Wilbur will be up for.’
‘Oh, definitely. I only take him up there occasionally. Both of us lack the stamina required.’
He’d beg to differ. Every part of her screamed endurance.
‘If you don’t mind driving we can take one of the Morgan’s utes. I’ll pack us a lunch.’
More time alone with Laney. More time to learn about the business—and about her—and food for his hollow stomach into the bargain. It was just a pity she couldn’t pack something to fill his empty soul.
‘Sounds great.’
‘Okay. Let’s head back to the house and you can pick up the ute while I throw together something to eat.’
* * *
Throw together.
As if this was just a casual thing. As if her heart wasn’t doing the whole Riverdance thing on her diaphragm.
The ute slowed to a rumbly idle and Elliott turned to her. ‘Now where?’
‘Is there nothing in front of us but ocean?’
‘From here to the horizon.’
‘Okay, turn right along the coast track.’
‘How far?’
‘Until you see dense trees to the north.’
‘And to the south?’
‘The south is a little sketchy—as you discovered the first day you were here.’ The day he’d watched her dancing and being a fool with Wilbur, wading in the water with her skirt hiked up to her hips—all of the above—without realising he was partly on Morgan land.
They turned north onto the coast track and Laney lowered her window to enjoy the closeness of the sea. It filled the ute’s cabin with the smell of ocean and the slight dampness of salty spray.
‘You love the ocean?’ Elliott asked.
‘I love the coast, generally.’
‘Well, you certainly picked the right place to grow up, then. It’s beautiful.’
She didn’t need to agree aloud. Her sigh said it for her.
‘How do you experience it?’ he risked. ‘The coast.’
‘I can smell the vastness of the ocean on the air. And the sounds coming off the land are more...muted than the ones from the sea. So, to me, the coast is all about space and open air and beauty and deep, fresh breaths.’
She heard the moment he clicked his teeth closed on whatever he’d been about to say.
‘What? Go ahead and ask.’
‘It wasn’t a question,’ he said. ‘I just... It saddens me that you’ll never see it. So you can see how right you are.’
Don’t feel sorry for me...
‘Have you ever heard a bee quack?’
As subject-changers went, that was pretty solid. Though hardly subtle.
But she was rewarded with one of Elliott’s warm laughs. ‘Can’t say I have.’
‘It’s more of a battle cry, really. The first virgin queen to hatch out toots to taunt the yet-to-be-born queens and they quack back at her from inside their cells, calling her on her challenge and begging to be let out so they can fight her.’
‘Uh-huh...’
‘But they’re not actually making a sound—they’re communicating with vibrations. We just hear it as sound because we lack the sensory perception to feel it as vibration.’
‘A vibratory Morse code?’
‘Yeah. But it doesn’t make the experience any less real for us because we hear it as sound. It’s just a different way of perceiving the same thing. I’m no more deprived by not seeing something than the bees are by not hearing their own toots. We both still experience it.’
‘Wouldn’t you like someone to experience the world your way sometimes?’
No one had ever asked her that before. They were usually more concerned about her sharing their experiences. ‘Can any of us ever truly share our own perceptions? I’ve had other blind kids here and even we didn’t experience things the same way.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘My joys and disappointments are as relative as yours. I get more pleasure from the ocean than just about anything else. I get the least pleasure from thinking about the day I’ll need to let Captain Furry-Pants go. And there are a thousand differentials in between.’
‘Really? Your dog more than your family?’
‘Any of them will break my heart, of course, but Wilbur... He has meant freedom and trust—’ and love ‘—for me for so long. I know that’s going to be a really, really bad day.’
Vulnerability saturated her voice and she wondered what he’d do with it.
‘I get it, you know. Why you get tired of people focussing on your blindness.’
‘Actually, that’s not it. Not exclusively anyway. I just...’
‘Just what?’
‘Ugh. This whole conversation is harder because of what you do.’
‘Realising?’
‘It’s your job to look at things in terms of their potential.’
‘You don’t want me looking at your potential?’
‘No.’ Because that means you’re not looking at me. ‘Because people are more than just the sum of their achievements.’
‘Yeah. But I’m not paid to assess how nice people are. I’m trained to look at what they’ve done and what they still could do.’
Right. She did somehow manage to keep forgetting that. This was work for him. ‘So what happens to the businesses you work with that aren’t realising their potential? Or that have none?’
‘I cut them free. Find something with more return on the investment
of my time.’
The implication tugged at her heart hard enough to hurt. ‘Does that go for people, too?’
His silence was filled with a frown.
She tried a different approach. ‘Tell me... Do you have any ordinary friends?’
‘Depends what you mean by “ordinary”.’
‘Do you have any friends who aren’t high achievers, or leaders in their field, or go-getters like you?’
‘No. But the world I live in tends to be filled with high achievers. We all move at the same pace.’
Just like the bees. All one frequency. And someone new to the hive had to match it or get out of the way.
‘Do you not have a single person in your life who is just a regular person? With no great ambitions or plans? Someone who just lives the life they are presented with?’
Elliott’s snort was immediate. ‘You just described my mother.’
‘Really? Yet you ended up so different?’
‘Thank you.’
Discomfort dribbled like cool water down her spine. But she held her judgement.
He heard it, anyway, in her silence.
‘My childhood was not like yours, Laney.’
Not if he’d left the country at the first opportunity, no. ‘Was it bad?’
‘It wasn’t hell, but we struggled for everything we had. We existed, with our noses just poking up above the poverty line. And that seemed sufficient for my mother.’
‘But it wasn’t enough for you?’
‘No. It was not. Not when I could see what others had. I always fought to be better. Brighter. More secure.’
‘She didn’t share your ambition?’
‘She did not.’
Anyone else probably wouldn’t have heard his quiet words as he turned them out through the far window. But Laney did. Of course she did. She heard the individual pitch differences between two bees—she wasn’t going to have any trouble with gravelly tones less than a foot away from her, no matter how whispered.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I rose above it—got out.’
‘No. I meant I’m sorry that you don’t have a good relationship with your mother. Mothers are important.’
Silence.
‘It’s not a bad relationship,’ he defended, finally. ‘We’re just very different. I think I inherited more of my father’s traits.’
‘Maybe that made things harder for your mother? That you were like him?’
‘Don’t go imagining that there was a great “love lost” story there, Laney. He was a one-night stand in the village at a Youth Championships meet. There was no great romance.’
‘She was an athlete?’ Somehow that didn’t fit with the passive woman he’d described.
‘Gymnast. Until me. Then she just threw it all in.’
Having a kid would do that to a woman’s sporting career... But there was real pain beneath all that judgement, so she holstered that opinion, too.
‘How old was she?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Wow. The Garvey family all like to strike out young, then?’
The surprise in his voice was palpable. ‘She still lives in the house we were assigned when I was born. She bought it in a state buy-back scheme. How is that striking out?’
Oh... A state housing kid. Suddenly that enormous chip on his shoulder took a more defined shape. ‘On her own, with a tiny baby and no father... That’s just as courageous as you jetting off to Bali.’
More so, maybe.
The ute wheels rattled on the gravel track. Eventually she accepted that he wasn’t going to reply.
‘Elliott?’
‘I’m processing.’
Not happily, by the sound of it. She felt for his forearm where it rested on the gearstick and laid her hand there. But his sigh didn’t sound much relieved. If anything it sounded irritated. Tension saturated his tone.
‘Do you know how small I feel for giving an earful of wahh about my crappy childhood to a woman who was blind all of hers?’
‘My childhood was pretty much great,’ she said. ‘Yours wasn’t. It’s okay to comment on that.’
A half-breathed mmm was her only answer. And something about it gave her the courage to go beyond what was probably polite.
‘Do you love her?’
No answer. But his silence didn’t feel like a no. On the contrary.
So she amended. ‘Does she love you?’
‘As much as she can, given I ruined her life.’
Empathy washed through her in a torrent. ‘She told you that?’
‘She didn’t have to. No way she’d have struggled like we did if I hadn’t been part of the picture. She was a world champion. Destined for big things.’
The ghost glow high in her consciousness changed shape then, added depth and complexity. Resembled much more a wounded little boy than a confident man.
He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, enough of my bleating. Do I just keep following this track?’
She knew enough about her brother and father to know when to let something lie. ‘Have you hit the crossroad yet?’
‘Nope.’
Every instinct wanted to reach out and curl her fingers around his. To lend him her strength. But something told her it wouldn’t be welcomed. ‘Stop driving like such a nanna. We don’t have all day.’
His grudging chuckle fuelled a little boost in speed and they started moving along more steadily. When he slowed the ute again a few minutes later she directed him left.
‘Where does this lead?’
‘Another lookout. Dad proposed to Mum up here.’
‘Really? Are you sure you want to show me somewhere so...personal?’
Why? Did he not want to encourage anything personal between them? ‘It’s not personal for me. I wasn’t even born yet. When Mum brings you here I’ll start worrying.’
‘I should be so lucky.’
‘Flirt.’ She smiled.
‘Cynic.’
‘Just pull over anywhere,’ she instructed. He did, and killed the engine. ‘Now, remember, don’t let me walk off the cliff or something. I don’t come here that often.’
‘Jeez, Laney. No pressure.’
It felt good to laugh again after the tension of the past few minutes. ‘I just don’t want you to forget that you’re my Wilbur this afternoon.’
‘What happened to wanting equality?’
‘I want to live, more.’
She got out as he did, but stayed close to the ute until he came around to her side and placed her hand gently on his bent arm. She took a few tentative steps forward.
‘There’s a few loose rocks...’
‘I’m really only concerned about the big drop that ends in a splash.’ Or a splat, probably, if the tide was out. ‘The rest is just normal to me.’
He led her forward a short way, then stopped. ‘This is about as far as I am comfortable taking you.’
Sweet how nervous he was about this. ‘What do you see?’
‘More view. More ocean. It’s still lovely.’
‘Turn around.’
He shuffled them both around so the water was to their back.
‘Now what do you see?’
‘Wow. Everything. It’s higher than I realised here. The forest to our left, all green and dense, Mitchell’s Cliff in the very far distance, and the highway. Both are Toytown-tiny. And I can even see your homestead and all the honey-harvesting plant in between. Your house looks like it’s practically overhanging the ocean from here. No wonder your view is so awesome.’
‘Dad says you can see the entirety of the Morgan land from here. That’s why he brought Mum here to propose—so she could see what she was getting into the bargain.’
The truth wasn’t quite so romantic. ‘No. He wanted her to be clear that she was taking on the life as well as the man. He needed her to know that he wasn’t going to change after marriage and that this was where they’d live for ever.’
And their children, and their children’s children...
‘Did it work?’
‘She said that one moment brought it all into crashing focus for her. Morgan’s was his life. And so she had to make it hers too. It was all or nothing.’
‘But she said yes.’
The tiniest glow filled her, thinking about the love her parents shared. ‘Of course. They were perfect for each other.’
‘Happily ever after, then?’
‘Like all good stories.’
Elliott turned them both back to the ute. ‘So, you said something about a basket...?’
‘Told you you’d be starving. Even with the honey snack.’
‘Stop gloating and start producing.’
Together they unloaded the hastily packed hamper.
Laney turned her back to the stiff breeze coming off the ocean and curled her legs under her. Its every buffet on her back was enhancing her perception of the kind of day it was out on the ocean. Consequently her hair whipped around her face wildly at times.
‘You okay there?’
‘I figured you might as well get to enjoy the view since it’s wasted on me.’ Her view was probably of the ute.
‘It just got even better, then.’
‘Flatterer.’ Her laugh was half-snort. ‘Totally working, by the way.’
‘This is some spread.’ He chuckled opposite her. ‘Cheese, pickled onions, ham, and more of your mother’s bread.’
It occurred to her to tease him for describing for her what was in the picnic that she’d packed herself, but then she realised that the warm sensation under her ribs was because he’d bothered. ‘And honey on that bread for dessert.’
‘Good choice.’
‘Not too rural for you?’
‘I had everything but the honey in the gardens of a French church once and called it exotic. I’d be a hypocrite to call it anything else here, with ocean and sky all around us.’
