Her Knight in the Outback
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Nikki Logan
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13
Chapter One
IT WAS MOMENTS like this that Evelyn Read hated. Life-defining moments. Moments when her fears and prejudices reared up before her eyes and confronted her—just like a King Brown snake, surprised while basking on the hot Australian highway.
She squinted at the distant biker limping carefully towards her out of the shimmering heat mirage and curled her fingers more tightly around the steering wheel.
A moment like this one might have taken her brother. Maybe Trav stopped for the wrong stranger; maybe that was where he went when he disappeared all those months ago. Her instincts screamed that she should press down on her accelerator until the man—the danger—was an hour behind her. But a moment like this might have saved her brother, too. If a stranger had only been kind enough or brave enough to stop for him. Then maybe Travis would be back with them right now. Safe. Loved.
Instead of alone, scared...or worse.
The fear of never knowing what happened to him tightened her gut the way it always did when she thought too long about this crazy thing she was doing.
The biker limped closer.
Should she listen to her basest instincts and flee, or respond to twenty-four years of social conditioning and help a fellow human being in trouble? There was probably some kind of outback code to be observed, too, but she’d heard too many stories from too many grieving people to be particularly bothered by niceties.
Eve’s eyes flicked to the distant motorbike listing on the side of the long, empty road. And then, closer, to the scruffy man now nearing the restored 1956 Bedford bus that was getting her around Australia.
She glanced at her door’s lock to make sure it was secure.
The man limped to a halt next to the bus’s bifold doors and looked at her expectantly over his full beard. A dagger tattoo poked out from under his dark T-shirt and impenetrable sunglasses hid his eyes—and his intent—from her.
No. This was her home. She’d never open her front door to a total stranger. Especially not hours from the nearest other people.
She signalled him around to the driver’s window instead.
He didn’t look too impressed, but he limped his way around to her side and she slid the antique window open and forced her voice to be light.
Sociopaths make a decision on whether you’re predator or prey in the first few seconds, she remembered from one of the endless missing-person fact sheets she’d read. She was not about to have ‘prey’ stamped on her forehead.
‘Morning,’ she breezed, as if this wasn’t potentially a very big deal indeed. ‘Looks like you’re having a bad day.’
‘Emu,’ he grunted and she got a glimpse of straight teeth and healthy gums.
Stupidly, that reassured her. As if evil wouldn’t floss. She twisted around for evidence of a big damaged bird flailing in the scrub after hitting his motorbike. To validate his claim. ‘Was it okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.’
That brought her eyes back to his glasses. ‘I can see that. But emus don’t always come off the best after a road impact.’
As if she’d know...
‘Going that fast, it practically went over the top of me as it ran with its flock. It’s probably twenty miles from here now, trying to work out how and when it got black paint on its claws.’
He held up his scratched helmet, which had clearly taken an impact. More evidence. She just nodded, not wanting to give an inch more than necessary. He’d probably already summed her up as a bleeding heart over the emu.
One for the prey column.
‘Where are you headed?’ he asked.
Her radar flashed again at his interest. ‘West.’
Duh, since the Bedford was pointing straight at the sun heading for the horizon and there was nothing else out this way but west.
‘Can I catch a lift to the closest town?’
Was that tetchiness in his voice because she kept foiling him or because hers was the first vehicle to come along in hours and she was stonewalling him on a ride?
She glanced at his crippled bike.
‘That’ll have to stay until I can get back here with a truck,’ he said, following her glance.
There was something in the sag of his shoulders and the way he spared his injured leg that reassured her even as the beard and tattoo and leather did not. He’d clearly come off his bike hard. Maybe he was more injured than she could see?
But the stark reality was that her converted bus only had the one seat up front—hers. ‘That’s my home back there,’ she started.
‘So...?’
‘So, I don’t know you.’
Yep. That was absolutely the insult his hardened lips said it was. But she was not letting a stranger back there. Into her world.
‘It’s only an hour to the border.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll stand on your steps until Eucla.’
Right next to her. Where he could do anything and she couldn’t do a thing to avoid it.
‘An hour by motorbike, maybe. We take things a little more easy in this old girl. It’ll take at least twice that.’
‘Fine. I’ll stand for two hours, then.’
Or she could just leave him here and send help back. But the image of Trav, lost and in need of help while someone drove off and left him injured and alone, flitted through her mind.
If someone had just been brave...
‘I don’t know you,’ she wavered.
‘Look, I get it. A woman travelling alone, big scary biker. You’re smart to be cautious but the reality is help might not be able to get to me today so if you leave me here I could be here all night. Freezing my ass off.’
She fumbled for her phone.
His shaggy head shook slightly. ‘If we had signal don’t you think I’d have used it?’
Sure enough, her phone had diminished to SOS only. And as bad as that motorbike looked, it wasn’t exactly an emergency.
‘Just until we get signal, then?’ he pressed, clearly annoyed at having to beg. ‘Come on, please?’
How far could that be? They were mostly through the desert now, coming out on the western side of Australia. Where towns and people and telecommunications surely had to exist.
‘Have you got some ID?’
He blinked at her and then reached back into his jeans for his wallet.
‘No. Not a licence. That could be fake. Got any photos of you?’
He moved slowly, burdened by his incredulity, but pulled his phone out and flicked through a few screens. Then he pressed it up against Eve’s window glass.
A serious face looked back at her. Well groomed and in a business shirt. Pretty respectable, really. Almost cute.
Pffff. ‘That’s not you.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
She peered at him again. ‘No, it’s not.’
It might have been a stock photo off the Internet for all she knew. The sort of search result she used to get when she googled ‘corporate guy’ for some design job.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake...’
He flicked through a few more and found another one, this time more bearded. But nothing like the hairy beast in front of her. Her hesitation obviously spoke volumes so he pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, simultaneously revealing grey eyes and slightly taming his rusty blond hair.
Huh. Okay, maybe it was him.
‘Licence?’
A breathed bad word clearly tangled in the long hairs of his moustache but he complied— eventually—and slapped that against the window, too.
Marshall Sullivan.
She held up her phone and took a photo of him through the glass, with his licence in the shot.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Insurance.’
‘I just need a lift. That’s it. I have no interest in you beyond that.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
Her thumbs got busy texting it to both her closest friend and her father in Melbourne. Just to cover bases. Hard to know if the photo would make them more or less confident in this dusty odyssey she was on, but she had to send it to someone.
The grey eyes she could now see rolled. ‘We have no signal.’
‘The moment we do it will go.’
She hit Send and let the phone slip back down into its little spot on her dash console.
‘You have some pretty serious trust issues, lady, you know that?’
‘And this is potentially the oldest con in the book. Broken-down vehicle on remote outback road.’ She glanced at his helmet and the marks that could be emu claws. ‘I’ll admit your story has some pretty convincing details—’
‘Because it’s the truth.’
‘—but I’m travelling alone and I’m not going to take any chances. And I’m not letting you in here with me, sorry.’ The cab was just too small and risky. ‘You’ll have to ride in the back.’
‘What about all the biker germs I’m going to get all over your stuff?’ he grumbled.
‘You want a lift or not?’
Those steady eyes glared out at her. ‘Yeah. I do.’
And then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he grudgingly rattled off a thankyou.
Okay, so it had to be safer to let him loose in the back than have him squished here in the front with her. Her mind whizzed through all the things he might get up to back there but none of them struck her as bad as what he could do up front if he wasn’t really who he said he was.
Or even if he was.
Biker boy and his helmet limped back towards the belongings piled on the side of the road next to his disabled bike. Leather jacket, pair of satchels, a box of mystery equipment.
She ground the gears starting the Bedford back up, but rolled up behind him and, as soon as his arms were otherwise occupied with his own stuff, she unlocked the bus and mouthed through the glass of her window. ‘Back doors.’
Sullivan limped to the back of the Bedford, lurched it as he climbed in and then slammed himself in there with all her worldly possessions.
Two hours...
‘Come on, old chook,’ she murmured to the decades-old bus. ‘Let’s push it a bit, eh?’
* * *
Marshall groped around for a light switch but only found a thick fabric curtain. He pulled it back with a swish and light flooded into the darkened interior of the bus. Something extraordinary unfolded in front of him.
He’d seen converted buses before but they were usually pretty daggy. Kind of worn and soulless and vinyl. But this... This was rich, warm and natural; nothing at all like the hostile lady up front.
It was like a little cottage in some forest. All timber and plush rugs in dark colours. Small, but fully appointed with kitchenette and living space, flat-screen TV, fridge and a sofa. Even potted palms. Compact and long but all there, like one of those twenty-square-metre, fold-down and pull-out apartments they sold in flat packs. At the far end—the driving end—a closed door that must lead to the only absent feature of the vehicle, the bed.
And suddenly he got a sense of Little Miss Hostile’s reluctance to let him back here. It was like inviting a total stranger right into your bedroom. Smack bang in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
The bus lurched as she tortured it back up to speed and Marshall stumbled down onto the sofa built into the left side of the vehicle. Not as comfortable as his big eight-seater in the home theatre of his city apartment, but infinitely better than the hard gravel he’d been polishing with his butt for the couple of hours since the bird strike.
Stupid freaking emu. It could have killed them both.
It wasn’t as if a KTM 1190 was a stealth unit but maybe, at the speed the emu had been going, the air rushing past its ears was just as noisy as an approaching motorbike. And then their fates had collided. Literally.
He sagged down against the sofa back and resisted the inclination to examine his left foot. Sometimes boots were the only things that kept fractured bones together after bike accidents so he wasn’t keen to take it off unless he was bleeding to death. In fact, particularly if he was bleeding to death because something told him the hostess-with-the-leastest would not be pleased if he bled out all over her timber floor. But he could at least elevate it. That was generally good for what ailed you. He dragged one of his satchels up onto the sofa, turned and stacked a couple of the bouncy, full pillows down the opposite end and then swung his abused limb up onto it, lying out the full length of the sofa.
‘Oh, yeah...’ Half words, half groan. All good.
He loved his bike. He loved the speed. He loved that direct relationship with the country you had when there was no car between you and it. And he loved the freedom from everything he’d found touring that country.
But he really didn’t love how fragile he’d turned out to be when something went wrong at high speed.
As stacks went, it had been pretty controlled. Especially considering the fishtail he’d gone into as the mob of emu shot past and around him. But even a controlled slide hurt—him and the bike—and once the adrenaline wore off and the birds disappeared over the dusty horizon, all he’d been left with was the desert silence and the pain.
And no phone signal.
Normally that wouldn’t bother him. There really couldn’t be enough alone time in this massive country, as far as he was concerned. If you travelled at the right time of year—and that would be the wrong time of year for tourists—you could pretty much have most outback roads to yourself. He was free to do whatever he wanted, wear whatever he wanted, be as hairy as he wanted, shower whenever he wanted. Or not. He’d given up caring what people thought of him right about the time he’d stopped caring about people.
Ancient history.
And life was just simpler that way.
The stoic old Bedford finally shifted into top gear and the rattle of its reconditioned engine evened out to a steady hum, vibrating under his skin as steadily as his bike did. He took the rare opportunity to do what he could never do when at the controls: he closed his eyes and let the hum take him.
Two hours, she’d said. He could be up on his feet with her little home fully restored before she even made it from the front of the bus back to the rear doors. As if no one had ever been there.
Two hours to rest. Recover. And enjoy the roads he loved from a more horizontal perspective.
* * *
‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ Eve muttered as she stood looking at the bear of a man fast asleep on her little sofa.
What was this—some kind of reverse Goldilocks thing?
She cleared her throat. Nothing. He didn’t even shift in his sleep.
‘Mr Sullivan?’
Nada.
For the first time, it occurred to her that maybe this wasn’t sleep; maybe this was coma. Maybe he’d been injured more than either of them had realised. She hauled herself up into the back of the bus and crossed straight to his side, all thoughts of dangerous tattooed men cast aside. Her fingertips brushed below the hairy tangle of his jaw.
Steady and strong. And warm.
Phew.
‘Mr Sullivan,’ she said, louder. Those dark blond brows twitched just slightly and something moved briefly behind his eyelids, so she pressed her advantage. ‘We’re here.’
Her gaze went to his elevated foot and then back up to where his hands lay, folded, across the T-shirt over his midsection. Rather nice hands. Soft and manicured despite the patches of bike grease from his on-road repairs.
The sort of hands you’d see in a magazine.
Which was ridiculous. How many members of motorcycle clubs sidelined in a bit of casual hand modelling?
She forced her focus back up to his face and opened her lips to call his name a little louder, but, where before there was only the barest movement behind his lids, now they were wide open and staring straight at her. This close, with the light streaming in from the open curtains, she saw they weren’t grey at all—or not just grey, at least. The pewter irises were flecked with rust that neatly matched the tarnished blond of his hair and beard, particularly concentrated around his pupils.
She’d never seen eyes like them. She immediately thought of the burnt umber coastal rocks of the far north, where they slid down to pale, clean ocean. And where she’d started her journey eight months ago.
‘We’re here,’ she said, irritated at her own breathlessness. And at being caught checking him out.
He didn’t move, but maybe that was because she was leaning so awkwardly over him from all the pulse-taking.
‘Where’s here?’ he croaked.
She pushed back onto her heels and dragged her hands back from the heat of his body. ‘The border. You’ll have to get up while they inspect the bus.’
They took border security seriously here on the invisible line between South Australia and Western Australia. Less about gun-running and drug-trafficking and more about fruit flies and honey. Quarantine was king when agriculture was your primary industry.
Sullivan twisted gingerly into an upright position, then carefully pulled himself to his feet and did his best to put the cushions back where they’d started. Not right, but he got points for the effort.
So he hadn’t been raised by leather-clad wolves, then.
He bundled up his belongings, tossed them to the ground outside the bus and lowered himself carefully down.
‘How is your leg?’ Eve asked.
‘I’ll live.’
Okay. Man of few words. Clearly, he’d spent too much time in his own company.
The inspection team made quick work of hunting over every inch of her converted bus and Sullivan’s saddlebags. She’d become proficient at dumping or eating anything that was likely to get picked up at the border and so, this time, the team only found one item to protest—a couple of walnuts not yet consumed.
Into the bin they went.
She lifted her eyes towards Sullivan, deep in discussion with one of the border staff who had him in one ear and their phone on the other. Arranging assistance for his crippled bike, presumably. As soon as they were done, he limped back towards her and hiked his bags up over his shoulder.
‘Thanks for the ride,’ he said as though the effort half choked him.
‘You don’t need to go into Eucla?’ Just as she’d grown used to him.
‘They’re sending someone out to grab me and retrieve my bike.’
‘Oh. Great that they can do it straight away.’
‘Country courtesy.’
As opposed to her lack of...? ‘Well, good luck with your—’
It was then she realised she had absolutely no idea what he was doing out here, other than hitting random emus. In all her angsting out on the deserted highway, she really hadn’t stopped to wonder, let alone ask.
‘—with your travels.’
His nod was brisk and businesslike. ‘Cheers.’
And then he was gone, back towards the border security office and the little café that catered for people delayed while crossing. Marshall Sullivan didn’t seem half so scary here in a bustling border stop, though his beard was no less bushy and the ink dagger under his skin no less menacing. All the what-ifs she’d felt two hours ago on that long empty road hobbled away from her as he did.
And she wondered how she’d possibly missed the first time how well his riding leathers fitted him.
