style="font-size:15px;"> The wind whipped the scrubby grass and stunted gums at the side of the road as they drove towards the distant ochre ranges and lifted the red dust they stirred into the now grey-black sky behind them.
At least the wind would shift the dust cloud more quickly when the road trains drove past, Kate mused, and, as if conjured, Rory slowed their vehicle and pulled close to the edge of the road to widen the distance between them and an oncoming mammoth truck.
The unsealed road was an important transport access for the huge cattle stations that lay between the infrequent dots of civilisation.
Road trains were three and four trailer cattle trucks that thundered backward and forward across vast distances. These road monsters didn’t have a chance of stopping if you pulled out in front of them.
Even overtaking a road train going in the same direction was difficult because the dust they stirred was so thick that visibility was never clear enough to ensure there wasn’t other traffic heading your way, and the risk far outweighed the advantages.
Kate remembered pulling over and brewing a cuppa instead of following one heading towards Derby in the past. She was thankful this one was travelling in the opposite direction.
This truck sported a huge red bull bar that flashed past Kate’s opposite window and three steel-sided pens filled with tawny cattle rattled after it. She sighed with relief when the dust was blown away by the ever-building wind and they could move on.
An hour and a half of corrugations later, they came to the first of the major rivers they’d have to cross, the Pentecost. There was barely any water over the road, a mere eighteen inches, but that would change as soon as the storm hit. Then they’d be stuck on the other side until it went down.
Kate caught a glimpse of a silver splash from the bank ten metres back from the road and shivered.
Thank goodness the height of water was easy to see because Kate had no desire to watch Rory walk the Pentecost to check the level.
Not that anyone walked across here. The Pentecost was populated with wildlife and a saltwater croc might just decide it fancied a roll with him. The name saltwater crocodile didn’t mean these creatures needed to be near the sea. They were quite happy to eat you a couple of hundred kilometres inland in freshwater. Even with her dread of the ‘talk’, that wasn’t how she wanted to avoid Rory’s company.
Rory slowed the truck for the descent into the river bed, changed into low range and then chugged into washed gravel to crawl though the wide expanse of water. Once across, they steadily climbed out the other side until back on the road and trails of water followed them as the truck shed the water they’d collected.
She looked up front through the windshield to where they’d stop. Her stomach dropped. Not here!
Ten years ago, Rory and Kate had set up a picnic at sunset out here to enjoy the glory of the Pentecost River and the distant ranges. That night before Rory left he’d wanted a place that wasn’t her father’s land and this was where they’d come. A point on the triangle of vast distances people thought nothing of travelling.
The memory was etched indelibly and Kate felt the soft whoosh of time as she remembered. That sunset had been as deeply coloured as a ripe peach with the magnificent sandstone escarpment of the Cockburn Range in the distance. She blushed red-ripe herself at that memory because that evening she’d set out to seduce the diffident Rory and they’d both got more than they’d bargained for.
That was their round-bellied boab up ahead. She just hoped Rory would have more delicacy than to pull in there.
The truck slowed and turned off the road into the lay-by. She glanced around for an alternative. Trouble was, theirs was the only decent sized parking area clear of the road and their boab was part of it. She sighed.
Grow up, she admonished herself. She needed to check Lucy’s blood pressure and her baby’s heart rate but the memories of this place all those years ago crowded her mind as she waited for Rory to open the door.
Kate remembered the night before Rory left ten years ago and unfortunately it was as clear as yesterday.
‘So you are leaving?’ Kate couldn’t believe it. Rory gone? What would she do without Rory? He stood tall and lean and somehow distant, as if he had to be aloof to say what he needed. This wasn’t her Rory.
Safe in his arms was the one place she felt loved for herself. He was the one person who understood how lonely she’d been since her mother had died, the person who could make her laugh at life and made her complete.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow morning. With the cattle on the road train,’ he said and the words fell like stones against her ears. How would she bear it? How could he?
He went on, ‘I can start my paramedic degree in two weeks. I have that. When I asked to marry you we both knew he’d fire me.’
He paused and looked away from her and she knew it was to hide his shame. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Kate wanted to hug the memories away from him. She knew what had happened. She’d overheard her father flay the pride from Rory as if he was a criminal.
She’d tried not to listen to the threats and abuse but if her father had thought she would think less of Rory from that exhibition then he was wrong. She was ashamed that she had Lyle Onslow’s blood in her own veins.
‘I’m sorry for my father, Rory.’
His eyes stared at the distant hills with a determination she’d never seen before. ‘It doesn’t matter.’He reached into his pocket. ‘I have something for you.’ He snapped open the box. ‘Will you wear this until I come back?’ he said, and pulled the ring free. She recognised it as a tiny pink diamond from the mines behind Jabiru—a token she had no idea how he’d managed to pay for—and slid it on her finger, where it sat, winking prettily at both of them. No matter that her father had refused permission.
She looked at the ring—Rory’s ring—it could have been the largest diamond in the world and it wouldn’t have been any more precious, but most of all she wanted to comfort Rory. Apologise for her father, show him how much she loved him. All she could do was pull Rory’s face down to hers and kiss him. They were alone under the vastness that would soon turn to night. Their last night together.
‘I want to marry you. I do,’ she said. For the first time she dared to gently ease the tip of her tongue into his mouth, awkwardly but with all her heart and soul in that one timid adventure, and suddenly they had entered a whole new dimension that sent spears of heat flicking from her through to Rory.
He groaned and kissed her back, answering her challenge, each emboldened by the other, enticed by the danger until both were mindless with the desperation his leaving had ignited between them.
She needed to feel his skin, hear his heart and she fumbled open his shirt and slid her hands against his solid warmth, up and down, not really sure what she should do but needing to feel and mould the hard planes of his chest—a chest she wouldn’t have near to lean on if he went.
She could feel the shudder in his body as he sucked in the air he needed for control, groaned with what she did to him, and she rested her hand over his heart and soaked in the pounding of his life force.
