control he’d always had. Push him to the edge and maybe he’d take her with him over to a place they’d always pulled back from.
He tried to put her away from him but she wouldn’t let him, flung herself back against him, pulling his hands up to caress her in return. Then it changed; she wasn’t the one in charge.
Suddenly she was in his arms, carried to the blanket she’d set up for their picnic, laid gently on the grass and he was beside her.
‘Are you sure?’ His whisper over her ear.
‘Yes.’ No second thought. ‘Kiss me.’
Then they were unbuttoning, discovering the places they’d left secret, venturing with her murmurs of pleasure and encouragement to seal their pact once they’d fumbled with their inexpert attempt at protection.
Kate realised she had her hand on her throat and the pulse beneath her fingers rushed with memories. The truck had stopped and she dragged her thoughts back to the present with a shiver.
They’d be gone from here soon and so would the memories that clung to her in this place like entangling cobwebs. She’d only need a minute or two to check Lucy and hear what she couldn’t as they rattled over the corrugations.
Still sleepy, Lucy stirred and opened her eyes. ‘Where are we?’
Kate laid her hand on her arm. ‘It’s okay. Pentecost River. How’re you feeling?’
Lucy blinked like an owl. ‘I can hardly keep my eyes open.’
‘It’s the drugs for your blood pressure. Just doze as you can. I need to listen to your baby and check your observations while we’re stopped.’
Lucy nodded sleepily and Kate slipped her stethoscope into her ears to listen for Lucy’s blood pressure. All the while she was aware that Rory was walking around the truck towards the rear doors and any minute now she’d have to face him. That wasn’t going to be as easy as it should be with those intimate memories so vivid in her mind.
Lucy slipped back under her sheet when Kate had finished.
Rory arrived, opened the back doors and waited to hear the verdict. ‘Lucy okay?’ His bulk blocked some of the light that spilled in with the open air and Kate was glad of the dimness because the heat had rushed into her cheeks and, uncomfortably, into other places too.
She licked dry lips. ‘Better. Blood pressure’s one forty on ninety. Much improved. I’m happy if it’s still sitting at ninety diastolic.’Kate eased her cramped knee and sighed. She’d have to get out and stretch. It was crazy not to walk around the vehicle to move her legs for a minute before they set off again. She just hoped he’d move and she wouldn’t have to squeeze past him.
As if he read her mind, he stepped away and, once out, it was hard to stifle the urge to catch a glimpse and see if their initials were still engraved on that tree.
She looked away to the river and realised Rory had moved up beside her, not touching but watching her. That was the worst thing. He didn’t have to touch her—she could feel his aura and there was nothing she could do about the tide of heat that again ran up her neck. Or the aching desire to just lift her hand and rest it on his cheek. Where had everything gone so wrong between them?
‘Our initials are still there, on the tree,’ he said.
Kate’s heart thumped at him reading her so easily. She was twenty-six, for goodness’ sake, too old to be self-conscious about adolescent romanticisms. It would be horribly awkward if he saw how weak she was.
She stepped past and thankfully her breathing became easier. Away from him.
Rory didn’t know what to say. The memories were there for him, bombarded him here, and he hated the way she threw an offhand glance at the tree. As if it meant nothing.
‘We were vandals,’ she said, and he winced at the unexpected pain her comment caused. ‘You’d get fined for that nowadays.’
She was so cold, Rory thought, and more like her father than he’d ever thought.
She pointed to the river, no doubt to change the subject. ‘I stitched up a traveller two weeks ago from down there.’ They both looked. ‘The croc only nicked his fingers when he bent down to fill his water bottle.’
Rory whistled through his teeth. ‘Now that’s one lucky man.’
Kate smiled grimly. ‘Tell me about it.’
No. He wanted her to tell him about what had happened ten years ago. Why she’d changed so dramatically. Why she’d broken her promise and said she didn’t love him. Sent the ring back.
Had her father made her? Had Rory’s own parents had something to do with it? Now there was only Kate to ask.
Why had Lyle Onslow victimised Rory’s father? Why fire him for no reason, stop his mother working anywhere on the station until they’d had to leave? Had the old man really been so afraid that Kate could love someone socially inferior like Rory?
Rory opened his mouth and then closed it. He sighed. ‘I’ll top up the diesel with the jerrycans while it’s not raining.’ He walked away.
It wasn’t what he’d been going to say. Kate knew that. That was the problem. They’d always had an intuition about what the other was thinking and it seemed she hadn’t lost hers either. She gazed out over the plains with the serpentine swathe of the river and the thick dark clouds almost obscuring the base of the ranges they’d watched that evening.
The day she’d become a woman. A day that would affect her for ever. And Rory didn’t know. Would he understand? Would he hate her? Blame her? Feel sorry for her?
‘You right to go?’
‘Absolutely ready to go,’ she said, and they both knew that was exactly what she was thinking.
Lucy had dropped into an uneasy doze and didn’t wake when the truck started again. Kate watched her patient’s flushed cheeks and a tiny niggle of fresh worry teased at her brain, pushing away thoughts of Rory.
‘It was a beautiful sunset that day.’ Rory’s voice was quiet and she knew it wasn’t only the sunset he was saying had been beautiful for them.
Not now. Not with the memories so fresh in her mind. She felt the tears sting and she waited for them to form but of course it didn’t happen. She couldn’t go there.
Thinking about that time of her life would open up all the wounds and grief and anger she’d bottled up for so long and she wasn’t sure what would ensue if she let them out. She was used to being frozen now. It was safe.
Her glance rested on the young girl opposite her. With Lucy so sick, now was the time to be focused on her patient.
‘I don’t remember.’ She met his eyes briefly in the mirror and shrugged before she busied herself with writing down Lucy’s observations.
Rory didn’t comment but, strangely, not once in the next hour did she feel his glance in the mirror as she had since Jabiru Township.
When
