drove air from his lungs.
But in the next breath her taxi arrived. The driver jumped out and grabbed her pack, grumbling noisily at having to leave the warmth of his cab and splash about in the rain. The girl slipped quickly into the back passenger seat. Ryan caught one final flash of her beautiful bare legs before she shut the door.
The driver, a very glum fellow indeed, dumped her bulky backpack into the taxi’s boot. He already had a couple of boxes in there and he spent a bad-tempered few minutes in the rain, shoving and cramming her pack, squeezing it mercilessly into the too small space.
At last the bulky pack was squashed enough to allow him to slam the door but, as he did, something slipped from one of the pack’s side pockets and fell into the rain-filled gutter with a plop.
It was a small book.
“Hey, mister, you want this cab or not?”
Ryan turned, surprised to discover that other passengers had left and he’d reached the top of the queue. A taxi driver was scowling at him.
His eyes swivelled back to the book in the gutter. Her book. Small and thick with a brown leather cover of good quality. It looked like a diary or one of those fancy planners many people couldn’t live without. And no one else seemed to have seen it fall.
“Just a sec.” Ryan waved violently to catch her driver’s attention. “Hey, you’ve dropped something!”
But it was too late.
The driver was already slipping behind the wheel. His door slammed and, with an impatient, throaty roar, his cab shot out from the kerb, ducked across two lanes and streaked off, leaving the girl’s book lying in the rain.
“Listen, mate, you either get in this cab or step aside. You can’t hold up the bloody queue in this weather.”
But Ryan stared after the other cab and at the book, lying in the gutter. If it wasn’t rescued quickly it would be ruined.
And why should he care?
Why should he, RyanTanner, a seen-it-all, done-it-all, travel-weary journalist, jeopardise his precious place in a taxi queue while he dived into pouring rain to retrieve an unknown stranger’s sodden book from the gutter?
He hadn’t the foggiest clue. It didn’t make any sense.
But, then again, he’d always been a curious type and he’d looked into the girl’s beautiful eyes…
So perhaps it made perfect sense.
Whatever…In the next unthinking, reckless split-second he grabbed his suitcase out of the driver’s hands, hurled it into the taxi’s boot and yelled, “We’ve got to follow that cab in the far lane!”
The driver’s jaw gaped. “You’re joking.”
“Never more serious, mate.” Ryan dashed for the gutter, shouting over his shoulder, “Get the other case and stow my snowboard in the back.”
As he scooped up the book, he was aware of a moment’s indecision behind him before the driver gave a strangely excited cry and leapt forward.
The snowboard was shoved into the back of the cab and the two men jerked their front doors open and leapt in, Ryan clutching his laptop. And the wet book.
The driver’s dark eyes were flashing with high excitement as he depressed the accelerator. He turned and grinned at Ryan. “I’ve been waiting twenty years for a chase!”
Ahead of them, the girl’s cab was still in sight—just. It had stopped at a junction, but any second now the lights would change.
As the lights turned green, Simone wriggled her shoulders and deliberately relaxed into the luxurious hug of soft leather upholstery. She closed her eyes and tried to shrug off the sense that nothing about her homecoming felt right.
Perhaps that was what happened when you came down from the top of the world. Literally.
Three days ago, she’d been madly celebrating the achievement of a lifetime. She’d never before experienced anything like that heady feeling of supreme accomplishment—or the wonderful sense of camaraderie she’d shared with her fellow cyclists.
The trip had produced all kinds of unexpected extras…best of all the especially close bond she’d formed with her new friends, Belle and Claire…the deep sense of connection that they’d all felt up there in the mountains, far away from their everyday worlds…the trust they’d developed.
And then, near the end of the journey…the dark secrets they’d unburdened.
The pact the three women had made.
The promise.
Oh, cringe. Simone shut her eyes quickly. Oh, help.
Every time she thought about the terrible secret she’d revealed to Belle and Claire that night, she felt a shaft of hot, terrifying panic.
It was so hard to believe that she’d actually told them. She’d said it out loud—revealed the one thing she never talked about.
Never. To anyone.
At the time it had felt amazingly good to get it off her chest at last. A blessed relief. After all, Belle and Claire had both spilled secrets too. And they hadn’t reeled back in horror at her story. She’d been lulled into thinking that perhaps it wasn’t so shocking after all.
And she’d felt so happy, so strong in her brave decision to visit her grandfather at last, to break her promise to her mother and to tell him what she should have confessed years ago. To ask for his forgiveness.
But everything had seemed different when she’d been up there, in the rarefied atmosphere of the Himalayas. Her vision had been clearer, choices had appeared straightforward. It had seemed perfectly OK for three women from totally different worlds—an Aussie, a Yank and a Brit—to make life-changing decisions beneath the benevolent gaze of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
Now, coming home, Simone wasn’t so sure. Sharing her secret had changed everything, complicated everything.
Before, no one else in the world knew, and she could almost convince herself that the events on that terrible night her stepfather died had never really occurred.
Now, she was frightened. She wished Belle and Claire weren’t so far away. She needed their reassurance that her life wasn’t going to collapse because they knew.
They’d agreed to stay in touch, to share regular emails and to help each other through the weeks ahead. Simone hoped that would be enough. She felt so…so…anxious. And something else. What was it? Not depressed exactly. Deflated? Yeah…definitely. She felt flat. Very flat.
They’d lost sight of the girl’s taxi.
Despite Ryan’s driver’s most valiant attempts, there was simply too much traffic, too much rain and too many taxis zipping back and forth. They’d had to admit defeat.
Now, as his taxi dashed through Sydney’s rain-lashed streets, heading for his flat in Balmain, the diary sat on the seat beside Ryan. The thick leather cover
