‘Half an hour.’ He was rushing her. He liked to do that but she’d lost the bet with herself so she had to go. For an internal argument it was pretty thin. It was just so darned hard to say no to someone who made her smile. At least on the inside.
The bus had seen better days but the grins of the tour guides were shiny new. Typically Balinese, they oozed warmth and fun and pleasure at the company of tourists and the chance to show off their culture and country. Something a lot of countries could learn from, Bonnie mused as she was helped into the bus.
Four couples made up the bus passengers when they started again—two young female schoolteachers from Portugal, two chefs from France, a fitness instructor and his wife from the States, and Harry and Bonnie from Australia.
Bonnie was jammed against the window, which in itself was a good thing and not only for the view. It was a bit like choosing a window seat on the plane. You could create your own space if you needed. But she could still feel the warmth from Harry’s jeans-clad leg against hers and that wasn’t going away unless she broke the safety glass.
Harry laughed and joked with the others around them about accents and travel mishaps, a different person from the man she’d seen yesterday at the pool. Aloof and cynical seemed to have stayed home today. So why’d he been so threatened yesterday? Interesting.
Bonnie found herself relaxing back with a little proprietorial smile that said she was here—with him—as the little bus ground up the mountain. Until she realised her sin and it slipped from her face.
Then she frowned. Crazy. This was holiday, short-term, transient. Even more transient than she’d anticipated. Enjoy the moment, enjoy the company and most of all enjoy Harry. She was on vacation, for goodness’ sake, and she’d soon be at the new job, wishing she had. This was safe.
Harry saw the moment Bonnie became a part of the group and suddenly the day seemed brighter. She smiled at him and for that moment the sadness he’d glimpsed in her eyes was gone. He felt his breath kick somewhere at the back of his throat and his chest expanded. He’d done that. He’d helped her feel better. And it felt good.
That was when he reminded himself to be careful.
He looked away from her profile, past the itching temptation to study the bones of her face and out the window towards the ancient volcano as it came into sight. Terraced rice fields skirted the mountains like layers on a brilliant green wedding cake and that thought made him shudder.
This wasn’t him. Connecting with women was so not on his programme. He’d been there and the pain was so great he wasn’t climbing that volcano so he could fall off again. He’d pulled himself away from all he knew, bolted home to Bali, the one place where he could drift and nobody would think it out of the ordinary. A place he could drown out the voice in his head that said he didn’t want this empty life but he wasn’t willing to risk more pain.
‘Is that a volcano?’ Bonnie turned towards him and her eyes were like the rice fields outside the window—iridescent with life.
He ran his hand down his face to clear any dumb expression he might’ve been left with. ‘Yes, Mt Agung. We’ll be having morning tea at the restaurant above Mt Batur, at Kintamani—lots of old lava at the base of that one. Then we’ll pick up the bikes at a village and ride downhill until we get to the river.’ He shut his mouth. He was rambling.
‘So how many times have you done this?’
He shrugged. ‘A few.’ Too many. ‘Sometimes I help out when they’re short of supervising riders, and it’s always a great day.’ Brainless, time consuming, just what he wanted.
She tilted her head. ‘You said you were visiting. How long have you been here this time?’
‘On and off, nine months this time.’ She was studying him and he could feel his face freeze with the old barriers at giving anything away.
‘A whole pregnancy,’ she said, and he winced. Great timing. A good boot to the guts like he needed to stop the rot. Ironic.
He turned away and spoke to the Portuguese girl about surfing, blocking Bonnie out, and yet still he felt it when she withdrew her attention and looked back out the window. His breath eased out. The Portuguese girl batted her eyelashes at him but her interest didn’t faze him like Bonnie’s did. Funny, that.
Finally they made it to the first stop. He’d never noticed the trip taking so long before and he felt like shaking himself like a dog to get out of Bonnie’s aura. He’d been mad to ask her out today. Not just mad. Dangerously insane.
For Bonnie, the view from the restaurant overlooking the volcano at Kintamani took her breath, and thankfully her mind, off the puzzle of the man next to her.
From where she stood overlooking the valley, because the restaurant walkway hung over the cliff, the view presented the huge lake and black scarring of the lava across the valley floor. Great gaping inverted cones up the side of Mt Batur showed the force of the volcanic activity.
‘When was the last eruption?’ She asked the question without looking at him. She didn’t have to turn to know he was right there. Her sensory receptors had warned her.
‘Nineteen ninety-four. One of the earlier ones swallowed the temple at Kintamani village. The western slopes are closed at the moment. The seismological institute thinks there’s risk of further eruptions. Pity. It’s a great walk to the rim for sunrise.’
Bonnie looked through the window into the restaurant at the rice and crêpes waiting, very strange morning tea on offer, and glanced at the view again. ‘What’s the lava like up close?
‘Hard and black. I rode across the whole field on a motorbike years ago and it was like jagged corrugated iron. The locals use it for building and you can see the areas where the lava’s been quarried.’
As a guide he was knowledgeable, though distracting from the view, enthusiastic about local history, just not good at being consistently relaxing, and she couldn’t see much of the yoga student this morning.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t his fault because half an hour later, when she followed the others back to the bus and climbed in, it was Harry’s leg alongside hers that she was waiting for. In fact, she could feel little waves of anticipation building as she sat down.
Disappointingly, this time they didn’t touch. Interesting and a little unacceptable, and she wasn’t quite sure how he managed it. As an experiment she allowed her knee to accidentally knock against his while she looked out the window and there was no doubt he shifted further away.
Definite reversal of the forces of attraction. She’d blotted her copybook somehow. Maybe it was the crack about pregnancy.
On her recent history of foot-in-mouth moments he’d probably lost a car full of children too. She sighed and then shrugged. This was why she didn’t get involved with men. Too complicated and distracting. It was a beautiful day and she was going to enjoy it if it killed her. She smiled to herself. Or him.
Wayan, their guide, had spent the last five minutes of travel explaining about luwak coffee and the main export for the plantation they were about to visit, but Bonnie had faded out.
So when the bus trundled into a dusty car park alongside other decrepit buses all shaded by overhanging trees and vines, she wondered if this was where the bike ride started.
She
