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.
IT WAS THE raised voices that first got Marshall’s attention. Female, anxious and angry, almost swallowed up by drunk, male and belligerent.
‘Stop!’
The fact a gaggle of passers-by had formed a wide, unconscious circle around the spectacle in the middle of town was the only reason he sauntered closer instead of running on his nearly healed leg. If something bad was happening, he had to assume someone in the handful of people assembled would have intervened. Or at least cried out. Him busting in to an unknown situation, half-cocked, was no way to defuse what was clearly an escalating situation.
Instead, he insinuated himself neatly into the heart of the onlookers and nudged his way through to the front until he could get his eyeballs on things. A flutter of paper pieces rained down around them as the biggest of the men tore something up.
‘You put another one up, I’m just going to rip it down,’ he sneered.
The next thing he saw was the back of a woman’s head. Dark, travel-messy ponytail. Dwarfed by the men she was facing but not backing down.
And all too familiar.
Little Miss Hostile. Winning friends and influencing people—as usual.
‘This is a public noticeboard,’ she asserted up at the human mountain, foolishly undeterred by his size.
‘For Norseman residents,’ he spat. ‘Not for blow-ins from the east.’
‘Public,’ she challenged. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you?’
Wow. Someone really needed to give her some basic training in conflict resolution. The guy was clearly a xenophobe and drunk. Calling him stupid in front of a crowd full of locals wasn’t the fastest way out of her predicament.
She shoved past him and used a staple gun to pin up another flier.
He’d seen the same poster peppering posts and walls in Madura, Cocklebiddy and Balladonia. Every point along the remote desert highway that could conceivably hold a person. And a sign. Crisp and new against all the bleached, frayed ones from years past.
‘Stop!’
Yeah, that guy wasn’t going to stop. And now the McTanked Twins were also getting in on the
