THREE
Rowan sat in the passenger seat of Seb’s Audi Quattro SUV as he sped down the motorway towards Cape Town. Although it was a little before eight in the evening, the sun was only just starting to drop in the sky and the motorway was buzzing with taxi drivers weaving between cars with inches to spare and shooting out the other side with toothy grins and mobiles slapped against ears.
Cape Town traffic was murder, no matter what the time of day. It came from having a freaking big mountain in the middle of the city, Seb thought. He glanced at his watch; they’d been travelling for fifteen minutes and neither of them had initiated conversation. They had another half-hour until they reached Awelfor and the silence was oppressive.
Seb braked and cursed as the traffic slowed and then came to a dead stop. Just what he needed. A traffic jam and more time in the car not speaking to each other. At the best of times he wasn’t good at small talk, and it seemed stupid, and superfluous to try to discuss the weather or books, movies and music with Rowan.
And on that point, since it was the first time that Rowan had been in the same time zone as her parents for nearly a decade, he felt he owed it to them to keep her in the country until they got a chance to see her, hold her. Like him, they didn’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, but he knew that they had to miss her, had to want her to come back. He could sympathise. He knew what it felt like, waiting for a loved one to come home.
He had never been able to understand why she didn’t value her family more, why she rebelled so much. She had parents who took their jobs seriously; he and Callie had a runaway fickle mother and...Patch. As charming and entertaining as Patch was, he was more friend than father.
Rowan’s parents, Heidi and Stan, had always been a solid adult presence right next door. Conservative, sure, but reliable. Intelligent, serious, responsible. On a totally different wavelength from their crazy daughter. Then again, it sounded as if Rowan operated on a completely different wavelength to most people, and he had enough curiosity to wonder what made her tick.
Since this traffic was going nowhere they had time to kill and nothing else to talk about, so he would take the opportunity to satisfy his nosiness.
He and Ro had never danced around each other, so he jumped straight in.
‘I want to know why you’re broke. I know that you consider yourself a free spirit, too cool to gather material possessions, but surely a woman your age should have more to her name than a hundred pounds?’
She’d known this was coming—had been bracing herself for the lecture. Because Cape Town was synonymous, in her mind, with being preached to.
Rowan pursed her lips as she looked straight ahead. Seb hadn’t lost his ability to cut straight through the waffle to what he thought was important. Lord, she was too tired to tangle with that overly smart brain of his. Too weirded out by the fact that he made her ovaries want to dance the tango. What to say without sounding like a complete idiot?
Keep it simple, stupid.
‘I was doing a deal and I was supposed to get paid for delivering the...the order when I got into Oz.’
‘What were you peddling, Rowan?’
Seb’s eyes turned to dark ice and his face hardened when she didn’t answer. Of course he couldn’t take that statement at face value. He needed more and naturally he assumed the worst. She knew what he was thinking...
Here we go again, Rowan thought, back where I started. As the memories rolled back her palms started to sweat and she felt her breath hitch. Even after so many years Seb still instinctively assumed the worst-case scenario. As her parents would... And they wondered why she hadn’t wanted to come home.
‘It wasn’t anything illegal, Seb!’
‘I never said it was.’
‘I’m not an idiot or a criminal! And, while I might be unconventional, I’m not stupid. I do not traffic, carry or use drugs.’ Rowan raised her voice in an effort to get him to understand.
‘Calm down, Ro. For the record, back then I never believed you should have been arrested,’ Seb stated, and his words finally sank in.
Rowan frowned at him as his words tumbled around her brain. ‘You didn’t? Why not?’
‘Because while you were spoilt and vain and shallow—and you made some very bad decisions—you were never stupid.’
She couldn’t argue with that—and why did it feel so good that Seb believed she was better than the way she was portrayed? Just another thing that didn’t make any sense today.
But she knew that Seb’s opinion was one that her parents wouldn’t share.
‘But, Rowan, this lifestyle of yours is crazy. You’re an adult. You should not be getting kicked out of countries. You should have more than a backpack to your name. Most women your age have established a career, are considering marriage and babies...’
Shoot me now, Rowan thought. Or shove a hot stick in my eye. This was why she hadn’t wanted to come home, why she didn’t want to face the judgment of her family, friends and whatever Seb was. They’d always seen what they wanted to see and, like Seb, wouldn’t question the assumption that she was terminally broke and irreversibly irresponsible.
Rowan’s eyes sparked like lightning through a midnight sky. ‘What a stupid thing to say! You don’t know anything about me!’
‘And whose fault is that? You were the one who ran out of here like your head was on fire!’
‘I didn’t run!’ Okay, that lie sounded hollow even to her.
‘Within days of writing your finals you were on a plane out of the country. You didn’t discuss your plans with anybody. That’s running—fast and hard.’ Seb’s finger tapped the steering wheel as the car rolled forward. ‘What really happened that night?’
Rowan lifted her chin. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He couldn’t know, could he? Callie might have told him... No, she’d sworn that she wouldn’t, and Callie would never, ever break her word. Seb had to be talking about her life in general and not that night she’d got arrested in particular.
That stupid, crazy, change-her-life evening, when she’d fallen from heaven to hell in a few short hours.
‘Sure you do.’ Seb scanned the road ahead, saw that the traffic wasn’t moving and sighed. ‘Something in you changed that night you were arrested... You were rebellious before, but you were never spiteful or malicious or super-sarcastic.’
Her attitude had been that of a rabid dog. In the space of one night she’d gone from being wildly in love and indescribably happy to being heartbroken, disparaged and disbelieved. That night had changed her life. After all, not everybody could say that they’d lost their virginity, got dumped and framed by their lover, then arrested all in the same night. And her weekend in jail had been a nightmare of epic proportions.
Was it any wonder that she equated love with the bars of a jail?
‘You were never that hard before, Rowan.’ Seb quietly interrupted her thoughts. ‘Those last six months you fought constantly with your parents, with me, with the world.’
