his hand into the pocket of his jeans and winced when the taxi driver leaned on his horn. Dammit, he’d forgotten about him. He felt humiliation tighten his throat. Now came the hard part, he thought, cursing under his breath. A soft drink was one thing...
‘Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got myself into a bit of a sticky situation... Is there any chance you could pay the taxi fare for me? I’m good for it, I promise.’
‘Sure.’ Ellie reached into her bag, pulled out her purse and handed him a couple of bills.
Jack felt the tips of his fingers brush hers and winced at the familiar flame that licked its way up his arm. His body had decided that it was seriously attracted to her and there was nothing he could do about it.
Damn, Jack thought, as he stomped out through the door to pay his taxi fare. He really didn’t feel comfortable being attracted to a woman he was beholden to, who was his mentor’s beloved daughter and with whom he’d spend only two days before blowing out of her life.
Just ignore it, Jack told himself. You’re a grown man, firmly in control of your libido.
He blew air into his cheeks as he handed the money over to the taxi driver and rubbed his hand over his face. The door behind him opened and he turned away from the road to see Ellie lugging his heavy rucksack through the door. Ignoring his burning side, he broke into a jog, quickly reached her and took his pack from her. The gangster bastards had taken his iPad, his satellite and mobile phones, his cash and credit cards, but had left him his dirty, disgusting clothes.
He would’ve left them too...
‘Here—let me take that.’ Jack took his rucksack from her.
‘I just need to lock up and we can go,’ Ellie said, before disappearing back inside the building.
Jack waited in the late-afternoon sun on the corner, his rucksack resting against an aqua pot planted with hot-pink flowers. He was beginning to suspect—from her multi-coloured hair and her bright bakery with its pink and purple exterior—that Ellie liked colour. Lots of it.
Mitchell had mentioned that Ellie was a baker and he’d expected her to be frumpy and housewifey, rotund and rosy—not slim, sexy and arty. Even her jewellery was creative: multi-length strands of beads in different shades of blue. He could say something about lucky beads to be against that chest, but decided that even the thought was pathetic...
He heard the door open behind him and she reappeared. She pulled the wooden and glass door shut, then yanked down the security grate and bolted and locked it.
Jack looked from the old-style bakery to the wide beach across the road and felt a smile form. It was nearly half-past six, a warm evening in summer, and the beach and boardwalk hummed with people.
‘What time does the sun set?’ he asked.
‘Late. Eight-thirty-ish,’ Ellie answered. She gestured to the road behind them. ‘I live so close to work that I don’t drive...um...my house is up that hill.’
Jack looked up the steep road to the mountain behind it and sighed. That was all he needed—a hike up a hill with a heavy pack. What else was this day going to throw at him?
He sighed again. ‘Lead on.’
Ellie pulled a pair of over-large sunglasses from her bag and put them on, and they started to walk. They passed an antique store, a bookstore and an old-fashioned-looking pharmacy—he needed to stock up on some supplies there, but that would raise some awkward questions. He waited for Ellie to initiate the conversation. She did, moments later, good manners overcoming her increasingly obvious shyness.
‘So, what happened to you?’
‘Didn’t your father tell you?’
‘Only that you got jumped by a couple of thugs and were kicked out of Somalia. You need a place to stay because you’re broke.’
‘Temporarily broke,’ Jack corrected her. Mitchell hadn’t given her the whole story, thankfully. It was simple enough. He’d asked a question about the hijackings of passing ships which had pushed the warlord’s ‘detonate’ button. He’d gone psycho and ordered his henchman to beat the crap out of him. He’d tried to resist, but six against one...bad odds.
Very bad odds. Jack shook off a shudder.
‘So, is there anything else I can do for you apart from giving you a bed?’
Her question jerked him back to the present and his instinctive answer was, A night with you in bed would be great.
Seriously? That was what he was thinking?
Jack shook his head and ordered himself to get with the programme. ‘Um...I just need to spend a night, maybe two. Borrow a mobile phone, a computer to send some e-mails, have an address to have my replacement bank cards delivered to...’ Jack replied.
‘I have a spare mobile, and you can use my old laptop. I’ll write my address down for you. Are you on a deadline?’
‘Not too bad. This is a print story for a political magazine.’
Ellie lifted her eyebrows. ‘I thought you only did TV work?’
‘I get the occasional assignment from newspapers and magazines. I freelance, so I write articles in between reporting for the news channels,’ Jack replied.
Ellie shoved her sunglasses up into her hair and rubbed her eyes. ‘So how are you going to write these articles? I presume your notes were taken.’
‘I backed up my notes and documents onto a flash drive just before the interview. I slipped it into my shoe.’ It was one of the many precautionary measures he took when operating in Third World countries.
‘They let you keep your passport?’
Jack shrugged. ‘They wanted me to leave and not having a passport would have hindered that.’
Ellie shook her head. ‘You have a crazy job.’
He did, and he loved it. Jack shrugged. ‘I operate best in a war zone, under pressure.’ He loved having a rucksack on his back, dodging bullets and bombs to get the stories few other journalists found.
‘Mitchell always said that it’s a powerful experience to be holed up in a hotel in Mogadishu or Sarajevo with no water, electricity or food, playing poker with local contacts to the background music of bombs and automatic gunfire. I never understood that.’
Jack frowned at the note of bitterness in her voice and, quickly realising that there was a subtext beneath her words that he didn’t understand, chose his next words carefully. ‘Most people would consider it their worst nightmare—and to the people living and working in that war zone it is—but it is exciting, and documenting history is important.’
And the possibility of imminent death didn’t frighten him at all. After all, he’d faced death before...
No, what would kill him would be being into a nine-to-five job, living in one city, doing the same thing day in and day out. He’d cheated death and received a second swipe at life...and the promise he’d made so long ago, to live life hard and fast and big, still fuelled him on a daily basis.
Jack
