He valued her highly but she wasn’t used to confronting potentially dangerous situations. With no makeup and her long hair floating all around her, her cheeks pink with indignation she looked little more than a child.
“Get me down there,” she said, racing towards him and taking him firmly by the arm. Literally a fire head.
Brod resisted momentarily, even though his expression was affectionate and understanding. “Fran, think about this. There’s a possibility the pilot has come to some harm. That could be very distressing for you. Believe me, I know.”
She looked up at him with her flower-blue eyes. “I won’t screw up, Brod, I promise. I want to be of help. I completed a first-aid course.”
Brod gave a sigh and ran his hand through his raven hair. “I don’t want to be alarmist but out here accidents aren’t something that happen to other people, Fran. We don’t read about it in the newspapers or see it on television. They happen to us. All the time. Curly might be beyond first-aid. Think of that. No matter how game you are, how much you want to help, you’ve led a protected life.”
“Most people do. But I’m ready to learn, Brod.” Francesca caught his stare and held it. “Stop treating me like a pampered little girl. I’ve had my tough times as well. Now, get in and drive.” She ran to the waiting Jeep ahead of him, almost dancing in her desire to get down to the airstrip. “Grant promised he’d take me,” she called over her shoulder. “I know it mightn’t be good but I’m not going to cave in. I’m half Kinross.”
She was, too, he thought with some admiration. Used as a buffer between warring parents. “It sounds to me like you have something to prove, love,” Brod said as he started the engine.
“Yes, I have.” The great thing about her cousins, Brod and Ally, was they wanted to listen.
“To Grant?” He looked at her with his all-seeing eyes, encouraging her.
“Who else?” she flashed him her smile.
Brod nodded, his expression wry. “He’s a helluva guy, Fran, a genuinely exciting personality. He’ll go far, but he’s very stubborn. Once he makes up his mind you won’t change it. Princess that you are you won’t wind him around your little finger so be warned. Grant has very strong views. A quick pride. Strength and energy to burn. But he has lots to learn like the rest of us. We know he’s deeply attracted to you but you could get hurt. Rebecca and I don’t want to see that because we care about you too much.”
Francesca’s delicately arching brows drew together. “I know and I love you for it but I have to take my own chances in life, Brod. Make all my own mistakes. That’s as it should be. My friendship with Grant has gone a step further. Everyone is aware of it. We’re more involved and as a consequence we’re coming increasingly into conflict.”
“You know what they say. Life isn’t meant to be easy. I can see it happening, Fran.” Brod accelerated away from the compound. “Grant has never felt a woman’s power. He’s had casual affairs but they never burned him. What happens when you go back to Sydney? Have you thought of that?”
“Of course I have!” Francesca exclaimed, trying to push the thought away. “I don’t want this time with you and Rebecca to end. I’m longing to see Ally when she gets home. Rafe, too, though I know he has reservations about my friendship with his ‘little brother.’”
Brod chose his words carefully, knowing what she said was quite true. “Responsibility is Rafe’s middle name, Fran. He damned near had to father Grant when their parents were killed. In his shock and grief Grant went more than a little wild. He was always getting into trouble, always trying to bring some daredevil prank off. That tragedy has shaped him. Put fear in him. Showed him about loss. It might well be to remember it. Grant mightn’t let a woman get too close to him. His grief at the loss of his parents was enormous. He was very close to his mother as the youngest.
“They were wonderful people, the Camerons. They took pity on Ally and me and our chaotic home life. They as good as fostered us. Rafe is as close to me as a brother. Come to that I always thought of Grant as a younger brother. To love is to lose. Grant learned that early.”
When they arrived at the airstrip Grant was close to taking off. He saw them coming and jumped down again onto the tarmac. There was Francesca looking like someone who should be scattering rose petals at a wedding, Titian hair flying all around her lovely head. He tried to keep a sudden anger down, wondering why he was feeling so angry at all. He didn’t want her hurt. That was it. He didn’t want her exposed to danger. In short he didn’t want her to come.
She was running towards him, crying out in reproach. “You surely weren’t going to leave without me?”
He nodded more curtly than he intended. “I don’t have a real good feeling about this, Francesca. It might be better if you stay home.”
“But you promised me last night.” Her churning emotions sounded in her voice.
“You agree with me don’t you, Brod?” Grant shot his friend a near imploring glance.
Brod considered a while. “I figure she’ll come to no harm with you, Grant. She may see something she’s not prepared for but knowing her I’d say she is adult enough to handle it. There may not be much wrong at all. A choke in the fuel pipe, or running too low on petrol to reach the scheduled landing.”
“Which places him fair and square in a difficult and potentially dangerous situation,” Grant said, feeling the pressure. “The sun is generating a lot of heat.” Both men knew a lost man could dehydrate and die within forty-eight hours in the excessively dry atmosphere.
“We’re all praying, Grant,” Brod said.
“I know.” There was tremendous mateship in the bush. Grant turned to see Francesca tying her hair back with a blue scarf for all the world as if she was donning a nurse’s cap. She looked achingly young. Adolescent. No make-up. She didn’t need it. No lipstick, her soft, cushiony mouth had its own natural colour. What was he to do with this magical creature? But she was game.
A few minutes later they were airborne, heading in the direction of Curly’s flight path. Grant pointed to various landmarks along the way, their flight level low enough for Francesca to marvel at the primeval beauty of the timeless land.
Beneath them was lightly timbered cattle country, with sections of Kimbara’s mighty herd. Silver glinted off the interlocking system of watercourses that gave the Channel Country its name. Arrows of green in the rust-red plains. Monolithic rocks of vivid orange stone thrust up from the desert floor, thickly embroidered with the burnt gold of the spinifex. The aerial view was fantastic.
Kimbara stockmen quenching their thirst with billy tea waved from the shade of the red river gums along a crescent-shaped billabong. This was vast territory. Francesca could well see how a man could be lost forever.
While Grant spoke to Bob Carlton on Opal, Francesca looked away to a distant oasis of waterholes supporting a lot of greenery in the otherwise stark desert landscape. The sky was a brilliant cloudless enamelled blue and the heat was beginning to affect her.
This wasn’t the super aeroplane, the great jet she was used to on her long hauls from London to Sydney. This was a single rotor helicopter she knew little about except it could fly straight up or straight down, forwards, backwards, hover in one spot, or turn completely around. It could do jobs no other vehicle of any kind could do like land in a small clearing or on a flat roof. In many ways, a helicopter was
