the surface, he was everything she didn’t usually go for. Physically impressive. Outdoorsy. A beer and football kind of a guy.
But then there was his age.
Through some online investigation last night she’d discovered he was thirty-six and she did have a track record with older men.
Leo had been twenty years her senior.
She supposed a psychologist would say she had a Daddy Complex. Her father had left when she was twelve and got himself a new family, including a set of twins who’d turned into sports-mad little boys.
She’d always felt the fact that she was a girl and had been more arty than sporty had been a huge let-down for her father. And after years of trying to win his attention and affection she’d finally conceded defeat as she’d headed off to college.
So, maybe his abandonment had spread invisible tentacles into her life.
Whatever.
It didn’t change the facts. Nothing else about Kent Nelson should have appealed.
Yet somehow it did.
She studied his profile as he drove, his eyes fixed on the road. His buzz cut melded into the stubble of his sideburns, which flowed into that covering his jaw, hugging the spare planes of his face, emphasising cheekbones that stood out like railings. It made him look...severe. A far cry from the bearded guy who had been laughing at the camera in the snap from the gallery.
It made him look intense.
Guarded.
It made him look haunted.
As a journalist, and a huge fan of his work, it was exceedingly intriguing.
As a woman—it scared the hell out of her.
Kent gripped the steering wheel as Sadie’s speculative gaze seemed to burn a hole at the angle of his jaw. After almost eighteen months in and out of hospitals and another six months of physical therapy, it had been a while since he’d had any kind of constant company—female or otherwise—and her concentration was unnerving.
He turned to look at her and almost rolled his eyes as she quickly pretended she hadn’t been staring at him by feigning interest in the scenery outside her window.
Very mature.
His gaze fell to her legs, the denim riding well and truly up above her knees and pulling taut across thighs as lush and round as the rest of her. Rubenesque slipped into his brain and he flicked his gaze back to the road.
‘I hope you brought something warmer—it’s going to get cold out at night.’
Sadie blinked. They’d been in the car for over an hour and this was the first thing he said to her? She really, really hoped he wasn’t one of those men who thought there was a direct correlation between her cup size and her IQ.
She slapped her forehead theatrically. ‘And I only packed bikinis and a frilly negligee.’
Kent gripped the steering wheel as images of her in a bikini screwed with his concentration. ‘A lot of people think of the outback as hot,’ he quantified, still not looking at her. ‘But it cools down really quickly at night.’
Sadie shot him an impatient look. ‘Thank you. But how about we assume from now on I’m a reasonably intelligent person who wouldn’t go on any trip without having thoroughly researched it first?’
Kent turned his head at the note in her voice. It was more than sarcasm. It was...touchy. As if she’d had to prove her intelligence one too many times. He guessed with her assets people didn’t often see beyond them.
He looked back at the road. ‘Fair enough.’
Sadie groaned as they passed a sign indicating their ascent through the Blue Mountains was about to begin. It came with a warning of sharp corners and hairpin bends.
The nausea kicked in at the thought of what lay ahead. ‘Fabulous,’ she muttered as she searched through her bag for her pills. ‘Dangerous curves.’
Kent wished there were a pill he could take for the ones inside the car, but her look of abject misery kept his brain off her treacherous curves. He could practically hear her teeth grinding as she pawed through the contents of a handbag big enough to fit an entire pharmacy full of motion sickness tablets.
For crying out loud! ‘Do you get sick if you’re the driver?’ he asked.
Sadie shook her head absently, missing the exasperation in his tone as she read the back of the medication box. It was a new brand to her, one supposedly with reduced side effects. ‘Nope.’
‘Well, that’s easy, then, isn’t it?’ he said as he indicated and pulled the car into one of the regular truck laybys that lined the route.
‘What are you doing?’ Sadie frowned as he unbuckled.
‘Letting you drive.’
Sadie didn’t move for a moment. ‘You want me to drive your car?’
He nodded. ‘You do have a licence, right?’
Sadie looked around at the behemoth in which she was sitting. She drove a second-hand Prius. ‘Not a tank licence.’
Kent’s mouth pressed into an impatient line. ‘You’ll be fine.’ He stepped out and strode around to her side.
Sadie had the ridiculous urge to lock her door before he reached her, but then it was open and he was filling the space along with the whoosh of traffic and the acrid aroma of exhaust fumes.
She looked at Kent, surprised at her elevated height to find she was looking him straight in the eye. They were brown, she noticed, now she was focused on something other than his mouth. She was close enough to see flecks of copper and amber shimmering there too, throwing a hue into the darker brown. They reminded her of something—a memory—she couldn’t quite recall.
Kent watched her watching him as if she was trying to figure something out. ‘Don’t they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?’ he prompted.
Sadie suddenly remembered. The tiger-eye marble she’d had in her collection as a kid. One of her father’s many attempts to get her interested in something other than reading and drawing.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, looking around the vehicle again, absently pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. If it had been a hire car she wouldn’t have hesitated. ‘I’ve never driven anything quite so...big. I’d hate to crash it.’
Kent did not drop his gaze to her mouth. The fact that he even noticed her lip being ravished by her teeth was irritating enough. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you make a habit of crashing cars?’
She shook her head, releasing her lip. ‘No, never.’ She looked back at him and frowned. She’d have thought a he-man like Kent would never have relinquished the wheel.
‘What?’ he asked warily.
Sadie shook her head. ‘I’ve
