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 never met a man yet who’d give up the driver’s seat for a woman.’ Her father had never let her mother drive when they were in the car together. ‘Doesn’t it emasculate you or something?’
Kent blinked. That hadn’t been a question he’d expected. What kind of Neanderthals did she hang out with? ‘I think I’m secure enough in my masculinity to not be threatened by a woman in the driver’s seat.’
Sadie’s gaze dropped from the spiky stubble of his angular jaw to the breadth of his shoulders. She had to admit if this man’s masculinity could be threatened then no man’s was safe!
‘Look,’ he said impatiently as she continued to sit. ‘It’s win-win. You don’t get to throw up every two minutes and I get to spot photo opps. I also don’t get to see you all trippy, which, given that we hardly know each other, is a good thing.’
Sadie couldn’t dispute his logic. The last thing she needed was to lose her inhibitions around a man who looked as if he kept his well and truly in check.
If he had any.
‘Fine.’
Sadie undid her belt and twisted in her seat to get out. She glanced at him, waiting for him to shift, her gaze snagging on his mouth. He didn’t for a moment and there was a split second when neither of them moved. When his beautiful mouth filled her entire vision and she found herself wishing he would say something just so she could admire how it moved. Then he stepped back and she half slid, half jumped to the ground on legs that seemed suddenly wobbly.
After giving Sadie a quick tutorial on the various idiosyncrasies of his vehicle, Kent left her to it, making no comment as she lurched it out onto the highway. Her grip on the steering wheel was turning her knuckles white and he was afraid she might split all the skin there if she didn’t ease up.
‘Relax,’ he ordered. ‘You’re doing fine.’
Strangely his command did not help Sadie relax. Her gaze flicked between the rear view and side mirrors as her heartbeat pelted along in time to the engine. She wasn’t sure if it was from nervousness about driving a strange car/tank that belonged to someone else or the weird moment she and Kent had shared as she’d exited the vehicle.
‘Relax,’ he said again.
‘Believe it or not,’ Sadie said, gritting her teeth as she eyeballed the road, ‘you telling me to relax is not helping.’
Kent held up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay.’
‘I just need to get used it,’ she quantified. ‘It’s not normal to be so high up. I feel like I’m driving a truck.’
Kent grimaced. It was hardly a semi-trailer. ‘I said okay.’
He turned then and dragged his camera case out of the back passenger floor well. Sadie was obviously stressed about driving the big, bad vehicle and he had little patience with princesses. Best to keep himself occupied and his lip zipped. And one more equipment check before they got too far away from civilisation wouldn’t go astray.
About ten minutes later he noticed her grip slacken and her shoulders relax back into the seat. Ten minutes after that she even started multitasking.
‘So. What’s the plan?’ Sadie asked, more comfortable now with how the car handled. ‘Where are our scheduled stops?’
Kent looked up from his disassembled camera. ‘Scheduled stops?’
Sadie nodded. ‘You know? Of a night time? When we’re tired?’
‘I hadn’t scheduled any stops. We’re driving all the way through.’
Sadie looked briefly away from the road to blast him with a you-have-to-be-kidding me look. A non-stop journey would probably take two full days.
Without a single break?
‘Don’t we have to sleep some time?’
He speared her with a direct look. ‘Do you really want to make this journey any longer than it has to be? We can pull over and catch some kip along the way. Either in the car or I have a couple of swags.’
Sadie supressed a shudder. Oh, goody. Maybe they’d find a jolly jumbuck to stuff inside. She flicked a quick glance towards him. ‘I don’t camp.’
Kent blinked at the way she said camp—as if she’d said prison. ‘What do you mean, you don’t camp?’
‘It’s simple,’ she said, returning her eyes to the road. ‘You don’t fly. I don’t camp.’
Great. Car sick. Didn’t camp. Sadie Bliss was stacking up the black marks against her name and truly pushing his patience. ‘What on earth have you got against sleeping under the stars?’
‘Nothing,’ Sadie assured him. ‘Give me five of them and I’m happy as a pig in mud.’
Kent shook his head. ‘You haven’t lived, city girl.’
‘I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one,’ she said sweetly.
Kent’s mouth took on a grim line. ‘I have a feeling there may be a bit of that this trip.’
Sadie did too. ‘So? Where should we stop tonight, do you think?’ she prompted.
Kent pulled the map out of the glovebox, where Sadie had thrown it in disgust earlier, and did some calculations. ‘It’s about another ten hours to Cunnamulla,’ he said, looking at the digital clock display on the dash. It was just gone nine-thirty. ‘That’ll put us there after seven tonight. It’ll also put us over the Queensland border.’
‘Okay.’ Sadie nodded.
‘Doubt there’s any five-star accommodation there though,’ he mused. ‘We could go another couple hours on to Charleville. It’s twice the size. Still don’t think they run to five star.’
Sadie shot him a sarcastic smile. ‘Thanks, I’ll settle for a shower, a flushing toilet and a bed.’
‘Cunnamulla it is.’
With that sorted, silence reigned as they wended their way through the beautiful Blue Mountains, and down the other side of the Great Dividing Range. Kent went back to his camera bag, soothed by the familiarity of the routine.
