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But hell, look where it had landed him.
‘Damon!’
Bella’s voice brought him whirling round. She was standing at the front gate, holding a small bag that probably held spare clothes. She was ready to jump in a car with him, again, although not quite in the same spontaneous way she had all those years ago.
She was wiser now, thank heavens. Wiser and warier. And so was he.
‘Ready when you are,’ she called.
His stomach tightened.
Bella had deliberately changed into her plainest clothes—old and slightly baggy jeans, a sensible, sun-smart, long-sleeved cotton shirt and sneakers. No make-up, just sunscreen and lip gloss.
Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and shoved inside a peaked cap. Sunglasses finished the picture and she hoped the message was clear: she was a flirtation-free zone.
The embarrassing thing was—it was she who needed to remember this. Not Damon. She knew there was absolutely no risk that he’d start flirting with her. His focus was solely on finding their grandparents.
‘How’s your father?’ he asked when he reached her.
‘Not too bad, thanks.’
‘He coped with the news?’
‘About the wedding? Yes.’
Actually, her dad had taken the news surprisingly well. He’d talked about sparks and chemistry, the kind of fire that had, apparently, kindled his happy marriage to her mum. Bella wondered if he’d guessed that a lack of these sparks had been at the heart of her problem with Kent.
‘He assures me he’s fine now,’ she said. ‘He’s only mildly concerned about Paddy, but he thinks it’s great that we’re going to find them and keep an eye on them. Oh, and he’s hoping to see you when we get back.’
‘Right,’ Damon said with the grim reserve that seemed to have become his default demeanour. ‘Let’s hit the road.’
The sun had climbed high and Bella turned up the collar of her shirt to protect her neck.
‘Are you worried about the sun?’ Damon was blessed with a natural tan, thanks to Italian heritage on his father’s side. He frowned at her. ‘We don’t have to have the top down.’
‘I’m okay for now, thanks.’ Risk of sunburn was not Bella’s first concern today. She was worn out after weeks of tension over the wedding and she welcomed a dose of sunshine and fresh air to blow away the cobwebs.
‘I’m planning to head across the downs to the coast via Kingaroy.’ Damon dropped a folded map into a pocket on the inside of his door. ‘I don’t expect we’ll need this, but I thought I’d play it safe.’
‘That’s not like you.’
He regarded her with a steady, cool gaze. ‘I guess I’ve changed.’ After a beat, ‘Haven’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ In recent years playing it safe had become a habit. So much so that her life had come to a grinding halt.
But she would worry about reinventing herself once they’d found Paddy and Violet.
‘I brought a photograph of them.’ She reached into her bag. ‘It was taken at Greenacres last Christmas. I’m afraid we were all wearing silly paper hats, but you can see our faces quite well.’
‘Brilliant.’ Damon’s eyes warmed as he looked at the snap of the happy trio linked arm in arm in front of a Christmas tree. ‘It won’t be easy to ask nosy questions without arousing suspicions, but at least this photo proves that you actually know Paddy and Violet. Good thinking.’
Bella was ridiculously pleased by this small spoonful of praise. For heaven’s sake, she had to calm down. Unnerved, she looked away.
Damon was calm and businesslike. ‘I think we’re good to go. The Greenacres people have our numbers, so they’ll ring us if there’s any fresh news.’ And then he started the car.
Almost against her will, Bella found herself watching him. His hands had always been strong and capable and she used to love watching him do ordinary things—anything really—catching a ball, wielding a penknife, changing gears.
The car’s engine purred, she took a deep breath and they moved smoothly forward. Within moments, fields of crops and clumps of bushland flashed past and she turned her attention to the scenery, determined that by the end of this trip she would be an expert on Queensland’s geography. Not the driver.
From the start, Damon tried his best to concentrate on the road ahead and to remain impartial to Bella’s presence beside him.
But she was constantly there in his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t help being aware of her hands, restless in her lap, pale and delicate and city-girl cared for. Her nails were painted silver and every now and then she fiddled with her ring finger, rubbing at the skin where her engagement ring had been.
What was she thinking?
He couldn’t deny he was curious about her mood now that the wedding was off. Was she heartbroken? Relieved? He couldn’t tell.
It was none of his business, of course. He had to get his mind out of that groove. He should try to think of something to talk about, but the only thing they had in common were memories and they were as dangerous to negotiate as a minefield.
‘So how’s your father?’ Bella asked him suddenly.
Damon almost groaned aloud. From his point of view, she couldn’t have chosen a worse conversation opener.
One look at his face and she must have guessed this. Carefully, she asked, ‘Is he still being difficult?’
‘No.’ Damon glared through the windscreen to the road ahead. ‘We just stay well clear of each other.’
He knew that Bella would be recalling the escalating wars he’d had with his policeman dad during the five years he’d been stationed in Willara. The final showdown had led to the cancellation of his eighteenth birthday party, and the end of their high-school romance.
‘You’ve certainly made sure you stayed far enough away,’ she said.
Damon bristled. Talking about his father was guaranteed to make him snappy. ‘I didn’t leave Australia simply to escape.’
‘Didn’t you?’
There was no mistaking the faint criticism in her voice. But Damon wasn’t prepared to admit she was close to the truth, that reporting about other people’s problems had helped him to avoid his own.
‘I wanted to see the world,’ he said. ‘You know—broaden my mind—experience as many different cultures and perspectives as I could.’
‘That does sound very appealing.’
There was a wistful quality to her voice. He turned to catch her expression, but her face was mostly hidden by the brim of her cap and her sunglasses.
He thought how different her past decade had been from his. While he’d been the prodigal son, she’d been the good and dutiful daughter, staying in Queensland and worrying about her parents and their illnesses. Coping with her mother’s death. She’d been very close to her mother.
To make amends for his terseness, he said, ‘This probably sounds clumsy, but I really liked your mother. She was terrific.’
Bella shook her head. ‘That’s not clumsy. It’s nice. I don’t get to hear it very often. Most people avoid talking about Mum. I suppose they’re worried they’ll upset me.’ She turned to him. ‘Mum liked you, Damon.’
‘Until I blotted my copybook.’
‘No. I know it didn’t seem like it at the time, but my mother was a true-blue fan of yours.’ She looked down and rubbed at her finger again. ‘Did you know she’d made you a birthday cake?’
‘For my eighteenth?’
‘Yes, for the party that never happened.’ Almost immediately, Bella groaned. ‘Sorry. Forget I mentioned that.’
‘Mentioned what?’
She looked momentarily puzzled, and then she smiled. Damon smiled, too, and for a heartbeat, it was dangerously almost like old times.
They stopped for a late lunch at a roadside café. Bella wasn’t particularly hungry and only ate half of her toasted sandwiches, but Damon tucked into his hamburger.
On the road again, she felt her eyelids beginning to droop. She’d had very little sleep the night before. She’d tossed and turned after she’d received a late text message from Kent saying that he needed to talk. And then this morning he’d knocked on her hotel-room door at the crack of dawn, and, although she was happy with the outcome, reaching their final decision had been an emotionally draining process.
She yawned loudly.
‘Feel free to sleep,’ Damon told her.
‘Oh, it’s too early. If I sleep now, I’ll never sleep tonight. I think I need to keep talking.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was too tired for anything serious like politics or current affairs. Problem was, Damon had been her first boyfriend and her head was full of memories of his kisses and caresses, of the exciting journey of sexual discovery that they’d begun together. ‘You could tell me about your girlfriends.’
‘Not much to report there.’
‘Rubbish. I’ve read all about you in a celebrity magazine. You’ve had girlfriends galore.’
She watched him silently, waiting for him to respond.
Instead, he bounced the question back at her. ‘And I suppose you’ve had lots of boyfriends?’
Ouch. She had no intention of telling Damon Cavello about her sadly minimalist relationship history. She sighed, knowing there was one topic she should probably broach. ‘I suppose I should explain about Kent,’ she said. ‘And why we decided not to get married.’
His hands tensed on the steering wheel. ‘Only if you want to.’
‘It’s okay. I think I’d like to explain. After all, you’re Kent’s friend. But it’s actually a rather long story.’
‘We have plenty of time.’
‘Yes.’ She drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Well … it started when my father got really sick.’
‘You’ve had a rough trot, Bella.’
She nodded. ‘After Mum died, we were all rather lost … Dad, Paddy and I. But your grandmother was wonderful for Paddy. She went out of her way to cheer him up.’
Damon smiled. ‘She has a talent for cheering people up. I’m glad she was able to help. She mentioned that your father was very low.’
‘He was. He started drinking too much. Drowning his sorrows. It was really awful, actually.’
‘You were away, working in Brisbane, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, and I didn’t realise how quickly Dad was going downhill. He was neglecting the farm. He wasn’t paying bills. When I realised how bad things were, I started coming home on weekends, and Kent helped out on the farm. Mending fences. Ploughing. Kent was fabulous, actually.’
Damon slanted her a piercing glance. ‘Is that when the two of you became close?’
‘Yes.’ She looked away, then said carefully, ‘I’m not sure if you ever knew, but Kent’s always looked up to my father. You probably heard that Dad saved Kent from drowning when he was a kid?’ Damon nodded.
‘Kent felt that he owed him a huge debt. He became very worried when Dad started the heavy drinking. Then Dad developed heart failure. He’d been literally drinking himself to death.’
‘And Kent wanted to help.’
‘Yes.’
‘By marrying you?’
The fierce intensity in Damon’s voice made her shiver. ‘More or less.’ She rubbed at her arms. ‘Kent suggested we should get engaged, and suddenly it seemed to be the answer to all my problems. He and I would be living next door to Dad. We could keep an eye on him, get him to AA meetings and help him to run the farm.’
‘And there’d be grandchildren for your father to dote on. A reason for him to go on living.’
Bella drew a sharp breath. ‘That was what we hoped.’
After a beat, Damon said, smoothly, ‘It sounds like a great plan. Dare I ask what went wrong?’
Oh, help. This was the hard part.
There was no way she could explain to this man who set her heart spinning at fifty paces about their lack of chemistry. ‘We—ah—realised that gratitude isn’t a good basis for a happy marriage,’ she said quietly.
Damon’s clever grey eyes narrowed. ‘And it was an amicable decision?’
‘Of course.’
But suddenly she’d had enough. She’d told Damon far more than she’d intended and she didn’t want this clever reporter probing too deeply. ‘This isn’t an interview, Damon. If you don’t mind, I’m done with answering questions.’
With that, she yawned dramatically and closed her eyes.
Damon drove on, and it wasn’t too long before Bella’s head slipped sideways. Her cap fell off revealing the soft, pale gleam of her hair. A strand escaped and fluttered gently like a golden streamer. As her head tipped farther he caught sight of the thick fringe of her eyelashes behind her sunglasses. Yes, she was definitely asleep, and he was flooded by a surge of protectiveness.
He thought about the story she’d just told him. There’d been no sign of self-pity in her voice, but he’d found her tale incredibly sad. Bella, the fun-loving, sexy and adventurous girl he’d known, had been loaded with too many responsibilities and worries.
Reading between the lines … these worries were the reason she’d been prepared to sacrifice herself in a passionless marriage. The thought of Bella trapped by duty enraged him.
But … damn it. This was so not the way he wanted to feel. An emotional reconnection with Bella Shaw was definitely not part of his plan.
He forced his focus to the blue bitumen road stretching ahead, and to the wider, lighter blue of the sky arching above. Purposefully, he inhaled the scents of dry earth and the eucalyptus wafting in on the fresh, clean air.
For him, the allure of an open road had always been strong, and if he weren’t so concerned now about Violet and Paddy he would have absolutely loved this journey. Each bend in the road was a new possibility, a chance for adventure. He was always at his happiest when he was travelling with no clear destination.
