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It was like an endurance test.
They stopped for a late lunch, then a major accident and a hailstorm held them up. Darkness fell suddenly, like a wet blanket.
They’d swapped driving duty an hour ago, which gave Steve nothing to do but concentrate on not thinking about his proximity to Anneliese. The radio had dropped out fifty kilometres back and the silence inside the car was beginning to grate on Steve’s nerves. It was past 10:00 p.m. ‘We’ve got to stop somewhere tonight,’ he said. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Ah…I…was hoping we could drive straight through—’
‘Nope.’ He’d expected that. ‘I need a few hours of horizontal.’
‘Take a nap now, then. I’m right for a while.’ Without taking her eyes off the road, she set the open map on his lap.
He’d hardly closed his eyes when he woke feeling vaguely disoriented. He checked his watch. One hour. Something wasn’t right.
She caught his glance and her frown mirrored his. ‘I expected we would’ve been near Moree by now… I think maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere…’
‘We?’
‘I thought—’
‘The general condition of this road gave you no clue?’ He gestured at the view beyond the windscreen, switched on the car’s interior light. ‘Why didn’t you wake me? Pull over to the side of the road.’
She complied without a word.
‘This is where we’re headed—were headed…’ Taking the map from his knee, she spread it out on the dashboard.
‘Anneliese. No.’ He remained calm—was calm, he told himself—as he reorientated the map ninety degrees, pointed to their route. So it was true what they said about women and maps. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘No.’ She set the car into gear, turned and headed back the way they’d come. ‘What’s that noise—?’
‘Just what we damn well need—’
They both spoke at the same time.
‘Pull over again,’ he ordered.
A chill wind wrapped around him as he climbed out. He confirmed the problem, then poked his head inside to give Anneliese the good news. ‘We’ve got a flat.’ He zipped his vest as high as it would go. ‘Guess we can be thankful it’s not something serious or we might be stuck here for hours.’
CHAPTER THREE
A FLAT.
As in tyre.
As in we need the spare.
The spare with the three-month old puncture she’d forgotten about.
Taking a deep breath, Anneliese closed her eyes. A hole seemed to open up in her stomach and she wished she could just crawl into it and disappear. So much for being independent.
‘Switch off the engine and help me unload your gear from the boot and I’ll change it,’ she heard Steve say. ‘Maybe we can still make Moree this side of midnight.’
She switched off the car but remained where she was. A muffled ‘um’ escaped from between her tight lips.
When she opened her eyes she found Steve leaning over the passenger seat, his gaze fixed on hers. ‘Tell me you have a jack.’
‘I do.’
‘Thank heavens for that, then,’ he said, backing out again. ‘For a moment there, I—’
‘But the spare’s…punctured.’
‘The. Spare’s. Punctured.’ He enunciated each word as if he needed time to absorb the meaning.
‘I never got around to…’ she looked away; she didn’t think he’d appreciate her bringing into it the fact that Dad considered it a man’s job and took care of her car. ‘…getting it repaired.’
‘You planned to drive seventeen hundred k’s without having your car checked over first.’ She flinched at the sound of a frustrated palm slapping the car’s roof. ‘I bet you didn’t forget your perfume, did you?’ He shut the passenger door with a firm thud.
‘For your inf…’ Forget it, he can’t hear you. He doesn’t want to hear you.
And what he’d said was no more than the brutally honest truth.
She watched him in the car’s headlights as he walked away, his unkempt hair whipped by the wind. He turned into the glare and motioned her to turn off the lights as he pulled something out of his pocket.
What in heaven’s name would she have done if she’d been alone? Exactly what he was doing, she thought, watching him punch numbers into his mobile. But she breathed a sigh of relief that he had everything under control and slumped down in her seat.
Except hadn’t she sworn to take control of her own life? She jackknifed up again. Wasn’t that why she’d begun this journey? To make changes? Forget that if she’d been responsible he wouldn’t be making calls on a lonely road in the middle of the night. Someone else taking charge. Again. Worse, it was Steve, the man she always seemed to fall apart in front of.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Ratty vest aside, he was…what? She’d never been so aware of any man the way she was aware of Steve. Because he was different? Because he didn’t treat her the way her usual dates did?
Her mind spun back to her twenty-first party at an exclusive Melbourne club. Most of the guests had left and he’d turned up late to collect Cindy and somehow Anneliese had found herself alone in the car park with Steve…
‘Happy birthday, Anneliese.’
His deep-timbred voice resonated along her bones, sending excitement fizzing through her veins like the celebratory champagne she’d been drinking all night, and she quite simply froze.
‘Thank you,’ she managed—barely—mesmerised by a smile that was as potent as the intensity of his dark eyes. She’d have walked past him, but even motionless he seemed to be blocking her way. Her feet remained glued to the concrete.
His hair stood up in spikes, and that facial fuzz had to be at least three days old. There was a smear of grease on his arm, as if he’d been playing mechanic. In tattered jeans and sneakers and a black T-shirt that looked as if it had been spray-painted over that mile-wide chest, obviously he didn’t care that this place had a dress code, even if he was only on driving duty.
And yet her pulse took no notice of the fact that this was the type of man she avoided.
‘You look sensational tonight,’ he said when she didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Just stood like a statue in her filmy white organza gown, eyes fused with his while his body heat radiated across the too-close space between them. ‘Thank you again.’ She cleared her throat and attempted to paste a smile on her stiff lips. ‘Cindy’s inside.’
‘Sorry I’m late—I’ve been working on her car.’ He hesitated a beat before saying, ‘Do I get a birthday kiss?’ He must have presumed she’d comply because he promptly stepped in and she got a whiff of motor oil and healthy sweat.
Her heart thundered; her breath stalled. Terror invaded her body. Terror that she’d fall at his feet in a mindless quivering heap. She flung out a hand in front of her. ‘Touch me and I’ll…’ She trailed off. Already her lips were tingling, her hand falling limp to her side, her body swaying towards him.
Her numbed brain registered a flicker of hurt behind the heat in his gaze. ‘And you’ll…what, Anneliese?’
She could feel the vibration of his lips, his breath, in the air between them and closed her eyes for the final assault.
Then…nothing.
‘No. On second thoughts, I don’t think so,’ he murmured. ‘You’d just spend the rest of the night awake and restles and wishing for more than just a kiss.’
She gasped as her eyes snapped open. His mouth was still a whisper away from hers. But not close enough.
Never going to be close enough.
Her cheeks stung with humiliation while her hands itched to slap that arrogant smile off his face. And her lips still ached.
Straightening, he stepped away. ‘And you’d hate yourself in the morning…’
Anneliese relived the emotions as she watched him through the windscreen. On the few occasions they’d run into each other, neither of them had mentioned that evening again. But it was always there, a silent wall between them.
So of course he hadn’t invited himself on this trip. He’d done it for Cindy’s peace of mind, and her father’s. She watched him rake a hand through his over-long hair and promptly dismissed the image of that hand touching her with the same wild abandon.
He looked thoroughly untamed right now with the wind flapping against his vest and the threadbare patches in the knees of his jeans. Some women went for that look. A lot of women apparently. A disconcerting blip interrupted her pulse… That was how she knew it wouldn’t be a chaste kiss at the front door.
As for her birthday non-kiss… Well, she’d never know.
He turned and headed back to the car and even in the night’s dimness she didn’t miss the impatient snap in his long strides, the grim face as he shoved the mobile in his jeans pocket. Chill air bowled into the car, sweeping away the residual warmth from the car’s heating as he swung the door open and slid inside. He smelled of spice and winter grass and she had to force herself not to gulp it in.
‘First off, I apologise,’ he clipped. ‘That gibe about the perfume was uncalled for.’
She inclined her head. ‘You called it as you see it. What now?’
‘Can’t get a signal.’ He closed his eyes briefly, then turned to her, his jaw tight and shadowed with the day’s stubble. ‘I’ll try again later. Unless a car comes by, we’re stuck here. And since we’ll need a tow, we’re here for the night in any case.’
She told herself the tight clench in the region of her stomach was because she hadn’t eaten, that the only reason her skin prickled was because she was cold. But it was more than that. Her irresponsibility had got them into this mess. And now they were stranded. Together. Close together. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘These things happen.’ He squeezed her shoulder in a totally non-sexual way and his expression relaxed a little, but warmth spiralled from his touch down to her fingertips.
She’d just bet these things didn’t happen to Steve.
He blew on his hands. ‘Do you have a rug, or something we can share while we wait?’
Share body heat with Steve Anderson? Her pulse accelerated and her skin prickled anew and she shivered involuntarily. For a moment she considered saying no, but that was about as dumb as travelling without an inflated spare tyre.
‘There’s a quilt in the boot.’ Scrambling out, she hugged herself against the wind as she headed to the back of the car, then began pulling out bags.
Steve appeared at her side, shrugging off his vest. ‘Here. You’re shivering.’ Before she knew what he was about, he’d slung the vest around her shoulders, enveloping her in his spicy warmth.
She didn’t need it. She didn’t need to feel the slippery sensation of the lining against her breasts through her jumper, didn’t want to be surrounded by his masculine scent. ‘No… I’m okay.’
Irritation and impatience sparked in his eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Keep it, I don’t feel the cold,’ he said, pulling the quilt out. ‘Get back in the car, I’ll finish up here.’
She did as he requested, dragging her arms through the openings in the vest on the way. Steve joined her a couple of minutes later with the quilt—her bedroom quilt with the extra down filling that seemed to shrink the limited space even further.
‘Slide your seat back.’ His breath tickled her ear and his hands looked big and dark and masculine on the familiar pink floral fabric as he adjusted it over them both.
Whoa. Her whole body went rigid; her heart stalled. It was like being in bed with him. She only had to lean a little more to the left to find out how his lips would feel against hers, and she was tempted. She’d never acted out anything like that in her life.
‘The steering wheel’s going to get in your way,’ he said patiently. ‘And if we want to maximise the quilt’s effectiveness we need to be close.’
‘Close?’ she repeated, her eyes drifting to his mouth again. Her voice came out as a whisper.
Then she realised he was waiting for her to oblige with the seat. She slid it back a couple of notches so that they were shoulder to shoulder. His heat burned through her jumper where they touched. Only the handbrake prevented their thighs from abrading. Thank heavens. She remained rod-stiff, closed her eyes and counted. One, two—
‘I won’t hurt you, Anneliese.’
The tenderness and absolute sincerity in his voice slid over her like the finest silk on polished wood. ‘I know that. You’re Cindy’s brother.’
A pause while he shifted—probably to a different angle—bumping her shoulder, but she wasn’t looking, so she didn’t know. Except…she could feel his gaze on her face, could hear the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
‘Do you only ever see me as Cindy’s brother?’ he said into the silence.
Oh, not a fair question. ‘Since I only see you when I’m with Cindy, the answer’s yes.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Isn’t that how you see me? As Cindy’s friend?’ She opened her eyes to find herself looking into direct and piercing eyes, his normally amber gaze coal-dark in the dimness, and swallowed.
‘We’re not with Cindy now.’
Anneliese’s heart stumbled against her ribcage and she looked away, into the night. That was his answer?
Whatever it was—a mistake, a slip of the tongue, an accusation—seemed to snap his patience. He shifted abruptly and his tone changed yet again. ‘I often wonder how it is that the two of you hit it off so well.’
Her gaze swung back to him. ‘I often wonder how you two can be brother and sister.’
He smiled. And, oh…my… The corners of his eyes crinkled, his mouth tipped up boyishly, revealing an endearingly crooked tooth. She’d never noticed that before, she thought hazily. Something stirred along her skin, fluttered in her breast, and she found herself smiling back.
‘I’ve wondered the same thing myself.’ He shook his head, warmth and affection for Cindy radiating from those twinkling eyes. ‘Maybe I was adopted.’
Anneliese’s smile froze. Her veins turned to ice. The almost relaxed warmth she’d been enjoying seeped away, leaving her chilled to the bone. She was elbow-jostling and knee-bumping and breathing the same air with another human being, yet she’d never felt so desolate.
‘Hey. What’s wrong?’ His own smile faded, his eyes narrowed and he reached out, touched a finger to her cheek.
The sensation of being touched, of normal human contact, tempered the pain of the past moment, but she stiffened and drew back, afraid of her own unstable emotions. Afraid of him. His heat, his proximity, his potent and unfamiliar brand of masculinity.
She didn’t want Steve getting in the way of what she had to do. She didn’t want Steve, period. She just wanted to reach her destination.
‘Nothing’s wrong. My stomach’s talking to me,’ she lied, patting her middle. ‘In fact it’s howling.’ She summoned up a casual demeanour and voice to match. ‘I’m going to have to admit you were right and beg a couple of squares of that chocolate you so prudently purchased this morning.’
He studied her as if trying to read meaning into her sudden turnabouts of the past few moments, then his mouth quirked and he said, ‘You mean that calorie-laden one with the delicious caramel filling? All we’ve got to eat between us until mid-morning at least?’
