Page 8 of Fearless
Chapter 3
It was a four-hour drive from Cairns airport to his home on the outskirts of Cooktown. With Kitty in the car, it took six.
On the way out of town, he stopped at a café for two of the biggest burgers they had to offer. He even indulged in a milkshake because, frankly, the more she ate the better, in his opinion. The pictures Garreth had sent hadn’t done the situation justice, and not in a good way. She was thinner than in the photos, with her stress showing openly on her too-pale face. It was in the hollowness of her eyes and in the tiny, premature frown lines etched around her mouth. She probably hadn’t smiled in at least as long as she hadn’t eaten.
And yet, in the time it took him to scarf his burger down, she only managed four small bites, not even a fourth of the burger, and maybe as many sips of the shake. Less than ten minutes later, he yanked the truck over to the side of the road while she hung her head out, vomiting. It happened so fast and without any warning from her, right up until she vaulted out of her seatbelt to roll the window down.
The wrong question entirely was out of his mouth before he could censure himself. “Are you preggo, love?”
She didn’t answer. Accepting the burger napkins he handed her once she’d eased back in through the open window, she gave him a withering frown and wiped her mouth.
Okay, then. Well, stress was certainly known to have this kind of effect on people, and obviously she was under a fair amount of that. So did a touch of the stomach flu. So did travel sickness, for that matter, and she had just got off a plane and promptly into his truck.
Pulling back out into traffic, Noah continued on his way, comfortable once again in his mind that, while this was going to be a big change for him, it was also the best possible thing for someone in Kitty’s position. “Give your gut time to settle, then sip your shake,” he said with a nod, because while he couldn’t do much about travel sickness, once he got her home and into bed, time and rest would sort out the other two.
Kitty didn’t answer but ten or so minutes later, she did take another sip of her shake. Then putting it back in the cup holder, she didn’t touch it again. She didn’t touch her burger either, not until they were a good hour underway. And then, she only touched it long enough to roll her window down and chuck it, wrapper and all, out into the wood brush.
“The smell,” she said by way of explanation as she rolled her window back up again. Gathering every other remnant of their meal, she stuffed it all back in the sack and tossed it into the backseat as far from her as she could get it. Hugging her stomach, she curled against the side of the door, turned her face to the window and closed her eyes.
Noah let her pretend to sleep. With any luck, the real thing would creep up on her while she was doing it and she’d get some much-needed rest. If it did, however, she didn’t snore and, every now and then, when he happened to glance over at her, more often than not he could tell by her lashes that her eyes were open. He had to look carefully, though, because she was listening for his movements. If he turned his head or shifted, or even dropped a hand from the steering wheel into his lap, she heard it and closed her eyes. No, all of his cautious spying had to be done via the rearview mirror if he wanted to catch her. He wasn’t offended. If he’d been through half of what Garreth reported that she had, he’d have been a cot case too.
The sun was almost gone by the time he pulled off the road to Cooktown. He went slow, but the single-lane road to his house wasn’t paved and the truck bounced in and out of the well-worn ruts and runnels so badly that even one as stubborn as Kitty gave up on ‘sleeping.’ She sat up.
“Home sweet home,” Noah said, somewhat proudly, as he pulled up to the front porch of his one-story ranch house. Once upon a time, it had been his grandfather’s house, built by the Carver patriarch’s own work-rough hands and to the aesthetic tastes of most 1930s farmspreads in the Outback. Not that being located on the outskirts of Cooktown qualified as the Outback, but the house didn’t know that and Noah was always proud to show it off.
It was red brick with an upgraded grey metal roof and white shutters, window awnings, porch posts and railings, and an extra wide, screen-enclosed veranda that kept the bugs out all the way around the house. The windows were huge and many, and although his property did not butt up to the ocean as so many did in Cooktown, he was close enough to it that opening all the windows north to south still worked as the best summertime air conditioning by catching that saltwater breeze that swept in off the Pacific. Shade cast over the house by the towering mango and eucalyptus trees did the rest, at least until it got too hot and muggy. At that point, Noah figured God made indoor air conditioning for a reason.
In the seat beside him, Kitty scrunched down low enough to stare, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the leafy awnings of the sheltering trees and—in particular—at the koala lazily climbing from one grazing spot to another higher up in the canopy.
“What—” she breathed, but stopped herself and looked at him instead.
“Koala,” he told her. “Which, by the way, are nowhere near as cute as the movies like to portray. They mostly stay up in the trees; sometimes they come down to the porch, especially when the weather gets bad. I’ve a watering trough and a screen left open for them out back.”
“I thought koalas didn’t drink,” Kitty said hesitantly.
“Used to be I thought that too. But, I suppose climate change’ll catch up with all of us eventually. Most of the year, they get what they need from the leaves. The rest of the time, they know where the watering trough is. The point is, cute they may be, but they’re also wild animals; they can and do bite. If you see one on the porch, give it a wide berth and leave it be. That’s Rule Number One.” He flashed her a smile as he snagged her bag from the backseat and got out of the truck. “Come on. I’ll give you the tour.”
He was all the way to the porch steps before she, reluctantly, unclipped her seatbelt. He used a smile to encourage her to follow, though he couldn’t help but note the supreme reluctance with which she stole glimpses of the field around his house and then the surrounding woods beyond them. He loved the natural seclusion his home offered and, especially, he was fond of the fact that nothing could be seen of any of his neighbors. Not so much as a porchlight at night. Judging by the shuttered absence of expression on her unsmiling face, Kitty did not feel the same. She did follow him, but only to the bottom of the porch steps. Then she stopped again.
Kitty wasn’t a short woman. Slightly taller than the average female he knew, nevertheless, she wasn’t as tall as he was and it didn’t help that he was standing one step shy of the top of his porch. So, Noah made himself smaller, lowering himself to his haunches and gentling his smile. Yet another that she would not return. She was a skittish one, he’d give her that.
“If your friends didn’t trust me,” he reminded her. “You wouldn’t be here. Right?”
Breathing in, she swept the remoteness of their surroundings before her gaze grudgingly returned to him. She nodded once.
“All right, then.” He straightened again, pointing west. “Cooktown lies three kilometers that way. Nearest neighbor is a bloke named Harris, almost a kilometer past those trees.” He directed her gaze back behind her, southeast past his truck. “If you feel like exploring, there’s no place on my property that you cannot go so long as I’m with you. If I’m not with you, you need to be within a quick sprint of this house. That’s Rule Number Two.” He waved her up the steps. “Come on inside.”
He put his car keys into his pocket. The door was never locked; he just went in.
“Welcome to my home.” Her bag still clutched in one hand, his smile morphing into a grin, he gestured broadly from living to dining room. “Come in, come in. Don’t let the A/C out, love. That’s Rule Number Three.”
A hand to the small of her back as soon as she crossed the threshold helped to hustle her far enough inside for him to close the door. Dropping her bag on the end of the couch, he crossed the room to the hallway that divided the two front rooms. “Living room,” he said, quite obviously to the pleasant sitting area to her left. A beige couch for company, an overstuffed easy chair for him, the blue curtains his mother had given him to help block out the sun, several dozen sporting trophies and winner plaques, plus a television that he almost never turned on made up the whole of its contents.
He pointed the other way. “Dining.” Four chairs were currently tucked up to the oversized table his grandfather had hand carved and which could easily have seated twelve when the three leaves were put back in. “Kitchen’s through that door.”
She obediently glanced to the open archway to the dining room’s far right.
“And here right behind me—”
