Page 21 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

Apparently, I’m also an idiot.

Bridie spent the rest of the day seething, developing film, and coming to the bald realisation that she’d somehow just taken some of the best photos of her life. Danger. Foreboding. Homecoming. Pleasure.

The cameras she’d set up to take a shot every thirty seconds had caught those moments of them together and they were more beautiful than she could ever have imagined, and she couldn’t ever show them to Judah, or anyone else, because he’d turned her down.

For reasons that made no sense.

‘Complete and utter idiot,’ she muttered the following morning as she dumped a tea bag into a huge mug and switched the jug on to boil some water. Because she’d had glorious love-soaked dreams all last night and she most certainly had not let the memory of yesterday’s kisses go. Hell, no.

‘Are you talking about my brother?’ a voice wanted to know, from somewhere over near the doorway, and there stood Reid, hat in hand and hair unruly. ‘Because he’s also a surly bastard.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to talk business. I’m also here to check up on you and see if your father’s home yet.’

And that was another reason for her foul mood. ‘I haven’t heard from him.’

‘Have you spoken to your aunt?’

‘Not since the trial,’ she muttered darkly. ‘And before you ask, I never cut her off. I love my aunt, even if she’s another complete and utter moron. She blames herself for being taken in by a monster who courted her to get to me, and she’s too ashamed to speak to me. I phoned. I wrote. I begged her to come see me. To forgive herself because I sure as hell didn’t hold her responsible for someone else’s insanity. Fat lot of good it did.’

‘Er...right.’

‘How come I didn’t hear your helicopter?’

‘I came on the dirt bike.’

She hadn’t heard that either. Existing in a world of her own, her father would have said had he been around. Which he wasn’t. Stubborn old goat. ‘And you’re also here on business, you said?’

‘Yep. Tourist lodge business. What are your thoughts on retractable roofs and floor-to-ceiling glass windows?’

Bridie blinked.

‘So that someone who, say, doesn’t like feeling hemmed in and doesn’t like sleeping indoors, doesn’t have to sleep in a swag in the back of his ute every night.’

Reid sent her a beseeching look, inviting her to buy into his problems, but she didn’t want to because she knew exactly where Reid’s problems led. ‘Judah?’

‘Yep.’

Right.

‘I just want to make it easier for him to get his life back, you know?’ Reid continued. ‘He’s not always...coping. And it’s the little stuff.’

Judah didn’t exactly appear to be coping all that well with the big stuff either—if impromptu wanton kisses followed by a hasty retreat could be classified as such. Or maybe she was the only needy wanton person around here. ‘What’s not to love about disappearing ceilings and walls? Turn all the lights on and bring every insect for six kilometres around for a feed.’

‘Okay, so my plans might need work,’ Reid conceded. ‘Wanna help?’

Two hours passed as they sketched cabin design after cabin design and talked about how best to accommodate eccentric guests with all sorts of needs. Reid’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Bridie’s interest in putting lodges on the ridges became real. She wanted this project to succeed. Two hours and three arguments later, they had a cabin layout they both liked. Bridie sat back, pleased with their progress. ‘I’m on board with this.’

‘Don’t sound so shocked.’

‘But I am shocked. I want these eco-tourism plans to work. I want to bring people here.’

Reid grinned and punched a fist in the air. ‘I knew it! And you’re going to be a world-famous photographer soon. That’s a given.’

She put her palms to her face and rubbed as butterflies found a home in her stomach at the thought of the final picture she’d chosen for the exhibition. ‘I’m going to try.’ The words came out muffled. ‘What if the media fixates on my past, instead of my work? Drags me through the mud, and Judah too? And by extension, you.’ She lowered her hands. Her fears came from a place of experience. ‘You were probably too young to remember the way the press treated the story.’

‘I was at boarding school. Believe me, I remember.’

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