Page 29 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

She could see his chest rise and fall beneath the thin cotton of the T-shirt he’d thrown on, along with sweatpants. ‘You do realise I’m sharing a full basket of vulnerabilities with you here?’

‘They weren’t exactly hidden.’

Ouch, Judah. Ouch. ‘You could reciprocate by revealing one of your many flaws. You might be scared of emus.’ She loved it when he smiled, no matter how small. ‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Razorbacks?’ Those huge wild pigs were mean mothers.

‘No.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘I’ll give those their due,’ he offered. ‘I have a few.’

But he didn’t name them and she didn’t press. Why on earth had she mentioned ghosts to a man who had killed to protect her? And then lost both his parents less than a year ago, while in prison for his sin? ‘They can dance with mine,’ she muttered. ‘They might even be the same ghosts. I bet you’re afraid of mice.’

‘In plague proportions? You betcha.’

See? They could have a meaningful, getting-to-know-you conversation if they tried. It took great patience and good coffee. And now she needed to retreat and leave him be, because she wasn’t pushy or needy or utterly infatuated with him. She was Bridie Starr of Devil’s Kiss station and life was full of joy and pain and growth and heartache and that was all just part of living. And dammit she wanted to live. ‘So, I’ll see you this evening?’

He nodded.

She turned away.

‘Hey.’ He’d waited until she was almost to her room. ‘For what it’s worth, you dazzle me too.’

By six o’clock that evening, Bridie’s bravado seemed to have fled. Judah watched with growing concern as she refused a bite to eat and started pacing instead, pausing every now and then to look at the paintings on the wall and in doing so somehow make her silhouette look even smaller.

‘How many people need to be at this opening for it to be a success?’ he asked, and she wrapped her arms around her middle and looked blankly towards him.

He tried again. ‘How many pictures do you need to sell for the exhibition to be a success?’

‘I’m sure the gallery has a percentage in mind, but I don’t know it. Sell-out show sounds good, though.’

He could help with her sell-out-show wish. He’d already secured one picture by calling through to the gallery this afternoon. He’d agreed that whatever picture of him she’d chosen to display could be part of her exhibition but hell if he was going to let it end up on someone else’s wall. The gallery director had initially told him it wasn’t for sale. Money had taken care of that objection. She’d promised not to sell the picture to anyone but him.

‘Does this outfit look arty enough?’

She looked to him for an answer, but how would he know what arty looked like? Didn’t arty people slink around in black trousers and turtlenecks? Or was that look owned by successful tech titans these days?

Bridie wore a vivid blue silk top streaked with grey and the burnt orangey brown of the channel country she called home. Sleeves to her elbows, the neckline as high and tight as one of his shirts. The top angled in towards her impossibly tiny waist and with it she wore severe grey trousers that flared at the bottom and didn’t go anywhere near to covering lace-up black boots. It was a fashion look, as far as he could tell, and she wore it very well. ‘Yes. You look fantastic.’

‘Fantastically arty though?’

‘Yes.’ And he looked like a suit, because he only had a few looks and one of them was outback scruffy and another was prison rough and neither would do here. ‘How did you get into modelling in the first place? Was it something you wanted?’

‘Oh.’ She looked momentarily surprised by his question. ‘No. I didn’t think about my looks at all much when I was growing up. I was just me and there was no one around much to see me anyway.’

‘So how did you start?’

‘I was in Melbourne with Aunt Beth for my fifteenth birthday and we’d gone to David Jones department store because she was going to buy me some make-up. That was her gift to me. It was the first time I’d ever seen those little make-up booths with women just standing around looking beautiful and waiting to make other people look beautiful too.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Everything was so glossy. So there we were and this make-up lady had just given me smoky eyes and cheekbones and then this beautifully dressed power woman rushed past and then backed right up and pointed at me and said, “You, come with me.” It was fashion week. An hour later I was walking down the catwalk, filling in for a model who hadn’t turned up. And that was that. Hello, modelling career, with my aunt as my manager.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘I loved the clothes, the make-up artists and hair stylists fussing over me, and the way I could sometimes barely recognise myself after they were done. Yeah. And then they took me off the catwalk and turned the camera on me and I got to see what great photographers could do with light and colour and settings and perspective and I was hooked. I wanted that, photography, only by that time Laurence was my manager and my aunt’s lover and he didn’t want that for me at all. He got more controlling. Started coming to every shoot. It only got creepier from there. I think he wanted a dress-up doll.’

Even after sitting at trial and hearing that Bridie had been beaten and kidnapped but not sexually abused, he hated thinking about what might have happened had Laurence not been stopped.

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