Her Knight in the Outback

She shoved past him and used a staple gun to pin up another flier.

He’d seen the same poster peppering posts and walls in Madura, Cocklebiddy and Balladonia. Every point along the remote desert highway that could conceivably hold a person. And a sign. Crisp and new against all the bleached, frayed ones from years past.

‘Stop!’

Yeah, that guy wasn’t going to stop. And now the McTanked Twins were also getting in on the act.

Goddammit.

Marshall pushed out into the centre of the circle. He raised his voice the way he used to in office meetings when they became unruly. Calm but intractable. ‘Okay, show’s over, people.’

The crowd turned their attention to him, like a bunch of cattle. So did the three drunks. But they weren’t so intoxicated they didn’t pause at the sight of his beard and tattoos. Just for a moment.

The moment he needed.

‘Howzabout we find somewhere else for those?’ he suggested straight to Little Miss Hostile, neatly relieving her of the pile of posters with one hand and the staple gun with his other. ‘There are probably better locations in town.’

She spun around and glared at him in the heartbeat before she recognised him. ‘Give me those.’

He ignored her and spoke to the crowd. ‘All done, people. Let’s get moving.’

They parted for him as he pushed back through, his hands full of her property. She had little choice but to pursue him.

‘Those are mine!’

‘Let’s have this conversation around the corner,’ he gritted back and down towards her.

But just as they’d cleared the crowd, the big guy couldn’t help himself.

‘Maybe he’s gone missing to get away from you!’ he called.

A shocked gasp covered the sound of small female feet pivoting on the pavement and she marched straight back towards the jeering threesome.

Marshall shoved the papers under his arm and sprinted after her, catching her just before she re-entered the eye of the storm. All three men had lined up in it, ready. Eager. He curled his arms around her and dragged her back, off her feet, and barked just one word in her ear.

‘Don’t!’

She twisted and lurched and swore the whole way but he didn’t loosen his hold until the crowd and the jeering laughter of the drunks were well behind them.

‘Put me down,’ she struggled. ‘Ass!’

‘The only ass around here is the one I just saved.’

‘I’ve dealt with rednecks before.’

‘Yeah, you were doing a bang-up job.’

‘I have every right to put my posters up.’

‘No argument. But you could have just walked away and then come back and done it in ten minutes when the drunks were gone.’

‘But there were thirty people there.’

‘None of whom were making much of an effort to help you.’ In case she hadn’t noticed.

‘I didn’t want their help,’ she spat, spinning back to face him. ‘I wanted their attention.’

What was this—some kind of performance art thing? ‘Come again?’

‘Thirty people would have read my poster, remembered it. The same people that probably would have passed it by without noticing, otherwise.’

‘Are you serious?’

She snatched the papers and staple gun back from him and clutched them to her heaving chest. ‘Perfectly. You think I’m new to this?’

‘I really don’t know what to think. You treated me like a pariah because of a bit of leather and ink, but you were quite happy to face off against the Beer Gut Brothers, back there.’

‘It got attention.’

‘So does armed robbery. Are you telling me the bank is on your to-do list in town?’

She glared at him. ‘You don’t understand.’

And then he was looking at the back of her head again as she turned and marched away from him without so much as a goodbye. Let alone a thankyou.

He cursed under his breath.

‘Enlighten me,’ he said, catching up with her and ignoring the protest of his aching leg.

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I just risked my neck entering that fray to help you and that means you owe me one.’

‘I rescued you out on the highway. I’d say that makes us even.’

Infuriating woman. He slammed on the brakes. ‘Fine. Whatever.’

Her momentum carried her a few metres further but then she spun back. ‘Did you look at the poster?’

‘I’ve been looking at them since the border.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What’s on it?’

His brows forked. What the hell was on it? ‘Guy’s face. Bunch of words.’ And a particularly big one in red. MISSING. ‘It’s a missing-person poster.’

‘Bingo. And you’ve been looking at them since the border but can’t tell me what he looked like or what his name was or what it was about.’ She took two steps closer. ‘That’s why getting their attention was so valuable.’

Realisation washed through him and he felt like a schmuck for parachuting in and rescuing her like some damsel in distress. ‘Because they’ll remember it. You.’

‘Him!’ But her anger didn’t last long. It seemed to desert her like the adrenaline in both their bodies, leaving her flat and exhausted. ‘Maybe.’

‘What do you do—start a fight in every town you go to?’

‘Whatever it takes.’

Cars went by with stereos thumping.

‘Listen...’ Suddenly, Little Miss Hostile had all new layers. And most of them were laden with sadness. ‘I’m sorry if you had that under control. Where I come from you don’t walk past a woman crying out in the street.’

Actually, that wasn’t strictly true because he came from a pretty rough area and sometimes the best thing to do was keep walking. But while his mother might have raised her kids like that, his grandparents certainly hadn’t. And he, at least, had learned from their example even if his brother, Rick, hadn’t.

Dark eyes studied him. ‘That must get you into a lot of trouble,’ she eventually said.

True enough.

‘Let me buy you a drink. Give those guys some time to clear out and then I’ll help you put the posters up.’

‘I don’t need your help. Or your protection.’

‘Okay, but I’d like to take a proper look at that poster.’

He regarded her steadily as uncertainty flooded her expression. The same that he’d seen out on the highway. ‘Or is the leather still bothering you?’

Indecision flooded her face and her eyes flicked from his beard to his eyes, then down to his lips and back again.

‘No. You haven’t robbed or murdered me yet. I think a few minutes together in a public place will be fine.’

She turned and glanced down the street where a slight doof-doof issued from an architecturally classic Aussie hotel. Then her voice filled with warning. ‘Just one.’

It was hard not to smile. Her stern little face was like a daisy facing up to a cyclone.

‘If I was going to hurt you I’ve had plenty of opportunity. I don’t really need to get you liquored up.’

‘Encouraging start to the conversation.’

‘You know my name,’ he said, moving his feet in a pubward direction. ‘I don’t know yours.’

She regarded him steadily. Then stuck out the hand with the staple gun clutched in it. ‘Evelyn Read. Eve.’

He shook half her hand and half the tool. ‘What do you like to drink, Eve?’

‘I don’t. Not in public. But you go ahead.’

A teetotaller in an outback pub.

Well, this should be fun.

* * *

Eve trusted Marshall Sullivan with her posters while she used the facilities. When she came back, he’d smoothed out all the crinkles in the top one and was studying it.

‘Brother?’ he said as she slid into her seat.

‘What makes you say that?’

He tapped the surname on the poster where it had Travis James Read in big letters.

‘He could be my husband.’ She shrugged.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Same dark hair. Same shape eyes. He looks like you.’

Yeah, he did. Everyone thought so. ‘Trav is my little brother.’

‘And he’s missing?’

God, she hated this bit. The pity. The automatic assumption that something bad had happened. Hard enough not letting herself think it every single day without having the thought planted back in her mind by strangers at every turn.

Virtual strangers.

Though, at least this one did her the courtesy of not referring to Travis in the past tense. Points for that.

‘Missing a year next week, actually.’

‘Tough anniversary. Is that why you’re out here? Is this where he was last seen?’

She lifted her gaze back to his. ‘No. In Melbourne.’

‘So what brings you out west?’

‘I ran out of towns on the east coast.’

Blond brows lowered. ‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I’m visiting every town in the country. Looking for him. Putting up notices. Doing the legwork.’

‘I assumed you were just on holidays or something.’

‘No. This is my job.’

Now. Before that she’d been a pretty decent graphic designer for a pretty decent marketing firm. Until she’d handed in her notice.

‘Putting up posters is your job?’

‘Finding my brother.’ The old defensiveness washed through her. ‘Is anything more important?’

His confusion wasn’t new. He wasn’t the first person not to understand what she was doing. By far. Her own father didn’t even get it; he just wanted to grieve Travis’s absence as though he were dead. To accept he was gone.

She was light-years and half a country away from being ready to accept such a thing. She and Trav had been so close. If he was dead, wouldn’t she feel it?

‘So...what, you just drive every highway in the country pinning up notices?’

‘Pretty much. Trying to trigger a memory in someone’s mind.’

‘And it’s taken you a year to do the east coast?’

‘About eight months. Though I started up north.’ And that was where she’d finish.

‘What happened before that?’

Guilt hammered low in her gut for those missing couple of months before she’d realised how things really were. How she’d played nice and sat on her hands while the police seemed to achieve less and less. Maybe if she’d started sooner—

‘I trusted the system.’

‘But the authorities didn’t find him?’

‘There are tens of thousands of missing people every year. I just figured that the only people who could make Trav priority number one were his family.’

‘That many? Really?’

‘Teens. Kids. Women. Most are located pretty quickly.’

But ten per cent weren’t.

His eyes tracked down to the birthdate on the poster. ‘Healthy eighteen-year-old males don’t really make it high up the priority list?’

A small fist formed in her throat. ‘Not when there’s no immediate evidence of foul play.’

And even if they maybe weren’t entirely healthy, psychologically. But Travis’s depression was hardly unique amongst The Missing and his anxiety attacks were longstanding enough that the authorities dismissed them as irrelevant. As if a bathroom cabinet awash with mental health medicines wasn’t relevant.

A young woman with bright pink hair badly in need of a recolour brought Marshall’s beer and Eve’s lime and bittes and sloshed them on the table.

‘That explains the bus,’ he said. ‘It’s very...homey.’

‘It is my home. Mine went to pay for the trip.’

‘You sold your house?’

Her chin kicked up. ‘And resigned from my job. I can’t afford to be distracted by having to earn an income while I cover the country.’

She waited for the inevitable judgment.

‘That’s quite a commitment. But it makes sense.’

Such unconditional acceptance threw her. Everyone else she’d told thought she was foolish. Or plain crazy. Implication: like her brother. No one just...nodded.

‘That’s it? No opinion? No words of wisdom?’

His eyes lifted to hers. ‘You’re a grown woman. You did what you needed to do. And I assume it was your asset to dispose of.’

She scrutinised him again. The healthy, unmarked skin under the shaggy beard. The bright eyes. The even teeth.

‘What’s your story?’ she asked.

‘No story. I’m travelling.’

‘You’re not a bikie.’ Statement, not question.

‘Not everyone with a motorbike belongs in an outlaw club,’ he pointed out.

‘You look like a bikie.’

‘I wear leather because it’s safest when you get too intimate with asphalt. I have a beard because one of the greatest joys in life is not having to shave, and so I indulge that when I’m travelling alone.’

She glanced down to where the dagger protruded from his T-shirt sleeve. ‘And the tattoo?’

His eyes immediately darkened. ‘We were all young and impetuous once.’

‘Who’s Christine?’

‘Christine’s not relevant to this discussion.’

Bang. Total shutdown. ‘Come on, Marshall. I aired my skeleton.’

‘Something tells me you air it regularly. To anyone who’ll listen.’

Okay, this time the criticism was unmistakable. She pushed more upright in her chair. ‘You were asking the questions, if you recall.’

‘Don’t get all huffy. We barely know each other. Why would I spill my guts to a stranger?’

‘I don’t know. Why would you rescue a stranger on the street?’

‘Not wanting to see you beaten to a pulp and not wanting to share my dirty laundry are very different things.’

‘Oh, Christine’s dirty laundry?’

His lips thinned even further and he pushed away from the table. ‘Thanks for the drink. Good luck with your brother.’

She shot to her feet, too. ‘Wait. Marshall?’

He stopped and turned back slowly.

‘I’m sorry. I guess I’m out of practice with people,’ she said.

‘You’re not kidding.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘In town.’

Nice and non-specific. ‘I’m a bit... I get a bit tired of eating in the bus. On my own. Can I interest you in something to eat, later?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Walk away, Eve. That would be the smart thing to do.

‘I’ll change the subject. Not my brother. Not your...’ Not your Christine? ‘We can talk about places we’ve been. Favourite sights.’ Her voice petered out.

His eyebrows folded down over his eyes briefly and disguised them from her view. But he finally relented. ‘There’s a café across the street from my motel. End of this road.’

‘Sounds good.’

She didn’t usually eat out, to save money, but then she didn’t usually have the slightest hint of company either. One dinner wouldn’t kill her. Alone with a stranger. Across the road from his motel room.

‘It’s not a date, though,’ she hastened to add.

‘No.’ The moustache twisted up on the left. ‘It’s not.’

And as he and his leather pants sauntered back out of the bar, she felt like an idiot. An adolescent idiot. Of course this was not a date and of course he wouldn’t have considered it such. Hairy, lone-wolf types who travelled the country on motorbikes probably didn’t stand much on ceremony when it came to women. Or bother with dates.

She’d only mentioned a meal at all because she felt bad that she’d pressed an obvious sore point with him after he’d shown her nothing but interest and acceptance about Travis.

*facepalm*

Her brother’s favourite saying flittered through her memory and never seemed more appropriate. Hopefully, a few hours and a good shower from now she could be a little more socially appropriate and a lot less hormonal.

Inexplicably so.

Unwashed biker types were definitely not her thing, no matter how nice their smiles. Normally, the eau de sweaty man that littered towns in the Australian bush flared her nostrils. But as Marshall Sullivan had hoisted her up against his body out in the street she’d definitely responded to the powerful circle of his hold, the hard heat of his chest and the warmth of his hissed words against her ear.

Even though it came with the tickle of his substantial beard against her skin.

She was so not a beard woman.

A man who travelled the country alone was almost certainly doing it for a reason. Running from something or someone. Dropping out of society. Hiding from the authorities. Any number of mysterious and dangerous things.

Or maybe Marshall Sullivan was just as socially challenged as she was.

Maybe that was why she had a sudden and unfathomable desire to sit across a table from the man again.

‘See you at seven-thirty, then,’ she called after him.

* * *

Eve’s annoyance at herself for being late—and at caring about that—turned into annoyance at Marshall Sullivan for being even later. What, had he got lost crossing the street?

Her gaze scanned the little café diner as she entered—over the elderly couple with a stumpy candle, past the just-showered Nigel No Friends reading a book and the two men arguing over the sports pages. But as her eyes grazed back around to the service counter, they stumbled over the hands wrapped around Nigel’s battered novel. Beautiful hands.

She stepped closer. ‘Marshall?’

Rust-flecked eyes glanced up to her. And then he pushed to his feet. To say he was a changed man without the beard would have been an understatement. He was transformed. His hair hadn’t been cut but it was slicked back either with product or he truly had just showered. But his face...

Free of the overgrown blondish beard and moustache, his eyes totally stole focus, followed only by his smooth broad forehead. She’d always liked an unsullied forehead. Reliable somehow.

He slid a serviette into the book to mark his place and closed it.

She glanced at the cover. ‘Gulliver’s Travels?’

Though what she really wanted to say was...You shaved?

‘I carry a few favourites around with me in my pack.’

She slid in opposite him, completely unable to take her eyes off his new face. At a loss to reconcile it as the under layer of all that sweat, dust and helmet hair she’d encountered out on the road just a few days ago. ‘What makes it a favourite?’

He thought about that for a bit. ‘The journeying. It’s very human. And Gulliver is a constant reminder that perspective is everything in life.’

Huh. She’d just enjoyed it for all the little people.

They fell to silence.

‘You shaved,’ she finally blurted.

‘I did.’

‘For dinner?’ Dinner that wasn’t a date.

His neatly groomed head shook gently. ‘I do that periodically. Take it off and start again. Even symbols of liberty need maintenance.’

‘That’s what it means to you? Freedom?’

‘Isn’t that what the Bedford means to you?’

Freedom? No. Sanity, yes. ‘The bus is just transport and accommodation conveniently bundled.’

‘You forget I’ve seen inside it. That’s not convenience. That’s sanctuary.’

Yeah...it was, really. But she didn’t know him well enough to open up to that degree.

‘I bought the Bedford off this old carpenter after his wife died. He couldn’t face travelling any more without her.’

‘I wonder if he knows what he’s missing.’

‘Didn’t you just say perspective was everything?’

‘True enough.’

A middle-aged waitress came bustling over, puffing, as though six people at once was the most she’d seen in a week. She took their orders from the limited menu and bustled off again.

One blond brow lifted. ‘You carb-loading for a marathon?’

‘You’ve seen the stove in the Bedford. I can only cook the basics in her. Every now and again I like to take advantage of a commercial kitchen’s deep-fryer.’

Plus, boiling oil would kill anything that might otherwise not get past the health code. There was nothing worse than being stuck in a small town, throwing your guts up. Unless it was being stuck on the side of the road between small towns and kneeling in the roadside gravel.

‘So, you know how I’m funding my way around the country,’ she said. ‘How are you doing it?’

He stared at her steadily. ‘Guns and drugs.’

‘Ha-ha.’

‘That’s what you thought when you saw me. Right?’

‘I saw a big guy on a lonely road trying really hard to get into my vehicle. What would you have done?’

Those intriguing eyes narrowed just slightly but then flicked away. ‘I’m out here working. Like you. Going from district to district.’

‘Working for who?’

‘Federal Government.’

‘Ooh, the Feds. That sounds much more exciting than it probably is. What department?’

He took a long swig of his beer before answering. ‘Meteorology.’

She stared. ‘You’re a weatherman?’

‘Right. I stand in front of a green screen every night and read maximums and minimums.’

Her smile broadened. ‘You’re a weatherman.’

He sagged back in his chair and spoke as if he’d heard this one time too many. ‘Meteorology is a science.’

‘You don’t look like a scientist.’ Definitely not before and, even clean shaven, Marshall was still too muscular and tattooed.

‘Would it help if I was in a lab coat and glasses?’

‘Yes.’ Because the way he packed out his black T-shirt was the least nerdy thing she’d ever seen. ‘So why are my taxes funding your trip around the country, exactly?’

‘You’re not earning. You don’t pay taxes.’

The man had a point. ‘Why are you out here, then?’

‘I’m auditing the weather stations. I check them, report on their condition.’

Well, that explained the hands. ‘I thought you were this free spirit on two wheels. You’re an auditor.’

His lips tightened. ‘Something tells me that’s a step down from weatherman in your eyes.’

She got stuck into her complimentary bread roll, buttering and biting into it. ‘How many stations are there?’

‘Eight hundred and ninety-two.’

‘And they send one man?’ Surely they had locals that could check to make sure possums hadn’t moved into their million-dollar infrastructure.

‘I volunteered to do the whole run. Needed the break.’

From...? But she’d promised not to ask. They were supposed to be talking about travel highlights. ‘Where was the most remote station?’

‘Giles. Seven hundred and fifty clicks west of Alice. Up in the Gibson Desert.’

Alice Springs. Right smack bang in the middle of their massive island continent. ‘Where did you start?’

‘Start and finish in Perth.’

A day and a half straight drive from here. ‘Is Perth home?’

‘Sydney.’

She visualised the route he must have taken clockwise around the country from the west. ‘So you’re nearly done, then?’

His laugh drew the eyes of the other diners. ‘Yeah. If two-thirds of the weather stations weren’t in the bottom third of the state.’

‘Do you get to look around? Or is it all work?’

He shrugged. ‘Some places I skip right through. Others I linger. I have some flexibility.’

Eve knew exactly what that was like. Some towns whispered to you like a lover. Others yelled at you to go. She tended to move on quickly from those.

‘Favourites so far?’

And he was off... Talking about the places that had captivated him most. The prehistoric, ferny depths of the Claustral Canyon, cave-diving in the crystal-clear ponds on South Australia’s limestone coast, the soul-restoring solidity of Katherine Gorge in Australia’s north.

‘And the run over here goes without saying.’

‘The Nullabor?’ Pretty striking with its epic treeless stretches of desert but not the most memorable place she could recall.

‘The Great Australian Bight,’ he clarified.

She just blinked at him.

‘You got off the highway on the way over, right? Turned for the coast?’

‘My focus is town to town.’

He practically gaped. ‘One of the most spectacular natural wonders in the world was just a half-hour drive away.’

‘And half an hour back. That was an hour sooner I could have made it to the next town.’

His brows dipped over grey eyes. ‘You’ve got to get out more.’

‘I’m on the job.’