Runaway Bride

‘Until I blotted my copybook.’

‘No. I know it didn’t seem like it at the time, but my mother was a true-blue fan of yours.’ She looked down and rubbed at her finger again. ‘Did you know she’d made you a birthday cake?’

‘For my eighteenth?’

‘Yes, for the party that never happened.’ Almost immediately, Bella groaned. ‘Sorry. Forget I mentioned that.’

‘Mentioned what?’

She looked momentarily puzzled, and then she smiled. Damon smiled, too, and for a heartbeat, it was dangerously almost like old times.

They stopped for a late lunch at a roadside café. Bella wasn’t particularly hungry and only ate half of her toasted sandwiches, but Damon tucked into his hamburger.

On the road again, she felt her eyelids beginning to droop. She’d had very little sleep the night before. She’d tossed and turned after she’d received a late text message from Kent saying that he needed to talk. And then this morning he’d knocked on her hotel-room door at the crack of dawn, and, although she was happy with the outcome, reaching their final decision had been an emotionally draining process.

She yawned loudly.

‘Feel free to sleep,’ Damon told her.

‘Oh, it’s too early. If I sleep now, I’ll never sleep tonight. I think I need to keep talking.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know.’ She was too tired for anything serious like politics or current affairs. Problem was, Damon had been her first boyfriend and her head was full of memories of his kisses and caresses, of the exciting journey of sexual discovery that they’d begun together. ‘You could tell me about your girlfriends.’

‘Not much to report there.’

‘Rubbish. I’ve read all about you in a celebrity magazine. You’ve had girlfriends galore.’

She watched him silently, waiting for him to respond.

Instead, he bounced the question back at her. ‘And I suppose you’ve had lots of boyfriends?’

Ouch. She had no intention of telling Damon Cavello about her sadly minimalist relationship history. She sighed, knowing there was one topic she should probably broach. ‘I suppose I should explain about Kent,’ she said. ‘And why we decided not to get married.’

His hands tensed on the steering wheel. ‘Only if you want to.’

‘It’s okay. I think I’d like to explain. After all, you’re Kent’s friend. But it’s actually a rather long story.’

‘We have plenty of time.’

‘Yes.’ She drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Well … it started when my father got really sick.’

‘You’ve had a rough trot, Bella.’

She nodded. ‘After Mum died, we were all rather lost … Dad, Paddy and I. But your grandmother was wonderful for Paddy. She went out of her way to cheer him up.’

Damon smiled. ‘She has a talent for cheering people up. I’m glad she was able to help. She mentioned that your father was very low.’

‘He was. He started drinking too much. Drowning his sorrows. It was really awful, actually.’

‘You were away, working in Brisbane, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, and I didn’t realise how quickly Dad was going downhill. He was neglecting the farm. He wasn’t paying bills. When I realised how bad things were, I started coming home on weekends, and Kent helped out on the farm. Mending fences. Ploughing. Kent was fabulous, actually.’

Damon slanted her a piercing glance. ‘Is that when the two of you became close?’

‘Yes.’ She looked away, then said carefully, ‘I’m not sure if you ever knew, but Kent’s always looked up to my father. You probably heard that Dad saved Kent from drowning when he was a kid?’ Damon nodded.

‘Kent felt that he owed him a huge debt. He became very worried when Dad started the heavy drinking. Then Dad developed heart failure. He’d been literally drinking himself to death.’

‘And Kent wanted to help.’

‘Yes.’

‘By marrying you?’

The fierce intensity in Damon’s voice made her shiver. ‘More or less.’ She rubbed at her arms. ‘Kent suggested we should get engaged, and suddenly it seemed to be the answer to all my problems. He and I would be living next door to Dad. We could keep an eye on him, get him to AA meetings and help him to run the farm.’

‘And there’d be grandchildren for your father to dote on. A reason for him to go on living.’

Bella drew a sharp breath. ‘That was what we hoped.’

After a beat, Damon said, smoothly, ‘It sounds like a great plan. Dare I ask what went wrong?’

Oh, help. This was the hard part.

There was no way she could explain to this man who set her heart spinning at fifty paces about their lack of chemistry. ‘We—ah—realised that gratitude isn’t a good basis for a happy marriage,’ she said quietly.

Damon’s clever grey eyes narrowed. ‘And it was an amicable decision?’

‘Of course.’

But suddenly she’d had enough. She’d told Damon far more than she’d intended and she didn’t want this clever reporter probing too deeply. ‘This isn’t an interview, Damon. If you don’t mind, I’m done with answering questions.’

With that, she yawned dramatically and closed her eyes.

Damon drove on, and it wasn’t too long before Bella’s head slipped sideways. Her cap fell off revealing the soft, pale gleam of her hair. A strand escaped and fluttered gently like a golden streamer. As her head tipped farther he caught sight of the thick fringe of her eyelashes behind her sunglasses. Yes, she was definitely asleep, and he was flooded by a surge of protectiveness.

He thought about the story she’d just told him. There’d been no sign of self-pity in her voice, but he’d found her tale incredibly sad. Bella, the fun-loving, sexy and adventurous girl he’d known, had been loaded with too many responsibilities and worries.

Reading between the lines … these worries were the reason she’d been prepared to sacrifice herself in a passionless marriage. The thought of Bella trapped by duty enraged him.

But … damn it. This was so not the way he wanted to feel. An emotional reconnection with Bella Shaw was definitely not part of his plan.

He forced his focus to the blue bitumen road stretching ahead, and to the wider, lighter blue of the sky arching above. Purposefully, he inhaled the scents of dry earth and the eucalyptus wafting in on the fresh, clean air.

For him, the allure of an open road had always been strong, and if he weren’t so concerned now about Violet and Paddy he would have absolutely loved this journey. Each bend in the road was a new possibility, a chance for adventure. He was always at his happiest when he was travelling with no clear destination.