Her Knight in the Outback

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.’