Imperfect Stranger. Elizabeth Oldfield
quiet road and if, heaven forbid, he should lash out, the chances of anyone coming to her rescue were slim. So what did she do? All she could do was attempt to cajole him with abject apologies and, if those failed, remember what she had once learned at a women’s self-protection class and keep her wits about her and a groin-targeted knee at the ready.
‘I wasn’t raised by wolves,’ the man said curtly, ‘and I’m anti-violence so there’s no need to panic.’
Danielle flushed, disconcerted to find that he had so accurately defined her thoughts. But she had been overreacting. No matter how angry he might be, the stranger was an inherently controlled character, in charge of his emotions and his actions. If he wished to inflict punishment it would not take the form of a wild lashing out It would be something far more deliberate, subtle, lethal.
‘I never…’ she began awkwardly. ‘I mean, I wasn’t—’
‘And far be it from a mere colonial like me to outrage the modesty of a well-brought-up English girl by tanning her backside, no matter how great the provocation.’ He paused. ‘Nor however shapely the backside. If I’d been sitting instead of coming to sit down, you would have driven straight over me,’ the man declared, in terse accusation.
Could his remark about her backside be interpreted as a compliment? Danielle wondered. It would be satisfying to think so, satisfying to know there was one thing about her which appealed. Yet why should she want to appeal to an unshaven low-life like him? she thought, a moment later. She didn’t.
Danielle shook her head, sending the fall of corncoloured hair swaying. ‘I’d have seen you and swerved,’ she protested.
‘You didn’t see my lunch,’ he rapped back.
‘Well..no,’ she was forced to concede, then rallied, ‘but you’re a dam sight bigger. You’re—’
‘Seventy-four inches and one hundred and eighty pounds,’ the stranger enunciated. ‘Though after this morning’s scrutiny you must have every one of my vital statistics carved for ever in your brain.’ He arched a thick black brow. ‘Every possible length of me measured.’
At the inescapable sexual implication, Danielle’s pink cheeks flamed scarlet. Two weeks in the country had already taught her that Australians were often more direct in their speech than the British, yet did he have to be quite so brash, so explicit? She poked the toe of her sandal into the stones. Though he could have said it in order to shock her, shock this girl who he appeared to believe was prim and proper. Danielle frowned. Whichever, it seemed that the object of her interest not only knew she had been staring, but was also aware she had done so for an appreciable length of time. So should she claim that he reminded her of someone, someone asexual and platonic, for instance a cousin? It would let her off the hook.
‘When I was—’ Danielle started, wishing she could lay claim to a castrated cousin. She got no further.
‘You’re a menace in that thing,’ the stranger denounced, flinging first her, and then the Land Rover, a withering look. ‘How long have you been driving it?’
‘I picked it up in Port Douglas this morning from—’
‘Which doesn’t surprise me,’ he said, cutting in again. ‘I noticed how you continually kept stalling when you were attempting to board the ferry.’
Danielle straightened her spine. The shock of charging into the stream was wearing off and her natural spirit had begun to reassert itself. She accepted that her driving had been a little erratic, but she was no longer prepared to submit to being so roundly maligned.
‘I did not stall,’ she informed him crisply. ‘The engine cut out-and only twice. And,’ Danielle added, ‘losing control just now was an isolated and totally uncharacteristic incident. Since passing my driving test on my eighteenth birthday, I have not had one accident nor—’ pride tilted her chin ‘—collected so much as a parking ticket.’
Her critic sluiced a shower of drops from his hair. ‘Wow,’ he said, sounding singularly unimpressed and, at the same time, making her sound as if she had been unbearably smug and righteous. ‘When was your eighteenth birthday?’
‘Er…almost ten years ago, and I’ve been driving ever since.’
‘You’ve driven four-by-fours?’
Danielle gave a silent groan. Why must he ask that? He had called himself a victim—some victim! she thought, when she felt as if he had her handcuffed, tied to a chair and was shining a blinding white interrogatory light into her eyes.
‘I haven’t,’ she confessed. ‘However, the rental guy insisted one was essential for the terrain and he said that mine is a woman’s model, so—’
The man plucked distastefully at his wet shirt, lifting its clamminess from his broad chest. ‘You’re still getting used to it.’
‘Well—yes.’ It was impossible to argue with his flat statement of fact. ‘Look, I have a sizeable packed lunch,’ Danielle hurried on. ‘Perhaps you’d like to share it?’
‘You’re concerned about my welfare?’ he asked drily. ‘Now that makes a change.’
His welfare could go hang, Danielle thought astringently; the reason she had made her offer had been to block any further discussion of her handling of the fourwheel-drive. While she was not about to admit it, she felt uncertain whether the engine’s dying was a mechanical fault or could be due to some lack of competence on her part. Why had she let herself be talked into hiring the vehicle? she wondered, when, from travelling the first few yards, she had felt too high up, at odds and not properly in charge.
‘It’d be a shame if you went hungry,’ she said, shining a fake Good Samaritan smile.
Her critic considered the proposition in silence, then gave a brief nod. ‘OK.’
‘The food’s in the back,’ Danielle told him, and walked round to open the rear door of the Land Rover.
When she looked inside, she grimaced. The bounce down the track had dislodged her luggage and while by some miracle the generously filled cardboard box had escaped damage, a heavy suitcase and travel-bag would need to be shoved aside in order to get to it. Danielle wrenched and rearranged, and, growing hotter and sweatier by the minute in the humid heat, eventually managed to haul the box forward. As she wiped beads of moisture from her brow, her lips compressed. She wished she had never suggested dividing her lunch. The beneficiary had not exactly overwhelmed her with grateful thanks, and now he had ignored her struggles and left her to cope alone. She knew all about equality of the sexes, Danielle thought thinly, but a little strong-arm help and a spot of courtesy would have been appreciated.
Deciding that she would allot the stranger the minimally acceptable portion and promptly depart, Danielle swivelled—to find him standing a yard behind her. Her heart kicked. He had not come to her assistance because, firstly, he had been tidying away the litter of his picnic into the plastic bag, and secondly because he had been shedding his soaked shirt. Her blue eyes wide, she gazed at him. Her earlier inspection had revealed that his shoulders were broad, his torso firm-muscled, his waist slim, but seeing him stripped had a new and far greater impact. A disturbingly sensual impact. What she had not known was that his chest was smattered with curls of black hair which made a horizontal pattern of sultry lace against the smooth olive of his skin, while a narrower vertical strip of hair tapered down to vanish into his jeans. However, he was not too hairy and although he had muscles they were not of the exaggerated bodybuilder kind, but rather his physique was well-toned. Danielle swallowed. Her lungs felt tight. His body seemed to be giving off an intense heat which had engulfed her and was making it difficult to breathe.
‘Let me take that,’ the man said, and, reaching past her, he swung the heavy box effortlessly out and into his arms.
‘Take—take it?’ Danielle enquired, in a choky voice.
He nodded towards a leafily spreading tree, beneath which were several large, flat-topped stones. ‘Why don’t we sit over there?’