Driving Her Crazy - By Amy Andrews Page 0,42

he dismissed.

‘She wants two for the price of one, remember, and getting sacked on my first job is not good on the CV. I can’t let her down. I need to deliver.’

Kent nodded. ‘That’s true. Tabitha doesn’t like to be let down.’

Sadie gave an internal groan. Excellent. ‘Is that a yes?’

Kent wrapped his fingers more firmly around the steering wheel. ‘My story is not for sale.’

Sadie heard the same ice in his voice he’d used for telling her he didn’t fly. Regardless, she prepared to launch into a whole selling patter because the thought of letting Tabitha Fox down was not a nice one, but mostly because she knew it’d annoy him.

And at least when he was angry at her she wasn’t thinking about kissing him so much.

But an awful clunk coming from the general direction of the engine put paid to any further chit-chat.

‘What was that?’ she asked, clutching the door handle.

Kent slowed the still-running vehicle slightly as he looked at his instruments. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘The temperature gauge is climbing, though.’

His eyes sought the road ahead, looking for the best place to pull over.

Fifteen minutes later Kent had parked the Land Rover under some large gum trees on the relatively flat stretch of highway. The other side of the road was less hospitable with a large expanse of scrub stretching almost uninterrupted to the horizon.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ Sadie asked as she joined Kent beneath the bonnet.

‘I think I’ve blown the water pump.’

Sadie looked at the convoluted metallic pipes of the internal combustion engine. It might as well have been an alien spacecraft. ‘That sounds bad.’ She looked at him. ‘Is that bad?’

‘It’ll need a new one and if we were in Sydney I could probably find a dozen mechanics within two city blocks that had one in stock. Maybe not so much out here.’

Sadie chewed on her lip. ‘Oh.’

Despite the fact that his hands were covered in grease, all Kent could smell was that damn passionfruit aroma of hers. Combined with her fate-worse-than-death look it was just plain irritating.

‘It’s okay, Sadie Bliss,’ he said as he pulled the bonnet down and wiped his hands on an oily rag. ‘You’re not destined to be stuck in the outback for ever. I’m sure there’ll be a garage in Borroloola that will be able to help.’

He left her by the front of the car and grabbed the satellite phone from the front seat. In ten minutes he’d located a supplier in Katherine who would send a tow truck by nine tomorrow morning. He hung up the phone. ‘Better get comfortable. We’re here for the night.’

Sadie looked at him, alarmed. ‘We are?’ She looked around her wondering how many spiders chose to call this speck on the earth home.

He nodded. ‘It’s okay, I have camp gear in the back. I’ll build a fire for now and we’ll sleep up top like we did the other night.’

‘Right,’ Sadie said faintly.

Except they hadn’t kissed the other night...

Kent set her up in a fold-out chair beneath the shade of a tree with her fully charged laptop and then came and went unloading stuff from the back of his vehicle and gathering firewood. In an hour he was lighting the fire. Sadie half expected him to drop a couple of rabbits at her feet and then set about skinning them.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, nodding at the laptop. ‘Did you get everything you wanted for Pinto’s feature?’

Sadie blinked, momentarily confused by the question because she hadn’t been tapping away about Leo at all. Instead she’d been writing about him. About the strong, silent, tough-guy enigma that both baffled and intrigued her.

‘Oh, yes, good, thanks,’ she lied, shutting the lid. ‘Plenty of info.’ The earthy aroma of wood smoke spiralled out to meet her as the first plume hit the air. ‘What about you? Are you happy with the pics you got on your little expedition last night?’

Kent nodded as he knelt by the fire, slowly feeding it. ‘Yep.’

‘Can I see them?’ she asked.

Kent looked up at her, surprised. ‘Sure. My camera bag’s in the car.’

Sadie retrieved it and Kent showed her how to scroll back to the pictures he’d taken the night before. It seemed more complicated than something off the space shuttle, but eventually she got the hang of it.

‘What did we do before digital cameras with delete buttons?’ she murmured as she viewed the images of the starry night and giant phallic termite mounds rising out