Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,149

me.’

Fifteen minutes later, with their appetites subdued, they were queuing to board the famous Skyrail—a seven and a half kilometre cableway of over one hundred small, round, glassed-in capsules that could take six at a time up to the mountaintop town of Kuranda. And Siena was so hyperactive he wasn’t sure he ought to come through with another coffee at the other end.

‘I can’t believe I’d forgotten all about this thing,’ she said, jumping from one foot to the other on her high red heels, as they came closer to the front of the queue. ‘It opened only a couple of years before I left. I would beg and beg and beg Rick to bring me up here, but he never did as he’s afraid of heights, which is half the reason I begged and begged.’

She shot him a cheeky grin. ‘You met him. He deserved it, right?’

‘I’ll say.’

A local in a khaki uniform helped the two of them into a small swinging capsule suspended from a fist-thick overhead wire, locked the glass door and told them to remember to ‘smile at the frog’ once they reached the other end.

‘Smile at the what?’ Siena asked and then her mouth dropped open as the concrete base slid away from under them and, just like that, they were hanging suspended over the rainforest. ‘Holy heck!’

As she gripped on to her seat, her eyes huge in her face as she peered out the three hundred and sixty degree windows at the view unfolding as their capsule swung up the mountain, James leant back against the hot glass, crossed his arms and simply watched her.

She turned to him, her eyes questioning, and he couldn’t help but smile back. ‘We put on quite a show up here for the tourists,’ he said.

‘You can say that again. Wow, this is amazing! How long does it take to Kuranda?’

‘Non-stop? About thirty-five minutes,’ he said, which was a little longer than the ‘tiny bit later’ he had promised her.

He waited for her to explode at being kidnapped, which was pretty much what he had resorted to, unsure as he was that she was as far along in this attraction thing as he was, but she just nodded and continued to shift and shuffle to get the best view.

Their capsule swung back and forth with her movements. If she had been half as energetic as a teenager, he was sure big burly Rick Capuletti would have been green about the gills by that stage.

They bumped and trundled their way up the mountain in silence, masses of ferns and vines, hot red flame trees, towering conifers and thick dark rainforest vegetation sliding away secretively beneath them. When the grand Barron River peeked through the foliage, twinkling silver in the late morning sun, James spoke up.

‘Get your land-legs back on. We’re almost there.’

Siena looked back at him with a relaxed smile. Her cheeks were pink from her time in the sun and, for the first time since he had met her, she seemed loose-limbed and relaxed.

‘If you tell me they’ve torn down the markets and those odd hippy shops to make way for a strip mall and condos I will take back everything I’ve ever believed about the snail pace progress of this place,’ she said.

The tickle of laughter that had threatened earlier bubbled to the surface as he actually chuckled. ‘Don’t get too excited. You’re still more likely to be able to pick up some weird herbal concoction at the markets than you are to find a Starbucks or McDonald’s.’

‘Great,’ she said, beaming so suddenly that James’s next breath lodged in his throat. ‘I know just what to get Rick for Christmas!’

When their capsule reached the other end, a guide reminded them to ‘smile at the frog', which turned out to be a frog-shaped camera. They did as they were told. Siena leaned in towards him, her shoulder brushing his as she smiled amiably until the flash went off.

Caught up in the heady feeling of companionship, James took a hold of Siena’s dangling hand and wrapped it back into the crook of his arm and led her into town. She didn’t argue or pull away, and when he glanced at her again he found the furrowed brow was clear. His cheek twitched into a self-satisfied smile.

She could stay that relaxed if she just allowed herself to live on tropics time, he thought.

James ducked into one shop alone and came out with a big floppy sun-hat to ward off the hot