Page 90 of Where the Wattles Bloom

People would stare. They’d wonder. They for damn sure would speculate. About her and Lachlan. About their relationship status. And she wasn’t sure she could shoulder their expectations. She didn’t want to make some kind of public statement but she feared the good people of Acacia Junction would take it as one anyway.

Glancing across at Lachlan, who was looking over his shoulder at her, Rowena worried her bottom lip with her teeth for a beat or two. ‘Would you mind if we didn’t go in?’

He folded his legs back into the car and shut the door. ‘Everything okay?’

Rowena nodded. ‘I don’t think I’m up for public scrutiny tonight.’

If he was disappointed he didn’t show it. He just said, ‘Wanna do some stargazing?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘That sounds great.’ Anything where they weren’t going to be observed was good.

Much to her surprise, though, Lachlan didn’t take her back to Blairgowrie. He drove in the opposite direction out of town for ten minutes before making a left turn off the highway onto a much smaller, unsealed road.

They were in the fancy dual cab tonight as his old trusty ute had a load of hay in the back for tomorrow, but it was just as equipped to navigate the potholes and corrugations. Probably better, actually, the suspension clearly superior on the newer vehicle.

The ute’s high beam was the only light for miles in the clear, moonless night, as a vast expanse of landscape unfolded before them. The dark outline of trees peppering the area detracted from its relentless flatness, while wattle trees, low scrub and tussocks of Mitchell grass gave the land depth and definition.

Two kangaroos jumped across the road well ahead of them. Behind, kicked up by the wheels, a plume of powdery beige dust drifted into the inky black of the night.

‘Nearly there,’ he said.

He took a curve in the road and that’s when Rowena noticed it, looming out of the dark up ahead. A cleared area. Then the ghostly presence of a big, white screen.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

He grinned, taking his eyes off the road for a second to confirm. ‘Sure is.’

As they neared, Rowena could make out several small buildings, all shut up and in varying degrees of disrepair. She assumed they would once have been the ticket office, the candy bar and the amenities.

A large chain-link fence had been erected around the perimeter but it, too, had seen better days, evidenced by the fact Lachlan drove through a hole in it big enough to admit an aircraft carrier.

The parking area had suffered the ravages of time, too. The asphalt surface was cracked and pockmarked, weeds growing up out of the gaping fissures as the inexorable march of nature had reclaimed the space. Most of the posts where speakers would once have been mounted were missing, but a half-dozen beheaded ones remained.

Slowly navigating the rise and fall of a typical drive-in terrain, Lachlan parked right in the centre, facing the screen. Or what was left of it anyway. Several panels were missing, revealing the rusting exoskeleton beneath.

Lachlan cut the engine, plunging them into the eerie outback silence. ‘Welcome to the Acacia Junction drive-in.’

It took a beat or two for Rowena’s eyes to adjust. She undid her seatbelt and leaned forward to stare out the windscreen at the almost apocalyptic scene. It was so barren out here she half expected to see a tumbleweed roll across in front of the screen.

‘It’s been twenty-five years since I’ve been to a drive-in,’ she murmured.

‘Can’t see a movie for love or money,’ Lachlan said. ‘But you can see a shitload of stars.’

That she could. With her night vision kicking in, Rowena could see a million shimmering points of light. But they could have easily seen them at Blairgowrie too, so she wasn’t sure why he’d brought her to a dilapidated drive-in.

Rowena turned her head to find him watching her intently. He didn’t seem to care that she’d caught him staring, he just held her gaze unwaveringly. It made her hyper-aware of how close they were in the cab of his ute.

And how well he was wearing that t-shirt.

Not to mention the way his warmed cologne spritzed the air like a dollop of Reggie’s Christmas marmalade. Spiking it with sugar and spice, different but just as appealing as his earlier more earthy male pheromones.

Her breath hitched as their gazes held, a hot leap in her blood echoing through every pulse point.

‘We could have seen them out at Blairgowrie,’ she said, her voice a weird kind of vibrato, her vocal cords as affected by the scent of him as the rest of her body.

He shrugged but he didn’t look away, didn’t break their eye contact. ‘Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. Stargazing at the town’s premier tourist destination.’

Rowena gave a husky laugh. ‘A run-down drive-in is the premier tourist destination?’