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Mimi felt dizzy. This couldn’t be happening. It was too crazy, too preposterous to be real, and yet the expression on his face told her he meant what he said.
Her heart began to pound. Fifteen long minutes ago having a conversation with him in the car about her non-existent sex life had seemed like a form of torture, but compared to being trapped with him for who knew how long, in the middle of nowhere, it was clearly the lesser of two evils.
Her heart thumped inside her chest. She could refuse to go, or try and persuade the chauffeur to intervene on her behalf, but somehow she didn’t think either course of action would get her what she wanted. Nor did she want to issue him a challenge, like she had earlier. The last thing she wanted was for Basa to make good on his threat to put her over his shoulder.
She stared out of the window. The instinct to run was nearly overwhelming, but where would she run to?
And yet she couldn’t spend an indeterminate number of days—and nights—with him on an island in the middle of nowhere. Surely there was another solution?
‘Look, we don’t need to go to Patagonia to talk. You want to talk—then, let’s talk now,’ she said quickly. ‘What is it that you want to know?’
‘The truth,’ he said softly.
She stared at him in silence. Somewhere deep inside she could feel a long-buried, festering anger roiling up inside her, after two years of being ostracised and judged and condemned without trial.
He made it sound so simple, but for the last two years there had been no single absolute truth—just a shifting kaleidoscope of other people’s opinions and beliefs that had nothing to do with who she was or what had happened—and not once had he been interested or willing to listen to her version.
‘Don’t make me laugh! You don’t want the truth. You’ve never wanted the truth. You’ve never once given me the benefit of the doubt. You’re just like everyone else. You just want to judge me.’
Her chest pinched as she remembered all the assumptions that people had made about her and her mother. The neighbours and friends and journalists and lawyers and all those people she had never even met, who had read and repeated and believed that she was guilty on the basis of nothing more than whispers and assumptions.
But it was his judgement that hurt most of all.
‘Mimi, listen—’
‘No, you listen, Basa.’
She took a quick breath, pushing past the ache in her chest.
‘If you want to force me to go all the way to Patagonia with you then fine!’ She filled the word with all the frustration and fury that was filling her body. ‘But you’re wasting your time. I’m done talking to you. So I hope you’re comfortable with silence, because that’s all you’re going to get from me.’
CHAPTER SIX
SHE KEPT HER WORD, smiling politely at the crew as they showed her to her seat, and then turning her face towards the window as soon as they were alone. It was deeply childish, she knew, to act that way, and judging by the look on Basa’s face he thought so too, but she’d had enough of worrying about what he thought of her. Accommodating his stupid demands and apologising hadn’t done much to change his opinion of her, so why not just be the rude, self-absorbed little troublemaker he thought she was?
Her head was aching and, overwhelmed with the tension and drama of the day, she leaned back against the leather headrest and closed her eyes.
What felt like thirty seconds later she heard the soft whine of wheels dropping into position and, opening her eyes, realised that she had fallen asleep.
She glanced out of the window and felt her heart bump against her ribs. They were getting ready to land.
Moments later the wheels hit the ground, and then she was climbing into another SUV.
It was late evening, and the sun had only recently set, so there was still a thin ribbon of gold on the horizon. But even with the headlights of the car at full beam she could see that beyond the darkness there was nothing except more darkness. And there was a threatening heaviness to the air, so that the night sky felt as though it was just inches away from swallowing her whole.
It felt as if they had reached the edge of the mapped world, and her stomach flipped over as the reality of her situation hit home.
Why had she allowed this to happen?
She couldn’t be stuck out here with this beautiful, furious man, who disliked and distrusted her in equal measure—the same man she had kissed just hours earlier, without any regard for the consequences, just as she had two years ago.
Shivering against the cool chill of the memory of that night, she steadied her pounding heart. Two years ago she would have followed him barefoot and naked into the wilderness, for then she had been willing—impatient, even—to give him her body and her heart. But back then he hadn’t wanted either, and nothing had changed except that now he wanted the truth.
She knew he was talking about what had happened that night at Fairbourne. But what if in exposing one truth he uncovered the real truth? That everything she touched turned to ashes?
He already knew about her stalled career; he didn’t need to learn that the rest of her life, including her love life, was similarly stunted.
The car stopped, and when she climbed out she saw that they were parked by the side of a lake. A series of low-level lights illuminated a wide wooden jetty, at the end of which was moored a large motorboat.
