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CHAPTER NINE
DALE CLINKED HIS glass against the rim of Daisy’s, but it wasn’t so much of a celebration as an acknowledgment of their predicament. They were back in the relative seclusion of their laundry hideout. Daisy had already gulped down half of her glass of red wine by the time he’d taken one sip.
“I needed that,” she said, smacking her lips. A drop of ruby liquid trembled at the corner of her mouth. He watched it, fascinated. Her mouth was like a like a pale, pink bow, lips plump and soft, turned up at the corners. A sensual mouth, full of dark promises. Then her tongue came out and licked away the droplet.
She turned dark eyes toward him, and he almost choked on his wine, glancing down at the floor, instead.
Quick, he needed a safe topic of conversation to refocus his thoughts. “I reckon the creek will be low enough tomorrow morning to attempt to cross it.” He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Damn, why had he said that? Dale didn’t want Daisy to go home. Even with everything that was happening on the station, he enjoyed having her around; enjoyed her company. He’d had fun with her barramundi fishing this morning. Loved their comfortable banter. She was easy to talk to. When she let those walls of hers down, that was.
“Am I actually allowed to go home?” Daisy eyed him over the rim of her glass. “The way the cops were talking this afternoon…?”
“Yes, yes, you are.” He hurried to allay her fears. “The senior sergeant said everyone was free to leave.” Robinson had confirmed with Daniella late that afternoon, after he’d finished interviewing everyone. He made sure they had listed everyone’s contact details, so they could get more information at a later date, if need be. Robinson also said he’d be heading over to Koongarra tomorrow to talk to Karri’s family. Dale assumed the senior sergeant would include Daisy’s work colleague in his investigations, even though the man had been nowhere near Stormcloud, he supposed the police would look at everyone in the area if they suspected a murder had taken place.
Thinking of Ryan reminded Dale about Daisy’s response today, where she’d freaked out at the thought of talking to the police. But sitting here in the laundry right now, she appeared completely normal. Back to the bold, undaunted woman he was coming to know. Whatever fears had been bothering her earlier seemed to have evaporated. He decided not to confront her about her earlier display. Why break the sanguine mood?
“That’d be great, thank you.” Daisy sighed and leaned backward against the wall, closing her eyes. “You don’t know how worried I’ve been. How worried poor Ryan must be about me.”
“Hm,” he replied absently. His mind was preoccupied with the idea of Daisy being terribly worried about Ryan. Of Daisy and Ryan…together. The thought had struck him earlier, and it’d returned, niggling like a barking dog in the recesses of his mind. If he wanted to put those doubts to rest, then he really needed to ask. It was now or never. “So, you and this Ryan guy…” he hesitated, twirling the stem of the glass between his thumb and forefinger.
Daisy’s eyes opened, and she regarded him with an inscrutable stare, then took a careful sip from her glass.
But he’d started, and he really needed to know. “Are you…ah…you know, together?”
She choked on her wine, spluttering as she leaned forward. “Oh, God, no!” Her response was so spontaneous, he knew she was speaking the truth. “He’s my...” She stopped and seemed to gather herself. “He’s like my brother. I would never…we would never—” She was still sputtering, and he patted her on the back. But his in his mind he was doing a small victory dance, because the way she’d been talking about her colleague, he’d almost been sure there was something going on between them. Now he knew there wasn’t, he felt lighter.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I just thought…”
“Well, you can stop thinking it,” she said, trying to laugh through her coughing fit. “We’re purely platonic. But that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about him.” She rubbed a hand around the rear of her neck, tipping her head from side to side as if trying to work out the knots. “I’m a ball of nervous tension.” She chuckled, but he could hear the genuine strain behind her words.
“Hm, maybe you should get a better form of communication sorted out, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.” It seemed a little odd to him that the university hadn’t sent them out with a sat phone. Weren’t universities supposed to be flush with money and sticklers for protocol? Maybe his version of those academic institutions was all wrong.
“Yeah, maybe.” Her reply was drowned by another long gulp from her glass. Her fingers kept working at her neck. He knew exactly how she felt. His own shoulders were as rigid as a board. There wasn’t a lot he could do about his tight muscles. But perhaps he could help Daisy lower her stress levels.
“Sit down here.” He pointed at the floor in front of him.
“Pardon me?” She gave him the side eye, glass stalled halfway to her lips.
“I’ll give you a shoulder massage. I’ve been told I’m good at it.” He winked at her, then immediately regretted it. He could never really carry off the cocky, self-assured flirt, not like Wazza, anyway. She was going to refuse, and he’d look like a stupid asshole.
He took a big gulp of his wine and was about to tell her not to worry, when she said, “Oh…all right. That’d be nice.” She placed her wine on the floor and settled cross-legged on the cement, beneath his make-shift basket chair. Daisy had her hair up in a long ponytail, and he wished she’d left it loose, like last night. She was wearing the same pair of borrowed denim shorts she’d had on last night, but today, she’d paired them with a dark-blue tank top—another one of Paula’s shirts that she’d left behind—to go fishing for barramundi this morning. The tank top left her shoulders bare, and at first, he was careful to keep away from all that alluring, brown skin, concentrating on keeping his fingers on the fabric only. He dug his thumbs into the soft tissue between both scapulas and her spine, and she dropped her head forward and moaned.
“Oh, yeah, that’s the spot. How did you know?”
“That’s where all my knotted muscles bunch up, too. I’m not doing it too hard, am I?”
“Nope,” she mumbled, her chin on her chest. “You’re doing it just right.”
He tried to ignore that innuendo and let his fingertips explore the contours of her back further. She was slim, he could feel every bone and rib below her skin; feel the bump of each ridge of her backbone. He liked the sense of her body beneath his hands. Yielding, yet solid at the same time.
His fingers walked up to the muscles that ran along between the base of her neck and her shoulders and began to knead them, and she moaned again, the sound vaguely erotic. A flicker of heat flashed through his veins. The crotch of his jeans got a little too tight, and he shifted to ease his growing erection.
He needed a distraction from how good her body felt beneath his hands. And a distraction from reality. He didn’t want to talk about everything that’d happened today. It was too raw, too painful.
“Tell me something interesting about you.”
She stiffened slightly beneath his hands. “Like what?”
“Like, are you a dog or a cat person? I can tell a lot about a person depending on their favorite animal.”
