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“Good.”
“But then we have water over the roads.”
He shot me a bewildered look and I grinned at him. “Excellent,” he said, putting his hand flat on the dash to hold himself in his seat. “Do we come back this way? Please say no.”
I chuckled. “Nope. We’ll be further north by the end of the trip, and we’ll come back from the east, near Arnhem Land. It’s flatter out that way.”
“You mean we could have gone out that way?” His knuckles were white on the grip bar. “Instead of on this goat track?”
“We could, but where would the fun in that be?” We hit a hole and both of us jolted in our seats. “Plus, this isn’t a goat track. It’s a wild pig track.”
His sharp blue eyes cut to mine. “Your sense of humour is about as funny as this drive.”
I grinned at him, but it was lost on him because he didn’t look at me. Not until we were on much flatter ground anyway. His fingers uncurled from the grip bar and he finally exhaled. It was still a track, still crowded over by trees and ferns, but flatter.
I slowed the Jeep to a stop.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, alarmed.
“Sure.” I pointed back up at the ridge now behind us. “See that gap in the trees on top of the ridgeline? That’s Paul and Derek’s camp.”
“Oh wow.”
“It’s a hairy climb down,” I admitted. “But I saved us a full day’s drive.”
Jeremiah gave an annoyed sniff but faced the front again. “Some warning would have been nice.”
“I did warn you. I said it was impassable.”
He turned slowly to face me. “Impassable would imply that the road is not drivable, meaning one is not supposed to drive on it because it’s impassable.”
“Impassable is not impossible.” I grinned at him and, putting the car in first, began driving again. “Anyway, that’s for tourists, not me.”
His eyes lasered in on mine, and oooh boy, those dark blue eyes could hold some fire. It didn’t help that I found it funny. It certainly didn’t help that I found it sexy as hell.
Disgruntled but choosing silence, he pulled out a map, the kind you found in old service stations, and it was probably just as well. Not that we had phone service out there, but it also meant he wasn’t looking at me, and it meant that sapphire gaze wasn’t trying to burn holes into my head.
The track had evened out, but it didn’t mean it was any less bumpy. The huge potholes were now filled with water, their depth—and subsequent amount of bouncing—hard to gauge. I took it slow, not wantin’ to break my suspension.
Jeremiah only just seemed to notice. He looked up from his map to the narrow track ahead, then to me. “The fact you’re driving with considerably less speed on this horizontal ground compared to the speed you drove down the vertical hillside makes me believe you actually weren’t controlling the speed with which we were plummeting down the vertical hill.”
I laughed. “Plummeting is a strong word.”
“Plunging also works.”
“I think expertly navigating is better.”
He rolled his eyes. “I think I know where we are,” he said, checking the map again. “We have no phone service out here.”
“There ain’t much of anything out here.”
“I have a serious question. What happens if one of us is injured?”
“I have a first aid kit.”
“No, seriously.”
“I am serious.”
