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He laughed, low and rumbling. “Eighty kilometres an hour. Just a little faster than your racehorses.”
“At top speed. I don’t usually go top speed.” She didn’t know the exact conversion, but if Lachlan was telling the truth, she figured they were going fifty miles per hour. Which felt a lot faster when the wind was whipping past and every part of her body was exposed to the elements. Not to mention the cars zooming past on what felt like the wrong side of the road.
It was enough excitement to kill her. Lachlan might’ve said he’d be careful, but the man liked adrenaline. If she’d gathered anything about him in the first hours of their acquaintance, it was that he didn’t know what it was like tonotbe a thrill seeker: if he wasn’t flying a tiny airplane, he was screaming down the road on his motorcycle.
“Welcome to the Australian bush!” Maybe she was imagining it, but she heard a hint of pride behind his teasing tone.
They’d left behind the clusters of houses along the road and were out in open country. It reminded her of the land where she’d grown up—stretches of dry pasture behind wood rail and barbed wire fences, punctuated by scattered stands of trees or an occasional outcropping of rocks. It wasn’t especially exciting scenery, but shelikedit.
“It reminds me of home.” In fact, the longer they rode, the more comfortable she was, even as she marveled at the sheer fact of being in a new country, in a new part of the world, with unfamiliar plants and animals.
“How’s that?” He sounded surprised.
“I don’t know. The feel of it. I like it. The open space, the livestock, the heat.” It was hot enough it might’ve been her hometown in summer— but it was days until Christmas. She wanted to take it all in, to seeeverything,to read each of the strangely charming names that appeared on the street signs: things like Wallamore and Tangaratta and Moonaran. The town and street names were unlike anything she’d ever encounter back in California.
But as the minutes stretched as long as the highway before them, and she got used to the speed, exhaustion crashed over her. It wasn’t just her fatigue from not sleeping on her flight, but the added physical exertion of staying on the motorcycle. She wasn’t laughing or screaming anymore, she was constantly leaning as Lachlan swooped through a curve or shifting ever so slightly as he steered around a rough patch of road or bracing against the buffeting of the wind. The sun warmed her and the rumble of the motorcycle was like a lullaby that made her want to drop her head onto Lachlan’s shoulders, close her eyes, and sleep. The nap he’d woken her from hadn’t been enough to take more than the slightest edge off her fatigue.
She was drifting, her eyelids so heavy. She knew she shouldn’t—couldn’t—fall asleep. It wasn’t safe, and she couldn’t rely on muscle memory to keep her holding on to Lachlan. She didn’t know she’d fallen asleep until she jerked awake. Lachlan must’ve felt it, because he’d slowed way down, and was edging toward the side of the road.
“You okay back there?”
“I’m sorry, Lachlan. I’m so tired. Aside from that nap in the airport, I haven’t slept since… I don’t know when. More than twenty-four hours ago. And I have no idea when I last ate a real meal. The food on the plane was pitiful.”
“Can you make it to Lena’s? It’s maybe twenty minutes. Or there’s a place we can stop, just at the edge of town.”
“I can’t make it to Lena’s.” She’d gotten a little jolt of adrenaline when she’d startled awake, but it wasn’t going to last her until she could crash at her bestie’s, and she didn’t want to put them both at risk if she couldn’t stay awake. Food would help.
“We’ll stop. Just a few more minutes.”
As they drove, houses started appearing with more frequency, and then Lachlan slowed as they approached a sign sayingWelcome to Bindarra Creek.She was surprised by the cocktail of emotions she felt, seeing it. Relief that she’d finally made it, even if she wasn’t all the way to Lena’s house yet, and a twinge of sadness. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Lachlan yet. Which was weird. She didn’t even know the guy. There was just something about him—maybe whatever it was that had made Lena say ‘Everyone likes Lachie!’ was working on her, too.
Just beyond the town sign was a mechanic’s shop. It had a huge mural of a river rushing through a gorge and a red-tailed black cockatoo winging through a blue sky. On the other side of the road was a place called Beth’s Truck Stop.
With an arcing turn, Lachlan steered to the parking lot for Beth’s and pulled into a space right in front. He waited while she slid off the motorcycle, then dismounted himself.
They’d been so close for so long, it felt strangely awkward to suddenly have so much space between them. To distract herself from how she wished she could just lean into him and let her body relax, she took her helmet off and then peeled off the leather jacket. The breeze was warm, but it felt good on her overheated skin.
When she turned to Lachlan, he’d already done the same, and his eyes were on her. Had he been checking her out?
He cleared his throat. “I’ll go in and get us some takeaway. You good with a rissole or do you want a meat pie? They’ve got pretty good ones here.”
She laughed. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language. “What’s a rissole?”
“Uhhh… Like a meat patty, on a bun.”
“A hamburger?” She didn’t know why she was using the American term like he’d know what it meant and whether it was the same thing as a rissole.
He shrugged. “Yeah, but… yeah. Is that good for you? Or they have fish and chips and sausage rolls… but I think the rissoles and meat pies are more likely to be a pleasant surprise after your low expectations.” He gave her one of those winks that she was starting to think of as his signature move.
But this wink didn’t disarm her so much that she wasn’t surprisingly touched by how he’d paid attention to what she’d said. “A rissole for me then.”
“You want the works on it? Egg? Bacon? Cheese? Tomato? Beet root? Pineapple? Onion?”
“Egg and beet root and pineapple? I’ve never had any of those on a burger!”
“Is that a yes? From you?”
She gave him a little shove that didn’t budge him even an inch. “Yes. I’m saying yes to everything.”
