Runaway Bride

He’d spent the past decade in voluntary exile, first as a journalist in Singapore, then Hong Kong, and in more recent years, as a foreign correspondent. He’d been busy, constantly learning, dealing with danger on a daily basis, and he could have sworn that Bella Shaw no longer had a hold on him. She’d been his high-school crush, for heaven’s sake. Nothing more.

He’d liaised with many women since he left this town. Beautiful women. Wise, wicked and worldly women. And he’d found something to admire in all of them.

These days, he was a totally different person from the boy who’d lived here. In high school he’d still been impressionable, trying for the most part to fit in with the local kids, despite the wars at home.

Since then, he’d discovered his true calling as a loner, an observer always on the fringes, never staying in one place for too long. A man with no ties. A man who was no longer brought to his knees by the merest fleeting smile from one particular girl.

He had been so sure it was safe to come back.

It should have been easy. Dead easy. Bella was marrying Kent Rigby.

Those fateful words: ‘I do!’ A gold band on her finger. In one short ceremony Damon could close the door on his past, could free himself of haunting memories. Forever.

What irony.

Instead of burying his past, he’d dragged it with both hands into his present. Bella was still single, and he was going to be in constant contact with her, up close and personal, for an indefinite period.

Damn. Shoving the car door open, Damon jumped out. Hands plunged deep in his pockets, he paced along the narrow dirt track beside the Blue Gums fence line while the shock of the wedding cancellation reverberated through him like a string of explosives.

What had gone wrong with their wedding plans?

There’d been no sign of a problem at the bucks’ party last night. Thud.

The bucks’ party. He felt a slam of guilt like a fist in the guts. He’d been such a jerk, made a damn fool of himself. He’d fronted up to Kent, intending to congratulate the lucky groom, then he’d lost the plot and more or less questioned Kent’s right to marry Bella.

Remembering it now, Damon groaned so loudly he frightened a flock of finches in a nearby tree. What the hell had he been thinking?

He couldn’t blame the drink—that had come later when he’d realised how very unsmart he’d been.

Talk about uncalled for. He hadn’t seen either Kent or Bella in over a decade, and he’d severely stuffed his chances with her back then. He had no right to question Kent.

And yet he’d been unable to quash his doubts. He’d told himself the doubts were crazy. Unreasonable. Kent was a great bloke, an old mate. There could be no doubt that he and Bella were destined as Willara’s golden couple.

Just the same …

Damon couldn’t get his head around the idea. He couldn’t see how Bella would be happy as a farmer’s wife, couldn’t forget the way she used to joke about it.

‘Shoot me now,’ she used to say if anyone suggested she might live in Willara for the rest of her life.

Last night he’d spoken out of turn. This morning, it seemed his doubts had been spot on and he couldn’t deny a glimmer of smug male satisfaction that he was right.

But hell, look where it had landed him.

‘Damon!’

Bella’s voice brought him whirling round. She was standing at the front gate, holding a small bag that probably held spare clothes. She was ready to jump in a car with him, again, although not quite in the same spontaneous way she had all those years ago.

She was wiser now, thank heavens. Wiser and warier. And so was he.

‘Ready when you are,’ she called.

His stomach tightened.

Bella had deliberately changed into her plainest clothes—old and slightly baggy jeans, a sensible, sun-smart, long-sleeved cotton shirt and sneakers. No make-up, just sunscreen and lip gloss.

Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and shoved inside a peaked cap. Sunglasses finished the picture and she hoped the message was clear: she was a flirtation-free zone.

The embarrassing thing was—it was she who needed to remember this. Not Damon. She knew there was absolutely no risk that he’d start flirting with her. His focus was solely on finding their grandparents.

‘How’s your father?’ he asked when he reached her.

‘Not too bad, thanks.’

‘He coped with the news?’

‘About the wedding? Yes.’

Actually, her dad had taken the news surprisingly well. He’d talked about sparks and chemistry, the kind of fire that had, apparently, kindled his happy marriage to her mum. Bella wondered if he’d guessed that a lack of these sparks had been at the heart of her problem with Kent.

‘He assures me he’s fine now,’ she said. ‘He’s only mildly concerned about Paddy, but he thinks it’s great that we’re going to find them and keep an eye on them. Oh, and he’s hoping to see you when we get back.’

‘Right,’ Damon said with the grim reserve that seemed to have become his default demeanour. ‘Let’s hit the road.’

The sun had climbed high and Bella turned up the collar of her shirt to protect her neck.

‘Are you worried about the sun?’ Damon was blessed with a natural tan, thanks to Italian heritage on his father’s side. He frowned at her. ‘We don’t have to have the top down.’

‘I’m okay for now, thanks.’ Risk of sunburn was not Bella’s first concern today. She was worn out after weeks of tension over the wedding and she welcomed a dose of sunshine and fresh air to blow away the cobwebs.

‘I’m planning to head across the downs to the coast via Kingaroy.’ Damon dropped a folded map into a pocket on the inside of his door. ‘I don’t expect we’ll need this, but I thought I’d play it safe.’

‘That’s not like you.’

He regarded her with a steady, cool gaze. ‘I guess I’ve changed.’ After a beat, ‘Haven’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’ In recent years playing it safe had become a habit. So much so that her life had come to a grinding halt.

But she would worry about reinventing herself once they’d found Paddy and Violet.

‘I brought a photograph of them.’ She reached into her bag. ‘It was taken at Greenacres last Christmas. I’m afraid we were all wearing silly paper hats, but you can see our faces quite well.’

‘Brilliant.’ Damon’s eyes warmed as he looked at the snap of the happy trio linked arm in arm in front of a Christmas tree. ‘It won’t be easy to ask nosy questions without arousing suspicions, but at least this photo proves that you actually know Paddy and Violet. Good thinking.’

Bella was ridiculously pleased by this small spoonful of praise. For heaven’s sake, she had to calm down. Unnerved, she looked away.

Damon was calm and businesslike. ‘I think we’re good to go. The Greenacres people have our numbers, so they’ll ring us if there’s any fresh news.’ And then he started the car.

Almost against her will, Bella found herself watching him. His hands had always been strong and capable and she used to love watching him do ordinary things—anything really—catching a ball, wielding a penknife, changing gears.

The car’s engine purred, she took a deep breath and they moved smoothly forward. Within moments, fields of crops and clumps of bushland flashed past and she turned her attention to the scenery, determined that by the end of this trip she would be an expert on Queensland’s geography. Not the driver.

From the start, Damon tried his best to concentrate on the road ahead and to remain impartial to Bella’s presence beside him.

But she was constantly there in his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t help being aware of her hands, restless in her lap, pale and delicate and city-girl cared for. Her nails were painted silver and every now and then she fiddled with her ring finger, rubbing at the skin where her engagement ring had been.

What was she thinking?

He couldn’t deny he was curious about her mood now that the wedding was off. Was she heartbroken? Relieved? He couldn’t tell.

It was none of his business, of course. He had to get his mind out of that groove. He should try to think of something to talk about, but the only thing they had in common were memories and they were as dangerous to negotiate as a minefield.

‘So how’s your father?’ Bella asked him suddenly.

Damon almost groaned aloud. From his point of view, she couldn’t have chosen a worse conversation opener.

One look at his face and she must have guessed this. Carefully, she asked, ‘Is he still being difficult?’

‘No.’ Damon glared through the windscreen to the road ahead. ‘We just stay well clear of each other.’

He knew that Bella would be recalling the escalating wars he’d had with his policeman dad during the five years he’d been stationed in Willara. The final showdown had led to the cancellation of his eighteenth birthday party, and the end of their high-school romance.

‘You’ve certainly made sure you stayed far enough away,’ she said.

Damon bristled. Talking about his father was guaranteed to make him snappy. ‘I didn’t leave Australia simply to escape.’

‘Didn’t you?’

There was no mistaking the faint criticism in her voice. But Damon wasn’t prepared to admit she was close to the truth, that reporting about other people’s problems had helped him to avoid his own.

‘I wanted to see the world,’ he said. ‘You know—broaden my mind—experience as many different cultures and perspectives as I could.’

‘That does sound very appealing.’

There was a wistful quality to her voice. He turned to catch her expression, but her face was mostly hidden by the brim of her cap and her sunglasses.

He thought how different her past decade had been from his. While he’d been the prodigal son, she’d been the good and dutiful daughter, staying in Queensland and worrying about her parents and their illnesses. Coping with her mother’s death. She’d been very close to her mother.

To make amends for his terseness, he said, ‘This probably sounds clumsy, but I really liked your mother. She was terrific.’

Bella shook her head. ‘That’s not clumsy. It’s nice. I don’t get to hear it very often. Most people avoid talking about Mum. I suppose they’re worried they’ll upset me.’ She turned to him. ‘Mum liked you, Damon.’

‘Until I blotted my copybook.’

‘No. I know it didn’t seem like it at the time, but my mother was a true-blue fan of yours.’ She looked down and rubbed at her finger again. ‘Did you know she’d made you a birthday cake?’

‘For my eighteenth?’

‘Yes, for the party that never happened.’ Almost immediately, Bella groaned. ‘Sorry. Forget I mentioned that.’

‘Mentioned what?’

She looked momentarily puzzled, and then she smiled. Damon smiled, too, and for a heartbeat, it was dangerously almost like old times.

They stopped for a late lunch at a roadside café. Bella wasn’t particularly hungry and only ate half of her toasted sandwiches, but Damon tucked into his hamburger.

On the road again, she felt her eyelids beginning to droop. She’d had very little sleep the night before. She’d tossed and turned after she’d received a late text message from Kent saying that he needed to talk. And then this morning he’d knocked on her hotel-room door at the crack of dawn, and, although she was happy with the outcome, reaching their final decision had been an emotionally draining process.

She yawned loudly.

‘Feel free to sleep,’ Damon told her.

‘Oh, it’s too early. If I sleep now, I’ll never sleep tonight. I think I need to keep talking.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know.’ She was too tired for anything serious like politics or current affairs. Problem was, Damon had been her first boyfriend and her head was full of memories of his kisses and caresses, of the exciting journey of sexual discovery that they’d begun together. ‘You could tell me about your girlfriends.’

‘Not much to report there.’

‘Rubbish. I’ve read all about you in a celebrity magazine. You’ve had girlfriends galore.’

She watched him silently, waiting for him to respond.

Instead, he bounced the question back at her. ‘And I suppose you’ve had lots of boyfriends?’

Ouch. She had no intention of telling Damon Cavello about her sadly minimalist relationship history. She sighed, knowing there was one topic she should probably broach. ‘I suppose I should explain about Kent,’ she said. ‘And why we decided not to get married.’

His hands tensed on the steering wheel. ‘Only if you want to.’

‘It’s okay. I think I’d like to explain. After all, you’re Kent’s friend. But it’s actually a rather long story.’

‘We have plenty of time.’

‘Yes.’ She drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Well … it started when my father got really sick.’

‘You’ve had a rough trot, Bella.’

She nodded. ‘After Mum died, we were all rather lost … Dad, Paddy and I. But your grandmother was wonderful for Paddy. She went out of her way to cheer him up.’

Damon smiled. ‘She has a talent for cheering people up. I’m glad she was able to help. She mentioned that your father was very low.’

‘He was. He started drinking too much. Drowning his sorrows. It was really awful, actually.’

‘You were away, working in Brisbane, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, and I didn’t realise how quickly Dad was going downhill. He was neglecting the farm. He wasn’t paying bills. When I realised how bad things were, I started coming home on weekends, and Kent helped out on the farm. Mending fences. Ploughing. Kent was fabulous, actually.’

Damon slanted her a piercing glance. ‘Is that when the two of you became close?’

‘Yes.’ She looked away, then said carefully, ‘I’m not sure if you ever knew, but Kent’s always looked up to my father. You probably heard that Dad saved Kent from drowning when he was a kid?’ Damon nodded.

‘Kent felt that he owed him a huge debt. He became very worried when Dad started the heavy drinking. Then Dad developed heart failure. He’d been literally drinking himself to death.’

‘And Kent wanted to help.’

‘Yes.’

‘By marrying you?’

The fierce intensity in Damon’s voice made her shiver. ‘More or less.’ She rubbed at her arms. ‘Kent suggested we should get engaged, and suddenly it seemed to be the answer to all my problems. He and I would be living next door to Dad. We could keep an eye on him, get him to AA meetings and help him to run the farm.’

‘And there’d be grandchildren for your father to dote on. A reason for him to go on living.’

Bella drew a sharp breath. ‘That was what we hoped.’

After a beat, Damon said, smoothly, ‘It sounds like a great plan. Dare I ask what went wrong?’

Oh, help. This was the hard part.

There was no way she could explain to this man who set her heart spinning at fifty paces about their lack of chemistry. ‘We—ah—realised that gratitude isn’t a good basis for a happy marriage,’ she said quietly.

Damon’s clever grey eyes narrowed. ‘And it was an amicable decision?’

‘Of course.’

But suddenly she’d had enough. She’d told Damon far more than she’d intended and she didn’t want this clever reporter probing too deeply. ‘This isn’t an interview, Damon. If you don’t mind, I’m done with answering questions.’

With that, she yawned dramatically and closed her eyes.

Damon drove on, and it wasn’t too long before Bella’s head slipped sideways. Her cap fell off revealing the soft, pale gleam of her hair. A strand escaped and fluttered gently like a golden streamer. As her head tipped farther he caught sight of the thick fringe of her eyelashes behind her sunglasses. Yes, she was definitely asleep, and he was flooded by a surge of protectiveness.

He thought about the story she’d just told him. There’d been no sign of self-pity in her voice, but he’d found her tale incredibly sad. Bella, the fun-loving, sexy and adventurous girl he’d known, had been loaded with too many responsibilities and worries.

Reading between the lines … these worries were the reason she’d been prepared to sacrifice herself in a passionless marriage. The thought of Bella trapped by duty enraged him.

But … damn it. This was so not the way he wanted to feel. An emotional reconnection with Bella Shaw was definitely not part of his plan.

He forced his focus to the blue bitumen road stretching ahead, and to the wider, lighter blue of the sky arching above. Purposefully, he inhaled the scents of dry earth and the eucalyptus wafting in on the fresh, clean air.

For him, the allure of an open road had always been strong, and if he weren’t so concerned now about Violet and Paddy he would have absolutely loved this journey. Each bend in the road was a new possibility, a chance for adventure. He was always at his happiest when he was travelling with no clear destination.

At heart, he’d never changed. He was a gypsy, a nomad.

And he was quite sure that, for a nomad like him, it had been a mistake to come home.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Bella woke she was aware of a strange blue-grey light outside. She saw stands of tall pine trees flashing past. And she saw the back of Damon’s dark head.

The back of his head? That didn’t seem right. She blinked and tried to sit up, but she was held down by her seat belt. Her neck was stiff and she realised that her seat had been lowered into the reclining position. And the car had a roof.

When had that happened? She couldn’t remember.

Beneath her cheek, there was something soft and pillowy—a man’s sweater with a faint hint of Damon’s exotic cologne had been rolled up to cushion her head.

She yanked on the lever that raised her seat. ‘What time is it?’

Damon smiled. ‘Hey, there.’

Yawning, she reached for her water bottle and took a few sips. That was better. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked again. ‘Have I been asleep long?’

‘It’s almost five.’ He pointed to the clock on the dashboard.

‘Wow. I’ve been asleep for a couple of hours, then.’

‘More than a couple.’

Sleepily, Bella took another look at their surroundings. There was something about the light that didn’t seem right for five o’clock in the afternoon. It should have been all golden and coppery and sloping in low from the west. She shivered and frowned as a terrible thought struck. ‘Damon, it’s not five o’clock in the morning, is it?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘No! It can’t be.’ Shocked, she sat up straighter, and pulled her jacket more closely around her. Wait a minute. Where had her jacket come from? She turned to Damon. ‘Did you get this jacket out of my bag?’

‘You were getting goose bumps on your arms.’

She rubbed at the stiff spot on her neck. ‘But I can’t have been asleep all night.’

‘You were exhausted, Bella, and you needed to sleep. You’ve had a huge twenty-four hours.’

‘I know. But don’t tell me you’ve been driving all night?’ ‘I felt fine.’

‘Damon, you shouldn’t have. You should have stopped.’

She was beginning to feel quite angry. Guilty, too. They were supposed to share the driving. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t planning to stop?’

‘It wasn’t planned. It just seemed like a good idea to let you sleep and push on.’

‘But we could have stayed in a motel.’

He cocked a questioning eyebrow. ‘Were you anxious to spend the night in a motel?’

‘In separate rooms, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Faint amusement shimmered in his eyes.

Bella could feel her anger rising to the boil. ‘Anyone with any sense knows you have to have adequate rest on a long road trip.’ She should have guessed something like this might happen. Damon Cavello had always been a risk taker.

They rounded a curve and she shot an angry glance at the view of vast plains stretching ahead, soft in the morning light, and dotted with grazing cattle. ‘So, where are we?’

‘Just south of Rockhampton.’

‘Rockhampton? That’s ridiculous, Damon. What’s the point of haring up the highway when we don’t know for sure where Violet and Paddy are? We could have passed them in the night back in Gympie, or Hervey Bay.’

‘I take it you’re not a morning person,’ he said smoothly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Okay, she was being snappy, but she was justified. Damon might think he was bullet proof, but they were supposed to be a team and he should have at least consulted her before deciding to drive all night.

‘I’m fine once I’ve had coffee.’

‘There should be a coffee shop coming up very soon.’

‘I still think I was making a valid point. Let me remind you, you’re not still in a war zone, Mr Cavello.’

‘I had noticed.’

‘That means we don’t need to take the risks you’re so fond of. I don’t fancy finding myself wrapped around a gum tree because you chose to drive all night.’

‘I was fine, Bella.’

‘That’s not the point. From now on, we make joint decisions. If we need to drive all night, I’ll be part of the decision making. I’m not just here for the ride, you know. I’ll do my share of the driving.’ ‘I hear you.’

Annoyed by his quiet, smug responses, Bella threw in her trump card. ‘And. As I said, it’s crazy to race pell-mell up the highway when we don’t know where our grandparents are. We’re supposed to be stopping along the way and making enquiries.’

‘The circumstances have changed.’

Gobsmacked, she stared at him. ‘How?’

‘Brenda Holmes rang from Greenacres. They’ve found a note from Violet.’

Bella’s jaw sagged. ‘You mean I slept through a phone call?’

‘Snored your head off.’

If he weren’t driving she would have hit him. ‘When were you going to tell me?’

‘When I could get a word in edgeways.’

The nerve of him to treat her like a sleeping child and then throw joking insults. Bella was sorely tempted to continue her lecture. But she supposed it would be water off a duck’s back. The man was a law unto himself. Already, she was beginning to regret her rash impulse to join him on this wild chase.

‘So where was this note?’ she asked primly. ‘And why did Brenda Holmes take so long to find it?’

‘It was stuck, or caught, under Violet’s neighbour’s doormat. Violet must have slipped it under the door in the middle of the night. She was probably fumbling around in the dark, and it went under the mat, as well. At any rate no one saw it till last night.’

‘And what did it say?’

‘Not as much as we might have hoped. But it seems there’s been some kind of emergency in Port Douglas, and Paddy was determined that he had to be there straight away. Violet lent him her car and apparently decided she couldn’t let him travel all that way on his own.’

Bella blinked as she assimilated this news. ‘But they might have driven to Brisbane and caught a plane.’

‘I doubt it. The driver at the servo was certain they were definitely heading north.’

‘That’s true, and I’ve just remembered that Paddy’s not supposed to fly. It’s something to do with his heart.’

She let out her breath with a whoosh. She hadn’t dreamed their grandparents were on some kind of mercy dash. It was such a long way for an elderly couple to drive. ‘Port Douglas is even farther north than Cairns.’

‘Exactly. That’s why I decided to keep going.’

‘I wonder what the emergency is.’ She was thinking aloud now, trying to remember if Paddy had talked about Port Douglas. She had a vague feeling he had mentioned it.

‘I think one of Paddy’s mates lives in Port Douglas. I remember Paddy talking about a fellow veteran from the Korean War.’

‘Can you remember his name?’

‘No.’ She sighed. ‘It might come to me, but I’m drawing blanks at the moment. Dad might know. I’ll call him later.’

At least she was feeling wide awake now. ‘You should let me drive, Damon. You must be worn out.’

‘We’ll have breakfast in Rockhampton and then you can take over.’ He shot her a wink. ‘Once you’ve had your coffee.’