14
A little after six o’clock the next morning, a sluice of cold water made Jo’s eyes snap open and her hands scrabble to find taps.
Crap.
Reminiscing about days gone by with a young and charming Hux was not a sensible way to be passing her time, and now she’d gone and used up all the hot water. She was in a cramped Formica shower booth, a shower curtain of dubious age threatening to leap at her and cling from knee to boob, and she couldn’t even remember what stage she was at in washing her hair. Had she even rinsed the shampoo out?
It was about three more seconds in the cold flow before the taps turned fully off. She reached for her towel.Forget Hux, she told herself.Concentrate on what matters: Luke, reboot career, find some happiness. She whispered while she towelled herself dry, ‘Luke, reboot career, find some happiness, Luke …’
She’d call Luke again, but she’d better wait a few hours; he wasn’t likely to thank her for waking him up at this early hour.
She’d visit the police station again after breakfast. See what the policewoman had to say. And then maybe it would be time she acknowledged this trip had been a fool’s errand before she spent every last dollar of her savings on hotel accommodation. She could return the scrapbook to the Dirt Girls, let them hold her hands and tell her nice things for a bit in the hope that some of their kindness sank in and did some good, then head back to Brisbane a few days early. She’d visit Jedda at the hospital to let her know that whatever secrets may be lurking underground at Corley Station, they were not yet ready to reveal themselves. And then she’d face up to the certainty that her career at the museum was all but over.
Jo wasn’t much into imagery. She found poetry impenetrable and she’d studied English at school because she had to, not because she wanted to, but even so, that phrase—all but over—rang dolefully in her head the way she imagined air-raid sirens had rung dolefully back in World War Two.
And over the top of the ringing, she could hear her parents’ voices:If only you’d studied pharmacy, Joanne, like we planned when we scrimped and saved and sacrificed our whole lives to send you to school and pay for your violin lessons.
Could a kid really be blamed for wasting her parents’ money on violin lessons that she’d hated?
Jo wrapped the towel around her hair to pat out what water she could, then cocked her head. Was that a knock?
She was opening her mouth to call out ‘Just a minute’ when the door swung open and standing there, two feet away from her wet and naked (and stretchmarky and droopy-boobed) body was the last person in the world she wanted to expose herself to.
‘Oh crap,’ said Gavin Huxtable.
At least, that’s what he might have said. She was busy shrieking and pulling the towel off her head and around her to cover her bits, so she may have misheard him.
‘What theheck?’ she said. That blush she’d thought she’d left behind in her gauche twenties was back, and from the way she was overheating, it seemed the blush was covering a whole lot more than her face.
‘Sorry,’ he said. But he didn’t actually look sorry. ‘Maybe you should lock the door next time.’
‘I did lock the—’ Shit. She hadn’t locked the door. ‘Maybe you could knock next time,’ she said instead.
He stood in the doorway, filling it just about, and that was when she noticed he was wearing boardshorts—pineapple-covered things that had no place in a country pub a thousand kilometres from the nearest body of salt water—and nothing else. He also looked rumpled. And tired. And a little bleary-eyed.
‘I did knock.’
He was grinning, now, like this was some great joke. Easy for him; he wasn’t sporting any blemishes that she could see nor carrying any extra weight. Her eyes took in ribs and stomach muscles and pecs and biceps like she’d suddenly become some sort of high-speed image scanner, so she forced herself to look away. What did it matter if he looked good? Better, even, than how he’d looked the last time she’d seen him stripped to the skin?
‘If you’ll let me past,’ she said, ‘I can be on my way.’
‘On your way where?’ How did he manage to make four words sound like a salacious invitation? He was in a very different mood now, barely past dawn, than yesterday when they’d been stuck side by side in a helicopter. Then, he’d seemed terse. Distant. Vaguely pissed off. Now, she was having a hard time interpreting his current mood as anything other than … charming.
‘To my room. I have work to do.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten about your work. Your lists and your notebooks and your academic articles. “Things I must do today. Things I must do next week. Things I must do to be the most famous scientist in the world, such as, oh, yes, ditch my boyfriend and move to Siberia”.’
Oh. Not charming after all, but vicious. And he’d muffed the location—it had been Argentina, not Siberia—but she wouldn’t have expected him to remember.
‘Ditch my boyfriend?’ she echoed. Was that what it had seemed like? She hadn’t ditched him … she’d run away from her feelings, under the disguise of accepting a career-changing opportunity. In a different country. A long, long way away. And he’d always been so casual and fun and friendly she’d just assumed …
She swallowed. She was having trouble remembering what she’d assumed, to be honest, so she tucked the towel more tightly around her and held her sponge bag like it was a fancy handbag. As a defence shield against accusations from the past, it was pathetic. As a time-buying strategy before she came up with something else to say, it was also pathetic, because she didn’t know what to say.
‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to say that out loud. I didn’t get much sleep.’
‘And yet you did say it.’
‘Don’t frown at me, Jo,’ he said, hitching one shoulder up against the door jamb and only missing it by a centimetre or two. Why hadn’t he got much sleep? Had he been outdrinking?
