Some Girls Don't (Outback Heat Book 2) (5 page)

Above all else, as Ethan constantly reminded them, Delia was Connie’s mum.

“I think Edward’s waiting for you on the dance floor,” he said instead.

Jarrod wanted to warn the local farmer off, but one look at poor Edward and he knew it was too late. He just hoped the fool didn’t get in over his head.

Thankfully Selena was peeling away from a little group and was momentarily without company. “Excuse me,” he said to Delia.

In half a dozen strides he was at her side.

“Jarrod,” she nodded, glancing at him warily. Normally she had to tip her head back a little, but her killer black fuck-me heels put them at eye level.

He liked it. He liked it a lot.

“Great speech.”

“Thank you.”

Jarrod shoved a hand in his pocket. “I need to talk to you.”

She blinked “Now?”

“Hey, Selena.” A guy Jarrod vaguely recognised smiled at her as he walked by. “Great job on that fracking story.”

“Thank you.” Selena smiled then looked back at Jarrod, her eyebrow raised.

“Yes. Now.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No.”

“Sorry, excuse me,” a woman said, smiling apologetically at Jarrod before turning to Selena and thrusting the event program and a pen at her. “Do you think I could have your autograph?”

“Of course,” Selena said, taking the pen and paper and fussing about with name spelling and the woman’s niece who was a big fan, until Jarrod wanted to take the program and tear it into confetti.

Two more people joined the gathering, also wanting autographs, and it was ten minutes before she turned her attention to Jarrod. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Her note of impatience was even more pronounced, but Jarrod ploughed on. “I wanted to apologise for what I said last night.”

“It’s fine, Jarrod.” She waved a hand dismissively. “We both said stuff.”

“No. I—”

“Selena? Could I get a selfie with you?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jarrod muttered under his breath as he was pushed aside for the photo. “This is ridiculous.”

He didn’t want to carve out an apology in the dribs and drabs of time they had in between fan interruptions. He was thrilled she was adored—hell, he’d been there himself—but impatience crawled up his spine.

When she was done he relieved her of her wine glass, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her towards the door, collecting his jacket off his chair on the way past. “Jarrod. What are you doing?”

He kept going, determined to get her alone.

“Jarrod!”

He stopped, tantalisingly close to the door, and turned. “Selena, please, for the love of
God
 … I need to talk to you without being interrupted every ten seconds.”

Jarrod figured the desperation that simmered in his gut must have been right there on his face too, if the narrowing of her eyes was anything to go by.

“Fine,” she sighed.

But outside wasn’t any better, as they were stopped three more times just walking down the rickety old stairway.

“Christ. I know how Prince bloody Charles must have felt now,” he said as Selena finished posing for another selfie.

She laughed and then he did too at the bizarreness of it all and they were both laughing and it was like it used to be between them; a surge of nostalgia swelled in his chest. “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing her hand again.

“Go?”

“Yeah, you know, split, vamoose.” He tugged on her hand. “Blow this joint. Get the flock outta here.”

“Ah, sheep jokes.” She smiled. “I remember they were your specialty.”

Jarrod remembered
she
was his specialty. “Come on.” He had the sudden urge to be completely alone with her. Get her away from everyone so he could apologise properly. “I’m sure your adoring fans can spare you.”

“I suppose.” She glanced up the stairs to the Farmers’ Hall. “I don’t think anyone can complain about how I worked the room.”

Hell
no. He’d had a hard-on most of the night watching her work the room, shrink-wrapped into that dress, and strutting around in those heels. “I think they got their money’s worth.”

She nodded. “Where do you want to go? Not exactly a quiet bar or a coffee shop open at this hour of night in Jumbuck Springs.”

Jarrod shrugged. “Hobson’s Crossing?”

One delicately arched eyebrow lifted. “
Really?
I don’t think that’s wise, do you?”

“That’s what you do when you come home, right? Revisit old haunts?” He looked up at the night sky. A three-quarter moon dominated an inky black void bursting with stars. “I remember we used to star watch out there lying in the back of my dual cab.”

She blinked at him in disbelief. “We used to do a hell of a lot more than that.”

Yeah. That too.

About five minutes west from Hobson’s Crossing had been their secret hideaway. A special place they’d found where they could be truly alone. They’d lost their virginity to each other there. On a blanket under a stand of shady gums as the sun had gone down. It hadn’t been a fancy city hotel but it had been exceptionally pretty. She’d given him his first ever blow job there as well. He’d come in about ten seconds flat. About two seconds more than he’d lasted the first time he’d slid inside her.

“Well … I can control myself.” He kicked up an eyebrow in silent challenge, remembering Selena’s competitive nature. “Can you?”

She was right, it would probably be better if they didn’t. If they just drove to a deserted street somewhere and sat in his car. What possible good could come out of going to a place rampant with memories of them? She had a boyfriend, for fuck’s sake.

But he just wanted to be alone with her. To finally talk. They were long overdue for one and they’d always been honest with each other out there.

She folded her arms, her chin jutting out. Challenge accepted. “Fine.”

*     *     *

Selena tried to
forget where they were going as they rode past the
Goodbye from Jumbuck Springs
sign. “I can’t believe you still have Rhonda,” she said, trying to distract herself as she looked around the inside. The vehicle had been ten years old when Jarrod had bought it.

So many memories.

“She just keeps going and going. Can’t trade her in. It’d be disloyal.”

Selena rolled her head along the headrest until she was looking at the hard blade of his cheekbone and the square set to his jaw. She didn’t think he was having a dig at her, but she could see the parallel. Jarrod was a loyal guy. She had no doubt in her head that he would have been loyal to her forever.

And that wasn’t nothing in this era of easy divorce.

Lights from the dash illuminated his strong profile and the soft layer of ginger whiskers. She itched to run her fingers over it, feel it prickling against her palm. He’d taken his tie off, undone the top two buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves a long time ago. The light played across the corded muscles of his forearms and the blond hairs.

She could smell his aftershave and breathed it in for old time’s sake.

He glanced at her briefly before looking back at the road. “About last night …”

“It really is okay, Jarrod. You said some stuff you shouldn’t have. I said some stuff I shouldn’t have. It was bound to happen with us. With so much … unfinished business between us.”

He glanced at her quickly again. “Yes.”

Selena sighed. Her grandmother was right. She did owe him an explanation for running out on him like that, without saying goodbye. The
real
explanation, not the fake ‘sudden opportunity in the city’ Grandy had been left to dish out.

It had been a shitty thing to do then and not trying to give him an honest explanation now would be even shittier.

The sign to Hobson’s Crossing approached, and he slowed the dual cab down. “You returned all my letters,” he said as he turned off the bitumen onto gravel.

Selena looked out the window as the landscape changed from stubbly paddocks to gum trees and bush, the headlights illuminating the powdery dust and the rutted corrugations of the dirt road.

“I had to go cold turkey, Jarrod,” she said, turning her head to face him again. His knuckles tightened around the steering wheel. “It was always all or nothing with us.”

He slowed the car as it dipped down to the narrow cement crossing that divided Hobson’s Creek in two. The creek was one of the many watercourses that were fed by the springs about an hour’s drive further west and after which Jumbuck Springs was named. When it rained enough, the water would flood over the cement causeway.

But from what Selena could tell from the flash of moonlight on water as they passed, they were in no danger of that.

“I don’t remember the creek ever being that low,” she mused.

“Lowest it’s been in forty years, apparently.”

The dual cab approached the parking area that overlooked the swimming hole. Popular with families during the day, and horny teenagers with only one thing on their minds at night, it was currently deserted.

“Jarrod?” she said as he drove straight by. “Where are you going?” It was a rhetorical question.

She knew where he was heading.

“We’re so close,” he said, his eyes fixed on the road. “Aren’t you curious to see the old hangout?”

Their own private lovers’ lane? She shouldn’t be, but now she was here she could feel the tug of curiosity. Maybe it was the moonlight. Or the stars. Or the memories being stirred by just sitting next to him in Rhonda.

Nostalgia was a bitch like that.

“Can you still find the track?” she asked.

He threw her his best boy scout look. “A man never forgets where he lost his virginity.”

Jarrod had stumbled across the thick stand of trees, just off the road, when he’d been surveying for the fire service, and they’d snuck out to it whenever they’d been able. But it
had
been fifteen years. Surely it must have fallen back to the inexorable creep of bush?

Unless … “Did you ever bring anyone else out here?”

He glanced at her swiftly, his brow crinkled as he shook his head definitively. “
Never
.”

A sweet swell of relief washed through her system. Selena didn’t have any right to demand this place be theirs exclusively but she couldn’t deny how happy it made her that it was.

Soon enough, Jarrod was taking the dual cab bush and they bumped along slowly through the undergrowth for a few minutes before the headlights picked out the ghostly outlines of tall thick trunks ahead.

He flashed her a grin. “Ta da.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes.

Within another minute he was wheeling the car around, positioning it within the horseshoe embrace of the trees, completely invisible to anyone passing by on the road to the springs.

Not that anyone would be at this hour of night.

He released his seatbelt then hit a switch, rolling both their windows down before he killed the engine. The moonlight projected overhanging leafy shadows against the windscreen as the smell of eucalyptus, warm bushland and dry earth joined the aroma of Jarrod’s aftershave.

She inhaled deeply and she was seventeen again.

Her pulse fluttered at her wrists and temple, joining a more primal flutter deep inside her. The hush of the night pressed in on them.

“I am sorry,” she said, removing her seatbelt, staring out the windscreen as the silence stretched, conscious of him looking out his window at God knew what. “About just taking off like that.”

He didn’t say anything, just gripped the steering wheel at the bottom and continued to stare out his window. Selena’s heart thudded loud in her chest. “I realise I never told you that, and I should have. Years ago. I was going to write, but then I didn’t know what to say, and when I did try, it seemed inadequate. I don’t know how many pages I screwed up and—”

She stopped.
Shit, Selena, shut up.
She was babbling.

But he wasn’t saying anything and she couldn’t bear the condemnation in his silence.

“Then time went by and I promised myself next week, next month or for Easter or Christmas until it just got too … late to do it. And then I figured it was better that you hated me anyway.”

His knuckles whitened on the wheel as he turned his head to face her. “What on earth did I ever do to you to make you think I wasn’t supportive of you moving to the city?”

Selena shook her head. “Nothing.”

“I knew you were leaving to go to college in February,” he said, his jaw tight. “I was fine with that. Well … I hated it, but I knew we’d figure it out. I knew you wanted a career in TV news and I wanted that for you as well. So I don’t understand why you just took off in the dead of night without a goodbye, a note, a phone call … nothing. Why didn’t you just tell me you were going?”

Because she wouldn’t have gone.

Hot tears pricked at the backs of her eyes but Selena refused to let them fall—she’d cried enough back then for both of them. She’d been running scared—terrified—and every action had felt justified at the time, but she’d hurt him and she had to own that.

“I got my exam results that day. I just scraped through with passes.”

Selena had been a straight-A student. She’d worked hard for them; she wasn’t naturally gifted but she’d always topped her classes. Until she and Jarrod had started having sex.