Page 71 of Sexy as Sin
A moment before he answered. “I would. Let’s do that. There’s also the matter of a Montana winter.”
“Pardon?”
“You don’t want to go back to your place, because you don’t want Azra’s mom coming after you. That little duffel you brought doesn’t have clothes for snow in it. Doesn’t have clothes for me to take you out the way I need to before we leave, for that matter.”
“Uh... no. To both things. I don’t want her thinking she can keep hanging around, and that she’ll find Azra through me.”
“We’ll take care of that in Brisbane, then. Autumn’s got to come sometime, even here, and surely somebody in Australia wears something besides shorts. We’ll get you Portland-ready, at least. Otherwise, you’re going to get off the plane and turn around to get back on it again. The Montana aspect, we’ll take care of when we get to Portland.”
“That’s endless assurance, mate. You buying my clothes now?”
“I sure hope so.”
She sighed. “Since I’m pretty well skint other than your money, which I’m saving, since I’ve just talked myself out of a job, I’ll take it. I’m not a good shopper, though, money or not.”
“Mm. On the other hand, you’ve got somebody nearby who’s on pins and needles herself and scared to leave the house, I’ll bet, and who’s very, very good at finding you beautiful things to wear. Maybe Azra needs a trip to Brisbane, and a chance to feel useful. We’ll take everybody to dinner by the river, how’s that? I know a place.”
Sunday noon, and Brett was discovering that Willow was as competent at driving as she was at every other physical activity. He’d given Dave the day off, but he’d taken the car. It was more comfortable than anybody else’s.
She was also nervous. After she’d gotten done chatting with Azra, who’d insisted on riding in the back seat because of his leg, she’d fallen silent. At first, he’d thought she was navigating the traffic, which was busy enough, but when she’d made it onto the quieter suburban streets, he decided it was something more.
He checked behind him. Azra had put headphones in, being discreet, no doubt. He only had a couple minutes for this, so he’d better make it good.
“You’re nervous,” he said. No sense in burying the lead.
Willow jumped. Physically jumped. “Oh! You startled me. Maybe a bit.”
“You know...” He couldn’t help smiling. “Talking to people is my job.”
“And you’re great at your job.” She was smiling back, at least a little.
“Not to get all arrogant about it, but that’s what they say.”
This time, she laughed. “If it were just my aunt... I don’t bring people home.Menhome. They’re going to think it’s... that it means something more than just an outing. We don’t actually have to do this.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “We do. And they’re going to be right, as far as I’m concerned. Why do you think I finally got a haircut?”
That flustered her some more, and she drove another block before she burst out with, “And why in the world did you say that walking the golf course with him would be fine? Passing over the fact that it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, since you can’t possibly golf right now, even if you could normally, so what’s the point—you’ve never seen my Uncle Colin walk. Ex-sergeant-major, in case I didn’t say.”
“You did say. It’s nine holes and maybe two and a half miles, flat crutch tips are a thing, Dave’s been taking me to his gym—you didn’t know that, did you?—and what else am I going to do, come shopping with you? Also, I’m a property developer. Of course I can golf. Normally.”
Two hours and four holes later, though, he was sweating it some. Willow had been right. Her aunt was as easy, casual, and cheerful as Willow herself. Her uncle was something else. Also, the temperature might be in the mid-eighties, but the humidity was set on “steam shower,” and he’d sweated all the way through his blue polo shirt and was now working on the khakis. Grass-tested flat crutch tips or not, it wasn’t easy to keep up with the three men striding over the ground like it was a race to get there. Two ex-military, one civilian with a point to make, and Brett, doing his damnedest not to bring up the rear.
Willow’s uncle was a broad-shouldered, lean-hipped man in his sixties with a posture so upright, you couldn’t imagine him bending over, and with hair clipped so close to his head, you could barely see that it was graying. No compromise to age, or to anything else. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine him as an action star’s father, and it wasn’t any kind of stretch at all to imagine him as the father of a special forces soldier. Brett placed a crutch into a sneaky dip in the ground and had an awkward moment, and ex-Sergeant-Major Blackstone naturally chose that moment to turn and ask, “All right?”
“Yep,” Brett said. Apparently not convincingly enough, because the other man slowed his pace a fraction and said, “Let them go on. Geoff takes bloody ages anyway. If I’m not there to watch, I won’t feel my blood pressure rise. He had a bypass last year. Thinks that’s an excuse.”
Brett laughed out loud, and Blackstone looked at him out of the corner of shrewd brown eyes and didn’t smile. Brett wondered if he could. The surface of that face would probably crack. “You think I’ve been testing you,” the older man said.
“Oh, yeah.” Brett hadn’t slowed down yet, and he didn’t do it now. “But then, I was expecting you to.”
They passed a dozen kangaroos grazing among the trees who decided to register their protest at being interrupted by hopping a few desultory feet away. Their appearance had startled Brett at first, and so had the huge white ibis who wandered the links as casually as pigeons in the park. On the other hand, itwasa foreign country. There were probably giant bats in those trees at night, too.
His wildlife musings were cut short by Blackstone saying abruptly, “Willow’s mum was my elder sister. A love match, obviously, even if I never understood the bloke, or her either, come to that. I’ve pounded sand in heaps of hot places too close to the equator. So has Jace. Didn’t make either of us burn to set up house there. People aren’t the same, Fiona would tell me now, and you can bloody well say that again. Anyway, there they were, and then Willow came along after everybody’d reckoned there wouldn’t be kids. Not that anyone paid much attention to her.”
Brett would always rather listen than talk. He already knew what he thought. He wanted to know what other people thought. So instead of diving into some declaration, he asked, “What was she like?”
If his face had been allowed to show an expression, Blackstone would have been showing surprise. He’d been expecting the declaration, clearly. Or possibly Brett screaming and running. After a moment, he said, “I was a drill sergeant at one time. Saw heaps of kids. Got to know how they’d turn out, mostly. Willow was that skinny farm kid from the Outback, the kind you’d swear would drop out in the first week if you didn’t know better. When you have them queue up on the first day, that kid never shoves up anywhere close to the front. He’s always got an Adam’s apple that sticks out too far and ginger hair, and you never hear him say a word. Willow didn’t have the Adam’s apple, but same idea.”
