Page 13 of Down the Track

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CHAPTER

6

Jo woke late on Tuesday morning after a crappy night’s sleep on a lumpy mattress that might have been new in the 1950s. The pillows on the double bed (all two of them) had been flattened into oblong pikelets by time and the heads of many, many other pub guests, and the aircon was one of those old window-box rattlers; more noise, bluster and drip than cool. And whoever had checked into the hotel late the night before and stomped down the hall outside her door seemed to have had a dog with them, yapping and scratching. Was that even allowed?

She had the lingering dream stuck in her head, the Mother’s Day one that replayed, over and over, the worst moment of her life as a parent, and she’d dearly love to take a minute to regroup. Have coffee. Buy a sticky bun or a peach puff pastry from the bakery and bury the bitterness so she could focus on the day ahead.

But she’d missed her chance; if she didn’t get moving, she’d miss the charter. First, however, she needed a very large glass of water and a second to acknowledge that she was not okay. Justhownot okay had been made very clear to her, and no doubt to the Dirt Girls, last night.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to face them like the palaeontology expert she was here in Yindi Creek to be after blurting out her problems the way she had. Ordinarily she’d have liked to have spent more time worrying about it, but as it was—far out, was that actually the time?—she wasreallybehind schedule.

Sixteen minutes later, after dressing at breakneck speed, Jo reached the strip of compressed dirt and gravel that comprised Yindi Creek’s airfield and walked up to the group of people standing under the drooping criss-cross blades of a blue and yellow helicopter. She considered how best to proceed. Should she look sheepish? Should she break with the personal habits of a lifetime and hug Dot and Ethel for being kind to her? Or act like she wasn’t a total emotional nutter and be the cool and professional Dr Tan?

Jo was so busy considering her options, in fact, that she was about three feet away before she took a look at the man dressed in shorts and pilot shirt standing with Dot and Ethel with a clipboard in his hand and a frown on his face.

‘Holy crap.’ Her first words came out in a rush. Like rocks out of a slingshot, in fact.

Ethel and Dot jolted with surprise, and she couldn’t blame them. Any sane person would have said good morning, or hello, but she was not feeling sane.

In a heartbeat, fourteen years rolled back … and not in some gilded, hazy, daydreamy way, but more in a bucket-of-cold-water way. There he was, right in front of her, right now: the long-ago summer fling she’d run away from when everything got too … She scrabbled around for a scientific word and didn’t find one. Too …

Much.

She wanted to tear her eyes away (god, how she hoped they weren’t all red-rimmed and puffy) but she found she couldn’t. Crikey, who could? Gavin Huxtable had been off-the-charts good-looking last time she’d seen him, but now?

Whoa. Her eyes drifted over him and the pang in her heart was swift and fierce. He looked totally the same but also totally different. Eyes the colour of faded chambray. The faint white line of an old scar above one eye turning a handsome face into a roguish one. He was bigger—more solid in the shoulder, muscle-bound instead of lean.

But that wasn’t the only difference between the man she’d had a fling with all those years ago when she was young and anxious but ambitious with it and the man standing before her now. This version of Gavin Huxtable wasn’t smiling.

An old straw hat that would have looked more at home on the beach was pushed back on his head so she could see that darker-than-amber hair, and his Yindi Creek Chopper Charters collared work shirt looked new. As in, she could still see crease marks pressed into the cotton from where it had been folded in a plastic packet.

He’d not been named as the pilot on this flight; she knew, because she’d checked and double-checked and triple-checked before paying the invoice. Charlie Cocker, that was who she was expecting. Also someone she’d met a lifetime ago, but just in passing. Charlie was a stranger, in fact, and would probably not remember a random blow-in like her from fourteen years ago.

So. Why was Hux here?

He looked so calm and collected, soadult, whereas she didn’t feel calm at all.

She swallowed, even more unsure what the protocol forthisgreeting might be.

Ethel raised her eyebrows at Jo, and Dot reached over and gave Jo’s hand a squeeze.

‘Good morning, pet. Everything okay?’

‘Uh, yes,’ she said. The sisters must be thinking she was batshit crazy by now.Get it together, Jo, she warned herself. ‘I was expecting a different pilot, that’s all.’

Hux looked at her, eyebrows raised, then checked the clipboard he carried. ‘I’m doing the flights today. I didn’t see your name on the passenger list, Joanne.’

He sounded irritated. The weather was poor, perhaps, although the horizon looked clear as birdsong and the sky bluer than … bluer than … Well, damn it, she was a scientist not a wannabe writer, so who cared if she thought in clichés? The sky was bluer than his chambray-shirt eyes.

‘Do you two know each other?’ said Ethel.

‘No,’ she said, at the exact same time as Hux said, ‘Yes.’

‘Not anymore,’ she amended, because now three people were looking at her with their eyebrows raised. ‘I booked in the name of the museum,’ she said, despite the fact the museum had no clue she was here, but it suddenly seemed absolutely vital to come across as a professional. A success, not an insecure young graduate trying to impress her superiors, like she had been when she and Hux had first met.Sheran digs, now.Shewas the autocratic expert who underlings feared. At least, that’s the person she’d hoped to be by this stage in her career. No need to mention the museum wasn’t paying. No need to mention the site they were hoping to find had already been dug over by a team of well-qualified, perfectly competent scientists who’d deemed it a bust.

‘Three passengers for a grid search over Corley Station,’ she said crisply. ‘Here we all are.’

‘Good to know,’ Hux said. ‘Right then, let’s get ourselves checked off. Ethel Cracknell?’ he said, sounding like a PE teacher about to assign kids into sporting teams.