Page 30 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars
“I’m partial to a bit of sage and onion,” Hallie replies. Fraser lifts an eyebrow at her, and she giggles. I think the wine is going to her head.
Linc grins, then looks at me. “What about you? No bungee jumping?” I shake my head.
“Scared?” he teases.
“I just haven’t really gotten around to it. My dad would never have let me do anything like that when I was at home, and I’ve been too busy since I left.”
“We’ll have to see what we can do about that,” he says.
“I don’t think I’d have the courage to do anything risky.”
“Courage isn’t not being scared,” he says. “It’s doing something in spite of being scared. The courage comes afterward.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that. “Hmm.”
“Tell us more stories about Fraser and Joel doing stupid things,” Zoe says, crunching on a tortilla chip.
Linc pretends to think. “So many to choose from.”
“I’ve got one,” Joel states. “I’ll say one word—bats.”
“Ah, fuck,” Linc says.
Joel grins. “Dad was trying to teach us orienteering. There was a group of us—Fraser, were you there?”
“Yep.”
“And Henry, and a couple of others. Dad took us into the forest and blindfolded us, told us to count to a hundred, then disappeared. We had maps and compasses, and we had to find our way home.”
“Fraser was in charge of the compass,” Linc tells us.
“Fatal,” Fraser says.
“And I had the map,” Linc continues. “We tried to identify where we were, then started walking. And we came to a river, where there shouldn’t have been one.”
“Did Fraser fall in?” Hallie wants to know.
“Not that time,” Fraser says. “But they did take the compass away from me.”
“His sense of direction is useless,” Joel says. “So I took over. We walked for, like, hours…”
The guys start laughing at the memory. “It was getting dark,” Linc says, “and eventually we realized we’d probably have to stay the night in the forest.”
“We were at the edge of the mountains,” Joel says, “and we found a cave…”
“I volunteered to go in first,” Linc states, “because I was the bravest…”
“What we didn’t know was that it was inhabited by a colony of bats,” Joel continues.
“You’ve never heard a young man’s voice scream in such a high pitch,” Fraser says.
“They attacked me!” Linc protests. “I swear they brushed my hair.”
“He came running out like his arse was on fire,” Joel says. “So we all screamed too and legged it into the forest.”
“We didn’t stop running until we reached Christchurch,” Fraser says, and we all laugh.
“I remember that night,” I say. “Dad had to go and find you all. He brought you home in the van, and Mum and I made you all beans on toast.”
