Page 25 of Road to Rosalee

Feigning shock-horror, Zai then pretended to be wounded. He allowed the men to think he got lots of action in the lust department simply by saying nothing and by denying nothing. The truth was he hadn’t for a long while and didn’t want to either – shallow hook-ups weren’t fulfilling anymore.

‘Zai and Melody sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,’ Showbags added. ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Zai pushing a baby carriage.’

‘Oi, fair crack of the whip, you shit-stirrer.’ Zai gave him a playful shove. ‘Bugger off or make yourself useful, would you?’ Not understanding the clenching in his stomach, or the sudden stampede of his heartbeat, he pointed towards the bench – anything to get Showbags off his back. ‘Go and grab me a cloth so I can mop the drips up and get this thing back out yonder so you can earn your bloody keep.’

Showbags huffed animatedly. ‘Far out, do I have to do everything around here?’

Chuckling, Zai gave him the bird and got one in return.

As he got back to work, he had to quietly admit that he was really looking forward to laying his eyes on the mesmerising Melody Harrison again.

* * *

‘What do you do if you’re landing in the dark, Stan?’ Her hand pressing against the dash, Melody thrust her voice over the whirr of the engine and through the headset.

‘We do it outback-style.’ Stan grinned like a rebellious child.

‘How’s that?’ With the day getting away from them, Melody was keen to know.

‘They soak toilet rolls in kerosene, stick each one in a tin can, position them out along the runway, and then light them up.’ He looked to her with wide eyes. ‘It works an absolute treat, I tell ya. Anyone would think it was daylight.’

Melody shook her head, laughing softly. ‘I could only imagine such a thing happening out here.’ Once again, she turned her attention outwards and lost herself in the vista that was the epitome of all she’d heard of the Aussie outback.

Now she could see it, feel it, and breathe it in … something about it filled her in a way she couldn’t quite explain, or want to.

It just … felt right.

With arcs of dust on the windscreen, the mail plane heaved and pitched like a roller-coaster as it battled the thermals, the occasional tin roof beneath glinting so brightly, it was almost blinding. Having clawed into the air from the runway of Mount Isa at first light, they’d been zigzagging their way across the country, meeting all sorts of country people. White and black, young and old, they were universally generous and hospitable in a way that Melody couldn’t quite believe. The pilot, the very charismatic Stan Loop, had scored himself scones and cakes and sausages and homemade beer, cheerily given to him by fierce-looking men with broad smiles shaded by their battered hats, or women almost too sweet to live in such arid land. Although, she could tell, beneath their warm and welcoming spirits these women must be built tough to call such challenging lands their homes. Along the way, they’d dodged kangaroos, sheep and cattle, and even emus. Once, they’d had to shoo a few cows from the shade of the plane’s wings and now, thankfully, they were almost at Rosalee Station. She’d keenly listened to conversations about the weather, the lack of rain, the price of livestock, dingoes and rabbits, the lives and deaths of loved ones, and the struggles of everyday life out here, where the clock didn’t rule your every step, but the climate certainly did. It was a whole other world – one she was about to call home for six long weeks.

The plane bucked then dropped a little. Stan whooped. Melody held her breath, and momentarily squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the tin can they were in to settle back down. Once it had, still gripping the edge of her seat tightly, she caught her breath then once again stared out at the earth that had been scorched clean of features by the severity of the sun. Her father hadn’t been kidding when he’d said the mail plane would be a ride she’d always remember. But despite the fact that this was more than a little out of her comfort zone, she found herself mesmerised by the brightness of the country sky, the copper-red of the rocky ridges that appeared as if they were reaching for the heavens, and the ever-evolving patchwork of landscape below. This was the closest she’d ever come to peering down on god’s creation and it was beyond beautiful.

Black soil plains had turned red, and the running creek beds she’d spotted outside of Mount Isa were now stone dry. With barely a tree to be seen, the rusted-metal red land was vast, intimidating and striking. Dried-up river arteries sliced the land into sections and colossal ant hills were all over the place. An old four-wheel drive bonnet leaning up against a fence caught her eye, but with the sun glinting off it, she couldn’t make out what it said. Then suddenly, what she guessed to be the main homestead’s roof flashed beneath them and she swivelled in her seat to watch it, another couple of dwellings, and what she thought must be stables, all of it surrounded by lush gardens, shrinking behind them ever so quickly. Her heartbeat raced with the thought of finally arriving, and what she would discover when her feet hit the hard-packed earth. She also wondered who would be collecting her, and silently hoped it was Zai – she’d feel a little more comfortable with him, seeing as they’d already met. There was something about him that made her feel relaxed, and he was very easy on the eye, she had to admit. Not that it should matter. As much as she was ready to call her marriage quits, she was still lawfully spoken for until she made that information known to Antonio when she returned to Sydney. For now, she wanted to focus on the here and now, at Rosalee Station.

‘Here we are. Time to get this old girl down,’ Stan bellowed, swinging the plane around in a sweeping banking turn that briefly left Melody’s stomach behind them.

Looking down at the mirages created by the intense desert heat, she could barely make out a landing strip. ‘Where are we touching down?’ She hoped it wasn’t going to be like some of the teeth-chattering bone-rattlers they’d landed on earlier.

‘Right here.’ His voice crackling through the headphones, Stan offered a sideways glance. ‘Hold onto ya britches, girly. We’re going in.’

The seventy-four-year-old’s horn-rimmed, startling thick glasses offering her no comfort, Melody sucked in what felt like her hundredth nervous lungful of oxygen for the day. Her breath snagged as they all but fell out of the sky. She said a quick prayer, then held on for dear life.

The Cessna circled twice and then dropped as if the engine had been cut. Anyone would think Stan had been a fighter pilot in his past life. For a few terrifying seconds, Melody actually honed her ears to make sure the engine was still running. Then she braced herself as the red dirt hurtled towards them and the wheels hit the dusty ground. Her teeth gritted tightly together as they bumped along, things flying off the dash and into her lap. She almost laughed out loud at the craziness of it all, but her racing heart prevented her. Then, mercifully, Stan brought the plane to a steady halt as a cloud of red dust engulfed them. Stillness hung for a few lengthy moments before Melody found herself breathing again.

‘Thank goodness we didn’t have to vie with the bloody roos today.’ Stan’s bushy grey brows yanked together as he flicked switches and then tugged his headset off, prompting Melody to do the same. ‘Those bouncy bastards have a death wish, I’m sure of it,’ he added as he slid out of his seat and nimbly clambered into the back of the plane.

Right on time, a dusty four-wheel drive came to a stop just shy of them. Melody gathered her things and climbed out to the knee-buckling sight of Zai striding towards them with a delicious countryman swagger. Even though her feet had just hit smack-bang in the dead heart of Australia, she felt as if she’d just dived off a mountaintop, and she was having trouble catching her airborne heart.

Good god, at least please let me have the ability to string a sentence together.

Reminding herself to play it cool, she couldn’t help but stare at the very fetching sight of Zai in his very manly cowboy get-up. Tall, tanned and muscular, his biceps flexed and shifted as he straightened his Akubra, his dashing smile curling.

‘Glad to see you made it, Melody.’ His evocative grin travelled from her face, down her body, pausing on her bright-pink manicured toes, then quickly landing smack-bang on her face again.

The gesture was more appreciative than insulting – it gave her a buzz. ‘I sure did.’ It was all she could verbally muster right now. His clean, spicy scent drugged her senses – he was aerial testosterone at its most lethal. And the fact that he never broke eye contact sent a weird flutter through her chest.

‘G’day Stan, how goes it?’ Zai said, turning his attention elsewhere, much to her relief.

‘Yeah, you know, can’t complain, Zai, and don’t really want to.’ Stan reefed his shorts almost to his armpits – his knee-high socks adding to his dress sense, or lack thereof, as he looked Zai up and down, a playful grin on his wrinkly face. ‘Gee whizz, Wellstone, you didn’t have to go to the trouble of scrubbing up for my arrival. Bloody hell, anyone would think you had someone to impress.’ His gaze darted to the left of him, landing on Melody.