Authors: Maya Wood
Trevor could feel the h
eaviness of her eyes on him. He snickered, counting with amusement the number of times he’d caught her massaging her lower back. “You’re too stiff!” Trevor shouted smugly. “You’ve gotta let your body move with the horse.”
Silence. Maybe he had pushed her past the limit. Why else would she not take the opportunity to send back a nettled retort?
Trevor snapped around, floored by the sight. Sucked into a vacuum of childish indignation, Alexis’s pretty features twisted as she mimicked his words silently. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her nose scrunched upward, and her head swiveled as she mocked him. He might have whipped her then with scornful sarcasm, but he could not suppress the wild flare of a grin at this ridiculous image.
The horse started and Alexis snapped to attention. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Trevor had stopped, his eyes locked on her face. His grin had vanished, but his eyes flickered with
unrestrained pleasure. “Is everything okay back here?”
She pulled the sunhat low on her face so that he could not see the scarlet shame ravishing her face. She cleared her throat as she passed him. “Yes, just perfect.”
As they penetrated the dense jungle, Alexis heard snaps and thuds, rustling of leaves from all directions. Some she could imagine away as alien insects, or prettily-colored birds. Others, she noticed, stopped her breathing as her eyes flew open like prey to survey the area for danger. She had read about the wildlife, the very real possibility of encountering dangerous creatures. Behind her she heard the heavy thud of hooves beat into the ground, the thick plant life swooshing ominously as it swallowed the animal. Alexis whipped her head back, ready to dig her heels into the horse’s flanks. When only the silent hush of air trapped in the sheltered jungle ensued, she turned to see Trevor eyeing her with glee.
“You know,” he called back, “thi
s time of year, the Taipan is what you really gotta keep your eyes out for. You read that in your books?”
A shiver ran down Alexis’ spine. She had read about the snake, actually,
one of the most venomous serpents in the world. “Yes,” she replied feebly with a shudder, “I have.”
“Well,” he said, his back still turned to her, “you can read about the Taipan, but you never really know about it until you see it, or see what it does to perceived threats.” A chilly silence lapsed, and Alexis closed her eyes tight. When she opened them, Trevor was looking back at her. The smile faded, replaced with alarming and genuine concern. “I’m serious, Red. If you come across one, don’t you move a muscle. They’re scared of humans, but they’ll strike you dead if they feel threatened.”
“Un huh…” Alexis nodded, the frayed sound all she could muster as her mind conjured a terrifying image of the long, gray-bodied reptile sinking its razor fangs into her calf.
Without realizing, Alexis’ body melted into sluggish heaviness, her breathing laborious, her head light and spinning. She had not yet drunk from the canteen strapped at the horse’s shoulder, and the hours they’d now spent with the sun lashing the canopy above them drained her totally. She noticed Trevor slow until they rode side by side. He looked her up and down, his face only slightly smug. “We’ll take a break just there, by the stream. Water the horses.”
Though she wouldn’t reveal it to save her life, Alexis felt gratitude wash over her in a tidal wave. Her lower back throbbed mercilessly from the unfamiliar labor of riding. She pulled the reigns of th
e horse and it slowed obediently, its massive but sleek frame wet from exertion. She swung a leg behind her over the saddle, just as she’d remembered from the couple of lessons in Massachusetts. But as she lowered herself, her heel caught in a leather strap. She jerked with fright and the horse neighed peevishly. Terrified the animal would spook and bolt, she squeaked with fear, closing her eyes tight.
She sucked in a deep, hot breath as she felt a pair of strong hands close around her waist. “Hold still,” Trevor said, his voice calm. Her bottom resting square against his chest, he steadied her frame. He
moved a hand deliberately over her leg, his fingers catching the strap which had ensnared her. He lifted her effortlessly and lowered her slowly against the solid wall of his body.
She stood paralyzed for a moment, planted firmly against him so that she could feel the soft rise of his chest as he breathed, shocked by the wave of heat his closeness ignited over her skin. Suddenly snapping out of the spell, she tumbled forward from the solid grip of his hands at her hips and glanced nervously at him. “Uh…thank you,” she managed as she sped toward the horse, reaching for the canteen.
“My pleasure,” he replied, his face pulled into a devilish grin.
Claiming a spot on a fallen log, Alexis squatted and pulled off her droopy straw hat. Her scalp was drenched with sweat, and she smoothed back the damp ringlets which clung to her hairline. She sipped slowly from the canteen, savoring the cool water. Trevor returned from the horses which gulped ravenously from the gurgling stream, their lips quivering over the ripples of water. He unfolded squares of bread wrapped in cloth and offered Alexis a small ration. After they nibbled their sustenance in silence, he pulled one of the maps from his satchel.
“It’ll take us ten days to get to our first site, you know,” he said, watching Alexis as she struggled to affect an air of total nonchalance.
“I hadn’t expected otherwise,” she replied coolly.
“You do put up a good fight, Red.” Laughing, he relaxed against the wide base of a tree. “Anyway, I’ve sent for my partner, Lewis, to meet us there. He can help with interpreting. You’ll like him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alexis backtracked, ignoring her mantra to keep the conversation as professional and neutral as possible. “About putting up a good fight.”
“Oh, nothing. Just that you’re not exactly in your element, but you’ll be damned if you’re gonna admit it.”
“You’re pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Alexis shot him an angry look. “Well, there’s a first time for everything, right? And besides, I’m as qualified as anyone else…”
“Oh, that’s right. That education you were referring to before.” Trevor rubbed the stubble on his chin. “It seems like you’re awfully reliant on other folks to be so ‘qualified’,
Dr.
Scott.”
Seething, Alexis snapped. “Gambling, boozing and paying women to keep company don’t exactly make you a genius. Well, I suppose you do know how to ride a horse.” The moment the venom escaped her lips, she felt the bitter sting of remorse. Who was she with this man? She could never have imagined herself to be so spiteful.
If she had pierced his ego, Trevor did not show it. “Ah, well,” he said, “if I know anything about people, and believe me woman, I do, you’ll last a week out here before you beg me, I mean
beg
me to take you back.”
Alexis flew to her
feet, her fists clenched tight, her knuckles bloodless. “Why the hell did you agree to this if you thought I’d turn right around and go back, all the while relentlessly baiting me with your razor sharp observations?”
That he was under her skin was humiliatingly obvious, and he smiled satisfactorily as he brushed a moist clump of earth from the thigh of his pants.
“The money isn’t half bad. But,” he looked toward the sky, as though seizing upon the more evident truth, “it’s more for the entertainment, really.” He gathered a leg up, pitting the heel of his boot firmly in the ground. He stood, flopped his hat down over the crown of his head, and whistled as he moved toward the horses. Looking back, he nodded at a fuming Alexis. “Well, let’s go, shall we?”
Alexis glanced at her watch. It was six o’clock. They had ridden for eight hours in a single day. Once she checked to see that Trevor was out of earshot, she let out a cathartic moan, folding down to stretch her mid-section, the relief pumping through her body like blood. Trevor appeared from behind a tree, the haughty grin splitting wide across his face, his eyes fixed to the roundness of her bottom displayed immodestly in the air. Alexis snapped upward, the blood draining from her face. He bit his lip, a spark firing in his eyes.
“I bet that ride really took it out of your body there.
If you want,” he said raising his large palms, “I could help you out with a massage.”
“Ha!”
Alexis laughed spitefully. “Unlike the women you spend your time with, you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to let you touch me.”
Trevor snorted and
tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “Well, if you asked any of
those women
I spend my time with, they’d tell you you’re missing out.” He pushed past her, moving toward the camp he’d begun to set up beneath a tight cluster of Sandalwoods. He unfastened a spade from the camping gear he’d removed from the tired-looking workhorse and plunged it into the earth. She watched him dig the fire pit, smoldering as she recounted his innumerable defects. She wanted to leave him there, spend the last hours of daylight exploring the fecund paradise, but Trevor’s words of warning echoed in her brain.
Still, her body was wracked with violent energy which she desperately need to release. Stomping toward her belongings, she retrieved her stationary from the leather briefcase Henry Patterson had tossed at her in his flurry. Wishing to expel the poison from her mind, she addressed a thin sheet of paper to Philip. If there was anyone who would understand her ire, her disdain for this hooligan, it would be him. She wrote so furiously that her thumb ached, until she had purged every hateful thought of Trevor through the black ink of her pen.
“A faithful narrative of your experience I expect?” Trevor’s voice was flat, sardonic. She turned to him, saw that his hands and forearms were coated in a sheen of dust and soil. Her stomach turned with an unfathomable mixture of repulsion, and against every rational part of her being, desire.
“Do you even know how to read?” Turning away, her eyes burned with salt. She was becoming a stranger to herself. Her words embodied the ugliness of elitism and condescension she’d always detested growing up. She couldn’t bear to see whether she had stung him, but he said nothing for an
hour as she wandered aimlessly but close to the camp.
Trevor had erected two small canvas tents
near the fire pit. As a peace offering, Alexis neared him, raising her voice softly, “Can I help do something?”
He ignored her for a moment, arranging the kindling at the center of the stone-ringed pit. “No, thanks,” he said finally.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What about bathing?” she asked him, smelling herself.
The smoky bravado lifted. T
hat smile crept over his face. “You want to bathe me, then?”
Alexis puffed with frustration. “No,” she said, her voice flat. “I want to know where I can take a bath if I can’t help you do anything around the camp.”
Trevor snatched a hunting knife he’d planted blade down into the ground, wiping its wide, serrated tongue clean between his fingers. He pointed its glinting tip, motioning behind her. “Just there. There’s a small waterfall. There’ll be wild things creeping about, but nothing to write home about. Take this just to be safe.”
He held out the knife, offering the handle to her. She took it reluctantly, her hand dropping unexpectedly with its weight. He simpered
and shook his head. “Scream if you need me.”
Sucking a deep breath of courage, Alexis rummaged through her belongings, greatly dim
inished since they had left Moresby. She retrieved a mesh satchel of travel toiletries. Lavender soap wrapped in linen, a thin terrycloth towel and shampoo. Clutching what now felt like precious remnants of her femininity, she maneuvered tenuously through the bush, her arm rigidly thrusting the hunting knife straight in front of her. As she slipped through a thick curtain of weeping leaves, she gasped with wonder.
A small waterfall, as Trevor had put it, didn’t seem to capture the mystical scene before her. From the small canyon where the t
rees cleared to expose the cerulean sky, the craggy mountainside soared heavenward, its boulders glistening like liquid silver from the fine cool mist suspended magically in the air. The waterfall gushed, ropes of crystal water spilling downward into a deep teal pool. Satin oblong flowers splayed wide from emerald trees, catching droplets on their red seductive petals. A bird cooed above. Alexis simpered with happiness, her body trembling giddily in anticipation.
Steadying herself against a tree, she peeled moist clothes from her body, pungent with the smell of leather and sweat. The veil of mist was glorious against her naked skin, and she stood at the edge of the pool, her feet massaged by the flat sun-w
armed stone. She surveyed the calm around her, its beauty overpowering any qualms of dangerous creatures. The branches of a tree shimmied behind her, and she saw a svelte, long-limbed monkey leap to a solid perch where it watched her with its dark curious eyes.
She eased into the delicious cool water. For a while, she rested afloat the crystalline pool, her breasts rising from its languid sur
face. In her ears she heard nothing but the sound of the mountain’s stream plunging into the pool. Its muffled thunder seemed to coax out every earthly thought in her brain, and her eyes fluttered beneath her lids until she was sucked down into a catacomb of serene darkness. When she roused from the hypnotic spell, she rubbed the pads of her fingertips together, now ridged and pruned.
Sighing, she hoisted herself onto the rock where she had left her riding boots and towel nearby. She squeezed her feet into the leather, now tight and unyielding against her wet skin. As she stooped to gather her towel she saw a terrifying movement of gray just feet from her hand, now quaking violently. Snatching the towel she fell backward into a cluster of leafy plants spurting emerald tufts between the cracks of jagged rocks, one of which stabbed her upper thigh. As she caught the wind in her lungs, she let out a bloodcurdling scream. Where was the knife? Where was the Taipan snake? She waited for its triangular head to dart from the grass, its angry fangs sinking deep into her flesh.
She hadn’t stopped screaming by the time Trevor burst through the bush, his eyes wild, his body rigid as it prepared to defend. “What is it?” he shouted over her shrill cries, his body looming over her as he surveyed the shadowy cover of leaves and brush.
“Snake!”
Alexis finally managed to cough. Trevor looked down at her, his eyes pausing for an instant on her pale, curvaceous, nearly-naked form. Alexis pointed to where she had seen the shadow of movement
“I don’t see anything!” h
e hissed. Moving cautiously in front of her, he kicked at the ground to startle whatever Alexis had seen lurking there just moments before. Finally she heard him roar, a sound which drew from his gut. When she looked at him to see the horror of what he saw, she realized that he was looking at her. “God damn it, woman!” Bending down, he swooped low, and returned clutching a small, terrified serpent. “It’s just a Keelback!”
The snake swung nervously from his grip, and Alexis whimpered sheepishly. It was tiny, in fact, compared to the Taipan, and totally harmless. Trevor tossed the reptile into the brush and Alexis scrambled to her feet. Hastily wrapping the soiled towel around her, she saw that Trevor was glaring at her.
“I’m sorry,” she offered. “I thought…”
“Well, that’s precisely it,” he snapped. He dropped his head back, relaxing his shoulders and returned his heavy, burning gaze. “If you thought it was a dangerous snake, why on earth did you see fit to holler and thrash about? Most of these snakes won’t attack unless they perceive a threat, which is likely if you jump around and scream bloody murder.”
The silence of the jungle weighed at her shoulders, and though she stared at her boots, she could sense that Trevor had not broken his gaze. When she dared to meet his eyes, she saw they were no longer locked at her face, but inching slowly over her exposed skin, glistening wet from her bath. They stopped at her thigh where the towel barely covered the rising slope of her bottom. Just as she began to feel the flame of indignation ignite at his boldness, he nodded at her. “You’re bleeding,” he said, the edge of his voice softened with concern.
Alexis touched the thin stream of blood oozing slowly from the small gash in her thigh. “It’s fine, I think. Just a rock from when I fell.”
He raised his eyebrows, as if deciding he were free to continue punishing her for her mindless blunder. “Here,” he growled as he passed her the change of dry garments she had brought to the waterfall. “It’s going to get dark soon. Stay close to the camp. Got it?”
Alexis pouted by the fire, the wood burning neon yellow and blue as it popped and hissed, sending miniscule shards of orange embers scattering to the air. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, the deep reds catching light as she watched the flames dance hypnotically against a black backdrop. She and Trevor had said little to each other since they’d returned to camp. He enjoyed watching the embarrassed slump of her shoulders, and her nervous eyes dashing sideways to avoid his gaze. She was hot with shame for her remarkable lack of composure at the waterfall, and she welcomed the silence in its deflection of his criticism.
He had warmed a tin of anchovies over the fire, and they spread it over discs of fried dough. She savored the heartiness of the bread, and the oily skin of the fish, remarking how much more she enjoyed the food that felt earned through the hours of riding
and climbing through mountains, cooked over the open flame of a campfire. She might have dreamed of such a moment in the whispering wilderness, the sky afire with stars, the crackling of the wood consumed in flame, all alone with an irresistibly handsome man. It was terribly romantic, and she shot a disappointed look at her companion, who squatted by the light on his haunches, carving the end of a stick with purpose.
She wondered how she’d ever arrived to such a place and time as this. What had ever compelled her to put her confidence in a man so unknown and apparently rogue as Trevor McFadden? For all she knew, he could be one of the sinister characters Henry Patterson had described to her over tea. Almost every word they’d exchanged since they’d met had been laden with palpable, mu
tual loathing, and she swiftly concluded that he was nothing more to her than the services he provided, and in every other way despicable.
These were the thoughts unraveling in her mind when Trevor sunk against th
e woolen pad of his bedroll and rested the curve of his neck against his bundle. He lied with his chest open to the sky, one leg drawn up, an arm under his head. She could see his eyes were open, staring at the leaves above them, gold in the firelight. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet she almost didn’t hear him. “How’s the leg?”
She brushed her fingertips over the loose cotton of her skirt and felt the swollen flesh of her thigh. “A little tender,” she admitted, surprised by his concern, and taken aback at how soft he had made his voice. She pulled a thick loc
k of glowing hair behind an ear and turned her face to him. She couldn’t see his eyes beneath the shadow of his heavy brow.
“Trevor,” Alexis breathed in the still.
“Yes?”
“I…I was wondering about you, about where you come from. McFadden is Irish, isn’t it?”
Trevor rolled onto his side now, and the shadow from his face vanished with the warm glow of the fire. She could see the sharp line of his aquiline nose, his bow-shaped mouth and full lips. She watched his silky locks of hair tumble softly over his forehead, around his strong, square jaw. And watching her were those dark, limpid pools which had just hours before seemed fiercely intrusive.
“My grandfather was from Ireland.” He revealed this detail so conclusively tha
t Alexis believed the conversation to be over. She began to settle against her bedroll when he continued. “He left Ireland at a young age. He was…a thief. He was sent to Australia, actually, to serve his time. And when he’d paid his dues, he met a beautiful aboriginal woman named Binda. My grandmother.”
Alexis shifted nervously against the ea
rth. She did not want to probe or offend him. “So they raised a family together?” she asked, hoping it was an innocent question.
She saw Trevor’s brow lift as he considered the details of his story. “Well, they had my father and no other children. From what I understand, they had a happy, quiet life, and my grandfather was lucky to escape the temptations of crime and easy money. I suspect my grandmother had a calming influence over his spirit.”
Feeling more confident now, she asked, “And your father?”
Trevor’s lids dropped as he studied the soil and grass matted down beneath his bedroll
. He plucked at a silky blade and pressed it between the pads of his fingers. “My father must have inherited that wild spirit, except he used it for his own gain, often at the expense of others. He looked as white as my grandfather, so he could easily blend in wherever he went. And when he met my mother, Girra, also an aboriginal, she was taken by his charm.”