Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 (6 page)

He studied her, jaw clenched, stare unwavering.

“That Evan Alexander of Wallaby Ridge is a quiet man who keeps to himself,” she continued, voice soft. “But one respected by all that know him. Whose friends speak of him with warmth and loyalty. In fact, I got the distinct impression after talking to three of those friends, that my life wouldn’t be worth living if I caused you any pain. The doctor, Matt, suggested he has a case of Propofol—whatever that is—that would find its way into my blood system if I did wrong by you. The guy that musters stock in his helicopter…he went so far as to point out the Outback is a very easy place for a city girl like me to go missing. And truthfully, I don’t even
want
to contemplate what the police officer was thinking he’d do if I so much as considered doing anything to hurt you.”

Evan’s nostrils flared. Apart from that, his expression didn’t change.

Jenna let out a shaky sigh. “I talked to a lot of people in this town, and all of them spoke of your quiet strength and courage and community spirit. Of your rare smiles and rarer laughter. None of them spoke of your scars. None of them.
That’s
the truth of Evan Alexander. The man you are now. And that man may not deserve to be put on a pedestal, but he does deserve to think more of himself than he does.”

She stepped closer to him, reached out her hand and brushed her fingertips over the scars on his chest.

He sucked in a sharp breath. Remained motionless.

“I can see you’re not the cocky guy I first met, Evan,” she said, holding his stare as she feathered her fingers down his scarred ribcage. “But I can also see you’re not the hideous monster underserving of love or desire you think you are. And to be honest, I like the truth of the Evan you are now even more.”

“Jenna…” Her name fell from his lips on a husky rasp. His eyes fluttered closed. A frown etched his forehead and pulled at his eyebrows.

Drawing her own steadying breath, she removed the space between them. She skimmed her fingers up the twisted flesh of his left side, over the scarred curve of his left pec.

A shudder rocked through him as she brushed her fingers over the stretch of dark skin that had once been his left nipple. A strangled groan vibrated low in his throat. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat again.

Heart racing, chest tight, her blood roaring in her ears, she trailed her fingers up his throat, to his jaw, and brushed her lips over his.

Another groan tore from him.

She didn’t linger at his mouth. Instead, she moved her lips over his chin and down the column of his neck, exploring the scarred skin with a path of gentle kisses.

“Jenna…” he rasped again, rolling his head back and to the side. She wondered if he was aware of what he was doing, that he was granting her lips greater access to his scars.

A joyous warmth throbbed through her. She raised her hands, smoothing her palms up his chest, her left hand on his unmarred flesh, her right moving over the uneven surface of his left pec.

He moaned, swaying towards her as he slid
his
hands over her hips.

She continued her exploration of his throat, across the broad expanse of his chest, up to the muscular curve of his left shoulder. The uneven texture of his skin felt foreign beneath her lips, and yet her mind and her body didn’t rebel or recoil.

Instead, a sense of rightness bloomed within her heart, a feeling of excitement and anticipation. She could spend the rest of forever exploring Evan’s skin with her lips and tongue and fingers. She could spend the rest of her life doing everything she could to erase the painful memories of those scars with moments of love.

Love.

The single syllable word caressed her heart.

She wasn’t in love with him. Not yet, but she suspected it wouldn’t take long before she was.

She had no problem with that at all.

With one final tiny step, she destroyed the minute space between them, returning her lips to his as she pressed her body against the hard warmth of his.

A soft noise—a groan of pleasure—vibrated low in his chest as she crushed her bare breasts to his chest. It radiated through his body into hers, along with the rapid pounding of his heart. The sensation of his skin sliding against her nipples filled her with a wave of giddy delight. She teased his tongue with her own, rolling her hips a little as she feathered her fingertips up the side of his torso.

For a heart-stilling second, she thought he was going to halt her hands. He didn’t.

Whereas every time before he’d stopped her from touching his scarred skin, now he proceeded to knead her backside, letting her caress his ribcage and his pecs with her fingers as he thoroughly worshipped her arse cheeks.

She reveled in his acceptance. Her soul flooded with joy. Her sex flooded with liquid need.

“I want…” she murmured against his lips.

Smoothing her hands back down his torso, she shifted her feet a little, enough to allow her hand to slip between their bellies.

Nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth, she reached for his belt. She tugged at the strip of leather threaded though the buckle at the same time that she lowered the zipper of his fly.

“
No!
” He jerked away from her. Not just one staggered step this time, but three. Three violent backward steps.

Jenna’s heart smashed into her throat.

He turned his back to her. For the first time, she saw how far around his body the scars reached. Most of the muscular plane of his back was a mess of pinkish-white taut flesh. It extended up to the base of his scalp to disappear beneath his shaggy hair, and down below the waistband of his jeans.

Once again, the reality of the excruciating pain he had endured slammed into her. Her stomach rolled.

“Evan.” His name fell from her in a husky plea. “Please don’t do this to yourself. To us. I don’t care—”

“I do,” he answered without turning. His back and shoulders moved as he pulled a ragged breath. She could hear the torment in the slow intake. “You’ve got your story. Now you can go.”

She stared at his back, at flesh marred by fire and who knows how many skin grafts. Hot tears pricked her eyes. Her blood roared in her head. Her heart thumped in her throat. “My story? The only story I’ve found here is that the hero of Wallaby Ridge is nothing but a broken man afraid to let anyone in to his life. Is that the story you want me to walk away with?”

He didn’t answer.

Her eyes stung. Her vision blurred. A single tear fell to her cheek.

“Is it?” she repeated, although the words were little more than a choked breath.

He turned his head—a fraction—to the right, not even enough for her to see a hint of his profile. “Please, Jenna. Please go.”

Gut a churning storm, Jenna ran her gaze over his back one more time. Ached for him. Prayed for him to turn and look at her.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he snatched up his shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head and covered his torso once again. Instead, he walked from the kitchen without a backward glance.

Leaving her alone.

“Okay,” she whispered to the empty room. “Okay.”

Hugging her shirt to her breasts, she retrieved her discarded pants and G-string from the floor and then redressed.

Evan didn’t return.

Nor did he reappear as she crossed to the front door.

The only thing that followed her through it was thick silence and a numb certainty she’d never see him again.

Chapter Five

“You’re an idiot.”

Evan raised his eyebrows at Ryan’s blunt statement. “For what? Going back out in the chopper at two a.m. despite the captain telling me to stay put? Should I remind you that you were out there as well? Beating down the last of the flames with a
burlap sack,
to be precise?”

Ryan snorted, adjusted his cowboy hat farther back onto his head and crossed his arms over his chest. He was covered in soot and dust, the only clean areas of skin on his face the laughter lines on either side of his eyes. Not for the first time since knowing the gay heli-musterer, Evan found himself wondering how many women in the Ridge fantasized about turning Ryan to the other side.

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it, Ev,” Ryan murmured, the declaration a gentle rebuff.

Even at this early hour of the morning, with dawn only just breaking, the Outback Skies pub was full. The sounds of its patrons hung on the air around them like a low droning buzz, broken every now and again by cheers or laughter. The Mutawintji National Park fire was officially out, extinguished completely three hours ago. The people of Wallaby Ridge were celebrating, along with the few members of the media who still lingered in the town.

As far as Evan could tell, Jenna and her cameraman weren’t among their number. That was good.

Yeah, right.

Ignoring the dull, empty ache that had been in his stomach since he’d turned his back on Jenna in his kitchen, he cast his friend in a steady stare. “Whatever you
think
you know, Ryan,” he said, reaching for the beer the owner of the pub had put in front of him when he’d first sat down, “you’re wrong.”

Ryan snorted again. “Mate, this is what I know. You’ve got a beautiful, successful, intelligent woman who obviously thinks you’re the bee’s bloody knees wanting to have a relationship with you and you’re behaving like she’s some kind of superficial, shallow cow who’s going to run screaming for the hills the second you get your gear off. Ergo, you’re an idiot.”

Evan narrowed his eyes. “Considering we’ve only been talking about the fire since the convo started, I’d like to know where you’re getting your so-called knowledge.”

Ryan threw back his head and laughed, a good-natured, open chortle that made those around their table flick him curious grins.

“Ah, mate,” he said, smirking at Evan. “You really should pull your head out of your arse. Despite the fact you’ve been talking shop for the last hour, you’ve been checking the door every time it opens and shrinking into the seat as you do so.”

“I have not.”

“Bloody oath you have.” Ryan grinned. “About the only time I’ve seen any real emotion in your face since you walked in was when Harry told you that reporter from Chanel Eight News was really pretty and that she seemed to have a
thing
for you.” He made quotation marks with his fingers either side of his head, his grin stretching to a smirk. “And let’s be serious, the woman has done nothing but ask about you since she got here.”

Slouching low in his seat, Evan tugged his baseball cap’s peak farther down his face. A tight sensation coiled in his stomach. An image of Jenna filled his mind, the smile he so easily remembered from their past relationship taunting him. He used to live for her smile when she’d hung out with him and Tracey. Every time she’d smiled back then, his body would throb with an elemental happiness. He hadn’t seen her smile since she’d arrived in the Ridge. Hadn’t seen her lips curl and her eyes dance with mirth. What he had seen was her shocked, sympathetic, aroused…angry.

“She’s a reporter,” he grumbled, fidgeting with his peak some more. “Of course she’s going to be asking questions. And she’s not here now, so there goes your theory about her wanting a relationship with me.”

“Not these kinds of questions, Ev. She may as well have walked around the place with
I like Evan Alexander
tattooed on her forehead. No, change that,
I
love
Evan Alexander
. I think she spoke to everyone in town about you, not about the fire—the thing she was here to cover, might I point out—but you. Were you seeing anyone? Have you been in a relationship? Where do you live?”

It was Evan’s turn to snort. “Sounds like a stalker.”

“Fuck, you really are an idiot.”

Straightening in his seat, Evan leant across the table and turned his head so Ryan couldn’t help but see the left side of his face. “In case you haven’t noticed, mate, I’m not exactly easy to look at.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “And in case
you
haven’t noticed, no one who cares about you gives a flying fuck.”

Evan slumped back in his seat and stared at the sweating beer glass in front of him. “You won’t understand, Ryan. You don’t know what it’s like—”

“To be different?”

The calm sarcasm in Ryan’s voice lifted Evan’s gaze to his friend.

“To know every time you step out of the privacy of your home, people are going to be looking at you? Wondering about you? Maybe even cowering away from you—even if it’s only mentally—as you walk near them? To hear people sniggering behind your back? To have your peers constantly mock you?”

Evan’s throat grew thick.

“Do you know how many Brokeback Mountain references I’ve heard since I came out, Ev?” Ryan grinned. “Do you know how many mustering jobs I’ve lost because of my sexual preferences? Station owners who used to book me months and months in advance to herd their stock, who now don’t even take my calls? Or how many times I’ve watched blokes I’ve known forever—guys I used to go skinny dipping with when we were just kids—make sure they never have their back to me? Like I’m going to bend them over the nearest table and fuck them there and then, just ’cause they’ve got a set of balls?”

Evan bunched his fists. Hot anger for his friend rushed through him. “Jesus, Ryan. Who are they? I think a lesson in human decency is in order.”

Ryan laughed. “I’m not asking for a hero, not even one as glorious and sexy as you. I’m pointing out you’re not alone in your fear. The difference between you and me is
I
don’t really give a fuck about what anyone thinks, and
you
seem hung up on it. When really, the only opinion of you that should matter is your own. Once you get that sorted out, mate, you’ll see that the pretty reporter from the city is seeing you for what you really are—a decent man with more heart and strength than most of us will ever have in our entire lives.”

Gut clenching, Evan turned his stare back to his beer. He watched a glistening bead trickle down the side of the glass.

Christ, was Ryan right? Was he just wallowing in his own self-pity? Was he cutting off any chance of a future he’d believed beyond him because of something as superficial as his looks? “What happens if she wakes up one day and realizes she can’t stand looking at me?”

“What happens when you wake up one day and realize you never gave her that chance? And it’s too late to do so?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Evan pictured Jenna in his kitchen. Saw her furious with him when he’d suggested she leave. Heard her accusation again.
“Are you really this scared to let anyone in?”
Saw the hurt rejection in her eyes when he refused to let her remove his jeans. When he refused to let her see him.
All
of him.

“And just to add fuel to the complicated fire you’re so stubbornly stoking over there. Yesterday arvo, while you were up in the air doing what you do so well, Jenna slapped the crap out of a reporter from a different news program to hers for suggesting you were too damn ugly to put on television. That’s some serious spirit right there. Her cameraman recorded the whole thing. As far as I know, it’s already got over a thousand hits on You—”

Evan jolted to his feet.

Ryan chuckled, the sound low and warm and slightly mischievous. “Going somewhere?”

Evan scanned the pub. Nothing. There wasn’t a sign of
anyone
from her network in the damn place.

“Reckon Charlie might be able to tell you where she is,” Ryan offered from his seat, playful laughter in his voice. “That bastard seems to know things not even a cop should—oh, better yet, look what I’ve got.”

Evan swung his stare back to Ryan.

The heli-musterer grinned up at him, a business card pinched loosely between his index and middle finger.

Mouth dry, Evan plucked the card from Ryan’s fingers.

Looked at it.

Read the words printed on its smooth white surface.
Jenna McGrath, Reporter, Chanel Eight News.

Read the words handwritten in blue pen beneath them.
Sunburnt Country Hotel. Room 4.

Without a word, he spun on his heel and headed for the pub’s main door.

“Oi!”

At Ryan’s laughing exclamation, Evan stumbled to a halt and cast his friend a harried frown over his shoulder. “What?”

Ryan fixed him with a level gaze, his smile still there but growing serious. “I’ve never met a person so into someone like Jenna is into you, Ev. But if you go to her, you can’t hold any of yourself back. Are you
truly
ready for what she wants from you?”

Another wave of heat prickled over Evan. His gut churned. He thought of the scars covering the left side of his body, his groin, his genitals…

Thought of the way he looked naked…

Chest tight, throat the same, he crossed back to where Ryan sat.

“Are you?” Ryan asked again.

Holding Ryan’s gaze, Evan reached up and closed his fingers over the peak of his baseball cap—a cap he never left the confines of his home without wearing—and removed it from his head.

“I am,” he said, tossing the worn cap onto the table in front of his friend.

Ryan grinned. “Damn, Ev, why the hell couldn’t you be gay? I’m so turned on by you right now.”

Evan turned and headed for the pub’s exit again. “In your dreams, mate,” he threw over his shoulder with a smirk. “In your dreams.”

The scorching hot morning sun struck his face the second he stepped from the pub. He raised his arm, shading his eyes with his hand. When was the last time he’d been outside without his cap on?

Five years. The day you were discharged from the hospital. The cap went on that day. And then, when Tracey left, the collar of your jacket went up and you’ve lived that way ever since. Hiding. Cowering from life…

Drawing a deep breath, he lowered his arm and turned his face to the sun. Closed his eyes and just stood there.

The sun bathed his unprotected, scarred face in golden warmth.

Seeped into his body.

Letting out his held breath, he opened his eyes and shucked off his heavy leather bomber jacket. Held the beaten, comfortable item of clothing in his hand, weighing it with wordless contemplation before turning back to the closed Outback Skies’ door.

“I am,” he murmured as he hung his jacket on the old brass doorknob.

Ten minutes later, he knocked on the door of Room 4 of the Sunburnt Country Hotel.

The morning sun seeped into his exposed arms and the back of his neck. A hot breeze blew through his hair, tugging on the strands.

He shifted on his feet, the unfamiliar sensations turning the knot into his stomach. Fuck, he felt exposed.

Vulnerable.

Ha! Vulnerable? Don’t you mean petrified?

He shifted his feet, staring at the closed door.

Why hadn’t she answered yet? Had she peered through the peephole, seen who had knocked and decided not to acknowledge him?

Was it too late already?

Had he already missed the chance of them having a—

The door swung open.

Jenna stood on the other side wearing a loose Chanel Eight News T-shirt that skimmed the tops of her thighs. Her hair was a tangled mess, her face free of makeup, her eyes puffy. From sleep? Or crying?

She stared at him, an unreadable expression on face. “Where’s your cap?”

He drew a slow breath, a small smile curling the corners of his mouth. “Don’t think I need it anymore.”

She studied him. Didn’t move. Her expression didn’t change. Whatever she was thinking, he had no hope of seeing it on her face or in her body language.

“I wish I could believe that.”

The softly spoken statement cut through him. He closed his eyes, nodding at the implication behind her words. Whatever chance he’d had with her, he’d blown it. It was over. His stupid, paranoid, gutless fear had destroyed it.

“I’m sorry, Evan.” Torment filled her husky whisper. “I can’t—”

Opening his eyes, he crossed the threshold, threaded his fingers into her hair and kissed her.

She moaned, a soft sound of haunted supplication and frustration, and parted her lips, accepting his tongue as she slid her palms up his chest.

He could tell she was kissing him goodbye. He could feel her grief, sense it in the way she stoked his tongue with hers. In the way she held back the passion he knew simmered within her. In the way she rested her hands on his chest, keeping their bodies apart.

She was kissing him goodbye, ending them before they’d had a chance to truly begin.

Fuck that.

He raking his hands down her back, he grabbed her arse cheeks and hauled her to his body. Pressed their hips, their bellies together. Held her to him and gave himself to her.

He swept his tongue over hers, pouring every hope and fear into the kiss. Kissed her with unrestrained need and passion and desire.

Kissed her until he felt her body tremble and her bury her hands into his hair. Until a raw whimper sounded in her throat.

Heart wild, he tore his lips from hers and gazed down into her eyes. “Jenna…”

She didn’t say a word. Instead, she slowly slipped her fingers from his hair and trailed them over the uneven surface of his scarred jaw, watching him.

He stiffened.

A ragged sigh fell from her and she closed her eyes. “You need to go,” she said without looking at him. She hugged herself, turning her head to the side. “It’s not going to…you need to go.”

Show her. Show her it’s not just your cap you no longer need. Show her.

Blood roaring in his ears, a crushing vice wrapping his chest, Evan reached for the door behind him and closed it.