Tall, Dark & Distant (6 page)

Nik sighed as the silver Porsche roared up the hill towards the mountains. He wondered why he had arranged to meet Georgia for a run. He already knew it was a bad idea. Dates with girls were always a bad idea. Even running dates somehow turned into something else with girls. He knew he should cancel. A girlfriend wasn’t part of the plan at all.

He pulled out his phone and found her contact details as he drove.
Georgia
. Just the name made him sweat. To him, Georgia conjured up suppressed memories of a hot shed in the middle of nowhere, the stench of stale urine almost overwhelming the reek of fear. It was confusing to have a name he’d associated with terror for so long now belong to someone he wanted so much.

As he ran a finger over her name, the feeling of her wet thighs against his shoulders came back to him, like he was in the pool again. He felt the fabric of her bikini pressed against the back of his neck. God, she was hot.

Shoulder wars – what genius had invented that game?

Georgia had been doing his head in since he first set eyes on her in the national park. There had to be a law against looking that sexy at 6 a.m. But it wasn’t just that. Lots of girls were sexy. She was different – totally unlike any other girl he knew. (And he knew a lot.) She was … real. She couldn’t lie to save her life; she was way too honest and way too open. He’d never seen any of those things as attractive personality traits before. He preferred to keep things locked away. It had worked for him, so far. Well, it hadn’t exactly
worked
for him. He’d left a trail of screwed-up relationships from London to Buenos Aires.

Guarded, remote, indifferent, selfish, thoughtless, unreliable
… just a few of the adjectives that had been hurled at him as he’d walked (or in some cases run) away from relationships. Sure, he was all of those things. And a whole lot more. But that was just who he was. He didn’t see those traits as flaws the way girls did. They were essential for self-preservation.

No-one could hurt you if you didn’t let them near you. He couldn’t guarantee that no-one else would get hurt in the process, but that wasn’t his problem. He wondered if he’d always felt like that. He guessed as a kid he’d been trusting. He’d trusted his father to take care of things. But he’d let Nik down in the worst possible way. Now there was no space in Nik’s world for trust and no reason for openness.

Nik glanced at his phone again as he pulled into his garage. As much as he knew he should keep well away from Georgia, he also knew he couldn’t. He
had
to see her again. He would go for a run. One run. He just needed to see her once more.

‘So, which track should we take?’ Nik asked, looking at the map at the entrance to the national park. ‘You’re the local, I’ll follow you.’ He glanced at Georgia, trying to keep his eyes on her smile and off her legs.

‘The coastal track is the nicest but it gets pretty busy this time of day,’ she replied.

As if to confirm her assessment, six middle-aged women marched past. Their perfume was so strong it nearly choked him. It reminded him of his mother. She used Chanel No. 5 as an air freshener – as if the fragrance would somehow cover the smell of despair in her apartment. Her home in Switzerland had a staggering view of Lake Geneva, but it still managed to be entirely depressing. His stomach clenched at the memory of his mother using her damaged hand to spray the perfume from the bottle.

‘On the coastal path,’ Georgia continued, ‘people are always dropping things like frangipani hair-ties. You’d waste a lot of time picking them up.’

She paused, expectantly. Nik was aware that Georgia was waiting for an explanation of some kind about how he’d spotted the hair-tie. But he just smiled at her joke, his mind still on Switzerland. He noticed her face falter, disappointed by his lukewarm response. He smiled more enthusiastically and made an effort to keep his mind on the conversation.

‘The other tracks are out of the sun,’ Georgia went on, pointing into the bush. ‘They’re shady and a bit quieter, not so many people.’

‘Let’s take the quiet option,’ Nik said. It was too easy for people to hide in crowds.

They pushed into the shadows of the rainforest. He didn’t need to look at her to know how well she ran. He could hear it in the rhythm of her breathing, even as the track got steep – she was definitely an athlete. Nik was glad he’d started training in Argentina a few weeks earlier. He’d taken up running again to get fit for polo. He hadn’t exactly been fanatical about it, but at least he’d done enough to keep up. And at least his runners didn’t look brand-new.

‘So, how long are you in Noosa?’ Georgia asked as they reached the cliff top at the end of the path.

‘I’m here for a while,’ he said, trying to keep things vague.

Georgia tried again. ‘Where are you staying?’

Nik waved into the distance. ‘Up on the hill.’

‘On your own?’ Georgia asked.

Nik peered into the sea. ‘Sort of,’ he replied. He looked for something to distract her from the interrogation. ‘Look!’ Nik pointed at the waves. With his other hand, he turned Georgia round to face the water. ‘It’s a turtle!’

She didn’t respond, and Nik looked at her face. Her eyes were on him, and he realised there were goosebumps on her skin. Her face was an open book – she’d liked his touch.

‘Anyway,’ Nik said, quickly pulling his hand away. ‘I’ve got some … things to do today, so let’s keep going.’

‘Ah, okay,’ Georgia said. She still looked vaguely startled.

They ran on in silence. He could feel Georgia’s eyes on him, but he kept focused on the ground – trying to keep his mind off the goosebumps on her olive skin, doing his best to stick to the plan. But no matter where he looked, his mind began to wander up her long legs, to the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs.

‘That was fun,’ Georgia said when they got back to the entrance to the national park. ‘We should meet again tomorrow.’

Nik nodded, even though he had already decided
not
to meet her again. Oh well. He could always cancel by text. It was easier that way.

‘How about six?’ Georgia said. ‘It’s cooler. I always run at six.’

‘Oh,’ Nik said. He didn’t do anything at the same time every day. A routine was the reason for the scar above his eye.

‘Six o’clock, then,’ Nik said anyway.

Georgia ran off towards her apartment. He knew he should be calling her back and cancelling the run. He had a plan. He had to stick to it. What if she turned into a gold-digging psycho like his ex? His father had been very specific:
Steer clear of girls
.

Instead, Nik called out to Georgia. ‘Ciao, bella!’

Georgia turned and smiled – a shy smile that could have melted solid rock.

Nik climbed into his car and headed back to the house – thinking of Georgia and feeling a bit more relaxed about the plan. A run in the park didn’t really break any rules. It didn’t actually mean anything; it wasn’t going anywhere. If he only saw her in the national park and always before eight, he knew he’d be pretty safe. His mind went back to the lookout at Hell’s Gates and the way Georgia had looked at him – her blue eyes, so lovely, so vulnerable. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t stay away from her either.

Nik pulled into the garage at the top of the hill and walked inside. He could hear the cleaner vacuuming upstairs, but apart from that the house was empty. Nik took off his T-shirt and runners, then strolled outside and dived into the pool. He swam a few lengths and then turned on his back to admire the garden. It wasn’t something that he did very often. But the trees beside the pool caught his eye. Their flowers were exactly the same as the one on Georgia’s hair-tie. He wondered what they were called. Had she said this morning? He couldn’t remember.

Nik considered asking Georgia back for a swim after their next run. She’d probably like to see the house, and he thought she’d appreciate the garden. He’d been terribly rude that morning, just abandoning her in the park without even offering her a lift. The least he could do was ask her back for a swim – surely a swim wouldn’t be breaking any rules. And then he remembered that it did. He’d already decided to limit their time to the park. Who knew where things would go if he brought her back to the house?

Nik met Georgia for a run every morning that week. Sometimes they met at 6 a.m., sometimes at 8 a.m. and on other days some-where in between. Georgia liked a routine, but there was no way Nik would stick to one. Boarding school was the last place he’d suffered a routine, but that was only because he had to. Now, he avoided them completely. They were risky. Not that he was going to admit that to Georgia, no matter how often she asked about why they met at a different time each day.

He was well practised in avoiding awkward questions and nothing would prise that particular story from him.

By meeting at a different time each morning, he was also able to convince himself that he was still in control of his not-a-relationship relationship with Georgia. He’d attempted to prove this point to himself by not showing up at all one day. But on that morning he got out of bed early anyway, put on his running kit, and drove into Noosa
for a coffee,
he told himself. Instead of stopping for a coffee, though, he drove straight to the national park where he met Georgia as planned. He was only two minutes late.

Nik tried to convince himself that he was only meeting Georgia every morning to improve his fitness. And it was true, she was a great running partner – fast, strong and fun. He hardly even noticed the hills as they ran through the park, comparing notes on running shoes, listing the reasons why gyms sucked, sharing travel stories, talking politics and even discussing trees. Georgia was so easy to talk to and so refreshing compared to his usual crowd. He couldn’t imagine identifying different types of eucalypts with them. But the problem was that he wasn’t just running with Georgia in the morning. He was thinking about her all day and dreaming about her all night. And that made his fitness theory difficult to maintain.

‘So, you still haven’t really told me why you came to Australia,’ Georgia said at the end of their sixth morning run. She’d asked the same question in a different way pretty much every morning, and he had batted her query back with a vague,
Why not?
His past was the one topic he’d stayed well away from all week, despite Georgia’s questions.

On this morning, for no particular reason that he could think of, he didn’t offer his standard answer. He actually told the truth. Or a selective version of it, anyway. ‘I needed a break from Europe. Too many parties.’

‘Really?’ she asked.

Nik shrugged. ‘I got into a bit of trouble in Monaco.’

‘Gambling?’ Georgia asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘No, I fell off a jetty after a party – no biggie really. But I just decided it was time for a change of crowd.’

Nik didn’t mention that he’d intentionally driven his Porsche off a jetty and into the sea after a bet with a totally insane American heiress. He’d been doing 200 clicks at the time. His father wasn’t too impressed and nor was hers. They’d both nearly drowned.

‘I see,’ Georgia said, but she understandably still looked confused. ‘I fell into a fountain once, after a party – in my school uniform. It was so embarrassing.’

Nik laughed. She was so cute. And, momentarily blinded to reason by her cuteness, he found himself saying, ‘Care for a swim?’

Nik knew he couldn’t invite her back to the house. Even if he had decided to break the rules (which, as yet, he hadn’t), Georgia couldn’t come over because Kat was due to turn up any day. But there were plenty of other places to swim, including a particularly inviting ocean no more than 20 metres away.

Nik nodded to a set of stairs leading to a rocky beach.

‘Great,’ Georgia replied. ‘But how about we go to a proper beach?’

‘Here’s fine,’ Nik shrugged, pulling off his shirt and trainers and making his way to the water’s edge.

Nik watched a wave crash over the rocks, sending spray into the air. He waited for it to retreat and then picked his way between the barnacles, stumbling slightly, and falling more than diving into the water.