But, after several drawn-out moments, she couldn’t help herself. Something about this place seemed to have her checking her will-power at the border of the pine forest.

She looked up to find Hud standing in the middle of the room, one hand on his hip, the other running up the back of his neck in a mirror image of her recent action, as though something heavy was bothering him too. His bicep strained against the cotton of his T-shirt, pale denim hung just so off lean hips, and he looked at her. Worse, he looked into her.

As though the well-built, well-tended, protective walls that normally kept her safe from a return of any kind of emotional disorder into her life were to him as transparent as cellophane. As though he knew the half a dozen articles she had due back to The Northern News weren’t the reason why she wanted to get on with their deal and quick.

She was here because she was drawn to him. But whether it was to his sad eyes or his beautiful face she had no idea. Either ought to have kept her strapped to her desk at home instead of sitting here becoming more and more familiar with every tempting facet, for both were so enticing she wasn’t sure quite how to escape their pull.

She let her wrists slump against the table and the breath she let go was juddery and hot, as if it had been pent up inside her for an eternity. Her skin began to itch as if a rash were crawling up her arm, as she waited for him to say something, to tell her what he saw. And her head spun as she tried to think of ways to not answer him.

‘So,’ he said, his hand dropping until his long arm rested at his side, ‘if you’re comfortable there, I’m happier to walk as I talk. Okay with you?’

Kendall licked her dry lips. She would have been more comfy on the couch by far, feet on the coffee table, laptop warming her thighs, but that would have put her nearer Hud and his sandalwood scent and that would have been tantamount to giving the guy the sledgehammer to knock down her walls for good.

‘Fine with me,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Then let’s go ahead and get this thing done.’

This thing, Hud repeated in his head. As if getting the story of the last two months of his life out of his head and down on paper was some kind of distraction getting in the way of other things the two of them could be doing together.

But this thing was the reason he was here. While she was the distraction. No doubt about it. All that dewy skin and those great big eyes and complex personality were enough to keep a guy like him—a guy with an infamously short attention span—interested.

Over the years he’d found women the world over who were happy to be distractions to a man who wore his inherent resistance to settling in one place like a second skin. Somehow, more often than not, they sought him out rather than the other way around. As though a friendly ear and a warm pair of arms could get many an aimless soul through the night.

But he knew instinctively that this woman was not like the others. She wouldn’t take being a distraction lightly. Giving into such urges would only be taking advantage. Which he had to tell himself over and over again while she sat there, looking up at him expectantly, eyes dark against her pale skin, believing she was part of something bigger than just the slaying of the monsters inside of his head.

He began to pace. Trying to find a beginning point, a way in. For now he actually had to say the words out loud to begin to get this thing—this great, dark, hulking shadow hovering over his future like a storm cloud waiting to burst—out of him and through her. Not his most brilliant scheme ever, though when an excess of hormones became involved most men could be said to be less than at their prime.

Kendall slowly sucked her lips between her teeth and her hands fell to cradle the edges of her laptop. ‘Once upon a time is a tad clichéd,’ she said. ‘I was born has already been taken. But anything else would suffice.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, shooting her a wry smile. And deciding that perhaps the walking thing wasn’t helping. He sat on the couch, grabbed a velvet throw pillow, punched it a few times and tucked it into a corner of the couch before lying down and using it as a pillow. But then he felt far too much like he was on a psychiatrist’s couch.

He sat up, clasped his hands so tight around his kneecaps his knuckles turned white and figured he may as well start the day it happened.

‘Colombia,’ he said, the word shooting from his lungs as though it had to pass through an obstacle course. He closed his eyes and breathed through it, doing his all to control the images already starting to crowd in on him.

Bad idea. Bad idea, his subconscious chanted. Then, Just be a man, and do it.

He looked across and noticed that, while Kendall’s right leg was stretched out comfortably in front of her, she was kneading her left thigh. Her expression was absent-minded, her brow furrowed.

‘You okay?’ he asked, happy for the interruption.

She looked up. He motioned to her leg.

And then, quick as a flash, she straightened her skirt, a twin to the one from the day before, only this one was the colour of caramel, then folded both legs back beneath her. ‘All good,’ she said with an easy smile. ‘Keep going. So far it’s riveting. I can only hope the rest can live up to the promise so far.’

‘Smart alec,’ he said, but what he thought was, Be careful what you wish for…

‘Night,’ he continued. ‘A sky of dark blue. Market umbrellas like triangular black holes against the squat, square mud buildings surrounding the town centre. Their dark windows like empty eyes looking out over the noisy milling crowd. I pass a group of young men leaning against a building, smoking, laughing, telling dirty jokes.’

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