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It was all starting to settle in Enough that on this late afternoon, he found hi on the porch in a rare undisturbed lorious sunset as he drank his tea on the top step, listening to the wind settle, the last call of birds and the hum of the flies
If he’d been out in the bush, he’d have wet the billy and been taking a cuppa about noatching the spread of color fro in his view but that sky and the low-lying scrub leading up to it He’d have been alone, purposefully s still running through his head He supposed he hadn’t yet figured out how to take care of things during the day and be around when she needed hiht
“That’s because you’re not going to delegate until you’re sure everything’s being done right, and you’re so head-over-heels about ht, whether I need you around or not” He glanced back, saw her standing inside the screen door, watching that sunset froured out, do you?”
“There are flies swi in your cup,” she noted
“When you co me”
“I think my chief value to you is as an insect repellant”
“Well, it does s far more enjoyable than they used to be Can even wear my shorts despite the mosquitoes” Sheout and then disappearing quickly, as it ont to do this close to the edge of the earth, she slid out the door and took a seat next to him She was as female as they came, but out on the station he knew she had little patience for anything but hertucked shirt that always ertips itch to follow the line of her bra beneath the pale fabric, tease the cleft of her breasts in the neckline Her eyes shts, but she leaned back against the opposite post and coainst his hip
“You said you’d tell me one day,” Dev said, “why you wanted to come back here” When sheout at the spread of darkness over the flat terrain, the transition of thedark silhouettes The last rains had put a touch of yellow on theit to her tonight to put in her hair, but one of the kids had escaped and he’d had to help Willis corral her They were going to have to coet thes
“I always liked living out here,” she said at last, surprising hi stretch of her jodhpurs allowing hiets boring I can hear everything The whine of the mosquitoes, fliesthe h the sand” She nodded into the darkness “I used to sit here and look at the trees and saltbushes and tell ht A tall stock with his straw to find water, a two-headed roo with a wallaby’s head for an arse” She pointed and it was a remarkable description for the shrub she indicated, such that he smiled
“I like quiet, Dev,” she continued, giving hilance “I don’t need a fast-paced life I can sit on this porch for the next twenty-five years if I want, and I’ new every day When I left all those years ago, I traveled to all the busy places Paris, London, Berlin, Beijing and Hong Kong New York and Hollywood” When he raised a brow, she nodded, huaze “Places where you don’t have to put the feet of the safe in pots of water to keep the ants out of your tucker But I don’t need fancy places like that I have so I want to catch up on Do you kno many hundreds of books are written every year?”
Her eyes lit up with the idea of it, and he couldn’t help but sed him with her shoulder “I love to read, and haven’t done ot a scholar in residence, s to me Maybe I’ll even coax him to read aloud tosexy voice of his”
“You et him to do that”
She gave his, when I was here before, was staying up long enough in theto tune in to the radio calls”
“Hear thepassed up the line about births and deaths,” he reossip”
“Yes” Her mouth curved “When life is this si at her then, Dev wondered how she aze flickered to him “I wouldn’t mind it,” she said “You’re a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, you know that?”
“Pot calling kettle again, love Does it bother you?”
“No,” she answered, with such sincerity he believed it “Another thing about va you la worth the sacrifice if done right But sometimes I ?”
He shook his head “I can only speak for myself I like a woman’s body as much as the next bloke, but sometimes, when a sheila looks at you with soft eyes and says she wouldn’t ets all coiled It’s alh you won’t find irls with big blue eyes that I want to shag”