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  “I understand, but we need to meet again, soon, Simone,” he replied, his voice still thick with emotion. “There’s too much between us, unspoken. We need to really talk.”

  “I agree. I’ll call you.”

  She then gave his hand a slight, surreptitious squeeze, before leaving his side and heading towards Emily, whom she saw a little distance away.

  A few minutes later, as Simone made her way towards the gate, bidding goodbye to familiar guests as she went, George sidled up to Teale and, with a leer, and a nod in the direction of the departing Simone, said, “The ice-maiden appears to have thawed a lot, lately. Someone must have fanned her embers. I was hoping to be the one to do that.”

  Teale barely restrained himself from ramming George’s unsolicited, and contemptible comment down his throat, but, instead, he turned sharply on his heel and walked away from him without acknowledging that the boor had spoken.

  CHAPTER 11

  After only about 20 minutes of trudging along one of the many earthen tracks winding through the forest surrounding the lodge, and climbing up and down a series of rough-hewn rock steps to various levels, Nadine’s feet and ankles were already killing her. But, there was no way in the world she would let on to Lee about her discomfort, after his sarcastic comment about her footwear.

  If he baulks, one more time, to admire another tree, she thought to herself, I’ll scream! I couldn’t care less how old or beautiful every bloody tree is, she fumed. If he wanted more exercise, why the hell couldn’t we have made love again? It’s well known that you lose more kilojoules having sex than in a five kilometre walk and, besides, it’s so much more fun! I can’t understand why he nearly has an orgasm looking at some tree or bird!

  Just then, her dark thoughts were interrupted, and her laboured progress along the track halted, by Lee’s coming to a sudden stop in front of her and, at the same time, throwing out one arm to impede her.

  “Shh!!” he commanded, in a harsh whisper. Then, in a much softer whisper, he continued. “Did you hear that?”

  “No! What?” she responded, with a note of panic in her voice.

  “It’s a Prince Alfred Rifle Bird,” he answered, his tone now full of reverence. “See it? It’s up there in that beautiful, tall Mountain Ash. I haven’t seen either for years!”

  “Oh, shit!” she yelled, angrily. “You frightened the hell out of me. I thought it must have been an axe murderer, or something, on our tail! It’s just a bloody bird, Lee!”

  “Damn! Now you’ve frightened that beautiful, rare bird away,” scalded Lee.

  “Oh! Fuck the bird,” responded Nadine loudly, in exasperation.

  Her expletive was greeted with a scowl from Lee, and a further whispered admonition to be quiet, as he saw another couple approaching from the opposite direction.

  As this new couple drew near the stationary Lee and Nadine, the woman, who was clad in khaki shorts and shirt, with sensible walking shoes on her feet, and who carried a pair of binoculars slung around her neck, spoke to them in a tone of suppressed excitement. “Isn’t this a lovely walk? Watch out for the Pied Currawongs up ahead, amongst the beautiful Salmon gums.” Then, eying Nadine’s boots as they passed, she added, “Oh, my dear, you’ll have to watch your step in those boots. It’s a bit rough up ahead.”

  Oh my God, thought Nadine. What is this? A nerds’ convention? I don’t know how much more of this I can stand!

  She had little time for further reflection, as Lee marched off, at a faster pace than before, in the direction from which the other couple had appeared, and she had to hurry to try to catch up with him.

  Pressing on ahead, determined to enjoy the walk despite Nadine’s obvious distaste for the whole process, Lee was suddenly brought up short by a piercing scream emanating from his reluctant companion, now trailing some metres behind him. Turning, he saw that she was now sitting on her bottom, in the middle of the track, crying, and holding one ankle.

  “What’s the matter, now?” he asked, his frustration evident in his voice, as he retraced his steps to where Nadine now sat.

  “A big black snake slithered across the path in front of me, and gave me such a fright I tripped over, and now I’ve hurt my ankle,” she blurted, between angry sobs.

  His attitude softened, slightly, by that information, and by Nadine’s now plaintive appearance, Lee squatted beside her to try to assess the extent and severity of her injury. He gently fingered her left ankle, which she had been holding, but when he tried to manipulate it, gently, to test its mobility, she gave a sharp howl of pain, and pushed his hands away. Quickly, then, he unzipped the full length fastener of the boot, and gently tried to remove it without putting stress on the ankle, which he could now see was already beginning to swell. That was unsuccessful. Then, taking up a position, squatting directly in front of her, he grasped the heel of the boot with one hand, and the toe with the other, and began to pull on it, gently at first, but with gradually increasing pressure, to try to remove it. That produced another groan of pain, and a shouted, “Stop it! That hurts!” from Nadine.

  “We need to get the boot off quickly, before the ankle swells any more, Nadine, otherwise we’ll end up having to cut it off to treat the ankle,” he quietly advised her. “Grit your teeth, and I’ll try again, and I’ll do my best not to hurt you too much.”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” she responded, reluctantly, with a slight whimper. “But be as gentle as you can, it hurts like hell.”

  With a nod, and a soft smile, Lee renewed his efforts to remove the boot, trying to apply a steadily increasing traction. Nadine placed her right boot against his chest, and pushed, as she gritted her teeth and tried hard not to scream. After a few moments, the boot came away from her foot with a rush, the sudden release of the resistance causing Lee to overbalance, and sprawl backwards onto the ground, landing with considerable force on his back.

  As he attempted to pick himself up from the ground, he felt a sharp stab of pain in his lower back. Instinctively, he grasped the painful area with both hands, and grimaced as the pain intensified.

  “Shit! Now I’ve done my back in,” he mumbled, between gritted teeth.

  Then, as he looked again at Nadine, and saw her rocking back and forth on her rump, holding her injured ankle in both hands, and sobbing, he could not help but observe, “What a nice mess we’re in now!”

  “And none of this would have happened if you’d done what I wanted, and stayed at the lodge to have more sex!” blurted Nadine, anger and frustration now displacing the pain in her voice.

  “Hell, Nadine! Life isn’t all about sex, you know,” retorted Lee, angrily.

  Before they could exchange any further pleasantries, another group of walkers came into view along the track, heading in the direction of the lodge. Seeing the obvious distress of Nadine and Lee, they increased their pace, with the clear intent of offering assistance.

  “What’s happened here? Are you two OK?” asked the leading member of the group – an athletic looking young man with a deeply sun-tanned face beneath a battered bush hat.

  As the rest of the group, which consisted of four, fit looking young men, gathered around, Lee answered the first man’s question.

  “My friend, Nadine, fell and hurt her ankle, and now I’ve done my back in getting her boot off. My name’s Lee. We’re staying at the lodge, and need some assistance to get back there so we can obtain some medical assistance. Can you guys help?”

  “Sure,” said the first young man. “By the way, I’m Alec, and these are Josh, Harry and Trevor,” he added, indicating each of his companions in turn. “We’re on a hiking holiday. Now,” turning to Nadine, “let’s have a look at that ankle.”

  As he stooped to examine her ankle, Nadine, despite her pain, noticed that he had a ruggedly handsome face, and a very well-muscled frame. Despite his obvious strength, his hands, when they touched her ankle, were gentle, but reassuringly confident. At the first touch of those hands, she felt a small flutter of excitement in the pit of
her stomach, and her tears instantly stopped flowing.

  After a careful examination of her ankle, which gave evidence of his obvious first aid experience, Alec announced that he was sure it was not broken, but that she had a moderately severe sprain.

  “You’d best not try to walk with that at all until it’s been examined and treated by a doctor,” he suggested. “We four can take turns, two at a time, to carry you back to the lodge on a ‘fireman’s chair’, with your foot elevated through the crook of the elbow of one of the other two walking in front. But, what about you, Lee? Can you make it back under your own steam? It’s not all that far.”

  “Yes, I think so,” replied Lee, rising slowly to his feet, with a grimace and another grasp at his painful back. “I may need a bit of a hand negotiating the stairs, though, and it will be slow going.”

  “That’s OK,” continued Alec. “The fourth man can lend you a shoulder to lean on along the track, and help you up and down the stairs. I’m afraid we can’t offer to carry you, too,” he added, with a slight grin.

  The return journey to the lodge was indeed slow and tortuous, with frequent pauses, not just to change the lifting crew for Nadine, but also to rest Lee’s back.

  Upon their arrival there, the manager summoned the resort’s ‘on-call’ doctor, who essentially agreed with Alec’s diagnosis of Nadine’s ankle injury, but advised her to attend the casualty department of the local hospital for x-rays to confirm there was no underlying bony damage. Subject to that confirmation, he advised elevated rest with cold packs for the next 48 hours, and provided her with some strong pain killers. As for Lee’s back, he diagnosed only a slight muscle strain for which he prescribed bed rest with, again, some strong analgesics, which he supplied.

  Alec volunteered to drive Nadine to the hospital for the x-rays. Despite his painful back, Lee accompanied them, anxious to discover the full extent of Nadine’s injury. The x-rays confirmed the absence of any bone damage and, after her ankle was strapped, Alec returned them to the lodge. During their journey to and from the hospital, and whilst awaiting attention there, Nadine flirted outrageously with Alec, as she had begun to do during their initial hike back from the scene of her injury. Lee seemed oblivious to her overtures to Alec, a fact that mildly irritated her.

  Alone together again, at last, in their unit, Nadine, who now seemed to be on a high after all the attention she had received, re-focussed her attention once more upon Lee.

  “It’s really good to be back here alone, together,” she purred, as she limped, with a little assistance from Lee, into the bedroom, where she collapsed onto the bed, dropping the crutch, which the hospital had loaned her, to the floor. Lee collapsed onto the bed beside her, with a deep sigh of relief.

  After a few moments of blissful stillness, Nadine stirred and, half sitting up on her side of the bed, picked up the not quite empty bottle of stale champagne that was still on the bedside table, and quickly drained its tepid contents down her throat.

  “God, Nadine! Don’t do that!” admonished Lee. “Surely you know not to take alcohol with those strong analgesics you’ve had.”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, lover boy. I’ve done that plenty of times before. Besides, it was only a little bit.”

  Then, turning towards him, she began to grope his groin area, before fumbling with the zipper of his trouser fly.

  “Not now, Nadine!” chided Lee, his annoyance obvious in the tone of his voice, as he attempted to brush away her hands.

  Despite his efforts to prevent her, Nadine managed to unzip his fly and extract his now limp penis from his trousers. Lifting and shaking it, playfully, she spoke, in a now slurred voice, as if directly to this part of his anatomy. “Poor little Willy. Nadine will have to see what she can do to liven you up.”

  As she lowered her head towards Lee’s crotch, he continued to resist and to protest.

  “Stop it, Nadine! I’ve got a crook back, and I’m feeling a bit woozy. Those tablets the doctor gave me have kicked in. Haven’t you felt them yet?”

  No sooner had he said that than Nadine’s head suddenly dropped, lifelessly, into his lap. The dead weight of it upon him, coupled with her now deep, rhythmic breathing, told him that she had, indeed, suddenly succumbed to the effects of the medication, and the alcohol she had consumed, combined, no doubt, with the shock of the trauma she had suffered and the drama that had followed.

  Thank Christ for that, he thought, with relief, and began to try, gently, to remove her head from his lap without awakening her. Before he had succeeded in doing that, he was startled to feel the familiar vibration of his ringing mobile phone, which he still had in the pocket of his trousers, but, fortunately on the opposite side to the head of the sleeping Nadine. With some effort, he managed to extract it and answer it, with a very quiet, “Hello?” without disturbing his unconscious companion.

  “Lee? Hi,” came Simone’s voice through the instrument. “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk much earlier. Harold was just about to introduce me to his nephew. I’m home now. I thought you’d like to know that Sasha had been over to apologise to Harold and Emily about her behaviour at the party. As a result, Harold had only glowing things to say about her.”

  “That’s good to hear,” he replied, still in a low voice. “It certainly took character for her to do that. I was a bit worried about leaving you to face the music there alone. Was it too embarrassing?”

  “No, as it turned out. I had quite a nice time, actually, but had to leave fairly early. I developed a bit of a headache. Probably just the tension about how Harold and Emily might react, followed by some red wine in the sun.”

  Uncomfortably conscious of Nadine’s sleeping head in his lap, and of his penis still protruding from his trousers beneath it, Lee soon made an excuse to bring his conversation with Simone to an end. Then, with renewed effort, he managed to lift Nadine’s head from his lap, and re-position it on her pillow, before carefully rolling to the far side of the bed where he, too, soon fell into a deep sleep, despite his companion’s loud snoring.

  CHAPTER 12

  On her arrival home from the Braithwaites’ party, Simone was, at once, both elated and anxiously guilt-ridden. Although the blissful memory of her recent steamy sexual encounter with Teale still lingered, that delicious memory was tinged with a deeper foreboding, arising from her unshakable suspicion that their frantic copulation had been observed, and possibly even photographed, by another guest at the party. The fear of exposure, and its consequences for herself and her family, not to mention for Teale, nagged at the edges of her consciousness.

  In her more rational moments, free from the uncontrollable lust and excitement engendered by Teale’s presence, she knew, in her heart, that their relationship was doomed to end tragically, particularly if they continued to throw caution to the winds in pursuit of their sexual gratification, as they had just done. Yet, at the same time, she was aware that it would be extremely difficult for her to forego the exquisite sensations that coursed through her body at the sight of her lover, and the merest touch of his hand, sensations which, even now, she felt stirring in her loins at the thought of him. Yet, those sensations were almost immediately scotched by a fresh attack of guilt as she recalled how she had virtually brushed Lee off when he had thoughtfully called to enquire how she was coping with the potentially embarrassing confrontation with Harold and Emily.

  Those thoughts caused Simone to reach for the telephone to return Lee’s earlier call. She knew that he would be pleased to hear how Sasha had fronted the Braithwaites to apologise for her antics at her party. Before she could pick up the phone, however, her intention was sidetracked by the sound of her doorbell, which gave out one long, sustained ring, followed by several short, sharp rings. Recognising the urgency behind this repeated ringing of the bell, she hurried to answer the door but, before opening it, she took her customary precaution of looking through the security peep hole. There she saw what she thought was the back of Sasha’s head, as she stood in front
of the door, but looking back over her shoulder towards the street.

  When she quickly opened the door, then, her visitor rushed to enter the open doorway. As she did so, she turned her head towards Simone, revealing that it was not Sasha, but Gai. She was wide-eyed, and obviously distressed. Simone now saw that one side of her face was very red, and one shoulder of her blouse had been torn, revealing part of her bra, the strap of which was also broken. Gai was desperately holding the two ends of the broken strap with one hand to prevent her breast from becoming completely uncovered. No sooner was she through the doorway than she exhorted Simone, in a panicky voice, to shut it behind her. As Simone hurriedly did as she was asked, she spoke quickly to her unexpected visitor, and with a note of alarm in her voice.

  “My God, Gai! What’s happened?”

  “A strange, scruffy-looking man just came up behind me, at the other end of the street. And he grabbed me!” replied Gai, with tears beginning to run down her cheeks. “He said something like ‘I’ll teach you to ignore me, bitch!’. I somehow managed to get away from him, but he hit me on the face, and tore my clothes. I’d just seen you walk up from the Braithwaites’ place and I ran here as fast as I could!”

  Putting one arm around her young visitor’s shoulders, Simone led her to a seat in the kitchen, where she handed her a glass of water and a tissue to wipe away her tears. Quickly ducking into the nearby laundry, she produced a freshly washed shirt, which she draped around Gai’s shoulders to cover her semi-nakedness. Then, sitting beside her, and taking hold of her hand, she said, softly, “We need to ring the police to report your experience. This bloke may be a potential rapist, and he could have a profile known to the police.”

  “Yes. It was horrible, horrible,” replied Gai, still sobbing. “Can you get Mum to come here quickly, too? I need her.”

  “Of course, dear. I’ll ring Harold on his mobile and ask him to give her a message to come here straight away, as you need her.”