The cable car from the ferry to the zoo was fantastic. Miri’s fingers itched for her camera. The views across Sydney had tourists snapping shots and exclaiming in half a dozen different languages. Her own contribution came without thought. ‘I’m a photographer.’ She glanced at Tad and saw that his attention was for her, not the view.
‘That suits you. You’re watchful, taking everything in. You should have brought your camera. I wouldn’t have minded.’
She shrugged one shoulder. Uncharacteristically, she hadn’t thought to bring it. All her attention was for him. The realisation made her self-conscious and dragged a deeper truth out of her. ‘Maybe I need to be in the world, and not simply viewing it through a lens.’
The cable car reached the zoo’s entrance and she used that as an excuse to stand and change the conversation. They kept getting too serious, connecting too deeply. It was disconcerting.
Perhaps he thought so too. For a few minutes, their conversation was only about the animals. They stopped at the komodo dragons’ enclosure.
‘Ugh. What a monster.’ The huge grey lizard was ugly, but it was the sense of power and threat that emanated from it that had her retreating, and bumping into Tad. They stayed like that a moment, with her alive to his warmth and strength. It seemed as if their breathing synchronised.
‘Do you know komodo dragons don’t need to have sex to reproduce?’
‘Pathogenesis.’
He put a hand to her waist and turned her around. ‘How do you know that? I thought I’d impress you with my knowledge.’
‘I guess we both watched the same TV documentary.’
‘Huh.’ He looked over her shoulder at the giant lizard. ‘Still, I feel sorry for him. Not much fun if there’s no sex.’
She figured there was no safe answer to that, especially with Tad smiling down at her, his smile broadening when she didn’t respond.
The zoo was alive with the sounds of the animals and with visitors. A group of elderly people had been disgorged from a bus outside and were now making their way determinedly from exhibit to exhibit. Parents with toddlers zipped smartly around them, manoeuvring expensive pushers and promising penguins. Through the chaos, zoo staff trundled along the paths in little electric carts. Miri stepped back fast to prevent being run over.
A cockatoo shrieked with what sounded suspiciously like laughter. A toddler responded with an ear-splitting demand: ‘Peng-wins!’ He silenced the bird and everyone else. His mother looked around, smiling brightly. ‘Does anyone know where the penguins are?’
A dozen hands pointed. She escaped.
Miri and Tad laughed. They took in the orang-utan enclosure and its sleepy, human-like inhabitants before reaching the giraffes.
‘Aww.’ The baby was adorable. ‘Look at her skinny legs. And her eyes. Giraffes have beautiful faces.’
No response from Tad.
Miri glanced at him.
‘I think they’re weird. I saw them in Africa, drinking at a waterhole, long legs all everywhere as they bent their necks down. And they run strangely.’
‘Maybe you should give them tips?’
He grinned at her. ‘Do you like my style?’
She rolled her eyes, not that he could see since she had her sunglasses on, but his unabashed fishing-for-compliments had her laughing.
He had to know he was gorgeous. What really worked for him was that he didn’t seem to care. He was just a regular guy strolling through the zoo and making her feel special with teasing, laughter and questions. Plus, he listened when she answered.
They walked through the dappled light of the safari zone, and she walked maybe a fraction closer than necessary, enjoying the brush of their bodies and the happy zap that accompanied the accidental touches.
A Barbary sheep regarded them with a grumpy expression.
‘What sort of photographer are you? Weddings? Studio?’
‘Magazine shoots and I’m trying to build up a reputation for quirky street scenes and landscapes. I’d like to sell art prints, calendars, things like that.’
At the tiger’s cage, they paused. The big cat was as lethal as the Komodo dragon, but so beautiful he mesmerised the senses. He lay in the sun, only the tip of his tail flicking.
From further down the path came the sound of many feet and excited voices. Over the top of them rang out a command. ‘Girls!’
Miri turned instinctively and a vice clamped around her chest, constricting her breathing. Panic. She swung back to Tad, focussing on his face and forcing her lungs to a slow steady rhythm. She could — would — control this. For the first time in too long, she was enjoying herself, and she would not have it ruined.
Tad looked from her to the approaching schoolgirls. Their uniforms declared their private school status. They were perhaps thirteen years old, all carrying drawing equipment.
They came closer, hurrying up to the tiger’s cage, undoubtedly drawn by the danger of the animal.
Miri went cold.
Tad put an arm around her and half lifted her off the path and back to a secluded bench they’d passed. He sat beside her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I didn’t think.’ She stopped. Breathed. ‘I shouldn’t react like this.’
‘A group of teenage girls are scary. Ask any cop. They’re unpredictable.’
She couldn’t respond to the humour. She tried, she truly did, but her mouth shook as tried to force a smile.
‘Should we go?’
She shook her head and got the words out all in one burst. ‘Seven weeks ago, I was photographing a school trip in the Blue Mountains. My old school. I was a scholarship girl. They asked me back. Wanted a professional look for some promo they had planned. Camping and environmental work.’
‘God. You were the one taken hostage.’ His tension enveloped her.
‘We all were. The boy, Scott, he had a gun.’ If Tad remembered the story, she didn’t have to continue. But she couldn’t stop. ‘I talked to him for over two hours. After the first hour, I got him to let the girls go. Their teacher and I stayed. He told us…he told us horrible things about his childhood. He was only eighteen.’ It was a cry from the heart, an appeal for understanding.
He rubbed his hand up and down her arm.
‘Scott talked and talked. He was so angry. Despairing. He said others had everything and he had nothing. He needed help. He had almost put the gun down when the local cops arrived. The girls had called them once they were released. The cops crashed in. Shouted. Scott panicked. He didn’t raise the gun.’ She turned within Tad’s embrace and put a hand against his chest, needing the connection. ‘I swear he didn’t raise the gun. Scott went to run. He stepped back. He slipped.’ She shuddered. ‘He fell over the cliff and died.’ Her eyes and nose stung with tears. ‘They found the gun beside him. It was empty.’
***
‘I’m sorry, Miri.’ Tad could feel her frozen horror. She was back in the moment. He wasn’t a trained negotiator and had never borne the responsibility of a hostage drama, but there were similarities to a rescue situation. You became the person’s link to life, to the real world of decent people. She had been the boy’s link. That took courage.
And when the boy had died, that broken link had devastated her. He could hear the depressed, desperate note of failure and self-blame in her hurried speech.
‘I thought I’d be all right at the zoo.’ Her voice was thick with tears, but a note of anger sounded through it; she was impatient with herself.
‘Flashbacks are normal.’ And isolating. He resented his helplessness. She felt small and vulnerable as she huddled against him, and all he could do was hold her tighter.
‘Huh.’ She grabbed a tissue from her bag and blew her nose.
‘Would you like to go home?’
‘It’s borrowed.’
‘Pardon?’ That didn’t make sense. Who borrowed a tissue?
‘I’m staying at a friend’s flat while he’s away. It’s not home. Selwyn knew I was having problems. I love my family but they’re over-whelming. They’re all around western Sydney. All checking on me.’
‘But the Bridge keeps them at bay?’
She smiled faintly. ‘You think you’re kidding, but it’s true. They don’t like the inner city.’
More likely they were respecting her demand for space, something he was starting to think she’d better never ask of him. He wouldn’t want to see her suffering and not be able to hold her. It would eat him alive, but he forced himself to ask. ‘Would you like to return to your borrowed refuge?’
She looked around at the cheerful, friendly zoo. Her gaze stayed a long moment on the schoolgirls, all seated, sketching by the tiger’s cage. ‘I’d like to stay. If you don’t mind?’ Her eyes were shimmery with unshed tears.
He squeezed her shoulders. ‘Your decision.’ He respected her courage. She stood and he rose with her, taking her hand.
She held it as if it were a lifeline.
The meerkats proved a great distraction. They were alert and funny, and Miri relaxed. Her photographer’s eye caught everything, and she commented on the animals’ antics and the human audience’s reaction.
He felt his own battle-ready tension ease as she relaxed.
‘Thank you,’ she said when they sat down for lunch at a café overlooking the harbour.
There didn’t need to be gratitude between them. All he’d done was allow her space to fight her demons. ‘We can feed the giraffes after lunch.’
‘I’d like that.’ She smiled.
That small smile, genuine and appreciative, touched him like a caress. It was an expression of trust and, whether she knew it or not, a promise for the future. The sweetness of it rocked his world, and he felt as clumsy as an armadillo as he got up from the table and tried to move and act naturally.
It helped that she moved naturally into his personal space, and looped her arm around his waist.
The giraffes were friendly and calm, their keeper talking easily about them. Tad took a photo of Miri with his phone as she fed them, showing it to her and enjoying how she leant into him to look at it.
‘Brilliant. Look at his eyelashes. Giraffes are beautiful.’
For beauty, he preferred to look at her with her jacket off and her green shirt open at the collar, lipstick worn off so that her mouth was naked as it curved in a smile.
She glanced up at him, saw something in his expression and her own gaze dropped to his mouth. Her breath came faster.
‘Peng-wins!’
She jumped, and laughed.
The same terrible toddler of the morning hadn’t lost his fascination with penguins. His mother appeared defeated. Without a word she turned the pram away from the giraffes and headed back to the birds’ enclosure.
‘The boy will be a marine biologist,’ Miri said.
‘That or a drill sergeant.’ The kid was loud and he’d spoiled the moment. But there’d be other moments.
They caught the ferry back to Balmain just ahead of the rush of schoolkids and commuters. It meant that there were still hours of the afternoon and the whole evening ahead of them.
Tad stood beside Miri at the ferry railing, his back to the view and his attention on her. ‘Phone number?’ He entered hers into his phone and watched her save his. He could ask her out for dinner. He wanted to. ‘You look tired.’ He pushed hair blown by the wind away from her eyes. It was an excuse to touch her.
‘I am. But it’s a happy tired. Thank you.’
He’d ask her out to dinner, tomorrow. For now he shifted so that they stood with her back to his front, his arms around her, the slight movement of the water rocking them together. The Sydney Harbour Bridge loomed up and passed over them.
She put her hand over his and leaned back.
It was a good way to travel home.
***
Despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun, Miri missed Tad’s heat as he released her and they walked off the ferry. ‘I owe that pelican.’
He caught on, not needing an explanation that she was referring to the morning’s pelican that had made her laugh and revealed her presence. ‘I’d have asked you sooner or later. He just gave me the excuse.’
They were holding hands, something that felt incredibly right, and now she pulled him to a stop. ‘You knew I was there on the balcony?’
‘Babe.’ Half-joke, fully serious. ‘I’m a trained policeman. I notice beautiful women.’
‘Smooth.’
They stopped at the entrance to her borrowed apartment. After the ease between them, she was suddenly uncertain.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said as they faced each other. In the shaded entry, they’d both taken off their sunglasses. His eyes were the clear grey-blue of the sea, intent and honest. A woman could rely on his strength.
‘Okay,’ she said absently. Her focus was more immediate than a future phone call. Would he kiss her? She was humming with curiosity and anticipation. Would the kiss live up to the awareness that had zipped between them all day? Could any kiss? If he didn’t make a move, she’d initiate things. No way was he walking away without this important point settled.
He touched his mouth to hers. The lightest pressure. She breathed in the scent of him as they played the game of ‘let’s pretend we’re in total control’. Only their mouths touched, teased, and they woke a deeper need, one that tingled through her. She slipped her tongue past his lips to flick the tip of his.
He sucked her in, even as he changed the rules. His hand cupped the back of her head, fingers threading through her hair, massaging. The kiss went wild. He walked her backward till there was only the solidity of the wall behind her and the potent hardness of his body in front.
She kind of forgot that although the apartment block’s entry was shaded, it was still visible from the road.
‘They can’t see.’ Tad’s voice was raw and husky, responding to the inarticulate noise she made at the feel of his hand on her breast. He’d mistaken her murmur for a protest. ‘My body’s between you and the street. I just had to feel…’
Her nipple jutted against her bra, the soft cotton not hiding her arousal, even through her shirt.
He slipped his hand inside her shirt. Inside her bra. They both sighed at the contact. Then he frowned.
She couldn’t understand his frown. It felt good, so good. His rough, calloused hand gentle against her skin.
He scissored his fingers, squeezing her nipple. ‘Either we stop, or we take this inside.’
Her choice.
With his hand inside her shirt, intimately possessive, she craved more. All of him. Twenty-six years of good behaviour fought flash-fire desire. She had never jumped into the flames before. She’d always known her lovers. ‘I…’
The stern line of his mouth relaxed a fraction. ‘Not on a first date?’
She nodded, defeated by her own confusion. If only she could trust this instantaneous passion, but for the last seven weeks nothing had been normal. She couldn’t add another regret. ‘I wish I could.’ She really did as his hand left her breast and rebuttoned her shirt. The thoughtful gesture, the caring, had its own power.
‘Dinner, tomorrow.’
‘Not tonight?’ Her question escaped, flaunting her desperation.
‘Don’t tempt me. Take the time. Think about what you want.’
She shivered at the low growl of his voice. She shivered more as he continued.
‘I know I want you.’