Frances
Frances kicked brutally at the ground, looking for something on which to vent her rage. The Stapler was yammering in the background, Darryl the Dickhead was preening and there was a camera in her face. She was hot and sweaty and coated in drying primordial ooze – ugh! No wonder early life forms had hightailed it out of the swamp. Her hip hurt like a bitch where she’d landed after a kamikaze geriatric had crash-tackled her. And, to top it all off, Joni had been as useful as a chocolate teapot.
The urge to use a very bad F word had grown all morning and she felt the tic in her eye leap to life. But she was damned if she’d let one day on this tropical Alcatraz break her. If growing up around soldiers hadn’t immunised her against colourful language, then tending to recovering addicts certainly had. She’d been known to let loose the occasional dirty word when pushed to her limits, but she drew the line at that word.
Unlike Joni, who had embraced it like a porn star.
Frances clutched the tool bag to her chest – the complete one, as it turned out. She listened vaguely to the next lot of instructions, as ten sets of eyes scrutinised her with a mix of jealousy, respect and determination. She suddenly knew how a lobster in a tank felt.
The last set of eyes, sloping gracefully at the edges and topped with sparse greying eyebrows, looked at her like they wanted to rip her limb from limb.
Bugger. Just her luck to have bested a madman.
Takahiro Miyagi may barely have reached her shoulder but he had fought like a demon. Sadly for him, he’d mistaken her genteel demeanour as the sum of her whole. But one thing her father had taught her well was how to fight. It was the duty of a military man, lumbered with daughters, to ensure they knew how to defend themselves – more often than not from other military men who weren’t averse to undertaking a reconnaissance mission involving the commandant’s daughters.
She knew every dirty-fighting trick in the book.
And a few more.
Frances had had absolutely no compunction about jabbing her knee straight into Takahiro’s testicles, while simultaneously sinking her teeth into his shoulder and ripping his few pathetic comb-over strands of hair right out of his almost bald head.
Her father would have been proud.
His daughter, kicking butt in the jungle.
‘Right, you raving nannas, go, go, go!’ The Stapler yelled, pointing to the darkening sky. ‘Reports coming in say we’re in for one hell of a tropical storm in the next few hours. Don’t want to get your pretty little heads wet, do yer? Remember to stay within the inner perimeter. All land beyond the yellow tape is off-limits.’
As everyone scarpered around her, Frances adjusted the still-unfamiliar weight of the mike pack sitting in the small of her back and fantasised about wallowing in a green tea and ginger bath. Washing off the sludge that was drying like pork crackling on her exposed skin and oozing, like lubricant, into other, unexposed places. Vile-smelling, hideous lubricant that would disgust even a very horny ogre. She suppressed the urge to do a little pelvic squirm. The Stapler had warned that cameras were everywhere.
Damned if millions of viewers worldwide were going to see her pluck a greasy wedgie out of her posterior.
She could hear Edward’s horrified What would the partners say? Frankly, she didn’t care. She hoped they all had apoplexy and went to hell, where they belonged.
Anyway, they were certainly the least of her worries as she stared down their first challenge – building a shelter. She looked at Joni, who looked back at her with big, frightened eyes as she absently petted her belly. Her legs and the hem of her pretty green sundress, fluttering in the increasing breeze, were soiled with dark brown swamp muck and, with her green hair, she looked like a tree.
A tree who could hear the distant rumble of the dozers and knew its days in the forest were numbered.
All she needed was a bird to land on her head and she’d be the full catastrophe.
They were doomed.
Frances looked up at the ominous sky as a rumble of thunder growled around the island. Or was it G chuckling, up in heaven? Not that Frances thought for a minute the old biddy deserved to have gone up after this little stunt. She could say that, should G suddenly appear in front of her now, she’d gleefully push the meddling old hag straight into the swamp.
‘Shouldn’t we be doing something, Frankie?’
Along with Joni.
Frances glared at her sister, who was shuffling nervously from foot to foot, like a toddler who needed to go to the toilet.
‘Good question, Frances,’ Darryl said, sidling up to her, his cameraman panning in on the only two contestants not doing anything. ‘Time’s a’wastin’. Storm’s a’comin’.’
Frances decided if he said ‘train whistle blowin” next, she’d push him into the swamp too. Instead, she smiled at him and touched his arm.
‘We’re thinking, Darryl. We’re strategising.’ Even though Joni was still doing her tree impression. A fossilised one at that. ‘We’re not going to go off half-cocked. No siree.’
Darryl smiled back at her with one of his famous hey-baby grins and, for a moment, despite the fact that she had wanted to smack him a million times during the Endurance Island marathon (seasons one through nine) that she’d endured, Frances was dazzled. His smile was so white – fluorescent almost – and he had a certain look that said: You’re the only woman in the world.
It was reminiscent of the way Edward used to look at her and, for a moment, she could actually see how he could charm librarians. And electric eels. Frances had a brief mental flash of pushing him down onto the banks of the swamp, ripping his shirt open, and scooping up handfuls of the warm ooze and rubbing it into his chest.
Frances blinked. Eww.
She’d not even been here two hours and already this island, with its blatant sexual pulse, with its phallic flowers and wild, musky aroma, was making her depraved.
Darryl winked at her. ‘Half’s not much use to anyone, is it, babe?’
‘Excuse us.’ She bestowed a tight smile on the sleazy host before grabbing her sister’s arm and yanking her in the direction of their allocated site.
‘Let’s just do it, all right?’ she lectured as she frogmarched Joni to their patch of jungle, aware of the all-seeing camera and all-hearing microphones.
They walked into the stiffening breeze, which instantly banished the cloying humidity. It blew her cotton tee against her body and Frances was grateful for the cooling effect. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the hem of Joni’s skirt flutter and swirl. She found herself suddenly praying for an almighty gush that would whoosh the bloody impractical thing up around Joni’s head. With any luck, she still went commando and the breeze would cause an avalanche of votes in their favour. If she were watching this in the comfort of her own home, she’d be disgusted at anyone using such a cheap ploy to win viewer votes but, with her hip still smarting from her rumble in the jungle, she was prepared to do anything to win.
They both surveyed their allocated site. ‘Site’ was a euphemism. It looked like virgin wilderness. Impenetrable.
Frances felt a strange connection to it.
It had been a long time since anyone had touched her wilderness either.
Aware of the frantic buzz of activity around them, Frances pulled herself into line. ‘Right then. Let’s get started.’
‘This is impossible,’ Joni whined. ‘And I’m hot and sticky. My legs are covered in swamp goo and …’
Frances couldn’t believe what she was hearing. They hadn’t even started yet and Joni was giving up. ‘Oh dear, did you get your legs all dirty?’ she asked. ‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one? At the moment I have amoebic swamp bugs relocating to the deep, dark depths of my vagina!’ She thrust the pouch at her sister. ‘Suck it up, Princess.’
‘But, Frankie, we don’t know the first fucking thing about building a shelter,’ Joni whispered.
Frances glanced sharply at her sister. Joni had perfected that round-eyed bewildered look at a very early age and it had never failed to suck her in. The urge to choke her sister battled with Frances’s need to hug her and tell her everything was going to be all right. That Frankie was here and nothing could hurt her.
Just like old times.
Frances cursed herself for this weakness and mentally reached for her big-girl pants. She would not baby her sister any more. They hadn’t come this far to give up at their first major challenge. How hard could it be?
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Frances said, ‘I’ve renovated my house several times, and I’m pretty damn sure you’ve slept with your fair share of construction workers, so, between the two of us, I’m sure we’ll muddle through.’
‘Jesus, Frankie, what’s it like to be perfect?’
Frances ignored the wounded note in Joni’s voice and the corresponding wave of guilt that washed through her. If it took getting angry to make her sister productive, then so be it.
‘Yes, Frances, what is it like to be perfect?’
Darryl and the cameraman were suddenly beside her again. She could see ratings dancing like sugarplums in his eyes and, for a moment, she wanted to pick up the nearby wooden stake and ram it through his heart.
Damn bloodsucker.
Did he honestly think she enjoyed airing their dirty linen to total strangers?
She looked at Joni. ‘Lonely.’
Obviously not getting the answer he was hoping for, Darryl slunk off towards the next couple, leaving the sisters staring at each other just as another rumble of thunder tolled its warning.
‘Right,’ Frances said, dragging her gaze from Joni and clicking into organisational mode. She’d built her own charity from the ground up. She could certainly build a rudimentary shelter. ‘We need a roof and walls.’
Joni looked at the leaf-rot ground. ‘What about a floor?’
‘We can decorate the bloody thing later,’ Frances said, crouching down and pulling tools out of the pouch. There was a hacksaw, a machete, a hammer and nails, a spade, a good amount of rope, and various other tools that Frances couldn’t have identified had someone put a gun to her head. ‘We need to keep the rain out, first and foremost.’ She passed a hacksaw to Joni and pointed towards the mass of twisted flora before them. ‘Go and get saplings.’
Joni looked at the saw. ‘Saplings?’
Frances nodded, not looking up. ‘And palm fronds. Or anything green that looks waterproof.’
Joni looked at her as if she’d just been asked to identify a new species of plant. ‘I live in Hackney, Frankie. The only thing green there is the fucking District Line and even it skirts around the edges! We don’t all have a view of the botanical equivalent of Disneyland.’
Oh, for fu– Frances pulled herself up short.
For the love of God.
‘Joni,’ Frances said, pressing the corner of her left eye, ‘living a five-minute walk from Kew does not make me a sodding botanist. Saplings. Young skinny trees, not many branches, easy to hack down.’
Joni stood her ground. ‘I’m not sure this is environmentally sound. What the fuck kind of carbon footprint is this show leaving?’
Frances was amazed that Joni even knew what a carbon footprint was. But then, she had always been a bit of a revolutionary. Next she’d be worrying about the birds and other forest animals they were depriving of hearth and home. ‘We’re not clearing the bloody Amazon, for Pete’s sake.’ Frances pointed. ‘Go!’
Twenty minutes later, Frances, who had forayed into the jungle with the machete, had formed two piles back at the site. In one pile, saplings and small branches that could be lashed together with the rope to form the roof and walls. And another pile of various large fronds to help waterproof it. She was sticky again, the breeze not strong enough yet to penetrate the humid underbelly of the dense jungle.
She looked around for Joni and spotted her in the distance, looking under a leaf and poking at something. Frances could see her lips moving and it seemed she was frantically trying to coax something to come out. Jesus Christ! Joni surely wasn’t going to try to adopt some poor bloody jungle creature as a pet while she was here, was she? She was supposed to be gathering raw materials for their shelter. Not being Dr Sodding Dolittle.
Even if she was doing little.
Two beautiful tenor voices fluttered towards her on the wind, interrupting her thoughts. ‘“Farewell to Old England forever, farewell to my old pals as well.”’
She was momentarily transfixed by the Irish lilt in the old seafaring song and how right it sounded coming from the potato farmers’ mouths. There was a plaintive quality to it and, for a few seconds, Frances could picture rolling green fields and the broad sweep of the Cliffs of Moher.
Everyone stopped what they were doing – except for Joni, who had moved further away to harass another poor living creature – and enjoyed a moment of solidarity. Endurance Island may not have been a convict colony but the way Frances’s back was breaking at the moment, it bloody felt like it.
As the too-ra-li, oo-ra-li, ad-di-ties started, everyone returned to the task at hand. Well, Frances pretended to, anyway. She couldn’t help but notice the advanced state of Colm and Daragh’s shelter.
She started to feel panicked. What the bleeding hell was Joni doing? Was she trying to gather two of every species on the island before the rains came? Like some scatty green-haired Noah? They were going to be pipped at the post. The ones with the best tool stash.
‘Joni,’ she hissed.
Joni gave her a startled look but obeyed the imperious finger Frances crooked at her. While she waited for Joni to join her, Frances busied herself sorting the two piles in front of her in order of size while surreptitiously scanning their surroundings.
Recon. Of the island and the enemy.
Jesus. She was turning into her father.
The area where they were setting up camp was slightly inland from the beach. Frances could hear the pound of the broiling surf and could just see it through the mass of skinny trunks. They were in a kind of a clearing. The foliage was less dense and the canopy sparser. Each couple had been allocated a space within the clearing, separated from each other by about ten metres either side and forming a rough semicircle around a massive stone fireplace.
The fireplace was an impressive prop. All they needed was Joan of Arc and it would have been the full catastrophe. Yes, it was out of place in a lush wilderness more primeval than medieval. But Endurance Island wasn’t about historical or geographical accuracy. It was about ratings, and kickbacks from telcos with major hard-ons over texting revenues.
Frances knew from watching all nine seasons that this was where the weekly Banishment ceremonies occurred. It was also where they’d cook, eat, receive messages and gather for challenges.
The quagmire they’d all been forced to endure sucked ominously somewhere beyond the fireplace and, further away again, beyond half-a-dozen strategically based trailers belonging to the crew, she could just make out the yellow tape signifying no-man’s-land.
‘Here you are.’
Frances looked at the two paltry saplings Joni threw on her pile before scuttling off into the jungle again. Two? Couldn’t Joni see they were falling behind? She looked back at the stone ring as visions of erecting a pyre in the middle assailed her. Joni of Arc?
Movement to the left caught her eye and she turned slightly for a better angle. Paolo was manfully bouncing on a recalcitrant green sapling, while his could-have-been-a-supermodel wife, Consuela, gazed on adoringly. The pair of them were so exotic, so striking, they were like a pair of toucans amid all this lush jungle.
Unfortunately for the Horny Honeymooners, they’d been among the unlucky ones to come away pouchless from the swamp and this was one place where their startling beauty meant nothing.
Mother Nature could be a real cow like that.
All they had now were the practical gifts the gods had given them – their brains and their bare hands (or feet, if Paolo’s current attempts were anything to go by). And their love, of course. Paolo stopped mid-bounce and pulled Consuela towards him for a full-on open-mouthed kiss.
Frances rolled her eyes. Oh, for Pete’s sake!
Thunder rumbled again but the South American love birds were oblivious. She could see The Stapler talking to Darryl and pointing at them, indicating the cameraman should zoom in on their continuing lip-lock.
Oh, sod off! Were they going for the world record?
Still, Frances felt a pang. It wasn’t long ago that she’d looked at Edward like that. That she could have kissed him all day.
A short, sharp noise pulled her out of her melancholy. It sounded like something Monkey would bellow as he defended Tripitaka from marauding demons. She looked over, to find the Japanese contestants, also pouchless, making gritty, determined headway.
Takahiro was breaking off branches with his bare hands while screaming what she could only presume were Japanese insults at his team mate, Kazuki Aichi. Having been on the end of a couple of those herself, she could understand the fear on the younger man’s face as spittle formed on Takahiro’s lip, and felt sorry for him.
The older man held his thumb and forefinger close together and shook them at Kazuki and, while her Japanese was limited to sayonara and sake, it did rather look like he was questioning the size of Kazuki’s package. Considering Kazuki had a good two inches of height on his boss, if it came to a proof-of-size match, Frances’s money was on the younger guy.
Still, the urge to stalk over and confront the arrogant little nob the way she had Kirby Jones was tempting.
‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ Kazuki bowed frenetically.
Frances wasn’t sure what Kazuki was agreeing to but wouldn’t put it past Takahiro to have ordered the younger man to gnaw at the indicated sapling. She knew from the debrief that both Takahiro and Kazuki were Japanese game show champions. And everyone knew those shows were even more messed up than this one. She’d bet her last cent Kazuki had eaten worse.
A high giggle dragged Frances’s attention away from the sick interchange. Kandy and Misty were hugging each other while jumping up and down. The cameraman was on them like white on rice. Frances looked for a reason for their jubilation. Surely they hadn’t completed the task already?
Her gaze fell upon the most frivolous structure she’d ever seen in her life. It looked rickety and flimsy and barely big enough for one person, let alone Kandy’s enormous breasts.
Where were they going to sleep? On top of each other?
The shelter did look pretty, though. They’d collected frilly palm fronds and laid them on the ‘roof’. It gave the structure a lacy look and, combined with the hibiscus flowers they’d strewn around the ground, it looked like Hawaiian Hooker Barbie’s Beach Shack.
A gust of wind rustled the leaf matter around her feet and drew her attention back to the raw materials she’d collected for their shelter. A streak of lightning lit the slowly encroaching gloom and, through the sparse canopy, Frances could see nature’s fury approaching.
Maybe Mother Nature was pissed off they were here?
Well, she could get in line.
‘Joni,’ she hissed. But whether it was due to the background noise of the increasing wind or the fact her sister currently had her head stuck up a log, Joni didn’t hear her.
This was vintage Joni. Fluttering around helplessly while other people got on with the job. And that was the way it had always been. But now she really needed Joni to pull her weight. Frances threw the rope on the ground and stalked off, following the pretty green blur of her sister’s dress.
‘Joni, what the hell are you doing?’ Frances demanded as she followed her behind a tree.
Joni had the good grace to look guilty before she replied, ‘Looking for saplings. And … stuff.’
Frances glared at her. ‘They’re all around you.’ She flung her arms wide, indicating the veritable glut of suitable material. ‘We don’t need them to have golden bark.’
Joni shuffled from foot to foot, looking past her sister to the jungle beyond. ‘You’re much better at this stuff than me,’ she said absently.
‘No, Joni, I’m not. For God’s sake, you have an IQ of one hundred and thirty-six,’ Frances snapped, feeling her frustration with Joni reach a new high. ‘You could build a bloody rocket ship if you …’ hadn’t destroyed your brain cells with lines of cocaine ‘… put your mind to it. All we need is a roof and three lousy walls.’
Joni shifted slightly so she could look around her sister. ‘Genius isn’t always practical.’
Frances could feel her rage building as surely as the storm was building out to sea. ‘No, but given your specialty of bedding men who are good with their hands I’d hoped some of it might have rubbed off.’
Joni shrugged absently, her gaze darting to a spot just beyond Frances’s head where some leaves were rustling. ‘It was how good they were with their hands in other areas that I was most concerned with.’
Frances frowned at Joni’s lack of spark. The immediate spike of guilt she’d felt over saying something totally shitty seemed obsolete when her sister didn’t even appear to be paying attention.
‘God, JoJo, do you think you could actually look at me while we’re arguing –’ Frances broke off as Joni darted to her left and lunged at the ground. Her brow furrowed deeply as unease crawled up her spine. ‘What the hell is going on?’
Joni rose, grinning, her hands cradling a very non-indigenous looking species. ‘Des. Oh, Des,’ she whispered, pressing kisses on his tiny ferret head. ‘Thank God, I thought I’d lost you to the jungle.’
Frances stared agape at her sister and the offending creature, quickly scanning behind and above her to see if they were being watched. She turned back to face Joni.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ she hissed, placing her hand over the mike pack to muffle her words. ‘I thought we’d discussed this?’
Joni pulled Desmond in close to her chest. ‘Shh, Frankie, everyone will hear you.’
‘Hear me?’ she hissed. ‘There are cameras all over this godforsaken island. They’ll bloody see you and that elongated rat long before they hear me. It’s contraband. Are you trying to get us kicked off? How the hell did you even get it through Customs?’
Frances had narrowly avoided a gloved hand because her sunscreen came to one hundred and ten mils!
‘I used a little rodent valium and tucked him into my bra. I couldn’t leave him behind, Frankie.’
Joni was looking at her with those puppy dog eyes, large and round, and as full of affront as if Frankie had suggested they eat Des for dinner.
‘We’re not allowed pets on the island, Joni! It’s not a bloody holiday camp. We’re not allowed to bring food, make-up or any luxuries at all. They briefed us on this.’
‘I don’t recall them saying anything about pets,’ Joni answered defensively.
Frances suppressed the urge to yell, spurring her eye twitch to life. ‘I guess that’s because they probably thought it was self-evident.’
Joni stroked Des against her cheek. ‘Please, Frankie. He depends on me.’
‘And what about me?’ Frances raged, forgetting to keep her voice down. ‘I’m depending on you too.’
The Stapler, standing with Lex, surveyed the scene with a beatific smile.
‘Yep,’ she grinned. ‘The boys in London really outdid themselves this time. I’ve got two of the highest-rating losers going.’
As she heard the commotion between Joni and Frances, she yanked on the cameraman’s sleeve. He’d been filming the Sorority Sisters, wearing their teeny tiny white t-shirts as they decorated each other with flowers, praying for the deluge to begin.
‘Get that,’ she ordered. ‘What are they fighting about? Do we have a tree camera somewhere over there?’
Lex winced at the sisters’ hostile body language. Whatever they were arguing about, it looked intensely private. And he’d earlier felt a strange affinity with the magenta-lipped, green-haired young woman scoffing pink doughnuts like it had been her last day on earth. There was something about someone who ate with such gusto. Who did anything with gusto. It reminded him of himself. When he’d been young and full of possibilities. It seemed like a million years ago now. It had certainly felt like his last day on earth, as his twenty-year career hit an all-time low. ‘Leave it,’ he said.
Sally turned on him. ‘I don’t think so, you great wazzock. That’s what we’re here fer. Exploit their divisions. Turn them against each other.’
Lex looked right into Sally’s perfect face. ‘No.’
‘This ain’t no social club, Lex. They know what they signed on fer. This is the stuff of great telly.’
Lex winced again at Sally’s definition of great. As far as he was concerned, Great Television was the ultimate oxymoron. He put his hand in front of the camera. ‘We have plenty of time for that.’
Joni didn’t move for a moment. Then she carefully tucked Des into the money belt at her waist. ‘Since when?’ she asked quietly. ‘Since when have you ever needed me?’
Frances opened her mouth and shut it again as her twitch kicked in to overdrive. Every day. That’s what she wanted to say. Every day. How many times over the last seven years had she yearned to have her sister nearby? At the end of a phone or across the table at a coffee shop?
Joni advanced towards Frances. ‘You don’t need me. Not now. Not ever.’
No, no, no. Joni’s words cut into her like a blunt, rusty razor blade. They made her want to cry at their unfairness. But anger was easier. God knew she’d had enough practice as far as Joni was concerned.
‘Bollocks.’ She poked Joni hard in the chest to stop her from coming any closer. ‘I just learned really early on that you couldn’t be relied on. Today is a classic example,’ Frances hissed. ‘I’m over there trying to build our shelter and you’re chasing around after a useless animal that, if it’s discovered, will get us kicked off.’ She felt the sharp prick of threatening tears retreat with each word. ‘This is just typical you. Not pulling your weight and me picking up your slack, like I’ve done our whole lives.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry you’ve been burdened with me,’ Joni snapped.
‘So you bloody should be. You know this world doesn’t revolve around you and all your bloody self-indulgent shite, right? Don’t you think the rest of us have problems too? But, oh no, it’s all about Joni, Joni, Joni.’
‘Fine then,’ Joni sneered. ‘I don’t have to put up with this crap. Consider yourself relieved of your sisterly duties.’ And she marched back to their clearing.
Frances followed, watching as Joni poked through the tools. At The Stapler’s urging, Darryl hotfooted it over to them. ‘Looks like our Feuding Heiresses are up to their old tricks,’ he commentated, seemingly trying to sound like David Attenborough but coming off as a total nob. ‘Could cracks be appearing already?’
Frances wanted to slap him as she pushed past, but Joni was extracting a spade and leaving.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Frances demanded, grabbing her sister’s arm.
‘Fending for myself,’ Joni yelled, shaking off Frances’s hand. ‘Apparently, I haven’t been doing that enough for the last seven years.’ And she stormed off.
Frances watched her go, followed closely by Darryl.
Looked like they hadn’t had to ‘act’, after all.
A massive crack of thunder shook every tree on the island, and Frances saw Joni falter briefly before continuing. Frances shivered involuntarily and opened her mouth to tell her to come back, as a familiar sense of worry roared to life. What the hell was she going to do with a spade and decreasing light? But something stopped her from speaking. Maybe it’d do her sister good to take sole responsibility, for once? And it wasn’t like they were alone. The production company had eyes everywhere and it wouldn’t look good if one of their ‘stars’ were to wind up falling off a cliff or being eaten by a crocodile.
Yet again, someone would pull Joni out of the trouble she’d inevitably find.
Frances returned to the task at hand. She needed to use four of the sturdier saplings as corner posts (luckily, the ground was soft), lash the rest together in five separate sections to form the roof and walls (thank God for the rope) and then line them with the waterproof foliage.
Easy. Not.
But Frances set about doing it anyway.
Within the hour, she had the posts in, the walls roughly tied together and was just finishing up the roof section. She became aware of a presence beside her and turned. Standing there, looking at her as if she were road kill and he were a buzzard, was Takahiro Miyagi.
And, of course, that other buzzard, Darryl.
‘You have dishonoured me. And my family.’ Takahiro’s voice was low with the unmistakable edge of crazy. His eyes burned with a fiery zeal. ‘Miyagis play to win. You, and your seester, will pay.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He sounded like Yoda. But had he just threatened her? And Joni? In front of a television camera?
Takahiro withdrew as quickly as he’d arrived and she watched open-mouthed as he stalked away, head held high. Darryl followed him, saying, ‘Only hours into the competition, and it’s already stepped up to the next level. Now it’s a matter of honour.’
Fab. As if Joni’s incompetence weren’t enough, now she had to sleep with one eye open in case a crazy Japanese Napoleon decided to exact revenge.
Not that she had time to worry about that now. The storm was almost upon them. She could smell rain in the air, and felt her insides quiver. She had no idea where Joni was, but she’d be back. All that mattered right now was this. Their shelter.
The roof complete, Frances stood, hauling it over her head. With a bit of grunting and groaning, and standing on tiptoes, she managed to angle it so it was sitting atop the four posts. Which just left the lashing together.
Unfortunately, even on tiptoes, the going was slow, as Frances could barely reach. She wanted to throw herself on the ground in frustration and indulge in a tantrum.
Too high. Too bloody high. Way to go, Frannie.
But, ever aware of the cameras, she instead looked around for something – a rock, maybe – she could drag over to give her some extra height.
‘How about I give you a hand?’
Holding on to one corner of her creation, Frances twisted her head, her gaze falling on Nick, one half of the Outback Exes. He had the bluest eyes and, for a moment, Frances forgot she was living in the midst of a Jurassic jungle, with a tropical storm bearing down on her.
‘Err, thank you,’ she said as Nick ducked to retrieve the nearby rope and reached over the top of her to lash the first corner.
‘Just hold it for me,’ he murmured.
Frances felt the words ooze, like swamp goo, down her spine. She knew he hadn’t meant them to be suggestive but something tightened deep inside her. She could feel his heat all around her as he lifted both his arms, expanding his chest even further. Her back was to his front, his hips brushing her mike pack, his chin occasionally grazing her hair.
Frances glanced to her side and was rewarded with an eyeful of tanned, bulging bicep. She shut her eyes against the urge to lick it. But then her sense of smell took over and she involuntarily dragged his scent a little deeper into her lungs. He smelled like salt and sand and coffee. Like a man. A real man.
Man-who-worked-the-land man.
Capable, bicep-bulging man.
‘You’ve done well,’ Nick murmured, admiring the curve of Frances’s arms. ‘You got some muscles going on there.’
Frances swayed slightly. ‘My personal trainer, Guy, is big on weights.’
Nick smiled. ‘Lucky Guy.’
‘Nick! What the fark are you doing?’
Frances’s eyelids flew open. Cheryl, or Koala Tits, as Joni had christened her, stormed towards them, Australian marsupials bouncing with each step.
‘It’s okay, darl,’ Nick assured her in a low, casual voice. But Frances wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or his ex-wife’s. ‘Can’t let down a neighbour now, can we?’
Cheryl glared at them both, hands on hips, obviously torn between wanting to scratch Frances’s eyes out and the ingrained Aussie culture of lending a hand to your neighbour.
‘All right,’ she huffed, giving Frances a hostile glare. ‘But hurry. It’s gunna piss down any moment.’
Nick had the lashing and had affixed the waterproofing in no time. ‘Thanks,’ Frances murmured as he brushed his hands on the fabric covering his butt.
Nick gave her a mock salute. ‘Great job with the Jap.’ He grinned before heading back to his already constructed, very sturdy-looking abode.
She stood staring after him for a long time.
And even when the first, fat, raindrop landed on her nose, Frances was oblivious.