Driving Her Crazy

A private moment of anguish.

And although the artist in her appreciated the abstract prettiness of the rosary beads against the bright blue dome of a foreign sky, the image was too intimate—she felt as if she was intruding.

Sadie pushed through the crowd out of the gallery into the sultry June night. She needed a moment. Or two.

ONE

Four months later...

Kent Nelson stood staring across at the view of Darling Harbour, his gaze following the line of the iconic white sails of the Sydney Opera House. He stood with his back to the woman swinging idly in her chair, his good leg planted firmly in front of the other as he leaned into the hand resting high against the floor to ceiling tinted window.

‘So, let me get this straight,’ Tabitha Fox said, tapping her pen on her desk, her bangles jangling, as she too admired the view. Not the one she was used to seeing when she looked towards her windows but a mighty fine one nonetheless. ‘You want to drive several thousand kilometres to take a few photos?’

Kent turned, his ankle twinging as he rested his butt against the glass, and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Yes.’

Tabitha frowned. She’d known Kent a long time, they’d been to uni together about a thousand years ago, even shared a bed for a while, but since the accident in Afghanistan he’d been practically invisible.

Until he’d turned up today wanting to take pictures any staff photographer could take.

‘Okay...why?’

Kent returned her curious gaze with a deliberately blank one of his own. ‘I’m your freelance photographer—it’s what you pay me for.’

Tabitha suppressed a snort. His official status might be freelance photographer for the glossy weekend magazine Sunday On My Mind, but they both knew he’d ‘declined’ every job offered and, she’d bet her significant yearly salary, probably hadn’t taken a photo since the accident.

She narrowed her eyes at him as she tried to see behind the inscrutable expression on his angular face. ‘There are these things called planes. They’re big and metal and don’t ask me how but they fly in the air and get you to where you want to go very quickly.’

A nerve kicked into fibrillation along his jaw line and Kent clenched down hard. ‘I don’t fly,’ he pushed out through tight lips.

The words were quiet but Tabitha felt the full force of their icy blast. Cold enough to freeze vodka. She regarded him for a moment or two as her nimble brain tried to work the situation to her advantage. She drummed her beringed fingers against her desk.

An outback road trip. Local people. The solitude. The joys. The hardships. The copy laid out diary style.

And most importantly, breathtaking vistas capturing the beauty and the terror in full Technicolor shot by a world-renowned, award-winning photographer on his first job since returning from tragedy in Afghanistan.

For that reason alone the paper would sell like hot cakes.

‘Okay.’ Tabitha nodded, her mind made up. ‘Two for the price of one. Journey to the Red Centre stuff—the most spectacular photos you can take.’

‘As well as the Leonard Pinto feature?’

She nodded again. ‘Might as well get my money’s worth out of you. Lord knows when you’ll grant us some more of your time.’

Kent grunted. Tabitha Fox was probably the most business-savvy woman he’d ever met. She’d built Sunday On My Mind from a fluffy six-page pull-out supplement to a dynamic, gritty, feature-driven eighteen-page phenomenon in five years.

He lounged against the glass for a moment. ‘Tell me, I’m curious. How’d you get him? Pinto? He’s pretty reclusive.’

‘He came to me.’

Kent raised an eyebrow. ‘A man who shuns the media and lives in outer whoop-whoop came to you?’

Tabitha smiled. ‘Said he’d open up his life to us—nothing off limits.’

Kent fixed her with his best ‘and pigs might fly’ look. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘Kent, Kent, Kent,’ she tutted. ‘So cynical.’

He shrugged. After spending a decade in one war zone or other, cynical was his middle name. ‘The catch?’ he repeated.

‘Sadie Bliss.’

Kent frowned. The journo on the story with the most spectacular byline in the history of the world? ‘Sadie Bliss?’

Tabitha nodded. ‘He wanted her.’

Kent blinked. ‘And you agreed?’ The Tabitha he knew didn’t like being dictated to. She especially didn’t like relinquishing her editorial control.

She shrugged. ‘She’s young and green. But she can write. And, I—’ she smiled ‘—can edit.’

Kent rubbed a hand along his jaw. ‘Why? Does she know him?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. But he wanted her. So he got her. And so did you. She can...’ Tabitha waved her hand in the air, her bangles tinkling ‘...navigate.’

Kent narrowed his gaze. ‘Wait. You want her to travel with me?’ Three thousand kilometres with a woman he didn’t know in the confines of a car? He’d rather be garrotted with his own camera strap.

Not happening.

Tabitha nodded. ‘How else am I going to get my road trip story?’

Kent shook his head. ‘No.’

Tabitha folded her arms. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m not good company.’

Tabitha almost burst out laughing at the understatement. ‘In that case it’ll be good for you.’

‘I go solo. I’ve always gone solo.’

‘Fine,’ Tabitha sighed, inspecting her fingernails. ‘Sadie and her staff photographer can fly to Pinto and get the job done in a fraction of the time and at half the cost and you can go back to your man-cave and pretend you work for this magazine.’

Kent felt pressure at the angle of his jaw and realised he was grinding down hard. He’d already burned his bridges at a lot of places the last couple of years. He was lucky Tabitha was still taking his calls after the number of times she’d covered for him.

But days in a car with a woman whose name was Sadie Bliss? She sounded like a twenty year old cadet whose mother had named her after one too many fruity cocktails.

‘I do believe,’ Tabitha said, swinging in her chair as she prepared to play her ace, ‘you owe me a couple.’

Kent shut his eyes as Tabitha called in his debts. ‘Fine,’ he huffed as he opened them again because he wanted—needed—to do this. To get back into it again.