Dance with the Devil. Sandy Curtis
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no electricity it wouldn't work anyway. In this heat, a body decomposes quickly. I couldn't just leave him here.'
'Why can't you take the body to Cairns when the creeks fall? A day or two won't make much difference, will it?'
Emma leaned back against the railings of the horse stall. She looked exhausted, dark smudges under her eyes betrayed her lack of sleep. 'If it keeps raining like this, it could be a week before the roads will be clear.' Even her voice sounded tired. 'And I heard on the radio this morning that the cyclone hit just south of Cairns. Enormous property damage, no power, no water. They have enough problems of their own.'
She turned wearily aside, tugged on her glove and picked up the mattock. She swung it in a practised rhythm, tearing chunks from the compacted earth. Drew eased the heavy Driza-bone from his shoulders and placed it and the Akubra next to Emma's coat. He re-wrapped the body, and sat on a feed drum. Frustration gnawed deeper with each swing of the mattock. He should be digging, he fumed, not this slim-hipped woman with her tender doctor's hands. He looked down at the bandages on his own.
He swung abruptly off the drum. Tack room - there had to be a tack room. With no lights or sunshine the stables were gloomy, and even the air felt damp. He passed clean, spacious horse stalls, but only two showed signs of recent use, with fresh feed and water.
He soon found the tack room. Smells of leather and grease and something else assailed him. He glanced around the room. Saddles, bridles, leather grease. Nothing unusual. The smell niggled at him. Then he saw it - a drum of wood shavings. Their sharp, aromatic smell hit him again and suddenly he was back, back in the shed, blind, chained, at the mercy of his tormentor.
A wave of panic hit him. He swayed, his fear another smell in the musty, dim room. For a few seconds it possessed his body, his mind, then he fought it off with savage determination.
He rummaged among the accumulated mess on the wall-length bench, finally finding the leather gloves he sought.
Emma's rhythm was slowing when he returned. He touched her gently on the shoulder and she turned towards him. She looked at his hands as he reached for the mattock.
'No. You can't. Your wounds will open.'
A long strand of hair had escaped from her ponytail and he brushed it back off her sweat-streaked forehead. For a moment their eyes met and he felt an unfamiliar rush of tenderness at the torment in her gaze. Before he could allow himself to act on it, before he gave in to the temptation to pull her into his arms and kiss her soft lips, he took the mattock and stepped into the grave.
'I'll do the shovelling.' Emma spoke in the 'don't disobey me' voice she had used on him last night. He was tempted to grin at her tone, but didn't. He understood her determination to be part of burying her father.
'Okay,' he nodded, 'we'll take it in turns.'
It was strange watching Drew work, watching the muscles ripple under the tanned skin. Emma's heartbeat seemed to skitter with each upward swing, her gaze following the trickles of sweat through the dark hairs on his chest. His unkempt hair and stubbled face made him look a dangerous man, and Emma was well aware of the type of danger he posed.
With each passing minute she was having trouble convincing herself there was nothing more to this attraction than heightened emotions caused by the trauma of the past twenty-four hours; that she had been merely grateful for the comfort of his arms when she couldn't keep the grief at bay any longer. But her heartbeat still skittered, and her chest tightened against the tentacles of desire that wound their way deep inside her.
It was a relief when he took a breather and she could shovel the dirt from the hole. When she stood with the ground almost at waist level, she nodded to him. 'It's deep enough. When I can, I'll give him a decent burial. I know Mum would want that.'
'Were your parents…'
'Divorced. My mother's remarried.'
Drew only nodded, as though he hadn't picked up on the faint nuance in her tone. She had reconciled herself years ago to her parents' divorce, but there was hurt underlying the acceptance, like festering under a closed wound. She slammed the spade into the rich, cool earth. Now there would be no way to lance that wound and let it heal. Even in death, her father had cheated her.
Soon they were tamping down the earth over the temporary grave. Drew pulled the gloves from his hands and Emma frowned at the blood-soaked bandages. Without a word she picked up his Driza-bone and helped him into it, then gathered her own from the corner where she'd left it.
'Come into the surgery.'
Emma hung their wet coats from pegs on the veranda. Drew pulled the boots and socks from his feet and followed her inside. The pain made him hobble and he was grateful to sink onto the examining table. He watched as Emma cut through the bandages on his hands and feet, her concentration focused on her task.
He wanted to reach up and pull off her hair tie, watch the honey brown strands fall down to frame her face. He wondered if he gave in to the temptation to kiss her, to feel the moistness of her tongue against his own, if she would taste as wonderful as he felt she must.
He tried to ignore his need to feel her long slim legs wrapped around him, urging him to take possession of her body, her soul. But overriding this deep, powerful desire was the urge to comfort and protect this woman who was both strong yet strangely vulnerable.
The pain in his hands and feet was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. It was a new feeling for him, this desire tempered by tenderness, and he wasn't sure how to handle it.
'You're lucky whoever did this went by the popular artists' impression rather than the true Roman method.' Her comment focused his mind back on her doctoring. She had re-bandaged his feet and was now examining his hands.
'What do you mean?'
'The Romans actually nailed through the wrists. The palm of the hand won't support the weight of a body - it would rip right through between the fingers and the thumb. Whoever did this used nails that weren't large enough either - hopelessly inadequate for the purpose intended.' She finished applying dressings to the wounds. 'The nail didn't go all the way through your right foot, and your hands weren't ripped. Obviously whoever did this to you didn't get a chance to finish what he started. Someone stopped him. Do you remember anything, Drew?'
Remember? Hell, it had been going over and over in his mind most of the night, making the sweat pour from his body as he remembered the pain, the horrible feeling of helplessness as his drugged body wouldn't respond to his mind's plea to fight. And none of it made sense. Perhaps if he told it to Emma she could pick up something he'd missed.
So he told her. Recounted the hazy memory of thunder shaking the walls of his prison hut as he surfaced from a drugged daze. Then the screaming, words lashing him like blows, that God had sent the sign that now was the time to offer up the sacrifice.
'And that sacrifice was you.' Emma's voice was soft.
He shuddered, recalling the pain as the whip cut into his flesh, jerking him back to full consciousness. He was no stranger to pain, but this was pain over which he had no control, and it was very different.
'Yes.' The word hissed out of him, anger and frustration mingling with the fear of the unknown.
Emma's hand was smooth against the stubble on his cheek, drawing him back to the present. Her eyes were soft with compassion - and something else. Warmth flooded the ice in his belly as he realised what it was. She was afraid for him, the worry shadowing her eyes, tightening her brows.
'You're safe for now. But who stopped him? Who took the nails out? How did you get here?'
'When he was whipping me, I heard someone crying.' Drew laughed, a harsh sound in the small room. 'I wondered at first if it was me. Then I realised it was a woman. She was telling the devil to stop, that it wasn't what God wanted. But he just said that the sign had come - something about purple lightning - and then he chained me down and started hammering in the nails.'
He drew in a deep breath. It hadn't been the fear of death that had eaten into him then, but the