Outback Sunset by Lynne Wilding Read Free Book Online Page B

Kerri, Bren.’
    ‘Thank you, Kerri.’ He didn’t want to say anymore, he’d said enough. Intuitively she’d worked out that he was either infatuated or in love with Vanessa, so all he could hope was that she wouldn’t use what influence she had with Vanessa to cruel his chance with her. Before he could make a speedy exit someone came up to Kerri and spirited her away without so much as a backwards glance at him.
    Theatricals! Watching her totter off in her stiletto heels, his mouth twisted in a cynical smile. Vanessa’s world was one he knew nothing about but he had the feeling that over the next month or so he was going to do a crash course on actors, agents and those involved in live theatre …
    Vanessa could not sleep. She should be able to because the performance, the backstage party, then the vigil at a restaurant in Soho until the morning’s first edition reviews came out, should have exhausted her. The reviews were good. Better than good; they had been excellent. The newspapers’ hard-to-please theatre critics, male and female, had waxed lyrical in their overall praise of the production, and especially the performers. That should have made her relaxed and happy but, confusingly, she was unable to fall asleep and she knew the cause. It wasn’t the reviews or her performance. Drifting in and out of her consciousness was a particular face, a very interesting face that belonged to … Bren Selby.
    Why? What was it about Bren that made him so memorable? She scarcely knew the man, and though he was attractive, he wasn’t the most handsome man in the world. But something — his ruggedness, the air of well-being, his congeniality, the no fuss attitude when compared to other men of her acquaintance — had an obvious appeal. Ohhh, she reprimanded herself, she was being silly. He probably wouldn’t call her, he was probably only being polite. Though, if he did call, how would she react? Right now she had no idea.
    You’re an idiot, Vanessa Forsythe. Why are you allowing yourself to lose sleep over something so trivial?
She unscrewed her eyes, opened the lids and glanced at the bedside clock: 4.32 a.m. Aargghhh! Irritated by her foolishness, and dog-tired, she thumped the pillow several times, sighed and repeated over and over, ‘Go to sleep, go to sleep … go to sleep.’
    Bren had been to London twice before so for his first date with Vanessa he hired a compact car and they drove to Lower Slaughter, a pleasant village not far from London, for lunch. He already knew that to see her he’d have to work in with her stage commitments — six nightly performances and a matinee on Saturdays. All the while his heart was telling him to go fast, but his head was saying the opposite; go slow, don’t try to rush a woman like Vanessa or he’d end up blowing it.
    Over a traditional ploughman’s lunch and a pint of beer at the Bald Stag Hotel, they talked, and talked, then, despite the crisp, winter’s day — springwas around the corner, so the Montgomerys assured him — they went for a walk. Suitably rugged up in jackets, scarves and hats, they strolled arm in arm around the picturesque village.
    ‘You know, if I wasn’t an Australian, I wouldn’t mind being English,’ Bren said as he peered into the many-paned window of an antique-cum-bookshop. ‘I love the old buildings here, the sense of history.’
    She laughed. ‘And if I wasn’t English, I think I’d like to be Australian. I loved Australia, the vastness, the freedom, the sunsets — God they’re wonderful. I’m not sure why, but I felt at home there. I’m sure there’s no other place on Earth like the outback.’
    ‘You’ll have to come back then,’ he said quietly, with a sly look in her direction.
    ‘I intend to, when the opportunity arises. As we speak,’ she confided, ‘Kerri is negotiating with a British and Australian film consortium on a role for me in a movie being made next year in South Australia.’
    ‘I see. So, tell me, do you