Unfamiliar Territory

Chapter Two

"I'm in Darwin!" Mac pressed the phone harder against her ear and yelled.

The thrum of the market, filled with thousands of people all sharing the same space around her, as well as a particularly bad mobile connection, made it almost impossible for her to hear herself speak, let alone Holly whom she'd been expecting would call.

"Darwin? Isn't he a famous Naturist? Anatomically speaking, shouldn't he be in you?" Her friend yelled back.

"No! Oh my god, you have sex on the brain!" Mac's voice was loud enough that it elicited several funny looks from the throng of people around her, "I'm in Darwin the place not the person, and besides, he was a NaturAList."

"Same difference. So where the hell is Darwin? You sound miles away."

"Australia," Mac blocked her other ear as the sound of someone demonstrating how to crack a whip nearby made the air above her ring.

"What the hell? Australia? Your Dad said you were out the back when I called the house just two hours ago," Holly's voice had now increased considerably, not only in volume but pitch too.

Mac rolled her eyes skyward. For a Dentist with eight years of university under her belt Holly really was frustratingly stupid sometimes. Taking a deep breath she replied, "Dad would have said outback, not Out. The. Back. It's very complicated and I don't really understand it myself yet. All I know is that there is some sort of problem at the property up here where he grew up, and he asked if I would come out to see if there was anything I could do to help. One minute I was recovering from a killer sausage and the next he had me booked on the first available flight out of Heathrow, our planes probably passed in the sky somewhere over the Middle-East."

"Woah! Slow down a second, let me get this straight, you are in Australia?" Holly asked a second time, more slowly, as though she was spelling out her question to a toddler.

"Yes. In Darwin, which is in the Northern Territory, check a map," Mac explained at the same pace as Holly's question.

"And you're there to do something for your father, at some house, somewhere?"

"Correct."

"And a sausage has what exactly to do with this? No don't answer that. Just tell me how long you're going to be away for?" She now sounded like she was pouting, no doubt disappointed that the thunder of sharing her honeymoon snaps with Mac had been well and truly stolen.

"I don't know when I'll be back," Mac answered truthfully. Side-stepping someone with a tray of Oysters in one hand and a beer in the other she lifted her arms high above her head so as not to knock their precious cargo to the ground where it would be lost in a sea of flip-flopped feet. She felt ridiculously over dressed in her five inch heels and pastel pink capri playsuit but at least her father would be proud, she'd even washed her hair.

"Ow! Shit!" Crashing head on, straight into Mac as she'd tried to avoid a collision with the shellfish, was a very tall, incredibly good-looking man.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" She pulled her elbows swiftly back down again and her face flushed instantly from the contact that the entire length of their bodies had just made.

Looking down into Mac's pink face his brows knitted together and his lips twitched, pulling taught the light sprinkling of stubble on his jaw and faintly revealing a set of dimples. His piercing blue eyes crinkled as he scowled, "Fucking tourists."

If only she could have thought of a witty retort to bark at his retreating back. Unfortunately though, 'oh wow' was the only thing that sprung to mind as he stalked off and so Mac settled with just a snarl.