Taming Her Hollywood Playboy Read online

Pietro was still clutching the little green Penthrax whistle but he shook his head.

  Despite the pain relief he seemed quite capable of following the proceedings and understanding what Damien and Saskia were saying—perhaps due to his medical training the English words didn’t sound too unfamiliar—but Kat stayed with him until he was taken for X-rays.

  He was lucky. He had a fracture dislocation of his left ankle which needed surgery and a suspected ligament tear in his right shoulder, but he’d escaped more serious injury.

  ‘I want him to have some detailed scans of his lower back, head and right shoulder, but I think he’s been relatively fortunate,’ Damien said as he reviewed the plain X-rays, which was all they were equipped to take at the Coober Pedy hospital. ‘We’ll need to call the flying doctor and get him transferred to Adelaide. Is he travelling with someone?’

  ‘His girlfriend,’ Kat said. ‘She should be here—someone was going to collect her from the backpackers’ hostel.’

  Kat explained what was happening to Pietro while Saskia got him comfortable, and then she and Kat left him dozing while they waited for the retrieval team.

  ‘So, I hear Oliver helped with the search,’ Saskia said as she made them coffee.

  ‘How did—?’ Kat began to ask before realising she already knew the answer. ‘Dean told you.’

  Saskia just grinned in reply.

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  Kat knew that wouldn’t be true. ‘C’mon, Sas, Dean always has an opinion about any man in my life.’

  She knew she’d made a mistake as soon as she’d finished the sentence and if she’d hoped Saskia had missed it she was out of luck.

  Saskia almost spat out her coffee. ‘I knew it! You like him. Not that anyone could blame you—there’s a reason Oliver Harding has been voted the world’s sexiest man. Twice.’

  ‘I said any man.’

  ‘You say tomato...’ Saskia was still grinning. ‘Dean said that Oliver couldn’t keep his eyes off you.’

  ‘He said that?’ Kat felt a warm glow.

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ Saskia considered her. ‘So, you like him.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I do. But—’

  ‘No buts—’

  ‘But you know how people talk in this town.’

  ‘You worry too much about what people think. Besides, you’re twenty-seven, you’re a grown woman, you’re your own boss.’

  ‘That’s not exactly true. You know what it’s like when you’ve grown up here—everyone has an opinion on how you live your life.’

  ‘Well, all I’m saying is that he seems keen and it would be a shame to let this opportunity go to waste. If it’s not you spending time with him, it will be someone else. Is that what you want?’

  No. She didn’t want that.

  ‘You don’t have to marry the guy,’ Saskia continued. ‘Don’t overthink things, just have some fun. Oliver looks like he knows how to have fun. How long is he here for?’

  ‘Only a few weeks.’

  ‘If you’re worried about what people think I’m sure you could manage to be discreet for that long. Treat it like a holiday romance.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a holiday romance. I’m looking for the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. What’s the point of starting something that can go nowhere?’

  ‘Are you kidding? The point is there’s a man in town who has literally been voted the sexiest man alive and who seems to have taken a fancy to you. You’ve been bemoaning the lack of men here for months. Are you seriously telling me you’d pass up this opportunity? With a man who looks like he does? You must be crazy.’

  She wasn’t crazy but she was scared. Scared she wouldn’t be able to control things. He had awakened her senses, he was making her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time. He made her laugh. He made her nervous. Excited. Happy. She liked him, really liked him, but she was worried things would get complicated. Coober Pedy was a small town. How could she expect to have fun without everyone else knowing her business? Could she keep him separate from her everyday life? She didn’t need to be the centre of town gossip or to have any interference from her family.

  Had she made a mistake by asking him to spend the day with her tomorrow?

  Maybe she had, but she didn’t want to change her mind. She had planned to take him away from town; she wanted to show him the wildness and beauty of her world. She could still do that. She had the perfect spot in mind. A place where she doubted they would see another soul.

  * * *

  Oliver was waiting in front of the hotel when Kat turned off the main street and climbed out of her dusty four-by-four. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of very short denim cut-offs. She looked amazing, but that wasn’t enough to keep his attention. He was completely distracted by the canoe that was strapped to the roof of her car.

  ‘Now I think I’ve seen everything,’ he said as he kissed her cheek. She smelt of soap and sunshine. ‘What on earth have you got planned for us? I thought we only had a few hours.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘So the canoe is just for show?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see. Did you get my message?’ she said as she looked him over. ‘Did you bring something to swim in?’

  ‘I did. But you have me intrigued. A canoe and a bathing suit. I flew into Coober Pedy and I don’t remember seeing any water for about four hundred miles.’

  ‘You weren’t looking in the right places,’ she said as they got into the car and slammed the doors. ‘The name Coober Pedy means boys’ waterhole.’

  ‘Does it? I was told it meant white man in a hole.’

  ‘That’s sort of true. In the local Aboriginal culture a boy is a male who hasn’t been through an initiation ceremony. There was a waterhole for those boys near here. The Pitjantjatjara word for white man is the same as for boy, as neither of them have been initiated, so some people translated it as “white man’s waterhole” as opposed to “boy’s water hole”, and somewhere along the line it became “white man in a hole”.’

  They headed east out of town, past the never-ending mullock heaps that dotted the landscape—piles of dirt that had been dug out of the earth in the quest for opal—past numerous damaged, abandoned cars and dead animals that were decaying on the side of the road.

  ‘The two often go hand in hand,’ Kat said when Oliver commented on the roadside carnage. ‘People don’t drive according to the conditions. You shouldn’t really drive at night out here if it can be avoided. Cattle, emus, kangaroos, even wombats can do a lot of damage to your car if you hit one of them, particularly at speed. We have a high number of fatal accidents.’

  ‘But why don’t the cars get towed?’

  ‘Most do eventually,’ she said as they drove past a utility vehicle that was crumpled, bonnet compacted, windscreen smashed. Black skid marks could be seen across the road. ‘That one was recent. Just a couple of weeks ago. The teenage driver swerved to avoid a cow, lost control and rolled the car.’

  ‘Were you here?’

  She nodded. ‘Dave and I were on shift.’

  ‘Was everyone all right?’ he asked as he kept his eyes on the wreck.

  ‘No. There was a fatality. A boy had been riding in the tray of the ute—he was thrown out and died at the scene. Another was in a critical condition and was evacuated by the flying doctor, and two more were taken to the local hospital.’

  ‘I can’t imagine doing your job. It must be tough. How do you cope with it?’

  ‘It’s a rewarding job. I like feeling as though I’m making a difference. Even with that accident, the fatality was dreadful, a terrible waste of a young life, but Dave and I managed to keep the other boy alive until the flying doctor got here. I’ve seen so many accidents like this, so you take the good with the bad, but it’s why I like to follow
the rules, not break them. Life isn’t something that should be taken for granted.’

  He remembered her comment about him doing his own stunts and wondered if she would accuse him of taking life for granted. He didn’t take it for granted but he did think that life was for living and he wasn’t going to sit around and watch other people living their lives. He wanted to be a participant.

  Kat slowed her car and turned off the road onto a smaller dirt track. The faded signpost read Lake Cadibarrawirracanna.

  ‘There’s a lake out here?’

  Kat nodded. ‘A salt lake.’

  ‘Does the name have a meaning?’

  ‘It does. It means stars dancing on the water.’

  ‘It sounds beautiful,’ he said, although he didn’t think it actually would be. He couldn’t picture a lake in this barren landscape. Not even his active imagination could envision that.

  ‘It is. I wanted you to see the beauty in the desert. You just need fresh eyes.’

  ‘Wow.’ They crested a small rise and Oliver was stunned at the sight of a vast lake, shimmering silver in the sun, before them. It stretched for miles across the flat landscape, a few trees clinging to its edges. A flock of birds rose off the water and took to the sky, startled by the sound of the engine, but other than that there was nothing else but land, water and sky. Now that the birds had flown he couldn’t see another living thing except for him and Kat.

  Kat parked in the shade of a stand of trees and he helped her lift the two-man canoe from the roof of the car.

  ‘Do you want to take the canoe out on the lake?’ she asked as she passed him a blanket and some cushions from the back of the car.

  Oliver spread the blanket on the sand. He didn’t want to paddle just now. He wanted to just sit and take in the view. And Kat.

  ‘Later, I think. I can’t remember the last time I sat and did nothing. I’m usually doing a movie, learning lines for a movie, doing publicity, interviews, going to red carpet events.’

  ‘Or going to parties.’

  Something in her tone put him on alert. ‘Have you been reading about me?’

  ‘A little,’ she admitted.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’

  ‘George told me the same thing. That’s why I thought I’d ask you; you can tell me what was and wasn’t true.’

  ‘Such as?’ he asked, although he was pretty sure he knew what she would have read and what subject she would be interested in.

  ‘Did a girl overdose and die at a party at your house? Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’ He wasn’t surprised by her question, that story was currently the first thing that popped up if someone did an internet search on his name.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure. I was away; I was in New Orleans working on a film and had friends staying in my house. They held a party. From what the police told me the girl who overdosed allegedly brought the drugs with her, something went wrong and she died.’

  ‘You weren’t there?’

  ‘No, but it was my house, so I was linked by association. My publicist and agent thought it would be a good idea to keep me out of Hollywood for a bit longer while it was investigated so they sent me here. I thought it was probably a good idea too but this time I haven’t left any friends staying there. I used to host a lot of parties, but I’m rethinking that scene now. I’m going to make some changes to my lifestyle when I get home. This trip down under will give me a chance to reset.’ He stood up; he didn’t want to talk about his old life any longer, and he was telling the truth when he said he was thinking about making changes. It was time to start behaving more responsibly. He was thirty-two years old; he couldn’t continue his partying ways for ever. ‘How about that paddle now?’

  * * *

  They worked up an appetite taking the canoe out on the lake, but Kat had anticipated that and had packed a picnic.

  ‘Where did you get all of this on a Sunday morning?’ Oliver asked as she unpacked cold meats and fruit from an ice box.

  ‘I raided the pantry. My family is Italian. Someone is always in the kitchen making something or preserving something. I have my father’s salami, my aunt Rosa’s sun-dried tomatoes, my cousin’s wife’s bread,’ she said as she handed him a loaf of bread.

  ‘This bread smells fresh—surely that wasn’t in the pantry?’

  ‘No, Maya, that’s Roger’s wife, made it this morning. She lives next door.’

  ‘Next door?’

  ‘Yes. My whole family lives in the same street. In the same hill.’

  ‘That sounds a bit close for comfort.’

  Kat shrugged. ‘It’s how it’s always been.’

  ‘I’d love to see inside an underground house.’

  She was tempted to invite him to hers but there was bound to be someone around. If not her father, it would be her aunt or cousins. ‘It’s not so different to your hotel. We have front doors, front windows, electricity, running water. It’s just on a smaller scale than the hotel.’

  ‘What happens if you’re claustrophobic?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t bother me. The rooms are light and ventilated. We have skylights and air vents. You must have noticed all the metal shafts poking up out of the hills in town. Those are ventilation shafts. They’re wrapped with wire to stop the snakes entering through them.’

  ‘And it’s safe? The houses don’t collapse?’

  ‘The rock around here is sandstone, and it’s very stable—we can excavate large spaces without needing structural support. We’ve got some enormous underground spaces in town. The Serbian church and a couple of the museums are massive. If you want to see a house, Faye’s is open to tourists.’

  ‘You’re not going to invite me over?’

  ‘It’s not my house. It’s my father’s.’

  ‘You still live with your parents?’

  She felt the familiar pang at the mention of parents. ‘I live with my father,’ she clarified. ‘My mother died a few years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kat. How old were you?’

  ‘Twenty-two. She was killed in a car accident.’

  ‘Out here?’

  She nodded. The memories were still painful. Her feelings of guilt still high. ‘A bus had been sitting behind a truck, trying to overtake, the driver got impatient and pulled out over double white lines to have a look, and my mother was driving in the opposite direction. He smashed into my mother’s car. It was his fault, he didn’t obey the road rules, but he survived, while my mother died at the scene.

  ‘I came back here after she died to be with my dad. And I’m still here. I am the single daughter of an Italian father. We don’t move out until we get married.’ Her family owned a lot of land and the only thing that would change when she married was that her father and uncle and cousins would dig her a house next to the rest of them, but Oliver had sounded so shocked she didn’t think he needed to hear that too.

  ‘How old were you when you left home?’ she asked. Oliver was watching her closely and she wondered if he was going to let her change the subject. She hoped so; she didn’t want to talk about her mother, she didn’t want to be sad. She breathed a sigh of relief as Oliver followed her lead.

  ‘I went to college in California when I was seventeen. My parents were in Japan.’

  ‘You went to college? To study acting?’

  ‘Actually, no. I went to law school. Acting wasn’t considered a career and one of my father’s sons was always expected to go into the defence force. My brother refused, so that left me. I had no intention of joining the force either so I enrolled in law school under the pretence that I could join the armed forces that way. But once I got to college, I realised I had visions of myself as a lawyer standing in front of a court room arguing cases. Performing, I suppose. Much like what you see in the movies. That’s w
hat I wanted to do. So I joined the drama clubs and I found I had a talent for it, so then I started auditioning for movie roles and when I got my first one I dropped out of law school. My father has barely spoken to me since.’

  ‘Because you didn’t join the army?’

  ‘Because I am a disappointment and he disapproves of my career choice. Because I chose acting over fighting.’

  ‘And what about your mother? What did she think?’

  ‘My mother is the daughter of an army general and now a wife of an army general. She followed orders.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Orders might be the wrong word,’ Oliver said, but to Kat’s ears it sounded as if it was exactly what he meant, ‘but she certainly never questioned Dad’s decisions. Never argued. I can’t say that I blame her. Isaac and I learnt that lesson early on too. The moment we were old enough we left home. It was the only way we could do what we wanted. Our mother didn’t have that option.’

  ‘How often do you see your parents?’

  ‘I don’t visit. I speak to my mother when my father’s not around. She believes her loyalty is to her husband, but I think she’s happy if I’m happy.’

  ‘And are you happy?’ Kat couldn’t imagine being happy without her family.

  ‘Yes. I get to experience all kinds of things; I travel the world pretending to be other people and giving people an escape from their everyday lives, from the world. I’m having fun.’

  ‘So, what’s next for you, after this movie?’

  ‘I would love to have a role in a musical. I’ve done comedy, action, romantic leads, but I’d love an opportunity to try something new. I’d be the next Hugh Jackman if I could. You know, he started on the stage in musicals.’

  ‘Can you sing?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘Dance?’

  ‘Not as well as I sing,’ he laughed. ‘But dancing I can learn. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to have dancing lessons. It wasn’t something boys did. Of course the more I was told I couldn’t do something the more I wanted to. Would you like to come dancing with me?’

  ‘In Coober Pedy? There aren’t a lot of places to dance around here.’