Love Is Blind Read Free Page B

all be over.’
    Anthea felt a flicker of irritation. Yes, Jane was annoying but she was still family. ‘My sister’s not that bad-looking, Rupert.’
    ‘I know … I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that she will insist on stuffing herself with fast food. She should take a heavily pregnant woman with her everywhere she goes, just to make her look slimmer.’
    Although tempted to laugh, Anthea clicked her tongue in disapproval.
    Rupert stroked her thigh. ‘
You
won the genetic lottery though, didn’t you? Sometimes I can’t believe you’re not adopted. And I can’t wait to make you my wife. Just think of the beautiful children we’ll produce.’
    Anthea smiled indulgently at her husband-to-be and nestled securely in the crook of his arm, like a baby.

Chapter Three
    Hate At First Sight
    WHEN ANTHEA FIRST saw the Outback town near to which her sister intended to make her home, it was hate at first sight. It was hard to say what she hated most about it. Was it the heat? The air was so dry the trees were positively whistling for dogs, and the chickens were laying hard-boiled eggs.
    Or was it maybe the ‘super pit’? The open-cut mine looked as vast and deep as the Grand Canyon. Massive trucks, each wheel the size of a seaside bungalow, toiled up and down its raw, red slopes – day in, day out.
    No, the sewage pit had to be worse. It sent up an unspeakable stench in the sun and attracted a black fog of flies. Worse even than that was the Aboriginal settlement. There were rows of windowless dormitories where she was appalled to discover that whole families lived. These identical cement structures were built between the two pits – the sewage and the super.
    But surely the worst aspect of Broken Ridge mining town was the casual racism. ‘What did Jesus say to the Abos when he was up on the cross?’ her cab driver bantered on the way there. She tried not to stare at his vast buttocks spilling over the bucket seat. ‘Don’t do anything till I get back!’
    Anthea had recoiled in horror. But even more unnerving than the casual racism were the many bars and brothels she saw. Her driver had bragged that they were all open ‘24/7’ to accommodate the men on shift work. ‘They offer around the cock service,’ he guffawed, running his bitten nails through his thinning hair. ‘Those girls are working away at, well, beaver pitch!’
    Anthea crossed her legs primly in the back of his dusty cab and pursed her mouth in disgust. What on earth had her irresponsible, erratic sister got herself into
this
time?
    The driver gunned the taxi past what he called the ‘starting stalls’. These turned out to be a row of corrugated tin cubicles in which women sat, half-naked and in provocative poses, awaiting customers. It was like a rustic, rusty, rundown Aussie version of Amsterdam’s red light district. Her driver unwound his window. He slowed down and called out to the girls, ‘Show us yer pink bits.’
    Anthea was horrified. ‘My goodness, I just can’t imagine why there’s a shortage of eligible women here,’ she said sarcastically.
    ‘It’s a nightmare,’ her driver confirmed, missing her joke. ‘The whole town’s full of horny miners and farmers, bustin’ for the company of a decent sheila.’
    ‘So, what are you looking for in a female companion?’ Anthea probed.
    ‘You just gotta be breathing,’ came his romantic reply.
    Anthea was seriously regretting her decision to come to the Outback. Things had not got off to a good start. Jane had rung her mobile and left a message to say that two of her music students had been late. Could Anthea get a taxi into town? She was to wait at a pub called, rather disturbingly, The Lucky Shag. In a bar there called, even more ominously, Skimpy’s. Jane and her fiancé Jacko would meet her.
    The driver dropped Anthea beneath the neon ‘Lucky Shag’ sign. It fizzed pointlessly beneath the searing sun. As she fished around in her purse, the driver promised her a free t-shirt if