Love Is Blind Read Online Free PDF Page A

more beautiful if you read a book now and then. Besides a legal textbook that is. Jane … now,
there’s
a reader for you,’ he concluded, fondly.
    This unexpected speech left Anthea shaking all over, like a dog swarmed by bees. Okay, the miner had better communication skills than she’d anticipated, but how dare he talk to her that way? Stalling for time, she extracted her lipstick from the pocket of her dress and reapplied a crimson layer. She forced a smile, but it was sharp as a razor.
    ‘The truth is, Mr Jackman, I don’t need to be informed of my sister’s many and wonderful qualities. Those I know about already. It’s just totally beyond me what she sees in
you
. Although I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with you that an exorcism couldn’t fix,’ she said, cruelly.
    ‘Is that right?’ Jacko dodged a lump of rotting road kill. ‘But really, am I that unattractive?’ he joked. ‘At the mine, you can see in at the window of my shower from the women’s changing rooms. I’ve been meaning to get a blind but, hey, why spoil their view?’ He laughed encouragingly.
    Anthea refused to be amused. She bestowed on him the kind of icy look which could have got her the part of an extra in a Dracula movie. Jacko’s smile died on his lips. But not, as Anthea thought, because of her snooty response. The truck was rounding a bend in the road at speed. And there, right in their path, lay a fallen tree. Jacko slammed on the brakes. The truck corkscrewed to a halt.
    Anthea lurched forward. She was then snapped back by her seat belt. The massive, charred gum tree lay right across the track. Weakened by the recent fire, it had toppled from the shallow ridge above the left-hand side of the road. The way ahead was totally blocked by a snarled wall of branches, leaves and blackened trunk.
    Jacko slowly steered to the right side of the road and peered out of the window. The hill pitched down steeply into a tangle of dense scrub.
    ‘Damn,’ he announced. ‘No way round.’
    ‘Can’t you call someone to come and clear it?’
    Jacko laughed. ‘We’re on bush time here, love. Nobody does anything in a hurry.’
    ‘Except fall in “love”, apparently,’ Anthea responded, sarcastically.
    Jacko knew that a comment like that should be stepped around as carefully as a dozing crocodile. ‘Could be hours before they clear this lot,’ he said. ‘Jane’s dinner will be ruined … Don’t worry, I know a back road. Old fire trail. Don’t want to miss out on our tucker. Your sister’s a hell of a cook as you know.’
    ‘Actually I know no such thing. Are we talking about the same person?’ Anthea was growing tired of hearing about all of her sister’s talents. She had little doubt that Jacko was really interested in just one recipe. The recipe for success that he could attain using Jane’s inheritance.
    Jacko swung the truck around, retraced their route for a mile or so, then lurched off on to a red dirt track. What would probably be classified as a traffic hazard anywhere else in the civilised world, Jacko saw as an actual road. The truck lurched and catapulted its way up the hill. It was a car journey which threatened to shake the fillings out of their teeth.
    As the red earth gave way to rock, Anthea began to worry that she was being abducted. But once they crested the ridge and nose-dived down the other side, she could see that they were indeed heading in the same direction as the main road far below.
    ‘Anyway,’ Jacko picked up on his previous theme, ‘that’s what I love about your sister. She doesn’t judge a book, or in my case a bloke, by the cover. Besides which, do you know why it’s better to go out with a rough and ready, ugly bloke? Because we’re so damn’ grateful. Which makes us so much less demanding … I get down on bended knee and thank Jane for coming into my life, every damn’ day. I worship that woman. I suppose your legal eagle fella just expects you to worship the water he walks on’,