Free Little Girl Lost by Janet Gover Page B

ground. As he approached the door, he remembered that the storekeeper, Ken Travers, hadn’t been looking well the last few times he’d been here. Of late, his wife Gina had been the one to meet Pete and supervise the unloading of the boxes of supplies. They had a young daughter too, a blonde girl. He hadn’t seen her for a while and assumed she was away at school. Or maybe she would have started college by now. It was such a shame to see something like illness strike a nice family like that. Still, all a person could do was take whatever life threw at them and do the best they could with it. He was beginning to understand that now.
    Pete walked into the store, and almost collided with a ladder set against the shelves just inside the door. He caught himself and placed a hand on the ladder, to steady it, in case there was someone up there.
    There certainly was. That someone was high enough up that ladder to leave Pete staring at her bare legs, for there was no doubt that the owner of those legs was female. Very female. The legs were not very long, but they were very shapely. They curved down to a pair of the prettiest bare feet he’d ever seen. The toenails of those feet were painted bright red.
    He couldn’t help himself; he let his eyes run slowly up those legs again to a pair of cut-off jeans shorts, filled out in the nicest possible way. The girl on the ladder was reaching for something on the highest shelf, and her top had ridden up to expose a few centimetres of skin on her lower back. Soft, silky skin. Not tanned like a lot of women were. Pete saw enough brown out the window of his truck when he was driving. This skin was creamy white and so smooth. It was like a drink of water in the desert. He wanted to run his fingers over that skin. Press his lips to it and taste it.
    Pete didn’t believe in love at first sight. But lust! That was a different matter and right now he was feeling decidedly lustful.
    He dragged his eyes away from that silky skin and forced his gaze upwards. He needed to see the face of this woman who in just a few seconds had set his heart – and other parts of him – on fire.
    She had twisted her body to look down at him. He took a moment to appreciate the curve of her breasts, and then looked past the blonde plait hanging over one shoulder to her face.
    A pair of amber eyes, flecked with gold, widened as they looked down at him.
    God! All his lustful thoughts vanished in an instant as a wave of shame swept over him. He jumped back from the ladder as if hit by an electric shock. It was the child, Sarah. Slowly she climbed down the ladder and turned to face him.
    ‘Hello … Pete.’ She’d called him Uncle Pete once, but no more, it seemed.
    ‘Umm. Hi, Sarah.’
    A welcoming smile lit her face, and Pete felt the earth shift ever so slightly on its axis.
    Sarah could hardly believe she was looking at Pete, the truck driver her younger self had hero-worshipped. He was older now, of course, but he was very handsome. She had obviously had good taste when she was a child. Sarah felt her heart lift a little as she looked at him. She hadn’t seen him in more than four years. A lot had changed in four years. She should have grown out of that childhood crush on a man who was far too old for her. She had dated quite a few men since she’d last seen Pete, but apparently that didn’t matter. She felt that same old feeling starting to return. Maybe it was just because she was feeling particularly vulnerable at the moment. Maybe she was looking too fondly at the past, because the future seemed very bleak, but it appeared from the lifting of her heart that he was still her knight in shining armour.
    For a few long seconds they simply stared at each other. Pete was the first to drop his gaze. If she didn’t know better, she would have suspected he was blushing under his tan.
    She could see new lines around his eyes and on his forehead that hadn’t been there when she left for college. The outback was