AN: This fic is dedicated to cassiemortmain, who gave me the idea to have (spoiler alert!) Sybil's car break down and Tom be the one to fix it. She was also kind enough to entertain my inane questions about her home country, help me eliminate unrealistic locations (apparently it's not a great idea to try and drive across the middle of Australia by yourself), and serve as a beta reader to help me get the details right (though any errors are my fault). Thanks so much, bb! Hope you enjoy.

The title is a mondegreen from the Men at Work song "Land Down Under." The actual lyric is "Where women glow and men plunder." I've been hearing it wrong since childhood and I always wondered why they rhymed "thunder" with "thunder"...and now I have my answer.


Darling Downs, South East QLD, Australia: mid-March

Sybil drives fast. With no other cars around and a road that looks as though it could stretch across the continent, there's no reason not to. It's just gone noon, and the sun is a burnished coin in the sky and the air above the highway ahead bends with the heat. She's been in Australia almost three weeks now and it's officially autumn; the days have cooled on the coast and in the mountains, but where she is—two hours' drive inland and between ranges—the air remains sticky and motionless.

She lets the wind whip through for a while, yanking her hair out of its elastic to blow in tendrils around her cheeks and into her eyes and mouth, but the charm of it palls as the temperature increases. Soon she puts up the windows and turns on the air conditioner, which struggles valiantly but can't quite counteract the baking heat. The RAV4 she drives is far from new: Sybil bought it three days after she landed in Sydney with the admittedly impractical but irresistibly romantic notion that she'd drive wherever the road took her. The idea earned her a look of pure horror when she related it to the car's previous owner, a guy in his late forties who looked like he'd spent every day of it in the sun. He'd told her he was selling the wagon to upgrade to a van, needing more space for his two daughters' field hockey equipment.

"You want to know where you're headed," he warned when he heard her plan. "You don't want to be muckin' about on your own if you don't know what you're doing." Then he related a story about a group of German tourists who'd recently died of exposure after their Land Rover had broken down on the Canning Stock Route, a desert road "out the back o' Bourke," as he put it.

"Oh, I'm not going to try to drive across the outback or anything," Sybil told him with a laugh. "I'll always be within shot of civilization!" The man still looked doubtful, but she was paying cash and hadn't dickered too much over the selling price, so in the end he let her go with another admonition to look after herself and always carry blankets and plenty of water.

"A knife or something might not be a bad idea, either," was his parting tip. "You run across some strange rangers out in the country."

Right now she's on her way into the Bunya Mountains. The national park there was touted as a must-see by some friendly locals in Byron Bay, where she spent a few days poking into art galleries and ambling between beach and bars. In the spirit of adventure, Sybil has decided to let the road take her there. If the sat-nav is correct, it should only be a couple more hours' drive. Plenty of time to find a place to stay for the next few nights and do a bit of hiking. She's not picky: a B&B or holiday cabin will do nicely. This is one reason she didn't invite Mary or Edith, who would have taken one look at Sybil's hostel accommodation in Brisbane and run—or hired a car service—back to the airport.

Sybil smiles as she thinks of her nonchalant pledge to stay near civilization. A baldfaced lie, as the highway she's speeding along lacks any sign of it. Even the road is a faded silver-grey, crumbling at the edges as though it's trying to blend in with its surroundings. The country would be lovely if it weren't so blazingly hot. Since she came down from the mountain town of Toowoomba (which she drove through mainly because she wanted to see what a place called Toowoomba looked like) it's been crisped-looking farmland, with the occasional village or abandoned shearing shed. In these gently rolling hills landmarks reveal themselves a long way off, coming in and out of sight with the elevation of the land. A house shimmers into existence on the horizon, looking like a mirage. As Sybil gets closer she sees that it's two buildings: a large corrugated-aluminum shed and a smaller, dilapidated farmhouse with a peaked roof and a porch that looks within a breeze of falling off. The little compound huddles a hundred yards from the road amid scrub grass and tired-looking trees. It seems deserted until one notices the washing hung in the side garden. She wonders who'd live out here, an hour's drive from the nearest supermarket.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a gleam of red on the dash: the temperature light's come on. Damn. She turns off the A/C and lowers the windows but the light stays lit, soon to be joined by its brother Check Engine. Damn, damn, damn. Her instinct is to keep driving and hope the issue resolves itself, but then she remembers the German tourists. She eases up on the accelerator, dithering. Seconds later the car decides matters by starting to shimmy in its path and releasing a great cloud of steam from underneath the bonnet.

She pulls off onto the dirt next to the road, there being no proper shoulder, and puts up the bonnet, dodging another cloud of steam. At the front of the engine compartment the radiator—at least she thinks it's the radiator—hisses and makes an ominous ticking sound. It doesn't seem like a good idea to touch anything. Now what?

Her mobile is in her messenger bag on the passenger seat, but it's about as much use out here as her wallet full of credit cards: there's no phone service, no data service. Sybil furrows her brow and looks down the road toward her destination, then turns and looks back the way she came. The metal shed by the house she passed earlier throws off a dull gleam in the sun, just barely visible. If someone's there they'll have a telephone, at any rate. With a sigh she coils her hair more securely on top of her head, puts her bag across her shoulder, and sets off.

It takes much longer than one would think to reach the house. It seemed as though it was only a couple of kilometers back, but by the time she trudges up its winding dirt driveway her throat feels coated in dust and there's a blister shooting glassy pain across her heel with every step. She wishes she'd thought to change into her hiking boots or even put on socks under her trainers before starting.

She mounts the porch and knocks. There's something about the way a knock on the door of an empty house sounds that lets you know it's empty; that's what her knock sounds like. She taps again anyway and goes over and peers into the window, hands around her eyes. She can make out dark humps of furniture in the dimness, a bookshelf full of books against the far wall. The place looks lived in, anyway. She starts to sit down on one of the plastic chairs on the porch to wait for the house's occupants to return, but then she catches a snatch of guitar melody from the direction of the shed.

Seeing a tow truck parked in back is the first stroke of luck she's had all day, and she feels even more fortunate when she reads the decal on the side of it: Tom's Mobile Auto Repair. The shed's large sliding door is open and the music wafts out, interspersed with the whine of some sort of machinery. She steps inside, blinking as her eyes adjust to the comparative dimness. There's a car up on jacks in front of the door but the cavernous space appears empty of people, though she still hears the intermittent metallic grinding. It bounces off the aluminum walls, painfully loud. "Hello?" She calls when there's a break in the noise. It doesn't start up again; nor does she receive any answer but the whir of a fan over John Lennon's mournful voice. It takes two more Hellos before a man—Tom, she assumes—appears in a doorway off to the right, where a wall has been rather haphazardly installed to create a separate room. He's holding ear protectors in his hands. He steps out into the main shed, eyes narrowed to make Sybil out against the backlight of the door. He's thirtyish, stocky, with dirty-blond hair that falls into his eyes and a few days' growth of beard. He wears oil-stained jeans and a badly faded INXS t-shirt. A true blue Aussie boy if I ever saw one, Sybil thinks. Then he opens his mouth.

"Can I help ye, miss?" He lilts, and her eyes widen; an Irish accent is the last thing she expected to hear in this neck of the woods.

"Yeah, hi. My car broke down a little way up the road." Sybil notes a jump in one of his eyebrows, a twitch of his mouth. Maybe he's surprised by her accent as well. "It's overheated, I think." It's futile for her to try and sound like she knows what she's talking about when it comes to cars, but maybe if she attempts it he won't overcharge her too much. With that in mind, she pastes on a smile that's as charming as she can make it, in the circumstances.

He nods. "We'll just have a look, will we?" He disappears for a few seconds and reemerges sans ear protectors and wearing a wide-brimmed bushman hat that looks a hundred years old. "I'm Tom, by the way."

"I thought so," says Sybil, then remembers herself and offers her hand. "Sybil."

"Glad to know you, Sybil." His handshake is firm, fingertips rough with calluses. His eyes assess her, but not in a lecherous way; he goes to a mini-fridge wedged in next to a desk at the back of the shed and fetches a bottle of water. "Here. You look like you could use it."

"Oh, cheers." She opens it and drinks half in one go, water trickling from the corner of her mouth. With her hand she wipes it off her chin. "Yeah, I was a bit thirsty."

Tom turns off the lights and the first-gen iPod that's in a dock on the desk, its clickwheel smeared with black grime, and picks up a tool satchel which he places in the back of the truck. He closes and locks the door to the shed, and they're off.

Sybil's car is where she left it, pulled off the road with its bonnet up. Tom gets right down to business, but it takes no more than twenty minutes before he lets down the bonnet with a bang and a solemn nod. "I'll have to bring her in."

"Oh…" Sybil is disappointed, if not surprised. "I thought you might just be able to add some fluids or something."

He shakes his head. "No such luck, I'm afraid. Your radiator's leaking coolant. Spark plugs need replacing as well, and that's just what I can see at a glance." He gives her a sympathetic little smile. "Don't worry, I'll give you an estimate before I get too far into it."

They chat a little on the drive back. Tom asks where Sybil's headed; when she tells him he says he's not been, but he's heard it's nice. "How long have you lived in Australia?" She asks.

"Almost two years." She waits for him to go on. Most Irishmen she's met would be regaling her with the reasons they've come here, as well as the opinions of at least four family members on the advisability of their move. Tom, however, seems to be keeping his own counsel. She peeks at him sidelong. His features are more delicately drawn than she thought. He's in better shape too: what she mistook for stoutness at first glance is solid muscle. He's rather fit, really, in a scruffy kind of way. She's always had a bit of a thing for blokes with a few rough edges on them; it must come from growing up surrounded by boys who always had to wear ties.

When they get back he keeps her car hitched up to the truck, saying he's just got to finish the vehicle he's working on—"I said I'd have it for him tomorrow morning—" but it should be done by lunch. The mention of food makes Sybil's stomach gurgle. It's already quarter past one, and she wonders what time Tom sits down to his midday meal and whether he'd be willing to share. "I've only sandwiches," he continues, "but you're welcome to it. I'll have you on your way within a couple of hours after that."

Sybil thanks him and sits down in one of a trio of rust-speckled teal metal chairs under a tree a few yards from the garage door. She's got a book in her bag but doesn't take it out; the local fauna provide distraction enough to her weary brain. She watches in fascination as a galah with a deep-rose-colored breast lands on a branch nearby and starts grooming under its wing, muttering to itself in an oddly human timbre. Seeing such exotic birds going about their business like sparrows would at home is still a novelty to her. Cicadas whir and the temperature continues to rise until she's sluggish and perspiring, with strands of hair sticking unpleasantly to the back of her neck. The sun creeps higher, encroaching on her haven until she's forced to scoot her chair almost to the trunk of the tree to be in the shade.

She looks with longing toward the dark mouth of the shed's entrance. It looks like a cave, cool and deep. Quiet, too, now that the mechanic seems to have finished whatever he was doing in the back room. She can hear the occasional scrape or rattle over the spidery guitar—the iPod seems to be shuffling through the more psychedelic half of the Beatles' catalog—but nothing louder than that. Finally she stands and walks inside.

"OK if I sit in here?" she calls to Tom, whose legs are sticking out from under the dark green sedan he's working on. "It's scorching out."

He slides out, sits up, and smiles. He's got a smear of oil next to his nose. "Sure. I can turn on the air conditioner if you like." He nods toward an ancient unit set into the wall next to the door. "Though it doesn't really cool the air so much as blow around the heat."

"Oh no, it's fine," says Sybil politely. "It's much better in here even without it."

"I like having the door open if it's at all bearable. Feels less closed in that way."

"I agree," Sybil says, mostly so he won't feel like he has to change things around on her account. She's used to working long hours indoors; operating theatres don't have exterior windows. Tom slides back under the car.

There's a rolling chair at the desk, but instead of sitting Sybil prowls around looking at things. The area in front of the door is pure workspace, swept concrete floor and fluorescent lighting and a long countertop running along the wall to the left. Above it tools hang on hooks; below are drawers and cabinets of faux-oak laminate, all with neatly hand-lettered paper labels stuck on. Just beyond, on the back wall, the desk and fridge delineate an office area. The large space to the right of that is shrouded in dimness and has a small sink and a number of tall steel shelf units; it seems to be a repository for larger auto parts. In front of that is the doorway to the other room, through which Sybil glimpses a rack of free weights, a bench press, and a long metal table holding several small machines she cannot identify. The man cave, she thinks, and a wry smile comes to her lips. She half expects to see posters of scantily clad women on the walls, but when she peeks through the doorway all that's there is a calendar from last year, turned to October and showing a picture of the Cliffs of Moher.

"I'm just about finished," says Tom from behind her. Caught snooping, Sybil backs out of the room guiltily. He's standing to one side wiping his hands with a rag. The slight curve of his mouth says that he has some idea of what she's thinking. "There's not much in the way of entertainment out here, I'm afraid."

"I was just admiring your organizational skills," Sybil replies, feeling inane. "A place for everything and everything in its place. Martha Stewart would be proud."

He laughs. "I found those cabinets on the side of the road in town."

"Oh, that's very trendy. It's called upcycling." Sybil tilts her head. "Or downcycling. I'm not sure which."

"Good to know. Though I don't pay much mind to trends, if you've not noticed." He grins. "You hungry?"

It's past three and Sybil hasn't eaten since morning. "Starving."

The path between house and shed is well trod, but there's a dense thatch of tall grass and shrubbery to one side of it. They're halfway between the two buildings when Sybil sees a flicker of movement out of the bottom of her eye and then another at her side, lightning fast, as Tom's hand shoots out to grab her arm and yank her backward. "Jesus, watch out!"

Her heart's in her mouth. "What—"

"Snake. You almost stepped on it." He nods toward the brush, where she just catches the tail end of a nondescript brown snake undulating into the grass. "You don't want to piss that one off."

She takes in a shaky breath. "Is it venomous?"

He chuckles and lets go of her arm; she hadn't noticed he was still holding it. "They're all venomous around here. At least it seems that way."

"Well, thanks. Sorry." She gives a sheepish smile. "Obviously I'm a newbie."

"Ah, don't let it bother you. I made a few stupid mistakes when I first came here." He grins. "Lucky I haven't ended up in hospital yet."

They enter the house through the back door, which gives on the kitchen. Sybil can tell Tom doesn't often get visitors; immediately he goes a bit stiff and starts tidying up, mumbling about it being a right wreck in here. She can see him seeing the place through her eyes and finding it wanting, though maybe that's all in her mind. Certainly she'd be embarrassed to bring a guest to a place like this but she reminds herself that Not everyone can afford to live somewhere nice. Don't be a snob.

To say it's nothing fancy is putting it politely. Everything's old and worn. Dark-paneled 1970s cabinetry glowers from the walls, the warped linoleum floor crackles with every step, and there's a faint, stale smell of decades of soaked-in grease. It's not the sort of place someone chooses to live in; it's a house you settle for because you can't get anything better. "What a lot of space you have," Sybil says, a bit proud that she's managed to come up with something positive. "I think my entire flat could fit in this kitchen." She sits down at the rickety table in the center of the room. It's too small for it, lost in a sea of beige lino.

Drying his hands at the sink, Tom gives a shrug, a rather defensive one to Sybil's eye. "Most of it's pretty dilapidated. I don't even use it all; the two back bedrooms are full of old boxes. They've been there since I signed the lease."

"You don't have housemates then?"

"Nah." He gets sandwich fixings from the refrigerator and sets them out on the faded orange worktop. "Most people want to live closer in to town."

Sybil studies his back. He hasn't had a haircut in a while, and it reaches down nearly to the collar of his t-shirt. He opens a cabinet and reaches up for a couple of plates, pulling the shirt tighter around his ribs and letting her see the way his shoulders taper into his narrow waist. No girlfriend? she thinks about asking, but doesn't. Instead she says, "Don't you ever get lonely?"

"Ah, sure," he answers easily. "But I get along. I see people when I go into town, get work through word of mouth. And I do a lot of reading." His voice takes on a note Sybil can't quite interpret. "It's quiet out here, you know. You can think."

Sybil wishes she could be as at peace with her own life as he sounds with his. "It sounds nice."

"'Course, there're the not-so-nice parts too. Scorpions, spiders. Snakes, as you've seen. I think there's a family of possums living in the roof." He pivots to carry their plates over to the table. "Before I moved here I always heard Australia was a place where nature's constantly trying to kill you, and that's not far wrong. D'ye want something to drink? Coke? Water?"

"Water, please." He fills glasses for them both and sits down. "Thanks." Sybil takes a bite of her sandwich and chews slowly: it's chicken salad, not her favorite by a long shot. But if there's anything her upbringing taught her it's how to be gracious in accepting favors. "So why did you move here?"

He smiles around a mouthful, swallows it. "It was either here or Alaska, and I hate the cold."

Sybil laughs. "That seems rather extreme. Were you that eager to leave Ireland?"

"Not really." His voice has gone flat, and Sybil can tell that's her cue to change the subject.

But something makes her press on. "So why did you?"

Tom takes a drink from his glass. "I've had a rule since I came out here," he says. "I don't talk about the past." His gaze meets Sybil's, electric blue in his suntanned face, and she is not certain whether the warmth that spreads upward from her neck is unease or something else. Though if she's honest, she doesn't get a dangerous vibe off him. Ted Bundy's victims would probably have told you the same thing, a cold voice inside her head admonishes. It sounds rather like Mary.

"You didn't kill someone or anything, did you?" Ha-ha-ha, say her tilted head and dancing eyes, but a split second before he answers she realizes she's holding in her breath.

"No one who didn't deserve it." He grins, taking it as a joke. Joking in return.

She leans across the table as if to impart a confidence. "Should I be looking around for pointy things to stick you with if you get fresh?"

His smile fades and he sits back in his chair, folding his arms and dropping his eyes. "You've got nothing to worry about." He doesn't seem offended in the slightest, but a pensive look has come over him that lays a stroke of contrition across Sybil's heart. One of his hands sneaks up to cradle his chin, oil-stained fingertips stroking the stubbled jawline. It has the air of a habitual gesture; something he does to help him think, or to soothe himself.

She gives him an apologetic smile. "It's not that I think you'd be anything other than a gentleman, only I've got to do my due diligence."

"Of course. A woman traveling alone." His eyes come back up and his even white teeth flash out at her and that heat rises into her cheeks again. "Which is quite brave of you, by the way." His hand leaves his chin to flap in the air. "A bit mad, but brave. I'm curious. How'd a posh English girl come to be driving about on her own in the Australian hinterland?"

Sybil lets her eyes fall to the table, feeling one side of her mouth curl up. "I'm not that posh. And I thought you didn't like to talk about the past."

His laugh echoes off the walls. He's got a nice laugh. "Well, I never said you couldn't. And anyway, five minutes ago is the past, if you want to get pedantic about it."

"Fair enough." Sybil takes her napkin out of her lap and lays it next to her plate, sips her water. "When I was a little girl, my grandmother—my mum's mum—and I would always talk about traveling together once I got older. Somehow I'd got it into my head that I wanted to go to Australia. When I was six I thought kangaroos were the coolest thing ever. So whenever she came over or I visited her in the States, we'd plan our trip. It was a fantasy, really." She smiles wistfully, recalling rainy New York afternoons spent poring over travel guides. "We'd talked about actually going after I did my A levels, but by then I was all gung ho about uni, so it changed to 'Oh, let's go after I've graduated.' But we never did, and this January she died."

"Oh. I'm sorry." His voice is soft with the respect one gives the dead. "It sounds like you were close."

"Yeah." She pauses for a beat, thinking about how everyone at Grandmama's funeral nattered on about what a full life she'd led and how it made Sybil want to scream. She appreciates that Tom hasn't thrown out any platitudes for her to deflect. "It was very sudden—she had a brain aneurysm. One day she was on the golf course in Boca Raton, and the next…" Tears sting the backs of her eyes and she takes a breath, blinking hard. "I suppose it's the way she would've wanted to go. She wouldn't have liked to linger." She sniffles and clears her throat. "Anyway, she made bequests to me and my sisters, and in her will she said that if she and I hadn't made it to Australia by the time she was gone, she thought I should use the money to go before I quit dreaming of it." Sybil smiles. "So I did. I cleared my diary for three months and flew in with no itinerary at all and bought a car to get around. I thought if I could sell it again before I went home it would be a wash in the end. I guess I didn't plan on repair costs."

"Or being stranded in the middle of nowhere," says Tom. "That car served you better than you think. You're lucky you broke down where you did… much farther out and you'd have waited a long while for someone to come along."

"I suppose you're right." Lucky, too, in that her rescuer does not seem inclined to take advantage of the situation in any way.

"So what do you do for a living, where you can take three months off just like that?" He gives her a quizzical look, with that hint of scorn she's familiar with from the early days in the hospital when certain people had a problem with her background. Before she'd proven herself.

"Nothing," Sybil admits, which elicits the rise of a sun-bleached eyebrow. "I mean, I'm a nurse, but I'm sort of… between jobs right now." He cocks his head with a Do go on expression, and she sighs heavily. "It's a long story."

"Part of the past you don't talk about?"

"Something like that."

"Fair enough." He grins. "So do you live in London town then, with your wee flat? Or is it somewhere else?"

"Yeah, London. Bethnal Green. Have you ever been?"

"To London? Of course." He smirks. "It's where my brother had his stag night. Stag weekend, I should say."

"Your brother went all the way to London for his stag party?"

"Well, he lives in Swindon. Has a garage there."

"So mechanical skill runs in the family, then."

That gets a perfunctory chuckle out of him. "It's a living." He pushes back from the table, gathering up their plates. By the time Sybil thinks to offer to do the washing up, the dishes are already dripping on the rack. "You can stay in here or come out while I work," he says. "I don't mind either way. I like a bit of company."

"I'll come out, then." She likes company too, and she's enjoying Tom's. Beyond the flashes of wit she's seen—not to mention the fact that he's already saved her life at least once—she senses there's more to him than meets the eye, which intrigues her. What meets the eye is of no little interest as well: I wouldn't mind watching him bend over my car again. She bites her lip to suppress a grin.

He pulls the sedan out of the garage and backs the tow truck in, lowering the RAV4 with a gentleness that seems so ingrained that Sybil thinks he'd probably do it the same way even if she weren't there watching. She sits in the office chair with her book, but finds herself paying more attention to Tom than the page in front of her. He quickly becomes absorbed in his work. He whistles a bit, countermelodies to the music that's playing, and occasionally he'll murmur an instruction or mild curse to himself. It's hotter in the garage as the afternoon reaches its height. After a while he comes over to the fridge and gets out a couple of bottles of water, hands her one, and runs the other across his sweating forehead. Eyes closed, he rubs the condensation over his face with a little groan of contentment.

Sybil's eyes flick down a split second after his open. "You still OK?" He asks. "You want me to turn on the air conditioning?"

"Mm-mm, just fine," she almost squeaks. "I'm not the one working."

He eyes her with a faint, quizzical smile and she feels as though her skull has become transparent. "You sure?"

Her face is hot; she must be the color of a tomato. "Positive!" She fans herself with her book. "I don't mind sweating a bit. In this weather you just have to embrace it, yeah?"

"That's how I look at it," he says, and carries his water back over to the car. From behind the bonnet he says, "Erm… what's your boyfriend think of you taking off round the world for three months, anyway?" It's a clumsy line and he knows it, his voice coming out brash but underpinned with uncertainty. If he'd tried it on her earlier Sybil would have written him off as a wanker and frozen him out.

Now, though, she plays along. "Oh, I haven't got a boyfriend."

"Good." Then, too quickly: "I mean, I'm sure he'd miss you."

"He would, terribly. If I had one." She gets up and walks around the car so she can see him.

"And you'd miss him." Tom's eyes are fixed downward, but there's a small smile on his face.

"It'd make it a bit difficult to sow any wild oats, yeah." Sybil grins. "My sister Edith said I was coming out here to do my own version of Eat, Pray, Love."

Tom gives a chuckle. "How's that going for you then?"

Sybil makes a face. "Well, I have been doing a bit of eating."

That tickles him. He straightens and laughs, throwing his head back. "That's a good 'un, that is. You know, you're funny."

Sybil drops her eyes."Oh, my sister's the witty one. Not Edith; my oldest sister, Mary." she considers. "Though she can be a bit mean with it sometimes."

"It's a poor comic who can only laugh at someone else's expense," says Tom, plunging his hands back under the bonnet. "My brother's a bit like that. Makes me cringe when he gets going sometimes."

"The brother in Swindon?"

"Nah, the younger one. Declan."

"Is he in England too, or still in Ireland?"

"He—bloody hell!" Tom springs back from the car, hissing in pain.

Sybil jumps. "Are you all right?"

"Fuck!" He's cradling one hand in the other; there's blood. Instinctively Sybil rushes forward to examine it, but he waves her off. "It's grand, it's grand." He runs his black-stained fingers over the injury in a way that makes Sybil wince. "I just scraped off a bit of skin, I think. Jesus, that stings."

"We need to get it cleaned and bandaged." Sybil looks around. "Have you got a first aid kit in here?"

"Sybil… it's fine." He gives her an indulgent smile. "I appreciate the concern, but it's only a flesh wound." He shows it to her: the top layer of skin on the back of his hand is torn, but the bleeding's already mostly stopped.

But Sybil's training has taken over, and she won't be able to relax until she's seen to him. "Whatever you cut it on was probably filthy. There's dirt and bacteria in that scrape, and it needs to be washed and protected. Do you remember the last time you had a tetanus shot?" Grasping him by the elbow, she leads him over to the sink.

"Yeah, couple years ago. OK, OK, I can wash my own hands, Jaysus." Tom shakes his head and smiles. "Well, if you did get sacked, whoever did it's mad. You're a wonderful nurse."

"Oh, please," Sybil retorts. "I haven't even done anything yet. Have you got any bandages in the house?"

"There's a first aid kid in the desk." He jerks his chin in that direction, and follows Sybil when she hastens over. She opens drawers until she finds a small metal box full of supplies that look like they were packaged in 1980, but they'll do. "I was more talking about the way you bullied me," he laughs as she applies ointment and gauze to his hand and wraps it up. "You must be a fearsome sight when someone doesn't follow doctor's orders."

Sybil gives a chuckle. "Yeah, well, we can't have your hand getting infected with you all alone out here in the bush." She looks up into his face, which is closer than she'd realized. He's perched on the edge of the desk while she stands in front of him, and their eyes are level with each other. "Where would you be then?" Her heart has started to beat faster: she can feel it fluttering in her chest like a small, excited bird. Tom's eyes hold hers for a second, then flick to her mouth, then back up to her eyes. One corner of his mouth turns up slightly, absently, as if he's unaware of what it's doing. Sybil realizes that this is the moment where she can either smile and turn away and let him get back to work on her car, or she can make the move she's been wanting to make for at least the past hour.

Oh, why not, she thinks, and she leans forward and kisses him.


AN#2: I have the next chapter pretty much done, so I won't leave you hanging for too long!