An Outback Affair/Runaway Wife/Outback Bridegroom/Outback Surrender/Home To Eden (65 page)

“No. I'm saying he couldn't get your grandfather's attention. He might have, had he been able to cope with your grandfather's expectations, which were that he needed to turn into a carbon copy of Sir Giles. Impossible for him, and the result was alienation.”

“That's not true.” She focused on the path in front of her, which stretched into a dark perfumed infinity.

“I'm afraid it is. You've got your head firmly stuck in the sand. The only one Joel was free to love was you. Siggy angered him with all her rules, and his father leads some interior life of his own. Who the hell knows Alan? He's a dark horse if ever there was one.”

Nicole gave a dismissive shrug; she was never interested in Alan. “He's simply a man who was corrupted by money, marrying into a moneyed family. It
could be the reason he rushed Siggy into marriage. He certainly doesn't work. He fools around in the office, mostly for appearances. At this stage, it's easier to leave him alone.”

“In short, he's a man behind a mask.”

“Pretty harmless, I'd say. He's never given anyone any trouble.”

“Did your grandfather never run a background check on him?”

“Good grief, no!” She was appalled. “At least I never heard about it. He's Siggy's husband.”

“They're hardly a loving couple.”

“You think you know everything about my family?” Her temper rose again.

“I saw more than enough.”

“You didn't see everything.” Her voice quivered with outrage.

“I saw more than you. I'm older. I was always very observant.”

“Can we stop?” she asked, thinking an all-out argument was quite possible. “So many things I remember too vividly. Others perhaps I don't want to remember. Feeling helpless, impotent, is a dreadful situation. Can't you understand that, Drake?”

“Of course. But if we're trying to pin this on someone, it has to be someone with the strongest motive. To many, that's your father.”

“Yes. More than just on the face of it. I believe he's a murderer.”

Drake threw her a look of angry exasperation. “Nicole, I'm not going to listen to this. Your father is dying. You want him to make a full confession before he goes?”

“He said he's come back to Eden to clear his name.”

“Why can't you believe him?”

“I've despised him for most of my life,” she blurted out.

“It never crossed your mind he might have had a raw deal?”

“You must be joking! For years he lived the good life.”

“You call the good life being marginalized? Your grandfather shoved him into the background. He wasn't even allowed to be a father to you.”

“That's not true!” Her hostility burned and burned. She threw up an agitated hand and he caught it in midair.

“It is true.” He held her wrist, knowing she would push each stage as far as she could. Push him. “Your grandfather didn't want you to see anyone as the dominant male figure in your life but him. Surely you realize that!”

“I won't be drawn into this. Don't turn Granddad into a villain, Drake. He loved me. Heath didn't. He could have been a father to me if he'd wanted to, but he didn't. He was a drunk and a gambler. He had a violent temper.”

“Things might have been different if your mother had really loved him,” he said. “But it all went wrong.”

“It must have been right for a while. I mean, they got married. My mother rushed headlong into his arms, but it must have been over by the time they got back from church.”

“God knows,” he said, sighing. “They had you.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Please don't push it, Nic.”

She stared down at their locked hands. “I can't seem to breathe when you touch me.” The confession was forced out of her.

“You're afraid of yourself.”

“I'm wise to be.”

He turned, realizing suddenly that the piano had stopped. For how long? Arms encircling her, Drake drew Nicole off the path, not stopping until they were lost in a thicket of towering shrubs.

A
LL THEY HEARD
at first was silence. Then Callista's voice like a downpour of icy hailstones. “Where on earth did they go?”

“They're probably up ahead. Why are you so angry, Callista?” This from Karen, high heels clattering on the path as if she was trying to keep up.

“I really don't have to explain myself.” Callista was at her most regal and withering. “So rude! I find it absolutely incredible you should fall asleep, Karen. I thought you had a little bit of culture.”

“I'm so sorry. I apologize.” Karen's voice cracked. She sounded on the verge of tears. “I don't normally have more than two glasses of wine, but we were having such a good time and the wine was so delicious. What are we supposed to do when we catch up with them?”

“We're simply out for an evening stroll.” Callista's tone was positively menacing.

“Then you'd better slow down. Oh, look at those stars, they're glorious!”

“Do shut up, Karen. Haven't I convinced you she's out to steal Drake? She's even more like her mother than I thought. She stole my brother.”

“Well, someone was going to steal him,” Karen
said in a perfectly reasonable tone. “He was your brother, after all, not your boyfriend, Callista.”

Callista obviously treated that remark with the contempt she thought it deserved. “Why don't you go back to the house, Karen,” she snapped.

“I think I will.” Karen showed some spirit. “This isn't the way to do it, Callista. Spying on your own nephew. Especially a man like Drake.”

“The best of men are putty in a beautiful woman's hands,” Callista responded, her normal cut-glass tone almost rough.

“Well, I'm not bad-looking and I've never had that experience,” Karen said. “I'll leave you to it.”

In the shelter of the grove Nicole drew a shaky breath. Every nerve in her body was jumping. It should have been comical, this game of hide-and-seek, but it wasn't. How much did anyone really know about Callista's dark side? She stepped back in alarm, which caused her to collide with Drake, and she was instantly aware of the powerful angles of his body, his unique scent she found so arousing.

They retreated farther into the deep shadows, cocooned in sweet-smelling darkness.

“She'll never find us.” Drake's lips skimmed her ear. His palms were running up and down her arms.

“Of course she will.” His caressing hands made her feel defenseless. Desire was consuming her like a slow-burning fire. Even the air around them had gone molten.

“She won't,” he promised, dipping his head and kissing her neck. Desire had encompassed him, too, an exquisite form of torture. Compulsively his hands moved to her breasts, draped in liquid blue silk. All evening he'd ached to touch them, his eyes drawn
to the low cut of her dress, the creamy perfection of her skin.

Her head fell back against his shoulder, her voice unashamedly desperate, as though she feared losing her restraint. “Wait. This scares me a little.”

“Me, too.” His forefingers and thumbs teased her hardened nipples, a ministration that unraveled so many physical sensations that Nicole felt the strong pull right through her body, as the tide feels the pull of the moon. All previous experience seemed trivial by comparison. The passion rising in her now was thrilling—and dangerous.

But she didn't care, didn't wish to retreat. Just as before, she worried her legs wouldn't hold her, but he had her strongly about the waist, the lean fingers of one hand splayed across her stomach, the tips only inches from her pulsating mound. She could feel herself turn damp, grateful for the darkness that obscured the yearning expression she knew must be on her face. For all the deep-seated fears that stirred her brain, her body never doubted him at all.

Time condensed. When he turned her in his arms to close his mouth over hers, such intensity engulfed her she became entirely what he wanted, not pausing for a second to weigh the outcome of her ardent response. If she'd thought she could control herself, control him, an aspect of intimacy with her past lovers, she swiftly found she'd been deluding herself. He was too bold. Too demanding. It was an erotic experience on a completely different level. She had never felt such physical identification with a man's body. The total loss of autonomy. To her cost?

The night swallowed them up.

 

C
ALLISTA
,
EYES ADJUSTED
to the darkness, kept to the path, looking frantically from left to right through the towering trees and banks of shrubs.

How easily they had concealed themselves, she fumed. Drake and Nicole, a cruel echo of David and Corrinne. Just so had David and Corrinne, with her mesmerizing beauty, melted into the darkness of the garden, returning to the house with Corrinne's face radiant, David with his arm around her as though he'd never let her go.

Damn you to hell, Corrinne,
Callista breathed. Life wouldn't be long enough for her to forget that bitch's treachery.

 

A
T SUNRISE
he came for her. They had a date to go riding.

“Ready?” Drake asked, so vivid and vital he almost crackled with electricity.

“I've been ready for ages.” Nicole had hardly slept. She'd tossed this way and that, racked by physical frustration, wondering what it would be like to have him there in her bed. God knows he might have been, except by the time they'd returned to the house, she had recovered sufficiently to resurrect her guard. For every rash action there were consequences. She had almost gone over the brink. Falling in love with Drake could be her downfall. Sleeping with him would increase her vulnerability to an intolerable level. She had to cling to the illusion she was still in control.

When they'd returned to the house—trying to appear normal was quite impossible—Karen was waiting for them on the veranda looking lonely and forlorn,
vivacity quite gone, asking fretfully where they'd disappeared to. Nicole was acutely aware Karen was looking more coldly on her than she had till then. Callista, it seemed, had gone off to bed citing the onset of a migraine that promised to blow her head off.

It was the opportunity for Nicole to excuse herself—save herself, whatever—leaving Drake and Karen to stay on and maybe fight it out.

Not the sort of evening Karen had intended, Nicole had no doubt, but it didn't pay for a woman on a mission to fall asleep.

She and Drake had agreed on a dawn ride while they were walking back. Dawn was an ideal time, blessedly cool. Nicole rode a chestnut gelding, sweet-tempered and even-gaited; Drake a majestic stallion, black as coal. All the signs indicated the animal wouldn't be easy to handle, but Nicole didn't worry. Drake was a superb horseman.

Twenty minutes later they were galloping across the enormous spinifex plains, giving the horses their head. All the old emotions came flooding back. She hadn't lost her riding skills. She was rediscovering the great thrill of feeling the powerful animal beneath her. The wind in her face bore the lovely familiar scent of the wild boronia that grew thickly near the countless arteries of watercourses, stirring memories of when she was a child and had ridden with her grandfather.

The sun was climbing. The pale blue of the sky deepened to cobalt with every passing moment, flooding the vast splendor with dazzling light. With the sun came the birds, an airborne explosion of glorious enameled colors, the tranquillity of the dawn broken by
their loud and brilliant orchestrations. There seemed little evidence of human intrusion save for the two of them. A distant dust cloud gave evidence of a moving mob of cattle.

With the arrival of the sun, the desert country began to change color, always an incredible phenomenon even when one was born to it. The earth and the rocks, the low eroded hills, a soft salmon pink, started to burn with a fiery brilliance. The trunks of the desert ghost gums stood out starkly white against the glittering blue of the sky.

They reined in their mounts and walked them in companionable silence to Deep Water Billabong, a smooth sheet of dark emerald water in a wonderful half-moon shape. The billabong issued a compelling invitation to dive into its cool depths; it was the perfect swimming hole and few could resist.

They tethered the horses and moved down to the water, a milky apple green in the shallows.

“Lord knows how I didn't visit you last night,” he confided. “I came close.”

“What stopped you?” She picked up a pebble and sent it skimming across the water. The movement startled a flock of little white corellas that exploded into the air in protest.

“I have to let you decide what you want.” He glanced down at her. She wasn't wearing makeup—she didn't need any with her skin—not even lipstick, which he found strangely erotic. “Which isn't to say I'm going to wait a long time.”

“For me to decide to sleep with you?” Her head tilted, her eyes more green than blue in the shade of her wide-brimmed akubra.

“You will, whenever, wherever. We both know it.”

She looked back at the peaceful, unspoiled scene. “It could be a mistake. Neither of us is exactly reconciled to the past.”

“I'm trying, Nic. You find it very hard to trust.”

“I'm concentrating on getting my life right.”

“You think increasing intimacy with me will only interfere with that?” His tone was deeply serious.

She nodded. “I can't deal with you like I've dealt with other men in my life, Drake.”

“How many?”

“Fewer lovers than you,” she answered tartly, suddenly finding the idea of him with other women unbearable.

“How would you know about that?” He bent forward and picked up a small glittery stone, like fool's gold.

“I've heard.”

“Ah, yes, your ears. They've never failed you.”

She shrugged, her eyes on a sacred kingfisher, its plumage a glorious azure against the textured trunk of the tree where it had its nest. “Because no one ever told me anything, I had to eavesdrop to keep up with what was going on. It was a house of secrets. Even as a child I recognized that. I probably wouldn't have gone with Granddad that day, only I was listening on the stairs. Heath was shouting, filling the house with his rage. I was so frightened. Not of him. I was never frightened of him. I had an awful feeling something dreadful had happened to my mother. I knew she was never coming home. Not alive, anyway.”

“Poor little Nic.” He looked at her with enormous sympathy.

“For years I thought I hated the McClellands, David's family. Even you.”

“You didn't really.”

She shook her head sadly. “I flew off to escape the mess. Now I'm home.” She moved restlessly. “And I'm hot. I'd love to go for a swim. The water is far too enticing.”

“Who's stopping you?” he asked mildly.

She held her head the way she did as a child when she was about to challenge him. “I'm wearing a swimsuit.”

“I know.” He gave her a lazy smile. “I can see the top through your shirt.”

He moved back to sit on a large rock that protruded from the white sand.

“You're not going to watch me, are you?”

“Why so nervous?”

“Because you make me nervous, damn you. I like sensitive subtle men, not men who look like they're about to swoop me up and carry me off to their cave.”

“You're getting quite chickenhearted! I won't touch you, Nic, I promise. I might, however, join you when I'm ready.”

“Please yourself,” she tossed at him carelessly, though her heart rocked.

Under the canopy of the trees, her back turned to him, she kicked off her riding boots, peeled off her cotton shirt and stepped out of her jeans—in so much of a hurry she almost tripped over them. She was wearing a navy-and-turquoise two-piece that didn't go a long way toward covering her, but normally she was quite unselfconscious about her body.

When she finally turned around, his appreciative
eyes were on her, and she thought she might as well discard her swimsuit altogether, so naked did she feel. Without another word, she ran swiftly to the billabong, wading out a little before she slid into the surprisingly cold water, kicking out in a crawl. Her thick braid would get soaked, but she didn't care. It was wonderfully invigorating to be in the water after the rigors of the gallop.

The lagoon spread around her, stands of trees like sentinels around its banks. She swam a distance downstream in a smooth rhythmic crawl.

As Drake watched her stylish stroke, his yearning for her became a physical ache in his groin. He yearned, too, for that carefree closeness they'd once shared. He knew—in the deepest recesses of his heart he realized he'd known for years—that Nicole Cavanagh was very special to him. Now he was in up to his neck, even with the wretched issue of her parentage that had caused such deep division in the past still unresolved. At least for her. What was she backing away from? Dangerous love? He understood she didn't want to complicate her life, when she'd fought hard to get herself together. Wounded psyches didn't heal overnight. She said she liked sensitive subtle men, which he took to mean men she could control. He was sensitive and subtle enough when he had to be. Obviously something about him threatened her. Or was the threat the power of passion?

He'd been thinking lately of making the pilgrimage to Eden's escarpment and the desert floor where her mother and his uncle had died. He knew—not certain how he knew—that Heath Cavanagh had played no part in the final tragedy.

 

S
HE WATCHED HIM
get to his feet and cross the sand to the water's edge. From lifetime habit he'd come prepared for a swim, too.

“Oh, man!”
she breathed silently, realizing how beautifully he was built. Superbly fit, he wore royal-blue hipsters, no part of his body not darkly tanned. He was a man in perfect condition, every single ounce of superfluous flesh run off by hard work. She took in the wide shoulders, broad chest tapering to a narrow waist and lean flanks. Despite the coolness of the water, she could feel heat mount inside her like a furnace being stoked….