Christmas Holiday Husband (9 page)

“Julia was ambitious. She was absolutely sure of what she wanted—and the moment we met again at Matt’s wedding, it was me. I’ve never known a girl so single-minded. She was quite something.”

“And hard to resist?”

“Damned hard. She was a dynamo. She tended to get what she wanted.”

“Not that you objected, obviously?”

“Not hard enough, anyway. She was pretty, affectionate, from a well-to-do family. I thought she’d make a good wife. But she was a real schemer—tough as nails—although she kept that well hidden to start with. Both her brothers are competitive as hell. I suppose she took her cue from them—or from her dad, David, while he was still alive. Ginny’s a honey by comparison.”

He reached across and linked his fingers through hers so she couldn’t pull free. He’d been a hand-holder in Sydney; she’d loved being out in public with him, branded as his by a casual warm clasp.

“I’m not interested,” she growled, gazing down at their joined hands.

“You were into my pants before lunch. That felt pretty damned interested.”

“A moment’s aberration,” she declared, knowing she was on very shaky ground.

Tony let loose a whoop of laughter. “That’s a new name for it.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“We’ll see.” He let go of her hand, and she pulled it back well out of his reach.

“And then she announced she was pregnant.” The humour had fled from his voice.

Ellie’s world stood still.

“So that was me, ready-trussed for roasting. She really put the acid on after that. Marriage was a foregone conclusion as far as she was concerned.”

Ellie breathed out very slowly with the pain, and lowered herself to lean back on her elbows. She stared ahead, trembling, seeing nothing, as her emotions seethed and boiled almost out of control.

“Condom must have failed,” Tony continued. “Or maybe she sabotaged it? That nasty little possibility did occur to me. I was always careful with my ladies. You were already on the pill, and I was careful with you, wasn’t I?”

“After the first night,” she agreed in a small voice.

The unfairness of the situation was horrendous. Worse than she’d ever imagined possible.

Julia had become pregnant and gained everything—the man Ellie had wanted, his children, a luxurious lifestyle.

Ellie had become pregnant, and lost, and lost, and lost.

Lost her mother’s esteem for long months. Lost the opportunity of training as a teacher until the following year. Lost the company of her son while she was away achieving her diploma. Lost any chance of Callum knowing his father.

And lost her heart forever, she acknowledged. Tony had spoiled her for any future man.

“So there we were,” he continued. “City girl and country guy, stuck miles out in the back-blocks, her as sick as a dog most mornings. I wrecked her life, all right. She never really recovered.”

“You seriously think she got herself pregnant on purpose?”

“I was careful. Always used condoms with her before we married.
Always.
But who knows?” He plucked at a blade of grass and spoke towards the river. “I hoped I might track you down when I came back, but Julia’s pregnancy put paid to that.”

“No,” Ellie breathed, shaking her head in disbelief. The ache in her heart intensified. He’d remembered her? Still wanted her? And been stolen away by history repeating itself? It was tragic beyond anything she could imagine.

Tony waved at the horse-fly threatening to land on his belly, then shot her an anguished glance. “You were special to me, Ellie. Out of the question all those years ago in Sydney, but special.” He reached across and ran a finger down the side of her face.

Ellie’s breath hitched, and instinctively she turned her head and sank her teeth into his hand to stop its unnerving progress.

“Stop,” she mumbled around his fingers. How she longed to lick his flesh, taste his skin, slide her tongue over him!

Tony sighed and removed his hand. “Julia hated the farm as passionately as I loved it,” he said. “We did our best, but it wasn’t working...was never going to work. We travelled as much as we could, but we always had to come back here. And then they found the tumour.”

He resumed pulling at the rough grass beside the rug. “I’ve been in limbo for the last three or four years. Stranded. Marking time. Wondering how the hell Julia and I could possibly settle things between us. I shouldn’t admit it, but her illness set me free. You’ve no idea the extra guilt
that
laid on me. It made things a hell of a lot worse, not better.”

Ellie hardly heard him. She was still too aware of his touch on her face, and her own helpless reaction. Slowly his meaning sank in to her addled brain as he stared into space, silent for a while.

So she hadn’t imagined the expression in his eyes the evening before? She’d thought he looked desolate. His normally warm brown eyes had been distant and cold.

But maybe she’d been in limbo too? She’d kept herself frantically busy, bustling about and filling every minute of her days. Given time to her son, her mother, and her pupils. But none to herself. Or none that was kind and indulgent.

With huge effort she’d achieved her goals of job and security, but had she found happiness or peace?

Thinking like this is useless
, she scolded herself. Her son, her job, her soon-to-be-finished house were quite enough. More than many single women gained. She’d worked for them with real determination and was proud of the way she’d managed to organise her life for Cal. She should be satisfied.

So why the hell wasn’t she...quite...any longer?

She drew a deep breath. “Tony, I have my life all arranged. I love my work. I’m really looking forward to moving into my own home. I’m pleased to be here at Wharemoana—this job is ideal for me. It’s somewhere to live for a while, too. But if we were to—” she hesitated, searching his face while she located the right description—“get together, it could only be temporary, until I went back to my real life.”

His gaze fastened on hers. “You mean mutual pleasure, no strings?”

Ellie nodded slowly, trying to gauge his reaction. “Yes, it would have to be like that.” Such a thought both relieved and appalled her. The prospect of once again becoming his lover was so tempting. But it had to be balanced against the certainty of being ripped away from him a second time. No amount of pleasure could make up for the pain that would follow.

“No problem, Ellie. That’s fine.” He sounded coolly controlled...unaffected by such a businesslike arrangement.

She looked away from his dark eyes, pretending to consider, knowing how difficult he’d be to resist.

Once bitten, twice shy.

If he’d found marriage such a disaster, for sure he wouldn’t want to tie himself down again, so that was one worry out of the way.

The bigger problem was Cal’s paternity, but she’d hide that by ensuring he never came near the farm.

She’d been contracted to work at Wharemoana until the end of January when the new school term began. Then she’d be putting plenty of distance between herself and Tony, however much that hurt. Perhaps a casual liaison was possible?

Leaving him would be hell on earth, but the prospect of a temporary paradise was almost overpowering.

And there was always the chance they might prove incompatible. It might fizzle out to nothing.

Yeah, right
.

“I’ll think about it,” she conceded.

Her body buzzed. Her brain smoked. She was at least halfway toward making the most stupid decision of her life.

And then Tony leaned across and kissed her.

It was a small soft kiss that was sweetly regretful, hugely hungry, and which never quite finished because Ellie’s determination fractured and she slid possessive hands over his shoulders...brushed her fingertips over the velvety new growth of his hair...and pulled him down to deepen their embrace. She wanted him, right at that instant. With eleven years’ hard-leashed passion that had suddenly rushed free. With the longing that had never ended.

xxx

Tony moved his body over hers, pinning her beneath him, positioning himself for the penetration that could certainly not occur yet, even though she’d parted her thighs to cradle him.

“Ellie,” he breathed, pushing his hips against hers. He’d grown outrageously hard, already primed again for possession. She’d responded so fast that his brain still processed the permission given, but his body was way ahead. Thundering with blood. Tight with passion. Desperate to claim her and subdue her and stamp her as his. All his male instincts raged at fever pitch. He could barely believe his luck after the long bitter guilt-ridden years he’d endured.

And her mouth!
Delicious.

The first savage tide of desperation subsided. He kissed her more gently, nipped her nose, brushed his lips over her eyelids, whispered against her neck that she was beautiful, that he wanted her even more than he had all those years ago in Sydney.

She sighed beneath him, murmured, “The girls will see.” But then she closed her lips around his earlobe and sucked.

Tony growled deep in his throat. Groaning, cursing, laughing softly, he levered himself off her and lay face down on the rug.

To judge from the excited barking of the old brown spaniel the girls were still some distance away, but...

“Tonight, then,” he said. The negotiating was over.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The cliffs did yield fossils—old crumbling shells that intrigued the twins, because the sea was several miles away.

“How did they get here, Daddy?”

“This land used to be way down under the ocean. It got pushed up in a huge earthquake, or maybe lots of little ones, thousands of years ago.”

“Millions, more likely,” Ellie said, still feeling his kiss, hearing ‘tonight then’ echoing through her brain.

“So there might be dinosaur bones? Really?”

Eyes grew wide. Antonia started to scrape harder with her trowel. It would take hours to make much impression. Uncovering any possible dinosaur was weeks away.

Ellie saw Tony’s amused glance. “Can you find an old cow bone or something?” she muttered, flicking her eyes out over the rough ground. He took the hint and wandered off, returning a couple of minutes later with something concealed in his hand. She watched as he pushed it into a crack not too far distant.

“There are some more shells over this way, Ellie,” he said. The twins scampered over to him, and the weathered old bone was duly discovered.

“Dinosaur! Daddy—look, a real dinosaur bone!” The thrill factor was huge.

Tony turned the bone around in his hand. “It just might be,” he said. “I suppose by some miracle it’s possible. What do you think it could have been? A big toe?”

To Ellie it looked suspiciously like a sheep-shank discarded after a riverside barbecue. “Goodness,” she exclaimed, trying to keep a straight face.

A few minutes later she checked her watch. “Nearly two-thirty. Teacher thinks it’s time for lessons in the classroom.” There were groans from the girls, but Tony agreed they’d been out in the sun long enough.

As they drove back to Wharemoana, he reached across and caressed her thigh, running a finger from her knee up to the hem of her shorts, then down again. She shivered with the implied promise of intimacy to follow, and was surprised when he said, “School hasn’t finished for the year yet. Or not according to Bob and his wife. How did you swing it?”

She lifted his hand away and dropped it on his own leg. “No mystery. I’m an on call relief teacher. A fill in for when others get sick or schools are short of staff.”

“So you don’t have a permanent class at the same school?”

“Sometimes, but mostly not for long. And yes, I swap schools all the time.”

He looked across at her, doubt in his eyes. “But why?”

“The hourly rate is better. Simple as that. I wanted to get my house deposit together as fast as I could. It means I have to be ready every morning to jump into action plugging emergency gaps, but it’s a better deal moneywise.” She reached back and gathered her hair into a ponytail, then let it fall again. “We don’t all live in your nice clean easy world, Tony.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yeah—no mud, no dung, no floods or droughts in my world. No pests and diseases, no worries about draconian government regulations or overseas markets cancelling their orders at short notice. No problem staff. No tractor or quad bike accidents.
Really
nice and easy...”

Ellie bit her lip. “Sorry. But you know what I mean. There’s only me to depend on, so I have to do the best I can.”

She turned away and stared ahead at the ribbon of gravelled road. “When I saw your ad asking for a private tutor, I thought ‘why not?’ I’m a good teacher—you learn a heap when you’re facing new classes all the time. I was able to start straight away, and that seemed to suit Ginny.” She glanced over at him again. “And then the flat caught fire, and it was amazing to have the possibility of a job with accommodation.”