Sarah's Baby (7 page)

“Sarah!” It took mere moments for him to reach her.

“Can't you see…can't you see…” She was breathless. Her voice trembled.

“What? Please tell me.”

Her weakness lasted perhaps ten seconds. She shook her head fiercely. “I've got to stop,” she said fiercely. She could melt away just from looking at him. She refused to. That would be inviting fire down on her head.

He heard her desperation, the conflict behind it. “Why not give in to it?” His voice was low-pitched, unconsciously thrilling.

It filled every space in her. The walls she'd taken refuge behind abruptly collapsed. Kyall's arms were around her, hers locked across his wide back.
This is what arms are for,
she thought helplessly.
Holding one another. In love.

He pulled her closer. Murmured something in her ear.

Old endearments? She couldn't tell.

“Sarah!” His caressing hands were simmering with electricity, touching every chord beneath her sensitive flesh.

Just for a moment, a little while, she let her head rest against his chest. To lay down her burden. His hands were moving along her back, so carefully he might have been an anatomy student studying her bone structure. Even through her grief, she couldn't fail to respond, her little sobbing gasps growing shorter as he began to nuzzle her neck. Her body was moving into another dimension now. She'd dreamed of feeling like this…

Dark eyes stormy, she looked up at him, felt the wavelets
of panic, swirling resentments, then a flowering, flashes of color. The world wasn't wide enough to separate her from Kyall. She could want no one else.

“This is me, Sarah,” he muttered, contending with his own confusions and frustrations. “How I've missed you! God almighty, every day!” He drew her into a kiss that sent her heart spinning, a kiss full of heartbreak and undying passion. Then for long moments he felt the bliss of utter forgetfulness.

The last time he'd kissed her, he had been on the threshold of manhood; now he was a man, with volcanic desires locked up inside him. He could feel her melting, melting, the heat of her skin proof of her blood surging hot.

Her breath was as clean and fresh as creek water. It had a citrus quality, too, that he had never forgotten. She couldn't and didn't deny him, her mouth wide-open to his exploration. What were words, when he could put his heart into his tumultuous feelings? He had lived with betrayal and a hurt so deep it had cut to the bone. He should push her away, seek retribution. But in his arms, she was the old Sarah. His Sarah. Her flesh was burning at his touch.

It was a kiss that he held on to forever, thinking that when he let her go, she would return to her hiding place. His hand sought the swell of her breast, not wonderingly as it once had, but confidently, possessively, his thumb working the nipple through the fine fabric. He had seduced her—but didn't she know he would love her forever? She'd never given him a chance.

My Sarah. My first love. My only love.

“Kyall, we can't do this.” She wrenched her head away, running her tongue over her lips. “We can't start again.”

He swore softly, fervently. “Why the hell not? Why are you so different from other people? Always running away from the things that hurt you. Obviously I'm one of them.
But we're not kids anymore. Our lives are in our own hands. You couldn't kiss me like that if you didn't mean it. Look at you! You're like me. Aching for physical release. For God's sake, you can't remain a girl forever. Let's just get married and end this nightmare. There's no life for either of us otherwise.”

Now. Now. Make a move. Tell him.
Sarah felt the challenge to her integrity and her courage. At the last minute she backed off. “And what then?” she demanded, her taut nerves evident. “Everything's going to be great? No damned way! I'd be no more welcome in your family now than I was years ago. You and I aren't going to happen, Kyall. That's just how it is.”

He held her fast, although she pushed back against his arms. “So you've chosen to be forever on the run?” He stared accusingly into her face. “What I should've done was make you pregnant years ago. Then you'd never have been able to leave me. We would've been together—would've stayed together.”

She turned her head away.

“I could make you pregnant now.” He fought to block a powerful, near-violent flood of emotion. “God knows that's what I want. You made a mess of my life, Sarah, not just yours. If I meant so little to you, why aren't you married? Has what happened between us made you frigid? We were in love—it wasn't a sin.”

“Then why do you feel so guilty?” she asked tempestuously. What did he know of her pain? He'd been spared.

He caught the back of her head. “Sarah, you're a highly intelligent woman, a trained doctor, not a neurotic with sexual problems.” His tone was deliberately controlled, bone-dry. “You've always denied it, but I can only conclude my grandmother threw a scare into you and your mother.”

“What would you have done had you known?” she
asked, trying to speak more quietly. “How could you have helped? You were sixteen!”

He studied her tormented, unsmiling face. “My grandmother has never ruled my life the way she has others. I'd almost become a man.
Was
a man after that night. I would've defended you, Sarah. You and your mother. You only had to tell me. My grandmother holds no terrors for me. Or mine. I could never in my heart believe what she told me—that you were ambitious. That you wanted an education above anything else. That you wanted to be a doctor and didn't want the distraction of adolescent love.”

“I had to start looking after myself, my future,” she responded bluntly, thinking she couldn't bear his anger and bitter disillusionment.

“This is a good time to ask. You weren't pregnant, were you? I've tortured myself with that.”

“Oh, Kyall…” It sounded like a lament. For lament it was.

“All right, all right, I'm sorry.” His apology was swift. “I know you would've told me. But it seemed a real possibility, so I had to consider it.”

“We only made love once.”

He threw her a derisive glance. “Once is all it takes. You know that better than I do. Have you had other partners, Sarah? Other lovers?”

“Fabulous ones!” She gave a short laugh and looked skyward. “No, I haven't been able to form any long-term relationships, Kyall. Anyway, I've been too busy.”

“Yet you're a passionate woman. You wouldn't have given up sex.”

She shrugged. “Sex is great, but I couldn't get serious about anyone. Consider that. I'm the victim of a forbidden love.” She laughed ironically. “In the grip of an obsession. I don't know if I love you or hate you, Kyall McQueen,
but I have to tell you this. I utterly and completely refuse to marry you.”

He suppressed the urge to shake her. “Could it be that you're emotionally stunted?” he demanded angrily. “If it were anyone else, I'd take it as a sign of immaturity. Poor Sarah,” he mocked. “Do you really think you can admit to loving me or hating me—what's the difference?—and then run off again? What sort of crazy strategy is that? You'll never be free of me. You'd better understand that.”

“What about India Claydon?” she flung at him. “She's madly in love with you.”

“India is no match for you, Sarah.”

“But you keep her around.”

“My grandmother keeps her around,” he corrected. “India is one of the few people she approves of. God knows why.”

“Because India will carry on the grand tradition and she'll never be fool enough to cross your grandmother.”

“Exactly. But I'm not going to marry India. I want you. That's not about to change.”

A cooling breeze came off the water and she turned her heated face toward it. “I dreaded coming back to town.”

“It's not the town you dread.” He spoke with a hard edge of disgust. “It's me. Why? You or your mother didn't sign some agreement with my grandmother, did you? Some legal document? If you did, tell me. I'll fix it. This whole business is bizarre. Something wrong at the heart of it. Can't you meet my eyes?” He took hold of her, communicating his urgency.

She shook her head. “No need to get angry. I signed no agreement, Kyall.” In fact, unbeknownst to her, her mother had. She had found it among her mother's papers. Agonized over it.

“Well, that's a relief,” he muttered with acid humor.

Above their heads the branches of the bauhinias were whispering to one another. The Aboriginals considered them fairy trees. The fairies that lived in them were urging Sarah to confide in him. Only she wasn't brave enough. She broke away blindly, making for the track, although the strength had gone out of her arms and legs.

There was comfort in silence.

 

O
N THE RETURN JOURNEY
Sarah confounded Kyall by telling him about Joe Randall's proposal that she take over from him at the hospital.

He'd been driving across the open plain, dodging the clumps of spinifex. Now he hit the brakes and drew the vehicle to a halt. “Sarah!” he exploded. “Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I don't know,” she said. “This is a very traumatic time for me, Kyall. I've settled into a kind of life. I have spells of being happy. My patients think I'm a good doctor and I do get results, so I must be doing something right. I deal with very sad things, but I try not to let my emotions get the better of me. Most doctors have to do that. But whenever I come back here, it all starts up again. The desperate memories…”

“Memories I share, Sarah,” he told her. “You don't want to love me. But don't you think I've been through that? I've tried to stop loving you. I wanted to get on with my life, but so far it hasn't worked. For either of us, obviously. But we can't go on and on and never find a resolution. What did you think of Joe's suggestion? He's ill, isn't he. He keeps putting me off when I ask him.”

“He has a condition that's very worrisome,” Sarah said evasively, Joe having sworn her to a secrecy of sorts.

“Go on,” Kyall urged. “I should tell you I'd never ex
pect you to give up your profession. Everything you've worked for.”

“You mean you'd come to the city?” Her voice held disbelief. “A McQueen of Wunnamurra Station. Scion of the McQueen dynasty.”

“Why not?”

Sarah turned fully to stare into his eyes. “You, give up your heritage? Devastate your grandmother?” she asked incredulously.

He laid a hand on her shoulder, his lean fingers automatically caressing. “Who said anything about giving up my heritage? My heritage is intact. Gran is only the custodian. She can't disinherit me. She won't even try. Legally she wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I can administer our affairs from anywhere. We have a station overseer and there's Mum and Dad. Gran's never given Dad credit for all the hard work he's done. He's too much a gentleman of the old school—he should've put her straight long ago. My mother's been too busy staying on Gran's good side to support her own husband. It's all too sad.” He flashed a sardonic smile. “We all live under one roof, but we're not a proper family.”

“Whose fault is that?” Sarah retorted. “It's a tragedy that your grandfather, Ewan, died so early. He'd have kept your grandmother in line. She would never have been able to adopt the role of dictator. She seems to enjoy making everyone around her feel insecure.”

Kyall acknowledged Sarah's words with a grimace. “Still, she's shown me nothing but affection.”

“A bond that can't be broken.” Sarah leaned her head back, her expression plainly unhappy.

“If she's ever hurt you, Sarah, she'd learn very quickly that her love—her kind of love—is not enough.”

A curious expression rippled across her face. “You say
all this, Kyall, but you don't really want to cut your ties with the land. Your love for it has a spiritual dimension. I feel it myself, although I'm not from an outback dynasty. My father just happened to be your top ringer.”

He gazed at her, so beautiful, so desirable, so maddening, she made his head spin. “Your father knew everything there was to know about shearing. He had the reputation of being a great bloke. You have no reason to look down on your father.”

“Who said I did?” Sarah burst out. “It's your family and the likes of India Claydon who make judgments like that.”

“She's jealous, Sarah,” he said quietly. “What can anyone do about jealousy? It's in her nature. India didn't get to be top student at school. She didn't go on to collect a medical degree. I've noticed that tendency in India. I don't particularly like it. Mitch couldn't be more different.”

Thinking of their friend Mitchell Claydon, Sarah's face relaxed into a smile. “Mitch spent almost as much time with Christine as you and I did together. We seemed to team up very early. You and I. Mitch and Chris. I know Christine cares about Mitchell Claydon to this day, only the struggle to be free of your mother's domination took her away from him. Just like me. Both of us outcasts.”

“You'll both return,” Kyall answered somberly. “Would you consider Joe's proposition? It would bring you back to me.”

Sarah wondered yet again what Ruth McQueen would make of that. “It's too weighty a decision to be made quickly. It would bring me back to you, certainly. It would also bring me a lot of stress.”

“As in work?” He picked up on that swiftly. “If you accepted, I'd do everything in my power to find another
doctor, although as you'd know, it's not easy when we're so remote.”

Part of her wanted to answer now. Part of her couldn't. “I can't say just yet, Kyall. I'm feeling far more vulnerable than I'd like. Going it alone—being separated from my mother—I had to develop a whole set of barriers or be overwhelmed. Can you understand that?”