The Collector's Edition Volume 1 (8 page)

Monty chuckled, dropped his hand to the bedcover and relaxed back against the pillows. ‘I’ve got you. You’ve always been a man of your word, Dan.’

‘One of my many failings,’ Dan said dryly.

Monty smiled up at her. ‘Look after him, Jayne. He’s my man.’

‘I’ll do my best, Monty,’ she assured him, not prepared to disturb his peace of mind.

‘Now go off and blow up mountains,’ he bade them cheerfully. ‘I don’t want to see either of you again until this job in China is done and you report back to me in Sydney.’

They left the ward. As they made their way out of the hospital, Jayne reflected that Dan would have no trouble keeping his word to Monty. He planned to fly to Australia anyway to have Anya baptised with Jayne as her godmother.
He wouldn’t have to go far out of his way to have a chat with Monty.

‘That was very tactful of you,’ she remarked, then couldn’t help adding, ‘Though somewhat deceptive.’

He gave her an ironic look. ‘You think I was being deceptive?’

She hesitated. ‘Weren’t you?’

‘I think I’d call it a wait-and-see situation,’ he drawled.

She frowned, hating the feeling of uncertainty. ‘Do you mean…if Monty still offers you fifty-one percent after a cooling-off period, you’d actually accept it?’

They reached the truck and he turned to face her, his eyes burning with relentless purpose. ‘You know, Jayne, when I saw Mount Everest for the first time, what came into my mind was how would I go about shifting it.’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she asked in bewilderment.

‘For some reason I find unfathomable, you’ve built a mountain between us. One way or another, I’m going to shift that mountain. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll find out what’s needed to blow it apart. And every other mountain you try to put between us, I’ll blow apart. I’ll reduce it all to rubble so I have a clear vista of who and what you are and who and what you want to be.’

‘Why?’ she cried. His determination was frightening in its single-mindedness. He wasn’t
even looking at, let alone considering long-term consequences. ‘Why is it so essential for you to control things?’

His gaze raked her from head to foot, searing in its intensity. ‘You might be Dragon Lady to everybody else, but not to me. To me you are the woman who was and should still be my wife, and I’ll fight for that with any means that comes within my orbit.’

Jayne’s heart kicked into overdrive. He wanted her back with him. He wanted their marriage resumed. He wanted…A danger klaxon shrieked through her mind. He might want too much, as he had before!

‘So, to get a controlling interest in me, you’d even take up Monty’s partnership offer. Is that your intention?’ she asked, to determine how far he would go for her.

‘This isn’t a power game, Jayne. Not to me. For a wife who wanted me…for a wife who wanted to have my children—’ his mouth curved sensually and his voice was a skin-tingling caress ‘—for her I would consider doing many things.’

‘Even settle in one place?’

‘Surely between people of goodwill, compromises can be found.’

She recollected Monty’s assurance that Dan could choose wherever he wanted to travel. How much would he really consider her needs when it came down to living with them?

Jayne scooped in a deep breath and very slowly released it. ‘We have work to do,’ she said bruskly, and, steeling herself against the emotional tug on her heart and the sexual magnetism that was pulling on her bones, she forced her legs to stride around to the driver’s side of the truck and climb into the cabin.

If they were to make love and have a baby, it would be in
her
time, on
her
terms, she dictated to herself. Nevertheless she couldn’t deny the heady mixture of hope and excitement leaping through her mind. This wasn’t a case of her following Dan. He was actively chasing her. But she wasn’t going to get caught until she was absolutely sure of what getting caught would mean for her.

J
AYNE
tried to keep level-headed as she worked closely with Dan. They did not take days off. The schedule was tight. The project had to be completed on time. They were constantly on the move, constantly together. The strong physical attraction between them was also ever constant, evoking a high-tension awareness that played havoc with Jayne’s concentration on her job as Dan’s assistant.

More insidious were the reminders of all the character traits she had loved in Dan, as well as other aspects of his personality she had not really been privy to before. During the four years as his wife, she had never seen him at work, never experienced what it was like to be with him as he went about his business. It was a revelation.

He didn’t just walk in and assume authority as he had every right to do as an acknowledged world expert in his field. He talked to the Chinese engineers, one by one, respectfully drawing from them their opinions and ideas on the mudflow problem, picking their brains of all local knowledge, showing keen interest in every bit of information he drew from them.

They liked him for it. He made them feel important. He injected the sense of everyone being a vital part of a team. In return, they quite naturally perceived him as a leader they instinctively trusted to put it all together and get it right for them. He earned their goodwill, their ready cooperation, as well as Jayne’s admiration and a much deeper appreciation of why Monty wanted Dan to head his company. It was not only Dan’s expertise in explosives. It was his expertise in leadership.

Then there was the way he treated her when he reviewed Monty’s files on the project. He complimented her on her orderly and efficient presentation of notes and maps, listened attentively when she filled him in on other points of progress to date, was unreservedly vocal in his appreciation of her general comprehension of what was required in her job as his—Monty’s—personal assistant.

There was one short conversation Jayne could not help hugging to her heart.

‘I can see why Monty values you so highly,’ Dan said with genuine spontaneity, then followed the observation with a rueful smile and the admission, ‘I’m sorry for pigeon-holing you as simply my wife, Jayne. If I’d realised your potential for such meticulous organisation with this kind of work, we could have shared so much more.’

His recognition of her worth as an assistant made her glow with pleasure. But was it a promise for the future, or merely an acknowledgement of a past mistake?

‘Travel agents have to check everything and get the scheduling right,’ she remarked, more as a statement of fact than a criticism of his oversight. ‘You never gave the impression you needed any help. I would have offered.’

He mused on that for several moments before answering, ‘Heritage, I guess. My dad never asked nor expected my mother to help with his work. He was happy with her being happy doing her own thing.’

‘Then perhaps your ideal wife should be an artist who can fulfil her talent in any environment without the need for others to contribute anything.’

‘No.’ He grinned, sending electric charges through her nervous system. ‘I don’t want to feel shut out of any part of my wife’s life. I like this better.’

For now…or for always?

It was a question that endlessly teased Jayne’s mind.

She was his wife…if she wanted to be…and each night she found it harder and harder to shut him out of her bedroom. Not that he made any overt sexual advance on her but he made no secret of what he desired. It was in his eyes all the time, the tempting invitation, the seductive sizzle of his
intimate knowledge of her, the unremitting challenge to take up what he offered, to risk the outcome and the consequences.

Jayne was acutely aware he was leaving the decision to her. He wanted her to show she wanted him, show it unstintingly, unreservedly, to choose him of her own free will, for better or for worse, to wash away the negative residue from having left him with a positive flow of faith and love and enduring commitment.

Sometimes she wished he would make it easy for her by just sweeping her into his arms and obliterating all her doubts and fears in a searing outpouring of passion. Yet she knew that was pure and desperate escapism, not an answer to her sense of insecurity about what a future with Dan might mean in terms of real togetherness.

She watched him with Anya, who went everywhere with him. Not even the tricky operation of setting the explosives in the mountains deterred Dan from taking Anya along. For the most part, his role in this work was supervisory, although he stepped in to make corrections whenever the Chinese engineers didn’t quite follow his instructions to the letter.

He talked to the baby as though she took in and understood every word he said. Somehow the communication seemed to work because Anya always responded to him with grave, innocent trust or a burst of baby chatter that Dan interpreted with paternal indulgence.

Why did communication get so difficult as life patterns took on more individual twists and turns?

The wonderful bond Dan and Anya shared was a further torment to Jayne. She couldn’t imagine a better father for the children she wanted herself. Eventually. When the circumstances were right.

Was it possible to strike a happy balance between her needs and Dan’s? Or at least a workable balance? How far would he compromise on a style of life he enjoyed?

A wait-and-see situation. That’s what he had said. No assurances. No guarantees. Wait and see…The words haunted her. It was the kind of thing her father had said when she asked him where he was taking her this time…taking her only to desert her again.

The nights were longer and lonelier than ever before, her sleeping pattern more and more shallow and restless. She awoke with a thumping headache from some formless nightmare one night and couldn’t stand the silent, claustrophobic darkness of her bedroom for another minute.

She leapt out of bed, switched on the light, quickly wrapped herself in a housecoat to ward off the sudden chill of the predawn hour, then hurried out to the kitchen to take some painkillers and make herself a cup of tea. She needed something warm inside her, warm and calming.

She was seated at the table, hunched over a steaming teacup, feeling despairingly bereft of all human comfort when she heard footsteps padding softly down the hallway toward the kitchen. There was nowhere for her to hide. She watched helplessly as Dan filled the doorway, the only exit back to the privacy of her bedroom.

She knew she looked pale and bedraggled. She felt a total mess, mentally, emotionally and physically. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. She stared fixedly at the deep V of tanned chest left naked by his loosely tied bathrobe. A black bathrobe. Was it the same one she’d given him for his birthday? Would he have kept it, worn it for over two years? It seemed to have the greyish tinge of well-washed age.

‘Are you all right, Jayne?’

The soft, caring words curled into her mind and wound their way down to her heart, squeezing it unmercifully. She dragged her gaze up to his, helplessly imploring answers she knew he wouldn’t—possibly couldn’t—give.

‘Jayne?’

She saw the concern in his eyes flicker uncertainly then recede, swallowed by a dark turbulence that enveloped her with urgent tentacles of need and want. His hand lifted, reaching out. He took a step forward.

‘No,’ she cried, a desperate croak of denial.

He checked himself.

‘I’m not all right.’ The words spilled from a deep chasm of emptiness inside her. ‘I’ve never been all right. For a while, with you, I thought I had everything I’d ever wanted. You gave me so much I had craved, Dan. And I’m sorry…I’m sorry it wasn’t enough. I’m sorry I couldn’t take it anymore. I can’t…I can’t…’

Her throat convulsed. Tears welled into her eyes. Impossible to stem the flow. She struggled to find Dragon Lady, to make her emerge with the inner fire of purpose that had sustained her for so long, but the fire was drowned in a tidal wave of tears pressing to get out, uncontrollable. And then it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. The grief for what had never been had broken out of its locked container, swamping everything else.

D
AN
was momentarily paralysed with uncertainty. He’d thought she was about to give in. He’d set out to win her back, charm her, convince her, seduce her if necessary. But this heart-wrenching torment…

Tears…A woman’s weapon…Yet Jayne had never used it. In all the time he had known her she hadn’t once wept for or over anything. Not even when she had left him. She had turned inward, presenting a stone face that denied him entry to her thoughts and feelings. The frustration of it had been maddening. For her to break down like this…God! What had he done to her in his determined drive to make her his wife again?

Disappointment and grief twisted through him. Hadn’t two years given him the message she didn’t want him in her life? What right did he have to crash his way into a world she was trying to shape for herself?

Wanting the satisfaction of proving she had been wrong to end their marriage had fired him along this track. Certainly there was pride involved, though it went much deeper than that.
He had wanted, still wanted, the love that had once been theirs.

How to comfort her? Would she accept comfort from him? Couldn’t a husband—even an ex-husband—be a friend who cared about her? More than cared, he mocked himself, but concern for her was uppermost as he moved to the table and slowly lowered himself into the chair opposite hers.

She had propped an elbow on the table, her hand covering her eyes. Her other hand lay limply beside the teacup. He reached across and gently stroked her fingers.

‘It’s no use,’ she choked out. ‘I can’t, Dan.’

‘I’m not pushing anything, Jayne,’ he soothed, encouraged that she didn’t reject the light skin contact. ‘I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘Not your fault.’

He frowned, not understanding. Streamlets of tears were tracking down her cheeks, dripping from her chin. The sheer abandonment of any attempt to wipe away or mop up the steady spill screwed up Dan’s stomach. He couldn’t stand it. He curled his hand around hers, pressing with what he hoped felt like warm reassurance as he urged her to accept the only ready offer he could make.

‘Jayne, honey, I haven’t got a handkerchief on me, but this old towelling robe can soak up a fair lot of moisture. You gave it to me yourself, so
we’ve already had some sharing time with it. You could treat it as an old friend to lean on. No more than that, I promise you.’

The response shattered any reasoned thinking. Jayne burst into more anguished sobbing. Before Dan could give any consideration to what he was doing, he was on his feet and pulling Jayne out of her hunch and up from her chair, wrapping his arms securely around her as she sagged against him.

‘You just let go now, love. Let the pain out. You’re safe with me,’ he heard himself murmur huskily, his lips sweeping over the tangled silk of her hair, his nostrils sucking in the scent of it, arousing an almost sick yearning for all he had just forbidden himself. Yet the helpless yielding of her body to his strength, to his support, brought a surge of tenderness, a fierce desire to protect, that took away the initial sting of his need for her.

He rubbed her back with the same soothing gentle action he used on Baby Anya when she had a bit of colic. He laid his cheek on her hair, wanting to cocoon her in the comfort of other human touch so she didn’t feel alone. He thought over what she’d said, trying to make sense of it, wanting to fix whatever was so shatteringly wrong for her.

‘What can’t you take anymore, Jayne?’ he asked softly.

Her body shook with another convulsive burst of weeping.

‘Is it me?’ he rasped in anguish. ‘Do you want me to go? Get out of your life?’

‘No…no…’

The tightness in his chest eased as he breathed again. Her face burrowed into the thick cloth covering his shoulder. She snuffled like a wounded child in need of succour. His arms tightened around her, yearning to impart a healing love.

‘Tell me, Jayne,’ he pleaded. ‘Let me help.’

‘I…don’t…know…if you can. It’s…not…fair.’ She hiccupped, struggling for some control. She sounded deathly tired. Exhausted. ‘You’re…you, Dan.’

‘And you are you. I want to know, to understand. Please…if it doesn’t hurt too much?’

She snuffled some more, took deep breaths, laid her head limply on his shoulder. ‘All my life…endless moving…the people…a passing parade of strangers. No time to fit in and belong. Like a shadow of a person. No substance. I didn’t count. I didn’t mean anything to anyone. Until I met you.’

‘You mean more to me than I can tell you, Jayne,’ he assured her with deep fervour. ‘Believe it. It’s true.’

‘Oh, Dan!’ It was a long, tremulous sigh of longing. ‘I loved you so much. You made me feel important.’

‘You were. You are.’

‘But you wanted to move on…and on. And I lost myself again. It all became unreal. As though I was a marionette being pulled along by your strings. And I can’t face that feeling again. I’m not like your mother. Nor mine,’ she added dully.

‘Yours?’ This was new territory for him. He felt compelled to explore it as far as he could. Later he could think about what she was telling him, what it meant in terms of the love and life he wanted to have with her.

‘She went everywhere with my father. I think she kept track of things for the band. It was their life.’

He vaguely recollected Jayne telling him her father had been a musician. Her mother had probably had the organizational skills Jayne had inherited.

‘I don’t think she minded where they went as long as it was together. The band was like a family to both of them.’

‘Not to you?’

‘I guess…in an offhand kind of way. They found places for me to live…people who’d take me in for a while…after my mother died.’

‘How old were you then, Jayne?’

‘Seven.’

And here she was, twenty years later, still without what she had needed all her life. A secure home base. People that she knew, who knew her,
down the continuity of years of knowing. Acceptance, approval, appreciation for all that she was and could be. Substance. Roots.

He closed his eyes and barely stifled a groan as the signposts she’d given him flashed through his mind with poignant power.

The need to establish her own identity.

Satisfaction in using the skills she knew she had.

Pride, self-respect…not a nothing person nor a second-class citizen without a voice of her own.

A home for Anya Micaela to come to if she ever needed it, wanted it.

And the self-absorption he had accused her of…she didn’t know any other way to survive except to turn in on the inner strength that she had silently depended on with no other supportive constant in her life.

The insights came so strongly, not only filling in the picture he had wanted but colouring it so vividly he could feel himself recoiling from the emotional neglect and the intense personal isolation that were the sum of her experience…except for what she had known with him…for a while.

‘Dan…’

‘Mmmh?’

‘Thanks for holding me up and giving me your robe to cry on.’

‘The least I could do,’ he said with sad irony.

‘I’m all washed out, Dan.’

She sounded it, drained and infinitely weary. ‘I’ll walk you to your bed. You might fall or stumble.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Don’t argue. I’m your boss and I need you on your feet tomorrow. Okay?’

She sighed and sagged her surrender to his management. He bent and scooped her off her feet. She needed to be carried. He wanted to carry her, wanted to hug her close, protect her, cuddle her.

She didn’t resist. She hung her arms around his neck and nestled her head against his cheek like a forlorn little child. It moved Dan deeply…the implicit trust in him, the instinctive faith that he would look after her.

He wished he had looked after her with far more care and attention and knowledge when they were married, instead of assuming he did his fair share of giving in the husband role, being the provider, the planner, the decision-maker, the achiever for both of them.

It hadn’t entered his head that what he was doing was literally pulling her along with him, wanting her to ride beside him on his merry-go-round, blindly dismissing the obvious indications that she was finding it difficult to cope with the changes he rang whenever it suited him.

He found himself in Jayne’s bedroom, beside her bed, with no memory of having negotiated the passage here. He didn’t want to put her down.
She was clinging to him. He turned and sat on the bed, holding her on his lap, reluctant to part from her. She needed him. To leave her alone would be wrong. She wasn’t all right and she’d feel even less all right if he left her alone, prey to more torment in the isolation of darkness.

He cleared his throat. ‘Jayne, honey…’ The endearment was probably a mistake. She might think…Damnation! How could he put it?

‘I’m going to stay with you and hold you until you’re sound asleep,’ he said in a decisive rush. ‘There’s nothing for you to worry about. I won’t take advantage of being close to you. I don’t want you lying here alone, thinking bad thoughts. It wasn’t wrong for you to cry and tell me things. It was good. And if you want to tell me more, I’m here to listen.’

He hoped that was enough reassurance.

She stirred, turning her face into his throat. Her breath was a warm caress on his skin, arousing memories, needs that he couldn’t let himself dwell on.

‘Is it asking too much…?’ she began hesitantly.

‘Anything you want,’ he promised gruffly.

‘Would you lie with me spoon-fashion, Dan? That always made me feel at peace somehow. I’ve missed it so.’

‘Me, too. They were the best times.’

‘Yes.’ It was a long, dragged out sigh of contentment, and the soft fullness of her breasts swelled and eased more closely against his chest.

Dan felt himself stir, the muscles around his loins tightening. How the hell was he going to stop an erection, lying next to her like that? Did she remember it was how they had lain together
after
they had made love, when every desire had been satisfied and the sweet languor of absolute satiation had drifted into the peace of utter fulfilment?

He tried to block it out of his mind as he busied himself removing her housecoat and putting her to bed. He couldn’t resist stroking her glorious hair out on the pillow and pressing a soft kiss on her forehead.

‘Won’t be a moment,’ he murmured.

He walked swiftly to the light switch and turned it off. The darkness was a relief. He didn’t want her to see the need, the temptation in his eyes. It was
her
need that had to be satisfied, and he wasn’t going to let her down. He had promised her.

He moved back to the bed, paused, his whole body tingling with anticipation. It wouldn’t feel the same if he kept his bathrobe on. He wasn’t completely naked underneath it. He’d taken to wearing boxer shorts to bed since Baby Anya had become part of his life. It wasn’t too much of a liberty to have his chest and arms bare. Jayne was wearing a cotton nightie.

He cast off the bathrobe and climbed into bed beside her. She was already turned on her side. He slid an arm under her neck, cushioning her
head against his shoulder. Slowly, and applying the utmost control over wayward impulses, he fitted his body to the soft curve of hers, gliding his other arm around her waist to snuggle her closer to him while carefully avoiding contact with her breasts. Then he forced himself to relax.

She wriggled her bottom more comfortably, more intimately against his groin, then sighed as though the feel of him was heaven.

To Dan, the feel of her was both heaven and hell.

Two years…

Was there only to be this at the end of it?