by Margaret Way
Jason may have slept with Megan and made her pregnant but Olivia on the evidence had to accept it must have been a drunken, deplorable, one-night stand. That was what Jason had claimed. He had even confessed he couldn’t for the life of him remember what had happened. Even so she could never forgive him. At least he’d done the honourable thing and married Megan. He didn’t love her. The great irony was Jason had never really liked Megan claiming there was something secretive about her.
Now it seemed Jason and his family had returned home to their birthplace—who knew why—and it was Jason of all people who had found Harry dead. There seemed no way Jason Corey would remain in her past. As Olivia had learned to her cost there were no certainties in life. With Harry gone, she would have to face Jason again.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS scorching out in the fields. Jason, clad in a navy singlet and jeans, his skin sheened with sweat, sat in the ute draining off a soda and watching the bright red self-propelled harvesters cutting a swathe through the purple tipped ripe crop. The harvest reached an impressive four metres, stretching clear away to the indigo line of the ranges. The harvesters were lurching like dinosaurs along the rows removing the leafy tops of the cane stalks, cutting the stalks off at ground level and chopping the canes into small lengths called billets. The billets would be loaded into the wire bins that were being towed alongside by workers in tractors. Harvested cane deteriorated rapidly so it was imperative to get the crop to the mill for crushing as quickly as possible. Sixteen hours was the ultimate but on Havilah he’d seen to it no bin was in transit for more than a few hours. Computers tracked progress along the network of cane railways to the crush. The plantation and mill were run with the utmost efficiency, Harry depended on him. He wasn’t about to let Harry down. Harry had given him a second chance.
He’d spent the morning organising another big planting of the so called miracle fruit, a member of the Sapotacea family which was proving very popular for both the home and export market. The fruit which came from a small compact evergreen tree had the unusual characteristic of making sour and bitter fruit taste sweet. A piece of miracle fruit made eating a lemon easy. The mature trees were covered in a profusion of small bright red, olive shaped fruits with white flesh and a shiny seed. They’d moved on from the familiar tropical fruits such as mangoes, bananas, pawpaw-papayas and lychees to jaboticabas, sabotillas, rambutans, jackfruit, star apple, sapote and sapodillas, the very distinctive star-shaped succulent carambola, and the mangosteen to name a few. They all grew rapidly and thrived in the tropics. Havilah Plantation tropical fruit was much in demand.
Harry had asked him to join him at the homestead for afternoon tea. He wasn’t a tea man himself though Harry was part owner in both tea and coffee plantations on the Tableland. These days with Harry not as active as he used to be, it was part of Jason’s job to oversee them. He liked to keep Harry company and Harry despite everything still enjoyed his. In his heart he had to admit being with Harry made him feel Liv somehow was still part of his life.
How he’d loved her! It still made his heart swell to think about the rapture she inspired in him, though he tried not to think about Liv often. He’d grown used to a life of quiet desperation apart from his work. He’d thrown himself into that. In the two years he’d been back with Harry the people of the district seemed to have forgotten or at least forgiven him his crime of jilting the much loved Olivia Linfield, Harry Linfield’s heiress. Olivia had been and probably still was in a class of her own. She’d been the brightest, the most beautiful and the most popular girl in a district famous for beautiful and exotic women from a mixture of ethnic backgrounds. Great waves of immigrant Italian families, for instance, had opened up the North, contributing greatly to the prosperity and importance of the sugar industry. Italian blood ran through his veins, though his colouring was almost entirely his father’s whose background was Irish.
Olivia Linfield was their version of a princess. She enjoyed a privileged status. A prize for any man, yet she had chosen him. A princess wooed and won by a young man born on the wrong side of the tracks.
At sixteen, his father had started his working life as a cane cutter like his father before him. Those were the days before mechanical cane harvesters replaced manual labour. His mother had been a domestic up at the Big House—not that there was any sort of shame in that. In many ways it had been considered a plum job for those who hadn’t been in the fortunate position to go on to higher education. When Jason was twelve and almost a man his father had deserted his mother and him. One day he was there, a man of uncertain moods and temper, the next he was gone.
“Good riddance!” Jason’s Italian grandmother had cried, shaking her fist at the heavens. His grandmother was full of drama. “All he was, was a savage!” It was true his father had sometimes struck his mother. Those were the times he was drunk—not a happy drunk but ready to explode. Not that he was a bad man. There had been plenty of good times. But his father was a complicated man who detested living his life as an underdog. Basically he didn’t fit into the labourers’ scene. Surely he had been clever? And handsome. Jason remembered how handsome his father had been. Mesmerizing, his mother said. Tall, muscular, graceful like a sleek jungle cat. His father had loved to read. He devoured books, always eager to learn. His grandmother, jealous of her daughter’s love for the man, had called him a savage. He’d never been that.
Towards the end his father told them he had an urge to paint. Time was running out. He had much to learn. Niall Corey had always been able to draw. People. Animals. Birds. Whatever one wanted. He’d left a note for his wife saying he was following Gauguin’s example. Did that mean he’s sailed for Tahiti? Like Gauguin the famous painter he’d certainly abandoned his wife and family.
They’d never heard from him again.
Afterwards instead of burning them, his mother had gathered together all his sketchbooks like treasure. Jason couldn’t pretend they weren’t good though he hated his father for deserting them. His father had filled the sketchbooks with extraordinarily accurate and insightful sketches of all the people around him, his family, his co-workers, his bosses, the Linfields, exquisite pastels of his beautiful mother, Liv as a little girl. His father had always told him one day Liv would break his heart. How right he had been. He wished he hadn’t thought of Liv now. It brought the past crashing back.
He didn’t see Megan until she came alongside the car, tapping on the passenger window so he would open it.
“Hi, Megan.” He lowered the window, making himself smile at her when the very sight of her filled him with shame and a kind of creeping dread. He’d never much liked Megan Duffy. She was pretty enough but an odd little thing. Liv being Liv had always been kind to her. She had even asked Megan to be one of her bridesmaids which hadn’t been in his plans but it was the bride’s day after all. The truth was since the night of Sean Duffy’s twenty-fifth birthday party he absolutely dreaded running into Sean’s sister. “Anything wrong?” he asked, thinking there couldn’t possibly be. He was on his way to see Liv, the love of his life. Nothing could come between him and Liv.
“I have to speak to you, Jason.” Megan was all eyes, blue shadows beneath, pallid skin. She didn’t look well.
A sensation akin to fear ran through him. “Okay then. Hop in. I’m on my way to see Liv. I can drop you off on the way.” He tried to sound friendly but everything about her put him in a panic. It was so claustrophobic with her sitting beside him in the car. He had the weird notion he was going to suffocate. He swallowed on a parched throat—it seemed like his saliva glands had dried up—glanced at her, paying attention to her pallor. “What is it, Megan?”
Her voice was barely audible. “I’m over,” she said.
He was so frantic he laughed. “Over what?”
“Two months.” Now she began to cry, red blotches appearing almost instantly on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “I’m pregnant, Jason. I’m sick all the time.” Her voice rose to near hysteria. “It’s yours
, Jason. Your baby. I was a virgin.”
Most of the guys thought she was. “Don’t do this to me! Are you sure, Megan?” he groaned, realizing with shock he had trembling hands. “It was only one time. I don’t even remember it. I’ve never been so drunk in my life. Oh, why talk about it! Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, feeling desperately ill himself.
“In this town?” Piteously Megan wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Besides, I had to tell you first, Jason. You’re the father. I’ve never been with anyone else.”
“Oh, Megan!” He slammed a fist into his knee, blazing with shame. “How did we let this happen?”
“I’m sorry, Jason,” Megan said feebly. “But you overpowered me. You’re so big and strong. It was near enough to rape but nothing would ever make me tell anyone else that.”
For all her cowered attitude suddenly that sounded like a threat. He trod on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt alongside the kerb. “No, Megan.” He fixed her with a searing stare. “I may have been all sorts of a fool, but I know I would never have forced you—that’s not my style. You’re entitled to be very upset but you must have given me some sort of encouragement?”
Very gently she touched his arm even though he visibly flinched. “You said it yourself, Jason. You were very drunk.” She stared at him, tears welling into her hazel eyes and slipping down her pale cheeks. “I’m so frightened. My father will kill me when he finds out. I’ve never been with anyone else, Jason. Couldn’t you tell? There was blood on the sheets.”
He recoiled. “I saw no blood.”
“You weren’t looking,” she pointed out mournfully. “I had to get you painkillers for your hangover. You were still sick the next day—almost out of it. Do you think I wanted this to happen, Jason? It was a terrible mistake. Olivia is my friend—she’s been so kind to me. She’s never looked down on us Duffys. Mum thinks Olivia’s a real lady. She’s always going on about it like I’m a slut, which you know more than anyone I’m not. This has been a dreadful shock for me, too. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been trying to keep myself together, locking myself into the bathroom. Mum asked me this morning if I had something to tell her. I think she knows.”
“That you’re pregnant?” Jason moved his eyes to her flat stomach.
“Yes,” she said, miserably. “I know what you’re thinking, Jason. You hate me.”
He rested his arms on the steering wheel, burying his face. He didn’t think he would ever smile again. “I don’t hate you, Megan. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Jason groaned in anguish wanting to shut the whole world out. He even had the sensation the blazing sun had disappeared. Where would he be without his beloved Liv? He might as well be dead. There was a taste like metal in his mouth, but he straightened up. “I’ll take care of you, Megan,” he promised. “This is my child, too. My responsibility. I always knew in my heart life didn’t promise me any rose-garden.”
Liv was a beautiful dream. Hadn’t he always had the feeling she was much too good for him.
Megan looked like she was about to reach out to him, but Jason backed right up against the car door, wanting to smash the window out. “Olivia loves you,” she said, her voice so tight the words might have been stuck in her throat.
“She’ll find someone else,” Jason muttered, thinking life for him was all over. Someone who deserves her.
Gradually Jason’s rage receded as pity gripped him. Megan was so small and desperate and her father, Jack Duffy was a brute of a man. A drunk and a failure, Jason could well imagine him being very tough on his daughter. Megan needed his support and so did the baby growing inside her. That baby was his. In the final analysis the baby was the one who mattered. Abandoned by his own father, Jason felt he had no other option but to front up to his responsibilities. “Our child deserves a future, Megan,” he said. “I’m not running away.”
An hour later he had sufficient control of himself to face Olivia. She ran down Havilah’s grand staircase to greet him, her long silky black hair flying behind her like a pennant in a breeze. So beautiful, so slender, so graceful, her smile so radiant it tore the heart out of him. He would never, until his dying day, get over Liv. Or cease missing her. “More presents have been arriving,” she said excitedly, lifting her face for his kiss.
Instead he drew her into the hollow of his shoulder. He had no right to kiss her anymore. He had forfeited that. “I have to talk to you, Liv,” he said, his voice conveying the raw intensity of his feelings. “Can we please go outside, take a walk.”
“Of course, darling.” She slipped her arm around his waist. “What’s the matter?” Love for him surged inside her, then a flash of naked fear. His handsome face was a mask of pain.
The only way to tell her was head-on. “I have bad news, Liv.” He led her out onto the colonnaded front terrace.
“It’s not your mother?” Olivia’s beautiful light grey eyes were full of concern. Antonella Corey didn’t keep good health.
“It’s not Mama.” Jason shook his head. “She’s okay.” But not for long. His mother would be devastated. His grandmother would go ballistic. “It’s something else. Let’s walk in the garden.”
“You’re frightening me, Jason.” She tucked her arm through his, staring at his resolute profile, the grimness of the strong jawline.
“I’m more sorry than I can possibly say.” Even then he couldn’t begin to calculate the full extent of the pain.
She shook his arm. “Jason, about what?” Olivia’s mind was racing. When she’d last spoken to Jason, only a few hours ago, he’d been on top of the world. Now he looked utterly desolate. Even his golden tan was bleached by emotion.
Jason paused beside the archway of pillar roses, staring at the roses without even seeing them. They had been brought to perfection for the wedding. The entire length of the archway was hung with cascading clusters of gorgeous blush pink double flowers with a wonderful fragrance. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Liv,” he began. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to say in my life. But I can’t marry you.”
She stared up at him blankly. Then she shook her head slightly as if to clear it. “Jason, darling, you’re not making any sense. You’re marrying me tomorrow. I love you. You love me.”
“I can’t marry you, Liv.” Grief was overflowing inside him. He raised his hand as if to stroke her cheek. Let it drop. “Months ago I did something crazy. Unforgivable.”
Olivia clasped her hands together prayerfully. “Tell me,” she urged, apprehension invading her black fringed luminous eyes.
“I love you, Liv,” he muttered. He felt like he was dying. “I love you more than life itself. I always knew I didn’t deserve you.”
“You do. You do! What are you talking about?” Olivia grasped the front of his shirt, clinging on.
“Megan Duffy came to me this afternoon,” he said starkly. “She told me she’s pregnant.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “Megan Duffy! What does she have to do with us? Megan Duffy?” Abruptly she spun about, presenting her slender back to him. “I don’t think I want to know. Is God punishing me for being so happy?”
“Liv, please. You’re breaking my heart. I wish, how I wish, I didn’t have to tell you this, but I’m the father, Liv.”
For moments Olivia stood utterly still like a statue, then fiercely she faced him, her eyes those of a woman who had been dealt a mortal blow. “I have no idea what is going on,” she said in a voice so tight it droned. “What do you mean you’re the father? How can that be? You love me. We’re getting married, remember? Harry has spent thousands and thousands making sure everything is just perfect for us. You’re lying.”
Desperate to touch her, even if he could never touch her again, he grasped her hands tightly. “You can’t think worse of me than I think of myself.”
“Jason, Jason, stop!” she cried. “I can’t bear it!” She wrenched her hands away from him, recoiling several steps.
Tears welled into her eyes but she blinked them back furiously. Anger was starting to lift, to soar. She felt as if her life was shattering like shards of glass all around her. She wanted to lash out at him. Hurt him. Hadn’t he wounded her to death? “Bring Megan here,” she demanded, a shudder rippling through her body. “I want to look into her eyes. Lucy, our chief bridesmaid warned me I was taking a chance on Megan Duffy but stupid old trusting me felt sorry for her. She hasn’t had much of a life. Her father’s a bloody maniac. Have you thought of that? He could kill you. How could you make Megan Duffy pregnant? How could it possibly happen? When did it happen? That’s the thing. We’re never apart. Why did you never say a word? Did you take leave of your senses, Jason? Did you lose control? Why? You had me. You love me. You’ve told me so many times I couldn’t possibly keep count. You don’t like Megan Duffy. How could you possibly make love to a girl you don’t even like?”
Her words pierced him like a dagger to the heart. “Booze, what else?” he said in desolation. “I must have thought she was you…but, no!” Immediately he rejected that notion. “That wouldn’t be right, she could never be you. I was drunk, Liv, I’ll have to live with that all my life. As for when it happened? It was months ago, after Sean Duffy’s birthday party. I told you I’d look in. The terrible part is I didn’t want to go but I felt obligated to at least make an appearance. He’s on my team.”
She willed herself not to break into a storm of weeping. That would have to wait until later when she was alone. “On your team? To think I was so proud of the way you excelled at sports. You’re a wonderful athlete but Sean Duffy…you know he’s into drugs. Why get mixed up with the likes of him?” Olivia struck Jason so hard in the chest, he reeled off balance. “Someone stop me from screaming,” she cried out in torment. “You had sex with Megan Duffy, my bridesmaid? That’s too much.” Olivia wrapped her arms around her body, holding herself upright with a tremendous effort. She had to counteract the feeling she was going to pass out. Her beautiful skin registered her agitation. It had turned white as milk. “Am I dreaming?” She stared upwards at the cloudless blue sky as though it could give her the answer. “I’m in the middle of a nightmare, aren’t I? Tell me!”
