Outback Heiress, Surprise Proposal

by Margaret Way

  ‘Of course I’m serious,’ he said, stripping off his shirt and regarding her with amusement. ‘God, Francey, we’ve taken a dip here countless times over the years.’

  ‘I’d need my swimsuit first.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ he mocked. ‘Strip down to your bra and briefs. I bet they’re more respectable than most bikinis on the beach.’

  She watched him, dry-mouthed, unzip his jeans and then step out of them, very comfortable with it. All that was left to cover his superb male body was a pair of navy briefs that clung low on his hips. There wasn’t a skerrick of excess flesh on him. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from his sculpted body, nor control her eyes’ descent. She could feel her cheeks flush. She could hear the beat of her heart.

  ‘I don’t know that I want to take off my clothes,’ she said, her voice trailing off uncertainly. She was just so modest. Maybe too modest—and no one made her feel more acutely conscious of her own body than Bryn.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he corrected, suddenly looking up at her, ‘you do. It’ll cool you down. Come on, girl! I’m not going to drown you, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

  His mockery fired her up. ‘Okay. Turn your back until I’m in the water.’

  ‘Francey, you amaze me—but okay.’ His voice was languid, lazy, taunting. He stood studying her for a moment longer, then stepped up onto a flat-topped rock that jutted out into the deep water and dived off it, surfacing a moment later, with water streaming off his jet-black hair, his face and wide shoulders, the hard muscle of his gleaming upper torso. ‘The water’s great. Come on!’ He beckoned to her, much as he had done through all the years of her childhood. He only had to beckon and she followed.

  Quickly she looked around her. Plenty of branches from which to hang her clothes—a sapphire-blue tank top and her jeans. She was already out of her riding boots. She turned away, hearing the sound of Bryn’s splashing. Damn him! If she were Carrie she’d have had all her clothes off in less than a minute. Carrie was quite comfortable with nudity. She had a great body. Not that there was anything wrong with Francesca’s own body. Nothing wrong with her underwear either. She liked good lingerie. Her bra was silk, with matching briefs, pale pink, patterned with violet and blue flowers and tiny red hearts. All quite respectable. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the hearts.

  Just as she reached the water, dipping in an exploratory toe, he shocked her by surfacing in the middle of the pool, treading water while he stared at her with open delight.

  ‘You look exquisite!’ he called out. ‘If I were gifted, like you, I’d depict you as a mythical water nymph—say, Ondine. But naked, of course. Nakedness absolutely obligatory. Either emerging from the depths of the pool, or perhaps lying stretched out on that rock shelf over there, with flowers in your long hair. Either one would work.’

  She saw his eyes linger on her small, high breasts, then slowly and deliberately move down her body to her legs. ‘Sounds pretty erotic!’ She was panicked, but felt a strange desire to stay exactly where she was, with his eyes on her.

  ‘Eros should be your middle name!’

  ‘Now, that’s bizarre!’ she protested. He couldn’t be serious. Just having a bit of fun. She had never seen herself as an erotic being, unaware that many people described her as intensely alluring. ‘Carrie is the exhibitionist,’ she said, for once accurately nailing her cousin. ‘But you already know that.’

  ‘Well, actually I do! But that’s an entirely different thing.’

  What wouldn’t he know about Carrie after their affair? And according to Carrie the sexual intrigue continued. She didn’t want to believe that. Bryn had denied it. But the niggling thought remained that Carrie would always be there before her.

  ‘Stand there a moment longer, can’t you?’ he called ‘You know your body is perfectly proportioned, like the ideal dancer’s? Neck to waist, to hip, to knee, to ankle.’

  ‘Got a tape measure, have you?’ She made very slow progress into the emerald-green pool waters, some part of her revelling in his frank stare.

  ‘I have a really good eye.’

  ‘I know that.’ She felt as if he was slowly peeling what little she still wore off her. It was like being held in golden chains. Bound to him. More like a wildly shy adolescent than a grown woman, she plunged in, striking out without hesitation. The water was surprisingly cold at first, but all the more energising for that. She was a good swimmer, fast over short distances. Naturally he was stronger. He caught her in the middle of the pool, though she pretended to duck away.

  It didn’t make one scrap of difference. He had her.

  Bryn experienced the searing realisation that his hands had taken on a life of their own. He pushed the straps of her bra down over her shoulders, revealing the tender upper curves of her breasts and the half-hidden rosebud nipples.

  It was an enormous shock and an enormous excitation. Francesca’s heart worked its way into her throat.

  ‘You know what you are?’ His voice was intense.

  ‘Show me.’

  She couldn’t control it. Yearning burst from her, sweeping her away. Within seconds it had demolished the dam of loneliness that had been built up over the years, leaving in its wake a great curling wave of emotion. She felt transcendent, ready for his kiss, which came the instant he had her locked in his arms.

  ‘Francey!’ He took the sweet mouth that opened to him. Took it hungrily. His tongue reached into the moist cavern, its tip teasing her. It was glorious, the press of flesh against flesh. A delirium of pleasure. The softness of her now naked breasts against the taut plain of his torso. Heart of one thudding into the other.

  They went under, neither of them drawing back, bobbed up against each other, gasping, then slowly sinking, their mouths locked, her long, slender legs hooked around his. She wasn’t going to lose this one chance. She would show him she was a woman. Not the hesitant and fearful girl he had watched growing up.

  Surfacing again, he took her long wet rope of hair in his hands, drawing her to him more roughly than he’d intended—but he was thoroughly aroused. How could he not be? He had waited so long for her, taken her in his imagination. She looked impossibly beautiful, with water coursing over her, the thick mane of her hair a sleek ribbon down her back, her great luminous eyes tinged with the green of the overhanging trees.

  ‘This is dangerous what we’re doing, isn’t it?’ she whispered to him, even though the light in her eyes was urging him on. ‘Reckless. And it was your idea.’

  He held her hard at the waist, fusing their lower bodies so she could not be unaware of his powerful arousal. For him there was only Francesca. No one else. Her skin in the dappled sunlight was perfection, beaded with tiny sprays of diamonds.

  ‘Why didn’t I think of it long before this?’ Of course he had thought of it, dreamed of it, so many times—but Carina had made it her business never to leave them alone together. ‘Francesca, you beautiful creature!’ he groaned, aware his strong hands on her were beginning to tremble faintly—a sure sign of his monumental desire. The waiting had been impossibly long.

  Francesca found her eyelids dropping heavily, her eyes filled with tears. His voice was so warm, so deep, so desiring. Voices were wonderful instruments of seduction. Voices were weapons.

  ‘You’re not crying? Francey?’ Concern washed over him, and his driving passion was forced to take a step backwards. ‘What is it? Tell me,’ he urged.

  ‘Tears come easily to me,’ she murmured shakily, placing her hand against the tangle of black hair on his chest that had tightened into whorls.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Pain is never far behind pleasure.’ She stared up into his eyes, black as night.

  ‘You think that will happen if we make love?’ God knew he didn’t think he had any reserve of control left. His sex felt rigid, rock-hard. He was desperate to plunge into her. It was pain he suffered, however sublime.

  Her thoughts had turned chaotic. Indeed, she sometimes thought her whole existence had
been chaotic. Once he made love to her all the secrets of her life would be unlocked. He would know her so intimately. She would have handed over the larger part of herself. Wouldn’t it be far safer for a woman if the man was more in love with her than she with him? There was always one who kissed and one who turned the cheek. Great love unreciprocated at the same level could be a disaster. Didn’t she have Carrie for a role model?

  It’s part of his plan. Didn’t I tell you?

  Out of nowhere Francesca heard her cousin’s voice. It was so piercingly clear she even looked swiftly over her shoulder, as though Carina might be standing on the stretch of sand, watching them locked in their watery embrace. Though she was desperate for Bryn to carry her back to the shore, to expose her naked body to his eyes, to reach deep into her yearning body with his own, to claim what was his, fear suddenly overtook her whole person. Carina’s warning words rose up like a curse to haunt her.

  He’ll be everything you ever wanted or wished for, but there’ll be a price to pay.

  Life had taught her that was cruelly true. She wasn’t equal to the power and skill of this beautiful man. Even half submerged in cold lake water his hungry clasp heated her blood. He touched her to her very soul. Didn’t that make her his slave? Had his bid for her—could she possibly see it as Carina had warned?—come too fast? Here in this enchanted place he knew she would be totally under his spell. It was in the very nature of the man-woman relationship.

  Before her body could further betray her, she threw her arms adroitly back over her head, her body half lifting out of the water as she swam a few butterfly strokes away from him.

  ‘Can we stop now, Bryn?’ she begged, when she was a distance off. Her insecurities were starkly on show and there was nothing she could do about it. Soaring hearts could just as well fall and be broken. She wrenched the sodden silk bra that encircled her waist back into position, sleekly encasing her breasts. She might be a woman, but she was still frozen in time.

  He gave a quick frown. ‘Of course.’ It wasn’t just physical lust that drove him—the need to possess her. He loved her. But he could see she was having the fiercest struggle with her emotions. Something was desperately ailing her. But what? She had to be ready for him. He wasn’t prepared to force her to overcome her fears, though he knew he could. ‘You’re always safe with me, Francey. Remember that. Anyway, it’s getting late.’ He thrust one hand through his glistening raven hair. ‘The sun will set soon.’

  She rapidly calmed at his tone. What was he thinking? That nothing was ever going to change Francey? ‘Let’s have our swim first,’ she suggested, her voice warm and sweet with conciliation.

  He swam up beside her, no hint of bruised male ego in his voice or on his dynamic face. ‘I tell you what!’ he said, as though she was back to half her age. ‘The last one to reach that big moss-mottled rock up there jutting out into the water makes dinner.’

  Her heart lifted in a kind of relief. She couldn’t bear to have Bryn angry and disappointed in her. ‘You’re on! Just give me a start.’

  ‘Not too much of one,’ he scoffed. ‘You’re fast in short bursts. All right—go!’ His voice rang out in that beautiful, secluded place. It startled the parrots. They rose in a vivid rainbow wave, then flew off, protesting, to more distant trees.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE had almost finished dressing. Paradoxically, she had dressed herself up as a woman might for the man she loved. Now she sat in front of the dressing table, staring sightlessly at her own image, as captured fragments of the afternoon came back to haunt her. Or more accurately to taunt her. She had been over and over her behaviour of the afternoon, and the causes for it. She wanted to hold on to those lingering sensations of rapture when she had been so magically transformed, but her sharp withdrawal from Bryn’s embrace, her renouncement of bliss, kept interfering. How easy it was to lose one’s way! She had blown her chance, maybe her only chance.

  A deeply entrenched habit of hers, her mind resorted to Shakespeare. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men—’ and presumably women? ‘—which when taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life, is bound in shallows and in miseries…’

  Who was going to argue with arguably the greatest literary genius in the history of mankind, with his sublime understanding of human nature and the power to express it? If she had missed the tide, then maybe she deserved it. Fortune favoured the brave. Fear was her weakness. She had to break free of it, haul herself up. Now Bryn had reverted to the easy companionship of her childhood and adolescence, apparently accepting she was harbouring myriad anxieties. The pounding passion of that episode in the water might not have happened. It was just one of her daydreams that went on for hours.

  Slowly she drew her hairbrush through the rippling length of her long hair, listening to its electric crackle. It reminded her of the times when Aunt Elizabeth had brushed her hair as a child. They had been very close. Far closer than her own blood. Satisfied with the result, she set the brush down, giving vent to a sigh.

  ‘The arrow of time flies in only one direction.’ Some other genius had said that. She had an idea it was Einstein. Einstein would no doubt have gone on to point out the enormous pulling power of the past and its impact on the future. But in the end one could only go forwards. Not backwards. She could never live this afternoon over again; only in memory. Consciousness was the crucial thing that separated man from beast. Man’s ability to relive the past and bring it vividly alive—happy or, in her case, cringe-worthy. The past had shaped her. The past had made her what she was.

  She tried to fight off the sense of bleakness that had clung to her since she was a child. It was as if her life since the death of both her parents had assumed a topography of hidden dangers and traps that she had to navigate her way safely through. It was part of the misery of loss—not only of her mother and father, but of her very identity. So much depended on where we were born; who we were born to, our environment, social standing, the kind of childhood we had. Those factors determined so much of life. A well-adjusted adult in all probability had had a happy, stable childhood, with the priceless gift of having being loved. Then there were people like herself, with too many memories of being grief-stricken, lonely, afraid to trust, desperate to unmake tragedy, to turn back the clock when the hands of time only ticked relentlessly on.

  Somehow over the years she had learned to work her way out of her pervading melancholy—which could be part of her artistic nature. The trick to survival, she had found, especially of late, was to focus all her energies on her new life and her plans for the future. For doing good. She had been given the opportunity to spread her wings, to take flight. What she now had to do—and she had been overlong at it—was throw off Carina’s influence, which she now recognised as a blight. Though she really wanted to believe Carina was changing as a person—it would make life so much better—it was difficult to accept the possibility.

  Maybe it was just possible to accept that Carina had come to terms with being passed over by their grandfather. After all, the reins of power brought attendant burdens of responsibility, and huge security risks in a world gone mad. Carina was, by her own admission, the quintessential party girl—a social butterfly bent on a life of pleasure and self-indulgence.

  Then, there was the crucial issue of Bryn.

  It began and ended with Bryn.

  How was Carina really handling her thwarted feelings and her whole world turned upside down? Carina didn’t tolerate loss. The way she had been reared as a pampered princess didn’t help. Carina was a very poor loser, even over a game of tennis. She had to win. Mostly she did, but it had to be all the time. Carina pushed gamesmanship to the limit. Wasn’t it highly unlikely, then, that Carina had accepted the loss of the man she intensely desired? With all Francesca knew of her cousin, Carina would be most likely to covet what she knew she could never possess. She might be forced to accept Bryn was never going to ask her to marry him, but Francesca couldn’t see Carina surre
ndering him to any other woman. And the worst possible scenario would be to a woman like herself.

  Carina’s jealousy over Elizabeth’s affection for her had just about ruined their childhood. Of course Carina had so often played the caricature of the loving, caring older cousin, but she had never felt it had been real. Carina’s genius was for fooling people, confusing them, hiding behind an elaborate mask.

  The issue of Bryn remained unresolved.

  Yesterday, when Carina had come into the office, she had forced on herself a particular role. But what had she hoped to achieve by doing so? A cessation of hostilities, even though the hostilities had been all one-sided? What had she been playing at when she’d insisted she was only looking out for Francesca’s interests? When had Carina ever looked out for her? Her mind had all but shut down on that traumatic incident of their childhood when she had almost drowned, only for Bryn’s miraculous intervention, with Carina standing by screaming…and screaming…as though she had never wanted any of it to happen.

  Even now, all these years later, she couldn’t bear to think it had been anything other than an accident that could always happen when children were left unattended. Only sometimes in the realm of her dreams she relived that day…The walk along the banks of the lagoon hand in hand, which had come as a lovely surprise, her exclaiming over the beauty of the waterlilies, how she was going to draw them the minute she was home, her scrapbook in her hand…Carina had hated the way she was always drawing…She remembered the danger of the deep water…the way Carina had waded in, which meant she’d had to go too. It was the paralysing feeling of extreme danger that always forced her awake.

  What had happened that day? Would she find the answer in her dreams if only she could let the nightmare run its course? Would she have that dream for ever? Her lungs bursting…her hands locked around thirteen-year-old Bryn’s neck as he waded out, carrying her in his strong young arms. She remembered looking down at the waist-deep water, and then they were safely on the sand. She must have been near choking him, clinging to him the way she had, though he’d told her afterwards she’d weighed no more than a feather. She remembered he’d had algae caught in his thick, gleaming thatch of hair. Lurid green against black. She remembered she hadn’t cried. She had been trying so hard to be brave. A look of bewilderment crossed her face—hadn’t she whispered something in his ear? It had to have been a secret, but she couldn’t remember it.