by Margaret Way
‘May I ask you a personal question?’ She turned to face him, held fast by the extraordinary intensity of his gaze.
‘You can try.’ He smiled. ‘And what would it be? Have I ever been in love?’ His voice held amusement.
It wasn’t her question, but she stared back at him, aware she badly wanted to know. ‘Have you?’
‘Caroline, I told you.’
That smile was magic. Few smiles lit up a man’s face like that.
‘My lifestyle left very little time for romance,’ he explained again. ‘There was a girl once. She got spooked by my lack of money. All she had to do was give me a little time.’
‘Do you still love her?’ The muscles in her slender throat tensed. She told herself it would be wonderful to have a man like Clay Cunningham love her. Something she knew she would agonize over later.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely positive,’ he said. He didn’t tell her, nor would he, he’d already dated falling in love from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, albeit rashly. He had already discovered she was the fiancée of Scott Harper, the bully boy of his childhood. Still was, for that matter. She wore Harper’s ring. Maybe the death of his mother and returning to Jimboorie had put him in a very vulnerable state of mind. That’s why he wanted a wife, a wife and children, a family of his own to love. Having a family of his own had somehow developed into a passion. Caroline McNevin could too easily become a passion. A doomed passion. Unless she found the strength to break away from Harper.
Carrie moved on. ‘I love the fireplace,’ she said. The chimney piece was constructed of flawless white Carrara marble. Instead of the usual large gilded mirror to hang above it—any mirror would probably have been shattered—was a very elegant over-mantel in the same white marble. Judging from the staining left on the marble, it seemed a painting had once hung there and on other places around the walls.
‘It would take a great deal of furniture to fill this room alone,’ she marvelled, finding it easy to visualise the drawing room restored. She loved houses; beautiful houses like this. Clay was quite correct in saying the interior wasn’t in any where near as bad condition as everyone thought. At least as much as she had seen.
‘A lot of the original furnishings, paintings, rugs, objets d’art, you name it, are in storage,’ he said, further surprising her.
‘Really?’ Her dark eyes opened wide. ‘On the property, you mean? One of the outbuildings?’
He shook his head. ‘Great-Uncle Angus wasn’t so steeped in grief he didn’t make sure nothing of real value was left here to be stolen. There’s a warehouse full of it in Toowoomba.’ He named a city one hundred miles west of Brisbane, the state capital, lying on the edge of the Great Dividing Range and famous for its spring carnival of flowers.
‘I think you could safely say your great-uncle Angus fooled the world,’ she said wryly. ‘Have you seen what’s in there?’
‘Not as yet, but I have the inventory. I’ll make the trip to Toowoomba some time fairly soon. Want to come?’
‘Aren’t you the bush bachelor looking for a wife?’ She gave him a look.
‘Most definitely,’ he retorted. ‘We could talk about what I should put in my ad along the way.’
‘You have a devil in you, Clay Cunningham.’
He absorbed her slowly with his eyes. ‘Most men do, but you’ll never stumble on mine, I promise. You speak of loving Harper, but I don’t think you do.’
She had learned that in stages. ‘Off-limits, Clay,’ she warned moving into the huge handsome room that was obviously the library. Cedar bookcases were set in arcaded recesses all around the room, but the collection had gone. A book lover, she prayed it had gone into storage.
‘Perhaps you’re a little too accustomed to doing what you believe will please everyone?’ he questioned, his voice resonating with a certain sympathy.
‘Is that a good reason to get married?’ She felt wounded.
‘It happens a lot,’ he said. ‘I had no difficulty sensing you badly need to please your father. That desire must be far from new.’
She stopped abruptly. ‘You sense far too much. What is it you want from me, Clay?’ Without meaning for it to happen—her momentary weakness shocked her—tears filled her eyes.
He stared down at her in dismay. ‘Caroline, don’t do that,’ he implored, slowly rubbing a hand across his tanned forehead. ‘I’ve got plenty of self-control, but your tears might prove my undoing.’ In reality he saw himself on the very edge of a yawning chasm. If those tears spilled onto her cheeks, he might plunge into that chasm, taking her with him, his arms enclosing her, cradling her, his mouth closing over hers to muffle her cries.
Oh God, Caroline, stop it! When he was with her his every perception was intensified.
‘Meaning what?’ She tried valiantly to blink the tears away.
‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’ His handsome face was grim. ‘Why do your eyes contain tears anyway? They’re no protection against me. The reverse is true. It seems to me you want to cry from sheer necessity. You’re unhappy. You feel caught in a trap. You can get out of it if you’re strong.’
Was she strong? She’d thought she was. Now she turned her head away from him and the tremendous temptation he presented. ‘It’s impossible overnight.’ Her hands were shaking. She lifted one to clasp the silk scarf at her nape. She pulled it free, suddenly irritated by the knot of material on her neck.
‘No, it’s not,’ he answered roughly, watching her hair uncoil into long golden skeins. It radiated light like a halo around her head. He couldn’t help himself. He moved nearer, lifting a hand and curling a long shining lock around his fingers. It felt like silk, sweetly scented. He tugged on the thick lock very gently edging her towards him.
‘Don’t do this, Clay,’ she warned, knowing they had both reached a turning point that was far from unexpected.
‘Look into my eyes and tell me that,’ he said. His hand moved to the mass of her shining hair pulling her head back so he could stare into her face. ‘Caroline?’
‘I must be mad,’ she murmured.
‘I know. So am I.’
Now the tears did seep from her eyes. What she saw in his face was sexual ardour of a nature she had hitherto never even glimpsed. It wasn’t crude lust. Lust she had come to despise. There was real yearning there, as though he believed she might be the one to cure his deep-seated griefs. She, in turn, was spellbound by the concentration of pure desire that burned so brilliantly in his blue eyes.
She didn’t so much go along with it. She surrendered herself to it, deferring to a stolen moment in time. ‘This may well be a serious mistake!’ The streams of passion that stormed through her veins offered proof.
He nodded solemnly, one hand cupping her face with a tenderness that was profoundly moving. ‘You’re so small!’
‘I’m a woman,’ she said. ‘A woman of nearly twenty-four.’
‘A very serious young woman who has to put a few things right.’
‘That’s how you see it?’ she whispered, her eyes on his clean cut mouth.
‘Don’t you?’
Before she had time to react—did she really have the strength?—he lifted her as though she weighed no more than a child and carried her to one of the recessed alcoves, setting her on top of the solid cedar cupboard, which supported the ceiling-high bookshelves.
‘Caroline McNevin, you are so beautiful!’ He trailed one hand down over her cheek, her throat, lightly skimmed the low-necked front of her tank top that gave a tantalizing glimpse of the upward curves of her breasts.
Her body ached. There was pain, she was learning, in desire. ‘Why are we doing this, Clay?’
‘It’s all I’ve wanted to do since you walked back into my life,’ he confessed.
Her eyes were very dark, her expression strange. ‘When kissing me is strictly forbidden?’
‘By whom?’
‘God help me, not me!’
He
r words chimed in his mind. He lowered his head, while Carrie closed her eyes, dizzy suddenly with the level of sensuality.
His powerful, lean body stood directly in front of her. Without thought—all she wanted was to get as close to him as possible—she brought up her slender legs to wrap him around. It was something she had never done before but her inhibitions were melting like a polar thaw. Her fall from grace—the full rush of it—stunned her. If indeed fall was what it was. But she had promised to marry another man, for all the decision to make a clean break from Scott was fast overtaking her.
She could pay heavily for this moment out of time. They both could. But Carrie was powerless to stop what had already started. The sense of having been caught up in something far beyond the power of either of them to control was strong in her. Fate, destiny, something preordained?
Gently, so gently at first, he touched his mouth to hers. A communion. Yet the effect was so overwhelming it drowned her in a wave of the most voluptuous heat. She had never experienced such a powerful sexual reaction. It caught at her breath so it emerged as a moan.
‘I’m not hurting you?’ He drew back a little.
‘No!’
The flame and the urgency of their coming together seemed to devour her. No flutter of conscience troubled her then. His kiss was so deep and so passionate there was no question of denying him what he sought to take from her. No question of denying herself such excitement, such a tremendous physical exhilaration.
She had never dreamed a kiss could be like this.
Never!
At that dangerous moment she was his for the taking. She was pressing herself against him with absolute abandon. All the world was lost to her. Instead of her habitual ingrained caution she felt only a magnificent generosity. She was offering herself, shamelessly, ultimately inciting him to take as much as he wanted from her. She was acutely aware he was powerfully aroused but she had no thought of withdrawing herself or calling a stop. Desire such as this was a revelation. It was the most potent of all intoxications and she was drinking it from his mouth.
Why would she call a halt to such a storm of wanting? For all she knew it might never happen again.
‘Caroline!’ He gasped out her name, getting one hand to her hair that was tumbling all around them in golden sheets.
She realised with a shock he was trying to hold her off.
Oh, God!
Absolute bliss turned to blinding mortification.
His dark head was bent over hers as he smoothed the hair away from her flushed face. ‘You know where this is going?’ His voice was as taut as a bow.
Wasn’t she inviting it? God help her, she was practically begging him to make love to her. She took a deep breath, then pushed him away, one hand flat against his chest.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He, too, had been unable to diminish the scale of all that he felt for her.
The whole extraordinary episode couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes yet she felt she would remember this encounter until the day she died. ‘It’s all right. I’m all right,’ she said. It took a while—she was cautious she wouldn’t slip into a faint she was so dazed—but she was able to slide off the cupboard bench, onto the floor. ‘I wanted that as much as you,’ she said, her voice full of confusion and regret, ‘but we have to watch ourselves from now on.’
A week later Carrie was working in a rather desultory fashion on station accounts when her mother rushed into the office, looking violently upset.
Gripped by panic, Carrie sprang to her feet. ‘What is it, Mamma?’ For a moment she experienced pure dread. Had something happened to her father? Was her mother ill? Had she received some terrible news? Blows had a relentless way of coming right out of the blue.
‘It’s Scott,’ Alicia gasped, sounding quite breathless.
‘What’s happened? Has he been hurt?’ Carrie began to imagine all sorts of horrendous things. Station accidents were all too common. Even fatalities. She had only seen Scott once since the Sunday of the picnic races. A Scott so repentant, so painfully anxious to please her, she’d found it extremely difficult to say what she needed to say; what desperately needed saying.
Scott, I want out of our engagement!
But the way Scott had acted made her feel breaking their engagement would be too terrible for him to bear at that time. Had she been blinded to the true depth of his love for her? Had she not seen how much he cared? Had she blamed him too severely for that terrible night? She couldn’t forget the sight of his hand upraised to her. His excuse was that he was drunk. People acted out of character when they were under the influence of alcohol. Pity for him was part of her self-enforced silence. He had treated her so carefully, as though she were utterly precious, and in the end she had let him drive away without saying one word of what was going round and round in her head.
The need for decisive action. It was causing her many a sleepless night. She had the awful feeling once she broke her engagement the recent harmony between herself and her father would break down overnight into icy rejection. Once the thought would have terrified her. But she was a woman now. She was well-educated. She would have to live separate from her parents. That meant she would have to leave her beloved home, the land she loved and seek a life for herself in the city. There were far worse things.
Now she led her mother to a chair. ‘Mamma, sit down. Here have some water.’ Swiftly she poured a glass from the cooler and put it into her mother’s hand. ‘Scott’s been injured, hasn’t he?’
‘They’ve both been injured,’ Alicia said bitterly. Alicia set down the glass of cold water so forcibly it was a wonder it didn’t break.
‘Both?’ Carrie stared at her mother vacantly.
‘Scott and that sly, underhanded bitch, Natasha Cunningham,’ Alicia said and thrust back a long strand of her hair.
Carrie was stupefied. ‘Mamma, what are you talking about? What happened? Where? Why were they together?’
Alicia looked at her daughter with pitying eyes. ‘Because he’s been seeing her on the side, that’s why!’
Carrie couldn’t seem to take it in, though she was staring at her mother, hard. ‘Scott has been seeing Natasha?’ she repeated. Given the way Scott had been behaving towards her—the way he always labelled Natasha ‘a bitch’—Carrie found it impossible to believe. Only a few days ago Scott had been literally down on his knees telling her how much he loved her, his voice filled with a I-can’t-live-without-you fervour. ‘How do you know? Who told you?’ Carrie demanded, wondering if there were a possibility her mother had got things wrong.
‘The way they found them told the story.’ Alicia reached for the glass and drained it as if she were parched to the point of severe dehydration.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ Carrie’s even temper started a slow boil. ‘Who found them? Where were they? Spit it out. Mamma, for God’s sake! I bet it’s all over the district already. Were they in his SUV?’
Alicia clapped her hand to her mouth as though she was about to be sick. ‘They careened right off the road and plunged into Campbell’s Crossing. It was Ian Campbell who found them. They’ve already been airlifted to hospital.’
‘My God!’ Carrie’s voice was flat with shock. ‘How bad were their injuries?’
‘No one knows yet,’ Alicia said, forcing herself to steady down. ‘Scott was in a worse state than Natasha, I believe.’
Carrie released a devastated groan. ‘We must ring the hospital to find out.’
‘Carrie, love, did you hear what I told you? Did you take it in? They were together. Scott has betrayed you. We all know he and Natasha were an item one time, but everyone thought it was over. What fools we’ve all been. Obviously their affair has never left off.’
‘I can’t understand this,’ Carrie said and she couldn’t. ‘I’ve been agonising over finding the best moment to tell Scott our engagement is off. I felt desperate to let him down lightly. Now I learn he’s been seeing Natasha behind my back al
l the while. It doesn’t make a bit of sense!’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Alicia laughed grimly. ‘She was giving him what you wouldn’t,’ she said, bluntly. ‘It was just sex.’
‘Just sex!’ Carrie’s voice soared to the ceiling. ‘You seem to know a hell of a lot about sex, Mamma.’
Alicia laughed even more bitterly. ‘I’m a married woman.’ Suddenly tears surged into her eyes. ‘Oh, Carrie, what a terrible mess!’
Carrie looked past her mother towards the door. ‘I’ll have to find out what condition they’re both in,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand here wondering. Does Dad know?’
Alicia raised her golden head, looking utterly drained. ‘He’s the one who told me. He’s shocked out of his mind.’
‘He never thought to come to me.’ Carrie’s feeling of wretchedness increased. ‘After all, I am supposed to be Scott’s fiancée. But Dad came to you. As always.’
‘He’s dreadfully upset.’ Alicia made excuses for her husband. ‘Naturally he would come to me, Carrie, and allow me to break the news to you. He was being thoughtful. He’s only just got the news directly from Ian Campbell. Your father thought the world of Scott.’
‘You didn’t, Mamma,’ Carrie pointed out, without emotion. ‘You wouldn’t have been too upset if I broke off the engagement.’
Alicia shielded her face with her hand. ‘I’m your mother. I wanted to see you marry well. Scott Harper is a great catch. Was a great catch.’ Her voice broke.
‘I pray to God he still will be,’ Carrie said, her expression badly strained. ‘But not for me. Why didn’t I recognise what was behind all those snide remarks Natasha used to make? The outright malice in her eyes? I put it down to jealousy. Understandable, when she must have been in love with Scott at one time. Now it appears she’s never given up on him. Maybe they were going to continue their affair right into our marriage? I’m a complete fool and I’ve only just found out. Surely someone realised what was going on?’
Alicia lifted her hand, her expression stony. ‘They erected a pretty good smoke screen, the two of them,’ she said with utter contempt. ‘I daresay some of his mates would have known what was going on. They’d think Scotty was entitled to a bit of fun on the side.’
