Sarah's Baby

by Margaret Way

  “Think about it, Sarah,” Joe urged, coughing a little. Sarah heard the rattle in his lungs. “That’s all I ask. I think I can hang on here for another few months. After that, I’m not sure. You know how difficult it is to get doctors for rural areas, let alone a place as remote as Koomera Crossing. Could you manage it for just a few years? You’d not only be doing the community a great service, you’d be doing something I feel is absolutely crucial for yourself.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NOT UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT, when he saw her exit the shop, put on her sunglasses, then look toward where he was parked across the street, was Kyall sure she was going to come at all. He saw the town nosey parker, a woman he disliked, Ruby Hall—Muriel’s helper in the store—peer through the blind. She obviously figured he couldn’t see, so he gave her a little salute.

  It would be all around town within minutes that he and Sarah had driven off together. Ruby couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. At least she wouldn’t know where they’d gone, but he wouldn’t put it past her to jump into her little shoe-box car and follow them, ducking and weaving down the main street. She should’ve been a private eye. She would have loved it. The trouble was, there was no excitement in Ruby’s life. She was in her forties, uneducated and unmarried; her sharp tongue had put off the odd admirer. Ruby’s idea of excitement was loitering for the purpose of spying on other people. She wasn’t exactly harmless, either. It was Ruby who’d told Vera Saunders that her husband was having afternoon trysts with a certain young woman who used to work at the pub.

  Sarah was moving gracefully in his direction, so Kyall abandoned himself to simply staring at her. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid, those glittering little ringlets springing in an airy halo around her face. She looked little more than a schoolgirl, her body slender and supple. For a moment he was swept by nostalgia.

  Sarah! Why did you do this to me? Why didn’t you write? How many years was it before he finally gave up? Surely what they’d felt for each other hadn’t completely died? He never ceased to marvel at what a poor, deluded fool he was. Whoever said women were the romantics had got it all wrong.

  She wore yellow jeans that showed off her slim hips and long legs. Instead of the usual T-shirt India favored, albeit with designer label, Sarah was wearing some gauzy cream top that had bands of cream lace on either side of the low V front. Very feminine and sexy enough to make him catch his breath. There were boots on her feet, a yellow leather bag slung over her shoulder. Sarah had always had style. Not something she’d learned but something that must have been with her from birth.

  “Hi!”

  She nodded briskly. No smile. “Could we please go, Kyall? Ruby—I had to let her open the shop—has her nose poked through the blinds like she’s on to something important.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve already spotted her.” He lifted a nonchalant hand, waved again. “I have complete confidence in Ruby to inform the town that Sarah Dempsey and Kyall McQueen have picked up where they left off.”

  “Then she’ll be pointing them all in the wrong direction.” Sarah stepped into the Range Rover. “So where are we going?” she asked tautly when he was behind the wheel, so dynamic in that confined space she didn’t know whether to jump out, cry with frustration or both.

  He placed both hands against the wheel. Beautifully shaped hands, strong, darkly tanned, long-fingered. She considered them for a moment, remembering their unique touch, then looked away.

  “Listen, I’m not trying to kidnap you, Sarah,” he said mildly. “I just want to grab a few minutes of your valuable time. What do you say to getting out of town?” He searched her face for understanding. “How about our old pocket of the creek, or does that have too many traumatic memories?”

  “I don’t care.” Her face twisted a little as she said it. In her body, perhaps, she’d always be fifteen.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sure you scarcely remember.” He was silent until he pulled out of the parking bay and drove to the end of the main street, which was, in fact, the only street of any significance. People conducted their business there. It was called O’Connor Street after an intrepid young adventurer who really didn’t know a lot about adventuring. Or not in the Australian outback, at any rate.

  Dominating one side of O’Connor was the shire council building, pristine white, surrounded by palms and beds of decorative grasses. It had been built with McQueen money and designed by a talented architect. It looked impressive enough. Air-conditioned for the comfort of the mayor, his mother (Kyall hadn’t been a bit surprised when she was elected) and the councillors, ten at last count. The pub on the other side. The Sweeney. Version three. Two had burned down, but photographs of the original quaint old building with its corrugated iron roof lined the current pub’s walls. The hospital had half a block to itself. The theater stood on the corner—the Endeavour. That was Harriet’s baby. It served as a cinema, as well. Again, mostly McQueen money. In some respects his grandmother was generous. In others? Well, she was miserly as hell.

  “How are you, anyway?” he asked Sarah, at the same time lifting a hand to hail another driver, someone Sarah didn’t know. A big man with a large, handsome head, and probably a body to match. Normally she would’ve asked who it was, but didn’t. Not the way she felt.

  “How would you expect me to be?” she asked. “My world will be a different place without Mum. We mightn’t have seen each other all that often, but we always kept in touch. I knew she was there.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah.” He glanced at her lovely wounded face. “It was obvious to everyone how proud your mother was of you. How proud the town was. Harriet in particular. So my grandmother did some good things. You’d never have become a doctor without her. Takes a lot of money.”

  “And we had none.”

  He sighed. “I meant gifted people sometimes need a helping hand with the practical realities—like medical-school fees. You always were good at healing. Remember how you used to find berries and fungi in the bush? Water roots? You used to rub them on my cuts and scratches.”

  “Loaded with antiseptic properties. I found them because I used my eyes. And I listened. There’s so much to be learned from the Aboriginals. They’re the ones with the special relationship to this land.”

  “They never plant gardens,” he mused, thinking how denuded the homestead would look without its gardens. “They’re not interested in cultivating gardens at all. Even vegetables to fill out their diet. I know they look on the whole natural environment as their garden, but to me and the rest of us who spend a lot of money and time surrounding our houses and public buildings with beautiful gardens, it seems they’re somehow deprived.”

  “They don’t see it like we do,” she said simply. “Nature is their garden. Ancestral beings left them enough to eat. They have intimate knowledge of all the plants and trees. What they can eat, what they can use to heal. They use everything to the full. They can find water where we see a barren desert. Remember old Jalgura showing us how to extract water from the roots of the mallee? We were just kids and he must’ve been nearing a hundred.”

  Kyall nodded. “I also remember that you became interested very early in the healing side of it. I was more interested in bush tucker for survival.”

  “We had a wonderful childhood.” Her gaze blurred with tears and she tilted her head away slightly, pretending to look out at the town’s buildings.

  “You were my shining light.” His voice deepened. “You always wore your gold hair the way you’re wearing it now. Exactly the same. Except for special occasions, when you let that glorious mane loose. You always knew how to look wonderful. Remember that last time when everyone for hundreds of miles around was invited to Bonny Hatfield’s wedding?”

  “I’ll remember it all my life.” After that, everything had changed.

  “So will I. Lottie Harris made you that beautiful dress. What was it made of, moonbeams?”

  She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Tulle over a silk slip with little rose
appliqués,” she managed eventually. “So pale a blue it was almost silver. How wonderfully generous Lottie was. Mum paid for the material, but Lottie made the dress for nothing. And she made the rose trim for my hair. I felt like a princess the night you stole my heart away.”

  “And your honor,” he responded harshly. “Do women still think of their virginity as their honor?”

  “It matters,” she answered carefully. “Perhaps to some more than others. It’s the moment of changing from a protected child to a vulnerable woman. Self-esteem is affected by the experience.”

  “Did the loss of your virginity give you so much grief?” He threw a brilliant blue glance at her. “God, Sarah, I didn’t rape you. I hope—I can’t remember exactly, because I was so crazy about you—but I would’ve stopped if you’d uttered one word of protest. Whatever happened to account for your subsequent behavior? You not only went beyond my reach, you treated me like a…like a criminal.”

  That was the truth, and in its way dreadfully cruel. “Please, let’s not talk about it, Kyall. It’s so long ago. What can be gained from going over the whole thing again?”

  “Because it matters, Sarah,” he muttered, echoing her earlier words. “To me, anyway. You’re an intelligent woman. You’re also a doctor, used to dealing with trauma. What was it about your first experience of romantic passion that made you want to cut me so violently out of your life?”

  To tell him would be playing with fire. “It was all too much for me to handle.”

  “So you hated me for it—even though no grown woman could have responded more passionately,” he said. “Then, almost overnight, you had no greater wish than to be separated from me. You might as well have left me stranded in the middle of the Simpson Desert.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked down at her shaking hands.

  “Why did you come with me today?”

  “I thought I owed it to you.”

  “Now, doesn’t that beat everything!” he heard himself saying in a hard, derisive voice. Then he blew out a calming breath. “It’s not really the time, is it, to get anything out of you. Losing your mother has hit you hard. I’m sorry, Sarah. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’d be lying if I said you haven’t hurt me.”

  Neither of them spoke on the journey out to their old haunt, a hidden and beautiful pocket of the creek that was always filled with volumes of opalescent green water. The water swirled whitely around and between a handful of large, oddly shaped rocks that stood up from the creek bed like primitive sculptures. When they were children, this had been a fairyland to them, full of beauty and mystery. The bauhinias always seemed to be in bloom, pink, white and cerise, along with the flowering kurrajongs and the tall pink masses of mulla mullas. Their secret place had been a haven for large butterflies, too. Beautiful species that fed on the blossoming shrubs.

  He helped her from the vehicle, acknowledging her thank-you with a curt inclination of his head. The native boronia was in flower. The heavenly scent, so filled with old memories, wrapped around them. In the old days they’d maintained a twisting track down the slope to the glittery sand. Now the track had long since overgrown with grasses and trailing vines covered with tiny mauve flowers.

  It was a mistake to come, Sarah thought, torn between melancholy and a knife-edged excitement.

  “Let me go first to clear the way,” Kyall said in a businesslike voice. “It amazes me that other kids haven’t found this water hole.”

  “How do you know they haven’t?”

  He gave her a half amused, half scornful smile. “Sarah, look around. No one’s been here for years. The whole area is totally undisturbed. Watch those vines. They’re inches deep. They might trip you up.”

  “I’ll follow you.” Hadn’t she always?

  Nearing the bottom of the slope, she gained an unexpected momentum, slamming into his broad back. It was too late for regrets now. She was here alone with Kyall.

  “Steady.” He caught her around the waist.

  Don’t let me go. Don’t ever let me go. She wanted to say the words aloud, but they were stuck in her chest.

  “It’s uncanny,” he said. “It’s like we were here yesterday.”

  She didn’t answer, moving to the water’s edge. There was a subterranean spring in the center that kept the water deep. One section of the oval pool was aglow with a flotilla of blue lotus, the water so clear she could see the sandy bottom in the shallows. She couldn’t begin to count the number of times they’d swum here, racing one another from end to end.

  Try to catch me!

  The memories kept breaking out all around her.

  Careless of her boots and the hems of her jeans, Sarah waded in a little way, dipping her hands in the cold, flowing water. Cold even in the shimmering heat. Gratefully she splashed her face several times, throwing back her head to send a silvery spray of water into the air. She would’ve liked to wade out to the rocks. She and Kyall used to sit there, with her perched on one rock, him on another, having one of their endless conversations, sometimes arguments. Her mother had jokingly called them “the twins.”

  Impossible to shake off her nostalgia, but this beautiful place, so important in her life, was diminishing her grief. It had changed so little that time might’ve stood still. She dared to chance a look back over her shoulder, feeling the sensual intensity gathering inside her. Desire was such a powerful force. She could feel her nipples harden and the muscles of her stomach tighten. Kyall was watching her from the shade, his tall, powerful body elegant even in a relaxed slouch. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking. No—not true. Of course she did! There was always that thread of apprehension mixed up with the longing.

  Across the stream, the wilderness blossomed and beckoned. One starry night, she and Kyall had sought shelter there in the wild bush. A place for young lovers to meet, curtained off from the world. There their child had been conceived.

  Suddenly she was crying—afraid of revealing herself, afraid of pity, anger, condemnation. But she couldn’t help it. She hid her face in her hands, allowing her hair to fall forward like a shield.

  “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 forgetfulnes
s.

  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.”