He should have put the trip off until morning—but he knew if he’d put it off, he wouldn’t have been able to leave Laila at all.
He was circling the home paddock now, ready for landing, his heart sad and full, his stomach clenching with joy and terror. How could this homecoming feel so right, and so wrong, at once? He was finally home. How could he feel so torn?
Laila’s face rose in his mind, sassy and pert, strong and lost. I’m in love with you, but you don’t love me. She’ll always be in your heart.
He had to block Laila from his mind, or he’d go crazy—or turn back to get her.
He thought of his brother and sister. Sandy and Aaron’s joyous excitement at hearing his voice put a lump in his throat that was still there now, an hour later; but hearing his mother’s voice, seeing her at Burrabilla at all, wasn’t something he was looking forward to.
Who was he to judge who belonged here or didn’t? Sandy and Aaron had that right. They’d done all the hard work, facing up to their responsibilities while he’d done just what Laila had said: ran around the country in a self-hate party for one.
That has to be the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard. What makes you think any of this is about you?
He smiled, just thinking about it. Lord help him, but he needed that woman! Only hours had passed, but he missed her already, missed her fearless honesty and sweet teasing, her love and her—
He missed her love? Was he the most selfish man on the face of the earth, wanting to keep the love of the amazing woman who was having his child while unable to give it back?
Or did it mean something more?
He shook his head. Whatever it was, now wasn’t the time. He could just imagine Laila’s eyes, all warm and teasing, as she told him to get his priorities straight…and she’d be right.
He stopped stalling, and got the landing gear in place, and was on the ground within two minutes.
Sandy was pulling the door open before he’d even turned the engine off. “Jake! Oh, Jake, thank God you’re home…” She’d flung herself into his arms and burst into tears while he was still only halfway out of the plane.
“Hey, San, you’re choking me,” he mock complained past the thickness in his throat. He wrapped his arms around his sister and held her close. “Sheesh, anyone would think you hadn’t seen me in years.”
A knuckle-punch on his deltoid brought back a ton of memories, and he grinned at his brother. “Ow. Watch it, Az, you’re stronger than you used to be.”
“That’s kinda the point.” Aaron grinned back. “Leave me with all the ruddy work for five years, will ya?”
He tried to clear his throat, failed and spoke through the lump. “Yeah, well, about that, I know I should have…”
“Stop it,” Sandy cried, kissing his cheek. “You did it for us for twelve years, Jake.”
“Don’t even think it, mate, or you’ll cop another knuckle-punch. Even when we could’ve killed you, we understood, so don’t you apologize. We don’t need it.” Aaron spoke with the kind of ferocity that had always been alien to his nature—but then, when they’d all lived here together, Sandy hadn’t been given to bouts of tears or hanging on to him, either. She was the tough Outback chick who could do anything the boys could do, and frequently do it better; Aaron was the family dreamer, and he, Jake, had taken care of them.
Seemed the past five years had changed more than him alone.
“Of course they understand. You were their mother and father for so many years after I left you all.”
Without a word, Sandy and Aaron moved aside at the sound of the tired voice: the fluid, musical voice he’d only rarely heard in the past twenty or more years. The voice he barely knew, because he’d refused to go with the kids on visitation weekends to Brisbane. Someone had had to stay home with their father to help with the workload.
He’d had to make sure poor old Dad made it through the weekends without jumping in the plane with the kids, to beg his wife for one more chance…a chance she wouldn’t give him. She’d been a city girl who hated the Outback life, and his father’s spirit would wither and die in a three-bedroom house on a quarter-acre block in the suburbs. They’d married after a brief affair that left her pregnant with Jake—but as Laila had proven to him with her graphic account of her friend Danni’s parents, some marriages just didn’t work.
“I’ll go back inside if you prefer, Jake.”
Jake looked around. Standing still and straight behind them, tall and graceful, lovely in the timeless way of Eurasian women, his mother watched the reunion with an impassive glance…the same impassivity he’d used himself the past five years to shield himself from pain.
With all his stubborn will, he tried to hang on to the hurts of the past, to see his dad’s utter loneliness—to remember the years of sacrifice he’d made to raise his brother and sister, but he couldn’t do it. He needed the forgiveness his brother and sister had given so freely after he’d deserted them, ran from his responsibilities.
Like mother, like son.
“Hello, Mum,” he said quietly, the long-unused word feeling strange on his tongue. “I’d welcome you home, but I think the shoe’s on the wrong foot for that.”
Mai smiled at her son. “Then I’ll welcome you.” She came forward with a hesitant step.
He really wasn’t ready for this—but as Aaron and Sandy moved away, giving Mai room, he bent a little, and allowed her to kiss his cheek.
The awkwardness of the touch couldn’t be helped; he’d barely seen her in twenty years, choosing to take sides, refusing to forgive one for the pain of the other.
With a man’s eyes—the eyes of a man given redemption freely—his vision had cleared.
“Well, are we going to stand around shivering here all night, or get inside?” Aaron demanded. Answering his own question, he reached in and shouldered Jake’s backpack.
As they began walking toward the homestead, various longtime workers slapped Jake on the back or murmured affectionate insults—a typical Australian welcome-home. The women hugged him as a long-lost child.
Maybe there was more to this prodigal son business than he’d thought.
“Bill and Adah will be here for lunch,” Sandy said, leading the way inside the house. “Darren will be over with his wife, Lucy, for dinner. They’re so excited you’re finally home.”
Jake stilled. His parents-in-law, and brother-in-law? It was too much, far too much!
Mai, who’d been walking beside him, said softly, “It’ll hurt for a long time, until you find the echoes of all this forgiveness inside yourself.” She nodded as he looked, startled, down at her. “I could give lectures on self-hate, and you are far more my son than you want to be.” She hesitated as they reached the kitchen, where, by the smell of things, a pot of tea and a chocolate cake awaited them. “Maybe we could talk about it later?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say in response. It had never occurred to him that his mother, of all people, could understand him so well.
But then, it had never occurred to him that a red-haired Outback girl with a sassy mouth and the heart of a wild brumby, who didn’t know the meaning of the word no, could bring him back to his family, to the joy of living, either.
At thirty-eight, Jake realized, he still had a lot to learn about life—but finally, at last, he was willing to learn.
He smiled at Mai, and said, just as soft, “I’d like that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“HI, JEN,” Jake said, in a strangled kind of whisper. “Bet you thought I’d never get here.”
Finally, after almost a week at Burrabilla, everyone had had their share of seeing him, he’d worked his land and come to some kind of peace with his former in-laws. Now, at last he had time, in the quiet hours before sunset, to come.
To her…to them. Jenny and Annabel.
He walked quietly past the grave of his father and grandparents to the small, fenced-in graves of his wife and daughter. He’d stopped to pick some of the hardy perennial fl
owers his mother had recently planted around the veranda, and separated them into two bunches. Not much of an apology, he knew, but what could possibly make up for ignoring his own wife and child for five years?
Somehow he’d expected the graves—one adult-size, one so pitifully tiny—to be wild and overgrown: a silent testimony to his neglect. He should have known Sandy better than that. While they hadn’t been seen to for about a week, and the flowers were faded now, most of the weeds were new growth.
Grateful to have something physical to do, he began pulling out the lamb’s-tongue and the dandelions, focusing his thoughts on that and just letting himself talk.
“I’m glad Sandy’s been taking care of you both. I’ve been gone a long time, I know—but I’m back, Jen. You probably always knew I’d run, didn’t you? You always said I was like my mother, whenever we had a fight. Well, I can’t run anymore, Jen. I’m tired, and I want to come home. I want to stay.” He gave a wry smile. “I can almost see you smiling at me. I always blathered on when I got nervous, didn’t I? Laila would laugh to hear that. She wouldn’t believe—” He skidded to a halt. What was he doing, talking about Laila at Jen’s grave?
Then he smiled again, because somehow it felt right to tell her.
“Laila’s the reason I’m here now, Jen. She’s an extraordinary person. You’d like her.” He gulped down the burning ball of pain in his throat. “Jen, I—” he dragged in a breath, closed his eyes and blurted out all the things he’d been holding in for five years “—oh, dear God, I’m sorry, Jen. I shouldn’t have left you that day. I should have taken you to your parents’, instead of letting you convince me to stay home. If I’d been thinking about anything but the cattle and profit-loss, I’d have known you’d drag out a stupid ladder or chair to finish Annabel’s room. You could never stand being bored, could you, darlin’?”
With the long-unused endearment, the first tear sprung up, and ran down his face: it felt cold as ice with the breeze frolicking around him. “I’m so sorry, Jen, so sorry…I’d give anything if it hadn’t happened—if you and Annabel were here with me now, and the other kids we’d planned together.”
Though he was saying the words Laila had given him, not one of them was scripted. Everything came from inside his long-frozen heart.
And yet he couldn’t go on, for it wasn’t true. It had been true, a few months ago—it had even felt true three days ago—but now it wasn’t. He’d loved Jen so deeply, with a love he’d been sure would last a lifetime. A big part of him still loved her, and always would; but would he truly give anything to have her back?
No, he wouldn’t give anything. Not anymore.
And slowly, he smiled through the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “I can’t lie—not to you, Jen. I’ll always love you—you know that—and if you were still alive, I wouldn’t be thinking this, or saying it. I wouldn’t have met her. But something’s happened to me I never expected. I couldn’t give anything to have you here…not anymore. You see, I’m going to be a daddy again. I’ve been watching him grow inside Laila, and I’ve felt him kick. And I just know that when he’s out in the world, and he smiles at me, I’m going to turn to mush…just like I do when Laila’s near me.”
Laila…sunshine Laila with her hair in its scrabbled ponytail, freckled nose and sassy mouth, and a heart that didn’t know the meaning of the word no—but she knew all about healing one stubborn, stupid jackaroo who hadn’t wanted to live.
“I love her, Jen,” he whispered, in sudden, blinding wonder. “I didn’t know—I couldn’t stand the thought of loving any woman but you for so long that when I met her, even though I couldn’t stop looking at her, I didn’t realize what it meant. But she took me as I was—a complete jerk who did nothing but hurt her—and she loves me.
“She loves me,” he said softly, smiling. “Maybe you wouldn’t wonder at that, but I know it for the miracle it is. I’ve spent years running scared from getting close to anyone, in case they died, too. I would never have given Laila a chance, but for the baby. She opened her heart to me, and I kept pushing her away. She never stopped giving to me, Jen, and never once asked for anything back. If she hadn’t kept the baby…if I hadn’t found her that day in the barn, she might have disappeared without ever telling me, and I wouldn’t be here now, back with the family. I would never have come home, but for her. I wouldn’t be me again, but for her.”
He bowed his head for a minute, eyes closed, breathing in the scent of home, the essence of being here at Burrabilla, where he belonged. Thinking of how his life would be now, if he’d walked away from Wallaby and Laila.
“I need her, Jen. I need her with me, my wife, the mother of my children. I know you’d understand that—but you and Annabel will always be here with us.”
He dropped to his knees, and after tossing out the wilted flowers in the vases resting on the headstones, replaced them with the fresh ones he’d picked. He picked up the plucked weeds, and tossed them away.
His fingers brushed over the gold lettering on the dark marble. Jennifer Connors Sutherland, beloved wife and mother. Annabel Adah Sutherland, beloved daughter. His hand lingered over the tiny grave of his daughter, his firstborn, now and always.
He would never forget them…and because of the miracle of a woman who loved him, he knew he didn’t have to. Laila accepted that his first wife and child would always be part of his heart—but the love they’d shared enriched the life he chose now. A life with Laila, his beautiful, feisty, stubborn, adorable Outback woman, who loved him with all her giving heart…and who might take more than a little convincing to believe in him, the way he believed in her.
“I’ll be back,” he vowed to them both, as he got back to his feet. “And this time, it’s a promise I’ll keep.”
Without stopping at Burrabilla—he’d radio the family from the air, and make them the same promise he’d just made to Jen and Annabel—he sprinted for the plane.
“Thanks for that, Laila. It saves me from hours more on a—messy job,” Dave Randall said, flinging a friendly arm around Laila’s shoulders as they alighted from the four-wheel-drive at Wallaby.
She grinned up at him. “Messy being the operative word.” She mock-shuddered. “Four hours of shaving Tilda Braun’s sheep’s bums. Has anyone told you lately that pregnant women are subject to bouts of nausea?”
“It’s called crutching,” Dave informed her, mock-haughtily, “and besides, Tilda deserves the help, coping alone with four kids and the sheep run since Pete’s death. You took on the job like a real pro.”
As expected, she chuckled. Everyone was trying so hard to cheer her up. “Ah, can the flattery, Dave. Nothing you say or do will make me take that job on a regular basis.”
“Yes, you would,” Dave said softly, and, swiping her hat, he ruffled her already messy and probably stinking hair, after spending the entire afternoon shaving the back ends of the sheep, and clearing out any traces of infection. Crutching was one of the most boring, messy and smelly jobs an Outback vet had to handle. Most owners did the job themselves; but Tilda Braun had had to let as many of her workers go as she could after her husband’s death, and the insurance payout hadn’t been a tenth of what they’d paid for.
The Braun job wasn’t the only freebie job she’d done. She’d had plenty of pro bono experience this week. Everyone in the region suddenly had jobs for her, and as they cheerfully explained, since they didn’t have to pay her, they might as well “make use of the sheila.”
At least sheila was an upgrade on “the Princess”, she thought wryly. It seemed there was one upside to having her heart…dented. People were seeing her as a real person. Nobody was bothering with gossip about her spending so much time with the hunky, blond, single vet. And keeping busy all day left her too exhausted at night to stay awake and grieve for losing Jake.
For much longer than an hour or two, anyway.
But when she was brutally honest with herself, she knew she had no right to grieve. Jake was probably happy now, back in the bos
om of his family, safe and busy in the role he’d been born and bred for—and he’d never truly been hers to lose. This was the wages of her sin the night of Dar and Marcie’s party, in taking what she’d never been given the right to have.
“Oy, Robbins, where’d your head wander off to just now—and without your hat—?”
Caught out in near-tears yet again, she forced a smile and lunged awkwardly at Dave as he danced away, laughing, with her Akubra. “Hey, give me that hat, Randall. It might be old and dented, but it’s hiding the sheep poop—”
“Laila.”
That voice, deep and dark as night…With a gasp, she whirled around.
A man stood on the lengthening shadows on the veranda.
He even made stillness and silence a thing of beauty and enthrallment.
One step, another; walking toward a promise of heaven she’d always known was out of reach, but she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t tear her gaze from him.
Vaguely she heard Dave’s four-wheel-drive starting up and driving off. It didn’t matter. He was here…Jake had come back…
He stepped out of the dimness and into the last rays of daylight, into the riot of sunset colors. Down one stair, another, his gaze locked on her, as if, disheveled and covered with mud and sheep dung, she was still exquisite to him.
He stood a step away from her, drinking in her face. His nose crinkled up as he put his hands on her shoulders. “You stink, Robbins,” he said softly, with a smile…a thing of beauty and simplicity—a smile without shadows, at last.
This was the man she’d ached to know from the first day.
The tips of her mouth curved up as she found words—typical Laila words for this profound moment. “Been crutching—you know, shaving sheep’s bums—all afternoon.”
He grinned, and touched her face with the kind of tenderness she’d only known from him the day she’d had the cramps. “That’s my woman. Can’t cook to save her life, doesn’t know a vacuum cleaner from a tractor, but she’s always ready to jump down into her favorite kind of war zone.”
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