Turning her back on the window, she rolled onto one side and took in the room. Small but adequate; what more did anyone need than a bed, a closet and a bathroom? However, the decision to stay overnight in the pub Adam frequented on his monthly visits to town had not gone down well with all the members of their party. A certain someone wanted to know why they couldn’t book rooms at the Cable Beach Resort. A certain someone was a spoiled princess and needed to pull her head in.
Which was basically what Neil had told Evie to do when he’d taken her aside tonight for another talking-to. It seemed her time spent schmoozing—what sort of a word was that?—up to Adam’s mother had not gone unnoticed and her boss would prefer she spent less time socialising and more time doing what she was being paid for. In the interests of keeping her job, she bit back her own observation that his little téte-a-téte with Chrissy had not gone unnoticed, either. She spared a moment to wonder what was going on there before her mind swung back to May.
Meeting Adam’s mother had actually been one of the highlights of her entire time here. She and May had been so open with one another, she felt she’d known the elderly woman for years. The revelation about Adam’s fostering explained a lot—his awkwardness at questions about his childhood, the sadness behind his eyes, the incongruous vulnerability in a man who appeared to have it all.
One thing it didn’t explain, though, was his reluctance to talk about his father. May had made her husband out to be a wonderful partner and parent. At one point Evie had contemplated asking about it, but she didn’t want to interrupt Adam’s mother. Continued careful treatment would be needed with that touchy subject.
She’d also have to take care that Adam realised for himself how important it was to talk about his past. That was the key to unlocking his emotions.
Her instinctive reaction to what she’d learned from May had been pity. Not for the fact that he was a foster child—it was character, not background that made a person who they were—but because Adam thought the wall of secrecy he’d erected around his past was protecting him. She respected his right to privacy, but in reality she could also see the harm it caused. Somehow she had to get him to open up; cracks had to be made in that wall he hid behind. For his sake even more than for her benefit.
She could do it. If she was patient, he would open up to her in his own time. When she set her mind to something she gave it everything she had, and failure was not on the agenda. She’d been there, done that, and it sucked. Losing her job on the Six O’clock News had been the defining failure of her life. She knew she deserved to be sacked—no question, she’d done the wrong thing—but failing at something she’d been so determined to succeed at had stung.
With sleep finally beginning to tug at her mind, she rolled onto her other side and closed her eyes. A vision instantly etched itself on her eyelids. Adam. She gave herself up to thinking about him. Tall, strong, dependable Farmer Adam. With his wide shoulders and even wider smile. His sense of humour so similar to her own. With his darker-than-dark eyes and white teeth. His wet hair curling at the nape of his neck and the citrus smell of him, fresh out of a shower each morning. And those large, long-fingered hands. They’d have the power to make a woman’s body melt beneath their slightest touch—
Or so she imagined.
Which she really shouldn’t be doing.
She flopped onto her back, groaning aloud at her own stupidity in allowing her mind to go there. Her eyes flicked open and she lay still as they adjusted to the dark. Slowly, her hyped-up heartbeat returned to normal and the tingle low in her stomach abated. The way her body responded so alarmingly to even a passing thought about Adam was unnerving.
Dammit! She needed this about as much as she needed a poke in the eye with a burned stick. She could not afford to have these thoughts about him.
The unbearable longings they stirred in her were better left sleeping. Better kept a secret—between her and her heart. She had too much to lose.
She gathered up her resolve. Starting tomorrow—she ticked everything off in her mind—she’d be professionalism personified, a team player to the nth degree. That should keep Neil off her back. To do her best by May, she’d get Adam talking about his childhood. That would help him, too, when he discovered the relief that unburdening brought with it. She cared for him more than enough to want to save him from any secrets his past harboured.
The actual details of getting him to open up were still a little sketchy, but she had faith in herself. Engaging people was what she was good at. She knew how to listen—attentive, relaxed, waiting in silence until he was ready to go on—and when to ask the necessary questions. And now, with what May had told her today, she knew the sorts of questions that needed asking.
A huge sigh of satisfaction left her lips as she snuggled into her pillow. She had a plan. Life was back on track.
* * *
A giant fist raised, ready to strike. Dirt-encrusted boot crushing his little-boy chest. Skin on fire. Small legs running, getting nowhere, his contorted face looking back over his shoulder. Tiny mouth open and screaming, but no sound emerging.
Adam stirred on the edge of sleep and consciousness as the fractured images flashed through his brain. From their wake rose a tsunami-sized wave of black pain that crested, hung suspended for an interminable moment, then pounded down.
Swallowing him up. Suffocating. Drowning him.
He sat bolt upright in the bed, chest heaving with a desperate need for air, his naked torso slick with sweat. He threw off the sheet. A pulse hammered in his forehead and the knot in his stomach made him feel physically sick.
The dark dreams, the nightmares that had intermittently haunted his nights for as long as he could remember, were back. This time they were even more vividly real and shocking in their intensity than before.
Breath coming shaky and shallow, he reached out and switched on the bedside lamp in a crazy attempt to scatter the demons that invaded his sleep. He sat perfectly still for a few seconds, relearning how to breathe. Finally under control, he wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked backwards and forwards on the dishevelled bed.
Night terrors. That’s what May had called them when he was young. But he was a grown man now with no such excuse to explain them away. He drew a ragged breath, pushing back the hateful tears stinging the corners of his eyes.
Were they nightmares? Or were they memories, as his mother had hinted at over the years? Memories he’d blocked as a coping device. It made sense; he’d acknowledged that to himself more than once. Complete denial was so much easier to live with than facing the idea he’d been a victim of such violence.
Inside, he knew the truth.
Accepting it—that was a whole other thing.
He stumbled to the bathroom and flicked the switch. The fluorescent light above the basin pinged into life. He reached down and twisted the tap handle, bent over to splash a handful of water on his face, sluiced some through his hair. With a hand he wiped the water from his eyes. Then, tightening his fingers around both sides of the white porcelain sink, he leaned forward, gathered his courage and finally looked up.
For the longest time he stared at the man in the mirror, hardly recognising himself. Under the harsh light of the bare fluorescent tube his face was drawn and pale and there was a tormented look to his eyes. A tear-shaped bead of water dripped from the end of his nose. He swiped it away.
This couldn’t go on. The past—that place his mind refused to go, except in the guise of nightmares—was catching up with him. The protective psychological defence that had for so long allowed him to pretend those things hadn’t really happened was crumbling.
May was right. The time had come to confront his private demons.
Squaring his shoulders, he pulled his body up straight and as he did, his gaze fell on the random pattern of milk-white brandings scattered through his chest hair. He used a trembling finger to trace an outline of puckered flesh. There was no pain, of course. No feeling at all. The nerve endings had
been destroyed long ago. When he was a kid, he’d passed them off as measles scars. As a teenager and an adult he kept them hidden; the small, circular shapes couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what they were—cigarette burns.
He watched his face twist into an anguished mask as shame washed over him. The abuse was his fault, not his father’s. A parent protected their child from hurt, they didn’t inflict it, right? A parent wouldn’t do something like that, not without the worst kind of provocation. The excuses followed one after the other in quick succession: his father didn’t know what he was doing; he didn’t know his own strength; he didn’t realise he was hurting his son.
What a hellish child he must have been to drive his father to such extremes. Completely, utterly, thoroughly, bad. He had to have brought the abuse on himself. If that wasn’t the case …
He screwed his eyes shut against the unfinished thought and everything it had always implied. The idea that his father had never loved him at all hurt too much to contemplate. Parents loved their children. It was a universal truth. May had taught him that.
He swallowed around the ache in his throat at the thought of his mother. He owed her such a lot. She and Larry had both opened their hearts to the messed-up little kid he’d been, refusing to let him push them away, giving him nothing but unconditional love. Their understanding and patience, their simple kindness, had gradually enabled him to manage the aggressive impulses and maelstrom of unnameable feelings he’d brought with him when he came to live with them.
His eyes slowly opened. The lump in his throat was now a football, impossible to breathe past. He opened his mouth and a soft sob escaped. He missed Larry, the man he’d called Dad, with a strength of feeling that sometimes threatened to overwhelm. It was Larry who, in his own gentle way, had provided the role model of what a real man, and a father, should be—devoted to his family, dependable, and able to love without holding back.
But it was May who Adam had to think of right now. Her advice—to bring his past out into the open, to talk it over with someone—was well meant. He knew that; he had no doubt of his mother’s loving concern for his welfare.
What he did doubt was the wisdom of allowing any person close enough to see the real man beneath this facade he’d constructed. Discussing his childhood with anyone would reveal far more than needed to be known about who he really was.
Almost automatically his thoughts turned to Evie. If there was anyone he could talk to, it would be her. It surprised him how much he’d told her about himself and his life already. He rarely shared his thoughts aloud—rarely had the opportunity, given his circumstances. So maybe it was his own loneliness, or maybe it was the non-judgemental way she had of listening that encouraged him to offer up more about himself than he ever thought he would.
None of it was to do with his past, though. Not only was that level of intimacy beyond him, for the moment at least, but he’d worked out long ago that expressing his thoughts and feelings aloud was a trigger for the nightmares.
His jaw tightened at the thought of even a glimpse of pity for him in Evie’s eyes. A band of pressure tightened around his skull and he roughed his hands over his face, fighting for control of his emotions. Just the idea of her knowing the truth about his past took too much out of him. He couldn’t do it. The scars he carried, both inside and out, were too shameful to be revealed.
Maybe one day he’d find the strength to tell …someone. Someone he loved and who loved him back. Maybe, if he allowed himself to get to know Chrissy and Meg better, he’d find himself falling in love with one of them and able to finally open up. He had to hope so, for May’s sake as well as his own.
Just not yet.
He was a coward. But emotional numbness had to be preferable to the agony of revealing his shame. In the interests of self-preservation he had to shut the memories away again. Shove them into some back corner of his mind where he wouldn’t have to see them, taste them, feel them in the light of day. The dark dreams would no doubt continue. But it was a price he was willing to pay to keep his secret.
With a sinking feeling he realised he was going to have to distance himself from Evie from now on. If that meant pushing her away, so be it, as hard as that would be. Because now that she knew a little about his background, there’d be even more endless questioning, and there was too much honesty in him to be able to openly lie to her. Keeping himself remote was the only option.
His knees sagged and his eyelids drooped as weariness wove itself through his body. It was a bone-deep tiredness that had as much to do with being emotionally drained as it did with lack of sleep. He turned off the bathroom light and made his way back to bed.
He left the bedside lamp on.
CHAPTER
13
Road to Cape Leveque
March 21
‘How much longer?’
The petulance in Chrissy’s voice set Evie’s teeth on edge. It was the third time she’d asked the same thing in the last half-hour.
‘You sound like a little kid.’ Meg’s trademark laugh followed the words, but there was a definite bite in her tone. ‘Are we there yet?’ she added, mimicking a child’s whine.
Chrissy turned to give her a death stare.
From the back seat, Evie had a clear view of the interior of the Land Rover. The dark-haired head almost brushing the roof in the driver’s seat belonged to Adam. Chrissy, of course, sat next to him; after the last stop, she’d almost elbowed Meg out of the way to take the pole position. In the middle row, Meg and Cam sat in quiet conversation, while Neil read through yesterday’s transcripts. The four-wheel drive was huge, with enough room for all of them plus cameras and luggage, but not nearly big enough for both Evie and Chrissy if the whingeing continued.
‘Five minutes or so.’ Adam’s response was patient. ‘It’s worth the drive, believe me.’
‘I do! And I can’t wait! I’m so looking forward to seeing this place.’ Chrissy clapped her hands together.
Meg stuck a finger down her throat and Cam chuckled.
The blonde head rested itself momentarily on Adam’s broad shoulder, before the never-ending bumps in the corrugated dirt road forced her up straight. Evie couldn’t suppress a smile. Adam called it the Kimberley massage—the rough bouncing up and down caused by driving through the inches-thick dust of these outback roads—but it was hardly conducive to relaxation.
She tried to focus her gaze on the red-dust-stained scrubland that Adam referred to as pindan whizzing past her eyes. They were headed for Cape Leveque which, according to Adam, was the last, and best, must-see destination in a full day of amazing sights.
The day had been a real eye-opener for Evie. What at first appeared to be a desolate landscape had surprised and delighted her with its impossibly vivid colours and surreal formations. And the tales Adam told as they drove along kept her enthralled. The story behind Anastasia’s Pool, in particular, had captured her imagination. It seemed at one time there was a lighthouse-keeper’s wife crippled with arthritis whose only relief came from bathing in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Her husband loved her so much he had a small, circular pool carved especially for her into the spectacular sandstone rocks at the bottom of Gantheaume Point. She could just picture the woman being carried lovingly down to the water by her husband. It warmed her heart to think of it. To have someone love you enough to do something like that must be a special feeling.
Hopefully, one of these days she’d know that feeling herself.
Far out! Where had that come from?
She’d sworn off the idea of any sort of permanent relationship twelve months ago. Twelve months and ten days to be exact. Could it be she was finally starting to get over Nick? Or was her ridiculous ability to explicitly recall the precise time and circumstances of his betrayal proof she wasn’t over it at all? Whatever the answer, it wasn’t a thought for analysis just now. She needed to focus on Adam.
She’d awoken this morning filled with the thrill of hopeful expectancy. Today
would be a good day. Today she would continue her attempts to win back the friendship and trust Adam had honoured her with earlier, before she’d had to draw a line in the sand about their working relationship. Today she’d get him talking about the fact he was a foster child.
The thing was, he’d been particularly reserved with her all day. It was almost as if he’d been deliberately avoiding her gaze, and he’d refused to be drawn into their usual bantering. The aloofness didn’t sit well with her. During an all-too-brief private moment the previous night, before the others arrived in the bar for dinner, they’d touched on May’s revelations about his background. Adam had seemed a little self-conscious but, apart from that, seemed to accept that she knew he’d been fostered. He had asked that she keep the information between them, to which she’d agreed. But today he’d been so distant and she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to cause the change. He couldn’t possibly think she’d go back on her word, could he?
‘Here we are, folks.’ Adam pulled the Land Rover to a halt by the side of the road. ‘Out you get.’
As she clambered from the vehicle Evie wasn’t sure whether her instantaneous intake of breath was caused by the sudden absence of air-conditioning, or by the stunning panorama in front of them. Beside her, Cam hoisted his camera, chuckling excitedly to himself. She knew how he must feel. The colours were a photographer’s dream: a natural canvas saturated with impossibly vivid colours, the red-rock cliff face a striking contrast to the bone-white sand. The crystal-clear turquoise waters lapping at the shore were so inviting she wanted to run down, windmilling her arms and whooping aloud with joy, to jump in, clothes and all.
She closed her eyes momentarily, drinking in the heat, the touch of the breeze on her face, and the sea scent surrounding her. The dramatic landscape of this vast wilderness couldn’t have been more different to what she was used to, but she was beginning to feel the pull it had on the senses. Adam’s pride in this isolated area was justified.
The Farmer's Perfect Match Page 13
