by Margaret Way
“I doubt that very much,” he said. His hand moved to rest upon her knee and his thumb began gently circling her kneecap.
“I’m serious. She is dramatic, to say the least. Add to that a veritable cocktail of mental and emotional ailments that can only be kept in check by a rigorous combination of medication, psychological massage, and around-the-clock care, she is … difficult to live with. And since we did not have the funds to pay for proper care anywhere else, it fell on my shoulders.”
“You took care of her all by yourself?”
“Pretty much every day since I was thirteen years old,” she said, doing her all to keep her mind off the warmth reverberating from his gentle touch.
“Did she appreciate what you did for her?”
Jodie’s cheek twitched as she remembered the years of verbal and emotional abuse that had been her mother’s version of thanks. But then she visualised their yearly Christmas shopping sprees through Chelsea and was able to find a kind of emotional balance.
“Not so much,” she admitted. “Which is one reason why I am so very glad that she now has Derek—a darling retiree who thinks the sun rises and sets with her. They have been together a little over a year, and so far everything is rosy. But the minute his patience or the money runs out …”
“You think she’ll want you back?” he asked.
“Every time the phone rings.”
His hand moved higher, infinitesimally so, but Jodie could tell. The simple circular movements of the pads of his fingers merely lulled her further and further under his spell.
“So you married me,” he said, “in order to anchor yourself here. To give yourself a solid reason not to go back.”
She nodded, though perhaps she was just trembling.
“I can’t believe that you would find it that hard to say no to her. You’ve said no to me any number of times and I don’t think it caused you even a blip of remorse.”
“She’s a very hard woman to deny,” she said, her voice huskier than normal. “She’s a fireball, an electric spark, a bundle of energy and I’m …”
What? Terms her mother had used over the years came back to her like slaps across the face. A wet sponge? A mouse? Not worth the money she spent on food and clothes?
“I’m more regular,” she eventually said.
“Regular?” Heath repeated. “Jodie, sweetheart, the last adjective I would ever attribute to you would be regular.”
His hand moved away from her knee and she all but whimpered. But when he reached out and took a clump of her waves into his fist, running his fingers slowly down the length and watching as each hair slid from his gentle grasp, the whimper faded to nothing. Jodie’s breathing escalated, her chest rising and falling with each continuing second of his intimate but not-intimate-enough touch.
“I have no idea what sort of woman your mother is, but you, my sweet wife, are luminous,” he said, his eyes swinging back to hers, their blue depths darkening with something that to her seemed a heck of a lot like desire.
“You are delightful, for ever surprising, and compassionate, and yet you have a temper which I never see coming. And I’ve recently decided I like it that way.”
So if he thought all of those things, if she kept him intrigued and in laughter and on the edge of his seat, then was there any possible way she could make him forget Marissa once and for all? But even if she could, would it be worth it if she were for ever second best? She wished she could just come out and ask him. The words caused a sour taste beneath her tongue and she knew that if she didn’t find out now, she never would.
“Heath,” she said, her soft voice an echo of the difficulty she had in summoning her words.
“Jodie,” he said back, his eyes following the track of his hand through her curls.
“Did you marry me to get over Marissa once and for all?”
His hand stopped its heavenly path and his eyes snapped straight to hers. And if she thought her heart had been running a race earlier she’d had no idea. Confronted with such intensity in his big blue eyes, her heart all but galloped from her chest.
Finally he sat back with a ragged sigh and she felt a wave of cool air take up the space where he had just been.
“This is fast becoming the strangest day of my life.” He ran a ragged hand through his hair. “If I didn’t know better I would think you have all gathered for some secret meeting without me. Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“I put two and two together. From things you’ve said.” She took a deep breath and dived into the deep end. “But mostly from overhearing your conversation with Cameron just now.”
His eyes slid her way, and then towards the front door through which his brother had recently departed, and then back to her, careful, wary, unsure. “How much did you overhear?” he asked.
Oh, now she’d done it. How could she possibly say without giving herself away? Without telling him why she needed to know? “Why don’t you just tell me what you said?”
He blinked, and she was sure his eyes were actually lit with laughter. But he admitted nothing.
“Why did you want to marry me, Heath?” she asked, her innumerable frustrations getting the better of her. “What’s in it for you? I’ve changed my mind on your motivation a dozen times already, but now I just can’t see what you could possibly gain from this unless it is respite from a broken heart.”
“Companionship,” he said, all too quickly, and Jodie just knew that wasn’t the whole truth. “Marissa’s death did come into it. It showed me how alone I am out here.”
“Okay, but at the end of our two years do you plan to go through it all again? Find some other woman after Australian citizenship that you can bring out here and introduce to your family and welcome into your home?”
Her voice was growing overly loud; she could see Heath flinching from her accusations. Well, that was just tough.
“Sure. Why not?” he said, folding his arms and glaring back at her. “My life was just too comfortable before you came along. What I really needed to do to spice up my life was to sleep on a lumpy couch three nights out of seven, start wearing pyjamas to bed so as not to scare my half-dozen housemates in the morning, and have some kid fresh out of college questioning me about my sexual habits on his first day on the job.”
That so wasn’t the answer she had been looking for.
“Do you really think that I would agree to go through all this junk, for you, just because I am pining over another woman?”
Absolutely unwilling to let him make this about her, she threw her arms in the air. “Fine. If you won’t answer me directly then I guess that means I can go on believing what I will. Goodnight, Heath.” She turned and headed for the stairs up to her bedroom.
“Why are you always running, Jodie?” Heath asked.
Jodie’s feet stopped. It took all her strength to stop them, but stop them she did. She even gathered enough strength to turn and glower. “Excuse me?”
Heath was standing, glaring back at her from the middle of the lounge room. “You have run away from home. And now you are trying to run away from me. I’m not such a pushover I am going to let that happen without a fight.”
“You want me to fight?” she asked. “I have spent my life fighting. Fighting to protect my mum from confinement, from doing herself harm, from doing me harm. But now I am here, I had hoped I had finally found a place where I could allow things to happen more naturally. Fighting is the last thing I want.”
He came to her, taking her arms in his strong hands, forcing her to look at him. To really see him.
“Then stop.” His eyes blazed down at her, filled with a passion she couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Stop fighting me. Stop fighting this. Stop looking for reasons why this can’t work. You won’t regret it, I promise. I won’t let you.”
“I … I don’t think I know how to stop.”
His face softened further until he almost smiled. She was so close to him she could see the myriad blues in his irises, the
old scar in his eyebrow, and the varied colours in his golden skin. This was a face that had lived. And loved. And lost. But the emotion she saw now above all others was hope.
“Help me,” she said, uttering two words that in her whole young life she had struggled hard not to think, much less say aloud. But she wanted what he was offering her, more than she wanted anything else. “Help me learn to stop fighting.”
And then, with a growl as primal as the sunbaked land surrounding their outback oasis, he kissed her. Sweeping her into his arms with such compulsion it was as though he had been waiting weeks for her to say the word.
Before she even realised that she had been lifted off the floor, Heath was laying her back onto his bed with a gentleness that belied the desire in his eyes, and the heat in his kiss.
At the last moment he hesitated.
But he was right, she would not regret this. No matter his motives, or hers, no matter if Malcolm Cage whipped her dream out from under her, no matter if in two years” time Heath did let her go, or she let him go, she would never regret this.
So she reached out to him, burying her hands into his soft hair and drawing his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEATH sat upon the window-seat in his bedroom, staring out at the moonlit expanse. Even as Jodie lay naked in his bed, he could still scarcely believe that they had made love. It had been building for so long, but he had still believed her to be out of his reach. Now that the storm had broken it only made him ache for her all the more. His desire for her was unquenched, and, in his lifetime, unmatched.
The shuffling of fresh cotton behind him got his attention. He turned to find Jodie stretching beneath his sheets. She rolled to face him, waking for a moment, her lovely face curling into a soft smile before her eyes slid closed once more. He could have sat there and watched her all night.
He only wished he could turn back the clock to when she had asked him about Marissa, for he had known the instant the words left her mouth that her question had not been about Marissa at all. But when she had been brave enough to ask how he truly felt about her, he had taken the coward’s way out and shown her instead.
Sure, he had made progress with Cameron earlier the night before, talking through his feelings. That had been a big step for him, ground-breaking, really, for a country boy who had spent a lifetime being strong and steadfast for everyone else while keeping his own dilemmas buried down deep within himself. But this next step would be harder still. The hardest thing he would ever do in his life.
To tell a woman he cared for her, while having no clue that she would or even could return his feelings, would be the biggest risk he had taken in his life. He would be risking rejection, embarrassment, and even heartbreak. She desired him. There was no doubting that now. But had her childhood made it impossible for her to give herself to someone fully? Was he merely an easy way for her to run from her problems back home?
He looked back out at the moonlit night, sending out thoughts to the gods of earth and sky to give him strength.
He uncurled himself from his seat, pulled back the soft cool cotton sheets and lay next to his wife, taking complete advantage of her sleeping state as he wound himself around her, spooning her heavenly form, hoping that the reward for his risk would be that this night would be one of many.
The next morning, Jodie made a full English breakfast. Her life had gone way past the sort of drama that a cup of tea could fix. Grease, fat, and overcooked breakfast meats were the order of the day.
Besides which, she was starving. Her stomach was hollow. For a girl whose usual weekly exercise output was the walk to and from the tram, the day before had taken it out of her in more ways than one.
She stopped scrambling eggs for a moment and allowed herself a little daydream. If Heath didn’t realise her feelings for him after that display, he was as thick as the willow trunk in his main paddock. But then again maybe she should have told him in no uncertain terms last night. In the cold light of day it could be too late. Sunlight had a way of showing up every flaw, every faux pas …
She set the table, tracking down crockery, cutlery, placemats, coasters and all the bits and pieces she needed to put on her spread. There was tea, coffee, juice, and anything and everything that could be considered breakfast. So when Heath came in through the laundry door, she had every angle covered.
“Good morning,” she said brightly, standing at the head of the table with the chair pulled out. She felt the throw rug she had wrapped about herself slipping off her shoulder, so she gave it a self-conscious hitch. Even though Heath had seen and known parts of her body even she was unfamiliar with, she still felt too shy to run about the house naked.
Heath slowed, wiping dirty hands on an even dirtier rag, his eyes roving over the feast. “What’s this?”
“Full English breakfast just like you would find in any good café or pub back home.”
“Do you mind if I wash up first? The ute has been leaking oil and while you were still asleep I thought I’d take the time to have a look.”
Jodie’s spirits dropped with every second that he looked anywhere but at her. She knew what he was really saying and she understood. He had woken before her, finding her naked in his arms, and he had made a run for it, finding something “important” to do to get him out of the house so he wouldn’t have to face her and the morning after conversation.
Well, that was fine. Just fine. There was no way Jodie needed him telling her that the night before had been a mistake. That it hadn’t meant anything. She could figure it out from the signs all on her own.
“Go,” she said brightly as though nothing had changed, “wash up. But don’t be too long or it will get cold.”
“Sure,” he said, then paused, looking at her, finally. His face softened; the expression of confusion fading away. Jodie felt herself heating under his glance. Melting. Burning up with a mixture of awkwardness and remembered passion.
Put me out of my misery, she thought. Just tell me that you now agree with my need for abstinence and we can get on with it. I am tough. Well, I can be tough. Just be hard with me, cruel to me, negate me, and it will make me tough again.
But when he looked at her like that with those eyes so filled with warmth, longing, and wonder she couldn’t be tough. She became soft, yielding, and full of hope when for the longest time her life had not seemed destined to accommodate such feelings.
Her heart picked up pace as she was sure he was about to say something. She held her breath, not certain she was ready to hear it, whatever it was. But then with a frustrated frown he turned and stormed into the bedroom.
The second he was gone, she slumped into a chair and let her forehead land on the tabletop with a resounding thump.
Heath stripped off his oil-spattered clothes and jumped into the steaming shower, letting the water soak away the dirt, and grime, and discomfort he felt in holding his tumultuous feelings inside of him.
He’d run. He’d accused her of running the night before, yet the second he had woken to the cold, harsh light of day he had run. He hadn’t woken her with a kiss to the end of her upturned nose as he had so ached to do. Years of holding his feelings in check had compelled him to swing his legs from the bed, pull on jeans and an old flannelette shirt, and sent him out to his toolbox.
Now there she was, all wrapped up in a worn old throw rug from the end of his bed, likely with nothing else underneath, her hair mussed, her face pink from sleep, having cooked him a feast. And his sturdy rider’s legs had all but buckled beneath him at such an endearing sight.
She had made a peace-offering, a way of bridging their usual polite conversation and the fantastical night before. Whereas he, with his apprehensive tongue forming nothing but knots inside his mouth, had clomped through the sweet domestic scene like a bull in a china shop. Again he realised that this slip of a girl was far braver than him.
He turned off the hot water with such force his wrist hurt. Then he stood still beneath the cold shower,
letting the chilly droplets spear his skin. It was all he deserved.
Time apart might be just what he and Jodie both needed. And when he had been working on the ute, the fates had intervened in the form of Andy, his station manager. That afternoon he and the boys would be heading out on a two-night camp-out. Andy had done a headcount and a few head of cattle might have been left behind on the last muster. So Heath had put up his hand the minute Andy had told him the score.
So this simple farmer only hoped that in turning to the stars for help he could summon the words to tell his wife what she really meant to him.
A few hours later, Jodie stood on the veranda, waving as Heath, Andy and a handful of others walked their horses out towards the hills at the edge of Heath’s property.
She watched them until they became specks in the distance and she was left all alone with nothing but her thoughts. But, Jodie didn’t want to think any more.
So the second they were out of her sight she did an about-turn, marched into Heath’s kitchen, pulled out a packet of chocolate Tim-Tams, an apple tea cake she had made for them and then “forgotten” to pack, and a tube of condensed milk.
She marched back out to the love seat, and sat with the afternoon sunshine belting onto her face. Without a second thought, she ripped open the biscuit packet, not caring to keep the ends neat. This was one packet that would not need to keep the remaining contents fresh.
She grabbed a thick chocolate rectangle, and bit down, her teeth sinking into the soft outer layer before crunching through the brown biscuit middle. She all but drooled as the taste exploded in her mouth. The sugar, so long missing from her system, melted against her tastebuds.
Before she had fully enjoyed the first mouthful, she slid the rest of the biscuit into her mouth until the crumbs and layers filled her cheeks and she could barely chew without spilling crumbs all over herself.
To wash down the last of the biscuit, she opened the tube of condensed milk, tipped her head back, and squeezed until she filled every inch of her mouth. The smooth texture and seriously sweet taste were so magical, so heavenly, so decadent, they almost made her cry.
