by Margaret Way
“I’m with you, love,” Dee answered with a nod of approval, as though she had known Amber all her life. Eliot looked happy but slightly bemused. Why couldn’t Janis get this result?
She had only been on Jingala a matter of hours, yet Ms Wyatt appeared very much at home, Cal thought. She had Dee and his uncle on side. In fact a visitor would assume she was very much part of the family. It had its piquant side.
“I can sit and watch him,” Eliot MacFarlane volunteered, even though Cal could see his uncle was uneasy about the outcome. Baby Marcus had screamed non-stop almost from birth.
“See, his eyes are closing,” Amber pointed out with a lovely tender smile.
Eliot’s breath whistled. If only. If only. “Poor wee mite hasn’t been getting any sleep at all. My wife is a total wreck. It’s been very hard on her.”
“So what is she going to do about it?” Cal tried hard not to show his impatience. He knew all about “baby blues”. He was godfather to quite a few kids. But this was something else again. Something he couldn’t put his finger on.
So what then was it? The marriage wasn’t working out. He already knew that. The age difference? It wasn’t all that great. What exactly was causing Jan’s nonstop lashing out at anyone within earshot? He suspected she had always been a bit on the emotionally unstable side. Even before she’d fallen pregnant his uncle had told him Jan was given to mood swings. He really wanted to be sympathetic. He didn’t enjoy seeing anyone suffering but his own assessment, backed by a top nurse from the Royal Flying Doctor Service, was that Jan was furiously disappointed her life wasn’t working out as she had planned.
“Mainly Mrs MacFarlane doesn’t want to take on the role of mother. Not everyone is cut out to be a parent, you know.”
Like he needed to be told! He had the miserable experience of his own runaway mother.
Amber, her eyes trained on the Cattle Baron’s high mettled face, could see the banked-down rage, impatience, frustration, whatever, behind his controlled exterior. Fabulous though he was, he appeared to be lacking in sympathy, which didn’t win him a batch of Brownie points from her. Then she felt ashamed. He had been very sympathetic in relation to her; that didn’t appear to be the case with his aunt by marriage. A bit weird to think that Jan MacFarlane was only a few years older than he was.
“Why don’t we find you a comfortable chair, Eliot?” She swiftly intervened. He had asked her almost immediately to call him by his Christian name. Warmth and friendliness rarely failed.
“Yeah, let’s fix you up,” said Dee.
They had been dining in a lovely relaxed place, an informal area off the kitchen. Tall, timber framed glass doors were folded concertina fashion to give the spacious seating area the effect of a breezy veranda where the indoors met up with the outdoors. The view across the grounds, liberally dotted with majestic date palms and desert oaks, stretched away to the mirage-shrouded hills that had lightened by the hour to a dusky pink. She had read about this changing of colour of the great rocks of the Interior, especially Uluru and Kata Tjunta that was said to be spectacular. Now she was in this part of the world, she wondered why she had never made the trek to the Centre. Her career and other destinations had kept getting in the way.
They rose from the table as one but it was Cal who gently took hold of little Marcus in his bouncinette and gestured to Amber rather imperiously, she thought, to select her idea of the suitable chair for his uncle to mind baby. It was all she could do not to bob a curtsy.
“I’ll have a bottle of formula ready,” Dee whispered, placing an encouraging hand on Amber’s shoulder.
Marcus made no protest as his bouncinette was lowered to the floor beside the comfortable armchair Amber chose. It was close to an antique Asian chest with quite an accumulation of interesting-looking books piled on top of it. Eliot would have something to read, though he too looked as if he was in desperate need of sleep.
The manoeuvre successful, Cal resisted the temptation to give Ms Wyatt a sardonic salute. At the very least, her coming had brought a breath of sanity. That took some doing. But what next? He hadn’t invited her to Jingala to fill the role of nanny. He just hoped she knew that.
CHAPTER SIX
NO SOONER had Amber taken her seat in the four-wheel drive than he took off like a rocket.
“Hey, what is this, lift-off?” she yelped. She had been comfortably settling herself in, enveloped in a warm glow of excitement and anticipation, now she had to scramble to secure her seat belt.
“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” He turned his dark head to give her a challenging smile. “Hold still now. We’re going to do a lot of winding in, out and over some pretty rough terrain, fording a creek or two. Why, are you terrified already?”
“Gosh, I thought I looked relaxed.”
“You don’t.”
“Darn and I was trying to make a good impression. Might be a stupid question, but are there any crocs in your lagoons?”
“Ms Wyatt, I don’t want to have to rope in your level of IQ.”
“Nothing wrong with my IQ. A friend of mine was chased by a croc up at Mount Isa where crocs shouldn’t be.”
He laughed. “Somebody introduced saltwater crocs into a dam up there when they were babies. They survived in fresh water. There would have been a sign about that your friend obviously ignored.”
“He said not. He had multiple lacerations trying to get through the barbed wire.”
“Barbed wire, really?” He glanced at her with sparkling eyes. “Barbed wire generally means, Stay Out, Ms Wyatt.”
“Great! I’ve got that right,” she answered dryly.
“One learns best when under threat.”
“Words to live by,” she drawled, then broke off in amazement. “Oh, look at the birds!” She stared out of the window at a fantastic V-shaped formation of tiny emerald-and-gold winged bodies. “Budgies,” she proclaimed, absolutely delighted with the massed display. “There must be thousands of them.”
“A common sight around here,” he told her, secretly very pleased by her enthusiasm and the radiance of her expression. “You’re in the land of parrots, the sulphur-crested cockatoos, the pink and grey galahs, the millions of chats and wrens and finches. The pretty little zebra finches—you’ll spot them from the stripes—form the staple diet of the hawks and falcons, sad to say, but that’s the wilds. The predators just swoop down very leisurely to collect their prey.”
“So, these zebra chats? Black stripes on a white body or white stripes on a black body?”
“Are you serious?” He headed cross country for the glinting chain of lagoons.
“I kid you not.”
“Damned if I know,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never given it a thought.”
“That’s okay. I guess you’re too busy. I’ll check it out.”
“Check out our biggest bird while you’re at it.”
“Wedge-tailed eagle, right?”
He nodded. “Listen, you should have come out here sooner. I can see you’re going to make a great student of Outback flora and fauna. You’ll see plenty of eagles, especially up in the ridges. I’m thrilled you’re so interested in our bird life. A couple of months back when the channels were in flood the nomadic water birds arrived from all over. Countless thousands of them. Jingala is a major breeding ground, as are the other big Channel Country stations. There are huge colonies of ibis. Hundreds of birds in one colony. They nest in the lignum swamps. The pelicans love isolation so they pick the most remote lagoons to make their nests. Then you have spoonbills, shags, herons, water hens, ducks of all kinds. You can see them gathered in great numbers at any waterhole. Water birds are nomads. They have to be. When the water dries up they fly off to better country.”
“And I’ve missed them,” she said regretfully, struck anew by the beauty of the mirage. It was pulsing away like a silvery fire amid the green line of trees.
“They haven’t all gone,” he assured her. “So buck up. Jingala
will fulfil its promise, Ms Wyatt. You won’t be starved for the sight of birds. There’s still plenty of water around. We’ve had more glorious rain than we’ve had in a very long time. The most prolific display of wildflowers is over. You would have loved it, but there are still areas covered in paper daisies and a lot of beautiful little spider lilies near the banks of the billabongs. The water lilies flower all the time. They’re quite magnificent. Oddly enough, some of the most exquisite little flowers bloom in the arid soil and the rocky pockets of the hill country. I’ll show you another day. The hardiest plant, virtually indestructible, is the spinifex, which you see growing all around us. The reason the spinifex survives is because the root system is always shaded from the sun. See all the long vertical spikes?”
Amber looked out with interest at the great golden clumps that formed a thick three hundred and sixty degree circle. “Yes.”
“They have a waxy coating to prevent moisture loss. Even a scorching sun is thrown off by the pointed tips, while the roots are protected.’
“So the spinifex is perfectly adapted to this incredible environment. What I’m finding so unusual are the endless chains of billabongs. It’s the desert but not the desert. It’s like magic.”
“It’s a riverine desert,” he corrected. “When the big floods are on and the water is brought down from the monsoonal tropical North through our inland river system, the Diamantina, the Georgina and Cooper’s Creek, those same billabongs we’re heading for can run fifty miles across.”
“Good grief!” She tried to visualize such a scene. “Now that’s downright scary. Have you ever been marooned?”
He turned his head to look squarely into the golden lakes of her eyes. “Of course. It’s drought or flood, Amber. We have to live with both. Many have died in the struggle. Every one of us, right from the first days of settlement, have had to make huge sacrifices. I love my country—this country around us—with a passion. I love it—I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else—but the one thing you couldn’t call it is safe. There are always huge hazards, danger all around you. So don’t go getting too carried away.”
“Is that a warning?” she asked, her eyes on a solitary conical shaped rock formation standing like a beacon amid the spinifex.
His eyes glittered. “I’m just putting you straight. How would a woman with apricot hair and exquisite creamy skin stand up to this harsh environment?’
Under his intent scrutiny she flushed. “Obviously, you don’t think it can be done, or not without consequences. What about your mother?”
“What about her?”
A definite snap. “Not a good subject, right?”
“Sorry,” he said. “But my mother, a beautiful woman, by the way—she got all the looks in the Erskine family—had to be the world’s worst mother. No, hang on,” he said as though seriously considering, “maybe Jan.”
She turned her head to face his handsome, hard-edged profile, more than ready to take him to task. “Now that’s unkind. Very unkind.”
“I never claimed to be kind,” he said and gave her a slight smile. A sexy smile, damn him, but he wasn’t getting off the hook.
“Yet you’ve been kind to me,” she pointed out crisply. “Amazingly kind.”
“Perhaps I have an ulterior motive?”
“Aah!” She let her bright head fall back. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted an unpaid nanny?”
He let his impatience show. “Surely you’re getting free board?” He let his challenging tone hang between them for a second or two. “Don’t be ridiculous. I invited you here to enjoy yourself, see our Outback, maybe derive inspiration for your forthcoming blockbuster, and don’t you forget it.”
“I was only joking.”
He took another moment to consider. “No, you weren’t.”
“Heck, Cal, are we going to fall out on our very first day?” she asked wryly.
His deep laugh, like a chuckle, caught her by surprise. “Amber, you’re not supposed to say silly things like that. I had no idea little Marcus would take to you like you were his appointed guardian angel. We had two good women with lots of experience to help and advise Jan. Like I told you, she drove them away with her flash bang verbal breakouts. They took it as long as they could, then literally flew off. Jan doesn’t have mood-swings, like Eliot once said. She’s in a filthy mood all the time. She takes no pleasure or interest in anything. She gives my uncle a really bad time.”
Amber had seen enough of Jan’s behaviour to well believe it. Still, she felt compelled to stick up for a deeply depressed new mother. This could and did happen to the best of women. “But surely these are symptoms of PND?” she challenged more disapprovingly than she intended. “The appearance of being out of control, the inability to cope with her baby. Jan’s to be pitied. She’s to be helped. The condition can be quite severe.”
“And you think I’m blaming Jan for what she can’t control?” He threw her a hard, impatient look.
“Yes.” Amber nodded emphatically. The first time she’d laid eyes on him she’d thought he was the kind of man who’d have difficulty in getting in touch with his feminine side.
“And that’s a snap analysis?” was his sarcastic rejoinder.
“I’m only saying what I believe. I’m a woman, after all.”
“And I haven’t noticed?” The green eyes whipped over her, increasing her heart rate. “The thing is, Ms Wyatt—”
“Yes, Mr MacFarlane?” She feigned strict attention.
“The thing is, Amber, we’ve all lived with it for months now. We thought things would gradually get better. Everyone has been kind and supportive, believe it or not. Even tough old me. I can see you’ve already labelled me a hard-hearted man. No, don’t begin to deny it.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said sweetly. “It’s just that you can’t know what it’s really like.”
“So what do you suggest? I rush out and father a child. See how I go?”
“You’ll find out eventually,” she pointed out calmly. “I didn’t say I don’t think you’d make a good dad.”
“But your preference is for sensitive New Age guys,” he mocked. “I won’t at this point mention that wimp, Sinclair. It defies logic that a woman as intelligent as you dedicated herself to such a louse. How the hell did that happen?”
She gulped in air. “Hey, might I remind you you’re not my keeper? Anyway, you’re not the one to talk.”
“Of course I’m not,” he agreed. “Maybe one day they’ll isolate the hormone that causes physical attraction.”
“You’re suggesting they find the antidote? Believe me, it won’t work.”
“Well, we can save that for another time. There’s nothing to be gained from mooning about the past.”
“Who’s mooning?” she sweetly asked.
“You said that as if you meant it.”
“I do. What about you?”
“I do the best I can.” He gave her a sideways grin. “As for Janis, Eliot has had loads—and I mean loads—of her favourite flowers flown in. The most expensive flowers ever packed up by a florist, I guarantee. They cost oodles! The bill put even me into shock. Anyway, why don’t we get off the subject of Jan?” He knew he sounded a little harsh.
“Her problems won’t go away. I do hope Marcus sleeps for your uncle.”
“Poor little scrap is suffering pretty severe sleep deprivation,” he said, his tone miraculously becoming gentler.
So it was the mother. Not the child. “I just want to say this.”
He gave a knowing smile. “Course you do. The investigative journalist. Prize-winning to boot.”
She ignored the taunt. “Mrs MacFarlane could be feeling very guilty. She could be feeling shame she can’t handle her own baby. She could even be feeling worthless. Have you taken that into account?”
“Would you like to know?” He swerved to avoid an all but hidden boulder, causing the four-wheel drive to rock.
“Of course I would.” She straightened up, slightly dizzy wi
th their close proximity. He was such a physical man. “I’m asking.”
“You have taken into account I’m not the husband. I’m not the father. I am what I am. Fed up to the back teeth and, before you take me further to task, a very experienced nursing sister from the Royal Flying Doctor team told me privately on her last visit she very much doubted Jan was suffering genuine PND.”
“Go on.” She turned to him.
“I intend to. Sister Ryan is very familiar with the condition. She advises many young mothers rearing their babies in our Outback isolation.”
Amber blew a stray coppery-red lock off her brow. “Okay, so maybe I’m out of line here.”
“Don’t let that bother you,” he said dryly. “That’s how we met, remember? You being out of line.”
“You know, maybe I shouldn’t have come out here. Why don’t you just tell me to leave?”
He laughed out loud. It was a great sound. “Asking you to leave wouldn’t come easily to me. I like you, Amber.” His eyes sparkled over her. “You’re a woman without inhibitions.”
“I wouldn’t count on that!” She gave him a very speaking glance, at the same moment she felt the imprint of his kisses on her mouth. “Even I, a woman without inhibitions, dare not ask if your uncle’s marriage isn’t working out. You may well bite my head off. There is the age difference, but it’s not all that great. Your uncle is a handsome, very gentlemanly man.”
“He’s that.” The Cattle Baron sighed deeply. “Sometimes it doesn’t work with women.”
“And no doubt you’re a good judge?” Just being with him was giving her a mad rush of exhilaration. Both of them were dealing with old wounds and, maybe now, a resurgence of hormones, chemicals, whatever. The Cattle Baron was man-handling her poor broken heart, though right now she had to question the depth of what she and Sean actually had had.
“No better than you, Amber,” he said, throwing her another narrow sidelong glance.
That hit a nerve, as it was meant to. “You mean we’ve both made serious mistakes in the romance stakes,” she retaliated.
