Outback Husband

by Jessica Hart

  ‘And in case it’s slipped your mind,’ she swept on furiously, ‘today I not only had my own children to look after, I also had yours! You just walked out and left her.’

  ‘She’s all right—’ Cal began, but Juliet wasn’t about to let him finish.

  ‘She’s nine!’ she said, her voice as contemptuous as Cal’s had been earlier. ‘She needs food and drink and attention, just like any other child, and that’s what I gave her. Or was I supposed to ignore her and rush around after you all day, letting myself be blamed instead?’

  Cal’s hands were clenched with rage and a muscle was pounding in his jaw. ‘No, but—’

  ‘But nothing!’ Juliet interrupted him. ‘You obviously have different priorities, but I put the children first. I have to look after them before I can look after the station. I know there’s a serious problem, and I also know that the only way I can deal with it effectively is to hire a competent manager.

  ‘That’s why you’re here,’ she reminded him in any icy voice. ‘If I could do it myself I would, but I can’t, so I’m paying you to sort out the problem. I’m not paying you to criticise me. Don’t you ever—ever!—talk to me like that again! If you can’t do the job, then you’d better say so, and I’ll get in someone else who can do it, and can do it without shouting and insulting me!’

  And with that she turned on her heel and stalked off towards the homestead, leaving Cal to slam his hand against the rail post in fury and frustration. He swore out loud. Damn the woman! It would serve her right if he did leave her to sort out the mess on her own! She would be ruined within weeks!

  For a moment Cal savoured the thought of telling Juliet just what she could do with her job, but he knew that he couldn’t risk it. He could call her bluff, but he wouldn’t put it past that dark-eyed witch to let him go and then find some other fool she could boss around to her heart’s content.

  Cal wished he knew how much money Juliet had behind her. The state of the station suggested that it wasn’t much, but it might just mean that she and her husband hadn’t been prepared to spend any on improvements and maintenance. He had heard the Laings had vast property interests around the world, so all Juliet would have to do was call her in-laws if she ran short of cash. And even if money was a problem, and she went bankrupt, the banks would get involved and it could be months if not years before he could buy Wilparilla back.

  No, he would have to stick with it, Cal decided reluctantly. He would stay and toe the line, but he was damned if he was going to save the station for her. He would do the minimum, even if it meant watching Wilparilla degenerate further, until she was forced to admit that she couldn’t keep it going any longer.

  It wouldn’t be long, he vowed.

  Juliet herself was still rigid with anger. Somehow she managed to feed the children, but only she knew what it cost her to keep smiling and acting as normal while inside she was screaming with rage and frustration and utter despair.

  Cal hadn’t needed to be quite so brutal to make her realise how desperate the situation was. The bare facts were enough to terrify her. The prospect of losing Wilparilla pressed down on Juliet. She couldn’t give in, she wouldn’t give in…but what was she going to do?

  At least when the children were in bed she could stop smiling. Supper was eaten in glacial silence. As soon as it was over, Cal excused himself, and Juliet was left to do the washing up alone. Even a repetition of last night’s kiss would have been better than being alone with her thoughts, Juliet realised wearily, as she stood at the sink, washing dishes like a zombie.

  Sometimes it seemed as if she had spent the last few years clambering over an obstacle course, each obstacle higher and harder than the last. Then Hugo had died and she had hoped that she would at least be able to have some control over her life again. She had made the decision to sack the manager and bring in Cal, but that had only replaced one problem with another.

  Juliet could have coped with Cal’s attitude, but the scale of the problems he had identified terrified her. She didn’t know where to begin solving them. All she knew was that if she didn’t, the twins would lose the only thing that Hugo had ever given them. Somehow she had to find a way to raise the money to cover the most immediate repairs, but—

  Juliet’s thoughts broke off as a plate that she was drying mechanically slipped between her hands and smashed onto the floor. She stared down at the mess, her bottom lip trembling with reaction. It felt like the last straw, and she was submerged by a tide of exhaustion and depression so profound that the simple task of clearing it up seemed insuperable.

  She did sweep up the pieces in the end, but the effort of doing it without bursting into tears was enormous. Her hands were shaking as she tipped the last of the shards down the rubbish chute. Leaving the rest of the dishes to dry themselves, she dragged herself along the corridor to bed, where she fell like a stone into an exhausted sleep.

  The sound of crying dragged Juliet out of the depths in the middle of the night. It’s one of the twins, her brain insisted. Get out of bed, it ordered. But her body refused to obey. She lay on the bed as if she were tied down by lead weights. It took an immense effort of will just to open her eyes, but somehow she got her legs to the floor.

  By the time she got next door, both boys were awake, both screaming, feeding off the other’s distress. Still disorientated, Juliet hung on the door, not knowing which to go to first. In the end, she had to lift Kit over to Andrew’s bed so that she could sit and hold them both. She tried to soothe them, but they could sense that she was close to tears of exhaustion and despair herself, and, picking up on her tension, they redoubled their cries.

  Further down the corridor, Cal could hear their screams. Let Juliet handle it, he thought. The bloody woman would only resent his interference if he tried to help. No doubt he would be accused of trying to exceed his responsibilities! In any case, it wasn’t his fault if she couldn’t cope on her own. There was nothing to stop her going home.

  He turned on his side, hunching a shoulder irritably, but the cries went on and on, until he could stand it no longer. They would wake Natalie up next. Exasperated, Cal pulled on some shorts and strode down to the twins’ room.

  The light from the corridor spilled into the room, and he could see Juliet in a white cotton nightdress, sitting on one of the beds and struggling to keep hold of the boys, who were arching back over her arms in a frenzy, their faces screwed up and their little fists clenched as they screamed.

  She looked up as he appeared in the doorway, her expression naked with desperation. Without a word, Cal went over and took Andrew from her. He walked the child around the room as if he were a tiny baby, calming him with the security of his hold and the steadiness of his heartbeat. Andrew’s head was buried into his shoulder, but as his sobs began to lessen, Cal looked over to see that Juliet’s undivided attention had magically soothed Kit too. She held him on her lap while the screams reduced to sobs, and then to little hiccuping gasps, and finally, blissfully, silence.

  ‘What was the matter?’ Cal asked in an undertone.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was dull with exhaustion, and she looked beaten. ‘A nightmare, perhaps. One of them woke up crying, and I didn’t get here soon enough to stop him waking the other with a fright.’

  Cal craned his head down to look at Andrew’s face. His eyes were drooping and his body had gone limp. ‘I think they’ll sleep now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Juliet roused herself to lift Kit from her lap and lay him back down in the bed. As Cal had said, he was almost asleep. Then she took Andrew back and put him down. He murmured something as she bent to kiss him, his little fingers stretching and curling subconsciously.

  ‘You can leave them now,’ whispered Cal, and she realised that she was just standing there, staring down at her son.

  She followed Cal to the door like an automaton, and stood blinking in the light. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not looking at him. ’I couldn’t stop them crying. I tried, but they wouldn’t stop, a
nd I couldn’t…I couldn’t…’

  To her horror, she could hear as if from a distance her voice breaking on the edge of hysteria. She made as if to stumble back to her room, but Cal had her arm in a firm grip.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and propelled her out onto the verandah, pushing her down into a chair. ‘Sit there and I’ll go and make you some tea.’

  Juliet’s mouth was working uncontrollably, and she covered her face with her hands. The unexpected gentleness in his voice was more than she could bear. If he had been brusque, she might have pulled herself together, but as it was she broke down and wept in a way she had never allowed herself to weep before.

  Cal hesitated. She looked so distraught that he wanted to gather her into his arms and comfort her the way he had comforted Andrew, but she wasn’t a child, she was a woman, and he didn’t think holding her would be a very good idea.

  Nor would Juliet want it. She was his boss, as she kept reminding him, and hired men didn’t gather their bosses onto their laps and hold them while they cried, did they?

  He turned away, and went to make the tea.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ he said when he came back, thrusting a hot mug into her hand. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  Juliet clutched the mug in one hand and tried to wipe her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said on a shuddering breath. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying like this.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  She took a sip of the tea. It was hot and sweet and steadying. ‘I’m just so tired,’ she admitted on a long sigh. ‘Everything’s gone wrong, and I’ve been trying to cope, but it never seems to get any easier, and tonight I couldn’t even stop my children crying. I was just sitting there while they were screaming and there was nothing I could do.’ Her mouth twisted bitterly at the memory of her own inadequacy. She linked her fingers around the mug and cradled it against her chest.

  ‘If you hadn’t come along, we’d probably still be there,’ she said, and glanced at Cal. He was leaning forward in his chair, resting his arms on his thighs and holding his own mug loosely between his knees. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking out at the night. The stars were splashed across the great dark bowl of the sky, their light so bright that Juliet could see the silhouettes of the coolabah trees on the way down to the creek.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said quietly, almost shyly. ‘I didn’t realise you would be so good with small children.’

  He looked at her then, just once, and then away. ‘Sara died when Natalie was three,’ he said. ‘I know what it’s like to have to cope on your own.’

  Juliet glanced at him. ‘Yes, I suppose you do,’ she sighed, although she couldn’t imagine him ever being reduced to hysterical tears, ever feeling lonely or afraid or overwhelmed by panic. He seemed too solid, too steady, too capable. But perhaps that was unfair? How would she know how he had felt when his wife had died?

  They were silent for a while, sipping their tea in the light striping the verandah from the corridor through the wire mesh of the screen door. Juliet rubbed her face absently with the back of her hand. That awful, hysterical feeling had faded and she felt oddly calm, sitting out here with Cal, listening to the sounds of the night.

  ‘I’m sorry about that argument this afternoon,’ she said at last.

  ‘So am I,’ Cal found himself saying. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

  ‘You were right to be angry. I know I have to do something to save Wilparilla, but I don’t know where to start.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘Hugo lost interest in the station long ago. They hadn’t even finished building the house before he got bored with the tourist idea and started spending time in Sydney again. When I got back here, nothing was happening on the station. All the men who’d been working here when he first bought the property had left, and he’d brought in a manager who didn’t seem to care any more than he did.’

  Juliet sighed. ‘I thought, when Hugo was killed in that car accident, that at least I could do something about getting things going again, but the manager wasn’t going to help me. I didn’t have much choice but to stick out the wet season, and then I’d hoped that we could make a fresh start together, but all he would do was tell me that I should sell up.’

  Cal grimaced to himself. ‘Why didn’t you?’ he said, studying her over the rim of his mug. ‘It’s hard enough to bring up two small children on your own without having the worry of a station like this to run.’

  ‘Because Wilparilla is all Kit and Andrew have,’ said Juliet, her eyes on the black outlines of the trees against the black night. ‘Hugo wasn’t interested in his children,’ she went on with difficulty. ‘He couldn’t even be bothered to be there when they were born. But if it wasn’t for him they wouldn’t have the chance to grow up somewhere like this. Hugo didn’t do anything else for them, but he gave them this and I’m keeping it in trust for them.’

  ‘Is that the only reason you don’t want to sell?’ asked Cal carefully. It was a fair enough reason, he supposed, but the security of an income ought to mean more to the boys in the future. He would be able to make her see the sense of that.

  ‘No.’ Cal could see the starlight gleaming in the huge dark eyes as Juliet turned to face him. ‘I don’t want to sell Wilparilla because I love it.’

  She looked back at the darkness. ‘It’s funny, you know,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘When Hugo told me he’d bought a cattle station, I thought he was joking. One minute I was in London, the next I was here! It was awful at first. Everything was so strange. I hated the flies and the heat and the emptiness and the silence.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  He thought at first that Juliet wouldn’t answer. ‘Kit and Andrew changed it for me,’ she said slowly at last. ‘Hugo never wanted me to have a baby. He thought it would be too much of a tie, and my pregnancy disgusted him. We hadn’t been married very long, and I was still clinging to the delusion that I could change him,’ she added rather bitterly.

  ‘Of course, Hugo didn’t want to be changed. He used to spend most of his time in Sydney. He said he was sorting out details for the new homestead, but I don’t suppose he was. Meanwhile I was here, hoping that everything would be magically different as soon as he saw his own children. I used to walk along the creek,’ she remembered. ‘And one day, I felt one of the babies move. I felt…’

  Juliet trailed off, searching for the words to make Cal understand what had happened to her that day. ‘I can’t describe how I felt,’ she admitted at last. ‘But everything changed for me then. I think, in an odd way, I grew up then,’ she said seriously. ‘Wilparilla would be my babies’ home, and I started to see it as they might see it. I started to listen to the birds and to smell the bush. I grew to love the light and the space and the silence and now…now I couldn’t bear to leave it.’

  Cal said nothing. He didn’t want to know this. He wanted to go on thinking of her as an alien, an outsider, not as someone who felt about Wilparilla the way he did.

  There was a long, long silence. Somewhere in the darkness, an insect whirred.

  ‘We’d better get some sleep,’ said Cal at last. He put his mug on the floor and stood up. He wished he could go to bed and wake up not knowing how much Juliet loved Wilparilla, not knowing how her husband had left her alone while she was pregnant. He wished he could be angry with her again. He wished he hadn’t noticed how long and slender her legs were beneath the skimpy nightdress, or how the fine material moulded over her breasts.

  Juliet nodded. The chair was deep and not easy to get out of without a concerted effort. She struggled to sit up, and without thinking Cal leant down to take her hand and pull her to her feet.

  His fingers were warm and strong around hers, and Juliet was conscious of a ridiculous desire to cling to them. For the first time she became aware that he was bare-chested, and at the same moment realised how revealing her nightdress was. He was standing very close, still gripping her hand to steady her.

  ‘OK?’ he asked,
and she nodded, intensely grateful for the darkness which hid the burning colour in her cheeks.

  ‘Thank you,’ she muttered.

  There was an imperceptible hesitation, then Cal dropped her hand and stepped back. ‘Don’t think about it all any more tonight,’ he said almost roughly. ‘We’ll sort something out in the morning.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE was no sign of Cal again when Juliet woke the next morning. He was probably avoiding her, Juliet thought in embarrassment, remembering how she had wept all over him the night before. She cringed when she thought of the helpless way she had just sat there and let him take control, of the wobbling hysteria in her voice and her self-pitying tears. He must think that she was pathetic!

  But if Cal did think that, he gave no sign of it when he walked into the kitchen later that morning. Juliet had been baking, and there was a smudge of flour on her cheek. She flushed when she saw him, and her heart quickened, leaving her ridiculously breathless.

  ‘I wanted to thank you for last night,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I was in a bit of a state, but I…well, I didn’t mean to bore you with all my problems in the middle of the night. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me,’ said Cal. He hesitated. He had been doing a lot of thinking that morning. ‘I’m the one who should apologise,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise what you’d been through, and I think I was a bit unfair on you before.’

  Juliet brushed flour slowly from her hands. ‘That doesn’t matter. I just wish all the problems you told me about yesterday would go away as easily.’

  ‘They’re not going to go away,’ he told her frankly. ‘We can make a start on some of them, though. I’ve sent two of the men out to fix the pipes at Okey Bore, and the others are making a start on the fencing, but I think you and I need to sit down and consider how we’re going to tackle the bigger problems. Are you up to that?’