by Jessica Hart
‘Now?’
‘I think it would be best. You’re going to have to make some tough decisions, and the sooner the better.’
‘All right.’ Juliet untied her apron and draped it over the back of the chair. She could hear the twins playing outside on the verandah, where Natalie had volunteered to keep an eye on them. She sat down at the kitchen table and Cal spread out some papers before her.
‘I’ve drawn up a list of jobs that need to be tackled urgently,’ he explained. ‘Those on this sheet are essential, but not immediate, and then this third sheet shows things that would improve the station in the long term.’
Juliet picked up the sheets of paper and eyed them in dismay. The urgent list was even longer than the ‘essential’ one. ‘We’ll never be able to do all of that!’
‘We can try,’ said Cal bracingly. ‘It depends how much money you’re prepared to put into saving Wilparilla.’
She put down the last sheet. ‘I haven’t got any money,’ she said, and he frowned.
‘You must have something. You don’t buy properties like these without a lot of capital behind you.’
‘I know. There was plenty of money when we first came out to Australia, but it’s all gone.’
‘Gone?’ Cal stared at her. ‘What on?’
Juliet lifted her shoulders wearily. ‘Who knows? This house cost a huge amount of money, but it was just one of Hugo’s whims. He would wake up in the morning with an idea, and he wouldn’t care how much it cost. He always had a plan that was going to change everything, but he never stuck at anything long enough to make it work.’
She smiled a little painfully, thinking that it was as true of her marriage as of anything else. ‘Hugo could be very generous when he felt like it. He’d buy something incredibly expensive, just on a whim, and then give it away when he was tired of it. Everything came too easily to Hugo,’ she added reflectively. ‘He never had to fight for anything he wanted, so he didn’t value what he had.
‘You’d have to have met Hugo to understand what he was like,’ she went on, seeing the disbelief in Cal’s face. How could she explain her husband to a man like Cal? ‘He could be cruel and irresponsible, but nobody could be more charming or better company when he felt like it. He had a sort of magnetism. And he was so handsome! He had a glamour too, with just the right undercurrent of dangerous unpredictability to make him irresistible. Even women who disapproved of everything he stood for fell for him.’
Once it had hurt just to say Hugo’s name. Now she could talk about him dispassionately, as if he were a character in a book that she had read. ‘Hugo was famous for never committing himself. He always had at least three beautiful women in tow: one he was finishing an affair with, one he was starting an affair with and one he had his eye on for the next affair.’
‘Why would you want to get involved with someone like that?’ The words were out before Cal could help himself, and Juliet half smiled. She should have known that Cal wouldn’t understand about Hugo. She might as well have been describing an alien from Mars for all the two men had in common.
‘Men with dangerous reputations are notoriously seductive,’ she tried to explain, even though she knew that it was useless. ‘Each of us secretly thought that all Hugo needed was the love of a good woman. Every woman who met him believed deep down that she would know how to handle him.’
‘And out of all these women who wanted to save him, he chose you?’
‘I know, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ said Juliet, accepting his surprise without rancour. ‘I was just like everyone else, in love with him from afar at first. I was working in London then, and I saw him at a few parties, but mostly I knew about him from what I read in the gossip columns.’
‘How did you meet him?’ asked Cal, unwillingly drawn into her story.
‘At a polo match. I was staying with friends for the weekend and he turned out to be friend of a friend of theirs. Close to, he was mesmerising. I was very young, only twenty-one, and Hugo swept me off my feet. I’d never met anyone like him before and I was lost. I didn’t care about his reputation. I really thought he had changed for me.’
Juliet sighed, half-indulgent, half sad for that younger, naive self. ‘When he asked me to marry him, I believed that proved it. Everyone told me not to marry him. My family and friends said that I was making the biggest mistake of my life, but I wouldn’t listen. We had a big society wedding, and I wore a long white dress, and I was so sure that I would prove them all wrong.’
She shook her head at herself. Remembering those early days with Hugo still hurt more than she wanted to admit, and she got restlessly to her feet to make some coffee. Part of her wanted to tell Cal all this, to explain what Hugo had been like, but another part was afraid that he would think her a fool for being so stupid and gullible.
‘Was it such a big mistake?’ Cal asked reluctantly. He imagined Juliet as a bride, young and in love, and then he looked at her averted face as she filled the kettle, the shadowed eyes, the hurt that seemed to be carved into the contours of her cheeks, and he wondered what kind of man could do that to her. ‘He wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t loved you, would he?’ he forced himself to say, although somehow the idea of Hugo loving her even briefly was jarring and unpleasant.
‘Well, that’s what I thought, of course.’ Juliet spooned coffee from the jar into two mugs and kept her voice deliberately light. ‘I thought, Hugo could have had anyone he wanted, but he chose me, so he must love me.’
‘Why else would he marry you?’
She turned and leant against the unit while she waited for the kettle to boil, clasping her arms lightly together. She had gone so far; she might as well tell Cal it all.
‘He married me because I was young and so pathetically grateful to him for choosing me that I wouldn’t make trouble. I didn’t know until after the wedding that his parents had made marriage a condition of settling his debts. When Hugo ran out of money, which he frequently did, he would just ask his parents to bail him out, but he was running up such enormous debts that they decided they needed to do something about it.
‘I gather they thought a wife might be a stabilising influence on him,’ Juliet continued, ‘but of course I made absolutely no difference to Hugo’s life at all. Once he was married they handed over the money, and he just carried on as before, spending wildly, having affairs, risking his neck on speedboats and skis, in fast cars and planes, whenever life got too tame for him. He was very easily bored,’ she added ironically as the kettle boiled and she turned to fill the mugs.
‘Why didn’t you just leave him?’ Cal asked, thinking that if he had ever met Hugo Laing in person he would have taken great pleasure in kicking him off his property.
Juliet carried the mugs over to the table. ‘Because I was still young enough to think that it was all my fault for not being the right kind of wife for him, and I knew that if I did leave him, everyone would just say, “I told you it wouldn’t work.” At the time, it seemed less humiliating to try and salvage something from the marriage.
‘Then Hugo ran into more trouble with his family. They were so wealthy that he didn’t need to work, but the Laings are very keen on appearances, and for form’s sake he had been given a job in their merchant bank. He didn’t spend much time there, but when he did he had to make things more exciting by speculating wildly with their reserves.’ She poured milk into her coffee and then held the jug up to Cal. ‘Milk?’
He shook his head and she put the milk jug back in the fridge. ‘I’m still not sure exactly what he was doing,’ she confessed, ‘but he was sailing even closer to the wind than usual, and his parents decided it would be better if Hugo was out of the country for a while. They’ve got huge business interests in Sydney, so we were packed off there—the unspoken message being that if I’d been a better wife, he would have settled down.’
‘I didn’t realise the English still thought of Australia as a useful place to send the black sheep of the family,’ said Cal
dryly.
‘The Laings probably don’t realise the British Empire no longer exists,’ Juliet told him. ‘If they weren’t so arrogant and manipulative, they’d be laughable.’
Cal drank his coffee thoughtfully. ‘It’s still a long way from Sydney to Wilparilla,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me the Laings have got business interests in the outback as well?’
‘No, buying Wilparilla was a classic Hugo whim. He liked Sydney for a while, and then he got bored. He went sailing one day with someone who had something to do with selling outback properties, and by the time he came home he’d put in an offer.’
Cal’s mouth tightened when he thought how casually Wilparilla had changed hands. He knew exactly who Hugo had been sailing with.
‘So here I am,’ said Juliet. ‘It was only when we got here that Hugo realised the advantages of an isolated property. He was furious when he found out I was pregnant, but that turned out to be a good excuse to leave me here once he got bored—which of course he did—so that he could fly off to Sydney or Perth or up to South East Asia on his own.’
‘Why did you put up with it?’ demanded Cal almost angrily.
Juliet ran her hands through her hair. It was hard to remember now. ‘Because when we first came to Australia I hoped it would be a fresh start for us, and it was, at first. Hugo wasn’t always a bastard. When he felt like it, he could be charming and funny and exciting, and I loved him. It takes a long time to give up loving someone like Hugo. It’s like an addiction. You keep on hoping, even when you know it’s no use.’ She gave a tiny sigh. ‘I did hope that once the twins were born Hugo would love them, and learn to love me because of them, but it didn’t work out that way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cal. It sounded inadequate, but what else was there to say?
‘It was horrible,’ Juliet acknowledged. ‘I was desperately unhappy for a long time, but I’m not unhappy any more. Now I’m angry. I’m angry that Hugo made no effort to give his sons even one happy memory of him. I’m angry at the way he neglected Wilparilla, and most of all I’m angry that he made no financial provision for the boys. There was one insurance policy on his life, but most of that had to go on settling his outstanding debts, and what’s left has to keep the boys and I until Wilparilla is making a profit again.’
‘You realise that could be some time, unless you can inject a large amount of cash now?’ Cal asked as gently as he could.
Juliet bit her lip. ‘How long?’
This was his chance, Cal realised. He could tell her ten, fifteen years, and she would give up. She wouldn’t risk what little money the boys had. Wilparilla would be his for the asking.
‘What about your husband’s parents?’ he heard his voice asking instead. ‘Couldn’t you approach them for some money? Kit and Andrew are their grandchildren, after all.’
‘No.’ Juliet’s mouth hardened. ‘I don’t want anything to do with them. I don’t trust them. They don’t think they have to play by the same rules as anyone else. If I took money from them, they’d think they had the right to interfere in my life. They’d be out here, lording it over everybody, looking for profit, wanting to take the twins back to England…no, I won’t ask them for anything.’
‘What about the banks?’
What was he doing? Cal asked himself desperately. He was supposed to be encouraging Juliet to sell, not suggesting ways she could save Wilparilla for herself.
But Juliet was shaking her head. ‘I’ve got a huge overdraft as it is, and they won’t lend me money on the kind of terms I need.’
‘All right, so we’ll just have to do what we can without investment.’ Cal shut his mind to the warning voice telling him that he was on the verge of blowing his best chance to get Wilparilla back, and picked up the list of urgent jobs. He studied it, frowning slightly.
‘We’ve got four men out there, and it won’t do them any harm to do some work for a change,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to do without any contractors. That means no helicopters for the musters, no bull-catchers. We’ll have to do all that ourselves.’
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and Juliet found herself noticing the golden hairs on his forearm, the solidity of his thigh on the chair next to hers. He was wearing shorts, and the impulse to lay her hand against his skin tingled in her palm. She looked away hastily.
‘Repairs are a major problem, especially for the vehicles,’ he went on, oblivious to Juliet’s distraction. ‘If we can’t invest in new machinery, we’ll just have to salvage what we’ve got, and to do that we need a decent mechanic. These guys wouldn’t know a spanner if it jumped up and smacked them between the eyes. I know just the man we need,’ he went on with a glance at Juliet, who cleared her throat and tried to look as if she had been concentrating all along. ‘We’d have to pay him, but it will be worth it.’
Dropping the list back onto the table, Cal stood up. ‘I’ll go and ring him now,’ he said, and then stopped, remembering a little too late that he wasn’t the one paying the wages. ‘If that’s OK with you, of course?’
Juliet smiled weakly. ‘Of course,’ she said.
In a way it was a relief to have him out of the room. Juliet lifted her hands and saw to her horror that they were shaking slightly. One minute Cal had been an advisor, an experienced manager, and the next she had looked at him and seen a man—a man with a tanned, tough body, a man with steady eyes and a mouth that made her feel weak just looking at it.
The memory of how that mouth had felt against hers uncurled dangerously in the pit of her stomach.
She mustn’t think about it, Juliet told herself desperately. That kiss was better forgotten. She and Cal had obviously got off on the wrong foot, that was all. It was hard to believe now how cold and hostile she had found him, how angry he had made her feel that first day. Only yesterday she had thought that she hated him, and now…
Now he was just doing the job she was paying him to do, Juliet told herself firmly. She didn’t have to feel anything about him. Cal was her manager, and that was all.
‘We’re in luck.’ In spite of herself, Juliet’s heart leapt as Cal came back from the office. ‘I rang Sam, and he’s had enough of retirement. He can get here by next week.’
‘Good.’ It came out as no more than a squeak, and Cal looked at Juliet curiously. She cleared her throat. ‘Great,’ she tried again.
‘I’ve arranged a housekeeper, too,’ he added casually, and her jaw dropped.
‘A housekeeper?’
‘We’re going to need all the hands we can get,’ said Cal. ‘You’ll be more useful if you’re not tied by the children and the cooking.’
‘I’d love to be useful,’ said Juliet, ‘but I’m not sure I will be. I don’t know how to do anything useful,’ she admitted, shame-faced.
‘You can learn,’ said Cal. ‘In any case, you can probably do more than you think. There’s a lot of time-consuming paperwork in the office, and if nothing else you can check fences and water troughs. I presume you can drive?’
She nodded. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘there’s no reason why you shouldn’t learn to ride as well—we’ll need all the horsemen we can get on the musters if we can’t afford any helicopters—but you can’t do any of that until you’ve got someone to look after the house and the kids while you’re out.’
Juliet had opened her mouth to tell him that she already knew how to ride perfectly well, but his last words diverted her. ‘I can see that,’ she admitted worriedly, ‘but I can’t afford a housekeeper, especially not if I’m paying for a mechanic.’
‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ said Cal gruffly. ‘I’ll sort that out.’
She stared at him. ‘Why should you do that?’
‘I was going to get a housekeeper myself for Natalie,’ he pointed out, not quite meeting her eye. ‘Someone has to keep an eye on her while she does her schoolwork.’
He wondered how he had got himself into the position of not only helping Juliet stay at Wilparilla but paying for it out of his own pocket
. It would work out to his advantage in the end, Cal reassured himself. If he helped Juliet now, she would come to rely on him, and would trust him all the more later on when he told her that her only option was to sell.
‘I’ve been talking to my aunt,’ he went on, before he could question his motives too closely. ‘Maggie grew up in the outback but she left when she got married and her husband got a job in Melbourne. She’s widowed now, and she wants to come back. She knew I wanted to come back, too, and she suggested some time ago that she should come and look after Natalie for me if the job worked out.’
‘I can’t ask her to look after two boys under three as well as Natalie,’ Juliet protested.
‘Maggie doesn’t mind. She’s always said that she’s only interested in people under six or over sixty, so the boys will suit her fine. She can be a bit scary as far as the rest of us are concerned, but for some reason kids love her. They’d be completely safe with Maggie.’
‘She sounds wonderful,’ said Juliet, weakening. The thought of being able to hand over the cooking and leave the boys without worrying every second they were out of sight was almost too good to be true.
‘There is just one condition,’ said Cal. ‘Maggie says she’s too old and crotchety to share a house any more. She’s happy to spend the day here, but she wants a house of her own to go back to in the evenings.’ He hesitated slightly. ‘I said we’d fix up the manager’s house and she could have that.’
‘That would mean you and Natalie would stay on at the homestead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won’t you mind that?’ Juliet asked rather self-consciously.
‘Not if you don’t.’
Cal’s voice was very even. Juliet stole a glance at him and then found that she couldn’t look away. His eyes were a keen, cool grey and they held her suspended, unable to move, while her heart began a slow, slamming beat that reverberated through her and stopped the breath in her throat.
