by Jessica Hart
‘Can you leave the twins for a couple of nights?’ he asked Juliet that night. She was in her usual place on the verandah, wearing a sleeveless red dress, buttoned at the front from the demure collar to the hem of the long skirt.
There was absolutely nothing provocative about the dress, or the way she was sitting, but Cal still found himself wondering how easy it would be to undo those buttons and slide the dress from her shoulders. He made himself lean against the rail, as far away from her as possible without looking ridiculous.
‘I’d have to ask Maggie,’ said Juliet, trying not to sound too pleased that he had sought her out. It had been impossible not to notice how he had excused himself every evening after the meal when Maggie left to go back to her house, and although she knew that she ought to have been glad that he was making it easy for her to avoid him, somehow it hadn’t felt like that at all. ‘Why, what’s happening?’
‘We’re going to muster the cattle in from the ranges tomorrow,’ said Cal. ‘It would be useful if you could come along as well.’
Well, what had she expected? That he was going to suggest a romantic night out alone together under the stars? ‘I thought I wasn’t useful for anything?’ Juliet tried to speak lightly, remembering some of Cal’s comments after her attempts at fence-mending, but something that sounded perilously close to disappointment gave an edge to her voice.
‘Anyone who can sit on a horse for two days would be useful,’ said Cal evenly. ‘Do you think you could manage that?’
He had only ever seen her riding that sluggish horse he had provided when they took the twins out. Juliet was looking forward to his face when he saw her ride on her own. She lifted her chin in a way that he was already coming to recognise. ‘I expect so.’
‘Good.’ Cal’s face gave nothing away as he leant on the rail, his arms folded across his chest. ‘I had a word with Maggie before, and she’s happy to stay here until we get back.’
‘In that case, I’d love to go,’ said Juliet.
They left the next morning on the long ride out to the range, leading a couple of pack horses and others to change for the hard riding the next day. Cal moved to saddle up the slow bay for Juliet, but she shook her head. ‘No, I’ll take that one,’ she said, pointing at a frisky chestnut horse that was sidling away from the sight of the saddles on the fence.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Cal began, but Juliet already had the horse by its bridle, and before his astonished eyes she had saddled it and had swung herself up onto its back. Wheeling the horse around with a masterful jerk of the reins, she touched its sides with her heels and was cantering out of the yard and down the track after the stockmen.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you could ride?’ he demanded when he finally caught her up.
Juliet slowed the horse to a walk and threw him a teasing glance, blue eyes glinting under her hat. His expression when she rode past him had been everything she had hoped for. ‘You didn’t ask me,’ she pointed out.
‘You didn’t say,’ Cal countered, but he was unable to resist the dancing mischief in her eyes, and in spite of himself one corner of his mouth lifted in a reluctant smile. ‘Of course, I assumed that you couldn’t ride.’
‘You assumed a lot of things about me,’ said Juliet, chin lifting in unconscious challenge, and Cal’s smile faded.
‘You’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘I did.’
There was an odd note in his voice, and Juliet looked at him curiously. His grey eyes were very clear and light in the shadow of his hat, and something in their expression held her fast. Dimly she was aware of the horse moving beneath her, but the reins were slack between her fingers and the open space around them had shrunk until there were just the two of them on horseback, so close that Cal’s jeans brushed against hers.
Juliet knew that she should turn her head away, but she couldn’t move. She just sat there and looked back into Cal’s eyes. It was as if time itself had stopped, leaving her suspended in the dazzling outback light and the outback silence, where the only sound was the slow, insistent beating of her heart and the only reality was Cal, with his quiet face and his cool eyes and the mouth that lurked in her dreams.
The sun beat down around them, and the air smelt of dry grass and dry leaves and dry earth. Juliet’s horse snorted at a fly and shook his head, and the sudden movement startled her, breaking the spell. Swallowing, she looked determinedly away.
‘I could ride by the time I was the twins’ age,’ she told Cal, as if that look had never happened, as if her whole body wasn’t quivering, acutely aware of everything about him as he rode beside her.
Her voice was high and strained, but she had to keep talking or she would turn and look at him again. ‘My father trained show-jumpers, and he put me on my first pony before I could walk. When I first went to work in London, I used to go home almost every weekend to ride, but then I met Hugo and…’ She trailed off, shrugged. ‘Well, you know the rest,’ she said.
‘You could have ridden here.’ Cal’s voice sounded very deep and slow compared to hers.
‘Except that I was pregnant soon after I arrived,’ she reminded him. ‘And later I had the twins. I couldn’t ride with a baby in each arm.’
‘Couldn’t Hugo have looked after the babies for you while you went for a ride?’ Cal asked angrily, and then cursed himself as he saw the shadow cross Juliet’s face.
‘He was hardly ever here,’ she said. ‘And there wasn’t anyone else.’
For the first time Cal realised just how lonely Juliet had been. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Juliet, determinedly bright. ‘I’m riding now.’ She looked around her. The bush had expanded back to its usual vast silence, the outline of every tree sharply etched against the brilliant blue sky. ‘I’ve dreamed about this,’ she sighed.
Sara had been afraid of horses, Cal remembered, and then felt disloyal. He didn’t want to remember Sara’s dislike of the bush. He would rather remember how pretty she had been, how open and friendly and wonderfully uncomplicated, and how he had loved her. It was all wrong to realise that she, an Australian born and bred, had never looked as right out here as Juliet did.
He watched her sitting on her horse, perfectly in control, utterly relaxed, letting her body sway with the rhythm of the horse, the shadows from the leaves overhead flickering over her face. How had he ever believed that she couldn’t belong at Wilparilla?
The muster was as long and hot and dusty as he had predicted, but whenever he looked at Juliet over the next two days, her eyes were shining.
He saw her emerging from clouds of dust that lay in a fine layer over her skin, and when she took off her hat the dark hair stuck damply to her head. If he had hoped to convince himself that Juliet would never adapt to life in the outback, he knew then that he was doomed to disappointment. She rode long and hard, and did exactly as she was told. When he was discussing plans with the men, she kept in the background, but he noticed that over the three days they rode together she talked to all the men individually. She told him later that it was the first time she had even learnt their names. At night, when they sat around the fire, she listened quietly to their stories, and rolled herself up in her swag without a word about the hardness of the ground.
Cal was ashamed of himself for being glad that none of the men had known him as the owner of Wilparilla and so couldn’t tell Juliet the truth that he was increasingly reluctant to confess. He would have to tell her some time, as he had promised Natalie, but the moment never seemed to be right, and he didn’t want to think how Juliet would react when she knew.
He was intensely grateful for the presence of the other men. Something had happened when he and Juliet had looked at each other. He had felt it, shimmering in the air, drawing him into her dark blue eyes. Cal didn’t know what it was, but the feeling made him uneasy, as if he were losing control of everything he had believed about himself and about her.
It wasn’t meant to happen that
way. He was ready to accept that Juliet would stay at Wilparilla and that he would have to go. All he had to do was stick out the three-month trial period. There was no point in getting involved, no point in looking into her eyes, no point in remembering how it had felt to hold her even briefly.
Cal was careful not to sit next to Juliet when they stopped for the night, but no matter where he tried to look his gaze kept straying back to where she sat in the firelight, drinking billy tea out of a battered enamel mug. And it was always the time Juliet just happened to be glancing at him, and in spite of themselves their eyes would meet so that both had to look quickly away again.
Even in the turbulent noise and dust of the muster, Juliet found herself catching glimpses of Cal, and every time her heart turned over. She did her best not to meet his eyes, but she was still excruciatingly aware of him, sitting easily on his big horse, lifting his arm to signal to the men chivvying the cattle along, spurring the horse forward to turn a cow that threatened to break away.
In the end, it was a relief to close the stockyard gate on the last stragglers and leave the cattle milling around, lowing as they raised great clouds of dust with their hooves. Juliet hosed down her horse and led it back to the paddock, and as she came out, she came face to face with Cal. They looked at each other, and something leapt in the air between them, something so urgent and intense that Cal actually took a step towards her.
‘Juliet,’ he said, in a voice quite unlike his own, but before he could go on, there was a call from behind him, and both of them jerked round as if they had been stung.
‘Hey, boss, is it OK if we go off now?’
Juliet swallowed her disappointment and waited for Cal to answer, but he had seen the stockman grinning at Juliet.
‘He means you,’ he said in an expressionless voice.
Startled, Juliet glanced at the stockman, who was waiting expectantly. She should have been honoured. He was half joking—his way of telling her that she had been accepted—but she could have wept at his timing. ‘Of course you can,’ she called back awkwardly. ‘Thanks.’
He lifted a hand in laconic acknowledgement and strolled off, and she was left facing Cal. ‘What were you about to say?’ she asked with an edge of desperation.
But the casual way the stockman had called her ‘boss’ had caught Cal on the raw, reminding him of the reality of the situation. He was Juliet’s manager and this wasn’t his property any more. ‘Nothing,’ he said, and his face closed as he turned away. ‘Nothing at all.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE JERKED his head in the direction of the homestead. ‘You go on. I haven’t quite finished down here.’
Without another word, Juliet turned and walked away. Cal watched her go, cursing under his breath. He had come so close to telling her how much he wanted her, and then what kind of mess would they have been in?
She was the boss. He had to leave it at that.
‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Kit and Andrew came running to meet Juliet as she trudged wearily back to the homestead. Her face lit up when she saw them and she crouched down to hug them close against her. It didn’t matter what Cal had been going to say. Kit and Andrew were all that mattered, she thought as she kissed their small blond heads and walked hand in hand with them the rest of the way to the house. If they were safe and happy, that was all she cared about.
Natalie was almost as pleased to see her as the twins were. She threw herself into Juliet’s arms and Juliet picked her up and hugged her, touched at the warmth of her welcome. ‘Is Dad back?’ Natalie asked.
‘He’s down by the paddock,’ said Juliet evenly. ‘Why don’t you go and find him?’
She watched Natalie run off and then went in with the twins to find Maggie. They were all in the kitchen having a cup of tea when Cal appeared, with his daughter dancing eagerly beside him. He was looking tired, and Juliet thought his smile as he bent his head to listen to Natalie was strained. He greeted Maggie, but he didn’t look at her at all.
‘Cal!’ Kit and Andrew scrambled off their chairs at the sight of him and hurled themselves across the room to clutch at his legs.
Juliet watched Cal laugh at their exuberant welcome and hoist them up, one under each arm, while they squealed with delight, and a surge of desire hit her like a tidal wave, blotting out everything else but the longing to go over and touch him for herself, to feel his arms close around and his mouth on hers.
The legs of her chair scraped across the floor as she pushed it back and stood abruptly. ‘I’m just going to have a shower,’ she said, in a high, unconvincing voice and practically ran out of the room.
She closed her eyes as the water streamed over her, washing off the dirt and dust of the muster, cooling the heat of her skin. She knew instinctively that Cal wanted her, and it was too late to deny that she wanted Cal, but that didn’t mean she had to give in to it. Cal just happened to be the first man that had come along, and she wasn’t going to sleep with him just because he was available.
She had to think of the boys, she had to think of herself. What was the point of getting involved with a man who might want her but who, as far as she knew, didn’t even like her very much? A man who would move away as soon as he had bought his own property. A man who would leave her, as Hugo had done, to cope on her own.
The thought of Hugo hardened Juliet’s resolve. She wasn’t going to let herself be physically or emotionally dependent on a man ever again. Cal was her manager, and that was all he would ever be.
At least Cal made things easier by avoiding her as much as possible over the next couple of days. Juliet used the excuse of the twins’ birthday that Sunday to stay at the homestead, saying that she wanted to get everything ready. In truth, all she had to do was bake a cake and wrap their presents, but anything was better than spending all day with Cal, pretending they had never looked into each other’s eyes and seen the desire there.
Natalie was more excited about the birthday than the twins, who had been too young the year before to really understand what was happening. She spent days making them a present each, and labouring over a special card for them, and Juliet was touched by her pleasure at being allowed to help wrap the presents Juliet had bought on her last trip to Darwin.
‘Dad, can we take the boys swimming at the waterhole for their birthday?’ Natalie asked Cal without warning as he walked into the kitchen that Saturday evening.
Cal hesitated. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said after a moment, glancing at Juliet.
She had turned as if casually when Cal came in, and was studying the kettle with forced interest while she waited for it to boil. If she’d thought about it all, she would have assumed that Cal and Natalie must have found the waterhole on one of their rides, but she was too preoccupied with not thinking about Cal to wonder how they knew about it. His mere presence made her spine tingle, and even with her back turned she could picture him with disconcerting clarity, laying his hat on the side, ruffling his daughter’s hair, stooping to greet the twins.
‘Kit and Andrew would like to go swimming, wouldn’t they, Juliet?’ said Natalie eagerly.
Juliet turned reluctantly. ‘I don’t know,’ she began, knowing that the last thing Cal wanted was to take her anywhere.
‘It’s quite safe, isn’t it, Dad?’
He nodded. ‘There are no crocs there. It’s a good place for children.’
‘The twins would love it,’ Natalie persevered, sensing that Juliet was unconvinced.
Juliet didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. ‘I’m sure they would. That sounds a great idea, Natalie, but there’s no need for your father to come on his day off.’
‘But Dad’s the only one who knows the way,’ said Natalie in dismay. ‘You want to come, don’t you, Dad?’ she pleaded.
For a brief moment Cal met Juliet’s eyes over his daughter’s head, and an unspoken message passed between them. They would do this for the children.
‘Of course I do,’ he told Natalie. ‘Try keeping me away!’
‘Too far for the twins to ride,’ said Cal. ‘I’ll drive you there.’
Natalie was thrilled with her idea, and her gaiety was so infectious as they set out the next morning that it was impossible for Cal and Juliet to keep up the strained distance they had been so careful to maintain since the muster.
It’s Andrew and Kit’s birthday, Juliet told herself. I’m allowed to be happy today. She could go back to being careful tomorrow. Meanwhile, the boys were wildly over-excited with all the attention, Natalie was giggling at their antics, and when she slid a glance from under her lashes at Cal he was smiling indulgently at the noise from the back seat. He had obviously decided to let down his guard for the day.
Juliet relaxed back into the front seat of Cal’s four-wheel drive and let her guard down too. Just for the day. Just for the children.
Later, when Juliet looked back on that day by the waterhole, it seemed to her suffused with magic from the start. Her mother had sent the twins water-wings and, egged on by Natalie’s promises about the waterhole, they couldn’t wait to try them out. Forearmed, Juliet had put on a swimming costume beneath her trousers. It was a bright yellow one-piece, and not at all revealing, she tried to reassure herself as she took off her shirt, but with Cal there she felt as self-conscious as if she had been completely naked. Avoiding his eyes, she took the twins by the hand and ran with them down to the water.
Cal, in the middle of blowing up the last water-wing, watched how the costume clung to her slender curves as she bent, smiling, to say something to Andrew, and the plastic deflated slowly in his hands while he forgot to breathe.
‘Dad! Come on!’ cried Natalie impatiently, and he swallowed hard and reapplied himself to his task.
He didn’t have bathers with him, so he simply pulled off his shirt and waded into the waterhole in his shorts. The water was very cold, and with Juliet looking the way she did, he reckoned that was just as well.
