Outback Husband

by Jessica Hart

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ said Cal, misinterpreting her wistful look. He hadn’t meant to touch her at all, but he couldn’t resist smoothing a strand of hair tenderly behind her ear. ‘It wasn’t so terrible, was it?’

  ‘No,’ said Juliet. He knew quite well that it had been wonderful.

  Cal opened the door. ‘Goodnight, then, boss,’ he said with a faint smile.

  ‘Goodnight.’ Juliet turned to go, then on an impulse turned back to plant a swift, light kiss at the corner of his mouth. It would be the last time she kissed him, she told herself. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly, and then she was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JUST a physical thing. That was all it had been. Juliet lay in bed and thought of Cal’s lips moving over her skin, his hands tracing patterns of fire on her body, the way he had murmured her name in the dark. She thought about the searing excitement and the extraordinary, marvellous, awe-inspiring joy they had discovered together. She thought about how right it had felt to wind her arms around his neck and kiss him. Just a physical thing.

  Nothing to get in a state about.

  She wasn’t going to be silly, Juliet decided. Cal was a man, she was a woman, that was all. They had scratched that particular itch, and now they could put it behind them. There was absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t carry on exactly as they had before. Cal had agreed that they should pretend it had never happened, and Juliet knew that was the right thing to do.

  It might be right, but it wasn’t easy, as Juliet discovered the next morning. She was excruciatingly aware of Cal as she moved around the kitchen, shaking cereal into bowls for the twins, pretending to listen to Natalie, pretending that everything was normal. The effort left her feeling edgy and irritable, and it didn’t help that Cal was just sitting there, eating his breakfast, not revealing by so much as the flicker of an eye that he had possessed her with such urgency the night before.

  When Maggie appeared, he got unhurriedly to his feet and carried his plate over to the sink. ‘We’re loading the cattle onto the trucks today,’ he said to Juliet, as if he had never kissed her, never whispered her name against her breast. ‘Are you coming, or do you want to stay here today?’

  ‘Of course I’m coming,’ snapped Juliet. She didn’t want to go at all, but she wanted him to think that she was bothered by last night’s episode even less. If Cal wasn’t going to feel awkward, then neither was she.

  She was given the job of prodding the cattle up the ramp onto the truck, but as they blundered past her her mind kept drifting out of focus and back to the night before, until a shout from Cal would bring her back with a start to the realisation that a cow had balked and was holding up the whole process. She would jab the unfortunate animal with the electric prod and wish that she could move her mind on as effectively.

  She had to force herself not to take the easy option and avoid Cal for the rest of the day, but she knew that her voice sounded tight when she spoke to him, and no matter how she tried she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. She was dreading the evening, when Maggie went home after supper. If Cal made a move towards her, Juliet knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist, for all her grand talk of being sensible. If he took himself off to the office, would she be relieved or disappointed?

  In the event, Cal did neither. ‘I’ve been going through the accounts,’ he said as he helped Juliet to clear away. ‘I think you should consider planting a crop for next year.’

  So Juliet had to sit and listen to him talk about sorghum, when all she wanted him to do was to take her down to his room and lock the door as he had locked it the night before. And when he had talked, and she had pretended to listen and agreed to whatever he’d said, he took his papers away, wished her a cool goodnight and went to bed on his own.

  As the days passed, Juliet began to feel peeved. Yes, she was the one who had wanted to forget that anything had happened between them, but Cal might at least have had the decency to pretend that he was finding it difficult. Time and again she had to remind herself that she didn’t want to get emotionally involved with him, or any other man. The last thing she needed was to find herself in thrall to a mere physical attraction. Cal was her manager, for God’s sake! She was paying him to run Wilparilla for her, not to make love to her.

  And yet when Cal did just as she wanted, and got on with running the station, instead of relaxing back into the relationship they had had before, Juliet grew increasingly tense. She made a heroic effort to behave as normal in front of the children, although if Natalie’s curious looks were anything to go by she wasn’t that successful, but when she and Cal were alone she was irritable and snappy, to disguise the way her body still craved his touch, no matter what she tried to tell it to the contrary. She knew that she was being unreasonable, but she couldn’t help it. Whoever had said that a taste of honey was worse than none at all had known what they were talking about.

  Cal ignored her at first, but a tell-tale muscle began to beat in his jaw. It was hard enough trying to pretend he had never made love to her without Juliet sniping at him. She had wanted him to forget the way she had made him feel that night, but how could he do that when she was always there, when he knew how silky her skin was, how sweet her mouth? She could stick her chin in the air all she liked, but he knew that beneath that haughty exterior burnt a fire and a passion that dried the breath in his throat whenever he thought about it. How was he expected to forget that?

  The tension between them twisted tighter and tighter every day, until it exploded at last when Juliet made the mistake of countermanding Cal’s decision about the activities for the next week in front of the stockmen. She only did it because he had been treating her as an irritant all week, his explanations about what they were doing and why growing increasingly perfunctory and, to Juliet’s over-sensitive ear at least, patronising.

  Contradicting him in front of the stockmen was a cheap shot, but she had just wanted to remind him about the situation. As soon as the words were out of her mouth Juliet regretted them, but she was too proud to admit it. Cal’s lips tightened dangerously. Curtly dismissing the men, he took Juliet’s arm in a steely grip and practically frogmarched her out of hearing.

  ‘Who’s running this station?’ he demanded, his voice stinging with contempt.

  Juliet rubbed her arm resentfully where he had held her, but she wasn’t going to be cowed by her own manager. ‘I am,’ she said, chin lifting in challenge.

  ‘The hell you are!’ Cal exploded. ‘I run Wilparilla! You don’t know the first thing about it.’

  ‘I know that I own Wilparilla!’ Juliet snapped back. ‘A fact that seems to have slipped your memory!’

  ‘How could it do that? I’m never given a chance to forget with you looking over my shoulder the whole time!’

  ‘That was part of our agreement—’ she began, but Cal wouldn’t let her finish.

  ‘We agreed that I would show you what was involved in running a station,’ he told her tightly. ‘That’s what I’ve been doing, although it would have been a lot easier if I could have just got on and done the job you’re paying me to do. As it is, I’ve turned this station round—and I mean I’ve done it,’ he went on, his voice like a lash. ‘You’ve just got in the way.’

  Juliet was white with rage. ‘I didn’t realise I was supposed to go down on my knees and thank you! As far as I’m concerned, you’ve just been doing what I’ve been paying you to do. If you’re not happy with that, I suggest we call an end to the trial period like now.’

  ‘Is that what all this has been about?’ said Cal furiously. ‘Push me around and then threaten to sack me when I object—is that the idea?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Juliet, turning away, but he caught her arm and pulled her back to face him.

  ‘This is about the other night, isn’t it? You’ve had your thrill and now you’re embarrassed about slumming it with me, and you want to get rid of me so you can employ some other fool who’ll fall for those big blue eyes.’
r />   The big blue eyes blazed at him. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I dare because you need me a lot more than I need you,’ he told her. ‘If it wasn’t for me, you’d have lost Wilparilla by now, and you know it.’

  ‘Now listen—’ Juliet erupted, but Cal stopped her with a finger jabbed against her chest.

  ‘No, you listen! I’ve put up with a lot from you, Juliet, and now I’ve had enough. If it wasn’t for Natalie and Maggie, I’d tell you where you could stick your trial period, but they’re happy and settled, and I’m not going to disrupt them before I have to. That means I’m going to stay here until my three months are up, and then I’m going to start looking for my own place, where I can get on with running a successful property without having to kow-tow to you or anybody else.’

  He dropped his arm with an exclamation of disgust. ‘You can find someone else to be your fancy man when I’ve gone!’ he said, and stalked off after the stockmen without another word, his back rigid with anger.

  The atmosphere at supper that night was thunderous. Both were too angry to even make an attempt to be pleasant in front of Maggie, who, after one glance at their faces, resigned herself to a silent meal and escaped as soon as possible.

  Juliet stood on the verandah and fought tears of fury, misery and confusion. She wasn’t going to cry over Cal. She wasn’t. So what if he left? She didn’t need him, whatever he said. She could find another manager, someone who would get on with the job and not turn her life upside down and then turn round and accuse her of using him. How could Cal even think she would treat him like that? Juliet choked back a sob. She wasn’t going to cry.

  Cal, coming back from a futile attempt to walk off his own bitter rage and frustration, saw her standing there, taut as a drawn bow, her arms hugged around herself for comfort. So what if she was lonely and distressed? he asked himself savagely, fully intending to walk past into the homestead, but she turned her head towards him, and the expression in her eyes dissolved the churning anger as if it had never been and left in its place only the knowledge of how much he still wanted her.

  Stopped in his tracks, Cal let out his breath in a long sigh of acceptance. ‘Juliet,’ he said softly, and walked slowly over to stand before her. ‘Juliet, why are we doing this to ourselves?’

  He reached out and took the arms that she clutched to her in an unconsciously defensive posture, pulling them gently free until he could hold her hands in his warm clasp, and Juliet felt the terrible tension unwinding, unravelling, as he drew her towards him.

  ‘I want you,’ he said, his voice deep and low. ‘And you want me, don’t you?’

  He had pulled her into the hard security of his body, until Juliet’s face was almost resting against his throat. She nodded, unable to deny it any longer.

  ‘We’re not hurting anyone,’ Cal went on. ‘Why don’t we just make the best of what we’ve got?’

  Juliet could smell his skin and feel him breathing, so tantalisingly near that it was hard to think about anything except how her lips were bare millimetres away from his throat. If she leant a fraction closer, she could kiss the pulse below his ear.

  ‘I just…don’t want you to think…’ was all she could manage, her breath warm against his skin.

  ‘You don’t want me to think it means anything?’ Cal suggested, when she trailed off incoherently. ‘I don’t.’ His fingers tightened around hers as he bent to kiss her shoulder where it curved into her neck, letting himself smile as he felt her shudder in response. ‘Neither of us wants to get involved,’ he murmured reassuringly against her jaw.

  ‘No,’ breathed Juliet, tipping back her head before the devastatingly gentle touch of his lips.

  ‘It’s just between the two of us,’ he whispered as his mouth drifted along to her ear. ‘We don’t need to explain anything to anybody.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, although she hardly knew what she was saying, and cared even less. Cal’s soft kisses were sending shivers of delicious anticipation down her spine, and, as if of their own accord, her arms wound round his neck to pull him closer.

  ‘We don’t need to change,’ he said, reaching the corner of her mouth. ‘During the day I’m your manager, you’re my boss, but at night…at night, we’re just a man and a woman.’

  And then, at last, his lips found hers in a dizzying kiss. Juliet melted into him, letting the last lingering doubts dissolve as his arms locked around her and the familiar churning excitement blotted out all other thought.

  ‘Come on,’ said Cal raggedly, breaking the kiss with an effort, and he took Juliet’s hand to lead her down the corridor to his room. Half-laughing, half-desperate by then, they fell back against the door as he pulled her inside to kiss her once more, and groped behind her to turn the key in the lock.

  Much, much later, Juliet sighed and stretched luxuriously beside Cal on the bed. They had made love with a sweetness and a fire that had taken her breath away, just like before, but this time it didn’t feel wrong at all. It felt utterly and completely right.

  Juliet was floating, awash with contentment. The relief of not having to deny how much she wanted him any more was indescribable. Why had she wasted so much time feeling scratchy and miserable when accepting the inevitable felt so much better? She heaved another long, happy sigh, and turned her head to find Cal watching her indulgently.

  ‘I’m sorry about this afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘What happened this afternoon?’ asked Cal lazily, unable to think back to a time when he hadn’t been able to lie close beside her, not caring as long as she was there, her mouth curving upwards in a dreamy smile that made something ache deep inside him

  ‘We had that horrible argument,’ Juliet reminded him. ‘It was all my fault,’ she said repentantly. ‘I was just scratchy and cross because I couldn’t forget about the other night, and you could.’

  Cal laughed out loud at that, leaning up on one elbow so that he could smooth her hair tenderly away from her face. ‘Is that what you thought?’ he said. ‘That I’d forgotten?’

  ‘If you hadn’t, you gave a pretty good impression of it!’ she said, trying to whip up some trace of her former resentment, but without much success. ‘Anyone else would have said you’d never even met me before.’

  Cal looked down at Juliet. Her skin was pearly in the dim light, her eyes soft and dark. ‘I tried to forget,’ he said seriously. ‘I tried because I thought that was what you wanted, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t forget what it had been like to hold you. I couldn’t forget any of it.’

  Juliet lifted her arms to pull him down to her for a long, long kiss. She loved his lean, powerful body. She loved the weight of him on her, the taste of his skin and the feel of the calluses on his hand, the way his muscles flexed responsively as she ran her hands over him.

  ‘Forget?’ mumbled Cal between kisses as they rolled over, still closely entwined. He tangled his fingers in Juliet’s hair and held her head between his hands so that she had to look down into his face. ‘No man could forget what you were like that night, Juliet. Why do you think I’ve been in such a filthy mood all week?’

  ‘I thought it was just because I was being so unreasonable. It was all so stupid,’ she sighed. ‘First thing tomorrow morning, I want you to tell the men to ignore what I said and do what you wanted them to do originally.’

  There was a tiny pause. ‘I already did,’ said Cal.

  Juliet pulled away slightly. ‘You what?’

  ‘I’ve already told them,’ he confessed. ‘I was so angry after I’d spoken to you that I went straight back and told them they were to do what I told them to do and no one else. I’ll take it all back tomorrow,’ he added hastily, and stopped Juliet’s protest with a kiss.

  Mollified, she kissed him back. ‘I’m sorry about that argument, too,’ said Cal, holding her close. ‘I should never have said those things to you. I was just lashing out because I thought you were looking for an excuse to get rid of me.’

  Juliet shook her head in baffled amazement
. How could he be so blind? But then, she hadn’t been thinking that clearly herself, had she? ‘I didn’t want you to go, Cal,’ she said, able to admit it at last. ‘I still don’t. It’s not just because of this,’ she added honestly, running her hand over one shoulder, loving the feel of the powerful muscles beneath his skin. ‘I know how much I need you to manage the station for me. I couldn’t do it on my own.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Cal, smoothing his hand deliciously down her spine and smiling in the way that made her heart turn somersaults. ‘Does that mean I get to stay as your fancy man for now?’ he teased.

  ‘Well, as long as you give satisfaction…’ His accusation had hurt her so much that afternoon that Juliet could hardly believe they were both laughing about it now, as she snuggled down in the curve of his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. His hand moved in lazy caresses over her skin and they lay for a while, warm and relaxed, listening to the sound of their breathing.

  ‘Cal?’ Juliet spread her hand over his chest, felt its steady rise and fall.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘About that argument…’

  He opened one eye and squinted down at her. ‘I thought we’d finished with that?’

  ‘I just wanted to know if you meant it when you said I’d been getting in the way,’ said Juliet. She had hated the thought of that almost more than anything else.

  ‘Do you want the truth?’ asked Cal, in a mock sombre voice.

  She swallowed. ‘Yes.’ Actually, she wasn’t sure that she did, but she could hardly say no.

  Cal shifted until she lay beneath him. ‘The truth is that you’ve been very useful,’ he told her, smiling at her expression when she realised that he had deliberately made her fear the worst. ‘You haven’t got in the way at all. What you have been doing, though, is driving me to distraction, just like you’re doing now.’

  Juliet stretched provocatively and ran suggestive fingers down his flanks. ‘If I really am useful, can I carry on distracting you?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Cal pointed out in amusement. ‘You can do whatever you like.’