by Nikki Logan
And that was not a croc you wanted to mess with.
He backed towards the truck and then took his time picking his way barefoot through the scrub. It wasn’t worth the lost seconds to slip his sandals on. His heart was still racing and his legs shook with the after effects of his body’s massive adrenaline-dump. It wasn’t the same heady rush he’d got riding the broncos—this was darker, stronger—but it had its usual effect on him. The last traces of it zinged around his body and teased his senses. Suddenly his mind filled with the woman clambering into the four-by-four: slim, but unquestionably pregnant, with the slightly convex belly as her body made preparations for the new life in it. Weighty breasts. Healthy glow.
All things beautiful and natural.
That was why she’d felt so damn good tucked into him just now, it was his body’s natural chemicals. The momentary survival-high. And she was wet and female and abundantly fertile.
His subconscious had noticed even if the rest of him was in complete denial.
‘Must you? That’s really not helping me relax.’
Reilly took his eyes from the pocked trail they were bumping along to glance sideways at Lea. She was pointedly staring at where his hands practically strangled her steering wheel. Almost as hard as the white-knuckled ferocity with which she held the passenger-side door handle.
He eased his grip. ‘Sorry.’
They’d tumbled into the vehicle wearing nothing but what they’d been swimming in. As a result, Lea sat trembling in the front seat wearing only her swimsuit and her daughter. Molly lay across her, having cried herself to sleep from the fright, and Lea stroked the dark, damp head that rested on her shoulder. Lea had pulled a dry towel around Molly but not herself. She looked cold and uncomfortable, but something told him not to intervene, that she needed to be close to her daughter right now.
Neither of them had spoken in the half-hour since they’d fled the waterhole. It had taken Reilly that long to muddle through the feelings surging through him in the wake of the adrenaline.
Concern. Anxiety. Desperation. Emotions he’d had little experience with in his past. He’d grown up fast on his own on Minamurra and trained himself not to indulge emotions that weren’t contributing to his survival. His achievement. He was all about confidence, composure, ambition, courage. It took him minutes even to recognise the foreign emotions. As soon as he did, his heart started to race, and he knew why. For the first time, he had something to lose.
Molly.
And his unborn child.
And, God help him, the woman carrying it.
His mind raced back to the water’s edge; the gut-turning fear that had torn through him. Those were not feelings he cared to indulge again any time soon. The thought of leaving them unprotected on a property as wild as Yurraji…
‘I want you both to come back to Minamurra with me.’
The unexpected statement at least had the unexpected benefit of bringing a hint of life back to Lea’s numb expression. ‘What?’
‘You’ll be safer there. Molly will be safer there.’
‘This could have happened anywhere, Reilly. There could be crocodiles in your waterholes too.’
‘This isn’t about crocodiles,’ he said.
No; it’s about me panicking because I don’t know what to do with all the damned emotion that’s flooding me. ‘You’re over four months’ pregnant, and the wet season is right on top of us. You’re alone on a property on the wrong side of the ridge with a sick child and no airstrip.’
If she clenched her jaw any harder she’d crack her molars, but that meant she was hearing him. He stared intently at her. Passion was pouring out of him from somewhere he’d never known. ‘If you tell me that the roads leading to Yurraji don’t wash out in the wet, and that you won’t have any trouble getting out of there in a crisis, I’ll believe you. I’ll never raise it again.’
Reilly knew from driving those pitted roads repeatedly how much water they must see during the wet season. There was only one asphalt road running through all the Kimberley and she wasn’t on it. He sensed Lea was incapable of lying—which wasn’t the same as always telling the truth. Sometimes she’d just say…nothing.
Like now. She stared at him, trying to outguess him.
‘Think about Molly.’ Her eyes flared and he knew it was a cheap shot. Lea Curran did nothing but think about her child. Her hands tightened on her daughter. ‘If something happened to you and you couldn’t help her, that’s three lives at risk: yours, the baby’s and Molly’s. Three lives on my conscience.’
‘Your conscience? How is this about you?’
‘I have an airstrip. I have a giant, empty house with a ton of food. Molly will love it at Minamurra.’
‘I realise you don’t think I do anything, Reilly, but I have a property to run.’
‘You run your property wild. It looks after itself.’
‘What about Pan and Goff? Who’s going to look after them?’
‘I’ll have them collected. Taken to Minamurra.’
‘You will not!’
‘You’ve seen my property, Lea, it’ll be like a horse-retreat for them.’
‘Because it’s big and expensive and covered in reticulated grasses? No, thanks. They’re fine where they are. Yurraji may be small, but it’s their home.’
Ideas poured out of him. ‘Then I’ll have someone stay on Yurraji to keep an eye on them and the brumbies. Lea, it’s nothing to me to have you stay.’
A dark shadow flared briefly in her eyes and her mouth tightened. ‘You’ve thought of everything.’
‘Actually, yeah. It seems the most obvious thing to do.’ He felt the track even out and knew they were drawing closer to Lea’s home. He slowed the vehicle slightly; he needed a bit more time.
‘For five months?’
‘Why not? Folk around here do it all the time when they get rained in. Come on, Lea; ride out the wet at Minamurra.’ He took a breath. ‘With me.’
Clearly those last words didn’t hold the same meaning for Lea. She glared at him a little longer. ‘And if I wasn’t pregnant with your heir?’
Reilly blinked. ‘It’s not an heir, Lea. It’s a child. Our child.’
Hazel eyes flicked away for the briefest of moments. ‘Your child. You asked me to sign to that.’
Reilly stiffened. ‘You signed over custody, not your maternal rights. It’s your baby too. Another Molly.’
She sucked in a breath so fast she almost hissed. ‘It’s an umbilical cord to me, Reilly. Nothing more.’
His heart twisted in a knot. Shades of Adele. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘It can’t be anything else.’ She sat straighter, speaking through a clenched jaw, avoiding his eyes. ‘I can’t let it.’
‘Why not?’
Her nostrils flared, just like God’s Gift when he was working up to a thrash around the paddock. ‘Do you still want…this?’ She indicated her belly below her sleeping daughter.
‘What? Of course.’
‘Then in less than five months you’ll be holding your child in your arms. A tiny living being, snuggled against your warmth.’
The image hit him in the solar plexus.
‘And I’ll be watching it being carried away.’ She pinned him with her burning gaze. ‘I need to hand that child over to you, Reilly. You can’t possibly not have thought about that?’ Her eyes dropped, and when they rose again they burned darkness. ‘You’re many things, but thoughtless is not one of them.’
He frowned. ‘I…Isn’t it instinctive—to bond? Can you turn it on and off?’
She white-knuckled the door handle again, as though the painful outlet was better than what she really wanted to do. Or maybe say?
‘Yes, Reilly, it is instinctive. I feel that life taking shape inside me. My body’s changing to accommodate it, my habits have changed to be half mine and half the baby’s. I like chicken, it makes me crave liver. I hate tomatoes, but find myself wanting to chug a vat of salsa. This baby owns me for the next fiv
e months. It’s part of me.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Were you always this obtuse, Martin? The woman’s trying to say something.
She nearly burst from not screaming. ‘Do you know how hard it is to resist letting myself love this baby? If I let him in, it will kill me to give him up.’
She looked horrified to have verbalised the thought. Her eyes widened, stricken. The sound of hard breathing filled the truck.
Reilly cleared his throat. ‘Him?’
She tipped her head up to stare at him through bleak eyes. ‘What?’
‘You said “him”. Is there something I should know?’
Lea’s head dropped back down for the longest time. ‘No,’ she mumbled, her chin resting on Molly’s head, her damp, dark hair shielding her face. ‘Slip of the tongue.’
Maybe she was more bonded with this baby than she knew. A new kind of excitement rushed through him. ‘Do you think it’s a boy, Lea? Did your last scan…?’
She sighed. ‘I didn’t ask at the scan, Reilly. But this pregnancy’s so different from Molly’s. Maybe?’
For some weird reason, her instincts were the one thing he did trust about her. She was such a part of the land, of nature, it seemed reasonable that her heart would know what she was carrying even if her head didn’t. His chest began to hammer.
A son. And a daughter. Considering he was a man who’d never had either, a matched pair would be extraordinary. The idea of a little boy-version of Molly running around stole all the air from his body.
His head came up, shamed. He was a lousy human being.
‘No, I haven’t really thought about how you are going to hand the baby over.’ In fact, he hadn’t ever visualised her handing the baby over at all. Not because he seriously thought she wouldn’t honour their agreement, but because he simply hadn’t considered them parting. Stupid. His brows dropped. ‘Of course you will. As soon as you have your cells.’
‘Molly’s cells.’ Wide, hazel eyes stared at him. ‘I signed your contract, Reilly, but it doesn’t mean I agree with it. I’m doing this because you’re leaving me with no option. I’m doing it for Molly.’
Reilly sagged. While he was being handed the most precious gift possible, she was being asked to tear part of her soul out. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t asked Lea to surrender the baby, he’d required it.
Who was the bigger monster here—Lea for neglecting to tell him about Molly, or him for putting such a condition on the saving of a child’s life?
Self-disgust leached through him. He was going to rip Lea’s heart out so that he could have a child. An heir. It was all about what he wanted. How was he any different from his mother? He swallowed the large lump that formed in his throat and acted before he changed his mind.
He reached over and took her icy hand. ‘Then do one more thing for Molly—come to Minamurra. Let me look after you all until the baby’s born.’ He squeezed her fingers. ‘Just a few more months.’
Lea looked entirely distracted by the hand on hers. ‘I’m pregnant, Reilly. My body is not my own any more and it’s making strange decisions. I’m not comfortable being in someone else’s house while that happens.’
He stared at her, considering. ‘You think I’m not accustomed to pregnancy? I breed horses for a living.’
Lea glared, some of her usual spirit returning. ‘What a flattering comparison, but hardly the same thing—unless you have a horse doubled over your loo every morning bringing up its chaff and apples.’
Concern creased his forehead. ‘Are you still suffering morning sickness? Shouldn’t it have ended by now?’
‘Have you been reading up?’
If he’d been wearing anything other than just shorts he might have had a chance of hiding the flush of embarrassment he could feel blooming in his body. Lea’s eye drifted to his throat where the heat gathered.
‘Oh. You have?’ Her eyes snapped back up to his and a beautiful, gentle smile birthed on her face. ‘Thank you, Reilly.’
His insides turned to mush. She could play him so easily. Still…
‘Will you stay, Lea? Just until the baby is born and Molly is well?’ If she noticed he’d just extended the timeframe, she didn’t question it.
Which was just as well, because he didn’t fully understand it himself.
Chapter Eight
‘WELCOME to Minamurra.’
Reilly took her hand as Lea scrambled out of her car, and she tugged it away ungraciously. She’d just spent three hours lecturing herself on all the reasons spending too much time with him would be a bad idea and he’d near undone it with one touch.
‘Thanks for coming, Lea.’
‘No worries. Yurraji was too quiet after you and your travelling band of ponies shipped out anyway.’
She didn’t tell him the past two days had reminded her of the quiet at Jarndirri when Anna and Sapphie hadn’t been there, when it had just been she and her father rattling around the enormous homestead not saying a word to each other.
If you can’t say something nice…
She solved her proximity problem by twisting away to look at God’s Gift spooking around the paddock, forcing Reilly to drop the hand that was still in his. ‘How is he? Better?’
Reilly turned to face the same way. ‘I was hoping you being here might tip the familiarity balance. He likes you.’
At least someone did! ‘And if it doesn’t?’ She couldn’t look at him. The answer to this question said a lot about the type of man he was.
He blew air through tight lips. ‘If he doesn’t, he goes back to his mob. He’s no use to me like this.’
Lea nodded slowly, disguising her relief. Good answer.
Good man.
She shushed her subconscious and let an excited Molly out of her safety seat to immediately run off in search of Max the Cat.
‘Walk!’ Lea called after her before easing her way down the grassed slope of the homestead towards the paddock holding the three wild horses. She took the chance to have a proper look around, to notice the things she’d been too nervous and then too upset to appreciate during her last visit.
‘My father would have loved Minamurra.’ She stunned herself as much as Reilly with her unplanned confession. Her father was the last person she’d ever think to discuss publicly. Reilly caught up and walked beside her, a tiny bit too close for comfort. She hurried on, uncomfortable, suddenly, looking about. ‘Well-planned layout, a shed for every machine. Nice and linear. The kind of meticulous order he liked around him.’
He looked at her as if recognising something for the first time. ‘That must have been tough to grow up with. Children being the natural enemy of order, I mean.’
Lea chuckled, knowing how true that was with Molly, and how much she appreciated order herself. Then she frowned. How had she forgotten that she and her father had that in common?
‘I guess I learned it somewhere. Shame he never lived to see the miracle.’ Her frown deepened. Would they have found more common ground as they both got older? Clashed less as life forced them both to compromise?
Maybe she should have just smiled and nodded, said that any of her father’s dozen ludicrous plans for improving the station were a terrific idea. Or told him that she didn’t care about the welfare of the strapling calves in the dehorning yard. Or said she’d never seen him having sex with their summer cook in the dead of night—while her mother had lain dying just rooms away.
Perhaps honesty wasn’t all it was made out to be.
The mares approached immediately, moving straight to Reilly and nosing him for treats, ever ready to bolt off at the first sign of trouble. The stallion kept a wary distance, but stopped jogging when he saw Lea. She hoisted herself up onto the first timber-fence rail and leaned towards him, cooing. Reilly kept the mares occupied off to one side but watched the proceedings intently. The stallion turned towards her voice, no more, and gave a full-body shudder. He looked plain relieved.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Reilly muttered.
‘That’s the first time in two days he’s not been clawing up my training paddock. Yeah, I’d say it worked.’
Their eyes connected over the top of Golden Girl’s golden mane. Reilly looked impressed, and somewhat confused. It felt too good standing here next to him, suddenly valuable for something. Appreciated.
She willed herself not to enjoy it. ‘So now what?’
‘Now there’s two of us glad to have you here.’
Reilly gave her the room that opened out onto the wide veranda surrounding the house. The room furthest from his.
Message sent and received. Still, it wasn’t entirely without redeeming qualities. It looked out onto a wetland area behind the house, a dam-fed pond covered in water lilies with vibrant, purple-and-yellow blooms soaking up the sun’s rays. A dozen water-birds picked through the reeds lining its banks and drag-onflies caused the only disturbance on its glassy surface.
Beautiful. Very Kimberley.
‘This is lovely, thank you.’
Standing there with Reilly only made her think of the last time they’d been in a bedroom together. Her body temperature shot up three degrees at the memory. She shook it off. If they were going to see each other every day, share a house, she had to get a handle on these crazy emotions.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve put Molly in here with you for the first few nights, but there’s a nice room all set up for her next door. Move her in whenever she’s ready.’ He pulled a mattress out from under her bed, and Lea forced herself to stand motionless.
It would take no effort at all to just nudge him…
She slapped herself mentally. ‘Uh…Are you okay if we take a few minutes to unpack? Is there anything you need me to do first?’
Surprise had him straightening. ‘You’re a guest here, Lea. You don’t have to do anything.’
‘I’m going to need to do something; I’ll go spare otherwise.’
‘We’ll figure something out. What are you good at?’
