by Valerie Parv
Tears threatened to brim over and she gulped them back. James needed her strength. Later would be soon enough to deal with her own struggles. “Come on, James,” she went on, “surely you won’t give in and let me win? If you die, I get sole custody of Genie, you hear? Genie. It’s not what you want, is it? If you come back, I lose everything. Even you.” It wasn’t what she planned to say, but she couldn’t prevent the admission from slipping out.
Her face was wet but her voice was strong as she added, “I know you don’t love me, but I don’t give you permission to go. You see…” Her voice broke on the admission she was powerless to hold back. “I love you.” It was wrung from her so softly she prayed it wouldn’t reach James where he was. Blindly she turned and shouldered her way out of the room.
She muttered an apology to the surgeon as she fled past him at the nurses’ station. If she didn’t get away, she knew she would break down completely, and what good would she be to James then?
She didn’t stop until she reached the hospital chapel, a serene oasis of polished timber and stained glass, belonging to no denomination, yet providing a welcome to all. Thankfully the room was deserted at this hour. Zoe threw herself onto a seat, huddling into herself, more alone and afraid than she had ever felt. She had never allowed herself to think of James making anything but a full recovery. Even if she couldn’t be with him, she wanted it for him desperately. If it was possible to will a man to live, she did it now, but she was terrified that it wouldn’t be enough.
“Mrs. Langford?”
Zoe lifted her head and recognized James’s nurse. Fear struck deep into her heart. “James, is he—”
The woman’s face creased into a smile. “He’s finally conscious. Dr. Margolin sent me to find you. He knew you’d want to see your husband right away.”
Zoe nodded, too overwhelmed with relief to speak. She had no idea how much time had passed, but her limbs ached when she stood up to follow the nurse.
James was propped up a little higher, his blue eyes aware but flecked with weariness, she saw as she crossed to his bedside, her heart pounding. “I’m glad you’re awake.”
James did not return the pressure of her mouth when she leaned across to kiss him. “Bill says you were here all night.” He didn’t sound pleased about it.
“I wanted to be.” Needed to be was probably more accurate, but she didn’t think he would want to hear that.
She glanced at the doctor. “Is everything all right?”
Dr. Margolin grinned, an answer in itself. “Ask your husband. All he needed to bring him around was a word from his beautiful new wife.”
James impaled him with a look. “Whose bright idea was that? Yours?”
The doctor nodded. “Worked, didn’t it? I’ll leave you two alone to talk. You’d better tell your wife the good news, James. She’s had enough of the bad for one night.” He ushered the nurse out of the door ahead of him.
“What good news does he mean?” she asked, twisting her hands together in front of her. She ached to have James wrap his arms around her so she could feel the pulse of his strong, healthy heart resonate through her own body. But he gave no sign that he wanted it so she stayed beside the bed, not touching him.
James waited until the door closed behind the doctor and nurse. “Bill means I’ll make a complete recovery. But it’s hardly good news for you, is it, Zoe?”
Tension crawled up the back of her neck. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It would solve your problem. With me out of the way, you’d have Genevieve to yourself, not to mention a substantial fortune.”
“I love Genie and I did want her with me,” she admitted, “but I’ve seen how close she’s become to you and how much she loves White Stars. Her welfare comes first.”
“So you’re leaving as we agreed?”
It was so obviously what he wanted that she nodded dumbly, lifting her head and blinking rapidly before he glimpsed her damp eyes. “How long will it be before you’re fit enough to go home?”
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Bill says I’ll be out of here in a few days.” His head fell back against the pillow, his face going white. “You won’t have to play the devoted bride for long, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“What else could it be?” She whirled out of the room and didn’t look back even when she heard him call her name.
James moved restively. His head ached abominably, but the doctor said it was the aftereffects of the anesthetic. The pain didn’t compare with the headaches he’d endured before the operation so he counted his blessings.
One of them plainly wasn’t his new wife, he thought angrily. What had Bill meant about James needing Zoe to bring him around after the operation? Surely she’d have been happier if he died, yet she seemed almost glad he’d made it. Personally he was glad as hell he’d made it. He hadn’t wanted to admit how scared he was of having the bullet removed. Everything happening so swiftly, there was no time to work himself into a cold sweat.
Zoe had been the one to sweat, which he hadn’t intended. Maybe what he was reading as concern for him was really relief that it was over, so she could return to her old life. She hadn’t denied it when he mentioned their agreement.
Somewhere in his mind lingered an image of her sitting by his bedside, holding his hand. What had she said? Something about her winning if he died. That was it. She had dared him to live and deprive her of her victory.
Well, he had taken her dare and lived. But something else nagged at him. He passed a hand across his clammy forehead. What in blazes was it?
His mind felt foggy. It was an effort to think straight, but he made himself focus. Then he had it. While he floated just below the level of consciousness, she’d said something about loving him.
The semiconscious mind was tricky. He couldn’t trust impressions gained in such a state, but he could swear she’d said she loved him. The hell of it was, he didn’t know whether it was a dream or a lie. Come to think of it, he didn’t know which he’d prefer to deal with.
The dream was understandable, given the intoxicating way Zoe had felt in his arms. Remembering how she had come to his cabin in the night made him smile, but the expression vanished as he recalled how the terrorist’s bullet had cheated him of the chance to make love to her. Did she regret whatever pity or duty had brought her to his cabin? Now that she knew he was going to live, she seemed anxious to cut the ties binding them.
So the lie was the more likely explanation. If it wasn’t for Genevieve, Zoe would never have come to White Stars or agreed to be his wife. She did what was right, no matter what it cost her. Her loyalty to her first husband and her behavior toward Genevieve was ample proof.
James slammed one fist into the palm of the other. No matter how tempted he was—and he had to admit, he was sorely tempted—he would not have her stay with him out of some misguided sense of duty. He’d experienced one marriage like that and it was enough for a lifetime. If she wanted to leave, she had the right. He wouldn’t stop her.
If she wanted to leave.
It was something he had a month to discover.
Chapter Twelve
Gradually the dense olive-clad escarpments of the Watagan State Forest gave way to the rolling hills and valleys of White Stars. From their vantage point in James’s helicopter Zoe could pick out the avenue of hundred-year-old oak trees leading to the homestead.
There were more than fifty stables and a hundred paddocks and from the air she could identify the gleam of whitewash on the post-and-rail fences. On this sunny spring day, four stallions warily watched their approach from a ridge-top.
Her breathing quickened as the two-storeyed Georgian stone house came into view. She was home. Not at White Stars, of course, but in this beautiful area where she had spent the summers with her grandparents, in the only true home she could remember.
While James recovered in the hospital, she had reached some decisions of her own. She had resigned from her job as a property manager and
prevailed on her old boss to help her find a suitable tenant for her house in Sydney. The rent would help pay the mortgage while she rented a place in the nearby town of Cooranbong, gateway to the Watagan area. She would be close enough for Genie to visit while living in the place that had claimed her heart as a teenager. For someone with her skills there was plenty of work even in the country. Her boss’s glowing reference practically guaranteed her a job locally.
There would be sadness, too. Living close by she would have frequent reminders of her brief marriage to James. But as Genie’s father there was no escaping him, no matter where she lived, so it might as well be somewhere she loved. Maybe in time she would be able to meet James without being assailed by an avalanche of painful yearnings every time he looked at her.
And pigs might fly, she thought bleakly. She twisted the simple gold wedding band which James had placed on her ring finger. Folklore once had it that a vein led from that finger straight to the heart. In her case it was true.
She flickered a glance at James, her heart tightening painfully. He looked a picture of commanding virility. Only the dressing visible beneath the collar of his polo shirt and a certain whiteness around his eyes hinted at the battle he had waged with death and won. He had won her, too, although he wasn’t to know how irrevocably. It was her secret alone, the desperate longings he stirred in her. Her greatest regret was that he hadn’t finished what he started on their wedding night.
He sat in brooding silence, his vivid eyes focused on the country beneath them, probably assessing the condition of his horses, and the work to be done. During the past week he’d seethed with plans for a future, which, before the operation, was frighteningly uncertain. No longer. He was back in charge and it showed.
She swallowed the lump clogging her throat as the pilot set the helicopter down on the pad. “Looks like Grace drew the short straw,” James murmured.
Zoe saw the stud manager waiting beside the four-wheel-drive vehicle. If she knew Grace, it was no chore to come for James. His bond with his staff made them practically family.
As such, the woman knew better than to fuss. “Glad to see you back in one piece, boss,” she said pragmatically, but her eyes never left James until he was settled in the car with the luggage stowed in the back. Her warm smile included Zoe. “Hope you don’t mind, but the team has organized a welcome-home barbecue for you tonight.”
It was probably the last thing James wanted, but he smiled. “We’ll cope.”
If he had hoped for a quiet affair, he had underestimated his own popularity. Not only the White Stars staff but many of their neighbors turned up, curious to meet James’s new wife as well, Zoe suspected. She wondered how he would explain her departure when the time came.
She noticed the quiet joy with which he introduced Genie as his daughter. Since the wedding the little girl had slipped easily into the role, and there was a definite ring of pride in the way she called him Daddy. Her welcome to Zoe was warmly affectionate, but it wasn’t long before she gravitated back to James’s side where she stuck like glue for most of the evening. No one knew yet that Genie was his daughter in fact as well as through his marriage to Zoe, but it was plain to Zoe that the truth couldn’t make Genie love James any more than she did already.
Despite her inner turmoil Zoe had to admit the home paddock provided a glorious setting for a barbecue with its spring-fed dam fringed by tall gum trees, which scented the air with their fragrance. Through the trees, the red-gold of the setting sun looked like a forest fire. Overhead, a wedge-tailed eagle wheeled high in the sky, its wingspan as wide as the gravel road ringing the homestead.
There was a seemingly endless supply of food from hefty T-bone steaks to stuffed mushrooms as large as saucers, a dozen varieties of salad and freshly baked damper as well as rivers of Hunter Valley wine, beer and soft drinks.
Grace’s husband, Jock, took charge of barbecuing the steaks. He had the square shoulders of a practiced horseman, with serious gray eyes and a full, slightly red beard. He moved rather stiffly and Grace told Zoe he had been a horse-breaker in his youth, suffering broken shoulders and a crushed chest. “He can’t do as much around the property as he used to, but James won’t hear of replacing him,” Grace went on. “The boss is a special man, not that I’m telling you anything.”
He was special to Zoe, if not in the way Grace meant. Zoe felt her throat close and her eyes mist, glad when Grace’s attention was demanded elsewhere. She jumped as a man materialized out of the shadows beside her. It was Howard Leigh.
Concern speared through Zoe as she saw James with the doctor. “Is everything all right?”
Howard glanced at James. “If your husband gets any fitter, Bill Margolin and I will be out of business. I’m here strictly socially.”
“You could have fooled me,” James observed caustically.
Her eyebrow lifted and the doctor grinned. “He’s grizzling because I told him to stay off those Arabian horses until that wound heals.” He waggled a finger at James. “No contact sports or anything with a risk of impact or jarring. I’m relying on you to see he obeys doctors’ orders, Zoe.”
“I can try.” Only she knew how little actual influence she possessed.
“And you,” the doctor went on, spearing James with a look, “listen to your pretty new wife.”
James shook his head. “Listening to her isn’t what I had in mind.”
The doctor made a noise of frustration. “Go easy on that, as well. Or take it slowly.”
James’s gaze locked with hers. “We will. Very slowly.”
Her pulses thundered and her palms grew damp as she wrenched her gaze away. The doctor left, muttering to himself and she swung on James. “Did you have to suggest to Howard that I…that we…”
James shrugged. “I doubt if I said anything you weren’t thinking.”
Could he possibly know what had been on her mind since that night aboard the yacht? She took refuge in defiance. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You have the most expressive face I’ve ever seen. Never, ever take up poker.”
She felt a blush starting and not only because of what he’d implied in front of the doctor. James had divined her thoughts too accurately for comfort. She did want him. She loved him as she knew now she had never loved Andrew. How on earth was she going to live without James?
“I’d better find Genie. It’s time she was in bed,” she stammered.
His gaze softened. “I could say the same for her mother.”
Had James been drinking? He didn’t look like it, but he had been different somehow since they returned to White Stars. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he wanted a real marriage. She caught herself in the vagrant wish that it could be so, then shook it off. What was the point of wishing for the moon?
Where else would Genie be but down at the stables, proudly introducing a neighbor’s son to her horse, Amira? Her reluctance to go to bed was obvious, but she complied with minimal grumbling. They were all tired after the long, emotionally draining day, and it didn’t help that the party looked set to continue for some time.
Genie was subdued as Zoe helped her to wash and change into her nightgown. “Is something the matter?” she asked as she tucked the child into bed.
Genie’s hold tightened on her favorite teddy bear, her small face puckering. “Don’t you like James anymore?”
Pain closed around Zoe’s heart. “We’re good friends. What makes you think I don’t like him?”
“You told Daddy you’re going away,” Genie said, tears welling in her expressive eyes. “I don’t want you to go. I love you.”
Zoe closed her eyes, fighting shock. Genie must have overheard her talking with James after they’d returned from Sydney earlier today. Zoe recalled saying something about going away, but she hadn’t dreamed that Genie was within earshot. She cast about for a response that wasn’t an outright lie. “You’ll always have James. He’s your daddy now and for always.”
&nbs
p; Genie sniffled. “I want you to be my mummy, too. Why can’t you?”
Close to tears herself, Zoe gathered the child in a tight hug. “We can’t always have what we want, sweetheart, but I’ll always be your special friend. Is that better?”
“I ‘spose so.” Genie sounded reassured although her eyes remained teary. Then she forced a smile. “Guess what? I can ride Amira by my own self, without Grace holding the leading rein.”
“Yes, she told me. I’m very proud of you.” Grace had also said it was only within the training paddock with Grace herself hovering close by. “Sleep tight now. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” came the sleepy rejoinder. Not sure where she got the strength, Zoe tiptoed out of the room without breaking down. She knew she should probably rejoin the party, but she had no heart for it after her conversation with Genie.
Tomorrow she would have to talk to James. It seemed pointless to drag their marriage out for any longer when it had served its purpose. The longer she stayed, the harder her departure would be on everyone, especially herself.
Zoe found herself immersed in a nightmare where James and Genie walked ahead of her down some dark passageway. Try as she might, she couldn’t catch up with them, nor did they turn when she called their names. Then they disappeared around a corner, leaving her alone.
The loneliness stayed with her when she struggled awake. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, far less well into the morning. Nor did she feel rested, the sense of desolation persisting as she rose and dressed in jeans and a pale blue silk shirt for what could be her last full day at White Stars.
When she went downstairs, the house was quiet. Few signs of the party remained. Genie’s bed was neatly made, Zoe noticed as she passed the child’s room. James must have gotten her out of bed and dressed, then taken her down to breakfast without waking Zoe. When she passed the study door, James was involved in what sounded like a business discussion on the phone so their talk would have to wait. Food was the last thing she wanted, but she headed for the kitchen in search of coffee.
