He looked long and hard at her features. Who are you, really? He didn’t consider himself an overly imaginative person but he sensed that a part of her—no doubt something in her past—remained aloof and secret. But, be that as it may, she was a woman worth loving. Rolling onto his back he pulled the doona up over their bare shoulders. He had waited a long time to find the right person to share his life with, and from all indications he had found her. All he had to do was to convince her of the fact.
A small hand beneath the covers snaked across and found his chest. The fingers began to lightly stroke his pectoral muscles.
‘I know you’re awake,’ Brooke’s voice was still husky with sleep, but her mind was wide awake and remembering last night. Her cheeks flushed as she recalled her wantonness. Never before had she behaved so spontaneously. She hadn’t been able to help it; the feelings he aroused in her had freed her from her inhibitions.
‘If I wasn’t before I am now.’
‘Oh, good.’ She rolled on top of him, straddling her legs out and over his invitingly.
‘God, woman, you’re insatiable.’
‘I hope that’s a compliment, sir.’ The words were chuckled throatily, to disguise that she was secretly amazed, and yes, a touch scared, by the depth of her need for him. Last night had opened a flood of emotions she hadn’t realised she possessed. She had wanted to, tried to, keep a piece of her heart separate, but she couldn’t. This time she was going all the way—wanting to feel, to share, to have everything she thought Jason could give her, whether or not it brought happiness or pain somewhere down the track.
Her mind refused to think any further than today, tomorrow, next week, for she knew that if she stopped to analyse or ponder what had happened over the last few months she would retreat for fear of being hurt. If she did, she might miss out on the best thing that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t prepared to risk that. Not now, not with Jason.
His arms came around her to imprison her against him. ‘Believe me, it’s not a complaint.’
She kissed him long and hard and deep, and he groaned silently as his body hardened instantly to the press of her breasts against his chest, her hips against his, her moist readiness poised at the tip of his penis, teasing him unbearably. Only admirable self-control stopped him from plunging into her this very instant. She began to rock against him, backwards and forwards, faster and faster, and then, when he thought he couldn’t bear another second of the delicious torture, she impaled herself on him, hot and wonderfully deep.
Several minutes later, they collapsed, sated, exhausted, their bodies still entwined.
Over coffee and fresh croissants bought at a bakery in King Street, and with sunlight streaming in from the skylights, they sat across from each other at the kitchen table.
‘We have to talk,’ he began, grinning as he paraphrased the sentence that had begun the confession of their feelings for each other last night.
‘It’s going to be awkward, at the centre.’ Brooke said. ‘And Meg’s such a busybody.’
‘I agree, which is why I’m proposing that,’ he paused and took a breath, ‘we get married straightaway.’
Marriage? Her heart skipped a beat or two. God, she hadn’t thought that far ahead…It was a big step, a real commitment. Should she, should they?
‘Marriage. Jason, are we ready for that? Wouldn’t it be smarter to…to move in together for a while? See if we can live together amicably?’
He caught her gaze and held it. ‘I think we already know the answer to that. I don’t need to shack up with you for six months to know that I want to live with you for the rest of my life, that I want you to bear my children, and for us to grow old together. But if it’s what you want, if you’re not sure, then it’s okay with me.’
Her heart warmed at the emotion in his voice, the love in his eyes. What was the point of delaying if they were both sure? Something pricked her conscience. Memories. The past. Did she deserve to be this happy, after…? She pushed the doubts aside. She had a new life now, her old life was over.
Her right hand covered his left hand. ‘Oh, I am sure, darling. Yes! Let’s plan for a wedding—a small, intimate one.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Wes Sinclair moved restlessly on his side of the polished mahogany table. He glanced out the window at the multitude of high-rise buildings that made up Sydney’s CBD. He didn’t like cities. Too much rushing about, too many people. And politicians trying to think up ways to rip money off country people. Any people, in fact. Yes, Cowra was big enough for his liking.
His blonde, dark-eyed wife, Claudia, sat beside her solicitor on the other side of the table. He grudgingly admitted that her separation from him and the children hadn’t changed her for the worse. She looked bloody fantastic, and he’d heard that she was passing all her legal subjects with flying colours, too. Something twisted in his gut. Bitter memories—the hurt was still there, even after six months of separation. He squashed, then obliterated, those feelings from his mind and his heart. His jaw tightened until it began to ache, but he put up with it. He’d made his decision and he was done with feelings, with caring about anyone other than Fleece and Drew. They were his life now, and Sindalee’s future.
Claudia had made her choice months ago. She wanted freedom more than marriage and motherhood. What a cold fish she’d turned out to be! Unfortunately, it had taken ten years of marriage for him to learn that. The memory of the night she’d said she wanted out was like a wound that refused to heal. Claudia had said she wanted a career, that she craved it more than anything else. And, damn it, she was on her way to achieving her goal. They—he, Fleece and Drew—had been left to pick up the pieces and remake their lives as best they could. For that he would never forgive her. His pain was bearable, but the children’s…
Her solicitor’s voice trampled on his mental meanderings. ‘Mr Sinclair, regarding the settlement. I assume you’ve studied Mrs Sinclair’s requests’
‘Yeah.’ He had looked at the long, expensive list her solicitor had provided to his solicitor, Kevin Matterling. She wanted an apartment and a new car. She wanted a monthly allowance, and access to the children on school holidays. There had also been a request for several items of furniture from their home. As far as he was concerned she could have the bloody houseful; every piece had been chosen by her and was a constant reminder that she no longer lived there. Her final demand was for a percentage—one third—of his share portfolio.
He grunted as he mentally went over her demands. Christ, he should be grateful that she and her solicitor hadn’t tried to get their hooks into Sindalee. He’d have fought tooth and nail, with all his strength, to keep Sindalee intact for his children and their children. His grandfather and father had fostered the love of the land in him. Now only he, a fourth-generation Sinclair, had remained to develop, expand and maintain it for future generations. His younger brother, Martin, and his sister, Adele, had moved away from Sindalee to follow different career paths.
What Claudia wanted was tough but fair. She had always been that—fair—he grudgingly conceded.
‘Do you agree with the disposition of the list as such?’
Wes didn’t look at Claudia. Instead, he glanced briefly at his solicitor, Kevin Matterling. Kevin nodded almost imperceptively, and Wes replied, ‘I guess so.’
Claudia’s solicitor sighed with relief; he seemed to have expected a heated argument. He didn’t know that what Wes wanted more than a discussion of the settlement was to get the hell out of this foreign place. The formality of the solicitors’ boardroom, with its panelled walls, mahogany table and leather chairs, and the paintings—watercolours of outback scenes—all made him feel damned uncomfortable.
‘Well, good. If you would just sign here.’ An index finger pointed to a dotted line.
With the formalities over quite civilly, they all rose from the table, preparing to leave the room.
‘Wes,’ Claudia’s tone was tentative. ‘Perhaps we could have lunch? I’d like to he
ar how the children are getting along.’
‘Even if I wanted to I can’t,’ he said flatly, dismissively. ‘I’m meeting a mate who’s getting married soon, for drinks. You remember Jason d’Winters? He’s tying the knot in two weeks’ time.’
‘Couldn’t you put him off till later?’ She chose to ignore her solicitor’s disapproving shake of the head. ‘We still have things to talk about. The children…’
Unrelentingly cool grey eyes, like rain-laden clouds, stared at her until she dropped her gaze. ‘Yes, the children,’ said Wes. ‘I’m sure you’d like to know that Drew cries himself to sleep at least once a week and still asks why Mummy isn’t coming home. You’d also like to know that Fleece is such a bundle of anger that she does crazy, dangerous things—like, yesterday, trying to ride the colt I bought last spring before it had been properly broken in.’ He paused for effect. ‘She fell off the damn colt and broke her arm, by the way. At Cowra hospital the doctor suggested she come home because she was making an almighty fuss in the ward, disturbing the other patients.’
‘Wes, please…’ she placed her hand on his arm. ‘I didn’t know about Fleece. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Wes shook her hand away. ‘It only happened yesterday. Besides, I didn’t think you’d be particularly interested.’
‘I am still her mother, no matter what you or Fleece think of me and the decision I’ve made.’
‘You are, biologically speaking, there’s no denying that.’ He got some small satisfaction at seeing her wince. ‘That’s why I’m asking Kevin to send you monthly progress reports on their schooling and health, with the occasional photo. Just so you don’t completely forget that Fleece and Drew are yours.’ He moved away from her abruptly, pleased that he had managed to keep his anger in check, especially in front of the legal eagles. He flashed her one last dispassionate look and wondered how and why he had ever loved her. ‘Goodbye, Claudia.’
Escaping to the foyer, he jabbed the elevator button until the doors opened. A cold, empty feeling had invaded his insides, as if some part deep inside was dead and would never come alive again. Christ, he could do with a drink! And more than one. When he met Jason he’d give him a piece of his mind about marriage, too. They’d been mates since they’d both worn short pants and used to skip school on hot days to swim in the creek behind the school grounds. Jason had also jackarooed at Sindalee to earn extra money during semester breaks from university.
Wes took the lift down to street level. Too bad he and Jason had let the bonds of friendship loosen as they’d followed their separate paths in life. He had been a good mate. He just hoped the woman he planned to marry was the right one for him.
Wes stepped out onto the street and hailed a cab to take him to a pub in Erskineville.
First came the whimpering, then the groans, then full-scale twisting and turning movements as Brooke once again became enmeshed in the nightmare.
Jason, a light sleeper ever since his internship, sat up in bed and watched his fiancée thrash about under the covers. The movements became more violent, more desperate as the dream took control of her subconscious. This wasn’t the first or even the second time he had watched the dream take over. He knew how it progressed, and he was ready to gather her in his arms when the next step happened. In less than a minute she woke with a fright, her pupils dilated and at first unseeing, a sheen of perspiration dampening her features.
He held her close, massaging her back and shoulders until the trembling eased and she breathed normally again. Keeping his voice even so as not to telegraph his concern, Jason whispered, ‘There, there. It’s all right, darling. Come on, calm down now.’
Slowly Brooke relaxed. Tension eased out of muscles and tissues as she recognised and enjoyed the warmth of him beside her. ‘Sorry I woke you,’ she said. Her voice sounded muffled against his chest.
‘That’s okay, but…’ he gave her a little squeeze, ‘these nightmares aren’t okay. You know that, don’t you?’
Her head nodded against him but she didn’t answer, even though, as her brain became fully functional, she knew it was time too. Jason had been extraordinarily patient with her nocturnal ravings, but she couldn’t keep him in the dark indefinitely. To do so wasn’t fair.
‘Maybe getting married is causing the stress?’ They were getting married in eight days’ time.
No. Didn’t he realise that them getting married would be, she hoped, her mental and emotional salvation? He made her feel safe, made the demons less worrisome. But then a thought tumbled into her head that questioned all that. If being content—and she was—lessened her anxieties, why were the nightmares escalating? She’d had three in as many weeks. No wonder Jason expected an explanation, though he never asked for one. What did he really think of such strange behaviour? Could he be having second thoughts, wondering what kind of person he was marrying? She exhaled slowly in a deep sigh. She had to tell him, had to get it out in the open and then let him decide what he wanted to do.
‘The nightmares have nothing to do with us getting married,’ she said. ‘They…relate to something that happened a while ago.’
‘Oh,’ he nodded knowingly. ‘Hamish McDonald. Something he did?’
Brooke shook her head emphatically. She could blame Hamish for a lot of things, but not the memories that haunted her. Talk it out of your system, get counselling, Janice had advised. She hadn’t taken Janice’s advice; she had believed she was strong enough to handle it on her own. Sublimating the memories when she was awake was something she had done quite successfully, but occasionally they surfaced in her subconscious and degenerated into nightmares.
She took a deep breath and began. ‘I told you that Mum and Travis died in a car accident almost two years ago. What I haven’t talked about is how they died, their injuries and…’ she took another breath, ‘that I was on duty in casualty when they were brought in. At first no-one took any notice of their surname. After all, ours isn’t an unusual name. I came face to face with Mum as they were transferring her to a cubicle.’ She tried to block the mental image that came to her of that first sight of her mother, bloodied, contusions to her face, an oxygen mask across her mouth; a temporary splint on her broken leg. She was only partially successful.
‘I’d spent enough hours in casualty to know that she’d been seriously injured, but seeing Travis—he was brought in via another ambulance—really freaked me out. Mum had been thrown clear when the other car had ploughed into Travis’s car; that’s how she sustained the head injuries. But the car had caught on fire and Trav—he…he’d been burnt.’
‘How badly?’
‘Over seventy-five per cent—third degree.’ She gulped in a breath then let it out in a shuddering sigh. ‘I…I remember…his face looked okay, the burns were mostly over the trunk of his body, his thighs and his hands. The burns team were already cutting his clothes off him when I first saw him. I’ll never forget the fear in his eyes, or how he smiled with relief when he recognised me, as if I’d come to rescue him as I’d often done when we were kids.
‘They’d been coming home from the party of a friend of his, and the other driver, a woman who was over the limit, ran a red light and crashed head-on into them as Trav was making a right-hand turn. His first question was whether Mum was all right.
‘At the time I was surprised by how lucid he sounded—and he didn’t appear to have any injuries other than the burns.’ She let out another sigh. ‘Later they found internal injuries: the spleen and liver were damaged. But, amazingly, Trav even joked to the attending doctor about whether the burns were going to affect his sex life.’
Brooke moved away from Jason slightly so she could see his face. ‘You’d know that third-degree burns victims don’t feel much pain because the nerve endings have been too badly damaged. They go into shock, and their body closes down. That Travis wasn’t feeling any pain really had me scared.’
‘I know, it isn’t a good sign.’
‘When I saw that Trav was being well looked af
ter I scooted back to see how Mum was doing. She was drifting in and out of consciousness.’ She ran a hand across her mouth, pushing the emotion back, stiffening her trembling lips, but she could do nothing about the trickle of tears that began to run down her cheeks. ‘The attending doctor was worried. They were organising an X-ray, and other tests too. Mum recognised me and held out her hand.’
Brooke remembered so vividly the brief attempt at a smile between waves of pain, the voice so low she had barely caught the words spoken. ‘I grasped her hand. She didn’t seem scared.’ She shook her head in wonder at that. ‘Maybe she knew, even then, that she was beyond help. I remember her asking me to look after Travis. Those were the last words she spoke before she slipped into a coma.’
A tightening in her throat almost prevented Brooke from going on, but she knew she had to. Janice had said that talking it out would be therapeutic one day, but Brooke doubted that it would ever be.
‘Then the accident emergency registrar, Dr Cummings, came in to make an assessment. He and I didn’t get on. We’d clashed on several occasions so, once he knew I was related to the patients, he asked me to leave and had one of the staff, Jerry, escort me to the waiting room. Jerry stood up for me but Cummings, being senior, was adamant.’ Her tone hardened. ‘That man could be a real bastard, you know. He was known as the coldest doctor in the hospital, the number-crunching, “let’s go with the statistics” type.’
Brooke paused, not for breath but to get the sense of frustration under control. ‘In hindsight perhaps he was right to order me out—I don’t know. It was emotionally devastating knowing what procedures were being done on Mum and Trav, but sitting in the waiting room, like an ordinary relative, not being able to help, not knowing whether they were calling out for me. It was…’ She gulped in a breath. ‘Shit, it was awful. As long as I live I never want to go through that again.’
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