by Margaret Way
‘I’ve looked up his number,’ Jacob said. ‘But I was waiting for you before I called.’
She wished that he hadn’t waited, but it would have sounded cowardly to say so. ‘Right. I guess we’d better get it over and done with. We’ll have to let Jean know what we plan to do as well.’
Heavy-hearted, she followed Jacob through to the study and sat on the deep window seat with her arms wrapped around her knees while he dialled. She watched his long fingers keying in the numbers and thought, irrelevantly, how lovely his hands were.
‘Mitch?’ Jacob said. ‘My name’s Jacob Tucker. I believe you knew my daughter, Tegan Browne. You were fruit picking with her at Beechworth last year.’
Nell had to admire how well Jacob handled his end of the conversation. It was a delicate situation, but he explained everything very smoothly and sensitively. From what she could tell, Mitch Bradley seemed to be taking the shocking news rather well.
Eventually Jacob paused. With his hand over the receiver, he looked directly at Nell. ‘Mitch was shocked to hear about Tegan, but he’s very excited to hear that he’s a dad. He’d love to meet Sam.’
‘When?’ Nell asked dully.
‘It’s up to us. As soon as we’re free.’
She felt strangely numb, as if all her emotions had been set in ice. Dropping her hands to her sides, she shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll have to check with the airlines and call him back.’
CHAPTER TEN
SECRETLY, Nell hoped they wouldn’t be able to get flights at such short notice, but she knew that was just delaying the inevitable.
Unable to sit still and simply listen while Jacob dealt with the airlines, she went to the kitchen and made coffee for them both. When she returned to the study, her hand shook as she handed Jacob his mug.
His eyes were watchful, his jaw tight as he accepted it with terse thanks.
‘Any joy with the airlines?’ she asked, trying to sound a hundred times more casual than she felt.
‘Actually, yes, we’re in luck. There are two seats available on tomorrow’s early flight out of Roma. We can be in Sydney by tomorrow afternoon.’
So soon?
How could Jacob call that luck?
Nell’s stomach churned and drinking coffee was suddenly impossible. Quickly, she set the mug on his desk. ‘Tomorrow’s a bit soon, isn’t it?’
‘We don’t want this hanging over our heads, Nell. We need it settled.’
The determined light in his eyes dismayed her. Was he simply being a typical male—stoic and hiding his feelings? Or was he truly unconcerned that within twenty-four hours they could lose Sam and have their lives once again turned upside down?
‘There’s no point in putting this off,’ he said again.
Of course, he was right. But his certainty annoyed Nell. And it frightened her. Was Jacob distancing himself now, because he thought it would all be over between them if Mitch decided to take Sam?
Worried beyond bearing, she whirled away from him, staring miserably out of the window, and saw darkness creeping through the bush, casting cold, grey shadows. The sunset was totally obscured by clouds this evening and the dusk was menacing, without any of the beauty she’d sensed on other nights. She was terribly afraid that she would burst into tears.
‘I suppose you’re right to be worried,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘If we—I mean, if you do lose Sam, it would probably make good sense for you to continue on to Melbourne after Sydney.’
Startled, she whirled back to face him. ‘Are you sending me away?’
His face turned a deep red and he dropped his gaze to his coffee mug, fiddled with its handle. ‘I’m just trying to be practical.’
After a moment or two, he seemed to regain his composure. Lifting his gaze once more, he looked at her with grey eyes that were carefully devoid of emotion. ‘Whatever happens when we meet with Mitch tomorrow, there’ll be legal issues to sort out, so it would make sense for you to continue on to Melbourne.’ His gaze was sharp.
‘Don’t you agree, Nell?’
No, she wanted to cry. She knew that, of course, it was sensible, but right now her emotions were roiling and she had no desire whatsoever to be sensible.
She was falling apart inside. Jacob was doing everything he could to hasten her departure and that was killing her. Surely, if he loved her with the deep and overwhelming passion that she loved him, he couldn’t possibly bear to be parted from her again.
Perhaps she’d been fooling herself when she’d believed that he’d wanted her at Koomalong because he loved her. It was more than likely that he’d only wanted her here as part of a package deal with Sam.
She wished she had the courage to ask those questions, but something about Jacob’s frightening stillness silenced her.
Instead she agreed dully, ‘I’m sure you’re right. I suppose I’d better start packing.’
She held her breath and waited for him to say something—anything—that might offer her a tiny glimmer of reassurance. Heaven help her, a day ago he might have pulled her into his arms and murmured smiling endearments, but now he simply stood there on the other side of his desk, with his hands sunk into the pockets of his jeans, and he looked as solid and stern and stubborn as the old Brahman bull in the bottom paddock.
Giving a helpless shake of her head, Nell turned and left the room.
Nell spent the rest of the evening busily packing while Jacob remained in his study. She went between rooms, gathering up her things and Sam’s. How on earth had they managed to spread so many of their belongings throughout Jacob’s house? And, as she went, she could hear Jacob’s deep voice as he talked on the phone, making endless arrangements with truck drivers about cattle shipments, with graziers about agistments, with stock and station agents about sales. There was even a call to Hilda Knowles asking her to care for Blue and Dander while he was away.
In fact, Jacob was so busy that he took a plate of heated leftovers back to his study and ate in snatches as he worked. Stunned and more upset than ever, Nell ate a sandwich perched on a stool at the kitchen window, staring out into the black night. Then she hurried back to her suitcases.
In his study, Jacob set down the telephone receiver and let out a weary sigh, picked up a pen and began to make tense cross-hatches on the writing pad in front of him. What a bloody awful night it had been. All evening he’d been fighting his emotions, keeping busy in a futile attempt to stop himself from thinking too hard about tomorrow. Crunch time.
By this time tomorrow night he would know the worst. The pen tore a hole in the paper. Angrily, Jacob stared at the mess he’d made on the page, quickly ripped it from the pad, balled it and binned it.
The damned thing was, the wonderful family life that he’d taken pleasure in over the past few weeks was as fragile as that paper. He and Nell had enjoyed such a short time together. They’d been the best days of his life, but now he was in danger of losing everything.
And, as far as he could see, there was not a damn thing he could do about it.
Curled in a tense ball on her side of the bed, Nell listened to the sounds of taps being turned off in the bathroom, then Jacob’s soft footfall as he came across the bedroom carpet. She felt the slight dip of the mattress as he got into bed, held her breath as he rolled towards her.
‘You asleep?’ he whispered.
‘No.’
Her throat was tight with burning tears as she turned to him. A faint glimmer of moonlight outlined the bulk of his shoulder. His skin smelled clean and familiar and she longed to reach out, to touch him, to bury her face against his hard chest, to feel his warm embrace. But the prolonged tension of the evening had stifled the last embers of her confidence.
His hand reached through the darkness to touch her cheek.
She lay very still, hardly daring to breathe, willing him to keep touching her, to close the gap between them.
‘Don’t worry too much,’ he said, stroking her jaw-line so gently she could barely feel it. ‘I’ll be with you tomorro
w.’
A pitiful sob broke from her.
And, before she knew quite what was happening, he was leaning over her, lifting her hair away from her face.
‘Nell,’ he said once, and then he lowered his head, blocking out the moonlight, and suddenly her arms were about his neck and they were kissing and caressing and making love, swiftly overtaken by a passion so powerful she had no choice but to give in to it.
Even in their youth, they had never been this ardent, this intense. It was as if their bodies were trying to say what they hadn’t managed in words.
And afterwards, when they lay in the pale shimmer of moonlight, disentangled and spent, like exhausted swimmers on the shore, Nell hoped they might talk. At last.
‘I’ve almost broken your record,’ she said lightly.
Jacob looked puzzled. ‘What record is that?’
‘I’ve stayed here for almost a month.’
‘Ah … yes.’ He smiled sadly.
She waited. Surely now, they could share their fears. Their hopes.
But Jacob closed his eyes and said, ‘You’d better go to sleep now, Nell. We have a very early start in the morning.’
They stood on the front steps of a dilapidated flat in a suburb of Western Sydney. Nell was so nervous she thought she might be sick. Beside her, Jacob was grim-faced as he rang the doorbell.
They waited, listening while the ringing died away, for the sound of Mitch Bradley’s footsteps. Nell’s heart thumped. Jacob gave her back a comforting pat, but he couldn’t quite manage a smile.
Hitching her bag of baby things higher on her shoulder, she held Sam more tightly. The baby grinned and cooed at her, caught a strand of her hair in his fist and pulled it towards his mouth.
‘You little charmer,’ she whispered, disentangling her hair gently.
Today she wished Sam wasn’t quite so cute and appealing. There was a very distinct danger that Mitch would fall for him the way people so often fell for kittens and puppies in pet shops, only to find out too late they weren’t able to care for them properly.
She couldn’t help casting a dubious eye over the untidy flower bed beside the front steps. Apart from weeds, which were plentiful, the garden was littered with two empty soft drink cans and a screwed-up paper bag. No wonder the dusty rubber plants were struggling.
‘Maybe Mitch isn’t home,’ she muttered hopefully when no one came to the door.
‘He said he’d be here.’ Jacob glanced at his watch. ‘He might still be asleep.’
‘At one o’clock in the afternoon?’
‘He works at night in a rock band, don’t forget.’
‘How could I forget that?’ Nell felt another nervous twist in her stomach.
Last night and today had been hideous. To her utter despair, Jacob had remained unbearably silent and withdrawn and she still hadn’t found the courage to challenge him. Now it was too late.
‘I’ll try this again,’ he said, lifting his hand to push the doorbell again.
‘No, Jacob, wait.’
Finger poised, he frowned at her. ‘We have to go through with this, Nell.’
‘I know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But there’s something I need to ask you.’
He lowered his hand. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
She tried to moisten her parched lips. ‘What will happen if we lose Sam?’
‘What will happen?’
She was almost too scared to speak, but she’d been trying to get this out all day and she mustn’t back down now. ‘To us. We haven’t talked about it and that’s crazy. I can’t stand it, Jacob. I have to know.’
‘I—I—’ His eyes glistened suddenly and his throat worked overtime. ‘I thought it was settled. You’ll go back to Melbourne.’
‘Is that what you want?’
With an abrupt movement of his head, he looked away down the street. ‘Of course it’s not what I want, but I can’t let what I want get in the way of your happiness. You have your friends in Melbourne. You have the theatres and book shops. Your cottage. If you lose Sam, you’ll need those things. They—they’ll comfort you.’
Nell swallowed the painful blockage in her throat. Her voice was shaking as she asked, ‘But what about you? What if I need you more than any of those things? Where will you be?’
Slowly, Jacob turned back to her. He studied her face for five torturous long seconds and she saw realisation dawn at last, saw the beginnings of his gorgeous smile. ‘Where would you like me to be?’
Before she could answer, the front door opened.
‘G’day,’ said a young man.
He was almost as tall as Jacob and dressed in a holey black T-shirt and ripped and faded jeans. His eyes were a sleepy blue, his hair tousled, long and blond. Blond stubble covered his jaw. He definitely looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
‘Ah—’ With obvious difficulty, Jacob dragged his eyes from Nell and offered the young man his hand. ‘You must be Mitch.’
‘Sure, man.’ Mitch’s gaze swept over them and landed on Sam and his face lit up as if someone had turned on a switch.
Nell’s heart, already shaken, began a drum roll. She wanted to run away from here. She wanted to answer Jacob’s question, to tell him that she wanted him to be with her, at Koomalong, anywhere, as long as they were together. And she needed to know his response.
‘I’m Jacob Tucker,’ Jacob said. ‘And this is Nell and, of course, this is Sam.’
Mitch shook hands with them. ‘Have you been waiting here long? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear my alarm.’
‘Not long,’ Jacob assured him.
Mitch turned his attention to Sam. He took a step closer and his face softened as he stared at the baby. His Adam’s apple rode up and down in his throat. ‘Hey, isn’t he a little dude?’
Nell smiled carefully and lifted Sam higher to give his father a better view and she wondered if they were going to be invited inside.
‘Do you mind if we come in?’ Jacob asked, as if reading her mind.
‘Oh, sure,’ Mitch replied after only the slightest hesitation. ‘Come on in.’ He sent a hasty glance over his shoulder and gave them a shamefaced smile. ‘But the flat’s pretty festy.’
As they went inside Jacob turned to Nell and smiled and she wished with all her heart she could interpret that smile. Was it saying, Don’t worry, Nell, I love you? Or simply, Chin up?
At least the flat wasn’t quite as bad as she’d feared. There was no lingering smell of cigarettes, which was a distinct bonus. There were dirty dishes in the sink and empty beer bottles and coffee mugs lying around, but she had to admit that it wasn’t much different from the flats many of her friends had lived in when she’d been Mitch’s age.
‘You might like to sit over there.’ Mitch pointed in the direction of an ancient vinyl settee.
Before Nell sat, she said bravely, ‘Would you like to hold Sam?’
The young man gaped at her, clearly taken aback, but to his credit, he quickly recovered. ‘I—I don’t know.’ He looked and sounded nervous. ‘I’ve never held a baby. I’m scared I might drop him.’ Then he flashed them a smile as charming as Sam’s.
‘That’s how every guy feels when he first holds a baby,’ Jacob assured him. ‘Sam won’t break. You’ll be fine.’
‘Perhaps if you sit down first,’ Nell suggested. ‘And then I’ll hand him to you.’
‘Right.’ Mitch sat on the edge of an armchair that seemed to have lost its springs, his arms stiffly bent at the elbows. ‘He’s so little. I don’t want to stuff this up.’
‘You just need to have one arm under his back and make sure you support his head,’ Nell explained as she gently lowered Sam into his father’s arms. ‘He’s pretty strong now, but his head can still wobble at times.’
Mitch grinned at Sam. ‘Hey, you’re so tiny.’ And then, ‘It’s me, your old man.’ The baby looked up at him and smiled and Mitch laughed. ‘Wow, does this kid have a cute factor off the scale, or what?’
Jacob a
nd Nell took their seats on the settee and sat in tight-lipped silence while Mitch admired his son. His face betrayed a kaleidoscope of emotions—everything from joy, through hilarity to fear.
‘He definitely looks like you,’ Nell said.
‘I know,’ Mitch agreed. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? I knew he was mine as soon as I saw him on the doorstep. It blows me away just thinking about it.’ His smile vanished. ‘I can’t stop thinking about Tegan, though. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘You just never know.’
She caught a distinctly misty dampness in Mitch’s eyes and he quickly dropped his gaze and stared at the rust-coloured carpet at his feet.
Looking down at her hands, tightly gripped in her lap, she could hear the echo of her heartbeats drumming in her ears. Mitch Bradley was a nice guy and she felt comforted by that. For Sam’s sake. And for Tegan’s.
But Mitch was falling for Sam, just as she’d feared he would. She tried to squash her feelings of dismay and told herself that his interest in Sam was a good sign. Every little boy deserved his father’s love and affection.
Beside her, Jacob drew a deep breath. He sat forward with his elbows propped on his knees and fixed Mitch with a steady gaze. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t know about Sam earlier.’
‘Well, maybe that’s my fault,’ Mitch admitted. ‘I didn’t write to Tegan either. We didn’t plan to hook up again, you see. It was just a—a summer thing.’
‘Yes.’ Jacob sent Nell a private look that told her he was remembering their own ‘summer thing’.
She was so tense that she almost burst into tears.
‘I’m very grateful to you both,’ Mitch said. ‘I needed to know about this. About Sam.’
And now it’s the moment of truth, thought Nell. Any minute, Mitch was going to tell them that he and his family would take care of Sam from now on. She reached for Jacob’s hand and was grateful when he enclosed her shaking fingers with his warmth and strength.
‘Have you told your parents about Sam?’ she asked.
Mitch shook his head. ‘My parents are dead. My grandparents raised me and my sister.’
‘Oh.’
