by Trisha David
'You're my wife, Jenni,' William said, watching her face. 'My father would have wanted my wife to share it.'
'Share, yes—if I really was your wife. But I'm not. You're not talking of sharing the farm here, William. You're not talking of sharing anything. Especially not your life.' She closed her eyes, pain washing through her. 'I'm not your wife, William. Go back to the States. I'll file for divorce, and then you can go back to being free. Being whoever you are in your other life. And we'll get on with being us.'
'Jenni, you must keep the farm.'
'You can rent it to us,' she said dully. 'If you're a better landlord than Martha, then we'll be grateful. But that's all. You've given us enough, William. Enough. Now it's time to move on—back to our separate lives.'
She wouldn't budge for a moment.
William spent the next three days arguing with her, in turn demanding, threatening and pleading. She wouldn't listen at all.
And Rachel and Beth, when appealed to, took Jenni's side with a vengeance.
'Our Jenni always takes the moral high ground,' Rachel said when she arrived home from university. 'You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. I don't think it's Jenni's style to be a kept woman.'
'Damn it, I'm not paying her to be my mistress.'
'No,' Rachel said thoughtfully, swinging her long legs on the porch swing. She'd been home for twenty-four hours now, jubilant after passing her exams and with her hair dyed crimson. She'd looked carefully at the strain on Jenni's face and she'd listened to what Beth had to say and she'd come to her own conclusions. 'I'm starting to think the opposite. I'm starting to think you're paying her not to be your wife.'
'Now what's that supposed to mean?'
'You didn't even know Jenni when you came home a month ago,' she told him. 'You'd met her briefly when you were kids and you hadn't contacted her for years. Then, in the space of a few days, you met her, you married her and you made love to her. And you made her fall in love with you.' Then, as his eyes snapped into a frown, she held up a hand to silence him. 'Look, maybe I'm wrong. This is all according to Beth, but you can't fool Beth. She doesn't just have a sixth sense to compensate for her lack of sight. She has a seventh, eight and ninth sense as well. She says Jenni's head over heels in love with you, and I believe that. But you don't want it. So you're giving her the farm.'
'That's not it.'
'So why are you giving her the farm? She's happy to rent it from you.'
'She needs it. I don't.'
'Nope.' Rachel hauled herself off the swing and picked up her beach towel. She was now officially on summer vacation, and she was making the most of it. 'You know what I think? I don't think Jenni needs a farm. I reckon she needs you. And Beth says you need her too,' she added conversationally. 'I don't know about that, but I have enormous respect for Beth's opinion. But even if she's wrong you must see that if Jenni's in love with you it would break her heart to have to take your pay-off. Your farm—but nothing else from you.'
'I don't see it.'
'Then you're blinder than Beth,' Rachel said kindly. 'Open your eyes, William Brand. Open your eyes and look. Only I don't think you're blind. I think you're just set in your ways. Open up a little. Live a little—and let yourself love.'
Damned kids. If this was what having a family was all about then he was glad he'd never had brothers and sisters. They were too direct for comfort.
Too truthful?
All William's office equipment had arrived the day they'd found the will. Now it all had to be repacked and redirected back to the States. William worked on a pile of packing cases and tried to ignore the sound of laughter coming from the next cottage. There was a possum on the roof. Sam was turning himself inside out trying to climb the trellis on the porch, and the girls were egging him on.
Unconcerned, the possum sat on the ridge of the roof and washed his face.
Five days ago William would have strolled over to watch. Now... He felt out of it. Old.
No longer one of the family.
Which was just as well, he told himself firmly. He didn't like having little sisters chastising him. Taking the moral high ground. Especially when they were wrong!
Then Sam made a spectacular leap at the trellis and managed to grab a hold about four feet up. His hind feet got a grip and he shoved himself higher. Six feet and climbing...
The rose cane holding him swayed outward. The big dog sagged sideways and he started falling—and Jenni shoved her slight body forward to break his fall.
Before he could stop himself, William was taking fast steps forward, breaking into a run as dog and girl fell sideways and landed in a tangle of legs and tail and laughter.
Six strides...then Jenni's face appeared over her armful of dog, and her eyes were brimful of gaiety.
'Oh, you stupid dog. You deserved to fall. Ouch! Beth, don't they teach dogs how to climb at seeing-eye-dog school?'
She rose, hauling the dog up with her, and half turned. Then she saw William only twenty feet away. The laughter died out of her face as if it had never been.
'Take your dopey dog, Beth,' she told her sister. 'I don't know what I'm doing here. Some of us have work to do.'
And she disappeared into the house, closing the door behind her.
'Did you want something?' Rachel asked William politely, and her mere politeness excluded him absolutely. He wasn't one of them. And—what was worse—he was hurting Jenni. Rachel's eyes accused him and condemned him all at once.
Beth and Rachel and Sam stood as a united front between him and the door. Between him and Jenni.
'No. I thought Jenni might be hurt.'
'Even if she was,' Rachel said coldly, 'it's up to us to fix that now. It's not up to you.'
Hell!
It had to end and it had to end now. That afternoon William took himself off to visit Henry Clarins and, when he returned, he had finally sorted out what he intended to do.
Rachel and Beth were swimming. Jenni was sitting on the roof of the farmhouse, staring sightlessly out to sea. When she saw William's car returning she started work again, furiously banging on loose shingles.
Seeing her working like that made his heart twist. She shouldn't be working so hard.
'That's the landlord's job,' he called up to her. One thing he could do was take over paying someone to do maintenance. 'I'll get Henry to organise someone to come on a regular basis.'
'It's going to rain tonight,' Jenni told him. 'You got a maintenance team prepared to shingle right now?'
'I'll help.'
'I don't need help.'
Yeah. Right.
She didn't move. She stayed up on her roof banging as if her life depended on it, and he thought suddenly that this was how he'd remember her.
Alone...
Why couldn't he commit himself here? he demanded of himself. Why couldn't he storm up that ladder, take the hammer out of her hands and kiss her ...?
She had a mouth full of nails for a start.
But that wasn't the only reason. They were poles apart, he thought as he stared up at her. She was wearing her blue jeans again now with a vengeance. The lovely clothes he'd bought her were locked away, and he suspected they'd never see the light of day again. For a little time—a short sweet while—she'd played with being William's wife. Now she was back to being Jenni.
And he didn't want William's wife, he thought suddenly. He wanted Jenni—in fact his loins were starting to throb just thinking about it! Just looking at her.
'I need to talk to you, Jenni,' he told her.
'So talk.' She was talking out of one side of her mouth, holding her nails with the other.
'I'll crick my neck.'
'I can't come down. These have to be finished by tonight.'
'I'm leaving.'
That gave her pause. She stopped and looked down at him for a long, long moment, taking her fill. Then she carefully removed the nails from her mouth.
'I...I guess it's time,' she said.
'Jenni...'
/>
'I hate goodbyes. Hate 'em. Can't you...can't you just go? Do you really want me to come down this ladder and shake hands?'
It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted her to come down the ladder and be kissed. He needed to kiss her goodbye. But then...
It wouldn't end there, he knew. If he held her again...
If he felt like this, what in earth was he doing leaving?
He couldn't stay, he told himself, and his reasoning was ragged. He was hardly making sense to himself. But his life was on the other side of the world.
He was an international businessman and he didn't need to be told that Jenni would hate the sort of life he led. She'd be desperately lonely. He worked long hours. How could she cope with his fifteen-hour days? How could she live with corporate entertaining and with weekends that didn't exist?
His world wasn't hers, and her world was no longer his. He had a financial empire to run, and staying here just dragged out the pain of leaving.
He looked around him, and he felt his gut twist in regret. Jenni's world had once been his, but he couldn't come back here now. Not permanently. For heaven's sake, this was the end of the world. The southern tip of Australia! You couldn't make money here. Jenni was eking out an existence, but she'd never be rich.
Sure, it was her home and she loved it as she loved her sisters. She'd go on living here, but it was time for him to move on.
Back to his life.
His thighs tightened again, and he almost groaned. His body was giving him messages that his head couldn't comprehend. His body wanted him to stay.
Yeah? Just because of a woman? To abandon a financial empire for a year was one thing, but for ever?
Get out of here, Brand, he told himself. Get down to the beach and say goodbye to Beth and Rachel—and then leave. You're just making it harder to drag it out.
Go.
'Jenni, I'll write.'
'You do that,' she said formally—dully—lifting her hammer again. 'I guess we'll have a few things to sort out. The divorce and things...'
Her voice died away to nothing. The divorce...
'There's no rush.'
'Not for my sake,' she told him. 'But there's no saying when the urge to remarry might hit you again, William. So you'd best be prepared.'
'I'm not in the market for another wife.'
'No?' She thumped a nail into another shingle with resounding force. 'The marriage profit margin doesn't look good, I guess. Still, you never know. And when opportunity knocks you have to jump right in there, William. Isn't that what being a businessman is all about?'
Her voice cracked with strain, and William took an involuntary step towards the ladder.
'No,' she yelled, and it was a yell of pain. 'Don't you dare come any closer. No!' She shook her head, trying to clear the fog of distress. 'Just go, William. Now. Please. Just go.'
And she lifted another nail and thumped down hard. She missed by a country mile.
Well, what else could she expect when her eyes were filled with tears?
There was one other person William had to visit before he left. He didn't want to, but Jenni's safety depended on it. So, before he finally left Betangera to go to the airport, William found Ronald.
It was difficult to find him. When he went to Martha's old home, the place was boarded up. There was a sign on the front door announcing a mortgage auction to be held in a fortnight.
'You won't find Harbertson there,' a neighbour told William morosely. 'Bailiffs came in yesterday and took everything he owned. They turned off the gas and electricity and water, and they locked him out. He's staying in a hotel, I think.'
He wasn't. William tried the town's hotels, and finally rang the police sergeant. As he suspected, the police knew where he was.
'He's in McAferty's boarding house,' the sergeant told him. 'I don't know how long he'll be there, either. McAferty's only taken him in because we asked him to, and paid a few days' board. He can't pay his shot after that, and he'll gamble his way through a social services cheque. We figure he'll be out of the town by the end of the week, and it's good riddance.'
'He has no money at all?'
'He gambles and he uses loan sharks,' the policeman said. 'He's in way over his head. There's all sorts of seedy characters after him. He's been holding them off with the promise of the farm, but now that Jenni owns it...' William could almost hear the shrug at the end of phone. 'Well, he's in trouble up to his neck, but he's asked for every inch of it.'
He was indeed in trouble.
It was only five in the afternoon but William found Ronald in bed. The man looked as if he'd been drinking heavily, he hadn't shaved for days and the room was filled with the stale odour of unwashed body and alcohol. He looked up as William came into the room and he practically cringed back under the bedclothes.
'Go to hell,' he told him. 'You've come here to gloat?'
'I'm not here to do anything of the kind,' William told him coldly. He'd hated this man for years. Loathed him. Now, though... The hatred died away. All he felt was an empty, weary distaste. 'I came to tell you I'm leaving. I'm going back to the States.'
That got Ronald's attention. He sat up in bed like a shot, his eyes narrowing.
'You mean... You mean you and that cow aren't sticking it?' He might be so drunk he was incapable of standing, but where money was concerned his mind was sharp as a tack. 'That means...if you don't stay married then that means the farm's mine!'
'No.' William pulled a photocopy of his father's will from his pocket and laid it on the bedside table. 'It doesn't. It means the farm's mine. We found my father's will, Ronald. The farm never has been yours and it's never been your mother's. It's always been mine.'
'What...what the hell do you mean?'
'Read it when I've gone and you'll see.' The quicker he got out of here, the better. The smell in the room was starting to make him feel ill. 'But I've just come to tell you...this is an end to it. There's no way you can touch the farm now, and if I ever find you've hurt Jenni or her sisters in any way I'll kill you. That's a promise. With my own bare hands I'll kill you. You stay away from Jenni and stay away from her sisters and the farm. Is that clear?'
Then, at Ronald's look of absolute bewilderment, he found it in him to feel a twinge of pity.
If anyone had ever told him he'd feel sorry for Ronald, he would have laughed. But now... This pathetic little man had nothing. Nothing!
William sighed, lifted a cheque-book from his pocket and wrote. Then he laid the cheque down on the copy of his father's will.
'Here's ten thousand dollars, Ronald,' he told him. 'I haven't a clue why I'm giving it to you, so don't ask. Use it to pay the worst of your creditors and then get out of here. Start up somewhere. Get yourself a job.'
'What...start with nothing?'
'I did and Jenni did,' William said bleakly. 'You've been given your mother's home and my father's fortune. You've wasted them both. This is your last chance. And if I never see you again after this it'll be too soon.'
He turned then, and walked out of the room—and blotted Ronald from his life for ever.
So why did he feel so empty?
William sat in the departure lounge at the airport and tried to come to terms with what had just happened. Hell, he felt dreadful.
He shouldn't. He was back where he'd started. He had affirmation of his father's love. He'd saved the farm. Jenni and her sisters were secure. Even if they wouldn't accept the farm as a gift, he could make sure they were safe.
He'd achieved everything he'd set out to do, and more.
So why couldn't he get rid of this dreary emptiness?
Jenni...
The vision of her as he'd last seen her flashed into his mind and stayed. Jenni sitting on her roof, battering on shingles. Alone and facing the world head-on.
He should have taken a photograph so he could remember her.
He would remember her. Always. He didn't need any photograph. She was the most beautiful woman. The most wonderful per
son.
She was his wife...
'Flight 469 to New York boarding from Gate Seven...'
The voice over the loudspeaker started just as the phone in his briefcase began to ring.
He almost didn't answer it. He should have turned it off, he thought. There was no one here to ring him. His mobile telephone had lain unused since the day after the fire.
It kept right on ringing.
It'll be a wrong number, he told himself, but others were staring pointedly at his briefcase as they prepared themselves for boarding. So he took the thing out and flipped it open.
Rachel's fear reached him down the line in a solid, sickening wave.
'William, is that you? Oh, thank God, you haven't left. I... We were just hoping against hope you might have the phone on. William, we can't find Jenni. We think...we think Ronald's taken her. William, come home.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two a.m.
There was no sleep at Betangera Holiday Cottages. Not even the most hard-hearted of holiday-makers could ignore the police cars, the floodlights, and the obvious distress of Rachel and Beth.
William pulled up between two police cars, ignored the group of strangers and guests, and mounted the verandah steps three at a time.
Rachel met him at the door, flung herself into his arms and sobbed her heart out. The cool, collected university student who knew it all was gone. She was past speaking. She was past anything but sobbing.
As William folded her to him, Beth stood up from the kitchen table with Sam in harness at her side. Her face was ashen. She took two faltering steps forward, and William reached out to take her hand. His free arm was still cradling Rachel to him and he hauled Beth in, too, and held them both. They were kids. Kids!
'What's happening?' he demanded, and if his voice was shaking who could blame him?
It was Beth who told him. Rachel was past speech, but somehow Beth held on to the remnants of coherence.
'He just came and took her,' she told him, in a voice that was filled with tears. 'There was only me here. Rachel had gone for a walk after tea. So he knocked on the door and Jenni answered it. I heard him speak, but I didn't hear what he said. And then...there was a sort of cry and a scuffle. Sam and I came out, but by the time we reached the door they were gone. I heard a car start up and drive away. Fast.'
