When she entered the kitchen she found a fresh, warm bottle waiting. She fed Melanie one last time, and the baby was fast asleep within a minute. Anna rocked her, softly crooning long after she knew Melanie couldn’t hear her. Ah, motherhood was so sweet, even by proxy.
She laid Melanie in the bassinette she’d just about outgrown, and placed it on the middle of the queen spare bed, surrounding her once again with all the pillows she could find, making a safe zone with every chair in the house. It meant they’d have to eat on the verandah, but that was a good thing: she knew Ellie and John Button would be watching. It also meant some touching, even some kissing to prove their reconciliation was real.
Her fingers curled hard over one of the chair backs. You can handle this. Do it for Rosie, and for Melanie.
The wafting smell of steak and onions came to her, and her stomach reminded her how long it had been since she’d had more than coffee. She walked out the door to the back verandah, where Jared, shirt plastered to his chest from Melanie’s kick-ups of water, was flipping the meat onto a platter already laden with onions. ‘I hope you’re hungry.’
‘Starving, actually,’ she confessed, with an uneven laugh. He looked so—so like every dream she’d had since she’d been fifteen—and he knew how to bring her every desire to life.
To divert herself from her fast-growing obsession, she reached for the platter, taking the food to the outdoor setting where the salad and dressings lay waiting. ‘I guess we eat out here, since all the chairs are surrounding Melanie’s bed…’
Her words dried up as she looked at him. She’d put Melanie in her bed, in the room that had been hers in childhood, and again after she’d moved out of their marital bed. There were many other rooms with beds here, but the implication—
‘I need a mattress put on the floor in her room,’ she said quickly, putting the plate down so he wouldn’t see her hands shaking. So he wouldn’t see how much she wanted and ached for what she craved, but shouldn’t have again. ‘It’s her first night in a new place. She’ll need someone familiar beside her if she wakes.’
‘It’s her second new place in a week, too, which is probably also why she was so unsettled tonight,’ he replied, his gaze penetrating, but his tone was calm. ‘I’ll bring one in for you when you’re ready to sleep.’
Glad she wasn’t facing him, she wet her lips. ‘Thank you.’ What else to say? He seemed so helpful, so strong, and so able to resist her…and though it should reassure her, it only unsettled her. When he’d come to her in Broome, it had been her place, her say. Now, even though she was half-owner of Jarndirri, she felt as if she’d lost her sense of power. He’d taken control again—he was master of her future, as well as her desires.
And yet he’d done nothing but help since she’d entered the house.
‘So tell me about life here since…in the past few months,’ she said with overdone carelessness. Telling him not to get too personal or come too close without words.
He shrugged, but smiled, and she realised it was the first time she’d asked anything about Jarndirri since her time in hospital. ‘It’s all going as normal. The seasons have been pretty good this year, behaving themselves nicely. The crop was excellent, and we got good prices for the beef and lamb. Stock from the neighbouring properties have wandered in, and we mustered them and took them back. One or two sheep have drowned in the river, two cows have died calving.’
‘The round of farming life,’ she replied, hearing the slight dreaminess in her voice. ‘I noticed my veggie patch is still thriving. I thought it’d be long gone.’
He turned his face toward the murky grey of the rain and falling darkness behind the thick curtain of clouds. ‘It’s a good place to shovel the muck from the stables, and the plants seem to do well with it. Watering doesn’t take long.’
With a little start, she blinked at him. ‘You’re the one who’s been looking after it?’
He frowned almost fiercely. ‘Why not? It’s a good source of fresh food, cheaper than flying stuff in, and it solves the dung problem. It makes economic sense to take care of it.’
Funny, but though all he said was true, her mouth twitched. She got the feeling he wasn’t telling the whole truth, and that wasn’t like the Jared she’d always known. ‘Thank you for not letting it die,’ she said softly. It was a part of her.
If anything, his frown grew. ‘You can take care of it again, now you’re back. It’ll save me an hour a day.’ As he said it his gaze came back to her, lingered on her face.
‘Of course,’ she said quietly, still hiding a smile. ‘And even if it only made good economic sense, I’m still glad you saved it.’
Strangely, as they ate, the thrumming rain on the tin roof became a companion, making the quiet somehow peaceable. She found herself smiling at her surroundings, familiar and loved throughout her life; smiling at the rain, her old friend—and she even smiled at Jared, who watched her with smoky-dark eyes, shadows of desire in the darkness. The wanting quivered in the air between them—and instead of being her enemy, her weakness, it gave odd comfort to her hurting heart. After he’d humiliated her before with Kissing used to make you happy, he was showing her he still wanted her…
Her smile grew and she sighed.
His voice drifted to her over the drumming beat of the Wet’s fall, deep and soft, filling her soul. ‘Is my barbecue that good?’
‘Actually, it is,’ she replied, liking even the small talk. ‘What’s the marinade?’
His brows lifted. ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’
She laughed, feeling relaxed enough—aroused enough—to slide back into the old teasing banter they’d always shared before making love. ‘The man’s a spy. He has to be. Everything’s a state secret, from his early life to his emotions and even his barbecue sauce.’
After a moment, he chuckled, moved an inch closer to her. ‘Australia has so many enemies, especially out here.’
‘You have a million hectares.’ She grinned at him in a playful kind of challenge she hadn’t felt with him since they’d been engaged, and she’d been able to pump him for anything she’d wanted to know. ‘You’re hiding a nuclear power facility out here. Mining uranium to sell to the unknown enemy. Making weapons of mass destruction. Building satellite dishes to listen in on our neighbours.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘Okay, I get it. I never was big on small talk.’ His fingers touched hers, and she drew in a breath as her taunt came back to mock her, I don’t want to sleep with you.
To string out the growing warmth between them, the certainty of shared desire, she threw him an incredulous glance. ‘Now, there’s the understatement of the year. You were never big on any talk, except to your horses.’
‘I get it, Anna. I don’t know how to communicate…but I’m trying. I can learn, if you’ll help me out,’ he said quietly, his eyes locked on hers, filled with meaning.
‘I am helping. I’m saying all I want to say for now.’ She sighed, and put her fork and knife down. ‘I don’t want to revisit emotions that are best left buried. Can’t we just talk like this, Jared? Have some fun, like we used to?’
‘All right,’ he agreed, in a lighter tone, ‘but before we descend to the weather and what groceries you want me to buy tomorrow, I have a confession.’
‘Oh, this sounds exciting,’ she teased to hide the sudden kick-up of her pulse. Anticipation was born and grew legs, running away with her galloping imagination. She knew what he was going to say but, oh, she wanted to hear it. ‘Spill. I can hardly wait.’
He leaned toward her, that arousing half-smile coming to life as he murmured, ‘I lied to you when I said I only kissed you yesterday to make you happy.’ The intent look in his eyes, the hunter’s trap, caught her in his sights, and she felt herself melting…
‘Oh?’ she managed to murmur, knowing she’d given herself away when his smile grew.
‘I kissed you to make me happy,’ he said, soft, purposeful, thrilling her.
&nb
sp; ‘Oh,’ she said again, lame, stupid, needing. The beautiful feminine pain filling her with just a few words, knowing it was going to happen. It was always inevitable; from the first time they’d made love, it had become their release, their addiction.
‘I was starving for you, Anna,’ he whispered, a few inches from her mouth. ‘I’ve lived a year without you, when a day is too long for me.’
She’d lost the power to speak, and he still hadn’t even touched her.
But then he reached for her—but didn’t sweep her into his arms. His index finger caressed her jaw, her throat, a fingertip so light she could barely feel it, and she was gone. ‘I’m still starving for you…and now you’re here, I’ll be doing my dead-level best to have you in my bed—tonight and every night.’
As she gasped softly and wet her lips in instinctive reaction, he leaned right to her and brushed his mouth over hers, once, twice, yet again, slower and deeper, lush and sensual as she knew only Jared could kiss her…and she couldn’t find any words, no resistance inside to stop him, or to stop herself.
‘Come to me,’ he whispered against her mouth, and she moaned, the pleasure-pain low in her belly flashed up, filling her from head to toe. ‘Come to bed with me, love.’ His fingers lightly touched her breast, and she gasped again in unbearable excitement. She swayed into him, everything forgotten but her body’s need too long denied, screaming for release.
‘Jared,’ she whispered, her hands shaking as she unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Ah, Jared, what you do to me…’
‘And you to me,’ he muttered, gruff, husky, making her shiver all over. ‘Now,’ he whispered, after another kiss, rough desire and hot command.
Caution and consequences were drowned in the rain; all she could think of was here and now, Jared’s hands, mouth and body…and that beautiful big bed, only a few feet from where they sat touching as if tomorrow wouldn’t come. ‘Yes, now,’ she whispered.
With that slow half-smile she adored, he swung her up into his arms and carried her inside.
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT a night…
Jared lay on his back on the bed, holding Anna close in the aftermath of the second bout of love-making—both in bed and in the shower—and for the first time in over a year, he felt almost complete, nearly happy. If he’d been starving for her, she’d been just as hungry. Her hands and lips had been all over him; she hadn’t been able to get enough.
He was winning her back. He was close, so close—and though it must be nearly two in the morning, she still wasn’t leaving the bed. She lay tangled over him, hair damp and messy from the shower, tasting his skin with mouth and tongue.
His body leaped from sated to needing in an instant.
She’d always had that ability, from that first haystack kiss. The sexual encounters he’d had with girls he’d met at rodeos and pubs, cattle sales, parties and the infamous Bachelor & Spinster balls during his teens had been a fun diversion, but he’d never bothered using the numbers the girls had given him, or wanted to repeat the experience with the same girl. They didn’t know him, knew only his looks or his name, the Jared West, Bryce Curran’s adopted heir, expected to inherit Jarndirri. And every time he left a girl’s bed, it had left him curiously blank. He’d felt empty from the moment he’d found satisfaction.
Until a single, impulsive, forbidden kiss, given because Anna had looked so adorable with hay in her hair and chocolate smears on her mouth…and instead of pulling away to demand what he was doing, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck with a little, feminine sound of surprised arousal, and had kissed him back. From that moment, like Alice down the rabbit hole, he’d fallen into a desire and need so all-encompassing that, twelve years later, he still hadn’t found a way out.
No amount of waiting, from school to university and the year she’d spent teaching in the Northern Territory; no change in their lives, no loss or even her leaving him lessened the craving. Seeing her pretty, funny pixie face, her lush curves, hearing her husky voice—or even her ridiculous laugh—turned him into a burning mass of desire.
And after a long year of empty abstinence, she was here, keeping him on constant slow burn with mumbled words and lighting trails of fire with her mouth. He turned to her, lifting her face for another I can’t get enough of you kiss. She moaned and arched into him, and they were consumed with each other again.
And with each touch and every kiss he tried to tell her everything his heart kept locked away from the world, all the little family secrets he’d never told anyone, and the overwhelming feelings he had for her.
All the emotion and pain he could never tell Anna had been communicated through the years with his fidelity and his voracious need for her—and he now prayed she understood.
Afterwards Anna yawned and stretched, smiling at him. ‘Can you help me drag a mattress into Melanie’s room?’
Something inside Jared stilled then withered. Okay, after so long apart he hadn’t been completely expecting the words of love she’d always given after loving each other into sublime satiety, but Can you help me move a mattress wasn’t high on his list of things he’d hoped to hear.
Anger flashed through him. ‘You’re staying with me.’
The smile vanished. ‘I’ve been away from Melanie long enough. It’s her first night in a strange place, as you pointed out. She’s fast asleep now but if she wakes she could try to get out of the bassinette.’
You’ve been away from me far longer than enough. ‘You’re making excuses. She can’t possibly roll off the bed with every chair in the house surrounding her—she’s not that strong. And you made a deal,’ he growled, hating himself for pulling a blackmail stunt on her but knowing that the longer he let her stay away, the farther her heart went from him. ‘You need me if you want to adopt the kid, and in return I get what I want. You’re my wife. I want you to sleep with me.’
The eyes he’d always loved looking into, like a rich, warm snugly brown blanket of love made just for him, were cold and hard. ‘I just spent the past few hours giving you what you want. I need to check on Melanie.’ She rolled over and got to her feet—and with a flash of fury at her defiance, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to the bed.
She struggled against him. ‘She’s not the kid,’ she panted. ‘She’s the only baby I’ll ever have in my life, and I will stay with her. I won’t lose her the way I lost Adam because you have to win again, to own me. You wouldn’t be stopping me now if it was Adam in that room!’
The bitterness inside her words turned him cold. Without thinking, he released her arm. Anna meant it. She really loved that baby—and she truly believed she would never have children of her own.
Would she ever begin to heal, come back to reality?
‘This is the twenty-first century,’ he said, low and fierce, yet with a sense of feeling his way. ‘There are a dozen other ways to have babies—’
‘Not for me.’ Flat, angry words, with an underlying certainty that haunted him. ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.’
Her ire roused his. ‘I understand that you gave me your word today, and you’re already breaking it. I’m doing my part. I keep my promises.’
Her lips pressed together, so hard they were rimmed with white. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Totally naked, she walked out of the room, and he heard the door opening to the room where the baby slept. He heard her croon softly to the kid, her voice rich with long-thwarted mother-love. Then, in exactly a minute, she returned and lay back down on the bed, but she remained rolled away from him, letting him know without words how little she wanted to be there, even after making love three times. Every pore and cell of her screamed, Don’t touch me.
He’d never been very good at taking orders—and not touching her wasn’t something he was prepared to negotiate. He pulled her against him, loving the lush curves of her body against him after so long away…and he’d be willing to bet she loved it, too, despite her silent resistance.
&
nbsp; But when she only lay stiff and cold against him, refusing to touch him voluntarily, and her breathing was uneven, choppy as she chewed on her anger and fear that the longer she stayed away, the higher the risk the baby would be hurt, Jared knew he’d made an enormous mistake. Lying beside his wife, holding her naked body close, he discovered anew a distance far greater than anything that could be measured in kilometres.
Seducing her had seemed the perfect solution only a few hours before. Making love had always brought them closer. In the loving and its aftermath, she poured out her affection, her love for him, as well as showing him the hidden tigress when they touched.
Tonight all he’d seen had been the sensual woman. His body was sated, but his heart was empty. He’d gambled high stakes on finding his Anna, the Anna he missed so badly, in bed—that she’d come back to him in the loving—and he’d lost, big time.
Aching for what seemed forever gone, the wife who’d loved cuddling him at night, his haven in a world gone wrong long before his father had put a rope around his neck, Jared moved his arm, giving her the choice, the freedom. Anna immediately rolled onto her stomach, finding a spare pillow to use beneath her body.
She was with him, beside him, and told him without words that it was the last place she wanted to be.
I might enjoy the sex, but that’s all it will be. She’d warned him, and he’d ignored her, ploughing ahead with his own plans for victory.
Maybe it was time he started not just asking but listening to her.
‘Go back to the baby.’ It was a rough growl filled with anger, but it was surrender. It was listening to her, giving her more than he’d ever had to before. ‘I’ll bring the mattress in.’
She rolled back to face him, staring at him in obvious surprise—and after a moment’s searching glance, her mouth curved in a tiny smile. ‘Thank you.’
It was far from the ‘I love you’ he’d once taken for granted as his right, his due, and now craved to hear; but he’d take it—a smile was a step in the right direction.
One Small Miracle Page 8
