It was a possibility. That was all.
Yet still, for now it was enough. Jenna’s hands ran through his hair again and again, and she knew there was some deep hurt here. Some hurt that would have to be healed before he could trust.
And if that didn’t happen? If she didn’t have time? If she and Karli had to board a plane to England in a couple of days and never see this man again?
What then?
Then this would have been worth it, she told herself. She loved him and she’d fight with everything she had. She’d fought for what she needed all her life. This might be the biggest fight of all.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘To make love to you…’
‘Is impossible,’ she whispered back and she made no effort to hide her regret. ‘Not with my little sister in full view. We’ve probably shocked her socks off as it is.’
‘I don’t see any socks-and kangaroos are much more interesting than we are.’ Riley glanced across at Karli and his mouth twisted into a smile. ‘Though that’s not saying we don’t have a very interested audience.’
Jenna blinked and checked for herself. He was right. The cows were lined up on the bank, peering down at them with astonishment. Behind them, the kangaroos had grown in number to about thirty. They’d come to the waterhole for their evening drink, but every kangaroo in the mob was staring straight at Jenna and Riley.
‘We’ve shocked the socks off the animal kingdom,’ Riley told her, chuckling into her hair. He lowered his mouth so he was kissing the nape of her neck. Sensations of pure light were filtering up from Jenna’s toes and flicking back down again, through and through.
She belonged right here, Jenna thought dreamily. In this man’s arms. Wherever Riley was, that was where Jenna belonged.
‘Why are you kissing Jenna?’ It seemed Karli had finally noticed.
Riley pulled away, and with infinite regret Jenna let herself be put at arm’s length
‘Jenna’s worth kissing,’ Riley told Karli. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Yeah, but that was a really long, slurpy kiss,’ Karli told them. ‘Do you see the kangaroos, Jenna?’
‘Y…yes,’ said Jenna.
‘Do you want to help me make mud pies?’
‘Maybe we should,’ Riley said, and Jenna could have screamed.
‘In a bit, Karli,’ she told her. ‘When we finish kissing.’
‘The kids at school say you get boy germs if you kiss,’ Karli told them. ‘And babies.’
‘How horrible.’ Jenna laughed, but it was a pretty shaky laugh.
‘And we wouldn’t want boy germs or babies, now, would we?’ Riley said and she winced. There was suddenly distance in his voice. As if he’d remembered something important.
‘Um…no.’
‘Maybe we’d better go,’ Riley said.
‘You mean stop kissing?’ Jenna asked.
‘I think…maybe we’re not being wise.’
‘Are you afraid of how I make you feel?’ she asked-and the whole world held its breath while she waited for the answer.
‘I don’t do emotion,’ he said at last.
‘Why not?’ This was a crazy time and a crazy place for such a conversation, she thought. They were neck-deep in muddy water. Karli had returned to her pie-making, and all around them were cows and kangaroos having their evening drink.
Surely this conversation shouldn’t be so intense?
But it was and they had to see it out.
Riley’s defences were back in place, Jenna thought bleakly. What was going on? What was in this man’s past to make him react like this?
‘You say you love me,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly mocking.
‘I think…I think that I do.’
‘Then you need to do some fast learning.’
‘To learn what?’ Her eyes weren’t leaving his face, and what she saw there made her cringe. She’d fought but she’d lost. His defences were up again and his eyes were bleak and hard.
‘Love’s only another name for present need,’ he told her. ‘It assuages loneliness, and that’s all it does. It doesn’t lock one person to another for ever. Nothing does that.’
How could he say that? That nothing tied one person to another? When she was so tightly bound she felt she’d be ripped apart if she were to leave him.
‘How did you learn that?’ she whispered.
He shrugged, moving back a step in the water. Extending the distance between them. ‘I was a fool. I got married.’
‘Oh.’
He looked down at her then, and his face suddenly relaxed into humour. ‘There’s no need to look like that,’ he told her. ‘I told you. It’s long over. You’re not having an illicit embrace with a man with a wife, six kids and a mother-in-law. Lisa left me years ago.’
Jenna swallowed. ‘Wh…why?’ It was none of her business, but she knew the answer was desperately important.
‘People do. They walk away and others hurt. Like us. If we took this anywhere and then broke up, it’d tear Karli apart.’
She stared up in confusion. He’d moved beyond her. ‘How could that happen?’
‘Everyone leaves this place. No woman can handle the life out here.’
Jenna looked about her-cautiously. ‘If you brought your wife here, then maybe you couldn’t blame her for wanting a few creature comforts after a while,’ she ventured. ‘If you brought her to a place like this…’
‘Munyering’s not like this,’ Riley said harshly. ‘And she knew…’ He stopped, as if thinking better of what he’d started to say. ‘This is nothing to do with us. With you. It’s been years.’
‘But not long enough for you to trust a woman again?’
‘Until you came I swore I’d never touch another woman.’
‘And now you’ve touched me. Excellent.’ She reached forward, took his face between her hands and kissed him again, hard and deep, searching for the break in his defences. ‘So now your vow’s broken-what are you going to do with me?’ she whispered. ‘Send me to the dungeon for tempting a man?’
‘It’d be a waste to put you in any dungeon.’ His hands gripped her waist, but, instead of gathering her to him again as she so desperately wanted, he set her back from him again. ‘No. Jenna, you’re enough to make any man break any vow. If Karli wasn’t here, and if you hadn’t said you loved me, then maybe I’d take you to my bed and we’d have great sex and we’d remember this interlude with pleasure for the rest of our lives.’ His gaze was suddenly uncertain. Wistful? As if he was speaking of something that could never be.
‘But you have said you love me,’ he told her. ‘I don’t believe it, but I can’t think… I can’t hurt you. Whatever it means, it can’t be allowed to progress any further than it already has. It’s not your life you’re playing with here, but Karli’s.’
Huh? ‘Are you saying I’m risking Karli?’ Jenna’s aching desire was suddenly overtaken by confusion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your responsibility is to Karli.’
Confusion became anger-just like that. ‘And I’m risking that by falling in love with you?’
‘You don’t really love me. You just want-’
‘You know nothing about what I want,’ she snapped. ‘You know nothing about me at all if you think I’d risk Karli in any way. I have no idea why I’m feeling like I’m feeling about you. I only know that I am. So now I’ve told you. I’m honest. Not like you, Riley Jackson, who can’t even admit to himself what he’s feeling.’
‘I don’t-’
‘You do,’ she snapped. ‘I can feel what you feel. I’m not some teenage twit with a crush. I have no idea what’s between us, but I do know that I’ve never experienced it before and it’s special and it’s brilliant and you’re not brave enough to even take the first step to trying to figure out where this could take us.’
‘I don’t want-’
‘To take risks,’ she flashed.
‘And you do?’ Anger was meeting anger. ‘Of course you do. You’re a born
risk-taker. Getting off a train in the middle of nowhere even if it means risking your sister’s life.’
What was he saying? She couldn’t believe it. Her hand came back to slap the accusation from his harsh, unyielding face.
She caught herself. No.
She wanted to slap him. More than anything else she wanted to pierce that accusing harshness. And if she did…
Maybe it could work. Maybe. But Karli was on the other side of the dam. To resort to physical aggression was never appropriate, but how much more inappropriate now.
‘Fine,’ she said grimly and turned away to trudge out of the dam. ‘If that’s the way you want to think of me, then it’s okay by me. Karli and I are getting out of here as soon as possible, and you’ll never see us again.’
‘Do you want to catch the train tomorrow instead of flying out with me?’
That made her pause. The train.
Yes. She did want to catch the train. She desperately wanted to walk away. Her humiliation was threatening to overwhelm her and she could cope with a few reporters if the alternative was more humiliation.
But then her eyes flew to Karli.
Karli was starting to be happy again. The little girl had faced so much. How much more could she stand?
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I…please.’ She’d risked too much. She’d risked Karli’s well-being just by being attracted to him. She’d forgotten how dependent they were on this man.
There was a moment’s loaded silence. She met his look and held it and something of what she was feeling must have come through. She saw his expression turn to rueful, as if he too was remembering what else she was facing.
‘I won’t put you on the train.’ His gaze shifted to Karli and there was suddenly a real remorse in his tone. ‘Hell. I’m sorry that I implied you’d put Karli at risk. It was a stupid thing to say and I had no right to say it.’ He hesitated. ‘But I need to put you away from me, Jenna. I don’t do relationships. I’m on my own. You’re with Karli and I’m here. There’s no meeting place. Not in a million years.’
Not in a million years.
Jenna nodded. Bleakly. Maybe Riley was right. He didn’t want her in his world and she had no right to ask to be included.
But it was so hard.
What she was feeling was love. She knew it. She’d never felt like this before, but now the sensation threatened to overwhelm her. Her love might be transient, she thought bleakly. It might be based on present need, but her heart swelled with pain at what he was saying.
There’s no meeting place.
She could do no more. She’d thrown her pride to the wind. She’d thrown herself at him and exposed herself to pain and to rejection as she’d done to no one in her life. There was nothing more she could do.
‘Thank you for our swim,’ she said dully. ‘We loved it. Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe it’s time to go back to the house.’
‘I’m sorry, Jenna.’
She looked at him then-really looked at him-and her chin tilted upward. He was sorry. ‘Coward,’ she whispered.
‘I’m not a coward. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You don’t want to be hurt yourself.’
‘Maybe.’ His face closed. ‘Whatever. You’re right. It’s time we went home.’
He turned and strode out of the water, up the bank and across to where Karli was offering mud-pie sandwiches to cows.
‘Are you ready to go home?’ he asked her and she raised her face to his and smiled.
‘Okay. Have you finished kissing Jenna?’
‘Yes, I’ve finished kissing Jenna.’
‘Good, ’cos it looked pretty yucky to me.’
‘Yep.’ He glanced across at Jenna and his face closed even further. ‘We never should have done it.’
CHAPTER NINE
THEY hardly saw him then until late the next afternoon. Riley drove them back to the house, grabbed his swag and a few supplies, and he was gone.
They were left to fend for themselves.
As they’d always fended for themselves.
‘Did you guys have a fight?’ Karli asked, and Jenna shook her head. She was making them dinner, fighting back tears; trying to make herself angry instead of desolate.
‘What makes you think we had a fight?’
‘Riley stopped smiling. You stopped smiling.’
‘Maybe it’s because we’re leaving tomorrow. It’s making us sad.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever see Riley again after tomorrow?’
‘Probably not.’
‘That’s really sad.’ Karli looked down at her precious rock. ‘I’d rather have Riley even more than my rock.’
Jenna tried to pull herself together. She sniffed and tried for a mature, adult approach to what was happening. ‘You shouldn’t call him Riley. His name’s Mr Jackson.’
‘He said I could call him Riley. He’s my friend. I think we should stay with him for longer.’
‘So do I,’ Jenna admitted sadly, abandoning mature as being just plain impossible. She and Karli seemed of an age. They surely thought the same. ‘But some things just aren’t going to happen.’
Karli slept, but there was little sleep for Jenna that night. She lay awake, staring out at the stars in the outback sky, trying to make sense of how she was feeling-of what she’d done. Of how she’d face the future.
There were questions everywhere. There were no answers.
The next day they woke to silence. They threw themselves into more work, fixing the bedrooms up, rigging a device so they could scrub higher than the original dust mark.
It wasn’t so much fun without Riley.
In the early afternoon they went outside and saw the far-off sight of the silver train they’d abandoned four days ago. They watched it slow to a stop at the siding to let the other train go through. They watched it leave.
Maybe they should have gone on the train regardless, Jenna thought. Maybe she shouldn’t trust Riley to do what he said he’d do.
But she did trust him. He was totally dependable, she knew. Totally dependable, but totally isolated.
He was breaking her heart.
At four she and Karli called it quits. The joyous enthusiasm with which they’d tackled their work over the last three days was completely gone and Jenna was bone-tired. It was as much as she could do to manage the pump.
There was no light-hearted singing of sea shanties.
They washed and they waited.
At five the Land Rover appeared from the south and Riley walked into the house looking worse than Jenna had ever seen him. She might be tired, but he looked exhausted to the point of collapse.
‘Riley,’ she whispered as he walked in the back door, but his look held her back. It stopped her saying anything else.
‘I’ve finished doing what needs doing,’ he told them, his voice drained of emotion. ‘Can you be ready to leave in fifteen minutes?’
‘We’re packed already,’ Karli told him, casting a dubious look from Riley to Jenna and back again.
‘That’s good,’ Riley said and smiled at her.
He didn’t smile at Jenna.
The plane bumped down the makeshift runway and rose into the sky, then banked and turned so they were facing south. Riley’s face was grim and he stayed silent. Karli was hugging her rock as if she needed its security.
Jenna put her face against the window and stared down at the receding dot that was Barinya Downs.
It was a dump.
She’d fallen in love with it.
She’d fallen in love with Riley.
They should talk, she thought dully. She should be talking to Karli. They should pretend this was exciting. They were flying in a tiny plane over a place as strange as she’d ever been in. They should be acting as if this were an adventure.
It wasn’t. Even Karli’s face was tight with strain.
Even Karli knew what they were losing, she thought bleakly.
The further they flew south, the greener the country gr
ew and a little over half an hour’s flight saw them descend to a place that, after Barinya Downs, looked almost like paradise.
Munyering.
She couldn’t believe it. As the plane came in to land she cast a doubtful look across at Riley, but his face was still set and grim. Karli was gazing down with her mouth wide open and Jenna felt like doing the same.
Okay, she did do the same.
It was still dry country-there were no lush, closely fenced fields like home-but this was no dust bowl. The paddocks were dotted with dams, each much larger than the one they’d swum in at Barinya Downs, and most of them ringed by trees. The soil looked rich and red, and there were low blue mountain ranges in the far distance. The paddocks were wide swathes of green pasture. Crops? Even from this height Jenna could see flocks of cockatoos wheeling and squawking about the trees, and there were cattle resting in the shade.
And the house. It was a sprawling white weatherboard farmhouse, surrounded by outbuildings that looked substantial and well cared for. The house was ringed by a wide veranda and a lush garden. Some sort of vine covered the veranda with great looping clouds of purple blossom.
And there was a swimming pool. The pool was a magic blue teardrop nestled into the garden and from the air it looked like someone’s version of paradise.
‘It’s really pretty,’ Karli breathed, and Jenna could only agree. She glanced across at Riley and looked away again. His face was a rigid mask. He was fighting with himself, she thought.
‘Hey, lighten up,’ she told him, fighting her own misery to try and reach him. ‘How can you look miserable when you’re coming home to this? I know you’ll miss your dust, but this is ridiculous.’
He managed a smile, but only just.
‘I need to concentrate on landing,’ he said, and Jenna bit her lip.
‘Of course you do,’ she said cordially. ‘You need to concentrate on anything that isn’t us.’
Riley’s silence was made up for by Maggie. As the aeroplane rolled to a halt the lady was waiting and Jenna guessed at once who she was. She looked like a Maggie. A little, dumpy woman in her late fifties or early sixties, she had deep black, wild, frizzy hair, tugged into a knot on top of her head, but with curls escaping every which way. She was wearing a bright red skirt, a bright yellow blouse and a stripey pinafore that was liberally sprinkled with something that looked like flour.
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