Gathering her stuff once again, she got out of the ute. Her body had become a lot slower to respond these past few weeks.
The rain softly pattered down on her shoulders and arms as she quickly walked towards the light and warmth of the hut. Once inside she was taken aback by the effort Will had made to turn this small, dirty, austere space into a haven. She was sure if he’d been on his own, the single chainmesh-covered iron bed folded up against the far wall would have been enough to provide him with comfort for the night. So he’d done this for her.
He’d opened up two other beds of the same ilk and pushed them close to the fire in the front half of the hut. Over one he’d folded a tattered blue tarp, and he’d slung a well-worn canvas swag across the other. Then he’d balled up a faded oilskin coat and a bunch of clean rags to use for pillows at the head of each bed. ‘Welcome to the Nunkeri Plains Hilton.’ Will’s dimples flashed as he twirled his hands in the air like a maestro begging for applause.
Despite her misgivings, she couldn’t help but smile.
A hissing sound came from the fire, a billy set over the flames to boil. Grabbing two small cans of spaghetti from the rock hearth at the side of the fire, he pierced a hole in the lid of each with a pocketknife from the leather holder on his belt.
With his back to her as he dumped the tins partially into the boiling water, Will said, ‘Emergency rations. Always carry a bit of tucker around in the back of the ute. Never know when you might be stuck up in the scrub.’
‘Same with the swag, and the billy, I suppose?’ Bella knew there was a faint accusatorial tone to her voice. She chastised herself; he certainly hadn’t organised the thick fog.
‘I’m good, but I’m not that good, Hells Bells. I can’t order God around.’ He sounded pissed off.
Bella knew she deserved that one. She gathered herself up, determined to make amends. ‘This looks great, Will. Thanks for making such an effort.’
Will waved a hand in response, his movements jerky with suppressed annoyance as he swung the billy, hooked on a wire rod, back across the fire.
He hadn’t meant the day to turn out like this. Well, not exactly. He’d hoped something might happen between them, but not here; not on a deserted, lonely plain in a dirty, cold cattlemen’s hut with nothing but a swag to sleep on and a grungy fireplace to give light.
He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move. He wanted to get it right this time. He couldn’t stand the pain of her misunderstanding him and walking away again like at Hugh’s Plain. Granted, she was a different woman now. Instead of being so strung-up and tetchy, she was more relaxed and could take a joke. She’d got rid of that woolley butt log on her shoulder, leaving only a few splinters in its wake. But still, he wasn’t sure which way this night would go and he figured it was best to leave that up to Bella rather than get it all wrong again. He could wait for her. He’d wait forever if he had to.
‘Look, I’m sorry, Will. I’m just tired, I guess.’
He turned around just in time to see her draw a hand across her eyes. He was shocked by just how black the circles under her eyes were. His gaze softened.
‘How about you take a seat right over here on this log?’ Will kicked a sawn-off block of wood towards her. ‘But just pull that door behind you closed before we lose what warmth we’ve managed to create in this old place.’
Bella swung back, and went to pull the wooden door tight. But just before she did, she took one more look outside. It was completely dark, no moon to light the way. She shuddered as the milky-white mist swirled around the door, thankful for the warmth and shelter now inside.
Lying on the twin wire beds much later, after having consumed every scrap of spaghetti, Bella found herself trying to get comfortable. Despite the makeshift padding, wire dug into her sides no matter which way she turned. She was also freezing in the places the fire’s warmth couldn’t reach.
‘What’s wrong?’ Will’s voice came from the bed next to hers. She hadn’t realised he was still awake.
‘I’m cold. And I can’t get comfortable.’
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d take that as an invitation.’
Bella mumbled something.
‘What was that?’ Will moved a bit, then sat up and looked down at her, his body shadowed by the dark depths of the hut at his back.
‘It is an invitation,’ said Bella, a tentative lilt in her voice.
Will raised an eyebrow, and Bella’s heart sank. Who’d want to make love to a hugely pregnant woman – especially if they thought it wasn’t their baby? She knew she should just tell him the baby was his, even if he didn’t want children. Maybe it would make things right, and all would be well. But as she opened her mouth to say the words, her throat closed over.
What the hell? Why don’t you just tell him and be done with it?
I can’t, said Bella to Patty. He doesn’t want children. You buggered that up. You and your bloody parents. So I have to do this myself. I’m strong enough. I don’t need a man to make it all right.
Fool!
Who are you calling a fool; you’re the one who’s dead!
Youch! Temper, temper, Hells Bells. You always were pig-headed.
Bella forced Patty away.
‘I’d love to accept,’ came the quiet, deep voice at her side. ‘C’mon, get up, cowgirl.’
It only took him a few minutes to stow the wire beds away. He stretched the swag out to its full width on the ground, and laid the coat and tarp out over the top. Will helped her down onto the swag and then bunched the rags so she had a pillow of sorts on which to rest her belly.
He lay down behind her and Bella marvelled as his hands moved around her waist to gently cup her belly, which was straining to hold the baby within its skin. She loved the spooned warmth of him against her back as he shared life and heat with her frozen body. Then came a tightening of his arm and hand as it moved up to secure itself on her breast. Bella backed in closer to Will and felt him respond.
Slowly, they helped each other remove their clothes and Bella marvelled at how the heat of their two bodies yearning to become one, burned away any remnant feeling of cold.
With her naked back once again tucked into Will’s chest, his left hand started to explore her new shape. Gentle fingers trailed their way down over her naked breasts, his hand cupping and caressing their voluptuous fullness. His warm touch then drifted across her mounded belly, stopping to explore, tickle and sensuously tease before moving along. But as he reached the tops of her thighs, she felt him tense, his hand abruptly halting. Moments ticked by before his fingers started to slowly explore the long indentations in her skin, external scars from the accident nearly nine years before. Finally, he moved his hand back up towards her breasts, away from those reminders of tragedy and grief, allowing her to let go of a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.
Commencing his journey all over again, Will’s hand gently worked its magic until in an agonisingly unhurried motion; he dipped his fingers into the cleft between her legs.
The passion that had been on slow burn the whole day – that had sizzled in the air between them since the Nunkeri Muster all those years ago – finally erupted. It was different this time, though. There was no thunder, no lightning. No urgent need to take and be taken. Comfort, companionship and love were at last consummated in that hut, so deep in the mountains, amid the security of the blanket of fog.
It was a long time later, when Bella was sleeping, and in the afterglow of lovemaking so beautiful he wanted to weep, Will was reminded of another time – when he held Bella at the Gundolin rodeo, wondering at his luck at having such a gorgeous creature in his arms.
He looked down at the white-gold curly hair. What changes time had wrought them both. But fundamentally they were still the same people. This woman was still Bella, the woman he’d come to know then and love now. Forever. Warren may have fathered the baby, but that didn’t mean Will couldn’t learn how to be a dad. If Bella would let him. The ch
ild inside Bella was hers and, to Will, that was everything.
Chapter 42
Dawn on the Nunkeri Plains promised a clear, sunny day. They made it home by mid-morning, and all afternoon Bella basked in the memory of Will’s lovemaking. Thoughts of his gentleness warmed her as she slowly made her way through the farm jobs. She wasn’t doing all that much now she was thirty-seven weeks’ pregnant, just trying to keep things ticking along until Maggie came home.
Afterwards she hit her laptop, intent on finishing up the last reports on the Landcare project. But her mind wouldn’t stay with the words and figures in front of her. It kept flitting to yesterday and last night, to last week and the week before.
Bella was pretty sure Will loved her, and with that knowledge her whole body buzzed with happiness. Sure, he hadn’t said as much, but his eyes told the story – all gooey molasses, loving and kind. And Will had just made love to a heavily pregnant woman not knowing he was the father of the baby. He had to love her, didn’t he?
The thought of seeing him again sent her legs scurrying down the Tindarra Road after dark, a small torch in her hand. When he dropped her off, Will told her he would be in town for the rest of the day. He wasn’t due home until late, and Bella hoped he was back by now. As she walked the moonlit gravel road, she thought about how it would be much more comfortable to make love in an actual bed . . . She hummed to herself in anticipation, already feeling his hands gently cupping her naked belly. Perhaps she should take the risk and tell him he was the father. Surely once he knew, he could love them both.
She wanted to surprise him, so she turned off the torch as she walked down the driveway. She could see the huge set of cattle yards beyond Will’s little house, reflected in parts by moonlight. She looked up. Storm clouds scudded across the sky, ducking and weaving around the moon. She swung towards the back of the house, surprised but pleased that Will’s dog Nala hadn’t yet set up a warning bark at her approach.
Probably inside with Will, she thought. As she came around the corner she stopped, startled. There was a dark green Land Rover Discovery parked hard up against the iron gate.
Her plans for seduction bit the dust. Damn it. She wondered who it was. She realised just how little she knew of Will’s life now. And she didn’t want to look like an idiot rocking up at his back door at this hour of the night – it would be obvious what she was there for. Asking to borrow a cup of sugar wasn’t going to cut it at eleven p.m.
Bella decided to take a look in through the lounge-room window. A massive hydrangea partially obscured the pane, so she slid in sideways between the puff-ball pink flowers and the wall of the house, inwardly cursing her round belly as she went. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Grabbing hold of the shutter to steady herself, Bella peeked through the glass.
Will sat on the end of the couch, and he wasn’t alone. A woman reclined on the floor against his legs, resting her blonde head in his lap.
Bella jumped away from the window, forgetting she was tight within the hydrangea. Leaves rustled and branches snapped and cracked as she fell back among the thick bush. She could hear Nala growl inside and a high-pitched voice straight from her past say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, William, it’s probably just a roo.’
She could hear the rumble of Will’s voice settling Nala, before all went quiet.
Bella righted herself and tried to force feeling back into her legs, her brain, her body now numb with shock. Her mind was reeling. Should she take another look? Confirm what she thought she saw? She snuck back towards the window and peeked through the glass again.
Prudence Vincent-Prowse O’Hara, maybe Fowler, still lay with her head in Will’s lap. She looked much the same as she had eight years before. A few more lines of discontent between the eyes streaking up to a furrowed brow, the same sulky blood-red painted lips, a slight thickening under the jaw – the beginnings of a double chin she would inherit from her mother.
Bella felt a slight sense of gratification. Her eyes then moved down the body reclining in a sensuous position on the floor. Prowsy wasn’t wearing much. What she was wearing strained to cover the fact that Prowsy was well and truly pregnant.
Bella couldn’t tear her eyes away. Just when she thought it was all coming together, just when she and Will had finally found their way back to each other – he did this. Could she trust any man with her heart, her soul, her life?
No. It didn’t look like it.
Patty’s voice tried to speak deep within her mind, but Bella shut it down. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any bloody O’Haras, ever again.
‘It’s just you and me, kid,’ she whispered to the babe stirring gently within her belly, just as Prowsy’s fake laughter tinkled through the glass.
Bella took one last look through the window to confirm what her brain was telling her heart: Will was a dirty, double-crossing two-timer, and he was out of her life.
It was at this moment, when Bella started to turn away, that Prowsy slightly raised her head to stare straight through the window into the night, right into Bella’s eyes.
Prowsy smiled.
Will had been serving up a mixed grill for himself when he heard the distant drone of a vehicle high up beyond the ridge. He stood at the kitchen window, which sat squat above the sink, and gazed across the paddocks towards Aunty Maggie’s. He could just make out the crisp lines of the house against the darkening twilight, a shadow of black angles against a steel-grey and violet sky. A light twinkled from panes of glass. He wished he’d been able to get back earlier so he could have made definite plans to see Bella.
In his mind he could see her at work at the kitchen table, head bent over her laptop, concentrating. He knew she was working hard to finish the final project report for her boss. His imagination wove images of those lapis eyes intent on the task. His heart lurched slightly as he remembered those eyes intent on him.
He wondered just how late was too late to go wandering up the road. The bunch of flowers he’d picked up from the Burrindal store, delivered fresh just this morning, sat in water at the sink. He smiled to himself and hummed along to the country CD playing quietly in the background.
The rumble of a diesel engine drowned the music out. The vehicle stopped outside his gate. A visitor. Damn it. He cast a longing glance towards Bella’s beckoning light. He hoped they wouldn’t stay long.
Whoever it was, was obviously opening the gate and the rumble started again, louder this time as the vehicle swung down his drive. He frowned. The driver hadn’t stopped to close the gate. There was only one person he knew who didn’t follow that country law; only one person who thought that unwritten rule was far beneath them.
Prudence.
‘So, William, how’s things? Still playing with cows?’ Prue’s forced laughter still rankled. ‘Got enough in that pan for me? You always did do a mean fry-up.’
Will leaned against the sink, his arms crossed. He didn’t move to greet his former wife. He just stood, watching her enter his house and his life once again. He didn’t say a thing; he’d said it all years ago when she left.
‘My oh my, the cat got your tongue? Or maybe something else?’ Her eyes flicked quickly towards the window, the light and Maggie’s, so quickly he might have imagined it.
She padded towards him. ‘And what’s this?’ she said, moving right into his personal space. ‘Flowers for me? Oh William, you shouldn’t have. I guess Shelley told you I was in town visiting Mummy and Daddy.’ Prue picked up the bunch of gerberas and roses, contaminating the flowers with her presence, stifling their sweet scent.
Will decided then and there he was throwing them in the bin. Bella wouldn’t be tainted by this girl ever again. He’d take something else to her tonight. Maybe the bowl of blackberries he’d picked from up in Blind Man’s Gully, or the multicoloured feather he’d found from a crimson rosella. He’d find another way to woo his girl. He caressed those words in his mind. His girl. Finally.
Prowsy interrupted his thoughts. ‘I heard
Bella Vermaelon was back in the valley. Knocked up, too.’
‘You can’t talk.’
Prue looked down. Shrugged. ‘True. Leyton’s promised me a nanny.’
‘What do you want, Prue? We were about to have our tea and there’s only enough for Nala and me.’
‘Of course, I should have remembered. The dog comes before your wife.’
‘Ex-wife,’ clarified Will. By Prue’s piqued expression, he could see she was wishing she could suck those nasty words she’d uttered right back in. Interesting. What did she want?
Prue smoothed her face and shrugged again. ‘Let’s head into the lounge and make ourselves more comfortable.’ At Will’s raised eyebrow, she went on irritably, ‘Oh don’t worry, I won’t be staying long. Leyton’s playing darts with Daddy at the hotel and I want to be back before he gets home.’
Prue walked into the lounge and waited until Will had sat down on the single chair, before sinking to her knees in front of him, setting her head upon his lap. Will stiffened. ‘Get off, Prue.’ He went to move her head off his legs.
‘I feel faint.’ Her hand fluttered towards her forehead. ‘Just let me rest here a moment.’
Prue’s voice held that familiar lilting whine that he’d come to loath so much when she was his wife. But he couldn’t bring himself to push her away. He sighed. She was a manipulative piece of work, that was for sure, but for once in her life she just might be telling the truth.
Nala started to growl. Trees rustled outside. Will sat up straighter, looking towards the window.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it, William, it’s probably just a roo.’
Will mumbled a few quiet words to the dog, who whimpered then settled.
‘I want something.’ Prue rubbed her hand along his lower leg like a cat.
‘Not much has changed, then.’
Prue pursed her blood-red lips and then thrust her blonde head further into his lap. ‘I want to come back, Will. I want you.’ Red nails came up to stroke his inner thigh.
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