His eyes narrowed, hating that kind of obvious remark, before he realised it was no come-on. She was teasing, taunting him with affectionate memories—the methods he’d used once to draw out a grieving, withdrawn little girl, his grandparents’ misunderstood foster child, and bring her out of hiding up a tree. It struck him that while she knew so much about him—even down to the handcuffs incidents—he knew nothing about her in the years since she’d left his grandparents’ farm to live with her paternal grandmother.
‘So what do you do with yourself these days?’
She leaned back in her chair. ‘Me? I wander the vast red outback in a BMW.’
‘A Beemer?’ he asked, diverted despite knowing she’d thrown him another red herring, one that her childhood mate would fall for immediately.
‘A four-seater red convertible, custom made.’ Her tone was soft, beguiling. ‘Six-cylinder turbo. She goes from zero to a hundred in under eight seconds, in the sweetest purring quiet you ever heard in your life.’
‘Oh, man,’ he breathed, moving around the desk to her. ‘What model? Where is she?’
She stood up, coming to his chin. At six-three, he’d had so few women do that. Last time he’d seen Elly, she’d barely reached his waist, and was as flat chested as a boy, and as adventurous. So many changes—no wonder he hadn’t recognised her.
She looked up at him. ‘Want to come see her? If you’re a very good boy, I might let you take her out for a spin.’ Her smile was all friendly guile, one childhood friend challenging another. There was nothing in her manner to match the provocative words, despite being close enough to breathe in the fragrance of her. Simple powder and shampoo—but when the combination radiated from Elly, who wore the scent of earth and sensuality like a second skin, he’d never inhaled a more seductive scent in his life.
He looked down into her upturned face. ‘What does “very good boy” entail?’ Hearing the odd huskiness in his voice, he coughed to cover it over, even grinned. ‘Are we talking deals, Miz Elly, like we used to?’
‘If you like.’ Yet her smile faded. ‘No more questions would be a good start.’
‘You need me, Elly.’ Now his tone was rough, almost angry. Absurd to be jealous of his younger self—but he was, jealous that she wouldn’t trust him as she used to. ‘I don’t mind a few mysteries, but you’re in trouble. Isn’t that why you came here? Why you got my attention by getting cuffed in the first place, and wearing that ridiculous outfit?’
Her expression closed off. ‘I thought I came to see a friend.’ When he didn’t answer, she sighed. ‘Okay, I dressed this way for you, and got arrested. It was just harmless fun. I wanted to wake you up, and find Claudius, lost in Old Sobersides—and Simon loved driving my red baby …’
This game was getting ridiculous. ‘Maybe you did—but you also did it because you knew I wouldn’t recognise you. You did it so when you jumped in with your new name, I’d be too confused to say “Janie Larkins”, or correct you.’
Her gaze flew to his, then fell. She flushed, but didn’t speak.
Exasperated, he lifted her chin with a hand. ‘Come on, talk to me, Elly. I’m the guy who sat in the tree with you when you cried for your mum, the one you covered for when I pinched Grandpa’s tractor. We’ve been in trouble together, roamed the mountains, and shared everything as we nursed your critters through the night. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?’
Great fawn-like eyes met his, wide and wary in a face pale beneath its warmth. Memories of the day they’d met hit him. The child Janie had been all hurting, raw emotion, less refusing to talk than unable to talk.
He found himself mumbling, ‘I’m sorry, Elly.’ Sorry for so many things. Sorry I never kept in touch. Sorry that my family only saw you as an embarrassment, and thought you were bad for me. And more than anything, I’m sorry life never taught you to trust anyone.
She shrugged. Whatever trouble she was in, he’d only know about it when she chose to tell him. ‘I—thank you,’ she said. When she looked up, his heart almost stopped at the pure fear crouching beneath the illusion of calm she was trying to project. ‘Don’t tell anyone my real name, or look me up on the database. Not yet. Please.’
‘Elly—’
‘Please.’ A quiver ran through her. ‘A day or two of fun. That’s all I’m asking.’ Her voice was a bare whisper. Then her fingers groped at her waist, before her hand dropped slowly to her lap.
A sudden vision blinded him: the little girl sitting in an enormous gum tree outside his grandparents’ farm, still grieving for her mother, and twiddling her waist-length curls whenever she felt stressed or miserable—a habit no amount of nagging could break.
So she’d only recently cut her hair. She’d dyed it. A professional hand had tamed its wild tangles. She’d changed small, but characteristic gestures—and she’d changed her name before she came to him, someone who’d had no contact with her for thirteen years.
‘C’mon, Elly, at least tell me if you need help.’ He frowned again, all she’d left unspoken assuming sudden and massive proportions in his mind. ‘Are you a protected witness?’
CHAPTER
3
How had he done that? After half a lifetime apart, he’d come so close to the bone, and far too soon. The jolt to Elly’s system was like an electric shock, hitting all of her. Whatever she’d expected in coming here, it hadn’t been this.
She shook her head, giving him a half-smile that offered nothing. But the look that created instant distance with most people only made him lift a brow. The way her cousin Kara always had, too—her only other real friend.
‘Then why put yourself through all this change … Janie?’
Don’t react. That’s what he wants. She managed to speak, clear and cold. ‘My name’s Elly.’
Worry filled the eyes she’d never forgotten, the silver-green of eucalyptus leaves in the forest near his grandparents’ farm, with flecks of earth brown. ‘What made you hate your own name, Elly? What happened to you?’
A ball of pain took up lodging in her throat. She coughed, but it wouldn’t clear. ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
He only shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. Come on, Elly. You can trust me.’
She felt herself rear back a little, a slight bitterness like gall rising from her belly, tight and hard. ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to you in years. How could you know if I’m fine or not? How could I know who or what you are any more?’
‘Because it’s me and you. Some things don’t change. You wouldn’t have come here if you felt that way. Something or someone’s got you on the run, and you turned to an old friend with no connections to you for a long time. A friend who happens to be a cop.’
His insight unnerved her, but she said, ‘Hey, don’t overthink it, Claudius. I hadn’t had a chance to feel like a charity kid in years … and there was a Jepson close to hand. So I thought, why not?’
‘Liar. I never saw you that way, and you know it. So why don’t you stop stonewalling me?’
Something in her darkened, a flame blown out. ‘No, you didn’t see me that way—then. But times change, people change. As we grow older, we often take on the attitudes of our families—and partners. After all, you did stop talking to me.’
At last she’d deflected him—yeah, he winced at her emotionless comment. Some of the more thoughtless remarks his family had thrown at her echoed through her mind. The words Adam’s girlfriend-then-wife Sharon had said to him, the careless cruelty she’d never meant for her to overhear: She’s not one of us.
But even Sharon hadn’t known how right she’d been. Janie Larkins or Elly Lavender, the nowhere child had become a nowhere woman.
Janie’s life of isolation had begun when she was three, when her father disappeared, taking her older brother with him. She didn’t remember what they’d looked like now, or even their names—but she knew all about her father’s desertion, thanks to her mother’s bitter comments. Her mum’s job as a fruit picker meant they had travelled from place
to place, struggling to survive, her mother teaching Janie to read and do basic maths outside of working hours. Life was the two of them, morning and night, and Janie reading and playing on her own through the day.
Then they’d come to the Southern Highlands when she was ten. The nightmare still came to Elly as if in slow motion: one of those vivid, technicolour things you can’t wake from or forget when you’re awake. Playing in the backseat of the car with Amelia, the rag doll she’d had for years, Janie didn’t see the Jepsons’ prize bull when it wandered onto the road. She didn’t see it charge at their car. She only heard Mum’s high-pitched scream, and felt the hard jerk of her own head, and then her body slamming against the seat-belt when the car swerved into a power pole.
The stupid bull came after them, charging the car over and over, hitting the driver’s seat. Janie wailed with the pain in her head and shoulder, with the stink of smoke in the car, crying for help. ‘Janie, be quiet! Don’t move,’ her mother had whispered, a horrible, wheezy sound that terrified the child into obedience. ‘No matter what happens, stay in the car, and be quiet.’
Boom. The bull hit the car again. Mum’s door buckled further. Her gasp was a long, sucking sound. She made a weak, frantic attempt to undo her broken seatbelt, but her hands didn’t seem to be working right. After a while, she’d stopped trying.
More smoke, not thick, but enough for the burning rush to come up Janie’s throat. Vomit all over her, over Amelia. Where was her water? ‘Mum, where’s my water? I need water, now!’
‘No! Don’t scream, Janie.’ It was a hiss pushed from the deepest part of her. The last part left. ‘Don’t make a sound.’
The driver’s door buckled. Mum flopped around like Amelia did when Janie made her doll dance: her head jerked sideways almost to her shoulder. Then she didn’t move again.
And still the car jolted a few more times, pushing off the pole, rolling into a ditch. Janie’s head smacked against the window. Pain and blackness and she couldn’t breathe. Everything hurt.
When she woke, pain ripped through her arm and head and Amelia had lost her head, and she was scared, so scared. Holding tight to what was left of Amelia, she’d scrambled out of her belt and over to the front seat, throwing herself onto her mother for comfort.
The only response was a long, rattling gasp.
Don’t scream, Janie.
‘Mum, wake up,’ Janie had whispered. Nothing. ‘Wake up!’
Even shaking her mother did nothing but make her head flop. ‘Wake up, Mum,’ she’d whispered one more time. ‘Mum, where’s my water?’ But there was nothing but smoke and vomit, a broken doll and a hand that got colder, no matter how long Janie held it.
When emergency crews showed up at last, they had to use a machine to open the passenger door. A man’s head popped in through the hole.
‘Hey, sweetie, what’s your name?’
Be quiet, Janie.
‘Come on, sweetie, you’re hurt. We need to get you to hospital. Is this your mum? What’s your name?’
They were going to take her mum from her, and she couldn’t even fight them off because her stupid arm wouldn’t work. She kicked him, and he didn’t even get angry. Kind and patient, the man sat beside her, strapping up her sore arm while she fought him. He kept asking her name. He even found Amelia’s head, and promised his wife was great at sewing and would fix her.
Don’t make a sound.
‘The engine’s gonna blow!’
She still remembered the prick of the needle going into her arm. The thin scream tearing from her throat, fighting sleep because—because she knew—
She’d woken up in hospital, a drip in one arm, and the other arm strapped to her body. Everyone was calling her Jane. A stranger in her own body, in a place she didn’t recognise, among people she didn’t know, and no Mum. Mum had gone to heaven, they said.
Liars, she screamed inside her head. If she’s gone away, she’d take me! She never goes anywhere without me!
When Steven, the paramedic, laid a repaired Amelia on her chest, Janie couldn’t move beyond caressing the doll with her cheek. Mum, come back! Take me with you!
Don’t move, Janie. Don’t make a sound.
Then some old people with beautiful clothes came to visit. They said to call them Uncle Adam and Aunt Irene, and she was coming to live with them on their farm.
No! Tell me where heaven is. I want to go with Mum!
Some more people came, with folders and pens, writing stuff down. They said they were from Child Services. ‘You’re so lucky to have a good home to go to, Jane.’
I’m not Jane! I want my mum! The screams in her head, the memories of Mum’s last moments, were so loud she didn’t even know she wasn’t talking. Not for weeks.
‘Elly?’
She’d forgotten the way Adam could make her feel—and remember; but it was second nature now to will away the memories. They were hers alone, not to be shared with anyone. Not even the boy who’d become her foster brother, her first real friend—and then … everything.
Not that he’d ever known, or wanted to know what he was to her.
She made herself grin. ‘What?’
‘Have you changed?’ Adam asked patiently, as if he’d already asked a few times.
Still feeling the waking dream, she found her current reality a relief. She thought about his question, instead of pushing him away. ‘I suppose I have. Living with my family taught me to believe in myself. I’m not ashamed of who and what I am.’
‘There never was anything to be ashamed of,’ he said, low. Shame crouched behind his chair, the Jepson elephant in the room. His burden to bear.
So he hadn’t changed as much as she’d feared.
She felt the smile grow from deep inside as better memories flooded in: the first day he’d come to the farm, and though he was just getting over a serious illness, he’d climbed the tree to sit beside her. Then he’d let her share his dog, and the screams in her head had slowly become murmurs. Instead of seeing her mother dying day and night, Mum’s twisted, bloodied face began to smile. He’s a good one, Janie. He’s not one of them.
Just like she wasn’t.
‘I’d better find a place to s-stay.’ Her tongue tripped, she needed to get away from the bright-burning candle of emotion he lit in her. Friendship and love twining in painful beauty, always hurting like lost possibilities. Being with Adam was always too much, and never enough.
‘The Rose and Thistle’s a good pub. Zoe and I stayed there for a few weeks when we first came.’ He spoke abruptly. Feeling her need to get away, but not understanding. So it still hurt him when she withdrew from him. ‘I’ll send Simon with you to make sure you don’t get lost.’
A shadow passed the outer office window—and though the day was clear and warm, she felt the memory of all she ran from, cold and lost, a physical presence hurting her. The screaming silence took over inside her, the need crawling beneath her skin—the reason why she hated the name her mother had given her.
Janie … I’m coming for you. This time, it’s forever. You’ll never leave me again.
‘Elly?’
Safety in a nickname, and a voice of velvet over gravel that brought her back from the darkness. Sensing Adam’s intent gaze, she turned away from the glass. ‘Sorry, I went off into la-la land.’ She laughed a moment too late, the sweetness a touch too false.
‘You don’t have to tell me. I can wait,’ he said, too quiet. He was deliberately not probing, giving her space, but she felt his worry and fear.
She’d come here expecting to find a Jepson. Instead, she’d found Adam—her Adam, still alive within the confines of everything his family had wanted him to be. The caring and the respect in his words overwhelmed her.
She had to clear her head.
I should never have come here in the first place.
So she laughed, distance in denial. ‘You know better than to worry, Claudius. I’ve always done things myself. I could always ride better than you, and round up Uncle
Adam’s cows—’
‘Stop it.’ It seemed he’d felt it, too, the broken pieces of all they’d once been, an imperfect fit over the people they’d become—and it hurt far more than she’d believed it could. ‘I told you I get it. You don’t want to tell me yet, fine—but please, leave out the fun-girl act you put on for the rest of the station.’
Walls of silence, years in the building, threatened to crumble with a few rough words. How did he always do this to her?
Then another shadow passed outside the window, blocking the sun. A moment, and it was gone. Was it real, or had she imagined it? Did she even know what was real any more? No matter where she ran, he kept coming, the broken man-child reaching for her each time he fell.
Was he here now?
‘Elly.’
When she turned, Adam was still watching her. ‘You’re cringing away from the window.’
Her eyes ached from staring at him. How could she have forgotten the downside to his knowing her so well—that he did know her?
When he went on, he spoke like a cop sure of his ground. ‘Your whole “arrest” act was to make me feel your cry for help in a way nobody else would be able to see or hear. So know I’m here, waiting. Whenever you’re ready for me, Elly.’
Now her mouth couldn’t even open. The child who’d died at his wedding thirteen years ago came to sit on that big, thick wall she’d built around herself, and the weight of little Janie’s loyal heart dissolved the bricks—no demolition, no implosion. And behind the wall was all that the woman she’d become couldn’t afford to show.
One by one, her muscles stiffened until she was straight backed, square shouldered, her chin up and her eyes cool. A soldier facing an unexpected battle—but for her, the fight was against the tenderness she’d never thought to know again, not from Sharon’s husband.
As if he sensed her need to run, he changed tactics. ‘So tell me what you do nowadays. That can’t be a state secret.’
Beneath the Skin Page 3
