Her Galahad

by Melissa James

  Against her will, half terrified of shattering the moment, she'd kept walking to him, her heart pounding. She couldn't breathe, or think beyond reaching him. Nothing else had ever felt like this. No man, not even Duncan's friend Cameron, who was so handsome and so kind to her, had ever affected her this way.

  He'd looked up as she reached him, with a quick half smile that froze on his face as he, too, stared. She saw then he was Aboriginal—or, judging by the lightness of his skin, of mixed Aboriginal-European descent; but her family's prejudice against the lower classes and indigenous Australians made no difference to her heart. She stood before him, struck almost dumb, drinking him into her heart with her wondering eyes.

  "Hi," was all she could find to say, cursing her banal tongue for its stupidity; but he knew. He'd known from that first look all the need, the joy, the emotion in her heart she couldn't hide. She was his … and he was hers.

  "Tess?"

  She started to the present, and tore her eyes from him. "You must be starving. I'll serve dinner. Since I still can't cook, it's not much, just a canned stew on toast and coffee—"

  "It'll be fine," he said quietly. "It's okay, Tess. I won't touch you."

  The words dried on her tongue.

  "I know," was all he said, his face filled with compassion. "How long have you been running from him? Did he hurt you?"

  She stood frozen, rooted to the spot. Dear God, he was beautiful—but the gentle understanding and tender pity in his eyes seared her soul. Finally she turned away. "Don't be so nice to me. Compassion doesn't fit your new bad-boy image. It just makes me wonder when you'll tell me what else you want from me."

  After a few moments' silence, she heard his rolling footsteps padding to the bedroom to dress.

  * * *

  Over the simple meal, she found herself blurting, "Why didn't you contact me from prison? Why didn't you write, or see me when you got out, if what you've told me is the truth?"

  He looked up at the abrupt tone, his bruised face filled with shadows. "Don't ask the questions unless you're ready to hear the answers. They're not pretty."

  She wouldn't turn away this time. She was tired of running and hiding and living in shadows. "I'm not stupid. Being brought up by banisters, you get to know the law reasonably well. With a criminal record you can verify your identity with fingerprints. Just by proving you're alive you can have Cameron and Duncan on charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and complicity in committing a felony—not to mention the bigamy. So if all you say is true, why didn't you do it?"

  He looked in her eyes, biding nothing; and in the face that made her ache with its strong, dark masculinity, she saw years of festering hate and the ugliness of betrayal chilling his soul. "I don't think you want to know, Tessa."

  She clenched her jaw. "Maybe not—but I need to know! You of all people should understand that."

  He shrugged. "I have a family. Parents who are getting old. A brother with juvie priors. A sister with a troubled kid. A cousin who did two years in lockup for assault. They're making a success of their lives now, but that wouldn't mean squat to the cops if Beller and Duncan got up a conspiracy against them."

  "Oh, dear God." She grabbed her glass of water, but gagged on the second swallow. "You must hate me for what they did to you."

  He shrugged. "Let's just say I've had a few doubts about your part in things since the day you slipped into the hardware store in Lynch Hill when a car pulled up behind you."

  She lifted her face, searching for answers in his eyes.

  He nodded, with a wry grimace. "Your face still gives you away every time. The fear in your eyes, the hollow look of a hunted woman, has stayed with me ever since.

  "Is that why you watched me?"

  He shrugged again. "I don't think I trusted my own instincts until you pulled the gun on me today. But when Beller torched my car, I started thinking. It's a pretty desperate act for a respectable guy like him. I thought maybe he wanted to stop me from getting to you, to stop us from getting together and talking. I needed to get out of Lynch Hill—and—well, someone had to look out for you, get you out of his reach, give you somewhere safe to stay."

  She closed her eyes, feeling the trembling work its way up from her fingers and toes. "Why would you do that for me? You think I betrayed you. I saw it in your eyes all afternoon."

  "Because I looked in your eyes, Tess. I could see what you tried to bide." His eyes glimmered, soft and tender. "I know how it feels to be hunted down like an animal. I've lived in a cage. I couldn't see it happen to you. I wouldn't hand a mongrel dog over to Beller, let alone a woman I'd once loved. I've been watching you for the past week, making sure you were safe at the school, getting home at night."

  She almost laughed at the irony. A man who'd hated her for years was protecting her from the men who claimed to love her.

  She swallowed a sense of bitter betrayal he didn't deserve. A woman I'd once loved…

  Of course he didn't love her now. Only a man as warped as Cameron could still love her—but Cameron loved a creature of his own imagination, a girl who'd never existed—not for him. She wasn't an innocent, trusting woman-child now, and she wanted nothing to do with that twisted emotion some people called love.

  I wanted Jirrah to touch me just then.

  That was something she couldn't deny, much as she wanted to.

  Her heart was a seething mass of longing and fear, guilt and anger, sadness and a deep, painful confusion. She couldn't sort out truth from lies until Jirrah proved his story to her.

  Maybe I don't want to hear it. Maybe I just want to run and hide again, turn my face from truth. Weak fool…

  She made herself smile, weak and shallow, an ineffective cover for the turbulence of emotions even she didn't understand. "Thank you, Jirrah, but what I need is the truth," she said in gentle, cool dismissal. "I don't need a hero for hire."

  "What makes you think you can buy me?"

  She stared at him, taken aback by his sudden burst of incomprehensible anger. "I didn't mean it like that—"

  "Yes, you did. You meant exactly that." He shoved his plate away and got to his feet, his eyes glittering dark ice. "The high and mighty Theresa Earldon of the rich and powerful Earldons and Bellers, who think everything has a price—even justice, or a man's integrity."

  At the contempt she didn't deserve, something sparked inside her. "You forgot one name in that pretty liturgy. Oliveri," she snapped. "I'm not and never was Theresa Beller. Like David Oliveri, she doesn't exist. So unless by some miracle you got a divorce without having me sign papers, I'm Tessa Oliveri, or McLaren, or whatever you call yourself now—your wife. And I don't buy anything I can't earn with my teacher's wage since Cameron froze my assets and took power of attorney." She turned to the wall, fighting the urge to heave. "So don't talk to me about buying justice. I've been bought, and I'm all too well aware of how powerless I am!"

  Soft clapping made her start. She whirled around to face him. He was grinning. "Good girl. You worked it out. You've decided to trust me. Now we can move out of the past and go forward."

  She frowned. "Why should you think I trust you?"

  "Don't you?" He moved toward her. Fascinated by the look in his eyes, the hypnotic smile, she couldn't move. "I provoked you—deliberately riled you with that buying justice crack—and you snapped back. You knew I wouldn't hit you or hurt you." He took another step. Her limbs felt paralyzed; all she could do was move her tongue over dry lips, and watch him come. "You let me walk to you without shying back like a nervous filly. I've been watching you for a week. You back off from men, from fathers of kids or storekeepers." He squatted on his haunches before her. "I'm here in front of you, and there's wariness in your eyes, but no fear. Even with all he put you through, you know not all men are like him."

  His fingers were a hair's breadth from hers.

  "You said—go forward," she choked.

  He nodded. "It's time, Tessa. The only way to go forward with our lives is to
go back. We have to find out how your family did this to us, and how they managed to get away with it."

  Something inside her turned cold and dull. "I see."

  Jirrah saw the frozen darkness inside her, and knew he had the fight of his life on his hands, right here and now, to convince her he was right. "They destroyed our lives and got away with it. The only way to get our lives back is to take control."

  She bit her lip. "You want your name back."

  "I want my life back." He got to his feet and paced the room, feeling like a caged tiger. "I want my name cleared. I want my builder's license, and a driver's license with my real name on it. I want a home loan, a credit card, to buy and register a dog, put money in the bank—to live my life in peace without worrying about the deranged lunatic obsessed with my wife." Hearing her gasp, he turned to her with a wry smile. "You were right. We're still married. I never divorced you."

  "Why not?" she whispered.

  He saw the shaking she tried so hard to hide, and oh, God, it hurt. He wanted to hold her, give her the comfort he sensed she desperately needed; but a deep instinct told him she wasn't ready for touch. He wasn't sure he was, either, if his full-on hard reaction to her tending his cuts earlier was anything to go by. He'd better back off fast, unless of course he wanted to live in a permanent state of unfulfilled arousal, since it sure didn't look like Tess was going to let him touch her in a hurry.

  So he answered in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could manage. "I never got the chance. I was in lockup, then legally dead. Bit hard to do much when you're dead, you know."

  She looked at her feet, scuffing her toe against a knot in the floorboard. "They must have tried to make you divorce me."

  "Not since my conviction. When I got out, all they wanted was for me to crawl in a hole and forget we were ever together."

  "I see." She scuffed harder, kicking a chip out of the wood he'd never polished. "So you gave in. You went away, and left me with them."

  He knew he deserved the accusation in her voice—but he wasn't ready to tell her the whole truth. "You married Beller only five weeks after I was arrested. I despised you for that. I was angry, bitter, and you betrayed me in the worst possible way. I'll never forgive you for what you did to the baby." He dropped to his haunches before her, a torrent of passionate words bursting from his heart. "But I never thought he'd hurt you, Tess. I thought it was only me he wanted to destroy. I knew he couldn't stand the idea of me being your lover."

  But Tessa wasn't listening; she'd blanked out before he'd even finished his words. She swayed in her chair, her face pale, her eyes glazed. "The—the baby?"

  The choking force of useless, bitter rage hit him again in its unrelenting tide, forcing him to remember his most compelling reason to despise this woman. "Yeah. My daughter," he grated. "I know what you did to her—what you did to me." He extracted a well-folded piece of paper from his wallet, and slammed it on the table. "That's your signature," he grated. "Don't deny it!"

  "My—my what?" Tessa's bewildered gaze followed his stabbing finger down to the paper. As if in a daze she unfolded it, and scanned its contents.

  The signed permission to give up a child for adoption.

  The last vestiges of color drained from her face. She seemed deathlike, a mask, her eyes dull and blank, fixed on the scrawl of ink at the paper's base. She swayed in the chair again; then her body gave a hard jerk forward. "Yes." A strained, harsh whisper. "It's my signature."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  "Yes," she admitted in the lengthening silence, her voice rough, scratchy. "It's my signature." Her body spasmed again.

  Jirrah snarled, "So you admit it. You gave our daughter to strangers like she didn't matter. Like I never mattered enough to you even to keep my child, or even name me as her father! Explain that form of bloody grief to me if you can, Mrs. Beller!"

  But her reaction floored him.

  Her knuckles gleamed white as she gripped the sides of the table; her eyes burned like zealot's gold in a wraithlike face. "I—I … oh, God, my baby, my baby … my Emily's alive. A-adopted…"

  Her body lurched out of the chair in a final jerking spasm. She stumbled toward the bathroom but fell to her knees outside the door and emptied out her stomach in slow, violent retching.

  Jirrah closed his eyes, whacking his forehead with an open palm. "Oh, you bloody idiot. You stupid, brainless jerk." He ran to wet a facecloth and towel.

  When he returned with the cloths and a glass of water, he found her leaning against the wall beside the door, ineffectually wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  He cleaned her face with the wet cloth, then handed her the glass. "Here, Tess. Sip it, don't gulp, or it'll come back up."

  She took the glass in a trembling hand, and rinsed her mouth. "Sorry," she whispered: a threadbare sound.

  He cleaned the mess with brutal efficiency. "Don't sweat it. I deserve it for being such a dumb-arse jerk. I actually believed them." He took the towels and threw them in the trash.

  When he came back she'd slumped sideways, the fallen glass creating a slow puddle over the floor, and on her shorts. So he carried her to the sofa, laying her down and covering her warmly; but she broke into fits of shivering beneath the blanket. He pulled her close, swearing beneath his breath at the way his body reacted to the feel of her soft curves laying against him.

  But the pain twisted his heart at the sight of the devastation ravaging her, in fits of hard, hurting shivers. "Those bastards." He stared down at the face he'd never been able to forget. "My God, Tess, what they've done to you—to us both."

  But within seconds she pushed him off and sat up, though she swayed still. "Don't touch me," she muttered as he moved to help her again. "I'm not going to faint."

  He didn't trust her to know right now. "You should get some sleep. You're in shock. You've been through too much today."

  She clutched the blanket around her, her face pale and strained—a ghost of moonlight and flickering fire. "I don't want to sleep. I want answers! How long have you known?"

  "Tess, you're white as a ghost. You only just found out about me, then I told you about Emily. You thought we were both dead. Hell, it shocked me when I got the birth certificate, and I didn't know you'd been pregnant. We can talk in the morning."

  "No. Now!" she all but yelled. "Don't presume to know me. You don't have a clue what I need. You haven't seen me in six years."

  That stung. "What about our daughter?" he asked, in soft challenge. "Do you need her, Tessa?"

  Bam. Dead-on target and straight back to life. Her gaze burned into him, blistering his skin with its fever. "Are you sure?" she hissed, her eyes narrowed. "Do you know she's alive?"

  "Someone left an envelope in my effects when I made parole—my death certificate and the adoption papers. The warden said it was from my barrister."

  "Could this be another plot? I mean, another fake certificate to make you hate me?"

  He shook his head. "I got my lawyer to check. It's authentic—the adoption's sealed, but real. She's alive. And if it's not your signature on the adoption papers it's damn close to it."

  She frowned. "That day, that whole week is a blur to me. I could have signed anything." She held her arms, shivering again. "God, what a fool I was. I should never have trusted them."

  He frowned. "You never suspected they'd done this?"

  She shook her head. "When they said she was dead, I started screaming. I don't remember anything for weeks but crying for Emily and taking pills." She glanced at him with sad, bewildered eyes. "Why do you think they left the papers for you?"

  "Insurance. They wanted to let me think just what I did think—that you betrayed me in a way I'd never forgive. They made sure I'd never want to see you again, so you'd never know I was alive, and I'd never know you thought Emily was dead."

  "Oh, yeah," she muttered. "Machiavellian plots are Cameron's specialty. Especially when it comes to getting what he wants from me, o
r climbing higher on the social ladder. Destroying other people's lives to improve his wouldn't even faze him."

  Looking at her, he knew she'd reached the limits of what she could stand. She'd learned enough today to send anyone into shock. "We've got a long day ahead of us. We need to talk about what we'll do from here, but it can wait. You take the bed. I'll sleep out here."

  She nodded and got to her feet, holding the blanket around her like a talisman. She looked fragile, vulnerable, so tired; but he knew her inner core of strength and staunch courage. He'd known it firsthand when the millionaire barrister's shy daughter braved the contempt of her world seven years before, following her heart to love a humble carpenter. So he expected her next words, waited for them. "I have to know what happened to Emily."

  He nodded; and filled with deep, if reluctant respect, he looked at her, really looked at her for the first time that day. He didn't see Theresa Earldon-Beller, the spoiled society woman he'd hated; he didn't see Tessa, the innocent girl he'd loved. He didn't see a helpless, abused woman needing protection. He saw the woman she was now … and before God, she was beautiful.

  Her offbeat, just-crooked slant of nose and mouth, and one dimple, would never be classic. But the vivid face that had stunned him seven years before, the slanted line of cheek, the silken waterfall of hair, the amazing amber eyes in the face of a proud Aztec priestess, still left him speechless. Even the remnants of suffering added gentleness and grace to her unconscious dignity: a charm so incorruptible that age would not weary it, an inner magic so strong mere beauty could never lay claim to it.