He could have kicked himself when he saw the devastation on her face. "Let's go before Cameron turns up again." Her face turned to the window in her familiar manner of hiding pain.
"Tess—"
She kept her face averted. "I know, Jirrah. I know what they've done. After talking to Mrs. Whitlow, I can't hide from it now if I want to." The quiver in her voice belied her pose of studied calm. "But they came to my ballet concerts and school turnouts. They gave up university and workdays to be with me when I was sick. Dad could have made Queen's Counsel years before he did, but he scheduled court appearances, and Duncan, university courses, around my school hours. Duncan studied for exams with me on his lap. I can count on my hands the times they hired a baby-sitter for me, because I was shy and didn't like strangers. When I cried, they held me and kissed me and called me their little princess, and said how much they loved me." She turned back to him, her face intense with the twin emotions of love and betrayal. "Was all that a lie, as well?"
"No, mulgu, no." Seeing her intense vulnerability, he took her into his arms, holding her close. "I'm a bloody idiot," he murmured, caressing her silky plait. "Why you haven't gonged me over my thick skull with a hammer before now is beyond me."
She buried her face in his neck, shuddering. "I'm with you on this, Jirrah. I'll do anything I can to help you find justice. But I can't hate them. They're all I've got," she murmured huskily. "No one else in the world cares if I'm alive or dead."
Her voice sent deep shivers throughout his body even while her closeness affected his very soul with need: the need to slay those bloody dragons for her. "You've got me. I care."
She pulled away. "No," she said, frowning straight ahead. "I have you until you have them put in prison. You want to find Emily. You feel sorry for me. You want to heal me, to save me. You might even want to make love to me. But you don't want me, Jirrah. You're doing this because you used to love me, once—because you pity me—end because you hate my family. You want revenge. You want them to suffer for what they did to you—and you want me to see you win."
His heart jerked in painful acknowledgment of her words. If he knew her too well, she also knew him. "I thought you'd want me to win, too, after what they did to you, to me, to our child."
Then he kicked himself again. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he trying to punish her? What crime had she ever committed but the one of loving her family?
Her eyes burned into his. "I want justice," she hissed. "I told you, I'll do whatever it takes to find Emily and clear your name. Don't you think I want to hate the people who hurt you, hurt me, and Emily, too? But every time I try to envision what Dad and Duncan have done—what I know they must have done—I see me on Duncan's lap while he read stones or helped me with algebra. I see Dad sleeping on a chair beside my bed at night when I had measles, mumps or the flu. If you could reconcile all that with what I've found out in the past two days, you're a better person than me. I just need time, all right?" she finished, in a forlorn little whisper.
His heart almost burst with sadness. "Ah, Tess." He drew her close, wishing their moments of tenderness didn't always have to be within the confines of a car, living on the run. His hands shook as he caressed her hair. "Maybe they're sorry now," was all he could think to say, cursing his unthinking bluntness in the first place. His obsession with clearing his name was eating at his soul so badly he'd infected the one person who shouldn't have to lance his poison.
She jerked out of his arms. "Don't patronize me," she said in a tone so cold he shivered with its icy blast. "I asked for time, not lies. I don't need fairy stories to comfort me. I know what they are, and what will happen when we get to Sydney. I might have nothing else left, but at least I have the truth."
She was right again. She'd always had a strange, wonderful gift of seeing life exactly as it was. She saw and spoke truth straight out, no matter what consequences it brought.
He'd almost forgotten how to do that. Life had changed him, warped him, turned him into an angry, barely-there survivor who'd given up on truth years before.
"Okay—no platitudes," he retorted, angry enough to give her truth on a platter. "What's your take on life? That at twenty-seven, your life's over? Because your family manipulated you into giving up your baby and living with Beller for—what, three years before you took off?—you're unworthy of having a normal life? Because your father and brother are a pair of selfish jerks who sold you to Beller without giving a damn what you wanted, you'll pay the price for the rest of your life!"
She'd turned around during his low-voiced tirade; now she blinked, opened her mouth and closed it.
"Is that it?" he continued in a low, furious voice. "Well, I don't buy the 'eternal victim' crap you're spouting. If you want to sell yourself short, fine—settle for seeing Beller in lockup and Emily happy with her family. Enjoy wallowing in misery and self-pity. Have a drink while you're at it. Pop a few pills—why not? But personally, I'm going to live the rest of my life. I'm taking back everything they stole from me. I'll have a driver's license and credit card. I'll build a house with my builder's license. I'll do the work I want, whenever and wherever I want to. I'll share my life with the people I love, once I put a stop on the mongrel bastards who've been way too happy to destroy my whole family, including my wife and daughter!"
Tessa's mouth fell open during his passionate outburst. Her eyes dilated with shock, then filled with soul-deep yearning—a longing to live so strong it knocked him sideways. She looked so sweet and gentle, so vulnerable—and open. Listening.
Finally seeing some hope for life beyond Beller? The goddess returning to life … and she was so damn beautiful in that rich, newfound wonder, he couldn't resist her.
Despite his promise to not touch her, he found himself planting a quick, hard kiss on her surprised lips, half expecting a violent or cold rebuff—but with a little moan she leaned into the kiss, tangling her arms around his neck, giving as good as she got.
When her tongue entered his mouth and her hands moved over his skin beneath his shirt he groaned, pulling her onto his lap. She went to him eagerly, caressing him with a sweet, fevered urgency he hadn't known since he left her.
It was as it had always been between them: they couldn't get enough of each other.
She'd loved his body from first sight, undressing him every chance she got, just so she could look at him … and looking led to touching—and touching to loving.
They'd made love within a month of first seeing each other. Tessa, the shy virgin girl, who'd told him she wanted to be a virgin bride, had all but begged him to make love to her. She'd pleaded with him, with such shy urgency … her hands and lips as eloquent as her words.
And nothing had changed in the years they'd been apart. He'd never known a woman who wanted him like Tessa did, with such raw, blazing lire: spontaneous combustion ignited by a single touch. Even now, so damaged by her time with Beller, she couldn't help responding to every move he made … and making plenty of moves herself. Like straddling his lap … pushing her hips with hot intimacy against his aroused body … gasping in heated, urgent desire with every touch of his hands and mouth.
He unbound her hair, running his lingers through the thick tresses. His mouth blazed a path of fire down her throat to her shoulder. She moaned, questing hands finding bare skin, in places she knew drove him mindless. She gasped and shuddered with raw need when his hand cupped her breast, rubbing a thumb over her peaked, hard nipple. "Jirrah," she purred, arching against him. "Oh, Jirrah, yes, yes, I want it, I want it…"
She was ripe for loving. He could take her to a hotel room now, burn her fears with the fire between them, and she'd be with him all the way. He could heal the shadows of her past, wipe out the horrors of her time with Beller.
But after they made love, what then?
He had nothing to offer a woman as brave and beautiful and fragile as Tess. He was as much use to her as the dead man he'd been for years until he could clear his name. He held their live
s in his hands—Emily's, too—just for being in a car with her this moment, let alone steaming the windows with the sensual heat they were creating in a public car park in broad daylight.
"Tess, we've got to stop," he gasped, forcing himself to stop nibbling her shoulder, with a jolt that was physical—like he'd ripped his lips on superglue.
Like a tap twisted off, her passion dried up in an instant. She scrambled off his lap and into her seat, looking anywhere but at him as she jerked her bra and jumper back up. "Of course. Sorry." Her words were cold, stilted, polite.
The exact opposite of her real feelings.
He couldn't make love to her. Not yet. Not until they were safe in Sydney, with their evidence in the hands of the right people. Not with Emily's safety hanging in the balance—not when it was her family putting their child in danger. "We should go. We need to get to Sydney tonight, find a place to stay."
She gave a little shrug. "They know everywhere I've been, who I've seen, who my friends are. It can't be anywhere I know."
He frowned. There was something—some murky secret hidden beneath her words… "My God," he gasped, as the connection hit. "He had you followed? Even when you lived with him?"
"Especially then. At the beginning." All he could see of her was the back of her head; the rest huddled under her coat. "And he's been tailing me ever since I left."
"And they allowed him to do that?"
She laughed: a chilling sound. "Why not? He's Cameron Beller, one of the best barristers in Sydney. He's handsome, charming, so loving to me and so very rich. He knew what they wanted to hear. I'm too delicate to work. I should stay home with a cook and cleaner, so I'm free to help Cameron foster his career. All my friends disappeared, replaced by people Cameron handpicked for me, tennis club, charity and career women I had nothing in common with. My life became his. If I was unhappy, it was postnatal depression. If I avoided his touch it was because I was immature, a romantic child. The bruise on my eye, the broken arm, was from a fall down the stairs." She shrugged. "I'd got my period again. For two years he'd wanted a baby and I couldn't seem to conceive. He screamed that I got pregnant with your kid, so why not now? I said I'd heard it was easy to get pregnant if the woman actually enjoyed sex instead of feeling contempt and revulsion for filthy, degrading acts like he put me through. He hit me—hit me hard, right in the eye. I stumbled and fell down the stairs, and broke my arm." She sighed. "He begged me to forgive him; he said he'd never do it again. But I'd seen the look on his face … he'd enjoyed hitting me. It gave him a sense of power over me he'd never had." Another shrug. "The night I got out of hospital, he hit me again when I refused sex. He threatened to put me in a psychiatric institution if I told Dad or Duncan how I got the second black eye. So I told him it was time we communicated, made this a real marriage. He was thrilled, thinking he'd got through to me at last. I made coffee for us—and dosed his with the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed for me. I took all the money out of his wallet, emptied our account at a teller machine and ran."
He slammed a fist on the steering wheel, hot fury eating his gut like acid. "Damn it, Tessa, why did you stay so long? Why didn't you leave him years before?"
"I tried." Her voice scraped, as if on stone. "I had nowhere to go, no friends, no passport to leave the country, no other family. Dad and Duncan believed Cameron was perfect for me. They didn't believe a word I said in the hospital about him hitting me, or taking power of attorney, and—they were all I had left…"
He saw in his mind's eye all she'd left unspoken. A litany of subtle put-downs smothered in love—the perfect cocktail for the destruction of Tessa's fragile self-esteem. He didn't speak, too afraid of what poison would emerge. Rage, his familiar friend, filled him, heart and spirit. He'd kill Beller with his bare hands for what he'd done to Tess. And he'd heal her, whether she gave him permission or not. That was no longer just a mission: it was his personal crusade.
A touch on his arm made him jump. "I feel the same when I think of you doing time because you loved me," she said softly.
He turned his head, looking at her gentle, concerned face. "I want to kill him for what he's done to you, Tess—and I won't apologize for that," he rasped.
"You don't have to." A watery smile. "But you'll have to get in line, buster. I was here first."
He shook his head, and chuckled. "Damn it, Tess, stop making me laugh when I feel like blue murder."
Her brow wrinkled. "Why is murder blue?"
"No idea." Smiling, he held out his arms to her—and after a tiny hesitation, she moved into them. "Life's going to get better—for both of us, mulgu," he whispered into her hair. "I swear to you, whatever happens, you won't be left alone."
She nodded, her hair tickling his cheek, soothing, arousing him. "My hero," she whispered back.
He chuckled. "I'm doing my best, Tess, but you picked a pitiful subject for your Sir Galahad."
She shook her head against his neck. "I'm no Guinevere, but you're the best protector I ever had." She pulled back, with a little smile, and he ached with need. "But if you feel you need to improve the score, my lord, a strong coffee would help right now. I'm worn-out with all this emotion and lack of caffeine."
As relieved as Tess to leave the subject, he grinned and started the engine. "If memory serves, there's a roadhouse about twenty miles down the highway toward Sydney that does a mean trucker's breakfast."
And he needed it—the food, and the distraction—because the way he was thinking right now would see him doing time until he was a very old man.
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
By the time they made the northern outskirts of Sydney, night had long since fallen. Jirrah's wrist was throbbing again; his headache rivaled the one after the car bombing. By the droop of her head and her tired sigh, he knew Tess was just as exhausted.
"You know your way around the back roads of the state, don't you? I wish I did," she said as he turned onto the Pacific Highway. "But I wouldn't risk getting trapped on a lonely mad."
Jirrah didn't want to go there: he'd spent the last seven hours imagining his bands around Beller's neck. "Any ideas on where to stay? I don't want to stay on the highway for long."
She shook her head. "Sorry."
"It can't he anywhere either of us has been before." He tried to think through a brain fogged with weariness. "Let's find the first hotel with parking at the back of the building."
"But we're on the North Shore," she objected.
"We're better off staying on Beller's turf. He won't expect us to be in an upper-class place. And that reminds me. We'll sell this car tomorrow for whatever we can get at the car market at Remington and buy another one—another four-wheel-drive, but newer. He won't be looking for us in something with a bit of style. We'll get more clothes while we're at the markets."
She tilted her head, looking at him in obvious puzzlement. "Do you have the money for all this? I've got a little, but—"
"Don't sweat it, Tess. I've got more than enough."
Her brow and nose wrinkled in cute perplexity. "But—"
Knowing what she wanted to say, he cocked a knowing brow. "But I'm a nowhere man, legally dead, with no ID, no tax file and no government handouts? That's true. But I discovered that I am a craftsman. I learned to paint in lockup, and I discovered I have a flair for carving, as well. I have an agent, but it's my business, so no one can rip me off. Aboriginal art sells for big money, here and overseas—there's plenty of collectors who'll buy my paintings or carvings, no questions asked." He grinned. "Your dad even bought a carving two years back—one of the first pieces I sold."
She blinked. "The enormous carving of the eagle chained to the tree stump?"
"That's the one."
"You're Dolphin Art?"
He laughed at her gaping expression. "Uh-huh. I work through the art gallery in Sydney where your dad saw the piece. I use the name of a friend of mine to make the transactions legal, and he gets commission for doing not
hing but storing a couple of lumps of wood and some half-finished pieces in his shed."
"I saw that eagle piece when I snuck back to see Dad about a year ago. I loved it," she murmured wistfully. "The way the eagle tried to fly, even chained—the unconquered, defiant spirit. I wanted it to be me." The tiny grin twitching at her mouth turned to wild, hurting laughter, tinged with tiredness. "That eagle was his pride and joy. He shelled out thousands to get it."
He stopped for a red light. "Three and a half, to he exact—and at a time I really needed the cash. And he told all his friends about me … not knowing it was me, of course."
She bit her lip. "You mean my father helped set you on the path to fame and fortune?" He grinned and nodded, appreciating the irony of Keith Earldon's as much as she did. "How many pieces, and paintings, have you sold?"
"Enough. The kangaroos I stored in the van are part of a deal I've got with Australia International Travel Agencies. They want them for their overseas offices."
"But—they're the biggest travel agents in Australia!" she gasped. "That must mean—?"
"That I am—to put it mildly—well off? I guess you could say so, princess." Again knowing what she wanted to ask, he grinned once more. "But why do I live like a stony-broke hermit in the back of beyond? I know it seems insane, but I figured if Beller or your brother found out I was making money, they'd try to shut me down. So I kept socking it all away where they'd never know about it, waiting for this time to come."
She frowned. "You knew we'd meet again?"
"No." He accelerated as the lights changed. "I knew the right time would come to take my life back."
"Did you want revenge on me, too?" she mumbled.
Hating to upset her, he said, "Not since we met again."
Risking a glance, he saw her set profile in sharp contrast to the setting sun. "You thought I was in on their plots."
Her Galahad Page 10
