A woman I'd once loved.
It seemed Tess wasn't the only one of them that had been lying to themselves. He'd been denying his love for her for six years, denying it to himself, and her. Now she believed it.
Was it too late now to right the wrong?
He strode to the car, climbing into the driver's seat; but he drove out of the Sydney metropolitan area, through and past the thunderstorm, and was well onto the northwestern highway before he spoke. "Tess, we need to talk. So many things have changed since last week, and—"
"Yes." Her face broke into a tender smile. "We found her. Tani's a lovely name, isn't it? Since she can't be Emily—"
"Yeah," he replied, diverted despite his resolution by the mention of their daughter. "It's a pretty name. She's a real cutie, too. I've seen her at the school."
She turned her face, eager and shy. "Isn't she gorgeous? She looks a lot like you."
"I noticed that." His eyes were warm on her face. "She adores you, doesn't she?"
She nodded, her face heart-wrenching in its tender love for their daughter. "We had a bond from the first day. I think part of me must have recognized her. She's so much like you—her father's daughter, inside and out. She likes sports and art and craft things. She's always up trees, making tree houses from bits and scraps of wood. She's fascinated with how things are made or built—just like you."
A lump of pride filled his heart and throat. He'd helped create that beautiful child, bright and cute and affectionate—and she was just like him. "I don't know about that," he said gruffly. "She's loving, just like her mother. I've seen how she is with you, with the other kids."
"Yes. They all love her. She hugs and kisses everyone. Even most of the boys like it, though they pretend not to." She bit her lip. "I remember watching her so many times, thinking, Emily would be just her age now. She might even look like her. I—" She gulped. "I want to see my baby, Jirrah. I want to see her, hold her again—" her eyes misted over "—but this time as her mother."
Looking at her radiant face, the love shining in her eyes, he choked back the words he was aching to say to her. She looked so beautiful now—so happy. If his love wiped the smile of joy from her face, he didn't think he'd be able to handle it.
He listened to her raptures over Tani all through the drive north, then west, heading for the Outback. He drank in all he could hear about the bright, sweet daughter he thought he'd never find, feeling deep emotion and aching pride.
Though he knew he had to burst the bubble, he waited until the sun fell low in the vivid patchwork sky. Not until they were within ten miles of Lynch Hill did he put the shadows in her heart, questions she had to answer for them both. "How will her grandparents react to us? You've met them, haven't you?"
"Yes." Tessa blinked, her lush crooked mouth falling open. "Vincent and Esther are a bit reserved, but they're completely devoted to Tani. Tani's adoptive parents, their son and daughter-in-law, died on the way to Sydney to pick up their second child. The child was given to another couple. Tani's all they have now. Their other son died of leukemia nine years ago."
A cold chill hit him, a premonition of the reception to come. "So maybe our announcement won't go down so well."
She chewed on a thumbnail. "I honestly don't know. Neither of them are very well—Esther has diabetes and Vincent has mild emphysema. Tani's an active little girl, bright and always up to mischief. They can barely keep up with her. That's why I created the kinder gym and art lessons three afternoons a week for her and Jarred, the other kindergartener, and dropped them home at Linton after. I wanted to help." She looked at him, with the stricken eyes of a wounded deer. "Do you think they'll believe I knew Tani was mine all along, and tried to worm my way in?"
His heart cracked and bled, thinking that his beautiful Tess's open heart and typical generosity of spirit could lead to Vincent and Esther Jones shutting the door in their faces. "I'm sure they won't," he lied valiantly. "You did the athletics training for the other boy, as well, ran the art class and Neighborhood Watch. It's just the way you are, to see a need and fill it if you can."
But she saw straight through him, just as she always had. "Yeah, right," she retorted. "It looks like I was sneaking in the back door. And if they tell her that, she'll hate me."
With a flash of insight based on his knowledge of her, he asked, "But I bet you did all these things for the kids you taught in the city, right? And they could easily check on that."
She nodded, looking out the window. "Until Cameron had me sacked for mental incompetence, yes, I did." She lifted up a hand as hot words rose to his lips. "No. He's not worth it. Let's talk about Tani. How can I convince them it wasn't how it looks?"
With difficulty, he swallowed the furious words. "They might not even think of it, so let's not borrow trouble. Cross the bridge if we hit it, okay?" He turned left toward Lynch Hill. "Tani could love us, and her grandparents might be willing for us to be a part of her life."
"But what if—"
"No, mulgu. Don't." He picked up the hand that fluttered over her forehead with each painful question, holding it in his lap. Looking straight ahead, he took the plunge. "The best way we can convince them we'd be good parents for Tani is to be focused—to have a clear purpose. Right?"
"Right Tani—"
"So we need to know where we're going," he interrupted inexorably. "Right?"
"Okay." She turned a frowning gaze on him. "Where are you heading with this?"
"Tess, we need to talk about us. Our future."
"We have no future. You know that."
"No, I don't," he replied strongly, pulling off at the side of the road across from the old pub.
"The turnoff to Linton is—"
"Tessa, stop it," he growled. "I want to see Tani, too. But it's almost eight, she's only five and most likely asleep by now, and we've both been awake half the night. We'll stay in the pub tonight and head straight out in the morning. It's time to talk."
With a tug, she pulled her hand free and snapped, "There's nothing to talk about except what we'll say to Tani!"
"Okay," he retorted, "so what do we say when she asks if we're married like other mummies and daddies, or if we love each other? And you can bet your boots she'll ask. I have four nieces. Little girls are romantic. They want to know about love and marriage and things like that." She turned to look at him, stricken, and he nodded. "Exactly. So let's go inside, get a room and talk this over." He stalked inside the pub, got a room for them, and ordered room service. They'd need privacy for the things he was about to say—for the pain he was about to put them both through.
* * *
Chapter 18
« ^ »
Jirrah didn't notice the peculiar quality of Tessa's silence until they were alone in their room. "We'll have to wait until the stores open tomorrow to go to see Tani. We'll need another change of clothes."
"I have clothes at Mrs. Savage's. You can pick me up there in the morning."
He swung around to her. The quiet restraint in her voice, the stiffness of her presented back, warned him something was very wrong. "You can't stay there. She can't protect you from Beller. He knows where you lived before—and if he knows where Tani is—"
"Oh, that's right. It's always for me." She swung around to face him, hands on hips, legs akimbo. "You're always putting me first. My protector. My dark knight." Her face was white, her eyes blazing. "Well, I don't need you to arrange my life."
"What in tarnation are you talking about?" he demanded. "All I did was get a room—"
"You told John Sutherland we're married!"
He blinked, then burst out laughing. "I've never heard a woman accuse a man of destroying her reputation by telling people they were married! Skewed logic, or what? I mean, so what if I did tell them? It's the truth. We are married!"
"And the news will be around town by tomorrow that the local teacher's married—how long do you think it will take for Tani to find out? Why did you do that?" she cried, her voice throbbin
g in passionate emotion. "How could you do that to your daughter?"
He scratched his head. "Why not? How can it possibly hurt Tani to know her parents are married?"
"What if she wonders why married people gave her up? And what if she expects us to stay married? Sooner or later she'll find out we're getting a divorce. She's already lost one set of parents!" Her voice broke. "How could you do that to her?"
"Divorce." The breath whooshed out of him. He grabbed her arms to stop himself from falling. "You want to divorce me?"
She jerked out of his hold. "You'll be the one to divorce me."
"No." He kept his distance, but held her gaze, trying to show her he was sincere. "I don't want a divorce."
"Not now—not yet," she muttered, shaking him off. "But when you meet the right woman—"
"I met the right woman seven years ago," he answered, just as low. "I married her a year later." He reached out to her, but her shuttered expression held him back. "I lost you for six years, Tess, but I never forgot you. Never stopped wanting you, or—"
She put up a hand—and the terror in her eyes halted the words about to burst from him. "Don't," she mumbled, her voice shaking. "Don't say things you'll regret later."
"I can't regret the truth. I'll be damned if I'll leave it like this. I love you, Tess! I always have. I always will."
"No—no," she muttered, her face white, her eyes shattered. "Don't say that. You'll get over it one day."
"No," he replied strongly. If he knew anything, it was this. "If in the six years we were apart I never stopped loving you—even believing you'd betrayed me—do you honestly think I will now? I'm going to love you the rest of my life."
A tiny silence, as if she was thinking it through. Then she did a total about-face on him. "I see. You always loved me," she sneered, her tone cold enough to freeze him. "And no doubt that explains why you moved in with Belinda and got her pregnant after you knew I'd left Cameron—when you knew we were both free!"
Belinda.
The shock hit him, the twin waves of guilt and regret. The torn loyalties that had, until now, kept his lips sealed. He wouldn't speak now, if anyone but Tess had asked. She was the only one who needed to know about Belinda. He'd never break her barriers without telling her the whole, sorry mess of what he did to an innocent woman.
He wheeled away, looking out the window to the dark, unlit street, feeling the velvet darkness envelop him. "I met Belinda a week after I left lockup," he muttered jerkily, feeling as if he was betraying a dead woman, the mother of his son. "I'd already been to your place—Sam got the address for me against his will—and I knew you were gone. I had nothing, Tess. No money beyond the couple of hundred the Government gave me on parole, no one who wanted to help me find you. I was legally dead. I couldn't get assistance anywhere. My family said if I was going to keep up what they called my stupid obsession over you, to go it alone. I couldn't get work. No one would take me on without my carpenter's license. If Earldon and Beller wanted to beat me down, it looked like they'd won. I didn't know what to do." He leaned against the window, drawing in deep, ragged breaths. "So I walked into a pub and got drunk. Crazy, roaring drunk. I fell off the stool at closing time." He leaned against the window, drawing in deep, ragged breaths. "Belinda was a barmaid there. She told me to go home. I told her I had no home. I think she took pity on me. She took me home." Leaning on the windowpane, he passed a tired hand over his brow, wishing it all could be left unsaid. "I apparently talked all the way to her place. She said I needed comfort—and she comforted me. I was desperate enough to take it."
A dog barked in the silence. Tess didn't speak.
After a while, he went on. "I stayed. I had nowhere else to go, nothing to do. I didn't go back to the pub. I started fixing up her house to thank her for putting up with me. I worked night and day, avoiding her when I could, talking like a maniac when I couldn't. I didn't sleep with her again for a long time. She was—kind to me. I didn't want to use her, especially after I met my agent through her cousin Peter—he's an artist. Pete saw me carving your Dad's eagle from a spare piece of wood I'd hauled from the council dump to fix a door, and Dolphin Art was born. I thanked her for everything, and packed to move out." He felt Ike a traitor as he blurted, "Then she told me she was pregnant."
The deep quiet of the night laid over them like a blanket, punctuated by the occasional laughter of people leaving the pub beneath them. "So you stayed."
"I couldn't marry her. Staying was the only thing I could think to do for her."
"You cared about her."
He shrugged. "She was good to me. She was having my child."
"So you made love to her, then?"
He looked around, and saw no pain or anger, only the shimmer of gentle acceptance in her eyes. "Yes," he rasped.
"She loved you, didn't she?"
He closed his eyes and grated the word out, as if his throat were filled with sandpaper. "Yes."
"But you wished she didn't love you so much," Tess said softly. "You wished she'd blame you or hate you—even hit you. Then you could walk out without guilt."
As if she'd pressed a button, a bottled-up weight released itself, lashing at him with relentless force. All he could say was, "Yes."
"If she'd hated you, if you could have looked in her eyes and not seen that love—but that need in her always made you guilty. Because no matter how hard you tried, no matter what she gave you or said or did or hoped, you just couldn't love her. So you stayed and made love to her, even if you had to force yourself to do it because you had to give her something back."
Beyond words now, he nodded. Ah, God, those memories hurt—seeing the despairing love in Belinda's eyes as she lay dying…
"What happened to her?"
He forced the words out. "She had the baby. We called him Michael. I gave him the name Kalkara—'storm bird'—because he was born in a horrendous storm. The car flooded. I delivered him before the ambulance could get there. He was beautiful, and she was happy—for a little while. I thought we'd be okay. Then she got postnatal depression. She couldn't handle me being near her. She hated that I loved the baby, and not her. She'd tell me to get out, then she'd cry and beg me to stay. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't make myself lie to her. I told her I cared, I loved her, but it wasn't the love she wanted. She threw me out again one day, and I cracked. I started walking, not to leave for good, but just for an hour of peace. She chased me, the baby in the pram, crying and yelling for me to come back." His voice broke. "The car came out of nowhere, ran her down and kept going. The cops found the burned-out shell the next day. It was stolen by a fifteen-year-old kid high on amphetamines the morning it hit her." He shuddered. "All I could do was hold her as she died."
The warm softness of her body filled his back as her arms slid around his waist from behind. "So that's why you couldn't stand being in Sydney after she died," she murmured.
He nodded, drowning in the waves of shame washing over his soul, the never-ending regret for what he couldn't change.
"So you did understand my cage. I'm sorry I yelled at you the other night."
He leaned back into her, needing her warmth, her generous heart, her healing touch. "It's okay. I knew why you did it."
She laid her cheek on the back of his shoulder. "I don't understand why you don't hate me. It all comes back to me."
He lifted one of her hands to his mouth, caressing it with lingering sweetness. "I love you, Tess. I can't help it. Even when I wanted to stop, I had no choice. You took my heart the moment I saw you, and I never found a way to get it back."
Her arms tightened around him, until he couldn't feel a part of him not filled with her. "I wish you didn't," she whispered.
Jagged pain ripped him open. "So you want me to find someone else?" he asked huskily. "You want me to share my life with another woman, making love to her, letting her touch my body?"
He felt the shudder rip all the way through her. "Yes," she cried out, harsh, strangled.
&nb
sp; "You're lying, Tess." He kissed her hand. "You can't stand the idea of me loving another woman any more than I can stand you being with another man without wanting to kill him. We belong together. Why are you denying it?"
"No," she cried, just as she'd cried "yes" moments before—as if her will fought her heart, her voice crying out the opposite of what she really wanted. "Stop pushing me, Jirrah."
"Don't go," he said quietly, just managing not to beg. "Your family's safe, Tess. They won't do time for what they've done, because I didn't force the issue. Do you still hold what I've done against me?"
She moved her cheek against his shoulder. "I can't blame you for anything you've done. I'm grateful you haven't gone for revenge, especially against Dad."
"Do you wish it all undone? Do you wish we'd never met again, or that none of this happened?"
"No," she murmured, holding him close. "It hurts. It will always hurt, what they did to us, but I don't want it undone. I'm glad we've had this time together."
"It doesn't have to end."
The shuddering breath she took hurt him. "Please don't make this harder for me."
He turned to face her, still in her arms. He cupped her face in his hands, looking into her eyes, scared spitless but needing to know the truth. "Are you saying you don't love me?"
A tiny cry tore from her throat. She hid her face on his chest. "You don't understand," she whispered.
"No, it's you who doesn't understand." He lifted her face, streaked with tears, to his. "I love you, Tess. You're all I'll ever want, all I'll ever need. I thought I was finished as a man. I thought what they'd done—losing you and Tani, what happened to me in lockup, and my time with Belinda—had warped me so bad I'd never be normal again. But in five days you turned me into a man again … the man I want to be."
Her Galahad Page 20
