by Lucy Walker
She tilted her head as she looked at his hand. The temptation to go to him was almost beyond endurance. She looked up at his face again.
‘Because?’ she prompted him.
‘Because I need you. Because I want you. Because I love you.’
‘But you said ‒ I mean ‒ what did you say?’
‘Come over here, Kim. Or do I come and get you?’
Slowly, not really believing in magic, she got up from the floor by the stove and went to him. He had said he loved her!
She slid down on the floor beside him. His arm went round her. Defeated and at his mercy, yet thankful beyond dreams, she dropped her cheek on his shoulder.
She was too tired. She didn’t care any more who came in that gaping hole of a door and saw them. She wanted never to move again from the warm circle of his arm.
She would give in; and take the crumbs. Yet, he had said ‒
Her ears were muffled by the pound of her unsure heart. Outside there was a sound for all the world like a car engine.
A loud car engine. It pulsed like the rhythm of a car engine speeding up, then rumbling off in the distance. It was mixed up with the noisy beat of her heart.
She could feel John’s chin resting on her head, and his other hand stroking her arm.
Suddenly Kim sat up.
‘That was the utility going! And taking the caravan with it!’ Her voice wobbled as she made this fantastic statement. Yet it was true.
His eyes had in them the kind of light that she never expected to see in any botanist’s eyes. Specially not in the eyes of Dr John Andrews.
‘Taking everything with them, including Stephen and Myree,’ he said.
Kim was bolt upright by this time, drawing herself away from him.
‘Stephen’s taken Myree?’ She couldn’t quite believe in miracles. ‘But how ‒?’
‘I think Stephen slammed Myree in the back of the caravan with her specimens,’ John said gently. ‘At least I would guess that from the last of the conversation we overheard.’ That maddening flashing smile was there, turning his face into all-heaven. ‘Stephen playing the perfect gentleman, would have unlocked the door for her,’ he went on. ‘Being no gentleman at all ‒ he would have locked it fast behind her ‒’
‘Myree inside?’ Kim was incredulous.
Then belief came ‒ dawning clear and true like the aurora night lights down in the far south.
It had happened! They were gone! Stephen had kept his side of the ‘blackmail’ bargain!
‘But how did you know, John? It was Stephen and I who ‒’
‘Who plotted it?’ John’s eyebrows went up quite innocently. ‘Stephen never could keep a secret. That’s why no one, not even Myree, let him know about hopwoodi.’
‘Stephen told you what I had said when you were talking to him out there before dinner?’
John was enjoying a joke but with a kind-of kindness that tangled itself in Kim’s heart strings.
‘He told me the whole plot. I even suggested the first moves for him. Moves such as putting her specimens in the caravan so she’d have to go and check them. Also getting her outside on a washing-up stint ‒’
‘You ‒ what?’
This just couldn’t be Dr John Andrews, the serious brain-box scientist!
Kim was almost shocked, yet beginning in a wonderful way to be wildly happy. It was all right for her to be plotting. But not John!
‘I didn’t think you would ever ‒’ she began. ‘I mean, I could stoop to things like kidnapping. I’ve been doing crazy things out of self defence, all my life. I haven’t any scruples ‒’
He was laughing at her.
‘Don’t you think a man is entitled to a little self-defence too?’ he asked.
‘Defence from what? Not Myree! Oh no ‒ you are going to give her a job at the Institute by the Mount ‒’
‘I’ve changed my mind. Some time back! Myree is a brilliant botanist, but much too self-determined. Two of us like that at the Mount would cry havoc, Kim. Pandemonium amongst the potted plants! Imagine it!’
‘But you’re not …’ She broke off. The situation was beyond her.
She drew back and looked at him, her brow wrinkled. She was still too nervous of mischance to grasp the invitation in John’s face.
He looked so wonderful sitting there ‒ his back against the wall, his long legs stretched out on the dusty, ant-eaten, weather-worn, plank-torn, heavenly floor!
‘Aren’t I what?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows as he read her mind. ‘Try me out, Kim.’
She was lost. She said nothing. She went on looking at him still afraid that the happiness so near might prove only a mirage. Here now ‒ gone in a minute. He actually was capable of doing the artful-awful things she sometimes did herself!
She shook her head.
‘You didn’t trust me. About that Mr Harold-tycoon-M-Smith ‒’ she said reproachfully. She had her theory about that ‘M’ initial, but she wouldn’t give Stephen away ‒ even to John! She had her side of the blackmail bargain to keep too. Just now her only hurt was because John had not trusted her.
He wasn’t smiling any more. He was as serious as if he’d turned one switch off and another on.
‘I did not not trust you, Kim. My confidence in you as an assistant was absolute. It simply cut me to the quick to think what tricks an unscrupulous man like Smith could have tried on anyone so unworldly as ‒’ He cut short. ‘Well, as the kind of girl you are, Kim ‒’ He finished just a little lamely for John.
‘What kind of a girl am I?’ she asked this ever so carefully for fear he might mention that word ‘school girl’ again.
He didn’t answer her. His eyes watched the shadowy thoughts in her face.
Suddenly he gathered in his long legs and stood up.
‘Time this station closed down for the night,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m going for the rugs. It’s getting colder already.’
She thought he went through the doorway in a very purposeful manner.
Kim was beginning to see stars even where there weren’t any.
She went out to the trough and finished the dish washing. Then she washed herself again, and cleaned her teeth twice ‒ just to be sure. She carried the cups and plates, knives and forks, back into the homestead, and tidied them away in a corner. She put the billy-can on the stove ready for the morning. She lowered the wicks of the hurricane lamps a little, then stirred the coals in the stove.
Outside the desert chill was creeping over the land. Her heart was beating somewhat ominously once more. She was anxious all over again because John was a long time outside. Putting his specimens to bed, of course.
She put her beloved hat on the floor by the wall near her. It was part of herself for ever even when she didn’t have to wear it.
John came in and dropped the rugs in a pile on the floor beside her. She looked at them ruefully.
‘John,’ she said gently, shaking her head at his absentmindedness. ‘You didn’t bring in the sleeping bags. They’re under the ‒’
She caught his eyes.
‘Sleeping bags be damned!’ he remarked flatly. ‘Life in those things would be like living in semi-detached houses. One of us in each ‒’
Kim sat quite still. Her eyes with their beguiling hint of wonder were very wide.
He dropped down on the rugs beside her. He looked at her for one moment, then held out his arms.
She leaned forward tipping straight into them. Her face was pressed against his shoulder.
‘I’m a very determined man,’ he said, resting his cheek on her head, holding her warmly to him. ‘You need to know about that, my dear, dear Kim. I will have my house the way I want it ‒ my wife beside me ‒’ He put his hand under her chin, lifted it and kissed her full on the lips. He took a long, long time about it. Kim could have stayed in that kiss for ever.
‘I love you very much, Kim. Ever since the first day I met you ‒ if I’d only acknowledged it then. You were so endearing in that short ski
rt and those new shoes. Such a haughty little wild-cat. But I can be stubborn too, I’m sorry to say.’
‘That makes two of us, doesn’t it? But now ‒’
Kim for the first time in her life, was wordless. He’d actually liked her all the time?
He scrambled to his feet, bent over her, then lifted her up in his arms. He set her down again on the rugs, leaning over her. He planted his hands one on either side of her, and smiled into her eyes.
‘I’ll tell you something else, my darling Kim. I forgot to bring your pyjamas too.’
Kim’s eyes widened ‒ just that much. Then, like magic, she too came to life.
With a flip-twist of her quicksilver body she turned and reached for the desert-daubed, earth-brown, hat-ridiculous. She slapped it high on her head, the brim dipping absurdly over one eye.
‘Then I’ll have my hat on my head,’ she said. ‘Just as you ordered, John. Day and night too!’
She was laughing at him. His eyes smiled back.
Kim had always known it would be heaven in the outback ‒ when she really got there!
That’s why she had run away.
Books by Lucy Walker
from Wyndham Books
The Call of the Pines
Reaching for the Stars
The River is Down
Girl Alone
The One Who Kisses
The Ranger in the Hills
Come Home, Dear
Love in a Cloud
Home at Sundown
More Lucy Walker ebooks coming very soon
Wyndham Books is reissuing
Lucy Walker’s novels in new ebook editions.
Be the first to know about the next reissue
by signing up to our free newsletter.
www.wyndhambooks.com/lucy-walker
