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She didn’t have time to cut off her final words. “—so good.”
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at her. Just opened the creaky door and climbed out of the vehicle.
Chapter Seven
That night, Jacinda couldn’t sleep for thinking about it … thinking about him. The way he’d kissed her. The way he’d turned his back.
It must have been after one in the morning by the time the memories released her body from its prison of sensual awareness, and her mind from circular questions. Even then, she had a restless night and was shocked to see how bright the morning light had grown when she woke up.
Eight-thirty, already?
Carly was long gone. Jac could hear her outside with the boys. Dressing, she heard a car, also, its engine missing some beats as the sound dropped to idling level in the front yard. She could make out an adult male voice that didn’t sound like Callan’s.
“Oh, that’s Pete,” Kerry told her a few minutes later, in the kitchen. She stood at the sink, washing fresh eggs and vegetables. “He’s one of our local North Flinders people, the Adnyamathanha. He used to be a stockman here, but he lives at the settlement at Nepabunna, now. He still drops over pretty often to help Callan out.”
“Drops over?” Jacinda repeated. “How far is Nepabunna from here?” Callan had mentioned the place, she thought, but she’d gotten the impression it wasn’t very near.
Kerry grinned, the same open, wicked grin that genetics had also given to her son. “Just a hop. Around a hundred and fifty kays. Ninety miles to you.”
“It’s okay. I’m learning to translate distances. And a hundred and fifty kilometers is just a hop?”
“It’s practically next door.”
“Well, so I’ve learned a new definition for next door, too.”
“And it’s handy for us that he is that close, because some things are a bit much for me, these days. We take on a couple of seasonals when we’re doing a big muster, but when they’re not around, it’s just Callan and Pete. They’re driving out to Springer’s Well today, working on a new mustering yard Callan’s been wanting to put up, and doing some tagging. Lockie’s going with them, I think.”
“Oh. Right. Carly will miss him.”
Carly and him being code for I and Callan.
He’s avoiding me, she decided, because of last night at the water hole.
Or else I’m kidding myself to think our kiss was that important to him, even in a negative, let’s-forget-it-ever-happened way, and he’s just building a mustering yard.
Whatever that was.
Going outside to find Carly several minutes later, she saw that Lockie and the two men were ready to leave. They were taking the chunky four-wheel-drive truck that Jac had seen garaged in a shed, and its rear tray was filled with the pile of heavy fence posts that Callan had warned Jac and Carly away from last week because of the snakes that might be living underneath.
Callan stood on top of the posts, tanned legs braced and broad shoulders working loosely as he casually caught the tools that Pete tossed up to him. He wore sturdy work gloves—possibly as a concession to the snakes—khaki shorts that came halfway down his thighs, heavy boots and the ever-present hat.
He looked so gorgeous like that—so physical, so strong, so much in his element—it made her ache.
Last night made her ache.
He waved at her and she waved back, starting to smile.
Then he turned away.
She stood like a marble statue, rocked by the strength of her response to the sight of him, stomach dropping at the brevity of that wave, hoping none of it showed. He was saying something to Pete, whose full head of white hair contrasted in the sunlight with skin that looked like hot chocolate fudge, dark and shiny.
Callan was definitely avoiding her.
Leaping down from the rear tray, he went around to the driver’s side of the vehicle and climbed in, calling Lockie at the same time. “We need to get going, mate.” Lockie scrambled into the middle of the front seat, Pete climbed in after him and Callan revved up the engine.
The truck circled out of the yard in the usual boiling mass of dust, bouncing its cargo of fence posts noisily up and down. Pippa and Flick stood in the back like sentinels and barked at the rush of air that increased as the vehicle picked up speed. Carly and Josh ran from the dust, shrieking as if pretending it was chasing them like a monster, up the veranda and into the house.
Callan waved at Jacinda again through the dry, choking curtain. Lockie and Pete did the same, and then they disappeared from sight heading down the track that headed toward the alleged road to Adelaide.
Jacinda’s breathing went sharp in her chest and she was shocked at how vulnerable she felt. Because of one kiss? Because it hadn’t ended with the promise of more? Because Callan’s wave and turn told her he’d meant what he’d said, last night, and the fact that he hadn’t stopped to introduce her to Pete only served to emphasize his state of mind?
Or just because she wasn’t going to see him all day?
“I’m too emotional. It’s just stupid,” she muttered, moving aimlessly around the yard as she listened to the ebbing sound of the engine.
But she’d always been this way. She knew it. Could manage to pep talk herself out of it sometimes, if she was really careful about it. Today it might be tough, because there was so much going on inside her. Yesterday, she’d felt so alive. Exhilarated. Proud of herself. She’d jumped into that water hole. She’d heard the echo of her voice thrown back from the rocks like a battle cry.
All of that was still there in this potent mix of feelings, but she didn’t know what to do with it, how to match it against Callan and his apparent rejection.
There was more to his reaction than met the eye. She felt sure of it. With time, she would understand and it would be all right.
Give it time, just give it time.
Turning to go back inside the house, the sudden certainty calmed her spirit, gave her direction, but then she hit the shade of the veranda and the certainty ebbed just as suddenly as it had come, the emotional transition as sharp as the physical one between heat and shade.
Callan wasn’t Kurt.
Kurt was the king of complex, incomprehensible reactions, shifting layers that you had to peel back and pick apart. Callan was probably as simple and uncomplicated as he seemed. He’d kissed her. He’d defeated that initial impulse of curiosity and chemistry between them. He’d decided that any kind of involvement was a mistake. He’d stopped. He didn’t want it to happen again, and he’d told her so.
Get a grip, Jacinda.
In the kitchen, Kerry was kneading bread dough, while Carly and Josh bickered over LEGO in the next room. Josh still acted more protective of his territory than Lockie did. He wasn’t quite convinced that Carly’s presence at Arakeela Creek was a plus. “I need all the curved bits for my tower,” Jac heard him say.
“But I’m making a tower, too.”
“I started making my tower, first. You’re not old enough for LEGO. Your fingers aren’t good enough.”
“Yes, they are.”
“They’re not, and anyway, I started my tower, first.”
Kerry and Jac looked at each other, wondering about intervention. “Give it another minute?” Kerry suggested.
“Can you teach me what to do with the bread, while we listen and hold our breath?”
Kerry laughed. “That’s about right, isn’t it, holding our breath?”
“I wonder why Carly and Lockie do so much better together. He’s that much older, I guess, and she’s less of a threat to his space.”
“More than that.” Kerry paused for thought and thumped away at the elastic ball of dough, flinging it with some violence onto a floured wooden board. The nearest store was several hours away, so if you wanted fresh bread out here, you made it yourself. When Jac smelled it baking, every second day, she practically drooled.
“Josh is like Callan, I think,” Kerry said after a moment. “He works hard to get his life just the way he wants it, and then he doesn’t like it to change.”
“That’s Callan?”
“It’s a part of Callan.” Kerry paused in her thumping and began to knead, pushing the dough away from herself so that it stretched into an oval, then folding it toward herself again and rotating it ninety degrees. The fluid efficiency of the movement said that she’d done this thousands of times before. “Which makes him sound too rigid, doesn’t it?” she added, shooting a sharp look at Jac.
“I wouldn’t say he was rigid, from what I’ve seen of him,” she answered carefully.
“No, he’s not. I’m glad you can see that. He just … needs time with some things.”
They were both silent for a moment, and the air felt a little too heavy, too full of meaning. Kerry seemed extra alert to nuances today, watchful somehow.
Watchful of me. Watchful of Callan and me, and the way I react to his name.
Jac didn’t know if that was a good thing, or not. What had Kerry thought about the two of them taking so long to retrieve Lockie’s Game Boy last night? What had she sensed in the air between them?
“Want to have a go at this, then?” the older woman said eventually.
“Can I? Will I ruin it? I’ve never made bread before. Should I thump, or knead?”
“I’ve done enough thumping. It releases the gluten in the flour, makes the bread lighter and more elastic. And it’s good for working out your aggression.”
On cue, they heard Carly’s voice rise in an angry scream. “You did that on purpose!”
“Somebody else is working out some aggression, I think,” Kerry drawled. She strode out to the children, the firm rhythm of her feet signaling a no-nonsense approach. “Joshie, we need to work this out,” Jacinda heard.
She began tentatively kneading, thinking that Kerry was probably the best equipped to handle the situation, in this instance. Kneading bread dough was tougher than it looked, however.
Push, fold, quarter turn. Push, fold, quarter turn. Tougher than it looked, but it felt good. The dough was like a baby’s skin, satiny smooth and warm from its first rising. The dusting of flour slipped across it like talcum powder on that same baby’s tush. Push, fold, quarter turn. Physical, creative, satisfying. Human beings had been doing it for thousands of years.
Kerry and Josh discussed LEGO towers in the next room—the possibility of two towers, of coordinated efforts to make a whole village of towers, square ones as well as curved, of Carly being the assistant and Josh helping her with bits that were too fiddly for her fingers. Eventually hurt feelings were soothed and territorial impulses reined in.
“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Kerry drawled again when she returned.
“And that’s what Callan was like?” She couldn’t help talking about him, despite what Kerry might think.
“Actually, no, he was pretty good at sharing,” the older woman answered. “They’re close in age, him and his sister. Nicky’s only fifteen months younger, so he never had to adjust to her as something new. As far as he was concerned, she was always there.”
“And she lives in Adelaide, now? Is that right?”
“A couple of hours north of there, the Clare Valley. She studied agriculture and married a farmer, but he has vineyards, not cattle.”
“You must have found it hard when she moved so far away.”
“To be honest, Clare was better than I’d hoped. I was afraid she might end up in Sydney or Perth!”
“Still, is it hard to keep in close touch?”
“Not with a bit of effort. We e-mail a lot, and take turns to phone each other every week. Sundays usually. Tonight it’s my turn. I send her drawings from the boys and she sends me magazine articles and newspaper clippings and we gossip about those. Silly things like celebrity marriages. We’re big fans of Prince Frederik and Princess Mary! But I’d communicate with Nicky by carrier pigeon if I had to. I don’t think it really matters what you talk about, either, if it helps you stay close. And I’m getting my first granddaughter in two months! I’ll be going down to stay with them, then.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Except that Jacinda was a little regretful that she’d nudged the conversation away from Callan. She had an itchy, secret urge to talk about him that she couldn’t remember feeling since her teens, when telling her friends, “I don’t even like Matt Walker,” had given her the delectable excuse to say a certain male classmate’s name out loud.
“If Callan doesn’t like change, we’re probably imposing on you even more than I’d realized, with our visit,” she said after another moment of silence.
“I shouldn’t have said it. I’m not putting it the right way.” Another pause. “I’m thinking about Liz, not about you and Carly.” The words came out in a rush, as if Kerry might regret anything she said too slowly.
“Oh, okay.”
Kerry divided the ball of dough in two and began shaping each piece into a log, ready for the greased loaf tins she had waiting on the countertop. “You see, thinking about the future, about the boys, about how lonely Callan must sometimes feel—how lonely I know he feels—I worry that any woman who’s not Liz is going to scare him too much. He’s never been any good at asking for help. Which means he’s going to have to get past the fear on his own, and I’m not sure how he’ll do it. Or if he can.”
She opened the oven door and it squeaked. After putting the tins on a lower shelf, she spread a damp dish towel on the top shelf. Jacinda knew that in the moist, tepid space of the oven, the loaves would rise to a high dome shape over the next hour. Squeak went the oven door as Kerry closed it again. Neither she nor Jacinda had spoken.
It’s my turn, though.
Talking like this, in the middle of routine household chores, made it easier to tackle tough subjects, she decided. When you were silent as you gathered the right words, other activity was still going on and the silence didn’t seem so difficult.
“I think … I wonder if …” she tried after a moment. “I think he’s stronger than that, Kerry.” She thought about what he’d said yesterday about yelling and jumping to get rid of the fear. He had his own strategies. They might not be the ones suggested in the hospital leaflets—he didn’t want them to be the ones in the hospital leaflets—but they were strategies, all the same.
Kerry looked eager, as if she itched to talk about Callan, too. “Has he said something to you? Has he talked much about Liz?”
“Not much. A little. He’s said—”
“No, please!” She warded off Jac’s words with her hands. “Don’t tell me what he said. I’m not asking for that. But I do worry.”
“Of course you do.” Jacinda was a mother, just as Kerry was. She knew. “But I think Callan at least does know what he’s fighting in himself.” He’d talked about the fear, and this made more sense now. The fear of change. The fear, if Kerry was right, of there being no one in the whole world to match Liz. “And you know, Kerry, when you understand the enemy, that’s always an advantage.”
“True. He is a fighter. In his own way. Always in his own way!” She laughed, and ran water into the electric jug, which she then placed on the countertop and plugged in.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”
“The boys do him a lot of good. Lockie, now that he’s getting older.”
“It’s funny,” Jac said. “Before I had Carly, I always assumed I’d be the big influence on her. That I’d make her who she was. And of course I am doing that. But I think she’s changed me more than I’ve changed her. I never realized that would happen, that kids had such, oh, influence. Kerry, does that make sense?”
“It does.”
They talked about it a little more—kids and change, Callan and Liz. Nothing earth-shattering. Some of it a little tentative, still. But nice.
“Are you having coffee?” Kerry asked. “It’ll only be instant.” The electric jug was about to boil.
“Instant is fine. I’d love a cup.” Jac got the coffee down from the shelf while Kerry found two mugs and poured the boiling water in, leaving plenty of room for Jacinda’s big dollop of milk. Kerry had filled the jug just an inch or two higher than she needed, and rather than waste the precious water, she poured it in to soak the mixing bowl she’d used for the bread dough. Jac made a mental note to take more care with saving water from now on. Her shower, this morning, for example …
“Is it a pain in the butt, doing that?” she asked suddenly.
Kerry looked surprised. “Doing what?”
