Adopted: Outback Baby

‘Jacob, be careful!’

A car horn blasted beside them and Jacob realised he’d swerved dangerously close to the next lane. Teeth gritted, he corrected the steering. And then he repeated his question. ‘Why did Tegan have to ask you for my name?’

He sent another sharp glance in Nell’s direction and, despite the obscuring sunglasses, he saw that her cheeks were flushed, her mouth contorted, embarrassed.

‘That’s because your name—’ The stain in her cheeks deepened. ‘Your name wasn’t on the records. You—you weren’t listed on Tegan’s birth certificate.’

‘What?’ The word exploded from him, making Nell flinch.

Too bad, if he’d upset her. She’d upset him. Twenty years of physical exclusion and now the news that there had never been any recognition of his link to Tegan. Father unknown. Anger roiled through him, gathering force, an avalanche of emotion.

Beside him, Nell clutched her handbag against her stomach and sat very straight. ‘Jacob, we shouldn’t discuss this sort of thing while you’re driving.’

She was probably right, but his only response was an angry hiss. Jaw clenched, he checked the rear-vision mirror, switched lanes in readiness for the Williamstown exit, and tension, as suffocating as smoke, filled the car’s interior.

Five minutes later, Nell directed him into a quiet street a block back from the waterfront.

‘My house is the little one over there with the blue door,’ she said, pointing.

His anger gave way to bafflement as he pulled up outside a quaint but modest colonial cottage with a front hedge of lavender, a flagstone path and yellow roses over the door. It was the kind of old-fashioned cottage and garden his mother adored, but he’d never dreamed that Nell Ruthven and her husband would live in a place like this.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ Nell said quietly.

‘My pleasure.’ Jacob couldn’t keep the brittle note out of his voice.

Her fingers sought the door catch.

‘Shall I pick you up tomorrow morning to go to the Brownes’?’

After a slight hesitation, she said, ‘Thank you. I suppose it makes sense if we travel together.’

‘We should talk, Nell.’ His mind was still seething with angry questions.

Her eyes met his and he saw a heart-wrenching mixture of sorrow and bewilderment and something deeper he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

‘After all this time, we have things to say to each other,’ he said.

‘I can’t talk now, Jacob. There’s no point in even trying to talk today. We’re both too upset and tense.’

Although he was desperate to get everything out in the open, he had to admit that he felt wrung out. And Nell looked far worse.

She pulled the catch, the door clicked open and the scent of lavender drifted in to him on a light sea breeze. In the distance he could hear a seagull’s cry.

‘It must be very pleasant living here,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone.

‘Yes, I love it.’ She turned to speak over her shoulder, without quite looking at him. ‘Why don’t you come early tomorrow? We can talk before we go to the Brownes’?’

‘Great idea. We can go for coffee somewhere in the city.’

‘We can talk here if you like.’

Jacob frowned. ‘Are you sure your husband won’t mind?’

He was watching her profile carefully, saw her mouth curl into a complicated, off-kilter smile. ‘That won’t be a problem. There will only be the two of us. What time would you like to come?’

‘Nine? Half past?’

‘Make it half past. I’ll see you then.’

Nell got out and closed the door behind her and Jacob watched her through the passenger window as she crossed the footpath and opened the front gate. A sudden breeze gusted up the street, shaking the heads of the lavender and, as she walked up the path, the wind teased a bright strand of her hair from its braid and lifted the collar of her jacket against her neck. Her high heels made a tapping sound on the paving stones.

Framed by cream and yellow roses, she stood on her front porch in her neat, dark suit and fished in her handbag for her door key, and she looked beautiful and citified and completely removed from the horse-riding country girl he’d known for two months of one summer twenty years ago.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would be entering that house, talking to Nell at last, discovering the truth he both longed for and feared.

He flipped the key in the Mercedes’s ignition so hard he almost snapped it in two.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO o’clock in the morning found Jacob awake in his unfamiliar hotel bed.

A picture of Tegan had been displayed at the funeral—his first, his only sight of his daughter—and it haunted him.

She’d been dancing on a sunlit beach and wearing a blue cotton dress that was a perfect match for the bright summer sky. Her feet had been bare and sandy, her tanned arms uplifted, her skirt billowing behind her in the wind. She’d been laughing and her long brown hair had streamed like a dark ribbon. Her eyes had sparkled with the sheer joy of being alive.

Jacob had been startled by how intensely and immediately he’d felt connected to her. The bond had gone beyond the uncanny likeness to his family in the darkness of her hair, the strong lines of her cheekbones, her straight, dark eyebrows. He’d felt it deep in his bones, in his blood, in his breath.

He had, of course, seen Nell in Tegan, too. She’d been there in the tilt of the girl’s head, in the slender shapeliness of her long legs. And that led him to thinking about Nell Ruthven née Harrington, about their meeting today. After so long.

He’d been way too tense. Everything about it had been wrong.

So many times during the past twenty years, he’d imagined a parallel universe in which he’d met Nell again. He had never deliberately sought her out, not once he’d learned she was married, but he’d imagined a scenario where they would bump into each other quite by chance. They would drop whatever they had planned for that day and go somewhere just to talk.

They’d smile a lot and chat for ages, catching up. Their reunion would be so poignant that time and Nell’s marriage to another man would become meaningless.

‘I want to go on seeing you,’ he’d say.

She’d smile. ‘I’d love that.’

Problem was, this fantasy was based on the twenty-year-old assumption that Nell had been wrong about her pregnancy, that it had simply been a case of a late period. Jacob knew through gossip his mother had passed on that Nell’s adult life had never included a child and he’d never dreamed their baby had been given away for adoption.

Tomorrow was going to be difficult. He had questions that demanded answers, but it would also be his one chance to enter that parallel universe, to reconnect with Nell’s world. And, even if it was only for a day, he didn’t want to get it wrong.

It would be easier to stay calm if he wasn’t plagued by bitter-sweet memories of their amazing, devastating summer at Half Moon, if he couldn’t still remember painful details of those two short months with Nell, right back to his first sight of her.

Home from university, she had been riding Mistral, a grey mare, and she’d come into the stables where he’d been working. Her cheeks had been flushed from the wind, her eyes bright and she’d been dressed like a glamorous, high-society equestrian in a mustard velvet jacket, pale cream jodhpurs and knee high, brown leather boots.

The fancy clothes had fitted her snugly, hugging the roundness of her breasts, cinching her waist and accentuating the length of her legs. Her pale hair had rippled like water about her shoulders and her eyes had been as blue and clear as icy stars. She had been beautiful. So incredibly beautiful…

But what had happened next was one of those unbelievably zany moments that should only have happened in B grade movies. Nell was leading her horse when she saw him and stopped. And instead of exchanging polite hellos, they’d stood there, open-mouthed, staring at each other, while Jacob’s blood had rushed and roared and his heart had become a sledgehammer.

Looking back, he guessed they must have spoken, but the rest of that afternoon was a blur to him now. Much clearer was their meeting the next morning.

He’d gone to the stables just after dawn and noticed immediately that Mistral was missing. He’d guessed that Nell had taken her for an early morning ride and within a dozen heartbeats he’d mounted another horse and taken off.

Half Moon was a huge property and he had no idea where Nell was, but he’d been quite sure at the outset that he would find her, that she’d wanted him to find her. Perhaps the mysterious sixth sense that the gods bestowed on destined lovers had whispered that she would be waiting for him.

It wasn’t long before he’d found her horse tied to a tree beside the river where white mist lifted in curling, wispy trails from the smooth, glassy surface of the water.

‘Hey there, Jacob.’

Nell’s voice seemed to come from a paperbark tree and when he peered through the weeping canopy he saw her sitting on a branch overhanging the water. She was wearing a blue checked shirt and ordinary blue jeans this morning, and dusty, elastic-sided boots. Apart from the golden gleam of her hair, she looked more like the everyday Outback girls Jacob was used to.

‘G’day,’ he called up to her as he tied his horse’s reins to a sapling. ‘Looks like you’ve found a good perch.’

‘It’s gorgeous out here. Come and see for yourself.’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘I don’t think that branch would hold the two of us.’

She bounced lightly. ‘Oh, it’s strong enough. Come on, the river looks so pretty at this time of the morning and I can see right around the bend from here.’

Talk about spellbound. There was no way he could have resisted Nell’s invitation.

Knot-holes in the tree’s trunk made it easy for Jacob to climb to her branch. He stepped on to it gingerly, pausing to test that it could take his weight. So far, so good, but the branch narrowed quickly.

Nell smiled, her blue eyes dancing with merriment, her white teeth flashing. ‘Dare you to come right out.’

She was flirting with him.

And he loved it.

Arms extended for balance, he made his way along the branch. His extra weight sent the leaves at Nell’s end dipping into the tea-coloured water, but she only laughed.

‘No fancy jodhpurs this morning?’ he asked as he got closer.

She screwed up her nose. ‘They were a birthday present from my parents. I only wore them yesterday to please them, but they made me feel such a poser.’

‘You looked terrific,’ he insisted, taking another step closer. ‘You’ll wear them to the picnic races, won’t—’

A loud crack sounded and the branch exploded beneath them, sent them plummeting into the river.

It was summer so the water wasn’t very cold. Jacob fought his way to the surface, looked about for Nell and panicked when he couldn’t see her. Heart thrashing, he dived again into the murky green depths. Where was she? He prayed that she hadn’t been hit by the falling tree branch.

Lungs bursting, he broke the surface again. Still no sign of Nell. Was she pinned to the river bed?

Once more Jacob dived, groped in the grass and the submerged branches at the bottom, desperate to find her, but again he was forced back to the surface, empty-handed.

‘Jacob!’

Thank goodness. He turned to see her breast-stroking towards him.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said. ‘I was worried that you’d drowned.’

‘I thought you’d drowned. I was looking for you.’

They swam to the bank. Jacob reached it first and, because it was steep and bare, he offered his hand to help her out. She accepted gratefully and they began to climb.

The bank quickly turned slippery beneath their wet boots and they had quite a scramble. As they neared the top, Jacob grabbed at a sapling for an anchor and pulled Nell towards him.

She came faster than he expected, bumped into him, in fact, and suddenly they were clinging together, her soft curves pressing in to him through their wet clothes. Her clear eyes and parted lips were mere inches from his and, despite the wet hair plastered to her skull, she was beautiful. Breathtakingly so.

She smiled. ‘Now this is a new way of breaking the ice. My college social club would be impressed.’

He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he understood very well the invitation in her eyes. And so he kissed her.

It wasn’t a long kiss and it shouldn’t have been a sexy kiss. Their lips were cold from the river and Jacob was clinging to the sapling’s trunk with one hand while he held Nell to prevent her from falling.

But it was a kiss Jacob would never, to the end of his days, forget. From the moment their lips met, he adored the feel and the taste of Nell, loved her response—so feminine, so…right.

Too soon their wonderfully intimate hello was over and he boosted Nell up over the rim of the bank and came after her, tumbling on to the grass.

He might have kissed her again, but they were apart now and he lost his nerve, remembered that she was the boss’s daughter and he was the cook’s son.

Instead, they lay in the grass at the top of the bank and let the morning sun stream over them, and Jacob contented himself with admiring her breasts, gorgeously outlined by her wet shirt.

‘So tell me about your college social club,’ he said.

‘Oh, they’re always coming up with new ways to get everyone to mix.’ Nell sat up and lifted her wet hair from the back of her neck. ‘They’ve run a series of cocktail parties where girls and guys can meet, but we’re only allowed eight minutes or so to chat with each person and to tell them about ourselves—just enough time to figure out whether people click.’

‘Sounds…racy.’

Nell grinned coyly, leant sideways and squeezed water from her hair into the grass. ‘Not really. It’s only chatting, after all.’

Considering that he’d just kissed her, he supposed she had a point.

‘So when you were at one of these parties,’ he said, ‘you would have said something like—I’m Nell Harrington, I’m nineteen and I’m studying Arts. I like horse riding, apple crumble with cream and sitting in trees.’

Her blue eyes widened. ‘How did you know about the apple crumble?’

‘My mum was asked to make it especially for your homecoming.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. I like Maggie. My mother says she’s the best cook we’ve ever had.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

Suddenly the stupidity of this meeting hit Jacob like a smart bomb. What in blue blazes was he doing here chatting with Nell Harrington? Her father would have him neutered if he ever found out.

He jumped to his feet, grabbed his horse’s reins. ‘I have to get to work.’ With luck, the sun and a fast ride would dry his clothes and no one would be any the wiser.

Nell smiled up at him, all sweetness and dimples. ‘Do you think we should try for another date?’

That moment had been his chance. He should have told her, No, not on your Nelly, and changed the course of their history, saved decades of heartache. Should have got the hell out of there.

Now, twenty years later, Jacob winced as he remembered how crazily spellbound he’d been.

‘I’ll see what I can manage,’ he’d said.

Nell studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Jacob would be here in five minutes and she looked a fright. The ordeal of yesterday followed by a sleepless night had left her pale and haggard, as dreary and limp as wet seaweed.

Dabbing concealer into the shadows under her eyes, she told herself that it didn’t matter what she looked like. Jacob’s regard for her had disappeared long ago, well before the turn of the twenty-first century.

Despite his controlled good manners yesterday, he’d made it painfully clear that he blamed her, probably despised her. She’d seen it in his eyes, had heard it in his voice and when he’d accused her of giving Tegan away, she’d been too stunned and numb to defend herself. Now he believed he had the high moral ground. For that reason alone she needed to gain some self control. And she needed to look OK.

Taking more than usual care, she lengthened her lashes with mascara, applied blusher to bring colour into her cheeks and selected her favourite lipstick. She ran her fingers lightly through her freshly washed hair, letting it fall loosely to her shoulders, took a step back from the mirror and drew a deep breath.

Her make-up and hair were OK and her floral top and blue skirt were cheery and feminine.

‘You’ll do,’ she told her reflection. She actually looked close to normal now.

If only she felt composed. She was no more prepared to ‘chat’ with Jacob today than she had been yesterday after the funeral. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. About Tegan. About Tegan’s baby, Sam.

Her mind buzzed like a bee in summer, darting frantically with no clear course. One minute she was drowning beneath the loss of her daughter, the next she was wildly, guiltily excited about the reappearance of Jacob after twenty years, and then she was sobered by the thought of her baby grandson and Jean Browne’s mysterious need to discuss something.

Nell had telephoned the Brownes the day after Tegan’s death. Desperately distressed, she’d needed to talk to them and she’d found comfort from being able to offer help. Bill Browne had suffered a stroke a few months earlier and poor Jean was carrying a huge burden, dealing with her grief while caring for him and the tiny baby, Sam.

Nell had done the little she could—a chicken casserole, help with finding a solicitor. She’d even minded Sam while Jean had dealt with the funeral directors. In a bonding moment over a cup of tea in the Brownes’ kitchen, she’d told Jean the circumstances of Tegan’s birth.

They’d cried together.

If Jean needed more help now, Nell knew she would be happy to lend a hand. She was less certain about Jacob.

Overnight, every forbidden memory of her youthful lover had shot to the surface—memories of the river, of the endless conversations she and Jacob had shared, of that first morning, sitting on the tree branch, falling into the water.

She and Jacob had even read poetry together. Fresh from her first year at university, she’d been mad about Yeats. She hadn’t expected a rugged cowboy to be interested in poetry, had been gobsmacked when Jacob had brought a copy of Yeats that had belonged to his father. They’d read selections to each other and she’d loved listening to Jacob’s deep voice rumbling sexily against a backdrop of chuckling water and softly piping finches.

Good grief. She shouldn’t be remembering such things after all this time. But every memory of Jacob Tucker was alive and vivid in her head—his shy, serious smile, the sexy power of his body, his gentle hands.

When she closed her eyes she could still see him lying in the shaded grass, one arm curved above his head, throwing a shadow over his beautiful face. She could see him looking at her from beneath heavy lids. Could see the thrilling intensity of his grey eyes, feel the warmth of his lips on hers.

Nell forced her eyes open again, blinked hard, shook her head. It was both fruitless and painful to revisit the past.

She and Jacob had each gone down separate paths. She’d married Robert Ruthven and Jacob had acquired a cattle kingdom. They’d grown older, richer, wiser and had become very different adults.

Yet here they were, brought back together by the very thing that had separated them in the first place.

Their daughter.

The front doorbell rang and she jumped. That will be Jacob.

She wondered what they were going to talk about till it was time to go to the Brownes’, and cast another frantic glance at the mirror.

Come on, Nell, you have to try harder than that. Chin up, back straight. Smile.

The smile was problematic, but at least her reflection looked a tad more determined as she hurried to open the door.

Jacob stood on her front doorstep. ‘Good morning,’ he said, smiling.

Nell’s insides tumbled helplessly. ‘Morning.’

Silly of her, but she’d been expecting him to look the way he had yesterday, all formal and serious and nudging forty. Today he was wearing faded jeans that clung low on his narrow hips and a navy-blue T-shirt that hugged his whipcord muscles. Apart from the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the tiniest smattering of grey at his temples, he looked dangerously—way too dangerously—like the nineteen-year-old she’d fallen in love with.

‘How are you feeling today?’ he asked.

‘Much better, thanks.’ She almost confessed to not sleeping too well, but decided against giving too much away.

With an offhand smile, he held out a brown paper bag. ‘Some comfort food from the bakery.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ As she took the bag his fingers brushed hers and the brief contact sent a strange current shooting up her arm. Get a grip, Nell. Now wasn’t the time to become girlish and coy.

‘Take a seat in here,’ she said, indicating the cosy living room that opened off her front hallway. ‘I’ll make some tea. Or would you prefer coffee?’

‘Tea’s fine.’ Jacob ignored her instruction and followed her down the hall and into the kitchen.

Flustered, Nell rushed to fill the kettle. It felt so strange to have Jacob Tucker in here, leaning casually against her butter-yellow cupboard with his long denim legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his strapping chest.

He looked about him with absorbed interest. Or was that amused interest? Was that a smirk she detected? What was so funny? Why couldn’t he have waited in the living room, as she’d asked?

Lips compressed, Nell grabbed scarlet and yellow floral mugs from an overhead cupboard and set them on a wicker tray. She shot him a curious glance. ‘Is something amusing you?’

‘I was just revising my impressions of you. You haven’t changed as much as I thought you had. Yesterday you looked so different in that efficient suit and with your hair all pinned up, but today you’re more like the girl I used to know.’

His thoughts were so close to her own that she almost blushed. Her hand trembled as she reached for the teapot. Don’t be fooled. Remember, this isn’t a proper reunion. Jacob’s filling in time till we see Sam. Nothing more.

She turned and fetched milk from the fridge, filled a small blue jug. ‘I don’t think the girl you remember exists any more,’ she said quietly.

‘I guess looks can be deceiving.’

I should remember that, too.

Nell selected a pretty plate and arranged the biscotti he’d bought at the bakery, set it with the other things on the tray. Turning to him, she said, ‘Can you take this tray through to the living room? I’ll bring the teapot in a minute.’

‘Sure.’

As he left the kitchen, she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Behind her the kettle came to the boil.

* * *

One look at Nell’s living room and Jacob knew that something very important was missing from Koomalong, his Outback homestead. He’d paid a great deal of money for a top Brisbane decorator to furnish his home and she’d gone to enormous trouble to give it a ‘masculine edge’.

‘A man like you needs an environment that screams alpha male,’ the decorator had insisted.

He’d always lived alone, changing women as often as the seasons, so a ‘masculine edge’ had made sense. But, despite the expense and the Brisbane decorator’s expertise, the so-called alpha male decor hadn’t really worked for him. His place didn’t feel like a home; it seemed to belong in a glossy city magazine.

The Ruthvens’ cottage, on the other hand, felt very homelike indeed. There was something about Nell’s living room, about the lounge furniture upholstered in muted creams and dusty reds, that invited him in. The slightly cluttered casualness, the deceptively careless mix of colours and florals and stripes enticed him to relax, to feel welcome.