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‘OK. Let’s get going, then.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘’Course I don’t.’ In truth, he was relieved to have something practical to do. A mission to rescue cattle was a darn sight more appealing than sitting around drinking tea and trying to make polite conversation with his beautiful soon-to-be ex.
‘It’s flat country, so we won’t need horses. I’ll have to take Jacko, though, so I thought I’d take the ute with the trail bike in the back.’
Joe nodded.
‘One problem. I’d probably have to stay in the ute with Jacko.’ Ellie swallowed, as if she was nervous. ‘Would you mind...um...looking after the round-up?’
‘Sure. Sounds like a plan.’ He chanced a quick smile. ‘As long as I haven’t lost my touch.’
As he said this, Ellie stared at him for longer than necessary, her expression slightly puzzled and questioning. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something in response, but then she shook her head as if she’d changed her mind.
‘I’ll get Jacko. He’s having an afternoon nap.’ She shrugged out of her coat and beneath it she was wearing a neat blue and white striped shirt tucked into jeans. Her waistline was still as trim as a schoolgirl’s.
When she took off her hat, Joe’s gaze fixed on her thick dark hair, pulled back into a glossy braid. Her hair had always been soft to touch despite its thickness.
‘Come on in,’ she said awkwardly over her shoulder. ‘You don’t mind if we leave your gear in your car until later?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s only Christmas presents.’
‘Would you...ah...like a cup of tea or anything?’
‘No, I’m fine.’ The muddy coffee he’d had on the road would take a while to digest. ‘Let’s collect the kid and get this job done.’
They took off their boots and hung their wet coats on the row of pegs that Joe had mounted beside the front door when they’d first moved in here. To his surprise, his own battered elderly Akubra still hung on the end peg.
Of course, he’d known it would feel strange to follow Ellie into the house as her guest rather than her partner, but the knife thrust in his gut was an unpleasant addition.
The house was full of the furniture they’d chosen together in Townsville—the tan leather sofa and the oval dining table, the rocking chair Ellie had insisted on buying when she was first pregnant.
Joe wouldn’t take a stick of this furniture when they divorced. He was striking new trails.
‘I’ll fetch Jacko,’ Ellie said nervously. ‘I reckon he’ll be awake by now.’
Unsure if he was expected to follow her, Joe remained standing, almost to attention, in the centre of the lounge room. He heard the creak of a floorboard down the hall and the soft warmth in Ellie’s voice as she greeted their son. Then he heard the boy’s happy crow of delight.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’
Joe felt his heart twist.
Moments later, Ellie appeared in the doorway with Jacko in her arms. The boy was a sturdy little fellow, with glowing blue eyes and cheeks still pink and flushed with sleep. He was cuteness personified. Very blond—Joe had been blond until he was six and then his hair had turned dark.
The last time Joe had seen his son, he’d been a sleepy baby, barely able to hold his head up. Now he was a little man.
And he and Ellie were a winsome pair. Joe couldn’t help noticing how happy Ellie looked now, with an extra aura of softness and womanly warmth about her that made her lovelier than ever.
She was complete now, he decided. She had what she’d so badly wanted, and he was truly happy for her. Perhaps it was fitting that this miracle had only occurred after Joe had stepped out of the picture.
Jacko was grinning at him. ‘Man!’ he announced in noisy delight.
‘This is Joe,’ Ellie told him, her voice a tad shaky. ‘You can say Joe, can’t you, big boy?’
‘Joe!’ the boy echoed with a triumphant grin.
‘So he’s going to call me Joe? Not Dad?’
Ellie frowned as if he’d let fly with a swear word.
‘You’ve been away,’ she said tightly. ‘And you’re going away again. Jacko’s only two, and if you’re not going to be around us he can’t be expected to understand the concept of a father. Calling you Daddy would only confuse him.’
Joe’s teeth clenched. He almost demanded to know if she had another guy already waiting in the wings. A stepfather?
‘Jacko’s bound to understand about fathers eventually,’ he said tersely.
‘And we’ll face that explanation when the time is right.’ A battle light glowed in Ellie’s dark eyes.
Damn it, they were at it already. Joe gave a carefully exaggerated shrug. Whatever. He’d had enough of war at home and abroad. On this visit he was determined to remain peaceful.
He turned his attention to his son. ‘So how are you, Jacko?’
The boy squirmed and held out his arms. ‘Down,’ he demanded. ‘I want Man.’
With an anxious smile, Ellie released him.
The little boy rushed at Joe’s legs and looked up at him with big blue eyes and a grin of triumph.
What now? Joe thought awkwardly. He reached down and took his son’s tiny plump hand and gave it a shake. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jacko.’
He deliberately avoided noting Ellie’s reaction.
* * *
They drove down to the river flats with their son strapped into the toddler seat between them, and Ellie tried not to mind that Jacko seemed to be obsessed with Joe.
The whole way, the little boy kept giggling and making eyes at the tall dark figure beside him, and he squealed with delight when Joe pulled faces.
A man’s presence at Karinya was a novelty, of course, and Ellie knew that Jacko had been starved of masculine company. He was always intrigued by any male visitor.
Problem was that today Ellie was almost as intrigued as her son, especially when she watched Joe take off on the trail bike through the rain and the mud. He looked so spectacularly athletic and fit and so totally at home on the back of a motorbike, rounding up the herd, ducking and weaving through patches of scrub.
He certainly hadn’t lost his touch.
‘Show-off,’ she muttered with a reluctant grim smile as he jumped the bike over a pile of fallen timber and then skilfully edged the stragglers forward into the mob, heading them up the slope towards the open gate where she was parked.
‘Joe!’ Jacko cried, bouncing in his car seat and pointing through the windscreen. He clapped his hands. ‘Look, Mummy! Joe!’
‘Yeah, he looks good, all right,’ Ellie had to admit. In terms of skill and getting the job done quickly, Joe might never have been away.
And that felt dangerous.
Out of the blue, she found herself remembering their wedding day and the short ceremony in the register office in Townsville. She and Joe had decided they didn’t want to go through awkward explanations about her pregnancy to their families, and neither of them had wanted the fuss of a big family wedding.
They’d both agreed they could deal with their families later. On that day, all they’d wanted was to commit to each other. Their elopement had seemed soooo romantic.
But it had also been reckless, Ellie thought now as she saw how brightly her son’s eyes shone as he watched Joe.
‘Don’t be too impressed, sweetheart. Take Mummy’s word; it’s simply not worth it. That man will only break your heart.’
Jacko merely chortled.
* * *
It was dark by the time Joe came into the kitchen, having showered and changed into dry clothes. Outside, the rain still pelted down, drumming on the roof and streaming over the edge of the guttering, but Ellie had closed the French windows leading onto the veranda and the kitchen was bright and cosy.
She tried not to notice how red-hot attractive Joe looked in a simple white T-shirt and blue jeans, with his dark hair damp from the shower, his bright eyes an unforgettable piercing blue. The man was still unlawfully sexy.
But Joe seemed to have acquired a lone wolf aura now. In addition to his imperfect nose that had been broken in a punch-up when he was seventeen, there was a hard don’t-mess-with-me look in his eyes that made her wonder what he’d been through over the past four years.
Almost certainly, he’d been required to kill people, and she couldn’t quite get her head around that. How had that changed him?
The Army had kept the Commandos’ deployments short and frequent in a bid to minimise post-traumatic stress, but no soldier returned from war unscarred. These days, everyone knew that. For Ellie, there was the extra, heavily weighing knowledge that their unhappy marriage had pushed Joe in the Army’s direction.
And now, here they were, standing in the same room, but she was painfully aware of the wide, unbridgeable chasm that gaped open between them.
She turned and lifted the lid on the slow cooker, giving its contents a stir, wishing she was more on top of this situation.
‘That smells amazing,’ said Joe.
She felt a small flush of satisfaction. She’d actually set their dinner simmering earlier in the day, hoping it would fill the kitchen with enticing aromas, but she responded to Joe’s compliment with a casual shrug and tried not to look too pleased. ‘It’s just a Spanish chicken dish.’
‘Spanish?’ Joe raised a quizzical eyebrow.
No doubt he was remembering her previously limited range of menus. ‘I’ve broadened my recipe repertoire.’
Joe almost smiled, but then he seemed to change his mind. Sinking his hands into his jeans pockets, he looked around the kitchen, taking in the table set with red and white gingham mats and the sparkling white cupboards and timber bench tops. ‘You’ve also been decorating.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Before I became pregnant with Jacko I painted just about every wall and cupboard in the house.’
‘The nesting instinct?’
‘Something like that.’
Joe frowned at this, his eyes taking on an ambiguous gleam as he stared hard at the cupboards. His Adam’s apple jerked in his throat. ‘It looks great,’ he said gruffly.
But Ellie felt suddenly upset. It felt wrong to be showing off her homemaker skills when she had absolutely no plans to share this home with him.
‘Where’s Jacko?’ he asked, abruptly changing the subject
‘Watching TV. Nina’s recorded his favourite programmes, and he’s happy to watch them over and over. It helps him to wind down at the end of the day.’
This was met by a slow nod but, instead of wandering off to check out his son, Joe continued to stand in the middle of the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, his gaze thoughtful.
‘He doesn’t watch a lot of TV,’ Ellie felt compelled to explain. ‘I...I usually read him story books as well.’
‘I’m sure he loves that.’ Joe’s blue eyes blazed. ‘Chill, Ellie. I’m not here to judge you. I’m sure you’re a great mum. Fantastic.’
Her smile wobbled uncertainly. Why would this compliment make her want to cry?
They should try to relax. She should offer Joe a pre-dinner beer or a glass of wine.
But, before she could suggest this, he said, ‘So, I guess this is as good a time as any for me to sign those divorce papers?’
Ellie’s stomach dropped as if she’d fallen from the top of a mountain. ‘Well...um...yes,’ she said, but she had to grip the bench behind her before her knees gave way. ‘You could sign now...or after dinner.’
‘It’s probably best to get it over with and out of the way.’
‘I guess.’ Her reply was barely a whisper. It was ridiculous. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long. They’d arranged an out of court settlement and their future plans were clear—she would keep on with the lease at Karinya, and Joe had full access to Jacko, although she wasn’t sure how often he planned to see his son.
This settlement was what she wanted, of course, and yet she felt suddenly bereft, as if a great hole had opened up in her life, almost as if someone had died.
What on earth was the matter with her? Joe’s signature would provide her with her ticket of leave.
Freedom beckoned.
The feeling of loss was nothing more than a temporary lapse, an aberration brought on by the unscheduled spot of cattle work that she and Joe had shared this afternoon. Rounding up the herd by the river had felt too dangerously like the good old days when they’d still been in love.
‘Ellie?’ Joe was standing stiffly to attention now, his eyes alert but cool, watching her intently. ‘You’re OK about this, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m totally fine.’ She spoke quickly, not quite meeting his gaze, and then she drew a deep, fortifying breath, hoping it would stop the trembling in her knees. ‘The papers are in the study.’
‘Ellie.’
The unexpected gentleness in his voice brought her spinning around. ‘Yes?’
‘I wish...’
‘What?’ She almost snapped this question.
What do you wish? Tell me quickly, Joe.
Did he wish they didn’t have to do this? Was he asking for another chance to save their marriage?
‘I wish you didn’t look so pale and upset.’
Her attempt to laugh came out as a hiccup. Horrified, she seized on the handiest weapon—anger. It was the weapon she’d used so often with this man, firing holes into the bedrock of their marriage. ‘If I’m upset, Joe, it’s because this is a weird situation.’
