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CHAPTER THREE
‘SHE’S left the baby to me,’ Anna repeated, hearing the dazed note in her voice—but it didn’t sound as completely poleaxed as she felt right now. She’s left the baby to me …
Jared stared, slowly blinked, frowned and then shook his head. ‘No way. That only happens in movies and novels.’
‘Well, it’s happened to me now.’ Not knowing what to think, still lost in the shock of it all, she thrust the letter she’d found lying on the spare bed at him. ‘And it’s happened to you, too.’
He opened the note, and, unable to believe it still, Anna followed each word from behind his shoulder.
I’m so sorry, Anna, Mr West. I can’t do this anymore—I have to stop fooling myself. When you left to get Mr West, Anna, I knew it was my fault Mr West was in trouble. I knew I’d brought trouble on you both. Then I looked at Melanie, and knew I’d only screw up her life, too. I want to finish university, become a doctor. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I’m only twenty. I’m not qualified for anything, and I don’t even have a settled home. I can’t give Melanie the life she deserves, and I want to be free to follow my dreams.
I’m going to get help for the depression, and if I still feel the same way when I’m better, I’m applying to return to university next semester. I’ll contact you again in a month. Please don’t call Child Services or the police, not yet. I’m asking you to take my little girl somewhere safe for a few weeks while I get help. I don’t want my mother to get rid of her or give her to strangers. Melanie loves you already, Anna. Jarndirri would be a wonderful place for her to grow up. Will you take care of my little girl?
PS: I’ll stay until I hear your car return, and know Melanie’s safe. Tell her that her mummy really loves her.
Anna saw the wetness of tears fallen over the PS, and closed her eyes.
‘It’s unsigned,’ was all he said after a long silence in which Anna could hear her heart beating, feel the blood pounding in her throat and wrists.
Lost in the emotion of the note, the soul-deep loss she could so readily identify with, Anna tilted her head. ‘So?’
He didn’t answer, but the frown between his brows was so deep it made a grooved V. ‘We should call Tom Hereford, get his legal opinion, before we do anything.’
Fighting the rising of panic like water from a burst dam, she nodded. She took the phone from its cradle and thrust it at him. She couldn’t speak coherently to Tom, Jarndirri’s lawyer, if her life depended on it.
Jared punched in the number, got through to Tom in moments—an account like Jarndirri was too lucrative to lose—and told the lawyer everything, while Anna shifted from foot to foot and dug crescents in her palms with her nails.
‘Okay, Tom, thanks for that. Yes, be in touch soon. Goodbye.’
He turned to her, his eyes flat. ‘In Tom’s opinion, chances are that, with the mother’s permission to take Melanie, we’d have the upper hand over anything Maggie claims, since she can’t prove she’s cared for the child in any way. But he said get to Jarndirri as quickly and quietly as we can. He said he’d never want to go up against Maggie Foster. Apparently she sued Rosie’s father when he left, for all he was worth, and fought until the man was bankrupted. But in the eyes of the law, either with or without a signature, Rosie is Melanie’s mother. Her wishes, in writing, will be seen as legal and binding, since she named us both. But our case is only strong as long as they believe we’re together.’
Though she knew he was telling the truth, she felt her teeth grind together. Her nod felt curt, graceless, even though this was why she’d called him.
‘They’re not going to believe a pretty show, Anna. They’d have to have compelling evidence that we’ve reunited—and not just for the baby’s sake. If Maggie finds out we have her and decides she wants her grandchild, she’d have a stronger claim than ours. And she’d go down fighting all the way.’
‘I know,’ she muttered.
‘So what I’m asking you is—is this what you want? What you really want? Is this going to be worth the fighting—maybe years of fighting—to have her?’
Unable to hold back, she heard words tumbling from her mouth she’d give almost anything to keep to herself. ‘This isn’t about me—it’s about a tiny baby and what she needs. But you know what I want—what I’ve always wanted. I want a baby—my baby—but you know I can never have that now. But I love Melanie.’ What a pathetic understatement! Amid the pain of loss, oh, the joy and solace that beautiful baby’s satin skin and drooling smile had given her in the past few months! That Rosie had needed her—that Melanie had needed her rather than Anna being the grieving, needing one—had been her saving grace, her road back to life when she’d begun losing it. ‘I—I do want her,’ she admitted quietly, giving up.
His gaze, when he lifted it to hers, held the cold distance he always showed when she’d displeased him. It left her shivering inside. ‘This is the reason you wanted to see me, Anna? The only reason?’
She felt a flush creeping up her cheeks. ‘When I called you, I thought it would only be for a few weeks,’ she tried to snap, but her voice wobbled. ‘I thought Rosie would worry about taking the baby flying so close to the Wet, but she wasn’t. She said everyone knows you’re the best small-plane pilot in the State.’ The heat on her face suffused her throat as, if anything, his face turned to deep-freeze. ‘I know you wanted me to come back—’ What am I doing, sounding like I want to go back to him?
‘This isn’t about what I want,’ he snarled. ‘Tell me what you want, Anna.’
‘Right now I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if this offer is real, or the depression talking. She’s been in a bad way.’ She wheeled around, began pacing the room. ‘I want to help Rosie, to be there for Melanie—but this …’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe she really means this. I doubt she’s thought about what it will be like without Melanie. I don’t want Maggie involved, giving Melanie away before Rosie’s made a firm decision. She needs a chance for the therapy to work before she decides on what she wants to do.’ She gave him a look of intense pleading. ‘She just needs a few weeks to get her life right, and …’ Anna closed her eyes ‘.if she decides she wants to give Melanie away, I want to have a strong claim. I want to be a mother,’ she whispered, feeling her throat close up and the rain fall from inside.
No. I will not cry. I won’t! She swiped at eyes stinging with familiar pain. There was no point crying in front of Jared. He wouldn’t let her feel, he never listened or let her be. He’d just find some solution, a way to fix it so she’d stop.
It took all her inner control to speak calmly, to say the words she’d rehearsed since reading the letter. ‘Because Rosie named us both, I can’t adopt her without you,’ she said, forcing a sense of calm she was far from feeling.
Jared was the one pacing the room now, drumming his fingers hard on the kitchen counter as he passed it. ‘This whole situation is insane, Anna. It hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in the equator of working.’
She felt her heart jerk. If she couldn’t make Jared believe in this, he’d never go along with it and she’d lose her last chance at motherhood. ‘It’s not insane. It can work. Maggie won’t know a thing about it. She’ll just assume Rosie left with Melanie. Rosie just needs a few weeks’ peace,’ she murmured, hearing the pleading note again. ‘The authorities don’t have to know for a few weeks, do they? Jarndirri’s isolation is the perfect cover. We can send away all the hands—say I’m coming home, and we want a second honeymoon for a week or two. That way we can persuade them we were back together before Melanie came into our lives.’
‘You’ve obviously been thinking fast. Go on, tell me the rest of your plan,’ he said, his understatement a monument to self-control.
‘There isn’t much else.’ For some reason she couldn’t look at him as she stuttered, ‘I—I love her, Jared. When I’m with her, my heart … well, it didn’t heal, it never could after Adam, but …’ I almost forget when Melanie’s here. I slept through the night for the first time since he died. She raised her eyes to his, in a pleading that had been foreign to her proud, independent Curran nature until now. ‘Please, Jared. We’re not doing anything illegal. We’re helping someone who desperately needs time out. We’re just—just foster-parents for a few weeks, and then I’ll go, leave Jarndirri to you for the rest of your life. Whether we reconcile for good or not is no one’s business but ours.’
‘It doesn’t even seem like it’s my business,’ he replied, still with the sense of a well scraped dry: empty and not caring.
How did he do that? She couldn’t bear the gaping hole inside her heart, and only Melanie had come close to filling it. Some days, all she wanted to do was fill it somehow, anyhow—and when people left their babies outside stores, left alone in a pram, the temptation almost killed her. Don’t leave your child, even for a moment! Don’t you know how precious they are? Don’t you understand some people would die to have your blessings?
She couldn’t believe Rosie would leave her child permanently.
But if Rosie meant it.
It would be the gift of her lifetime. Oh, for the chance to have chubby baby arms around her when she needed to feel loved—to hold a warm, living body close instead of the living death she’d endured the past year, always seeing her beautiful boy, cold in his tiny white coffin.
If helping Rosie—if having even a tiny chance of becoming this darling baby’s mother—meant going back to Jarndirri for now, so be it.
When Jared half turned from her with that signature shrug of his—why should he care if she needed Melanie or not? He wanted his own kids, not this stranger baby—she panicked and blurted, ‘If you do this, I’ll sign all rights to Jarndirri over to you, permanently. Just let me stay until Rosie makes her decision—or until the adoption goes through. Let the authorities think we were together when Rosie asked us to take her. Let her stay with us through one Wet season so she’ll be bonded to me by the time the adoption agency can get there. Then I’ll leave with her, come back here or disappear, whatever you want.’
‘Seems to me that what I want isn’t in this scenario at all, apart from Jarndirri.’
The understated sarcasm sent a new flash of fear through her. She saw the frown on his half-averted face, and the harsh breaths jerking into his chest. Terrified she hadn’t offered enough, she added anxiously, ‘I swear if you do this, I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll set you free.’ she gulped hard and forced the words out ‘.to have the children you want with someone else. I’ll give you Jarndirri, and all the money. I don’t care. I don’t want any of it. All I want is Melanie.’
He wasn’t looking at her at all now. He’d wheeled right around, looking out the back window to the slow-brewing storm outside. ‘Thank you.’ Two words, cool irony.
The two words felt like an accusation. She flushed. ‘I’m just trying to be honest. If you’re honest with yourself, you know I’m right. You only wanted me because I was part of Dad’s marry-her-for-Jarndirri package. Well, I’m giving you what you always wanted, free of strings.’
‘That isn’t what I signed on for when I married you.’ He turned to the fridge, pulled out the milk. ‘I think you were right that day in the hospital. If you think Jarndirri is all I want, you don’t know me at all.’ He lifted the sugar bowl. ‘Still one sugar and milk, or has that changed about you, as well?’
‘Still the same,’ she sighed. Why did he have to make this so uncomfortable? She was what he’d always wanted her to be—sensible, unemotional, not putting her wants on him. Why was he changing the game on her now? ‘Look, Jared, can’t we deal with this as adults? You signed on for Dad’s dream; you love the life on Jarndirri. You’re willing to continue on there for the rest of your life. I’m the one walking away. You can have everything you wanted when you agreed to marry me … and I’ll set you free. You can find another woman to have your sons with.’
There, she’d said it, twice now, and even without a quiver. So why wasn’t he grateful? Surely she was letting him off lightly—but the silences were becoming unbearable. Jared looked outside as he poured coffee and stirred in the milk and sugar, his face expressionless, just as it had been the day her father had told them of his plans for them to marry and inherit Jarndirri together. She remembered the sick, sinking feeling, so scared he’d say yes, even more scared he’d say no …
Anna forced herself to stand still and quiet, giving him time and space to think.
Then he said the last thing she expected as he turned back to face her at last, pushing a mug toward her. ‘Bryce offered me the Jarndirri deal with Lea, you know.’
She almost choked on her coffee. ‘What?’
‘When you were fifteen and Lea was eighteen, he said if I took Lea off his hands so he didn’t have to worry about her any more, I could have everything.’
She frowned, forcing coffee down a tight throat. Thinking of it, it made perfect sense—Dad knew she’d be the good girl, accept his decision and take whatever was left. He had to get the rebel settled and safe before she did anything stupid to dishonour the Curran name. ‘And?’
He shrugged. ‘Predict it, Anna. You know Lea.’
She thought about it, and found herself grinning. ‘She exploded, told Dad to go to hell … and you too, if you thought she was going to be served on anyone’s platter.’
His brows lifted, fell. ‘That’s about it … you just missed one or two small things.’
‘Well?’ she prompted after a few moments.
His eyes met hers … deep, stormy grey-blue, his mouth curving in that half-smile of sensual intent, and she felt her body heating in response. She couldn’t tear her gaze away; her breaths came short and choppy. He didn’t move—he didn’t have to. Whenever he looked at her like that, she always came to him … came running.
How easy I made everything for him. A loving wife and Jarndirri, all neatly served on Dad’s platter. One kiss, one touch and I became his for the taking.
‘And?’ she croaked, forcing her feet to stay in place. Heart and mind fought a body that suddenly reminded her that, uterus or not, she was still a woman. Sort of.
‘And we had a good laugh later. From the day I moved in, we were like brother and sister. There was nothing there.’
‘Really?’ She tried to snort the word, but it came out breathless. ‘You two always got on so well.’
‘Every way but one.’ The smile slowly grew, and she felt her feet itching, trying to move. Her hands ached, screaming to touch him. She might not love him now, but, oh, he knew every way to arouse her, to give her satisfaction. ‘She didn’t want me either. We tried to kiss once, and ended up falling on the ground laughing.’ He grinned now. ‘She kept wiping her mouth and saying, “Ick, gross, it’s like kissing my brother.”’
‘Did you like it?’ she asked slowly, wishing she could keep the words locked inside, but so many years of wondering.
He took a step toward her, the predatory intent clear, and all the words she’d practised since asking him to come fled her mind. She watched him come, her body coming alive, hot and breathless, her breasts swelling and her hands lifting.
‘Kissing Lea was one of my life’s happier memories. It was then I knew I had a sister for life—and I knew I’d never hurt her.’
Interpreting everything he hadn’t said, as usual, she relaxed—until he took another step closer, body heat the oxygen fuelling her slow-burning body, and she gulped and breathed, trying to keep up with her galloping heart. ‘And then?’
‘I found you three weeks later in the haystack, hiding from Lea with the chocolate stash you stole,’ he murmured, eyes languorous with blatant sexuality, and his tinder sparked the slow flame in her.
Hiding from Lea, she’d whispered frantically to Jared to not give her away when he found her there. He’d looked at her in silence, asking without words what on earth she was doing. She’d lifted the chocolate in laughing offer, sharing her booty if he wouldn’t give her away. And he bent to her, saying she’d made a mess of her face, and took the chocolate smears from her mouth with his lips and tongue. She’d forgotten all about the chocolate, the hay in her hair and on her clothes; she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, crossing the unseen threshold from child to woman in an instant.
He hadn’t kissed her again for a long time—she was only fifteen to his eighteen—but he hadn’t gone with all the young guys to the infamous B&S balls—the Bachelor & Spinster balls—after that. And he hadn’t let any other guy near her either. He’d kept her on constant sensual alert with burning-hot glances and unspoken promises, soft whispers in her ear and intimate jokes for her alone.
But on her eighteenth birthday he’d given her a beautiful diamond ring made especially for her with gold from Jarndirri and a Kimberley diamond, danced with her all night at her party, and took her outside to the high verandah where she kept dozens of sweet-scented potted flowers and her climbing roses—planting them, even in the high ground, would drown them in the Wet—and he’d kissed her again, this time deep and slow with his arms around her.
I’m going to marry you, he’d whispered in her ear after half an hour of dazzling, melting kisses, and, poor, starry-eyed girl that she’d been, she’d had no thought of denying him anything he’d wanted. They’d come back into the house with that ring on her left hand, and her eighteenth party had become their engagement party.
They’d married four years later, after she’d finished university as her father demanded. She’d come home, torn between wanting to teach and aching to be with the man she adored. One slow smile from Jared on her return to Jarndirri, one melting kiss, and her future was decided. She couldn’t have left him again if her life depended on it.
She’d never kissed any other man, had never wanted to. From the first time she’d seen him, she’d been lost; from the moment he’d kissed her in that haystack, his wishes had become her wishes, his world hers.
Then the bottom fell out of the world they’d forged for themselves, the shattering of dreams as beautiful as pure crystal, and just as delicate. When she came home from the hospital, she’d felt the storm building inside him slowly, worse for its being unspoken. He wanted her to talk, to come past her intense grief, to heal … but he only wanted her to say what he was ready to hear. She knew what he wanted—the smiles and laughter, the sensuality and return to the joyous woman she’d once been. He’d wanted relief from the endless pain, for the uncertainty to be over, so he could get on with his life.
He could get on with life, because he still had options. He could still become a father. He could never understand the depth of her double loss. He just wanted her sadness to be over so he could bring up what he’d planned. She felt the leashed impatience as the months passed.
That was Jared. He was willing to run any race, fight any fire, swim any flood … he’d be there whenever she needed him, for whatever reason she needed him, so long as she didn’t expect him to talk, to share—or to feel. He just wanted to get on with it, whatever it was.
With Adam’s death and the hysterectomy, she saw her life through new eyes: the compliance, the hollowness of trying to please a man who only saw her as his adjunct. What did she have that was all hers, that wasn’t handed to her by her father, or given by Jared? What did she really want in life? It certainly wasn’t the souvenir store.
She still didn’t know what she wanted, and within an hour Jared’s mere presence was threatening her determination to find it. He could shatter her newfound strength with the promise of a kiss—and, what was worse, she was almost giving in. With a kiss, he could make her want to come home for good—and she’d never know. Her life would again be Jared’s to own.
She lifted her chin. ‘While that’s all sweet, it’s really rather irrelevant now. I only want to come back until we hear from Rosie—and if she still wants us to adopt her, I’ll give you Jarndirri, the money—whatever you want—if I can have Melanie.’
The long silence unnerved her—especially when he didn’t move or step back. ‘Is that a promise?’ he asked slowly at last.
She frowned. ‘What, about giving you … a divorce?’ She sipped her cooling coffee. Funny, after all the times she’d practised the word, it was still so hard to say. ‘Of course, I told you—’
‘That isn’t what you said,’ he interrupted her, his voice uncompromising. ‘You promised me everything I want, if I let you stay.’
He wants more than Jarndirri.
Her stomach hollowed out. What little coffee she’d drunk churned inside, making her want to be sick. Twelve years together, five years married, so much they’d been through together, and still what she wanted meant nothing to him. A million hectares of earth still held his heart captive—that, and the life he’d planned for them. That was Jared, stubborn to the last.
I can’t give you children, she wanted to scream. I can’t go back to where my sweet Adam was still here, still alive!
Jarndirri was no longer home to her; it was the place where hope and dreams and love and laughter had died. All she wanted was to never go back.
For Melanie, her heart whispered. You’ll have Melanie.
She forced her chin up. Her fists curled, she drew in a breath and said with a semblance of calm, ‘Everything you wanted that I can give you, Jared.’
‘Everything I wanted, Anna,’ he repeated, his voice hard and cold. ‘A little white lie or a big black one, I’ll still be committing perjury for you. Give me your word.’
‘I can’t give you the babies you wanted,’ she snapped, trying to hold in the tears. ‘How can you even think I could—?’
Not a muscle in his face moved. He looked like the red rocks of the Kimberleys: wind-blasted, refusing to falter or weather away under pressure—and, illogically, she felt the stirring of arousal return. Was she a masochist, yearning for a man who didn’t know how to feel? ‘Just give me the promise, Anna. Then I’ll do whatever it takes to give you that baby.’
Something turned to lead within her. She knew what he was demanding—her, back in his bed; back in his life and world. The Curran–West dynasty intact, with no more embarrassing separations … and she knew, looking in his eyes, he had another brilliant plan for them to have a baby. His baby, at least.
She ought to have known he wouldn’t let her bail on him, or the life he loved. The opinion of their neighbours—his reputation, and keeping his promise to Bryce Curran, the only person he’d ever looked up to—meant that much to him.
He didn’t want Melanie—but she couldn’t see what he did want, or what he was planning. She only knew when he had an ace up his sleeve, and he always knew when to play it. This was only step one. He wanted his wife to come home with him—to share his bed again—and wasn’t above using Melanie to get what he wanted.
All or nothing: that was Jared. Win at any cost.
She closed her eyes, shutting him out as her mind raced. She’d survived five years of marriage with plenty of desire and Jarndirri to bond them, but no love—at least on his side. She was a Curran, a strong Outback woman. And love it or hate it, Jarndirri was still home. She could never deny that. Love and hate and grief, it held her captive as strongly as it did Jared.
‘You have my word.’ She looked at him, and to her surprise felt only sadness as she said, ‘But you need to know the truth. I’m only doing it for Rosie, and for Melanie. I would never have called you but for this dilemma. I’d never go back to you willingly, if I didn’t have to. I want a life of my own. I was waiting until the year was up to divorce you.’
‘And you’ve made me thoroughly aware of that fact for the past five months,’ he said, his voice rich with irony, yet somehow as dry as dust.
Hearing some unaccustomed feeling beneath the coldness he was projecting, she wished it was different, that she could be happy about returning. ‘I’m sorry, Jared. That’s the way it is.’
At least, it was the way it had to be. She had a few weeks to convince the authorities they were a united couple—if spending those weeks in Jared’s bed could give her Melanie, a life and a future without the unbearable agony of the past year, she’d do it. Then, when she had the stamped, legal adoption papers in her hands, she’d prove to Jared it really was over. She’d make him believe she didn’t care about anything but Melanie. If she could prove to him that he no longer had the power to move or hurt her, she’d walk away with her baby, and he’d be free to find a woman who could give him what she no longer could. He’d thank her for it one day.
‘Then come home,’ he said, with no emotion at all now, not even triumph. ‘I assume you have everything packed?’
And even though she deserved it, something inside her churned at his uncaring tone. She’d turned him off at last; she should be rejoicing. He was on his way to accepting it was over—if she could hold it together, stay strong, he’d let her go when the adoption went through, let her go find a life with Melanie, and he’d …
