Читать книгу Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle - Nikki Logan - Страница 12

WHAT a night …

Jared lay on his back on the bed, holding Anna close in the aftermath of the second bout of love-making—both in bed and in the shower—and for the first time in over a year, he felt almost complete, nearly happy. If he’d been starving for her, she’d been just as hungry. Her hands and lips had been all over him; she hadn’t been able to get enough.

He was winning her back. He was close, so close—and though it must be nearly two in the morning, she still wasn’t leaving the bed. She lay tangled over him, hair damp and messy from the shower, tasting his skin with mouth and tongue.

His body leaped from sated to needing in an instant.

She’d always had that ability, from that first haystack kiss. The sexual encounters he’d had with girls he’d met at rodeos and pubs, cattle sales, parties and the infamous Bachelor & Spinster balls during his teens had been a fun diversion, but he’d never bothered using the numbers the girls had given him, or wanted to repeat the experience with the same girl. They didn’t know him, knew only his looks or his name, the Jared West, Bryce Curran’s adopted heir, expected to inherit Jarndirri. And every time he left a girl’s bed, it had left him curiously blank. He’d felt empty from the moment he’d found satisfaction.

Until a single, impulsive, forbidden kiss, given because Anna had looked so adorable with hay in her hair and chocolate smears on her mouth … and instead of pulling away to demand what he was doing, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck with a little, feminine sound of surprised arousal, and had kissed him back. From that moment, like Alice down the rabbit hole, he’d fallen into a desire and need so all-encompassing that, twelve years later, he still hadn’t found a way out.

No amount of waiting, from school to university and the year she’d spent teaching in the Northern Territory; no change in their lives, no loss or even her leaving him lessened the craving. Seeing her pretty, funny pixie face, her lush curves, hearing her husky voice—or even her ridiculous laugh—turned him into a burning mass of desire.

And after a long year of empty abstinence, she was here, keeping him on constant slow burn with mumbled words and lighting trails of fire with her mouth. He turned to her, lifting her face for another I can’t get enough of you kiss. She moaned and arched into him, and they were consumed with each other again.

And with each touch and every kiss he tried to tell her everything his heart kept locked away from the world, all the little family secrets he’d never told anyone, and the overwhelming feelings he had for her.

All the emotion and pain he could never tell Anna had been communicated through the years with his fidelity and his voracious need for her—and he now prayed she understood.

Afterwards Anna yawned and stretched, smiling at him. ‘Can you help me drag a mattress into Melanie’s room?’

Something inside Jared stilled then withered. Okay, after so long apart he hadn’t been completely expecting the words of love she’d always given after loving each other into sublime satiety, but Can you help me move a mattress wasn’t high on his list of things he’d hoped to hear.

Anger flashed through him. ‘You’re staying with me.’

The smile vanished. ‘I’ve been away from Melanie long enough. It’s her first night in a strange place, as you pointed out. She’s fast asleep now but if she wakes she could try to get out of the bassinette.’

You’ve been away from me far longer than enough. ‘You’re making excuses. She can’t possibly roll off the bed with every chair in the house surrounding her—she’s not that strong. And you made a deal,’ he growled, hating himself for pulling a blackmail stunt on her but knowing that the longer he let her stay away, the farther her heart went from him. ‘You need me if you want to adopt the kid, and in return I get what I want. You’re my wife. I want you to sleep with me.’

The eyes he’d always loved looking into, like a rich, warm snugly brown blanket of love made just for him, were cold and hard. ‘I just spent the past few hours giving you what you want. I need to check on Melanie.’ She rolled over and got to her feet—and with a flash of fury at her defiance, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to the bed.

She struggled against him. ‘She’s not the kid,’ she panted. ‘She’s the only baby I’ll ever have in my life, and I will stay with her. I won’t lose her the way I lost Adam because you have to win again, to own me. You wouldn’t be stopping me now if it was Adam in that room!’

The bitterness inside her words turned him cold. Without thinking, he released her arm. Anna meant it. She really loved that baby—and she truly believed she would never have children of her own.

Would she ever begin to heal, come back to reality?

‘This is the twenty-first century,’ he said, low and fierce, yet with a sense of feeling his way. ‘There are a dozen other ways to have babies—’

‘Not for me.’ Flat, angry words, with an underlying certainty that haunted him. ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.’

Her ire roused his. ‘I understand that you gave me your word today, and you’re already breaking it. I’m doing my part. I keep my promises.’

Her lips pressed together, so hard they were rimmed with white. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Totally naked, she walked out of the room, and he heard the door opening to the room where the baby slept. He heard her croon softly to the kid, her voice rich with long-thwarted mother-love. Then, in exactly a minute, she returned and lay back down on the bed, but she remained rolled away from him, letting him know without words how little she wanted to be there, even after making love three times. Every pore and cell of her screamed, Don’t touch me.

He’d never been very good at taking orders—and not touching her wasn’t something he was prepared to negotiate. He pulled her against him, loving the lush curves of her body against him after so long away … and he’d be willing to bet she loved it, too, despite her silent resistance.

But when she only lay stiff and cold against him, refusing to touch him voluntarily, and her breathing was uneven, choppy as she chewed on her anger and fear that the longer she stayed away, the higher the risk the baby would be hurt, Jared knew he’d made an enormous mistake. Lying beside his wife, holding her naked body close, he discovered anew a distance far greater than anything that could be measured in kilometres.

Seducing her had seemed the perfect solution only a few hours before. Making love had always brought them closer.

In the loving and its aftermath, she poured out her affection, her love for him, as well as showing him the hidden tigress when they touched.

Tonight all he’d seen had been the sensual woman. His body was sated, but his heart was empty. He’d gambled high stakes on finding his Anna, the Anna he missed so badly, in bed—that she’d come back to him in the loving—and he’d lost, big time.

Aching for what seemed forever gone, the wife who’d loved cuddling him at night, his haven in a world gone wrong long before his father had put a rope around his neck, Jared moved his arm, giving her the choice, the freedom. Anna immediately rolled onto her stomach, finding a spare pillow to use beneath her body.

She was with him, beside him, and told him without words that it was the last place she wanted to be.

I might enjoy the sex, but that’s all it will be. She’d warned him, and he’d ignored her, ploughing ahead with his own plans for victory.

Maybe it was time he started not just asking but listening to her.

‘Go back to the baby.’ It was a rough growl filled with anger, but it was surrender. It was listening to her, giving her more than he’d ever had to before. ‘I’ll bring the mattress in.’

She rolled back to face him, staring at him in obvious surprise—and after a moment’s searching glance, her mouth curved in a tiny smile. ‘Thank you.’

It was far from the ‘I love you’ he’d once taken for granted as his right, his due, and now craved to hear; but he’d take it—a smile was a step in the right direction.

Yeah, it looked like it was definitely time he started listening to what she was actually saying, not what he thought she wanted—and he’d watch her body language. If he got really lucky, maybe she’d seduce him next time, and stay because she wanted to.

Her strong, curvaceous working woman’s body made him ache again as she gathered her scattered clothes and made a beeline for the bathroom—but he’d made a forward step, and he wasn’t about to blow it.

As he dragged the mattress into the other room for her, finding space for it in a corner beside the plethora of chairs she’d used for the baby’s safety, he wondered how he could have made so many mistakes with her and missed them—and how he’d lost her love without even noticing when it had gone missing.

Unfamiliar shame washed through Anna when she’d awoken with Melanie’s cries at seven the next morning to find a bottle made ready in the kitchen, apples steamed and strained for the baby and already mashed through his arrowroots. He’d even left coffee hot in the pot.

He’d made everything for her before he’d flown out, so all she had to do this morning was bond with Melanie. After her ungracious refusal to stay with him—which she guessed he probably had the right to expect after making love three times—he’d still kept his word.

The plane moved slowly into the hangar again at eleven, during Melanie’s morning nap. ‘Can you help me unpack the gear, Anna?’ he yelled over the beat of the rain.

‘Coming.’ She ran out to the hangar, drenched before she made it into the massive double doors. She blinked in surprise when she saw the plane stacked to the roof. ‘What’s all that you’ve got there?’

Opening the back doors of the plane with care, Jared grinned at her, his black hair plastered to his forehead just by the twenty seconds he’d been outside calling for her. And the brightness of his eyes, that slow, sure smile sent her insides into silly flips. How did he still do that to her after all these years? ‘I brought back lunch and dinner from the pub in Kununurra,’ he said, ‘meat pies and chips to reheat in the oven, and a lasagne with garlic bread for dinner.’

She frowned. ‘You went to the pub?’

He kept smiling at her. ‘Don’t worry about gossip. The tom-toms are already out on us. I got a call outside the grocery store from Jim Turner’s missus. She wanted to feed us to say welcome home to you, and happy second honeymoon.’

‘The Turners didn’t see the nappies and cereal?’ she asked anxiously.

He flipped her concern away with a hand. ‘I got a tourist lady to buy them—she thought it was hilarious that I couldn’t be seen buying baby stuff. She made some joke about a woman’s underwear department. I didn’t get it.’

‘I do.’ Anna heard herself chuckling. Crazy that, after all these years, Jared had found a new ability to make her laugh, even when he had her thinking about second honeymoons and all they entailed.

Jared shrugged and grinned, willing to be the butt of humour; the thin, wet cotton shirt stretched taut across his shoulders and back as he bent into the plane to pick something up, and her mouth dried with ridiculous longing. How pathetic was it that she could want him again so badly, only hours after they’d spent half the night making love?

‘We can’t get too many baby things yet,’ he was saying, his voice muffled. ‘It’ll look too suspicious—but …’ A smile of boyish excitement filled his eyes with sapphire brilliance as he turned back to her, opening something. ‘Voilà!’

Anna’s jaw dropped—unbelievably, he’d brought a collapsible travel cot!

‘Where did you get that?’ she asked, awed and a little worried. If the store owner remembered him later … Then she noticed its slightly rusty legs.

He laughed, his normally in-control face, like a carving of Alexander the Great, was alight with teasing pride. ‘Would you believe it? I saw it left by the road near the airstrip. It’s a bit busted up, but I’ll fix it before she needs to sleep tonight. It’s wet, but it’s all plastic coated so all we have to do is wipe it down. I bought a few thin pillows to use as a mattress for her. So you don’t need to worry about her safety. The baby’s got a bed.’

Anna had had to swallow a lump in her throat. This wasn’t the man she’d married. Her Jared would never have noticed a collapsible cot, let alone stopped to get it.

Or maybe he would. He’d saved the lives of two kids by diving into a swollen, raging river, had flown through dangerous storms to help others.

Flown through thunderclouds to reach her in the time he’d promised.

He’d found the cot for her. The way he didn’t even call Melanie by name told her how little he wanted to bond with a baby that wasn’t his. But he’d gone to all this trouble to make her happy. Even if he’d done it to keep her in bed with him, to stop her from needing to sleep with the baby, he’d still made Melanie more comfortable.

She should have known he’d do it. Whatever she’d ever given him, Jared had always found ways to return it tenfold. That was her Jared, the man who moved heaven and earth to keep a promise, or risked his own life to help others.

Just don’t ask him to talk, she reminded herself ironically.

He’s talking now, isn’t he? an imp in her mind taunted her. You’re the one refusing to open up …

‘I can’t believe you managed all this without anyone noticing,’ she said as they kept unstacking. ‘But I’m not really surprised. You always did come up with brilliant plans.’

After a short silence, he shrugged. ‘We’ll have to wait until after dark to bring in the baby supplies. You know how curious Mrs Button can be.’

‘Good plan.’ She refused to create new unspoken tension between them, after all the debacles yesterday. Him being away had given her time to think. The adoption authorities would want to see a happy, loving couple here, not tense silences and discord, if she wanted any hope of keeping Melanie. She had to keep things light and happy. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she helped him unpack the plane. ‘I really appreciate it.’

He glanced outside then moved on her, so close she could smell the honest sweat on him, taste the desire he never wanted to hide from her. Her body, already stirring in response to his wet shirt, flared to life with the touch of his cool skin in the watery heat. ‘There’s a better way to thank me, one I think we’d both enjoy.’ He lifted her face and kissed her, hard and hungry.

Before she knew it her hands were in his hair. Cooling heated palms on the raindrops running through it; she moved against him, with a soft sound of exultation and need.

They kissed until they both forgot where they were, slowly dropping to the ground, undressing each other with trembling fingers. Jared was lying on her, and she gloried in the feel of his taut body on hers, the hard arousal—

Suddenly an alert went off in her mind. What was she doing—again? The more she gave in to this, the more right he had to hope she wouldn’t leave. And things would go back to the way they’d always been. A hard life, a satisfying life, loving the land and the work, but.

She pushed him away an inch. ‘I’ve got to go in to Melanie,’ she said softly, kissing him once more so he didn’t think she was angry or withdrawing from him. He’d done so much for her. ‘She’ll be waking soon.’

Expecting some curt or cutting words about Melanie and her priorities, she almost started when he smiled at her again and helped her to her feet. ‘Put the oven on when you go in, will you? Lunch needs reheating. I’ll find a way to get these things in under cover before Ellie Button dies of curiosity.’

Anna blinked and shook her head. ‘Is this an alien abduction? Who is this man who actually seems to want to talk, and when will you take me to your leader?’

He bent and kissed her again, his chuckle making her lips vibrate. ‘From James Bond to My Husband Is An Alien—what’s the next Hollywood comparison?’

‘I think that alien was a stepmother,’ she whispered back, the soft, breathy laugh touching his lips as his touched hers. The shock sent tingling through her, but it was a pleasant, sensual vibration. She might barely recognise this Jared, but whoever this man was she—liked him.

Shaken by the thought, she turned away from him, gathered the lunch sack and dinner basket under each arm, drew a deep breath and bolted through the sheets of water to the house. She needed space, distance from this new, fun, exciting Jared. Wanting him she could handle; but liking and wanting him at once was dangerously close to emotions that could see her walking voluntarily back into the Jarndirri cage.

She could never go back to that. A life of being what her father had wanted, what Jared had wanted, instead of what she wanted. Subjugating herself to suit the men in her life, the life even strong-minded Lea couldn’t take—no, she couldn’t live like that any more. She’d never be that lost, needing woman again.

She ran through the back door, soaking wet in fifty metres, to hear Melanie’s voice through the open bedroom door. The baby wasn’t crying; she was making blah-blah-blah, singsong sounds.

Melanie seemed remarkably resilient to strangers, happy to go with her. If Rosie didn’t change her mind, Melanie could be happy with her.

Grabbing the opportunity while the baby was happy, she put lunch in the oven, turned it on and ran to the bathroom to dry off the water running in rivulets down her skin. Despite the happy play, she couldn’t risk Melanie getting bored, crawling out of her bassinette and rolling off the bed. The sooner that travel cot was ready, the better.

‘She seems a happy baby,’ Jared said as he joined her in the bathroom nearest the main bedroom, the one that had always been theirs.

She snapped back, her face muffled in a towel, ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

Then she felt ashamed. Why had an innocuous remark instantly put her on the defensive?

Though he said nothing at first, Jared’s gaze burned right through the towel to make her cheeks heat up. ‘No reason,’ was all he said, his tone light yet penetrating, and what he’d left unsaid hung in the air between them like an accusation. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t forget Rosie could change her mind.

She hung up the towel, but still didn’t look at him. Her recent discovery of new feelings for the man she thought she knew was too raw, too frightening to keep thinking about. ‘I’ll grab her while you set the table.’

‘I need to—Sure,’ he amended, and she knew he’d seen her stiffen. ‘Can you help me feed the animals and shovel out the muck this afternoon?’

‘Of course I can.’ Then she frowned. ‘But what do we do with Melanie?’

‘The cot’s portable, remember? There are also some of yours and Lea’s kiddie toys in the attic. I’ll grab them before we go out. She should be happy enough being in sight of us—and she might like the animals too. Most babies do.’

‘Good thought.’ They’d both been exposed to farm animals before they’d been able to sit up, put on ponies before their first birthdays. If Melanie was going to live here—

She skidded to a shocked mental halt. That wasn’t and never would be the plan, no matter what Jared believed, or made deals over. She’d make sure he didn’t want her to stay … then she could find a life of her own at last, and he’d be free. ‘I’ll get her,’ she said curtly, and walked out before he could say anything else to set her thinking.

Melanie was chewing on a pillow, grabbing others and dropping them, laughing in baby delight at her accomplishments.

When she saw Anna coming for her, she gurgled and lifted her arms—and Anna’s heart flipped with joy and tenderness. Yes, superimposed over Melanie’s beautiful dimpled face was, maybe always would be, Adam’s, but she was a beautiful girl in her own right, and deserved a mother’s love as much as Anna craved to give it.

Don’t get your hopes up …

Sometimes in the past year she’d thought about having children by other means, such as adoption—but part of her kept believing that she couldn’t possibly love a child not of her own body as she’d loved Adam. Would she resent that poor child more than she’d love them?

That worry, and the deeper knowledge that she couldn’t put another set of parents through the anguish of loss had held her back from giving in to the darkest temptation when she’d seen a baby outside a store in a pram, looking so alone and neglected.

‘Thank God I didn’t know,’ she whispered as she gathered Melanie’s warm limbs into her arms, cuddling her close.

‘Thank God.’

‘For what?’

She stilled for a moment, fury filling her for him thinking he had the right to come on her in this private moment. Even worse was the knowledge that her promise gave him that right. Whatever he wants …

The air crackled with expectation—his and hers. Pivotal moments came to every marriage. She could keep playing the good girl, or be a woman and tell the truth.

‘For Melanie,’ she said quietly as she laid the baby down to change her nappy, giving herself a minute to change her mind. The baby’s romper pants were wet as well, so she rubbed Melanie down with baby wipes before putting on a nappy and clean clothing.

When she was done, he was still waiting for the rest in his usual silence. It seemed that, at last, he really wanted to know.

So she added with deliberation, ‘For not knowing until she came into my life that I could love another child this deeply.’ She turned on him in slow defiance. ‘If I’d known before she came to me that I could feel such love for any baby but Adam, I might have done the unthinkable.’

And surely that should shock conventional Jared into letting her fall from the cursed Curran pedestal he kept her on.

But to her surprise, he nodded slowly. ‘I saw it in your eyes yesterday, the guilt. I’ve been thanking God ever since then for watching out for you when I didn’t.’

It shocked her to her core that perfectionist Jared had not only seen the truth but understood her unbearable temptation, and forgiven her. If she didn’t shore up her defences, and fast, she’d never leave this place again—and she couldn’t gamble her life, and Melanie’s, on Jared’s changes becoming soul-deep, or that they’d be permanent.

Willing away the softening of her heart, she lifted her chin. ‘You’re not responsible for me, Jared. I left you, remember? I make my own decisions now.’

Instead of withdrawing, as he had every time she’d reminded him that as far as she was concerned they were still separated, he looked deep into her eyes and said, ‘I keep my vows.’

It should have moved her, filled her with love … words like that had always turned her into a shivering mass of loving woman. But this time all she felt was driving anger. Keep your cool … ‘Selectively,’ she replied, coolness in the single word, and she walked past him. ‘Lunch must be just about ready.’

His voice came from behind her as she strode through the house, dark and, yes, finally, withdrawn. ‘You don’t need to remind me of my selective vow-keeping. It comes to me every night in my dreams. Losing Adam because I listened to the midwife, not you … you lying in that pool of blood the next day … and whose fault it was that it all happened. I know, Anna. I know.’

Arrested by the tone, she wheeled around to frown at him. He hadn’t used the amused reproof that always made her feel small, or the enigmatic coldness that made her wither inside. Every word he’d spoken had been aimed inward. Self-recrimination wasn’t something she was used to from Jared. He was Action Man, always finding the way out, always saving the day. ‘What?’ she spluttered as he pushed past her to get the pies and chips from the oven. ‘You blame yourself for what happened? You think I blame you for.?’

‘Who else is there to blame?’ He pulled out plates and put the food on them, got cutlery from the drawer. He didn’t look at her. ‘You do, too, Anna, or you’d never have left. You wouldn’t have moved out of our bed if some part of you didn’t believe me at least partly responsible for Adam’s death, and your near-death.’

Beyond shock now—how many years had she wanted Jared to say something so profound, and ask her?—she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Did she blame him for that?

At that moment Melanie lunged forward, trying to get to the floor, and she let the baby down, where she happily tugged at a broken corner of black-and-white linoleum that needed replacement. Anna replaced the makeshift toy with a wooden spoon, which Melanie began banging with a gurgle.

Then Anna found her mouth moving of its own accord, words she didn’t know were true or a lie. ‘Jared, I never once thought—’

‘Don’t say it, Anna. If you’re going to leave me after this, despite your promise, then at least end it honestly,’ he said with suppressed violence. ‘Our son is dead because of me.’

Thunder cracked overhead, and the baby jumped; her face crumpled, and she wailed. Glad of the distraction, Anna touched her downy little head in a loving caress of reassurance, but her mind had stalled like a car engine that had run out of oil. ‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked slowly, feeling that pivotal moment stretching out, unwinding like a ball of yarn.

‘It’s not about what I want,’ he said, with a dark unutterable weariness that tugged at her soul. ‘For once in our lives, stop playing Miss Perfect, stop giving me what I want and tell me the truth.’

The truth was that, for months, she’d hated the world for not understanding, hated the help group that she’d attended for having found a place of peace she hadn’t been able to see. She’d hated Lea for having Molly so easily and so carelessly from a one-night stand, hated Jared for getting on with life when she couldn’t, didn’t know how—didn’t want to.

This was why she’d hated those she loved the most—for never asking—and at last he’d asked, at the perfect moment. The perfect time for him.

She gave a tired laugh. ‘Oh, that’s great, Jared, ask when it’s less painful, less imperative, when I have Melanie, and I don’t feel as if I’m bleeding to death any more.’ Her hands curled into balls, shaking, longing to lash out. ‘You didn’t want to know before, you ignored me when I all but begged you to hear me, so why choose now, when it can’t make a difference?’

He stood with his back to her, legs spread wide, his white-knuckled hands gripping the kitchen bench like he stood in quicksand and it stopped him sinking. ‘Because I’m not too afraid to ask you now.’

‘Because you’re back on home territory, and in control?’ she half mocked, the months of repressed fury and betrayal bubbling up in unexpected flashpoint.

As if he’d expected the words, he shrugged and said simply, ‘Because I’ve already lost you, lost Adam. So say it, Anna; get it all out. There can’t be worse.’

On legs surprisingly steady—maybe part of her had always known he’d ask eventually; he’d been waiting for this time, when he was back safe on his turf—she found a chair and sat down, half-facing Melanie, replacing the flooring corner which she was pulling at again with a plastic bottle. The baby began banging it on the floor, squealing in delight at the juddering noise.

And, watching the baby, she felt the fury draining away, just when she wanted to hold hard to it. With a little sigh, she let her heart speak for her. ‘Why did you never even hesitate about choosing to implant Adam when the doctor said it was dangerous to try again? Why, Jared? He’d told us fairly bluntly that the baby and I could both die, but you kept pushing. Was a son worth more to you than my life?’

After a long silence, broken only by Melanie’s play, he asked, ‘Are you hungry? Lunch will get cold soon.’

There it was, his withdrawal, right on cue. Don’t poke and prod me like a cow, don’t push me or I’ll retreat. It was her turn now to make it easy, to say yes and eat, and after the baby was asleep he’d reward her in the way that had once made her happy, had once been enough.

It had never been enough.

She lifted her chin, and spoke from a place of control, because she no longer cared if he retreated or withheld affection from her. ‘No, I’m not hungry. I asked you a question, and I’d like you to answer it.’

He stopped in mid-stride, turning to stare at her from over his shoulder. ‘Have you believed that all this time?’ His face was unreadable, but his voice held some deeper-hidden emotion.

‘Stop it,’ she said, soft, holding in the anger lest they upset the baby. ‘Stop turning the questions onto me. You always do that instead of answering, to make me talk. It’s your way of finding out my issue so you can find the solution to the problem.’

He wheeled right around to face her then, frowning. ‘You don’t want a solution?’

The question was so typically Jared, she laughed before turning his words of the day before onto him. ‘I want you to talk.’ Then, in deliberate provocation, she added, ‘I want you to have the courage to answer my question.’

His clenched fist thudded on the sink. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.’

The confusion, the frustration rang so clear she heard it like a bell tolling. He didn’t understand, didn’t know what to do if he couldn’t do, couldn’t act, couldn’t fix. He was waiting for his cue to charge into the fray like Lancelot, finding a way to make things better.

‘I asked you a question. Was having the required son and heir worth more to you than my life?’ she asked again. Pushing with a rapier covered in silk.

‘Dear God, how can you even ask?’ he rasped.

‘I need to know. I need to hear it. I’ve wondered—doubted—for a long time.’

He shook his head, with a slow wonder. ‘I did everything for you, for us.’ Anger vibrated through every word, denial of what she’d asked.

‘You talked me into trying once more, with the last embryo—with Adam—when they’d told us both the risks. I was terrified, but you never faltered. You had to have your son, the Curran heir. That’s how it felt to me, Jared.’ She kept her voice gentle but she was pitiless. She had to know. When he didn’t answer, she went on, ‘I’d given you one of two things you’d planned for the life you wanted—Jarndirri—and you had to have the other, your son and heir from a Curran woman’s body. If the cost was my life, it didn’t seem to matter.’

In the silence, she saw a sheet of white-hot lightning rip across the sky outside the window. She lifted Melanie into her arms before the boom followed and frightened her. When the sound passed she put the baby down again and turned to look at him, saw his fingers clenching that old, worn bench so tightly, his fingers looked ready to snap.

Or maybe it was Jared that was about to snap.

She forced herself to not move to him, to not comfort him with touch, and do the talking for him. She’d waited too long to know.

‘It mattered.’ He was taut, holding onto control by a tiny thread. The struggle was so clear inside him she could almost see the straining, emotions against his will, a tug of war she’d never known existed until now, when the rope was stretched to breaking.

‘But not as much as having a son—Bryce Curran’s grandson, to legitimise your claim on Jarndirri,’ she said softly. Snip.

His shoulders pulled at the shirt as the muscles moved beneath, clenching his fists over and over, thudding the bench. ‘You never told me how scared you were. I thought you wanted a baby more than anything. I thought it would make you happy. You were so lost after the last time.’

Understanding flashed through her at the muttered words; they made sense. Yes, he’d wanted a son, but he’d thought it was what she wanted, and she hadn’t told him.

It was only now she wondered: had she begun to withdraw from Jared emotionally even before Adam’s death? Had she expected him to know how she felt without telling him, and then blamed him for not seeing her terror?

Tentative, unsure, she said softly, ‘But when the doctor said it was dangerous, you didn’t hesitate for a moment.’

He shrugged, shook his head. ‘It made no sense to me. I didn’t realise I’d.’

‘You never knew you’d have to sacrifice anything for my sake? Is that what you thought?’

Snap. As if she’d seen that thread break, he whirled round on her at last, his eyes burning bright and dark. ‘I thought they were wrong. How could we have everything else, but be unable to have one single child? How could a woman as strong as you, as perfect as you, almost die doing what millions of women do every day?’

She frowned at the intensity with which he spoke—as if her flaw insulted him. ‘Millions of women still die every year in childbirth.’

He shuddered. ‘Not you, not you,’ he muttered beneath his breath.

‘It’s a danger to all women,’ she said quietly, wondering why her imperfection was such an impossibility to him. ‘I got an infection when I was twelve, Jared. It happens. It could have affected my brain or heart. I could have died then. I have to live with what it did do to me.’

‘Don’t say it,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t talk about it!’

‘I have to. This is my reality now. I can’t have children. ‘

He strode to her, grabbing her by her shoulders, eyes blazing with light. ‘There’s a way, Anna. It’s not impossible. We can—’

Unable to bear hearing what she knew he had planned, she had to deflect him. ‘There is no “we”.’ She shook him off, gently but with finality. ‘You can’t keep living the dream for us both, Jared. I don’t want to live it any more.’

‘You gave me your word—whatever I want,’ he growled, low and intense.

She forced a shrug. ‘If I have Melanie, if Rosie wants us to adopt her, I’ll stay—but I won’t want to be here. I won’t want to be your wife, and I don’t want to live here any more.’

‘I refuse to believe it,’ he grated out. ‘It’s always been us, Anna. It’ll always be you and me, here at Jarndirri.’

‘No.’ Aching, she stepped back. ‘There’s no “us” now—and there never will be while your heart and soul is on Jarndirri.’

Now he frowned. ‘Why not?’

She tried to think of something to say to convince him—he wouldn’t listen to the truth—but eventually she shrugged and said, ‘I lost my mother here, when I was only four. My grandpa Curran died here a year later, and my dad when I was twenty-three. I lost five babies here. Adam’s body is here.’ She bit her lip. ‘Don’t you get it, Jared? This place is my pain, my past. I need to find a future away from here. I need to find a way to be happy, and it isn’t here.’

‘But you know I can’t just up and leave …’ He closed his eyes. ‘You don’t just mean Jarndirri, do you? I’m also your pain, your past. I remind you of all you lost.’

‘Yes,’ she said, softly, sadly.

‘And you’re not willing to fight for us, to make things better, to be happy here with me.’

Oh, why did he have to make this so hard? Her eyes stung and burned. ‘What is there to fight for? You’ve been fighting for a dream that never had substance … at least, not with me.’ He wavered in her vision as tears rose unbidden. ‘Let me go, Jared. Let me find the life and person I want to be. Take Jarndirri. I don’t want any part of it.’

‘No.’ Without warning he turned on her, sneering lips, dead-white face. ‘Keep your blood money. I won’t assuage your guilt. This place can fall to ruin before I’ll take a bloody cent from you, or a single acre of this place.’

The ball had been hit right out of the park; the arrow had hit the bull’s-eye. She’d wanted him to take the place and continue her father’s dreams, so she could leave without regret.

Without guilt.

She flushed and wheeled away. ‘Then we’ll sell it in the divorce proceedings, and take half each. It was left to us both. It should be enough for you to buy a smaller place, or bring Mundabah Flats to its former glory.’

‘I’ll never go back there.’

There it was again, that deep-waters-covering-murky-depths tone she’d heard so often, but she’d never connected it to any one thing before. But this was the second time he’d spoken that way about Mundabah. ‘Why not?’ she asked slowly, digging in what she was certain was the right hole at last.

He waved a hand in frozen dismissal. ‘I’d rather work as a jackaroo on the worst drought-ridden property in the state than go back. My mother and her failure of a husband are welcome to it.’

‘Why?’ she pressed.

His eyes flashed. ‘Don’t go there, Anna.’

She laughed, half incredulous, half pitying. ‘Why, what will you do to me, freeze me out again? Refuse to kiss me? I meant what I said just now. I’m going to divorce you, Jared.’

His face had stilled, like a marble carving, beautiful and cold. ‘You always were a pitiful poker player, showing your hand too early. If nothing I can do will change your mind, if I’m losing the life I want, I have no incentive at all to tell those little white lies to the adoption authorities, do I?’

Anna felt all the blood drain from her face.