Kitabı oku: «The Australians' Brides», sayfa 10

Chapter Ten

One wrong word.

All she would need to do would be to say one wrong word at this point and everything between them—the trust, the chemistry—would be shattered, Jacinda knew.

And yet silence was wrong, too, which meant she had to think fast. She held on to him, understanding the tight, rigid state of his body much better now, and she wondered how arrogant she must be to even hope that her touch could soften him, after what he’d just said.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said quietly, just before the silence grew too heavy.

“Well, you pretty much gave me no choice.”

“No. Okay.”

“So there you have it.”

She waited for him to move, to disengage physically and emotionally from their close body contact, but he stayed where he was, and so did she. “Who have you talked to about it?” she asked.

Letting her head fall lightly against his chest, she felt the strong beat of his heart. There was nothing wrong with his circulation, for sure, and absolutely nothing wrong with his ability to arouse a woman.

“You,” he answered her. “Just now.” His voice was barely human, more like a growl.

“Not a doctor?” She was moved—and scared—that she was the one who’d heard his confession, when no one else had.

“No, not a doctor.”

“Shouldn’t you?”

“Hey, do people need doctors anymore? All that trouble and expense? We can scare ourselves for free on the Internet.”

“So you’ve looked it up there?”

“I couldn’t find anything that seemed … relevant. It was all too much about side effects from illness. Prostate cancer. Diabetes. Physical things.”

“So you think this is emo—?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Jacinda.”

No hesitation. No doubt. The same tone he’d used when he’d said I don’t need help.

She didn’t have the right to push any further, and he’d pulled out of her arms so she couldn’t even touch him anymore.

“We should eat then,” she answered carefully. “You rescued the fried eggs, we shouldn’t let them get cold. But first can I say again, thank you for telling me?”

“That means you’re going to bring the subject up again, right?” He moved farther away, picked up the panful of eggs. Every nuance of his body language screamed at her to keep her distance.

“I’m remembering how this started, you see. Because you understood about my writer’s block. We have common ground, Callan. You were the one to work that out first. If we can help each other, I don’t want to let this go.”

“Don’t—just don’t—talk about helping me.”

“Okay.” She took a breath. “Boy, that bacon smells good!”

They ate, sitting on adjacent rocks, and every bite tasted fabulous after the early morning climb and all the fresh air.

Well, she’s still here, Callan thought, dragging in a long, hot mouthful of smoky coffee.

Which put her in the same category as Birgit. The blonde at the races would have been long gone by now. Jacinda would go the sex-therapist route, take his admission of sexual inadequacy as a personal challenge. He hadn’t told Birgit that his failure with her wasn’t his first, so she’d used phrases like getting you back in the mood and scary the first time, with someone new.

He felt defensive. Didn’t want to hear any of those kinds of lines from Jacinda, the way he hadn’t wanted to read the pamphlets on bereavement from the hospital. He would prefer that they spent the remaining two and a half weeks of her visit in total, monklike silence. From beneath the concealing brim of his hat, he watched her, waiting for her to pounce. It took him a while to understand that she wasn’t planning to.

She ate with a mixture of fastidiousness and greed that no one could have faked. It wasn’t intended to seduce, but, Lord, he found it sexy! Something deep in his body began to stir again. Putting egg, bacon and tomato inside a sandwich of two bits of toast, she opened her mouth wide and bit down on it hard and slow, closing her eyes. The liquid egg yolk burst, leaked from her lips and ran down her chin, and she opened her eyes and laughed.

Running her index finger up to push the yolk back into her mouth, she said, “I wish this could be breakfast every day. Salt? Cholesterol? Who cares! The sun evaporates that stuff, right?” She swallowed, grinned, and then apologized for talking with her mouth full.

A small, irritating black bush fly buzzed around her face and she waved it away, her hand soft. Callan remembered how her fingers had felt on his body just now, pushing for his response. He took another gulp of coffee, to disguise the fact that his breathing wasn’t quite steady.

A fantasy flashed into his mind, as complete as an edited piece of film. He would spread out a blanket on the sand—never mind that he hadn’t brought one with him—and he’d fall asleep. Jacinda would seduce him without waking him. He would believe the whole thing to be a dream. She’d take off his clothes with whisper-soft movements. He would feel her breath, the brush of her hair on his skin.

The sun would climb and the air would heat up. Her naked body would almost burn him as she slid over him, wrapping him in her long limbs. He’d thrust into her, hard as a rock, engulfed by her silky heat and, because it was a dream, he wouldn’t think any of those panicky, mood-destroying thoughts for a second and they’d surge over the crest of the wave together. Success, before the concept of failure had even entered his head.

Failure.

The stirring, swelling, expectant feeling sank away like water down a plug hole.

Callan, just finish your breakfast.

“Do we have time to swim?” Jacinda asked, as he drained the last mouthful of coffee.

“It would be pretty cold,” he said, dampening the idea down the way his body had just dampened down its own need. “The sun isn’t on the water, yet.”

“The water’s cold even with the sun on it. I don’t mind. I think a swim would be good.”

For both of us, the words implied.

Therapy.

Or a cure.

Yeah, and she was probably right. The outback version of a cold shower. Not that he needed one right at this moment, but maybe she did. He knew she wanted him, and he’d left her hanging.

“We’d better put the fire out, first,” he said.

She remembered the way they’d done it last week and shoveled on scoops of creek sand with the billycan, smothering the dying coals. “Is that enough?”

“It’s fine. You’d have to be unlucky to start a bushfire in these conditions, even if you left it in flames.”

“But you like to play it safe.”

“A few minutes of work versus hundred-and-fifty-year-old creek bed trees? You bet!”

They packed up the egg carton, the jar of coffee and the rest of the breakfast things, and then she started rummaging in her day pack for her swimming costume. Callan had another fantasy. She’d forgotten it back at the house. She’d have to swim naked. They’d both—

“Why are things always in the last place you look?” she said, dragging the two pieces of animal-print fabric from the side pocket.

“Because once you’ve found them, you stop looking,” he told her.

She stared at him, blank faced, and then she laughed. “Cattleman’s logic?”

“There’s an impressive intellect at work under this hat, I’m telling you.”

She laughed again, and he felt better. No more fantasies invaded his brain. His muscles weren’t knotted quite so tightly. The empty, angry feeling had gone. First and foremost, they were friends. He had to remind himself of that, hang on to it, trust it.

Trust her.

And not look at her while she changed.

She helped by disappearing behind the pale trunk of a huge tree overhanging the creek and he took off his shorts, boots and shirt while she was out of sight, to reveal the dark gray swim trunks he’d put on this morning just in case.

Wearing her neat, figure-hugging costume, having left her clothes in a tidy pile beside her day pack, Jacinda screamed all the way along the sand, like a jet coming down a runway. “If I take this fast, I won’t notice the temperature,” she yelled, then disappeared in a flurry of splashed-up water. Twisting, she launched onto her back with her arms spread out, still yelling. “Hey, are you coming, Callan? It’s freezing!”

“After that sales pitch …” He launched toward her and ended up deeper, wetter and probably colder, competitive the way he’d been with Nicky as a child. Couldn’t let any female get too far ahead of him, but appreciated the ones who gave him a good run for his money.

Like Liz.

He felt a twist of regret and loss and impatience. Why had he thought about Liz now? Why did he have to make everything so hard for himself? Liz would have been the last person to approve of the way he tied himself in knots.

Go for it, Callan.

He could almost hear Liz’s voice, saying the words.

But go for what?

“Are we jumping and yelling and bunyipping today?” Jac asked.

“What, we’re not cold enough already? We need to get colder?”

“We need to keep moving. The rocks up on the ledge are starting to get into the sun. They’ll warm us up. I didn’t yell loud enough, the first time. I want to do it again.”

“Race you to the ledge,” he said, and won.

Just.

“You let me get that close to a win.” She was breathing hard, making her chest rise and fall in the water. He wanted to look down, ogle her breasts. He was tense and prickly and awkward and aware, and knew she felt pretty much the same. “You were going easy on me. Weren’t you?”

“You’ll never know, will you?”

She flicked water in his face, and then they both climbed onto the ledge.

The way they’d done last Saturday, they ran and jumped and yelled, swam and climbed and ran to jump again. “Why is this so good?” Jac said. The highest parts of the rock ledge were in full sun, now, and the smooth granite warmed rapidly. They sat on it, stretching their legs out and making wet imprints that shrank to a vanishing point as the moisture dried. “This should go in a self-help book.”

“You ever think of writing one of those?” Callan suggested. “They sell pretty well, don’t they?”

“Never, no matter how well they sell. I don’t think I have enough answers for myself, let alone for anyone else!”

“I can’t imagine self-help books give people real answers. I’ve looked at some. They always make it sound too easy. And if they do give answers … What about your novel? Doesn’t a novel need answers?”

“Yes, but they’re messy ones. Nice and human and flawed. Not definitive.”

“But basically, with a novel, you control the universe. You can make it all work out just the way you want. That must be pretty nice.”

“Not always. I mean, it is nice, but you can’t always do it. You’d be surprised. Characters sometimes refuse to behave.”

“Make them.”

“You can’t. They have minds of their own. If they don’t, then they’re made of cardboard and readers can tell. I mean, I’ve never finished my novel so I don’t know why I’m sounding like such an authority on the strength of thirty thousand words. All I know is, there have definitely been times when my characters didn’t behave, and the right thing seemed to be to let them take control.”

“When you talk about your writing, when you’re really involved in it, your face changes.” He’d noticed it before, but the change was more marked, today.

“Does it?” She pressed her hands to her cheeks, embarrassed, laughing a little. “Hope the wind doesn’t shift direction, then.”

“No, it’s a good kind of change. Your eyes get a spark in them. You smile more. You move more. Are you working on your novel, in Lockie’s notebook?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “No, I’m not.” She paused. “At least …”

“So you are?”

“Oh … no … I had a couple of thoughts about my main character, that’s all. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t written a word.”

“Are you going to try? You should. You shouldn’t give up on something like that. You shouldn’t let it defeat you.”

She moved abruptly on the rock, shoulders squaring and bent arm snapping straight. “You are so unfair, do you know that?” she almost yelled.

Startled, he realized she was angry, not kidding around. She jumped up, headed toward the water, then circled back.

“So unfair!” she repeated even louder, and she was blinking back tears.

Before he could respond, she’d slipped into the water and started heading for the beach, her crawl messy and furious, lots of splash and not much speed. He followed and caught up easily, grabbed her wet shoulder and turned her around just at the place where they could both stand without difficulty, chest deep.

“Don’t say something like that and walk away,” he told her.

“Why the hell not? You do it to me! How many times now have you said something important about what’s going on inside you and then just walked away?”

Oh.

She meant that.

Of course.

“That’s different,” he growled.

“Why? Your manhood is of universal, earth-shattering importance, but the disappearance of my creativity … my livelihood … is a minor irritation? We can chat about one in a light, friendly way, lots of helpful hints from you about how to get it right, while the other is this doom-laden, forbidden, terrifying, ghastly topic that has me beating myself up because I’ve accidentally—despite a burning, huge need to … oh … just be your friend about it, Callan—said and done a couple of slightly, and totally unintended, sensitive things? Is that how it is?”

“You’re telling me the two things are related? Not being able to write, and not being able to—?” He stopped. “You’re telling me that they’re parallel? Equal?”

“Yes! Damn it! Isn’t that part of what lets us understand each other? Care about each other, even? Care, probably, way more than is sensible, in my case.” She blinked again.

Creek water or tears?

He wasn’t sure.

He was sure that she was still angry.

And, so help him, it turned him on. He felt his heart rate speeding up, and his breathing, and the air in his nostrils and deep in his lungs was suddenly full of some indefinable aura of wanting and need that he and Jacinda had manufactured together like a powerful scent. This time, after all the false starts, he couldn’t imagine it ebbing away. This time, he was sure he could get it right, because she was so different, so much more important in his life than those other women had been.

She looked like a sleek wet leopard in her animal print, with her shoulders getting tanned from the sun and her hair streaming down her back. The water came level with her breasts, floating them higher so that they swelled smooth and neat and round above the curved and normally modest neckline of her suit.

Her black lashes were spiky and thick with water, and her gray eyes seemed huge. They flashed at him. The tension in her whole body was electric.

“Jacinda …” he said.

“I’m trying so hard to find a way to get my writing back. I’ve told you how important it is. You almost … I’ve even thought you understood. More than I would have expected. Because of—Yes, your own problem. I’ve told you how it’s helping me, being here. I’ve been … really naked to you about it, a couple of times.”

“You don’t think I’ve been naked?”

“You have. Which is why you should understand how hard it is, and not push me about my novel.” She paused. “But I probably overreacted.”

“And I didn’t think,” he said.

“Let’s forget it.”

She bobbed down into the water, letting herself float on her back with her arms spread wide, trying to relax. Her hair floated away from her like water weed and she stretched out her neck. Moisture gleamed on her fine-pored skin. The water lapped at the hip-level gap between the two halves of her swimsuit, showing her flat, olive-skinned stomach.

He didn’t take his eyes off her for a second, and she must have known he was watching her, she must have felt it like an electric current zapping between them in the water. His whole body crawled with aching desire like some dizzying illness, only the feeling was too good to be a disease.

When she stood up again, one swimsuit strap had drifted down off her shoulder, peeling the animal-print fabric halfway down her breast. Her thumb came to hook it back up, but he closed his hand over hers and said, “Don’t. Please don’t. Leave it down. Please.”

She looked at him, and didn’t need to ask why.

Which was good, because he couldn’t have given her an answer. If he thought about anything … anything … except the immediacy of this moment, then he feared the moment would go.

In the water, they drifted against each other. The cold was unimportant. He felt her thighs, tight and cool and as slippery as satin, wrapping around him while her arms wrapped around his neck. Her eyes were wide and clear, their gaze fixed on his face. He cupped her backside in his hands and pulled her tighter against him, slid his fingers down and along to her inner thighs, where he stroked her.

She kissed him, her mouth wet and flavored with creek water, cool at her lips but warm within. He kissed her back, deeper than the other night, harder and stronger and longer. The sun dried their faces and heated their skin, contrasting with the cool water that moved around their legs.

He bent his knees and dipped her deep in the water again, kept kissing her with their faces submerged then pulled up to break the surface again and let their contact break. He still didn’t speak. Couldn’t. But wanted more. He found the second strap on her swimsuit, the one that was still in place, and lowered that, as well.

She didn’t protest.

Not a word.

But she watched him and her eyes said, “Keep going.”

He slid the tank-style swimsuit top down to her waist and her bared breasts moved lightly in the water, her nipples the color of cinnamon and strawberry mixed together. The swimsuit top bunched awkwardly so she raised her arms and he pulled it over her head, flung it toward the beach, didn’t look to see if it had safely gotten that far.

She stepped back a couple of paces, to where the water only came just above her waist, and stood up, letting her body stream with dazzling wetness. She had her spine straight and her shoulders softly square. She knew he couldn’t take his eyes from her jutting breasts and she didn’t want him to.

The sun steamed the water from her skin and caught in her hair and she lifted her face higher into the bright light and closed her eyes. He could see just how much she loved the freedom of this place, the air and the space for miles around, no one to see them, nothing to get in the way of the sun on their skin and their primal awareness of each other.

He closed the distance, kissed her mouth, her jaw, her neck, and her tight, beautiful nipples, one and then the other. Her breathing sped up and she closed her eyes, pressed his mouth harder against her breast and arched her spine. He took her deeper into his mouth, sucking hard, lifting her higher. Each breast fitted just right, swelled just a little bit beyond the size of his cupped hands.

He was hard, throbbing, in pain.

And she knew.

Easing him into the shallows, she stroked his back, slipped her thumbs inside the waistband of his swim shorts and dragged them down. Then she lay back in the water and pulled his arms toward her so that he slid up her body, his hardness brushing the one remaining barrier of fabric between them at her groin. He heard her breath hiss in at the contact, felt her pushing her hips up so that he’d feel her again.

Oh, God.

He reached between them, cupped his hand over the warm mound between her legs. She pushed harder, and beneath the water his finger slid the fabric aside and slipped inside the two sweet folds. She gasped and writhed, her body trembling with its need for more, and he gave it to her.

But then he felt a change. She began to hold herself back, pressed her hand over his, and opened her eyes. The hesitation lasted only a few seconds, and he could see so clearly what she was thinking, the questions in her head.

Tease or keep going? What’s going to make him stay aroused? What’s going to keep the momentum? If I think about my own pleasure is that going to ruin everything for him?

Half a dozen other doubts and concerns, too, for all he knew.

Her hand slid awkwardly up his arm, and she whispered, “Not yet.”

And despite how sure and confident he’d been just a short while earlier, that was all it took for everything to go wrong. It was like snatching at a piece of thistledown in the wind. You grabbed, and the thistledown floated farther away. You chased it and grabbed again, crushing its delicate fibers in your palm, forgetting why you’d reached for it in the first place.

“Callan?”

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t apologize,” she begged. “Please don’t. It was my fault.”

He laughed.

“It was! I stopped. I didn’t know—”

“What to do next, because I’m such a delicate flower, one wrong move—”

“And I made it. I made the wrong move.”

“It shouldn’t be such a knife edge. Hell, it feels so strong between us sometimes—I like you, Jac, I want you—you’d think I could withstand twenty wrong moves and still get there.”

He slid out of the water and onto the warm sand, hugging his arms around his knees, hiding the evidence of his failure. The sun beat onto his back, a slap more than a caress by this time. They should have headed back to the homestead way before this.

She followed him and knelt in front of him, her posture caving in the way he’d noticed it did when she lost confidence. Was his self-doubt contagious? She crossed her arms in front of her, covering her breasts. He didn’t think it was deliberate. “What could I do to bring it back, Callan?” she asked him softly.

With no answers, thankful at least that she’d managed to avoid the phrase help you he just shook his head and closed his eyes.

It must only have been about thirty seconds later that Jac heard a vehicle. At first she thought it was something else. Wind in the eucalyptus trees, or one of the airplanes that occasionally flew overhead. But it got louder and she recognized the grind of an engine making its way slowly over the rough track in their direction. Kerry surely wouldn’t have come looking for them yet, would she? They’d probably been gone longer than planned, but not by that much.

Oh, shoot, and where was the top of her swimsuit?

Scrambling to her feet, she went looking for it, hearing the vehicle get closer and closer. Make that vehicles, plural. There were two more driving in convoy behind the first one, she saw, as she picked up her sand-encrusted top from the hot ground. Still bare and dripping, Callan found his swim trunks and pulled them on, then crossed the creek bed to meet the vehicles, which gave her time to soak the sand off her top and pull it awkwardly down over her body.

Her throbbing body.

Her breasts still felt swollen, with hardened nipples at their crests, and she had an aching fullness where he’d touched her, and tingling skin that baked where the sun hit her shoulders and back but still felt cool along her arms and around her sides.

If they’d kept going, if Callan had been able to make love to her, they would have been discovered or at the very least interrupted. She’d never been a sexual exhibitionist, but right now in a heartbeat she’d have exchanged flagrant, shameless discovery for this feeling of failure and mess.

She felt stupid for having thought that a block as deep and real as Callan’s could be overcome by a few sexy moves on her part, or even by the real and deep-rooted strength of her own desire. And she felt stupid for having believed that they’d established enough trust, enough depth, enough commitment.

Good grief, commitment?

The word fit nowhere.

She and Carly were leaving this place in two and a half weeks, in quest of a place to belong on the far side of the world. Those postcards she’d written to her brothers on Thursday at the café might have reached Adelaide by now. They were such a tiny step in creating a future for herself, but it was the only step that made any sense—the start of a plan, at least.

Move east, close enough to Andy and Dad in New Jersey or Tom in upstate New York so that they could get together every week if they wanted.

Work on her relationship with Andy, Dad, Tom and her nieces and nephews so that they did want to spend time with her and Carly, because Kerry had shown her it was possible and worthwhile.

Live on her savings and Kurt’s ungenerous alimony for a year while she wrote … tried to write … worked out if there was a chance she’d be able to write and sell … her novel. If she couldn’t, then at least Carly would be in school by that time, and Jac could get office work or possibly teach.

The plan didn’t—couldn’t—include Callan, his family, his land or his problems.

She found the rest of her clothing and struggled into it, her wet swimsuit dragging against the dry fabric of T-shirt and stretchy Lycra shorts. The sand didn’t help, either. Her feet were covered in it, and it ended up gritty and uncomfortable inside her socks and shoes.

She could see Callan still talking to the new arrivals, nodding and gesturing, pointing to places on a map they’d unfolded and spread on the hood of one vehicle. She thought about going over there but before she could decide if it was the right thing he’d left the group and returned across the creek bed to the water hole.

“They’re going to camp here,” he said, and she could see how glad he was to have such an obvious and impersonal subject to talk about.

He wasn’t planning to launch into a rehash of sensitive issues any time soon, and he was probably right. She wondered if they’d ever rediscover the same peace and intimacy that they’d found this morning, and that still hadn’t been enough.

“They’ve picked a good spot!” she said, meeting him halfway.

He nodded, brushing dry sand from his forearms and calves, which gave him a good excuse not to look at her. The air almost crackled with the distance he’d put in place. How long would it last? Would she dare try to break it? Was there any point?

“They’re part of a four-wheel-drive touring club,” he said. “Seem pretty responsible, and well-equipped. They’re planning on staying three nights, and hiking up the gorge tomorrow. I’m glad we did our dawn climb this morning, or we’d have had company.”

“Do you charge them for camping here?” She held out the towel she hadn’t taken the time to use, but he shook his head and she could see he’d dried off almost completely in the sun and didn’t need it. “It’s your land, after all.”

“We’ve thought about it, but it’d be more trouble than it was worth. We’d have to put up signs and garbage facilities, even a pit toilet, and that would only encourage more people to use the place.”

“The water hole’s a pretty sensitive ecosystem, isn’t it? It wouldn’t take much tourism for it to be ruined.”

“We don’t get too much tourist traffic out here. We’re not on the main road to Leigh Creek, and our side road ends just a few clicks from the homestead, at Wiltana Bore. A generation ago, that made Arakeela a pretty lonely place, sometimes, but there’re so many more tourists coming up here now, you’re right, it’s become a good thing.”

“So you never get to know any of them? They don’t invite you down to their campfire for a beer?”

“Sometimes,” he said, and he sounded awkward about it, as if sharing campfire tales wasn’t something he liked doing even when he did get an invitation. “We should head back.”

“Yes.” Pick up on his cues and leave everything unsaid? Or speak? Suddenly, that felt wrong. “Callan—”

“Can you grab the breakfast things and put them in the vehicle?” he cut in quickly. “I’d better get my shirt on or I’ll start to burn.”

So we’re not even going to acknowledge that we’re not talking about it, Callan? That’s it? We’re left hanging?

And yet, when she thought about it, she didn’t know what else they could do.