Heart of the Outback (5 page)

“Tell me what you’ve been doing over the past five years,” he invited.

“Working.” Her smile mocked any further pursuit of that topic. “I don’t want to bore you, Gareth.”

He glanced at the statuette on the seat between them. “You obviously worked to good effect. I don’t imagine that such an award comes easily.”

“It was a goal to aim for.”

“And you reached it.” He lifted his gaze and searched her eyes, curious to see what she felt about it.

“Yes.”

“Have you now achieved your life’s ambition?”

“No. I have other goals.” He could misinterpret that statement as much as he liked. She was not going to elaborate to him on the way her mind was working.

His mouth curled into a sardonic smile. “To reach the top of any field, you have to dedicate your life to it, Alida. Is there room for anything else apart from your ambition?”

“I’m making room for you, Gareth,” she answered bluntly.

“Tonight you are.”

“Yes. For tonight.” To see if it was a beginning or a dead end, she thought.

His fingers dragged back and forth over hers, transmitting the tension that held them both captive to the unanswered questions that throbbed between them.

“How old are you?” he asked quietly.

“Thirty.”

“You haven’t wanted to marry?”

She knew he had her pigeonholed as a woman whose career came first and foremost. “It hasn’t happened.”

“Does your career get in the way?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Then why?”

“I loved a man once. It takes two people to marry, Gareth.”

“Who was he?”

“No one I could introduce you to,” she said evasively.

“I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically, totally unaware that she had been speaking of him.

“Are you?” Alida tossed at him. “We wouldn’t be in this taxi if I was committed to someone else, Gareth.”

His mouth twisted. “You mean you wouldn’t do what I did?”

“Precisely.”

“It wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting you, Alida.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really care about desire.”

There was a raw yearning in his eyes that choked the breath in her throat. His marriage hadn’t stopped him from taking what he wanted last time. Would her hypothetical marriage have held him back from approaching her again? How ruthless was Gareth in going after what he wanted? How much did he want her? He had once been contemptuous of her supposedly loose standards of morality. What were his standards?

“If you don’t care about desire, Alida, why am I with you?” he asked, a hard note of suspicion in his voice.

Had he leapt to the thought that she might have played him along to wreak the kind of revenge she had initially had in mind? “Perhaps I didn’t want to be by myself,” she answered.

He probed her eyes for long tense moments before relaxing with a rueful sigh. “In the loneliness of the night,” he half mused. “I guess we all know how that feels. The problem is in how much lonelier you feel afterwards.”

The comment gave Alida the opportunity to ascertain where she stood with him. “Was I one of many that you had because of…”

“No.” He gave a harsh derisive laugh. “Believe it or not, I found celibacy easier to live with than guilt. There was only you, Alida.”

The jolt to her heart was instant. She shook her head in stunned disbelief. “Are you saying that except for me you stayed faithful to your wife all through your marriage?”

“Is that so surprising?” he mocked, then cynically added, “Yes, I suppose it is in the fast lane where you live.”

“Fidelity is not exclusive to your set of people, Gareth,” she retorted sharply, hating his false assumption about her but knowing she had no means of correcting it. “You must have loved Kate very much.”

A strange conflict played across his face as though he was no longer sure of what he felt for the woman he had married. “Kate was my wife,” he said. To him that was obviously explanation enough for the way he had stood by her.

Alida felt painfully confused. All her preconceptions about Gareth were crashing around her. “Why me?” she asked huskily. “Why choose me?”

“Does one choose mutual attraction? Did you choose me, Alida?”

He was right. Choice hadn’t come into it. It was like a fever in the blood that had caught both of them unprepared for what would follow.

But she had been the only one, Alida thought on a rising wave of hope. No other woman had stirred him as she had. Surely that meant there was a chance for this strong attraction to grow into something deeper now there was no reason to stunt it or cut it dead.

On the other hand, Gareth hadn’t come looking for her. He still didn’t choose her. None of his prejudices about the sort of woman she was had been wiped out, and Alida knew that words wouldn’t achieve that end. He had to see, to learn for himself. Could that be done in four nights and three days?

The challenge of desire burned in his eyes, forcing an acknowledgment that she shared it with him, inciting the response that only he had ever drawn from her. It was impossible to control the instinctive chemistry stirring into urgent life inside her, suffusing her limbs with a sweet heavy ache, exciting fluttery little tremors through her stomach, bringing a tingle of sensitivity to her breasts. She wasn’t even aware of the taxi slowing to a halt outside her house.

“This is it, isn’t it?” the driver enquired when neither Gareth nor Alida moved.

Alida confirmed that they had arrived at the right destination. Gareth paid the fare, then helped her out of the car.

“Your house?” Gareth asked, a note of surprise in his voice as he scanned its conventional facade. It was not a luxurious house, by any means, more a good solid brick home with no outstanding features except for the artistic landscaping of the garden.

“Yes,” Alida answered briefly. Gareth’s arm was around her waist, his hand resting on her hip. The warmth of his palm seemed to burn through her silk culotte. She was vibrantly aware of his body brushing against hers as they walked up the front path.

“Wouldn’t an apartment suit you better?” he asked curiously.

”I prefer my own space.”

And space for Andy to play outdoors, she added silently. It was fortunate her darling little boy was out of the way at the moment. It wouldn’t do to let Gareth see him until such time as it might prove right. She would telephone her parents tomorrow, tell them she was delayed in Perth for a few more days. Andy wouldn’t mind. He loved being with his grandparents and uncles. Life at the Rose homestead was far more fascinating than the enforced boundaries of a house in suburban Perth.

With a heart-sickening jolt, Alida suddenly remembered the bathroom. Andy’s toys were lined along the bathtub ledge. She would have to hide them. Her mind swept through the rest of the house, trying to recollect if there were other things of Andy’s lying around in full view. She couldn’t think of any. Gareth would have no occasion to look into Andy’s bedroom. The only bedroom that concerned him was hers.

Her heart beat faster as she unlocked the front door and pushed it open. Her legs were trembling as she stepped forward into the hallway. She switched on the overhead light and moved to the console table where she set down the statuette and her handbag. The door clicked shut behind her. She took a deep breath in a vain attempt to calm her shrieking nerves, then swung around to face Gareth.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked with brittle brightness.

“No.” It was little more than a breath from his lips. His eyes told her unmistakably what he wanted. The frank explicit message was both frightening and enthralling. His skin looked tightly stretched across the strong bone structure of his face, and she shivered in anticipation, recognising the taut waiting hunger that had once been unleashed with barbaric passion.

Gareth’s thin veneer of civilisation was disappearing before her eyes. There was strength and authority in the hand that took hers and pulled her against his body, uncompromising purpose in the arm that slid around her waist to hold her there. The adrenalin pumping through her bloodstream made Alida feel light-headed. She wanted his mouth to come down on hers, wanted the kisses that would shut out the rest of the world. Only a persistent beat of sanity cried a warning against it.

Remember afterwards, it said. Remember how he turned away from you when his passion had all been spent. He didn’t care about you, and he still doesn’t. If you let him use you as he did before, it will be the same, wife or no wife. He will consume all you give him, and you’ll be left with ashes again.

A shudder of pain ran through her as he bent his head towards her. “No! Don’t!” she choked out, and wrenched her head aside.

She felt Gareth’s body stiffen, heard a terse impatience in his voice. “What’s the matter?”

“I…I can’t do this, Gareth. Let me go. Please,” she begged, her hands kneading his chest in agitation while the rest of her body churned in upheaval at the denial she was forcing upon it.

She wanted him so desperately. He was so close. Everything within her yearned for the fulfilment he promised. But it was a false promise. Everything he had said, the way he had acted—he only wanted to take, not give.

A hand grasped her chin, turned her face to his. The blue eyes blazed with angry questions. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because…” Because I love you. I always have, fool that I am. But you don’t love me, Gareth Morgan, and you’re going to break my heart into little jagged pieces again, and leave me in a far worse state of desolation than you did before, and I can’t bear it. A huge lump swelled into her throat and tears welled in her eyes.

“Alida?” His brows lowered in puzzlement. The arm around her relaxed its hold. The hand on her chin moved to gently cup her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I’m not playing games. I meant to—”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he commanded urgently.

“You are. About so many things. I thought I could use you as you want to use me, but I’m not like that, Gareth. I’m not. And it’s no use thinking I can be. I just can’t take being used again.”

“Alida.” It was a rasp of protest. His hands moved to her upper arms, rubbing them in a soothing way. Then he heaved a ragged sigh and stepped back from her, his face tight with frustration, his eyes sick with it, confused and accusing.

Alida felt sick, too. Tears spilled down her cheeks in a miserable dribble as she stared at the man she had loved and hated and wanted for so long. Why couldn’t it be different? Why couldn’t he have courted her decently, as he must have courted his wife? Why did he judge her so meanly?

He lifted his hand in a stiff, awkward gesture of offering. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“For a woman who lives in the fast lane?” she choked out bitterly. “You don’t care about how I feel, Gareth. You never did. Your desire is only to take.”

Her legs felt as though they were flowing with heavy treacle, boneless. Somehow she forced them to move, to support her as she turned and stepped to the console table. “I’ll ring for a taxi. You won’t have to wait long,” she said, reaching for the telephone.

“Why are you doing this, Alida?”

His voice was low and strained. She paused, yearning for him to be sincerely sympathetic, then shook her head with bleak resignation. “There’s nothing for you to stay for, Gareth. I won’t change my mind.”

“You shared yourself with me once,” he reminded her. “Won’t you let me give you something in return?”

“Like what?” She swept him with a dull, derisive look.

“Company. You said you didn’t want to be by yourself tonight.”

“Yes. I said that. But what company would you be, Gareth? All you do is judge me contemptuously. I don’t want to hear any more of your prejudices. They hurt.” Her eyes raked his with pained accusation, then dropped to the award she had won. She picked up the statuette. “You think this represents ambition.”

“Doesn’t it?”

A harsh, bitter laugh scraped from her throat. “Have you ever worked hard to keep from thinking of other things, Gareth? To wear yourself out so you’ll sleep at night?”

“Yes. I’ve done that,” he answered quietly.

“Are there national awards for good management of a cattle station?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But you give yourself goals.”

“Yes.”

“Well, so did I. So did I,” she repeated sadly as she set the statuette on the table again. “Years of hard work to stave off the loneliness—that’s what this award represents to me, Gareth. And you know what I felt when I went up on stage to get it tonight?”

“Tell me.”

“I didn’t feel anything.” She turned to him with a wobbly little smile. “I should have felt something, shouldn’t I? It wasn’t right to feel nothing.”

“You looked proud.”

“Yes. And I smiled. I smiled very brightly, like a winner. Except I’m a loser in life, Gareth. The right things don’t happen to me. Not the things that I really care about.”

“What do you want?”

She stared at him, seeing the restraint he was rigidly applying to keep this conversation calm and reasonable. His hands were clenched at his sides, belying the quiet, soothing words he spoke to her. He was wound tightly like a clock, exerting control by sheer willpower.

The strain showed on his face, making it look older somehow. She saw that the lines carved from nose to mouth were deeper than she remembered. Fine crow’s-feet marked the outer corners of his eyes. A few threads of grey glinted in the midnight-black hair. Time moves on and stamps its passage on all of us, she thought. We’re both five years older, the circumstances are different, yet everything remains the same between us.

“You wouldn’t think of introducing your daughter to me, would you, Gareth? You’d keep her as separate from me as you once kept your wife.”

A muscle in his cheek contracted. “I didn’t think that far ahead, Alida.”

Her mouth twisted. “I know. I’m not a real person to you, am I? You made me up in your head, fashioning an image that suited you, that you could discard as unimportant after I’d served your needs. That way you didn’t have to think of me as a person who bleeds inside. People in the fast lane are too busy to bleed, aren’t they? And they don’t stop to care about children.”