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Her Galahad
Melissa James


Seven years ago, a pregnant Tessa Earldon had been passionately in love with her newlywed husband.But she was told he was dead and was quickly pushed into an ill-fated marriage - and lost her child shortly thereafter. Now divorced and on the run from her ex, when she hears footsteps one dark night, she assumes they belong to her husband. And she's right. But she's wrong about which husband is pursuing her .Six years ago, David Oliveri - aka Jirrah McLaren - was about to claim his bride when her brother intercepted him, threw him in jail and convinced Tessa that he was dead and to marry another. Now Jirrah is a free man, and he's back to get what's his - his wife. His child. And revenge. And not necessarily in that order.






“You must have grieved for me real bad,” David said.


“A whole month, wasn’t it, before you married again—out of respect for my memory? Nice grief, Tessa.”

She blanched. “If I’d known you were alive—”

“What? You wouldn’t have committed bigamy?” At her gasp, he continued. “That’s right, princess—little Miss High Society is a bigamist. Surely with a daddy, brother and husband as barristers, one of them checked out the facts for you before you walked down the aisle for the second time in just over a month?”

“I didn’t know you were alive!” Tessa’s cry throbbed. “They gave me a death certificate! They had a memorial service for you!”

She still sounded stunned. As if she hadn’t known where he’d been all those years. As if she hadn’t betrayed him for wealth, success and a handsome face.

Maybe she hadn’t?




Her Galahad

Melissa James










MELISSA JAMES


is a mother of three living in a beach suburb in county New South Wales. A former nurse, waitress, store assistant, perfume and chocolate (yum!) demonstrator among other things, she believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. She’ll try almost anything at least once to see what it feels like—a fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, “I can do that!” Years later, she found her niche at Intimate Moments. Currently writing a pilot/spy series set in the South Pacific, she can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kids’ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, climbing down a cave or over a cliff—anywhere her characters are at the time!


For my mum,

who always said that this book would be the one.

And for Jaime, for her contribution.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue




Chapter 1


Lynch Hill Primary School

Outback New South Wales

It happened again.

The quiet whisper of chilling menace limped up her spine and entered her flesh with pinprick accuracy, congealing her blood to ice. This primitive instinct, like a savage voodoo curse, always came when she had to run. Run for her life.

The depth of terror that came alive when Cameron was close.

A furtive search of the school grounds, the lane and the road beyond revealed trees, grass, the half-tarred road, softly lowing cows meandering around the paddock opposite the tiny Outback school. A tranquil country scene, nothing to fear.

But she wasn’t paranoid. The pulsing beat of urgency inside her—the need to bolt—never failed. Cameron was here in Lynch Hill, using his cultured angel’s face, the smooth persuasion of his TV evangelist’s voice, the aura of wealth and success to get the information he wanted.

Have you seen this woman?

Like a nightmare in automatic rewind, she could almost smell his spicy lime-coconut scent lingering in the air: the subtle benediction of fear. I’m here, Theresa.

“How’d I do, Miss Honeycutt?”

Tessa started, clicked the stopwatch and walked to the boy panting by the ragged finish line at the end of the playground. “Fifty-nine point five-eight, Matt—a brilliant four hundred! You’ll blitz Sam Iliah at the Country Carnival. Any scout coming from the Australian Institute of Sport is bound to spot you.”

“Awesome!” Matt lifted his hand; they slapped a high-five.

A two-ton utility truck drove into the grounds of the school. The rushing breeze in its wake caused golden-ochre leaves to drift down from the trees lining the road, warming the cloudless autumn day with hues of fire. The horn beeped. “Matty!”

Relax, Tessa. Breathe. It’s not Cameron.

“Hi, Dad!” Matt jumped the fence, raced to his father’s truck and hopped in. He hung halfway out the window to yell, “Thanks, Miss Honeycutt. You’re the best teacher we ever had!”

Moments like this made all the hours she put in after school with the kids worthwhile. She swallowed the lump in her throat. She wouldn’t be here to see Matt win his race, or to help Amy blossom into a great outback artist, or enjoy little Tani and Jarred’s smiles of wonder at kinder gym again. Her darling kids would have to travel twenty miles each way to school every day. “Have a great holiday.”

Matt’s father waved and drove away.

In the sudden hush of the truck’s departure, it returned. The slow, prickling sensation rose above her spine, making all the hairs on her neck lift.

It was real. It was now. Without turning her head, she searched her peripheral vision with swift glances—

And she saw him: the silent menace. A man hiding deep within the shadow of a thick belt of windbreak trees across the road. Anonymous clothes. Dark hat. Faceless, motionless, silent.

Oh, God. One of Cameron’s goons had found her.

Her stomach churned. Her heart pounded. Sweat broke out on her face. Every instinct screamed at her to run—

Act like you never saw him.

She strolled across the field to the whitewashed building that was Lynch Hill Primary School. She locked the door, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked to the lane. She opened the old wooden gate, flicking a quick look from beneath her lashes.

He was still there, a silent shadow in the deep green darkness. And somehow she knew he’d been there before. Just watching her. Waiting.

Whistling a little tune, she ambled down the lane to the main road. She turned left toward the doubtful safety of her boardinghouse, heart slamming against her ribs and sweat trickling in the valley between her breasts. Get to the car, to the car….

Pretending to tie her shoe, she shot a glance back. He was still there, unnerving her with his dark sense of quiet. Almost invisible. A ghost of the pines.

The taste and scent of fear filled her mouth.

She straightened and continued down the road away from him, kicking at rocks and fallen leaves, making a hopping step once or twice. A country teacher celebrating the Easter break.

A soft, oh, so soft crunching of pine needles behind her. She spun around. He was coming out of the shadows into the sun.

Tessa braced herself to run—

But her silent watcher turned in the opposite direction, walking without hurry to an old red one-ton pickup truck.

Even from his back view, she could feel the heat emanating from him, the sense of power and strength held deep inside. So much purpose in every movement. Hints of simmering fury kept under tight leash. Hidden danger radiated from him like an aura: a raw, earthy male.

Fascinated, she kept watching as he half turned for a moment. Five-eleven, maybe six feet. Broad shouldered, strong build. A taut backside encased in well-worn Levi’s. Scuffed boots long past their quality prime. A dented Akubra hat kept his face in shadow. Loose dark curls touched the collar of his form-fitting shirt. Such beautifully muscled light coffee skin, he almost appeared a statue: an ancient messenger of Zeus. Obviously a physical man. So perfect of form…

A long-buried memory stirred. He looked—he looked like—

It began in her fingers. The shock hit, like a tiny current of power flowing up her arm, leaving her trembling in its wake as it flew to her very core.

“David?” A weak, stunned whisper. “David?”

Perspiration broke out anew, brow, palm, throat, breast. The pain of shock streaked from fingers to toes, flashing past her heart in its lightning journey, kick-starting a pounding beat: boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.

“It’s crazy,” she muttered. “I’m insane. It can’t be him….”

But her eyes kept telling her what her mind knew to be false. Her stomach clenched. Her lungs seized. Her pulse stormed and crashed in her ears, boom-boom, boom-boom.

The man kept striding across the grassy paddock, head down, feet rolling from heel to ball. He had a strange walk, compelling to watch: head down, feet moving as if feeling for hidden treasure beneath.

Just like David once walked.

David, the beloved. How she’d loved his name, its meaning. As she’d loved his tribal, totem, dreaming name. Jirrah the dolphin, her magnificent creature of the sea. How well it suited him. The sleekness, the movements of grace and beauty; the playfulness, the instinctive purpose beneath. Jirrah. The name she’d cried aloud in passion, in the trusting confidence of young love.

Then he was gone, and there was nothing left. Nothing but chasing shadows. Looking for David in every man she met, long after she’d married Cameron Beller.

Don’t be stupid. David’s gone, and he’s never coming back.

But she couldn’t stop watching the man behind her. Her wondering gaze drank him in, as a desert wanderer finding oasis. David, oh, David…

He climbed into the battered pickup and drove away, past the belt of pines and small scrubby paddocks lining the battered road, toward the tiny Outback township of Lynch Hill.

From over her shoulder she watched him leave, her eyes fixed on the empty street where he’d been.



He watched her in the rearview mirror as he drove off, hating the way he automatically noted how her lithe golden body glowed in her simple denim shorts and white long-sleeved knit top. Hating that she still looked so damn good. Those incredible golden-amber eyes, in a vivid, slightly crooked face dominated by slanted high cheekbone and full, sculpted lips. The river of dark hair with a life all its own, falling over her shoulder in its habitual thick plait. That sinuous grace and exotic fascination shimmered in the air around her as strong as ever, still drawing him to her against his will.

Damn her for that.

She shouldn’t be here at all. She should have changed by now, ensconced in a Harbourside mansion in Sydney, living the high life as the wife of a rich and famous barrister. Yet she was in Lynch Hill, a simple Outback teacher. Looking like she had at twenty. Shorts and joggers and a face a man couldn’t forget.

Damn her for that, too.

He turned a corner heading into town, still watching her. There was a hint of a hunted doe about her: a wide-eyed wistful touch. The tense stance of her, always ready to bolt.

So what? He knew, none better, how deceiving her looks could be. The fawnlike, haunting fear in those gorgeous almond-shaped eyes of hers was as fake as her name.

With a hand shading her eyes, her gaze stayed riveted to his truck. Like she was reading the license plate.

She sure as hell didn’t seem surprised to see him.

So he’d been wrong. She knew he was here. She’d probably known the whole time.

His lips twisted. “So that’s how it is? The same old game. Damn stupid to even want to think differently of her,” he muttered, slamming the steering wheel with a clenched fist.

That he could still hold any vestige of innocence after all these years was a joke. She was just like the rest of them. And to think he’d wanted to protect her…he’d actually thought she might need help. He must be going soft in the head! Fool. Jerk. Well, that was over. He was going ahead with his plan—all of it—and little Miss Respectable could take the consequences.

Damn her and her wide-eyed, haunting, crooked loveliness. Sucking him in with a look. Making a fool of him again. She was working with them to find and destroy the stuff he had—evidence that could put her precious family inside for ten to fifteen. No more illusions. No protection. He’d destroy them all.

He parked outside the town’s only pub, bypassing the wet, malty-smelling bar, the smoky crowd watching Skychannel, playing pool or slots. He strode up the back stairs to his room, flung open the door and stopped dead. “What the—”

Torn, shredded, broken. Opened up and strewn all around. The room was trashed in a frantic search for what he’d never find.

“This time he’s gone too far,” he growled. “This is bloody war!” He grabbed what he needed, threw some notes from his wallet on the bedside table and bolted for the pickup.

An odd noise when he opened the driver’s door—a burned-out sizzle—gave him two seconds’ warning. “Run!” he screamed at passers-by, diving headlong on the road.

The truck exploded with a roar of fire.

His body lifted and flew with the force of the blast, landing with a sickening whump on the street. Smashing glass and shrill screams filled his ears as he rolled over and over on the gritty road like a flicked cigarette butt, the untarred mix of earth and gravel ripping his clothes and skin apart. He was almost relieved when he collided with something cold and solid—the makeshift red soil gutter on the other side. He slammed into the dirt wall and fell on his back, trying to catch his breath.

When the screams died down, a crowd gathered around him. “Call the police! This man’s been injured!”

“No cops!” His voice croaked so bad no one heard. A kid went running to the tiny police station at the other end of town.

The game of hiding in the shadows was up. He lurched to his feet and staggered away, his left boot peeling beneath his foot, the afternoon wind stinging his cuts and burns.

“You can’t go now, mister! You need help. The police and ambulance are on their way,” a woman called. “You need a doctor. You have to give a statement. Someone bombed your car!”

“No duh, lady,” he muttered and lurched ahead, bolting on unsteady feet to the dubious protection of the fields outside town. He had to get away. If the cops so much as asked him his name he was a goner, no matter what he answered.

There was only one way he could get out of here now—and she’d damn well better co-operate.



Could the whole world change in a single half hour?

Tessa walked home on automatic pilot. She didn’t even notice she’d reached the faded gray weatherboard of Mrs. Savage’s boardinghouse until she turned the knob to let herself in.

She looked at her hand in blinking confusion. Then she walked inside and wandered to the stairs, looking around her. The polished mellowness of the homey old place, the faded violet wallpaper, the scent of lavender suited the musty, old-fashioned loveliness of the latest Outback town she’d called home. She’d been happy at Lynch Hill…almost at peace. For a little while.

What am I doing? I have to get out of here. Now!

Time to go. Leave the money on the dresser and disappear. The same way she’d left the other four country towns in the past two and a half years, from Queensland to the Victorian border.

“Miss Honeycutt. Oh, Miss Honeycutt!”

She turned to her breathless, birdlike landlady coming in from the kitchen. Her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes proclaimed she had fresh gossip to pass on. Tessa schooled her features into a smile of polite interest. Don’t give her a reason to wonder about you. Don’t leave her with any doubts or fear. “Yes, Mrs. Savage?”

Mrs. Savage straightened her teased mess of gray hair, with her usual mixture of quick curiosity and cringing apologetic smiles. “I do hope you’re not wanting to take a shower, Miss Honeycutt. I know how you like to rinse off after a hard day, but the water’s off again, and won’t be back on until tomorrow. I phoned the company for you—I know how much you like to—”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Savage. I’m used to country ways now.” While she smiled she mentally tallied what she could pack in ten minutes.

The old lady gave her a little, knowing smile. “Oh, but you must be wanting to freshen up and get yourself pretty—what with your date tonight with that nice man—”

Nine minutes—Tessa’s hand froze on the banister. “What man?” she asked, very quietly.

Mrs. Savage’s face creased with ingratiating innuendo. “Oh, my stars, you’re a lucky girl. He came to see you today. I said you wouldn’t be home till five-thirty, being one of your training days for young Matthew—heavens, you’re early today, it’s only one forty-five! Oh, of course, it’s the Easter break. You let the children leave at lunchtime! Anyway, he said he’d come back at five. Oh, and he asked me not to tell you! He wanted to surprise you. Silly me—! You won’t tell him, will you? What a handsome, charming man he is! That lovely hair—so wavy and tawny, like a lion’s mane—and his eyes, like caramel toffee! He’s so tall, so debonair! Just like Cary Grant on An Affair to Remember—”

Tessa reeled back. Cameron’s here. Oh, God, it’s too late, too late…. Then she came at her landlady like a drunken woman. He can’t find me. I can’t let him take me!

“…and he was so kind to an old lady—”

Tessa grabbed Mrs. Savage by the arms, her hold deliberately gentle. Seven minutes. “You didn’t see me. I never came home.”

Mrs. Savage let out a squeaking gasp. “M-Miss Honeycutt?!”

Tessa pulled the old lady closer, eye to eye, not realizing she was all the more frightening because her hold was so very gentle. “You didn’t see me,” she whispered right in her face. “I never came home.”

The landlady’s rheumy eyes goggled. “But—Miss Honeycutt—!”

You’re scaring her. Tessa closed her eyes. Think, think! You need time to get away, and Edna Savage can provide it! With a lightning change of plan, she released her, and gave Mrs. Savage a deliberately pleading look. “Please, I need your help. Can you help me?”

Mrs. Savage nodded, looking doubtful but willing. “Of course, Miss Honeycutt. Anything at all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Savage. I knew I could rely on you.” Six minutes. “Keep him waiting here as long as you can. Don’t tell him I came home, that you saw me, or told me he came here. Do you understand?”

The elderly lady blinked. “But—he’s such a nice man! Why would you want him to think badly of you?”

Tessa nearly screamed in frustration. Five minutes. “Please, I’m begging you. I never came home!”

Mrs. Savage gave a doubtful nod. “All right, Miss Honeycutt.”

She sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

Run, Tessa. Now.

She tore up the stairs and shoved everything she’d need into an Indian-weave sack, throwing unwanted stuff on the floor in a frenzy of fear. “Shoes.” Cameron’s here.

“Underwear.” North last time. Southwest before that. I’ll have to head east or south—just nowhere near Sydney.

“Jacket—jeans—”

Oh, dear God, that man probably knows I came home. He must know where I live. If he tells Cameron—

“T-shirts. Windcheater.”

Cameron’s already been here, you idiot! Run!

“Toothbrush. Soap. Toothpaste.”

What if he’s outside now watching me? Or calling Cameron? What if he follows me? What if he makes sure I can’t get away?

“Pyjamas.”

If Cameron gets me—

“Hairbrush. Socks!” She flung them into the sack.

I’ll kill myself before I’ll go back.

She threw the sack over her shoulder, grabbed her wallet and keys and bolted back down the stairs, leaving a small, pitiful mess. The only visible sign of her time in sweet Lynch Hill.

A wailing voice halted her flight at the base of the stairs. “Miss Honeycutt! Please! What can I say to him to keep him here? I’m not clever, like you. I can’t think what to say, and I—”

One minute. She turned on the babbling woman, holding her skinny shoulders. Human contact is nice to elderly people. She’s scared. Reassure her. “Just act normal, Mrs. Savage. Give him coffee. Talk about your life. Tell him I’ll be home soon. Tell him I’ve gone to one of my pupils’ houses after school, or there’s a Neighborhood Watch meeting you forgot about, or Amy’s day changed for art lessons. Make up something. Anything to keep him looking for me in Lynch Hill until tomorrow. Just don’t tell him I came home, or you told me he was here!” She released the woman, hoping to God she could trust her. She picked up her sack. “Please. I’m begging you. Tell him nothing.”

“Y-es.” Mrs. Savage nodded, her eyes still bewildered. “I—I—y-yes. I understand. I’ll do what I can to keep him here.”

Tessa kissed her soft, wrinkled cheek, inhaling her violet-scented powder. Another memory to store, another scent to conjure regret. Another unwanted goodbye. “Thank you.”

“He—won’t hurt me, will he?”

She swung back, realizing with a pang what the dear old lady was willing to go through for her. “No. I swear to you he won’t.” He’ll save that for me.

She pressed a fifty-dollar note into her landlady’s hand. Do the drill fast. “Can you clean up my room before he comes back? Make it look like I’m still here? Keep my things for a week. If you don’t hear from me by next weekend put it all in a charity bin. And please, please don’t talk to anyone about this.”

She threw open the screen door, burst through the open space to the verandah and cannoned straight into a hard male body.

She looked up, saw the face belonging to it, and screamed.




Chapter 2


He was about to force his way inside the faded gray frame house when she bolted out the door and slammed into him.

He staggered back under the twin impact of her body crashing against him and the bag she carried thumping into his gut. The echoes of her first scream still rang in his ears; her second, riding on its wave, hit a new note in piercing pitch.

“Be quiet! I won’t hurt you.” He grabbed her shoulders to steady them both. “Where’s your car?”

She blinked and stared at him; her shrill cry stopped with shocking suddenness. Laughter replaced it, a wild sound of disbelief—but even the cynical twisting of her lips lit her exotic face with all its crooked charm. “You’re really something, aren’t you. ‘Hi, Tessa. Long time, no see. Where’s your car?’”

He grabbed her arm, pulling her with him through the door to the verandah. “Where is it? We’ve got to get out of here!”

The laughter snapped off like a shuttered light. “It was you—at the school today. I thought…I thought—it can’t be him! Then you left…and—but you must have known it was me….”

He pulled her off the verandah and down the stairs, around the faded English gardens to the barnlike garage at the back of the house. “We can talk about it on the road. Just run!”

With the sudden fury of a lioness she lashed out, struggling to break free of him. One fist found its mark, attacking arms and chest already battered; her nails clawed at cuts still open and bleeding. “Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”

He grabbed her wrists, trying to hold her writhing body still. “Have you gone nuts? We’ve got to get out of here now!”

She stilled, panting; then she jerked out of his hold, her face blanched, her eyes glassy. “I thought you were dead!”

He rocked back on his feet. “What?”

“You—they said you were dead—” she whispered.

He blinked and frowned, reasserting mental control. Of course they did. Damn fool he’d been to not think of it before!

Did that mean Tessa had never—

He shook himself. “Well, you can see I’m not. Now that’s established, which car is yours so we can get out of here?” He reined in the fierce desire to shake her—he had to get her trust, and bloody fast. “Every second counts. Get in your car!”

She broke away, bolting to a beat-up brown van. “Thank God, a four-wheel-drive,” he muttered as he threw himself onto the passenger seat. “We’ll need to go over some rough roads to—”

She leveled a small gun in his face. “Shut up.”

He shut up. Yeah, she’d changed, all right.

“Good.” She spoke with a fierce, terrifying quiet. “How much did he pay you to do this? Did you set this up, or did he?”

His heart pounded in sickening rhythm, but he lifted a brow in a show of cool unconcern. If she saw the fear clenching his gut she’d leave him behind on the road alone and unarmed. “Which ‘he’ are you talking about? Your dad, your brother or your husband?”

She held the gun before his eyes without wavering, her vivid, glowing face filled with grim hatred and desperate resolution. Terror lurked beneath the steel in her eyes, held at bay only by the force of her will. “Damn you, David, answer me!”

He reached out to reassure her, but halted as she lifted the gun barrel to level right between his eyes. “Does it matter now? For God’s sake, Beller’s after us!”

Her eyes glittered. “How much is he paying you this time?”

“What?” Paying him? This time? “What the—”

“I hope you asked for more this time. A resurrection’s a rare occurrence. After all, anybody can die. It’s Easter holiday, too—very appropriate. I hope you asked for double time, at least.”

He blinked again. “Are you insane? What the hell are you talking about? And why now? Beller could be here any minute!”

She shook her head, showing her teeth in a fierce smile. “So you’d better prove to me I’m safer with you than him, and fast. Or you’re on the road. Don’t move, David. I know how to use this—and don’t think I won’t. Did you work out this plan, thinking I’d be so shocked by your sudden resurrection from the dead I’d go along with anything you said without question? How much is Cameron paying you to bring me to him? How much?” She was screaming now, her forehead beading with the perspiration of intense stress.

He could feel tiny drops of sweat breaking out on his upper lip; he watched in wary fascination as her finger curled around the trigger, her thumb pulled off the safety catch. “I’ve never taken a cent from your father, your brother or Beller. I’d never sink as low as that.”

The gun wobbled in her hand. “They told me you were dead—and you never came for me,” she whispered a second time. “Why?”

The half-terrified, confused betrayal in her eyes was something he understood—he’d been there. He’d hated this woman every minute of the past six years, and her look, her words said she didn’t exactly hold tender memories of him, either. “When we’re safe I’ll explain,” was all he could think to say.

Explain? What a joke. Could anyone understand the crazy mess his life had become since meeting Tessa?

“This is a scam.” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “You can’t pull a trick on me he hasn’t already tried—and I’d rather die now than go back to him.”

He finally lost it. “Tessa, for God’s sake will you look at me? It’s not just you he’s after!” With a lightning movement he had the gun in his hand, jamming the safety into place, checking the barrel for bullets. “Don’t scream—if I was going to shoot you I’d have done it years ago. Now look at me, woman,” he snarled. “He did this to me because of you!”

Eyes wide with horror gradually unclouded. She seemed to look at him, to take in the blood trickling down his temple, the swollen eye and torn lip, the contorted purpling masses on his arms, chest and thighs through his torn T-shirt and ripped jeans. “If I had a car left I wouldn’t be here. Beller blew up my truck, right in the middle of town. God knows how—I was only gone three minutes. Thank God whatever he used had a faulty timer.”

Or maybe it didn’t? He frowned. Maybe Beller didn’t want him dead—just disabled. Unable to reach Tessa in time.

I thought you were dead, she’d said….

There’s no time to think!

He handed her back her gun with the bullets still in the barrel, sweating on the hope she’d understand the significance of his act. “Your landlady’s watching us from the back window. How long do you think we’ve got until he charms her into spilling her guts? When he knows what type of car we’re in and which way she saw us go, we’re stuffed until we can get a new car. So can we please get the hell out of here now before he kills both of us?”

Her eyes searched his for a moment—the strange, unforgettable eyes of amber and gold that still visited his dreams after six years. Then she started the car and screeched away from the house. But she left the loaded gun on her lap—and whether it was to use on him or Beller he didn’t know.

Right now he didn’t care. He was safer taking his chances with Tessa than an obsessed maniac like Cameron Beller. On a blown-out quiet sigh he said, “Head for the northern highway. We can stay at my place tonight.”

Her voice filled with disbelief and contempt. “We? You think I’d stay with you? I’ll get you out of town, but that’s it.”

“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “When we’re away from here and safe we can take a stroll down memory lane, throw a few recriminations around. I’ve got a few questions I wouldn’t mind asking myself. But let’s work at keeping alive first!”

“We’ll talk? About what, David?” Her voice quivered with fury; her hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. “About how you walked out on me? How you disappeared without a word, leaving me to believe you were dead until now?”

“Keep your eyes on the road. I didn’t escape a car bomb to have you slam me into a pole.” He put out a hand, steadying the steering wheel as the van flashed past farms on the northern edge of town. They hit a straight stretch of open road, flanked by flat brown paddocks and half-rotting fences. He kept an eye on the road behind them, throwing up a fervent prayer for a quick sunset, a sudden autumn storm or miraculous fog; but the sun kept shining and the van could be seen for a mile either way. “And don’t call me David. I go by the name Jirrah now. Jirrah McLaren. David Oliveri no longer exists. And I didn’t lead you to believe anything. I had no idea you thought I was dead.”

“What do you mean you don’t exist?” Tessa drove one-handed; the other caressed her brow, as if soothing herself. “What did you think I’d believe when you didn’t show up? They said—”

“If you haven’t worked out by now that your family are lying, cheating sons of bitches, you’re a fool.” He flicked another glance back. “There’s a car coming up behind us. Fast.”

With a high-pitched gasp she floored the accelerator.

The car, a dark Ford sedan, sped up until it was right behind them. It weaved toward the other side, came back again, too close behind. Trying to find a way around them.

He glanced at Tessa. The hand holding the wheel was shaking; her breaths came and went in sharp-edged ragged gasps, her terror so palpable it was hitting him in waves. “Tessa?”

She fingered the gun in her lap like a talisman. “He said he’d kill me if I left him,” she whispered. “But my God, what he’d do to me first…”

A sudden horn blast made her hand jerk on the wheel. The van skidded, fishtailing toward the red-mud shoulder of the road.

“He won’t have to, the way you’re driving—you’ll kill us both.” He grabbed the wheel for the second time. “Hold the bloody wheel straight, with both hands preferably, and ease off the accelerator. You’re spinning the van out. Keep it steady.”

“He’s right beside us!” she screamed.

He squinted, trying to see inside the tinted dark glass of the car pulling level with them. “Don’t panic yet. Slow down. Let him pass and see what happens.”

In a flash she sped up, holding the steering wheel in one shaking fist—and the gun was back in her other hand. “You filthy bastard, was that the plan?” She held the gun on him while trying to right the car. “Gain my trust by returning the gun, get me alone, let him overtake us and hand me over to him? Do you think I trust you any further than I could kick you?”

“Not any more than I trust you,” was his brutal rejoinder. “And any plans I might have don’t include getting you locked up for killing a half-tanked city cowboy out on a ’roo shoot. My plans didn’t include my truck getting blown up, or your rolling a van at high speed with me in it. If Beller offered a million bucks, it ain’t much use to me if I’m dead.”

After a moment, she nodded. “Okay. I can accept that.”

“Then get on the right side of the road. Let the Ford pass us. I don’t think it’s Beller. Your wanna-be classy husband wouldn’t be seen dead in anything less than a Jag or Range Rover,” he said dryly. “We’re almost at the turnoff. If we have to double back on ourselves it gives Beller time to find us.”

He could almost taste the bile of fear on her tongue, but she nodded again. “Okay.” She slowed down, moving back to the legal side of the road and let off on the accelerator.

With another horn blast, the Ford roared past them down the empty highway. The van shuddered in its wake.

Tessa wiped her face with her sleeve. “W-where’s the turnoff?”

“Left in about two minutes. There’s a back way to Marshall’s Creek. I reckon he’ll be searching the highway for us tonight. He’ll expect us to be together by now.”

“How long have you been in Lynch Hill?”

“Just over a week.”

She flashed a look at him, a look of magnificent fire, and he rocketed back in time to his first sight of her.

A golden-skinned pagan goddess in cut-off shorts and tank top, her silky dark hair flying around her face like an aura of dangerous magic in the warm wind of a summer’s day, her strange, beautiful eyes devouring him, drinking him in like ambrosia and nectar of the gods.

A vivid face, full of life—every emotion inside her so easy to read. One look and he was gone. She exploded inside his heart, catching hold of the flying pieces in her loving hands; and in all the years he’d hated her, he’d never found a way to take them back.

Her voice of furious scorn jerked him back to a less tender present. “…and you never let me know. You leave me for six years, don’t bother to contact me until he shows up and then you say, ‘Hey, Tessa, I’m alive. Let’s leave town together’?”

He shrugged, fighting a half urge to grin. “Yeah, well, expect the unexpected. At least I’m never boring.”

Again that quick, flashing glance of molten gold, searing his veins with her inner fire. “No, I never had time to be bored with you. I only grieved for you!”

“Oh, yeah, you must have grieved for me real bad,” he shot back. “A whole month, wasn’t it, before you became Mrs. Beller—no, sorry, I heard you actually waited a whole five weeks out of respect for my memory. Nice grief, Tessa.”

She flushed. “If I’d known you were alive—”

“What? You wouldn’t have committed bigamy, or you’d just have divorced me first?”

She gasped and hit the brakes, making them both jerk forward and back in their seats.

He laughed again, but it was a harsh, jeering sound. “Yeah, that’s right, princess—little Miss High Society Theresa Earldon-Beller’s a bigamist. How much time do they do for that? Surely with a daddy, brother and husband as barristers, one of them checked out the facts for you before you walked down the aisle for the second time in just over a month?”

“I didn’t know you were alive!” Her cry throbbed with passionate denial. “Duncan gave me a death certificate! Dad even held a memorial service for you!”

He had to believe that. Her terrified screams at the sight of him, her words of half an hour before confirmed it, if he hadn’t already known what her family were capable of.

“I thought you were dead!” she’d said, in that stunned voice. As if she hadn’t known where he’d been all those years. As if she hadn’t betrayed him for wealth, success and a handsome face.

Maybe she hadn’t?

He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to know. “And where did they say my body was conveniently hiding?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Just for interest’s sake.”

Another choking gasp. “They—they said a car accident—your body incinerated…nothing left to bury…” She swung the van off to the side of the road and buried her face in trembling hands. “I can’t drive and talk about this.”

“Swap,” he said succinctly. He stalked around the front to the driver’s door as she slid over to the passenger’s side. He swung back onto the road, checking every few seconds for cars. “Go on,” he grated. “So they told you I burned to death, and you believed it. How convenient for you, and for Beller. I die just in time for the society wedding he had ready. I read all about it in the paper. My wife the bigamist’s glittering socialite bash.”

She gazed out the window as slow darkness rolled over the eastern sky. Her ebony braid, falling to her waist, glowed like sable in the brilliant half light of the setting sun; her golden skin shimmered, playing the colors of an outback sunset across her slanted cheekbone. The pagan princess glowed even in shadow, thrumming with the pulsing beat of her inner life and heat. “David, I didn’t know they lied to me. I had no idea anyone could fake a death certificate for a living person until today!”

A delicate touch of spring flowers wafted to him in the car’s heated air. It always seemed an anomaly to him that exotic, spicy Tessa loved such a gentle perfume; yet it suited her once. His innocent Tess…

Was she still so innocent after all these years?

He switched on the headlights. “The death certificate’s not a fake. It’s a legal document. As far as the world’s concerned, David Oliveri died two and a half years ago.”

“But…” Flicking a glance at her, he saw the helpless confusion in her eyes. “But don’t you mean six years ago? They gave me a death certificate three days after you—disappeared.”

He shook his head. “That one’s fake. Has to be. But the one I’ve got is legal, all right.” He eased off the accelerator to negotiate around a clump of rocks on the dark country road. “So call me Jirrah from now on. I could do six to twelve months inside on a felony charge just for using my name.”

He felt her frowning gaze on him in the gathering gloom. “That’s the second time in five minutes you’ve mentioned prison sentences,” she said slowly. “Is that why you never showed, six years ago? Is that why you’re on the run now? Did you break the law somehow? Are the police after you?”

He laughed at the naiveté of her questions. “Um, I’m dead, Tessa. Last I heard, you can’t do time for that.” He turned into a side road, heading northeast. “But doing three and a half years in lockup for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon—” He heard her high-pitched gasp, and grinned in savage bitterness. “Yeah, I suppose that tends to make a man see the legal system from a more negative side of the fence than an average, decent, law-abiding bigamist like yourself.”

“I’m a bigamist? I—oh shoot, so I am!” She made a tiny choking sound: the enchanting gurgle of suppressed laughter he’d once known so well, and loved to hear. “What a farce!” Half laughing, hysterical tears ran down her face. “I’m a bigamist! And I always thought I’d lead a boring, unadventurous life!”

He’d hated this woman for years; he hated her still for what she’d done to him. Yet he felt a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. Well, the whole situation was absurd; and he’d always responded to her quirky sense of humor that shone out at odd moments. “We’d better stick to the speed limit. If the cops put my driver’s license through a computer, they may notice that I’m supposed to be eighty-one.” He grinned. “Jirrah McLaren was my grandfather on my mother’s side who died two years ago. My cousin put my photo on Pop’s ID and fudged the birth date. It was fairly easy since we were born just about fifty years apart.”

She mopped the laughter-tears from her cheek. “Thank God we’re in the country—if we got pulled over for random breath test or speeding, and neither of us can say who we are!”

“Crazy,” he agreed, with a grin.

He could feel her eyes on him: her old, lynxlike gaze of unnerving honesty. “Duncan and Cameron did this to you, didn’t they? They set you up so Cameron could have me.”

He nodded, swamped by the magnitude of his relief. He’d half expected her to deny it all, dump him by the roadside when he told her what Beller and her brother had done to him. But with the integrity typical of the girl he’d known, she recognized the truth, no matter how tough it was to accept. The inescapable fact that she’d committed bigamy was the linchpin on which he’d based his hope, and he’d been right—helped along, no doubt, by the death certificate he didn’t know they’d given her.

That must be why Beller blew up the car today: to stop them from meeting and swapping stories—but the plan back-fired. Stupid jerk! He’d have been out of Tessa’s life forever by now if Beller had left his car alone.

He frowned. Beller had played a star part in his prosecution, and trying to prevent his parole; but it had been a respectable, plausible part. The fierceness of this sudden rampage—acting himself instead of using a hired goon, taking such risks—told him Beller was bloody scared. Scared of losing his life. Losing the support and admiration of Sydney society. Losing his wife.

This time, Beller would be out for blood. His blood.

He negotiated the rocky terrain of the untarred back road in silence, waiting for her to work out the rest. He knew she would. Tessa might be many things, but she wasn’t stupid.

She drew a deep breath, and said the words he’d expected. “When did they set all this up?”

“The cops arrested me on the way to your dad’s house.”

It had finally been spoken, her worst fear: the connection in time between the wedding and his arrest. Tessa slumped in her seat, reliving the slow horror of that morning.

The day after their secret marriage.

She’d had to come alone to tell her widowed father about her marriage to an Aboriginal carpenter. Only she could tell him that she, his most cherished and beloved child, had gone against his will in a way he’d never forgive. Keith Earldon, millionaire barrister, loving, overprotective father and inconspicuous racist always had, always would consider David Oliveri to be a man far beneath his daughter, in every possible way.

It was hard, so hard. She endured her father’s pleading, his recriminations and coldness; she even took his eventual disowning of her in unflinching silence. With tears streaming down her face she packed her bags, knowing this choice had been inevitable from the moment she met the man she loved. She dearly loved the father and brother who’d brought her up, but her heart belonged to David. They’d surely come around….

She’d stood outside the gates of the exclusive beachside acreage, waiting for her husband to come for her. Waiting with all the sweet confidence of young love. Waiting. And waiting.

And then the slow, chilling realization came creeping into her soul. David wasn’t coming to face her father with the reality of their marriage. He wasn’t here to take her away, to start their life together. He wasn’t coming for her at all.

She’d never forget the utter desolation of the next three days, the confusion, fear and unwanted sense of betrayal, not knowing what happened to the man she loved. Then Duncan told her about the fatal accident. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” her brother had murmured, rocking her while she sat stunned, silent, too empty to cry, the certificate held like a priceless treasure in her hand.

The certificate of death that was as fake as her brother’s sympathy for her.

“Like hell he was sorry,” she muttered. “He set it up. He handed me to Cameron like—like a human sacrifice.”

“Beller was in on it, as well,” he informed her grimly. “They were the star witnesses for the prosecution in my court case. I apparently robbed Beller’s apartment and hit him over the head with a crowbar. I got five years but made parole after three and a half for good behavior.”

“A-assault—with…?” She blinked, trying to clear the thick cloud of confusion dulling her brain. She looked at him—at his splendidly muscled body, then up to the face filled with dark, masculine strength, the single stud earring and the curly hair worn in the bead-banded ponytail he’d had when they were lovers. After all these years, his nearness could still draw her gaze to him like a magnet, fill her with a blooming of feminine warmth she thought she’d never know again. Even with the new lines on his face, and a slight hardness in his eyes, his face and body—his mere presence—still shook her as no other man ever had.

Strange to call a man beautiful, but it was the only word for Jirrah. Strong, masculine, with a dark male beauty beyond definition, beyond words.

He still looked the same.

Had he changed so much inside that he’d set up this whole insane scheme? Or had her own brother—maybe even her father—destroyed her life without a single twinge of conscience?

“Cameron came to see me after you, um, disappeared. He had stitches. He said he’d been attacked, that he’d pressed charges. That was you?” He nodded. “I don’t understand. With an alibi, and no eyewitnesses…surely they couldn’t frame you?”

He shrugged his shoulders—the broad, sculpted shoulders she’d once loved to touch. “They claimed I did it when I was waiting for you before our wedding, at the park. I was alone. And your brother was the ‘eyewitness’ to my crime,” he informed her, curt and clipped. “They found his stuff in my truck. My fingerprints were all over Beller’s place, and his things. They conned me into doing a job there the week before.”

Her voice shook as she asked; but she had to know the truth. “Did you ever see my father? Was he a part of this, as well?”

A little silence. “I haven’t seen your father since the week before our wedding.”

She hung on to the handle above the door as the van careered around a pothole, then up and over a gradient full of rocks. “But you suspect him. You’re so obsessed, you even think Dad broke the law to get rid of you! I understand why you suspect Duncan, but what did Dad ever do to hurt you? I know he thought you weren’t good enough for me because of your background—”

“Despite the fact that he married a woman who had a native Canadian background,” he put in. “Don’t you think it’s weird that he has such an aversion to having an Australian Aborigine in the family when he married a Canadian one?”

She frowned. “I—I don’t know. Dad and Duncan never speak about my mother.” Even now, she knew little about her mother apart from the words on the memorial stone in her father’s garden. Rachel Beckwith Earldon, beloved wife of Keith, loving mother to Duncan and Theresa. She knew nothing of her mother’s heritage. She’d only discovered Rachel’s family ties when Duncan lost his temper during a fight over her relationship with David.

Not David—Jirrah. This quiet, intense man, so focused on revenge, wasn’t David, the happy-go-lucky young man she’d loved. If his story was true, she wasn’t Theresa Beller, either. Her brother, a staunch upholder of the law, had committed a felony. As had Cameron, maybe even her father. Respected barristers were the real criminals. Jirrah, the ex-con, was an innocent man.

Was nothing as it appeared any more?

“Haven’t you ever wondered why they never talk about your mother, and her background?” Jirrah said quietly, interrupting her turbulent thoughts. “Haven’t you thought about why you had to find out about her the way you did?”

A fleeting memory of sobbing the sad little story in his arms crept into her mind. Then she swept it out. “No, I don’t, and right now I don’t care. Why do you want me to suspect my father? Do you honestly believe my whole family went to the crazy lengths of having you locked up just to get you away from me, or do you want to leave me with no one to believe in, no one who cares about me? Do you hate me that much?”

“We don’t have time for this right now,” he said through a clenched jaw, holding his temper with an obvious effort. “Let’s get to the house before we play Twenty Questions. I have some questions myself, as I said. But I can’t carry on an emotional argument while I’m trying to stop Beller from killing us!”

Realizing the validity of his words, she closed her mouth, but the questions remained. Questions she had to have answers to before she’d listen to his story—

Then a thought, blinding in its sudden brilliance, burst into her mind. He didn’t know about Emily.

Would he still want to help her escape from Cameron when he knew?




Chapter 3


In the deep velvet hush of an unlit country night, they arrived at their temporary sanctuary.

Through the light of the van’s headlights, Tessa surveyed the place, taken aback. David—um, Jirrah once took such pride in creating beauty from bricks and wood. The small, wood-plank house was crude, filled with the sense of simmering fury she felt inside its owner: a rough-made house with an uneven front verandah, surrounded by dense brush except for a coarse, bumpy dirt track. All was dark and quiet. There were no streetlights, no sealed roads, no near neighbors she could see. She almost felt like she’d stumbled into a fairy tale—except Jirrah’s home was no enchanted forest cottage—more like the abandoned shack in the back of beyond. A bush-ranger’s retreat: Ned Kelly’s hut, or Captain Thunderbolt’s hideout in the hills.

Yet once upon a time, she would have been happy here, making Jirrah’s house a home, because he’d built it for them. Planting flowers, painting the wood planks rich cream and the windowsills a soft yellow. Working side by side with him to fix the roof, as she had when they were lovers: Tess the carpenter’s mate, he’d dubbed her, solemnizing the event with her own tool belt and hard hat. Fitting in work between kisses. Oh, together they could make this place a home he’d want to come home to—

“Do you have a flashlight?” Jirrah asked, interrupting her reverie. “The generator might be dead by now. It’s pretty old.”

“What a pity you didn’t think of it before,” she snapped, exhausted with the day’s stress, embarrassed by her little daydream. “Now I’ll spend the night imagining us playing blind-man’s buff with Cameron in a dark, isolated cabin!”

He made a small, savage sound of impatience. “Look, I just spent three hours driving on lousy roads after your fruitcake husband car bombed me. I’m hungry, I have a headache the size of a Mack truck, my wrist’s throbbing and I’m covered in cuts and gravel burns. I want food, a shower and sleep before I have to outrun Beller yet again. So I’d appreciate it if you’d cut the complaints and tell me if you have a flashlight or not.”

She yanked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Yes, I have one. I’ve also got food and a first-aid kit. I’ll bring my gun inside, too. At least one of us was prepared for this!”

“Yeah, well, any preparation I might have had blew sky-high back at Lynch Hill, so don’t expect any apologies from me.”

She flushed in the darkness. “You want to compare notes? I was carjacked today by somebody I thought was dead, with a Ripley’s story about my family for his excuse! If I’d had time to get you out of the car I wouldn’t be here now!”

He looked at her. “If you didn’t believe me you wouldn’t be here, and neither would I. You’d have shot me.”

A sudden jab of anguish landed over her heart, robbing her of breath. Was he right? “I’m still thinking about it. I don’t shoot people without at least giving them a hearing. I still have the gun…and you have tonight to prove you’re telling me the truth.”

He held up a hand. “I get the picture. We’re both overwhelmed and stressed now. Can we call a truce and get the flashlight?”

“Fine.” In moments she handed him the torch. “I have aspirin, antiseptic and bandages. I’ll bandage your wounds inside.”

“Thanks.” He flicked it on, and led the way in.

When the light came on, Jirrah sighed in relief. “Thank God for that. The last thing I needed was to wrestle with that crazy generator tonight. You hungry?”

Tessa looked at the house, with its rough walls, unfinished windows and loamy scent of damp earth rising from between the imperfectly laid floorboards, and frowned. Then she noticed a wood carving set on an upturned crate. An enormous kangaroo made of a deep red eucalypt wood, one of a pair. The other stood on a similar platform in a shadowy corner. “These are magnificent—exquisite pieces,” she said softly, wondering at the incongruity of their surreal and radiant beauty living within the dark shadows of this sad, neglected shack. “They’re so real they look like they’re actually in flight.”

He nodded. “I like them. You hungry?” he repeated.

Looking at him she saw the pain, the total exhaustion, and realized the toll the past few hours had taken on him, driving over unlit roads after a brush with death. “I keep tinned food in my van. I’ll heat some up while you rest. You want coffee?”

“Sounds great.” He fell back on an old brown-and-black striped sofa, just about the ugliest she’d ever seen. He closed his eyes—one eye purple and contorted with swelling.

She left the room, disturbed by the sight of him looking like that. He’d been hurt because he’d come to find her.

Moments later, she touched his shoulder. “Here.” She handed him two tablets and a glass of water.

“Thanks.” He downed the tablets, and closed his eyes again.

Never anybody’s cook, it took Tessa almost half an hour to get the food heating in the gorgeous but impractical Kookaburra wood-fire oven. Soot striped her face and top from trying to light it. By the time she’d cleaned herself up the coffee was cool in the Bodum plunger—so he was still a fresh-coffee addict—and she had to make it fresh. “Where the hell’s a microwave when you need one?” she muttered, dumping the coffee grinds out the window, since there was no drain in the kitchen.

Why did Jirrah live in a hovel like this? If she could just have a week here, he wouldn’t have to. It would be a home—

Don’t think like that. Don’t go there. That’s in the past.

She returned to the living room with her first-aid kit.

A small open fire blazed behind a grate in the corner. Jirrah lay sprawled on the long, ugly sofa in a deep sleep, looking so much like her David she ached with it.

He’s Jirrah. David’s gone. This man is no more the boy I loved than I am the girl he married.

Fighting a second wave of grief over him, she put the water and bandages on the crate before the sofa and tended to the cuts on his arms and chest through the gaping tear in his T-shirt.

The first time she’d touched a man’s body in over two years, and she didn’t want to now; but Jirrah had risked his life to help save hers today. She owed him, big time.

It seemed she owed him even more if he was telling her the truth about Duncan and Cameron’s setup.

He’s alive, and I have a death certificate Duncan gave me. Isn’t that enough?

She continued cleaning the wound with warm water, frowning.

Jirrah started half-awake when her fingers connected with his chest. “Tess,” he mumbled, capturing her fingers with his.

Magic.

A sleepy word, one sleeping brush of his fingers, and all she’d tried to forget the past six years arose from slumber. One unconscious touch, and warm, dark, unpredictable magic lit the very air she breathed—

And it terrified her.

She jerked her hand away, and kept dabbing the antiseptic on the long, ugly gash on his chest.

“Ssssss.” He jerked to full awareness with the stinging touch, sitting up and glaring at her. She scrambled back across the rough floor, hot and cold with panic.

“Tessa? You okay?”

Unable to drag her gaze from his, she saw him watching her with a look she didn’t want to define. She pulled herself together and nodded, feeling sick, hurt, betrayed by the sting of his unwanted pity. “You just startled me.”

“It wasn’t the best way to wake a man, Tess.”

Trying to disguise the little quiver of unwanted pleasure at the intimate nickname he’d given her seven years before, she pointed to the inflamed cut. “It’s infected. I was just trying to help.” She handed him the cotton pad soaked in antiseptic.

He looked at the wound, and nodded. “Thanks.”

She turned away, fighting another unwanted surge of sorrow. They’d been so happy once…now they were just awkward. “Dinner’s almost ready. Do you want it now, or after you’re cleaned up?”

“I’ll take a shower. I need to get the dirt and gravel and glass out of the cuts—and some of them are in places you don’t want to clean,” he added, with a wry grin.

“Nothing I haven’t seen or touched before,” she retorted without thinking.

He looked at her—and she could barely breathe, reading the hot, urgent man’s need in his eyes. She skittered farther across the floor. “Stupid comment,” she mumbled through stiff lips.

After a long moment he nodded. Without looking at her again he headed for the bathroom. She fled to the kitchen, needing coffee to steady her nerves, and clear her turbulent confusion.

When he came back out, she almost spilled the hot coffee all over herself. Clad only in a towel, his dark coffee skin gleamed in the firelight, his wet hair dripped rivulets down his deep brown chest, broad shoulders and muscular arms, like hot sweat.

He walked straight past her, seeming completely unconscious of her fascinated gaze on his superb body—so superb it took her breath away even with the cuts and bruises marking it. “Sorry,” he muttered as he passed, motioning to the towel, his nakedness beneath. “I should have picked up clean clothes from the bedroom first, but I was so tired I didn’t think—” He turned at her continued silence. “Tess?” He made no movement, but somehow seemed closer by the power of the heat in his deep, dark eyes.

She lost the power to breathe. She returned his gaze, licking her upper lip in a fear that was paralyzing, yet delicious…

Like the first time she’d seen him.

Her lips parted, as the sweet rush of erotic memory filled her heart. Returning home from second-year exams at teacher’s college. Attracted by the hammering and drilling, she’d walked around the corner of her house to the backyard. The carpenters her father had hired were tearing down the old gazebo to make way for a new one. Seeing Jirrah—David, as he was then—strip off his T-shirt and mop the sweat from his lithe, muscled body, she couldn’t tear her gaze away, enthralled by an unfettered portrait of masculine beauty: a glistening sculpture of superb honed muscle and warm coffee skin. A purity of grace and perfection of form that could have belonged in Michelangelo’s imagination.

Against her will, half terrified of shattering the moment, she’d kept walking to him, her heart pounding. She couldn’t breathe, or think beyond reaching him. Nothing else had ever felt like this. No man, not even Duncan’s friend Cameron, who was so handsome and so kind to her, had ever affected her this way.

He’d looked up as she reached him, with a quick half smile that froze on his face as he, too, stared. She saw then he was Aboriginal—or, judging by the lightness of his skin, of mixed Aboriginal-European descent; but her family’s prejudice against the lower classes and indigenous Australians made no difference to her heart. She stood before him, struck almost dumb, drinking him into her heart with her wondering eyes.

“Hi,” was all she could find to say, cursing her banal tongue for its stupidity; but he knew. He’d known from that first look all the need, the joy, the emotion in her heart she couldn’t hide. She was his…and he was hers.

“Tess?”

She started to the present, and tore her eyes from him. “You must be starving. I’ll serve dinner. Since I still can’t cook, it’s not much, just a canned stew on toast and coffee—”

“It’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “It’s okay, Tess. I won’t touch you.”

The words dried on her tongue.

“I know,” was all he said, his face filled with compassion. “How long have you been running from him? Did he hurt you?”

She stood frozen, rooted to the spot. Dear God, he was beautiful—but the gentle understanding and tender pity in his eyes seared her soul. Finally she turned away. “Don’t be so nice to me. Compassion doesn’t fit your new bad-boy image. It just makes me wonder when you’ll tell me what else you want from me.”

After a few moments’ silence, she heard his rolling footsteps padding to the bedroom to dress.



Over the simple meal, she found herself blurting, “Why didn’t you contact me from prison? Why didn’t you write, or see me when you got out, if what you’ve told me is the truth?”

He looked up at the abrupt tone, his bruised face filled with shadows. “Don’t ask the questions unless you’re ready to hear the answers. They’re not pretty.”

She wouldn’t turn away this time. She was tired of running and hiding and living in shadows. “I’m not stupid. Being brought up by barristers, you get to know the law reasonably well. With a criminal record you can verify your identity with fingerprints. Just by proving you’re alive you can have Cameron and Duncan on charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and complicity in committing a felony—not to mention the bigamy. So if all you say is true, why didn’t you do it?”

He looked in her eyes, hiding nothing; and in the face that made her ache with its strong, dark masculinity, she saw years of festering hate and the ugliness of betrayal chilling his soul. “I don’t think you want to know, Tessa.”

She clenched her jaw. “Maybe not—but I need to know! You of all people should understand that.”

He shrugged. “I have a family. Parents who are getting old. A brother with juvie priors. A sister with a troubled kid. A cousin who did two years in lockup for assault. They’re making a success of their lives now, but that wouldn’t mean squat to the cops if Beller and Duncan got up a conspiracy against them.”

“Oh, dear God.” She grabbed her glass of water, but gagged on the second swallow. “You must hate me for what they did to you.”

He shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve had a few doubts about your part in things since the day you slipped into the hardware store in Lynch Hill when a car pulled up behind you.”

She lifted her face, searching for answers in his eyes.

He nodded, with a wry grimace. “Your face still gives you away every time. The fear in your eyes, the hollow look of a hunted woman, has stayed with me ever since.”

“Is that why you watched me?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t think I trusted my own instincts until you pulled the gun on me today. But when Beller torched my car, I started thinking. It’s a pretty desperate act for a respectable guy like him. I thought maybe he wanted to stop me from getting to you, to stop us from getting together and talking. I needed to get out of Lynch Hill—and—well, someone had to look out for you, get you out of his reach, give you somewhere safe to stay.”

She closed her eyes, feeling the trembling work its way up from her fingers and toes. “Why would you do that for me? You think I betrayed you. I saw it in your eyes all afternoon.”

“Because I looked in your eyes, Tess. I could see what you tried to hide.” His eyes glimmered, soft and tender. “I know how it feels to be hunted down like an animal. I’ve lived in a cage. I couldn’t see it happen to you. I wouldn’t hand a mongrel dog over to Beller, let alone a woman I’d once loved. I’ve been watching you for the past week, making sure you were safe at the school, getting home at night.”

She almost laughed at the irony. A man who’d hated her for years was protecting her from the men who claimed to love her.

She swallowed a sense of bitter betrayal he didn’t deserve. A woman I’d once loved…

Of course he didn’t love her now. Only a man as warped as Cameron could still love her—but Cameron loved a creature of his own imagination, a girl who’d never existed—not for him. She wasn’t an innocent, trusting woman-child now, and she wanted nothing to do with that twisted emotion some people called love.

I wanted Jirrah to touch me just then.

That was something she couldn’t deny, much as she wanted to.

Her heart was a seething mass of longing and fear, guilt and anger, sadness and a deep, painful confusion. She couldn’t sort out truth from lies until Jirrah proved his story to her.

Maybe I don’t want to hear it. Maybe I just want to run and hide again, turn my face from truth. Weak fool…

She made herself smile, weak and shallow, an ineffective cover for the turbulence of emotions even she didn’t understand. “Thank you, Jirrah, but what I need is the truth,” she said in gentle, cool dismissal. “I don’t need a hero for hire.”

“What makes you think you can buy me?”

She stared at him, taken aback by his sudden burst of incomprehensible anger. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Yes, you did. You meant exactly that.” He shoved his plate away and got to his feet, his eyes glittering dark ice. “The high and mighty Theresa Earldon of the rich and powerful Earldons and Bellers, who think everything has a price—even justice, or a man’s integrity.”

At the contempt she didn’t deserve, something sparked inside her. “You forgot one name in that pretty liturgy. Oliveri,” she snapped. “I’m not and never was Theresa Beller. Like David Oliveri, she doesn’t exist. So unless by some miracle you got a divorce without having me sign papers, I’m Tessa Oliveri, or McLaren, or whatever you call yourself now—your wife. And I don’t buy anything I can’t earn with my teacher’s wage since Cameron froze my assets and took power of attorney.” She turned to the wall, fighting the urge to heave. “So don’t talk to me about buying justice. I’ve been bought, and I’m all too well aware of how powerless I am!”

Soft clapping made her start. She whirled around to face him. He was grinning. “Good girl. You worked it out. You’ve decided to trust me. Now we can move out of the past and go forward.”

She frowned. “Why should you think I trust you?”

“Don’t you?” He moved toward her. Fascinated by the look in his eyes, the hypnotic smile, she couldn’t move. “I provoked you—deliberately riled you with that buying justice crack—and you snapped back. You knew I wouldn’t hit you or hurt you.” He took another step. Her limbs felt paralyzed; all she could do was move her tongue over dry lips, and watch him come. “You let me walk to you without shying back like a nervous filly. I’ve been watching you for a week. You back off from men, from fathers of kids or storekeepers.” He squatted on his haunches before her. “I’m here in front of you, and there’s wariness in your eyes, but no fear. Even with all he put you through, you know not all men are like him.”

His fingers were a hair’s breadth from hers.

“You said—go forward,” she choked.

He nodded. “It’s time, Tessa. The only way to go forward with our lives is to go back. We have to find out how your family did this to us, and how they managed to get away with it.”

Something inside her turned cold and dull. “I see.”

Jirrah saw the frozen darkness inside her, and knew he had the fight of his life on his hands, right here and now, to convince her he was right. “They destroyed our lives and got away with it. The only way to get our lives back is to take control.”

She bit her lip. “You want your name back.”

“I want my life back.” He got to his feet and paced the room, feeling like a caged tiger. “I want my name cleared. I want my builder’s license, and a driver’s license with my real name on it. I want a home loan, a credit card, to buy and register a dog, put money in the bank—to live my life in peace without worrying about the deranged lunatic obsessed with my wife.” Hearing her gasp, he turned to her with a wry smile. “You were right. We’re still married. I never divorced you.”

“Why not?” she whispered.

He saw the shaking she tried so hard to hide, and oh, God, it hurt. He wanted to hold her, give her the comfort he sensed she desperately needed; but a deep instinct told him she wasn’t ready for touch. He wasn’t sure he was, either, if his full-on hard reaction to her tending his cuts earlier was anything to go by. He’d better back off fast, unless of course he wanted to live in a permanent state of unfulfilled arousal, since it sure didn’t look like Tess was going to let him touch her in a hurry.

So he answered in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could manage. “I never got the chance. I was in lockup, then legally dead. Bit hard to do much when you’re dead, you know.”

She looked at her feet, scuffing her toe against a knot in the floorboard. “They must have tried to make you divorce me.”

“Not since my conviction. When I got out, all they wanted was for me to crawl in a hole and forget we were ever together.”

“I see.” She scuffed harder, kicking a chip out of the wood he’d never polished. “So you gave in. You went away, and left me with them.”

He knew he deserved the accusation in her voice—but he wasn’t ready to tell her the whole truth. “You married Beller only five weeks after I was arrested. I despised you for that. I was angry, bitter, and you betrayed me in the worst possible way. I’ll never forgive you for what you did to the baby.” He dropped to his haunches before her, a torrent of passionate words bursting from his heart. “But I never thought he’d hurt you, Tess. I thought it was only me he wanted to destroy. I knew he couldn’t stand the idea of me being your lover.”

But Tessa wasn’t listening; she’d blanked out before he’d even finished his words. She swayed in her chair, her face pale, her eyes glazed. “The—the baby?”

The choking force of useless, bitter rage hit him again in its unrelenting tide, forcing him to remember his most compelling reason to despise this woman. “Yeah. My daughter,” he grated. “I know what you did to her—what you did to me.” He extracted a well-folded piece of paper from his wallet, and slammed it on the table. “That’s your signature,” he grated. “Don’t deny it!”

“My—my what?” Tessa’s bewildered gaze followed his stabbing finger down to the paper. As if in a daze she unfolded it, and scanned its contents.

The signed permission to give up a child for adoption.

The last vestiges of color drained from her face. She seemed deathlike, a mask, her eyes dull and blank, fixed on the scrawl of ink at the paper’s base. She swayed in the chair again; then her body gave a hard jerk forward. “Yes.” A strained, harsh whisper. “It’s my signature.”




Chapter 4


“Yes,” she admitted in the lengthening silence, her voice rough, scratchy. “It’s my signature.” Her body spasmed again.

Jirrah snarled, “So you admit it. You gave our daughter to strangers like she didn’t matter. Like I never mattered enough to you even to keep my child, or even name me as her father! Explain that form of bloody grief to me if you can, Mrs. Beller!”

But her reaction floored him.

Her knuckles gleamed white as she gripped the sides of the table; her eyes burned like zealot’s gold in a wraithlike face. “I—I…oh, God, my baby, my baby…my Emily’s alive. A-adopted…”

Her body lurched out of the chair in a final jerking spasm. She stumbled toward the bathroom but fell to her knees outside the door and emptied out her stomach in slow, violent retching.

Jirrah closed his eyes, whacking his forehead with an open palm. “Oh, you bloody idiot. You stupid, brainless jerk.” He ran to wet a facecloth and towel.

When he returned with the cloths and a glass of water, he found her leaning against the wall beside the door, ineffectually wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

He cleaned her face with the wet cloth, then handed her the glass. “Here, Tess. Sip it, don’t gulp, or it’ll come back up.”

She took the glass in a trembling hand, and rinsed her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered: a threadbare sound.

He cleaned the mess with brutal efficiency. “Don’t sweat it. I deserve it for being such a dumb-arse jerk. I actually believed them.” He took the towels and threw them in the trash.

When he came back she’d slumped sideways, the fallen glass creating a slow puddle over the floor, and on her shorts. So he carried her to the sofa, laying her down and covering her warmly; but she broke into fits of shivering beneath the blanket. He pulled her close, swearing beneath his breath at the way his body reacted to the feel of her soft curves laying against him.

But the pain twisted his heart at the sight of the devastation ravaging her, in fits of hard, hurting shivers. “Those bastards.” He stared down at the face he’d never been able to forget. “My God, Tess, what they’ve done to you—to us both.”

But within seconds she pushed him off and sat up, though she swayed still. “Don’t touch me,” she muttered as he moved to help her again. “I’m not going to faint.”

He didn’t trust her to know right now. “You should get some sleep. You’re in shock. You’ve been through too much today.”

She clutched the blanket around her, her face pale and strained—a ghost of moonlight and flickering fire. “I don’t want to sleep. I want answers! How long have you known?”

“Tess, you’re white as a ghost. You only just found out about me, then I told you about Emily. You thought we were both dead. Hell, it shocked me when I got the birth certificate, and I didn’t know you’d been pregnant. We can talk in the morning.”

“No. Now!” she all but yelled. “Don’t presume to know me. You don’t have a clue what I need. You haven’t seen me in six years.”

That stung. “What about our daughter?” he asked, in soft challenge. “Do you need her, Tessa?”

Bam. Dead-on target and straight back to life. Her gaze burned into him, blistering his skin with its fever. “Are you sure?” she hissed, her eyes narrowed. “Do you know she’s alive?”

“Someone left an envelope in my effects when I made parole—my death certificate and the adoption papers. The warder said it was from my barrister.”

“Could this be another plot? I mean, another fake certificate to make you hate me?”

He shook his head. “I got my lawyer to check. It’s authentic—the adoption’s sealed, but real. She’s alive. And if it’s not your signature on the adoption papers it’s damn close to it.”

She frowned. “That day, that whole week is a blur to me. I could have signed anything.” She held her arms, shivering again. “God, what a fool I was. I should never have trusted them.”

He frowned. “You never suspected they’d done this?”

She shook her head. “When they said she was dead, I started screaming. I don’t remember anything for weeks but crying for Emily and taking pills.” She glanced at him with sad, bewildered eyes. “Why do you think they left the papers for you?”

“Insurance. They wanted to let me think just what I did think—that you betrayed me in a way I’d never forgive. They made sure I’d never want to see you again, so you’d never know I was alive, and I’d never know you thought Emily was dead.”

“Oh, yeah,” she muttered. “Machiavellian plots are Cameron’s specialty. Especially when it comes to getting what he wants from me, or climbing higher on the social ladder. Destroying other people’s lives to improve his wouldn’t even faze him.”

Looking at her, he knew she’d reached the limits of what she could stand. She’d learned enough today to send anyone into shock. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us. We need to talk about what we’ll do from here, but it can wait. You take the bed. I’ll sleep out here.”

She nodded and got to her feet, holding the blanket around her like a talisman. She looked fragile, vulnerable, so tired; but he knew her inner core of strength and staunch courage. He’d known it firsthand when the millionaire barrister’s shy daughter braved the contempt of her world seven years before, following her heart to love a humble carpenter. So he expected her next words, waited for them. “I have to know what happened to Emily.”

He nodded; and filled with deep, if reluctant respect, he looked at her, really looked at her for the first time that day. He didn’t see Theresa Earldon-Beller, the spoiled society woman he’d hated; he didn’t see Tessa, the innocent girl he’d loved. He didn’t see a helpless, abused woman needing protection. He saw the woman she was now…and before God, she was beautiful.

Her offbeat, just-crooked slant of nose and mouth, and one dimple, would never be classic. But the vivid face that had stunned him seven years before, the slanted line of cheek, the silken waterfall of hair, the amazing amber eyes in the face of a proud Aztec priestess, still left him speechless. Even the remnants of suffering added gentleness and grace to her unconscious dignity: a charm so incorruptible that age would not weary it, an inner magic so strong mere beauty could never lay claim to it.

He’d never be immune to her. He’d want her until the day he died. But loving her almost killed him once. Losing Tess ripped the soul from him and shredded his heart, leaving him locked in a cage—physically and emotionally. He’d never let it happen again.

But he swore he’d set her free from Beller’s obsession with her if it killed him…and he’d make Beller and Duncan Earldon pay for what they’d done. He owed Tessa that much, at least.

“I’ve been looking for the baby—Emily—for a long time,” he admitted. “But it was harder for me to get anywhere. I couldn’t claim parentage to get the birth certificate. I tried, but they put father unknown on it.”

The torment in her eyes hurt his soul. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for caring about our daughter.”

He couldn’t answer her; he’d spent the past two and a half years hating her for not caring about Emily. What a fool he’d been to believe them! “My family left the city today. So we can look for Emily without worrying about them…but we’d better pray Earldon and Beller don’t already know where she is.”

She sat down abruptly on a chair at the old, rickety dining table he’d picked up at a roadside throw. “You knew before today? You knew I’d want to look for her?”

“No.” He had to be up-front now, or he’d lose her later. She already knew he had a hidden agenda—he had nothing to lose. “I need you to help me find her. You can go where I can’t. You can ask questions at the birth registry, of your dad and brother. You’re far more likely to get answers out of them.”

Her gaze turned cool, challenging. “Only about Emily? Is that all the information you want?”

Darkness filled his heart. “You know that’s not all.”

“You want me to spy on them.” It wasn’t a question; she knew the answer. “You want me to help you get your revenge.”

“Yeah, all right, I do!” he snapped.

She lifted a brow, not letting him off the hook. “And?”

“I need you to see what they’ve done to you, to me, to our child. I want you to believe what I’m saying is the truth,” he replied bluntly. “I want you to want justice like I do.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “You want me to find evidence against my own family. You want me to help you put my brother—maybe even my sixty-eight-year-old father—in prison.”

“I never said that,” he shot back.

“You just thought it,” she said softly.

He turned away from her. “Okay, can we at least find evidence to hold over them, so they don’t start any more plots?”

She looked at him, her golden eyes boring into his, filling him with the old, uncanny feeling that she could see right past his barriers and into his soul. Back then, her love filled him with a happiness so rare and incredible he hadn’t cared that she knew him inside and out. Now it just made him uncomfortable.

Damn her for still seeing into his heart so clearly! Could she see what he couldn’t afford to let her know?

He crossed the room to squat before her. “If they know where Emily is, she’s in constant danger,” he rasped, full of passionate conviction. “If Beller works out we’re together on this—and he probably already has—we’ve got a week at most to find her. He’s got the resources to get to her quicker than we can through the official channels. If he gets to her first—or Duncan,” he added, hating the need to be so ruthless, “they’ll hold her safety over our heads to keep us quiet, and for Beller to take you back.”

The light went out of her eyes so fast he thought she was going to faint. She dropped a white, ravaged face in her hands and whispered, “My God. We have to find her fast.”

“And we have to get ammo on them. It’s the only way,” he went on when she looked up, her eyes dark with pain and denial. “If they’re chasing their tails trying to cover up their little perjuries, they won’t have time to think of getting to Emily. And any evidence of Emily’s whereabouts now is more likely to come through them than the official channels.”

Her face lifted to his, her eyes filled with suffering, with guilt—and complete, pain-filled understanding. “You want me to spy on my father—to get evidence that could put him in prison.”

“It’s the only way,” he said again. God, how he hated pulling her strings when she was already in shock, but he couldn’t afford the luxury of time or compassion when their daughter’s life was at risk. “If he’s innocent, we’ll find nothing.”

“If not, you’ll put my whole family away.”

“But you’ll have Emily,” he reminded her, hoping to God it would be enough to make her agree.

She looked away, chewing her lip. He waited in silence, allowing her time to think it through.

After a long stretch of quiet, she said, “I want my child.”

“So do I.” Watching her carefully, he said, “But I have to protect myself. I need you to come to my lawyer, and to the cops. To back up my story so the cops won’t suspect me for perjury on the death certificates. Then if Beller or Duncan try their tricks, I’ll have an unimpeachable witness to state where I’ve been at all times. As Duncan’s sister and Beller’s supposed wife, you can give me the alibi no one else could—and they couldn’t afford to expose our history.”

She tilted her chin. “Show me Duncan was part of the plot to adopt Emily and put you inside, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

From his wallet he pulled out another piece of paper, and tossed it into her lap. “Here you go. Put yours down and we have a matching pair of death certificates, three or so years apart.”

She looked at the death certificate, marked September 20, two and a half years before. She shook her head, but didn’t speak.

“Not good enough? Didn’t your brother give you yours?” He sighed. “Go to the cops. Ask who the star witnesses were in my case. Show ’em your ID, and you should get access. You’ll see Duncan knew I was alive when you married Beller.” He threw another piece paper in front of her. “Here’s my parole papers, date marked—same day as my second ‘death.’ I was in the cells at the City of Sydney Police when I supposedly died the first time.”

She licked her lip, then bit down hard. Her fingers gripped the papers hard enough to rip them to shreds.

“Still not enough? What about the adoption papers? The parole papers tell you where I was when you had Emily,” he challenged. “The adoption paper’s dated. I didn’t have the freedom to create it! And if I had, would I give up my own child? You know how I feel about kids.” When she remained silent, he got to his feet and paced the room. “Come on, princess, do the sum!” he flung at her. “Duncan gave you the death certificate. He was there when Emily was born. How could I have got the adoption papers, since I’m not named as Emily’s father? How could I have myself declared dead the day I got out of lockup, a penniless ex-con? It doesn’t make sense—unless you put legal eagles with money and connections in the equation. You know what they’re capable of—”

“All right.”

“—and yet with all this evidence—” He wheeled around to face her when the words penetrated his consciousness. “What?”

“I said all right.” She met his eyes; hers were dull gold, filled with the darkness of inner torment. “I’ll help you find your evidence or whatever you want, if you help me find Emily.”

He blew out a sigh of relief. He’d done it. She’d come with him. That was the only whatever he wanted from her.

Liar. You want her like hell already. Five hours with her and she’s already got you inside out. Stay five days with her and you’ll be her puppet again…and she’ll knot your strings just like she did seven years ago.

“I don’t need anything on Duncan or Beller,” he said, playing it safe. “But if your dad’s involved, we need to know, to hamstring any tricks he might try. Only you can do that.”

She started like a nervous doe, the wide-eyed, haunted look back. “You can do most of this yourself. You could find another respectable witness, and get search warrants. Why do you really need me? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Yeah, she was smart, all right, even in shock. “Only you can access Emily’s files, talk to the hospital staff where you gave birth, and put your name down with the relevant organizations to find her.” With unthinking bitterness he added, “I have no power to search for my daughter, or ask about her as things are—and only you, her mother, can give me those rights.”

After a quiet moment she said softly, “I wanted to keep her, Jirrah. I would have put your name on the birth certificate.”

“Gee, thanks, princess.” He gave her a wry look. “But right now, ‘would have’ don’t count a hill of beans. She’s my daughter—my flesh and blood—and I’m ‘father unknown.’” He tried to stare her down, but she held his gaze, her lissome body taut with defiance; and he hated the ache building in him just watching her. “I want that wiped from the record. I want my name on her birth certificate. I want to claim my daughter.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not alone in that. She’s my child, too!” Her momentary gentleness was gone: she was flashing fire, a streak of lightning in a dark sky—the woman of blazing passion beneath her shy cover. The girl he’d always known in bed. “I’ll try to give Emily your name, or mine, if we can find her—if she wants it—but don’t expect too much help if Cameron or Duncan block it. I had therapy after I lost Emily. I talked of killing myself, and was labeled depressive and suicidal. No sane woman would want to escape Cameron, so of course I’m nuts. If they get wind of what we’re doing, I’m as sunk as you are! You might go back to prison, but I’ll be in a mental institution!”

“So get a second opinion, or a third,” he retorted, thrown by the fact that she had as much to lose as he did—thrown that the vivid passion of her fury only turned him on more. “And could any institution be worse than the cage you’re in now? For God’s sake, look at yourself. You might have left him, but you’re still in a cage! You have to live beyond running from him. You have to start trusting people again.”

“And who do you trust, David-Jirrah?” she said softly, her eyes still glittering with the fierce passion hidden deep inside her. The incandescent glow from a once loving heart that, even locked deep inside her, illuminated her from within, making her unique, radiant, so alive she made others want to be with her, to experience that soul-stirring intensity in living. “The police? Your family? Your many friends? Your wife?”

The heat of need she’d engendered in him silenced him as much as her home questions. His luminous Tess…

As if she’d read his thoughts—or seen what she’d done to his body—she pressed her lips together. “I’m tired.” She got to her feet. “Thank you,” she said simply. “I realize what you did for me today. You didn’t have to save me. But you did.”

“I’d never have got this far without you.” Knowing she’d left something unsaid. Some indefinable emotion filled her heart, dousing the flame inside her. Tess was hiding something.

And you’re not?

She shrugged. “Just a car.” She finally dropped the blanket and walked to the bedroom door. There she turned, standing in the shadow of the flickering firelight. Her hair, half-spilling from its roped plait, glowed ebony; her proud face warmed in the golden light. Light and shadow, past and present, goddess and woman, her quiet dignity and inner beauty evident in her simple shorts and knit top—and she left his throat dry and his chest a ball of pain. “He stole your life and our child, yet you left me with him, knowing how I feel about the sanctity of marriage. You left me thinking I was married to him, that I had to stay.”

He had to tell her the truth now or lose her help in finding his long-delayed justice. “You’d left by the time I made parole. I asked the neighbors. You left him four weeks before I got out.” When there was no response, he added, “You saw the parole papers. You left him late August. I was paroled September 20.”

Her voice drifted to him through the warm, flickering darkness. “Did you keep looking for me?”

He nodded. “I remembered your dream of teaching kids in the Outback. I found out where you were a while back, and kept a few feelers out. When I heard Beller was sniffing around I came to Lynch Hill to make sure you were safe. That’s all.”

She said softly, “You hated me, but still looked out for me?”

He shrugged, unable to understand his own motivations, or to explain how he felt about her. Only one thing came to mind, and he stated it simply. “You’re the mother of my child.”

Her eyes darkened in the play of firelight and shadow. An ancient goddess: Athena in bronze. Diana in marble.

He felt like a fool standing in her presence, almost like he should kneel before her. Seven years from his first sight of her, and Tess still stunned him, still left him speechless.

When she slanted him the smile so uniquely hers, lighting her one dimple, warming her glowing amber eyes with molten honey, her whimsical face came as close to beauty as it ever would. But to him, she’d always be so damn beautiful it hurt—and never more so than at this moment. He could see the metamorphosis happening before his eyes. The woman of fire and passion had begun her slow, reluctant emergence from her frozen chrysalis.

It started a chain reaction inside him, as well. He could feel it happening—the vaguest hint of warming around the outer layer of thick, encrusted walls of ice he’d been building around his heart since the day he was put in lockup.

Damn it, he couldn’t do this. The one thing he didn’t want—the thing he could least afford to happen. But when he was near Tess, choices weren’t something he had in his armory. One look from those amazing eyes, and he was on his knees before her.

Damn you, Tess, for always doing this to me!

She reached out, almost touching his face for a brief moment. He held his breath, waiting, half-hoping—

Then her hand fell, and the gentle memory of the forgotten caress lingered only in his damaged heart. “Thank you for helping me today. Thank you for telling me about Emily. I’m glad you’re alive.” Her smile was gone, leaving him so cold it sent a shiver down his spine. “I wish I felt happier about it. I wish I could forgive you for what you want to do to my family—what you want me to do for you. I wish I knew it was right, even for Emily’s sake. But I can’t—and I can’t forgive you, either. I just can’t.”

She vanished into his room, closing the door, and he ached with the void she’d left behind.




Chapter 5


He lay in a fevered sweat on the lounge, in thrall at the visions of his mind. Faces. Illogical faces from the palette of Picasso. Black faces, brown faces, white faces. The accusing faces of his parents, Matt and Annie Oliveri. The baffled fury and terrible fear of Keith and Duncan Earldon. The thwarted lust and warped love in the handsome yet repellent face of Cameron Beller. His brothers, sisters and cousins, unsure yet willing to believe the worst. The face of his lover as she lay dying a year before. The faces of the children who had suffered, would continue to suffer until he could clear his name. The leering faces of his fellow prisoners, men he hated yet were the only ones who understood his bond, his cage.

And every face chanted words, the litany that burned in his brain for seven long years. You’re not good enough for her, and she’s no good for you…

And in the center of this bizarre tapestry of faces was the one they all warned him against. The unforgettable face, the haunting eyes, the threads of her midnight hair binding the anger and the sadness together.

And she gave him that smile: the lopsided smile that twisted his guts and made his heart turn over. “Jirrah,” she breathed, as she had when they moved together in the act of love. The name she’d cried aloud in passion, whispered as she’d touched his body in wondrous desire, full of a woman’s need. “Jirrah…”

He reached for her, pulling her down to him. “Mulgu.” Ah, the beautiful totem name he’d given her years before: Mulgu, the wild black swan. His quiet, dark-haired girl with the untamed spirit, always wanting to fly from the restrictive conventions of her family. The Earldons were always clipping her wings, threatened by the hint of inner wildness inside Tess: the legacy of the beautiful, free-spirited Native Canadian mother who died when she was four. But oh, how he loved her wildness, her passion for life…the single-minded passion for loving she only showed to him. “Ah, mulgu…” His mouth sought hers.

“Jirrah.” The voice sounded almost real. He started to half-awareness, but didn’t open his eyes. Her face was his addiction, and if dreams were all he’d get, let him sleep. He held her long, lithe body against the whole length of his, his lips touching warm golden-brown skin. Ah, God, it felt good…

“Jirrah, wake up!” Something tickled his chest.

His eyes snapped open. It was real. She was here with him. Her glorious face filled his vision; her unbound hair trailed over his chest. Her small breasts, covered only by a thin calico nightdress, brushed his collarbones. They lay not quite hip-to-hip, the softness of her thighs covering his tight, hard heat. His lips roamed her throat—and she didn’t look like she wanted to complain. “Tess,” he murmured huskily, seeking her mouth.

“Let me go.” Her voice wobbled, but her denial came across loud and clear, a thread of panic winding through.

He released her. She skittered back, her gaze tormented with the inseparable emotions of hidden desire, undeniable rejection and the utter and repellent lack of trust. “We have to go soon, and you said we need to talk about how we’ll find Emily.”

He rolled to a sitting position, knowing she must be aware, from their intimate position, just how hot and hard he was. “I was dreaming.” About you, he added silently, cursing his continued weakness when it came to her.

She chewed her thumbnail in silence. If she thought the subject too dangerous to dwell on, she was dead right. “I made you coffee and toast,” she offered.

“Thanks.”

“I’d better get dressed.” She bolted to the bedroom. His bedroom. Right now, she was probably sliding her ridiculous, old-fashioned, damn sexy nightgown up and over her lithe golden body…

He grabbed the toast, forcing himself to chew and swallow to clear his head of the thick fog of lust filling it, so aware of her he couldn’t think. Wanting her with every breath he took.

Some things never changed.

He’d spent six years trying to put her memory behind him. He’d almost convinced himself he had, when he lived with Belinda—when she carried his child. But Belinda always knew part of him was always somewhere else—with someone else.

One look at Tess showed him he’d been kidding himself, blinding himself to the truth. He wanted to forget her; oh, dear God, how he wanted to put her behind him; but he knew he never would. She’d haunt him until his last breath.

He wouldn’t fool himself again. Deeper waters than their shared daughter connected them; threads bound them in a tangled maze beyond their control. He wanted her, wanted her so bad he couldn’t even think of her without getting so damn hard it hurt; but he wasn’t a gullible kid any more, believing their love could leap all obstacles, survive any test. They could never make it together. There were too many strikes against them.

So keep the walls of ice in place. Keep your heart safe.

His body was another matter. If she wanted him, they could be lovers—for a day, a week, maybe even longer. If he was right in his belief that Beller had abused her sexually—even he had heard rumors of the barrister’s strange sexual appetites—she might need to make love even more than he did. But he had to guard his heart, because once he’d found justice—once he’d thrown her father and brother into the dark purgatory he’d suffered for years—she’d walk away without a backward glance.

She no longer loved him; that much was crystal clear. So why did she still love those heartless sons of bitches after what they’d done to her, and to their daughter?

Tess returned to the living room in jeans and a V-necked T-shirt. He tried to concentrate on her words; but she was exotic, stunningly sexual in a simple pair of jeans, her hair encased in a thong clip. “—you said Cameron wanted you to go quietly away and forget me. Why didn’t he offer to drop all charges if you’d divorce me? I’m sure he’d have made it worth your while.”

“Yeah. He tried.” His shoulders jerked; he heard his voice, flat and hard-edged with the strain of covering his carnal cravings. Envisioning her shimmying those jeans down long, silken thighs… “That was the original deal once he knew we were married. He’d drop the charges if I left Sydney and let you get on with life without me. But trusting him to keep his word’s as stupid as leaving a dingo to guard a sheep’s carcass.” He shrugged. “Next he offered to drop the assault charge he’d added to the robbery.”

Tessa’s head fell. She felt sick. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“He left me alone for a while after I moved in with Belinda.”

He had a woman. He’d made love to her. That woman had kissed him, touched him, loved his body. And though some part of her had realized he wouldn’t wait for her forever, knowing the other woman’s name made the pain worse. Belinda. Jirrah’s lover.

After a moment she asked with near-perfect control, “Will our being together—um, looking for Emily, I mean—cause trouble for you with Belinda?”

“Not now.” He ran a hand through his hair, making a mess of his banded ponytail. “She died in a car accident last year, about three months after she gave birth to our son.”

Tessa stared at him in horror, then bit her thumb down hard, looking around the house. No bright colors adorned the walls—there were no finger marks, no spilled food, no animal mobiles, Sesame Street posters or rainbow paintings anywhere. This house held none of the sunshine and warmth of a child’s love. It was more like a prison of yesterday’s anger. “Is your son alive?” she whispered, almost too terrified to ask, but she had to know.

He nodded. “Living with Leslie and her family.”

She stared again, this time in disbelief. “Why leave him with your sister? Didn’t you want to keep him?” If he’d been her son—

Jirrah looked at her, bleak and hard. “Of course I do. He’s my son. I see him every weekend—but I can’t offer him any sort of life. I can’t even enroll him in preschool till my name’s cleared and I’m declared alive again.” He shrugged. “You know the system with Kooris,” he said, using the term his people used for Aboriginals of his area. “Aunts and uncles have the same status as parents to us. Mikey knows who I am. Leslie knows she won’t keep him forever. He’s with her until I can take proper care of him. When I’m sure he’s safe from Beller and your brother.”

She turned from him. “Look, Jirrah, I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask them to persecute you. I didn’t know you were alive!”

“No, you didn’t,” he agreed. “In their minds, I asked for it by having the gall to touch you in the first place.”

She turned back to him, but there was nothing she could say.

After a few moments’ silence, he went on. “Life was peaceful here until last Wednesday, when our storekeeper said a private eye was looking for a woman who fitted your description, and offered payment for info…he seemed to know you were in the area.” He made a wry face. “My conscience gave me hell. I couldn’t eat or sleep until I knew you were safe.” He grinned then, seeming to finally find something to smile at. “I should’ve come by bus. Beller wouldn’t have dared blow that up.”

Tessa couldn’t smile. “What can I say?” Her hands spread in a helpless gesture. “That I’m sorry? I am sorry. I can’t understand his obsession with me, ruining your life to have a marriage that made us both miserable. Cameron could do so much better than me—most other women adore him. Yet he still follows me around.”

The flat look in his fathomless eyes hurt her. “You don’t have to say it. You didn’t do it. I know that now.”

“But you think I’m weak. You think I gave in without a fight.” She passed a hand over her eyes. “I wasn’t even twenty-one when I was told you’d died—and eight months later Emily died—and I died.” She looked up, hoping against hope he’d see the truth behind her indefensible acts. “Everything I loved vanished from my life—you, my baby, my friends, my work, my car…and they gave me him. Throwing big parties, giving me things…always watching me. Touching me. He wanted me to be a socialite wife, a leader of Sydney’s elite…to love being his wife…to fall in love with him. More, always wanting more. He couldn’t see how I hated his life. I just wanted to hide. The blackness and emptiness of my heart and soul—I can’t describe it. So I blocked everything out.”

A long silence, in which they could only hear the ticking of a clock, and the wailing screech of a lone cockatoo outside. “Everything but the hate. You hang on to that because, in the end, it’s all you’ve got left.”

“You know,” she said in wonder, almost sagging with relief because, for the first time, his eyes, his face, were soft with something besides pity. “You do understand.”

He shrugged. “My cage was bricks and steel. Yours was golden.”

“It was even uglier for that,” she burst out. “An ugly sham. The money, house, cars, clothes—the jewelry he made me wear—and when he touched me. He was always touching me, even when I said no. I hated him for that—I hated him more than anything.” Her voice shook. “I never knew I could hate anyone like I hate him. It eats me alive.”

“Why, Tess?” Looking at him, she saw the still-festering pain, the half-hidden reproach. “Why did you marry him so soon after you married me, when you were pregnant with my child?”

She drew a harsh breath. “I didn’t know what to do. I went to your family, but your dad said what happened to you was my fault and slammed the door in my face. I thought he meant your death. He said they never wanted to see me again. He didn’t want to know about the baby.” She buried her face in her hands.

“Pretty eloquent for my dad.” He touched her arm. “Tell me what he said to you. I’m sure it went beyond that.”

She gently pulled away. “It doesn’t matter. He was right to blame me.” She couldn’t tell him the vile names his father had called her, the accusations he’d thrown. He’d only used words against her. Jirrah could claim far worse from her family.

She looked up, her eyes dark. “A week after they said you died, Cameron bought out Earldon Associates. I didn’t even know they were in trouble. Cameron asked me to marry him. It was sick. He didn’t care that I loved you. He said he’d change it—that we belonged together, and he’d prove it.” She dragged in a breath. “Dad and Duncan begged me, over and over. They said when they needed help, Cameron saved them—and all he wanted in return was to belong to our family in every way. They reminded me of all they’d done to make my childhood happy, especially since my mother died. They kept nagging and nagging that he truly loved me, as no other man had or would—that I’d be happy ever after as his wife.” She choked on an almost hysterical laugh. “Happiness and Cameron is a dichotomy. He doesn’t know how to be happy—he only knows how to want more and more. I don’t think anyone but me can know what he’s like, the warped nature he hides beneath that strange hypnotic charm of his. They didn’t know then—they still don’t now. They honestly thought it was best for me, but they made me commit bigamy.” She heard herself laugh again, strange and wondering. “That’s what’s so weird about it. I could be the one to do time in prison for what they did to me.”

“Since Beller and Duncan’s testimonials in my court case two months later prove they knew I was alive, I doubt any charge laid against you would stick. But their charges’ll sure as hell stick—aiding and abetting a felony, unlawful imprisonment of another and there’s worse. Much worse.”




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