Frances was lying on her bed, thinking.
It was best to think of all this like a mystery or a puzzle. That way she wouldn’t have to be involved; she could view herself as though she were having an out of body experience.
Dad. Linda. Jack. Jax.
Jack and the real mother were part of the puzzle about where Frances would end up. Her dad and Linda were the mystery. Maybe she’d never know why they behaved the way they did or why they dumped her first chance they got. Maybe the real mother and Jack had mysteries too. Maybe everybody did, which would be helpful, because then Frances wouldn’t feel like such a weirdo.
She definitely couldn’t call Jax mother. But could she call her Jax?
She’d had to call Linda Mummy. Even after she turned eleven, it still had to be mummy, not mum. Total embarrassment when she was with her friends, so she ended up not calling her anything.
She didn’t know if she wanted to see her dad or not either. He’d been upset after he’d punched her. Frances had woken up in the house, and the ambulance people were there. So were the police. Linda and her dad were shouting at each other and a policewoman was trying to calm them down.
In those fuzzy, hazy first few minutes after regaining consciousness something inside her told her she didn’t want to be in that house anymore because it wasn’t a home and it never had been. She hadn’t noticed when she’d been a toddler or even when she turned eight. And everyone knew what an important age eight was, because that was when kids started getting some sense of what was going on around them and how they fit in.
Frances had always felt like she was tiptoeing through life from age eight, as though she didn’t belong, although obviously she’d only been a kid so hadn’t been able to make a thorough judgement. But it was also when she’d found out that she wasn’t Linda’s child.
She often had fantasies of being Cinderella. Not that she wanted a prince or anything, because if she was going to be a famous crime writer, or a senior sergeant like Jack, she couldn’t have a prince holding her back. He might not want the same things she did; then they’d argue. She knew she had to be able to fight her own fights. Just not fist fights. Although, if she did want to be a detective, she’d probably have to know how to fight.
She wrinkled her nose.
Jack was coming over for dinner. Would he like the chocolate pudding she’d made? It was her speciality although Linda never ate any. Too fattening. Frances loved it, especially with runny fresh cream. Would Jack like it?
She decided she wouldn’t ask, just wait and see if he mentioned it.
Her thoughts returned to what was she going to do about calling the mother Jax. She could test it out quietly and say her name while not looking at her. If the mother said anything, like Oh, darling, I love that you’ve called me by my name, then she wouldn’t do it again. She wasn’t used to hearing all the love words and wasn’t sure if they’d make her cry, the way—Jax—had nearly cried just now.
‘She’ll wait for you and walk at your side, Frances, like my last foster family did for me.’
Jack must have been through a lot more than Frances, and yet he still understood what she was going through, and didn’t mind that it wasn’t nearly as bad as what he must have suffered.
And Jax had asked for Frances. She’d gone through all those tests and talks or whatever the counsellors made you do when you wanted your real daughter back.
If Frances wanted to know exactly what Jax thought about how this was going to work forevermore, she’d have to ask. That would mean a conversation and she wasn’t sure if she had the guts to steer that conversation or not. She didn’t want to look like she was being soppy or anything.
Another thought crossed her mind. What if it changed suddenly, after she relented and got used to it all?
She’d seen Jack and—Jax—looking at each other when they thought her attention was elsewhere. They fancied each other. They might get married. They’d want to be alone all the time. She wouldn’t be able to leave here until she was sixteen, or maybe fifteen. But that was two years away. How was she going to keep her face in a scowl for that long? It hurt after a couple of hours.
Bella jumped up onto the bed and Frances tickled her tummy. Chocolate pudding and her own dog. Two special things. Not that she’d been given Bella, but it felt like she could claim her as her own dog, since she was allowed on the bed and slept with her at night.
This would never have happened if she’d still been with Linda. If she could see Frances now, looking forward to chocolate pudding and cream, with a little dog on her bed.
It made her smile. Her face didn’t ache nearly as much as when she scowled.
Jax heard the car draw up and made her way to the front door, opening it and stepping out onto the verandah as Jack parked the troop wagon at the edge of her shrub- and herb-filled garden.
She’d expected him; he’d told her he’d be over.
He eased out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door, beeped the remote, clipped the keys to his belt—he was in uniform now—and rolled his shoulders, rotating his neck at the same time.
He hadn’t noticed her and she took the moment to just look at him.
It was the inviting security of his chest, shoulders and arms that won her over more than his resilient, creased-eyed, weary-detective’s handsome face. The trouble was, he looked like he was coming home, returning from a day at work.
He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked along the path, then looked up, paused on the middle step to the verandah, and smiled, all tiredness wiped from his face. ‘You have no idea how lovely you look and what I’ve just been through.’
‘Bad day at the office?’ She said it with a raised eyebrow, but wished the words back immediately. It was too close to happy families. ‘What are you doing here early? Isn’t Solomon outside?’ She looked over his shoulders at the acreage surrounding her house.
‘Can’t get here until midnight. He’s got a horse problem. He’s waiting on his vet.’ He took the next couple of steps up onto the verandah. ‘Do you know who his vet is?’
‘I might.’
‘Don’t say it. You both make use of this “vet’s” services but can’t tell me because he or she isn’t registered.’
‘Is it Tani?’
She shook her head and grinned cheekily. ‘Close.’
He took a long breath and exhaled it. ‘I’ll keep my nose out of it then.’
‘Please.’ Solomon’s cousin, Dak, nephew of Tani, was brilliant with animals and although he wasn’t a vet officially, as far as Jax was concerned he was as much a veterinarian as anyone who’d spent their years in university. Dak had spent his years on the land, in the bush, learning as he went. Plus, it was excessively expensive to get a vet up here from Kalgirri, so if there was an injury she knew Dak could handle, she’d call Solomon and Solomon would go bush to find him.
Jack looked over her shoulder, into the house. ‘Where’s Frances?’
‘In her bedroom. Dinner will be another twenty minutes. I presume you want some.’
‘I’ll also be sleeping on your sofa again, if that’s okay.’
‘I thought you or Solomon were doing an outdoors watch?’
‘I might as well take some time with you. Let him get lonely and bitten by mozzies out there in the dark.’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘I might.’ He took her hand. ‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’ She glanced over her shoulder, down the hallway towards Frances’s room, but Jack pulled her along the verandah behind him.
‘Our secret hideaway,’ he said.
He led her off the side of the verandah and towards the aviary.
Good job she kept her keys on a clip on the belt loop of her jeans.
She unlocked the door of the stock room next to the aviary and walked in, expecting Jack to follow her. She put her keys onto the workbench.
‘Do you have any idea how lovely you are, Isabelle Brown?’
She turned, taken aback by the softness in his tone.
‘It’s Jax,’ she said but her voice sounded lacklustre. Isabelle. It made her think of her grandmother and everything refined and soft and caring. Why had she forgotten how loving her first name had sounded when her grandmother used it? Or now, when Jack said it.
He stood in the doorway, the light behind him bright and luminous. The evening sun was midway to the earth and made her want to shield her eyes with her hand.
‘It’s got to be Isabelle,’ he said. ‘Jack and Jax. Nursery rhyme. Remember?’
She’d said that off the cuff when he’d been here a few months back, to annoy him, mainly. It had been a means to keep him at bay. But that had been before she knew how good a man he was.
‘I took what you said to heart,’ he continued. ‘I take everything you say to heart actually.’
He stepped inside the stock room, his body blocking the glare of the sun.
‘Everybody here knows me as Jax. Jax’s café. Jax’s animal rescue centre. Call Jax, people say. Jax will do it.’
‘So how are we going to get over the nursery rhyme issue?’
She felt a need to blush when she met his gaze. His eyes were inviting her to … she wasn’t sure what, but it probably involved taking off clothes.
‘Jack and Isabelle,’ he said. ‘It sounds great. No more Jack and Jax went up the hill to fetch something …’
She attempted to remove the amusement from her face. ‘If you look up the meaning of that nursery rhyme you’ll discover it’s one of the most depressing.’
‘I did look it up. It’s about Louis the whatever and Marie-Antoinette getting beheaded. Losing their crowns.’
‘Louis the sixteenth; and it’s not about them because it was written around thirty years beforehand. There’s a town in England that stakes claim to the real meaning of the rhyme. They say it’s about a man and a woman who went up a hill to have sex—to fetch a pail of water; it’s a euphemism.’
‘My imagination is already in overdrive.’ The expression on his face—warm, tender, and with more than a hint of teasing—reached right into the depths of her being.
‘It has a horrible ending,’ she told him, keeping her cool. ‘The woman gets pregnant. The man is killed by a rockfall and then the woman dies in childbirth.’
He stepped forwards and Jax had to tighten her kneecaps in order not to step back.
‘If you were ever inclined to fetch a pail of water with me, Jax, I promise not to sit beneath a pile of rocks. Plus, medical conditions have vastly improved since the Middle Ages, so I’m sure you won’t die while having our baby.’
Her stomach flipped.
The glow his look gave her spread to an uplifting warmth she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Suddenly her mind was filled with the mental imagery and sensations of having a baby with Jack and what it would feel like, emotionally. She saw Frances smiling and cradling her brother or sister. She saw Jack’s face, contented as he took in the welcoming picture of his family.
But he’d lost his mind!
‘You can’t stay here in Mt Maria, Jack. There’s nothing for you to do. You’d be bored within three months.’
‘I’d have you. I don’t foresee anything boring about that.’
She wanted to shake him. She wanted to step away from him. She wanted to be able to breathe naturally again, instead of being suffocated by his remarkable presence.
‘In our phone call earlier,’ he said, ‘you told me my marriage proposal was ridiculous because we haven’t kissed again. I think we should sort that problem out.’
So this is why he’d taken her away from the house, so Frances wouldn’t hear or see.
He paused, looking at her, waiting for her, not rushing her.
Then she smiled. It felt like it had lit her eyes. It lit her heart too, and if there was such a thing as a soul, she thought she might have just felt it fly through her.
His gaze softened. ‘This is it,’ he said, with a caressing curve of his mouth. ‘Our smile.’
She couldn’t refute it. His smile burned in his eyes. Her smile was all encompassing, reaching its magical fingers to the depths of her, from the top of her head right down to her toes. This was the smile they’d shared hours after Luke had introduced them in Kalgirri and after the shock of that first meeting and the electricity in the air had stunned them both. It was the smile they’d shared when they stood outside the hotel restaurant, a moment before Jack leaned down and she’d reached up and they’d kissed. She’d only been in his company for about fifteen minutes in all, but she’d kissed him knowing she’d love the touch of his mouth on hers as much as she’d known the instant she set eyes on him that she’d sleep with him, if he wanted her to.
That same shared smile was warming her now but it was also heightened with expectation at the prospect of their impending kiss.
She didn’t have to be led to a sensual level when she was with him. She was always highly aware of him, everything about him. His tough strength. His gentleness with Frances, and also with her. How could she have ever thought that this man, the man who’d undone every rebellious instinct in her to remain frozen and heedless of need and passion, would smile so tenderly and kiss her so warmly, then leave her in a romantically lit restaurant without a good reason for doing so.
She arched and reached up; he tilted his head and leaned down. A second later her mouth was beneath his and her soul took another walk through her body.
She drew her arms up and around his neck, and he pulled her into an embrace, holding her hard, heat rising between them.
Her heart jumped, her skin tingled.
It wasn’t their first kiss, but it ought to be remembered that way.
This is how it would be if they slept together. This would be the first, thrilling, heated stage where she let him know she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
His mouth moved over hers, their lips parted. His mouth was as strong as he was. Safe, comforting, sensual. She didn’t want the kiss to ever end; this secret, passionate kiss in the stock shed next to the aviary, which smelled like sawdust and dog food and hessian sacks and old, musty leather.
All she was inhaling was Jack. She wanted to consume him so all she had to do in the future was breathe in and he’d be with her again, in memory and in soul.
When their lips parted, she blinked up at him, not knowing what to say but wanting to speak. Wanting to tell him what she felt, even though she could hardly comprehend her feelings.
‘Isabelle Jaxine Brown,’ he said steadily, his gaze fixed on her, ‘will you marry me?’
Jax wondered if there was any way in the world she could say yes.