THE NIGHT WAS perfectly still, so still it was hard to believe a rain squall had swept through Warrapinya only a few hours earlier. From the veranda Erin looked out at the black line of trees that marked the end of the silvery paddocks. She looked up at the clear, star-studded sky and saw the red eye of an aeroplane cruising high.
Tomorrow she would be flying away from here. Nails would spend half a day driving her to Cloncurry and then she would catch a commercial flight back to the coast.
In the meantime she had to tell Luke the decision she’d reached.
She sighed heavily, felt panicky—which wasn’t good enough. She’d been scared for too long, and by running scared she’d come close to ruining Joey’s life. And she’d left a terrible hole in Luke’s.
Bringing Joey back to Australia had begun the process of making amends, but now there was another more difficult—oh, so much more difficult step that she had to take.
‘Erin, can you spare a minute?’
Luke’s voice, coming from behind, startled her. She turned and saw him silhouetted against the lights of the house and she felt a leap inside her, like a flare.
Would she ever develop immunity to this man? It wasn’t right to go on feeling this way about her ex.
‘I wanted to apologise about the phone call this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It interrupted us. We didn’t get to finish our discussion, did we?’
‘We didn’t arrive at any long-term plans for sharing Joey.’ She hoped she didn’t sound nervous.
‘Actually, I was more interested in talking about us.’
‘Us?’
His face was in shadow but she caught a flash in his eyes that looked suspiciously like amusement. ‘What was it you said this morning? Something about dangling?’
‘Oh, yes—well—’
‘I was wondering if you feel less dangling now.’
Erin swallowed. ‘I certainly found it helpful to talk to you about—what went wrong—with us.’ She turned back to the railing. It was so much easier to talk about this when she wasn’t actually looking at Luke. ‘I hope we can keep the channels of communication open now,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘It would be nice if we could stay friends.’
‘Nice?’ He made it sound like a swear word.
‘It—it would be helpful for Joey if we were friendly, wouldn’t it?’
Luke’s answer was to move closer. His hands touched her shoulders and she blushed as she felt the warm pressure through her blouse.
‘What about you, Erin? Is that what you want? My friendship?’
Her poor heart thumped. She remembered the way he’d kissed her last night. So much more than friendly. ‘I certainly don’t want to be your enemy.’
‘Are those our only alternatives?’ He dipped his mouth close to her ear. ‘To be friends or enemies?’
She was so super-aware of Luke, of his touch and the longing building inside her, that she couldn’t think. ‘I—I don’t know.’
‘Wrong answer,’ he said and she heard a teasing smile in his voice. ‘Now you’re going to have to ask me a question.’
‘What kind of question?’
Somewhere out in the silent darkness beyond the veranda a lone bird called mournfully.
Luke’s hand touched her chin, tilting it gently so that he turned her to face him. She saw a depth of emotion in his eyes that stole her breath. ‘Why don’t you ask me how I feel about seeing you again? Ask me what it’s like to be losing myself again in the most beautiful blue eyes in the known universe.’
She began to tremble. ‘Don’t flirt, Luke. It’s not fair.’
‘I can’t help it. You’re still an incredibly desirable woman, Erin.’ He lowered his hands to the railing on either side of her, so that no part of him was touching her but he was there, all around her. She felt light-headed to have him so close. If she moved a fraction of an inch they would be touching and any minute now she’d give in. To resist Luke was asking the impossible.
He dipped his head and let the rough skin of his jaw graze her cheek. ‘I’ve been going crazy just being near you. You’ve no idea how much I want you.’
Oh, but she did! She was on exactly the same page. Melting hot! Weak-kneed with longing. Already her mind was racing ahead, imagining the two of them naked and passionate in bed together. A whole night of—
Oh, help. She mustn’t give in to Luke tonight, mustn’t lose her head. It was not the way out of their dilemma. She would only be setting herself up for more pain. She was leaving in the morning. At the end of her vacation she was going back to New York.
She had to talk her way out of this. And fast.
‘Sex is not going to solve our problems, Luke.’
‘I’m damn sure it would solve the problem I have right now.’
‘Don’t even joke about it.’
Just minutes ago, she’d been gathering up the courage to tell him something serious and important. How had she moved from that to being seduced?
‘We tried to solve our problems with sex when we were married,’ she said, not quite steadily. ‘It didn’t work then.’
‘A lot of things worked, Erin. And we were sensational in bed.’
She closed her eyes, but it didn’t help. She was picturing Luke making love to her and she was ablaze with wanting him.
‘We were Olympic-standard lovers,’ he murmured.
In spite of her tension she couldn’t help smiling. ‘The duck’s pyjamas,’ she said, remembering a long-ago conversation.
‘No doubt about it.’ His lips brushed her ear. ‘I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you.’
Help! Oh, help! How could a girl withstand such temptation? Why should she? Right now all Erin could think was that she wanted Luke to kiss her, to hold her, to make sweet, beautiful love to her.
But we’re divorced.
She grabbed at that thought the way a drowning swimmer grabbed at a lifebelt. ‘A one-night stand is only going to complicate things,’ she said.
‘Then stay as many nights as you like.’
Oh, God. She was so tempted.
But then she remembered exactly why his wonderful suggestion was a very bad idea. ‘If we become lovers again we would really confuse Joey, wouldn’t we?’
Luke went still. He didn’t speak. After a tiny beat he wrapped his arms around her and drew her against him, sending an electric tremble through every pulse point. She heard him sigh deeply and felt the rise and fall of his chest.
For a breathless stretch of time she stayed there, basking in the warmth of Luke’s embrace, wishing she could go on being held by the man she loved.
If only… Oh, dear heaven, if only…
Gently, sadly, with the kind of unfurling move a dancer makes, she eased herself out from his embrace.
‘Erin.’ His voice was rough with need as he tried to reach for her again but she took a quick step back.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Luke. We mustn’t delude ourselves. I couldn’t bear to rush in and make the same mistakes as last time. It can’t lead anywhere.’ Before he could interrupt, she rushed on. ‘I’m going away in the morning. Maybe—’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe after I’ve had my break at Byron Bay. After you’ve had more time with Joey and we’ve both had some space to think. But not now.’
She still hadn’t got to the other thing she’d planned to tell Luke tonight, but she was suddenly afraid that if she didn’t leave now she might weaken and throw herself at him. ‘Goodnight,’ she said quickly.
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her with a mixture of anger and sadness that ripped at her heart.
The rest of what she had to tell him would have to wait till morning. Talking to Luke was always safer in daylight.
Long after Erin left, Luke stayed on the veranda staring out into the black bush and the sky. The stars were so bright they looked cheeky tonight. Cheeky and winking at him, winking at his foolishness.
Stay as many nights as you like.
Oh, that was great. That was really smart.
Surely he could have done better than that? Given the fullness in his own heart, the feelings clamouring to be set free, he should have burst into poetry this evening. But he’d been so damn nervous. And maybe a little crazed by desire. Okay, more than a little crazed by desire.
It had seemed to make sense this afternoon in the aftermath of the storm. That was when he’d decided that the best way to win Erin back was to try to seduce her. Once she was in his bed, once he’d spent a whole night making beautiful, impassioned, hotter-than-hot love to her, she’d change her mind about leaving.
And she’d be ready to hear the truth—that he loved her. Still. Always.
He wanted her back in his life.
But instead of seduction, amazingly sensuous romance and confessions of true love, tonight had been a major stuff-up.
Erin had said she wanted space to think and he hadn’t said a word. Not a damn word.
Erin paced her room.
It was four a.m. and she couldn’t sleep so she’d finished her packing and now she was ready to leave. Packed and ready to leave—and still in love with Luke.
Oh, God. There it was. She’d allowed herself to think the unthinkable. She was still in love with the man she had married—and divorced.
It wasn’t just a physical thing. She loved everything about Luke Manning. She loved watching him every chance she could, loved watching the way he interacted with Joey. And with Jenny and the boys. The grimness that had hung over him like a cloud when she’d first arrived in Sydney had almost vanished now. Once again he was the easygoing, fun-loving Luke. Prince Charming in blue jeans.
But what could she do with her love?
With a wail of despair she threw herself down on the bed, rolled on to her back and stared up at the slowly rotating ceiling fan.
She’d made the right decision tonight, she was sure of that. If she’d slept with Luke she would have begun the whole catastrophe all over again.
Would it have been different if Luke had said he loved me? If he’d asked me to marry him again?
Erin blinked and pressed her knuckles to her eyes before the tears could start. What was the point of asking those questions? Luke hadn’t said anything about love. He’d been interested in sex, not re-marriage.
She’d known when she left New York that this journey to Australia was not about mending her relationship with Luke. She’d come because Joey needed to meet his father.
And now, the kindest thing, the best way to demonstrate her love, was to get out of Luke’s life so he could concentrate on Joey.
If only there was another answer.
Breakfast was a hurried affair. Erin and Nails had half a day’s drive ahead of them before they reached the airport at Cloncurry.
Everyone assembled on the front veranda to say goodbye to her. Jenny was there and the boys, and Joey, of course, watching her with his sad puppy look and Gracie, looking worried.
Luke hadn’t appeared this morning and Erin tried not to mind. Perhaps he’d seen her bags sitting on the veranda at the top of the front steps and decided that they were too ghastly a reminder of the last time she’d left.
Reaching into her pocket, she handed Jenny and Gracie slim packages wrapped in tissue paper. ‘They’re necklaces I made,’ she told them. ‘I hope you like them.’
Gracie’s eyes brimmed with tears and Erin had to look away. Which was when she saw Luke striding down the veranda.
Her heart trembled in her chest. He looked dreadful, as haggard and sleep-deprived as she was.
Her stomach twisted in knots. This was it. Her only chance to tell him her decision. Aware that everyone was watching her, she hurried along the veranda to meet him halfway.
‘Luke, before I leave there’s something I wanted to tell you.’
He drew a sharp breath. ‘Yes? What is it?’
She pressed her palms together in a prayer-like gesture. ‘As you know, I’ve insisted all along that Joey has to come back with me to Manhattan at the end of this vacation. But I—I’ve changed my mind.’
‘How? What do you mean? You’re taking him sooner?’
‘I mean—’ She looked back down the veranda to the cluster of people waiting to say goodbye to her. ‘If Joey really wants to stay here with you, I think he should.’
She heard the sharp hiss of Luke’s indrawn breath.
‘I haven’t said anything to Joey, of course. I think we should just wait and see how the next few weeks pan out, but—I’ve realised I’d be selfish to drag him back to live in Manhattan if he really wanted to be here.’
Erin held her breath.
‘That’s—very generous,’ Luke said gruffly and then he cleared his throat. ‘But—but what about you?’
Her mouth turned square.
I mustn’t cry. I am not going to cry.
‘I—I would still want to see him, of course.’
‘Erin, I know this must—’
‘We can work out details at the end of the vacation,’ she said, briskly cutting him off. ‘If the need arises. I might be jumping the gun. Joey might be quite happy to go back home. I—I just wanted you to know I’m not so black and white on this issue any more.’
‘Mommy,’ called Joey. ‘Nails is coming.’
It was almost a relief to be able to say, ‘I have to go.’
The kiss she gave Luke was so quick and frantic she actually missed his cheek and hit his nose. She turned quickly and almost scurried back to the others and the next few moments were a blur as she hurried through the farewells.
‘See you in Sydney,’ she said, hugging Joey tight.
And then she was down the steps and in the ute and the door was shut. Her tears began to fall as the engine started up.
Nails looked at her with dismay.
‘Not again,’ he muttered as the ute rolled forward.
‘It’s different this time,’ she blubbered.
‘You reckon?’
Nails drove very fast over the bumpy dirt track that cut across Warrapinya to the main road. Probably, thought Erin, because the poor man was desperate to get this over and done with. Sitting beside him in the passenger seat, she couldn’t hold back the tears, had no choice but to let them stream silently down her cheeks. She was leaving the two people in the world she loved most.
She had to keep reminding herself that she was leaving for all the right reasons. That was the only thing that stopped her from begging Nails to turn the ute around and take her back.
They climbed a rocky ridge and in front of them the countryside stretched flat and wide all the way to the horizon. The road was a dirt track—a straight red streak cutting across the land and flanked on either side by pale champagne-coloured grass.
Erin dug for a tissue in her pocket, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘This is all Warrapinya land, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yep. The boundary gate is an hour away.’
Joey’s inheritance, she thought, biting her lip. Such a contrast to the crowded streets of New York and her tiny Upper West Side apartment. She thought, for a deeply nostalgic moment, of home. For the first time ever memories of Manhattan didn’t pull on her heartstrings the way they always had in the past.
She sighed. ‘Gracie told me about the old men who dreamed about me coming back to Warrapinya. Looks like they were wrong.’
Nails frowned. ‘That’s not the way I heard it. They didn’t say you were coming back to Warrapinya. Just back to the Boss.’
Erin drew a deep breath. She mustn’t think about Luke or she’d have some kind of breakdown.
She tried to remember the meditation exercises she’d learned in yoga class, but before she could properly begin the first of them, she heard the whine of a motor, different from the ute’s throaty growl. It came from somewhere behind her.
‘What’s that noise?’
Squinting through the windscreen, Nails ducked his head to get a better angle. ‘What the blue blazes is he up to?’
‘Who? What’s happening?’
Nails slowed the ute and a small plane sailed over them, unusually low. ‘Reckon it’s the Boss,’ he said.
Luke? Her heart leapt to her throat. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘Looks like he’s going to land.’
Astonished, Erin watched through the windscreen as Luke’s plane shot over and in front of them. ‘But there’s no landing strip.’
‘Doesn’t matter out here.’ Nails brought the ute to a complete stop and they both watched as the plane banked in a wide arc and then zoomed back towards them, dropping lower and lower.
Erin’s jaw gaped. Nails was right. Luke was going to land right on the dirt road in front of them.
Nails was shaking his head and chuckling softly, but Erin sat very still as the little plane touched down with surprisingly few bumps. She couldn’t let herself try to think what this meant, wouldn’t allow any of her wild and scattered thoughts to take hold.
Luke’s plane taxied closer, its twin propellers whirling. What had happened? Did he have bad news from home?
‘He’s got the little fella with him,’ Nails said.
And, sure enough, Erin could make out the small shape of Joey sitting in the cockpit beside Luke, waving madly through a cloud of red dust.
And then her vision blurred, but she managed to see Luke getting out of his seat and moving to the cabin door. She saw his long legs emerge and then he was on the track and jogging towards them.
She fumbled frantically with the door handle. At first it wouldn’t open and then it swung free and she stumbled out. ‘What is it?’ she called to him. ‘What’s the matter?’
He stopped a few feet away from her. His face was flushed, his eyes fiercely intent.
‘What is it, Luke?’
‘You can’t run away again, Erin. I won’t let you.’
She stared at him. Can’t? Won’t let you? What did he mean? Was he going to demand that she come back to Warrapinya? Had Joey thrown a tantrum?
‘I’m going to Byron Bay, Luke,’ she said with quiet but grim determination. ‘You mustn’t try to stop me.’
‘But I must.’ Luke’s throat worked and his eyes shimmered in a way that set her heart racing. ‘Remember that day we met in New York? I blocked your way then. I made sure I didn’t lose you in the crowd. I was crazy to ever let you go. I’m not going to make that mistake again. This time if you go, I’m coming with you.’
Her heart gave a wild little skip, but she tried to ignore it.
‘But—Joey wants to be here,’ she said.
‘Joey wants to be wherever we are, Erin.’ Luke tried to smile and failed. He looked suddenly vulnerable, impossibly young and lost. ‘I can’t bear to lose you again. I love you too much.’
Oh, Luke.
She opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him too, but the sound that emerged was somewhere between a sob and a cheer.
She held out her arms and in the next instant they were together, hugging tight, wondrously tight, as if they were both afraid to let each other go.
Erin could feel their hearts pounding together as they kissed. And between kisses they exchanged thrilled, excited smiles. They laughed, cried a little, kissed again and they held each other with the kind of ecstatic relief that came when a most treasured possession had been lost for too long but was found at last.
With her head against his shoulder, she said at last, ‘I love you.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you, Luke. But I haven’t been brave enough to tell you.’
‘But you have, Erin.’
‘Have I?’ She lifted her head and looked at him. ‘When?’
‘It’s been there in your eyes. And in your kiss. And just now it was there in the wonderfully plucky way you offered to leave Joey with me.’
‘But I should have been brave enough to tell you.’
Luke smiled. Beautifully. ‘I should have been brave enough to ask you.’
He kissed her again.
‘How can we make this work?’ She looked steadily into his eyes. ‘I’m not sure I should offer another promise that I could live here at Warrapinya and be happy ever after.’
‘I don’t expect you to, but I can promise I’d be happy to live with you and Joey in Manhattan, Erin. And I’m free enough to do that now.’
‘Are you sure? Would you really be happy there?’
‘No doubt about it. I love New York. It’s the most exciting city in the world.’
‘You’d be able to hassle your agent on a regular basis.’
‘That’s a bonus I hadn’t thought of.’
She smiled wryly. ‘But meanwhile, back at the ranch, Joey’s learning to love it here.’
‘We’ll bring him for summer vacations.’
‘And you, Luke. You can’t just walk away from everything here. I know what it means to you.’
He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. ‘It’ll take time to find the perfect balance, but we will, Bright Eyes. The important thing is that we’ll be a family again and we’ll work it out together.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed happily and she released a deep sigh of utter contentment, because at last she knew with absolute certainty that, as long as she and Luke and Joey stayed together, they would find a way to make this second chance work.
Luke drew her close for another kiss, but an excited cheer from behind brought them spinning around.
Their son had climbed down from the plane while they’d been lost in a world of their own and now he was standing near the ute with Nails.
‘Hey, Dad,’ Joey shouted, with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. ‘Mommy does like kissing you after all.’
Ah, yes…they were a family again.
* * * * *