THE BUSH GRASS WAS SO DRY IT CRACKLED, AND THE AIR felt hot, oppressive, weighted. One spark, one match tossed carelessly to the ground, Ian thought uneasily, and the whole landscape would go up in a roaring blaze.
He couldn’t help drawing a parallel between the weather and the situation with Jacy—one was as volatile as the other.
Ian stood next to the fence, watching as the shiny van from Merimbula backed up to the gate. Wilson Tate got out to unload the butternut-colored mare Ian had bought as a gift for his wife.
With a practiced eye, his hat shielding his face from the harsh sun, Ian assessed the animal as it clattered down the ramp. Jacy might have supreme confidence in her ability to manage a horse, but in truth she was an inexperienced rider. If the mare wasn’t tame enough, he’d send it straight back to the fancy stables on the other side of Corroboree Springs.
Tate slipped the bridle off over the horse’s head and sauntered toward Ian, grinning. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’d have dealings with Merimbula for any reason,” he said. “Bram’s right. That little Yank’s got the measure of you, she has.”
“Shut up,” Ian grumbled, looking past his mate, still engaged in a critical inspection of the mare. He had tack waiting on the fence and began saddling the animal, hoping Tate would leave him be.
He should have known better.
“It’s no wonder the rebel colonies broke away from Mother England,” Tate commented sagely, “if the whole country’s made up of people like your wife.”
Ian was tightening the cinch, and he gave it an extra jerk, making the poor mare whinny in surprise and toss her head. Chagrined, he patted the creature’s sweaty neck, murmured a few conciliatory words, and loosened the strap. Finally he turned and faced his mate, tugging at his worn leather gloves as he spoke.
“If you’ve got something to say about Mrs. Yarbro,” he said evenly, “I’ll be warning you to choose your words with care.”
Tate took a cigarette from the packet in his shirt pocket, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it with a throw-away lighter. Again Ian thought apprehensively of the incendiary state of the bush grass.
“Don’t get your balls in a wringer, Ian,” Tate said, grinning through the acrid smoke wreathing his head. “It happens that I admire a spirited woman. Trouble is, she’s got my wife and just about every other female between here and Willoughby all set for a mutiny.”
Ian rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “And you’re wondering what I mean to do about her?”
Tate drew on his cigarette and exhaled leisurely before answering. “No. I figure you don’t know what to do about her any more than any of the rest of us would. I guess I’m just trying to express my sympathy.”
Ian chuckled—Tate’s grasp on the situation was an accurate one—but then he was serious again. Behind him the mare pranced and nickered, evidently impatient to prove herself. “Maybe Jacy’s right about some of it,” he said. “For instance, there’s Redley. All these years he’s been knocking Darlis into next week and doing God only knows what to the little one, and the whole time we just looked the other way, the lot of us.”
“Time was, a man could manage his family the way he saw fit,” Tate reflected. “My own dad, now there was a one. He put his share of bruises on my brothers and me, and his word was law around our house. My mother, God rest her, wouldn’t have dared to cross him.”
Ian turned, thinking of his father, a good and decent man, if not one to show a lad any affection. He pulled the bridle on over the mare’s head and swung up into the saddle. The animal fretted, and he calmed her with ease. “It’s a new world,” he told his friend. He leaned forward, resting his arm on the worn pommel. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never understood how slapping a sheila about could make a man feel big. Seems like a coward’s way to me.”
Before Tate could respond both men were distracted from the conversation. A car was approaching, flinging up a trail of reddish-brown dust in its wake, and it wasn’t one Ian recognized.
“Who would that be?” he muttered, though he knew in advance that Tate wouldn’t have an answer for him.
“No one from Merimbula,” Tate affirmed. “Don’t recognize it.”
Ian nodded toward the gate, which was partly blocked by the horse trailer and the ramp, and Tate opened it up wider so Ian could ride through. The feeling in the pit of his stomach was made of the same stuff as his earlier anxiety about the dryness of the land.
This wasn’t Collie bringing Alice Wigget home from the trip up to Darwin, nor, as Tate had already said, was it Andrew Carruthers come from Merimbula to make another of his fruitless offers on the property. Ian knew for a certainty that this was trouble come a-calling.
He rode the skittish little mare into the dooryard and bent to pat her neck while waiting for the car to arrive. It was long and shiny, a fancy English model of some sort with a uniformed driver. The back windows were tinted, however, and he couldn’t see who else was inside.
Not that he didn’t have a theory or two. Suppose his visitor was Elaine Bennett, Chris’s natural mother, come to try and take the boy from him? Or, as was more likely, her wealthy parents, with the same aim in mind.
Ian set his jaw and waited. The devil would pass out ice cream in hell before he would give up his son.
The car came to a whispering stop in back of the house, and the driver got out, touched the brim of his fancy hat to acknowledge Ian, and went round to open the back door.
A woman stepped from the back, slender and expensively dressed, right down to a pair of white gloves. She had the good sense to wear a wide-brimmed hat, thus keeping the merciless sun off her head, but otherwise her clothes were more suited to a cooler climate.
“Ian Yarbro?” she demanded, and her voice had that peculiarly American twang, flat and slightly nasal.
Jacy’s mother. Of course.
Ian pushed his hat to the back of his head and sighed. He’d almost have preferred to deal with Elaine or her parents.
“Yes,” he said, dismounting and leaving the mare standing with her reins dangling in the dirt.
The woman extended a gloved hand with well-concealed reluctance and announced, “I’m Mrs. Michael Walsh—Regime—if you haven’t guessed. Is my daughter around?”
Ian felt defensive, but he wasn’t about to show weakness. “No,” he said politely. “I’m afraid she’s still in town, at some sort of meeting.” He gestured grandly toward the house. “Why don’t you and your driver come inside, out of the heat, and I’ll see if I can find you something cold to drink.”
Mrs. Walsh looked him over and plainly found him wanting. “Jacy led me to believe you had household help,” she said coolly.
Ian was damned if he was going to explain Alice’s absence, or mention her at all, for that matter. This, after all, was a woman who had abandoned her husband and separated him from his child—virtually unpardonable sins in the bush. Or anywhere else.
“I think I can manage to open the fridge,” he said with exaggerated politeness.
Regina’s eyes were the same pale blue-green as her daughter’s, and they flashed with irritation now, though only briefly. “I should hope so,” she said with the same hostile cordiality Ian had shown her.
He led the way toward the house, gesturing to the driver to join them. Wilson Tate, who had tied the butternut mare to a hitching post in the corral during the exchange between Ian and his mother-in-law, followed nonchalantly. He was a great one for gossip, was Tate; worse than any sheila ever thought of being.
For the first time in his memory that spacious, familiar kitchen seemed crowded to Ian, and strange. He remembered his manners and drew back a chair for Regina, but she stiffened, looking from the chauffeur to Wilson Tate and then back to Ian again. Her message was as plain as if it had been written in fire: Surely you don’t expect me, a lady, to sit with these … men.
Ian felt a flush of irritation rise in his neck. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable out on the veranda,” he said to her, nodding for Tate and the driver to take seats at the trestle table.
With a huffy flourish Jacy’s mother raised her aristocratic little chin and swept grandly off through the living room toward the veranda beyond. At first Ian was surprised that she knew the way; then he realized that she must have been in the Yarbro house with Jake before the divorce.
The driver, an overweight man who was plainly suffering in his chauffeur’s uniform, rolled his eyes expressively.
“Got a fly up her nose,” Wilson Tate commented.
Ian refrained from comment, though he figured Regina Walsh had something up something, for sure and certain. He ferreted about in the fridge until he’d found two bottles of beer and one of Jacy’s beloved diet colas.
He carried the beer to the table, where Tate and the driver eagerly accepted their refreshment, then set off determinedly for the veranda with the cola.
Regina was seated in the swing, fanning herself with her narrow purse. She’d removed her hat, and her fair hair was moist with perspiration. She accepted the cola with a brisk and somewhat grudging “Thank you.”
Ian nodded in response, leaning against the veranda’s railing, his arms folded. “Jacy will be surprised to see you,” he said.
Regina gave him another of her rich-bitch looks, but he caught a glimpse of softness in her, too, and realized that she wasn’t nearly so mean as she would have him believe. In fact, she was probably capable of great tenderness and even greater passion, like her daughter.
If Jake Tiernan had loved this woman once, and he had, there was good in her.
“I have no doubt that my arrival will come as a shock to my daughter,” she said, her tone colder than the beer Tate and the chauffeur were drinking. “You and I agree on that much, at least.”
Ian scratched the back of his head, felt the rough place where Jake had stitched him up like a sheep cut in the shearing process. “I guess she must have written you about Jake,” he said carefully.
Sadness cast a shadow over those porcelain features; if it hadn’t been for her tendency to be ill-natured, Regina would have been a lovely woman. “Yes, I know that he passed away. I was sorry to hear it, of course.”
Ian only shrugged; he wasn’t about to offer further comment on the subject of Jake. The topic was too sensitive.
He took off his hat, shoved his hand through his hair. He resented this woman heartily, but he knew now that it wasn’t because of what she’d done to Jake. That was old news, and although Jake had suffered, he’d come through the experience well enough. No, what bothered Ian was the knowledge that Mrs. Walsh had come to Yolanda, and to his property in particular, to convince Jacy that she didn’t belong in the Australian bush.
The worst part was knowing that Regina might well be right. Life was hard in the outback, without any of the luxuries Jacy had probably enjoyed in the States, and she would be the first to agree that when it came to women’s rights Yolanda was a hundred years behind the times. On top of that was the threat Redley Shifflet represented.
Regina must have divined some of his thoughts, because she smiled indulgently and then said, “You must understand that my daughter has been through a great deal these past few years. Jacy’s told you about her friend, Paul, I’m sure—she was devastated by his death.” She paused and sighed delicately, her attention focused on the landscape. After a moment her gaze swung back to Ian’s face. “Jacy is in no condition to make long-term commitments.”
Ian felt some new emotion akin to terror, but quieter and more calm. He didn’t allow so much as a flicker of it to show in his face. “That’s for Jacy to decide, don’t you think?”
“No,” Regina responded tartly, “I don’t think. She’s given to impulsive actions, ones she generally regrets. The problem is that Jacy is likely to suffer in silence, the way she did when Paul was dying.”
Ian turned away, gripping the railing, because he felt his control over his facial expression slipping. Fortunately, he could still trust his voice. “That must have been very painful for her.”
“It was,” Regina agreed, sighing the words. “She hasn’t been the same since.”
“Grief does that to a person,” Ian said, speaking to the land. Like a much-loved woman, it was capable, that terrible, beautiful terrain, of conferring the deepest of sorrows. He both revered it and feared its power over him.
“I quite agree,” Regina replied. “I’ll speak frankly, Mr. Yarbro—Ian—Jacy simply isn’t ready for marriage. Especially not to a man who lives in this godforsaken outpost of nowhere.”
At that Ian turned. His jawline felt tight; he consciously relaxed the muscles there. “We’re not talking about a little girl, Mrs. Walsh,” he pointed out. “Jacy is a grown woman. I think she knows what she’s ready for and what she isn’t.”
They were both startled by the sound of soft applause from behind the screen door. Ian’s heart stumbled and then righted itself when he saw Jacy standing there clapping her hands, partly because he hadn’t heard her drive in and partly because he always felt a certain lurching wonder when he looked at her.
“Thank you, Ian,” she said, pushing open the door. “Could I get you to put that in writing?”
He grinned crookedly, but he felt a pang of sorrow because he knew better than anyone how easy it would be to lose Jacy. She was like some beautiful tropical bird; if he tried to tame her, she might take wing and disappear into the blue sky. “Quote me,” he teased, in response to her question, “and I’ll deny everything.”
Jacy stepped out onto the veranda then, and Regina, obviously thrilled to see her daughter, rose to her feet and held out her arms. “Baby,” she said.
Jacy moved into her mother’s embrace. “Hello, Mom,’ she said with a certain affectionate resignation in her voice “What took you so long?”
That seemed like a good time to leave the two women alone, so Ian went back into the house and got himself a beer. Wilson Tate gave him a sympathetic slap on the back and said he thought he’d be settling the mare he’d brought into a stall and then getting back to Merimbula. With that he was gone.
Ian sat down at the trestle table for a chat with the chauffeur, but his mind wasn’t on it. He was thinking about the two women on the front veranda. They looked alike, except for the obvious age difference. Did they think alike, too?
Jacy had been expecting her mother, on some level, but she wasn’t prepared for the reality. There was so much going on in her life already, what with the small-scale revolution and Redley Shifflet out there in the bush someplace, no doubt plotting his revenge against both her and Ian. Now she would have her well-meaning parent to deal with in the bargain.
“I’ve got a hotel room—to use the term loosely—in Willoughby,” Regina announced as soon as they were alone and seated on the swing, hands clasped. “You can come back with me tonight—we’ll catch our breaths and then fly home. Michael will take care of the divorce.”
Jacy flinched at the word. “First of all, Mom,” she said patiently, “I’m not planning to go anywhere. I love Ian, and I’m going to stay with him. And second, Michael isn’t an attorney, he’s a pediatrician.”
Regina’s still-lovely face was pinched with jet lag and disappointment. “Don’t be stubborn, darling,” she pleaded. “This isn’t the life for you, and you know it.”
“It wasn’t the life for you, Mother,” Jacy pointed out, less patiently than before. “But I’m half Australian, and I’ve got this place in my blood, just like Ian does.”
Regina gave a theatrical sigh. “Come, now—do you think I don’t understand what’s happened here? I know because I did the very same thing—I mistook a youthful passion for real love. And because of that mistake I broke a good man’s heart.”
Jacy didn’t remember Regina speaking so kindly of Jake before that. Usually she referred to her ex-husband in far less complimentary terms. “What happened between you and Dad?” she asked, her fingers comfortably interlaced with her mother’s.
A sad, sweet smile touched Regina’s mouth, and her gaze was on the distant horizon. After a long time she answered her daughter’s question in a soft and hesitant voice. “We were just too different. He loved this dry, dusty place, and after the novelty wore off I was wildly homesick for Manhattan. We began to argue, and then …” Regina looked at Jacy again, her brow furrowed with reluctance.
“And then?” Jacy prompted gently.
“Jake met another woman.” Regina closed her eyes for a moment; plainly, the memory still caused her pain. Seeing the shock and corresponding hurt in Jacy’s face, Regina went on quickly. “It wasn’t all his fault, sweetheart. He was young and very virile, and I refused to share his bed for the last six months of our marriage.”
Jacy’s eyes burned with tears; she ached for both her parents. Regina must have felt like an outsider in this strange and hostile place, and Jake had probably just been looking for the love he’d had and then lost.
“Didn’t you miss him at all after you left?”
Regina’s smile was heartbreaking to see. “Miss Jake? I cried for a year. Every time the doorbell rang I prayed it was him.” She sniffled. “Jake would have liked the United States, damn his stubborn Aussie hide, but he refused even to visit. It was as though he blamed the country—or specifically my being an American—for everything bad that happened between us.”
Jacy thought uneasily of Ian’s remarks about her Yankee ideas and bit her lip for a moment. What if Ian grew disenchanted with their marriage—given their many differences, it didn’t seem all that unlikely a prospect—and turned to another woman the way Jake had?
She’d die if that happened, she reflected. But only after killing Ian.
Her grip on her mother’s hand tightened until Regina frowned and withdrew.
“I suppose you inherited Corroboree Springs,” the older woman said.
Jacy was grateful for the change of subject, though she knew the respite was only temporary. Regina hadn’t traveled halfway around the world not to accomplish her objective. “Sort of,” Jacy said with a nod. “Ian got the springs, the land is mine.”
Regina looked startled. “Ian inherited? Why on earth would Jake split up the property that way?”
Jacy smiled, missing Jake acutely, even though she felt a little disillusioned by what she’d learned about him. “Dad believed Ian and I were made for each other,” she recalled. “My guess would be that he thought binding us in a partnership of sorts might lead to other things.”
“And he got his way, the old devil,” Regina reflected, studying the landscape again.
The sun was beginning to set, and there were familiar sounds coming from inside the house—masculine laughter, Chris’s incessant chatter, a staticky newscast out of the big, old-fashioned radio in the front room.
“Yes,” Jacy agreed. “He got his way.”
“You’re really not coming home.”
“This is home,” Jacy answered. “Right here, where Ian is.”
Regina’s mouth tightened for a moment before she replied. “You’ll regret your rash choices, Jacy, when the passion fades—and it will, no matter what you think now. Then you’ll come to hate this inhospitable place.”
Jacy sighed. “There’s no point in our discussing the subject, Mom,” she said gently. “I’m staying.”
“Until there’s a child?” Regina demanded in a whisper, suddenly angry. “That way the baby will be hurt, too, as well as that little boy in there, and Ian. And worst of all, you!”
“Mom—”
Regina was crying. She pushed away from Jacy and rose from the swing to walk to the other end of the veranda. “Just leave me alone,” she said between soft, strangled sobs. “You can’t imagine what it does to me—you can’t imagine—seeing history repeat itself this way!”
Jacy opened the screen door but lingered on the threshold. “I’ll have the driver bring in your bags.”
Regina did not turn around. “Don’t bother. I left my things in Willoughby, at the hotel, and I’ll be returning there as soon as I pull myself together.”
There was no point in arguing, although it broke Jacy’s heart that Regina meant to leave so quickly. They had always been good friends, the two of them, as well as mother and daughter. It would hurt to part without laughing together, having a few heart-to-heart talks, and gossiping about all the fascinating people in Regina and Michael’s lofty social circles.
“Did you see the horse?” Chris cried, unable to contain his excitement, when Jacy wandered into the kitchen in a spell, washed her hands, and automatically started dinner. She didn’t mind cooking—she even enjoyed it sometimes—but she was definitely looking forward to Alice’s return. “Did you see the horse Dad bought for you?”
Jacy went still, holding a frying pan six inches above the burner, and sought Ian’s face. Wilson Tate was gone, but of course the driver her mother had hired in Willoughby remained, as well as Chris and her husband.
“Horse?” she echoed stupidly.
Ian looked shyly pleased, like a little boy offering a paste-speckled valentine. “You said you wanted to ride,” he replied.
She set the skillet down with an unintentional bang and headed straight for the back door, all her doubts and problems momentarily forgotten. She’d noticed the Merimbula truck and trailer outside when she’d returned from the meeting in town, but she’d been more interested in the limousine. “Where is this horse?” she cried, breathless. “Where?”
She heard Ian laugh, felt him behind her even before he fell into step with her.
“In the shed, sheila,” he answered, beaming. “Where else?”
They went into the barn together, not by way of the farmyard but through a side doorway. Jacy spotted the mare immediately—she was munching hay in a corner stall—and she startled every animal in the place with a shriek of pure joy.
Then she turned and flung her arms around Ian’s neck, kissing him soundly on the mouth before telling him, “She’s beautiful! Oh, Ian, I love you!”
He looked surprised by this declaration, but he offered no direct comment. “You’ll have to wait to ride her—I haven’t had a chance to make sure she’s all right, what with your mother showing up and everything.”
“Nonsense,” Jacy said, striding toward the stall. “I’m not a novice, Ian. I don’t need you to test-drive my horse.”
“Jacy—”
She had already opened the stall door by the time Ian reached it and was inside slipping a bridle over the mare’s head. Although Jacy had taken formal lessons in the States as a young girl, Jake had taught her to ride bareback, thinking it was safer, and that was the style she still preferred.
“Jacy,” Ian repeated, more sternly this time.
She led the mare out of the stall and mounted. She grinned down at Ian when he took hold of the bridle. “Don’t spoil this for me,” she said shakily. “Please.”
Ian hesitated, then released his grasp on the bridle. “Go ahead, then,” he growled. “But be careful.”
Jacy nodded, and she fully meant to comply with Ian’s wishes, too, but once she got outside, into the twilight, she had a sudden, crazy impulse to outrun all her doubts and fears, all her inadequacies and failures. She leaned low over the mare’s neck and goaded her into a gallop and then a dead run.
She didn’t look back but simply headed straight out into the bush, spurring the horse with the heels of her sneakers, making the animal run faster and faster. And the mare seemed to delight in the exercise.
They must have traveled about a mile—Jacy couldn’t see the house or remember exactly where it lay—when the animal stumbled and Jacy went flying off over its head. She rolled, unhurt, over the hot, sandy dirt and got up laughing.
The mare bolted, spooked by a lizard or some other small, quick creature, and ran off.
Jacy wasn’t afraid, because she knew Ian was right behind her. Sure enough, he rode out of the thickening shadows within a couple of minutes, mounted on one of his tamed brumbies, leading her lathered mare behind him.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he reached her, swinging down from the saddle to grasp her shoulders in his hands.
She started to laugh and to cry, both at once. It was all too mucli—the threat from Redley, the rebellion brewing among Yolanda’s women—a revolution of which she was the unwilling leader—Jake’s death, and her mother’s arrival.
Ian pulled her close and held her, and she clung to him, knotting her fingers in the back of his shirt, loving the man-smell of him, the strength and the substance and the warmth. Oh, God, if only he loved her, she thought, the world would be a perfect place.
“It’s all right, sheila,” he said gruffly.
She wailed, then laughed hysterically, then settled into a series of deep hiccups. “You’re—going—to hate—me,” she managed.
Ian chuckled, one hand buried in her hair. “No, sheila. Never that.”
“The women—the women of Yolanda are going to refuse to—to sleep with their husbands,” Jacy blurted, still hiccuping. “Until they agree to send all the children to school every day.”
That got his attention, as she had known it would. He held her away from him, searching her face. It was then that she noticed his injured eye was almost back to normal. “Was that your idea?” he demanded.
Jacy shook her head. She held her breath, cheeks puffed out, in an effort to stop the spasmodic hiccups.
“Are you planning to leave our bed?” This was serious business to Ian, as it would be to most men.
Jacy let her breath out in a rush and waited, somewhat dazed, to see if the old trick had worked.
It had.
“No,” she said. “I was going to ask you to leave it.” Ian narrowed his eyes. “What?”
Jacy laid one hand to her chest, fingers splayed, and sniffled loudly. “I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t, now, wouldn’t I?” she reasoned.
“God damn,” Ian hissed. Then he released her, turned away, and flung his hat down. “God damn, God damn, God damn!”
Jacy smiled, enjoying this display of masculine maturity. Then, mischievously, she said, “I didn’t say I expected you to agree, Ian. I just said I had to ask, that’s all.”
He whirled, his face crimson beneath his deep tan. “You mean—”
She moved close to him, gripped the collar of his work shirt, and looked up into his eyes. “I mean,” she teased shamelessly, “that if you refuse—well, there just won’t be much I can do about it.”
Ian glared. Then he laughed.
Then he kissed her. Hard.