JACY’S THOUGHTS TURNED OFTEN TO IAN, AND SHE MISSED him with a poignancy that frightened her. Oh, but it was dangerous to love so deeply, she thought, so fully, without restraint or reservation.
She spent most of her first day in Adelaide closeted away with a banker and attorney, since moving a trust fund like hers from one country to another was no simple process. While Jacy was doing business Regina and Chris explored the city.
Late that afternoon, when she returned to her hotel, her mother and stepson were still out. Jacy took off the prim suit she’d worn, splashed cool water on her face, and lay down for a nap.
She was awakened when Chris burst into the room like a torpedo, crying, “We saw Gog and Magog!”
Regina came in behind the child, giving Jacy a discerning look. “Statues,” she explained. “They’re in the shopping arcade. Put on your robe, darling—there’s a bellman coming right behind us with some of the loot.”
Jacy snatched up the hotel robe that lay across the foot of her bed and put it on. “What do you mean, ‘the loot’?”
Chris’s face was bright, and his freckles seemed to stand out from his skin. “Mrs. Walsh bought us presents, you and me!” he announced just as the bellman knocked. He rushed to admit him.
Jacy gave her mother a look. “Mom—”
Regina interrupted with a wave of one hand and an impatient whisper. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jacy, let me have a little fun, won’t you?”
The bellman brought in a cart loaded with bags and boxes, and Regina directed him to put everything on the nearest bed, which happened to be Chris’s. Jacy stared at the small mountain in amazement while her mother thanked the hotel employee and took care of the tip.
“Is there anything left in Adelaide to buy?” Jacy asked in a tone of marvel. “Or did the two of you scarf it all up?”
Chris was happily plundering the sacks. While Ian had always provided well for him, life was simple in the bush, and there were many things a young and harried father would not think to purchase.
Chris brought out a beautiful pair of riding boots made of buttery brown leather, and stacks of jeans and T-shirts, socks and underwear for Jacy to admire. Regina had also bought him toys—a Viewmaster and plenty of reels, several hand-held video games, a cassette player and tapes, and a soccer ball.
Jacy felt a stab of plain, old-fashioned jealousy. She’d wanted to give Chris some of those very things, but Regina had beaten her to the punch. When she met her mother’s gaze, however, she could not be angry.
Regina had been generous; there was nothing wrong in that. The expression in the older woman’s eyes was at once mischievous and pleading.
“It’s all very lovely,” Jacy said, ruffling Chris’s hair. She knew Ian would be irritated, his formidable pride being what it was, but he’d get over it soon enough. After all, none of them loved Chris more than he did.
“There’re things here for you, too,” Chris went on, arranging his own booty neatly at one end of the bed lest there be any confusion and Jacy should claim the soccer ball or some other treasure by accident.
She hid a smile at that, looked at her mother, and shook her head in good-natured consternation. “What am I going to do with you, Mom?” she demanded, throwing up her hands in mock frustration.
“I haven’t seen you wear anything decent or stylish since I arrived in this godfor—” Regina paused, remembering Chris. “Since I got here. Naturally I took matters into my own hands. You’re still a size eight, aren’t you?” She went over to the bed and started rustling bags. “Sizes are different here, but in the good boutiques the salespeople translate them well enough.”
Regina pulled a silky lavender jumpsuit from one of the sacks and held it up.
Jacy adored the outfit on sight; her mother had excellent—and of course costly—taste. “Ian will love it,” she said, just to nettle Regina a little.
Regina grimaced prettily. “It would look awful on him,” she retorted, and all three of them broke up laughing. When that had subsided Regina, ever the queen bee, clapped her hands and ordered, “Come now, the both of you. Get yourselves bathed and changed. We’ll take in a movie tonight, I think—and I have theater seats for tomorrow night.”
Jacy sighed. Even if she’d wanted to resist Regina—which in this instance, at least, she didn’t—it would have been like swimming upstream in a river of wet concrete.
When Regina had gone to her own room and Chris was in the tub, Jacy went through the gifts her mother had bought for her that day. Tailored trousers and blouses, jeans and T-shirts, lovely lingerie, a sleek little black dress of silk crepe and sexy shoes and stockings to compliment it. Makeup and perfume—in exactly the shades and fragrances Jacy would have chosen for herself.
After Chris was out of the bathroom and dressed in his Sunday clothes, Jacy went in and did a transformation of her own. She felt renewed and glamorous, wearing her new makeup, a pair of black slacks, a soft white blouse with a scoop neckline, and sandals. In the morning she would get a haircut and a manicure for good measure.
While she and Regina and Chris were eating in a restaurant just down the street from the hotel Jacy got a surprise. Andrew Carruthers, the American manager of Merimbula, approached their table. He was elegantly dressed, for an evening at the symphony or ballet, perhaps, and a stunningly beautiful red-haired woman walked beside him wearing an exquisite bejeweled evening gown with a medieval look about it.
“Mrs. Yarbro,” Carruthers said warmly, as though he and Jacy were well acquainted. He looked around, feigning an expression of confusion. “I don’t see your husband about.”
“He’s at home,” Jacy replied politely. She hardly knew the man and had no reason to dislike him, but knowing how Ian felt about him, how Jake had felt, made her cautious. “This is my mother, Regina Walsh, and my stepson, Christopher.”
Chris was glaring up at Mr. Carruthers, his small fists knotted in his lap.
More to this than meets the eye, Jacy thought, interested. What with all the excitement back at the property, she and Ian had never gotten around to continuing their discussion about his antipathy for their neighbor.
Carruthers’s smile was like something varnished, hard and shiny. He nodded to Regina and Chris and put an arm around the woman. “My wife, Carol,” he said.
Jacy shook hands with Carol and remembered a mission she’d intended to carry out. “I understand you have children,” she said. “We would love for them to join us at Yolanda School.”
Carol Carruthers laughed; it was a rigid, high-pitched sound. “We have a governess,” she replied.
Jacy was undaunted. The forays into the Dog and Goose and her confrontations with Redley Shifflet had engendered a certain sense of derring-do. “That’s lovely,” she answered. “However, you might want to send your girls to school at least some of the time—it’s important for kids to interact with others. That’s how they learn to share, and to take care of themselves.”
Carol’s varnish didn’t crack; her smile was blinding. “We’ll consider it,” she lied.
Mr. Carruthers said a few more things but, being preoccupied, Jacy forgot them five seconds after he and his wife walked away from the table.
“Pretty good bonding job,” Regina remarked once the Carrutherses were out of earshot. “You could buy a racehorse with the money that woman has put into her mouth.”
Chris had been flushed with some private fury, probably loyalty to his father, but now his skin was its normal golden shade again. “Mrs. Carruthers put money in her mouth?” he marveled, making a disgusted face.
Regina patted his shoulder. “Children are such literalists,” she said to Jacy before looking the boy in the eyes and answering his question. “No, darling. It was a figure of speech meaning that she’s had a lot of dental work.”
Chris still looked a little confused. “Oh,” he said, his gaze following Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers as they left the restaurant. “He’s a no-gooder, that one.”
“Why do you say that?” Jacy asked gently, pushing away her plate. Her appetite had been fluctuating wildly since she’d left the property; sometimes she was ravenously hungry, but sometimes the sight or smell of food nauseated her.
Chris leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice, even though there was no danger of anyone overhearing him, since the tables were set far apart from one another. “Dad thinks he’s had fires started, and even arranged to get blokes killed, though it always looked like an accident. Jake thought the same thing.”
Jacy set her napkin aside. “Chris, those are very serious accusations. I hope you haven’t been talking about them to just anybody.”
Regina was leaning forward, an expression of intense interest on her face, her eyes narrowed. She loved drama, on stage or off. “Fascinating,” she said.
Chris was looking earnestly at Jacy. “They want to drive all the small graziers out, those Merimbula people,” he said with utter conviction. “Linus Tate says they’ll bulldoze Yolanda to the ground and put wheat in its place if they get the chance.”
“Still,” Jacy began, feeling uneasy. If she could have gotten on a train, bus, or plane and headed straight back to the property at that moment, she would have done it. “Still, Christopher—to say they’d kill people—”
Chris was resolute. “They have,” he insisted. “Ask my dad.”
Jacy laid her hand over his. “I believe you, love,” she said, frowning. “That’s what frightens me.” After that she deliberately turned the conversation in another direction.
Soon the three of them left the restaurant and took a taxi to a movie theater. They saw a Disney feature, though Chris argued strenuously for a bloody-looking action/adventure film, and while she watched the colorful figures moving and cavorting on the screen Jacy found her mind wandering.
To Ian.
Was he all right?
Was the weather good?
Did he miss her?
After the movie Regina and Chris shared a massive chocolate sundae while Jacy sat across from them, sipping tea and wishing she could telephone her husband. She felt an aching, urgent need to hear his voice.
When they’d returned to the hotel and Chris was tucked up in bed watching his beloved television, Jacy put a call through to Nancy at the Yolanda Cafe.
Her friend answered on the fourth ring, sounding, as always, as though she were singing instead of talking. “Yolanda Cafe. Nancy here.”
“Nancy,” Jacy said. She was crouched over the phone almost furtively, her hand cupped around the receiver. It was a silly reaction, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “It’s Jacy Yarbro.”
Nancy laughed, not with amusement, but with joy. “Jacy! How’re things in the big smoke?”
“Fine,” Jacy replied a little abruptly. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I guess I’m just a bit homesick.”
“Well, now, you’ll be back soon, won’t you? Have a good time while you can, love, and don’t be spending your holiday moping about.”
Jacy smiled. Just talking to Nancy was making her feel better, though she would have given a large part of her soul to speak to Ian. “How goes the revolution?”
Nancy chuckled. “Swimmingly. The males of Yolanda are starting to come ‘round—it looks like you’ll be running the show, with twice as many students to teach, when school takes up again.”
Jacy’s smile faded. “Has—has Redley come back?”
“No sign of that rotter,” Nancy chimed cheerfully. “Darlis is as well as can be expected, and my aunt’s called twice from Darwin to say how well little Gladys is getting on. Auntie took the child to a doctor straightaway and has found a children’s therapist so that Gladys can get some counseling if it’s needed.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jacy said, her eyes filling with tears. She would remember, when her fears got to her, that Gladys, at least, had come out of the situation as a winner. Scarred and bruised, for certain, but a winner nonetheless.
At last Jacy had worked around to the real reason for her call. “Have you seen Ian?”
Nancy answered without hesitation. “Not hide nor hair. Guess he’s busy with those brumbies of his, not to mention the sheep. Only reason he’d have to come to town would be to sit in the Dog and Goose and swill beer, and I guess he can do that at home.”
“You’re being diplomatic,” Jacy said, smiling a little. “He’s probably gotten himself banned from the pub for having such a renegade wife.”
“Probably,” Nancy agreed readily. “No worries, though. These blighters ‘round here, they’ve known Ian all his life. They’ll come ‘round one of these days.”
Nancy was probably right, but Jacy still felt a sting to know she’d made a rift between Ian and his scruffy mates. “I didn’t mean to cause him so much trouble,” she confided, half to herself.
Despite the questionable connection, Nancy heard her clearly. “Ian needed a bit of trouble,” she said staunchly. “The whole lot of them did. If it hadn’t been for you, they might have gone along in the same old track for another hundred years.”
Jacy laughed, but there were tears in her eyes. “If you see Ian, will you give him my—regards, please?”
“Your regards?” Nancy countered wryly.
“For now,” Jacy answered, laying a hand on her lower abdomen, where Ian’s baby, her baby, was taking shape cell by cell.
Jacy could see Nancy rolling her eyes as clearly as if she’d been standing in the Yolanda Cafe looking at the woman. “Oh, hell!” Nancy laughed, probably shoving a hand through her short, glossy hair. “I’m going to tell him you’re mad for him, that you can barely control your passion—”
Jacy flushed. She wasn’t sure Ian knew she loved him—he was just obtuse enough not to have guessed—but he was definitely aware that she could “barely control her passion.” He’d experienced the fact often enough.
She changed the subject out of self-defense.
“Is there anything I could bring you, Nancy? Books, clothes, makeup—anything like that?”
“Bring me a man,” Nancy said brightly. “Mel Gibson would do.”
“Mel Gibson is married,” Jacy felt duty-bound to point out, though she was smiling as she spoke.
“Oh, hell,” Nancy repeated. “Just use your imagination, then. And don’t forget a single thing you see or buy or eat or do. I want to hear about it all!”
“You will,” Jacy promised, thankful that she’d made such a good friend in such a short time. She hadn’t another one like Nancy, even back in the States—Paul had been the last person she could talk to so freely.
The two women said good-bye and then rang off.
Jacy turned her attention to Chris as she was hanging up the receiver and saw that he was sleeping. Tenderly she kissed his forehead, tucked him in, and then went over to turn off the television set. She hoped she wouldn’t be creating a monster, so to speak, by buying the promised satellite dish and TV; she certainly didn’t want to see Chris’s lively mind sucked into the screen.
Perhaps because of her nap, and because she was missing Ian so sorely, Jacy made double sure Chris was asleep, then got her key and crept out. A moment later she was knocking on her mother’s door across the hallway.
After a brief interval the door swung open, and Regina stood in the opening, her hair up in foam curlers, her face covered with thick, sticky white cream.
“Come in,” she commanded impatiently.
Jacy leaned back against the woodwork, her mouth twitching. She failed in her valiant effort not to smile, and that opened the way for a giggle.
Regina scowled at her. “Your day will come, my dear. Especially if you’re silly enough to stay out there in the bush for the next forty years and let that wretched sun turn your complexion to leather!”
“It’s the same sun that shines on Manhattan, Mother,” Jacy pointed out, still smiling. “And let’s not scrap. I came to thank you for giving Chris such a wonderful day and for sitting through that animated movie. I know you wanted to see the romantic comedy.”
Regina sniffled. “Nonsense. I love Disney features.”
Before Jacy could reply she heard a cry from outside in the hallway. Alarmed, thinking there might be a fire or some other disaster, she flung open the door.
Chris was standing in the center of the hall, his face pale, his eyes wild with panic. He was obviously still more asleep than awake. “I thought you’d gone and left me!” he wailed when he found Jacy.
She went to him immediately and dropped to her knees on the carpeted floor because he was small for nine, and she wanted to look straight into his frantic little face. “Sweetheart,” she said, putting her arms around him and drawing him close, “I’ll never leave you—never! And neither will your dad.”
He was sobbing, his thin body shivering against Jacy’s. She got to her feet and, casting one meaningful look in Regina’s direction, led Chris into their room and put him back to bed.
“Why are you so afraid of being left?” she asked softly when he was settled. She was sitting on the side of his bed, holding his hand. “Or is it just that you miss your dad and Mrs. Wigget?”
“My mum went away,” he said in a very small voice. “There was something bad about me.”
Jacy’s heart broke right in two. She smoothed his rumpled, sweat-dampened hair back with a gentle hand. “Oh, sweetheart, that just isn’t true. I’ve known a lot of little boys in my time, and you’re the best one ever. Honestly.”
“Why didn’t she want us, my dad and me?”
Jacy bit her lower lip, taking a moment to frame her answer. “I don’t know, honey,” she finally replied, curving one hand around his sweet face. “But I’ll tell you what—I want you—both of you. And I won’t be going anywhere.”
Chris nodded and settled deeper into the pillows. “I guess I acted like a baby,” he confided. “You won’t tell Thomas Jr., will you?”
“I won’t tell anybody,” Jacy said, kissing him on the forehead.
“Do you suppose my dad’s all right? And Mrs. Wigget and Blue?”
Jacy smiled at Mrs. Wigget’s being lumped in with Blue, Ian’s favorite sheepdog. “I’m sure they’re fine,” she said, and that part, God forgive her, was an act. She was uneasy about Ian’s safety and wanted to go home as much as or more than Chris did.
One thing was clear to her, at least, and that was the fact that she didn’t miss city living. Adelaide was a beautiful, gracious place with every amenity, but Ian’s property was home.
The strange sense of anxiety spinning in the pit of Ian’s stomach grew stronger and more insistent with every passing day. The weather was hotter than ever, and there was an incendiary feeling to the heat, a sort of explosive portent.
The third day of Jacy’s absence, as Ian and Tom Sr. were taking down the fence between his land and Jake’s, because it was all one property now, Ian felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He raised his head, pushed off his hat, and assessed the ferociously blue sky.
“Not a cloud to be seen,” Tom commented, as though he’d read Ian’s mind. Like Ian himself, the other man was dirty from head to foot, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. A wry twist to his mouth, he gestured toward the unrelenting sun. “Take a rest, you bastard,” he muttered to that blazing star, so big and so close it almost seemed a man could touch it.
Ian scanned the dry land around them. Just his horse, and the dog, Blue, and Tom Sr.’s old truck. Except for those things the two men might have been alone on some arid planet in another part of the universe.
“Looking for somebody?” Tom Sr. asked. He didn’t seem to expect an answer, which was a good thing, because there wasn’t one forthcoming.
Ian shrugged and took hold of another fence post with his gloved hands, struggling to uproot it. He was missing his wife and boy, that was all, he told himself. He’d never really been separated from Chris before, and as for Jacy—well, she’d made a place for herself in his heart and mind as well as his home, and he felt dismembered without her.
The two men worked in concert for another hour without speaking a word, pulling up weathered fence posts, cutting the barbed wire stretched between, loading both in the bed of Tom Sr.’s truck.
Tom Sr. broke the silence, grinning. “The wife’s got cold beer in the fridge,” he said. “Let’s get over to Corroboree Springs and have a drop.”
Ian thought of the Dog and Goose, where he’d been welcome ever since he’d come of age, and felt a certain defiant sorrow. “She won’t be wanting the pair of us underfoot, now, will she?” he countered. “Let’s go to town instead.”
Tom Sr. nodded, affable to the bone, and got into his truck. “I’ll meet you at your hay shed,” he said, watching as Ian swung up onto the back of his horse.
Ian touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment.
Half an hour later he stepped over the threshold of the Dog and Goose, with Tom McAllister right behind him. And found Redley Shifflet sitting at the bar, big as life.
“You’re not coming home with me, are you?” Regina asked as she and Jacy left the beauty salon the next morning, their hair freshly cut and styled and their nails manicured. Chris was with them, but he was wearing the earphones of his cassette player, listening to one of the tapes Regina had bought for him the first day.
Jacy shook her head. “Not only that,” she said gently, “I can’t wait to get back home. I miss Ian so much, sometimes I think I’m not going to be able to stand it.”
Regina sighed. “Hormones,” she said.
Jacy looked at Chris, who was humming loudly to the music no one else could hear, and whispered, “What I feel for Ian aside, you saw what happened last night. Do you think I could leave this little boy?”
There was a distinct softening in Regina’s impeccably made-up face. “All right,” she whispered back, “I admit that would be hard—very hard. But you can’t sacrifice everything—”
“I’m not sacrificing anything,” Jacy interrupted in a polite but firm tone. “In fact, sometimes it amazes me that I could be so blessed.”
Regina linked her arm with Jacy’s and patted her hand. She was silent, but there was no need to speak. Her sigh said volumes.
They spent the rest of the day shopping, ordering the satellite dish, the TV, and a lot of furniture and other household items as well, and returned to the hotel for an early dinner. Jacy was alone at the table, Chris and Regina having gone into the gift shop to buy postcards, when Andrew Carruthers appeared again.
Jacy jumped, startled.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Carruthers said quickly, smoothly, with a hint of a bow.
Jacy had the feeling he’d been watching her, waiting for her to be alone, and it made her nervous. In the next instant, though, she put the idea down to homesickness and sore feet.
“May I?” he asked, pulling back a chair.
Jacy nodded. “Sit down,” she said.
“I suppose your husband has told you that we at Merimbula want to buy his land, as well as that which belonged to your father.”
Jacy took a sip from her water glass. What was it about this elegant, educated man that made her want to leap to her feet and run?
She reminded herself that her running days were over and stayed put.
“Yes,” she answered. “And I know Ian’s told you that we don’t want to sell.”
Carruthers arched one eyebrow and smiled benignly. “We’re prepared to pay a price that would surprise you,” he said.
“I have all the money I need, Mr. Carruthers,” Jacy said.
At that moment she saw Chris entering the restaurant with Regina. Catching sight of Carruthers sitting at his step-mother’s table, the little boy looked so fierce, so like Ian, that Jacy had to grin.
Carruthers followed her gaze and smiled indulgently. “I’m afraid the Yarbro men tend to dislike me,” he said. “I’m not sure why.”
“Maybe it’s because you won’t take no for an answer,” Jacy replied, watching as Chris zeroed in on them, looking for all the world as if he planned to challenge the manager of Merimbula to a fistfight.
“I didn’t get where I am, Mrs. Yarbro,” Carruthers said moderately, “by giving up on the things I want.”
Something in his tone, something ominous, brought Jacy’s gaze to his face again. He slid his chair back and rose.
“When I go after something,” he said, tugging at the sleeves of his perfectly tailored jacket, “I never fail.”
Jacy refused to flinch. “You’ve met your match in Ian Yarbro, Mr. Carruthers,” she said calmly just as Chris reached her side. “And in me.”
Carruthers bowed again, gave the angry little boy an amused look, and walked away.
“What did he want?” Chris demanded.
Jacy gave her stepson an admiring glance. “To buy our land,” she said, seeing no reason to be dishonest. “And I told him the same thing your father would have—no.”
Chris watched Carruthers until he was out of the dining room, his eyes narrowed. “He’s just lucky I didn’t give him a knuckle sandwich,” he said.
Regina’s and Jacy’s gazes met and just as quickly skirted each other. No one commented on the fact that Mr. Carruthers was bigger, older, and far stronger than Chris.
They spent the evening at the theater watching a road company perform Les Miserables. Jacy had seen the play half a dozen times, but it was one of her favorites, and she enjoyed every moment. Regina wept at the sad parts, dabbing delicately at her eyes so she wouldn’t ruin her makeup, and Chris was on the edge of his seat the whole time.
When they returned to the hotel, physically and emotionally drained, the red message light on Jacy’s phone was blinking, and even before she called the switchboard she knew the news wasn’t good.