Taming Charlotte (46 page)

He clasped her forearm—it was bare and smooth, since she was wearing a sleeveless cotton sundress—and half-dragged her to the door and down the wooden ramp to the ground. The farmyard was filled with cars and trucks, and the homestead was a long, low shadow some distance away.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded in an outraged whisper.

Jacy raised her chin and put her hands on her hips. Her pale yellow dress seemed to shimmer in the rich light of the moon and stars, and her eyes sparked with silver fire. “That depends on what you mean by ‘here,’ “ she retorted just as furiously. “If you mean why am I here at this damn party, then the answer is, because my father wanted to come and see all his friends and neighbors, and I came along to make sure he didn’t overdo and land himself back in the hospital. If, on the other hand, you mean why am I in Australia, well, that should be obvious. My dad had a heart attack and I’m here to look after him.”

Ian was fairly choking on the tangle of things he felt; he might have turned and put a fist through the rickety wall of the shed if his hands hadn’t already been swollen and cut from all the times he’d caught his own flesh in the clippers while shearing sheep. Instead, he said, “Ten years you stayed away.
Ten years.
Do you think he didn’t need you in all that time?”
Do you think I didn’t need you?
he thought.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and because Ian wasn’t expecting that, he was wounded by the sight.

“Damn it, Ian,” she said, “there’s no need to make this so difficult! I’m here, and I plan to stay for an indefinite period of time. If you can’t accept the fact, fine, just stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours. When we have the misfortune to run into each other, though, let’s try to be civil, shall we? For Jake’s sake, if nothing else.”

Ian couldn’t speak. He was reeling from her announcement that she wouldn’t be leaving the area anytime soon. Only one thing would make him crazier than her absence had, and that was her living at Corroboree Springs, day in and day out.

Naturally, she couldn’t leave well enough alone and keep her mouth shut. Oh, no. That would never have done.

“Well?” she prompted, with a sort of nasty sweetness.

Ian shoved a hand through his dark hair. With all the business of mustering and shearing the sheep, then dipping them in disinfectant to prevent infection in the inevitable scrapes and cuts and to keep the blowflies away, he’d let it grow too long, and it felt shaggy between his fingers.

“You should have stayed in America,” he said stubbornly. “Jake has mates here. We’d have been glad to look after him, with no help from you.”

She dried her eyes with the heel of one palm, smearing the stuff she wore on her lashes, and then tossed her head. “God, Ian, you can be
such
a bastard. Would it kill you to be polite, at least?”

“Would it have killed
you
to say good-bye before you left?” he snapped, regretting the words even as they tumbled from his mouth. “Even ‘go to hell’ or ‘drop dead’ would have been better than just leaving the way you did.”

“So now it was all my fault!” she flared, making little effort to keep her voice down. “Has it escaped you that Elaine Bennett came up to us in front of the movie house in Yolanda and announced that she was carrying your baby?” She threw out her hands for emphasis. “But maybe you
did
forget. After all, you certainly never got around to mentioning that you’d been sleeping with her while we were going together!”

Ian tilted his head back and glared up at the stars. He didn’t know why he bothered to tell her, since she’d never believe him, but the truth was all he had to offer. There had been many
occasions in Ian’s life when a lie would have been convenient, but he’d never gotten the knack of it. When he tried, he stuttered and his neck turned a dull red, so he’d long since given it up.

“Elaine and I were all through before I ever touched you, Jacy.” He made himself meet her eyes, and saw there the incredulity he’d feared all along. “And somewhere deep inside yourself, you know it. You knew it then. You just needed something to throw between us, some excuse to run away, because you were scared to death of what you were feeling!”

Jacy retreated a step and hugged herself as if a chill had struck her, even though it was nearly ten-thirty and still hot enough to smother a camel. “Okay, so I was scared,” she murmured testily, but with less conviction than before. “I was only eighteen.”

“So was I,” Ian responded brusquely, giving no ground whatsoever. “And I was just as frightened as you were. But what I felt for you was real, and so was the hell I went through when you walked out on me.”

It was all he could trust himself to say. He turned to walk away, toward the long, one-story cement homestead he shared with his nine-year-old son, Chris, intending to wait out the party there. Chances were, no one would miss him.

She clasped his arm, and Ian stopped cold, bracing himself, refusing to turn and face her. “I’m sorry, Ian,” she said. “Please believe that.”

He wrenched free. It wasn’t good enough, after the way he’d suffered. “Do us both a favor,” he said, still refusing to look at her. “Go back to America…and stay there.” With that, he strode off toward the dark and empty house, where the light and music of the party wouldn’t reach, and it was like walking into his own soul.

Jacy stood watching as Ian disappeared into the shadows, trembling a little, flinching when she heard a door slam in the distance. She hadn’t expected their first meeting in ten years to be easy, not after the way things had ended for them, but she hadn’t anticipated anything so wrenching and difficult as this, either.

She needed time to compose herself, not wanting her dad and the friends, neighbors and workers jammed into Ian’s shearing shed to see how shaken she was, so she sat down on a
crate in the shadows, drew a deep breath, and folded her arms. Some of the things Ian had said stuck in her spirit the way briers and nettles stuck in the sheep’s wool and the callused fingers of the shearers—especially that bit about her being afraid of the love she’d felt for him. It had been as vast and deep as an ocean, that youthful adulation, full of treacherous beauty and alive with mysterious currents. She’d thought, sometimes, that the great waves would encompass her one day, and she’d drown.

Jacy sighed, looking up at the summer moon, mentally tracing its gray ridges and valleys of cold light. Another of Ian’s accusations had struck its mark, too; she’d neglected her dad, keeping her distance those ten long years when she’d known how much her visits meant to him. It had been hard staying away, because she and Jake had always been kindred souls, but she simply hadn’t been ready to face Ian.

She still wasn’t, she supposed, though she hadn’t had much choice in the matter.

“Jacy-me-girl?”

Startled by her father’s voice, gentle as it was, Jacy jumped a little and turned her head quickly.

Jake was standing at the base of the ramp, leaning on the cane he’d been using since he left the hospital. His heart attack had left him weakened and gaunt, and Jacy still hadn’t gotten used to the change in him. He’d been so strong as a younger man, as vital and tireless as Ian, though always more good-natured.

“It didn’t go well, then?” he asked, in the lilting accent she loved.

Jacy blushed, knowing Jake had had hopes of his own for the evening. He had been a second father to Ian, since the elder Yarbros had passed on within a few years of each other, when Ian was still very young. Jake had never made a secret of his belief that Jacy and Ian belonged together.

“It couldn’t have been worse,” she said, with a sigh and a rueful, shaky smile. “Except if he’d drawn a gun and shot me, that is.”

Jake made his way to the crate with a slow awkwardness that was painful to see, then took a seat beside his daughter. “Give him time,” he counseled. “Ian’s a hardheaded sort, you know.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Jacy mocked, but she moved a little
closer to her dad and let her head rest against his thin shoulder.

Jake patted her hand. “Once he works it all through, he’ll come round.”

Jacy stiffened. “I don’t want him to ‘come around,’ Dad. Not in the way you mean, at least.”

The glow of the moon only highlighted the amused skepticism in Jake’s face. “Is that so? Then I’ll confess to wondering why a simple shearing shed would be filled to the rafters with blue lightning from the moment the two of you spotted one another. There was so much electricity flying about in there that I’d have been afraid to step in a puddle of spilled beer.”

Jacy couldn’t help smiling at his description of the tension that had coiled between her and Ian earlier in the evening. She slipped her arm around Jake and said, “I’ve missed you a whole lot.”

“Don’t be changing the subject,” he replied, his accent thicker than ever. It happened whenever he was being mischievous or having trouble controlling his emotions. “This is a small community, and you and Ian won’t be able to avoid each other forever. You’ll need to settle things.”

She linked her fingers with her dad’s and squeezed. Jake had a point; Ian’s property bordered their own, and if that wasn’t enough, they were bound to meet in nearby Yolanda, in the post office and the shops. Or in Willoughby, the slightly larger town fifty kilometers to the northeast, where homesteaders and townspeople alike went to see the doctor, purchase supplies, and attend to various other errands that couldn’t be taken care of in Yolanda.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come back to the States with me, just until you’re feeling strong again?” she ventured, though she knew as she spoke what the answer would be. Jake had nothing against America—he’d married a Yank, after all—but he’d often said he was no more suited to the place than a kangaroo was to Manhattan.

He simply arched an eyebrow.

“All right,” Jacy burst out. “Then we’ll go up to Cairns again, like we did when I was twelve. We could collect seashells and lie out in the sun and eat those wonderful giant avocados.” She still had some of the colorful shells she’d gathered back then, displayed on a shelf in her room at the homestead. To her, the
shells symbolized eternity, and the extravagant, careless continuity of life. “We could leave tomorrow. What do you say?”

“I say that you’re trying to run away again.” Jake paused, still gripping her hand, to study the spectacular display of stars, their majesty undimmed by the lights of any city. When he looked at her again, the expression in his eyes was sad and gentle. “You’ve done enough of that in your young life, Jacy. It’s time to stop now and face matters head-on.”

She averted her eyes, afraid of all that was in her heart, good and bad, noble and ignoble, terrified that all those mixed-up emotions would spill over and disgrace her if she let down her guard for so much as a moment. There was no point in denying her father’s words anyway, because he was right. Jacy’s unspoken credo had always been, She who loves and runs away, lives to love another day.

Only she had never loved again. Not before Ian, and certainly not after.

“What do I do now?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Nothing much,” Jake replied easily, tenderly. “Just stand still for a time, Jacy-me-girl. That’s all. Just hold your ground and see what comes toward you.”

She laughed, but the sound resembled a sob. “What if it’s a freight train?”

Jake chuckled, slipped an arm around her shoulders, and gave her a brief hug. “See that you don’t stand on the railroad tracks, love. Now, let’s take ourselves home, shall we? I’m tuckered.”

Jacy was relieved to be leaving Ian’s place. At the same time, she was worried about Jake’s physical condition. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” she asked, peering at him anxiously. “We could drive over to Willoughby and see the doctor, just to be on the safe side—”

“And rouse the poor bloke from his bed?” Jake spoke amicably, as he almost always did, but Jacy knew the suggestion had annoyed him because he shook off her hand when she tried to help him stand. “Get a grip on yourself, sheila. I can’t go waltzing off to the doctor every time I feel a bit worn down, now can I?”

Wisely, Jacy said nothing. She just walked along at Jake’s side, and when they reached his dusty old truck, she got behind
the wheel and left him to hoist himself into the vehicle on his own.

Jacy rose early the next morning, even before Jake was up. It was her third day back, but she was still greedy for the sights and sounds and smells of the place. She loved the house, with its green lawn and sheltering pepper trees and the old-fashioned roses Grandmother Matty had planted at one end of the veranda. Loved the shed, although there were no sheep there now, and the paddocks, though there were no horses. As little time as she had spent there, the homestead and the land surrounding it were dear to her in a way her mother and stepfather’s luxurious townhouse in Manhattan had never been.

She lingered on the veranda for a while, watching the sunlight sparkle and dance on the surface of the spring-fed pond a little distance away, in the midst of a copse of thirsty trees. From there, the water flowed away through the paddock in a wide stream, eventually forming the border between the Tiernan land and Merimbula, the huge cattle station to the south.

Standing still, she heard her mother’s voice in her mind. “You’re an Aussie, through and through,” Regina had often said, always adding a long sigh for effect. “It’s in your blood, that hot, lonely, harsh place, and for that, my darling, I offer you my sincerest apologies.”

Jacy smiled. She’d spent most of her life in America, but there was an element of truth in her mother’s words. She
was
an Aussie, in so many ways.

Some of her pleasure faded. Despite her Australian heritage, Ian and not a few other people would always view her as an outsider. It would be naive to believe her former lover was the only one who thought she’d failed Jake by staying away all those years; in the bush, where everyday life was a challenge, abandoning someone was just about the worst thing a person could do. A betrayal of one was a betrayal of all, and the homesteaders around Yolanda had long, long memories where such matters were concerned.