The Cattleman's Special Delivery (13 page)

It was no surprise that she slept soundly until Rosie woke around four. Softly, she tiptoed to the kitchen, heated a bottle and brought the baby back into bed with her.

Snuggled against a pile of pillows, she made Rosie comfortable, then lay looking at her little girl in the faint creamy light that crept through the slatted blinds at dawn. She rubbed her cheek against her soft silky hair and breathed in the pink and white smell of her.

She remembered last night with Reece, and happiness bubbled through her, again. A shiver-sweet delight that had everything to do with Reece. He’d been so flatteringly passionate and yet considerate too. As a lover, he was her secret fantasy come true.

It was tempting to make comparisons with Alan, but she wouldn’t allow that. In fact, she was becoming increasingly aware now, in this new light of day, that she needed to get her head sorted.

Yes, last night was a really big deal for her. Huge. Unforgettable. But she had to remember it was a fling, not the start of a new relationship. It had been all about chemistry and it had nothing to do with deeper emotions. She was vulnerable because she’d felt overwhelming gratitude to Reece ever since the night he’d found her on the side of the road.

Looking down at Rosie again, seeing her plump cheeks and the bright concentration in her eyes as she drank, Jess remembered the promise she’d made to her daughter back in Cairns on the night Reece had come to dinner. She’d been sure then that she would get on top of their debts and build a future. Without a man.

She had to stick to that plan. Had to do this alone.

She’d had an unforgettable night with a man who stirred her to her very soul, but it shouldn’t happen again.

It was more important than ever to remember that now.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘
I
’VE
been checking
out your garden,’ Jess told Reece at breakfast a few days later.

He looked up, amused. ‘What garden?’

‘Near the back stairs and beside the laundry.’

‘You can hardly call that mess a garden.’

‘Well, it has potential. I know it’s mostly grass and weeds at the moment, but I started clearing a corner and I found brick edges and the start of a pathway. There’s been a garden there in the past and it’s all just waiting to be uncovered.’

Jess envied people with gardens, and, after a lifetime in rented flats, she’d been really excited by her discovery. It was like finding buried treasure. ‘Is it OK with you if I keep clearing?’

‘Sure. Be my guest.’ Reece’s dark eyes glowed with a mixture of amusement and admiration...and something else. ‘I’ll help you, if you like.’

She turned back to the stove so he couldn’t see how pleased she was. Despite her resolution to keep her distance, there’d been a happy vibe between them ever since the night they’d made love.

They hadn’t talked about it. Reece had been as careful as she was to get ‘back to normal’, but another barrier between them had definitely fallen. They couldn’t help smiling at each other now, and they were both mega eager to please.

It was a dangerous kind of limbo, a happy bubble that couldn’t hold for ever. At some stage they would have to talk about what had happened. Perhaps they were both scared? Perhaps it meant too much? Felt too dangerous, after all?

Even working in the garden with Reece would be perilously like playing Happy Families, although Jess couldn’t deny that his muscle power would be invaluable.

‘I’d actually love to grow a few vegetables and herbs for the kitchen,’ she said.

‘Great idea,’ he agreed. ‘I should have been doing that years ago, but running the cattle business has taken up most of my time. As you know, we tend to live on tinned and frozen veggies.’

‘Well, I’m happy to get it started. Pity there’s no plant nursery around here.’

Reece shrugged. ‘It’s easy enough to order seeds over the Internet, and I’ll have to take Dad back to the doctor in Cairns again soon. We can buy plants while we’re there.’

‘We? Are you planning for me and Rosie to come too?’

‘Why not? You’d like a break, wouldn’t you?’

Jess grinned at him. It was another thing to look forward to. Each day, her life at Warringa seemed to keep getting better, despite the silent, lingering question—

How long could it last?

She shook that menacing thought away. ‘Actually, I’m glad Michael is seeing the doctor again,’ she said. ‘I do feel he’s slowed down a bit lately, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ Reece sighed softly. ‘But he’ll never admit it.’

He stood and took his plate and cutlery to the sink. ‘We may as well start clearing the garden straight after breakfast, before it gets too hot.’ He seemed almost as keen on the garden idea as she was.

It was fun—certainly more fun than a potentially boring job like digging up weeds and grass should have been. After Jess had fixed breakfast for Michael, she set a playpen, a picnic rug and toys under a shady jacaranda tree for Rosie. Reece extracted a wheelbarrow, spades, forks and a hoe from an old garden shed, and together they set to work. Reece wielded the hoe on the tough weeds and clumps of kunai grass, while Jess prised out the roots of the couch grass runners that completely covered the path.

It was rewarding to see the growing mountain of rubbish in the wheelbarrow, while a brick-edged garden emerged beside the house, bordered by a surprisingly beautiful, old-fashioned path made from black and white bricks in a herringbone pattern.

‘This is going to be gorgeous, Reece.’ Jess was already carried away, imagining clumps of basil and rosemary, and then sage and a ground cover of oregano. Oh, and there’d be parsley, as well, and chillies. And cherry tomatoes. ‘We can have a pot of mint under the tap.’

She’d once worked in a restaurant that had its own kitchen garden, and it had become a personal fantasy she’d nursed for years. Until now it had been another pipe dream.

Amazing to think it was coming to life all the way out here. When she’d arrived at Warringa, she’d thought she’d come to the middle of nowhere. Now, this house and the land around it were beginning to feel like the centre of
somewhere
. An increasingly fascinating and alluring somewhere.

Jess realised Reece was smiling at her again. ‘Have you any idea how your eyes shine when you’re excited?’

‘Well, maybe they’re a bit like yours?’ she suggested shyly and, without warning, the air around them was crackling.

Their clothes and hands were grubby, covered in dirt grass stains, but it didn’t seem to matter as Reece closed the space between them and gathered her in. And Jess decided instantly that resistance was futile. She gave herself permission to forget all her questions as he kissed her.

Time stood still. She closed her eyes and his lips worked their magic and the winter sun streamed gently over them.

It was their little bit of heaven until a grouchy
‘Harrumph’
from the veranda brought them springing apart.

‘What the hell are you two up to?’ Michael roared.

To Jess’s blushing relief, Reece remained quite calm. Instead of trying to justify their kiss, he sank his hands into his jeans pockets and strolled over to the veranda. ‘Hi, Dad.’

She held her breath, waiting for Michael to demand why his son and the housekeeper were madly locking lips.

‘What’s all this mess?’ Michael demanded, with a glare and a sweeping gesture that encompassed their attempts at gardening.

‘We’re making a vegetable and herb garden.’

‘A
what
?’

‘A vegetable and herb garden. You know,’ Reece said patiently. ‘Tomatoes, lettuce, chives—plants we can eat.’

‘We don’t need to eat plants.’

‘Come on, Dad. Don’t play games. You know what I’m talking about. Jess wants to grow things for the kitchen. For salads and to use in her cooking.’

Michael continued to scowl. ‘This is a cattle station, not a bloody restaurant.’ He shot a surprisingly angry glare Jess’s way. ‘You’ve been doing something to those hanging baskets near the kitchen too, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve been watering them,’ she admitted. ‘But I haven’t wasted tank water, Michael. I’ve been collecting the grey water from the laundry.’ She’d been pleased with her economy and with the lovely green shoots and fronds now sprouting from the ferns’ massive, ancient root systems.

‘Don’t bother,’ Michael growled. ‘I hate those ferns. They give me the creeps.’

Reece was shaking his head. ‘Dad, those hanging baskets have had struggling ferns in them for as long as I can remember. If they gave you the creeps, you could have tossed them out years ago.’

Michael simply growled again and stomped back inside the house. Not a word about their kiss. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed?

He was more upset about the garden.

Rosie began to cry then, and Jess went to pick her up. ‘You probably need changing, don’t you, kitty?’

With the baby in her arms she turned to Reece. ‘I might see if she’s ready for her nap.’

But he hadn’t heard her. He was staring with a puzzled frown at the space where his father had stood.

‘Reece?’ Jess stepped closer.

He turned and blinked, as if he’d been miles away.

‘Is everything OK?’

‘Sure.’ He sighed. ‘I was lost in the past. Trying to remember. I’m pretty sure my mother planted the ferns in those hanging baskets.’

He hardly ever spoke about his mother, the woman who’d left so many years ago, leaving Michael alone to raise their son.

Jess had no idea what had driven the woman away, and she didn’t understand how she could have abandoned her little boy. Just the same, Michael’s reaction to the baskets was strange. Why had he kept the plants in a half-dead state? What was he clinging to? Had he never really forgiven his wife? Was he still bitter and angry after twenty-eight years?

These were sobering questions as she went inside. But as she changed Rosie and smoothed lotion onto her soft skin, she realised it was easy enough to wonder about Reece’s parents’ relationship, but much harder to examine her own behaviour. A few short minutes ago, she’d shared another kiss with Reece in a moment of spontaneous happiness.

Why, when she’d known it was reckless? Why would she risk giving him the wrong idea when she knew she’d eventually have to leave, just as his mother had?

* * *

As Reece had predicted, the afternoon sun hit the back of the house and it was too hot to garden after lunch. While Michael and Rosie had naps, he went off to tinker with a tractor’s motor in the machinery shed, and Jess turned her attention to housework.

She was dusting bookshelves in the lounge room when she came across a particularly smart-looking photo album. As she picked it up to wipe the thick red leather binding a photo fluttered to the floor. Stooping to collect it, she saw a picture of a serious little boy with dark hair and handsome dark eyes.

He was standing at the bottom of Warringa’s front steps, dressed in smart-looking black trousers, a white shirt and a neat little striped waistcoat.

The boy had to be Reece.

Jess slipped the photo back into the front of the album, but she couldn’t help taking a peek and she soon realised that every photo in the album was very alike, with Reece standing on the front steps.

Frowning, she looked a little closer. Reece was incrementally taller and older in each photo, and he was wearing a different outfit each time. The clothes looked brand-new.

These had to be the photos of his birthday outfits. He’d told her that his mother used to send clothes for his birthday, and he would ask his father to take a photograph to send back to her with his thank-you notes.

Jess knew she shouldn’t be prying, but she couldn’t resist taking a closer look. She could see almost immediately that the clothes weren’t very suitable for a boy living in the outback. Reece had spent his days helping his dad in the stockyards or riding horses, but there wasn’t one pair of jeans or riding boots.

In one photo a young Reece was wearing a long multicoloured T-shirt over cord-style shorts with long tube socks and sneakers. In another he wore a knitted pullover in a totally impractical lemon and white diamond pattern.

There were other photos of Reece in lime-green Hawaiian-print board shorts, or ridiculously oversized jeans with an equally oversized black rock T-shirt. Perhaps worst of all was the photo of Reece in his teens, wearing a pale grey tracksuit with legs that were too short, so that the elasticated cuffs rode halfway up his calves.

What had his mother been thinking when she sent her son garments that were practically useless?

Jess looked intently at Reece’s face in each photo, recognising the gradual maturing of his handsome features. His mouth was always curved into a careful smile, but anyone who knew him well could see the questions in his eyes, as if he wondered if his mother really expected him to wear this stuff.

Her heart ached for the little boy who’d longed for toys, not clothes. Poor Reece.

No doubt he’d also longed for a mother who understood him and really cared about him. And yet he’d dutifully sent these photos back to her, no doubt hoping they’d please her.

With trembling fingers, she touched a photo of Reece in pale beige wide-legged trousers and a brown button-down shirt with palm trees printed across the chest. A city boy might have worn these clothes to church or to the movies or a party, but how often could Reece have worn this outfit? Any of these outfits?

Her face crumpled and a tear splashed the page. More tears followed. Tears for a little boy who’d been left behind. A boy who deserved so much more.

* * *

Up to his elbows in motor parts, Reece was wrestling with a tractor’s innards when he heard a sound behind him. He turned and blinked as a stooped silhouette appeared in the brightly lit doorway.

‘Is that you, Dad?’

Instead of answering, his father shuffled forward. ‘I thought I might find you in here.’

‘You’re supposed to be having a rest.’

‘I’ll rest in a minute. I wanted to talk to you first.’

‘Everything OK?’ Reece reached for a rag to wipe the black grease from his hands as his father shambled closer and slowly, stiffly, lowered himself onto an upturned oil drum.