Their Newborn Gift (8 page)

Dark eyes slid away from Sapphire and onto Lea, but his hands continued to reassure the mare. He stared down at her hard. ‘What makes you think I’m not talking about you?’

She fought away the heat that started to rise. ‘I’d take it as a given that you are. But you’ve only known me a few years. That sentiment sounds like it was born in childhood, not recently.’

He stepped away then thrust her the lead-rope.

‘Can I take that as a no?’ she huffed.

‘Honey, you can take that however you want.’ He turned away to reach for more carrots.

Lea’s mind immediately joined the dots. It was not the first time he’d avoided the subject by bristling. A hint of a memory from over five years ago fed her impression that things hadn’t been rosy at the Martin homestead. Something he’d said that she couldn’t quite remember…Something about his parents.

She should leave it; let him have his privacy. ‘I’m just curious about your childhood. You never really talk about it.’

Dark eyes swung back to her. ‘Just because I don’t talk about it with you doesn’t mean I don’t talk about it.’

She felt the sting of his judgement deep in the thick skin she’d developed over the years. It was an all too familiar bite. Watching him with her horses, it was getting harder to picture him as the careless, brainless saddle-jockey she’d believed he was. Somewhere in the past couple of weeks she’d started to care what he thought of her.

Not very much, judging by his tone.

She took a deep breath. ‘Reilly, you’re now in Molly’s life and she’s bonding with you. It’s not entirely unreasonable that I’d try and get to know a bit more about you. To understand what makes you tick.’
And whether you’re a ticking time-bomb.

He kept working. ‘Funny, I can’t recall there being a clause requiring deep and meaningful conversation in our contract.’

She bit back the temper. Breathed deeply. ‘Reilly…’

‘Are you looking for skeletons in the Martin closet, Lea? To protect your daughter from hurt? Well, let me ask you this one…’ he spun square on to her ‘…how is Molly going to cope growing up with the town outcast for a mother?’

Lea gasped. Reilly barrelled on relentlessly. ‘Have you considered what it does to a child to have notorious parents? How invisible it can make you feel? How alone? Half your school friends teasing you and the other half wanting something from you? Especially when your parents are famous. And wealthy. Maybe you should be looking more closely at your own issues rather than digging for mine.
You’re
the rod Molly’s back will have to bear.’

Lea’s heart thumped hard enough to hear in her voice. She willed her heartbeat to slow down. Every part of her wanted to jump on his hurtful words, to strike back, as she’d watched her father do. But it had never really worked for them, had it?

She used the time it took to get her pulse back under control to drag her erratic thoughts into some kind of order. ‘I do think about that, actually. And then I remember that if I can just keep her alive long enough to get to school age I’ll be doing well. It’s easy to push everything else back.’

Reilly’s eyes softened. He swore at himself and slid a large hand around her upper arm. His strength leached into her. ‘We’ll get her to school, Lea. And to uni. And to have her own kids in school.’

Lea couldn’t help the tears that prickled at that extraordinary thought. She forced a tight, watery smile. She’d never allowed herself to imagine Molly as a mother of her own child. Her throat thickened. ‘She’d be a brilliant mother.’

‘She’s had good training.’

Lea blinked, astonished.

‘I may not like how Molly came into being, Lea, but there’s no doubting that you’ve done an amazing job with her. Before her sickness and since.’

Thumpety-thump; there went her heart again. ‘You never knew her before.’

‘I can see how she must have been. The way she’s so confident. Respectful. Amazingly responsive to authority. That’s down to you. You’ve raised her well.’

Lea stared, a single tear spilling over. Reilly swiped it away with his thumb. She frowned at him, confused. ‘Thank you, Reilly.’

‘Are you so surprised I would think it? I’m not a monster, Lea.’

She realised she’d stopped thinking of him in ‘monster’ terms weeks ago. A pleasant shiver marched up her spine. ‘I should get back to her. Good luck with Sapphire.’

Lea marched, stiff-backed, up to the house and Reilly watched her go, torn. He hadn’t expected the flashes of softness he’d seen in her over the past couple of weeks. She was as sharp as a tack—another thing he could feel himself appreciating—but vulnerable with it. It drew him in, like the bad old days. It was the same quality he’d responded to in that bar. He’d recognised the signs of an animal in distress.

He wasn’t interested in bonding with her now. He just wanted to get on with the business of moving these horses to Minamurra. Of making a baby. He stroked the skittish mare while its nostrils flared wildly.

Business, like the rest of their relationship.

Not
a relationship. He was Molly’s father and the biological father of the child growing in Lea’s fit, glowing body. He didn’t owe her a thing that he hadn’t already delivered in spades. Yet he found himself worrying about her out here alone with Molly. The two of them isolated on the wrong side of the ridge, living on a property that Lea could barely manage on her own.

Maybe she needed to find a husband. Get some help. She wouldn’t want to—Lea Curran was not a woman who settled unnecessarily—but maybe it was what she needed.

The thought of another man raising Molly frosted his blood. Someone else teaching her to ride and how to do long division. And the thought of another man touching her mother’s perfect skin—

His whole body jerked upright. Sapphire tossed her head and trotted off, tail swishing in agitation.
Whoa…
Where had that thought come from? And why was it so slow to drain away?

He didn’t need to start indulging thoughts of that kind, and he didn’t need to start having in-depth discussions about his family with a woman like Lea Curran. That wasn’t going to help anybody.

He pulled his hat down harder on his head, as if to squeeze inappropriate thoughts out, and set about luring the mare again.

Two days later Reilly released God’s Gift to canter off to the middle of the paddock. ‘I’d like to leave the transporter here overnight, loaded with food and backed up to their yard, so the brumbies can explore it at their own pace. Tomorrow we get them on the truck and over to Minamurra.’

Sensible, except…‘How will you get home tonight?’

The look Reilly gave her was cautious. And loaded. ‘I was thinking of staying here.’

‘No.’ Absolutely not. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

‘It’s a six-hour round trip, Lea. You will not.’

‘You’ve been doing it every day.’

‘I’m not four and a half months’ pregnant. I can doss down in the tack compartment of the transporter.’

Lea had seen that compartment; it was designed for stableboys and equipment, not for six-foot-plus men made of solid granite. ‘God’s Gift’s not going to go in there if he can smell you.’

‘We’ll give it a try.’

She chewed her lip. Nightfall was still nine hours away and the heat meant they’d finished training for the day. ‘What will you do for the rest of the day?’ The thought of him hanging around at a loose end for hours was unsettling.

He shrugged. ‘What do you and Molly normally do during the heat of the day?’

Lately? While Lea’s body adjusted to supporting a new life and the weather was so disgusting? ‘Sleep. Read. Swim.’

He stripped his hat off to wipe sweat from his forehead. Even hat hair and heat glow didn’t diminish his looks, all angles and equine lashes.

‘A swim sounds good,’ he said. ‘Where do you go?’

There were a handful of swimming pools in the district, of the installed kind, but most landowners had access to natural pools that formed at the base of rocky outcrops. The tourists dominated the safe public ones that still had water in them after a long, hot dry season, and crocodiles dominated the rest.

‘Joyce’s Pool at the far edge of Yurraji is spring-fed and runs all year round.’ In the wet season it more than ran, it flooded with rain-wash, and created a spectacular billabong wetland filled with life. But in the dry season it subsided back to being smaller, deep and cold, fed directly from the aquifer.

And it was very, very private.

Lea’s heart sank that she was going to miss her daily swim. And on a sticky scorcher like today too. She sighed. ‘I’ll give you directions.’

‘I don’t want to run you off your swim. We can all go.’ His glance was casual. ‘I’d enjoy seeing Molly swim.’

Right. An afternoon with Reilly Martin at the most secluded and pristine corner of the property—out of the question. Her hormones had been making things quite difficult enough without spending a few hours watching him cavort semi-naked in a natural spring. Even with a pint-sized chaperone.

Reilly raised his voice so Molly could hear him from the porch where she played with her Middleton ponies. ‘What do you say, kiddo? A swim at Joyce’s Pool?’

‘Yeah!’ Molly did her happy dance, no doubt delighted at the prospect of showing her new friend her favourite swimming spot. Or floating spot, in Molly’s case, given her reliance on industrial-strength floatation aids.

Reilly noticed Lea’s reluctance and his lips thinned. ‘Come on, Lea. You couldn’t be in safer company.’

Hurt broiled in her chest. Because he drew the line at hitting
on a pregnant woman? Or because he had no interest whatsoever in her, pregnant or otherwise? She gave herself a mental pinch. What did it matter? She shouldn’t care whether he looked at her as a woman or as a brood mare. The man wanted a swim. So did she. So did Molly.

‘Okay. Give me twenty minutes to find a swimsuit.’

To find
a
swimsuit. Not
my
swimsuit.

Lovely Lea Curran usually swam naked. Realisation hit Reilly out of nowhere and the unwanted, illicit image struck straight for his groin. Why wouldn’t she? Her own land, her own pool, her own rules, and a five-year-old who wouldn’t know the difference. Only Lea and the wildlife for a hundred-thousand lonely acres.

Never mind that the occasional lost tourist might stumble upon a naked nymph drifting in the water. If they were smart they’d look their fill and then disappear back into the bush with that mental postcard for ever.

Welcome to the Kimberley!

Lea’s hands moved surely on the steering wheel of her beat-up old four-by-four. Other than the air-conditioning, it was stripped back to nothing, a typical north-west working vehicle, and it handled the rocky track like it was on four sturdy legs. Lea wasn’t kidding about the pool being on the far side of her property. They’d set out diagonally across Yurraji a lifetime ago. It was slow, rough going, picking across the brutal terrain. Molly had become increasingly grizzly as the minutes had ticked by, even with the air-con on full.

Joyce’s Pool must be something special to make this journey worth while all season.

That swim was looking pretty good. With or without swimsuits.

The naked swimmer fit the image of the wild, free spirit he’d been expecting to find. A leopard didn’t change its spots no matter how hard it was working to cover them up. So Lea galloped across the flats with her hair flying, and she liked to swim naked in ancient watering-holes. That fit. That was the woman that might get the district’s back up over animal-rights
issues. That would raise a child defiantly on her own. That would struggle to make friends in the conservative grazing-country. That would become a target. He almost felt sorry for that woman.

If not for the fact that that same woman had also cheated him out of a child.

The pool, when they rumbled out from between thick scrub, was like a blue-green oasis. The Kimberley red rock had eroded to form pastry layers of pure, hardened magma, an ancient staircase down to the glassy emerald sheet that was the undisturbed waterhole surface.

He had nothing like it on Minamurra, despite his station’s size. ‘It’s beautiful. How long have you been coming here?’ he asked.

‘Grandad first brought me when I was about eight. Just before Dad packed us off to boarding school.’ A shadow crossed her face.

What put that there—memories of boarding school, her grandad or her father? And why did he care?

They parked the vehicle and walked the remaining distance down to the water. It felt natural to Reilly to pick up a dozy Molly and save her the walk. Even the surrounding birds were sleeping off the worst of the midday heat, making the constant drone of insects the only sound for miles.

Towards the back of the pool, a granite overhang threw some welcome shade onto the rock shelf and provided protection from the sun blazing in the deep-blue sky. It felt three degrees cooler in the shade, so Reilly dropped their gear and his daughter there.

‘Will you watch Molly? I always walk the perimeter, just to be sure,’ Lea said, setting off around the waterhole. There was a shelf of rock right the way around, stretching back to the scrub that grew in the sandy earth bounding the rock. Nature’s pool-decking. Molly sat completely still on a nearby rock, obviously accustomed to this routine and knowing what her instructions were.

‘Have you ever found anything?’ Reilly asked when she returned.

‘It’s purely precautionary. The only things living in that
water are marron and they’re much more interested in what settles on the bottom than what’s swimming in the top.’

‘But you still check for crocs?’

She looked at him. ‘With the early onset of the dry season, wouldn’t you?’

She had a point. Giant saltwater crocodiles surfed the high waterways further inland every year, but they got stranded here if the waters receded too early. They crept around between inland pools getting hotter and hungrier and more desperate until the rains returned and opened up their aquatic path back to the coast to feeding grounds.

Finally, she was done. Reilly watched her staring into the blue-green depths for a moment before recognising her delaying tactics. She didn’t want to be the first one to get her clothes off. Her reluctance was oddly sweet. He started to pull off his shirt, then stopped and frowned. He kept himself in good shape, and revealing his body to a woman was normally a cinch, but flashing his flesh to Lea seemed different now. Awkward.