by Valerie Parv
“This love stuff isn’t easy, is it?” he asked, not really expecting Blake to answer.
He did anyway. “Frankly, I’d rather wrestle crocodiles. I gather you didn’t tell her about the last part of our code of the outback, the bit about no mushy stuff?”
Tom felt his face heat. “Of course I didn’t. Anyway, we were kids when we wrote that. What did we know?”
Blake grinned. “We sure didn’t understand how our attitude toward mushy stuff would change as we grew up.” He looked at the cup in Tom’s hand. “Would you like me to take that to Shara?”
“I’ll do it. You’re wrong about her making eyes at me.” Even as he said it, Tom wondered which of them he was trying to convince.
Blake sighed. “I’m not wrong, mate. I wish I was.”
At the door, Tom paused. “Because?”
“Because I’m afraid if you let her slip through your fingers out of fear, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
His foster brother’s words rang in Tom’s ears as he carried the coffee to Shara’s room. His fears were valid, weren’t they? His temper was every bit as quick as his father’s, and there were times when he’d had to struggle against the urge to lash out. That he hadn’t hurt anyone so far didn’t mean he never would. The more he cared about Shara—and he suspected Blake was right about how deep his feelings went—the more Tom wanted to protect her, even from himself.
There was no answer to his knock and the bathroom door stood open, so she wasn’t in there. He hated to wake her after their eventful day yesterday, but she wanted to make a start on reconstructing her research, and Tom knew it was time he got back to work, too.
He hadn’t counted on finding her bed empty. The room was small enough that he could check it with a glance. Her clothes and her bag were gone. He put the coffee cup down on the bedside and hunted for a note, or some clue to where she’d gone. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach forewarned him that it wasn’t for a walk around the wildlife park.
When Shara awoke she hadn’t had any real plan in mind, except to find the cave Tom and Blake had talked about at dinner the night before. She could have waited until Tom awoke then talked him into taking her to the cave, but she didn’t need a nursemaid. She wanted to do this alone.
What was she trying to prove? That as a princess she wasn’t as mollycoddled as everyone thought? As she tried to dress quietly in the dark, fumbling and mismatching buttons, she grimaced at herself. She still wasn’t used to getting herself ready for the day, having had servants assisting her for most of her life, even down to choosing what she should wear each day.
Not a dilemma that troubled her now, she thought. With only a few outfits to her name, she didn’t have much choice. The white cotton shirt and pants she had worn to dinner last night would have to do. This time she tucked the shirt into the pants. Thinking of Tom’s openmouthed reaction when she’d appeared with the shirt tied beneath her breasts and her midriff bare, she felt her mouth lift into a smile. Knowing the effect she’d had on him made her early-morning foray all the more worthwhile.
She might tell herself she wanted to repay the Logan family for helping her, but deep down, she knew Tom was the reason. He had been her first and only lover, but somehow she knew he had made it special for her. If she never knew any other man in her lifetime, she would be content. Now all she had to do was convince Tom.
Helping to solve Des’s money worries would be a start. After the older man was relieved of the worry of the mortgage, he could concentrate on staying well until a transplant became an option. After that, she and Tom would be free to focus on themselves.
His bedroom door was firmly closed when she slipped out into the hall, only a sliver of predawn radiance lighting her way. She had willed herself to awaken early, sure that both men would be early risers. Carefully she felt her way along the hall to the kitchen where she collected some oranges for breakfast and a bottle of water. She found the keys to the old work car where Tom had dropped them on the hall stand, near the door she remembered led to the front entrance Blake had pointed out last night.
Although they hadn’t come that way yesterday, he’d said there was a gate that avoided the need to go through the crocodile park. Just as well. She didn’t think she’d have had the courage to find her way between the pens of monster crocodiles.
The gate was locked, but not from the inside, she saw as she let herself out quietly. A security light burned in the car park, illuminating the car she’d driven since coming to Diamond Downs. It would take Tom some time to work out where she’d gone, and follow her. By then she hoped to have some useful evidence to show him.
She had to concentrate on finding her way along the unfamiliar roads. By the time she crossed onto Logan land and began to navigate the network of cattle tracks leading to Cotton Tree Gorge, dawn had broken.
This was where things became tricky. In her bag was the map on which Tom had shown her the cave where they’d hidden out as children. He’d mentioned a tree split by lightning as a landmark. By daylight, however, she saw there were many such trees. Every rocky escarpment looked similar.
Exploring on foot was the only way she had any hope of finding the right cave. She stopped the car in the shade, ate an orange and drank some water, then put the bottle in her bag and got out. Screwing up her eyes, she squinted upward. Where should she start?
A twinge in her calf reminded her of the penalty for a wrong decision. When Tom’s friend aimed the spear at her leg, she had never suspected Tom had also been firing an arrow into her heart. She was doing this for him, she reminded herself, and for the future she was determined they would share.
Shouldering her bag, she began to climb.
Two hours later she was no closer to finding the fissure leading into the secret cave. Once, she’d located an opening in the rock, and her heart had begun to pound, but the cleft hadn’t been deep enough to be called a cave, and was open to the sky. Ancient rock art adorned a few of the crevices she explored, but none was in the style she remembered as belonging to the Uru people.
“Coo-eee! Coo-eee!”
At the sound of the traditional Australian bushman’s call, she lifted her head from a petra glyph she’d been examining. Could Jamal have somehow found her? Apart from the shallow cleft there was nowhere she could hide, and in any case, they’d have seen her car by now. Whoever was calling knew she was up here.
“Coo-eee! Coo-eee!”
As the call echoed around the canyon again, she recognized the voice. It was Tom and he was alone. Her heart sank. By the time he’d found her, she’d hoped to have some progress to report, but she’d achieved nothing except to make him angry with her for going off on her own.
Shara Najran might be many things, but she wasn’t a coward. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped out of the shadows.
Moments later he bounded up to her, his face flushed. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“Looking for the entrance to your cave.”
“Out here alone? You could have gotten yourself lost or killed.”
“Would you have cared?” she asked quietly.
“You know bloody well I would.”
“Why, Tom?” Admit that you care for me, her heart implored silently.
“It’s my job to care.”
“Only your job?”
His dark gaze bored into her. “It can’t be anything else, Shara.”
“Yesterday it was a lot more.”
He pushed his hat back on his head. “Yesterday was a mistake.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. You don’t know what you’re risking with me.”
She thought of how sublime she’d felt when he’d made love to her. “Surely the risk is mine to take?”
“Not in this,” he said harshly. “Yesterday I was thinking with my glands instead of my brain.”
A pang shot through her. “You regret making love to me?”
His hands dropped to her arms. “Never that. I’ll take the memory of what we shared to my grave. But I shouldn’t have let it happen. There’s too much danger of you coming to harm because of me.”
“I know you would never harm me,” she stated, believing it with all her heart.
His gaze turned bleak. “Do you, Shara? Because it’s more than I know for sure.”
“Just because your father was a violent man doesn’t mean you take after him.”
Her shot in the dark had hit home, she saw when his eyes widened. “Don’t you realize,” he said in a tone barely above a whisper, “the only way I can be sure is if I’m put to the test.”
“You were willing to take a spear meant for me,” she pointed out. “They’re hardly the actions of a violent man.”
He turned away from her. “My mother said much the same thing to my dad. In one of his sober moments, my father begged her to take me and get away. She thought that meant he could change, so she stayed. Wishful thinking cost my mother her life.”
“And you’ve been paying the price for her decision ever since. It’s not fair.”
He slammed a fist against the rock wall. “No, it isn’t.” He swung around, his eyes blazing. “I’d accepted my lot in life, until you came into it. Damn you, Shara, you make me wish I was anybody but the man I am.”
Her spirits lifted. No matter what he said, he did care for her. There was hope for them. “In my country, there is a saying—the sword is nothing without the fire. If you hadn’t been tempered by the fire of your experiences, you wouldn’t be the man you are.”
“And that’s supposed to be a good thing?”
“It is, to me.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”
She couldn’t conceal her hurt. “Believing in you doesn’t make me a fool.”
“You’re right, Your Highness. My apologies. It merely makes you misguided.”
“It’s your task to set me straight, I suppose?”
He nodded tautly. “Somebody has to, before you get hurt.”
She would get hurt no matter what happened, she knew. It had become unavoidable the moment she gave herself to him. But there was no going back. “My father has the same attitude. His solution is for me to marry Jamal. Are you suggesting I should do so?”
Tom’s fingers flexed as if he would like to feel them around Jamal’s throat. “You know me better.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all.”
He made an angry sound of dismissal. “Let’s find the cave.”
She concealed her satisfaction. Tom might be convinced he had nothing to offer her, but she knew differently. She wasn’t afraid of him, or of what he might do in a fit of temper. Maybe she was the fool he’d accused her of being, but she trusted her instincts and the love he’d shown her. If he could only learn to trust himself, there could be a chance for them.
First, they had to locate the entrance. “I’ve been trying for ages with no luck,” she said.
At last he smiled, and her heart almost cracked open. “You’ve been looking in the wrong places. Des did the same thing whenever we kids pulled our disappearing act, and he never found the cave either.”
She took some small comfort from that. “I looked in line with the lightning-blasted tree, but there are so many of them.”
He gestured toward a tree not far below them. “Only one has a trunk like an arrow. You were closer than you think. Give me your hand.”
The touch of his fingers sent fire tearing along her veins. He might think yesterday had been a mistake, but she couldn’t make herself believe it for a second. In her country, one’s fate was supposed to be written before you were born. If it was true, she had been meant to come to Australia and find Tom. Everything in her life, even her quirky interest in rock art, had led her directly to where she was now, and the man at her side.
Especially the man at her side.
He guided her along the ledge to where it seemed to taper to nothing. “I’ve already explored along here,” she protested, gasping as gravel spilled into the air under Tom’s feet.
Suddenly he tugged his hand free and disappeared, seemingly melting into the solid rock.
If he could do it, so could she. Like a sight-impaired person, she felt her way along the rock face until her fingers closed around a jagged edge that was invisible until she was right on top of it. Closing her hand around it, and her mind to the conviction that at any moment she would plunge off the narrowing ledge to her death, she forced herself to take another step.
Moments later she swung around the jagged edge through an opening like the eye of a needle, into Tom’s waiting arms.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was here? I thought I was about to plunge off the cliff,” she protested. Her heart slammed against her ribs so hard that she could hardly breathe, although whether from falling into the hidden cave, or from finding Tom’s arms around her, she didn’t know.
He took her bag and dropped it on the sandy floor. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
She couldn’t argue. Being held tight against him certainly fit the description. So did the way his mouth was roving hungrily over her face and eyebrows. His hands were warm on the back of her neck. She dropped her head back and let him feast.
When her own need became too great, she fastened her lips to his and took in her turn, feeling heat pool deep inside her, igniting the core of her womanhood. Oh, how she wanted him. Was this how it was supposed to be? First the discovery of what a man could give a woman, then the all-consuming desire to revisit that sacred place? To create love and children and a future there?
In Tom’s arms, she had found her spiritual home, she thought, wishing this moment didn’t have to end. The thought of Jamal’s pursuit weighed heavily on her, along with what Horvath might be planning against Tom’s family. Was there never to be a time when she could simply follow the dictates of her heart?
Tom let his hands slide down her body to her waist, the touch thrilling of itself, until he put her carefully away from him. His breathing was shallow and his face was flushed. He sounded unsteady as he said, “I should have known better than to bring you here.”
Her own voice felt less than reliable. “It wouldn’t matter where we were. I would still feel the same.”
“Me, too, damn it to hell,” he said.
She shook her head. “I hardly think hell is where we were headed.”
He dragged his hat off and placed it on a ledge, then raked his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t bring you here for that.”
Her whole body throbbed with the need for him to totally possess her. She felt like a tuning fork struck at precisely the right note, vibrant and strong and sure. And just as certain that it wouldn’t end here. “Wherever we are, it seems to come down to that,” she said.
“All the more reason to focus on what we came to do,” he rasped.
He was right, as she’d already reminded herself, but she’d already learned that the expectation verged on the impossible. He felt it, too, she saw from the fire in his gaze and the unsteadiness of his hands. He might not share her people’s belief in predestination, but her belief was strong enough for them both. It told her as surely as if their fate had been carved on the cave walls, that she and Tom were destined to be one.
She suspected he also felt that, but meant to fight it as hard as he could.
For both their sakes, and the children she believed with all her heart were already written in her and Tom’s stars, this was one fight she was determined not to let him win.
Chapter 17
Despite knowing he should get out of here before he gave in to the desire to kiss Shara again, Tom stood his ground. He felt a tug of nostalgia as he looked around the cave. As a boy he’d been able to stand up in every part of it. Now he had to bend to access the farthest reaches. “Everything’s just the way we left it,” he said.
Shara followed his gaze. A pair of camp stretchers stood at right angle
s to each other in a corner. A large rock had been manhandled between them to serve as a table. An assortment of chipped enameled mugs and plates still stood on it. Tom sat on one of the cots and picked up an adventure novel he last recalled seeing when he was about fourteen. He dusted off the cover with his sleeve and sneezed. “Guess it’s been a while.”
She coughed to chase the dust from her throat. “It’s a wonderful hideout, but I don’t see any unusual cave paintings.”
“There’s a gallery opening off this one.” He stood up. “You have to crouch to get through the access tunnel to reach it.”
He wasn’t wrong, she soon discovered. The tunnel was barely her height in places, and Tom had to stoop to pass through the lowest section. But the effort was worth it when she emerged into a high-ceilinged cavern. Tom had gone ahead of her and was already standing in the middle, hands on his hips.
During the course of her research, Shara had seen many pictures of rock art, aeons old. Her father’s reluctance to allow her to travel meant she had been unable to visit most of the sites she’d researched, other than those in Q’aresh. It was hard to believe she was actually standing in this one. She had never seen anything so breathtaking.
A natural fissure opened at the cavern’s highest point, allowing light to filter in through a mesh of tree roots. At this time of day the cave was gently illuminated, and she looked around in wonder.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw that every surface was covered in figures of people, fish and kangaroo formed from hundreds of fine lines drawn in natural ochre. She had read that the ochre had been carried north, sometimes for more than a thousand miles, until it was pulped and kneaded by the tribal artist, and painted onto the wall. Barely perceptible depressions on the rock floor would have served as an artist’s palette.