Mitch’s face darkened. “You can tell Anson for me that my fiancée won’t be back on after this.”
“Don’t answer for me, Skydancer,” said Lissa. “I can handle my own life.” She frowned and asked Mabel, “You’ve been checking on me?” She knew Mitch hadn’t had time to tell anyone anything about her—and obviously hadn’t wanted to, by the scowl he wore.
“Anson did. Of course he did, as soon as he knew you were going to marry Skydancer.” Mabel gave Mitch a swift grin. “As I’m sure you were aware, Skydancer, he found a lot more than he bargained for. Welcome to the Nighthawks, Countrygirl.”
Curiouser and curiouser: a month ago she was a neglected dirt-poor farmer and single mum, now she was an international spy. She blinked again, took the papers and money and smiled back. “Countrygirl? Who thought of that?”
“Anson, of course. He gives us all our names.” The woman lifted her brows at Lissa’s surprise. “You didn’t think Mabel was my real name? Don’t give me yours, either. I don’t want to know. It’s safer if none of us knows anything.”
Mitch, his face dark and brooding, hauled the bike onto the plane. “Tell Anson I’ll be taking Bertha from Darwin on. She’s been spray painted since I got back. The kangaroo’s gone.”
Mabel patted his shoulder. “It’s only paint, Skydancer.”
“It’s obvious you’re not a pilot,” he retorted.
Mabel laughed. “I’ll pass on your obvious displeasure at Anson’s offer to Countrygirl.”
“Like that’s gonna make a difference, if ‘Countrygirl’ wants the job,” he snapped. “Tell Anson I really appreciate his courtesy in discussing the matter with her, or with me, before he enrolled my fiancée in the job I want the hell out of!”
“No, you don’t.” Mabel kissed his cheek, then pincd it, chuckling. “You’re as addicted as the rest of us, Skydancer. Puff off all the steam you like, but you’re an adrenaline junkie and hero wannabe, and you always will be.”
Lissa smothered her grin and climbed into the cockpit. “Bye, Mabel. See you again sometime.”
“Not if I can help it,” Mitch muttered, and slammed the door shut on the Cessna.
Mabel winked at her, hauled the rifle back over her shoulder and returned to sentry duty as Mitch, still muttering beneath his breath, prepared for takeoff.
She pressed her nose to the window as they lifted up into the sky, still marveling at the wonder of being in the air. Only her third flight, and she was hooked.
“Try to get some sleep,” Mitch said, his tone sour. “It’s a seven-hour flight to Darwin, and it’s gonna be a long night.”
Her stomach rumbled. “I can’t sleep now—I’m hungry,” she replied apologetically. “I don’t suppose Mabel packed food? We didn’t get to have lunch.”
Without a word he handed her a Snickers from a pouch in the backpack between them.
“Mmmm.” She sank her teeth into the chocolate bar, mumbling in ecstasy at the rich, sticky sweetness. “I don’t know what it is about having a gun put to your head and running for your life, but it makes me really hungry.”
He shook his head as he set course northwest for the Northern Territory. “And I thought I knew you so damn well. Is anything about you the same as when we were kids?”
“Yeah, I still like Spy versus Spy.” She lifted her chin. “Baby, if you want a sweet little mousy wife who’d stay home, mind the kids and knit cardigans, you shouldn’t bring spies and secrets home with you to tempt me with a life I always wanted. But I must say in your defense,” she added thoughtfully, “I didn’t remember all of this about me, either, until the gray man bugged the house. So I guess you can say I’m as surprised as you are by my sudden penchant for action and excitement.”
“My old mate, the adrenaline rush,” he said quietly.
“Hmmm. I suppose so. I guess I have something to thank our voyeur for, after all,” she finished with a grin.
“Well, if we’re going to share excitement, do you think we can share food? That was my last Snickers, and I don’t want to stop before Birdsville. The pub there has steaks to die for.”
“Birdsville,” she murmured dreamily. “The Outback. I always wanted to see the Outback.” She broke off half the chocolate and handed it to him.
“You won’t see much of it today. It’ll be sunset by the time we get there. Darkness comes quick in that part of the world.”
“And you’ve seen so much of the world, haven’t you? Not like me. I’ve barely ever left Breckerville.”
There was a small silence. Then he said, “You never had to leave it to know it’s home, Lissa. You don’t have to see the horror and violence in the world to appreciate the you’ve already got.” He spoke in a jerking tone. Then he plunged into his half of the chocolate, as if he knew he’d said too much.
There was a small white line around his nostrils. His eyes were shadowed with anger and something else—disillusionment?
She sensed he was making an enormous effort to talk so casually to her, and she could read his thoughts as clearly as her well-loved Anne of Green Gables books.
“Don’t do this to me, Mitch,” she said quietly. “I didn’t ask for this to happen. But now that I’ve been dragged into your world, I won’t scream and faint so you can play the big he-man protecting his woman. If you want a gentle, innocent homebody for a wife, you’d better start looking elsewhere. Because I won’t pretend to be what I never wanted to be. I’ve had to live this boring, stay-at-home life for the past twelve years, and I won’t do it again so you can fulfil your dreams. You’ve had enough of yours come true. Now it’s my turn to live!”
He glanced at her, his eyes filled with ghosts of the past. “You were that girl once. You would have done that for me—once.”
“Yes,” she replied bluntly. “And I’d have been fool enough to think I was happy. But that girl’s gone. The girl who adored you with all that puppy-dog devotion is gone forever.”
His jaw clenched. “So it seems.”
She bit her lip. “I see. It’s not really me you want, is it? It’s the past. I represent the security you always wanted.”
“I told you before that’s not true,” he growled.
“You told me that the first day, before you knew what I’m like now. Before you saw that I could take care of myself. I’ve grown up, become a woman—and I’m not the woman you imagined I’d be.”
“That much you got right.” His laugh held no amusement. “In all my dreams of you, I never saw you checking the house for bugs, kicking a spy’s butt or joining the Nighthawks.”
“And it bothers you—that’s what gets to you the most. You don’t want me to be part of your world. You want me in the past. You want a haven from all the war and horror you’ve seen, to help Matt and Luke forget the pain they went through with Kerin. You want a mother, a lover, a friend and counselor—but essentially a woman without needs of her own. I’m not a real person to you. I’m an ideal.” She almost choked on the words. “Did you know, Mitch, or did you fool yourself into thinking that you really wanted me? Maybe you even thought you were in love with me. Maybe you even called it love. But it’s really a foster kid’s infatuation with what you think I am—what a family woman should be.”
When he spoke this time, it was in grim desperation. “Lissa, I’m taking you to Tumah-ra—a war zone, for crying out loud! Would I do that if I thought you were just some stupid ideal?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said gently. “To protect me—to save me from the big bad wolf. To keep me in character, your gentle goddess who knows nothing about the seamy side of your life. But the first time I stepped off the pedestal, you were outta there’t handle me being less than your perfect ideal. You didn’t see me protect myself, did you? But then, you don’t want to know about that, because it makes me real!”
“Lissa, don’t do this to us! Don’t say it.”
“I have to.” She was shaking now; she had to force down a huge, hard, hurting ball of anguish in her throat. “Sorry if I
’ve shattered your illusions and dreams, but I don’t want to be your haven. I don’t want to be some warped representation of home and hearth, the little woman waiting for her wandering hero to come back to her. I’ve been that all my life. I’ve been daughter and friend, wife and mother. I gave up my dreams of university to help Dad on the farm, then I did it again for Tim’s gym. Then I had Jenny, then Matt and Luke. But it’s finally my turn now. I want to live—and since it seems you can’t accept that, you’d better start thinking up how to tell the boys they aren’t getting the family you promised them.” She looked down at her lap. “The wedding’s off.”
“No. I can’t accept that. I won’t accept that!” Mitch was shaking himself. He hit the auto-pilot button then held her by the shoulders to turn her to him. His eyes blazed. “Baby, it’s not like you think at all. Don’t judge me until you’ve seen what I’m talking about. Give us a chance before you blow it all off.”
“There is no us. I only agreed to marry you in the first place because that man insisted I do what it took to get evidence against you, to keep you with me. Then I wanted it to be real.” She pressed her lips together, gritted her teeth, but the tears came anyway. “There never was a real chance for us, except in our imagination. I think we made ideals of each other based on how crazy we were about each other as kids, and neither of us were lucky enough to meet anyone else who fulfilled our ideal. Maybe one doesn’t exist. We’re dreamers, Mitch,” she whispered, trying to smile through the tears raining down. “Both of us. But we’re not kids anymore. We can’t force each other into moulds that don’t fit, whether we want each other or not.”
“I don’t want to force you into anything. I don’t want an ideal. I just want you!”
She shook her head. “You didn’t trust me today. You came in with guns blazing. You didn’t give me a chance to deal with him.”
“Why don’t you ask me why, Lissa?”
She looked at him, but the words wouldn’t form.
He sighed. “Anson told me to go in and get you out. And you’ll learn soon enough that you just don’t disobey Anson.”
She nodded reluctantly. “Will I learn, Mitch? You don’t want me in the Nighthawks.”
His eyes went dark, like a light snapped off. “No. I don’t,” he agreed, his voice quiet—too quiet. “Why don’t you ask me about that, too?”
She wiped tears from her face. “Why don’t you ask me what I want for my life, instead of assuming you know? Why don’t you ask me why I want to join the Nighthawks?”
“You don’t know what it is y’re joining!”
“And you knew all about it when you signed up with them?” she challenged. “You left the Air Force before the peacekeeping force was needed in East Timor. So besides flying, how much Air Force training in peacetime Australia helped you with what you needed to do with the Nighthawks?”
“Okay, not much!” he muttered. “But I know now, and I know it’s not for you.”
“Based on what you knew of me as a kid, or what you’ve seen me do the past few weeks?” Silence. She sighed and turned away, tired of crying but unable to stop. “Just answer this, Mitch, based on what you’ve seen of me the past few days. If it weren’t me in question—if I were any other woman than sweet little Lissa Miller from your Breckerville memories—would you still know I couldn’t handle what’s entailed in being an operative for the Nighthawks?”
That silenced him, too. But oh, how she’d hoped it wouldn’t.
She watched in helpless anguish as he resumed control of the Cessna. “Please, don’t say any more. Let’s just get this over, let’s bring this guy down, get the kids safe and—”
“And?” he asked quietly. “What then, Lissa? What do we tell Matt and Luke—Luke, whom we both promised we’d never leave? That we’d always be together?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, finally beyond tears. “I don’t know, all right? All I know right now is I’m thankful we didn’t get in too deep, that I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with you all over again. We’ll think up something to tell the kids.”
“You’ll have to, Lissa, because I won’t lie to them. I still want to marry you. I won’t cancel the wedding.” He sighed again, and spoke with quiet despair. “Give me two days, Lissa. Two days to convince you you’re wrong about us—that if I’m wrong, I can change how I think of you. That we do have a chance together. That what we have could be as real as our dreams.”
She shoved half a fist in her mouth to stop the hysterical laughter emerging. “Mitch, we’re gong into a war zone!”
But he only nodded. “What better place to prove I trust you, by putting my life in your hands, and yours in mine?”
Startled, she turned to face him.
He smiled grimly. “This is as real as it gets, Lissa. I’ve always worked alone. I’ve never trusted anyone. But in the next two days I’ll have to. Because any decisions I make will affect the rest of your life—and yours will affect mine. Matt, Luke and Jenny’s as well…and Hana’s, too. We have to do this together, for all our sakes. No arbitrary decisions or orders. Joint decisions. If we can do this, we can do anything. If I prove I can do that, will you think again about our life together?”
She wanted time to think it through—but he was right. There was no decision. This had to be. If they survived the next two days, maybe—just maybe—they could make a life together, too.
Slowly she nodded.
The stiffness of his spine visibly relaxed. “Thank you.” Then he turned the plane toward far-west Queensland, to the tiny Outback town famous for its yearly insane horse race, its one pub and nothing else. As he guided the Cessna groundward the sun dipped and fell, and they flew right into a harsh, unforgiving land, all ochres and copper and rust and the flaming dark red of blood, in a violent and glorious sunset.
Chapter 10
The adorable little dark-haired child’s face lit on seeing Mitch the next morning. “Nicker! Nicker!”
With a grin Mitch dropped to his haunches and held out a Snickers—one of an amazing supply, almost into the hundreds, he’d bought that morning near Darwin airport
. “Go for it, kid.”
With a look of ecstasy Hana devoured the chocolate, smearing a good portion of it over her face in her hurry to get it all in. Then she gave Mitch a timid smile. “Tanks you.”
He touched her grubby cheek. “Wala pong anuman, Hana.”
Hana’s face lit up at his use of Tagalog; she nodded, with a beaming smile. Then she dragged him to a small table, where she got out a pack of cards, and they were soon embroiled in a falteringly bilingual, very intense game of Snap.
Lissa watched him playing with Hana, touched anew by his rapport with kids—any kids. For a man never brought up in a family—whose own last name came from the priest who ran the church orphanage where he’d been dumped—he had such innate tenderness and empathy. He never wasted time with self-pity but got on with living, making the best of what he had.
“Would you like a drink of tea, Lis-sa?”
Lissa turned to the smiling Tumah-ran woman. “Thank you, Lily. I would.”
The little woman bustled around her simple kitchen beneath the ceiling fan, cheerful amid heat so humid she could wring out her clothes. If she hung them on an outdoor line they’d still be wet tomorrow. The whole house—the whole city of Darwin—had a heavy odor of steamy heat and the doubtful swirling freshness of an afternoon storm coming.
Lissa used her handkerchief for the fiftieth time to wipe her perspiring face, but it was so damp it was of little use. She felt limp and languid, puddling from the inside. “Is Tumah-ra as humid as Darwin?” she asked Lily, wondering if, like a character in a book she’d read in childhood, she would literally melt away in her own sweat. How could people live here?
Lily frowned and tilted her head. “What is—”
Lissa bit her lip, then she fanned herself and wiped her forehead, using the same sort of verbal sign shorthand she’d seen Mitch use with Hana during the Snap
game. “Tumah-ra same?”
Lily smiled and nodded. “Hot. Very hot. Rain.”
Lissa sighed.
Lily patted her arm. “Very nice, Tumah-ra. Pretty. Much tree, pretty water…coral. Nice. Before soldiers come and…and—” She frowned, then said triumphantly, “Shoot ’em up!”
Lissa gasped at the terminology. “Are you sad, Lily?”
Lily turned to her, with a heart-wrenching smile of sadness and bravado and acceptance all in one. “Tumah-ra very pretty. Very nice. Find oil, it go bad for money. My brother, he die fighting rebels. My sister, she disappear. We lucky here, my husband, me, my son, be refugees for one year, maybe two. But one day go home. Make house again. Make village back. Find my father. He we not find to go on boat.” She shook her head as Lissa’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears. “No, Lis-sa. My brother, my sister in God’s hands. We have good life. This bad thing for now—only now. One day soldiers go home, and we go home. Make Tumah-ra pretty again.”
She couldn’t answer Lily. A queer pain streaked through her, an aching wistfulness. Lily and her family—not to mention Mitch—had known so much less of love and joy and family security in their lives, yet it was she who held back, who refused to rebuild her world when it fell apart. She who kept others at arm’s length for fear of being hurt.
When had she lost that optimism, that willingness to see the brighter side of life? When had she become so much less than the woman she’d once wanted to be?
Give me two days, Lissa. Two days to show you that our lives can be as real as our dreams.
Maybe it was time to start dreaming again. If anyone deserved to have their dreams come true, it was Mitch. Why he wanted to marry her, why he wanted her at all, she had no idea. But if he wanted this to work, she could at least give him these two days, for his sake. And for her own. For something told her this was her final chance at life. If she threw this away—whatever it was she and Mitch had—then cynical loneliness would set in her heart for good. She’d become another deserted wife and single mother, complaining about the price of education, interfering with her kids’ choices in life because she had no life of her own, and then, finally, she’d grow old alone, bitter and angry, wondering why her kids no longer came to visit her.
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