by Margaret Way
“But it happened.”
“It must have. I’m here. I’m so much like him we don’t need any DNA. They took off for New Zealand where Lockhart had family. I hear from them from time to time. Jim could never take to me, especially after, but he did his best.”
“So when was this? When were you on your own?” Sadness jolted her heart.
“Fourteen. I couldn’t go with them, too difficult for Jim my mother explained, too destructive to the marriage. I was sent to boarding school for the next three years. They must have had to dig deep. It was a top school. My friends came from Outback properties all over Queensland. That’s how I finished up as a station hand.”
“Who very quickly rose to the top,” she reminded him. “Have you ever spoken a word to Lancaster?”
“I couldn’t trust myself to speak to him,” Steve said, tasting violent anger at the back of his throat. “I despise the man. He’s supposed to be Gavin Lancaster, the big man, the cattle baron! He’s a spineless, gutless, wimp. One day we’re going to come face-to-face. One day—”
He broke off, his expression so dark, Meredith caught a glimpse of his inner demons. “You don’t need him, Steven. You’re going to make your mark on your own.”
“I intend to,” he said. Somehow he knew he was capable of extraordinary things. “You know I’ve got half brothers everywhere. A Lancaster, two Lockhart’s. A half sister—she was a sweet little thing—yet I feel connected to no one. Cal comes the closest.”
Meredith’s tender heart smote her. She saw in her mind’s eye a vision of the fourteen-year-old left all alone while his family started a fresh life in another country. “Give me your hand,” she said very gently, reaching out to him.
His tall, powerful body went taut. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he warned, knuckles clenched white, obviously agitated when he was usually so in command.
“I want you to think of me as your friend.” It seemed very important to her he did. “Please, Steven. I told you. I like you. I…”
She never got to finish that hopelessly inadequate sentence. With an explosive oath, he lifted her forcibly, effortlessly into his arms, so she was lying across his chest, staring up into a face brilliant with a passion he couldn’t control.
“You can’t try the teasing, Meredith. Not with me, you can’t!”
Teasing? She had no thought of teasing in her head. “But, Steven, it’s not like that!” She was so agitated she had difficulty speaking.
“Then you should be more careful,” he rasped, lowering his head with such a look of hunger it overwhelmed her. Heartbeats shook her body. She was aware of an acute sense of trepidation. She had imagined something like this happening, though she had held it a secret deep within her. What if the reality fell far short of those imaginings? What if…
He kissed her until she was swooning in his arms, the excitement breathtaking. His beard was slightly rough against her soft skin, grazing it, yet it was so wonderful! He was cradling her, covering her face and neck with kisses, as if only she could make his hunger and pain go away. His hands closed around her face as he kept returning to her yielding mouth, over and over, his tongue slipping around the moist interior, exploring it and the shape of her teeth.
It was astonishing as though it were all happening in the most voluptuous slow motion. Meredith didn’t see how it could go on without their shedding their clothes, rolling naked on the sand. Her shirt was already off one shoulder. She was crushed against him, the pressure of her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, going along with this tumultuous tide, with not a thought in her head of fighting it. She could smell him, the wonderful male scent of him, something warm and intoxicating like the smell of fine leather and warm spices.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he muttered. “No, stay there.” He had unloosened her thick plait, now her hair was swirling all around them releasing the herbal scents of her shampoo. He took a handful of it, kissed a lock, then her cheek, inhaling her skin. She’d been working all day yet she was so fresh. Always was.
Meredith had never felt so weak in her life. Her body had turned boneless. She didn’t think she could possibly stand up or find her balance if she did. She was making no attempt to block his moving hands. She didn’t want to. It was all too thrilling. Now his hand was reaching into the neck of her shirt, moving down to her breast; long strong fingers reaching further down, seeking the nipple, already erect.
How could she stand it? She was unravelling like a bolt of silk. She had to do something. God, what? This was ecstasy. She’d had little of that. She wasn’t a virgin—a few, mostly pleasant experiences—but she’d never known anything like this or felt so remotely close to someone. And they were only kissing. Only! His fingers had reached her nipple, stimulating it further, setting her off wildly. Sensation was spreading down to her groin. She had to squeeze her legs together, when she wanted to throw them wide apart. Her heart was pumping madly She didn’t know it but her nails were sinking into his back. Stars exploded behind her tightly shut eyelids, a kaleidoscope of colours.
Easier to put out a fire before it reaches a conflagration.
The warning voice in her head tried to call a stop, but she was too caught up in sensation. Calling a halt was so totally against her desire.
Meredith, you’re losing yourself. Stop now. The voice came again. This time it had the power of a scream! She could so easily fall pregnant. It was a long time since she had taken the Pill.
Somehow she stayed his hand, though the effort nearly split her open. “Please, Steven.” Her voice was no more than a ragged sob.
For a moment, an eternity, she thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t heed her plea. She was unsurprised. She should never have let him go so far. But, oh, it was ravishing, electric! And she had learned a few things about herself she had never known. She was electric only for him.
Steve’s anguished groan came from way down deep in his throat. How was he supposed to let go of her after that? Didn’t women understand a man couldn’t just shut down at the flick of a switch? He didn’t know how to protect himself from the pain. He buried his face in her sweetly scented neck, his hands breaking off caressing her. He could have howled aloud. “I don’t know what to say,” he muttered, as much to himself as her.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she tried to comfort him, feeling as if they were sealed off from the rest of the world.
“I frightened you for a moment, didn’t I?” He threw his head back to stare into her eyes, his own glowing.
“Maybe,” she whispered, not hiding from the truth. “I frightened myself, too.”
He gave a strange laugh. “See what happens when you ask to hold my hand?”
“It’s been coming a long time. But you know what they say? Forewarned, is forearmed.” She tried to joke, when she had never felt so emotional, allowing her forehead to rest against his. “I care about you, Steven. I don’t simply like you. I really care.”
He accepted that now. All that wild passion wasn’t only on his side. The tremors that shook her had been real. For long moments there he had thought she would let him do anything he liked with her. Let him peel off her clothes, run his tongue over every inch of her satiny body, find every little secret crevice. “If someone saw us and reported to your dad I’d be out of here this same afternoon,” he said wryly, thinking it would have been well worth it. “Even Cal couldn’t save me.”
She felt bolder, stronger, than she had ever felt in her life. “I’d save you,” she said, planting a kiss near the corner of his eye. “My father has played the heavy in too many of my relationships. God knows why. It’s a puzzle. Cal is the one my parents love and adore. Not me.”
“They must be mad,” he muttered thickly and with disgust. “A wonderful daughter like you to fill their lives?”
She gave him another sweet kiss, this time on the cheek. “I must get up. Go home, Steven.” Life went on. Reality replaced rapture. She had to make a big decision. She had to d
ecide what she really wanted out of life. She had to decide if the emotion that had ripped through her like a hurricane could move on from a powerful sexual attraction to something deeper, stronger, more permanent. She realised she expected it with a man like Steven Lockhart. There were deep waters beneath that calm, controlled exterior, deep surging passions.
A kiss can be life changing. Strange but true.
With her hair undone it was blowing this way and that in the late-afternoon breeze. “You’ve wrecked my hair,” she said, smiling down at him, the warm flush in her cheeks highlighting the burning blue of her eyes.
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see yourself. A woman’s hair truly is her crowning glory.” He sat looking at her, his heart ravished, as she rebuttoned her shirt, then set about replaiting the gleaming masses. “How is it going to be from now on, Meredith?” he asked, his tone very serious. “I couldn’t have made it more obvious how I feel about you. Now everything has changed. How do we handle that?”
She flicked her thick plait over her shoulder, making the decision to speak the truth. “I want…I want you, Steven.”
He nodded as though she had revealed something very important. Then, “Talk around the station is, your parents want you to marry that McDermott guy. Are you going to do it?”
She began to brush sand off her clothes. “Nope.”
“He’s got a lot to offer,” he persisted. The McDermotts were a wealthy pastoral family and McDermott was a likeable guy, a great polo player.
“I suppose. Everything but love.” She didn’t tell him Shane McDermott had already proposed to her. Twice.
“So where are you leading me, Heaven, or Hell?” He stood up; looming over her, a superbly fit young man, his golden-brown eyes searching her face.
“What about the stars?” she suggested softly, wishing the two of them could stay like this for ever.
“I’d snatch them down for you if I could.” He pulled her tight…tighter.
“I’ll remember that.” She leaned back against his arm.
They stayed like that for long moments staring into one another’s eyes, then he released her. She turned away to pick up her hat, settling it jauntily on her head. It was very difficult trying to return to normal again. Steven was right. Every second of their explosive lovemaking had brought them closer and closer together. Everything had, indeed, changed. Her desires, her longings, her hopes had been dredged up from some deep quarry inside her. She had to start thinking about wanting more instead of settling into a pattern of accepting less.
“Let’s move slowly,” she said, blue eyes going back to him, seeking his understanding. “One day at a time.” She knew opposition from her parents would be fierce if she came out with her feelings for Steven Lockhart. “Okay?” She sought some gesture of agreement. “I don’t care if we’re seen together often. I’m past pretence.” She waited nervously for his answer, frightened he might move back from the brink, seeing himself as a man with a lot to lose and probably nothing to win.
He inclined his raven head. “Whatever you say.” How he wished he had more to offer her. Right now. He knew he could get it, but it would take time. “I guess your family will have enough on its hands welcoming Gina and their little grandson.”
She sighed in agreement. “You’ll be hearing about it.” She held his gaze, wanting to make sure he understood the opened lines of communication between them really mattered. Changes came through making decisions and carrying them through. If she wanted Steven Lockhart—and she realised she did—she knew she would have to give up her ingrained reticence and reach for him. He had suffered too much rejection and he was a man of pride.
To her relief he gave her a little salute. “At the end of the day, this is going to affect us all.”
It was only after she rode away that the voice in his head began. It whispered words of caution that dropped, heavy as a pile of stones.
Remember who she is, Steve.
Yet she had come willingly and without resistance into his arms. She was as powerfully attracted to him as he was to her. That much he knew. Or had they both simply surrendered to an overwhelming temptation? And what about the McKendrick rules? Cal had broken them. Even for him it hadn’t been simple. How much more difficult for Meredith?
When Meredith went downstairs some fifteen minutes before dinner—which was always at 7:00 p.m. on the dot, dress please, no jeans, slacking not accepted—her mother called to her the moment she saw her.
“There you are, dear,” Jocelyn spoke brightly. “Join me for a moment, would you?” She beckoned Meredith to follow her down to the library, leaving behind her a light trail of her very expensive signature perfume.
“Anything wrong, Mum?” Meredith asked when they were inside the room. It was huge, but wonderfully atmospheric and welcoming despite the size. She loved books. Couldn’t live without them. For years she had wanted to make a start on cataloguing the library—Uncle Ed had been keen to join her—but they both realised they were going to be refused the project.
Don’t bother me now, Meredith. When I decide the time’s right I’ll call in a professional. Someone who knows what he’s about.
He. That was her father, the quintessential chauvinist.
The ambience of the library settled her slightly when, truth be known, she was a bundle of nerves what with Cal’s affairs and hers. Cal couldn’t come home soon enough so far as his sister was concerned.
Jocelyn turned about, delicate brows raised like wings. “Why should anything be wrong, dear? No, no, I was planning on asking Kym to stay for the week-end.” She settled herself gracefully into a deep comfortable chair, upholstered in a rich paisley, indicating to Meredith to take the one opposite. “I thought you might like to ask Shane. Make up a foursome.” She gave her daughter an encouraging smile. “You’re getting on, my dear. Time to settle down. One should have one’s children young. Your father and I did.”
“I’m not twenty-six yet, Mum,” Meredith said thinking subtlety often eluded her mother.
“Twenty-six is getting on,” Jocelyn said, her voice firm.
“Not what anyone else would call over the hill,” Meredith murmured dryly. “And aren’t you forgetting something, Mum?”
“Remind me.” She put a hand to her triple string of large, lustrous pearls. She was rarely seen without them even if they were half hidden by collars or under sweaters and the like. They were a wedding present from her husband and very valuable.
“Dad has made an art form of scaring off my admirers,” Meredith pointed out. As if her mother didn’t know! And often condoned.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Jocelyn now studied her slim ankles. She had kept her tiny waist and youthful figure and was very proud of it. “Only the fortune hunters, dear. Shane isn’t one of those.”
“No, indeed, he’s one of us,” Meredith lightly mocked, thinking in some respects her mother was a throwback to far less egalitarian times. “Shane and I aren’t going anywhere, Mum. Sorry to disappoint you. I like him. I value him as a friend, but I’m not and never will be in love with him.”
Jocelyn’s equable temper suddenly flared, putting diamond chips into her glass-green eyes. Jocelyn thoroughly disliked having her plans thwarted. “Who said anything about love?” she demanded to know. “There are far more important things than love in a marriage, my girl. Love can fly out the window as fast as it flew in. You have to consider more lasting qualities. Similar backgrounds, shared interests, liking and respect. Friendship is very important. Friendship between the families, as well. I’d like you to know—”
“Did you love Dad when you married him?” Meredith interrupted the flow, wondering if her authoritarian father had ever been a lovable person.
Jocelyn did effrontery exceedingly well. “Of course I loved your father. How could you ask? We are still in love.”
Meredith supposed they were in their own way.
“And we’re excellent friends. Your father and I see eye to eye. We’ve been greatly
blessed. We have our wonderful son. A better son no parent could ask for. And we have you. You’re a beautiful young woman, Meredith. Or you could be if you ever decided to do something about yourself. You could take a leaf out of Kym’s book there. She’s always marvellously turned out. All I ever see you in is jeans with your hair scraped back. It’s scraped back even now.”
Meredith put a hand to the loose curls that lay along her cheeks. “And here I was thinking I had prettied it up. Could the fact I do a lot of work around the station, as well as in the office have anything to do with the way I dress, do you suppose? It might come as a surprise to you, but Kym has often told me she’d give anything to look as good as I do in jeans.”
Jocelyn lifted a porcelain ornament—eighteenth-century Meissen—off the small circular table beside her, then put it down again gently. “Well, she is a bit pear shaped,” she conceded with a smile. “So what about it? We ask them both, Kym and Shane. Give the poor boy a chance, dear. You won’t have any trouble with your father. I’ve already spoken to him. We like Shane.”
Meredith clasped her hands together. Looking down at them she was sure she should be taking more care of them. Especially now when she had never felt more a woman. Bring on the hand cream! “Be that as it may, Mum, you’re wasting your time. I don’t think this week-end is a good time to invite anyone. Cal won’t want to come home to find Kym here. Do you never stop hoping?” Meredith looked at her mother with pitying eyes. Jocelyn had gone through life getting what she wanted. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to give up on Kym. After all, she and Beth Harrison had dreamed of a marriage, uniting the two families and eventually uniting the two stations.