Things had gone much more smoothly on day two. Marie had woken clear of her hay fever and able to take over the kitchen. Polly and Tattie had escorted the party on a tour of the property, some on horseback, others in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and nothing had gone wrong. No horse had bolted or put its foot in a hole—and Beaufort had done the rest.
The barbecue under the stars last night around a big bonfire had been a huge success. They’d sung songs and Polly had electrified them all with her whip-cracking expertise. And now they were going, all swearing they’d be back, and not only that—they’d also tell all their friends about the best ‘top end’ experience they’d had.
And, possibly because she’d been so inundated, Tattie hadn’t heard Alex fly in, so it took her completely by surprise to turn from waving the bus off and almost bump into him.
‘Oh! I didn’t hear you arrive!’
‘So I gathered. Would I be right in assuming you’ve had an outstanding success?’
‘Would you ever!’ Polly glowed. ‘I’ve had four invitations to go to America!’
‘I take it you’ve tamed Polly?’
Tattie and Alex were having lunch on the veranda, alone for once, when he made his remark.
Tattie shook her head. ‘Not really. Smoothed a few corners, that’s all. They just adored her as herself—a dinkum Aussie girl. Alex, if this is a real success, Polly will have to take a lot of the credit.’
‘Tell me about it all?’
She did so, making him laugh with the disasters of the first day then the highlights of the rest of it.
But he sobered as she ran out of anecdotes and studied her. ‘You’re exhausted.’
She couldn’t disagree, although she said, ‘It’s got to get easier.’
‘Have you got any bookings this week?’
‘No, but next weekend is a big one—a full house and a party of six in the bunkhouse.’
‘Come to Darwin with me for a few days.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Why?’
‘You need a break.’
‘I… Not really; I’ll be fine, and there’s so much to do!’
‘Anything Polly, Marie and your mother and the rest of the staff can’t handle?’
‘Uh…Mum’s sprained her ankle.’
‘It’s better. She rang me this morning to apologise for having to desert you. She and Doug are happy to come for the next influx.’
Tattie looked at her plate of cold meat and salad, then sipped the glass of wine he’d insisted on pouring her. ‘There’s Oscar.’
At the sound of his name Oscar pricked up his ears and placed his front paws on Tattie’s knee.
‘Bring him,’ Alex said.
‘Oh, I don’t… I mean, in an apartment—’
‘You’ll just have to take him for regular walks.’
Tattie stared at him wordlessly.
He held her gaze with his dark eyes unfathomable for a long moment. Then he said drily, ‘My mother is having a hip replacement in two days. She’s missing you and wants to see you before she goes in. I think she’s really nervous about it all.’
Tattie bit her lip. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the beginning?’
He didn’t answer, but his look said it all.
She had a chat with Oscar before she went to bed.
‘Sweetheart,’ she said seriously, ‘I’m going away for a few days. I would love to take you with me but I think it would be really difficult—for both of us. So I’m going to leave you with Polly. Please be good for her, and I’ll be back before you know it!’
Oscar gazed at her soulfully.
‘I’ll tell her to let you sleep on my bed,’ Tattie promised, then grimaced. ‘Well, maybe not, but rest assured, when I get back it’ll be like old times because you and I are a team!’
Oscar crawled into her lap and licked her chin and she hugged him close.
But it was harder than even she had anticipated to leave him the next morning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT MIDDAY the next day she was standing in the middle of the lounge of their Darwin apartment, looking around a little dazedly.
Alex put their bags down and went to open the shutters and sliding glass doors. It was a magnificent dry-season Darwin day, warm and clear with no smoke from bush fires, and two navy boats were steaming smartly towards Stokes Wharf.
‘Doesn’t feel like home any more?’ he queried as he took in her expression.
She opened her mouth to say no, then changed her mind. ‘It just feels a bit strange to be back.’
‘Perhaps you should have brought Oscar,’ he said drily.
Tattie grimaced. ‘I tremble to think what Oscar could do to this place,’ she said, ‘if he was left to his own devices.’
But of course the other reason she’d left Oscar behind was for an excuse to get back to Beaufort as soon as possible.
‘Is that an admission that you haven’t been as successful a dog trainer as you thought?’
Tattie hesitated, belatedly realising that Alex was somewhat annoyed. She wondered why. ‘He’s only three and a half months old,’ she said quietly. ‘You… Are you cross with me about something? Other than Oscar?’
He faced her squarely, then shrugged and grinned reluctantly. ‘I’m beginning to regret giving you that dog because it’s obvious he means more to you than just about anything else. But that is actually rather a “dog in the manger” attitude on my part, so don’t worry about it.’
Her lips parted incredulously. ‘You…couldn’t be jealous!’
He strolled across the carpet, took her chin in his hand and kissed her very lightly. ‘For my sins, yes, I could.’
She was transfixed by the glint in his eyes, the feel of his fingers still on her chin, and the whole dangerously exciting experience of Alex Constantin in close proximity with that look in his eye. He wore a bush shirt and jeans, he flew his plane with consummate ease, as he did just about everything, and he was so much pure man her knees felt like buckling at the thought that he could be jealous over her.
But he released her almost immediately, shoved his hands in his pockets and changed the subject completely. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this, but I’ve asked my parents over to dinner tonight. You know how my mother insists on personally supervising an eight-course banquet at home, and I don’t think she’s up to a restaurant. Could you manage that? The operation is tomorrow, so it will take her mind off it.’
Tattie came down to earth with a bump and swallowed. ‘Uh…of course. I’ve got time to shop and…all the rest.’
‘Good girl.’ This time he kissed her on the top of her head, most impersonally, and added, ‘I’ve got to go to work for the afternoon, so I’ll be out of your hair.’
He turned to go, then turned back. ‘By the way, I’ve got a surprise for you.’
All she could do was raise her eyebrows at him.
‘Tonight, Tattie. See you.’ And he was gone.
It turned out to be a long, dithery afternoon for Tattie.
She shopped, then had to go out again for the things she’d forgotten. She prepared dinner, but several times had to stop herself from seasoning dishes twice.
I’m a nervous wreck, she told herself, or, to put it more accurately, I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels—and all because Alex is jealous of Oscar! Unless this is some new direction of the game?
Finally she got things under control and went to have a relaxing soak in the tub. Which turned out to be not so relaxing on account of her churning emotions, and they were responsible for her not hearing Alex come home. Thus it was that just as she stepped out of the bath the door opened and Alex stood there.
She froze on the step up to her raised, shell-shaped bath and he stopped abruptly in the doorway.
Then he murmured, ‘My apologies, Tattie. Things were so quiet I wondered if you’d run off again, or if someone had kid…’ He stopped.
‘No. As you see.’ She closed her eyes and could have died, because there was absolutel
y nothing of her that was not on offer for him to see.
‘I do. You look like Venus rising out of her shell. I’ll bring you a towel.’ He plucked a jade towel from the rail and brought it over to her. ‘Only much lovelier than Venus to my mind,’ he said softly, coming to stand right in front of her.
Their gazes clashed, cornflower-blue and dark, almost black. Then his gaze slipped up and down her sleek, pearly body, from her high little breasts with their velvety tips right down to her toes.
Once again Tattie was transfixed. He handed her the towel and she took it, but the will to wrap it around her seemed to have deserted her. Nor could she tear her gaze from his.
‘Tattie,’ he said very quietly, deep in his throat and he once again flicked that dark gaze up and down her curves, then paused.
And he sniffed. He definitely sniffed, and half turned from her, and she was ready to die of mortification—until she caught it as well: the aroma of burning meat.
‘Oh, no! My dinner,’ she moaned. ‘This is just the worst day of my life!’ And she wound the towel round her swiftly and leapt down the step, straight into his arms.
He picked her up.
‘Alex, no, I haven’t got time for this,’ she protested. ‘I cannot offer your mother a burnt meal!’
‘Let’s see what we can do, then.’ He carried her through to the kitchen, put her down and grabbed a cloth with which to open the smoking oven. When the smoke cleared her piece of roast pork revealed itself as burnt black.
Tattie looked at the temperature gauge unbelievingly. It was far too high, and she put her hand to her mouth in despair.
Alex looked alertly from her to the pork. ‘OK. Let’s stay calm,’ he recommended. ‘What else have you got?’
‘I’ve got smoked salmon for the entrée and fruit salad and ice cream for dessert, but I cannot offer them only an entrée and a dessert,’ she said tragically.
He tucked the corner of the towel more securely between her breasts. ‘I have the solution. There’s a take-away I know of that does fantastic spare-ribs. I’ll ring them.’
‘Your mother would die rather than eat take-away food!’
‘That’s a good thing,’ he said. ‘She won’t have had any of their spare-ribs, so she won’t know it’s a take-away.’
‘But—isn’t it too late?’
He smiled into her deeply worried eyes. ‘I’ve been a very good customer of theirs while you’ve been doing great deeds at Beaufort, Tattie. They’ll rush it here with all the trimmings, and if you just point me in the direction of suitable serving dishes no one will know the difference.’
She breathed a sigh of relief, and the towel slipped a bit as she gestured towards a cupboard.
Once more he tucked the corner more securely between her breasts, but this time his fingers lingered on her skin.
‘May I make another suggestion, Tattie?’
She stared a question up into his dark eyes with her breath starting to come raggedly again.
‘That you take yourself off and leave all this to me.’
‘Yes, all right,’ she murmured, but her feet refused to move.
‘What’s more,’ he said softly, but with a most wicked glint in his eye, ‘it might be a good idea to wear your least sexy clothes tonight, otherwise I doubt if you and I will get through this evening, and we don’t really want to shock my parents rigid, do we?’
His gaze lingered on her throat, the smooth, rounded skin of her shoulders, the valley where the towel was tucked between her breasts, the flare of her hips beneath the jade material.
Tattie swallowed and, although he wasn’t touching her, she could feel the graze of his end-of-day stubble on her cheeks, the hard lines of his body on hers and, above all, she could remember all too well what pleasure he could inflict on her with his hands and mouth.
‘Tattie?’
‘I’m going,’ she whispered, and fled for the sanctuary of her bedroom.
Her least sexy clothes!
She surveyed her wardrobe a little wildly and finally came up with a long navy linen dress. It had a Peter Pan collar of off-white Thai silk, cap sleeves and a row of mother-of-pearl buttons down the front. And it was straight, not fitted, although it did have a slit up one side—but a very discreet one. She slipped on a pair of plain navy blue shoes with little heels, then sat down in front of the dressing table to tackle her hair, her make-up, but most of all the still stunned look in her eyes. She couldn’t go back out looking like that, she told herself as she brushed her hair and wielded the minimum amount of make-up—a light foundation, the faintest touch of blusher and some lip gloss.
Better—well, a bit, she decided as she studied herself critically, and for the first time in her life longed acutely for a drink. She stood up and sprayed her perfume on, and the door clicked open. It was Alex with a glass in his hands.
‘Brought you a Scotch, ma’am, and the information that everything is under control. The ribs have arrived.’
He put the glass on the dressing table and looked her up and down with his lips quirking.
‘Now, that dress,’ he said gravely, ‘makes you look like a nun. Which is a challenge in its own right for any red-blooded man. You’ve got about ten minutes, Tattie.’ And he left, closing the door behind him.
Tattie sat down and murmured several very unladylike epithets her convent school would have been horrified to hear issue from her lips. Then she took a strong swallow of her drink and closed her eyes. Should she change? How did you cope with Alex in this mood? How was she going to get through the evening, and most of all…what awaited her at the end of it?
Then she heard the doorbell chime. It had to be George and Irina. She took another sip of her drink, squared her shoulders and sighed deeply—and went to entertain her parents-in-law as well as cope with her husband.
In point of fact, Alex behaved beautifully.
And Irina, limping painfully and using a cane, was genuinely thrilled to see her. So was George.
‘My dear Tatiana, I’ve missed you so much! I would have loved to come and see Beaufort and what you’ve done, but as you see I’m an old crock these days.’ Irina enveloped Tattie in an emotional hug.
A sliver of guilt pierced Tattie for having run off the way she had—made worse by how nice they were being about it. Unless Alex had coached them…
But dinner progressed without a hitch, and Irina said of the spare-ribs, ‘My dear, that was delicious—you excelled yourself!’
Tattie opened her mouth but intercepted a warning glance from Alex, which went along the lines of—Don’t you dare say a word!
She shut her mouth and went to get the fruit salad and ice cream.
It was while she was pouring the coffee that Alex produced his surprise. He’d suggested they have their coffee in the den, where the television was, and he slipped a video into the machine.
Tattie went on pouring the coffee, then stopped as she, in her pink linen dress, appeared on the screen.
Irina clapped her hands. ‘I can’t see this often enough!’
‘Tattie hasn’t seen the edited version yet.’ Alex took the coffee-pot from her and told her to sit down.
‘My dear, you are excellent,’ George pronounced. ‘A wonderful advertisement for Constantin pearls.’
‘Oh, dear, this is embarrassing,’ Tattie murmured, but not long afterwards she lost herself in the video as it brought back memories of the lovely time she’d spent with Alex at the pearl farm and in the Drysdale River.
But her cheeks burned as they all, including Alex, congratulated her again as the video finished.
‘You may have to watch this little girl, son,’ George said jovially. ‘Hollywood could steal her!’
Alex grinned and slipped another video into the machine. ‘Now this one is the unedited version of the one we made for Beaufort.’
Tattie sat up. She’d forgotten about the two days they’d had a film crew on the station to make a promotional video. And she blinked as Oscar, with a shoe i
n his mouth, bounded onto the screen with her and Polly in hot pursuit. Polly could be heard swearing, then was seen clapping a hand over her mouth and saying, ‘Sorry, Tattie, strike that!’
Tattie turned to Alex accusingly. ‘You didn’t!’
He nodded. ‘I did. They had their cameras rolling almost all the time. Watch this.’
She looked back at the screen and there she was on horseback, describing the wonders of a billabong, until her horse got stung by a bee and reared up and took off with her.
‘That was take one,’ Alex said.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Tattie said.
This time, looking quite windblown as she started her spiel, with Polly holding the horse just to be on the safe side, she said slowly and clearly on the video, ‘There are more billabongs in this wonder… That’s not right, is it?’ And the prompter could be heard in the background correcting her…‘there are more wonders in this billabong…’
‘That was take two,’ Alex murmured, ‘but you ain’t seen nothing yet.’
In take three she’d only uttered two words when her horse decided to relieve itself at length.
And in take four Tattie had almost got through her speech on the wonders of billabongs when Polly started to do a demented jig at the same time as she was heard to say, ‘There are also bloody green ants around billabongs and I’m standing on a nest. Ouch!’ And the camera panned around to see that everyone was convulsed with laughter.
Tattie had to wipe her eyes in the civilised safety of Darwin as she remembered that hilarious day. ‘I think it took seven takes to get it right,’ she said, still laughing.
‘Oh, look,’ Irina said as the video finally rolled to a close, ‘I haven’t laughed so much for years. Thank you, Alex and Tattie. And thank you so much for coming home to be with me during this operation.’
Tattie took Irina’s hand in hers. ‘I can’t wait to show you Beaufort in the flesh. As soon as you’ve got this little business out of the way you must come and stay. Both of you,’ she said warmly to George.
The Constantin Marriage Page 11