by Jessica Hart
Her eyes gleamed with mischief as her hands drifted tantalisingly lower. ‘So I can,’ she said. ‘As long as you don’t mind.’
‘If you carry on doing that, Juliet, I won’t mind anything,’ he told her, with something between a laugh and a groan of pleasure, and they gave themselves up to the sheer, sensuous pleasure of exploring each other anew.
Afterwards, Juliet lay and savoured the feel of Cal lying heavily on top of her, his face buried in her throat. ‘I should go back to my room,’ she said reluctantly.
Cal raised his head at that. ‘Do you have to go?’
‘If I don’t, I’ll fall asleep, and I don’t want Natalie or the boys to see me creeping out in the morning.’
‘No, I guess not.’ He levered himself away from her with an unwilling sigh and helped Juliet retrieve her clothes, which lay where they had been discarded long, sweet hours earlier. Then he unlocked the door and took her in his arms for a lingering kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, releasing her reluctantly at last.
She nodded, leaned into him for one last kiss, and then tiptoed down the corridor to her room.
Juliet woke up smiling the next morning. At first the brightness in the room just seemed to be a reflection of her mood as she lay lazily watching the dust twirling in the stripes of sunshine, but when she summoned the energy to look at the alarm clock by her bed her smile turned to a yelp and she sat up abruptly. Half past nine! How had it got to be so late?
Scrambling into her clothes, she hurried down to the kitchen, where she found Maggie with the children. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ she puffed, still belting her jeans as she bent to kiss the twins and Natalie.
‘Cal said to let you sleep,’ said Maggie. She was creaming butter and sugar in a bowl. ‘He said you were very tired.’
Faint colour touched Juliet’s cheeks at the mere mention of Cal’s name. ‘Er…yes,’ she said, hoping that he hadn’t told Maggie just why she had had so little sleep.
‘They’ve gone out to fix the pipe at Five Mile Bore, if you want to join them,’ Maggie went on, keeping her inevitable conclusions as to the change of atmosphere to herself. ‘Otherwise he said he’d see you later.’
‘I’ll take them out some coffee and biscuits for smoko,’ said Juliet.
Cal straightened when he saw the car heading across the paddock towards the bore. He had hoped that Juliet would come. ‘Morning, boss.’ He smiled as she got out of the car.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, returning his smile demurely. ‘I overslept.’
‘If you’ve brought some coffee, you’re forgiven,’ said Cal, and turned to tell the men to take a break.
‘What’s the problem?’ she asked as she unscrewed the Thermos, and as Cal explained she marvelled at how easy it was to be with him now that she didn’t have to deny how much she wanted him any more. His smile had told her everything that she wanted to know, reassuring her that the night before had been as special for him as it had been for her, but that for now he was simply her manager, just as he had said that he would be.
The next few weeks were golden ones for Juliet. Cal never touched her during the day, even if no one else was around. It gave her a secret thrill sometimes to discuss breeding programmes, or the need to order more fuel before the wet, as if they had nothing but a shared interest in the station in common, and to know all the time that once the bedroom door closed behind them he would undress her with deft fingers and pull her down onto his bed.
They made love with a passion that awed and sometimes almost scared Juliet with its intensity. She grew familiar with his body, and would lie counting the creases at the edges of his eyes or the calluses on his hands. She knew exactly how he smiled when she kissed him, knew just where to let her fingers drift to feel his strong, sleek body ripple in response.
Juliet always went back to her own room before the children woke, but she spent longer and longer with Cal every night, bewitched as much by their growing friendship as by the passion they shared. They would lie together, talking softly in the darkness and smiling as they felt the other laugh, so comfortable with each other that the strict boundary they had drawn between night and day became increasingly blurred.
Cal lay stretched out on his back one night, his hands behind his head, and wondered out loud about putting in a new road. ‘We’d need a grader, of course,’ he said. ‘But we could do with one anyway. We could get rid of that pile of dirt out on—’ He stopped, suddenly aware of Juliet’s expression. ‘What?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Nothing.’ She smiled wickedly. ‘I just love it when you talk dirty to me!’
Laughing, he moved swiftly to pin her beneath him. ‘You should have told me this before, Juliet,’ he teased.
‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about work at night,’ she said, squirming with pleasure as his body rubbed enticingly against her.
‘Who was it who suggested last night that we might do something to improve the stockmen’s quarters?’ he countered. ‘And who wanted to know when we’d be going mustering again?’
‘That was just asking questions.’ Juliet pretended to pout. ‘Haven’t you got something more interesting to talk to me about than graders?’
Cal pretended to consider. ‘Well, there’s always the possibility of planting sorghum next year. I got the feeling you weren’t really paying attention when I tried to talk to you about it before.’ His fingers caressed the soft skin of her inner thigh. ‘This might be the moment for me to go over it again, mightn’t it?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Juliet wound her arms around his neck in mock excitement and whispered suggestively in his ear. ‘Tell me all about it.’
‘Well…’ Cal murmured, nuzzling kisses along her collarbone as she dissolved beneath the ravishing exploration of his fingers. ‘We’d have to plough up one of the paddocks,’ he began, but Juliet had already stopped listening, and she no longer had to pretend to be excited.
The one thing they never talked about was the future. That would have meant thinking about what they really wanted, and neither Juliet nor Cal were ready to do that. When Juliet wrote to her family and friends in England, she didn’t tell them how happy she was. She said that she had found a good manager, and that things seemed to be working out, but that was all. It was almost as if talking about Cal, even writing about him, would break the spell.
From time to time she had felt Maggie’s shrewd eyes on her, but if Cal’s aunt had guessed what was going on, she kept her opinions to herself. The stockmen, Juliet suspected, neither knew nor would have cared that she and Cal were sleeping together. It wasn’t that she felt ashamed at all. It was just a sense that once their relationship was no longer a secret, she would have to admit how she felt about him, and Juliet wasn’t sure that she even knew that herself.
She wasn’t ready to ask herself how deeply she was coming to rely on Cal. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if and when he found a property of his own. It was easier not to think at all, to enjoy things as they were and pretend that they could go on like that for ever.
Cal wasn’t anxious to think about the future either. Natalie was happy, he was happy. Aunt Maggie had never been one to give much away, but he knew that she was content as well. He had come to get Wilparilla back, and he couldn’t do that now without hurting Juliet. Some day he would tell her, he promised himself, but not yet. Not yet.
So they closed their minds to the future and gave themselves up to the present instead. The days were long and hot and often hard, but the nights were sweet, and Juliet was happier than she had ever been before. The children picked up on her happiness, and were happier themselves without being aware of it.
Without quite knowing how it had happened, they had fallen into a routine. Sometimes Cal would give the twins their bath, while Juliet listened to Natalie reading, or they would both bath the boys while Natalie perched on the edge and chattered about their day. The weeks were busy, but they tried to keep Sunday free so that Maggie coul
d have a day off. If they went riding, or swimming, they all went together, like a family, but sometimes they would just have a barbecue lunch and catch up with things at the homestead.
One Sunday, Juliet and Natalie were clearing up the kitchen after lunch. Cal had been detailed to keep an eye on Kit and Andrew in the cool, and Juliet could hear the sounds of a rumbustious game going on somewhere down the corridor to the accompaniment of much squealing and laughter. She smiled at Natalie. ‘What do you think they’re up to?’ she said, raising her eyes. ‘You’d think they’d be tired, wouldn’t you?’
It was only when they had finished the washing up and were putting things away that Juliet realised that the noise had stopped and all was suspiciously silent. ‘Go and see what your father’s doing with the boys, will you?’ she asked Natalie. ‘And whatever they’re doing, tell them to stop it! They’re much too quiet to be up to any good.’
Natalie skipped off and came back a couple of minutes later. ‘Juliet, come and look,’ she said. Tugging at Juliet’s hand, she led her down to the twins’ room, where she laid her finger on her lips and pointed through the open door. Cal was stretched out on Andrew’s bed, the two little boys tumbled over him like puppies, and all three of them were sound asleep.
For one terrible moment Juliet thought that her heart had stopped, before it kicked back into its rhythm with a great jolt of emotion. Tears pricked her eyes and her hand closed tightly around Natalie’s as she realised for the first time how much she loved them all. Andrew. Kit. Natalie.
And Cal.
CHAPTER NINE
JULIET’S first thought was to wonder how she could not have known she loved him before. She looked at him lying on the bed, his face relaxed in sleep, her sons sprawled trustfully over him, and knew that she had been fooling herself for the past few magical weeks. Of course she had fallen in love with him. How could she not have done?
‘We’ll let them sleep,’ she said quietly to Natalie, and turned away from the door.
She didn’t want to be in love with Cal. She had been in love with Hugo, and her fairy tale love had turned into a nightmare of deception and cruelty. Oh, not physical cruelty. Hugo would never have been crude enough to lift a hand, but he had been cruel all the same, thought Juliet. He had taken her innocent adoration and smashed it to pieces. She had been a loving, carefree girl, and he had almost succeeded in crushing the spirit out of her.
Almost, but not quite. The criticism, the careless contempt and the lies had worn her down, until Juliet had believed that she was as worthless as Hugo had said. Kit and Andrew had given her back some confidence in herself, but Juliet never wanted to hurt like that again. Falling in love made you vulnerable, dependent on someone else for your happiness, and she wasn’t sure she could go through with it.
But she didn’t have any choice. She had fallen in love with Cal anyway, and no amount of hoping was going to change that.
Cal’s different, her heart cried. He wasn’t anything like Hugo. Where Hugo had made her feel a failure, Cal made her feel as if she could do anything. He made her feel safe; he made her feel sexy. And he didn’t lie to her as Hugo had done.
Juliet clutched at the thought for reassurance. No, Cal had never lied. He had been completely honest with her. ‘I want you…and you want me…’ he had said. ‘Neither of us wants to get involved.’ He had never pretended that their relationship was anything but physical. He desired her, Juliet hoped he even liked her, but he didn’t love her. He had made that clear at the start, and she had no reason to suppose that he had changed his mind.
If only she could go back to the way they had been before! Juliet wished that she had never sent Natalie to see what Cal and the boys were up to, wished she had never seen him looking so right with her sons, wished the realisation of how much she loved him hadn’t hit her with the force of a blow.
She wished she could tell Cal that she loved him, but love hadn’t been part of their agreement. It might spoil everything if she did that. He might feel awkward, or crowded. Or he might leave if he felt that she was about to pressurise him into a commitment he so plainly didn’t want. Juliet didn’t think that she could bear the thought of Wilparilla without Cal.
But he might leave anyway, as he had said that he would, and then she would have to bear it. It would be easier if he didn’t know that she loved him…wouldn’t it?
When Cal woke up from his impromptu nap, Juliet was nowhere to be seen. He found her eventually down by the creek. ‘There you are!’ he said, spotting her pink shirt through the trees.
Juliet jumped at the sound of his voice, and steeled herself to appear normal by the time he reached her. ‘Hi.’ She forced a smile. ‘Are the boys OK?’
‘Natalie’s with them.’ Cal looked at her closely. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said brightly, too brightly. ‘I just felt like a walk after lunch.’ She carried on walking, against the temptation to throw herself into his arms and tell him how miserable and unsure she felt. ‘I used to come down here when I wanted to think,’ she went on as Cal fell into step beside her. ‘I haven’t been here for a while. I obviously haven’t been thinking too much lately,’ she tried to joke.
Cal was seized by a sudden fear that she was going to tell him that she wanted to end their secret relationship. Was she bored? Was he taking too much for granted? ‘Sometimes it’s a mistake to think too much,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t thinking about anything serious,’ she lied. Just about how empty her life would be when he left. She couldn’t allow herself to depend on him or she would end up as she had been when Hugo had died: lost, lonely and afraid.
‘I just thought that it was time I made an effort to meet other people,’ Juliet made herself go on. ‘I don’t know any of my neighbours apart from Pete Robbins, and I’ve only spoken to him a couple of times. I suppose I’ve been waiting for them to make the first moves, but I think now that it’s up to me to go out and introduce myself, and let them know that I’m not just like Hugo.’
She hesitated. ‘I heard the men talking about the races next Sunday, and I thought it would be nice if we all went. I don’t mind driving if you don’t want to go,’ she added as Cal looked less than enthusiastic.
‘No, I’ll take you in the plane if that’s what you really want,’ said Cal slowly. ‘I don’t think you’ll find the races very exciting, though.’ He was trying to dissuade her, he realised, not because he didn’t think that she would enjoy herself, but because he didn’t want her to want to meet anyone else, he didn’t want to share her.
Everyone would know him at the races, and he could hardly stop them talking to Juliet. How long would it take Juliet to discover that he was the one who had made the crass offers to buy her out before her husband was cold in his grave? He should have told her long before, Cal realised bleakly. He would have told her, but the time had never been right.
The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to spoil things. He hadn’t exactly lied to Juliet, but he hadn’t told her the whole truth either, and he knew that she would be upset when she found out. There hadn’t seemed any reason to tell her. He had hardly thought about buying Wilparilla back over the last few weeks. It hadn’t seemed to matter who owned the land when he held Juliet in his arms every night, but Cal knew that he had just been fooling himself. Juliet ought to know who he was and what he was doing here.
He would tell her that night, he decided, but Juliet was in an oddly elusive mood. She wasn’t hostile, but she seemed to have put up an invisible barrier between them. It left Cal with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was she trying to tell him that she didn’t want him any more? He half expected her to make some excuse to be alone that night, but instead she came to find him on the verandah as soon as the children were asleep. She put her arms around him and held him tightly.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said.
She made love with an edge of desperation, and afterwards she cried. Cal held her close, stroking her hair
. ‘Juliet, there’s something I have to say,’ he began, but she lifted her tear-stained face and put a hand over his mouth.
‘Don’t say it,’ she begged. ‘There’s no need to say anything.’
He had guessed that she loved him, Juliet thought wretchedly. It must be obvious how she felt, and now he was trying to remind her gently not to let herself get involved.
She took her fingers from his mouth and sat up, hugging her knees together, not looking at him. ‘There’s no need to say anything,’ she said again, desperate to convince him that nothing had changed so that they could carry on as before. ‘I…I know this is just a temporary thing for both of us.’
‘But, Juliet—’
‘So we don’t need to explain anything to anybody,’ Juliet hurried on. ‘You said that right at the beginning, Cal. You said it was just a physical thing, and that’s all it is. Neither of us wants to get involved in the kind of relationship where you have to tell all your secrets, do we?’
‘No,’ Cal agreed slowly. He had allowed himself to forget Juliet’s concern not to let anyone close. He had thought they were close, but it didn’t sound as if she did. Just a physical thing—was that all it was to her?
‘Don’t tell me anything,’ Juliet said, turning back to lean over him. If they got into a discussion about emotions she would give herself away, and she didn’t want that. All she wanted right now was to lose herself in Cal’s body and pretend for a while that that was all that mattered. She lowered herself until her mouth was just touching his. ‘Don’t talk at all,’ she whispered.
Maggie wasn’t interested in the races, she said, so Cal took Juliet and the three children in the plane. The stockmen had left the night before in the ute, and were clearly intending to spend more time in the pub than watching the horses.
There seemed to be more planes than cars parked around the dusty little race course, Juliet thought as they landed. She wished she hadn’t insisted on coming, but, having raised the idea, she hadn’t been able to think of a convincing reason to change her mind. She would have to face her neighbours some time. Hugo had managed to alienate everyone before she had had a chance to meet them for herself, but it was time she made contact. She might need them once Cal had moved on.