by Susan Napier;Kathryn Ross;Kelly Hunter;Sandra Marton;Katherine Garbera;Margaret Mayo
They rappelled back down to the base of the wall without incident. They packed the climbing gear back into the two packs it had come out of, Tristan covering her hand with his when she reached down to pick one up to carry it to the car. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He hefted one pack over his shoulders, held the other like a carryall and started for the car. Erin walked beside him carrying nothing.
‘So, I’ll drop you at your place, shall I?’ she said, when they reached the car, desperately striving for some semblance of normalcy.
‘You can’t drive with that shoulder,’ he said, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘I’ll drive.’
He was probably right, she thought as she sat in the passenger seat. Her shoulder was really starting to throb and sagging back into the car seat and keeping it motionless felt like heaven. She reached for the seat belt, wincing as she did so, but his hands were already there.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said gruffly, his hands gentle as he drew the seat belt across her body and clicked it into place.
He was so close, so careful of her that she reached out to him again, brushing her fingers against his cheek, and for a moment she thought he would respond. His hand covered hers and he seemed to turn into her caress, but then he was pulling her hand away and placing it gently in her lap. ‘Tristan, what is it? What’s wrong?’
‘We’ll go to your mother’s,’ he said, ignoring her question as he moved away and headed for the driver’s seat. ‘Patch you up there. You’re going to need rest. Looking after.’
‘Okay.’ She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, willing away the tears. Her shoulder hurt, and the scratches on her leg were stinging, but they were nothing compared to the pain in her heart.
She couldn’t reach him.
They stopped for ice for her shoulder at the first petrol station they came to and Erin was glad of it. It must have shown on her face because Tristan’s eyes grew dark with concern. ‘We’re going to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Now.’
She didn’t protest.
He drove like a demon to get there. Waited with her in silence, tension radiating from him in waves until her name was called. He walked with her to the door of the examination room, and the look he gave the young intern would have fried a lesser man.
‘Take care of her.’
‘That’s the plan,’ said the younger man dryly, and to Erin, ‘Come on in and we’ll take a look at that shoulder.’
The shoulder was fine, the intern told her when her X-rays came back some half an hour later. She’d torn some muscle and she’d have severe bruising and stiffness, but otherwise she’d be fine. He gave her some painkillers, strapped her shoulder, and ushered her from the cubicle.
Tristan had been sitting, waiting. He stood abruptly when she came out, his focus absolute as he searched her face. He didn’t say anything when she approached. He didn’t have to. His eyes spoke for him and they gave her hope. He cared for her. Maybe he didn’t want to, but he did. It was there in those bruised and shadow filled eyes. She wasn’t the only one who’d been beat up by that mountain. Tristan had taken a hammering too.
‘The shoulder’s going to be fine,’ she said gently. ‘I’ve torn a few muscles and bruised the rest, that’s all.’
‘Best to be sure,’ he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets.
‘Yes.’ Her smile was gentle too. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
She gave him directions to her mother’s house as they drew closer to it and he followed them in silence. He was silent when they pulled into her mother’s driveway as well. Big surprise.
‘Here we are,’ she said. It was inane but it was the best she could do.
‘Head on in,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring your gear in and call for a taxi.’
‘Take this car,’ she said. ‘I can call round for it tomorrow.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll take a taxi.’ He gathered up her things and followed her into the house, greeting her mother with a politeness that was as sweet as it was awkward.
‘What happened to your shoulder?’ asked her mother.
‘We went climbing this morning. I gave it a nudge.’
‘How big a nudge?’
‘Not that big. Nothing’s broken. We stopped by the hospital on the way home. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine,’ said Tristan.
‘He’s right,’ said her mother.
Two against one. ‘Honestly, I’m fine. I just need to sit and rest for a bit, that’s all.’
‘I’ll call for that taxi and let you,’ said Tristan.
‘I’ll call for the taxi,’ she said. ‘I can have one here in less than two minutes. I have connections.’
He smiled at that, just a little. ‘I’ll wait for it outside.’ He nodded to her mother, nodded to her as if they were nothing but casual acquaintances and headed up the hall. He almost broke her heart.
He felt something for her; she knew that. But whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. He was pulling back. Had pulled back. And nothing she said or did seemed to make any difference.
Lillian Sinclair wasn’t slow on the uptake. She gave Erin a quizzical look and inclined her head in Tristan’s direction as he headed up the hallway. ‘I’ll call for the taxi.’ Follow him, her look said. Taking a deep breath, Erin did.
She stood back as he unloaded his carryall from the boot and set it at his feet. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ she said in a small voice. ‘Whatever we had, it’s over.’
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘Erin, I need time. I need some space. I can’t think when I’m near you. You spin me round. You shake things loose that shouldn’t be.’
‘I don’t mean to.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t. I’ll call you. In a few days.’
‘Really?’ She sounded desperate. Men hated that. She hated it. ‘Well, you know. If you ever need a taxi…’
‘Erin, don’t,’ he said quietly, and she blinked rapidly and looked away.
She couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him she was going to cry. ‘There’s your ride.’ She watched him walk up the driveway. She refused to watch him get in the taxi and leave. With a small wave she turned and headed back into the house.
Her mother was waiting for her in the kitchen with the kettle on and coffee beans grinding in the grinder. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Did you get the stones you wanted?’
Erin nodded and tried to smile. It didn’t work. ‘Oh, Mama, I’m such an idiot,’ she said. And burst into tears.
Chapter Eleven
TRISTAN’S Ford arrived at his father’s house two days later on the back of a truck that was almost as old as the Ford itself. Frank was driving it. ‘How about putting her over to one side of the garage, underneath that elm tree?’ said Frank. ‘It’ll look quite the picture.’
Yeah, thought Tristan. The colour of the rust was a near perfect match for the colour of the falling leaves. He could sweep them into a heap around the old jalopy and no one, his father included, would ever know it was there. ‘Good idea,’ he said and set about helping Frank unload it. ‘You heading back to Lightning Ridge straight away?’
‘Nope. I’m gonna get me some culture. I’m booked into a downtown hotel and tonight I’m off to the Opera House to hear Beethoven’s piano sonatas numbers one, three, and fourteen.’
‘You’re a Beethoven fan?’
‘Isn’t everyone?’
‘No.’
‘Erin is,’ said Frank, nodding his head for good measure. ‘That girl knows her classics. How’d she go finding more opal?’
‘Nothing caught her eye.’
‘Ha!’ cackled Frank. ‘She knows what she wants; I’ll give her that. She caught you yet?’
Tristan gaped at the sun battered older man with his baggy town clothes that hung loosely on his once powerful frame. Age had caught up with Frank’s body but it certainly hadn’t withered his mind. He was sharp. He saw too much.
; ‘Guess not,’ said Frank. ‘Pity,’ cause I brought those black opals along, in case you were in the market so to speak. She’s a firecracker all right. Just like my Janie. Best twenty years of my life, married to that woman.’
‘What happened to your Janie?’ asked Tristan.
‘She up and died on me. Her heart gave out. I nearly died right along with her.’ Frank’s face creased into a bittersweet smile. ‘Life doesn’t come with guarantees, boy, and neither does love. When you find it you hold to it. All you can do. For as long as you can.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather not have found it at all?’
‘Hell, no. A man starts thinking like that and he’s only half alive.’ Frank eyed him shrewdly. ‘You alive, boy?’
‘I guess I am.’ He eyed Frank right back. ‘But I’m still not looking at any black opal. If I was thinking of asking someone to marry me—and I’m not saying I am—I’d take diamonds along for backup.’
‘If you’re thinking of Erin—and I’m not saying you are—you’d best be looking at the Kimberley Argyles. I’ve heard her talk about them. She had that look women get in their eyes. You know the one.’
Tristan sighed heavily. He was trying not to think of Erin at all. Problem was he couldn’t help it. ‘I’d need a fistful of them.’
‘Oh, ho!’ Frank cackled some more. ‘You blew it, didn’t you?’
‘Big time.’ Tristan shoved a couple of bricks behind the wheels of the old car to stop it from going anywhere, not that it seemed to want to. ‘I need to call her but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start.’
‘I don’t normally give advice without a beer in my hand,’ said Frank, ‘but for you I’ll make an exception. Start with an apology.’
It sounded like good advice. He could use some more of it. ‘There’s beer in the fridge,’ he said. ‘Lots of beer. How long before your show?’
The following morning Tristan set about pulling the Ford engine apart. He hadn’t called Erin. Not…yet. He would, though. Soon. Just as soon as he was clear on what he was going to say.
Frank was right; it would start with an apology. Yes, it would start with that. The next step was to explain why he’d backed off so fast on the top of that damned cliff and there was the rub. The thought of losing her had terrified him. Still terrified him. But walking away from her was impossible, so he was going to have to park his fear somewhere and walk away from it. He had to tell her that. He had to open up and talk about his feelings out loud.
He’d do it. He would. Soon.
Just as soon as he got this motor apart and built up the courage for it.
Two hours later he was still no closer to calling her. His shirt was off, his jeans were filthy, and so was just about everything else he’d touched. He wanted to keep the innards of the engine halfway clean but it just wasn’t happening. He was swearing like a trooper, and Pat—who’d screeched at him from her cage on the fence line until he’d let her come over—was with him every step of the way, perched on the edge of the Ford’s front grille, watching him work while she extended her vocabulary.
‘I’m a moron,’ he muttered.
‘Moron,’ said Pat.
‘A fool.’
‘Fool,’ said Pat.
‘And how I ever figured you for anything other than female I’ll never know,’ he said, eyeing the bird darkly. ‘Spanner.’
Pat passed him a screwdriver with her claw.
He put it down, picked up the spanner. ‘Spanner, Pat. Spanner. This is a spanner.’
‘Moron,’ said the bird.
‘She’s too impetuous for starters,’ he said. ‘Asking a complete stranger to go gem-hunting with her for a week. How sensible is that?’ Pat handed him another spanner. ‘Thank you. She’s fearless, Pat. She gives too much. Have you any idea what that does to a man?’ Pat handed him a bolt. Tristan had no idea where it had come from. ‘Thank you.’ He sighed heavily. ‘She doesn’t want a burnt-out cop in her life. Who would?’
Finally a reason for not calling her that actually made sense.
Until he remembered her innate understanding of the pressure that came with his work. She didn’t deal in platitudes, she understood impossible situations and difficult choices and she knew full well they weren’t easy to live with afterwards. Sometimes the system asked too much, she’d told him passionately, and he’d known it for truth. She saw into the heart of things. She’d seen into the heart of him and she hadn’t seen failure. She’d given him strength when he’d needed it, and in return he’d surrendered his heart.
‘I’m in love with her, Pat. All the way in love.’ There, he’d said it.
Now what?
‘I’m putting in for a transfer back to Australia. I’m here to stay.’ He still needed to find a place of his own. He still needed to get the transfer. But distance was one obstacle he could remove.
‘And no more undercover work either. I’m taking a desk job.’ He was tired of working undercover. He didn’t want to deal in secrets any more. He wanted to be up front about his work. He wanted the people he dealt with to know what he was and what he did. ‘From now on I’m living a balanced life.’ He needed to be able to offer it to the woman he loved.
‘Hobbies.’ He punctuated the word with a wave of his spanner.
‘Sport.’ Another wave of the spanner.
‘Hell, Pat, I might even get a pet.’ He was on a roll, dreaming big.
‘Children.’
Whoa! Children. Where had that come from? Perhaps he’d better put the spanner down.
He needed to call Erin. He needed to call her now. He held out the bolt Pat had given him earlier. ‘Where did you get this?’
Pat bit him.
‘He hasn’t called.’ Erin was sitting at the counter in her mother’s kitchen eating lemon meringue pie, heavy on the double cream, and watching her mother paint an illustration for a children’s book of verse. Today’s picture was the dark, dark house. The gloomy menace of the dark, dark house suited Erin’s mood to perfection. Being in love was difficult enough. Being in love with a soul-wounded, work-weary, overprotective and uncommunicative Interpol cop who hadn’t called her in three days was murder. ‘He’s not going to call.’ Her mother dabbed her paintbrush in the grey and started to darken the sky. More menace. Excellent.
‘Why don’t you call him?’ said her mother.
‘No.’ Erin shook her head vigorously. No. ‘My falling down that damned rock face brought everything to a head but he’d have backed off anyway.’ She dug her spoon into her piece of pie with a vengeance. ‘At the end of the trip or even just before he went back to London. Sooner or later he’d have pulled back. The fall just made him do it sooner, that’s all. He doesn’t want to love me. He doesn’t want to love anyone.’
‘You’ve never known loss,’ said her mother. ‘You’ve never known the death of someone who’s a part of you. Tristan does. My guess is that when he does love he does it passionately, deeply, and for ever.’
‘Go on,’ said Erin. ‘Rub it in.’
‘You made him care for you. And then you took him up that crag and, in falling, made him face his greatest fear. He thought he’d lost you. And he couldn’t handle it.’
‘You need more black in the sky,’ said Erin. ‘God, I’m so depressed.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘I do.’
‘Are you prepared to fight for him?’
‘I am. But I’m not calling him. I can’t.’ She shook her head. ‘He has to want to fight for me too.’ A phone started ringing. Her phone. The one in her handbag. Her handbag was sitting on the counter. Erin stared at the bag as if it had sprouted fangs, her heart suddenly pounding with equal measures of terror and hope. ‘What if it’s him?’ she whispered.
‘What if it’s not?’ her mother countered dryly.
‘What do I do?’
Her mother set her paintbrush on the palette and stared at her with no little amusement. ‘Answer it.’
Right. Of course. Yes
. First things first. She needed to answer it. She found the phone. Took a deep breath. ‘Erin Sinclair.’
‘Erin, it’s Tristan.’
Erin covered the phone with her hand. ‘It’s him.’
Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘Well, talk to him, not me.’
Right. Of course. She was about to make a complete fool of herself, nothing surer, so with a wave for her mother she headed out onto the deck. Best she didn’t have an audience. ‘Hello.’
‘I, ah, hope I didn’t interrupt anything,’ he said.
‘No.’ No, that didn’t sound right. That sounded as if she’d been moping around waiting for him to call. She needed to sound busier. ‘That is, I’ve been working on my competition pieces this morning, but you didn’t interrupt. I was taking a break.’ A long one. At her mother’s.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Er, how did the sapphires cut?’
‘The tally so far is three shattered practice stones, three shattered big stones and nine that have cut up beautifully. I still have twelve more of the bigger stones and three more practice ones to go.’
‘Will you have enough?’
‘I’ll make it enough.’ Excitement crept into her voice. ‘Tristan, they’re stunning. You should see the colour. It’s perfect!’
‘I’d like to see them,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you. Maybe take you to dinner.’
‘You mean like a date?’
She sounded wary, thought Tristan. After the way he’d treated her, she had every right to be. ‘Or a movie,’ he said quickly. ‘Dinner and a movie. Or, we could do something else. We could meet for coffee or go on a picnic.’ Whatever she wanted.
‘We could go climbing.’
Except that. Tristan raked a hand through his hair and looked to the sky for inspiration. ‘We could,’ he said carefully. ‘We could do that. I might even manage a civil word afterwards. Provided you didn’t fall.’ If she fell, all bets were off. ‘How’s the shoulder?’
‘Sore. And, to be honest, climbing’s out for a while on account of it.’
‘Shame.’
‘Liar.’