by Dorothy Cork
it,' she accused wildly. 'You arranged this, didn't you? You—you deliberately stayed out till it was too late, in spite of all those promises you made this morning. I'm just beginning to find out I can't trust you one little bit, Drew Sutton!'
`Are you now? And why the devil would that be? What on earth am I supposed to have done this time?' he demanded. He caught hold of her arm with fingers that hurt and stared down angrily into her eyes, and Edie stared back at him, angry too. All sorts of wild accusations concerning his engagement to Laurel floated about in her mind, but before she could get any of them out he grated, 'Damien and I have a valid reason for being back late which you'll hear about presently, no' doubt. But while you're accusing me of breaking promises—or intending to break them—I'll remind you that in fact I haven't made you any promises. I'll also remind you—though it's against my principles as a rule to be so ungallantly frank with a member of the female sex—that up to now I've been the one who's applied the brake when we were—skidding off the rails. You'd have come to bed with me any time I liked to invite you in the last few days, wouldn't you, Edie? Wouldn't you?'
Oh, how she hated him for reminding her of that! How she hated herself, too, for having fallen so precipitately in love with him. And how certain she was at this exact moment that she could never feel anything for him again other than the deepest dislike.
`Well?' he insisted, and when she refused to answer he pressed on, 'Wasn't it my suggestion this morning that we shouldn't rush our fences? Or are you going to tell me it was yours?'
Edie looked at him speechlessly. Her heart was beating suffocatingly fast, and like some little cornered
creature she longed to escape. To accuse him now of not being honest with her, of using her to save his face when Laurel had jilted him, seemed futile. He'd have her in a trap in less than no time, and at last she said pantingly, I'm—I'm not going to tell you a thing. Except that if you—if you so much as touch me tonight I'll scream the house down!'
He had narrowed his eyes slightly and was looking at her as if she had gone mad.
`What the hell's got into you, Edie?' he asked roughly, shaking her slightly as he spoke. 'I'm damned if I can understand you.'
`I don't care if you can't,' she retorted, pulling away from him. 'I certainly can't understand you, and—and the less we have to do with each other the better. Isn't that about what you said this morning?' she finished bitterly. She scarcely knew what she was saying. Tears had flooded her eyes and she turned her back on him abruptly and looked across the garden. The sun had almost gone, and the light was a fiery red-gold. The whole garden—the lawn, the leaves, the flowers, the trunks of the trees—was glowing and coppery. She breathed deeply and blinked hard to get rid of her tears, and wished despairingly that she'd held herself in check—played it cool. She told Drew chokily, 'You said we'd forget we were married—and that's exactly the way I want it to be.'
`Okay, okay.' His voice still had a hard edge to it. 'So we can forget it—but we can't expect Mickie and Dame to do likewise. They think we're happily married lovers and I'm not planning to disillusion them. It doesn't suit me you should do that either, and if you blurt it all out, I'll forget every promise you imagine I ever made to you. Just keep that in mind, will you, Alfreda Asher. We have to share a room tonight and you can shut up
and put up with it. It's not a situation that's going to give me much of a kick after all this, I assure you ... And now if you don't mind I'll get washed up. I need that beer.'
She heard him go, though she didn't look at him, and she stood there feeling shaken to the core. He'd never spoken to her this way before, and she hated him for it. And she—she hated Laurel too. Oh, how she hated Laurel Clarkson!
Disgusted with herself, she wanted nothing so much as to go away somewhere alone and have a good cry. Deep down, she wished that they'd never come here—that she'd never heard of Laurel, and more than anything, she dreaded the thought of going to bed that night.
But certainly, she thought, not ten minutes later as they all sat sociably on the verandah, life goes on. On the surface they were two young married couples having a beer together at the end of a hot day. Damien and Mickie could have no suspicion of the dispute she and Drew had engaged in—or of what lay behind it. Sitting back in her chair, willing herself to relax, to calm down, she only half listened to the conversation. She discovered with singularly little interest that Drew and Damien certainly had a good reason for being late back home. They'd been out to the muster camp and it was on the way back, taking a different track because Drew wanted to look at a certain bore, that they'd been delayed.
`We ran into this young bloke in a beat-up old car who'd got himself stranded,' Damien explained. 'Apparently he'd been there since morning and it took us God knows how long to fix up his vehicle and put him on his way again.' He went on to enlarge upon the difficulties they'd had and Edie ceased to listen. Drew,
sitting back drinking his beer, left the story to Damien, and Edie wondered if he was thinking about her—hating her as she was hating him—or if his mind was on what the other man was saying. Hers certainly wasn't. It was going round and round in circles as she tried to make sense of her mixed emotions and failed dismally. She was sure she hated Drew—she had to hate him; he'd behaved abominably—
Her eyes strayed to him continually, lingering on that smoky brown hair, his tanned face, the strong lean line of his jaw, the dark hair that showed on his chest where he had unbuttoned his shirt for coolness. He was like no other man who had ever been in her life, and in a frighteningly short space of time she had become so—so fanatically addicted to him that this feeling of hating him was almost as exciting as her previous feeling of loving him—of wanting him. Now she wanted to fight him, and her mind went back over their low-pitched conversation on the verandah so short a time ago. She remembered every expression that had passed over his face, every note that had come into his voice—the feel of his fingers on her arm, the threat that if she poured it all out she'd regret it. A shudder ran through her and her thoughts jetted ahead to the time when they'd be shut in alone in the bedroom ...
With a start, she realised she must have been wrapped up in her thoughts for a considerable time. The -story of the stranded traveller was long over, the beer cans were empty, and Mickie was promising that the meal would be on the table in five minutes flat.
The remainder of the evening passed in a kind of dream. Edie's preoccupation was taken to mean she was tired, and she wasn't teased over her lack of response when Mickie or Damien tried to draw her into the conversation. She wondered what they'd say to each
other later—whether Mickie would perhaps decide Drew had made a mistake in breaking with Laurel to settle for her. Laurel, who'd stayed at Dhoora Dhoora so often, would never have been such an outsider. Was she—was she good in bed? The question came into her mind as clearly as if someone had spoken it, and she looked up in alarm and coloured fiercely as she met Drew's eyes—cool and unreadable. She pretended to yawn, covering her mouth with her hand, and Mickie said sympathetically, 'We're keeping you up too late. You must have made an early start this morning.'
`Yes, I am tired,' Edie admitted. 'I wonder if you'd excuse me if I went to bed now.'
`Of course,' Mickie agreed. 'It's time we were all hitting the hay anyhow. When we have visitors we tend to forget the time and stay up talking till all hours. Does anyone feel like a nightcap?'
Nobody did, it seemed, and instead of being able to say goodnight, and to escape, Edie found herself making her way to the bedroom Mickie had prepared in Drew's company. If he'd been considerate, she thought, he'd have told her to go ahead while he took a walk in the garden, or something like that. But he didn't, and she supposed he wanted to give the impression he was eager to be alone with his bride. He had taken her arm, but she soon pulled away from him and told him aloofly, 'You don't have to come to bed yet just because I'm tired.'
He didn't bother to answer her but pushed open the door, and
as she went in ahead of him he flicked on the switch that lit a wall lamp over the dressing table. Then he shut the door and leaned against it and looked at her with a cold clinical expression in his eyes that was totally alien to her. She almost withered under it and for a minute she didn't move. Suddenly the night
seemed deadly quiet. Mickie's and Damien's room, she knew, was at the other end of the passage and all she could hear was her own breathing.
Then there came the far-off but familiar call of a mopoke, and as if a spell had been broken she moved across the room. On the bed, which was covered by a heavy old-fashioned white crocheted bedspread, was a pretty blue nightgown, and Edie averted her eyes from it quickly. Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she leaned down and pressed her hands against the mattress, as though testing it for comfort.
`Do you want me to sleep on the floor again?' Drew asked in a voice so cold it sent splinters of ice into her heart.
She straightened up and told him, 'If you don't, then I shall.'
`That leaves me no choice, does it?' He strode across the room, pulled back the bedspread and tossed one of the pillows on to the floor. 'I want to take a shower before I turn in. You go first if you want to—I promise I shan't intrude.'
She said nothing and he added, his voice and his eyes hard, But I forgot—my promises mean nothing, do they?'
Edie swallowed and looked away. The atmosphere between them, that had often been tense and had gone through many stages since they had met, had never been as disastrous as this, and she found herself longing to have even last night's situation back again. Last night she had felt so wounded, so frustrated, because he had let her go to bed alone ! Could it have been only last night? It didn't seem possible. It was her own fault, of course, for stirring things up as she had this evening —and she'd done that because she was stunned by what she'd learned from Mickie. The fact was, she had be-
come far too emotional about it, and now she made things worse than ever by saying quarrelsomely, 'You're always saying you never make promises. Anyhow, there's sure to be a lock on the bathroom door and I'll certainly use it.'
`I'd advise you to since you don't trust me,' he said coldly.
Edie's cheeks went crimson and then white. She picked up the shamefully sexy nightgown, and promised herself she'd wear bra and panties under it, seeing she had no slip with her. Then she gathered up the toilet things left for her by the thoughtful Mickie, and catching sight of a towelling bathrobe hanging behind the door she took that too. She slung out of the room and only just managed to restrain herself from slamming the door shut.
Her legs shook as she made her way to the bathroom, which she found unoccupied. There was a bolt on the door and she used it, just in case—because you never knew with Drew, she told herself.
She took her time over her shower, letting the warm water run soothingly over her body and planning that she'd be in bed and asleep—or pretending to be asleep —when Drew came back from the shower. She tried not to think of him sleeping on the floor—and she tried not to think of him sleeping in the bed. There'd been no pyjamas laid out for him. He'd wear his briefs, she supposed, and banished the vision of his muscular figure that floated into her mind.
As she dried herself on the big bathtowel, she knew that some way her heart was sore. It shouldn't have been like this tonight—oh, it shouldn't! Only this Morning she'd been so happy because of what Drew had suggested. It would have been so different sharing a room if there'd been an understanding between them.
He might have made love to her, she admitted to herself with a feeling of shame-and then reminded herself she should be thankful she'd found out about his duplicity in time.
Ask him about Laurel, a voice within her advised. He owes it to you to tell you. Yet did he? Did he owe anything to a girl who had merely answered an ad?
There was some scented talc on the vanity cabinet and she used it absentmindedly before she slipped the nightgown on, rejecting her previous impulse to wear panties and bra under it. It wasn't necessary—Drew wasn't going to see her. She wouldn't discard the bathrobe till he was out of the way.
A minute later she made her way back to the bedroom. Before she went in she tapped on the door. There was no answer and she went in. The room was empty, and she stared about her disbelievingly. It was somehow an anticlimax. The bedspread had been folded up and now lay on top of the chest. A corner of the sheet and the single light blanket was turned back, the wall lamp was off, but on one of the bedside tables a reading lamp shed a soft glow over the room. Where had he gone? To walk in the garden and give her the privacy she wanted to shed her bathrobe and slip into bed?
Curiously, she felt uneasy. She'd sooner have found him there—brushed her hair at the mirror, perhaps asked him in some indirect way about Laurel while he collected his things for the shower. That would be the way to do it—indirectly. She didn't want to put Mickie in for being indiscreet—because she hadn't been indiscreet.
She dropped her clothes on a chair with uncharacteristic carelessness, then went to the verandah door and looked out.
His voice made her jump. He was standing some feet away in deep shadow where the vines shrouded the verandah so thickly she hadn't noticed him
`What?' Her voice shook oddly, and she felt a tingling sensation in her limbs.
`Come here. I want to talk to you.'
She stayed where she was. 'Why don't you come here?'
He leaned back against the rail and she could see his face vaguely, and the white flash of his teeth more distinctly.
`You really want to know why not?' He moved towards her as he spoke and stopped where the soft light from the bedroom fell on him, and she caught her breath. He had stripped off his shirt and the sight of his bare chest was somehow unnerving.
`Yes—why?' she said unevenly, though by now she hardly knew what she was talking about.
`Because there's a bed in there, that's why, Edie. That's one thing that's generally been missing on the other occasions I've started making love to you.'
She flinched a little. 'You're—you're not going to—'
`Make love to you tonight?' he finished for her. 'I'd hardly want to when you've been acting like a she-devil ever since I came in this evening. No, I'm not in the mood for making love to you right now, Edie, but that's not to say I won't feel that way later on.'
`You—you were going to take a shower,' she said, feeling nervous perspiration break out on her palms. It was impossible in the midst of a conversation like this to frame some seemingly casual question about his recent love life. She simply couldn't do it.
`It can wait. Maybe I'm going to need a shower later on—a cold one,' he said with a brutal realism. 'Mean-
while, are you going to join me out here, or are you going to insist we go into the bedroom?'
`What—what do you want?'
`To talk to you, that's all.'
`What about?' she asked suspiciously.
`When you come over here you'll discover what about.'
She shivered. 'I—I don't know that I want to discover it. I'm ready for bed.'
`Well, damn you, Edie, I'm not!' he exclaimed with shocking suddenness. 'My share of it's a pillow on the floor.'
Her mouth opened soundlessly and then she was free to choose no longer, for he had taken her forcibly by the arm and pulled her violently away from the doorway. 'You can come and talk to me and quit playing whatever crazy game it is you've begun.'
`I don't know what you're talking about,' she gasped, as whether she liked it or not she was dragged across the verandah.
`We should be out of earshot here,' he said when he'd drawn her round the corner. 'Now we can start talking, and the first thing I want to know is what the hell got into you tonight?'
He still kept hold of her arm and she stared into the darkness of his eyes, feeling her breast palpitating. `What—what do you mean?' she breathed.
`You know damned well what I mean—all those accusations you hurled at me, suggestions of f
oul intentions and broken promises, of not being able to trust me. What's it all about? I've admitted to behaving badly, but I haven't seduced you, have I? Not yet,' he added beneath his breath, for without apparently meaning to, he had taken her other arm and pulled her against him. 'You can't have forgotten you all but asked
me to do more or less that only this morning.'
`I—I did no such thing,' she panted.
`Edie, don't tell such lies. You were still stirred up enough after last night to suggest we—consummate our marriage.'
She flinched. 'I didn't mean that.'
`Oh yes, you did. That's exactly what you meant and we both know it. Yet when I came in this evening you started hurling abuse at me—threatening what you'd do if I so much as touched you tonight. Well, I'm touching you now, aren't I?' he asked, his voice rough. He pulled her even closer and his eyes seemed to pin her like a butterfly. 'Are you going to scream the house down?' He said no more as his lips found hers, and for a moment the two of them wrestled together. Edie twisted and turned her head in vain. His lips followed hers and captured them, and then his hands were inside her robe seeking her breasts. His fingers stroked down over her rib cage to the softness of her belly, and she stopped resisting. It was completely mad, but her mind seemed to have cut out. All that was left was her body and the sensations he was arousing in it.
`You said,' she gasped out as he left her mouth free for a moment simply because he needed to draw breath, `you said you wouldn't make love to me tonight—'
`I won't—if you don't want me to.' His voice was muffled and his breath against her bare shoulder made her realize that somehow her bathrobe had slipped to the floor. 'Anyhow, I never make love to a woman with a verandah rail against my back.'
`What woman? Laurel?' The crazy words came into her mind, but she didn't speak them, though the recollection of Laurel was enough to bring her at least partially to her senses. She withdrew her hands from where, she discovered, they were rhythmically stroking