And they did have to be hoisted into the helicopter, because the ground was too soft and waterlogged for it to land. By contrast, however, it was a bright sunny day, the sky was a clear blue, and the drenching rain, howling winds and pyrotechnics of the night before were like a dream—of the nightmare variety.
They were still sitting in the helicopter. It had landed on a tarmac driveway, and they were waiting for an ambulance to transport Bridget to the Gold Coast Hospital for a check-up.
She’d strenuously objected to this, saying she was quite fine, but Adam had sided with the paramedic on the helicopter and she’d been effectively outvoted. She had been uplifted by the news that the family in the car that had been washed away after hers had also been rescued.
‘Bridget,’ Adam said for the third time, and put his hand over hers. ‘I’m not for you, and that’s—’
‘Not my fault but yours?’ she murmured huskily, in a parody of the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ explanation.
He grimaced. ‘Trite, but unfortunately true.’ He paused. ‘I’m lousy lover material, and I’d be terrible husband material.’
‘Lousy lover material?’ she whispered. ‘I have to beg to differ.’
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. ‘You’re sweet, but it was just one of those things.’
Bridget considered. It had seemed to her, from the moment they’d woken to the sound of the rotors and both leapt out of bed, covering themselves with whatever they could find and racing out to flag down the helicopter, that they’d been tied to each other by an invisible string.
She reconsidered. As if they belonged to each other! But she’d certainly felt that, and could she have been so wrong?
She recalled the way he’d taken her back inside the shed and helped her into the voluminous coveralls, how they’d laughed a little together as she’d all but drowned in them. How he’d kissed her and told her it had to be an improvement on a horse rug.
Then they’d used a double harness to winch them up—he had seemed to know all about it, and also to know one of the crew—and she’d gone up in his arms.
He’d kissed her again when they were safely inside the helicopter, and she’d sat squashed up against him as it had risen and flown, squashed and in his arms, so her erratic heartbeats had normalised and she’d felt safe because they were his arms.
‘Will you ever get over the woman who left you for your brother?’
He looked down at her, and there was something like compassion in his eyes that hurt her very much.
‘I have got over her. It’s my brother—but it’s more than that. I’m far too old for you.’ He stilled her sudden movement. ‘In experience, in the kind of life I’ve lived, and in the far too many women I’ve loved. What you need is someone with no murky past, who can share an optimistic future with you.’
‘And if I don’t want—?’
‘Bridget,’ he cut in, and released her hand to wipe away the tears that sparkled on her lashes with his thumbs. ‘If there’s one thing you can take away with you, it’s this: you were gorgeous in bed, and don’t let any guy with an oversize ego tell you otherwise. You be selective, now, and make sure you give the men who are not good enough for you the flick.’ He brushed away another tear and picked up her hand as his lips quirked. ‘Incidentally, I’m one of those.’
‘But I loved being in bed with you,’ she whispered brokenly.
‘There’s a lot more to it than that.’ He turned his head as an ambulance drove up and parked beside the helicopter. ‘Your limo has arrived, Mrs Smith.’ He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles again. ‘So it’s time to say goodbye. Take this with you.’
He rummaged in a seat pocket until he came up with a pencil and piece of paper, upon which he wrote a telephone number.
‘If you need me, Bridget—’ his eyes were completely serious now ‘—in case of any unplanned…consequences, this number will always get a message to me.’
Bridget took the piece of paper, but she couldn’t see what was written on it. Her eyes were blurred with tears. Then it came to her that there were two ways she could do this. As a tearful wreck, or…
‘And if you need me,’ she said, dashing at her eyes as she raised her hand beneath his to kiss his knuckles, ‘you know where to find me.’
They stared into each other’s eyes until he said, very quietly, ‘Go, Bridget.’ His expression changed to harsh and controlled as a nerve flickered in his jaw, and he added, ‘Before you live to regret it.’
Several hours later Adam Beaumont let himself into a hotel penthouse suite on the Gold Coast, and strode into the bathroom to divest himself of the orange SES coveralls which had raised a few eyebrows in the hotel.
He took a brisk shower, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and padded through to the lounge.
But with his hand on the telephone he paused and thought about Bridget. Was she still undergoing examination for any unseen injuries? Or was she at home now?
It annoyed him momentarily to realise he couldn’t picture her ‘at home’ because he had no idea where she lived. And it worried him obscurely to think of her at home, wherever that was, and alone. Not only after her amazing and dangerous adventure, but after their spontaneous lovemaking.
What had possessed him? he wondered rather grimly.
She couldn’t have been less like the women he usually dated: soignée, sophisticated girls, well able to take care of themselves even when they discovered that he had no intention of marrying them. Not that he ever tried to hide it.
As to why he had no intention of marrying them, was it only a case of once bitten, twice shy? Once betrayed by a woman, in other words? Well, there was also the disillusionment of his parents’ marriage at the back of his mind, but even that, painful as it had been as he grew up, did not equal his disbelief, the raw hurt, the anger and cynicism, the desire for revenge his now sister-in-law’s defection had provoked in him.
Strangely, though, he hadn’t thought about it in recent times—until a copper-headed girl with green eyes had winkled it out of him last night. And, yes, he thought harshly, it did still hurt, so it was better packed away—along with the whole thorny question of whether he would ever trust a woman again.
But to get back to Bridget Smith—why had he done it?
To comfort her? Yes. To prove to her that her one previous experience had been no more than a case of the wrong man? Yes.
Because he hadn’t been able to help himself?
Well, yes, he conceded. And that had been due to a combination of those green eyes, that lovely, tender little body, her freshness, and the simplicity and naturalness of her reactions. Yes, all of that. Plus admiration—because she had been brave and humorous, and those little touches of hauteur had secretly amused him. Even her outrageous lies on the subject of the nonexistent Mr Smith had amused him.
It came to him from nowhere. Perhaps, if he was ever to take a—how to put it?—convenient wife, Bridget Smith was the kind of girl he needed?
He stared out at the view from the penthouse as he pictured it. Mrs Bridget Beaumont. Then a frown came to his eyes and reality kicked in. He was better off steering clear of any commitment to a woman. Far better off.
He shrugged and lifted the receiver to organise the retrieval of his Land Rover and the possessions in it. He was about to put the phone down when he thought that there was one thing he could do for Mrs Smith. He could at least facilitate the retrieval of her possessions, if not her car…
Bridget had had to get a locksmith to let her into her flat, although not much later—after she too had showered and changed out of her coveralls—a knock on her door had revealed yet another SES officer, bearing her overnight bag and her purse, both retrieved from her car.
She was immensely grateful, even though the news about her car was not good. It was going to have to be taken out of its final resting place piece by piece.
She closed the door on the officer and bore her purse to the dining room table as if it we
re precious booty. Once she’d checked everything and found it all there she sat back and looked around, feeling suddenly sandbagged as all the events of the previous twenty-four hours kicked in.
It was small, but comfortable, her flat: two bedrooms, open-plan lounge, dining room, kitchen and a pleasant veranda, on the second floor of a modern two-storeyed building in a quiet suburb not far from the beach.
Although she could have owned it—her father had divided his quite substantial estate between her and her mother—she’d decided to keep her nest egg from her father intact in case she ever really needed it.
She’d put quite some effort into decorating her flat, though. She’d used a cool green for the walls, with a white trim, and cool blues for the furnishings and rugs.
Cool was the way to go on the sub-tropical Gold Coast. But there were splashes of yellow and pink. Some fluffy yellow chrysanthemums in a pewter flask vase on her dining table—the vase had been a present from her mother, who lived in Indonesia these days. And some pink cushions on her settee, a fuchsia lampshade atop a pretty porcelain lamp.
There were also some of her own paintings on the walls. Paintings of flowers that flourished in the tropics—orchids, frangipani and hibiscus. Oddly enough, despite her assertion to Adam that she wasn’t much good, she’d entered some of her paintings in a local art show, and the owner of an interior design firm that specialised in decorating motels, rental apartments and offices had bought all six. He’d also told her that he’d take as many more as she could paint, and no matter if she repeated herself.
So far she hadn’t done any more. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about her work gracing the walls of impersonal motel bedrooms, rental apartments and offices. Did that make her a real artist, or something much more commercial?
But now, as she looked around, art—commercial or otherwise—couldn’t have been further from her mind. Why wouldn’t it be when she’d just gone through a unique experience and then had it torn away from her?
But as she thought of the man called Adam she had to acknowledge that from the moment he’d so reluctantly revealed his past history she’d known he was bitter about women. He’d told her himself he was a rolling stone, so it shouldn’t have come as such a shock that he would walk away from her like that.
But it had, she conceded, and wiped away a ridiculous tear. Because their intimacy, for her, had been so perfect and such a revelation.
Had she unwittingly translated that into the belief that it must have been the same for him?
She grimaced sadly. That was exactly what she had done. But perhaps the bigger question now was—What was she left with?
A memory, to be pressed between the pages of a book until it dried and lost colour like a forgotten rose? A memory that evoked a bittersweet feeling in her breast that faded with time? Or a raging torrent of disbelief and anger that he could have made love to her so beautifully she suspected she would never forget it and then simply walked away?
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHO’S this?’ Bridget Tully-Smith was holding a newspaper and staring at a picture of a man on the front page. Her expression was completely bemused. ‘I don’t believe it…’
Julia Nixon, her colleague and friend, put her red high heels on the dull commercial-grade carpet of the busy TV newsroom and wheeled herself in her office chair from her cubicle to Bridget’s cubicle, next door. She scanned the picture and caption, scanned Bridget in turn, then said carefully, ‘What part of Adam Beaumont don’t you believe?’
‘But that can’t be Adam Beaumont!’
‘Oh, it is,’ Julia murmured. ‘In all his glory.’ She frowned. ‘Why can’t it?’
Bridget put the paper down and turned to her friend. ‘Because I met him.’ She paused, and thought how inadequately that covered her encounter with this man roughly three weeks ago.
‘He was—’ She stopped, then went on. ‘He wasn’t part of the Beaumont empire! If anything he was very much a rolling-stone-that-gathers-no-moss type.’
‘Well, he may be, but that doesn’t stop him from being gorgeous or the real thing.’ Julia stared at the picture with a pensive look in her grey eyes. ‘Has he taken over from Henry Beaumont, his brother?’
Bridget perused the opening paragraph of the article accompanying the picture. ‘There’s a rumour, but that’s all at this stage. How did you know?’
‘High society is my department these days, darling,’ Julia reminded her. ‘You’d be amazed how many strange rumours I hear about the rich and famous when they party.’ She smoothed her pale gilt hair and studied her long red nails with an expression Bridget couldn’t identify.
Julia was in her thirties, an experienced journalist, with a penchant for red shoes, tailored grey suits and red nails to match her lips. She was extremely attractive, although she often exhibited a world-weary streak. She was unmarried but, talking of rumours, was said to have had—still had, for all Bridget knew—a series of highprofile lovers.
‘For example,’ Julia continued, ‘Adam Beaumont is supposed to be estranged from the fabulous Beaumont mining family. He’s certainly made his own fortune—out of construction rather than minerals.’ Julia gestured. ‘Further rumour has it that there’s a blood feud between Adam and Henry Beaumont. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam has finally found the lever to unseat Henry.’
Bridget’s mouth fell open.
Julia raised a thinly arched eyebrow at her.
Bridget closed her mouth hastily. ‘Nothing.’
‘And I also wouldn’t be surprised,’ Julia went on, ‘if he doesn’t do as good if not a better job than his brother. I always had Adam Beaumont taped as a cool, tough customer who would be equally at home in a boardroom as a bedroom—he’s as sexy as hell. Where did you meet him? It has to be him, I would say. You couldn’t confuse that face easily.’
Bridget blinked at the picture in the paper and thought, No, you couldn’t. ‘Beside a swollen creek in a flash flood, trying to rescue a carload of people.’
Julia pursed her lips as she summed Bridget up from her short cap of coppery hair, her delicate features and her sparkling green eyes, her slender figure in a whitedotted voile blouse and khaki cargo pants to her amber suede pumps. ‘You may have been lucky if you looked like a drowned rat.’
‘Oh, I did.’ Bridget paused with a grimace that turned to a frown. ‘But—is he really a playboy?’
‘He has escorted some of the loveliest, most exotic women in the land, but not one of them has been able to pin him down. Uh-oh.’
Julia wheeled herself back to her domain to answer her phone. And it occurred to Bridget as Julia did so that there was something in her colleague’s demeanour that was a little puzzling. But she couldn’t put her finger on it, so she turned her attention back to the picture in the paper.
Adam Beaumont was thirty-one, and good-looking. In the picture, he was wearing a suit and a tie, and he’d been captured on the move, with the front flap of his jacket flying open—not at all how she remembered him.
Despite his being soaked and unshaven that tempestuous night, and in jeans and boots, the two things she would always remember about him remained the same, however. It was the same tall, elegant physique beneath that beautiful suit, and the same haunting eyes—those often brooding or moody, sometimes mercilessly teasing, occasionally genuinely amused blue eyes.
It all came flooding back to her, as it had in the moments before she’d made the exclamation that had grabbed Julia’s attention.
But for the time being she was to be denied the opportunity to think back to that memorable encounter with Adam Beaumont, whom she’d known only as Adam. It was an hour before the six o’clock news. The main bulletin of the day was to go to air, and the usual tension was rising in the newsroom.
She heard her name called from several directions, and she folded the newspaper with a sigh, then took a deep breath, grabbed her clipboard and leapt into the fray.
When she got home, she made herself a cup of tea and s
tudied the newspaper again, at the same time asking herself what she knew about the Beaumonts.
What most people knew, she decided. That they were ultra-wealthy and ultra-exclusive. Adam and Henry’s grandfather had started the dynasty as a mineral prospector, looking for copper but stumbling on nickel, and the rest, as they said, was history.
What she hadn’t known was that the family was plagued by a feud, until Julia had mentioned it. The moment Julia had remarked on the possibility of Adam finding the lever to unseat his brother, Henry, it had taken her right back to the shed, the paraffin lamps and the storm, and that hard, closed expression on Adam’s face. If she’d had any doubts that they were one and the same man, they’d been swept away.
Her next set of thoughts was that Adam Beaumont had probably gone out of his way not to reveal his identity—because, to put it bluntly, he was way out of her league.
Surely that was enough, on top of what he himself had said, to kill any lingering crazy longing stone-dead? she reflected—and wrapped her arms around herself in a protective little gesture.
Three weeks had seen her go through a maelstrom of emotional chaos. Her bruises and scrapes might have healed, but her mental turmoil had been considerable. And, as she’d postulated to herself the day she’d been both rescued and abandoned, she felt torn between a bittersweet it was never meant to be sensation and a tart resentment that left her feeling hot and cold. If he’d known he wasn’t for her, why had he done it?
Of course she’d been more than happy to participate, but she hadn’t had a cast-in-concrete conviction that she was a loner, had she? Moreover, shortly before it had happened, she had thought she was going to die. Had that accounted somewhat for her willingness in his arms?
But most of all, in these three weeks, she’d felt lonely and sad. She couldn’t believe she could miss someone so much when she’d only known him so briefly, but she did.
She sniffed a couple of times, then told herself not to be weak and weepy, and turned her attention to the newspaper again.
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