by Valerie Parv
He broke off to speak to someone in the background, and Bethany felt her smile turn brittle. The voice in the background was unmistakably female. Bethany couldn’t make out the words, but the woman’s musical laughter was answered by Nicholas’s honeyed tones. No wonder he wanted Bethany there as soon as possible. It sounded as if Maree was getting in the way of his reunion with Lana Sinden. Maree had come between them once before. He was probably ensuring it didn’t happen again.
When he came back to the phone she said stiffly, “I can be there by five.”
He didn’t seem to notice her change of tone. “Terrific. We’ll have your room ready.”
The plural wasn’t lost on her as she slowly replaced the receiver. Nor was the awareness that some of the pleasure had just gone out of the day.
The feeling dimmed some of her appreciation of the drive north from Melbourne along the Calder Freeway toward the Macedon Ranges. Only as the ranges began to lose their purple haze and turn into the famed “hills of gold” where fortunes had been made and lost during the gold rushes of the previous century did she start to relax. In accepting this job she wasn’t looking for the “gold” of a relationship so what did it matter if Nicholas Frakes and Lana Sinden had kissed and made up? Maree was the only one who mattered.
She smiled as she thought of the baby. In spite of the tragedy in her short life the child had a delightfully outgoing personality, a far cry from some of the disadvantaged babies who passed through the children’s shelter in Melbourne—some battered, others neglected, and all so hungry for love and attention that sometimes Bethany could hardly bear it. As a result of their experiences, many of them were afraid to trust themselves to give and receive love.
Bethany’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. If she wasn’t careful she would end up like those babies, too emotionally bruised to trust in her own lovability. Then she would be as much to blame as Alexander for allowing it to happen.
“No,” she said aloud, startling herself. Maybe Nicholas Frakes wasn’t for her, but he wasn’t the only man in the world. Neither was Alexander. Out there somewhere was a man she could love with all her heart and who would cherish her for her own sake, not for what she could or couldn’t give him.
Angry at allowing herself to doubt it for a minute, she blinked away the mist that clouded her eyes in time to spot the round tower of Australia’s only surviving bluestone windmill. Standing by the Metcalfe Road just beyond the town of Kyneton, it marked the turnoff which led to an old coach road and onto the Frakes estate of Yarrawong.
Set in fourteen acres of land with its own mineral springs and stands of tall timber, Yarrawong lay at the heart of bluestone country, characterized by stone bridges and viaducts, mills and colonial cottages. Surrounded by the ranges and forests of the spectacular Central Highlands it had been a favorite haunt of bushrangers but now offered a haven of peace and quiet, exactly what she needed right now. If only Lana Sinden was as happy as Nicholas to have Bethany here, came the reluctant afterthought.
Well, she was about to find out.
Turning in at the open wrought iron gates leading to the homestead, she drove along a tree-lined avenue to the house, which was set among magnificent red gums, a huge Moreton Bay fig and graceful peppertrees. Despite her apprehension over what sort of welcome she could expect, a feeling of well-being crept over her and she started to hum under her breath.
This time her arrival was not greeted by earsplitting screams. Almost before the peals of the doorbell died away, Nicholas appeared at the front door, Maree in his arms. Bethany drew in a sharp breath. She had told herself she wouldn’t be affected by the sight of him, but her body had other ideas.
In contrast to her last visit, today he looked not only rested but freshly overhauled, dressed casually but impeccably in dark slacks and a butter-colored polo shirt, open at the neck. The strong line of his jaw was emphasized by a thorough shave. The faint scent of his aftershave lotion teased at her nostrils, the spicy fragrance mingling with his own distinctive man smell to make a heady blend.
“Come in, come in,” he urged while Maree gurgled her own brand of encouragement. “We can get your things after you’ve made yourself at home.”
This would be home for a while, she thought with a surge of pleasure. Lana or no Lana, she was going to enjoy the change. If it was half as good for her as it seemed to be for Nicholas she would return to Melbourne a new woman.
She followed Nicholas along the hallway to the kitchen, which seemed to be the heart of the homestead. She realized she hadn’t seen half the attractions of the lovely old home, until it came to her that last time she had made her entrance via Nicholas’s bedroom. That was one room she could be sure she had seen for the last time.
“The old place is pretty impressive when you come in the front way, isn’t it?” Nicholas asked over his shoulder, as if he had read her thoughts.
She was glad he didn’t look back in time to catch the sudden reddening of her skin. The image of the black satin sheets was all too fresh in her mind, along with the foolish fantasy of herself in skimpy nightwear, sharing that room with him. “It’s beautiful,” she managed, coughing to clear the huskiness from her voice. “Has your family always lived here?”
“My great-great-grandfather built the house in the 1860s,” Nicholas supplied. “He was a policeman in the goldfields but did a bit of mining in his free time. He was working his claim when a government official fell down a flooded shaft. He managed to hold the man’s head above water until help came and was granted this land as a reward. My family has lived here for four generations.”
She caught the sadness in his voice. “But you hadn’t planned to live here?”
At the kitchen door he paused, then turned and rested his back against the wall. “Rowan—Maree’s father—was my older brother, so the place rightfully belonged to him. He said it was too big to be a one-family home anymore. He planned to run it as a place where tourists could stay a few days in a tranquil, homelike atmosphere. My late sister-in-law, Kerry, was a trained chef. They would have made wonderful hosts.”
His face was hidden by Maree’s dark curls but his voice cracked. Bethany felt something give inside her in response and longed to tell him it was all right. He could share his pain with her if it would help. Her own recent experiences made her only too well aware of how much it hurt when a dream died.
Before she could summon the right words of comfort, the kitchen door opened and a young woman appeared framed in the opening. A little younger than Bethany, she was stunningly pretty although not as beautiful as Bethany would have expected for a model. A heart-shaped face was framed by a cascade of unruly blond curls held back from her face by a tortoiseshell comb. She was only an inch taller than Bethany herself, and her smile was warmly welcoming. “Hi, you must be Bethany, I’ve heard what a miracle worker you are with babies.”
As soon as the door opened Nicholas straightened and smiled, although the shadows lingered around his eyes. The sight left an echo of pain around Bethany’s heart, but she took her cue from him and smiled back at the young woman, enjoying the welcome that was far warmer than she’d expected for some reason. She held out her hand. “And you must be Lana Sinden. I’m glad to meet you.”
Both Nicholas and the young woman frowned in unison, but the young woman spoke first. “Lana? Don’t I wish. Sorry, I’m only Kylie Ross, general dogsbody around here.”
“I told you I’d get someone in to handle the cooking and cleaning,” Nicholas supplied. “Kylie’s dad is the local vet. They only live five minutes away.”
“So I can come over whenever I’m needed.” She looked away. “My fiancé and I planned to work for Rowan and Kerry, helping to look after their guests, but now...”
“Now you work for me,” Nicholas said on a deliberately upbeat note. He grinned at Bethany. “Didn’t you notice a difference in my standard of housekeeping when you walked in?”
She was still recovering from the discovery that the young
woman wasn’t Lana Sinden. Nicholas’s girlfriend hadn’t returned after all. Bethany felt her spirits leap and hastily checked them. Nicholas had given no sign that he regarded her as anything other than a caretaker for Maree, so there was no point in Bethany letting her imagination run away with her. Around him she was doing far too much of that already.
“Was there something wrong with your housekeeping before?” she asked in a carefully innocent tone.
He threw a sharp look at Kylie. “This from the woman who said her life isn’t long enough to clean up after me.”
Kylie grinned. “I can’t imagine why she would think that, can you?”
“Enough of this. We Frakeses know when we’re outnumbered, don’t we?” he asked Maree. She gurgled a reply, and he nodded sagely. “Good idea, little darling. We’ll let Kylie make Bethany a cup of coffee while I get you changed and bedded down for a nap, then I’ll get Bethany settled in.”
He looked at them over the baby’s dark head. “She always has good ideas.”
Was bringing Bethany here one of them? she couldn’t help wondering as she followed Kylie into the kitchen. They heard Nicholas chatting softly to the baby as he carried her off down the hall.
At her first sight of the kitchen Bethany gave a gasp. “I can’t believe this is the same room.” It was immaculate, the stove and cooking utensils gleaming. The floor was newly washed and polished and there wasn’t a trace of spinach on Maree’s spotless high chair.
“It’s a slight improvement,” Kylie observed, looking pleased as she uncovered a tray set with coffee things and fresh blueberry muffins on a plate. “But Nicholas is a busy man. I admire the way he transferred his business to Yarrawong and kept it going while taking care of that precious mite all on his own.” She handed Bethany a cup of coffee, adding sugar in response to Bethany’s prompting. “I’m glad you’re here. He was starting to despair of finding someone Maree would take to.”
“You didn’t think of taking the job?”
Kylie grinned. “Like my father, I’m great around baby animals but hopeless around human ones.”
Bethany sipped the coffee, which was delicious. “I’ve had a lot of practice with babies, and she’s such a sweet little thing.”
“That’s the difference. You care about her. To the other people Nicholas interviewed, this was just a job, and not a particularly convenient one, out in the country.” She gave Bethany a searching look. “Have we met before? Your name sounded familiar the moment I heard it.” Then she snapped her fingers. “I know, you’re the Bethany Dale who publishes The Baby House. My grandmother runs a craft shop in Trentham and I gave her a subscription last year for her birthday.”
Bethany searched her memory. “Small Pleasures.” She recalled the shop’s name from a series of advertisements placed by the owner. “Your grandmother sells miniatures by mail order as well, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right. She makes tiny curtains, bedspreads and rugs and sometimes lampshades and other stuff for dollhouse collectors. My grandmother will be thrilled when I tell her you’re working here. Are you giving up publishing then?”
Bethany toyed with her coffee. “Not for good. Only until I can make the journal pay its way.”
“Is that why you took this job?”
“It was part of the reason.” She didn’t think Nicholas would appreciate her discussing the Frakes Baby House with Kylie until they’d worked out the ground rules of her interview.
But the other woman was ahead of her. “Meeting you has reminded me. Didn’t the Frakes family once have a famous dollhouse?”
Bethany shifted uncomfortably. “My favorite uncle made and collected dollhouses and told me about seeing it here, but it’s no longer on public display.”
“Maybe Nicholas will make an exception if you ask him about it,” Kylie suggested helpfully.
“Ask Nicholas about what?” Nicholas said as he came into the kitchen. He helped himself to a muffin and regarded them with interest as he ate.
Bethany’s heart sank. Now he would think she was the one who had brought up the question of the dollhouse when it was far from being his favorite subject. “Nothing that won’t keep,” she said dismissively, getting to her feet. “I should get my things from the car.”
“We were talking about Bethany’s journal and wondering about the dollhouse your family used to own,” Kylie volunteered.
Bethany felt the temperature in the kitchen drop by several degrees. “Were you now? Surely you can come up with a more interesting topic of conversation than my family history?” He dusted the crumbs off his hands and stalked out of the room.
Kylie looked worried. “Did I say something?”
Bethany shook her head. “No, but it’s time I did.” It was probably just as well she hadn’t begun to unpack, she thought as she followed the direction Nicholas had taken. By the time she finished giving him a piece of her mind he would probably decide against hiring her, and she would be on her way back to Melbourne before she knew what hit her.
It was a risk she had to take. If the price of working here was treading on eggshells whenever Nicholas was around, she wasn’t going to last long, anyway.
He was in the last place she expected to find him, lifting a bundle of clothes out of her car. She skidded to a stop, some of the wind temporarily taken out of her sails. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Unloading your car. What does it look like?”
“Even though I’m a gossip who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut?”
He shot her a thunderous look. “I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it when you walked out in a huff because Kylie dared to mention the dollhouse.”
Anger vibrated in his expression and stance, and he thrust the bundles back into the car before taking a step toward her, stopping only inches away. Typical male, she thought, trying to intimidate her by intruding on her personal space. If she’d been a man he would never have tried it. If she’d been a man her heart wouldn’t be racing a mile a minute and her palms wouldn’t be so damp she had to rub them against the sides of her slacks to dry them.
Lord but he was big. Big shoulders, big hands, big...enough of that, she reined in her errant thoughts. He was a powerfully impressive figure, especially standing so close she could feel the brush of his trouser legs against her calves. But they had a few matters to settle before she could let herself get distracted.
“I never go off in a huff,” he said in a quiet voice that didn’t disguise the hint of menace.
She tilted her head back to meet his eyes, which were the color of a storm-tossed sea and looked similarly dangerous. “You did a good imitation of it a few minutes ago.”
“With good reason.”
“Care to share it with me?”
He caught her upper arms in an implacable hold which brought them even closer together. “You already know how I feel about that damned dollhouse. You and Kylie could have talked about the weather like anybody else. Or the drive from Melbourne. Or any other neutral subject. But in the first five minutes of meeting, you have to bring up the one subject I’d rather not have discussed all over the district.”
She could have pointed out that Kylie had been the one to bring up the subject, but she didn’t want to get the other woman into trouble either. “You didn’t exactly swear me to secrecy,” she snapped, unnerved by his closeness. “In fact, you promised me an interview and photographs. Or don’t you intend to honor our agreement?”
“I have every intention of honoring it,” he forced out through clenched teeth. “But in my own way and time. In the meantime I’d rather you didn’t splash the information all over the district.”
His intensity shocked her, the effect reinforced by his grip on her arms, which would threaten her circulation if he didn’t let go soon. “Why, Nicholas? What is it about the dollhouse that makes you so angry you refuse to discuss it rationally?”
His sighing breath whistled between them, but he did slacken his hol
d. “Maybe I just don’t want sightseers turning up on my doorstep. I had enough of it when I was growing up.”
“You let me come.”
“You’re different. Maree likes you.”
She half turned in the circle of his arms, his words provoking a surprising sense of disappointment. “Maree seems to be the only member of the family who wants me here.”
“I want you here, too.”
The matter-of-fact statement caught her completely off guard. “You—you do? But why? One minute you’re coming down on me like a ton of bricks because of some skeleton in your family closet that you refuse to explain, and the next you say something so outrageous I don’t know what to think.”
“Then maybe this will help to clarify things.”
His hold on her tightened again and he pulled her against him. His arms went around her shoulders, one hand threading through her hair as his lips found hers, working her mouth open gently but irresistibly. There was no time to think, react or decide whether this was a good idea before a white-hot river of desire flooded through her.
The intensity of it was so overwhelming that her knees weakened and she clung to him, feeling the world start to spin around her. Since high school she had been teased about kissing with her eyes open but this time surprise made her long lashes sweep down. Instantly she found herself in a dark cavern of pure sensation, registering every fluttering nerve and throbbing pulse on an internal Richter scale she hadn’t known she possessed.
Dear heaven, if this was why most people kissed with their eyes shut she had better open hers in a hurry, she thought a little wildly, but almost closed them again as her gaze linked with his from startlingly close range.
“You keep your eyes open, too,” she murmured as realization dawned.
“I like to look as well as touch,” he said teasingly, his lips warm and full as they moved against her own. “This way all my five senses enjoy the experience.”
Hers were almost at the point of overload, she thought. Whether it was the unexpectedness of the kiss or her own instantaneous response she didn’t know. She only knew she felt light-headed from anoxia by the time he released her. At least he looked equally thunderstruck, she had the satisfaction of noticing.