An Outback Affair/Runaway Wife/Outback Bridegroom/Outback Surrender/Home To Eden

by Margaret Way

  The Cathedral of Saint Mark, on the east side of the square, was a wonderful example of Byzantine architecture, the Campanile—a bell tower—standing nearby. Just off the Square was the pink and white fairy floss of the Doges Palace, residence of the early Venetian rulers.

  They tried in their enchantment to take in all this city of legend had to offer, but there was so little time. The priceless artworks on display throughout Venice they devoured: the Academy of Fine Arts, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese. They strolled at dusk along the waterfront, watching the buoys on the water light up like lanterns, waiting for a vaporetto to come to take them on yet another mystery journey.

  They dined out at famous restaurants. Stayed at a lovely private apartment lent to them by a friend of Evan’s. At night they slept wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Rapture!

  In the morning they woke to the sun streaming into their bedroom, because they didn’t bother to close the shutters. This was their honeymoon. They had waited a full year for Laura’s divorce to come through and now they were man and wife. Sharing their blissful life. Day after day. Week after week. Each minute brought them more joy, more intimacy.

  On their last evening they walked hand in hand through the square of San Marco, listening to the babble of languages around them, the voices of excited children, the music the water made, splashing and lapping against stone.

  “Venice has been everything I ever read about it,” Laura said dreamily, snuggling into the warmth of her husband.

  “It’s like Paris. It never disappoints.” Evan smiled down at her.

  “It’s been fantastic.” Laura lifted her head to inhale the peculiar odour of the city, a kind of lemony-limey freshness mixed with the dankness of brackish water. “The two of us together. How can I ever tell you how wonderful it’s been, my husband?”

  “You’ll have a lifetime to do it.” He embraced her, pressing her against him. “My wife, my lovely Laura.” On a wave of euphoria he bent his head over her, kissing her passionately, while Laura, freed of all constraint by his love, responded in kind.

  Both of them were oblivious to the little wave of clapping from people who strolled benignly by.

  Venice was the city for lovers.

  “Tomorrow we begin our journey home,” Evan said as they walked on.

  “Home. Isn’t that a wonderful word?” she rounded her lips on it. “All this has been wonderful. We could never spend enough time here. But I’m missing the world we left. Its sheer vastness and mystery. We have so much open space. And I miss our friends. They’ve been so good to us. Do you think we’ll stay in Koomera Crossing? Your book, now that it’s finished, is so good. It’s expected to do very well. Maybe you could become a writer full time? It’s something you enjoy.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted. In fact he had lots of ideas he could pursue.

  “I could compose,” she said sweetly. “There’s music all around us. I feel so happy, so focused—I know I could get the sounds in my head down on paper.”

  “I’m sure you could,” he answered, very proud of her. “That piece you wrote for your father is truly beautiful. Mother thought so too. It’s a great joy to me you two clicked so wonderfully well. I knew you would.”

  Laura’s smile was full of charm. “Your mother is a beautiful woman in every way. I’ll never forget how happy she was at our wedding. How she played for us. It brought such peace and calm to have her there. My mother and Craig. Everyone getting on so well. Our wedding day was the most perfect day of my life.”

  “And mine.” He bent to kiss her, an expression of great happiness lighting his strongly hewn face. “Let’s wait a while and see where life takes us. We’re together. We have one another. Sometimes I think I want nothing else but the two of us. Then again, I expect I’ll have a family to support…”

  That sent sparkles of joy rushing through her. She smiled, blushed and nodded. “I feel we mightn’t have to wait all that much longer,” she told him in a voice that was lyrical in its joy.

  His hand was instantly at her shoulder. Such a look of wonderment on his face. He thought he loved her so much his heart could barely contain it.

  “What does that mean, sweetheart?” Surrounded by people, he only had eyes and ears for her.

  She looked up at him and laughed. The most radiant feeling of contentment was taking possession of her. Every day of her life with him she was falling deeper and deeper in love.

  “I’ll know for sure by the time we get home,” she promised.

  Margaret Way

  Outback Bridegroom

  “I’m over you, Chrissy,” Mitch said very softly, putting his hands on her shoulders, tangling his fingers in her dark abundant tresses.

  “Then why kiss a woman who’s been nothing but trouble?” Christine couldn’t resist the urge to taunt him.

  “Could be I just think of it as fighting fire with fire.”

  “So what are you waiting for?” She felt a sudden violent rush of exhilaration in her blood as the weight of his wonderful curvy mouth came down over hers.

  It was meant to be a light, mocking kiss that would convey to her she was no longer in his blood. No longer able to drive him to distraction. Only, the kiss changed character….

  Dear Reader,

  This third story in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries continues the theme of families and bonded lives, the unique relationships that are formed in isolated outback life. We all belong to a family, and how we fared in childhood and adolescence has a powerful effect on our lives. Some have the great good fortune to be reared in a loving, stable home where the young are encouraged to approach life from a positive angle and are always given a helping hand. Others are always struggling to win acceptance, to be loved, knowing it’s not going to happen. Eventually, they are forced to make a life far from their families in order to protect themselves.

  Christine is one such heroine who is forced into fleeing her desert home. In running away she must leave behind the love of her life, her kindred spirit, Mitch Claydon. He nurses a bitter hurt and disillusionment while she travels the world as a glamorous fashion model, but she’s unable to forget the man she’s left behind….

  The first book in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries was the Harlequin Superromance® novel Sarah’s Baby. This was followed by Runaway Wife in Harlequin Romance®. Look for Outback Surrender, December 2003, also in Harlequin Romance®.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS funny about love, he thought. It never died. Or his particular kind of love didn’t: his was unconditional, irreversible. He’d had it once. He’d never found it again. Not since Christine. Always, always, Christine!

  If he lived to be one hundred he doubted if he could ever forget his childhood sweetheart, the love of his life, the impossibly beautiful Christine Reardon. Such was their bond right through childhood and their teens—his wretched and—let’s face it—unrequited love for her was never going to leave him. He was still spellbound by the very sight of her, though she had used him shamefully. For a man with guts and pride aplenty, that made him feel really bad.

  He had learned to love early. Both he and Christine were Outback born and reared. Both were the children of pastoral dynasties—bush aristocracy, as it were. That in itself had forged a powerful connective link. He was Mitchell Claydon, heir to Marjimba Station, she was the granddaughter of the so recently late, unlamented Ruth McQueen, whose wake he and half the Outback were at present attending.

  The interment, under a blazingly hot sun, was mercifully over, but the wake, held at the McQueens’ historic homestead Wunnamurra, dragged on and on as it befell everyone to pay their respects to such a powerful pioneering family.
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  For two hours now he had stood suffering blackly—he hoped it didn’t show—longing to cool off with a cold beer, not endless cups of tea or the whisky the boys in the library were having. An irreverent thought, maybe. Ruth’s funeral was a momentous day in their part of the world—vast Outback Queensland, an endless source of fascination to most of the country who led city lives. Ruth, ex-matriarch of the McQueen dynasty, was not your normal much mourned grandmother. Ruth in her lifetime had had a patent on seriously ruthless behaviour, but she’d had the aura and financial muscle to somehow pull it off.

  He’d never liked her. In fact he’d come close to loathing her, so how could he be expected to mourn her passing? Wasn’t the reason Christine had run away from him to escape her grandmother’s clutches? Or so Chrissy had claimed. One way or the other, Christine’s flight had been swift and terrible for a girl who up to that time had declared her endless love for him. The fervour with which she’d said it still rang in his heart like a bell.

  “How I love you, Mitch!” That tone should have been kept for worship. Her face had been luminous as a pearl above him, her thick braid undone, silken hair glistening even in the scented darkness of their special place, a pink lily pond few other people came to or even knew. Her beautiful hands had always smelled of boronia, caressing his naked chest, spiralling downwards, in delicate stroking circles that had made his blood run molten, his body shaking with the fine tremors of blind passion.

  An inferno of desire! He would have done anything for her. She had power, great power, in the age-old manner of beautiful seductive women. It was this that had mesmerized him. Kept him captive so he never saw all the other girls who tried to win his attention.

  Christine. Always Christine.

  Her ardent declarations had turned out to be utter lies. She had betrayed him and played him, scorning the love she’d proclaimed so sublime. The grief and the anger Mitch felt had gone so deep they still burned brightly. So why, then, couldn’t he forget her? Wash his hands of her? Get on with his life?

  It hadn’t worked out like that at all. God knows he’d tried. And now he stood in Wunnamurra’s very grand drawing room watching the assembled family saying goodbye to the last of the mourners. There was much solicitous air-kissing, diplomatic condolences, though the departed Ruth had been disliked with a passion. Not that Ruth had minded while she was alive. In fact she’d actively encouraged such strong sentiments in those she considered her inferiors, and they included the entire Outback at one time.

  Vale, Ruth! Arrogance and snobbery personified.

  Kyall was an entirely different story. No one could tarnish Kyall McQueen’s image. Kyall had been his friend from earliest childhood, as was Kyall’s fiancée, Sarah Dempsey—Sarah Dempsey—head of Koomera Crossing’s Bush Hospital.

  Ranged beside Kyall and Sarah on the fare-welling line were Kyall’s mother and father, Enid and Max, a mightily dysfunctional couple if ever there was one, and beside them Kyall’s problematic young cousin, Suzanne, dragged home from boarding school. But the ultimate object of Mitch’s attention this long, terrible day was the stunning young woman standing protectively beside Suzanne like some exotic long-legged water-bird.

  Christine. His only love! Hell, weren’t they great days, when love had surged sweet and absolutely irresistible? So irresistible it sometimes seemed to him his emotional life hadn’t taken one single step forward. As for Chris? Her life had gone ahead in great leaps and bounds. It was a long hike from awkward adolescent, head ducking, shoulders slouching in an effort to hide her height, to fêted international model who regularly bagged the cover of well-known international magazines.

  The moment he’d laid eyes on her that morning she’d been walking with immense style down Wunnamurra’s grand divided staircase. That catwalk training had been devastatingly successful, he’d noted cynically.

  God, what a knockout! He, despite everything, felt pierced again by love’s maddening arrows. The poor schmuck who stared up at her as if she was a goddess favouring earth with a visit. Who could take that much heart-stopping beauty? He’d only stared, feeling his tormented heart banging away so loudly he’d thought it might leap from his chest. Such weakness dishonoured him. From that moment on his pride had made it easier…

  “Mitch, how wonderful to see you again!” Her stunning, high-cheekboned face turned on the now famous smile. “It’s so good of you and the family to come.”

  Some moments spin out forever. Memories invaded his mind, one scene opening out after the other. Always he and Chris together—riding, swimming, skinny-dipping in the creeks across Marjimba, exploring the Hill Country, exploring each other’s excitable young bodies. God knows how he’d found the gumption to move, but he had.

  “Hey, we’re family, aren’t we, Chrissy?” He’d sauntered up to her, hadn’t attempted to hug her, or kiss her cheek. He’d settled for a sardonic handshake. She wouldn’t like the “Chrissy”, but he’d just wanted to let her know he’d never accept the usual baloney. “Wonderful to see you” rang ludicrously untrue after the way she’d treated him.

  That had been twenty minutes before the trip to the family cemetery, where Ruth had been interred with the pomp she certainly didn’t deserve. Since then his emotions had threatened by the minute to get seriously out of hand. A big mistake. These days he was very much a man in control. He considered it a by-product of being dumped by the said Christine. He didn’t look for love any more. Love was a four-letter word. Now he settled for companionship. Sex. He was tempted, like the next man. And this way there would be no stress, no pain. Sometimes a lot of fun, but that was the end of it. Still, it was lousy when you couldn’t fall in love again.

  Christine, his heart’s desire, was woven warp and woof into the fabric of his life, and it looked as if he’d have to wrestle with that one forever. She’d become so finely polished, like a diamond, he could hardly bear her brilliance. Neither could he look away. Enid’s “ugly duckling” had long since turned into a swan. He’d always known she would.

  In her adolescence Enid and Ruth had hardly a kind word to say to Chris regarding her coltish, somewhat androgynous look, the insouciant “boy” in jodhpurs and shirts. Of course she’d cultivated the look deliberately, in retaliation, and quietly laughed about it as he kissed and caressed her beautiful, very feminine breasts.

  Petite women, Enid and Ruth had privately and very publicly agonized over Chris’s height as though it were none of their fault. So Chris was six feet? Tall for a woman, certainly, but they had been so cruel!

  Christine in those days had been like a creature of the wild trapped in a cage. And she had fled her unhappy home. Anyone who’d had anything to do with Enid and Ruth could understand that. Except she’d fled him when he’d thought they had never been more in love. Hell, he’d been five minutes away from marrying her.

  She was nineteen, he just twenty-one, and stupid enough to think he was God’s gift to women. Girls had liked to tell him that. Hard to believe, but true. Not Christine. She’d called him many a nasty name, ranting and raging that she had to find herself before she could deal with him. Marriage. Kids. Had he ever considered, given their combined height—he was six-two—their children might finish up as basketball stars?

  What was wrong with that? They’d fought terribly. He’d had every confidence he would win. He knew he’d acted as if he equated her pending defection to committing a serious crime. But it was the pain and the sense of loss that had enraged him. A grief so acute it had resulted in his saying a lot of things that should never have been said.

  Hadn’t she promised when she turned fourteen that they were going to get married? He’d thought both of them had taken that promise very seriously. Neither of them had wanted anyone else. He realised how stupid all of that was—kids’ stuff—except his feelings had never changed. He hadn’t even learned to be truly unfaithful. The flesh was weak but the mind remained purely loyal.

  Now Ruth McQueen’s death had brought Christine home. For how long?
A couple of days? A week? Surely she could spare some time off? She loved her father and brother; she tried hard to love her difficult, distant mother; she seemed to have taken charge of Suzanne. She didn’t need the money—Christine had a very tidy trust fund—but she did need that sense of self her success had brought her.

  Always beautiful to him, she had made big changes. Gone was the slouch, the dip of the head to make herself shorter. How often had he tried to encourage her out of that? She’d always looked great to him no matter what she wore. Easy, casual. Now her clothes were the epitome of cosmopolitan chic. Dressed head to toe in sombre black, she nonetheless resembled an elegant brolga among what was in the main a flock of dull magpie geese.

  She had learned patience. She’d stood throughout the ceremony in a contemplative mood. It must have been easy enough to conjure up her never well-intentioned late grandmother of the acid tongue. She’d shown no sign of nervousness or the inattention which had warranted many admonitions in the old days. Occasionally she’d smiled. The smile, now famous, lit up her face, displaying her beautiful teeth. He still had her early toothpaste ad hidden away in a drawer. It was almost in tatters from the countless times he’d looked at it. Once he’d had an impulse to tear it up—ever after grateful he hadn’t.

  Christine! What a class act.

  A kind of rage fuelled him. He who loved this goddess risked losing his head. Just being in the same room with her after years of estrangement put him in a strange mood, where anger and the pain of rejection lay heavily on his heart. He was profoundly conscious time was passing. All his friends were either getting engaged or married. When the hell was he going to surrender? He had to know he wouldn’t want for prospective brides.