by Trisha David
Jenni had climbed from the truck to open the gate, and she was now signalling him to drive through, but William didn't move. He sat and stared...and stared some more.
He'd known that he'd loved this place, but he hadn't been home for so many years it had been like some faraway, forgotten dream. Sometimes when he'd thought of the farm he'd told himself that it was only nostalgia that was making it seem so good.
But it was every bit as good as he remembered—and better.
The house itself was nothing. His stepmother had hated it and refused to live in it and William could see why. It was a plain weatherboard cottage with verandahs on three sides. It had one, two, three additions, like three wooden elbows tacked on. His father had told him that previous owners had built an extra addition for every four kids the family had produced, and they must have had twelve.
The cottage had looked serviceable and ancient in his father's day. Now...it was neat and well cared for, but it was still only just serviceable and it was even more ancient. A good wind could knock the place over.
But the setting...
The setting where the farmhouse stood was just plain fabulous. The house was only two hundred yards from the sea. This was volcanic land and some ancient eruption had spilled rich chocolate soil all the way to the ocean. Unlike the coastal plains further on, here the land was fertile almost to the water's edge, where it became soft golden sand.
So the forest grew everywhere that wasn't cleared. There were magnificent gum-trees—ghost gums with stark white trunks and wide spreading branches. Huge ferns... The hills rose behind the farmhouse, and a creek trickled down to meet the sea. No one had cleared along the creek, and the ferns grew rampant, like a rainforest.
There were a couple of cows grazing contentedly in the home paddock, leaning over the fence to watch the new arrivals. There were chickens clucking in the dust under the verandah. A goat was tethered to the outer fence...
How on earth did Jenni make a living from this place? William wondered, and then his gaze swung to the right, past the creek, and he saw...
His gaze stopped and held.
* * *
There were six little cottages, set so well back into the bush that they were almost hidden. They were built as a miniature version of the farmhouse, complete with verandahs, though each was much better tended than the house itself. They were painted muted shades to fit in with the bush, and each had a name on a board outside. The boards were almost more obvious than the cottages themselves.
'Kookaburra'. 'Mannagum'. 'Kangaroo'...
They were just exquisite.
And a sign past the gate told William just what they were.
'Betangera Beach Cottages. Holiday Accommodation.'
There was an additional sign swaying in the wind under the main sign. 'No Vacancy.'
William wasn't surprised. These cottages were paradise. You could step out of these cottages, walk ten paces and hit the surf. And what surf! The beach here was wide and clean, with soft golden sand to the water's edge. The sea was a series of long, shallow swells, the turquoise shallows gradually sloping out to the blue of deep water. The beach here was as safe as houses, but along to the east it provided the best surfing in the world.
This year wouldn't be entirely penance, William thought, but then he dragged his gaze from the cottages back to the main house. This was where he'd have to stay. With Jenni.
She was waving him through the gate. William looked up at her as he drove the few yards into the house yard. She looked worried.
Damn, she shouldn't be worried. He'd just handed her this farm on a plate. With these holiday cottages already built, it must be worth even more than his people had guessed.
Someone must have been good to this girl to build these cottages. Who had built them? Martha?
Hell, no. No way! Not Mean Martha.
Was there a man somewhere? Jenni had dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous, yet under those dreary clothes she was an attractive woman. She certainly was...
Hell!
'Get a grip on yourself here, Brand,' he told himself bluntly. 'Now! Let personalities...let sex enter this arrangement and the whole thing will be blasted out of the water before the marriage is a month old. Because you can't stay here if there's emotional entanglement.
'So find out what you need to know and get out of here until the wedding. Fast!'
There were a few awkward moments to get through.
Like...how to act when you're shown through the home you lived in as a kid—that you know so well—when you're being shown it by the woman you intend to marry but don't intend to get close to.
William tried for polite interest and it seemed to work.
Jenni showed him from room to room and he nodded and tried not to make his face go tight and hard.
But Jenni saw.
'I'm sorry,' she said softly, closing the door of the master bedroom. 'It must be hard for you. The locals say your parents loved this place.'
'We all loved this place.'
'Then you'll understand.' Jenni stared down at the scrubbed floorboards and scuffed her boot against the worn timber. 'You'll understand why I'm prepared to do so much to stay.'
'Even marry me?'
Jenni's face tilted and the look she flashed him was pure courage. William thought suddenly, she'd marry me even if I was a total dead-beat. Even if I was into wife-beating, she'd do what she had to.
'Yes.'
'Why will you go to such lengths?' he said softly. 'Just because you love this place?'
'If you know so much, then you'll know I have to stay.'
'My people tell me you're supporting your sisters.'
'That's right.'
'But one sister's away at university. She could get government assistance. There's only the fifteen-year-old left living with you. If you got a job in the city then she could five with you there. There's welfare to assist with her education.'
'That's right. There's welfare.' Jenni's face grew rigid. 'Only we're not on it. Mr Brand, if you don't mind butting out of what's not your business...'
'Call me William. And if you're my wife, then it'll be my business.'
'In name only,' she reminded him. 'That's all. Don't get any funny ideas about this wedding. It may suit us both, but it's business. That's all.' She paused and then said flatly, 'When...when we're married, you can have the master bedroom. I don't use it.'
'Why not?' He was watching her as a hawk watched its prey before pouncing, Jenni thought angrily, and he made her flush. Her anger rose.
'Because when I came here I was sixteen years old and the thought of sleeping in a double bed—of taking on any sort of pretence at being a parent—scared me stupid,' she snapped. 'Even though I had to do it. Take that responsibility, I mean. Also...the room was the same as it was in your parents' day. I gather Martha didn't even want the furniture when she married your dad and you all moved out. It's still set up as a bedroom for a married couple. It...it sort of seemed wrong to disturb it. So I moved into a single bed in one of the lean-tos and that's where I've stayed. And that's where I intend to stay, William Brand. Now...are there any more questions?'
'Yes.' He was still watching her. He leaned against the passage wall and placed his hands behind his back. Watchful as a hawk. 'Who built the holiday cottages?'
'What's it to you?'
'I want to know.' His mouth twisted into a wry smile at her rudeness and Jenni flushed some more. 'Call it a husband's prerogative.'
'Look, I don't—'
'Jenni, just tell me,' he said softly. 'I'm not testing you here. I'm not trying to trap you. You act like you're scared I'm going to pounce and eat you for breakfast.'
Jenni bit her lip. How could she explain that was exactly how he made her feel?
It was just too fast, she told herself. Everything had happened so fast. She needed time away—to get herself adjusted.
But William was going nowhere. 'Who built the cottages?' he asked again. 'Did Martha have them b
uilt for you?'
'You have to be joking.' That, at least, got a response from her. Jenni's mouth set in a tight, angry line while she thought through her answer, and when she spoke the anger was still there. 'Surely you know your stepmother enough to know that. Martha did nothing here. She let us rent this place on condition we keep it habitable. That was a joke to start with. I had to reroof the house as soon as we moved in. And then she watched every improvement on the place, and put the rent up accordingly.'
'But...' William frowned. 'Why did you do it, then?'
'Oh, I did it for us,' Jenni said bitterly. 'While Martha could see I was improving the place and while I was paying her good rent, then she didn't let Ronald have it. It gave her a secure income that Ronald couldn't touch. So it's meant we've had a home for ten years. And now...'
'And now you still have a home,' William said gently. He turned and stared out of the window to the cottages beyond. 'But, Jenni, you still haven't told me. Who built the cottages? They must have cost you a fortune. If you had that sort of money...'
'I didn't.' Once more, that defiant tilt of the chin. 'I built them myself.'
'You...you what?'
'I could see I'd need a decent income,' she explained. 'Even when I was sixteen I could see that. Rachel was so smart that she had to have her chance at university, and Beth...well, Beth has special needs. So...to start with I took in boarders. Backpackers mostly. Surfers who wanted a place to crash. My sisters and I slept in one lean-to and we let out the rest. Then, with every bit of money I earned— before the real costs of the girls' education started—I started building the cottages.'
She turned to face out the window with him, looking over the six little cottages that looked as if they'd been there for a hundred years.
'Remember the stables out the back?' she asked. 'They were falling down, but the stables gave me most of the timber for the first cottage. I made mud-brick pavers for the floor. I found a stove in the rubbish tip—and an old bath and toilet. You have no idea what I scrounged. The cottages are what the holiday catalogues call "olde worlde". That's because the toilets and the baths and the doors and the beds...everything in them's olde-worlde.'
'You're kidding!'
While William gazed out of the window, a beer-bellied gentleman wearing only bathing trunks came out of the first cottage. He stood for a moment in the afternoon sun, scratched his belly as he gazed out to sea, and then walked down to the waiting surf.
'That's Mr Haynes,' Jenni told William, following his stunned gaze. 'His wife loves this place and makes her husband come back every year. Florence Haynes would have pink kittens if she knew she was using furniture supplied by the Betangera Council Garbage Dump.'
'I don't believe it.' William turned to stare at Jenni in amazement. At this girl-woman. She wore no make-up. Her hair was hauled back schoolgirl-style and her clothes were more suited to a fifteen-year-old than a mature woman. But there was a maturity about her that belied her appearance. She had an inner beauty that told him without words that she'd never lie. 'But...who did the building?' he said faintly.
'Me. And Rachel and even Beth.'
Despite her look of absolute truth, that shook him. 'I can't believe this.'
'That's your prerogative,' she said kindly. And then she smiled, and for the first time William saw her as she should be. This was a girl's smile. It was the smile of an enchanting girl. Not the careworn woman who'd built this place from nothing. There was still a laughing kid under there somewhere. Under all those responsibilities.
She was a girl-woman and it was an apt description. She was a weird mixture of thirteen and thirty.
'Hey, I'm not saying we didn't have help.' she told him, ignoring his look of stunned incredulity. 'Mr Clarins—the lawyer we've just been to see—he's in the local Rotary Club, and he's been wonderful. He was a friend of my father's. If I got stuck...well, before I knew it he'd have a plumber out here to give me advice or an electrician to spend a few hours on the wiring, or a carpenter to teach me how to do things. I just had to scrounge the materials and there'd be someone to help me use them.'
And then Jenni's smile deepened. 'And sometimes I'd go to sleep thinking. Where the heck am I going to get a hundred yards of insulating tape? And you know what? I'd wake up and it'd be on my front verandah. This is a great local community. So I haven't been entirely on my own.'
'No.'
William could think of nothing else to say. He stood silent, stunned at the enormity of what one sixteen-year-old girl had achieved.
Hell!
From the age of eighteen, when his father had died, William had been alone. He'd fought hard. Quit the university he'd no longer been able to afford to attend. Got himself a job as a night kitchen hand and gone to a cookery school during the day. And then he'd hauled himself up the ladder of financial success.
He'd become a qualified chef and saved to buy his first restaurant. He'd turned it into a boutique hotel and then formed another. And another.
Somewhere deep down he was proud enough of his own achievements. But compared to this girl...
William Brand was a man who stood alone. He always had. With the exception of one crazy episode, nothing and no one had touched him since his father had died and that was the way he wanted it. But there was something stirring in him now that he hardly recognised.
Recognition of a kindred spirit? No. He stared down at Jenni and rejected the thought entirely. She wasn't like him. She wasn't tough. Or hard. Or emotionless.
You could read her emotions on her face as she stared out of the window. She was determined. He'd persuaded her to marry him because that would get her what she wanted. But she was as confused as all heck—and, somewhere underneath, she was still an innocent.
What sort of life was this for a woman? She was stuck here with sheer hard work facing her every way she looked.
William stared out at the six cottages and thought of the work needed to keep them let. Plus the cows to milk and the chickens and the fencing and the upkeep on this place...
Plus the fact that she'd abandoned her own schooling at sixteen.
'Wouldn't it be easier to accept welfare?' he asked gently—but then, as he watched, Jenni's face changed again. To dismay. She was no longer listening.
'Oh, no. No!'
Jenni was staring out at the road. William had heard some sort of vehicle approaching and stopping, and now he turned to look as well.
It was a school bus, by the look of it, and it had stopped right in front of the gate. There was a girl in a school uniform standing by the bus door, her schoolbag on the ground beside her—and the driver was carrying a big black dog down on to the road. A dog that looked as if he was badly hurt.
'Sam!' Jenni yelled, and she took off as if her heels were on fire. 'Oh, no, Beth. Sam....'
William was left to follow.
CHAPTER THREE
By the time William reached them, the bus was no more than a cloud of dust disappearing around the next bend. The girl was still there, though—and so was the dog. The schoolgirl and Jenni were crouched over the roadside, the big dog under their hands.
'It was Ronald,' the girl was sobbing. 'I was waiting at the bus stop, and the next thing he was there. Ranting at me. Telling me you were a bitch, Jenni, and you weren't getting away with it. And then he came closer and I thought he was going to hit me—he sounded so mean—and Sammy growled and Ronald kicked out. And then the bus arrived. Ronald disappeared and I didn't know what to do, so the bus driver brought us home.'
'Oh, Sammy...' Jenni was down on her knees in the dust, cradling the dog's head in her lap.
'He's not...he's not...' The girl's voice was fearful. 'Oh, Jenni, he's not dead? He's not moving at all. Oh, why can't I see?' The words were flung from her in an explosion of frustration.
And suddenly William did see.
The big black Labrador was wearing the harness of a seeing-eye dog, and the girl's eyes, staring hopelessly down at her injured dog, were devoid of
sight.
This, then, was Beth. Jenni's little sister. The reason Jenni fought so hard for this place to call home.
Now was not the time to ask questions. Both girls' faces were frantic with fear. William knelt down in the dust and looked closely at the dog.
The dog was magnificent. He had a gleaming coat and eyes which spoke of intelligence. His eyes were dulled now with pain, but he looked up at the people around him with absolute trust.
And Ronald had kicked him...
Quickly William's eyes ran all over him, carefully assessing. There was a laceration high on the dog's hind leg, and it had bled profusely. Jenni had already found it. She was hauling her T-shirt off, and forming a pressure pad to put over it.
Which left one thin, worn bra!
William's eyebrows shot to his hairline, but Jenni was totally unaware of his reaction. Jenni was totally unaware of anything but the dog.
William swallowed and hauled his eyebrows back into order. It took some doing. 'Let's lift him a little, Jenni,' he told her. This was important. More important than cleavage. 'Lift him so I can check his leg's the only problem.'
Jenni glanced an enquiry at him, but she moved fast, trusting him instinctively. Her hands slid under Sam's hindquarters and William's did the same at his front. Together they lifted the dog a small section at a time, and William ran his fingers underneath, disturbing him as little as possible. Searching...
Thankfully, there was nothing more to find.
They laid him gently back on the grass, and Jenni shoved the pressure pad on hard.
'I think it's only blood loss that's making him limp,' William said. He laid a hand on Beth's shoulder and gripped. The child looked so terrified she seemed likely to pass out at any moment. 'It's okay, Beth. The bleeding seems to have almost stopped. He should be okay if we move fast. We need to get him in to the veterinary surgeon to get some plasma on board. I'll get my car.'
'But...' Jenni said, but she didn't have time to finish. William was already sprinting across the yard with the ease of an athlete. In thirty seconds he'd driven back, positioning his car right beside the injured dog.