by Trisha David
'Hush, Jenni. Don't move. I'll come around the other side.'
He was behind her.
She would have ignored the pain and shifted, but he was too fast. Before she could as much as blink, William was around the other side of the bed, kneeling on the floor and taking her face between his hands.
And kissing her, oh, so gently, on the lips.
'My Jenni,' he said, and all the joy of the morning was in his voice. 'My love.'
'Will...William.' Her voice was a thready whisper. 'How long have you been here?'
'Since we brought you in last night.' He glanced at his watch. 'About eight hours ago. Do you remember?'
'Not very much.' She forced her fuzzy mind back, but the details were sketchy.
She remembered vaguely coming around in the police car and finding William cradling her close, and then drifting in and out of consciousness during the long ride to hospital.
She vaguely remembered white coats and people talking of stitches and setting her arm—and bright lights over her head.
And William, always there. William.
'Beth...Rachel...' she whispered.
'They've gone home to sleep. They could see you were safe. They're fine.'
'And...and Ronald?'
'He's in jail.' William's smile caressed her. It enveloped her in its tenderness, and it took her breath away. 'He could hear us shouting in the bush. When we started bush-bashing our way out, he realised that without us he was hopelessly lost. That bushland can swallow a man up, never to be seen again. In the end, he yelled to us to wait, and he came out.'
'So you rescued him, too.'
'Not because I wanted to,' William told her. 'But there's enough evidence now to lock him up for a good few years.' He touched the dressing on her shoulder and the smile on his face faded. 'Bastard...'
'Don't...'
'I've never been so afraid in my life,' he told her, and he put his face down to kiss her hair. He let his head rest there. 'Oh, Jenni... They rang me at the airport and told me he had you. And I'd seen Harbertson. I'd seen what condition he was in. I should have guessed.'
'You'd never guess anyone could be capable of that.'
'No. But...' He shook his head, shaking off a nightmare. 'If it wasn't for your courage... And Beth and Sam...'
'They found me?'
'They did.' William's smile returned in full. 'It's the only good thing that's come of all this. It started pelting with rain twenty minutes after we found you. Without Beth and Sam, you'd still be in the bush. Where you were....even if Ronald didn't find you, with the loss of blood and shock and pain... By morning...'
He closed his eyes and then forced them open again, as if making sure she was still there.
'And it was down to Beth,' he told her. 'Beth knows that. If she wasn't blind and if she didn't have the best seeing-eye dog in the world, then we would have lost you, Jenni. Just now, she told me she felt like she's been given the world. Not just you, Jenni. But she's been given back her dignity. Her place in the sun. You won't stop her now. There's nothing that kid can't do.'
'I'm so glad...' Jenni's voice faded to a whisper and William gathered her to him and held her.
'You're done in, sweetheart. You need to sleep.'
'No.' Her eyes opened again, and her fingers came out to touch his shirt-front. 'William...'
'Yes, love?'
'When I wake up again...will you still be here?'
Silence.
For a long, long moment there was nothing between them but silence. Nothing.
And then, slowly, tenderly and with infinite love, William gathered his wife to him. Heart against heart.
'I'll be here, Jenni. I'll always be here.'
'William...'
'No. Hush. Let me speak.' He placed his fingers on her lips and then ran his hand through her hair. Wonderingly. As if, even now he couldn't believe she'd been restored to him.
'Jenni, I've been every sort of fool,' he told her. 'Since I was eighteen I cut emotion right out of my life. It was like I couldn't afford to let myself feel. I was so hurt! And then, when I was twenty-six, I came up for air from my solitary life of making money—making myself so financially secure nothing could touch me—and I met Julia. For just a while there I thought I could rebuild something. Only it was stupid. I got shot down in flames again. So I went back to making money, and using people for what I could get out of them.'
'William, don't...'
'I need to say this to you, Jenni,' he said softly. 'I know you're tired but... Dear heaven, all last night I thought this through, and I thought I'd never be able to say it to you. But now... You're here. You're alive.' And he bent and kissed her full on the lips.
'Jenni, I love you,' he told her, when finally he paused to give her breath. And Jenni just had to see his face to know that what he spoke was the truth. 'You're my family. My heart. I love Beth and I love Rachel and I love Sam, but most of all—most of all I love you. You've taught me what it's like to be a human again. You've hauled me out of my bank vault and you've made me live. I didn't see it. I came so close to going back to the States, without seeing that what you were offering was worth more than all the gold in the universe. Jenni, you're the most beautiful...die bravest...the kindest...'
Jenni's eyes closed again. She was weak past belief. She was tired and filled with pain, and the effects of the anaesthetic and last night's horrors were still with her. But somewhere inside her heart was filled to bursting. Filled with love and hope and desire. And joy. All the joy in the world.
'Jenni, give me another chance,' William said, and his voice was urgent. 'You must. Jenni, I love you. I want you. More than anything else in the world, I want to marry you again. Properly this time, with vows that mean for ever. You must, Jenni. Please, my love. You must.'
And Jenni's good arm came slowly up from under the bedclothes, and her fingers caught around her lover's face and pulled him to her. So that his lips met hers. So that she could feel his warmth. His touch. His being.
'Oh, my love,' she whispered. 'My heart. My William. Of course I must. Of course I must love you. I will for a lifetime.'
It was sunset on Betangera Beach.
Six weeks had passed since Jenni had been hurt. She still wore a light plaster on her forearm but it no longer bothered her. The long, jagged cut was now a fading scar.
Ronald was behind bars and would stay that way for years.
William had stayed for a week after Jenni came home from hospital—enough time to start a small army of people working at the cottages. Jenni now had cleaners and carpenters and painters at her beck and call, and the cottages had never looked better.
William had flown to the States and closed down his central office.
'We're an international corporation now,' he'd told an astonished Harriet. 'With e-mail and faxes and teleconferencing, we can keep this chain going from anywhere in the world. I'm running my end from Betangera. You and Walter are my front people here. Do you want to stay in New York, or would you like to base yourselves somewhere else?'
And Walter and Harriet had looked at each other, astounded.
'You mean—anywhere?' Harriet had asked.
'As long as your choice has electricity and a telephone.'
'Well...' Walter, fifty and balding and four years on from his first wife's death, had looked for a long time at Harriet. And a slow smile had dawned.
'If I keep being administrator for this corporation for the next ten years, I wouldn't mind fitting in some fishing on the side,' he said. 'How about it, Harriet? Can you bait a hook? How about we head to the mountains? Together.'
And Harriet had blushed a deep shade of pink and stammered and giggled like a schoolgirl.
The thing had been settled. They'd come to the city if necessary—but then so would William. If absolutely necessary, he'd fly back to the States, with Jenni by his side.
'Because where I go she goes,' he'd growled, and Harriet had giggled again, and blushed, and Walter had held her
around the waist as if he'd just found a treasure. Good grief! Was love contagious?
And then William had flown back to Betangera.
'You'll be bored out of your brain,', his friends had told him, but William didn't think so.
'I'll set up the best restaurant you've ever seen, right in the midst of our cottages,' he'd said. 'Tiny and exclusive and only available to house guests. What's the bet we'll have an international five-star rating within a year?'
And no one who'd seen the determination in his eyes had been able to doubt him.
And then he was back with his Jenni.
Back to a wedding.
Now they stood, hand in hand, Where the tongues of foam licked the golden sand before rushing back to gain strength for another try. The sun was slipping over the mountains, a vast golden ball casting its fiery hue over the sea. The sand was still sun-warmed from the day.
The scene was magic.
The bride stood bare-toed and clad in jeans and T-shirt, with her hair braided.
'Because that's how I first saw you,' William told her. 'That's how I love you.'
'You didn't like my bridal finery?'
'I loved your bridal finery,' he said firmly. 'I'm so in love with you that I even love your No Brand knickers. But I love you best in this.'
'Well, you're one up on me,' Jenni told him, kissing him long and lovingly on the mouth, 'because I love you best in nothing at all...'
William groaned and somehow dragged his attention back to the matter in hand. To the celebrant waiting to marry them for the second time. To Beth and Rachel and Sam—their only witnesses to this private exchange of the very deepest of vows.
'With this ring I thee wed. With my body I thee worship. With all my worldly goods I thee endow... That means pigs,' Jenni said as William caught her face in his hands and bent to kiss her. 'The pigs are yours, my love.'
'How about the satin sheets?'
'You can have them, too,' Jenni told him. 'I don't want them.'
'I have news for you, Mrs Brand,' Mr Brand told her. 'For your wedding gift I've bought you silk ones. Silk sheets.'
'Silk sheets...' Jenni gasped. 'You didn't.'
'I did.'
'All for me?'
'Nope,' he told her as he pulled her back into his arms. 'You've just made a vow. "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." You've just given 'em back to me. So...we'll just have to share. Now, how are we going to do that, my love, my heart?'
'We could cut them in half?'
'We could.' He appeared to consider. 'Or...one each?'
'Or...'
'Or we could sleep in them,' William told her as the first evening star appeared low on the horizon. Rachel, Beth and Sam stood by with three identical expressions of dopey satisfaction on their faces.
As two people became one.
'We can sleep in them together,' William told her. 'Together, my love. For ever.'
'We'll wear them out.'
'Let's try.'