MisplacedCowboy

by Mari Carr

  Not until he figured out what he was going to do next.

  Not until he knew where he was going to be tomorrow. The next day. And the day after that.

  Here in New York? Or back home?

  Back at Farpoint Creek.

  Dylan’s gut clenched at the thought. He’d never been so bloody conflicted. Had he thought he was messed up a day ago? When he was under the impression Annie was meant to be his future? Fuck, that was nothing to how he was feeling now. Now it wasn’t a woman messing with his head, it was a whole bloody country. Two of them.

  No matter how hard he tried, every time he imagined himself somewhere apart from Farpoint, he failed. But every time he tried to imagine a life without Monet, he failed that too. If he didn’t have an ego the size of Ayres Rock he’d be worried about his sense of self-esteem. But it wasn’t his self-esteem taking a pounding from his current situation, it was his sanity.

  Now he had to do something about it.

  That something was to be outside, be in the city. Exist in the city. Try to picture himself there for a long time.

  And he thought dragging snakes out of the main billabong back home was tricky.

  “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Monet’s question drew his gaze to her face and he found her smiling at the sights around them. After breakfast in a crowded restaurant, where the staff seemed determined his coffee mug never come close to emptying, they’d wandered the SoHo district, Monet buying supplies for their picnic, pointing out quirky little facts about the area only a local would know.

  When the lady behind the counter at one store realized he was Australian, she asked him to say “g’day”. He did, and she laughed and commented how different New York must be from his home. He agreed. It was. Very different.

  Chatting about art and movies and Australia and America, they’d finally made their way to the Great Lawn at Central Park, the large expanse of lush grass the perfect place for a picnic. All around them children in scarves and beanies laughed as they flew kites. Lovers necked on blankets, uncaring of those around them. Businessmen in expensive suits and ties scarfed down street-vendor hotdogs as they consulted tablet computers and talked the mobile phones plastered to their ears.

  It was, as far as Dylan could work out from his mother’s addiction to Woody Allen movies, the quintessential New York scene. And yet the movies never conveyed just how loud the traffic was, rising over the park’s serenity. Nor how dank the air was, nor how gray the skyline. At least to Dylan’s senses.

  There wasn’t a moment of quiet peace, even in an area of parkland roughly the size of Farpoint Creek’s main homestead yard. Hell, he was even finding it hard to hear the leaves rustling in the wind. Leaves no longer green but copper-red and brown from the chilly weather. With this much breeze at home, the leaves would be singing their soft song and he’d be able to hear it. He’d be able to hear the magpies call to each other on the wind instead of dueling car horns trying to out-blast each other in the nearby streets.

  He walked beside Monet, his arm encircling her back, her warmth seeping into his body, and looked at her world. The world he’d been trying to place himself in since the moment he’d accepted he was in love with her.

  He took it all in, his pulse growing fast. The people, the grass—greener than any blade back home—the concrete sidewalks that designated where you should walk and were you shouldn’t, all so different from the home he knew. He looked up at the massive monoliths stabbing into the sky, building after building of metal and concrete and glass so high their shadows seemed to reach for everything around them.

  He saw it all, recognized it as beautiful, but he couldn’t feel it. The only beauty he could feel in this place was the woman who’d asked, “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  And there was the answer to the question threatening his sanity. If the only thing that moved him here, the only thing that he found truly beautiful was Monet, he didn’t belong here.

  Dylan’s feet stumbled beneath him. He stopped, drew in a deep breath and stared at the New York skyline, the inescapable buildings looming over him, blocking far too much of the sky. He stared up at it and thought of his home, of Farpoint. Of the never-ending blue sky that reached from one flat horizon to the other. The paddocks that unfurled before him as he rode his horse across them, Mutt yapping at the cattle, tail wagging, tongue lolling. He thought of the sweet scent of eucalyptus on the air after a rain. He thought of his brother, his mother. He thought of the sweeping plains that, to a stranger, would look empty and devoid of life but was really teeming with it.

  He thought of his home.

  He thought of Farpoint Creek.

  He thought of Australia.

  And was unable to avoid the answer he’d been so desperately trying to refuse.

  His heart slammed into his throat. Blood roared in his ears. Tearing his stare from the famous metropolis, he turned his gaze to the woman he was irrevocably, completely, one hundred percent in love with.

  “Monet?”

  She swung her gaze to his, and his soul died a little as he watched the smile she’d been wearing fade from her lips. It was the fact he’d called her Monet, maybe, instead of love? Or the expression on his face? Something told her.

  You never were any good at poker, Sullivan. Guess you know now why Hunter kicks your butt every time.

  “Monet,” he said, sliding his arms around her, pulling her closer. Needing to feel her against his body. “I need—”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t say it, Dylan.” She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and shook her head again. “Please?”

  His gut clenched. His chest tightened. “I have to, love.” His voice left him on a whisper, his throat too tight to speak. “It’ll only hurt us both if I don’t.”

  She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to his chest and shook her head once again. “Don’t.”

  “I love you, Monet,” he said, holding her, aching for her. “I can’t even find the words to tell you how much, and I know my heart is with you, only you, but my place…” He paused, his chest crushed by an invisible vice, his whole body in agony.

  Don’t say it, Sullivan. ’Cause once you do, you can’t take it back.

  “My place is back home. In Australia. I don’t belong here. And I have to go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Monet stared at the Australian stockman before her, his square jaw untouched by a razor for at least four days, his hat hiding the expressive laughter in his eyes. She let her gaze roam over his face, a face she would never forget.

  And smashed her balled fist into his strong, hawkish nose.

  The clay—still soft despite being manipulated for the better part of the day—flattened under her knuckles, mashing the stockman’s nose until it was nothing but a knuckle-shaped indent.

  She studied the new shape of her artwork’s face and let out a frustrated sigh. It was the third one she’d created and destroyed since she’d started sculpting on Black Friday The third savaged by her fist since Dylan left, four hours after he’d told her he had to return to Australia.

  Each time she punched the lump of clay she’d shaped, carved, pinched and molded to look like a typical hardworking stockman, a wave of hot satisfaction rolled over her. Followed by an emptiness so total and complete she wanted to sob.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself the sculptures were anyone else but Dylan.

  Art had always been therapeutic for her. She’d exorcised her parental demons through her first New York exhibition, a collection of sculptures and lithographs depicting a deranged family in various situations. As her career had flourished and her reputation grew as an artist not afraid to unsettle as well as charm with her creations, she’d worked through many issues. Her last exhibition, Lust is Love is Lust, had indeed been partly influenced by Phillip Montinari, just as he’d boasted. But only those works capturing the distorted egotism of sexual power. Phillip and guys like him. Guys who used their sexual prow
ess to define themselves.

  The works depicting romantic fulfillment and love, however, were the embodiment of what Monet one day hoped to find—true love and happiness.

  And she had, briefly. With Dylan.

  She looked at the mashed-in face of the sculpture. What was this work about? Was her punching the sculpture part of the work? Part of the work’s meaning? Or was she just being pathetic?

  Brushing hair from her face with the back of her hand, she turned and glared at her studio sofa where Dylan had slept for four nights of his life with her. The sofa where he’d brought her to climax again and again with his fingers and mouth. It was a childish act to be angry at a piece of furniture she knew, but she had no more sculptures to destroy and she’d run out of clay.

  “Oh for god’s sake, Monet. Stop being so ridiculous.”

  She stormed away from the sofa and the beaten-up artwork. If art was her therapy it was doing a fuck-all job. All she’d done since the night Dylan had flown out of JFK was draw sketch after sketch of the man and sculpt bust after bust. There was nothing in them but Dylan. No underlining meaning to the works, no subversive subtext. Just drawings of a laughing, sexy man in an Akubra hat. Just sculptures of a man she couldn’t bring herself to finish because it made her hurt too much.

  Staring through the window at the snow-dusted city beyond, she blew out a wobbly sigh. She felt like shit. If this was how Annie felt every time she had her heart ripped out, Monet was going to drown her best friend in chocolate and suffocate her with hugs when she was back in New York.

  But Annie wasn’t coming back. Not for at least another week. And now Dylan was heading back to Farpoint.

  The reality struck Monet like a fist. Her chest grew tight. Annie and Dylan were going to be in the same country, face-to-face. What happened if they took one look at each other and realized they really were meant to be?

  “For fuck’s sake, stop it!”

  Her shout echoed around her empty apartment.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. Outside, snow continued to swirl and dance on the wind. It had begun Friday night, growing heavier with each hour Dylan’s plane flew farther away from New York. The rational part of her knew it was just weather patterns, winter coming a few days early. The drama queen inside her, the one all creative people lived with whether they wanted to admit it or not, knew it was symbolic. The man she loved had left her, and her world would forever be cold and bleak.

  After his revelation in Central Park, they’d returned to her apartment. He’d called the airline and exchanged his ticket for the first flight back to Sydney, one that had a six-hour layover in Denver and a two-hour pit stop in Hawaii. One that departed JFK exactly four hours after Dylan made the call.

  Which had given her no time at all to convince him to change his mind.

  Why had she let him go? Why hadn’t she fought harder?

  The memory of Dylan’s goodbye assaulted her. The touch of his lips as he kissed her at her apartment door, the kiss that tore out her heart. He wouldn’t let her go with him to the airport. He wouldn’t make love to her again.

  “It will hurt too much, love,” he’d said, his hand cupping her cheek, his eyes—those laughing, mischievous green eyes—so cut with grief it was all she could do not to cry. “If I make love to you again, I’ll never leave.”

  She’d taken his hand from her face and placed it fully on her breast. “Then make love to me. Now. I don’t want you to go.”

  He’d smiled a slow, sad smile that sheared through her like a knife and removed his hand from her breast. “If I stay, we’ll only grow to hate each other, Monet. I don’t belong here. And I can’t ask you to move to Farpoint.”

  Monet opened her eyes, watching the snow dance in the wind beyond the glass. Move to Farpoint. It was an insane idea. She was an artist. A New York artist. A damn successful New York artist. She couldn’t move to a cattle station on the other side of the world.

  Why not?

  “Because…”

  The rest of the answer didn’t come.

  Heart thumping fast, she ran her gaze over the gray clouds hugging the buildings on the other side of Central Park. What was the sky like in Farpoint now? Was it blue? Cloudless? Was it hot there? Would she walk about the homestead, a place she felt she already knew thanks to Dylan’s descriptions, in shorts and a tank top? Would the sun warm her skin as much as Dylan’s arms and love warmed her heart?

  Was that what she was trying to do with her art now? Capture that possibility?

  She twisted a look over her shoulder at the abused bust of the Australian stockman. Until she’d smashed her fist into it, it had been more realistic than any sculpture she’d created. In fact, there was nothing in all the works she’d furiously sketched or sculpted even remotely distorted or abstract. They were nothing but pure, honest representations of a man in a hat who lived in a different world than hers.

  What did that mean?

  A sharp knock on her apartment door made her jump. She frowned, staring at it from across the room. Who the hell would be knocking on her door on a Sunday afternoon? And for that matter, why hadn’t Tommy buzzed the apartment?

  Wiping her clay-crusted hands on her thighs, she crossed the room, refusing to look at mashed-in Dylan again. Even with his face punched in it was too damn painful.

  Too damn confusing.

  Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again. Harder this time. Sharper.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Monet muttered, releasing the locks and yanking the door open. “Keep your shirt—”

  The rest of what she was going to say faded away, lost to sinking guilt at the sight of the man on the other side of her threshold.

  “Hello, Ms. Carmichael,” Joseph Prince said, looking every bit the all-powerful, all-crushing billionaire businessman he was. “Would you mind telling me where my missing daughter is?”

  * * * * *

  Dylan took one look at his brother standing amongst the International Arrivals crowd at Sydney airport and shook his head. “Don’t say a bloody word.”

  Hunter held up his hands. “Okay.”

  Nearly thirty hours of travel time hadn’t lightened Dylan’s mood. Every damn second of that time had been spent cursing himself. Cursing the fact he was a bloody Australian stockman, not an American city slicker.

  The Down Under Wonder. That was him.

  And now here he was, back in Australia, looking at his brother—a man he loved more than anyone would ever truly understand—and what did he feel?

  Miserable.

  He’d expected to feel relieved stepping foot on Australian soil again, even if that “soil” was the lino-covered floor of Sydney International Airport. Instead he felt bloody miserable. And angry.

  Climbing into the Farpoint Creek helicopter, he tossed his duffel bag in the back and threw his hat on top of it. He let out a low grunt, glad to have the damn hat off his head. Every time he touched it or looked at it he thought of Monet.

  Hell, everything made him think of Monet. He’d spent six bloody hours in the Denver airport reading an art magazine, comparing the works in it to hers. Convinced she was more talented than any of the artists featured in its pages.

  Six bloody hours reading an art magazine as he wondered if it was too late to fly back to New York.

  He’d forced himself onto the plane from Denver to Hawaii. He’d forced himself onto the plane from Hawaii to Sydney.

  And, if he was being truthful with himself, he was forcing himself to buckle into the Farpoint Creek chopper.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” Hunter asked an hour into the trip.

  Dylan pulled his stare from the carpet of eucalyptus trees twelve thousand feet below. Sydney was long behind them, the helicopter now flying over the expanse of country between the coast and the Outback. Miles of populated regional cities giving way to rural farmland. Farmland surrounded by bush and scrub. Dylan watched it all whisk by and still he waited for t
hat sense of serenity he’d thrown away his heart for.

  “Well?” Hunter’s voice rose over the constant thrum of the chopper, his frown part worried, part irritation. If Dylan had been in a better state of mind he would have laughed. “Are you?”

  Dylan shook his head. “Nope.”

  His brother studied him for a long moment, speculation pulling at his expression.

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Just watch the bloody air, dickhead, or you’ll get us both killed.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” Hunter raised his eyebrows. “Fly into the side of a low-flying 747?”

  Dylan snorted. “If anyone was going to, it’d be you. Just wait until I’m not in the chopper with you, okay?”

  Hunter rolled his eyes this time. “Baby.”

  Dylan grinned. “Moron.”

  Hunter returned his attention to the chopper’s flight path, a smile pulling at his lips. “Missed you, brother. Although I’ll punch the shit out of you if you tell anyone I said that.”

  Dylan laughed. For the first time since walking away from Monet, he actually felt…okay. Not good. He didn’t think he’d feel good ever again. Not deep down in his soul. But okay. If nothing else, it was good to be back with his brother. Perhaps it wouldn’t take long at all to get over Monet. To get back into the swing of things at home.

  To forget all about the American artist.

  Yeah. Right. Now who’s the moron?

  Shoving the sarcastic thought aside, he raised his left leg, plunked his foot on the chopper’s dash and threaded his hands behind his head. “So tell me. Did you get the new herd down into the south paddock?”

  Hunter threw him a sideways glare. “Get your bloody foot off my dashboard.”

  They spent the next four hours discussing the workings of Farpoint, Hunter bringing him up-to-date on the business end of things. Dylan could tell he was trying to avoid any mention of Annie, an uncharacteristic tension falling over Hunter every time her name was uttered. Dylan had to admit, he was nervous about seeing her. Not because of what he’d thought they were going to be—a couple. But because the second he laid eyes on her, he’d be reminded again that he’d left her best friend in New York. He’d remember the hours lost in passion with Monet. Remember every minute.