by Ann Major
“Because my first loyalties lie with my sister. When she didn’t return for her child, naturally I investigated—which is why I’m here now.”
“I want you out of my life. I have enemies enough without taking you on."
"I know about your enemies." She lifted her chin and stared at him down the length of her nose. "For once we are in agreement," she answered, this time in that infuriatingly placid tone a schoolteacher might use with an upstart youngster.
As he watched her flatten one of the tucks in her blouse with her free hand, he felt a wild jubilation. Nothing had ever been this easy with her. Then he grew aware that something in her smug expression didn't fit with her words. He realized she had caught him off guard.
"What do you mean?"
She smiled sweetly. It was the smile he most distrusted.
"Only that this once we both want the same thing, Jackson." She pressed her fingertips beneath her chin in that cool, determined manner of hers.
She was finished with the tuck. But not with him.
"You see, Jackson, I want Lizzie, too. That’s why I've come here to help you."
Four
Tad's hand was a claw gripping Jess's wrist. He felt the warmth of her breasts spilling voluptuously against his chest. Her body was soft and inviting. Too bad her head and heart were as hard as flint.
"You see, Jackson, I want Lizzie, too."
Jess's velvet voice seemed like a living thing, a hateful sound lingering in the darkness.
Her mouth was set, and she was looking down the length of her shapely, upturned nose at him again. Dear God! Of all the ills in the world, surely there was none worse than an interfering female who's made up her mind to bully you.
The ceiling fan droned. The moonlight was a halo of silver in her hair.
Tad could not get her statement out of his mind.
Her face was pale, her eyes darkly glimmering pools. The wisp of her hair that had blown loose wrapped around her neck.
In the smoldering silence that fell between them, they studied one another warily. It was as though so much was at stake, neither dared say more. It was as if a bomb was about to go off, and they were both in such a state of shock all they could do was listen to the ticking.
"What do you mean, you want Lizzie?"
"The same thing you do, Jackson."
"Lizzie is my child."
"Your child. Not your possession," came that precise schoolteacher tone he so despised. “Deirdre asked me to take care of her until she returned, and I promised her I would. But Deirdre never returned, so I can’t desert Lizzie…or I would be breaking my promise.”
Despite her air of moral superiority, she was the one who had stolen his child! He wanted to scream, "Mine! Mine, you fool[JO7]!" and be done with it. But that would never work with Jess. He had to progress logically. Logically—whatever that meant to her.
He began in what he hoped sounded like a calm tone. "Surely you don't think a person should just take a man's child and keep her for a year without even telling her father where she is."
Darkly defiant gold-flecked eyes met his. "For pity's sake, Jackson, that's deplorable—even from you. I didn't take Lizzie. Deirdre entrusted her to me because your station was a war zone and you weren't doing anything about it. She wanted Lizzie safe."
"Not doing anything! I was fighting back with all I had. Then my sweet wife just took Lizzie and vanished."
"I don't blame her. Like all men, you see only your side. Deirdre, never a brave soul to begin with, was scared witless, and you couldn't protect her. You were always an impossible husband—even in the best of times. Of course she ran to me with precious Lizzie."
He controlled his rage and continued, his voice bitter. "When she ran short of money, Deirdre came back to the station and stole my operating cash and one of my planes."
"She needed money to live on."
"She left me nothing. She emptied out our joint checking account, too. After that she came here and never returned."
"Because I’m beginning to fear she was killed!"
"My child was gone, and the only person who knew where she was was dead. Or so I thought. My station was a battlefield. Everyone thought I killed them both. My own child! There was no way I could defend myself. The only thing that stood between me and prison was Ian McBain, my lawyer. Believe me, his legal fees, on top of all my other expenses, have dealt the station a death blow. You could have at least told me Lizzie was safe."
“Perhaps, but I had to put Lizzie’s safety above your peace of mind.” Jess's expression was odd. "Deirdre mentioned Ian."
Tad's mouth thinned. "Do you know what it's like to be hated and despised for something you didn't do? What it's like to live with the terror that your child is somewhere hurt or dead and there's nothing you can do? To go to bed every night looking at her picture, wondering if you'll ever see her again? That ate at me more than living with the constant violence. I called you. I asked you if you knew anything…"
He felt Jess flinch. The moonlight seemed to bleach all color from her face.
Her voice was smooth and unemotional. "I'm sorry."
"You'll have to do better than that," he murmured tightly. "I'm sorry's have never cut any ice with me."
"I-I didn't know what to do," Jess said at last. "When Deirdre didn't come back for Lizzie I did make inquiries, and I found out you were in terrible trouble."
"Trouble?" He sneered. "I was in hell. You knew! And still you didn't bring Lizzie."
"Deirdre had made me swear I wouldn’t. And then you have never exactly been my favorite person."
"You didn't even write! Not a line to tell me she was alive."
"But then you would have known where we were."
"So you admit it—you deliberately kept her—knowing what I was going through?"
"Like I said, what else could I do?"
"You could have brought her home!"
"How? I was working in Calcutta at a clinic. I couldn't just leave. And I had to investigate your situation. I came as quickly as I could find a replacement."
"No, you were too busy saving the world to give a damn about the one man whose life you've been set on destroying ever since you first laid eyes on him."
"That's not true."
"It damn sure is."
"How could I bring Lizzie to you? Not after what Deirdre said about you. Not when she made me promise—"
"And I'll just bet she said plenty! My sweet wife had the habit of blackening my name to anyone who would sit still, and I'm sure you enjoyed listening when she aired all the dirty laundry of our marriage."
Jess's eyes grew huge, intent on his face. "Would you believe me if I said you're wrong about that?"
"Deirdre doesn't matter anymore. Whatever she told you doesn't matter."
"It does to me. A year ago, to help her when she came to me and said you both were in trouble, I accepted responsibility for her child. Lizzie's been through a rough year."
"Tell me about it," he said caustically.
"It wasn't easy for me, either. I was in India working fourteen hours a day in a clinic. I-I was trying to forget about... the accident. Deirdre left a five-year-old child and never came back. And Lizzie, who just happens to take her willful disposition after you, is hardly the most easily managed child. I was in grief over the losses of my own darling child and husband. Lizzie turned my life upside down, and I had to make changes.
“Lizzie was separated from her home, from everyone she loved, everything familiar. I understood her loss. For several months I thought Deirdre was coming back. Then I found out that Deirdre was dead, that there were rumors about you having had a part in her death."
Jess stopped, and the tortured look on her face that he read as disgust and fear made him writhe inside.
"So you, too, think I killed her?"
When Jess didn't answer, he yanked her closer to the bed, so close he could feel the heat of her body, the intoxicating scent of her perfume. Her haunted eyes were f
illed with some emotion he did not understand.
"Answer me," he demanded.
"No, I don't." She lowered her lashes.
He could not stand her cool remoteness. "You do!"
She forced herself to look at him again. "I never lie," she whispered.
"That's not true."
Her face went blank. Her eyes glittered darkly in the queer light of the moon.
"You did. That once," he said, "ten years ago."
She shook her head in denial, but he kept glaring at her until she flushed guiltily.
"All right. Yes. Back then maybe, but not now. I don't know what happened to Deirdre. Except I know...I know you didn't kill her."
"Then why are you looking at me like that?"
"B-because I know what it's like to take the blame for something terrible like that. You see when Jonathan and little Benjamin were killed...I was driving."
His grip tightened. "It wasn't your fault."
"I wish I could be so sure. All I know is that if I could undo what happened that night, I would. But we make mistakes, and sometimes there are no second chances. Except having Lizzie with me this year…has felt like a second chance."
He felt a strange pull from her, a crazy desire to drag her into his arms, to touch her, to caress her, to comfort her. Unknowingly she caught her lower lip with her teeth and a sudden tremor shook him.
He stared at her. She believed him! When everyone else doubted him. She had known what it was to suffer, to be blamed for something she hadn't done. She had come back—even if she’d taken her own sweet time about it.
A wild elation filled him that someone understood, even if it was only Bancroft, who was his enemy. It pleased him that she didn't think he'd killed Deirdre. For the first time in a year, some of his loneliness left him.
He wanted to seize Jess and kiss her. Immediately he realized how absurd such an impulse was. This gorgeous blonde whose voluptuous curves fitted him so enticingly was none other than his conniving, bullying sister-in-law.
She’d kept his child. He should throw her out of the room and never lay eyes on her again. The last thing he should want from her was kindness. And yet there was an ache in his gut that told him it was the one thing he wanted.
He remembered how she hated sentimental fools. He hated them himself.
"So you see, I know you'd never hurt anyone...not like that anyway. Still, I can't just turn Lizzie over to someone who..." Her voice caught. "I can't send her to Jackson Downs with all the violence, back to you, when I know you won't see after her properly. And when I love her more than life itself."
"I'm her father," he said roughly. "I'll be there, damn it. She's my responsibility, not yours. You’re her aunt, not her mother."
He could feel Jess's hand trembling in his. She was as deeply upset as he.
"Then we're at odds," she said firmly. "As usual. Because I consider her my responsibility, too."
"And you take all your responsibilities seriously."
"You know I do." She hesitated. "Especially this one. Jackson, I love her, and I don't want to fight you."
He studied Jess's still, white face, and he knew that his sister-in-law was just as determined as he. And just as stubborn.
"I don't want you in my life," he said. But he gripped her hand like it was a lifeline.
"I didn't ask Deirdre to make Lizzie part of my life, but Deirdre did it anyway. I-I never wanted to love another child again. Not after..." Her voice broke. "And especially your child. B-but I do. I won't let you take her and ruin her the way my father..."
A cloud passed in front of the moon, and Jess's face was lost in darkness for a few seconds. Then the moonlight shone through the shutters once more, brighter than before, and he saw the terrible vulnerability in her eyes again.
He was not the only one who had lived in hell.
With his free hand, he reached up and traced a finger against her jaw, along the sensitive skin beneath her chin and neck. He felt her pulse leap in response. He saw her lower lip quiver even as she fought to control it.
His own pulse started to throb, and he tore his finger away from the tantalizing softness of her throat.
She took a breath and then lost it. He felt her stiffen. The wrist he held had stopped trembling and was again rigid with tension. He struggled to control his own emotions.
There was going to be a battle. The fiercest he'd ever fought.
"You kept my child," he said, "for a year, without ever letting me know where she was."
"As I said before, someone had to look after her. It was obvious that her parents were too wrapped up in their own problems to do so."
He'd been ambushed more times than he could count. "You dare imply that I was not a good father?"
"Let me go, Jackson," she whispered. "We'll talk about this tomorrow."
"I want to finish it now."
"You're as weak as a cat." She twisted her wrist and broke free of his grip. "See!"
It was humiliating how easily she had freed herself.
"Tomorrow," she insisted, backing into the shadows. "You must go to sleep now."
Then she was gone.
*
All through the night Jess's words thrummed like staccato heartbeats in Tad's fevered brain.
I want Lizzie, too. I want Lizzie, too. The words mingled with the raucous thunder of parrot sounds outside and drummed even louder.
Another, more dangerous sensation thrummed in his blood like the rain that pattered for a time against the roof and thick clusters of broad banana leaves.
She had commanded him to sleep. Even if he'd been the kind of man to let a she-devil boss him, how could he sleep with her words whirling in his head? How could he sleep when the scent of orange blossoms lingered in his bed, when she'd left behind an aura of sensuality that stirred forbidden memories? But it wasn't only her beauty that haunted him, it was the sadness he'd seen in her eyes, the terrible longing in her soft voice when she’d spoken of her losses and her love for Lizzie, the way her skin had been like hot silk beneath his fingertips.
All he wanted to feel for her was a cold, hard anger, and an even colder satisfaction that her life had gone as badly wrong as his. But something stronger and more complicated than dislike was in his heart, something that filled him with fear.
He told himself that it was the stifling heat that made the bedroom so unbearable, and not this new unwanted emotion. It was the moonlight, slanting across the bed, right in his eyes that made it impossible to sleep.
Restlessly, he threw off his sheet and lay sweltering on top of the narrow bed, fighting not to think of her.
He could think of nothing else. He hadn't had a woman in over a year. Maybe that's why he kept remembering how beautiful Jess was, with her pale hair shining in the darkness, with those flyaway wisps blowing against her face. Every time he remembered the way the poplin material had stretched across her breasts and pulled at the row of buttons, a fever throbbed in his blood. He clenched his fists and willed himself to forget. He hated that stubborn, willful streak in her that refused to bend. At the same time he ached to take her in his arms and hold her all through the night. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to make her forget Jonathan and Benjamin. Never again did he want to see that terrible look of anguish on her face. He knew too well the pain she must have suffered.
The fan blew across his skin, and he started to feel cold. So he pulled the covers over him again. No sooner than he got warm, he was too warm.
Sometime in the night he got up, bundling the sheet around his waist. He tore open the shutters and opened the doors that led out onto the veranda. There was no breeze. Only the thick, wet heat seeping out of the jungle. He felt faint, sick, drugged. The black trees seemed to whirl like towering giants.
It was Bancroft's fault! She had plunged him into this hell. She'd taken his child. She'd pushed him over that cliff. She'd drugged him with enough medicine to knock out a horse.
He almost fell down. He lunged wildly to s
ave himself, and crashed into the shutters instead.
Wood splintered. One of the shutters drooped crazily.
He knew he should go back to bed.
He stumbled outside anyway.
Five
It was after midnight. Jess lay awake, absently twirling a strand of her hair as she glared at a ribbon of moonlight on the wall. She'd been awake for hours, her mind stewing endlessly about Jackson. From where she lay, she could see the dark rain forest clearly.
She had known when she came to Australia that Jackson would behave in his inimitable, deplorable fashion. She had never expected him to willingly cooperate with her.
Blast him! Why did he have to be so impossibly macho and stuffed to the core with his own pride? Despite all his ferocious strutting and chest-thumping, he was only a man. But what a man. She smiled weakly, and not the usual sweet, superior smile that Jackson hated. Her lips felt hot and fluttery as she thought of his long, dark fingers, holding her prisoner, of his immense bronzed body coiled into hers, of how deliciously small she'd felt as she'd lain on top of him. Her stomach felt hollow and clammy. It was horrifying that she was so turned on by such a sexist individual.
Dear God, what was happening to her? How could this perverse man, this caveman, still affect her in the same way he had when she was a girl? For all her blustering determination when she'd been with him, the truth was she was actually afraid to go to Jackson Downs with him.
Why did he have to be so excessively masculine? So disturbingly male and beautiful that even a woman with a character as strong as her own still found him exciting? She lay in her empty, cold bed and wadded her top sheet restlessly as she thought of him alone in his. Her heart throbbed dully as she remembered his tight fingers gripping her wrist, his hard body beneath hers.
Why him? Why did he alone have this power over her? He was a hunk of muscle and conceit and testosterone—strong-willed, grouchy, selfish, stubborn, spoiled. The list was endless. He didn't care a whit for the world or its problems[JO8]. Only his own. She'd grown up abroad, seen the world and its brutal realities she'd wanted to make a difference.