by Ann Major
The child vanished into the scrub.
Jess felt Deirdre's presence—warning her. Her twin had been here. Something terrible had happened to her here. She felt it in her bones.
Jess's heart beat faster. Her trembling fingers tightened with determination on the vine.
Ninnyville! Poppycock!
For an instant the powerful tug of some dark force battled with her equally powerful will. With a cry Jess flung the vine and its snarl of emerald leaves aside and clambered ungracefully up the cliff. Branches tore at her clothes and skin. The roughened edge of a tree limb nicked her cheek, bloodying it, but she struggled upward.
Above her, Jess heard a footfall. It stopped cautiously. A tiny rock tumbled downward through the vines. There was only silence.
"Hello there," she called out. When she parted the vines and pulled herself the rest of the way to the top, no one was there.
And yet she knew seconds before someone had been there. Someone who had not wanted to be caught watching her.
*
Tad sat at a wicker table in a high-backed wicker chair. Where was Jess, damn it?
The tropical sunlight streaming across the veranda was bold and hot, and yet without Jess to battle, the morning lacked sparkle.
Her presence was everywhere. The gray painted floor had been mopped with something that made it gleam. No cobweb dangled from the eaves or from the shaded corners. Tad noted these details with amused respect. Jess, and her Dutch-housewife mania for housekeeping. In the past he had loathed this nit-picking trait of hers. A bit of dirt never hurt anything. For an instant he reflected on Mrs. B., his housekeeper, who preferred complaining about all the housework she had to do to doing it. What would Jess make of the shambles he'd allowed his homestead to fall into in the past year? Not that he'd ever allow her to set foot on his place, of course.
Jess. Where was she? He’d felt out of sorts ever since he'd awakened and found her gone.
*
Tad sprawled in the wicker chair and rubbed his clean-shaven chin after he finished shaving. Lizzie had watched him shave with fascinated eyes. The skin was paler there than the rest of his face, but it felt good to be almost himself again.
Around him, a profusion of begonias, spider lilies, and orchids bloomed beneath ten-foot-tall tree ferns. The flowerbeds near the house had been recently turned, and not a single weed grew among the blooms. Jess had doubtless been busy there, too, after she'd finished with the porch. A high weed-infested, emerald green lawn stretched to the dense scrub where the parrots were conducting a symphony—the lawn that she had meant to mow.
Tad's fever was gone. He was miraculously better. Naturally, he took full credit. His well-being owed nothing to the diligence of Jess's nursing. He refused to dwell on the memories of how she had hovered at his bedside.
He told himself that he had the constitution of a horse. It took more than pneumonia (he still didn't believe that diagnosis from Dr. Know-it-all) and a kick off a cliff from a she-devil to keep him down. Except for being a little sore, he felt invigorated from a night of rest, from a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast, butter, jam and purple passion fruit.
He sipped his coffee and felt bursting with energy.
He was a new man—ready for a cigarette. He fumbled defiantly in his pocket and then remembered that there were none because he’d quit.
Grumpily he eyed the vacant wicker chair across the table. Where was she, damn it? Messing around in someone else's business, no doubt. With her gone, there was no one to fight. And that bothered him even more than the nagging urge he felt for a cigarette.
What did Jess have? The minute he was around her, she crawled inside him and took him over until his every thought, his every emotion, centered upon her.
He hadn't seen her since that last hour before dawn when he'd awakened in the moonlight and discovered her nestled in his arms. Vaguely he'd been aware of her getting up some time later, after the sun had risen above the trees. She had crept stealthily out of the room as though she were ashamed of having slept beside him. She had cooked his breakfast, but Meeta and Lizzie had served it.
"Madam Doctor went to the hotel to tell about the mower you broke," Meeta had explained in her curiously precise English, when Tad had demanded to know where Jess was.
So, now it was the lawn mower he broke! Well, when was she coming back? How long did it take to walk two miles to the hotel, fabricate this half-truth, pay for the blasted thing and return? Usually she was efficient as hell.
Though he felt bored and irritable, he decided to waste no more time while she was away. If he was going to wrest control of his daughter from Jess, he needed their passports. That way Jess couldn't disappear with Lizzie the minute she decided to.
He hobbled to Jess's room and began going through her suitcases and briefcases. While he searched, he discovered several journals in which she'd made notes about her experiences in India. Vaguely he remembered her saying she was writing a book.
He found letters from the Indian government warning Jess that she had been admitted as a tourist to India and not as a missionary, that she had no right to operate her clinic even though the neighborhood wanted her to. Tad pitied the poor bastard. As if legalities would stop Bancroft!
At last he located Lizzie’s and Jess's passports in the side compartment of one of her briefcases. Just as he pocketed them he heard a sound outside.
Lizzie bounded into the room, and then came to an abrupt standstill when she caught him rummaging through Jess's papers. Two untied purple ribbons dangled from her hair.
"What are you doing in Aunt Jess's room, Daddy? She told me never to..."
He started guiltily, but he couldn't help feeling more secure since he now possessed Lizzie's passport.
"Aunt Jess came to Australia to help us," Lizzie said guilelessly.
"That's what I'm afraid of," he muttered.
"She better not catch you! Come on, Daddy, I don't want you to get into any more trouble."
"I'm not in trouble, and I’m not afraid of her," he roared. Nevertheless, when Lizzie took his hand and pulled him firmly away, he let her lead him downstairs to his wicker chair.
He lifted her onto his lap. "All I want to do is take you home, Lizzie. Is that so wrong?"
"I heard you fighting with Aunt Jess last night. Why were you so mean to her?"
"I wasn't mean. It was your Aunt Jess who started it! She kicked—"
"You were too mean!" Lizzie gave him a long, searching look. Then she jumped off his lap and went to watch a large bug inch its way across a fern. "Why don't you want Aunt Jess to come with us? She’s lots of fun. She can play with me and write her book when you’re gone."
The last thing he needed was Dr. Know-it-all setting up a command post at his station.
"I’ll play with you," he stated emphatically.
"I want her, too! I'll be scared when you're gone away. I need her."
There was no way around the fact that Jess had been the only mother Lizzie had known for the past year. Tad remembered Deirdre's neglect. The only real mother ever! No wonder Jess held his daughter's heart in a stranglehold.
Lizzie's childish mouth trembled. "Will you go away and leave me alone all the time, the way you used to? What if the bad men come while you're gone?"
He knew too well from his own childhood what abandonment felt like. He thought of how lonely and sick at heart he'd been the year Lizzie had been away. A vertical crease of worry formed between his brows. He'd been thinking of sending Lizzie to boarding school until the station was safer. Would she see that as abandonment?
"Aunt Jess pays attention...just to me. You never did that."
"Jess has her clinic in India," he said lamely. "What would all those sick people do without her?"
"She got another doctor to come and take her place. Daddy, you don't know her like I do! She lost her little boy. Benjamin. She'll be sad and cry if I go away and leave her."
"Somehow I can't imagine your Aunt Jess crying."
"But she does. When it's dark and she can't fall asleep, when she thinks nobody knows. I saw her one night when I sneaked up to tell her I wanted a glass of water and I couldn't find my purple cup. She was in her bed looking real sad and holding Benjamin's picture. She showed it to me and let me climb in bed with her. Then she told me about him. He was her little boy, but he was killed. He had a black cat named Roger. She'll never see Benjamin again. That's why we can't go away without her. She'll be all alone."
At the thought of Jess crying over Ben's picture, a strange feeling gripped Tad as he remembered the shimmer of desperate loneliness he'd seen in Jess's eyes.
There were quick, brisk footsteps on the stairs. The light patter of sound grew louder.
Bancroft.
He had learned the sound of her years ago and he felt cheered, much more than he wanted to. She was back. Safe. For the first time he realized how worried he'd been.
Behind him the footsteps stopped. She had seen him.
He inhaled the scent of orange blossoms. Jess's presence hovered in the air, electrifying him. He had difficulty trying to breathe and there was an odd tightening in the pit of his stomach.
"Bancroft?"
"You're better, I see," came her crispest, no-nonsense voice.
He turned and saw her, and his feelings grew momentarily soft.
She was standing in a shower of sunlight. Her hair in its prim knot was as bright as gold. Her cheeks were radiantly flushed. As always she wore a white poplin blouse buttoned all the way to her throat. Only this one had a torn sleeve. He saw a tiny scratch across her cheek.
"Did you hurt yourself?" he began, feeling way too much concern.
"I-I tripped," she said. "I-I'm okay."
In his mind's eye he saw the broken bits of rubber hose, Deirdre's diving gear scattered upon the sand. "Where were you?" he demanded.
"Paying for the mower that you—"
"That you broke," he finished. "It damn sure took you long enough."
"Wally got to talking about the hotel expansion."
"No doubt you insisted on seeing the plans and sharing a few of your own ideas."
"As a matter of fact I do know a thing or two about building and spotted several flaws in his plan. Naturally, I offered my help—"
"I knew it!" This was a roar. "You are the bossiest! The most impossible—! Poor Wally!"
Jess's face darkened.
"Aunt Jess, please don't mind if Daddy gets grumpy and picks quarrels with you. He's been sick, and he always gets like this when he sits around by himself and starts feeling lonesome."
"Grumpy?" Tad almost snarled the word. "Lonesome? I’ll have you know I was as happy as a lark while she was gone!"
Lizzie bounded into her aunt's arms to protect her.
"You're right, darling," Jess agreed in her sweetest, most galling tone, petting her niece and retying the purple ribbons as she ignored Tad. "He's impossible now." Jess hesitated. "The pity of it is that he's even worse when he's well."
“I will not have you passing judgment on me to my own daughter!"
Lizzie snuggled even more tightly into her aunt's arms, and Tad reined in his fierce desire to rant as he observed the easy affection and trust between the two of them. With a pang of something that felt almost like—like jealousy—he watched Jess stroke the bright red curls tenderly, her face softening.
"Look, Aunt Jess! He shaved it off!"
"So I see."
Jess's expression was an attempt at sternness, as she studied him. Suddenly she smiled, that charming smile that lit up her eyes. His own anger and jealousy vanished. He stared at her, dazzled.
"I'm glad to see that you haven't acquired a double chin since I saw you last, Jackson," she murmured drily, coming nearer, inspecting the hard line of his clean-shaven jaw with disturbing intensity. "Or a scar."
"What?"
"In fact, I'm surprised." She squinted, studying every detail of the hard jawline, the stubborn, clenched male mouth. "I was afraid you must be hiding some new defect. Why else would a man as vain and cocky about being handsome as you are cover your face with such a beastly set of whiskers? They made you look very untidy."
He dismissed vain and cocky and beastly.
Handsome. He was so inordinately pleased by her backhanded compliment, he grinned. "I don’t give a damn whether or not you approve of my face."
There was a brief silence. Lizzie, who had tired of being hugged, bounded exuberantly outside to chase blue butterflies across the lawn. For a moment Jess's gaze followed the child. Then she turned back to him.
"I'm sure most women who do not know you as well as I do approve of your face, Jackson."
"Ah, but you who do know me, and quite well..." He let his eyes flash with delicious, joyous insolence. "You approve, too."
"That would not be my choice of term. I heartily disapprove of your conceit, of your arrogance... In short, of the multiple defects in your character. And character is what really matters in a man."
"Well, at least there's something about me you like." He grinned at her. "That's a start."
"A start?"
The most horrendous, the most outrageous idea had popped into his head. He was remembering the way Jess's eyes shone every time they touched Lizzie. He was thinking of his own excitement every time he found himself in this impossible woman's presence. He was remembering how dreary the station had been this past year. He was bored with the sameness of his lonely existence. And sometimes when he was bored he did crazy, self-destructive things.
"A start in the right direction," he replied casually. Tad's heavy-lidded eyes swiftly appraised the slim, full-breasted woman standing before him. She was wearing her khaki shorts again, and a great deal of honey-toned leg was exposed. But he wasn't looking at her shapely legs. He was studying the stretch of starched white poplin across her breasts.
He remembered those breasts, those ripe, lush breasts with their enchanting strawberry tips, rising and falling against the hot skin of his chest last night. He thought of her narrow waist, her curving hips, the long, luscious legs and he became uncomfortably warm as he remembered how marvelous she was in bed. Despite all the reasons he had for disliking her, despite her contrary disposition, she excited him as no other woman ever had.
He had always wanted her.
He had just been tricked into taking the sister instead.
Jess's lashes fell before his bold, deliberate scrutiny, and she held her breath in an agony of embarrassment and irritation. He lowered his gaze—not a second before she would have blasted him with a barrage of temper.
He was insane—to even think of it. But at the mere thought of it, his blood tingled through his veins, setting every nerve alert.
His eyes rose to her breasts again.
He thought of the danger.
But there would also be the opportunity for revenge. She had betrayed him. She had made love to him, made him love her, and then... He remembered the years of bitter, soul-destroying pain with Deirdre.
Quickly he looked away, but he had made up his mind in that instant.
He was going to take Bancroft to the station with him. What were bullets and bandits to someone like Jess? It was time he took the upper hand with her and used her for his pleasure in the same way she had used him. She would keep Lizzie safe or die trying.
He wasn't going to fight her about it, after all. He was going to placidly agree to her plan. Of course, they wouldn't get along. He would have to endure her busybody presence. She'd insist on running things. So would he. They would fight like tigers.
But that's what tigers were meant to do.
He smiled back at her. He was drowning in the inky, gold-flecked darkness of her sparkling eyes. Long ago she'd looked at him in that same way when he'd made love to her the night she had betrayed him.
"I see my medicines and my nursing have done the trick," she said, congratulating herself immodestly in that manner of hers that usually annoyed him.
Natura
lly, like any man with a dash of conceit in his nature, he felt it his duty to eradicate such an abominable trait when he found it in a woman.
"I wasn't so very sick," he said huskily, deliberately goading her. "I'm healthy by nature."
She frowned slightly. "Oh, really?"
"Really. I didn't even need a doctor."
Her eyebrows arched. She pursed her lips at his conceit and ingratitude. "Yesterday you thought you did."
"You may be interested to know that I've decided to let you come with me to Jackson Downs," he said magnanimously.
"You already agreed to that last night."
"What?"
"When you were delirious. You practically begged me."
"When we were in bed," he amended. "At such times, a man will say anything."
Her narrowed eyes went from deepest black to fiery gold—her haughty-empress look. And yet beneath the look, he sensed a profound pain.
She moved jerkily, turning her back to him and crossing the veranda to the side door.
"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," he pursued softly. He said that only to prevent her leaving.
She stopped. "No you're not. You're used to treating every woman as if it's your intention and right to seduce her."
"Not every woman," he said thickly. "I already succeeded with you—once before."
She sucked in a quick breath. Her fingers trembled as she struggled to open the door.
He jumped out of his chair and sprang toward her. She backed against the wall.
"Y-you're just saying that so I won't come," she said.
"Am I?" He towered over her, laughing, conscious of a hot male excitement. Once she had made him want her, and she had used his desire for her to destroy him. "Maybe I'm saying it so you will. Because I do…intend to seduce you…that is…if seduction is necessary."
Scant inches separated them. She was so beautiful, like a goddess, with the sunlight turning her hair to gold, with the color high in her cheeks. He longed to trace a fingertip gently across the jagged cut on her cheek. She turned from him and struggled with the door.
Dimly Tad heard the doorknob rattling furiously, but he was overwhelmed by an urge to touch her. Instead of doing so, his brown fingers clasped the brass doorknob, and twisted it. "Here, let me help you."