Outback Bridegroom

by Margaret Way

  “Why do we do it then?”

  “Why do I do it with you, you mean?” He smiled at her but the mockery didn’t stop. “Self-protection, Christine. If you don’t love, you don’t lose. Losing can be horribly wounding.”

  “Somehow we’ve got to work through this, Mitch.”

  “Why?” Marshal your defences, he reminded himself. Line up your arguments before you answer. She can knock them down in less than a minute.

  “Because it’s important. For all that’s happened, we still care about each other.”

  “You mean I want you,” he corrected bluntly. “What I feel now is lust, not love. Wanting isn’t always the right thing to do, but I’m afraid that’s a matter beyond repair. The flesh has a life of its own.”

  “Let’s start with your head,” she challenged.

  He hauled her closer, their bodies moving in the old way, rhythmically, in perfect unison. “My head rejects you.”

  “That’s terribly sad.”

  “Isn’t it? Come here.” He said it as though she was about to break away. “It doesn’t stop either of us functioning. I carry much of the responsibility for the station now. You’ve made a big success of yourself. So we’re both performing more than adequately, despite our little estrangement.”

  “I don’t feel estranged.” She felt inflamed. Madly, hotly yearning, desirous. Heart slumbrous, body light as thistledown in his arms.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Awfully in love with you. It’s as though my heart’s set in concrete.”

  For a moment he almost lost it. “Ah, stop it,” he chided, grinding her beautiful, slender body against him in ecstasy and a kind of rage.

  “You asked the question. I answered.”

  “You’re trying to re-establish yourself in my life?”

  She could have recoiled from his blazing eyes. Instead she let her breath surge, then subside. “If you’ll let me in.”

  He swallowed hard on a stifled groan, feeling inadequate to the task of pushing this woman away. This woman who made all his senses run riot.

  “What then?” he demanded. “We get back to the same situation. You’ll decide again you really shouldn’t have made any commitment. We have to let go, Chris. You no longer fit in here.”

  That hurt terribly. “You didn’t used to be cruel,” she whispered, swaying in his arms.

  “You can take the blame for that. Cruelty is a way of maintaining distance.”

  “So you’re never going to forgive me?”

  It was all he could do not to pick her up and carry her off with violence and passion. “It’s not a question of forgiveness,” he said bluntly. “I fear being in love with you, Chrissy. There. I’ve admitted it. I fear all the rage, the loneliness and frustration. Losing you was too painful an experience to want to chance it again.”

  “Yet you want to go to bed with me?”

  He relaxed his firm hold on her. “Should that be a surprise? You’re a very beautiful, experienced woman. Sex doesn’t always end in disaster. Love can—and does.”

  “So you’re prepared to forfeit love for the likes of Amanda Logan? I couldn’t help seeing her wrapped around your arm.”

  He didn’t respond immediately, aware he was guilty of allowing Amanda to cling. “Surely you’re not jealous? There’s no need to be.”

  “You’re giving Amanda encouragement. I’m not jealous, as it so happens. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “You’re absolutely right about that. Amanda’s too ready to leap into my arms.”

  “She should play harder to get.”

  “Chrissy, darling, don’t interfere. You’re out of my life, remember?”

  “How could I forget, when you keep telling me? There’s no hope I could get back?” Her sapphire eyes implored; she was breathless with the effort.

  “Why are you doing this?” He bent his head over hers, such a terrible rending sensation inside him. “In no time at all you’ll be out of here. The vacation will be over. You’ll have to move on. Make yet another escape. It can’t have been all that easy to move to the top of your profession anyway.”

  “Strangely enough, it was. That’s the irony of it. My agency called my rise ‘meteoric’. I was lucky. I had the right look at the right time.”

  “And the celebrities of the fashion world are your friends. You’ve spent your time winging around the great capitals of the world. Even your family couldn’t keep track of you. You’re used to million-dollar contracts, nightclubs, dinner parties, gala functions—the high life. Hell, you must have brushed up against some wild people—the drug scene, even. Modelling must expose you to all sorts.”

  She drew back in surprise. Somehow she’d thought he would never touch on that subject. He knew her, the sort of person she was. “Sure I have,” she freely admitted, “but that scene scares me to death. I hate it mostly for the ones who seem powerless to stop themselves from entering it. I don’t do drugs, Mitch. Never have, never will. It’s outside my code. I’m not promiscuous either.”

  “God, did I say you were?” The very thought of her in nameless men’s arms shocked him to the core. This was the woman who had once been everything to him. Who still made him come sensually alive.

  “I think in your head you’ve exaggerated my way of life,” Christine said quietly. “You’ve probably heard too much about fashion identities hooked on alcohol or drugs. I keep my feet on the ground. I may have changed on the surface, but I’m the same person underneath.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that, Chrissy?” he asked. “You’re surely not trying to tell me you’re ready to give it all up? Come home?”

  She looked across the brightly lit terrace and saw Amanda staring their way, her pretty face pinched in envy. “I’ll have to eventually. I’d say I have a couple more years at the outside. Youth is the name of the modelling game. Adorable little twelve-year-olds all made up to achieve the look. Starving themselves into the bargain. It’s a serious problem. Still, they’re making the pages.”

  “So there’s life after modelling?” He sounded highly sceptical.

  “It’s about time I lived it.” Trembling in his embrace, she allowed her hand to caress the back of his neck, compulsively smoothing it.

  “Stop that!” He spoke with deceptive gentleness. What a rare gift she had for raising passion’s ecstasy.

  “Scaredy-cat!” she whispered beneath her breath, just like when they were children. His hair was like thick silk, his skin beneath the hair velvet.

  “Turns out I am,” he answered with a kind of deep self-disgust. “Some part of me will always be mad about you, Chrissy, but not mad enough. So stop all the little tricks. Where exactly would you live? It wouldn’t be all that easy falling off centre stage. The glory and the adulation over.”

  “None of it was in demand from me. I don’t need adulation. As I said, my feet are on the ground. I don’t have stars in my eyes, Mitch. Being a well-known model isn’t the sole object of my life. It was an avenue that gave me worldly success and a lot of pleasure, but I think I can survive the loss.”

  “And what if you’re mistaken?” His gaze was searching.

  “You’ll never trust me again, so why answer? That terrible thought nags at me.”

  “As well it might,” he confirmed dryly. “I can only tell you this, Chrissy. I’m not about to have my heart ripped out twice.” Even as he said it, perversely he pulled her closer, roused and arousing. Electric currents passed from his body to hers, spreading through every fibre, every nerve. It was a fever that would endure.

  That was his brain talking, of course. The only problem was his body wasn’t listening. The pleasure of holding Christine so intimately in his arms was rapture. It was damned nearly killing him. He wanted her…craved her…from the depths of his clamouring heart. He wanted to cover her with kisses, let his hand shape her breasts, move down over her body. He did let one hand slip to her hip-bone, moving his knee between her long lovely legs in a contriv
ed movement of the dance. Hunger was sweeping over him like veils of sand in a dust storm. Not another woman in the world could deliver him such pleasure. Christine as a lover had never been surpassed.

  In the shelter of a lush springing palm, desire peaked. He abandoned all pretence, scooping her beautiful face into his hands, placing his mouth where it most urgently wanted to be.

  Was there a split second’s resistance or sizzling shock? Whatever, he couldn’t control the pressure, increasing it, wanting more and more, while her lips opened like a flower, so perfect for his loving, her tongue the stamen, circling his with tiny little darting flickers. It flooded him with passion, urging him on.

  Her eyes were closed. He could feel the tickle of her long eyelashes. Somehow she had melted into him in the most ravishing fusion, her body hot beneath the flimsy silk-chiffon. He wanted to say, Come away with me. He wanted to take her hand, guide her back through the house to his sanctuary of the west wing. He wanted the unparallelled sensation of undressing her.

  The very thought filled his blood with sparks. He thought his strong hands must be crushing her satiny cheeks, but she didn’t complain. Not a whimper. If anything she was letting his mouth devour her in an effort to drive away the anguish. He’d told himself over and over he couldn’t put himself through any more, yet here he was, control gone, mortified by desire.

  Kissing wasn’t enough. It had never been enough. He had to know that body, so perfectly constructed for his loving. He wanted her naked in his bed, between his sheets. He wanted to stretch the length of his hard sinewy body beside her. He wanted to drive his manhood deep, deep into her.

  Ecstasy!

  He loved her. It was a force of habit. Though that love was full of desperation. Once they had been the most likely couple in the world. That they were going to get married a foregone conclusion. Now they were the most unlikely pair. She was expelled from his life. The cattleman and the fashion model. Her career, her dramatic rise to the heights, had wrecked all his dreams. There had to be more for him than memories.

  With a muffled, feeling-charged exclamation he released her, inhaling the scent of her on him, breathing it in like oxygen, staring down into her beautiful impassioned face, the desperate wide eyes.

  “That was stupid.” His voice turned sober, cracked with tension. “In fact madness.”

  She confronted him with rising agitation. With love and longing for this hot-hearted, hard-headed man. “What’s wrong with you, Mitch? Do you like it this way? Loving me, hating me?”

  To admit to it was unthinkable. “What I’d love is to take you in a way you’d never forget. I wouldn’t let you out of my room for days, maybe weeks.”

  “Only you lack the courage to try it. You cherish your old grief, Mitch. You nurse it along. I betrayed you. You don’t let me ever forget it. Everything or nothing.” She held a hand over her racing heart. It didn’t beat like this even after a strenuous workout. “You’re wallowing in self-pity,” she accused him. “Is it so utterly impossible to pity me? Yes, and I’ll tell you why. You let your pride choke you.”

  “Really?” Anger ran through him like a dark, bitter undercurrent. It showed itself in the blue flash of his eyes, the set of his head and shoulders, the force of his grip. “Even now you’re trying to control me. You know it. You want to stay the only woman who has gone deep down inside me. Some women are like that.”

  “Not me!” She seemed to be straining to breathe.

  “You can’t take rejection, Chrissy, any more than I could. I loved you,” he said fiercely, “but you didn’t care enough. This is all about power now. The power of a beautiful woman. You’re used to making a spectacular impact. It probably keeps you sparking on all cylinders. Only you’re not asserting that power over me. I’m tired of wasting my life over you. It’s agonizing. I’m the fool who’s lived a stupid dream. It’s kept me from getting on with my life. But the world wouldn’t end if you left me again. I’ve survived separation once already.”

  “I have too. Don’t you think the knowledge I hurt you so badly bites deep? I’m so sorry. I’m beseeching you to sweep away the unhappy past.”

  “It’s not that easy, Chrissy.” He shook his head.

  “Let it rest!”

  “It’s hard to forget what you did.”

  “Then why do you kiss me like you do?” She locked her eyes on his face. “It makes no sense.”

  “I’m human,” he gritted. “Sometimes it’s impossible for me to understand myself. Pride means everything to a man.”

  “What’s pride got to do with it when we’re talking about love?”

  “Who said I still love you?” Behind his head was the dazzling star-studded sky.

  “I say you do.”

  “No more.” He shook his head. “The answer’s simple. It’s sex, Chrissy. I’ll say again, sex has nothing to do with love or happiness.”

  “Agreed—only I don’t accept what you’re saying. You’re trying to punish me. I know you, Mitch. We grew up together, remember? You loved me as your friend before we ever became lovers.”

  “A profound mistake.” His tone was dark. “I’ve relinquished faith in you, Chrissy, when once I had all the faith in the world. For all I know you could be looking for great sex too. Despite everything we know it’d still work.”

  “Except I don’t come cheap.”

  “That goes without saying. So what do you want? It can’t be money. I think it’s still possession.”

  Shadowed by the palm, blind and deaf to everything but themselves and their abandonment to anger, they failed to hear a sweet syrupy voice until the owner of the voice was almost upon them.

  “Mitch, where are you?” It was Amanda, pretending she didn’t know where Mitch had disappeared to when she’d been keeping him and Christine under close surveillance all night.

  “Damn!” Mitch sobered in an instant. “You never know what to expect with Amanda.”

  “I’d call it an ambush.” Christine tossed her hair back from her heated face. “You go and pay her a lot of attention, Mitch. It’ll take your mind off me and hopefully dull your senses. I’ll go back the other way.” With that she moved with the swiftness of a gazelle, already out of sight before Mitch had eased his rangy figure back into the light.

  “There you are, Mitch!” Amanda exclaimed in delight, her pretty face dimpling.

  She was fascinated with Mitch Claydon. Fascinated with everything about him. She prayed he would start paying her more attention. He’d been her escort at the last Outback ball. Of course she’d approached him—put him on the spot, actually—but he could have refused or made up some excuse. He hadn’t. He’d even kissed her at the end of that glorious night, putting her in a delirium of excitement and pleasure. Maybe he’d been a tiny bit drunk. All the guys had been. But she was certain he liked her. In some quarters she was very, very popular, but she’d never scored a date with Golden-Boy Claydon. That was what all the girls called him.

  Now he was walking towards her, exuding a powerful sexuality. She was certain he’d been with Christine Reardon. Those sparkling blue eyes were alight with arousal and some spark of anger. They’d had an argument, she supposed.

  Good!

  Nevertheless, Amanda experienced a thrust of jealousy so sharp and so deep it shocked her. Christine Reardon was getting right on her nerves. Wasn’t she supposed to have been the great love of his life? Yet she’d left him behind. What woman in her right mind would do that? She’d kill for Mitch Claydon. There was still a deep attachment between them, though. She’d been watching them all night out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t wait for the supermodel to pack her bags and fly off for the Big Apple, or somewhere just as far. The sooner the better. Mitch Claydon was everything any sane woman could ever want.

  Quickly, sweetly, Amanda took his arm, her softly voluptuous body blooming. “I’m so enjoying myself, Mitch,” she crooned. “I can’t thank you enough for inviting me. And Shel, of course. Shel doesn’t get out much. She prefers
to be at home than out at a party.”

  “Maybe she’s kept far too busy?” Mitch suggested dryly. “It’s no secret Shelley works very hard.”

  “Of course she does,” Amanda agreed, sounding mortified. “But she thrives on it. She wouldn’t do it otherwise. I must say it’s been thrilling to see Christine again. She’s so gorgeous, and she doesn’t have any airs and graces to her. I love that. We’ve all missed her. I expect you’ve missed her too?”

  “I certainly have.” He hoped that would put Amanda off.

  “Wasn’t there one time you and she were going to get married?” She glanced up at his marvellous face.

  “I don’t know how many times you’ve asked me that, Amanda.”

  She gave a little breathy laugh. “I guess we’re all in awe of Christine. Not everyone gets to be a supermodel. She must have the most glamorous lifestyle—star treatment, all the guys in love with her. Poor old me—I’d be scared of that world myself. Those models try everything! The things you read about them… But Christine knows how to keep her head. She must have had great strength of character, getting off the drugs.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Mitch stared down at her.

  “Oh, gosh. I’ve put my foot in it.”

  “No need to sound so pleased.”

  “Pleased?” Amanda injected a whole lot of dismay into her voice. “I’m not pleased. How could you say that, Mitch? But surely you know, or you’ve heard about it? Why, a few years back Christine admitted in an interview to experimenting with designer drugs. Curiosity, mainly, she said, and obviously she can control it. Some people can, apparently. They take it or leave it. Can’t be easy, I tell myself.”

  “You’re talking absolute rubbish,” Mitch said flatly.

  “Oh, dear. I’m sorry!” Amanda let out a little woeful cry. “You’re so surprised. I really didn’t expect that. I’m fairly certain I’ve still got the magazine. I thought she was a tiny bit indiscreet, admitting to it, but of course in her world it must be all around her.”

  “I dare say it is, but Christine knows how to look after herself. She doesn’t do drugs. I’m certain of that. So don’t go spreading any damaging gossip. She’s denied ever taking them.”