But how could she hang around in this district for almost a week?
Those thoughts alone could have kept her awake, but as the hands of the plate-shaped clock on the kitchen wall crept past midnight Lily thought most of all about what the policeman, Heath Drayton, had told her.
‘You’re bound to hear if you’re staying in the district,’ he’d said. ‘Daniel Renton’s recently been released from jail.’
Jail. Oh, God.
No wonder Daniel was withdrawn and shadowed by sadness.
However, when Lily had pressed the young policeman for details, he hadn’t been prepared to tell her any more. ‘But you can take it from me, they locked up the wrong bloke,’ he’d said.
She’d been even more shocked to hear that.
Poor Daniel. How awful. The very thought of jail seemed to drain every ounce of happiness from her. It conjured dreadful images of dreary grey guarded cells, walls topped by broken glass and barbed wire, lines of angry men, degraded and defeated.
On the other hand, although it was a selfish thought, she was reassured to know that at least her instincts about Daniel had been right. He was a troubled man, but apparently he wasn’t really a criminal.
‘I’m afraid Daniel will still have a few dry gullies to cross, emotionally,’ Heath had added, and his eyes had flashed with a disturbing shrewdness.
Lily had felt compelled to protest. ‘I don’t have designs on him.’
He’d grinned at her then. ‘That’s a damn shame.’
No wonder she couldn’t sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN DANIEL LOOKED in at the kitchen door next morning, Lily was still fast asleep. She was lying on her back, her tanned arm, loose with sleep, flung over the pillow. A single gold bangle encircled her wrist. She looked innocent and lethal at once—sweet, and yet dangerously sensuous and womanly.
He couldn’t help staring at her—spellbound by the perfect swell of her breasts beneath a lavender camisole, by her softly parted lips, the pink flush on her cheeks, the play of morning sunlight spinning her sandy hair to silver and gold. He was seized by a desperate desire to plunge his hands in her hair. He wanted to touch her soft skin, to taste her lips and to kiss the shallow dip above her collarbone, to bury his face in her breasts.
He wanted her—wanted her so badly he almost groaned aloud with the aching thrust of his need.
Damn.
Spinning on his heel, he made a hasty but necessary exit. Breakfast could wait. He’d put in two full hours of work before he ventured back into his kitchen.
Five minutes later, steering the tractor towards a stand of head-high kunai grass, he went through the process of banishing all thoughts of Lily. But when at last he’d cleared his head of her he made a mistake. A bad mistake.
He thought about Jess instead.
Jessica, his daughter, who lived in Sydney with his former mother-in-law. Thinking of her brought the full weight of his awful loneliness down on him. The memories of Jess crowded in—especially the way she’d used to dance into the kitchen on weekday mornings, dressed in her blue-and-white-checked school uniform with her pigtails bobbing, eager to guess what he’d prepared for her breakfast.
Sometimes it had been sausages or baked beans, but more often than not it had been eggs—boiled, poached, scrambled or fried. Her favourite was a boiled egg in a hen-shaped eggcup. And she’d have toast fingers for dipping. And milk, or orange juice, in a glass with stars painted on it.
In winter she’d have porridge, sprinkled with brown sugar. Saturday mornings they’d made pancakes sprinkled with white sugar and lemon juice.
Food was a big deal for Jess. She was always ravenous. And yet, because she was always on the go, she was such a skinny little thing. All thin brown limbs and big blue eyes. Full of laughter. Lots of laughter. And hugs. And giggles. Oh, boy, could that kid giggle.
Daniel pressed a fisted hand over his mouth to stop himself from crying out.
Life without Jess was hell.
He thought of the breakfast he’d had yesterday morning—dry toast and black tea. It was all he’d felt like.
He’d read somewhere that a lack of interest in food was a symptom of depression. Well, yeah, maybe he was depressed. Maybe he had a right to be down. Freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be—not when it meant coming home to a run-down property with too many broken fences, overgrown weeds and heavily reduced numbers of stock in poor condition.
And an empty house.
Without Jess.
He had little hope of ever winning his daughter back from his former mother-in-law’s clutches.
‘You can’t possibly expect Jess to live with you now, Daniel,’ Susan had told him, her smug, well-bred voice turning shrill over a long-distance phone call from Sydney. ‘Not after all that she’s been through. Have you any idea how she’s suffered during your—your incarceration? I won’t countenance sending her back. It’s unthinkable. She’s only just settling down now, and it would be cruel to disturb her. Besides, you couldn’t be an appropriate person to take care of a young girl turning eleven. She’s at a very delicate age.’
Oh, yeah, Susan. And you did such a superb job of raising your own daughter.
When he ventured back to the house at around eight, he saw that Lily had folded the camp-bed and set it on the veranda, and as he approached the kitchen doorway he was met by the mouthwatering aroma of frying bacon. Lily was at his stove, frying not only bacon, but mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs.
She turned and grinned at him. ‘I started as soon as I heard your tractor stop.’
His stomach rumbled as he eyed the sizzling pan. ‘Did you buy all this stuff in town yesterday?’
‘I sure did. There’s orange juice in the fridge, and I’ve got some freshly ground coffee from New Guinea. Would you like some?’
He was suddenly incredibly hungry.
‘Orange juice and coffee would be great,’ he admitted, and he reached to open a cupboard. ‘I’m sure there’s a coffee plunger in here somewhere.’
As they sat down to breakfast, Lily wondered if this would be another meal accompanied by desultory, awkward conversation. If only Daniel was relaxed and sociable, like most of her friends, then he would probably ask her what her plans were. And she would feel quite free to tell him about her reason for being here, about her worries for Fern and her need to confront Audrey—as well as her frustration with the scarcity of accommodation at the pub, and how Audrey had taken off without notice.
And once she’d explained all that it would be more than likely that a relaxed and sociable friend would invite her to stay on. She would offer to clean his house in exchange for accommodation. Heaven knew, Daniel could do with a helping hand.
But Daniel was nowhere near relaxed—which was hardly surprising, given all that he’d been through.
Eighteen months in prison.
Lily couldn’t imagine shaking off an experience like that. And Heath Drayton had implied that Daniel certainly should not have been locked up in the first place. If he was innocent—and Lily had no doubt that he was—he might never get over the cruel injustice of it. No wonder a pall of black gloom clung to the man. He couldn’t be expected to forget such horror quickly or easily.
‘So, you’re heading off today?’ His voice cut through her thoughts, catching her off-guard. ‘Which way are you going? Back to Sugar Bay?’
What was the point of lying? She had nothing to lose by telling him the truth. ‘Actually, I was hoping to see someone who lives out here. But she’s gone away, so I’m at a bit of a loose end for a few days.’
He looked displeased with her answer, and frowned moodily as he speared a mushroom with his fork.
She felt a ridiculous urge to give him a bear hug and urge him to cheer up, but then she remembered about the ‘emotional dry gullies’ he still had to cross.
Ridiculous urge, indeed.
Instead, she said quickly, nervously, ‘Look, Daniel, I’ll keep out of your way, I promise, but I was w
ondering if perhaps I could give you a hand to clean this place up?’
He looked shocked. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Lily sucked in a quick breath. ‘Well, for starters, the pub’s full.’ She began to tick off the points on her fingers. ‘And you’ve got a problem with me camping down by the road. You’ve got more than enough on your plate with the cattle and weeds and things, so you don’t have time for your house. I’m cash-strapped and need somewhere to stay.’
When he didn’t respond, she went on. ‘Maybe I could do a spot of house-cleaning?’
It was simply a practical arrangement that benefited them both, Lily told herself. But was she being honest? She hated to think about ‘moth and flame’ comparisons, but she’d felt shamelessly drawn to Daniel ever since she’d first seen him standing in the river, naked and wet, with muscles rippling.
And her feelings for him had become more complicated once she’d learned that he’d been in jail. When she looked at him now, she felt a sweet, piercing pang that went deep—way deeper than sympathy. Or simple lust.
So, yes, for all sorts of reasons she was probably crazy to be here, proposing to intrude further into this man’s home.
But the alternative—heading home empty-handed—would feel like bitter defeat, as if her father had won after all.
Daniel stared at her, and his throat worked, and then he dropped his gaze to Orphan, who was sitting quietly near his feet. ‘I don’t have much in the way of cleaning gear,’ he said.
Good heavens. Was she mistaken, or had that sounded amazingly like an acceptance?
Lily cleared her throat. ‘I could run into Gidgee Springs and stock up for you, if you like.’
His head jerked up, and he eyed her warily. ‘If people in town knew you were working for me they could give you a hard time.’ A dark flush stained his cheekbones.
‘I’d like to see them try.’ Reaching a hand across the table, she almost, but not quite, touched him. ‘Daniel, I don’t know why you went to prison, but Heath Drayton told me they jailed the wrong man. That’s good enough for me. I believe him. I don’t care what others think or say.’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘I was brought up in a hippie commune. I’m a free spirit.’ She lifted an eyebrow. ‘I also perform miracles with dusting rags.’
Daniel refused to be amused. Jaw set, he stared at Orphan, and seemed to be wrestling with an inner battle.
‘I’ve got a vacuum cleaner,’ he said at last. ‘Not much else.’
Lily’s breath caught. ‘Great. A cobweb broom would be handy, too. And I could get extra bottles of cleaning stuff. Furniture polish—that sort of thing. What do you reckon?’
She waited for his scowl, but, to her surprise, he smiled slowly.
‘I reckon you’ve got a huge job on your hands.’
She smiled sweetly back at him. ‘I like a challenge.’
I like a challenge?
Mid-morning, Lily stood in the hallway of Daniel’s house, surrounded by a mountain of cleaning equipment, and wished she’d been more honest with him. With herself.
If she’d been truthful she would have admitted that her housekeeping skills were minimal. In fact, when she’d lived in Sydney she’d paid a weekly cleaning service to take care of her tiny, one-bedroom apartment. She’d had better things to do than mopping and dusting—she’d had parties to attend, nightclubs and the movies.
Travelling to Sri Lanka had changed her. Rather, it had completed a change that had already begun. For some time before that she’d been growing more and more uneasy with her shallow, frivolous lifestyle in Sydney. After twelve months of working in disaster-ravaged villages, she’d discovered the deeper satisfaction of helping people who desperately needed her help but could never pay her back in a material sense.
However, she’d been working in administration, writing begging letters for donations, placing orders for essential commodities and distributing provisions—not doing housework.
Now Lily’s chest was spiked by an uncomfortable twinge of guilt. Not because she couldn’t work out how to turn on the vacuum cleaner, but because by boasting about non-existent housekeeping skills she’d been given permission to invade Daniel’s home. He clearly didn’t want to talk about himself or his past, and yet she would be opening doors that would reveal all manner of things about him—and, possibly, about the people who had lived with him.
She hoped, as she set her hand on the first doorknob, that she wasn’t making a serious mistake.
She felt nervous flutters in her stomach. For all she knew, there might be very good reasons why Daniel had left these doors shut. She’d assumed he simply wanted to contain the dust, but they could be hiding anything—including bad memories.
Nevertheless, she was committed now. He’d gone off with Orphan to mend fences and left her the run of his house.
Her original plan had been to throw open all the doors and get an overall idea of what she was up against. But now the thought of five filthy rooms was too daunting, and it suddenly seemed prudent to uncover the rooms one at a time—a kind of lucky dip.
She pushed the first door open.
It wasn’t until she heard Daniel’s footsteps coming down the hall that she realised it was lunch time already, and she was only halfway through cleaning the first room.
She was on her knees beside the bookcase, surrounded by small towers of books, busy with a bottle of orange oil and a dusting rag, but she sent Daniel a brave smile as he came into the room. And his answering smile was surprisingly warm. It seemed to slip right under her skin, warming every part of her.
Hoping to deflect attention from her slow progress, she asked quickly, ‘How did Orphan enjoy her first morning at Ironbark?’
Daniel was so busy looking around him at the room that he almost seemed to have forgotten the dog at his heels. He blinked and looked down at Orphan. ‘I think she’s had a great time. She actually chased a wallaby. What about you?’
‘I’m afraid I’m terribly slow at this.’ She hoped he didn’t see the guilty flash in her eyes. ‘I expected to be finished with this room already, but I realised these books needed to be dusted individually.’
‘Whatever you’re doing, the results are great.’ He continued to look about the large, airy room, with rows of deep, white-framed windows that opened onto the veranda. ‘I’d forgotten how much I liked this living room.’
‘I took the curtains down,’ Lily said. ‘But I’m afraid they might not survive another wash, or even a trip to the cleaners. They look as if they might fall to pieces.’
Daniel surveyed the framed-glass windows, now sparkling clean and offering a clear view of the front lawn, the pink cascading flowers of the cassia tree and the sunny blue sky above. ‘I think I prefer it in here without curtains.’
Resting back on her heels, Lily considered this. ‘I don’t suppose privacy’s an issue out here, but you might want some sort of drape to cut the afternoon sun if you’re watching television.’
‘Perhaps.’ He frowned, and something like a shadow passed across his face. ‘I haven’t bothered with television since I got back. Somehow I haven’t felt ready to let the outside world in.’
This unexpected admission brought a lump to Lily’s throat. It was the first time Daniel had shown her a tiny glimpse into how he was feeling.
He crossed the room and ran his fingers lightly along the back of the sofa, and then he stared thoughtfully at the silky oak entertainment centre, housing a television set, a CD player and a video recorder. The freshly polished timber gleamed with a warm honey glow, and as he studied it he seemed lost in thought. In memories?
Lily wondered if he was remembering happy times, sitting there on the sofa with someone he loved curled beside him while they watched their favourite TV show, or perhaps a movie. She could picture a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. Or wine glasses. Two heads close together.
A loud and very unhappy sigh escaped Daniel, making Lily uncomfortable, as if she were a voyeur, watching him
during an intensely private moment. She discreetly switched her attention to Orphan, who was sniffing and snuffling at something in the corner behind a lounge chair.
‘You’re showing me up, Orphan,’ she said, with a bright little laugh. ‘I know I haven’t cleaned in that corner yet. What have you found? A dead mouse?’
Hurrying over, she bent down to see what the dog was so interested in. ‘Oh, dear, no, you can’t have that.’ Over her shoulder, she told Daniel. ‘It’s a poor little dried-out frog. It must have hopped in here and then couldn’t find its way out again.’
‘Don’t let Orphan eat it,’ he said. ‘It might be a cane toad. They’re poisonous.’
‘It’s all right. I’ve wrapped it up in a duster.’
Lily patted the dog’s head, but in a distracted way. She’d seen something else down on the floor—a dusty cherrywood frame. Bending lower, she reached into the corner behind the chair. ‘There’s something wedged back here. It looks like a photo frame.’
Standing upright again, she held it out, and Daniel’s face tightened.
‘That’s nothing,’ he snapped. ‘It can go straight in the bin.’
Lily knew she should probably do exactly as he asked, but she was seized by insatiable curiosity and she turned the frame over. She couldn’t help a shocked gasp. Despite the dust and cobwebs that covered it, she could see that this was a wedding photo.
Daniel, as a young bridegroom, looked impossibly happy and proud beside his beautiful bride—a stunning, slender brunette in an exquisite Italian gown.
Heat tinged Lily’s cheeks and her throat grew tight. Where was that bride now?
‘Give it here,’ Daniel muttered. ‘I’ll get rid of it.’
‘All right.’ She stepped forward and handed it to him. He took it from her a little too roughly. ‘Be careful,’ she warned. ‘The glass is broken.’
He scowled at her, and then at the photo.
What should she say? What could she say? ‘She’s a very lovely bride.’
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