Home On the Station/Noah & Kate/Daniel & Lily/Luke & Erin

by Barbara Hannay

  ‘She’s dead.’

  The two words struck her like knife-thrusts.

  She’s dead. Oh, my God.

  Sickened, Lily saw that Daniel was holding the frame by one corner, between two fingers, as if it were a letter bomb. She saw again, beneath the fractured, dusty glass, the beautiful face of the young bride, and she was seized by the terrible thought that this woman’s death was the reason Daniel had gone to jail.

  She felt a flare of panic. Her horrified imagination raced, throwing up wild pictures of terrible possibilities—a domestic dispute that got out of hand, an unhappy love triangle, a passionate duel…

  Shocked, shaken, she stared down at her hands. They were trembling. She knew her face must have drained of colour. ‘I—I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry for me.’

  Lily flinched. ‘I—I…’ She wrung her hands wretchedly. Why, oh, why, had she dragged that photo out? She felt again all the old fears that had haunted her when she’d first met Daniel. Who was he? What had happened? What had she got herself into?

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said softly. ‘I—I mean, I don’t know anything—about—about you. I shouldn’t have—’

  She stopped, knowing that her stammering awkwardness was only making things worse.

  Daniel stared at her, his face devoid of all warmth. He stood granite-still, and his eyes were dark grey stones. Lily felt so scared, she wished she could gather up her things and run away.

  ‘You think I killed Cara?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Frightened by the cold light in his eyes, she shook her head. ‘No. Not—’ She had been going to say not intentionally, but the awful steel in his eyes stopped her.

  After a dreadful silence, Daniel said, ‘There’s no connection between my wife’s death and my jail sentence. Cara died six years ago. And she’d already left me a year before she died.’

  ‘Oh, I—I see,’ Lily whispered, and then she was swamped with relief. Daniel hadn’t killed his wife. Almost immediately, she felt a rush of sympathy for him. The poor man! How many tragedies had shadowed his life?

  He turned abruptly away and stared out of the window. ‘This is exactly what I hoped to avoid,’ he said harshly. ‘A total stranger digging up all the unhappy details of my personal life.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small, tight voice. ‘I didn’t want to intrude into your personal matters. I know this must be painful for you. I wanted to help, but if my poking around brings back too many bad memories—’

  A bitter, mocking laugh escaped him. ‘Will you leave off the “poor, wounded Daniel” routine? I don’t need your sympathy, Lily. Believe me. I can talk about my marriage without bursting into tears. I’m past all that. Our marriage was a mistake from the start.’

  Turning from the window, he said, less severely, ‘Cara ended up with a property developer from Sydney—a guy from the fast lane. Someone who could keep her in fancy clothes and fancy cocktails. And, more importantly, someone her mother approved of.’

  Then he walked across the room and dropped the photo into the plastic garbage bag Lily had been using for rubbish. He wiped his hands against each other to rid them of dust, then plunged them into his jeans pockets and stood, staring at the floor.

  ‘I should amend that. Cara’s mother thought the new guy was wonderful,’ he said. ‘Until he ran his BMW over a cliff one morning on his way home from an all-night party. Taking her daughter with him.’

  An uncomfortable silence descended.

  Lily thought for a moment that now Daniel had started he might go on to tell her more—even about why he’d gone to jail. But after another uncomfortable stretch of silence she realised that wasn’t going to happen. As he said, he hated the idea of a total stranger learning all the unhappy details of his personal life.

  ‘Daniel,’ she said, and then she had to stop to swallow the nervous knot in her throat. ‘I truly wanted to help, but if my going through your house brings back things you’d rather forget, perhaps I’m really not much use to you.’

  He was still standing by the rubbish bag with his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes less stony, but not exactly friendly.

  Lily straightened her shoulders and drew a deep breath. This house was an emotional landmine. She should walk away now, before she stepped on something really disastrous.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve disturbed your peace,’ she said.

  He looked at her from across the room. ‘You disturb my peace in more ways than you might guess, Lily. I might have a poor way of showing it, but I do appreciate your help.’

  His blue eyes were suddenly alight with a warm, soft glow, and he actually smiled at her. Lily felt again an unexpected, inescapable pull, so strong she almost cried out.

  ‘I appreciate your company, too,’ Daniel said, and he smiled again.

  Heaven help her. When he smiled at her that way, all thoughts of running away evaporated like mist at sunrise. Perhaps this moment—finding the photograph—was one of the ‘dry gullies’ Heath Drayton had referred to. And Daniel had crossed it. They both had—and they’d safely reached the other side.

  ‘Well,’ Lily said, with a renewed lightness of heart. ‘I guess it’s time to get lunch ready. I’m starving, aren’t you?’

  The fencing Daniel had scheduled for that afternoon didn’t take as long as expected, and he returned early and sat with Orphan on the front steps, scratching the soft, short fur between the dog’s velvety ears while he listened to the industrious sounds of Lily’s vacuum cleaner.

  The dog still had a worried, anxious air about her, but already, in just one day, she’d calmed down a great deal and, in her own mournful way, seemed happy enough in his company now.

  Inside the house, the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped and Daniel’s scratching fingers grew still. His hand tensed. All afternoon he’d been thinking about Lily. Tonight she would be sleeping in the spare room. They would be sharing dinner. Breakfast tomorrow. And the same again the day after. Was it fair to have her living here, cleaning his house while knowing next to nothing about him, wondering what the hell had landed him in jail?

  The answer was hardly a brain-teaser. It wasn’t fair to leave her in the dark. He knew that. But to actually talk about it all with someone who wasn’t a policeman or a lawyer or a social worker felt like a quantum leap.

  Until yesterday he hadn’t been in the mood to talk to anyone, and it was damn amazing that he’d actually let Lily into his life. But there was something unstoppable about her.

  What was also amazing was that Lily had been prepared to stay here. He realised, with something of a shock, that he knew as little about Lily Halliday as she did about him.

  Her footsteps sounded on the veranda behind him, and he looked up. ‘All finished?’

  ‘Yep. That’s the spare bedroom done and dusted.’

  She stood near him, lightly resting a neat hip against a veranda post and crossing her arms as she looked down at the dog stretched sleepily beside him. ‘Orphan’s made herself at home.’

  ‘Yeah. She seems to have settled in.’

  ‘Are you going to keep calling her Orphan?’

  Daniel’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Maybe. Orphan’s a rather fitting name for such a sad-looking dog, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you think she’s sad-looking?’ Lily reached down and tickled Orphan’s ear. ‘Did you hear what he’s saying about you, beautiful?’

  Daniel swallowed hard. What was the matter with him? Lily was tired, at the end of a hot day’s housework, dressed in a cobweb-smeared T-shirt and faded jeans, and she was bending forward to scratch the dog’s ear. Why the hell would that inspire his intense fascination? He felt heat tremble through him as he imagined her reaching out to touch him with that same easy confidence.

  ‘Maybe we should give you another name,’ Lily said to the dog. ‘Something happy.’

  Daniel swallowed again, and wondered if it was possible to feel so much desire for a woman and do nothing about it. Tempting fant
asies of a hasty affair with this passing stranger had been haunting him all day. But what a damn fool idea that was.

  Hell. Even if Lily was the kind of twenty-first-century girl who indulged in flings, he hadn’t the right to make love to her. How could he taint her with his darkness?

  He forced himself to think about the dog rather than the woman. ‘What’s a happy name for a dog?’ he asked.

  ‘Ooh, let me think.’

  He hadn’t really been serious, but clearly Lily was.

  ‘“Joy”, maybe?’ she said.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Or what about “Felicity”? That means happy, too.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘I can’t imagine yelling out to a dog called Felicity.’

  ‘Well, no, perhaps not.’

  Lily plopped down on the step beside him, close, almost touching, and he felt his blood begin to sizzle.

  ‘What other names mean happy?’ she mused. ‘There’s “Blythe”, I suppose. Or “Hilary”.’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘A station dog has to have a name that sounds good when it’s yelled across three or four paddocks.’

  She frowned at him. ‘Can’t you just whistle for her?’

  ‘Yeah, but you still need a good name you can yell.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy to test.’ Flashing him a cheeky grin, she hopped to her feet again, jumped two steps and jogged a short distance across the grass. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she tipped her head back and yelled into the afternoon blue, ‘Jo-o-oy!’

  Daniel felt Orphan quiver in reaction to the raised voice.

  Lily turned back to him, smiling broadly. ‘How did that sound?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  He couldn’t help grinning back at her. She was so lovely and untroubled and happy; she had an uncanny ability to dredge up big smiles from the murky depths inside him.

  ‘Try “Sunny”,’ he said, letting his hand glide over Orphan’s bony spine.

  ‘Sunny? That’s a good one.’ Lily tipped her head back again, and the deep afternoon sunlight lent her tawny hair a golden sheen. ‘Su-u-n-nee!’

  She flipped him another grin. ‘Sunny rolls off the tongue more easily than Joy. “Smiley” would be nice, too.’

  ‘Yeah. Smiley’s good. I like that.’

  This time Lily’s eyes narrowed shrewdly as she looked back at him. ‘Come on, then, it’s your turn. Come and give Smiley a test-yell.’

  Her laughing eyes challenged him. Innocently? Daniel felt like a kid again, challenged to a childish dare, but of course there was nothing childish about the vital, golden woman waiting on the lawn.

  He glanced at Orphan, who was watching him with forlorn brown eyes. ‘No need for a test,’ he said. ‘A dog that looks this sad is just asking to be christened Smiley.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Daniel. Don’t be a spoilsport. Come and yell it out to make sure.’

  A cold, wet doggy nose pushed against Daniel’s hand. He looked at Orphan’s mournful eyes and then again at Lily’s bright, smiling face.

  This was crazy, he decided as he got to his feet and crossed the lawn. Crazy, but fun.

  Standing beside Lily, he said, ‘One yell coming up.’ He let his head fall back, raised his hands to cup his mouth and let ‘Smi-lee!’ ring out across the paddocks.

  ‘Yes!’ Lily cheered. ‘Smiley sounds great.’

  He found he was grinning. Again.

  Behind them, on the steps, Orphan’s tail was wagging. ‘It works, doesn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Sure does. So you’ll call her Smiley, then?’

  He nodded. ‘I reckon it’s a terrific name for her.’

  ‘Way to go!’ Lily flung triumphant arms above her head, leaping high into the air like a cheerleader.

  Her skin glowed in the afternoon sun, and the shiny river of her hair broke free from its clasp and bobbed on her shoulders. And, as her feet reached the ground again, Daniel felt a burst of genuine happiness deep in the pit of his stomach.

  He pulled her into his arms.

  And he kissed her.

  Her lips had been parted in laughter, but the laughter died as his mouth met hers, and she went very still.

  For a heartbeat he feared he’d made a fool of himself—that she was going to pull away from him. But she stayed. Oh, yes. She stayed.

  She stayed, warm and soft and wrapped in his arms, and he kissed her slowly, tenderly and thoroughly. Savouring every delicious sensation.

  The afternoon melted around him and he was no longer conscious of the dog or the homestead or the paddocks and the distant cattle. He was aware of nothing but kissing this sweet woman. This earthy, womanly woman.

  He wanted to kiss her for a week, to go on kissing her till the world stopped.

  Nothing else mattered but this happiness. This heart-lifting pleasure.

  With Lily in his arms he could hold back the darkness… Indefinitely…

  With Lily in his bed…

  Daniel broke the kiss and stepped back, breathing hard.

  Lily made a soft sound of dismay. Her eyes sent him a silent question, but she didn’t move.

  ‘That was—that was a thank-you,’ he said. ‘For Smiley.’

  Her eyes were suspiciously bright, and she blinked rapidly. ‘You’re welcome.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LILY DUMPED HER backpack on the bed in the spare room where she was to sleep, and yanked the zipper with such frantic energy that she almost broke it.

  She. Felt. So. Stirred.

  Daniel’s kiss had left her shaken. Shaken to her roots. And scared. Yes, scared. It was very scary to realise that she could be so completely and gloriously reduced to a trembling mass of longing by one careless kiss.

  And she was unbearably confused, too. Had there ever been a man so difficult to read? Daniel might as well have been a message written in Swahili, for all she could understand him. His kiss had been so unexpected, but so thorough and beautiful. And sexy! Oh, goodness, yes.

  And then he’d had the effrontery to look as if he’d regretted it.

  How dared he?

  How dared he be so upset and distracted that he’d charged off with Smiley, muttering something about a windmill that needed attention?

  Angry tears burned her eyes.

  She was angry with herself as much as with Daniel. She shouldn’t have let his kiss get to her. Hadn’t she learned tough lessons about men? First from her father and later from Josh? Since then, she’d prided herself on never letting down her guard where her heart was concerned. She’d perfected the art of flitting from boyfriend to boyfriend like a carefree butterfly, determined to have fun and not to be hurt.

  Plenty of other men had kissed her, and she’d found the experience pleasurable, but hardly life-threatening.

  But with Daniel there’d been no warning. She’d been rendered helpless by his kiss—electrified by the potency and urgency of his mouth locked with hers.

  She’d been overcome by a heady rush of wanting. Worse, she’d fallen—blissfully, giddily, thrillingly—smack on her face in love.

  She’d been a fool—a fool to let such feelings get the better of her. And Daniel had looked dismayed when he’d realised his mistake.

  What was wrong with them both? They were both adults, who’d been around the block more than once, but they were behaving more like inept teenagers.

  Now, angry and emotionally drained, Lily flopped onto the bed. The mattress bounced and her backpack lurched, spilling some of its contents onto the bedspread, including a small drawstring bag.

  Sobered instantly, she picked the bag up. She loosened the strings and tipped it so that three round, river-washed stones, painted in her father’s signature gaudy colours, rolled out.

  Marcus Halliday had painted this little rock family for her when she was four years old. And here they were still. She carted them with her wherever she went—a father, a mother and a little girl, with cheery, red-apple cheeks and bright beady eyes, and hair painted so meticulously she could almost se
e every individual strand.

  How Lily had loved them!

  She’d adored these stone people, and she’d adored her father for creating them for her. As a child, she’d played with them endlessly. They were her special gift from Marcus and later, after he’d left, they’d been her only link with him. Maybe if he’d never given them to her she would have adjusted more easily to his leaving. But he had given them, and she’d cherished them.

  ‘I painted them especially for you and only you, sausage,’ Marcus had told her. He’d always called Lily ‘sausage’, and she’d loved him for that, too.

  Later, she’d hated him for leaving her, but back then, when he’d lived with Fern and her in the little house at Sugar Bay, Lily had adored him as only a little girl could adore her father. He was strength, he was safety, he was hugs. And love.

  She had so few images to remember him by, but she recollected clearly the sight of his strong, sun-tanned legs coming in from the beach, his feet trailing sand on the floorboards as she crouched behind an armchair, suppressing excited giggles during a game of hide-and-seek.

  She remembered the smell of his cigarettes, and how she would sit in his lap, and how he’d allowed her to flick his silver cigarette lighter…

  But along with those happy memories came the pain, sharp, swift and cruel as ever…

  There was a sudden knock at her bedroom door, and Lily jumped.

  Daniel was standing in the doorway, watching her with worried eyes. She realised her eyelids were stinging, and she lifted a hand to touch her cheek, surprised to find it wet.

  ‘You’re upset,’ he said, looking almost as unhappy as she must have looked. ‘I’ve upset you.’

  Embarrassed to be caught crying, she couldn’t immediately think of anything to say. She glanced down at the three cheery stone faces grinning up at her, and then hastily shoved them back into the drawstring bag, brushed at her cheeks with the backs of her hands and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she said, and with forced casualness dropped the bag into her pack and closed the flap.

  When Daniel looked doubtful, she gave the backpack a careless pat. ‘I’ve been having a pathetic moment, but it has nothing to do with you. It’s just a little emotional baggage I should have offloaded years ago.’