by Lilian Darcy
Sarah was waiting for her answer. She’d brought the pony to a halt quite competently and was sitting on it with her face and shoulders screwed up tight, as if her whole destiny hinged on this moment. Despite the application of sunscreen, a scattering of freckles was already darkening on her face in the spring sunshine. She was a skinny, good-natured, energetic tomboy, and she’d been in heaven on the shaggy pony.
‘Horses are risky,’ Tammy murmured.
‘Should I talk you out of it? Life is risky. Babies get born early for no reason. Space rocks fall out of the sky.’
‘And people choke on apples, even though they’re good for you. I know. That’s what I’ve always believed. Embrace life, despite the risks.’
They were still looking at each other with wry smiles and complete understanding and that zing getting louder in the air. Was Laird only asking her about the risk of ponies? What other risks was he daring her to take?
For the moment, she only had an answer on this one.
Tammy raised her voice. ‘You can trot, sweetheart, but listen to Laird when he tells you what to do.’
Laird strode across the grass and gave Sarah some instructions on telling a pony to go faster, corrected her heel position in the stirrups, showed her how to squeeze back the reins. ‘He has a soft mouth, this lad, he doesn’t need you to pull hard and hurt him.’
Sarah listened and nodded, then pulled on one rein and turned the pony towards the centre of the paddock. She kicked. Banana felt he’d had enough of carrying little girls today and didn’t move.
‘Harder, Sarah, you won’t hurt him. He’s being a bit lazy, wants to test out who’s boss. You have to show him it’s you.’
Sarah nodded and kicked again. Banana ambled off at a lazy walk.
‘Even harder, sweetheart.’
This time, she took the word ‘harder’ a little too much to heart. Without warning, Banana broke into a bouncy, spirited canter and raced off through the grass. Sarah screamed…and so did her mother. Was that a sound of terror or pleasure, fading in the air as Banana carried Sarah wildly away?
‘Oh, hell…’ Laird muttered. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’
He broke into a sprint and Tammy followed.
Seconds later, Sarah lost her seat, lost her stirrups and fell, while Banana cantered away and then slowed and wheeled around with a sheepish sort of air, as if he was a bit embarrassed at having gone off like that. He dropped his head and started munching on the grass.
‘Is she…? Is she…?’ Tammy gasped as she ran.
Was Sarah moving? She was. Her shoulders were shaking. She was sobbing. Or…
She sat up, laughing out loud. ‘That was so-o-o fun!’
‘Are you hurt, Sarah?’ Tammy dropped to the grass beside her.
Sarah matter-of-factly examined a long grass stain on her forearm that would probably turn into a bruise, and rubbed at a couple of other places on her body. ‘I’m a bit bumped,’ she said.
‘Were you scared, sweetheart?’
‘Only right when I fell off. I loved going fast.’
‘Let me take a little look at you, Sarah,’ Laird said.
He did a quick neuro check then got her to turn her head, lift her arms, walk in a straight line. Tammy watched the interaction between them. Laird’s straightforward calm, Sarah’s quick obedience.
They were good together…and Sarah really was unhurt.
‘Can I get back on?’ she asked eagerly.
‘Just to ride him over to the fence so we don’t have so far to carry the tack,’ Laird said.
He helped her back on. Banana gave Laird’s stomach a nuzzle, as if in apology. Sarah got her feet back in the stirrups and the reins in the correct position in her hands, squared her shoulders and nudged the pony into a walk as if the fall had never happened.
People could choke on apples, but most of the time they were delicious and crunchy and good for you.
All three girls were adorable as they unsaddled Amira and Banana, after the alarming end to their ride, and gave the ponies and donkey some treats. They trailed after Laird, taking every one of his instructions seriously, staying away from the animals’ back legs, willing to help with whatever he asked.
Laura and Lucy stretched up to hang the ponies’ bridles on their hooks in the little tack room at one end of an impressive shed, while Sarah insisted on lugging one of the saddles all the way from the paddock fence, even though it weighed almost as much as she did.
By the time the ponies had been groomed and released again to roam their paddock freely, it was lunchtime. Laird had bought an assortment of pies from a local bakery earlier that morning. He put them into the oven to reheat and asked, ‘Inside or out to eat?’
‘Out,’ Tammy answered, so they set up a table on the veranda, and the girls chomped down their chicken and vegetable pies in about five minutes then went back to talk to Amira, Banana and Solly over the fence, while Tammy and Laird lazed over their meal and drank two cups of tea.
They took a walk around the property, with the girls running ahead like puppies, jumping off stumps, balancing on logs, picking dandelions, chasing each other and falling into a laughing heap in the long spring grass.
‘It still needs a lot doing to it,’ Laird said as they headed back to the house.
‘Oh, yes, you’ll have to go to the garden centre nearly every week—what an unspeakable burden for you,’ Tammy answered, enthusiastic and envious on his behalf.
He looked at her. ‘Come to the garden centre with me. Help me choose.’
She didn’t answer, because if he hadn’t been serious, or if he changed his mind, the eager agreement that she could so easily have made would hang like a yoke around both their necks. She didn’t dare to think beyond today. ‘I’d better not. I’d make you spend too much,’ she told him lightly.
Back at the house, the younger girls were ready for the box of dolls Tammy had put in the back of the van and Sarah still enjoyed the excuse to play at four-year-old level, while Laird wanted Tammy’s advice in the kitchen on what to feed everyone that night. ‘You’re staying, right?’
‘Well, we should probably—’
‘You’re staying.’ He leaned closer. She could feel his body warmth, smell his shampoo, and feel her own surging reaction to him.
OK, he was right, they were staying.
For dinner, they decided on a green salad and cheese ravioli, with a sauce they just made up out of things they found in the pantry. Canned tomatoes and chopped capers, a shake of dried herbs, a handful of crushed walnuts, parmesan cheese to go on top.
‘I wish we lived here,’ Sarah announced after the meal, and Tammy had to hide her head in the fridge while she put away the leftover salad, so that her face didn’t say far too clearly to Laird that she did, too.
‘You can’t stay the whole night, can you?’ Laird asked quietly, while the girls were packing up their dolls. ‘I shouldn’t even ask.’
‘Mel’s dropping the boys off at eight-thirty in the morning. Mum would be worried.’
‘Even if you phoned her?’
‘Especially if I phoned her. Laura and Lucy are tired. I really have to go. They’ve had a terrific day.’
‘So have I,’ said Laird quietly.
But the minivan wouldn’t start.
Laird had found the chance to kiss Tammy in the kitchen at last, ten minutes earlier, and she’d had to tear herself away from the warmth of his arms. Now she had the girls all bundled in the car, yawning, and the box of dolls packed in the back. It was dark. The ponies and the donkey were quiet beneath their shelter in the paddock…
And the wretched van just wouldn’t start.
Which was appropriate somehow. An omen, probably.
A perfect day, coming to a wobbly, uncomfortable, typical-for-Tammy end.
Tammy had to phone Mum to tell her not to worry because they weren’t home yet, phone Mel to say goodnight to the boys, and finally phone the road service, who took forty minutes to arrive, coul
dn’t get the van started either and came up with a direly expensive-sounding list of things that needed to be done to it before it could be driven again.
They towed it away to the garage Laird recommended, by which time the girls’ yawns had turned into fretfulness and complaints. It was way past their bedtime.
‘I’ll drive you,’ Laird said.
When they pulled up in her driveway after eleven o’clock, Laura, Lucy and Sarah were all asleep in his back seat, and Mum had to be asleep out the back because there were no lights on. Tammy had told her not to wait up for them. Laird carried Sarah inside, while Tammy carried Laura, then she changed the half-asleep girls into their nightwear while Laird went back to the car for Lucy.
It was eleven-thirty by the time they were settled.
Tammy came back downstairs and straight into Laird’s waiting arms, not because she’d planned to but because he was standing there waiting for her in the living-room and he held them out and she couldn’t…didn’t want to…do anything else. ‘Come here, you…’
‘Thank you for today.’
‘Stop. No talking.’
He kissed her, tenderly at first, as if to soothe away the bumps in their evening, then harder and deeper because the need had built up inside him all day. Tammy could feel the release of it now all through his strong body—an eagerness and urgency and celebration of the fact that he had her alone at last.
She couldn’t believe that he wanted her so much, couldn’t understand why, couldn’t trust it, but felt herself swept away with it anyhow, because she didn’t have enough strength to say no. There was just a chance she could fight him, but she couldn’t fight herself at the same time.
‘Here or upstairs?’ he said. ‘Tammy, I want this so much.’ He ran his hands over her breasts beneath their thin covering of outer cotton and inner lace, and over the tops of her thighs, and that too-curvy and generous jeans-clad rear end that was supposed to protect her from something like this.
‘It’s brutal, how much I want this,’ he muttered. He pulled at her cotton top and she helped him take it over her head and discard it on the floor.
‘Is it?’
‘Can’t you feel it?’ He bent to make a trail of kisses down her neck, toward the valley between her breasts.
Yes. But can I trust it?
Could she trust him or herself or the future or anything?
He slid the straps of her bra down her arms, pulled his own shirt over his head, wrapped his arms hard around her again so that they stood skin to skin from the waist up, just two pairs of grass-stained jeans in the way of full intimacy. ‘Stop me now, if you’re going to, because…’ He broke off and swore. ‘I just want this.’
‘I want it, too,’ she whispered. She couldn’t fight it any longer, couldn’t remember all the reasons for saying no.
‘Where?’
‘Here?’
‘Perfect.’
He ran his fingers around the back of her neck and up into her hair, painting kisses onto her skin in a dozen different places. Now that they both knew it was going to happen, there was no impatience or rush. He seemed to want to linger, to explore, to claim her whole body bit by bit, kiss by kiss.
She touched him, too, intensely aroused by the newness of him, by everything her senses began to learn about the way he felt and tasted. She’d lost track of the passing minutes by the time he brought his hands to the waistband of her jeans and whispered, ‘Can we take these off? I want to hold you against me. I want to touch you…’
‘Mmm.’ Tammy unsnapped the fastening—not on her jeans but on his—and found him straining against the softer cotton of his dark-coloured briefs.
She felt a powerful, aching surge of anticipation at the thought of his size, of the way he would fill her, and was a little shocked at the greediness of her response. No denying it, though, she wanted him big and as close as a man could ever be. They both slid down their jeans and underwear and left them on the floor, forgotten.
‘Oh,’ he gasped as she touched him.
She felt him shudder as he wrapped his arms around her, and knew that they weren’t going to be slow and unhurried about this for much longer, which meant…
‘Do you have something?’ she gabbled on a breathless, inpatient whisper. He felt like hot satin, and she felt a terrible, aching temptation to forget that kind of caution about birth control—but she couldn’t. ‘Protection, I mean…’
He took his hot mouth away from her neck. ‘I do. Do we need it?’
‘You’ve seen the size of my family, Laird. I’d have thought my fertility was well and truly proven.’
‘So after the triplets, you didn’t…? I mean, you could still have more children.’
‘Yes, so…’
‘Yes, OK. Wait.’ He held her shoulders and lowered her to the couch, then kissed her until they almost forgot what had given them pause. Eventually he let her go and she watched him as he went in search of his wallet, loving the strength and ease and unselfconsciousness of his body in the bluish darkness, loving the instant heat of him as soon as he came back to her. ‘You feel so good,’ he whispered.
‘So do you.’
‘I’ve wanted this all day. Every time I looked at you.’
‘Me, too.’
‘To be inside you, to feel your legs wrapped around me and hear the sounds you make…’
After that, there was no more talking for a long time, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Tammy was the first to wake up. The clock on the DVD player read 2:15. Laird lay heavy and warm against her side and she could have stayed like this all night, cradling her own happiness the way she cradled his body. Her arm rested on his chest and her breasts nudged his ribs and chest with their fullness and weight. Her legs were tangled with his.
So she’d done it.
She’d given herself to a man—to him, to Laird—without promises or commitments or any certainty at all.
And she wasn’t sorry. How could she be, when he was still here? There was an aura of trust in the way he slept, his chest rising and falling so peacefully, his lashes long and dark on his cheeks. She felt her own capacity for tenderness swelling inside her—the giving part of her, which just got so much practice, with the kids, with her work. She was good at giving. Too good. She liked it too much, and didn’t protect herself enough.
She knew that, but she didn’t want to change.
Yet she didn’t want to get hurt either.
Laird stirred. She felt the difference in his breathing and knew he was awake, even though he hadn’t opened his eyes. ‘Mmm, Tammy…’ he said.
‘Hi, you.’
His heavy, sleepy lids lifted and he smiled a slow smile, and she couldn’t help leaning across his body at once to kiss him. His hand brushed her backside as she moved, and her breasts grazed his chest and pressed into him. He touched her, brushing the ball of his thumb across her nipple, then he kissed her mouth and cupped her breasts in his hands so he could kiss them, too.
Again? Could she do this again? Was he going to stay all night and be here in the morning for the girls to find? She could imagine him dressing quickly the moment sounds started upstairs, refusing breakfast, leaving before they’d had any chance at a morning-after talk. He might make that vaguest of male promises, ‘I’ll call you,’ and she wouldn’t know where she stood.
The emotional vulnerability she’d recognised in herself so clearly just now had a physical counterpart in her naked body, entwined with his. The touch of his mouth on her nipples was so intimate and sweet. She gripped his shoulders and arched her back and had to fight within herself to push him away instead of pulling him closer.
‘I think maybe…’
Maybe what? Maybe she wanted him to go home? Maybe she wanted him to promise undying love?
She slid sideways again, away from that so intimate press of their bodies and the touch of his mouth.
‘What’s up, Tammy?’ he said softly.
‘Just…Don’t hurt
me,’ she heard herself say.
‘What? Hell, Tammy, did I? Just now? You should have—’
‘No…no. I don’t mean hurt physically. Of course you didn’t. You were— I meant my heart.’ She pressed her closed hand between her breasts, and her back against the cushioned back of the couch.
‘Tammy—’
‘You told me to stop you, before, if I was going to stop you at all. And I didn’t. But maybe I should have.’
‘Is that what you’re doing this time? Stopping me? Once is OK, but not twice?’
‘I know it doesn’t make sense. Why is after always so different from before?’ She tried to laugh but it didn’t quite work. ‘I—I have to find out if I’m safe. My heart. My spirit. That’s what I meant about hurting. I have to say this, Laird. If this has been a one-night stand…’
‘It’s not,’ he said at once. ‘It wasn’t. How could it be, after we’ve—?’
‘Then what is it?’ She shivered as she spoke. This late at night, the room had grown chilly, especially when she wasn’t letting herself take Laird’s body warmth any more. She sat up, reached out to grab for her top, discarded two hours ago on the floor, and held it against her body. The protection it offered wasn’t enough.
‘Does it need a definition? Does it need a plan?’ He pulled her close against him once more, and she could see his growing frustration.
A huge part of her wanted to let this go—this foolish, vulnerable protest of hers—and just kiss him again, ravish her mouth over every inch of him, even more intimately this time, feel his body against hers once more, give them both this whole night and think about the consequences in the morning, but she summoned some resolve and forced the issue.
‘You can’t date a divorced mother of five on a whim, Laird.’ Her voice shook a little.
‘This wasn’t a whim. It isn’t. How could you think that? Have I ever given that impression?’
‘You haven’t. But then what is it, Laird? A commitment? After we’ve been out together three times?’
‘Four. I’m counting the garden centre.’
She laughed unwillingly. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t count the garden centre?’