As a farm it was better.
‘Is the beach safe for swimming?’ Marcus asked.
‘It sure is.’
‘Can we?’
‘Nope. I have to milk.’
‘What, already?’
‘Harry will be home any minute. Take him swimming.’
‘Doesn’t anyone help you milk?’
‘I like milking. I don’t need help.’
‘Peta, you have me. Use me.’
‘No.’
‘You need-’
‘I don’t need a husband in any more than name,’ she interrupted, her face closed. ‘You know that. Thank you for my day.’ She rose and gave what seemed to him to be a regretful glance at the ocean. ‘Stay here and rest. I’m off to play milkmaid.’
‘Peta, I want to come. Your foot must be hurting.’
‘My foot’s fine. It has to be. And I told you, you’ll scare the cows. Keep Harry company.’
But Harry didn’t want company. Harry had homework. ‘I’m way behind and there’s a cool project I have to do on volcanoes.’
‘Would you like some help?’
‘Nah,’ Harry told him. ‘Thanks anyway but I’m used to doing stuff on my own.’
So was Marcus. Wasn’t he? Dismissed and not enjoying the sensation as much as he might expect, Marcus made his way back to the beach.
At least here was pleasure. The water was gorgeous. He swam with the strength of a champion swimmer-not for nothing had he purchased an apartment with rights to an indoor lap pool-but he swam alone.
He was so unsettled. What was he doing?
Nothing. He was doing nothing. He wasn’t needed.
It should make him contented. Two weeks holiday with nothing to do and no demands on him.
It made him… He didn’t know what. He’d never had nothing to do in his life.
And he’d never wanted to be needed-by someone who didn’t want him.
She watched him.
Peta milked her cows and all the time she was achingly aware of the man on the beach below the dairy. She could see him stroking back and forth across the bay. He looked superbly fit and at home in the surf, a far cry from the tailored New York businessman she’d fallen for five days ago.
Fallen for?
Uh-oh. The words settled. Then they settled some more. Had she fallen for Marcus Benson?
Of course she had.
‘And I’ve fallen hard.’
She said it out loud and the cow whose teats she was cleaning swivelled round and stared down at her. Bemused.
‘Do you guys fall inappropriately in love?’ she demanded and the cow kept on staring.
She stared back, and then sat back on the wet cobbles and stared some more. What had she said?
The truth. She’d said the truth.
‘How can I fall in love with Marcus Benson?’ she asked herself. ‘How can I possibly do that?’
She’d done it.
She turned and stared down at the sea. He was still stroking back and forth in steady, even strokes.
‘We have absolutely nothing in common,’ she told her cows. ‘He’s like some modern-day Prince Charming, Marcus the Magnificent, rushing round rescuing damsels in distress. It’s all very well being a damsel in distress but it doesn’t make for any sort of equal relationship.’
‘Do you want an equal relationship?’
‘I don’t want to feel rescued for the rest of my life.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘No.’ She was talking to herself, to the cows, to anyone who’d listen. She had two sides of her brain competing. Or maybe it was her head and her heart.
‘He’d come up my end of the veranda,’ she told her cow. ‘If I pressed.’
‘You wouldn’t have to press. You know darn well what it feels like whenever we touch. He feels it, too. I know he does. And he’s a male.’
‘Are you suggesting a spot of seduction?’
‘You’re married to him. It’s hardly illegal.’
‘Are you out of your mind? In two weeks he’ll go away and…’
‘And break your heart.’
Head and heart converged right there. The truth was unpalatable but it was unescapable.
‘You’ve really fallen for him, haven’t you?’ she whispered.
‘Maybe I have,’ she whispered back. ‘But it’s not the knight in shining armour I want. Or…not very much. It’s the man who makes Harry laugh. The man who cares for his assistant. Who makes Ruby smile. Who makes my heart twist…’
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
‘So keep on with what you’re doing,’ she told herself. ‘Keep it light. Keep it distant. And above all, keep your heart intact.’
‘Your heart hasn’t been intact for five days.’
‘It has to be.’
Peta finished milking and returned to the house to find Harry packing sausages into a picnic basket.
‘Beach night,’ he said as she paused in the kitchen door.
Beach night. It was a custom they’d had for years. On a warm, still night like this they’d take their dinner to the beach, light a fire and cook it there. They’d swim and eat and return to the house at dusk.
It was a great idea. But… Was it a great idea when Marcus was around?
‘He’s still down there,’ Harry told her. ‘I went to see and he’s gone for a run. He’s just a dot on the horizon. I reckon we could get the campfire burning before he comes back.’
‘I thought… Won’t he want to cook? He bought lots of ingredients this morning.’
‘It’s our turn to cook-and we make great sausages,’ Harry retorted. ‘I’ll watch them so you don’t even get to burn them.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘Go get your swimsuit,’ he told her. ‘Hurry up.’
‘But…’
‘But what?’
But… She just knew it wasn’t wise. Help.
They’d done this often. They were expert. By the time Marcus returned from his run, they had the fire burning and there was already a bed of hot coals. They’d scooped the flame from the centre and the sausages were sizzling in their pan. Marcus had seen the smoke in the distance and, as his jogging slowed to a walk, he realised they were here and waiting for him. The smell of sausages reached him and he had no need of Harry’s shouted announcement.
‘We’re having a barbecue. Come and get it.’
Peta looked up from turning the sausages. She had on a swimming costume, but she’d thrown an oversized T-shirt over it. A pity…
‘Hey, great pecs,’ Harry called and he suddenly thought an oversized T-shirt was a really good idea. Peta was smiling at him and heck, he felt like blushing.
‘Cut it out,’ he growled.
‘Are you brave enough to eat one of my sausages?’ Peta was saying, taking pity on him but still smiling. Harry hastened to reassure him.
‘I’ve done most of the cooking and the cake for afterwards is one you guys bought at the bakers today.’
‘So I needn’t worry about being poisoned?’ he asked and watched Peta’s smile widen. She had the loveliest smile…
‘My cooking’s not that bad.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Harry said cheerfully. ‘How many sausages, Marc? Three or four?’
‘Six.’ He sank down on the picnic rug. Sausages were something he normally wouldn’t consider but they looked great. He’d been outside all day. He was starving, he realised. Even if Peta had burned them…
‘If you’re hungry enough you’ll eat anything,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Cooking classes are a waste of time.’
‘And cooks are a waste of time?’
‘I’m sure whatever’s important to you is your own business,’ she said primly and he grinned at the twinkle behind her green eyes. She had the capacity to tease. To make him smile inside. To make him feel…
Heck, to make him feel as if he did want to save her. To take her as his Cinderella and turn her into his companion for life. If she could always be he
re. Laughing at him. Gently mocking. Making his life light from within…
Stupid thought. Brought on by hunger and by sausages. He made a frantic attempt to haul his senses-all his senses-back to what was most important.
‘Did you bring ketchup?’ he asked.
‘Ketchup?’ Harry looked nonplussed.
‘He means sauce,’ Peta told him. ‘He talks American.’
‘You should learn Australian,’ Harry said, handing over the sauce bottle. ‘It’s not really even sauce. It’s dead horse. You say pass the dead horse and every Australian knows what you mean. So I guess dead horse is Australian for ketchup.’
‘I have a lot to learn,’ Marcus said faintly.
‘You do,’ Harry agreed. ‘You’re going to have to hurry up to fit it all into two weeks.’
They ate their sausages and their chocolate cake and then Peta went for a swim. Harry disappeared back to the house-to finish his volcanoes. Maybe Marcus should have gone, too, but how could he leave Peta swimming alone? The fact that he knew for sure she swam alone nearly every day didn’t cut it. She was swimming alone now and he was staying.
In truth, he wanted to go back into the water as well, but he couldn’t. Something stopped him.
Being in the water with her… Somehow it seemed like taking a step to her end of the veranda.
So he watched from a distance that was safe enough to almost seem detached. Almost.
She didn’t swim as he had. She must be tired, he thought, as he watched her float on her back and gaze up into the flame-filled sunset. She’d been up since five this morning and for most of that time she’d been working hard. Her ankle must be hurting. She had no need to stretch her muscles as he had. She was content just to float.
She was content.
There was the difference, he thought. That was why he was so attracted to her. She was…peaceful. She’d settled back into her lot with joy. All she wanted was her farm and a future for her brothers. She had no need of anything else.
Problems that would fester and sour in others were nothing to her. The locals seemed to have sent her family to purgatory. She had little money and even less in the way of material possessions. Her future was bound by this tiny farm.
She wouldn’t want what he had to offer, he thought, and the thought jarred.
Was he offering?
He didn’t know.
But… Was he offering? The thought stayed. Like an insidious fleck of some matter he’d never heard of, it nestled in his brain and grew.
She was lovely. She made him smile. If he could take her back with him to the US… Turn her into his real happy ever after…
She wouldn’t leave Harry.
She could bring him, too.
They’d never desert this farm.
He could put a farm manager in, he thought. Keep it safe for them. For their future.
What the hell was he thinking?
Nothing, he decided fiercely, or nothing that made sense. He’d decided early that he was a loner. What had changed now?
Peta had changed. Peta had changed him.
He watched her float on, desperate to join her but forcing himself to stay. Forcing himself to be sensible. By the time she emerged from the water he almost had himself convinced that his thoughts were a nonsense.
She came up the beach towards him, smiling, shaking her head with the water from the curls forming a glistening arc around her head. The dogs went flying down the beach to meet her and then wheeled away to chase gulls, to chase their tails, to simply soak up the warmth of the gathering dusk. Marcus sat back on the sand and watched Peta towel her hair, smile down at him, simply…simply be.
This was a sensation he’d never experienced before. For the last half hour he’d sat and done nothing, simply let the night soak into him. The place. The time.
Peta.
‘You’re lovely,’ he said softly and his words hung in the night with a promise of something that was as yet undisclosed.
She stopped towelling and stared down at him. She’d giggle, he thought, or disclaim. Or arch her brows… He’d seen it all.
Instead she smiled, a gentle smile that was almost sympathetic.
‘You’re not bad yourself.’
‘Gee, thanks.’ It was inane but it was all he could manage. He swung himself to his feet and took her towel. ‘Let me do that?’
She pulled away, ducking under the towel and backing.
‘You don’t want to.’
‘Towel your hair? I do. Very much.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Her smile had died. ‘The up close and personal bit isn’t going to work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Neither of us are in a position to take it further.’
‘We have two weeks…’
Wrong thing to say. Her face shuttered and the barriers went up. He could see it.
‘Keep to your own end of the veranda, Marcus,’ she told him. ‘Or maybe it’d be better if you went back to Aunt Hattie’s.’
‘No!’ Keep it light, he told himself desperately. Keep it light. ‘Anything but that. Please don’t condemn me to drown in pink.’
‘Then don’t touch me.’
‘Why don’t you want to be touched?’
‘Who said I didn’t want to be touched?’
‘I assumed…’
‘You assume all over the place,’ she said crossly. ‘You assume and assume and assume. I needed to accept your very generous offer to marry me and save my farm but that doesn’t make me inclined to see you as Mr Wonderful for the rest of my life.’
‘I didn’t-’
‘Want to be Mr Wonderful? No. Of course you didn’t. You don’t want to be up on a pedestal, and I don’t want to keep you there. But when you come down…’ She took a deep breath. ‘You see, the problem is that when you come down from your pedestal, Marcus, then I see you just as a person. Or, not just as a person. As Marcus. Marc. Someone who’s as needful as me. Someone who’s even more lonely. And who’s lovely and generous and who smiles and makes me feel crinkly inside and… Marcus, no, I didn’t mean… I don’t mean…’
He didn’t get to hear what she didn’t mean. How could he? Standing there with her hair dripping and her green eyes luminous and her face earnest, she was so obviously trying, trying to sort it in her mind, to tell the truth, and he’d have to be inhuman not to react.
She was so lovely. She gazed up at him and he reached forward and took her hands in his and their eyes locked and held.
Afterwards he couldn’t remember who had moved first. Whether she’d stood on tiptoe and tilted her chin so her face met his, or if it had been he who’d drawn her into him and who’d cupped her face and tilted those lips…
No matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered but that her body was being drawn into his and all he could feel was the warmth of her, the feel, the softness of the curves of her body against him. Dear heaven. The way her still damp body curved into his, her breasts moulding to his chest, her body melting, her lips tasting of sea and salt and warmth and desire and…
Peta.
He didn’t know whether he said the word. Whether he said her name. He couldn’t. How could he kiss and speak at the same time?
But it was as if he shouted it. It was as if his whole being was an exultant cry. Peta!
She was his. His! His hands held her, linking around the small of her back, tugging her closer, loving her, wanting her.
Loving her.
The world stopped right there. Or maybe it started. It was as if his heart had stopped and then started afresh, anew, and he was someone else. The wonder. The joy.
He’d never known he could feel like this. All his life… The barrenness of his childhood. The awfulness of his time in the army. The knowledge that he could never let anyone close. That people disappeared all the time. The dreadful time in the Gulf, learning for the first time about friendship only to have it blasted to bits before his eyes. The years of business where all that mattered was money; where
employees were people you treated with consideration because that way they worked best but you never, ever got involved…
He was involved now. He was involved right up to his heart.
And this woman was his wife. His wife! What miracle was this?
The kiss deepened. She was surrendering to him. Her lips had parted and he was plundering her mouth, taking the kiss deep, deeper…
Dear heaven, he wanted her. Her wanted her more than life itself. More than he’d ever dreamed he could want a woman.
‘Peta…’
The kiss lasted for ever. The waves rolled in and out; the dogs wheeled back to them, vaguely worried at their immobility but fast bored. They wheeled away again. All except Ted-dog, who lay at his mistress’s feet and softly whined, as if in warning.
She was heeding no warning. She’d given herself up to this moment, to the taste of him, to the feel of him. To the sensation he was feeling and that he knew she must feel, too. Here was her man and here was his woman. Man and woman. One.
It had to end. Somehow it had to end. The dusk was turning to night. The next move had to come and it had to come from him.
He pulled back somehow, and he stared down into her face. She looked up at him, her eyes confused, tender, but there was still that wonderful smile. The laughter that had been there the first time he’d seen her. The laughter that caught and held…
‘It seems… Peta, it seems that indeed you are my wife,’ he said in a voice he hardly recognised. ‘My wife.’
Her smile faded. ‘What do you mean by that? “Indeed you are my wife…”’
‘We made vows.’
‘No.’ She backed away, a trace of fear washing over her face. ‘No, we didn’t mean them.’
‘We didn’t mean them but they’re coming true.’
‘To have and to hold?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘In sickness and in health. Until death us do part. To love and to cherish. To be one. I don’t think so, Marcus.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said slowly. Not that. Not a complete joining. She was beautiful, he thought. She was the most desirable thing. But… Somehow he forced his confused mind to think. Somehow.
The Last-Minute Marriage Page 14