She mopped the laughter-tears from her cheek. "Thank God we're in the country—if we got pulled over for random breath test or speeding, and neither of us can say who we are!"
"Crazy," he agreed, with a grin.
He could feel her eyes on him: her old, lynxlike gaze of unnerving honesty. "Duncan and Cameron did this to you, didn't they? They set you up so Cameron could have me."
He nodded, swamped by the magnitude of his relief. He'd half expected her to deny it all, dump him by the roadside when he told her what Beller and her brother had done to him. But with the integrity typical of the girl he'd known, she recognized the truth, no matter how tough it was to accept. The inescapable fact that she'd committed bigamy was the linchpin on which he'd based his hope, and he'd been right—helped along, no doubt, by the death certificate he didn't know they'd given her.
That must he why Beller blew up the car today: to stop them from meeting and swapping stories—but the plan backfired. Stupid jerk! He'd have been out of Tessa's life forever by now if Beller bad left his car alone.
He frowned. Beller had played a star part in his prosecution, and trying to prevent his parole; but it had been a respectable, plausible part. The fierceness of this sudden rampage—acting himself instead of using a hired goon, taking such risks—told him Beller was bloody scared. Scared of losing his life. Losing the support and admiration of Sydney society. Losing his wife.
This time, Beller would be out for blood. His blood.
He negotiated the rocky terrain of the untarred back road in silence, waiting for her to work out the rest. He knew she would. Tessa might be many things, but she wasn't stupid.
She drew a deep breath, and said the words he'd expected. "When did they set all this up?"
"The cops arrested me on the way to your dad's house."
It had finally been spoken, her worst fear: the connection in time between the wedding and his arrest. Tessa slumped in her seat, reliving the slow horror of that morning.
The day after their secret marriage.
She'd had to come alone to tell her widowed father about her marriage to an Aboriginal carpenter. Only she could tell him that she, his most cherished and beloved child, had gone against his will in a way he'd never forgive. Keith Earldon, millionaire barrister, loving, overprotective father and inconspicuous racist always had, always would consider David Oliveri to be a man far beneath his daughter, in every possible way.
It was hard, so hard. She endured her father's pleading, his recriminations and coldness; she even took his eventual disowning of her in unflinching silence. With tears streaming down her face she packed her bags, knowing this choice had been inevitable from the moment she met the man she loved. She dearly loved the father and brother who'd brought her up, but her heart belonged to David. They'd surely come around…
She'd stood outside the gates of the exclusive beachside acreage, waiting for her husband to come for her. Waiting with all the sweet confidence of young love. Waiting. And waiting.
And then the slow, chilling realization came creeping into her soul. David wasn't coming to face her father with the reality of their marriage. He wasn't here to take her away, to start their life together. He wasn't coming for her at all.
She'd never forget the utter desolation of the next three days, the confusion, fear and unwanted sense of betrayal, not knowing what happened to the man she loved. Then Duncan told her about the fatal accident. "Baby, I'm so sorry," her brother had murmured, rocking her while she sat stunned, silent, too empty to cry, the certificate held like a priceless treasure in her hand.
The certificate of death that was as fake as her brother's sympathy for her.
"Like hell he was sorry," she muttered. "He set it up. He handed me to Cameron like—like a human sacrifice."
"Beller was in on it, as well," he informed her grimly. "They were the star witnesses for the prosecution in my court case. I apparently robbed Beller's apartment and hit him over the head with a crowbar. I got five years but made parole after three and a half for good behavior."
"A-assault—with…?" She blinked, trying to clear the thick cloud of confusion dulling her brain. She looked at him—at his splendidly muscled body, then up to the face filled with dark, masculine strength, the single stud earring and the curly hair worn in the bead-banded ponytail he'd had when they were lovers. After all these years, his nearness could still draw her gaze to him like a magnet, fill her with a blooming of feminine warmth she thought she'd never know again. Even with the new lines on his face, and a slight hardness in his eyes, his face and body—his mere presence—still shook her as no other man ever had.
Strange to call a man beautiful, but it was the only word for Jirrah. Strong, masculine, with a dark male beauty beyond definition, beyond words.
He still looked the same.
Had he changed so much inside that he'd set up this whole insane scheme? Or had her own brother—maybe even her father—destroyed her life without a single twinge of conscience?
"Cameron came to see me after you, um, disappeared. He had stitches. He said he'd been attacked, that he'd pressed charges. That was you?" He nodded. "I don't understand. With an alibi, and no eyewitnesses … surely they couldn't frame you?"
He shrugged his shoulders—the broad, sculpted shoulders she'd once loved to touch. "They claimed I did it when I was waiting for you before our wedding, at the park. I was alone. And your brother was the 'eyewitness' to my crime," he informed her, curt and clipped. "They found his stuff in my truck. My fingerprints were all over Beller's place, and his things. They conned me into doing a job there the week before."
Her voice shook as she asked; but she had to know the truth. "Did you ever see my father? Was he a part of this, as well?" A little silence. "I haven't seen your father since the week before our wedding."
She hung on to the handle above the door as the van careered around a pothole, then up and over a gradient full of rocks. "But you suspect him. You're so obsessed, you even think Dad broke the law to get rid of you! I understand why you suspect Duncan, but what did Dad ever do to hurt you? I know he thought you weren't good enough for me because of your background—"
"Despite the fact that he married a woman who had a native Canadian background," he put in. "Don't you think it's weird that he has such an aversion to having an Australian Aborigine in the family when he married a Canadian one?"
She frowned. "I—I don't know. Dad and Duncan never speak about my mother." Even now, she knew little about her mother apart from the words on the memorial stone in her father's garden. Rachel Beckwith Earldon, beloved wife of Keith, loving mother to Duncan and Theresa. She knew nothing of her mother's heritage. She'd only discovered Rachel's family ties when Duncan lost his temper during a fight over her relationship with David.
Not David—Jirrah. This quiet, intense man, so focused on revenge, wasn't David, the happy-go-lucky young man she'd loved. If his story was true, she wasn't Theresa Beller, either. Her brother, a staunch upholder of the law, had committed a felony. As had Cameron, maybe even her father. Respected barristers were the real criminals. Jirrah, the ex-con, was an innocent man.
Was nothing as it appeared any more?
"Haven't you ever wondered why they never talk about your mother, and her background?" Jirrah said quietly, interrupting her turbulent thoughts. "Haven't you thought about why you had to find out about her the way you did?"
A fleeting memory of sobbing the sad little story in his arms crept into her mind. Then she swept it out. "No, I don't, and right now I don't care. Why do you want me to suspect my father? Do you honestly believe my whole family went to the crazy lengths of having you locked up just to get you away from me, or do you want to leave me with no one to believe in, no one who cares about me? Do you hate me that much?"
"We don't have time for this right now," he said through a clenched jaw, holding his temper with an obvious effort. "Let's get to the house before we play Twenty Questions. I have some questions myself, as I s
aid. But I can't carry on an emotional argument while I'm trying to stop Beller from killing us!"
Realizing the validity of his words, she closed her mouth, but the questions remained. Questions she had to have answers to before she'd listen to his story—
Then a thought, blinding in its sudden brilliance, burst into her mind. He didn't know about Emily.
Would he still want to help her escape from Cameron when he knew?
* * *
Chapter 3
« ^ »
In the deep velvet hush of an unlit country night, they arrived at their temporary sanctuary.
Through the light of the van's headlights, Tessa surveyed the place, taken aback. David—um, Jirrah once took such pride in creating beauty from bricks and wood. The small, wood-plank house was crude, filled with the sense of simmering fury she felt inside its owner: a rough-made house with an uneven front verandah, surrounded by dense brush except for a coarse, bumpy dirt track. All was dark and quiet. There were no streetlights, no sealed roads, no near neighbors she could see. She almost felt like she'd stumbled into a fairy tale—except Jirrah's home was no enchanted forest cottage—more like the abandoned shack in the back of beyond. A bush-ranger's retreat: Ned Kelly's hut, or Captain Thunderbolt's hideout in the hills.
Yet once upon a time, she would have been happy here, making Jirrah's house a home, because he'd built it for them. Planting flowers, painting the wood planks rich cream and the windowsills a soft yellow. Working side by side with him to fix the roof, as she had when they were lovers: Tess the carpenter's mate, he'd dubbed her, solemnizing the event with her own tool belt and hard hat. Fitting in work between kisses. Oh, together they could make this place a home he'd want to come home to—
"Do you have a flashlight?" Jirrah asked, interrupting her reverie. "The generator might be dead by now. It's pretty old."
"What a pity you didn't think of it before," she snapped, exhausted with the day's stress, embarrassed by her little daydream. "Now I'll spend the night imagining us playing blind-man's buff with Cameron in a dark, isolated cabin!"
He made a small, savage sound of impatience. "Look, I just spent three hours driving on lousy roads after your fruitcake husband car bombed me. I'm hungry, I have a headache the size of a Mack truck, my wrist's throbbing and I'm covered in cuts and gravel bums. I want food, a shower and sleep before I have to outrun Beller yet again. So I'd appreciate it if you'd cut the complaints and tell me if you have a flashlight or not."
She yanked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Yes, I have one. I've also got food and a first-aid kit. I'll bring my gun inside, too. At least one of us was prepared for this!"
"Yeah, well, any preparation I might have had blew sky-high back at Lynch Hill, so don't expect any apologies from me."
She flushed in the darkness. "You want to compare notes? I was carjacked today by somebody I thought was dead, with a Ripley's story about my family for his excuse! If I'd had time to get you out of the car I wouldn't be here now!"
He looked at her. "If you didn't believe me you wouldn't be here, and neither would I. You'd have shot me."
A sudden jab of anguish landed over her heart, robbing her of breath. Was he right? "I'm still thinking about it. I don't shoot people without at least giving them a hearing. I still have the gun … and you have tonight to prove you're telling me the truth."
He held up a hand. "I get the picture. We're both overwhelmed and stressed now. Can we call a truce and get the flashlight?"
"Fine." In moments she handed him the torch. "I have aspirin, antiseptic and bandages. I'll bandage your wounds inside."
"Thanks." He flicked it on, and led the way in.
When the light came on, Jirrah sighed in relief. "Thank God for that. The last thing I needed was to wrestle with that crazy generator tonight. You hungry?"
Tessa looked at the house, with its rough walls, unfinished windows and loamy scent of damp earth rising from between the imperfectly laid floorboards, and frowned. Then she noticed a wood carving set on an upturned crate. An enormous kangaroo made of a deep red eucalypt wood, one of a pair. The other stood on a similar platform in a shadowy corner. "These are magnificent—exquisite pieces," she said softly, wondering at the incongruity of their surreal and radiant beauty living within the dark shadows of this sad, neglected shack. "They're so real they look like they're actually in flight."
He nodded. "I like them. You hungry?" he repeated.
Looking at him she saw the pain, the total exhaustion, and realized the toll the past few hours had taken on him, driving over unlit roads after a brush with death. "I keep tinned food in my van. I'll heat some up while you rest. You want coffee?"
"Sounds great." He fell back on an old brown-and-black striped sofa, just about the ugliest she'd ever seen. He closed his eyes—one eye purple and contorted with swelling.
She left the room, disturbed by the sight of him looking like that. He'd been hurt because he'd come to find her.
Moments later, she touched his shoulder. "Here." She handed him two tablets and a glass of water.
"Thanks." He downed the tablets, and closed his eyes again, got the food heating in the gorgeous but impractical Kookaburra wood-fire oven. Soot striped her face and top from trying to light it. By the time she'd cleaned herself up the coffee was cool in the Bodum plunger—so he was still a fresh-coffee addict—and she had to make it fresh. "Where the hell's a microwave when you need one?" she muttered, dumping the coffee grinds out the window, since there was no drain in the kitchen.
Why did Jirrah live in a hovel like this? If she could just have a week here, he wouldn't have to. It would be a home—
Don't think like that. Don't go there. That's in the past.
She returned to the living room with her first-aid kit.
A small open fire blazed behind a grate in the corner. Jirrah lay sprawled on the long, ugly sofa in a deep sleep, looking so much like her David she ached with it.
He's Jirrah. David's gone. This man is no more the boy I loved than I am the girl he married.
Fighting a second wave of grief over him, she put the water and bandages on the crate before the sofa and tended to the cuts on his arms and chest through the gaping tear in his T-shirt.
The first time she'd touched a man's body in over two years, and she didn't want to now; but Jirrah had risked his life to help save hers today. She owed him, big time.
It seemed she owed him even more if he was telling her the truth about Duncan and Cameron's setup.
He's alive, and I have a death certificate Duncan gave me. Isn't that enough?
She continued cleaning the wound with warm water, frowning.
Jirrah started half-awake when her fingers connected with his chest. "Tess," he mumbled, capturing her fingers with his.
Magic.
A sleepy word, one sleeping brush of his fingers, and all she'd tried to forget the past six years arose from slumber. One unconscious touch, and warm, dark, unpredictable magic lit the very air she breathed—
And it terrified her.
She jerked her hand away, and kept dabbing the antiseptic on the long, ugly gash on his chest.
"Ssssss." He jerked to full awareness with the stinging touch, sitting up and glaring at her. She scrambled back across the rough floor, hot and cold with panic.
"Tessa? You okay?"
Unable to drag her gaze from his, she saw him watching her with a look she didn't want to define. She pulled herself together and nodded, feeling sick, hurt, betrayed by the sting of his unwanted pity. "You just startled me."
"It wasn't the best way to wake a man, Tess."
Trying to disguise the little quiver of unwanted pleasure at the intimate nickname he'd given her seven years before, she pointed to the inflamed cut. "It's infected. I was just trying to help." She banded him the cotton pad soaked in antiseptic.
He looked at the wound, and nodded. "Thanks." She turned away, fighting another unwanted surge of sorrow. They'd been so happy once … now
they were just awkward. "Dinner's almost ready. Do you want it now, or after you're cleaned up?"
"I'll take a shower. I need to get the dirt and gravel and glass out of the cuts—and some of them are in places you don't want to clean," he added, with a wry grin.
"Nothing I haven't seen or touched before," she retorted without thinking.
He looked at her—and she could barely breathe, reading the hot, urgent man's need in his eyes. She skittered farther across the floor. "Stupid comment," she mumbled through stiff lips.
After a long moment he nodded. Without looking at her again he headed for the bathroom. She fled to the kitchen, needing coffee to steady her nerves, and clear her turbulent confusion.
When he came back out, she almost spilled the hot coffee all over herself. Clad only in a towel, his dark coffee skin gleamed in the firelight, his wet hair dripped rivulets down his deep brown chest, broad shoulders and muscular arms, like hot sweat.
He walked straight past her, seeming completely unconscious of her fascinated gaze on his superb body—so superb it took her breath away even with the cuts and bruises marking it. "Sorry," he muttered as he passed, motioning to the towel, his nakedness beneath. "I should have picked up clean clothes from the bedroom first, but I was so tired I didn't think—" He turned at her continued silence. "Tess?" He made no movement, but somehow seemed closer by the power of the heat in his deep, dark eyes.
She lost the power to breathe. She returned his gaze, licking her upper lip in a fear that was paralyzing, yet delicious…
Like the first time she'd seen him.
Her lips parted, as the sweet rush of erotic memory filled her heart. Returning home from second-year exams at teacher's college. Attracted by the hammering and drilling, she'd walked around the corner of her house to the backyard. The carpenters her father had hired were tearing down the old gazebo to make way for a new one. Seeing Jirrah—David, as he was then—strip off his T-shirt and mop the sweat from his lithe, muscled body, she couldn't tear her gaze away, enthralled by an unfettered portrait of masculine beauty: a glistening sculpture of superb honed muscle and warm coffee skin. A purity of grace and perfection of form that could have belonged in Michelangelo's imagination.
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