by Miranda Lee
Gareth didn’t say a word for several moments, but Leah could tell he wasn’t happy with her decision.
‘Next Monday, you said?’
‘Yes, I have most Mondays off. I could fly down first thing in the morning and be back by cruise time on Tuesday evening. I wouldn’t like to let Alan down after giving my word to work the full season.’
‘Why now?’ he said abruptly. ‘Is it because of me?’
‘Partly.’
‘You want to be with me, but you have to be sure you don’t still want Gerard too. Is that it?’
‘I just want to be free,’ she said frustratedly.
‘But you are free, Leah. Okay, so you’re not officially divorced, but you’re no longer Gerard’s wife. You don’t live with him. You left him and you have no intention of ever going back to him. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re as divorced as any woman with a piece of paper saying she is.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Look, if you must go,’ he said, ‘then I can’t stop you. But I don’t understand the sudden hurry. We’re not lovers yet. I said I wouldn’t rush you and I meant it. Trust me, Leah.’
‘Words will never be enough for me any more, Gareth. Actions speak much more loudly. What you did to me in that car was the action of a man intent on having his way. I know seduction when I feel it. I was well acquainted with it in my marriage.’
He winced at her last words. ‘It wasn’t my intention to seduce you,’ he muttered. ‘Believe me, if it was, I would not have stopped. I simply got carried away with the moment. That’s the truth of the matter. You’re a very beautiful and desirable woman, Leah, and I’m only human. But I promise to do better in future. Come on, let’s go inside, with other people and out of temptation.’
CHAPTER NINE
THE bar was separate from the restaurant, quite a large room, with a tropically colonial feel to its decor.
Called The Palms, it had a large bar with brass railings across one end, where a few people were perched up on fabric-covered stools, with serviceable grey tiles underfoot. Dark carpet covered the rest of the floor on which stood cream-coloured tables surrounded by pale cane-backed chairs. Three upturned beer barrels down the middle of the room also served as tables, one flanked by two elderly gentlemen playing a game of chess.
The far wall was mainly glass and overlooked a terrace beyond which lay a lawn courtyard, fringed by palms and lit with ball-lights on tall green poles. The bay beyond was not visible, its mangrove-lined waters as dark as the night sky.
‘Where would you like to sit?’ Gareth asked.
Hardly any of the tables were occupied, most of the evening’s patrons probably having moved on to dinner by then.
Leah chose one of the empty tables against the glass wall.
‘What would you like to drink?’
His offer startled her. Gerard had rarely asked her what she wanted to drink, though she conceded that was partly her own fault. In the beginning she hadn’t known what to order, always deferring to him.
‘A gin and tonic would be nice.’ Gin and tonic had become her favourite drink during her travels abroad. Her time had mostly been spent in hot humid harbours. A tall gin and tonic with plenty of ice had been a refreshing drink at the end of a hard day mending sails or swabbing decks.
When Gareth turned to walk over to the bar she watched him go, her gaze running over him from behind. He had a very nice behind. No doubt he had a very nice everything, just like his brother.
Leah pursed her lips in aggravation at always comparing the two brothers. It really was an impossible situation, one which asking Gerard for a divorce would probably not cure. Gerard would always lie between any relationship she formed with Gareth. It would be like having a ghost around all the time, a third in their bed. At least for her…
Leah put her elbows on the table, her head coming to rest in her hands, her eyes closing. Whatever was she going to do?
‘You’re thinking of Gerard again.’
Leah’s head snapped up at Gareth’s voice, her elbows shooting back off the table.
‘You were quick,’ she said, ignoring his comment about Gerard.
His face showed extreme irritation as he placed her gin and tonic in front of her and sat down with a beer.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said firmly. ‘Do you or do you not still love him?
‘I want the truth now,’ he demanded when she hesitated.
‘I don’t honestly know, Gareth,’ she admitted, and started sipping her drink through the straw. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘You said you despised him.’
‘I do.’
‘In that case you don’t love him.’
She could only shake her head. ‘He was my first love, Gareth. My first lover…’
‘But surely when you heard what you heard any love for him would have died.’
‘Yes, you would have thought so. It’s just that…’
‘Just what?’
‘I don’t think you will want to hear this next part.’
‘I want to hear everything about you and Gerard, Leah. What happened between you two is vital to what happens between us.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said, returning to her drink for a deeper swallow.
‘Then just spit it out. I can take it.’
Leah put aside the straw and looked into Gareth’s eyes. ‘I was going to confront Gerard the night I overheard him saying what he said. I meant to. But when he came upstairs that night he…he didn’t give me much of a chance. He started making love to me and I…I…’
‘Yes?’ Gareth asked tensely, the beer clutched, untouched, between his hands.
‘I simply forgot about what he’d said. I forgot everything but the moment…the pleasure. Then afterwards I felt so humiliated, so…ashamed. I realised then I wasn’t strong enough to fight Gerard on open terms. Whether it was love or not, whatever I felt for him was too powerful. He was too powerful.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t see!’ she snapped. ‘He proved that power again the following night even more horribly. I’d already made my plans to leave him, but it was going to be a couple more days before I could physically leave the house. I invented a headache to get out of making love, but he got round me again, seducing me quite effortlessly. And I enjoyed it, Gareth. Mindlessly. Madly. I cried myself to sleep afterwards.’
‘Hell, Leah.’
‘Don’t worry, it disgusted me just as much as it’s disgusting you. So, on the last night I decided I would not let him seduce me again. I could not have borne it. So I did something I’d never done before. I…well, suffice it to say I took the initiative. And he was so darned pleased, not knowing how much it killed me to do such a thing.’
Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought of that night again, and the subsequent tenderness Gerard had put into his lovemaking. Any woman would have believed he’d loved her then.
But he hadn’t! reminded the cold voice of reason.
Good God, how much suffering did it take for her to ram that simple fact into her thick skull, to put aside her feelings for the man and get on with her life?
She blinked the tears away with a fierce burst of pride, the reliving having reinforced her resolve to have done with Gerard.
‘I’m sorry, Gareth,’ she said. ‘I should not have told you that. It wasn’t fair to you.’
‘You’re wrong, Leah. You should have. I now understand why you ran away from Gerard. I hated thinking you were afraid he might do you physical harm. Other than that, what you’ve told me is nothing more than I already knew. Gerard is a very experienced and skilful lover.’
‘Yes, but…but…’
‘But nothing,’ he said, overriding any protest. ‘I’ll be an even better lover. Because I truly care about you. I won’t be just trying to prove I’m better than Casanova. Now drink up, darling. Our dinner reservation awaits.’
Leah went in to din
ner in a rather dazed state. She’d thought Gerard was a stubborn man. And supremely self-confident. But his brother left him in the shade!
‘You’re incorrigible,’ she muttered to Gareth as they followed the waitress to a table in the non-smoking section.
‘Yes,’ he returned simply. ‘My mother says the same.’
The non-smoking section was a glassed-in nook which resembled a conservatory and overlooked the courtyard from a different angle. The carpet was bluish, the walls cream, the tables covered in rusty coloured tablecloths with a cream overlay, a brass-bottomed candle-holder in the middle of each.
There were several marine souvenirs dotted around the room, Leah especially liking a brass diving bell hat which rested on a nearby counter—a relic from the days when brave men had dived deep into the sea to bring the highly prized pearl shells to the surface.
Brass ceiling fans and colonial wall-lights completed the stylish old-world elegance. Anywhere else in the world Leah might have felt under-dressed in such a setting, but here, in Broome, everything was far more casual.
The waitress, who was dressed in flowing black trousers and a simple white blouse, pulled out the cane-backed chairs for them at their table for two, then waited while they sat down before handing Leah the food menu and Gerard the wine list.
‘A Chablis do?’ Gerard asked after a swift perusal. ‘Or would you prefer a Chardonnay?’
‘Not Chardonnay,’ she said.
Gareth frowned at her sharp tone, then shrugged and selected a local West Australian Chablis, the waitress hurrying off to do his bidding as waitresses had been hurrying off to do handsome men’s bidding for centuries.
‘You don’t like Chardonnay?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said, then quickly buried her head in the dinner menu.
Gerard had never ordered her any other white wine but Chardonnay, which had a tendency to go straight to her head. He rather liked her tipsy, he’d once told her as he’d pulled his black Porsche over into a darkened side road on the way home from a dinner party. She was always deliciously co-operative that way, he’d added as he’d switched off the darkly throbbing engine and turned to her.
‘Deliciously co-operative’, she thought angrily, her upper lip curling with self-contempt. Downright gullible, more like it. A push-over!
‘None of the food to your liking?’ Gareth asked, misinterpreting her expression.
‘Oh, no, no, it’s all lovely food. I just don’t know what to order.’ God, but she was flushing, heat filling her face as what had happened in the car that night flashed into her mind.
Leah was eternally grateful the room wasn’t too brightly lit!
‘What about good old fish and chips?’ Gareth suggested, smiling.
Her laugh sounded strained. ‘I don’t think that’s on the menu. Here. You order this time. I can’t seem to make up my mind all of a sudden.’
Or any other time, came a brutal inner voice.
If Gerard were sitting opposite you right now, you probably would go to mush. He wouldn’t have to touch you. He’d only have to look at you and tell you with his eyes what he’d like to be doing to you—or what he’d like you to be doing to him—and you’d be incapable of either speech or simple thought.
She glanced over the candle to where Gareth was studying the menu, his classically formed features etched into planes and angles by the flickering candlelight.
‘Do you look like your father or your mother?’ she asked abruptly.
Her head jerked up, his eyes startled. ‘My father. Why?’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘What about them?’
‘I want to know everything.’
‘That’s a tall order—even worse than deciding what we’ll eat tonight.’ He folded the menu and immediately the waitress was at his side, wanting to know if he wished to order.
In contradiction of his supposed indecision, he crisply ordered spicy Thai pumpkin soup for starters, to be followed by Barramundi wings in lemon butter and caper sauce. He agreed to a suggestion of the waitress for herb bread, but refused dessert at that time—a decision to be made later.
When the waitress had departed he looked thoughtful for a moment, then began fiddling with his fork, drawing patterns on the tablecloth. Leah waited for him to speak first, shifting a little nervously in her seat.
‘My father was a carpenter,’ he began. ‘You know the song about the carpenter in love with the lady? He asks her if she would marry him and have his baby. That was similar to my parents’ marriage. He was a carpenter and she was a lady. Only she married him because she was having his baby.’
‘Babies,’ Leah corrected.
‘What? Oh, yes, well, she didn’t know that at the time. This was pre-ultrasound. Anyway, it was a disastrous mismatch from the start. Or so I finally realised.’
‘What do you mean, finally? Weren’t you boys aware your parents didn’t get along?’
‘Not really. My mother was a lady, remember? She’d been brought up to always be perfectly polite, to always look perfect and to always defer to the men-folk in her life. The façade was more important than the reality. I thought she and Dad were happy enough. I had no idea they were both miserable.
‘Mum felt trapped, and Dad was tormented by thoughts she might leave him one day. He knew, you see, that she didn’t love him, that he’d just been a mad rebellious fling, that she’d only married him because of her pregnancy. He, however, was crazy about her. He thought if he gained wealth, he might buy her love.
‘Unfortunately, he didn’t have a business brain. He tried everything but only ever succeeded in losing more money. Mum had to go out to work to make ends meet. Towards the end he began to drink heavily. Then one day, about ten years ago, when he was in a drunken rage, he beat her very badly. And she left him.’
‘Ten years ago,’ Leah repeated slowly, frowning. ‘That was when you and Gerard parted company, wasn’t it?’
‘Just about then.’
‘What happened exactly?’
‘The day my mother left, Gerard and I came home to find my father drunk and Mum gone. Dad told us a pack of lies about how he’d found out she’d been having an affair with her wealthy boss for years, that the boss’s wife had finally died and he wanted to marry Mum, that she’d left without a backward glance, not caring about any of us any more.
‘He ranted and raved about how she’d always despised being married to a man who worked with his hands, that all she’d wanted out of life was money and material things. He claimed he’d worked his fingers to the bone to provide for her but nothing was ever good enough.
‘Naturally, this all came as a bit of shock. As I said, their marriage had seemed reasonably happy on the surface.’
‘But you believed him?’
‘Gerard did. He’d had a recent experience with a girl dumping him for a guy with a sports car, so I guess he was rather primed to believe badly of women. He’d never been all that close to Mum, either. Dad had been the better parent, affectionate and loving. Mum was far more remote, emotionally. On top of that, things did look damaging against her.
‘Without us seeing her bruises, we had no idea what Dad had done. He’d never even hit her before. She hadn’t left any letter for us. Neither did she ring up at that time and explain. We didn’t know it then, but she was terrified Dad might murder her. He’d already threatened to kill her, and had actually gone to her boss’s home with a loaded rifle.’
‘So she was at her boss’s house?’
‘Yes. He was very fond of her. He doesn’t deny that, even today. But he swears they were never lovers. Mum had gone to him for protection when she had nowhere else to turn and he’d taken her in. It wasn’t till later that they fell in love. Still, her being in his home was another nail in her coffin in Gerard’s opinion. He went to the house himself. It was a mansion down on the Gold Coast. Unfortunately, by then Mum and her boss had left for the States together.’
‘That must have looked
pretty bad.’
‘It did. When Dad found out he went crazy. He wouldn’t believe Gerard. He accused him of lying. He raced out to the garage, jumped in his utility and screamed off at a suicidal speed. He crashed it on the way and was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.’
‘Oh, Gareth…how awful.’
‘It was. It really was…’
‘So, did your mother contact you eventually?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Gerard wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t listen. He blamed her for Dad’s death. In the end she gave up trying to explain to him. When she actually married her boss, Gerard saw that as final and irretrievable proof that our father had been the wronged party. He told me that he never wanted to see her or speak to her again. She was dead as far as he was concerned.’
Leah could only shake her head. She could imagine Gerard saying that. Once crossed, he would never forgive or forget. No doubt he hated her now.
‘He changed after that,’ Gareth went on. ‘He became ruthlessly ambitious. He dropped out of architecture and—’
‘Gerard was an architect too?’ Leah broke in, startled.
‘He was. But after Dad’s death being a fledgling architect just wouldn’t do. Not enough money in it. So he went into sales. Selling houses proved far more lucrative than designing them. He worked seven days a week. Had no time for the things we’d once planned to do together. He had no time for me at all. I was a constant reminder of what had happened to Dad.’
‘So he cut you out of his life! And his mother as well!’
‘He believed she’d lied.’
‘Isn’t that just like Gerard?’ Leah went on with a wealth of feeling. ‘You had the decency to hear your mother’s point of view and keep an open mind. But Gerard only has one point of view. His.’
Gareth frowned. ‘I was hoping you might understand your husband a little better once you knew his background. I was hoping you might have it in your heart to forgive him.’
‘Never!’ she exclaimed heatedly. ‘God, no. How can you possibly ask that of me, Gareth? What he did to me was unforgivable. I don’t care what his background was. I’m sick and tired of people finding excuses for their actions because of something that happened in the past. Once you become an adult you make your own choices and decisions. Your background was the same as Gerard’s and you didn’t turn out to be a cold-blooded conscienceless devil. No, I can’t excuse him. He knew what he was doing and he did it anyway.’