The flash of agony ripped through his leg, the faceless enemy, the constant reminder that his life was over.
He had to get out of here before he fell down.
He tipped up her face, denying the searing heat that raced through him with the simple touch. He couldn’t afford to think about it. “Don’t go there,” was all he said—but even he heard the anguish, the need, and he didn’t have a clue which need it was right now, to have his life back or to have her.
Didn’t matter: his dreams were gone and he couldn’t have them back. He dropped his hand, ready to run.
Limp, his mind corrected in sardonic self-mockery.
The tender touch on his face halted him with the force of a Mack truck. She’d always had that way with her; her power all the stronger because she had no idea what she did to him. “Tal,” she whispered, holding him captive with warmth and caring. “Don’t go. Please.”
He turned his face back to hers and aching hunger ripped through him: the need to fall inside her arms, lips and body—and just maybe, lost inside her, he’d find himself once again.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Desperate, his voice sounded thready now, weakening under the relentless jagged hell in his thigh.
He couldn’t face her like this. When he could walk again—when he’d got his head together, drowned the roaring need under the force of a few cold showers—he’d feel more in control.
“All right.” Then both hands touched him, cupping his face. Her silky-soft fingers trailed over his scars, unconsciously erotic on the exquisitely sensitive skin. “You didn’t lose it all. Dreams change shape. You can still help. You can be so much more than you are now.” And the soft brush of her mouth on his shocked him to the core. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He swallowed down the ball of hot gravel in his throat. What a man—he wanted her like hell, but could barely stay on his feet. He couldn’t stand for her to see— “Just go, okay?”
As if she knew, she dropped her hands. “Okay. But we have to talk. Consider your services hired for tomorrow—all day.”
With a massive effort, he grinned. “I’ll look forward to that, Miss West.”
Already walking away, she flicked a strange, intense look over her shoulder. “I hope you still feel the same when you know what services the world requires from you—Dr. O’Rierdan.”
When she’d gone, he grabbed the walking stick he kept hidden behind the deck chair near the wooden shack he called his home-office. Gritting his teeth, he hobbled slowly into his cabin. As soon as he was inside he fell to the bed, pulling his legs up, fighting the fisted knuckle-punches gutting him from the inside, from thigh to groin. When he could finally pull it together, he rolled to the bedside table and grabbed the full syringe he kept there and injected his leg, right beside the scars.
He forced himself to lie flat on the bed, waiting for relief. He only took enough to take the edge off, never often enough to get addicted. But when it came, he had two choices: this or puke and pass out where he landed. If he was flying when the pain hit, he settled for a local anesthetic until he got back here.
At least he had a choice today: he could feel sorry for himself or think about why Mary-Anne was here…why she’d gotten mad with him, why she’d touched him—kissed him.
Could it be that maybe, just maybe, beneath the cool, controlled, icy Verity West persona that she presented to the world, his Mary-Anne—lovely Mary-Anne, so sweet and caring, so fiery and passionate as she’d only been with him—still existed? And if she did, maybe…God help him for even hoping—
Don’t think. Don’t go through this. She’ll be gone soon, back to her latest album or concert or high-society party, and your life will go back to crap.
Yet as he drifted into restless sleep he knew that, no matter why she’d come to him or what happened after, life was going to be a hell of a lot more interesting this week than it had been over the past fourteen months.
Chapter 2
B ut she slipped farther down…poor baby was hanging on to his knees, screaming, her eyes begging for help while the boy on his shoulders began to topple, flung against him in the gale-force wind. Held up by lines suspended from the chopper, they kept slamming into the cliff face. A man, three kids and a split-second choice: which kid did he save? Or did they all die?
Drenched in sweat, he jolted up in bed.
Five-thirty. Would he ever break the habit of jerking awake the second the sun peeped above the horizon?
At least it broke the nightmare.
If he’d never joined the Nighthawks, there’d be no blood-soaked visions stalking him whenever he closed his eyes. He’d be a hardworking Flying Doctor, helping people in isolated areas—
Stupid. I left the Flying Doctors and joined the Navy to make Ginny leave me—and I left the Navy for the Nighthawks because it was my dream to work in war zones, helping those in greatest need. I jumped at the offer, knowing all the risks.
Tal limped to the bathroom, gritting his teeth hard when he had to balance himself to use the john. At least he was walking again this morning—hell, he was lucky he could still walk at all. The docs in Darwin saved his leg from amputation when putrid infection set in, and the most up-to-date plastic surgeon put his face back together—but all the medical magic in the world couldn’t make his femur knit as it had before, or stop the pain. So this was life, Jim, but not as he’d known it.
You could be so much more than you are…
He stood face-up beneath the stinging spray of a cold shower, half wishing it would drown him. Why wasn’t it cold enough to freeze the mess in his head and douse the raging fire of turbulence inside? Just yesterday his life was quiet, serene—
And boring as hell. You know you want to do whatever this mission is. Any reason to be with Mary-Anne again is worth it.
No, damn it, he couldn’t afford to want her here. She’d gone light-years out of his reach…and there was no way he could be friends with her. The white-hot chemistry that confused and embarrassed the hell out of him when he was a kid was still in full force. He’d never be able to look at her without wanting to drag her somewhere and make fast, furious love with her.
Dripping wet, he looked at himself in the mirror. The daily grueling upper body work had done its job: he was in top condition. The days in the sun left his olive skin glowing with health. Even his other leg looked good thanks to the one-legged skip-rope jumps he wasn’t supposed to be doing. As good as he was going to get—nowhere near good enough for a star like her.
So get over it.
Yeah. After half a lifetime of obsession with her, that was gonna happen.
Fifteen minutes later he left the shack and headed for the massive garage-style hangar that housed his little Cessna. A solitary sunrise dip and swirl with Harriet, the one faithful love of his life, would do him good.
He jammed his Akubra on his head as he limped down the soft, sandy dirt track bordered with wild hibiscus and azaleas. If any of the few tourists here got up this early, they’d be off on the high bush tracks or running on the sand to worship nature at its finest: an unspoiled sunrise over a calm, pristine reef ocean. They wouldn’t even notice him.
The irony of it. All he’d wanted once was to be overlooked, unimportant, faceless—but he’d wanted it by his own choice.
Not like this. Never like this.
Passing the nearby B and B on a palm-shadowed, winding path near the beach, he heard soft, peaceful Eastern music. He turned to find its source—and lost his breath.
She stood gracefully on one leg on a towel on the creamy sand beneath a swaying palm tree. The other leg extended back, her arm forward in a balletlike stretch movement. Her hair glowed in the gentle morning light, roped down her back in a simple plait. Barefoot, wearing shorts and a lemon tank top, breasts free of restraint—Don’t go there—her face scrubbed fresh and shower-clean, she resembled the simple, natural girl she’d once been.
And he was gone. The old ache, the helpless longing he always knew when h
e’d see her waiting for him at the billabong between Eden, his family’s farm, and Poole’s Rest, filled him again.
Mary-Anne had been his since she was six and she’d first seen his face. He’d been hers from the same day, climbing a tree for her against his will, a sulky eight-year-old putting a nest of dead swallow’s eggs back up in the branch to stop her tears for the task she was too chubby and ungainly to perform herself.
Not wanting her then—but wanting to be like her. A timid girl hiding in the shadows of life, she still had the courage to love, to give, never anything but herself. She’d needed him to help with her makeshift hospital of limping wildlife rejects, and he’d needed someone to need him. Just…a friend.
When his feelings changed, he didn’t know.
Maybe when Kathy died of leukemia when he was fifteen? Mary-Anne had left him speechless with gratitude when she’d sneaked through the window into his room the night of the funeral and held him all night in empathetic silence, letting him cry.
The erotic dreams of her started that night, a crazy wildland fire out of control—but, confused and ashamed, he hadn’t called it sexual love for his best friend.
Perhaps he’d known on his eighteenth birthday. His parents, close friends of her parents, had invited her to his private party with just the families, knowing she wouldn’t come to face the town kids’ taunts in a pink fit. Yet, knowing how much it would mean to him if she showed up, she’d stood outside the door and fumblingly handed him his favorite coconut-cream cake. Ginny, rich, pretty, spoiled and his try-hard-wannabe-girlfriend, had seen the pride on his face for his best friend. Spiteful and jealous, she’d said the name Mary-Anne suited her, since she was straight from “Gilligan’s Island.” All the kids laughed, but Ginny couldn’t work out why Tal didn’t. She didn’t know he’d always had a secret crush on the more famous Mary Ann, for being so sweet and kind to dopey Gilligan.
Three months later he’d turned down a major football contract in Sydney—and of all the kids in town, only she understood. “Oh, Tal, I’m so glad I’m not losing you,” she’d whispered…and, seeing her unashamed love for him in her eyes, he’d kissed her for the first time. It was gentle, sweet, awkward and terrifying—a fragile moment of beauty he would never forget. A son of four generations of blunt-talking, hardworking farmers who didn’t know how to communicate, he’d prayed that his touch, his kiss, told her all he could never bring himself to say.
But he’d known he loved her the night his loving, distressed parents and Ginny’s rich, smarmy father, holding the mortgage on Eden and having ambitions for the boy he’d hand-picked to be his son-in-law, had backed him into a corner with two words. “Ginny’s pregnant.” They hadn’t had to say more: they’d known he’d stand by her, even if Ginny had had to find him in a drunken stupor after a college party to seduce him. Well, she’d claimed he’d been enthusiastic, but since his mate Carl had had to carry him back to his dorm, and the remains of his puke had lain on the floor beside the bed, it hadn’t seemed likely.
Years later, Ginny had taunted him with the truth—but he’d never questioned at the time that the baby was his. She’d suckered him, grabbed the chance to get a ring from the boy Daddy had planned for her to marry. The boy she’d known could barely stand her.
As the families planned his wedding, only one thought filled his mind. How the hell do I explain this to Mary-Anne?
He’d given a quiet, unemotional promise to marry Ginny and left them to the champagne Max had brought—refusing to lie or to act happy about it—and he’d run to the tiny billabong, desperately needing comfort. Home from nursing college for the summer, Mary-Anne had come to him—but with tears streaming down her face for what they both knew would be their last time together.
“Ginny’s pregnant,” she’d cried, her pure, clear voice sweet even in her severe distress. “The whole town knows—and they’re all laughing at me. How could you? Why didn’t you make love to me? Why her? I thought…I thought—” She’d broken off then, her face ravaged and white, her eyes dark and burning.
He’d ached to comfort her…and to get comfort himself. Caught like an animal in a trap from one damn time he couldn’t remember. But he’d been in it then, for better or worse. Much worse. “I don’t love her. I—I don’t even like her,” he’d stuttered, desperately needing someone to talk to…aching to hold her, one last time…
“But you slept with her. You gave her your baby.” She’d flung off his touch, his pleading hands. “Go on then, marry her—have your baby—have a nice life with your skinny, pretty wife—but she’ll never love you the way I love you!”
The words he’d always longed for her to say as woman to man, said a day, a week, a year too late, while Ginny listened in from the shadows. Ginny, who’d thought she could cheat and lie to get him, and he’d love her anyway.
Ginny had made him pay for the love he’d only given to Mary-Anne. She and Max had made him pay every hell-filled day of the five years he’d been forced to stay with her, long after their mythical baby returned to the world of fairy tales and any real baby she might have had could have been any guy’s in town.
And Mary-Anne had disappeared into a fairy-tale ending. She’d hooked up to the stars, and dropped his Mary-Anne carelessly in some other galaxy where he’d never find her again.
As if dragged by magnets, he limped over to her now. “Well, I never thought I’d live to see this sight. Mary-Anne Poole is exercising of her own free will.”
“I didn’t lose those sixty pounds by crying in my coffee.” She turned her face to smile at him, sweet and unselfconscious. “And it’s rather hard to keep up a schedule of two hours of dancing and singing almost every night without some basic fitness skills.”
“I thought you famous pop-star types slept ’til midday.”
She smiled at that, too. “You’re still a farmer’s son, why shouldn’t I be a farmer’s daughter?” In a movement shimmering with tranquil beauty, she lifted her arms to a sky alight with the colors of sunrise. A gentle scent of rose and lavender floated to him, filling him with a sense of peace and rest.
“What are you doing?” he asked gruffly, gulping down a ball in his throat at the sight of her effortless grace, the fluid movements of her body. Oh, man, I’m losing it already…
“Tai chi. I finished my yoga a few minutes ago.” She sighed. “I feel like a sloth. I usually do an aerobic dance workout, run five kilometers and do an hour of weights, but I ‘officially’ have a throat infection, so I’m taking a week or two of R and R.”
He shook his head, laughing. “Mary-Anne Poole running five Ks every day and working weights. Is this the same girl who hid behind the equipment shed during phys ed?”
“No, it’s Verity West and Songbird.” Her tone measured, even. “I work out every day. I have to stay fit to keep my jobs.”
“And the jobs are so important to you?”
She gave him a look hard to interpret. “Verity West is my cover, like being a beach bum pilot was yours until you quit. I have to work hard at getting it right, but the life I lead for my cover is no less important to me than yours is to you.”
“Right. You lost the weight first. You were famous four years before you joined the Nighthawks, and you reveled in it!”
She didn’t blink at his knowledge of her life. “So you asked about me,” she said softly. “You found out about me after that day we passed each other in the hall at headquarters.”
He flushed. Had Anson told her about his attempted theft of her files, the suspensions he’d endured for refusing to drop what Anson called his obsession with her? Had she asked about him, or was the gnawing need for them to be together again only in his mind and heart? “Can you answer the question?”
“Fame was important once.” She swung her body around in another motion of unselfconscious confidence. So unlike the girl who hunched over to hide her breasts, walking with a shuffle, as if apologizing to the earth for being such an unwanted part of it. “I thought I’d feel better a
bout myself, being accepted. But being chased and photographed by the press, or enduring endless speculations about my sex life—no, I don’t revel in it.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to be like everyone else.”
“Why?” To him, she’d always been a miracle, a true human in a world of wannabes. A girl who just loved him for what he was, in a town where everyone adored him in an awed manner as Cowinda’s sports star and valedictorian. In their anxious eyes, he was only as good as his next performance or exam result, his university entrance mark and the beautiful girl on his arm.
“Being normal has its merits, Tal.” She lunged down, her arms reaching out, fingers reaching to emptiness—but it didn’t seem to bother her, the emptiness. But she’d never had the emptiness inside, like him.
“Why are you here?” He had to end this farce, the pretense that they were still friends, soul mates—anything but the lovers he couldn’t stop aching for. “What does Anson want?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to hear it?”
He shrugged. “I know Anson. Always expect the unexpected.”
She scouted the area to be sure they were alone. Then she looked him in the eyes with her usual directness. “Here’s the deal. We have a whirlwind public courtship, then do a fake marriage ceremony in either Sydney or Cowinda within three days. Then we begin a European honeymoon where, under the cover of a happy couple, we investigate the activities of a black market arms dealer and an apparent houseguest wanted for murder.”
The world swung around him like her body in that Tai chi movement. Oh, man. Was this a twelve-year dream coming true or yet another king hit from life? Trying to reorient himself, he lifted his brows and sucked in a breath. “O-kay,” he said for the sake of saying something, vaguely proud of the fact that he hadn’t fallen over. Yet. “Why us?”
She gave him a resigned grin. “The tabloid stories Ginny sold. What else?”
He felt the flush creep up his neck. After he’d left her three years ago, Ginny had made a fortune by selling stories to TV, radio and the print media that her husband had taken the Iceberg’s virginity by a billabong. When the story grew cold, she’d added her belief that Mary-Anne was cold to all other men because she was still, and had always been, wildly, madly, deeply in love with Tal O’Rierdan—even when she was married to Gilbert West.
Can You Forget? Page 3