He grinned, already aroused. “You get one more thing in the deal—me. And when we’ve had enough, we can retire from fieldwork and have a few kids. How does that sound?”
Her heart melted at the anxiety he was trying not to show. “Doofus.” She smiled with total love. “What do you think? I’ve only wanted you all my life, and to be the mother of your babies.” She wriggled against his arousal. “Mmm. Yes, please…”
With a deft flip he was on top of her and, after a deep, hot kiss, was inside her. “Welcome home, Songbird,” he whispered.
Afterward, twined together once more, he spoke in the warm darkness. “I love you, Mary-Anne. Will you marry me?”
She laughed at him. “I love you, too, but…um, Tal, unless I missed something, we are married.”
“Yeah, but you got cheated of your dreams. I want you to have them.” He tilted up her face and kissed her. “I want to marry you again—properly this time, at the billabong, with our family and friends all there.”
She gasped, choked on the tide of emotion surging up from her heart, and stammered, “Tal—oh, Tal…”
And when she wept in quiet joy against his chest, neither of them had to speak.
Everyone kept their secret, right up until their wedding day two weeks later. The only reporter to cover the event was from the cash-strapped local bush rag. The scoop of the year, sold to newspapers, magazines and TV stations around the world: the sunset wedding by the billabong of the handsome, scarred local hero and the woman who’d turned her back on fame to share her life with the man she loved.
“You may kiss your bride,” the local minister proclaimed, smiling at them both.
Tal drew her into his arms and touched the simple lace of her dress. “I love you,” he murmured, and she whispered it back. Then he kissed her, to the cheering joy of their families and the laconic, understated approval of the Cowinda community.
And the silent, smiling man standing in the shadow of a tree well away from the other guests, who couldn’t afford to be seen in public or in any photo, gave them a nod of approval, and left his gift on the wedding table. He stifled the yank of unwanted pain inside his empty heart and climbed into his unmarked sedan, to return to his dangerous and isolated world, where he could keep pretending that saving the world was enough.
In the quiet of an Outback evening, the man who no longer existed drove alone in a government car toward a plane that would take him to a city that wasn’t home, to a house that wasn’t his, in a world barely anyone knew about and none in the know dared acknowledge. And when the coldness of night came to him, surrounding him like the loved ones around Mary-Anne and Tal, he knew this was all the comfort he’d ever know—the satisfaction of a job well done, and seeing others find their happiness.
Annie was gone. Forever.
With his adoring wife still in the circle of his arms, his mouth still filled with the taste of her kisses, Tal quietly watched Anson slip away into the violet shadows of dusk, like the ghost he’d become so long ago. An instinct as deep and abiding as the one he’d had at eight years old, that told him he’d belong to Mary-Anne forever, filled him, touching the edges of his joy. He could see it, see the shadows of dark memory seeming to follow Ghost, gathering all around him, quiet and malevolent, biding their time.
The storm was coming…
And when it came, he and Mary-Anne would be standing beside him, facing it shoulder to shoulder. The Nighthawks were like that.
“Tal?”
The soft, pure voice recalled him to now. He smiled down at the beautiful, radiant woman in his arms. “I’m here, honey. Now and always.” He took her hand. Together they led the way to the big old barn in Eden, decked out for an old-fashioned hoedown, to celebrate the marriage, not of the year, but of a lifetime.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7742-1
CAN YOU FORGET?
Copyright © 2004 by Lisa Chaplin
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Can You Forget? Page 25