She wondered if this was the beginning—if her memory would return with little bursts of déjà vu.
But she didn’t want to ponder too long...didn’t want to spoil the pleasant mood. The setting was magical. The water was so still she could see the white trunks of the paperbarks reflected in its surface. The dusk was so quiet the only sounds were the faint crackle of the fire and the far-off squawks of cockatoos calling to each other as they headed for home.
Soon the sausages and sliced onions were sizzling in the pan, and enticing smells added to the magic mood.
Sitting comfortably on a smooth rock, still warm from the day’s sun, she let the peace of the scene seep into her. It was true, that old saying about the simplest things being the best.
She found herself watching Max, enjoying the easy athleticism of his movements as he crouched by the fire, then leapt up to grab another piece of wood from the pile they’d collected.
She was still watching as he kicked at a fallen coal with the toe of his boot, then leaned down to flip the sausages in the pan. ‘Snags are almost done,’ he said.
‘Great,’ Carrie said. ‘I’ve made a salad.’
‘Salad?’ His expression was both amused and shocked. ‘Green stuff?’
‘Don’t you like salad?’
He chuckled. ‘Sure. But you can’t beat a sausage with fried onions and tomato sauce wrapped in bread.’
When he grinned like that Carrie was in no mind to argue.
* * *
They stayed on the riverbank, enjoying the flickering firelight and the silvery path of the almost full moon as it rose majestically above the treetops.
Carrie, replete with crispy sausages, was glad that Max didn’t want to rush back to the house. With Clover happily sprawled beside her, she sat hugging her knees and sneaking glimpses of Max’s profile in the firelight.
‘I proposed to you down here,’ he said suddenly.
Carrie gasped, and almost immediately stupid tears sprang in her eyes as she tried desperately to imagine what must have been the most romantic moment of her life.
‘How d-did it happen?’ she stammered. ‘Wh—what did you say?’
Max turned to her and his eyes flashed blue fire. Then he smiled and pulled out a stick from the coals. There was a glowing ember at one end.
‘It wasn’t anything fancy,’ he said. ‘But there was a little sky-writing involved.’
He began to write in the air with the stick and the fiery ember glowed bright red and gold against the night sky. The movement caused sparks that hung in the air just long enough for Carrie to make out the words he was writing.
MARRY ME
She gave a delighted laugh. ‘That’s so cool! Simple and straight to the point. Did I write my reply?’
‘You did,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m assuming I wrote YES?’
Max nodded and dropped the stick back into the fire. Then he gave a shrug and sighed.
Carrie supposed he felt frustrated. It was all so one-sided when he was the only one with memories. She wished that he would flirt a little, the way he must have when they first met. She wondered why he was holding back and began to worry again.
‘How long have your family lived here?’ she asked, feeling a need to steer the conversation in a safer direction.
‘Almost a hundred and twenty years,’ he said. ‘There’ve been Kincaids on Riverslea for five generations.’
‘Wow.’ She was silent for a moment as she let this sink in. Clearly there was a huge family tradition associated with Riverslea Downs. The lovely old furniture in the homestead and the family portraits on the walls were just a part of it. There had been over a century of hard work put into managing the vast hectares. One family had served as ongoing custodians of a large slice of Australia. That was quite a legacy.
‘So has the family name here always been Kincaid?’ she asked. ‘They never ran out of sons?’
Max poked a stick into the fire’s embers, raising sparks. ‘Not so far.’
A lump filled Carrie’s throat as she registered the implications of this news. No doubt it was her job to produce the next generation of Kincaids. The thought of performing this duty with Max’s help sent a bright flush rippling over her skin.
It wasn’t long before curiosity nudged her to ask, ‘How did I feel about the pressure to produce a son and heir?’
She gripped her knees tightly as she waited for Max’s answer. In the firelight’s glow she could see the blue of his eyes, the strong planes and angles of his cheekbones, his nose and his jaw.
He stared into the fire as he spoke. ‘Last time we discussed it you were looking forward to the challenge.’
Last time we discussed it. It was a comment that opened up more questions than it answered. Deeply intimate questions about their marriage. But Carrie felt suddenly shy. It was too soon to try and go there.
‘So, do you have brothers?’ she asked instead.
‘Two sisters.’ Max’s face relaxed and he smiled. ‘Jane’s a physiotherapist, married to a lawyer in Brisbane. Sally’s a journalist, working in the UK.’
‘How nice.’ Carrie wished she could remember them. Being an only child, she liked the idea of sisters-in-law.
‘And your parents?’
‘Both alive and well. They’ve retired to the Sunshine Coast. Moved there shortly before our wedding.’
She had to ask. ‘Did I get on well with them?’
‘Sure,’ Max said, but his face was in shadow now, so she couldn’t see his expression. ‘They’re both very fond of you, Carrie.’
His voice sounded a little choked as he said this, making fine hairs lift on Carrie’s arms. ‘That’s nice to know.’
‘My parents were ready to retire,’ Max said next. ‘And they wanted to give me—to give us—a free rein here. So we could make our own decisions about running the property. They still visit quite regularly, though. They were here at Easter.’
‘Oh.’
Her memory loss was like a brick wall that she kept running into. Perhaps she’d asked enough questions for tonight.
* * *
Conversation lapsed as Carrie repacked the picnic basket while Max stomped out the fire and poured water on the coals for good measure.
For him, this evening had been an excruciating test of willpower.
Carrie looked so happy tonight—like the Carrie he’d married. She’d eaten her charred sausages with the gleeful enthusiasm of a child, tipping her head back to catch dripping sauce and innocently showing off her white throat and the pale skin in the V of her blouse.
She was exactly like the starry-eyed happy bride he’d brought to Riverslea three years ago, doggedly determined to become the perfect Outback wife despite her mother’s doleful warnings.
It was probably a mistake to have talked about the proposal, though. And it was unhelpful now for Max to recall the several times that he and Carrie had made love down here on the riverbank, spreading a picnic rug on the sand and stripping naked in the glow of the fire, falling onto the rug together and driving each other to ecstasy.
Tonight it had taken every ounce of his self-restraint to keep his distance. The memories had run hot and his body had throbbed with wanting. It hadn’t helped that Carrie had been flirting. Her lovely dark eyes had shone with that special excitement and anticipation he knew so well, stirring memories of how eagerly she’d made love.
His imagination raced ahead. He tasted the sweetness of her lips, felt the silky smoothness of her skin, the soft swell of her breasts beneath his hands. It would have been all too easy to take liberties tonight. Delicious, tempting, glorious liberties.
The longing had nearly killed him, but he’d given his word to Sylvia. And even if he hadn’t there was every chance that Carrie would be furious when s
he regained her memory and realised he’d taken advantage of her.
It had been a cruel irony, though, to watch his wife’s unrestrained enjoyment of the campfire and the bush. Carrie had no idea that she’d changed so completely in recent months—that she’d lost interest in lovemaking and had scorned outdoor activities, claiming that all aspects of the bush life were boring.
Any day now she would remember, and Max knew he shouldn’t be bewitched by her current happy mood. His task was to watch and wait, and to steel himself for the eventual fallout.
* * *
By the time they left for Whitehorse Creek on Sunday nothing had really changed.
Carrie’s memory still hadn’t returned. Max was still sleeping in the spare guest bedroom. Carrie was still as desperately curious about their relationship as ever, but she and Max were still treating each other more like polite acquaintances than husband and wife.
For Carrie, the tension of waiting for normality to resume was becoming unbearable.
On Saturday she’d done her best to discover as much as she could about life at Riverslea Downs. She’d risen at dawn with Max and had watched the sun rise majestically golden over the treetops. She’d travelled with him to the outer paddocks and had enjoyed watching the cattle tussle for molasses at the feed troughs.
She’d enjoyed even more watching Max do his cowboy thing—scaling stockyard fences and hefting heavy barrels with ease, moving fearlessly among all those hooves and horns.
Back at the homestead, she’d trawled through emails, had found a large file on her laptop crammed with recipes for preserves. She’d had also found, behind the orchard, an abandoned vegetable garden which Max told her had once been her pride and joy.
‘You lost interest and I didn’t have time to keep it going,’ he’d said, when she’d asked him about the beds filled with ugly weeds.
It was a sobering discovery to learn that she’d once had a thriving garden. Now only a few shrivelled and withered chilli and tomato plants hung sadly from their stakes, their bright red fruit rotting on the stems.
For Carrie it only deepened the mystery and raised another host of questions. And now, as Max turned off the highway onto the track that led to the Whitehorse Creek homestead, she faced even more uncertainty. She was about to meet her father and his wife, but she felt more vulnerable and ignorant than ever.
‘Max,’ she said suddenly, unable to hold back. ‘Before we get to the homestead I have to ask—is there something not quite right with us?’
He shot her a sharp frown. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I have this growing sense that we have a problem. I don’t know whether it’s you or me. I suspect I’m the problem, but it might be both of us. Anyway, I’m sure there’s something.’
Max stared fiercely ahead and didn’t answer.
‘That’s why you’re being so cautious with me, isn’t it?’ Carrie persisted. ‘And Barney is, too. I really get the feeling he’s worried about us—and it’s not simply because I’ve lost my memory.’
She couldn’t hear Max’s sigh over the noise of the motor, but she saw the way his chest rose and fell heavily.
‘Now’s not a good time for this, Carrie. You’re about to meet your father...again.’
It was a reasonable excuse. Carrie was sure she should feel more keyed up about the impending meeting with her mystery father, but at this point Doug Peterson was still an unknown quantity—a vague possibility... The state of her marriage was a more pressing concern, hi-jacking her emotions.
Ever since she’d first seen Max in the hospital she’d felt a strong tug of attraction, and since then she’d discovered that she really liked him. She knew he really liked her, too. It was there in the way he looked at her, in the way he took care of her, as if she was someone he loved.
With every minute she spent in his company her feelings for him deepened. It was even possible that she was falling in love with him. Again.
If there was a problem between them, she was desperate to know what it was.
‘I’m betting my father knows all about our situation,’ she said. ‘That means you and my father and his wife will all know about it—and I’ll be sitting there at lunch like a dumb bunny, feeling—’
Without warning, the mounting tension inside Carrie threatened to burst. To her horror, she felt her throat tighten and her eyes fill with tears.
Not now. She couldn’t arrive at Whitehorse Creek in tears.
She drew a deep breath, trying desperately to calm down. As she did so Max stopped the vehicle.
They were in the middle of a dirt track, with gumtrees and scrub closing in all around them.
Max turned to her. ‘I know this is hard,’ he said gently. ‘But you have to believe that we all care. We want the best for you, Carrie. You should try to relax and enjoy this lunch. No one’s going to be judging you. We understand.’
‘But I don’t!’ she cried, her voice high-pitched and tight with tension. ‘I don’t understand anything.’
It was all very well for Max to preach to her about relaxing. He had no idea what she was going through. She glared at him, fuming with righteous anger.
But then she saw his handsome face, saw his beautiful blue eyes glistening with a suspicious sheen, and her heart slammed against her ribs. In the very next breath her body whispered the truth that her memory still withheld. There could be no doubt. She was in love with this man.
Without any knowledge of the whys or wherefores, she knew at some visceral, bone-deep level that she loved him. And with that knowledge came longing—crashing over her body like surf breaking on a sea cliff.
With a soft cry, she flipped the buckle of her seatbelt.
‘Carrie...’
She heard Max groan, but she had no idea whether it was a warning or an invitation. She couldn’t really see him through her tears.
It didn’t matter. She was heedless to common sense as she melted towards him and there was only one thing that mattered now. To her relief, Max knew what that was. He met her halfway, hauling her roughly into his arms.
Oh... It was so good to feel him at last, to have the warmth and strength of him surround her, to have his mouth on hers, his tongue slipping past her lips, seeking, demanding, needing her.
This was how he tasted. This was how his kisses felt. Soothing and thrilling at once. Awakening her senses. Driving arrows of desire into the deepest part of her.
Carrie pressed closer, winding her arms around his neck, and he took her mouth in a hungry, desperate kiss, holding nothing back. Her face was damp with her tears as she matched his passion with a wildness of her own. It was so good to finally give in to the need that had been churning and burning inside her for days, to feel her longing build and burst as she poured her heart into their kiss.
All sense of time and place vanished as she surrendered to Max and to this storm-burst of longing. Heaven knew what might have happened if her elbow hadn’t inadvertently bumped the car horn.
The sudden blast filled the cabin, startling them. Instinctively, as if an axe had fallen, they pulled apart.
Breathless and slightly panting, they stared at each other. Carrie knew Max was as surprised as she was. She stared in amazement at his crumpled shirt, at the buttons that she’d clawed undone, revealing his broad, brown now heaving chest.
She had no idea what to say as she edged back into her seat. After all, they had every right to be passionate. They were husband and wife.
And yet...
There were a thousand and yets...
As if he was remembering every one of them, Max stared ahead through the windscreen, his jaw tight. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly.
‘Don’t apologise.’
He slid her a frowning, questioning glance.
‘It was my fault,’ Carrie said, blushing.
‘I guess my curiosity got the better of me.’
Max smiled sadly. ‘Is that what it was? Idle curiosity?’
‘Not exactly idle...’ This time Carrie offered a shy smile of her own.
He gave a soft laugh. ‘You’re a hussy, Carrie Kincaid.’
She almost giggled with nervous relief.
‘We’d better get going,’ he said next, and he did up his shirt buttons while Carrie found a tissue and lipstick and a comb. Thank heavens she hadn’t worn mascara. She’d left it off in case she became teary when she met her father, but it was her feelings for her gorgeous husband that had made her cry.
‘All set?’ he asked after a bit.
‘Yes.’
‘You sure you’re OK?’
OK wasn’t quite how Carrie would have described her emotional state. Not with the power of her husband’s kiss still reverberating through her. Thunderstruck was possibly more apt.
But on another level she felt calmer. Reassured that there couldn’t be too much wrong with their marriage when their chemistry was so explosive.
She nodded and managed to smile. ‘I’m fine, Max.’
She glanced again at his shirt, which still looked a bit rumpled, at his face which was once again stern, as if he might already be regretting their impulsiveness.
But they weren’t teenagers, stopping off for a quick fumble on their way to meet the parents.
Something deeply significant, perhaps life-changing, had happened. Carrie was sure of it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DOUG PETERSON LOOKED as distinguished as he had in the wedding photos as he waited with his wife on the homestead veranda.
Max got out, opened the door for Carrie and collected a cake that she’d baked from the back seat. Together they crossed the lawn. With the kiss still reverberating through her like the lingering notes of a song Carrie was almost floating as she walked beside Max, her feet not quite touching the ground.
Doug came down the steps. He had the lean, athletic figure of a man of the land and his silver hair glinted in the sunlight. His eyes were dark brown, like Carrie’s eyes, and his arms were outstretched in greeting.
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