"If there are that many, then the poachers will be back."
"Precisely." Matthew finished the few swallows left in his cup. For just a moment he let the coffee, the sunny kitchen and the lovely woman across from him warm him. The sensation was a shock, and he shut it out quickly. It had been remarkably close to pain.
He stood. "Then you see why you should leave here, at least until the poachers are jailed?"
Alexis stood, too. Her eyes caught his and, surprisingly, held them. "Oh, no, Matthew." She almost stumbled over the name, but she went on, as if she still had all the confidence that Charles had bled out of her, drop by drop, in the years of their marriage. "I'm not leaving. If the poachers come back and no one is here, they can kill the koalas without any trouble. I'm going to be here to scare them away."
His dark brows met in a fierce slash that told her what he thought of her foolishness. "You're a woman alone. That makes no sense!"
"It makes all the sense in the world," she said quietly. "I can't leave."
"And why not?" he demanded, forgetting that he had no business asking.
"It's simple." She smiled a smile that held all the world's sadness. "Because I know what it's like to be hunted."
* * *
SHE KNEW WHAT it was like to be hunted. She knew what it was like to be so weary of running that you wanted to turn and give yourself up, give up fighting and pleading and screaming for help.
Alexis sat bolt upright in bed, her hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that had almost been torn from her. While she slept, Charles had found her. He had stalked her, gun in hand, the aristocratic lines of his face distorted by hatred. He had aimed the gun at her, then fired. And a koala had fallen at her feet. She had been racked with guilt, trembling with fear. And then the gun barrel had swung back to her.
And she had awakened.
Moonlight touched objects in the room with familiar golden light. Nothing moved, nothing sounded except the high-pitched calls of a night bird roosting in the dense bushes at the clearing's edge.
"Charles?" she whispered. But there was no answer. Charles was a hemisphere away. And she was alone with Jody, beginning a new life.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The throw rug against the soles of her feet helped bring her closer to reality. She stood on trembling legs, holding one bed post to steady herself. When she was calmer, she made her way down the hall to Jody's bedroom. The little girl's door was ajar, and a nightlight beamed its comforting glow into the room. Alexis could tell from the doorway that Jody was sleeping peacefully, sleeping soundly.
Sleeping as only a child can sleep.
Alexis sent a silent prayer of thanks that Jody could still sleep that way. After everything, she could still sleep as if the world were a safe place to be.
Turning, she started back through the house to her room. Halfway there she realized she wouldn't sleep again, no matter how many times she meditated or counted the breaths she took or told herself she was free from threat.
Instead she turned in at the first door past Jody's and switched on a small lamp. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and the windows by her desk looked out over the same view that graced the kitchen. There was just enough moonlight to touch the rock-strewn surf with platinum, and the sky was a magnificent abundance of stars laced with gossamer wisps of clouds.
"God's in His heaven, all's right with the world," she whispered, wanting desperately to believe it.
Hours later she was exhausted, but there were four new pages to add to the novel that she had begun a week before. She stood, stretching, then flicked off the computer.
The novel was going to be good. She could feel it expanding inside her. Like her first, it traced a woman's personal growth. Unlike her first, it said little about her own struggles. Her first book had been therapy. Writing it had saved her life, although, ironically, it had also endangered it more. There was nothing of her life that anyone could pinpoint in this book. There was nothing to enrage the man who was always enraged anyway. Charles would know she had written the book, but there would be nothing there to make him search harder for her.
Once again she told herself she was safe.
She turned off the light, but she was still unwilling to go back to bed, even though the hours left for sleeping were few. Instead she headed toward the kitchen for a glass of milk. She got it without turning on the light, then went to stand on the thick rug at the windows to see what was stirring.
Kangaroo Island was a place of night creatures. By day they existed somewhere in the thick stands of mallee and yacca scrub. But at night they prowled the island scavenging for food.
Some of the night creatures were quickly becoming Jody's friends. There were wallabies, the miniature kangaroos with soulful eyes and bony animal hands that clasped whatever scraps they were given like skid row bums with newly donated dollar bills. There were possums, Australian style, who sat on their hind legs and begged, snatching food from human fingers with the adeptness of trained dogs. And there were other night creatures she and Jody never saw but knew were there from their scurrying feet under the front porch, the tip of a tail, the squeak or squeal or growl from an animal throat.
Kangaroo Island was a long way from Grosse Pointe, the exclusive suburb of Detroit where Alexis had lived with Charles. There the only night creatures had been policemen silently cruising the tree shaded streets in constant vigilance, and garbage men who came quietly sometime after midnight to whisk away the trash that wasn't allowed to defile the curbsides after dawn.
There, wallabies and possums and koalas had been creatures to be seen in a well stocked zoo.
Alexis thought of koalas, and then she thought of Matthew Haley. It wasn't the first time that night. His face had intruded as she worked on her novel. She had pictured the man who would inhabit the pages of her book, and his hair had darkened from sandy to medium brown, his eyes had turned a deeper blue, his eyebrows had become a slash of black over a long, perfect nose.
She wondered if, despite the training of her marriage to Charles, she was still susceptible to cold good looks, to men with eyes that looked right through her and lips that had never learned to smile. Yet this time she had also seen torment behind those eyes, and she had seen the lips twist into something that had been the saddest expression she'd ever witnessed.
And it had been the torment, the smile that had almost bloomed, that had intrigued her.
"Matthew Haley."
As if the name had called something from the shadows, she saw a movement behind the scrub that bordered the path leading down to the beach. She squinted, then pressed her face against the glass. It was cold against her cheeks, and she shivered. At first she saw nothing, and she wondered if imagination had distorted reality. Then she saw movement once more. She stepped back, afraid suddenly that she might be seen. There were heavy old curtains lining the window's edge, and she stepped behind them so that the silhouette of her body wouldn't be visible from the ground below. She leaned against them, turning just far enough so that she could still view the bushes.
There was nothing for a minute; then, as she watched, a man's figure appeared out of the shadows. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but she could tell little else. He turned and looked toward the window. She squinted, frantically searching his hands for a gun, but he was too far away for detail.
Then, as she watched, he started toward the house, walking directly toward the stairs up to the kitchen door.
Heart pounding, Alexis flattened herself against the narrow wall between kitchen windows. She always locked the house, and yet, in her terror, she couldn't remember if she had locked it tonight. It only made sense that after the talk of poachers and memories of Charles she would have locked the house and checked it yet again.
Still she couldn't remember. She knew if she passed in front of the windows to check she might be seen. But she had no choice. Being seen was less important than being.... Her brain refused to name her fear. In one quick movement
she fled to the door, grabbing the key in the keyhole to test the lock.
At the same moment there was a light rapping from the other side of the door. The key was already in position; the door was safely bolted. She stepped away from it and thought of all the glass windows in the house and how easily they could be shattered with a rifle butt or a swift kick. How easily the man standing on the kitchen stairs could gain access.
"Miss Whitham." A pause. "Alexis." The voice was quiet but stern. It was also unmistakably Australian.
Alexis felt such a surge of relief that her knees grew weak. Tears clouded her eyes as she turned the key and let in the man who moments before she had worked so hard to keep out.
Matthew stepped into the room, and then, with a muttered oath, grabbed her just as she slid to the floor.
Chapter 3
SHE WAS AS light as the china doll she resembled. Matthew could have borne Alexis’s weight without having to tense one muscle. But every part of him was tensed anyway. Through her dressing gown he could feel the softness of her breasts pressed against him, her hips cradled against his. He could smell the floral bouquet of her shampoo and hear the soft gasps that proclaimed her struggle for control.
When he could abide the sensations no more, he swept her over one arm, forcing her head down. "Keep your head low. It will stop you from fainting."
She leaned over his arm, but she protested as she did. "I'm not going to faint. I'll be fine in a moment."
"Miss Whitham, if I take my arm away, you'll crumple like a fifty dollar suit. Now be quiet and breathe."
She took several deep breaths, because she knew he was right. With the fourth, she straightened. The room spun, then miraculously halted. Then, and only then, did she realize that she was still in Matthew Haley's arms.
She pulled away immediately, anger and apology fighting for prominence. Before she could speak, he did. "Are you all right now?"
"I was all right before I saw you sneaking around in the shadows!"
He felt a twinge of regret at what he had to say next. But it didn't stop him. "And if I had been a poacher? Would fainting at my feet have stopped me from killing koalas?"
"I didn't think you were a poacher."
He saw her straighten her shoulders, but he also saw that she still trembled. He remembered how she had felt trembling against him, and his voice was sharper. "Then who did you think I was?"
Alexis knew she had said too much already. She hadn't come all the way across the world to blithely tell her life story. She had come to hide. "Suppose you tell me why you were out there, instead."
Matthew remembered the way she had avoided answering him earlier that day, too. He had asked her what she meant about being hunted. She had smiled her sad smile again and shaken her head. Then the little girl had come in, and his chance to persuade them to leave had passed.
But the look in her eyes had stayed with him through the rest of the day and into the night. He hadn't been able to forget the sadness, or something else he'd seen: resignation.
He wasn't going to tell her that the sadness, the resignation, had brought him here tonight. He told her the other half of the truth. "I came because I was hoping the poachers would come back to find the koala they'd shot. I've been waiting for them since dark."
She felt protected. And the feeling was so new, she wasn't certain what to do with it. "You've been out there since then?"
His nod was curt.
"Why didn't you let me know?"
"I didn't want an audience."
"You must be freezing and exhausted."
"Not necessarily in that order."
"Sit down and let me get you something to warm you up." She saw that he didn't move. "It's the very least I can do if you're going to stand guard for me all night, but if that's too much to accept. . ."
His eyes narrowed, but he moved toward the table and sat down in the chair he had used that morning.
"Soup or a hot toddy?"
Matthew was too tired to care. "Whatever's easiest."
Alexis flicked on the light over the stove, then busied herself mixing milk, cinnamon and vanilla with just a touch of honey. She stood with her back to Matthew, avoiding the small talk that neither of them wanted. When the mixture had heated, she poured Irish Whiskey into two mugs and added the milk. Only then did she go to the table.
Matthew's eyes were closed. In repose, his features didn't seem so austere. He seemed warmer, gentler, safer to know. This was more the man who had given up a night's sleep to watch her property for poachers and less the icy hearted ranger.
"Matthew?" she called softly. "Are you awake?"
He hadn't been, but as he opened his eyes and chased sleep away, he wished that he hadn't given in to his exhaustion. He felt defenseless, as if the moments napping had robbed him of something vital. He held out his hand, and she gave him the mug. He cupped it in both hands for warmth. The first sip flowed through his chilled body like lava.
The last woman to take care of him this way had been his wife. And without thinking of the consequences, without thinking that he hadn't said her name out loud in three years, he spoke. "Jeannie used to make a toddy like this."
"Jeannie?"
"My wife."
Alexis's eyes flicked down to his hands. There was no wedding band there, but then, many men didn't like visible signs of their marriage. Charles had been one of them. "And what does Jeannie think about you skulking in the shadows all night?"
He wasn't sure he could make himself say the words. Like her name, like Todd's name, they were words that had lodged in his throat every time he had tried to force them out. God help him. Three years had gone by, and he was still tongue-tied with grief.
Alexis saw the anguish melt across features that she had thought were austere. She drew a quick, silent breath. Suddenly she understood so much. "I'm sorry." She reached across the table and touched his arm. "You must have loved her very much."
He looked up, surprised. He had said nothing, but somehow she had known. He didn't want sympathy. He didn't want her understanding, or anyone else's. He just wanted to be left alone. And yet the words came anyway. For the first time in three years, they came.
"She's dead." He felt an explosion inside him, as if he had just killed her himself. "Dead," he repeated, "for three years."
Alexis had never known that a man could love so deeply. Through the years of Charles's abuse she had come to believe that men were different from women, colder, rigid, filled only with anger and hatred that they vented on those weaker than themselves. Charles hadn't been the only man she had known who was like that, but he had been the worst. Matthew had seemed to be a man made from the same cloth. But now she knew better.
She pulled her hand from his arm and found that anger had replaced sympathy. Anger at a world where some people were given everything and others didn't even get to share their crumbs. "She was a lucky woman."
His mug slammed against the table. "What do you know about it?"
"I know you loved her," she said, too caught up in her own feelings to be frightened. "I know that she was loved, and that she died knowing it. I know you've mourned her for three years."
"She died in a plane crash! My son was with her. They both died, and they knew for long, long seconds that they were going to." He dropped her wrist. "Lucky?"
"Not lucky they died, though there've been times in my life when that was all I wished for." Alexis's anger at the world faded, and the void it left filled with tears. "I didn't mean to hurt you," she said softly. "But Jeannie died knowing you loved her. Sometime in those seconds, Matthew, she thought of that, and it's so much more than most of us will ever have to comfort us."
Three years, and he hadn't talked to anyone about Jeannie's death, hadn't even said her name. Now he sat across the table from a stranger who didn't know to step softly, didn't know that he kept his memories of his wife and son locked away inside him. He wanted to scream his protest.
At the same time he wanted to offe
r her the comfort it was obvious that no one else had.
There was a noise in the doorway. He turned and saw the child standing there, her hair tumbled around her shoulders, her eyes wide and frightened.
"Mommy?"
Alexis turned, then sprang from her chair. In a moment she was at Jody's side, lifting her against her chest. "It's all right," she soothed.
"I heard you fighting. With Daddy."
Alexis rocked her back and forth, trying to abolish what couldn't be abolished. "Daddy's not here, sweetheart. You heard me talking to Mr. Haley. That's all."
"Make him leave. You were fighting." Jody buried her head against her mother's shoulder.
"Not every conversation between a man and a woman is a fight, sweetheart."
Matthew stood. "I'd better go."
Alexis silently pleaded with him not to. "If you leave now, Jody will think we really were fighting," she said as calmly as she could.
He didn't know what was expected of him. He only knew that something was, and it had to do with the resignation he had seen earlier in Alexis's eyes. He was under no obligation to help her. She was a stranger, a woman from another country. He was a man who wanted to be left alone.
The child lifted her head to stare at him. He hadn't seen the resemblance to her mother before, but although the coloring was different, her features were remarkably the same. In her eyes, he saw traces of the same fears.
"Well, I wouldn't mind another toddy," he said, although it was the furthest thing from his mind. He motioned to the little girl. "Come sit at the table with me while your mother fixes it."
"A good idea," Alexis said, setting Jody down. "I'll get you some milk."
Jody clung to her for a moment, and Alexis brushed her hair back from her forehead. Then Jody approached the table. She sat across from Matthew, but she didn't meet his eyes.
Matthew remembered the child of the morning, proud, stubborn, brighter than she had a right to be. That child seemed to have disappeared. He felt the change like a reproach.
Out of the Ashes Page 3