One Night Pregnancy
Autore
Lindsay Armstrong
Letto da
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Capitoli
9
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS a filthy night in the Gold Coast hinterland.
It hadn’t started out as such, but severe summer storms were not unknown in the area and this series had sped across the escarpment, taking even the weather bureau by surprise. Rain was teeming down, and gusts of wind buffeted Bridget Tully-Smith’s car. The ribbon of winding, narrow road between the dark peaks of the Numinbah Valley disappeared regularly as the windscreen wipers squelched back and forth, revealing and concealing.
She’d been staying with a married friend who had a hobby farm and was breeding, of all things, llamas. It had been an enjoyable weekend. Her friend had a young baby, a devoted husband, and their particular patch of the Numinbah Valley was wonderfully rural.
It should have been only an hour’s drive back to the Gold Coast, but as the darkness drew in and the storms hit, somehow or other she got lost. Somehow or other she found herself on a secondary road, little more than a track, just as the rain became torrential—as if the heavens above had opened and were literally hell-bent on deluging the area.
Then she came round a bend to a concrete causeway-style bridge, or what had probably been one but was now a raging torrent, cutting the road in two. It came upon her so suddenly she had no choice but to brake sharply—and that very nearly proved to be her undoing.
The back of her car fishtailed, and she felt the tug of the creek water on it, more powerful than the brakes or the handbrake. In perhaps the quickest-thinking moment of her life, she leapt out of the car as the back of it was slowly pushed to midstream, and scrabbled with all her might to attain higher ground.
She found a gravelly hillock supporting a young gum tree, and clung to it as she watched in horrified disbelief. Her car straightened, with its nose pointing upstream and its headlights illuminating the scene, then floated backwards downstream until it was obscured from view.
‘I don’t believe this,’ she whispered shakily to herself. She tensed as above the wind and the drumming rain she heard an engine, and realised a vehicle was coming from the opposite direction—and coming fast.
Did they know the road? Did they think speed would get them over the bridge? Did they have a four-wheel drive? All these questions flashed through her mind, but she knew she couldn’t take a risk on any or all of those factors. She must warn them.
She abandoned her tree and ran out into the middle of the road, jumping up and down and waving her arms. She was wearing a red-and-white fine gingham blouse, and she prayed it would stand out—though she knew her loose beige three-quarter-length pedal-pushers would not; they were plastered with mud.
Perhaps nothing, she thought later, would have averted the disaster that then took place. The vehicle was coming too fast. It didn’t even brake. But as it hit the torrent raging over the bridge, just as had happened to her car, the back fishtailed, the stream got it, and it too was swept away at a dangerous angle.
Bridget winced and put a hand to her mouth, because she could see faces at the windows of the vehicle, some of them children, and there were childish cries as windows were wound down, one piercing scream. Then the car disappeared from sight.
She sobbed once and forced herself to examine her options, but they were pitifully few—actually she had none, she conceded, other than to try to reach the car on foot. Her mobile phone was sitting in her car…
But another vehicle suddenly appeared around the bend behind her, and this one managed to stop without skidding, well clear of the torrent.
‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she breathed as she started to run towards it, slipping and slithering up the muddy road.
A man jumped out before she got to it, tall, in jeans and boots and rain jacket.
He got the first words in. ‘What the hell’s going on? What are you doing out in this?’
Bridget tried to catch her breath, but it was a panting, emotional explanation she gave. She finished by saying passionately, ‘There were children in the car! They’d have no hope against a torrent that can wash away cars. Have you got a phone? Mine’s in the car. We need to alert—’
He shook his head.
‘What kind of a person doesn’t have a mobile phone these days?’ Bridget demanded thinly. She was feeling thoroughly overwrought by now.
‘I’ve got a phone. I’ve got no signal, though. The country’s too rugged.’
‘Then—’ she wiped the rain out of her eyes ‘—should I drive your car back to get help while you see what you can do here?’
He shook his head.
She jumped up and down in exasperation. ‘Don’t keep knocking all my suggestions on the head—why not?’
The stranger took a very brief moment to examine her sodden, highly emotional presence. ‘I’m not—’ he began.
‘Yes, you are!’
‘You wouldn’t get through,’ he said precisely. ‘There’s a rock fall, and a washaway over the road a couple of kilometres back. It happened just after I passed.’
He stopped to open the back of the rather elderly Land Rover he was driving. ‘So I’ll go and see what I can do.’ He pulled out a hank of rope, a knife in a leather holder that he clipped to his belt, a small axe and a waterproof torch.
‘Oh, thank heavens—I’ll come.’
‘Nope. You stay here.’
‘Mister!’
He turned to her impatiently. ‘The last thing I need is a hysterical slip of a girl to worry about. I only have one waterproof, that I happen to be wearing—’
‘What does that matter?’ she interrupted. ‘I could hardly get wetter! And—’ Bridget drew herself up to her full height: five feet two ‘—I’m not a hysterical slip of a girl! Let’s go!’
Had it been doomed from the start, their rescue mission? She sometimes wondered. They certainly gave it their all. But climbing their way downstream beside the swollen creek, in pouring rain, with bushes and small trees whipping in the sudden gusts of wind, was not only heartbreakingly slow, it was exhausting.
It was also bruising and scraping, and before long, with still no sign of the car or any of its occupants, all her muscles ached.
That might have accounted for her slipping suddenly and getting herself caught up on an old piece of fence line at the edge of the creek. Somehow a piece of wire slipped into the belt loop of her pants, and she couldn’t free herself however much she wriggled.
‘Take them off!’ the man yelled, and flashed his torch behind her. She looked backwards over her shoulder, and nearly died to see a dirty wall of water coming down towards her.
She didn’t give it a second thought. She squirmed out of her pants, but the water caught her and she’d have been washed downstream if her companion hadn’t leapt in beside her, managed to tie the rope around her waist and somehow drag and half-carry her to relative safety.
‘Oh, thank you! You probably saved my life,’ she panted.
He didn’t reply to that. ‘We’ve got to get higher. Keep going,’ he ordered.
She kept going. They both kept going—until, when her lungs and her heart felt like bursting, he finally called a halt.
‘Here—in here,’ he said, and flashed the torch around. ‘Looks like a cave.’
It was a cave, with rocky walls, a dirt floor and an overhang overgrown with dripping bushes and grass. Bridget collapsed on the floor.
When her panting had subsided a bit, she said with irony, ‘Looks like the rescuers will have to be rescued.’
‘It’s often the way,’ he replied, and set the torch on a ledge of rock.
Bridget sat up and looked around tentatively. She wasn’t all that keen on small spaces, but the thought of what lay outside outweighed her tendency towards claustrophobia.
For the first time her partially unclothed state struck her. She looked down at her bare legs, then realised her blouse was torn and showing parts of her blameless pink lace and silk bra. It was also muddy and torn.
She looked up and discovered her rescuer on his knees, looking down at the dripping, twisted, half-clad length of her with a little glint of admiration in his amazing blue eyes—it was the first time she’d noticed them.
But just as she felt like squirming in embarrassment he looked away abruptly and started to undress himself.
She watched him in startled suspended animation as he ripped off his waterproof jacket, then his long-sleeved plaid shirt, revealing a tanned, muscular chest sprinkled with dark hairs and a pair of powerful shoulders. For a moment her eyes rounded in admiration of her own, then she swallowed with a strange little squawk of sound—a squawk of unwitting apprehension.
He said, matter-of-factly, ‘I’m Adam, by the way. Why don’t you take your blouse off and put my shirt on? It’s relatively dry. I’ll look the other way.’ He tossed the shirt into her lap and did as he’d promised.
Bridget fingered the shirt. It was mostly dry, and it emitted a reassuringly masculine odour of sweat and cotton. It would be heaven—not only as a cover for the deficiencies of her attire, but also because she was starting to shiver with cold.
She pulled her blouse off, and her soaked bra, and slipped into his shirt as quickly as possible, buttoning it with shaky fingers. It was way too big for her, but although the sleeves hung over her hands, the length made her feel at least halfway decent. ‘Thank you. Thank you! But will you be all right? I’m decent, incidentally.’
He turned back and pulled his rain jacket on again. ‘I’ll be fine.’ He sat down. ‘Not going to return the compliment namewise?’
‘Oh, yes! I’m Bridget Smith.’ She often used only the second half of her famous double-barrelled surname. ‘Oh, no!’ She put her hand to her mouth and her eyes darkened with concern as, for the first time since the car with the children had been washed away, she thought suddenly of her own plight. ‘My car!’
‘Your car will be found,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure in what condition, but once the waters recede—and they will—it will be somewhere.’
‘Do you really think so? My windows were all closed but I didn’t have time to lock it—my whole life is in my car!’ she said, on a suddenly urgent little note.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
‘My phone, my credit cards, my driver’s licence, my keys, my Medicare card, not to mention the car itself.’ She stopped helplessly.
‘They can all be replaced or, in the case of credit cards, stopped.’
Bridget subsided, but her expression remained doomed.
‘I take it it’s Miss Smith?’ he queried.
She shrugged. ‘Not necessarily.’ Her thoughts returned to her car.
‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring,’ he pointed out.
Bridget hesitated, and stopped looking down the barrel of the chaos in her life if she didn’t retrieve her car to look rather intently at the man she was trapped in a cave with.
Then she fished beneath his plaid shirt and pulled out the gold chain she wore around her neck. There was a plain gold wedding ring threaded onto it.
‘I see—but why don’t you wear it on your finger?’ he queried.
Bridget blinked, and wondered how she could assess this man. Because, however good-looking, beautifully built and strong he was, the fact remained that she didn’t know him—and one could never be too careful, could one? So it mightn’t be a bad idea to have a husband in the wings…
‘I’ve lost a bit of weight and it’s just a little big.’ The last part was true enough.
‘So what’s he like? Mr Smith?’
Was it just a casual query? Bridget wondered. To take her mind off the traumatic events surrounding them? Or had he doubted her?
‘Actually, he’s rather lovely, as Mr Smiths go,’ she said lightly, and it was the invention flowing off her tongue so smoothly that caused her to smile appreciatively—not, she thought swiftly, that he would know it. ‘He’s tall, probably even a bit taller than you,’ she continued. ‘And he strips to great advantage.’ She stopped and asked herself where the hell that particular phrase had sprung to her mind from? A Regency novel? ‘Uh…’ She soldiered on. ‘And of course he’s devoted to me.’
‘Of course.’ A smile appeared fleetingly in those smoky blue eyes—a smile of genuine amusement that, all the same, made her uneasy for some reason. ‘Does that mean to say,’ he went on, ‘he’s waiting for you? At home, perhaps?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Bridget lied with abandon.
‘That’s comforting to know. So when you don’t show up, and you don’t ring, he’s liable to call the police, who in turn are liable to get onto the Emergency Services when they realise you’re liable to be caught up in this situation?’
‘Ah.’ A tinge of pink coloured Bridget’s dirty cheeks. ‘Well, no. Not exactly. I was speaking more generally. He’s—he’s out of town at the moment. But only on a business trip—and—and—he’ll be home tomorrow. Definitely. Or maybe the next day.’
Adam studied her. Her short cap of hair was a coppery bronze, and not even an extremely arduous hike through rocky, sodden terrain had been able to dim her sparkling green eyes, he reflected, and smiled inwardly. They were also very revealing eyes, and from the turmoil they’d revealed as a variety of emotions had chased through them he was fairly sure she was lying. But if she’d chosen to invent a husband, why had she?
He narrowed his eyes on the obvious answer. Never trust strange men. Of course. So Bridget Smith was a cautious girl, even on a night like tonight. Well, he’d go along with it if it made her feel safer…
‘But hang on!’ Bridget stopped looking guilty. ‘The friends I was staying with—they’ll probably worry and try to ring me. They wanted me to stay overnight, but I’ve got an early start tomorrow so…’ She looked rueful. ‘They might alert someone when they can’t get me.’
‘OK.’ He shrugged and got to his knees. ‘I’m going out to reconnoitre. If the water’s still rising we may have to move again.’
The water was still rising, but not quite as fast.
‘I think we can relax for a bit,’ he said as he crawled back into the cave. ‘The fact that it’s not rising so fast may mean it’s going to start falling soon.’
Bridget heaved a relieved sigh, but her relief was to be short-lived because there was an almighty crack of sound and something—a tree, they realised moments later—fell down the hillside from above, blocking the entrance to the cave.
She turned convulsively to Adam, her eyes wide and dark with fear. ‘We’re trapped,’ she whispered.
‘Trapped? Me?’ he replied with a ghost of a smile. ‘Don’t you believe it, Mrs Smith.’
‘But all you have is a small axe and a knife!’ she objected.
‘You’d be amazed at what I can do with ’em.’
‘Are you—are you an axeman?’ Bridget asked. ‘Like those wood-chopping men you see at country shows?’
For some reason this question seemed to take him by surprise. Then his wide-eyed look was replaced by one of ironic amusement, and he responded with a question of his own. ‘Do I look like one?’
‘Not really. You look like—well, you could be anything.’ She smiled anxiously. ‘I didn’t mean to be offensive—I think I’ll just shut up.’
‘Might be a good idea to save our breath,’ he murmured, ‘for what lies ahead. But, really, you have no need to worry about me. Nor would Mr Smith.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, but there was a question mark in those green eyes. As if she suspected she was being teased.
He waited for her to retaliate, but she dropped her lashes suddenly and folded her hands primly in her lap.
He was tempted to laugh, but reminded himself in time that, despite his assurance to the contrary, they were actually trapped in a cave by a tree at the moment.
An hour later they were free.
An hour during which Adam had used a combination of pure strength, some chopping, some manipulation with his rope, some propping with rocks and the sturdy axe to move the tree.
‘I don’t know how you did it!’ Bridget gasped as the tree rolled away. ‘You’re actually amazing!’
‘Leverage,’ he replied, ‘is what’s amazing. One should always have a good understanding of levers and leverage.’
‘I’ll certainly put that on my list of things to learn—oh!’ He’d swung the torch over the view from the mouth of the cave, and it wasn’t a reassuring sight.
‘Yes,’ he agreed grimly. ‘The water’s still rising. OK, Bridget, we need to get out and up as fast as we can. Put the rope around your waist. That way we’ll stay together. I’ll go first. Ready?’
She nodded.
The next interlude, and Bridget had no idea how long it took, was sheer torture. The land above the cave rose steeply and was strewn with rocks. It was also slippery, but she followed Adam up the hillside doggedly, although at times it was a one step forward, two steps back kind of progress.
At one point she had to stop because of a burning stitch in her side, and she fell over once. Only the rope stopped her from cartwheeling down the incline.
Fortunately they were level with each other, and she caught sight out of the corner of her eye, during the regular sweep of his torch, of a rock he didn’t see. A rock that looked to be teetering dangerously, directly above them. With a high-pitched yell, she cannoned into him, catching him off-balance and pushing him with all her might. They rolled away only inches from where the rock passed on its deadly way down the hillside.
Just as she felt she could go no further, they reached some flat ground, a grassy little plateau, and another sweep of the torch revealed a shed below the hillside, at the far end of it.
‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she breathed, but sank to her knees in utter exhaustion. ‘I just need—a—little break, though. Not long,’ she assured her companion, her voice coming in great gasps.
He came to stand over her and shone the torch down on her. She couldn’t read his expression. She couldn’t actually think straight, she just did as she was told.
‘You hold this,’ he said, and gave her the torch. She took it, and was completely unprepared to be hoisted to her feet and then up into his arms.
‘But—but—what are you doing?’ she stammered as he started to walk. ‘I really—’
‘Shut up, Mrs Smith,’ he recommended. ‘You’ve actually been rather amazing yourself, and you probably saved my life. It’s the least I can do. Would you mind directing the torchlight forward?’
Bridget hastily repositioned the torch so he could see where he was going, and unwittingly began to relax. More than that, she had to admit to herself that it was heaven. His arms felt amazingly strong; she felt amazingly safe. And she had seriously to doubt she could have covered the remaining ground on her own two feet, because she felt as weak as a kitten.
They reached the shed.
‘It’s locked,’ he said as he put her down. ‘But on a night like tonight, and since we’re not here to rob anyone, I don’t suppose they’d mind if we do this.’ And with a single stroke of the axe, pulled from his belt, he broke the padlock.
‘Yes, well.’ Bridget blinked a little dazedly. ‘You’re probably right. And we can always replace things.’
He looked down at her with a faint smile. ‘We can, indeed. After you, ma’am.’
Bridget shuffled into the shed and made a sound of heartfelt approval at what she saw. In fact she discovered herself to be feeling a lot less sandbagged as she looked around.
It was an old shed, and didn’t look particularly solid, but there were bales of straw stacked high against one wall, a double bed against another. There were some paraffin lamps, hanging on hooks, a kettle and a primus stove, some chipped mugs and a tea caddy standing on an upturned tea chest. There were racks of neatly sorted horse gear: headstalls, bridles, saddles and brushes. Three old thin towels hung on a railing, along with two light horse rugs.
There was also a wood-burning stove, with a chimney going through the roof. It was packed with paper and billets of wood.
‘Glory be,’ Adam remarked. He raised his voice against the drumming of rain on the tin roof. ‘In these conditions you could call this place the Numinbah Hilton.’
Bridget chuckled. Then she sobered. ‘Those children—’ she began.
‘Bridget.’ He turned to look down at her. ‘We did our best. It’s a small miracle we weren’t drowned in the process. They will be fine, riding it out somehow. Just hold onto that thought.’
‘But I was wondering—there must be a road to here, and maybe we could go for help.’
‘I had the same thought,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea where we are?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Neither do I,’ he broke in. ‘In fact I’m thoroughly disorientated after all the twists and turns that creek took. We could get even more hopelessly lost, whereas in the daylight this could be a good point of reference. We may even be able to flag a passing helicopter. There’s bound to be some State Emergency Services scouting the area after a storm like this. But, listen, just in case there’s a house attached to this paddock and shed, I am going to scout around a bit. As for you—’ he scanned the dirty, sopping length of her ‘—first of all, do you have any sprains, strains, fractures or the like?’
Her eyes widened. ‘No, I don’t think so. Just a few bruises and scrapes.’
‘OK—now, you may not approve of this suggestion, but it’s an order, actually, and you can hold it against me as much as you like.’ For a moment there was a rather mercilessly teasing glint in his eyes.
She stiffened her spine against that glint. ‘What order?’ she asked with hauteur.
He studied her tilted chin and smiled briefly. ‘I don’t know if you noticed a tank at the corner of the shed, collecting rainwater from the roof?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, it’s there, and it’s overflowing. After I’ve gone, go out, take your clothes off, and stand under the overflow pipe. Wash all the mud, blood and whatever off yourself, then stand under the water for a couple of minutes. Do your bruises a world of good. But I’ll get the fire going first.’ He turned away.
‘I—’ she started to say mutinously.
‘Bridget,’ he returned dangerously over his shoulder, ‘don’t argue.’
‘But I’ve got nothing to wear!’
‘Yes, you have.’ He pointed to one of the railings. ‘You can wrap yourself in one of those horse rugs.’
He did get the fire and three paraffin lamps going before he left.
‘Take care,’ she said. ‘I—I’m not too keen about being left on my own here. Naturally I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, either.’ She grimaced. ‘That sounds like an afterthought if ever I heard one! But I do mean it.’
He inclined his head and hid the smile in his eyes. ‘Thank you. I won’t be going too far. Not only because I don’t want to get lost, but also because I don’t want the torch to run out on me.’ He touched her casually on the cheek with his fingertips. ‘You take care too.’
She watched him walk out of the shed into the rain-swept night and swallowed back the cry that rose in her throat—the urge to tell him she’d go with him. Swallowed it because she knew that her brief resurgence of energy, such as it was, would not survive.
So she forced herself to examine his suggestion—or order. She looked down at herself. She was a mess of mud, his shirt was caked with it, and below her legs were liberally streaked with it.
It made sense, in other words, to get clean. If only she had something else to wear afterwards other than a horse rug…
It was like the answer to a prayer. Some instinct prompted her to look under the pillows on the bed, and she discovered a clean pair of yellow flannelette pyjamas patterned with blue teddy bears.
Under the second pillow was a pair of men’s tracksuit pants and a white T-shirt.
‘You beauty!’ she breathed. ‘Not only can I be comfortable overnight, but I won’t have to be rescued wearing a horse rug. And not only that, my fellow traveller can be decent and dry too—which is important, I’m sure. OK. Onward to the shower, Mrs Smith!’ And she marched out of the shed.
It was a weird experience, showering beneath an overflow pipe in the middle of the night, in the middle of a deluge, in the altogether, even though there was a brief lull in the rain.
She took a lamp with her, and found a hook on the shed wall for it. It illuminated the scene, and she could see a huge gum tree on the hill behind the shed, plus the ruins of some old stone structure.
Definitely weird, she decided as the water streamed down her body, and freezing as well. But at least the tank stood on a concrete pad, and there was a concrete path to it from the shed door. She’d also discovered a bucket tucked behind the tank, with a piece of soap and a nailbrush in it.
Did someone make a habit of showering from the rainwater tank? she wondered. Not that it would always be overflowing, but it had a tap. Maybe they filled the bucket from the tap and poured it over themselves?
She didn’t stay around much longer to ponder the mysteries of the rainwater tank, but skipped inside and dried herself off in front of the fire. Then she examined herself, and, satisfied she would find no serious cuts, donned the teddy bear pyjamas.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured to the owner of the pyjamas. ‘I’ll get you a new pair!’
And then she turned her attention to the primus stove and the possibility—the heavenly possibility—of making a cup of tea.
Adam came back just as she was sipping strong black tea from one of the chipped mugs.
‘I’ve just made some tea. I’ll get you some. Any luck?’
He peeled off his waterproof. ‘No—where did you get those?’ He eyed the yellow pyjamas patterned with blue teddy bears.
She explained, and pointed out the track pants and T-shirt. ‘You know, I can’t help wondering if someone lives here at times.’ She poured bubbling water onto a teabag in the second mug and handed it to him.
‘I think you could be right—thanks. There’s no house nearby, but there’s evidence of some foundations. They’re probably using the shed while they build the house. The driveway leads to a dirt road—it’s now deep mud—with a locked gate.’
‘There may be horses out there—maybe fenced in.’
‘I hope there are, so long as they’re safe. The owners may come to check them out.’ He put his cup down. ‘You obviously took up my suggestion?’ He inspected her clean, shiny face.
‘I thought it was an order.’
His lips twisted. ‘What was it like?’
‘Weird,’ she said with feeling. ‘But if I could do it, so could you.’
‘Just going, Mrs Smith,’ he murmured.
Bridget watched the shed door close behind him and found herself standing in the same spot, still staring at the door a good minute later, as she visualised the man called Adam showering as she had done beneath the rainwater tank overflow. It was not hard to visualise his powerful body naked, that fine physique sleek with water…
She blushed suddenly, and moved precipitately—only to trip. She righted herself and castigated herself mentally. Anyone would think she was a silly, star-struck schoolgirl! All right, yes, she might have come out in sudden goosebumps, but at twenty-three surely she had the maturity to recognise it as a purely physical reaction to a dangerously attractive man? Besides which, she was allergic to dangerously attractive men who turned out to be less than likeable—wasn’t she?
All the same, when Adam came back from showering wrapped in a towel, and she turned away while he dried himself in front of the fire and donned the track pants and T-shirt, she was aware of him again in her mind’s eye. In a way that again raised goosebumps on her skin and caused her to feel a little hot.
Stop it, Bridget, she commanded herself.
An hour or so later another heavy storm broke overhead.
It was close to midnight.
Adam and Bridget were dozing side by side on the double bed when lightning illuminated the shed and a boom of thunder reverberated directly overhead, or so it seemed. Bridget woke and rolled towards Adam with a little cry of fear. He put his arms around her, but she started to shake with barely suppressed sobs.
‘It’s only another storm,’ he said, and stroked her hair.
‘I know,’ she wept, ‘but haven’t we been through enough? And I can’t stop thinking about those kids out there in this!’
‘Hush…Listen, I’m going to put some more wood on the fire. Then I’ll be right back.’
He was as good as his word, and when he came back, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he piled the pillows up behind them and pulled her loosely into his arms. ‘Tell me about yourself, Bridget. What do you do? Where were you born? What do your parents do?’
‘I work in a television newsroom. At the moment I’m everyone’s gofer, but I’m hoping for better things.’
She shuddered as another crack of thunder tore the night but soldiered on.
‘I was born in Brisbane. My father died in an accident a few years ago, and my mother has remarried. She lives overseas at the moment. I did a BA at Queensland University, majoring in journalism. My father was a journalist, so I guess that’s where I get it from.’ She paused to consider for a moment.
She did enjoy her job, but had she inherited her father’s passion for journalism? She sometimes stopped to wonder whether it had been her admiration for her father that had moved her to pursue the same career rather than a deep, abiding feel for it. She often found herself feeling restless, and as if she’d prefer to be doing something else—but what?
Adam broke the silence and the train of her thoughts.
‘Now for the question of Mr Smith.’ He looked at her with suspicious gravity.
Bridget bit her lip. ‘There is no Mr Smith. The ring…’ She fingered the chain around her neck. ‘It’s my mother’s, but since I didn’t know you, it seemed a good idea to invent a husband.’
‘I wondered about that.’
‘Why? I mean how could you tell I was lying?’
He considered. ‘You have very revealing eyes. It also sounded like pure invention.’
Bridget blushed faintly.
He traced the outline of her chin lightly. ‘So, no romantic involvement at the moment?’
Perhaps it was the storm raging overhead, perhaps it was the reassuring warmth of his proximity, but for whatever reason Bridget found herself telling Adam things she’d not told another soul. Things to do with how she had fallen madly in love at twenty-one, how it had led to an affair—a first for her—and how it had been a disaster.
‘He changed,’ she said sadly. ‘He became possessive, and yet…’ she paused ‘…oddly critical of me. But that was probably because I didn’t—well—I didn’t seem to be very good at sex. I think a lot of that was to do with the fact that I would really rather have waited—until we’d got engaged at least.’
She heaved a heartfelt sigh and continued. ‘I—it didn’t take that long for me to discover I’d gone to bed with a man I didn’t seem to like much. Oh, he was good-looking, and fun to be with, but…’ She trailed off. ‘He became rather scary when I broke it off.’ She shrugged. ‘All of which amounts to the fact that I haven’t tried again—I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’ She looked into Adam’s blue eyes, now thoroughly red-faced.
‘Maybe it needed to be told?’ he suggested, and stroked her hair. Creep, he thought at the same time, but didn’t say it. He did say, ‘Things could be quite different with the right man.’
Bridget looked unconvinced, but didn’t pursue it. ‘Why did I talk about it now, though?’
He stretched out his legs and pulled the one blanket around them. ‘It’s been quite a night. Fear, stress, physical exertion, highs and lows, and now an almighty electrical storm.’
It’s more than that, Bridget thought. There’s something about this man that really appeals to me. He not only makes me feel safe, he makes me feel interested in him, as if I really want to get to know him and—
She stopped her thoughts there. And what? She was very conscious of him physically, she answered herself, and she just couldn’t seem to help herself. Alive to all sorts of little things—like his hands. I love his hands, she decided suddenly. And the way his eyes can laugh, the way his hair falls in his eyes sometimes.
‘Not only that,’ he went on, and took his hand from her hair to rub his jaw ruefully, ‘what it makes you, Mrs Smith, is simply very human. We all make mistakes and some dodgy judgements.’
Bridget thought for a moment, then said, ‘I guess so.’
He grimaced at the lack of conviction in her voice. ‘But there must be more to Bridget Smith.’ He raised his voice as the thunder growled overhead. ‘Tell me about your likes and dislikes. What makes you tick?’
‘I’m very ordinary.’ She paused and cast him a suddenly mischievous little look. ‘Well, I do a lot of things fairly competently, but to date nothing outstandingly—although I’m living in hope that my true forte is still to make itself known.’
He laughed. ‘What about all the things you do fairly well?’
‘Let’s see. I paint—at one stage I thought I might be the next Margaret Olley, as I love painting flowers, but not so. I also like doing landscapes. I play the piano, but any hopes I would be the next Eileen Joyce were dashed early on. Mind you, I still enjoy doing both. I once thought I’d like to be a landscape gardener. My parents had a few acres and I loved pottering around the garden.’
She paused and thought. ‘And I ride—I love horses. I don’t have any of my own, although I did have a couple of ponies as a kid, and I help out at a riding school for disabled children. I seem to have a rapport with kids. Uh…I read all the time, I enjoy cooking, I enjoy being at home and pottering—oh, and I sing.’
‘Professionally?’ he queried.
She shook her head, her eyes dancing. ‘No. I did believe I might be the next Sarah Brightman, but again not so. That doesn’t stop me from singing in the shower and anywhere else I can manage it.’
‘Sing for me.’
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’
So she sang a couple of bars of ‘Memory’, from Cats, in her light, sweet soprano. When she’d finished she confessed she was mad about musicals.
‘You sound like a pretty well-rounded girl to me,’ he said, with a ghost of a smile still lurking on his lips. ‘In days gone by you would have had all the qualifications to be a genteel wife and mother.’
‘That sounds really—unexciting,’ she said with a gurgle of laughter. ‘But it’s probably in line with what one of my teachers told me. She said to me, “You’re not going to set the world on fire academically, Bridget, but you are a thoroughly nice girl.”’ She looked comically heavenwards. ‘Unexciting, or what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He grinned, and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s nice to be nice, and I think you are nice.’
Bridget smiled back at him, unexpectedly warmed. Then a twinkle of humour lit her eyes. ‘I showed her I wasn’t such a disaster academically when I got to uni, and I got honours in a couple of subjects, but enough about me—tell me about you?’
His chiselled lips twisted. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘Well, how old are you and where were you born? What do you do? That kind of thing.’
‘I’m thirty-one—whereas you would be…twenty-two?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three,’ he repeated. ‘I was born in Sydney. I’ve done many things. I’m also pretty keen on horses, but—’ he raised his eyebrows ‘—since you ask, I’m something of a rolling stone.’
‘You mean—no ties?’ she hazarded.
‘No ties,’ he agreed.
‘Did you get your fingers burnt by a woman once?’
For some reason that quiet question, uttered with a mix of wisdom and compassion, caught his attention fairly and squarely, and his remarkable blue gaze rested on Bridget thoughtfully for a long moment. ‘You could say so.’
‘Would you like to tell me?’
A little jolt of laughter shook him. ‘No.’
Bridget faced him expressionlessly. Her hair had dried to a silky cap of copper-gold, brought to life by the firelight. Her eyes were greener in that same firelight. And, while the teddy bear pyjamas made her look about sixteen, there was, as the man called Adam knew, a perfect little figure beneath them, with high breasts, hips like perfect fruit and a slender waist.
She was also, he reflected, brave.
And no fool, he discovered, when she said, repeating what he’d said to her, ‘But maybe it needs to be told?’
He pushed the blanket away and sat up beside her. The thunder was still growling, but it seemed to be moving away. The rain was still falling, but it was much lighter now. How did I get myself into this? he found himself wondering, and looked around somewhat ruefully, then down at the borrowed track pants and T-shirt he was wearing.
‘I don’t shock easily,’ Bridget murmured. ‘Did she run away with another man?’
He stared at her, and a muscle flickered in his jaw. Then he smiled, a wry little smile that didn’t touch his eyes. ‘How did you guess?’
‘Well, with a woman involved, that’s often how it goes. However…’ Bridget paused, and wrinkled her brow. ‘He must have had a lot more than you to offer materially, otherwise she must have been crazy!’
‘Why?’
Bridget blinked and blushed. Then she grimaced inwardly and acknowledged that she’d allowed her tongue to run away with her. So, how to retrieve the situation with minimum embarrassment? Maybe just the truth…?
‘You’re pretty good-looking, you know. Not only that, you’re amazingly resourceful, you’re strong, and I couldn’t think of anyone I would feel safer with.’
‘Thank you,’ Adam said gravely. ‘None of that was enough to hold her, however. Although I have to admit the competition was quite stiff.’
Bridget frowned. ‘But that makes her somewhat suspect, I would say, and maybe not worthy of too much regret?’
He waited impassively, and she tilted her head to one side enquiringly at him. Then he said, ‘Have you quite finished, Mrs Smith?’
Bridget immediately looked immensely contrite. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said softly. ‘It still hurts a lot, I guess? Shall we change the subject?’
Adam swore as he rolled off the bed and went to put the kettle on the stove.
Bridget watched from the bed as he rinsed the mugs in a bucket. The paraffin lamplight softened the outlines of the piled-high bales of straw, but didn’t pierce all the shadows in the shed. At least the worst of the storm had definitely moved away.
He spooned instant coffee into the cups and poured the boiling water in. ‘Sugar?’
‘One, thank you.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, I am sorry. I must have sounded unforgivably nosy.’
He shrugged and handed her a mug, then sat down on the floor beside the bed so he could lean back against it. ‘At least it took your mind off the storm.’
‘Yes. And I did tell you my life story, so I suppose I was expecting something in return. We also saved each other’s lives.’
There was silence, apart from the crackle of the stove and the now faraway thunder.
‘She threw me over for my older brother,’ he said. ‘You’re right. She’s not worth it. But she—’ He broke off. ‘My brother is another matter, and one day he’ll get his come-uppance.’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘Just a matter of finding the right lever.’
Bridget stared at his profile, her eyes wide and horrified—it looked as if it was carved in stone. She swallowed and said the only thing she could think of. ‘You’re hot on levers, aren’t you?’ Then, ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Much better for you to move on and—’
‘Leave it, Bridget,’ he warned, and flicked her a moody blue glance. ‘Finish your coffee.’
‘OK, I’m sorry,’ she said contritely, and drank her coffee in silence.
He took the cup from her and placed it along with his on a ledge beside the bed. Then he climbed back in and took her in his arms again. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said, not unkindly.
Bridget relaxed and thought how good it felt. How reassuring, how warm and comfortable and natural, and she started to doze off.
Adam, on the other hand, found himself watching her in the firelight and wondering what it was about this girl that had prompted him to tell her things he’d never told anyone else.
Because she was entirely unthreatening? Because she had no idea who he was? Yes, but there was more to it than that. Rather, there was more to his feelings on the subject of Bridget Smith, spinster, he thought wryly.
He felt protective of her, and he had to admire the way she’d slogged through everything nature had thrown at them, but, again, there was more.
As he watched her, he found himself wondering what it would be like to make love to her. To part those pretty pink lips that were twitching a little as she dozed—what was she dreaming of?—and kiss her. What expressions would chase through her green eyes if he, very slowly and gently, initiated her into the pleasures of sex and wiped out the memories some oaf had left her with?
It would be no penance, he realised, and he felt his body stir. It would be the opposite. She felt as if she’d been made to fit into his arms, as if that tender little body should be his property…
Then her eyelashes lifted, taking him by surprise, and for a long frozen moment they stared into each other’s eyes. He held his breath as the expression in those green eyes became an incredulous query, as if she’d divined his thoughts.
But it was gone almost immediately, that expression, dismissed with the faintest shake of her head, as if she’d banished it to the realm of the impossible or as if it was a dream, and she fell asleep again.
He released his breath slowly and smiled dryly.
No, it would not be impossible, Bridget Smith, he thought, and nor was it a dream. But it was not going to happen. For a whole host of reasons.
He lay for a while, listening to the rain on the roof, deliberately concentrating on it, and on the fact that it seemed to be getting lighter. But in fact the night hadn’t finished with them…
