The Australian (2 page)

“No. They’re predicting a good bit of rain when the Wet comes. The past two years have been good to us.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Yes, there have been some lean times...look out!” He braked suddenly for a kangaroo. The tawny beast bounded right into the path of the car and stared at its occupants, with a tiny baby in its pouch. John had stopped only inches from it, cursing a blue streak, and the kangaroo simply blinked and then hopped off to the other side of the highway.

“I’d forgotten about the ’roos.” Priss laughed, grateful that she’d been wearing her seat belt. “They’re bad pedestrians.”

“That one bloody near met its maker,” he returned on a rough sigh. “Are you all right?” he asked with obvious reluctance.

“Of course.”

He started off again, and Priss stretched lazily, unaware of his eyes watching the movement with an odd expression in their azure depths.

He seemed content to sit there smoking his cigarette, and Priss kept her own silence. She wondered at her composure. Several years ago riding alone in a car with John would have been tantamount to backing the winner in the Melbourne Cup race. Now she was so numb that only a trickle of excitement wound through her slender body. Perhaps even that would go away in time.

Eventually they came to Providence, which looked very much the same, a small oasis of buildings among the rolling grasslands with the hazy ridges of the Great Dividing Range in the distance behind them and eternity facing them. John turned off the main bitumen road onto a graveled track that led past the Sterling Run on the way to Priss’s parents’ home. She tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn helplessly to the big sprawling house with its wide porches and colonial architecture. The driveway was lined with oleanders and royal poinciana and eucalyptus trees, which everyone called simply gum trees. Streams crisscrossed the land. They mostly dried up in the nine months preceding the Wet, which came near Christmas, but when the Wet thundered down on the plains, it was possible to be confined to the house for days until the rains stopped. Once she and her parents had had to stay with the Sterlings or be drowned out, and their small house had suffered enormous water damage.

“The house looks as if it has just been painted,” she remarked, noticing its gleaming white surface.

“It has,” he said curtly.

She loved its long porches, where she had sat one spring with John’s mother and watched the men herd sheep down the long road on their way to the shearing sheds. That would be coming soon, she recalled, along with dipping and vetting and the muster of the cattle that supplemented John’s vast sheep herds.

Beyond the house and its grove of eucalyptus trees were the fenced paddocks where the big Merino sheep grazed. They’d just been moved, she imagined, because the paddocks looked untouched. She noticed that the fences looked different.

“There’s so little wire,” she remarked, frowning.

“Electrified fencing,” John said. “Just one of the improvements we’re making. It’s less expensive than barbed wire or wooden fences.”

“What if the power goes out?” she asked.

“We have backup generators,” he returned. He glanced at her. “And men with shotguns...” he added with just a glimpse of his old dry humor.

But she didn’t smile. The days were gone when she could do that with John. She only nodded.

Soon they were at her parents’ house, deserted because Adam and Renée apparently hadn’t come home yet.

“They’ll be back by dark, they said,” he told her.

She nodded, staring at the lovely little bungalow, with its high gabled roof and narrow long front porch and green shutters at the windows. It was set inside a white picket fence, and Priss loved the very look of it, with the gum trees towering around it. Behind it was a stretch of paddock and then another grove of gum trees where a stream ran hidden, a magic little glade where she liked to watch koala bears feed on eucalyptus leaves and wait for lorikeets and other tropical birds to alight briefly on their flights.

“It looks just the same,” she remarked softly.

He got out and removed her bag from the trunk. She followed him onto the porch, and as she looked up her green eyes suddenly flashed with the memory of the last time they’d been alone together at this house.

He searched her eyes slowly. “It was a long time ago,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she agreed, her face clouding. “But I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget. Or forgive,” she added coldly.

He stuck his hands into his pockets, staring down at her from his formidable height. “No,” he said after a minute, and his voice was deep and slow. “I could hardly expect that, could I? It’s just as well that it’s all behind us. You and I were worlds apart even then.”

Her knees felt rubbery, but she kept her poise. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said formally.

“I won’t say it was a pleasure,” he returned. “For my part, I wish you’d never come back.”

He turned, and she glared after him with her heart going wild in her chest. She wanted to pick up something and throw it at him! But she stood there staring after him furiously and couldn’t even think of a suitable parting shot. She stood on the porch and watched him turn the car and drive away in a cloud of dust. Then she turned and read the welcoming note on the door before she turned the knob and went inside.

It took only a minute to regain her familiarity with the comfortable furnishings and warm feeling of the house. She thought she even smelled freshly baked apple pie. Her bedroom was still the same, and her eyes lingered helplessly on the bed. If only she could forget!

She dressed in a pair of designer jeans and a yellow sweater Aunt Margaret had given her as part of her graduation present, a complete new wardrobe. Then, determined to exorcise the ghosts, she walked out behind the house over the grassy deserted paddock down to the wooden fence that separated her father’s property from John’s.

With a long sigh, she leaned against the old gray wood. She could still see herself as a teenager, in those long-ago days when she’d haunted this spot, hoping for a glimpse of John Sterling. How carefree she’d been. How full of love and hope and happy endings. Happy endings that had never come.

Chapter Two

It was an Australian spring day when Priss went speeding across the empty paddock toward the fence that separated her father’s small holding from John Sterling’s enormous cattle station. She was flushed with excitement, her long silvery blonde hair fanning all around her delicate features as she ran, her green eyes sparkling.

“John!” she called. “John, I got it!”

The tall blond man on the big black gelding wheeled his mount, frowning impatiently for an instant at the sight of Priscilla risking life and limb. Barefoot, for God’s sake, in a white sundress that would have raised a young man’s temperature.

“Watch where you’re going, girl!” he called back in his broad Australian drawl.

She kept coming, laughing, making a perfectly balletic leap onto the faded white wooden fence that separated the properties. In her slender hand, she was waving a letter.

“Keep going, mates, I’ll catch up,” he told his men, trying not to notice the amused looks on their faces as he rode toward the girl.

Priss watched him coming with the same adoration she’d given him freely for two years. She knew he was aware of her infatuation—he couldn’t help being aware of it—but he indulged her to a point.

He was so rugged, she thought dreamily. Big and broad-shouldered, with hands almost twice the size of her own, he filled out his moleskins and chambray shirt with delicious flair. He was almost ugly. His nose was formidable, his bushy eyebrows jutted over heavy-lidded sapphire eyes that were almost transparent. His cheekbones were high, his mouth wide and sexy-looking, his chin stubborn and dimpled. His hair wasn’t truly blond, either. It was light brown, with flaring blond highlights, like his eyebrows and the thick hair over his chest and brawny forearms. But despite his lack of sophisticated good looks, he suited Priss. She only wished, for the hundredth time, that she suited him. He was still a bachelor at twenty-eight, but women liked him. He had an easygoing, humorous manner that appealed to most people, although he had a formidable temper when riled.

“Barefoot again,” he said curtly, glaring at Priss’s pretty little feet on the fence rail. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I could make several suggestions,” she murmured with a mischievous smile.

He lit a cigarette, not commenting, and leaned his forearms over the pommel of the saddle. His sleeves were rolled up, and Priss’s helpless eyes were drawn to the huge muscular hands holding the reins and the cigarette. The leather creaked protestingly as he sat forward to stare at her from under the wide brim of his Stetson. “Well, what’s the news, little sheila?” he prompted.

“I got the scholarship,” she told him proudly, eyes twinkling.

“Good on you!” he said.

“Mom’s proud,” she said. “And Dad’s especially pleased because he teaches, too. I’m going to major in elementary education.”

He studied her. Anyone would be less likely to become a teacher, he thought. He smiled softly. With her long hair curling like that, a silvery cloud around her delicate features, she was a vision. There wouldn’t be any shortage of suitors. That disturbed him, and the smile faded. She was still a child. Just eighteen. His eyes went slowly over her slender body, to the taut thrust of her perfect breasts against the sundress’s thin top, down over a small waist and slender hips and long elegant legs to her bare pretty feet.

Priss watched him, too, vaguely excited by the way he was looking at her. She couldn’t remember a time before when he’d looked at her like that, as if she were a woman instead of an amusing but pesky kid.

She shifted on the fence, with the forgotten letter still clutched in one hand. “Will you miss me when I’m gone?” she asked, only half teasing.

“Oh, like the plague,” he agreed, tongue in cheek. “Who’ll drag me to the phone in the middle of calving to ask if I’m busy? Or go swimming in my pond just when I’ve stocked it with fish? Or ride me down in the woods when I’m taking a few minutes to myself?”

She dropped her eyes. “I guess I have been a pest,” she agreed reluctantly. She brushed her hair back. “Sorry.”

“Don’t look so lost. I will miss you,” he added, his voice soft and slow.

She sighed, looking up into his eyes. “I’ll miss you, too,” she confessed. Her eyes were eloquent, more revealing than she knew. “Hawaii’s so far away.”

“It was your choice,” he reminded her.

She shrugged. “I got carried away by the scenery when I toured the campus with Aunt Margaret. Besides, having an aunt nearby will make things easier, and you know Mom and Dad don’t want me living on campus. I kind of wish I’d decided on Brisbane, though.”

“You’re an American,” he reminded her. “Perhaps you’ll fit in better in Honolulu.”

“But I’ve lived in Australia for two years,” she said. “It’s home now.”

He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “You’re young, Priss. Younger than you realize. So much can change, in so little time.”

She glared at him. “You think I’m just a kid, too. Well, mister, I’m growing fast, so look out. When I come back home for good, you’re in trouble.”

His bushy eyebrows lifted over amused eyes. “I am?”

“I’ll have learned all about being a woman by then,” she told him smugly. “I’ll steal your heart right out of that rock you’ve got it embedded in.”

“You’re welcome to give it a go,” he told her with a grin. “Fair dinkum.”

She sighed. There he went again, humoring her. Couldn’t he see her heart was breaking?

“Well, I’d better get back,” she sighed. “I have to help Mom with lunch.” She peeked up at him, hoping against hope that he might offer to let her come up behind him on his horse. It would be all of heaven to sit close against that big body and feel its heat and strength. She’d been close to him so rarely, and every occasion was a precious memory. Now there wasn’t a lot of time left to store up memories. Her heart began to race. Maybe this time...

“Mind your feet,” he said, nodding toward them. “And look out for Joe Blakes.”

She frowned, then remembered the rhyming slang he liked to tease her with. “Snakes!” she produced. “You Bananabender!”

He threw back his blond head and laughed, deeply and heartily. “Yes, I’m a Queenslander, that’s the truth. Now on with you, little sheila, I’ve got work to do, even if you haven’t.”

“Yes, Your Worship,” she mocked, and jumped down from the fence to give him a sweeping curtsy. Her eyes twinkled as he made a face. “That’s called cutting tall poppies down to size!”

“I’m keeping score,” he warned softly.

“How exciting,” she replied tartly.

He laughed to himself and turned his mount. “Mind your feet!” he called again, amusement deepening his voice, and with a tip of his hat, he rode off as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Priss watched him until he was out of sight among the gum trees, and sighed wistfully. Oh, well, there was still a week before she left for Hawaii. If only he’d kiss her. She flushed, biting her lower lip as the intensity of emotion washed over her. He never had touched her, except to hold her hand occasionally to help her up and down from perilous places. And once, only once, he’d lifted her and carried her like a child over a huge mud puddle when it was raining. She’d clung to him, as if drowning in his sensuous strength. But those episodes were few and far between, and mostly she survived on memory. She had a snapshot of him that she’d begged from his mother, on the excuse of painting him from it. The painting had gone lacking, but she had the photograph tucked in her wallet, and she wove exquisite daydreams around it.

With a world-weary look on her face, she got down from the fence and began to walk slowly back across the paddock. Maybe a snake would bite her, and she’d be at death’s door, and John would rush to her bedside to weep bitter tears over her body. She shook herself. More likely, he’d pat the snake on the head and make a pet of it.

She wandered lazily back to the house and walked slowly up the steps to the cool front porch where she liked to sit and hope that John would ride by. In the distance were the softly rolling paddocks where John’s Hereford cattle and big Merino sheep grazed peacefully.

Her eyes grew sad as she realized that she would soon be far away from this dear, familiar scene. College. Several years of college in Hawaii—out of sight and sound and touch of John Sterling. And he didn’t even seem to mind. Not one bit.

Renée Johnson looked up as her daughter came into the house. She smiled a little as she bent her silver head again to her embroidery. She was in her late forties, but traces of beauty were still evident in her patrician face.

“Hello, darling; back already?” she teased.

“John was busy,” Priss sighed. She plopped down into a chair with a rueful smile. “He’s glad I’m leaving, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t think he is, really,” Renée said carelessly. “Friendship can survive a few absences, dear.”

Friendship. Priss almost wailed. She was dying of love for him!

“Dad should be back now, shouldn’t he?” she asked.

“He had to stop in Providence to pick up his new suit on the way back from Brisbane,” she reminded her daughter. “And Brisbane is a good drive from here.”

“All for a student he hardly knows,” Priss remarked. “Just because he needed a way to the airport. Dad’s all heart, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” her mother agreed warmly. “That’s why I married him, you know.”

Priss got up and paced the room. “I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Hawaii’s so far away...”

“The university there is one of the best,” she was reminded. “And your aunt will love having you close by. She’s your father’s favorite sister, you know.”

“Yes.” Priss stared out the window at the distant white cloud of moving sheep. John had cattle, too, but his primary interest was his big Merino sheep. She loved watching the jackeroos move them from paddock to paddock. She loved the sheepdogs, so deft and quick. But most of all she loved John. John!

“Set the table, dear, would you?” Renée asked. “I’ll be dishing up supper any minute.”