The Wildwood Sisters (20 page)

Not wanting to read on, but knowing she had to, Renee opened her eyes, wiped away her tears and drew in a deep calming breath. She could do this. She
had
to do this. Grabbing the diary from her bedside table, she flicked open to where she was up to. Skimming over the now sparse entries, Renee was careful to take in every single minute detail as she tried to read between the lines. Scarlet kept mentioning her mystery man, but frustratingly, not once did she mention his name—not even an initial.

March 21
^st

I don't have time to write much today because I'm meeting him real soon but last night blew my mind. The way he kissed me all over and told me he loved me, and the way he cuddled me afterwards… It was like all my dreams had finally come true. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him.

Scarlet xx

Afterwards?
That meant Scarlet had had sex with him. How could she not have known? How could Scarlet not have told her? Whoever it was had taken advantage of her sister and it made her furious. Who in the hell was he?

Finally she came to the last diary entry, the devastating day Scarlet had gone missing. Renee flicked past to make sure there was nothing towards the back of the book before reading it. She needed a few moments to come to terms with the fact that this was the last time her sister had written down her deepest feelings. Scarlet's life had been stolen from her on this very day. With her trembling hands calming, Renee turned back to the love-heart embellished page and read slowly, dissecting every word, every letter, every full stop.

May 11
^th

I'm so excited!! I cannot wait until tonight because we're going to go to our secret place to spend a few hours together, and I can tell him what I've been dying to tell him for days now. But first, I have to meet up with Billy and tell him it's finally over.

I can't keep pretending. I've tried a few times to gently tell him I don't think we should be together anymore, but Billy just laughs it off and tells me that I can't get rid of him that easily. He really thinks we're gonna be together forever, and I don't push the subject too much because there's something in his laugh that worries me, like Billy believes he owns me, but maybe it's just my imagination playing tricks with me. I know he's going to be really pissed off when I break up with him, but he's just going to have to deal with the fact I'm in love with somebody else. Not that I'm going to tell him that—not yet anyway.

Oh, my skin is tingling with the thought of making love to my secret man again. I really want to tell Renee about him, but I can't, not yet. She's going to be very mad and very disappointed in me when she finds out who he is, but I know she loves me enough to forgive me and eventually get over it.

I told him I hate keeping things from her but he told me to wait until we make it official, and then we can tell everyone. He still hasn't broken it off yet either. He's promised he's going to do that tonight, before he meets me, and then we can be together forever. Ah, I like the sound of that. Together forever.

Nan and Pa aren't going to be very happy about it either, but I'm sixteen and a half now, and they've got to let me make my own decisions in life sometime.

Anyways, I better sign off for now. I have to go get ready for tonight. Yay!

Scarlet x

Tucking the diary safely beneath her mattress, and then switching off the bedside lamp, Renee pulled the blanket up and over her head, enjoying the sensation of feeling cocooned. If only she could emerge as a beautiful butterfly in the morning—free and light and worry-free—wouldn't that be something. But with the way she was feeling—wretched, weighed down and drained—she'd be more likely to emerge as a slug. And after getting an hour-long lecture from Pa about taking off on her own today, loaded on top of everything else, she was utterly exhausted.

Looking at her watch, which was glowing in the dark, Renee grumbled to herself. It was just past one am—where had the hours gone? She had to be up in a little over six hours to get Mick to his doctor's appointment in town. Rolling over on her side, she flicked the blanket off her head and tried to get comfortable by hugging a pillow, her back sore after the bumpy double back with Pa on his horse, Gus.

She needed to get some sleep, especially considering she had an endless list of things to grab from Woollies and the agricultural store while in town—and her pa had warned her that it would be busy in town seeing as Thursday was pension day. Nan was coming home on Sunday afternoon and she wanted to have some baked goodies ready for her, along with loads of healthy food, and she also needed to get the homestead back in tiptop shape. She was nowhere near as good a housekeeper as Nan. The washing had piled up in the laundry, there was an overflowing basket of ironing to do, the timber furniture could use a dose of Mr Sheen, and the floors needed a good going over with the vacuum and mop. And with only a few days left to achieve everything, she definitely needed to get her act into gear.

Letting her heavy eyelids drop shut, Renee thought about how lucky she had been to find the diary, and for it to be in such good nick. She truly believed Scarlet had somehow led her to it, the scent of her frankincense not something to be ignored. There was clearly something in the diary that Scarlet wanted her to read. Although she was still at a loss as to who had taken her sister from them, she was now sure that it was someone she and her grandparents knew. If only Scarlet had given a name…

Beyond exhausted and trying to derail her train of thought so she could get a few hours of precious sleep, Renee traced her fingertips over her still tingling lips, sighing miserably. She and Dylan had come so close to a full passionate kiss, so close to stepping over the line and to pulling down that brick wall he'd built. And the look in his eyes when he had taken her into his arms was like he was diving into her and caressing her from the inside out. No man had ever had the ability to make her feel so protected, so cared for, so loved. But in the blink of an eye, he had pulled away from her like she was a poisonous snake about to bite him, and the way he had walked away, like nothing had happened, as though what she had just felt from him wasn't real, crushed her.

What had he meant when he'd said he wasn't really married? Had his wife left him? Or had she died? From the dark shadow that had passed over his eyes when he had spoken of her, she guessed that it was the latter. If her intuition was right, her heart broke for him. No wonder he was reluctant to allow anyone into his life again—especially her after the way she'd already hurt him so deeply in the past. She had intended to ask Pa about Dylan's wife over dinner, but she hadn't been able to get a word in as her pa lectured her about the dangers of being stranded in the bush.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Renee started to count backwards from one hundred—a technique she'd found helpful in the past to get to sleep. Counting made her mind focus on something other than all the jibber jabber. At forty-eight, her body began to feel heavier, and by twenty-two she started to forget where she was up to. Teetering on the edge of dreamland, she let herself fall into the abyss, her unconscious mind taking over as she slipped into a much-needed deep sleep.

***

The cry of a curlew echoed throughout the otherwise silent night, the unnerving sound making Dylan shudder beneath his doona. The Aborigines believed it was the call of death, and he wasn't the only one that thought that way. Craig and the other town copper, Jake, both laughed about the occasional calls from worried locals who thought someone was being murdered in their back paddock.

After not being able to get one wink of sleep despite having lain in bed for hours, Dylan kicked his doona off in a huff. There was too much spinning around in his overactive mind. Thankfully he was going back to see the shrink after work tomorrow—and the fact that he was actually looking forward to speaking with Theresa Wise again was comforting in itself. He couldn't wait to share the good news that the nightmares had stopped, hopefully for good.

Dragging himself from the bed, he walked over to his dresser and reluctantly popped a sleeping tablet from the blister pack. Hesitating for a few moments, he threw it in his mouth and then gulped a mouthful of water from the cup beside his bed. Flopping back down onto his mattress with a thump, he groaned again. He hated relying on drugs to sleep—he hated taking Panadol at the best of times—but drastic times called for drastic measures. He needed sleep if he was going to perform to the best of his abilities at work, and he was determined to try and impress Stanley enough to maybe score a more permanent position. There was something about being at Wildwood Acres that he loved. Maybe it was the sweeping landscape, maybe it was being able to work alongside such an experienced cattleman as Stanley Wildwood, he wasn't sure, but whatever it was, he liked it. He refused to believe it was because of Renee Wildwood.

Rolling over, he stared at his alarm clock like it was the archenemy, watching as minute after minute ticked over. He wished he could unplug the bastard, but he needed the alarm to wake him up—that was, if he ever fell asleep. Was a decent night's rest too much to ask? It was just past one in the morning, and he'd been lying here for exactly five hours since hitting the sack soon after he'd tucked Annie into bed. Yet again, insomnia was playing mind games with him, and it was winning.

He slapped his hand against the pillow in defeat. For fuck's sake, he had to be at work in less than six hours. Rolling onto his back, and then his side, and then his stomach, and then back onto his back again, he groaned. His mum had suggested a few times that he should try counting sheep. Yeah right! As if that was going to do anything. Knowing his Gemini mind, he'd probably just start imagining shearing them, or eating a juicy lamb chop—and then he'd make himself hungry and need to get up and have a midnight feast. Bless her for trying to help, though. Anyway, it was impossible to picture anything else when Renee Wildwood's beautiful face was hogging every millimetre of his mind—hadn't he already lost enough sleep over her throughout the years? When was enough going to be enough?

Throwing a pillow over his head, Dylan let his mind do whatever it wanted to, and gave up trying to alter its course. In seconds, he was back in the shack, standing in front of Renee, her full kissable lips so close to his he could almost taste her sweetness. It had taken every bit of his resolve not to tear her clothes off right then and there so he could feel the silky softness of her skin beneath his fingertips. He ached with the thought of pushing her up against the wall and sliding down to his knees so he could lick her sweet nectar. He wanted to tease her with his tongue, caress every inch of her, and push her to the brink just long enough to make him beg to be inside of her.

And oh, how he ached to be inside her, to be at one with her, to feel the entire world fade away as he made love to her once again, like they had when she was seventeen and he was eighteen. It was mind-blowing back then, and he could only imagine what it would feel like now. With his imagination wandering off behind closed doors, Dylan felt the grasp of sleep take his hand and walk him into the void of slumber, the heavy sensation of his body finally sinking into the mattress absolute heaven. And in a matter of seconds, he was in dreamland, along with Renee, her naked body pressed up against his as she took him to places he'd never been before.

***

The shrill beep-beep of the alarm clock dragged Renee from her deeply satisfying dream and for a few blissful seconds she hovered on the luxurious threshold between reality and fantasy. Allowing the ethereal feeling to capture her entirely, she refused to open her eyes and tried to ignore the alarm. She didn't want to wake up, ever. In her dream, Dylan and she were together, Scarlet and her parents were still alive, all of their lives perfectly entwined, and all of them without a care in the world. If only it could be true, if only her life could be so picture-perfect, but it was never that easy. Her parents and Scarlet were never coming back, there was no such thing as a life without worries, and Dylan Anderson clearly had deep-set issues with her—they were never getting back together.

Succumbing to the fact she was going to have to face the day, she reluctantly let the dream fade away. Bleary eyed, she rolled over and smacked her hand down on top of the offending clock, killing the sound instantly. Part of her wanted to throw the darn thing across the room. Groaning wearily, she dragged herself to sitting, her eyes still half shut, every inch of her dying to flop back down amongst her tussled sheets and go back to sleep. Her mind whirred like an engine with a failing battery, with her body chugging slowly behind it. Coffee, she needed coffee, and the stronger the better.

She rubbed her eyelids and willed herself to wake up. She'd only given herself half an hour to have a shower, get dressed and be at Mick's front door to take him to his check-up appointment at the Opals Ridge hospital, so she had to move her arse. Grabbing her towel from the floor where she'd dropped it last night, Renee threw it over her shoulder and then headed off down the hallway towards the bathroom.

She was looking forward to seeing her nan at the hospital today, seeing as she hadn't made her daily trip in to visit her yesterday. It would be the first time she had visited without her pa—her first drive into town without him as her chaperone. She was looking forward to the taste of freedom, the independence that she so greatly missed. The initial nerves were long gone. She was dying to venture into town on her own and act her twenty-six years.

Feeling a little more human now that she was showered and had coffee and two golden syrup-soaked crumpets in her belly, Renee pulled into the last remaining car park of the small country hospital, thankful for the automatic parking assist in Nan's shiny black Holden Caprice. She was shocking at reverse parallel parking, quite often finding herself up the gutter and on the sidewalk or red-faced because she'd banged into something like a wheelie bin or lamp post.