An Outback Affair/Runaway Wife/Outback Bridegroom/Outback Surrender/Home To Eden Read online

  On stage, Laura threw the switch, at the same time making the mistake of staring up at the blinding dazzle of lights. They immediately left an afterburn on the retina.

  “Laura?” he called up to her, seeing the way she closed her eyes and turned her head.

  “I’m okay.” In fact she felt a little foolish. It was an inadvertent thing. The black dots didn’t go away quickly, but she found herself stepping off the stage. Her vision slowly cleared, though she wasn’t altogether sure of her footing.

  “Lord!” Her every nerve jumped. She gave an involuntary little cry as the heel of her sandal caught. “Evan, I’m sorry, but I can’t see where I’m going.”

  “I’m here. Right here,” he called reassuringly, moving swiftly into position at the base of the steps. “You shouldn’t have looked up at the lights.”

  “No, that was stupid. Oh, God! I’m going to fall.” She had instant visions of a sprained ankle.

  “No, you’re not!”

  The next moment she was locked securely in his arms, her feet dangling clear of the floor.

  The whole world jolted to a stop. It was like coming into a safe harbour after a storm, though the air around them was full of motion.

  Her mouth was a breath away from his chin. There was no fear. But excitement immeasurably beyond anything she had felt before. She wanted to stay like that for ever, embracing it. A dangerous way to feel, but it was out of her control.

  “How did this happen?” His voice was very deep. He made no move to set her on her feet.

  “I don’t know. I’m embarrassed. That was stupid. I stumbled. You caught me.”

  “Okay, so we have an excuse.” His voice was deep and exciting. There was an identical expression in his dark eyes. “It’s just too damned hard not to kiss you, Laura.”

  “You mustn’t,” she whispered, at the same time raising her head, welcoming his kiss so much she could barely speak.

  “I know I mustn’t,” he answered gently. “But that’s not helping me right now. My God, what do you weigh? You’re a featherweight. I could hold you like this until four in the morning.”

  Her green eyes were staring uncertainly into his, her lovely lips parted, her skin as white and soft as a gardenia, glowing in the dim light. He could feel the ache in his body. The need for a woman. Not any woman. Laura.

  “This is what comes of being alone in the near dark,” he said, drawing on all the gentleness in him. Inner wisdom told him Laura hadn’t been treated with care. “Don’t be frightened, Laura. I’d never hurt you.”

  “I’m not.” Yet she instinctively braced herself from long habit. Waited. Other terrible kisses were coming back to her, the awful stroking of her white skin, the moments she’d tried desperately to escape. It was an involuntary thing thinking of Colin. Fear was always uppermost in her mind.

  “Stop that,” he said, very quietly.

  “What am I doing?”

  “Your whole body has gone tense.”

  Yet he held her so very tenderly. “It’s just that—”

  “Don’t say anything unless it’s the truth.”

  In one fluid movement he lowered her until her feet came to rest on the second step from the floor. Her head was almost level with his, which was just where he wanted it.

  “Let yourself relax,” he urged, his voice like black velvet.

  “How can I?”

  “You know I would never do anything to upset you.”

  She did know, and it was a revelation. Joy overtook apprehension. She felt her body might not be able to accommodate the extremity of her emotions. But any lingering fears were lost as he drew her against him, lowering his dark head until his mouth settled over hers.

  Waves of desire came off him, giving her such a heady feeling of confidence in her womanliness that she was radiant with bliss. Colin’s image disappeared.

  Evan’s kiss was so beautiful, so exciting, so wonderfully moving. She could feel her heart, so used to beating loud and hard with dread, simply melt. Warmth was like a beautiful, enveloping blush moving over her skin. What she was experiencing was flawless male mastery, yet it so wrapped her in multiple layers of security she abandoned herself entirely to the enormity of the moment.

  Such an infinity of sensation piled up in her body. She felt her spirit soaring, as it did when she made music. She didn’t flinch as the kiss deepened, became more passionate. She wasn’t frigid at all. She could never think that of herself ever again. Not with Evan kissing her as if he was drowning in unimaginable delight, aching for her. She had become so accustomed to withholding response, but now that was impossible. With Evan she had cast off all barriers, in a world without horizons.

  His strong fingers were in her hair, not tearing or pulling, but smoothing, as if its length was a precious bolt of silk. There was more than a good chance she might simply swoon away from such boundless tendresse.

  “Laura?” He lifted his mouth from hers, aware she was striving to come up for air. He, himself, had never experienced such an extraordinary play of emotion. “You haven’t gone to sleep?” he gently teased, luxuriating in her heavenly softness. Her fragrance all around him. Desire. Delight.

  She let her head tip forward onto his chest, her whole body tingling from the contact. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his cotton shirt, smell his clean male scent, hear the thud of his heart. Her own heart was beating as if she’d just run one hundred metres.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Do you know how wonderful you are to kiss?”

  “Am I?” She moved slightly so she could lay her cheek against him.

  “Doesn’t your peculiar boyfriend tell you that?”

  “Don’t let’s talk about him,” she begged. Colin had no place there.

  “You didn’t think of him when I was kissing you?”

  She was truthful. “Only to realize I’ve never been kissed before,” she said, her voice soft and intense.

  “Then two kisses are surely better than one?”

  How thrillingly quiet he was, yet his voice, his eyes, the way he looked at her, stirred her to her unguarded soul. It was a miraculous feeling, her body resting against his. She was getting such pleasure and comfort from it. What she’d said she meant. Evan’s kiss was the only kiss she had received in her life.

  “Come closer to me.” He snuggled her supple, yielding body against him, everything that was tender in him aroused by the delicacy of her limbs.

  “Evan?”

  “It’s only me.”

  If only she had never met Colin. But she had, and he had harmed her. She’d come a long way since then.

  I can’t let it go on like this with Evan. She spoke silently to herself. I must do something about it. I have to tell him the truth.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WUNNAMURRA Station was an island of civilisation in an ocean of Spinifex scorched to a bright gold. On their near two-hour journey from the town they had passed through an extraordinary landscape, making the trip to Wunnamurra for Ruth McQueen’s funeral almost an adventure for the city-bred Laura.

  “This is like being a million miles from anywhere,” she said to Evan, who was doing the driving. “I thought I’d be looking at one of the world’s harshest environments but this is more like a wonderland. All the fiery colours! Namatjira really did capture them.” She gazed out of the window at the flying miles.

  “These unique landscapes made him famous,” Evan remarked of the famous aboriginal artist. “Even when he became a celebrity he always wanted to go home to the desert. So far as I’m concerned no one has been able to match him for capturing the essence of the Outback.”

  “And to think I used to consider the palette he used too vivid to be true,” Laura confessed, “which shows my ignorance of the Outback. Just look at the red rocks, the red plains and dunes, the distant violet ranges all under the deepest blue sky I’ve ever seen. Not a single cloud. I love the ghost gums.”

 
“Namatjira’s ‘ghostly gums’ made his name. The silver-grey leaves, the crisp white branches and trunks. They’re beautiful. Even the dead trees are marvelous, with their extraordinary gnarled shapes.”

  “What’s that one over there?” Laura twisted her head around. “It’s not a ghost gum.” She pointed at a huge bare tree, its branches twisted into fantastic curves and angles.

  “Desert Oak.” Evan identified the species for her. “Casuarina decaisneana. How’s that for a botany lesson?”

  “Pretty good.” She smiled. “I hope I’m not being a nuisance, asking all these questions, but what’s the glitter in the distance?”

  Evan eased the speed of his four-wheel drive so she could look her fill. “An area of gibber. Pebbles and stones, even boulders. They’re rounded and polished by the windblown sand until they look like gems. That accounts for the glimmer. East of Lake Eyre is Sturt’s Stony Desert. Now, that’s a remarkable place. The surrounding plains are literally covered in colourful polished pebbles. The total effect is one of a never-ending mosaic.”

  How she was cherishing the trip, cherishing being with him, though half melancholy because she couldn’t be indifferent to the fact she was still legally tied to Colin. She couldn’t stop to analyse the exact feelings for Evan, especially since he’d kissed her. That would be like stepping off a cliff.

  “Speaking of colour, you’ve had a colourful life?” She glanced at his bold sculptured face in profile, the strong column of his brown throat.

  “I’ve seen a lot, Laura.” He gave her back a glance. “A lot good. A lot bad. Australia is good. The Australian Outback is better. It’s the heart and soul of the country. A healthy, healing environment—unless you’re a complete fool and do the wrong thing, like heading off without telling anyone where you’re going or travelling without water. Water is a very precious commodity out here.”

  “Even with all those interlocking watercourses, the lagoons and billabongs, the water running off all the rocks and gullies?” she asked.

  “Providing one is near them,” he pointed out dryly. “You’ve only seen the town. The bush is so vast you could have a thirty-kilometre walk in scorching sun. It doesn’t take long to become severely dehydrated.”

  “One wonders why Mrs McQueen decided to venture out,” Laura mused. “I understand she was an elderly woman.”

  “You’d never have known to look at her. She was all style. An extraordinarily glamorous woman. Very black intelligent eyes. A powerful woman too, but far from likeable as a lot of powerful people are.” he added dryly.

  “Have you ever been anywhere there was a chance you’d be killed?” Laura startled him by asking.

  He flicked a glance at her, very aware of how close she was to him, inhaling her fragrance. “What a question.”

  “Do you think you could answer it, oh, man of mystery?”

  “I have to tell you I’ve been close to an active volcano.” He gave her a half-smile. He could never tell her about his perilous times in the Balkans.

  “You’re joking!”

  “Not to mention all the poisonous gases in the air.”

  “Where? Please do tell me?”

  He smiled at the imploring note in her voice. “I was twenty-five years old. In those days I thought nothing of taking risks. A friend of mine from my university days was a geologist. Both of us were on holiday in Italy, fascinated with volcanic eruptions. We decided to take off for Mount Etna. The Viper, as the Italians call it.”

  “What a scary thing to do!”

  “You bet!” he agreed mockingly. “In those days we thought of it more an awe-inspiring adventure, and it was. Small wonder some societies worship active volcanos.”

  “And you actually stood on the edge of the crater?” she asked, fascinated.

  “We did. But if you really want to see the earth’s most unique crater it’s right here in the Red Centre. Actually, not all that far away by charter flight. It’s called Gosse’s Bluff. Spinifex plains just like these.” He waved a hand at the rugged landscape. “The pound roughly twenty, twenty-five kilometres across, surrounded by what appears to be a massive circular range of mountains—which is, of course, the pink sandstone wall of the crater. No one knows what caused the mighty impact, comet or meteorite, but it must have been felt all over earth. A cataclysmic explosion probably a couple of hundred thousand times greater than the explosion that destroyed Hiroshima. Mercifully our scientists tell us huge comet or meteorite falls like the one that created Gosse’s Bluff occur only once in a million years.”

  “That’s good to know,” she shuddered wryly. “I saw a movie about a meteorite about to destroy earth not that long ago. It was bad enough. Have you been to Gosse’s Bluff as well?”

  In his other life he’d spent years globe-trotting, ready to take off for an assignment at twenty-four hours’ notice. “No.” His charismatic voice deepened. “But if you’ll come with me I don’t see any reason why we can’t go. Vehicle access is probably difficult. A helicopter could land.”

  Laura felt her own cataclysmic jolt. “Are you serious?” Oh, let him be!

  “Of course I’m serious. Would you like to go?”

  The thought thrilled her unbearably. “I’d love to go.”

  “Well, then, the trip’s on.” He drank in her lovely face, her excited response.

  She’d told him the day before she didn’t have a single black outfit in her wardrobe to wear, but she’d found a very stylish little navy suit which she wore with a white navy-trimmed silk blouse beneath. It didn’t take an experienced eye to know it was top quality, very expensive. Her hair was drawn back with a navy ribbon.

  So young, so absolutely beautiful, so gifted. So why did he think she was weeping inside? He realized his feelings for her were growing into a private torment. What could come of it? He didn’t know where his life was heading. She was clearly running from a serious situation. Now he had gone and dreamed up this trip. Unsharable nights together under the Outback stars. He had to be raving mad. Nevertheless, he got himself in even deeper.

  “We might as well take in Uluru,” he added compulsively. “Forget calling it Ayers Rock—Uluru is the only name that calls up its mystery and magic. And twenty miles on are the magnificent domes of Kata Tjuta.”

  “The Olgas.” She gave him a little smile.

  “Both great monuments are sublime. Have you seen them?”

  “I haven’t done anything much,” she confessed. “I’ve never been further off-shore than New Zealand, Fiji, Bali. Once to Bangkok.”

  “Where did you stay?” He gripped the wheel as the four-wheel drive bounced over a very rough patch of low scrub.

  “The Oriental.”

  “One of the great hotels of the world. So you weren’t slumming it?” he observed dryly.

  “Far from it.” She dreaded saying the trip to Bangkok had been her honeymoon destination.

  “You don’t sound as though it was a wonderful experience. Surely the food alone is superb?”

  “Of course it is. I loved the dazzlingly beautiful arrangements of flowers in the lobby. Great fish bowls on spectacular stands, filled with enough orchids or flowers in season to fill a great florist shop, the enormous temple bells that serve as chandeliers, the gilded wooden elephants caparisoned with a blanket made from woven flowers. The Thai people have a genius for turning floral arrangements into living works of art.”

  “Better include the way they carve fruit and vegetables into exquisite shapes.”

  “The ice sculptures too.”

  “Did you fly on to Phuket?”

  “No.”

  He was alerted all at once. “You don’t sound like you had any fun at all. Phuket is a great attraction in that part of the world. Phangnga Bay is famous for its profusion of limestone peaks rising out of the milky green water. There are countless caves as well. I’m not sure how many James Bond movies have used the bay as a location. And who was your companion in all this luxury?”

  Her green eyes went d
ark. “Someone I fell very fast out of love with.”

  “Ah…your lover!” Despite himself his voice took on a dark edge. He hated the idea of her with her doctor lover. Knew he had no right. “Are we allowed to use the D word?”

  “What’s the D word?” she near whispered.

  His gaze pinned her. “As in doctor?”

  “We went home early.”

  “Weren’t enjoying yourselves?” he asked sardonically.

  “I wasn’t enjoying myself,” she corrected. “May we get off the D word?”

  “Certainly.” He bit off what he wanted to say. He didn’t want to cheapen the extraordinary bond he had formed with her. “I don’t like the sound of the D word either.”

  “Neither do I.”

  He was baffled. “Forgive me, Laura, but why spend any time at all with a man who only offered you trouble?”

  “Try because he wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  “All right, you’re still in love with him even if you can’t see a future?” He had a sensation of extreme anger directed towards her doctor, who sounded very much like a control freak..

  “I’m not so involved I didn’t love being kissed by you,” Laura freely admitted.

  He whistled softly beneath his breath. “The lady admits it.”

  “I couldn’t hide it,” she said simply.

  “But I’m not the only man in your life?” He kept his tone deliberately light.

  “Unfortunately, no. Not at this point in time.”

  “Be that as it may, Laura, it’s not going to stop me from kissing you again,” he warned. “I’d say you’re in need of lots of love and kisses.”

  “The right kind,” she murmured.

  He took his eye off the track to study her face, a frown between his strongly marked black brows. “What do you know about violence?” A terrible suspicion opened up, although she looked as inviolate as a white orchid.

  So difficult to answer—particularly because she couldn’t bear anything to jeopardise their blossoming relationship. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it? One only has to watch the television or read the papers.”