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‘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 rainswept 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, starstruck 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 outstand-ingly—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…
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