Outback Bridegroom

“Then why kiss a woman who’s been nothing but trouble?” Christine couldn’t resist the urge to taunt him.

“Could be I just think of it as fighting fire with fire.”

“So what are you waiting for?” She felt a sudden violent rush of exhilaration in her blood as the weight of his wonderful curvy mouth came down over hers.

It was meant to be a light, mocking kiss that would convey to her she was no longer in his blood. No longer able to drive him to distraction. Only, the kiss changed character….

Dear Reader,

This third story in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries continues the theme of families and bonded lives, the unique relationships that are formed in isolated outback life. We all belong to a family, and how we fared in childhood and adolescence has a powerful effect on our lives. Some have the great good fortune to be reared in a loving, stable home where the young are encouraged to approach life from a positive angle and are always given a helping hand. Others are always struggling to win acceptance, to be loved, knowing it’s not going to happen. Eventually, they are forced to make a life far from their families in order to protect themselves.

Christine is one such heroine who is forced into fleeing her desert home. In running away she must leave behind the love of her life, her kindred spirit, Mitch Claydon. He nurses a bitter hurt and disillusionment while she travels the world as a glamorous fashion model, but she’s unable to forget the man she’s left behind….

The first book in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries was the Harlequin Superromance® novel Sarah’s Baby. This was followed by Runaway Wife in Harlequin Romance®. Look for Outback Surrender, December 2003, also in Harlequin Romance®.

Outback Bridegroom

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS funny about love, he thought. It never died. Or his particular kind of love didn’t: his was unconditional, irreversible. He’d had it once. He’d never found it again. Not since Christine. Always, always, Christine!

If he lived to be one hundred he doubted if he could ever forget his childhood sweetheart, the love of his life, the impossibly beautiful Christine Reardon. Such was their bond right through childhood and their teens—his wretched and—let’s face it—unrequited love for her was never going to leave him. He was still spellbound by the very sight of her, though she had used him shamefully. For a man with guts and pride aplenty, that made him feel really bad.

He had learned to love early. Both he and Christine were Outback born and reared. Both were the children of pastoral dynasties—bush aristocracy, as it were. That in itself had forged a powerful connective link. He was Mitchell Claydon, heir to Marjimba Station, she was the granddaughter of the so recently late, unlamented Ruth McQueen, whose wake he and half the Outback were at present attending.

The interment, under a blazingly hot sun, was mercifully over, but the wake, held at the McQueens’ historic homestead Wunnamurra, dragged on and on as it befell everyone to pay their respects to such a powerful pioneering family.

For two hours now he had stood suffering blackly—he hoped it didn’t show—longing to cool off with a cold beer, not endless cups of tea or the whisky the boys in the library were having. An irreverent thought, maybe. Ruth’s funeral was a momentous day in their part of the world—vast Outback Queensland, an endless source of fascination to most of the country who led city lives. Ruth, ex-matriarch of the McQueen dynasty, was not your normal much mourned grandmother. Ruth in her lifetime had had a patent on seriously ruthless behaviour, but she’d had the aura and financial muscle to somehow pull it off.

He’d never liked her. In fact he’d come close to loathing her, so how could he be expected to mourn her passing? Wasn’t the reason Christine had run away from him to escape her grandmother’s clutches? Or so Chrissy had claimed. One way or the other, Christine’s flight had been swift and terrible for a girl who up to that time had declared her endless love for him. The fervour with which she’d said it still rang in his heart like a bell.

“How I love you, Mitch!” That tone should have been kept for worship. Her face had been luminous as a pearl above him, her thick braid undone, silken hair glistening even in the scented darkness of their special place, a pink lily pond few other people came to or even knew. Her beautiful hands had always smelled of boronia, caressing his naked chest, spiralling downwards, in delicate stroking circles that had made his blood run molten, his body shaking with the fine tremors of blind passion.

An inferno of desire! He would have done anything for her. She had power, great power, in the age-old manner of beautiful seductive women. It was this that had mesmerized him. Kept him captive so he never saw all the other girls who tried to win his attention.

Christine. Always Christine.

Her ardent declarations had turned out to be utter lies. She had betrayed him and played him, scorning the love she’d proclaimed so sublime. The grief and the anger Mitch felt had gone so deep they still burned brightly. So why, then, couldn’t he forget her? Wash his hands of her? Get on with his life?

It hadn’t worked out like that at all. God knows he’d tried. And now he stood in Wunnamurra’s very grand drawing room watching the assembled family saying goodbye to the last of the mourners. There was much solicitous air-kissing, diplomatic condolences, though the departed Ruth had been disliked with a passion. Not that Ruth had minded while she was alive. In fact she’d actively encouraged such strong sentiments in those she considered her inferiors, and they included the entire Outback at one time.

Vale, Ruth! Arrogance and snobbery personified.

Kyall was an entirely different story. No one could tarnish Kyall McQueen’s image. Kyall had been his friend from earliest childhood, as was Kyall’s fiancée, Sarah Dempsey—Sarah Dempsey—head of Koomera Crossing’s Bush Hospital.

Ranged beside Kyall and Sarah on the fare-welling line were Kyall’s mother and father, Enid and Max, a mightily dysfunctional couple if ever there was one, and beside them Kyall’s problematic young cousin, Suzanne, dragged home from boarding school. But the ultimate object of Mitch’s attention this long, terrible day was the stunning young woman standing protectively beside Suzanne like some exotic long-legged water-bird.

Christine. His only love! Hell, weren’t they great days, when love had surged sweet and absolutely irresistible? So irresistible it sometimes seemed to him his emotional life hadn’t taken one single step forward. As for Chris? Her life had gone ahead in great leaps and bounds. It was a long hike from awkward adolescent, head ducking, shoulders slouching in an effort to hide her height, to fêted international model who regularly bagged the cover of well-known international magazines.

The moment he’d laid eyes on her that morning she’d been walking with immense style down Wunnamurra’s grand divided staircase. That catwalk training had been devastatingly successful, he’d noted cynically.

God, what a knockout! He, despite everything, felt pierced again by love’s maddening arrows. The poor schmuck who stared up at her as if she was a goddess favouring earth with a visit. Who could take that much heart-stopping beauty? He’d only stared, feeling his tormented heart banging away so loudly he’d thought it might leap from his chest. Such weakness dishonoured him. From that moment on his pride had made it easier…

“Mitch, how wonderful to see you again!” Her stunning, high-cheekboned face turned on the now famous smile. “It’s so good of you and the family to come.”

Some moments spin out forever. Memories invaded his mind, one scene opening out after the other. Always he and Chris together—riding, swimming, skinny-dipping in the creeks across Marjimba, exploring the Hill Country, exploring each other’s excitable young bodies. God knows how he’d found the gumption to move, but he had.

“Hey, we’re family, aren’t we, Chrissy?” He’d sauntered up to her, hadn’t attempted to hug her, or kiss her cheek. He’d settled for a sardonic handshake. She wouldn’t like the “Chrissy”, but he’d just wanted to let her know he’d never accept the usual baloney. “Wonderful to see you” rang ludicrously untrue after the way she’d treated him.

That had been twenty minutes before the trip to the family cemetery, where Ruth had been interred with the pomp she certainly didn’t deserve. Since then his emotions had threatened by the minute to get seriously out of hand. A big mistake. These days he was very much a man in control. He considered it a by-product of being dumped by the said Christine. He didn’t look for love any more. Love was a four-letter word. Now he settled for companionship. Sex. He was tempted, like the next man. And this way there would be no stress, no pain. Sometimes a lot of fun, but that was the end of it. Still, it was lousy when you couldn’t fall in love again.

Christine, his heart’s desire, was woven warp and woof into the fabric of his life, and it looked as if he’d have to wrestle with that one forever. She’d become so finely polished, like a diamond, he could hardly bear her brilliance. Neither could he look away. Enid’s “ugly duckling” had long since turned into a swan. He’d always known she would.

In her adolescence Enid and Ruth had hardly a kind word to say to Chris regarding her coltish, somewhat androgynous look, the insouciant “boy” in jodhpurs and shirts. Of course she’d cultivated the look deliberately, in retaliation, and quietly laughed about it as he kissed and caressed her beautiful, very feminine breasts.

Petite women, Enid and Ruth had privately and very publicly agonized over Chris’s height as though it were none of their fault. So Chris was six feet? Tall for a woman, certainly, but they had been so cruel!

Christine in those days had been like a creature of the wild trapped in a cage. And she had fled her unhappy home. Anyone who’d had anything to do with Enid and Ruth could understand that. Except she’d fled him when he’d thought they had never been more in love. Hell, he’d been five minutes away from marrying her.

She was nineteen, he just twenty-one, and stupid enough to think he was God’s gift to women. Girls had liked to tell him that. Hard to believe, but true. Not Christine. She’d called him many a nasty name, ranting and raging that she had to find herself before she could deal with him. Marriage. Kids. Had he ever considered, given their combined height—he was six-two—their children might finish up as basketball stars?

What was wrong with that? They’d fought terribly. He’d had every confidence he would win. He knew he’d acted as if he equated her pending defection to committing a serious crime. But it was the pain and the sense of loss that had enraged him. A grief so acute it had resulted in his saying a lot of things that should never have been said.

Hadn’t she promised when she turned fourteen that they were going to get married? He’d thought both of them had taken that promise very seriously. Neither of them had wanted anyone else. He realised how stupid all of that was—kids’ stuff—except his feelings had never changed. He hadn’t even learned to be truly unfaithful. The flesh was weak but the mind remained purely loyal.

Now Ruth McQueen’s death had brought Christine home. For how long? A couple of days? A week? Surely she could spare some time off? She loved her father and brother; she tried hard to love her difficult, distant mother; she seemed to have taken charge of Suzanne. She didn’t need the money—Christine had a very tidy trust fund—but she did need that sense of self her success had brought her.

Always beautiful to him, she had made big changes. Gone was the slouch, the dip of the head to make herself shorter. How often had he tried to encourage her out of that? She’d always looked great to him no matter what she wore. Easy, casual. Now her clothes were the epitome of cosmopolitan chic. Dressed head to toe in sombre black, she nonetheless resembled an elegant brolga among what was in the main a flock of dull magpie geese.

She had learned patience. She’d stood throughout the ceremony in a contemplative mood. It must have been easy enough to conjure up her never well-intentioned late grandmother of the acid tongue. She’d shown no sign of nervousness or the inattention which had warranted many admonitions in the old days. Occasionally she’d smiled. The smile, now famous, lit up her face, displaying her beautiful teeth. He still had her early toothpaste ad hidden away in a drawer. It was almost in tatters from the countless times he’d looked at it. Once he’d had an impulse to tear it up—ever after grateful he hadn’t.

Christine! What a class act.

A kind of rage fuelled him. He who loved this goddess risked losing his head. Just being in the same room with her after years of estrangement put him in a strange mood, where anger and the pain of rejection lay heavily on his heart. He was profoundly conscious time was passing. All his friends were either getting engaged or married. When the hell was he going to surrender? He had to know he wouldn’t want for prospective brides.

Christine hadn’t married either, though he hadn’t the slightest doubt her phone kept ringing off the hook. For years he’d secretly followed her career as revealed by the tabloids. Her name had been linked with several highly eligible bachelors on the international scene, including an up-and-coming American actor who apparently featured in some TV soap five afternoons a week.

Strangely enough, the actor wasn’t unlike him. His mother had pointed him out on a magazine cover. The same physical type—tall, blond hair, blue eyes. Was it possible it had struck Christine too in passing? Say, this guy looks a bit like Mitch. Remember Mitch? Your first lover. He would have fought for you. Slaved for you. Died for you. He would have sold the family farm for you. He would have done all of that. He really loved you.

In the end she had taken off. Defection. What she had left behind her was poor old Mitch Claydon with a broken heart.

Across the room his mother gave him a wave, indicating they were about to fly home. His expression, unconsciously taut, softened. He loved his mother. She was a good woman with a brightness about her. These days he did all the piloting. His dad preferred to go along as a passenger.

He and Christine had barely exchanged a word. He’d had more to say to her young cousin Suzanne, who had to be all of sixteen. In the old days he and Christine had thrown their arms around each other, kissing, hugging, even when they’d seen one another the night before. They hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. Then. Loving to spend all their free time together. They’d even had their own fairy tale going. He was to rescue her from the clutches of her wicked grandmother…

Pure wishful thinking! Now so much time had passed. Time and change and pain. Christine was back. How in the world was he going to deal with it?

Christine hoped he wasn’t aware of it, but she’d been watching him endlessly, full of aches and regrets, memories she’d never been able to put out of her mind. Years of separation might have begun yesterday. Mitch still had the same magnetic drawing power that had captured her heart in the first place.

He was hard to miss. Mitch Claydon was a legitimately dashing guy. Golden-boy handsome, compellingly heterosexual. Almost rare in her world, where good-looking male models abounded, scarcely a one of them straight. Mitch would never enter her kind of world. Mitch had grown up accomplishing things, with a wonderfully pleasing and sunny nature. Mitch was a bred-in-the-bone cattleman, from a family with a rich pastoral tradition, a family very much like her own. Except the Claydons didn’t fall into the dysfunctional category. Mitch’s parents were and remained loving partners, committed to their family, openly demonstrative.

After their big break-up, somewhere along the line Mitch had developed an air of total inaccessibility. His gaze told her very plainly, Look, I might have loved you once, but I’ll never let you in again. Even the way he’d greeted her earlier in the day had told the same story. A white smile on his golden-skinned face, eyes sea-blue, sometimes turquoise, depending on his mood, always brilliantly twinkling as if there were stars at their centre, that thick soft golden pelt a woman would die for brushing his collar, but behind the smooth façade a great big sign that said: Back Off!

It made her incredibly unhappy, but she thought she was covering it well. Her model training was the perfect camouflage. She could provide expressions on demand.

In her experience men like Mitch were outside the ordinary. They stood out in life, not simply because of their looks, which were remarkable enough, but because of their aura of self-confidence. In some it almost bordered on arrogance, except it was the arrogance of achievement, of skills beyond the norm. The McQueens and the Claydons had established pastoral empires. Men like Mitch and her brother Kyall made it work. Without them, and men like them, their considerable enterprises would go under, their properties be dispersed.

It had happened with her own father’s family, the Reardons. Such was the McQueen name, and her grandmother’s power, her brother Kyall had actually been christened Kyall Reardon-McQueen, to be universally known as Kyall McQueen by the time he was three years old. And nothing to be done about it! Whereas she, the girl, and therefore not in the running for the top job, was Christine Reardon. Extraordinarily enough, even her father understood Kyall was a McQueen, with all that entailed. She had never heard him snipe about it.

She glanced over at her parents. They were deep in conversation with the Claydons. Her heart quivered as she stared at her father. He had never had an easy time of it. Not with her domineering mother and grandmother. Things had never been good at Wunnamurra, where disharmony prevailed. She often wondered how her parents had come together in the first place, their personalities were so different. Eventually she and Kyall had decided it was more a marriage of suitable families than a love match.

Her grandmother, Ruth, had made everyone uneasy. She hadn’t attempted to disguise her contempt for her granddaughter’s “tawdry career”—and tawdry did enter into it at some points. That couldn’t be denied. Alcohol, drugs, sexual predators—even among the very people there to protect you. Some of her friends in the business found it a battlefield, but she’d always been able to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground. All that mattered was to love and be loved in return. For all her successes she had never achieved that.

Not since Mitch, who had clearly put her behind him.

Love was a beautiful plant. If it wasn’t nurtured it would eventually wither and die. She hadn’t arrived at that point. It seemed Mitch had. She didn’t blame him.

A part of her had never left her Outback home, just as a part of her had always feared to return. Too much stress she didn’t want to handle. Although she thought she had changed a good deal—certainly she had become self-reliant—she knew it mightn’t take long before the old sense of worthlessness began to pervade her. Such was her mother’s and, to a much greater extent, her grandmother’s corrosive effect on her. Now her grandmother had been removed from the scene. Laid to rest. Or she was off some place else, terrorizing people.

A warm cheerful voice spoke as a hand touched her shoulder. “Christine, we’re off! It’s so lovely to see you again, dear.” In a flurry of genuine affection Mitch’s mother, Julanne, a handsome blonde woman with beautiful skin, embraced her. “Please don’t run away too soon. It’s so wonderful to have you home. I’d love it if you could visit us for a few days. There’s so much I want to talk to you about. Please say you’ll spare us a little time?”

Out of the corner of her eye Christine saw Mitch approaching with his familiar dashing, athletic grace. “I don’t know if Mitch would like that, Mrs Claydon.” Her tone was a mix of rueful and very wary. She’d seen the masked hostility spilling out of Mitch’s beautiful light-filled eyes.

“You don’t have to worry about Mitch,” Julanne whispered back, following Christine’s glance. “Deep down you two could never be anything else but friends. I always understood why you went away, my dear.”

“I had to, Mrs Claydon. The simple, unvarnished truth.”

“I know that.” Julanne Claydon appeared to consider her next words with great care. “But things will be easier now, with your grandmother gone. She was a truly extraordinary woman, but she could cause great tension.”

Christine nodded. “She wanted perfection—or her kind of perfection. Sadly for me, I couldn’t deliver. Mum and Gran saw eye to eye on one point. They wanted a doll they could dress up.”

“And what they got was an absolutely beautiful young woman. Inside and out.”

“Thanks for that, Mrs Claydon.” Christine smiled at this very kind, supportive woman who had always been her friend.

“Julanne, please, love. No need to call me Mrs Claydon any more. I watched you grow up.”

“And up!” Christine the supermodel raised her eyes heavenward, such was the drubbing she’d received about her height.

“It’s because of your height and those lovely long limbs you’ve become so famous, dear,” Julanne pointed out. “You must know that.”

“I do.” On an impulse Christine kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I’ve never forgotten your kindnesses to me.”

“You were very easy to be kind to, Christine,” Julanne responded, remembering how Christine had been virtually ignored while all the love and attention was focused on her brother Kyall. “So you’ll come? I’m starved for some colour and excitement. Think of all the stories you can tell me.”

“Some stranger than fiction,” Christine only half joked. “Well, then, it’s a date—and thank you for always being so nice to me. Give me a little time to sort out an agenda and I’ll let you know.”

“Mitch can come for you,” Julanne suggested, never having given away her dream that some day her son and Christine Reardon would patch up their differences and make a match of it. After all, for many long years they’d been a perfect circle of four. Mitch and Christine. Kyall and Sarah.

“Mitch can do what?” There was challenge, maybe an edge of animosity beneath the silken enquiry.

She steeled herself to turn around, tension showing in every line of her body. Earlier in the day she had known moments of pure exultation when they’d first come face to face. They might never have been parted; her attraction had been running at full throttle and she’d found herself remembering all the wonderful times, the bad times, full of shouting and tears. Now, heart thumping, she looked steadily into the compelling eyes that had haunted her. “Your mother will tell you, Mitch. I fear I don’t dare.” He looked absolutely marvellous to her, even with his bronze brows drawn together.

“That’s not the Christine I knew. She wasn’t scared to say anything.”