For two years Pricilla Johnson watched John Sterling manage his cattle station, and at the tender age of eighteen she innocently surrendered her young heart to him. He was big, brash, brazen and Australian. Everyone called it infatuation, Priss knew it was love.

But Pricilla had to move on with her life. Four years of college in Hawaii provided the time and distance to transform a naive girl into a desirable, mature woman.

Returning to Australia as a certified teacher, she was ready to put John to the test. And ready or not, he was about to learn a lesson he would never forget.

The Australian

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

The airport at Brisbane was crowded, just as Priscilla Johnson had expected. She’d left Australia a college girl, but her college days were now over. With graduation had come the slow, sad process of severing friendships in Honolulu and leaving Aunt Margaret’s house, where she’d lived for five years. Now the future held a teaching career in Providence, a small town northwest of Brisbane across the rain forests of Queensland’s Great Dividing Range.

She looked around excitedly for her father and mother, and smiled when she remembered how happy they’d been about her plans to teach in Australia. It had been touch and go, that decision. If Ronald George hadn’t been coming here to teach himself, if he hadn’t prodded her...

She shifted from one navy pump-clad foot to the other. Her blonde hair curled in short wisps around her delicate oval face with its wide green eyes and creamy complexion. Those eyes were quiet and confident and just a little mischievous even now as she approached her twenty-fourth birthday. She walked with a fluid, easy grace, a result of the charm school classes her aunt Margaret had paid for. And in her white linen suit and powder blue blouse and navy accessories, she was a far cry from the teenager who’d left Australia so reluctantly five years ago to go away to college in Hawaii.

Priscilla shivered a little. Here in Australia it was spring in late September, not autumn as it had been in Hawaii. Her seasons, like her senses, were turned upside down. She’d had only two years in Queensland, after all, before college began. Her parents had left their native Alabama after Adam Johnson had applied and been accepted for a teaching position in Providence. He’d liked the idea of working in a small school mainly populated by children from three large cattle and sheep stations in the fairly remote area. Renée, Priscilla’s mother, had been equally enthusiastic about the move. Neither of them had close family anymore: there were no other people to consider. All three of them had an adventurous streak. So they’d packed up and moved to Australia. And so far none of them had regretted it. Except perhaps Priscilla.

She wondered how it would be to see him again. Inevitably she would. Providence and the surrounding country were sparsely inhabited, and everyone met sooner or later in the small town to buy supplies or go to church or just socialize. Her thin brows drew together in a worried frown. It had been five years. She was a different woman now. Besides, Ronald would be settling in soon, and she’d have someone to keep her mind off Jonathan Sterling.

John. It was impossible not to remember. Her green eyes grew hard, and she clutched her purse and carry-on bag until her knuckles went white. Her memory hadn’t dulled. Neither had the pain.

She was tired. It had been a long flight, and despite the fact that most of her luggage had already been shipped over and she was only carrying a small bag, she wished her parents would appear. She wanted to get back to the small cottage where they lived, on the fringe of the mammoth cattle and sheep station known as the Sterling Run.

Her eyes wandered quickly around the crowded terminal, but before they could sweep past the front entrance, she saw a broad-shouldered man standing a full head above the crowd of travelers. Her heart slammed up against her throat, and she began to tremble. Perhaps she was mistaken! But no, his hair was light brown with bleached blond streaks all through it, thick and slightly shaggy in back, and straight. He was wearing an old tweed jacket with gray slacks and dingo boots, but even so he drew women’s eyes as he strode through the crowd.

His pale blue eyes swept the travelers, and he scowled. His dimpled chin jutted pugnaciously; his firm mouth was set in a thin line. There were new wrinkles in that strong craggy face. Her eyes searched him like hands, looking for breaks.

He hadn’t recognized her yet. Of course not, she reminded herself. She’d left here a long-legged gangly teenager with waist-length blonde hair and ill-fitting clothing. Now she was much more poised, a sophisticated woman with confident carriage and designer clothing. No, she thought bitterly, he wouldn’t recognize her.

She picked up her carryall and went toward him gracefully. He glanced at her with faint appreciation before his eyes took up their search of the crowd again. It wasn’t until she stopped just in front of him that he looked at her once more, and his eyebrows shot together with the shock of recognition that flared in his pale eyes.

“Priss?” he asked uncertainly, his eyes punctuating his astonishment as they ran up and down her slender body.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said with a cool smile. “How are you, John?”

He didn’t reply. If anything, he grew colder as he registered the new poise about her.

“I’m waiting for my parents,” she continued. “Have you seen them?”

“I’ve come to fetch you on their behalf,” he said coldly, in the familiar Australian drawl that she remembered so well. He towered over her, big and broad and sexy as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, while his eyes followed the lift of her eyebrows. “They had to attend some sort of luncheon in Providence.”

She shifted her weight slightly, hoping her parents hadn’t arranged this whole thing out of misguided affection. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to spell it out,” he said on a cold laugh. “I’m no more anxious for your company than you are for mine, I assure you. But I could hardly refuse when I was asked. And I did have to be in town today.”

“I can always ride in the trunk, if you like,” she returned with an arctic smile.

He didn’t even bother to reply. He picked up her carryall and turned, starting toward the front of the terminal and leaving her to follow or not as she chose.

She had to practically run to keep up with him, and that made her angry. “Still the master of the situation, I see,” she threw at him. “You haven’t changed at all!”

He didn’t turn his head or break stride. His face only grew harder. “Well, you have,” he replied. He glanced sideways, and there were angry glints in his eyes. “I didn’t recognize you.”

Once a remark like that would have devastated her. But over the bitter years she’d learned control. She’d learned to hide her heart. So she only smiled carelessly. “It’s been five years, after all, John,” she reminded him, and had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if he liked the change.

“That suit must have cost a mint,” he remarked.

She laughed up at him. “It did. Surely you didn’t expect a ragged urchin, John?” she chided. Her eyes wandered over his own garb. “Odd, I remember you as being more immaculate.”

His eyes darkened dangerously. “I’m a working man.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Yes, I remember,” she said. “Sheep and cattle and dust.”

“There was a time when you didn’t mind,” he reminded her and abruptly turned out of the terminal, his voice sharper than she ever remembered hearing it.

Yes, she thought, there had been a time when she wouldn’t have minded if he was caked in dust or covered with bits of wool. Her eyes closed for an instant on a wave of pain and humiliation and grief that almost buckled her knees. But she had to be strong. She had to remember more than just the beginning. She had to remember the end.

Her head lifted, and her own eyes darkened. That would do it, she told herself. Remembering the end would do it every time.

“How’s the college boy?” he queried as he unlocked the door of his late-model white Ford and put her inside.

“Ronald George, you mean?” she asked.

He went around and got in himself and stretched his long powerful legs under the dash as he started the car. “Yes, Ronald George,” he replied, making an insult of the name.

“He’ll be here Monday,” she told him, delivering the blow with cold satisfaction.

His eyes narrowed on her face. “What?”

“He’s going to teach with Dad and me in Providence,” she said. “He’s looking forward to the experience of small-town life.”

“Why here?” he asked narrowly.

“Why not?” she said flippantly and smiled at him. “Ronald and I have a special relationship.” Which was true. They were the very best of friends.

His eyes swept over her, and he turned back to ease the car out of the terminal parking lot with a low humorless laugh. “Well, I’m not all that surprised,” he said. “You were ripe for an affair when you left Australia.”

She flushed, turning her head out the window. She didn’t like remembering how he knew that. “How’s your mother?” she asked.

“She’s doing very well, thanks,” he replied after a minute. He put out his finished cigarette and lit another as they drove through Brisbane. “She tells me she loves California.”

“California?” she asked. “Isn’t she living with you anymore? I know she had a sister in California, but...”

“She lives with her sister now.”

He didn’t offer more conversation, so she busied herself staring around at the landscape. Brisbane seemed as foreign as it had that first day when she’d come here with her parents from Alabama. She sighed, smiling at the tall palms and golden wattle and royal poinciana trees towering over the subtropical plants that reminded her of Hawaii. Brisbane was a city of almost a million people, with gardens and parks, museums and galleries. With the Gold Coast and the Great Barrier Reef nearby, it drew constant hordes of tourists. It was a city that Priss often had wished she’d had time to tour.

She would have loved to see Early Lane, which re-created a pioneer town—including an aboriginal dwelling called a gunyah. John Sterling had two aboriginal stockmen, named Big Ben and Little Ben, because they were father and son. Big Ben had tried unsuccessfully for days to try to teach Priss how to throw a boomerang. She smiled a little ruefully. Another place she had always wanted to see was New Farm Park, on the Brisbane River east of the city. Over 12,000 rosebushes were in wild bloom there from September through November, and the scent and color were reputed to be breathtaking. If she’d been with her parents, she would have asked them to drive there, even though it was out of the way. But she couldn’t ask John.

He headed out of Brisbane, and she settled back in her seat, watching the countryside change. Outside the city, in the Great Dividing Range, was tropical rain forest. She could see copious orchids and scores of lorikeets and parakeets and other tropical birds flying from tree to tree. There were pythons in that forbidding glory, as well as several varieties of venomous snakes, and she shuddered at the thought of the early pioneers who had had to cut away that undergrowth in order to found the first big sheep and cattle stations. It must have taken a hardy breed. Men like John’s grandfather, who’d founded the Sterling Run.

She glanced at the hard lines of his craggy broad face, and her eyes lingered helplessly on his wide chiseled mouth before she could drag them back to the window. That hard expert mouth had taught hers every single thing it knew about kissing...

She moved restlessly in the seat as the car wound over the gap in the range and they began descending again. In the distance were rolling grasslands that spread out to the horizon, to the great outback in the western part of the state, which was called the Channel Country. John had cousins out there, she knew.

Southwest of Brisbane were the Darling Downs, the richest agricultural land in Queensland. But northwest were some of the largest cattle stations in Australia, and that was where Providence sat, along a river that provided irrigation for its three sheep and cattle stations. One of those was the Sterling Run.

Priss wanted to ask why John was driving a Ford. It occurred to her that he’d had a silver Mercedes when she’d left Australia. He’d driven the Mercedes when he was going to town, and a Land Rover on the station. But then, she also wondered about his clothing. John had always worn a suit to town, and it had usually been an expensive one. She laughed bitterly to herself. Probably he didn’t feel he needed to waste his time dressing up for her. Her eyes closed. If she’d been Janie Weeks, no doubt he’d have been dressed to the back teeth. She wondered whatever had happened to seductive Janie, and why John hadn’t married her. Priss knew her mother would have told her if he had.

“Turn on the radio, if you like,” he said shortly.

“No, thanks,” she replied. “I don’t mind peace and quiet. After Monday, I’ll probably never know what it is again.”

He glanced at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke, his blue eyes searching.

“Why is it that you’re here before summer?” he asked curiously. “The new term won’t start until after vacation.”

“One of the school staff had to have surgery. I’ll be filling in until vacation time,” she returned. “Ronald is going to work as a supply teacher, too, until we both have full-time positions next year.”

He didn’t reply, but he looked unapproachable. She wondered at the change in him. The John Sterling she used to know had been an easygoing, humorous man with twinkling eyes and a ready smile. What a difference there was now!

“Dad said something about Randy being at the station now; he and Latrice,” she murmured, mentioning John’s brother. “Are the twins with them?”

“Yes, Gerry and Bobby,” he replied. “You’ll be teaching them.”

“How nice.”

He looked sideways and laughed shortly. “You haven’t been introduced yet,” he said enigmatically.

“What happened to Randy’s own station in New South Wales?” she continued.

“That’s his business,” he said carelessly.

She flushed. It was mortifying to be told to mind her own affairs, and she resented his whole manner. “Excuse me,” she replied coldly. “I’ll keep my sticky nose to myself.”

“Why did you come back?” he asked, and there was a note in his voice that chilled her.

“Why don’t you do what you just told me to and mind your own business?” she challenged.

His head turned, and his eyes glittered at her. “You’ll never fit in here,” he said, letting his gaze punctuate his words. “You’re too much the sophisticate now.”

“In your opinion,” she returned with faint humor. “Frankly, John, your opinion doesn’t matter beans to me these days.”

“That goes double for me,” he told her.

So it was war, she thought. Good. This time she was armed, too. She ran a hand through her short hair. “Does it look like it’ll be a dry year?” she asked, changing the subject.

“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.”

Chapter Three

Adam Johnson glanced curiously at his daughter over the dinner table. It wasn’t like Priscilla to pick at her food.

“Aren’t you hungry, darling?” he asked.

She lifted her face with a plaintive smile. “I’m just homesick already,” she confessed.

“Homesick? Don’t be silly, Hawaii’s not that far away,” he chuckled. “You can come home on holidays and vacation.”

She pushed her fork into her potatoes and stared at them. “I suppose so.”

Adam turned his head toward Renée, who was shaking her head.

“It’s just...well, do you suppose John really will miss me?” she asked her father, all eyes.

He laughed, misreading the situation. “Now, darling, I doubt that,” he chuckled as he concentrated on his food. “You do wear him out, you know.”

Priss got up from the table in tears and ran for her room. Her mother glared at her father.

“You animal,” she accused. “How could you do that to her? Don’t you realize she’s horribly infatuated with John?”

His eyebrows arched. “With John? But, my God, he’s ten years older than she is. And she’s just a child!”

“She’s eighteen,” she reminded him. “Not a child at all.”

“Well, John’s too experienced for her by far,” he said firmly. “Don’t get me wrong—I think the world of him. But she needs boys her own age. And you know how relentlessly she chases the poor man, Renée. I wonder that he tolerates it. You can see he isn’t interested in kids like Priss.”

“Yes, I know. But she’s so young, darling,” Renée said softly. “Don’t you remember how we felt at her age?”

His dark eyes softened. “Yes,” he said reluctantly, and sighed. “With everybody around telling us how young we were...poor Priss.”

“She’ll get over him,” Renée promised. “Once she’s with boys her own age, she’ll get over him.”

Priss, standing frozen in the hall, heard every word. It all came rushing at her like a tidal wave. Had she hounded John? Did he realize how desperately infatuated she was?

Her face flamed. She leaned back against the cool wall, almost shaking. Of course he did. Ten years, her father had said. John wouldn’t want a child like herself. She closed her eyes. It was far worse than she’d realized. And the worst thing of all was that she hadn’t realized how very noticeable her infatuation was. But it didn’t feel like infatuation. She loved John!

She turned and went back into her room, closing the door quietly. She felt more alone than she ever had in her life. Poor John. Poor her. Her father had said John was too experienced to want a teenager, and he was surely right. If John had felt anything for her, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. She would have known. People always said you knew when love happened.

She tumbled onto her bed and slowly pulled out the crumpled photo of him that she kept in her wallet. She stared at it for a long time, at the rugged face, the bushy blond and brown eyebrows and hair, at the sensuous mouth and dimpled chin, at the pastel blue eyes. No, he wouldn’t miss her, she thought miserably.

“Well, you don’t know what you’re losing, John Sterling,” she told the photograph. “I’m going to be a force to behold in a few years, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t want me. I’ll show you!” She put the photograph in her trash can in a temper and flounced over to the window, glaring out at the big gum tree casting its shade over the ground. She leaned her face on her hands and sighed. “I’ll come back as finished as a princess,” she told the gum tree. “I’ll be wearing an elegant gown, with my hairdo impeccable, and I’ll be poised and ever so serene. And every man will want to dance with me, and John will be wild to, and I’ll just brush past him and ignore him completely.”

She smiled as she pictured it. What a proper revenge it would be! But then she realized how impossible it was going to be, living through those years without him. And where would she get the money for an elegant gown and hairdo? And what if John got married in her absence?

She felt sick. With a scowl, she fished his photo out of the trash can and put it carefully back into her wallet. She had too much time to think, that was her trouble. So she went to the kitchen and began clearing the table for her mother, trying to ignore the curious looks her parents were giving her.

“Could we all go into Providence Saturday and have lunch together?” she asked with a forced smile. “I have to leave for Hawaii Monday, you know.”

Her father gave a relieved sigh. “Yes, of course we can. That’s a date.”

“I’ll enjoy it, too, dear.” Her mother smiled. “Now, suppose I help you with the dishes and then we’ll go sit on the porch.”

“Fine,” Priss said brightly. Perhaps the pretense of being happy would lighten her spirits, she thought. Perhaps it would dull her hurt. Why, oh, why did she have to pick a man like John Sterling to fall in love with, and at such a youthful age? He was going to be a ghost, hanging over every relationship she tried to have with other men. She knew that no one would be able to match or top him in her loving eyes.

She avoided him during the next few days. For once she didn’t phone him to ask unnecessary questions at night. She didn’t walk along the paddock fence hoping for a glance of him. She didn’t find an excuse to ride her bicycle over the distance that separated her father’s land from John’s, or invite herself to lunch with his mother, Diane. She kept to herself, and her parents seemed delighted by the sudden maturity in their daughter.

They couldn’t know that it was killing her not to see John, to think of being thousands of miles away from him. But she was deliberately trying to put him out of her life, so that the parting wouldn’t be so rough.

The hours and days dragged, but at last Monday came, and she packed for the long drive to Brisbane, where she’d catch her flight to Hawaii. It was the most miserable morning of her entire life.

“Aren’t you even going to tell John Sterling good-bye?” Renée asked, her face concerned and full of love.

Priss’s back stiffened a little, but her face was smiling when she glanced at her mother. “I thought it might be better not to,” she said.

“Why?”

Priss shrugged. Her eyes went to her folded blouses. She fit them carefully into her carry-on bag. “I don’t think I could stand having him shout for joy,” she said with a nervous laugh.

Renée went close and put her arms around her daughter. “Not John. John wouldn’t do that to you. He’s fond of you, Priss; you know that.”

“Yes, but fond isn’t enough,” Priss ground out, fighting tears. She lifted a tortured face to her mother. “I love him,” she whispered.

Renée hugged her. “Yes, I know. I’m so sorry, darling,” she murmured, rocking Priss as she had years ago, when her daughter was little and hurt. “I’m so sorry.”

Priss hugged her mother again and smiled wanly. “You’re a terrific mother, did I ever tell you?” she asked. She wiped away the tears. “I’m okay now.”

“You’re a terrific daughter,” Renée said with a smile. “I’ll leave you to pack. Your father and I are going into Providence for a little while. He’s got to get something or other done to the car.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“We will.” Renée kissed her daughter on the forehead. “It gets better, if that helps,” she added gently. And then she was gone, and Priss stared helplessly at the suitcase, hating it for its very purpose.

She finished putting in the blouses and went into the kitchen to check the dryer for spare articles. She found a lacy slip and was just pulling it out when she heard a car pull up. Surely it wasn’t her parents, she puzzled; they’d hardly been gone ten minutes.

She went to the back door, opened it, and looked out. Her heart shot up into her throat at the sight of John Sterling climbing out of his Land Rover.

He was wearing khaki trousers with a short-sleeve tan bush shirt, and under the wide brim of his hat, he looked even more formidable than usual. Priss, with her hair loose around her shoulders, in her pretty blue shirtwaist dress and white pumps, felt suddenly vulnerable.

He looked up as he reached the steps and stopped there, just gazing at her.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said without preamble.

She twisted the slip absently in her fingers and studied the soft pattern in the lace. “Yes.” She glanced up with a forced grin. “Aren’t you relieved? I’ll be gone by afternoon.”

He hesitated for an instant before he came up the steps. “Got something cool to drink?” he asked, sweeping off his hat. “It’s damned hot.”

“I think there’s some iced tea in the fridge,” she said. She tossed the slip onto the dryer and filled a glass for him.

He took it from her, standing much too close. He was scowling, as if his mind was working on some problem. He took a sip of the tea, and her eyes were drawn to his brawny hair-roughened forearms. He was so sexy, and some lucky woman was going to grab him up before she was old enough to.

She felt more miserable than ever. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to cry, even if he did manage to get over to say good-bye. But now it was the eleventh hour, and he’d be rushing off any minute. He was probably here to see her father, anyway.

“Did you want to see Dad?” she asked, turning the knife in her own heart.

“I wanted to see you,” he corrected curtly. “To say good-bye. Weren’t you even going to bother?”

She shrugged, staring down at his dusty boots. “I...I don’t like good-byes,” she managed in a voice that was already starting to break. The thought of not seeing him for months was killing her, and this was making it worse. She didn’t know how she was going to live in a world without him.

“What’s this?” he asked softly. His big hands, cool from holding the tea glass, caught her arms and turned her, forcing her to look at him.

Her full lips wobbled no matter how she tried to control their trembling, and her big emerald eyes were misty with tears. Silvery blonde hair curled around her oval face, and her cheeks were flushed with emotion. The picture she made held his attention for a long minute. His eyes wandered down to the top buttons of the blue shirtwaist dress, and he studied her body as if he’d only just realized she had one.

His hands smoothed up and down her arms, slowly, making wild tremors of pleasure shoot through her.

“Homesick already?” he asked quietly.

She drew in a sharp breath and tried to smile at him, but he blurred in her vision.

He was a blur of brown hair with blond streaks through it, sky blue eyes staring curiously at her from that weathered face that she loved so dearly. It was a long way to look up, even though she was wearing high heels. He towered over her like a sunburned giant.

“You’re so big,” she whispered.

“To a runt like you, I probably seem that way,” he agreed pleasantly, but his eyes weren’t laughing. They were dark and quiet and oddly watchful.

She fidgeted under the arousing touch of his hands. “I should finish packing,” she mumbled.

His thumbs pressed hard into her arms. He moved his callused hands up to enclose her face, and the look in his eyes made her knees weak.

“Don’t look so tragic, darling,” he murmured, bending his head. “I’ll wait for you.”

That hurt most of all. He was teasing her, playing with her, because he knew how she felt and was indulging her. Her eyes closed. “John...” she tried to protest.

He brushed his lips across her forehead, and she wanted to wail. He was trying not to hurt her....

“Do you want my mouth, little sheila?” he whispered suddenly, unexpectedly, and her heart shot up like a balloon.

Her eyes opened, full of dreams and hurt pride and aching hunger, and his nostrils flared.

“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he asked under his breath, and his face was solemn, intent, making her feel years older. He bent his head, letting her feel his warm breath on her parted lips.

Her body tautened, demanding to feel his against it; her mouth lifted. All her dreams were coming true at once, and the look in his eyes made her heart run wild. Her body pressed against his tentatively, shyly. She loved his warm strength, the powerful muscles tensing where her breasts were flattened slightly against him. He smelled of the outdoors, and cologne and tobacco, and her senses reeled.

“I’ve only been kissed once,” she whispered nervously, her eyes wide. “Playing...playing spin the bottle. And his mouth was wet and I didn’t like it.”

His fingers traced soft patterns on her flushed cheek, and they seemed to be the only two people in the world. “Stop dithering, little one,” he said quietly. “I don’t mind kissing you good-bye, if you want it.”

“If,” she whispered shakily. Tears were stinging her eyes. “Don’t you know that I’d walk across blazing coals to get to you...?”

His eyes flashed. “You don’t even know what it’s all about,” he said sharply. “One kiss, from a clumsy boy...”

“But you aren’t a boy,” she reminded him, her voice trembling.

“No,” he said, “I’m not.” He bent slowly, holding her eyes. “Such a taut little body,” he breathed, his hard lips parting on a faint smile as they brushed deliciously over hers. “Why don’t you let it relax against mine?”

She tried, but she was trembling with excitement and new discoveries. “I can’t,” she moaned against the soft persistent brushing of his mouth.

His fingers splayed over her throat, tilting her head against his shoulder. “I’m hungry, too,” he whispered roughly. There was a glitter in his eyes as they searched hers. “Don’t let me frighten you. Trust me.”

“I want to kiss you so much,” she managed in a broken tone, so desperate for him that she was beyond pride.

“Yes,” he said, parting his lips. “Yes, I can feel how much. Priss, you go to my head...” His voice trailed off into a deep slow moan as he kissed her for the first time, tenderly, coaxingly, letting her feel the very texture of his lips before he showed her that he needed more than this.

His breath seemed shaky as his mouth bit at hers. She kept her eyes tightly closed, hoping that if it was a dream, she could die before she woke. The silence around them was deafening, and she felt afire with awakening emotions.

Her hands suddenly clawed into the thick muscles of his upper arms, and she stiffened even more as his mouth began to invade hers. She hoped he wasn’t going to waste her last few minutes with him by being gentle.

His head lifted then and his mouth waited, poised over hers. His breath sighed out against her moist lips. “I can make you hungrier than this,” he said huskily. “I can burn you up.”

His eyes frightened her a little, but she was too consumed by longing to care. She pressed closer against his tight hard body and stood on tiptoe.

“Oh, John, kiss me hard!” she pleaded, clinging. “Kiss me hard and slow and pretend you want me!”

“Pretend!” he bit off. His mouth swooped down. He could feel the hunger building in her young body, feel the first faint stirring of response in the tender lips accepting his. Ravenously he opened his mouth and bit at hers, not wanting to frighten her, but needing more than the trembling uncertainty of her closed mouth. After a minute, she seemed to like the tender probing of his tongue. Involuntarily her lips relaxed and began to part shyly.

“Yes,” he prodded roughly. “Yes, that’s what I want. Open your mouth slowly; let me taste it with my tongue...”

It was wildly erotic. Priss had seen men and women kiss that way in movies, with their mouths open, their bodies crushed together, but she’d never known how wildly arousing it was. She moaned against John’s demanding mouth, because the sensations he was making her feel were new and overwhelming.

“Frightened?” he whispered.

Her eyes drifted open, wide and drowsy and dazed. “No,” she moaned. “Oh, no, not of you; not ever of you,” she whispered shakily. “No matter what you do to me!”

“You don’t know what I could do to you,” he warned gruffly. He studied her face for a long moment. His hands smoothed down her back, bringing her closer to his shuddering chest. One of them edged between their bodies and traced a line between her waist and the soft underside of one breast. She trembled again, her fingers digging into him.

“Steady on,” he breathed gently, watching her face as his fingers began to trace her breast, watching her eyes widen with pleasure.

She made a wild sweet sound and buried her face against his chest, clinging to him.

“I need this,” he said, sounding shaken. “God help me, I have to!”

She felt his mouth searching for hers, and she turned her head a fraction of an inch to meet it.

“Keep your eyes open,” he breathed as he took it, ardently, roughly, and his eyes stared into hers. His hand moved at the same time, and he saw her pupils dilate until her eyes were black as he cupped her soft breast in his big hand and felt the nipple go hard in his palm.

She moaned, feeling her body move helplessly against his, feeling her body provoke him, beg for his touch.

He lifted his mouth. “It’s passion,” he whispered. “Don’t be ashamed of it. I need you as much as you need me. I won’t compromise you—not in any way.”

As he spoke, he bent, lifting her clear off the floor, his eyes glazed with emotion. “Where are your parents?” he asked softly as he carried her into her bedroom.

“In...in town, to have...to have the car...fixed,” she told him. Her voice was so shaky, it was hard to talk. “John,” she moaned.

“Shhh,” he whispered. His lips brushed her eyelids closed. “It’s going to be exquisitely tender. I just want a taste of you.”

“I’ve never...” she began.

“I know.”

He laid her down beside the open suitcase on the bed and slid alongside her. His mouth touched her face softly, lovingly, brushing every flushed inch of it, teasing her mouth. She felt his knuckles on her soft flesh as they slid beneath the bodice of her dress, and her eyes opened, because what he was teaching her was so beautiful, she wanted to remember him like this all her life. Even if it was only pity he felt for her, she’d live on these few minutes until she died.

“I’m only going to touch you,” he said gently. “Here,” he whispered, tracing the slope of her breast where it was covered by the lacy wisp of her bra. “And here.” They moved under the lace, to the hard pulsing tip that screamed her helpless reaction to him.

“Oh,” she moaned, shocked, arching to his hand.

“New sensations?” he responded, savoring the feel of her, bursting with the triumphant knowledge that no other man had touched her. “I feel new sensations, too, Priss. You’re a virgin, and all your first times are happening with me. I feel humble knowing that.”

She stared into his eyes. “I wanted you...so much,” she confessed brokenly.

His eyes smiled. “Did you? And now that you have me?”

Her lips parted. “I don’t know what to do,” she said simply.

“Do you want me to teach you?” His voice was all dark velvet, seducing her, and he smiled as his big hands found the buttons of her dress and lazily eased them open down the front.

“Yes,” she entreated. “But...” Her courage failed as the last button came undone, and the full force of what she was letting him do washed over her in waves.

He shook his head, pressing a gentle finger against her protesting lips. “No,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen with some college boy, out of curiosity. Let me be the first.”

Her body trembled. But she loved him almost beyond bearing, and she wanted his eyes on her. Only his. No other man’s, ever.

His hands moved again, unfastening the bra. There was a second when she almost jerked away from him, but he controlled the instinctive withdrawal, pulling her face into his throat, making her close her eyes while he eased the garments down to her waist. She felt the cool air on her skin and his warm rough hands against her bare back, and her heart went crazy in her body.

“Now,” he breathed, with his open mouth against her forehead. “Now let me look at you. Lie down, Priscilla, and let me see what you’ve shown no other man.”

With breathless tenderness, he eased her back onto the coverlet and slowly his eyes feasted on her soft pink breasts with their hardened, uptilted tips. She flushed.

But after the first few agonizing seconds of embarrassment, she began to relax, to take pleasure from the appreciation she read in his intent gaze. Her body seemed to like it even more. It began to move in jerky sensuous motions on the mattress and lifted toward him without her consent.

“Do you want my hands?” he asked, lifting his eyes to hers.

She tingled all over, her breath catching in her throat at the deep, fervent note in his voice. His sophistication made her innocence more obvious than ever.

He sat up and one big hand smoothed across her flat stomach, across the bulge of the clothing at her waist. Lightly, slowly, holding her eyes, he touched the hard peaks of her breasts and watched her shudder.

“Your breasts are like honey,” he said. “You’re like honey. So sweet, you make me drunk.” He bent, with his eyes on her bareness. “I want to take you in my mouth,” he breathed. “Are you going to let me?”

She groaned helplessly, and her body arched again, inviting him.

“Priss,” he whispered, sliding his hands slowly under her back. “Priss, come here.”

He lifted her to his parted lips. She stiffened and cried out with the shock of pleasure as his mouth took her, and the excited little cry aroused him instantly. He took the hardness into his mouth and eased closer, feeling her reactions, glorying in her headlong response. Her hands tangled in his hair, frantic. Those wild little cries were pushing him right over the edge, making him shudder with a kind of desire he’d never experienced.

“Oh, God,” he whispered with reverence, because she was so deliciously innocent, so trusting. She was giving him free license to do what he liked to her smooth young body, and he was going crazy with the freedom.

His mouth moved down her body, to her waist, her hips, the flatness of her stomach, as he eased the dress farther down to bare her body to his greedy lips. She tasted of delicate soap and powder, and he wanted to taste all of her....

“Do you want me now?” he whispered roughly. His mouth ran back up her body, over her creamy breasts to her face, and he cupped her breast as his lips made nonsense of any protest she might have made. “Do you want to lie with me and touch me the way I’m touching you with nothing between us except air?”

“I...ache,” she said through parched lips, clinging, trembling.

“So do I,” he said unsteadily. “You’ve taken my mind from me. Lie still, darling. Let me touch you, let me have you.”

His face moved, touching, brushing. His mouth loved her, cherished her. She was shuddering under its tenderness, and he knew she’d make no further protest if he undressed her completely and took her. But even as he was drowning in the anguished pleasure of the knowledge, he began to think about consequences. She was a virgin. The first time for her was probably not going to be as good as it would be for him. He was more aroused than he’d ever been in his life—too aroused to take his time, to give her patience. And worst of all, she’d be unprotected. He could make her pregnant. It was that thought that brought him suddenly to his senses. She was hardly more than a child herself.

He dragged his mouth from her soft belly and managed to pull his tormented body into a sitting position, breathing roughly, running his hands through his damp hair. She was breathing roughly herself, and her body was trembling wildly.

With a harsh mutter, he brought her up into his arms and rocked her damp body against his. “Hold me hard, darling,” he whispered into her ear, feeling the heat of her breasts through the cotton of his shirt. Her back under his hands was like silk. “Hold me. It will stop. Hold me hard.”

She clung to him, vaguely embarrassed at the intensity of her response, wildly frustrated, wanting something he hadn’t given her but not realizing exactly what.

“Oh, gosh,” she whispered, awed.

“Now you know,” he said gently.

Her nails bit into his shoulders, and she nuzzled her head into his neck, shuddering a little as her heartbeat calmed and her breath steadied. “You...weren’t going to stop...at first. Why...did you?” It was a statement, not a question.

His big hand smoothed her hair slowly. “I could have made you pregnant.”

Thrills of pleasure wafted through her. She might have liked that, being pregnant with his child. It wasn’t at all frightening. But it would be a poor way of getting him, a mean trick. She sighed.

“I’d have let you,” she answered.

He laughed softly. “Yes, I know. Delicious, delightful little virgin.” He bit her shoulder, quite hard, and she shuddered with unexpected pleasure and laughed.

He half threw her back on the pillows and sat looking down at her seminudity with possessive, glittering blue eyes. “I’ve never wanted anyone so much,” he said huskily. “I was on fire for you. I still am.”

It was plain speaking, and a little embarrassing—like her wanton behavior. He seemed to sense those uncertainties, because he smiled tenderly when she sat up and began to tug her dress back in place.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said gently. “Only the two of us will ever know what happened here today.” He touched her mouth with a long finger. “And I won’t tell if you won’t.”

That was the John she loved so much, teasing, mischievous. She couldn’t help smiling at him. He smiled back and bent, kissing her softly, amorously, as his hands drew the bodice down again. “I’ll never see anything else so beautiful as long as I live,” he ground out, staring at her pink skin where his mouth had pressed and pulled and tasted it, with something like reverence on his hard face.

She flushed wildly and blushed even there, and he bent and kissed the shyness from her eyes, her mouth.

His fingers moved the damp hair away from her face, and he looked at her as if she were a sunrise he was committing to memory. “You belong to me now,” he said quietly. “Keep your body for me, and no other man. I’ll wait for you.”

“It belonged to you long before now,” she said in a choked tone, her eyes searching his. “John, I...!”

He put his fingers over her lips. “Don’t say it.” His mouth replaced his fingers, and he kissed her with an expertise that left her moaning, in tears, when he lifted his head. “You’re very young,” he said, as if it bothered him. “There’s plenty of time.”

“Plenty?” she queried. “When I’m leaving today?”

“Darling,” he breathed, staring down at her, “if you weren’t leaving today, you might damned well find yourself in my bed by nightfall.”

He got to his feet, stretching lazily and indulgently watched her efforts to rearrange her dress. There was possession in his eyes, and quiet pride, but she wasn’t looking.

“See what happens when you avoid me?” he asked as she got to her feet, smoothing back her disheveled hair. “Frustration can push a man to the very limits.”

She smiled shakily. “Was that what it was?”

He caught her waist and pulled her to him. “What do you think it was?” he asked.

She stared at his shirt, curious about how he looked without it. She’d only seen him that way from a distance, when he was working on fences with the men or digging a new bore.

“It’s too late now,” he said deeply, his voice amused. “If you wanted to go on safari, you should have indulged yourself while we were lying together on the bed.”

She flushed, and he laughed.

“The months will pass,” he said lightly, giving her a last careless kiss. “Write to me.”

“Could I?” she asked, breathless.

“Of course.”

“Will you write back?”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m not much good at letters, honey,” he confessed. “I’ll get Mother to write for me.”

His words hurt her. They wouldn’t be love letters—he was saying as much. Perhaps he’d meant what they had just shared as a going-away present, a fond farewell. Something to make up for the times when he’d ignored her, crumbs from his table.

She felt sick all over, but she was too proud to let it show. How could she have forgotten what her father had said, about John being glad to let her go, about his being too old to be interested in her?

“I’ll see you at the Easter holidays,” he said. “You’ll be home then?”

“Of course,” she said woodenly. “’Bye, John.”

He traced her cheek lightly with his finger, and his eyes met hers in a long hot exchange, but he didn’t touch her again. “’Bye, Priss. Keep well.”

“You, too.”

And he was gone, leaving her with the memory of a few wild minutes in his arms. It might have been kinder, she thought, if he’d spared her that. Coming from heaven back to earth was painful. She went to the window and watched him drive away. He waved from the end of the driveway, and she knew that he was aware of her watchful eyes. He knew how she felt. It had all been a pacifier, a consolation prize. Give the girl a few kisses to thrill her.

She went back to her suitcase and stared at it, denying her eyes the tears they wanted to shed. Well, she didn’t need John’s crumbs, thank you, she told herself. She’d go away and forget him. She’d forget him completely.

Sure, she would. She sat down on the bed and wailed. The coverlet still smelled of the spicy cologne he wore. Her lips touched it with aching passion, and it was a long time before she could force herself to get up and finish packing.

Hours later she said good-bye to her parents in Brisbane and climbed aboard a plane bound for the Hawaiian Islands. Despite the fact that she had promised herself she wouldn’t, her helpless eyes scanned the airport terminal for a glimpse of John. But he wasn’t there. Why should he be? He’d said his good-byes. She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. It was going to be a long day.

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