Outback bride - Hart Jessica - Страница 27

The contract.

Mal dropped it onto the dressing table, where it landed with a faint slap. ‘That’s your copy,’ he said, his face blank of all expression. ‘You’d better keep it safe.’

The last lingering traces of enchantment cracked and splintered, falling in icy shards around Copper and leaving her cold and bereft. He could hardly have made it clearer that last night had indeed been a pretence as far as he was concerned. She turned her face away on the pillow. ‘I will,’ she said dully.

She was silent and strained as they drove back down the winding road to the city to pick up Megan. The whole day had taken on a nightmarish atmosphere. Over breakfast Mal had behaved as if absolutely nothing had happened between them. He’d talked about taking the opportunity to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables and about what time he had arranged to meet Brett at the hotel for the return trip, but he’d said nothing at all about the long, sweet hours they had held each other in the darkness.

She had asked him to pretend to be in love with her, and he had pretended. That was all there was to it.

Copper clung to the thought of the night to come. The contract belonged to the harsh light of day, but surely once darkness fell, and they closed the bedroom door, they could recreate the tenderness and joy once more. She wouldn’t even mind that Mal was pretending, Copper told herself, as long as he would take her in his arms again.

She longed to be back at Birraminda, but the day seemed perversely long. Stores had to be bought, Megan had to be picked up, goodbyes had to be said, and then Brett was late meeting them at the hotel so they had to hang around for over an hour before he turned up.

It was a long flight back to Birraminda in the tiny plane. Everyone was tired and on edge. Mal scowled at the controls, Brett was sullen and Megan fractious, and Copper just wanted to shut herself in a dark room and be left alone to enjoy a good cry.

When they touched down on the rough landing strip it was nearly dark, and they still had to pack the fruit and vegetables and everything else Copper had brought with her into the pick-up truck and then out again at the homestead. Megan had to be fed and bathed and put to bed, but she was over-tired and over-excited after all the attention of the last couple of weeks and the whole process culminated in a shattering tantrum. Copper just wished that she could do the same. Her head was aching and her eyes felt gritty with unshed tears.

By the time she and Mal were able to go to bed, the night before seemed like a lifetime ago and Copper was too tired even to think about the plans she had made to rediscover the sense of magic they had shared. ‘I’m exhausted!’ she sighed, sinking down onto the edge of the bed as Mal closed the door.

‘There’s no need to start dropping hints,’ he snarled, and she stared at him, surprised out of her lethargy.

‘What do you mean?’

Irritably, Mal began to strip off his shirt. ‘I mean you don’t have to think up an excuse every night to avoid sleeping with me. You made yourself clear enough last night.’

‘But

but I wasn’t hinting,’ stammered Copper. ‘I was just saying that I was tired!’

‘Fine,’ said Mal, chucking his shirt onto the back of a chair and reaching for a towel. ‘You’re tired, I’m tired, so let’s just get some sleep.’

When he came back from the bathroom, Copper was lying stiffly under the sheet with her back turned to the light. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she was pretending to be asleep, but she was vibrating with awareness. She could sense Mal moving around the room, hear the clunk of his boots hitting the floor and the sound of the zip as he undid his trousers, and she could picture him so clearly that she might as well have had her eyes wide open.

Then he clicked off the light and the bed dipped as he got in beside her. Copper held her breath in the sudden darkness. If he turned to her now, if he spoke, everything might still be all right. She would meet him halfway and burrow into the comfort of his arms and they would laugh together over the tensions and misunderstandings of the day.

But Mal didn’t turn. He didn’t even say goodnight. He simply settled himself down and went calmly to sleep.

Aching with disappointment, Copper edged onto her back. Had he just been indulging her the night before? The thought made her burn with humiliation. If Mal thought she was going to beg him to make love to her every night, he had another think coming. She had asked once, and she was damned if she was going to ask again! He could make the first move next time.

In the dark hours of the morning Copper came to a decision. It was easy to make angry resolutions, but it didn’t change the fact that she still loved him. Somehow she was just going to have to make him fall in love with her as well. If Mal wanted a practical, unromantic wife, that was the kind of wife she would be. She would play her part and she wouldn’t ask anything of him, and perhaps, in time, he would realise that she was nothing like Lisa and decide that he wanted a wife who loved him after all.

Over the next few weeks, Copper worked really hard at being what Mal wanted her to be. Most of her time she spent with Megan, starting her on elementary lessons with the books that she had bought in Adelaide. She gave Megan the security of knowing that she would be firmly disciplined if she was naughty, comforted if she was hurt and loved whatever happened.

When she wasn’t with Megan, Copper cleaned and tidied and scrubbed and polished, and gradually the homestead lost the faintly neglected air it had worn when she arrived. She sorted out the storerooms and reorganised the office and even offered to help Mal with all the paperwork. There was the camp site to be established too. Copper threw herself into the project, setting aside time every day to study tenders for the construction work or redraft their plans in the light of everything that she was learning about real life in the outback.

She was so busy that it was easy to get through the days, but the nights were much harder. It wasn’t too difficult to talk normally together during the day, but every night when they went to bed they lay carefully apart and didn’t talk at all. Copper made no demands on Mal, but as it became obvious that her careful strategy wasn’t working she became increasingly crotchety and frustrated.

She was trying her best to be a good outback wife but it obviously wasn’t enough. She couldn’t brand a cow or ride a horse very well, and nothing else seemed to count with Mal. She got no credit for keeping the house or noticing that one of the jackaroos wasn’t feeling well or discovering that Naomi was deeply unhappy. What thanks did she get for caring for his daughter and ensuring that they all got three square meals a day? None!

The more Copper brooded, the more her resentment grew-until she had almost convinced herself that she wasn’t really in love with Mal at all. How could she be in love with a man who barely acknowledged her existence?

As the weeks passed, so the tension grew, until it shimmered like the heat haze over the scrub and the air between them twanged and whined, and finally snapped.

She was in the office one day, working on some figures, when Mal strode in and informed her that the men would need sandwiches for lunch as he was sending them out to check the fences.

Copper laid down her pen, a dangerous look in her green eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this at breakfast?’

‘I didn’t know at breakfast,’ said Mal, with a touch of impatience. ‘I thought it would take them most of the day to finish off what they started yesterday, but they’ve made good time and it’s worth them making a start on those fences this morning.’

‘If they’re making such good time, they can make their own sandwiches,’ said Copper, and picked up her pen again.