The Australian (9 page)

“Of course.” Randy grinned, hugging a reluctant Latrice to his side. “We don’t get invited out that often these days, do we, darling?”

She glowered at him. “No. Not that often.”

Priss mumbled a quick good night and beat a path to the door.

Chapter Seven

“Have any luck?” Adam Johnson asked his daughter after she’d climbed into the back seat and he was starting the car.

Priss gave him a rueful smile. “I hope so. They’re being deprived of television.”

Adam shook his head. “It won’t work.”

“Stop disillusioning me,” Priss said, hitting his shoulder playfully.

“Did you see John?” Renée asked quietly.

Priss sat back. “Yes.”

“I don’t think he even noticed us,” Adam related dryly. “He got straight into his car and drove off in a cloud of dust.”

She stared out the window. “How odd,” she said tensely, but she didn’t say anything else and, after a quickly exchanged look, neither did her parents.

Betty Gaines was a petite woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a glowing personality. She made them all feel right at home, and Priss was delighted to find a few young people her age at the party.

“What fun this is,” Ronald George commented in her ear. “I can hardly wait to go to sleep.”

“Hush!” she scolded. “It’s a lovely party!”

“Your Aussie friend doesn’t seem to think so,” he returned, glancing toward John, who was standing alone in the corner with a cup of punch in one hand, glaring at them.

She peeked through her lashes, hoping that John was miserable. Hoping that she’d hurt him. “No, he doesn’t,” she said too sweetly. “Why don’t we go over and cheer him up, darling?” She laughed, and revenge glittered from her eyes. She caught his sleeve and half dragged him across the room.

“Why, hello, John,” Priss said with false warmth. “I don’t think you’ve ever met Ronald George, have you? Ronald, this is John Sterling, who owns the property adjoining ours.”

“So pleased to meet you, old chap,” Ronald said with his easy grin, and extended a hand.

John looked as if he were being offered a piece of moldy bacon. But after a slight hesitation, he shook the hand roughly and let it fall.

“I hear you’re in cattle,” Ronald nodded politely. “My father has a cow or two.” He grinned. “He owns a chain of steak restaurants. You might have heard of them—The George Steak Houses?”

“Sorry,” John said brusquely, staring down at the smaller man from his formidable height. He towered over everyone, Priss thought. He was powerfully built, right down to the huge hands whose gentleness she hated to remember.

“Ah, well, not to worry.” Ronald began to look uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “Nice town, Providence.”

“My grandfather thought so,” John returned quietly. “He founded it.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Ronald doesn’t know much about Australian history,” Priss told John. “But he is quite an authority on financial matters.” She smiled vaguely. “He and his father have made a fortune in investments.”

John seemed to withdraw. His eyes were the only things alive in that searing face, and they cut into Priss’s face. “Have they?”

“We’ve had some small successes,” Ronald said, with a puzzled glance at Priss. He cleared his throat. “Uh, darling, wouldn’t you like some punch?” he asked hopefully.

But Priss was enjoying herself. Revenge had a sweet taste, and she was repaying all John’s taunts, all his cutting remarks as she played up to Ronald. “Yes, I would,” she agreed. “Would you bring me one?”

“Delighted!” Ronald said and hurried away.

“Isn’t Ronald a dream?” she sighed, viewing the teacher’s thin back with adoring eyes. “I do so admire his taste in clothes. And he has the most delightfully cultured background. He’s quite unique in these parts, don’t you think?”

“He’s a thoroughbred, all right,” John said with a cold smile. He gulped down the rest of his punch and put the empty glass on a nearby table before he lit a cigarette. “Why didn’t the two of you stay in Hawaii?”

“My family is here,” she replied. Her eyes wandered over his hard face, and she saw new lines in it. A twinge of aching grief went darting through her, but she forced herself not to show it. There was no hope that she’d ever kiss that hard mouth again, or know the strength of those arms holding her. She might as well steel herself against lost hope.

“God, you’ve changed,” he said, staring down at her.

“I’ve only grown up. Aren’t you delighted?” she asked with venomous sweetness. “I won’t be following you around like a pet puppy from now on.”

He stared down at his cigarette and shadows deepened in his eyes. For an instant he looked odd. Strangely haunted. “Yes. I’m delighted.” He put the cigarette to his lips and took a long draw from it. “I have to go. We’re starting the muster tomorrow, and I’ll have a mob of cattle waiting.”

“Well, at least you’re already wearing your work clothes, aren’t you?” she asked with an empty smile. “You’ll save some time that way.”

His face grew stony. He smiled back, but it was a chilling smile. “There’s an old saying about clothes making the man. But out here, little sheila, it’s the man who counts. I may not dress to suit your newly acquired sophistication. And I may not have the cultured background of your pet pommy over there. But I’m satisfied with my life. Can you say the same of yours?”

She couldn’t, but she smiled though it killed her. “Without you in it, you mean?” she asked coldly. “Oddly enough, I look on the breaking of our engagement as a lucky escape. It forced me to take another look at Ronald.” She glanced toward the punch bowl, where he was filling their cups. “My, isn’t he gorgeous?”

John smiled ironically. “Just your style, Priscilla,” he agreed. His eyes burned her. “Perhaps you’re able to satisfy his watered-down passions. You’d never have satisfied mine. Good night.”

She stared after him with trembling lips. Why did he continually do that to her? Why did he say cutting things and walk away before she could come up with a suitable reply? She picked up the cup he’d put on the table and was actually raising it over her head when Ronald came back.

“No!” he burst out, grabbing it. His eyes were incredulous. “You weren’t really going to throw it at him?”

“Why not?” she asked abruptly. “Don’t be so stuffy!”

Ronald looked toward the door where John had exited. “Poor chap,” he sympathized. “You do give him the boot at every opportunity, don’t you?”

“He deserves all he gets and more,” she stated angrily. She shifted restlessly, her evening ruined. “I wonder why Randy and Latrice haven’t shown up?”

“Oh, the other Sterlings?” he asked. “Betty said Latrice had called and explained something about a headache.”

“More like a fight,” Priss groaned. “And my fault. I had to tell them about the twins, and she and Randy went at it. Oh, what a miserable day!”

“Would you like to leave?” he asked.

“No. I’d like to try not to ruin Betty’s evening after all the trouble she’s gone to.” She forced a smile. “Shall we circulate and pretend to be jubilant?”

He grinned. “Delighted! While we’re circulating, could we perhaps circulate in the direction of the gorgeous little blonde?”

“Mandy?” She grinned back, observing the small teacher in the corner all alone. “Yes, let’s!”

“How are you getting on with the Sterling twins, by the way?” he asked as they walked toward Mandy.

She sipped her punch. “I’m going to ask for a raise.”

“That bad, hmmm? Listen, if we could get their father into the military, I think I could pull enough strings to have him transferred to another commonwealth country...”

“He’s already served,” she said.

“Drat!”

“Randy and Latrice said they’d take care of it,” she added, without divulging their recipe for success.

He sighed. “I’ll remember you in my prayers, old girl.”

“Thanks.”

After the party was over and Priss was lying in her own empty bed, she couldn’t manage to get to sleep. All she saw was John. Her heart seemed to swell up at just the thought of him. And she’d thought it was over, that she could see him and not be affected. That she hated him. That she could take her revenge and not feel anything. Ha! She’d cut him tonight all right, in many ways. But as sweet as it had been at the time, her conscience hurt her now. He was so different. He looked so much older, and he dressed like someone without much money. But that was impossible: he still had the Run. He and Randy had the Run, she corrected. She frowned. That was another puzzle. Why were Randy and his family living with John? It was all so confusing. And most confusing were her own turbulent emotions. She was shocked to find how vulnerable she still was to John. That would have to be kept carefully concealed. Perhaps if she worked at it, though, she could force her heart to shut him out for good. Perhaps.

She rolled over. She’d realized tonight that she wasn’t indifferent to him. And he’d proved to her that whatever he felt, it wasn’t regret over the past. He’d said he was quite satisfied with his life.

After all that had happened, why did she ache so from looking at him? Why did her body tremble with desire to feel his again? Why were there tears in her eyes and a pain like rheumatism in her poor heart, if it was all over? She buried her face in the pillow. It was going to take some self-control to stay here. She wondered if she could....

She slept late the next morning and got up just in time to wave good-bye to her parents as they went into Providence to shop for groceries at the tiny store there. She put on an old pair of jeans and a black T-shirt and went out walking.

It was a glorious spring day. The whole outdoors smelled of freshness and new growth, and far away she could hear cattle bawling. It was spring, after all, she reminded herself. They’d be mustering cattle over on the Sterling Run. She stuck her hands into her pockets as she walked, wishing she could go over and watch. The muster was much like an American roundup, with calves being branded and immunized and neutered, and sweating stockmen trying to keep up with the pace set by John, who never seemed to tire. She wondered if Randy helped these days. In the old days, Randy hadn’t liked getting dirty.

Her eyes went to the distant peaks of the Great Dividing Range and she smiled at their grandeur against the clear azure sky. She loved Australia; droughts, floods, and all. Summer would soon be here, and with it the Wet, the flooding that she remembered from the days before she went to college. She shuddered a little. The Warrego went out of its banks in flood, and sometimes it was impossible to get across the streams that crisscrossed the bottoms. Flash flooding back in Alabama had been nothing like it was here, where even the lightest rain could make little streams into rivers.

She’d often wished it would flood when she was at John’s house in the old days, so that she could have an excuse to spend the night with him and his mother. She wondered how Mrs. Sterling was liking America, and if she ever planned to come back. Odd that she’d gone so willingly, when she loved this country as much as John did. And Randy hated station life; he was a city boy at heart. What was he doing up here so far from Sydney and his sheep property?

As she walked she caught a glimpse of John in the distance, tall in the saddle, his silver-belly Stetson catching the light as he eased his stock horse in and out of the small mob of cattle he was driving down the long road between her father’s property and the Run.

His head turned, and he seemed to see her. The aboriginal stockman with him herded the cattle along, with the help of one of the station’s prize stock dogs, an Australian shepherd.

John turned his horse and rode over to the fence, waiting for Priss to come up to it.

It was like time turning back, she mused, as she walked to meet him. Once, she’d have run. But that would be undignified. Not to mention foolish. Let him think she didn’t care anymore.

“Hello,” she said. “Scorching cattle today?”

He tilted his hat back. “Something like that.” He lifted his dimpled chin and stared at her quietly.

“Was that Little Ben?” she asked, nodding toward the lean young stockman who was riding away from them.

“Yes. You remembered.”

“I do have a memory,” she reminded him. “How’s Big Ben?”

“He hasn’t aged a day,” he told her. “He’s still the best stockman I’ve got. Billy Riggs is jackerooing for us these days.”

She knew Billy from school: he’d been in her senior class. “Yes, I know him. He always wanted to work cattle.”

“And you always wanted to teach school,” he reminisced, studying her.

“Are you disappointed that I don’t wear horn-rimmed glasses and black skirts with white blouses and have my hair in a bun?” she inquired on a mocking laugh. “Schoolteachers are no longer dull and droll and unappealing.”

“As I see,” he agreed.

She searched him over, her eyes helplessly following the play of muscles under his khaki shirt as he shifted in the saddle. He was perfect physically, the most devastating man she’d ever seen.

“How are you liking the school in Providence?”

“Very much. I’m delighted that they let me take over for Miss Ross while she was having her surgery. It will give me a head start when school begins again in the fall.”

“The twins are brooding,” he remarked. “I suppose you know they’ve had their television privileges revoked. To top it all, Randy and Latrice had one hell of a fight last night and Latrice took off bag and baggage on another trip.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she responded quietly.

“What those children need is a lot of love and attention—none of which they receive,” he uttered regretfully. “Randy is too involved with investments and Latrice in travel. They hardly communicate these days, and they have no time at all for the boys.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes. If I had sons, they’d be with me as much as possible,” he said, and something in his eyes caught her attention. “I’ve got the twins with me today, watching the muster. They’re behaving quite well.”

“I’m sure they like being around you,” she affirmed. “They’re outdoor kids.”

“Randy hates the outdoors,” he remarked. “Flies, you know.”

She smiled involuntarily. “How in the world did he wind up here with you?”

His face changed. “What are
you
doing out here?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Just walking. It’s such a lovely day,” she said.

He nodded. “I have to get back,” he said. He hesitated, his eyes narrowing as they searched her face, and he asked suddenly, “Want to come up behind me?”