Bella's Run (28 page)

Why didn’t she feel like this with Warren? Turned on at a slightest touch while at the same time safe, warm and protected? It was such a foreign feeling, this one of security. Bella looked up to catch a glimpse of the man doing this to her, only to find herself unceremoniously thrust away.

‘I’d best get going,’ mumbled Will as he quickly turned, leaving Bella standing staring at his back as he walked away.

Damn the man!

Now, sitting watching the wedding proceedings, she had a perfect excuse to check him out more closely, to see what seven years and marriage to Prudence Vincent-Prowse had done to him. At first glance it didn’t look like much, maybe just a few extra lines etched into his face. But when he dismounted to hand Trinity the wedding rings, Bella could see his frame was leaner and somehow harder, tougher like a piece of Number 8 wire that was extremely difficult to bend to your will. His warm molasses gaze was now a brittle toffee.

He had the unconscious confidence of a man who was sure of his place on the earth, but there was a slight flaw, an imperceptible limp favouring his right leg over his left. Only someone who knew him – or
had
known him – well would have been able to tell, so well did he disguise it.

Bella remembered Maggie telling her over the phone about Will’s fall from a grain silo a few years ago; a shattered left femur refusing to heal properly, back when he’d been married to Prowsy.

Bella’s stomach did an involuntary twist and she felt sick at the thought of Will and Prue together. Maggie had told her of the union two years after she’d left for Melbourne. Bella had gently replaced the phone’s receiver then spent the day curled on the couch in her pyjamas and fluffy dressing gown in tears, shattered by the news.

She had thought that the bright lights of Melbourne had snuffed the flame of yearning she had once carried for Will; that the man who had briefly become an intimate part of those hell-raising, boot-stomping years of her life could be tossed aside without a care. But Prowsy, of all people? She couldn’t fathom that one. Then again, Prowsy had always been good at reeling in the fellas, saving her bitchy side for any competition.

They had divorced three years later. Apparently Prowsy had run off with a property developer from some toffy horse-breeding place in New South Wales.

‘She took our Will to the cleaners. He’s had to mortgage the farm to pay her out. She reckons she helped him get to where he is. Pah!’ snorted Maggie. ‘I’ve never heard such rot! How can a flower-arranging class help you build the finest herd of Herefords this valley has ever seen? She nearly sent him broke buying all that “country” decorator stuff in those flash magazines!’

A canine yawn drew Bella’s attention to the dog sitting at her horse’s hooves. Bindi, Trin’s border collie, had flopped to the ground near Bella’s right stirrup, a raspberry-pink bow slung around her shaggy neck. She was clearly bored with proceedings; proceedings, Bella suddenly realised, that had finished while she was off in another world.

The crowd was surging forward to congratulate the radiant bride and groom, milling around the logs that had been their seats. Bella felt a chuckle welling in her throat as she glimpsed Dymphna, Wes’s daughter and Trin’s mother, tottering on two- inch heels, as she tried to cope with knee-high pointed wallaby grass seeds, snagging at her fine denier stockings. You’d think she’d have worn something more appropriate having spent her childhood in the bush.

From her viewpoint on Aprillia’s back, Bella could see numerous amateur photographers urging the bridal couple to kiss. The pair were more than happy to oblige, and as Trinity’s head bent to claim Caro as his prize, Bella felt Will’s eyes alight upon her face.

Glancing sideways, she was caught by the intensity of his gaze. Different expressions were flitting across his face: pensiveness, resentment and hurt, duelling with fatalistic, resigned attraction. Raw longing glimpsed then shuttered away.

Bella’s guts clenched as she absorbed it all.

She hurriedly turned back to the bride and groom.

A roar was sent up from the crowd as the groom kissed his bride, almost drowning out the mournful bay of a hound whispered on a slip of wind sliding up the valley.

Bindi rose to paws growling, her hackles up, her teeth bared towards the bush out to Bella’s left. Aprillia pricked her ears, flicking them restlessly back and forth. Bella gathered the loose reins to keep the horse in check, sweeping her hand up and down the mare’s neck. Bella noticed Will doing the same, his unsettled horse backing away from the bridal scene in front of them.

Then, all hell broke loose.

A kangaroo bounded from the scrub out to the left of the open clearing where the wedding had taken place. Like a racehorse released from a barrier in the Melbourne Cup, the roo flew across the open natural amphitheatre, blindly aiming for the crowd of milling people. Baying hounds could be heard again, louder now, on the slither of breeze, and that was enough.

Aprillia bolted.

Bella felt a sudden whiplash to her head, neck and shoulders. She tried pulling back hard on the reins but the horse had taken the bit between its teeth and was running out of sheer fear. Then she knew nothing except grabbing for mane, saddle and reins, anything to keep her on top of the horse. In her peripheral vision she saw Trinity grab Caroline and thrust her sideways, protecting his wife with his solid body as Aprillia slammed into the crowd.

People ran in all directions screaming.

Bella saw Dymphna fall onto her backside, legs flailing in the air, shrieking as her corsets and petticoats were thrust on display. Then they were through the people and all Bella could see in front of her was massive stringy-bark trees, under-storied by thick burgan and dogwood bush.

She clung precariously to the side-saddle, lying as low as she could along the horse’s neck to avoid being struck by the overhead branches that would be the biggest danger once she hit the scrub.

She had no control.

There was nothing to turn the horse into to force her to stop, not a fence or yard for kilometres either way. There was nothing she could do except hang on.

The last voice she thought she heard was Will’s. ‘
Bella
!’

Aprillia crashed into the bush, following a path only the mare could see, and as the baying of hounds resonated clearly through the air again, a terrified Bella wondered just how long she could stay on.

Chapter 26

The ride seemed to go on for hours. Sticks cracked and snapped underfoot, branches slapped at her body and the saddle, creating divots in both skin and leather. Bella lost count of how many tree limbs she dodged.

Time came to mean nothing. Much of her life flew through her mind; snapshot images flicking past, gone as quickly as they came, almost matching the beat of Aprillia’s legs crashing through the scrub.

As the mare ploughed on through the bush, eating away at the ground with her pounding hooves, Bella fleetingly wondered if anyone was coming after her. The horse seemed to be keeping to wild brumby tracks that wound through the trees. Hopefully someone would find them. She just needed to watch out for the low-hanging branches, and maybe – just maybe – she’d be able to ride this one out.

Aprillia’s gait finally slowed to a plodding walk. A few more steps and then she stopped. Sides heaving, legs shuddering, the mare tossed her head into the air, spraying Bella with foam from her frothing muzzle. Then she dropped her head to the ground in a droop that betrayed her exhaustion.

Bella flung herself sideways from the saddle, her own shaking legs collapsing under the sudden weight. She dropped her head into her hands and fell backwards into the thick native grass.

Tears came easily now the danger was past. As she flicked away small branches and leaves that clung to her clothes and hair, her body convulsed into sobs.

She closed her eyes and lay inert, and allowed the hot sun to kiss her face and body, and calm her rapidly beating heart.

Will pushed his gelding hard, striving to follow the trail Aprillia had left on her flight through the bush. Damn the hunters and their hounds near Ben Bullen Hills on today of all bloody days.

He was pretty sure where Aprillia was headed, that was
if
she kept to the brumby trails laid out before him. His heart was in his mouth and he knew he was pushing his horse too hard, but he couldn’t help the fear that hammered through his body, coursing adrenaline through his veins.

Bugger and blast the bloody girl. Why couldn’t she have stayed where she was, in the city, well out of harm’s way . . . out of
his
way.

He knew it wasn’t really Bella’s fault. It rarely was. Trouble just followed that girl and it always had, especially where he was concerned. And at the moment his main concern, his greatest fear, was finding a pink-covered bundle, motionless on the ground.

An image of Bella at the wedding flashed before his eyes: all tousled blonde ringlets, voluptuous curves and those amazing blue eyes. Eight years and a lifetime later, Will had been shocked to see those stunning eyes were shadowed by hurt, clouded with frustration and filled with vulnerability as she gazed at Trin and Caro. He had wanted to gather her into his arms and kiss it all away.

A branch came from nowhere and clouted him across the jaw. The pain was like a dousing of cold water. ‘Bloody hell!’

To him Isabella Vermaelon was a temptress on legs, and he was sick of years of temptation studded with bouts of torment and pain. He’d loved her. He’d lost her, and it was his own goddamned fault. Now she was engaged to some rich tosser from Melbourne and he couldn’t do anything about it.

Although by the sound of the phone call that morning, all was not well with wanker Warren. Maybe Will stood a chance, even after all this time? He remembered her stumbling into his arms in the stockyard; the feel of her body was so familiar.

Prue of course had been a terrible mistake. She had simply been in the right place at the wrong time, and Will was the first to admit it. She seemed to think she could make him forget Bella. Make him love her instead. But she couldn’t and he didn’t. He’d apologised when she threw it in his face the day she’d left.

‘You don’t love me, you arsehole, so why the fuck did you marry me?’

‘I have no idea why I married you, Prue,’ he’d said as he’d heaved her suitcases into the car, wishing to hell she’d just get in it and drive out of his life. Forever.

‘You’re still in love with
her
, aren’t you? I’m not having three in my bed anymore. At least Leyton loves me for me!’