Bella's Run (32 page)

She shrugged those ideas aside. Will was obviously only after sex. Nothing more, nothing less, and she’d handed herself to him on a platter. More fool her.

Chapter 30

Four weeks later, Bella was trying to find something decent to watch on TV when the phone rang in the Melbourne penthouse. It was her father, which was strange, because Frank hated using the phone. Warren was working late, as usual.

‘I’ve been thinking . . .’ said Frank.

Bella sat back in her chair and curled her fingers around the armrest to wait for a bombshell. Her father never started a sentence with ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’ unless something major was about to be declared. ‘Thought I’d take your mother on a round-the-world trip. It’s been something she’s always wanted to do and . . . what, with everything that’s happened . . . we’ve never done it. The cows are going well, milk prices are the best they’ve been in years, so I thought now’s the time.’

Bella could imagine her father sitting in the hall at Merinda. Could see him leaning back in the solid carver chair as he spooled the telephone cord around his big hand.

‘Are you asking me if you should do it, Dad? Or are you telling me that’s what you’re doing?’ asked Bella.

‘Well . . . I suppose I’m telling you that’s what we’re doing, Hells Bells.’ There was that nickname again. ‘The tour leaves in a month and they’ve got four tickets left. A sudden cancellation, someone kicked the bucket so the other three who booked don’t want to go. Aunty Maggie’s going to come with us – to help me with your mother.’

‘How long for?’

‘Six months or so, I’d reckon,’ came the reply. ‘The initial world cruise goes for a hundred and four nights, stops at forty-two ports. Then the travel agents have hooked us up with another land tour that takes us on a jaunt around Europe.’ Her father’s voice was animated and he sounded more excited than he’d been in years. Bella listened with amazement. Why hadn’t he mentioned this a month ago when she was up at Merinda?

‘Justin and Melanie are right to run the farm by themselves. Maggie’s in a bit more strife, but I think she’ll just sell the stock and get that old codger Wes Ogilvie down the road to keep an eye on the place. Of course, Will O’Hara would be around too, but he’s really busy now he’s expanded his station into cropping and lucerne as well as cattle. It’s a bit of a pickle, because Maggie really wants to come and I need her help with your mum . . .’

Her father paused, hesitant to air his next thought. Bella couldn’t have known he was wondering at the wisdom of what he was going to suggest next. If Maggie’s meddlesome plot was really going to work or if it would just complicate his daughter’s life even further. But he didn’t want to see his beloved daughter end up with Warren
either
. He wasn’t right for her. Frank took a deep breath. ‘That’s unless you could see your way clear for a bit of a spell from that hectic city life you’ve got down there?’

And suddenly Bella knew.

The telephone call wasn’t to tell her of the trip of a lifetime.

No, he was slinging her a lifeline. To come back to the bush to sort out what she really wanted to do with her life.

‘I didn’t mention the cruise when you were up here, love, as I wasn’t sure it was going to come off. But now it has and it’s all a bit of a rush. What do you think? Can you help poor old Maggie out?’

Bella didn’t tell Warren about the phone call. She didn’t get to tell him much these days. She’d come back from the wedding after the night at Merinda, feeling guilt-ridden and miserable, to find him buzzing with excitement and humming with energy, all memories of their fight over the CEO forgotten.

Taking her into his arms, he’d burbled, ‘There’s a takeover bid happening, darling. And they want
me
to head up the team! What an opportunity! It’ll mean I’ll need to be at the office more, but what a step for my career! I’ll be up for board member before we know it. They know how good I am, what I can do – and this is my reward.’ He twirled her around the floor with glee, landing a fleeting kiss on her lips before letting her go.

The lights of Melbourne were his backdrop as his arms drew pictures in the air of all the things he would do to ensure Oxford, Bride and Associates were the winning players in this corporate duel. And Bella had been so wracked with guilt over her indiscretion with Will she’d faked the enthusiasm Warren so desperately wanted. He was
so
sure she would be happy for him,
so
positive she would rejoice and back him all the way; she pushed her doubts about their future aside.

But not once did he ask for her opinion.

Not once did he ask about
her
weekend.

He didn’t enquire about her mother’s health or her father’s farm. He obviously thought he’d done his duty just by coming to the reception.

And now, after her father’s phone call, she lay alone in a cold silk-sheeted bed remembering it all. Realising she needed to make some decisions. Stop taking the easy route and drifting along. The city with its frenetic pace was an easy place to do that.

Warren loved her, in his own funny way. But she couldn’t continue to be what he wanted – an accessory to his success. Deep down she admitted to herself it wasn’t all his fault. Up until recently she’d been happy sitting on the sidelines living
his
dreams.

But now? Wasn’t it time she took control of her life and created some dreams of her own?

Her trip back into the mountains and seeing her old way of life made her realise how, deep down, she
really
missed it. She’d never wholeheartedly committed herself to being a city chick; in fact, she had been as resistant to it as Warren had been to the country. While she liked her job with the public-relations firm, the shine of it had begun to pall. All the networking and being nice to people she really didn’t like, just to get their patronage and money. She wasn’t like Warren, she admitted to herself. She didn’t want to make her job her life.

We work to live, girlfriend, not live to work. You’ve got to get the balance right, chickadee.
Patty’s voice rang clearly in her head.

That was another startling thing since the wedding at Ben Bullen Hills – she’d heard Patty’s voice in her head, come ringing back to life. She’d even felt ghostly warm arms clasped around her shoulders. It was spooky, but comforting. Was Patty telling her something, Bella wondered, as she lay in the half-dark, reflections from the city lights casting shadows around the silent room.

Bella moved her head and stared at the small photo sitting on her bedside table. Boots and hats flying, arms swinging, she and Patty danced silently in time to Sara Storer, somewhere outside Tamworth on the way home from up north.

Maybe taking time out at Tindarra was what she needed – to sort out whether she really wanted the city to be her life. The only place she could see Warren moving was further up the corporate tree of Oxford and Bride. If she married him she would be stuck in the city forever.

Marry him? Christ, you’re not still thinking of doing that, Hells Bells?
Patty’s voice sent shivers down her spine.

A clunking noise startled her, her heart jumping a beat. The airconditioner hummed to life and pumped its artificial breath around the stark room. Warren liked to sleep in the cold when he finally made it home
. If
he made it home, she amended to herself, as she tried to find some warmth in the freezing bed. She didn’t know where the hell he’d been sleeping lately, but it wasn’t in this dockside morgue.

Thoughts of Aunty Maggie’s quaint old cottage flooded her mind, with its corrugated-iron roof that resonated with tinny music whenever it rained. Then there was the slow-combustion stove inside that ran hot twenty-four hours a day, making a cosy welcome. Bella remembered the day she had been shocked to see Maggie pull a sponge from the top oven while shoving a live lamb back into the bottom oven with her slippered foot.

‘It’s the warming oven,’ she had explained to Bella, who was staying for her usual school-holiday break. ‘This poor little mite got a bit cold as his mother died. I’ll warm him up then we’ll see if he wants some tea.’ She had pointed to the hotplate on the stove where a teat-topped sauce bottle full of milk peeped from an old boiler filled with warm water. Bella smiled to herself as she remembered those days.

If she listened closely enough, above the roar of the city traffic she could hear the music of Tindarra’s babbling mountain stream, on its winding journey to the lower country of Narree; could visualise the peacefulness of the rolling hills with their towering trees.

Lying in her penthouse home set beside the dirty Yarra River dreaming of a mountain valley hundreds of kilometres away, Bella made her decision.

The only problem was the other inhabitant of Tindarra, and she didn’t mean old Wes. She needed a clean break from
all
the complications in her life – and that included Will O’Hara. Memories of him naked and making love to her on Hugh’s Plain danced before her eyes: those tanned bicep muscles holding his body inches above hers, his head thrown back, those molasses eyes crinkled in ecstasy; her own unrestrained responses to a body and hands that just seemed to know how to please her, how to love her.

‘You’re still good in the sack, cowgirl.’

Overwhelming shame at his words.

He’d just have to stay out of her way. The mountains were big enough for the two of them. His property might be next door to Maggie’s, but it was pretty damned big, and even though they would be in the same valley, it didn’t mean she had to
see
him.

Bella sat up in bed, took the remote control from the holder above her head and depressed the switch for the aircon.

Rummpfff.

The machine rumbled as it clicked off.

She got out of bed, ran into the sitting room and dragged her red minky blanket from the couch. Back in the bedroom, she wrapped herself into the blanket’s cuddly warmth and set about planning how to move home.

Three and a half weeks later she was ready to go. She’d resigned from her job, leaving a boss unhappy to see her go but moving right along to start a new girl next week. There were no flies on him, she thought wryly. Another difference of city versus country. Easy come, easy go.

She still hadn’t told Warren she was leaving town. She’d barely seen him long enough to say hello. Any conversation they had inevitably revolved around the takeover bid. Lovemaking in the early hours of the morning, if and when he made it home to bed, was unsatisfying. He rolled off and was asleep in minutes, leaving her to stare at the ceiling, frustrated and alone.

She reproached herself again and again for not telling him she was going.

Procrastinator
, mocked Patty, playing around in her head.

‘Yeah, well
you
deal with him then!’ she mentally lobbed back. ‘He’ll pout and sulk and probably yell a bit while he goes on and on about how I’m making
his
life difficult.’

Well, what the fuck are you doing with the self-absorbed prick, Hells Bells?
came the reply.

‘He’s not a prick. And he loves me.’