Bella's Run (45 page)

She wanted to surprise him, so she turned off the torch as she walked down the driveway. She could see the huge set of cattle yards beyond Will’s little house, reflected in parts by moonlight. She looked up. Storm clouds scudded across the sky, ducking and weaving around the moon. She swung towards the back of the house, surprised but pleased that Will’s dog Nala hadn’t yet set up a warning bark at her approach.

Probably inside with Will, she thought. As she came around the corner she stopped, startled. There was a dark green Land Rover Discovery parked hard up against the iron gate.

Her plans for seduction bit the dust. Damn it. She wondered who it was. She realised just how little she knew of Will’s life now. And she didn’t want to look like an idiot rocking up at his back door at this hour of the night – it would be obvious what she was there for. Asking to borrow a cup of sugar wasn’t going to cut it at eleven p.m.

Bella decided to take a look in through the lounge-room window. A massive hydrangea partially obscured the pane, so she slid in sideways between the puff-ball pink flowers and the wall of the house, inwardly cursing her round belly as she went. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Grabbing hold of the shutter to steady herself, Bella peeked through the glass.

Will sat on the end of the couch, and he wasn’t alone. A woman reclined on the floor against his legs, resting her blonde head in his lap.

Bella jumped away from the window, forgetting she was tight within the hydrangea. Leaves rustled and branches snapped and cracked as she fell back among the thick bush. She could hear Nala growl inside and a high-pitched voice straight from her past say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, William, it’s probably just a roo.’

She could hear the rumble of Will’s voice settling Nala, before all went quiet.

Bella righted herself and tried to force feeling back into her legs, her brain, her body now numb with shock. Her mind was reeling. Should she take another look? Confirm what she thought she saw? She snuck back towards the window and peeked through the glass again.

Prudence Vincent-Prowse O’Hara, maybe Fowler, still lay with her head in Will’s lap. She looked much the same as she had eight years before. A few more lines of discontent between the eyes streaking up to a furrowed brow, the same sulky blood-red painted lips, a slight thickening under the jaw – the beginnings of a double chin she would inherit from her mother.

Bella felt a slight sense of gratification. Her eyes then moved down the body reclining in a sensuous position on the floor. Prowsy wasn’t wearing much. What she
was
wearing strained to cover the fact that Prowsy was well and truly pregnant.

Bella couldn’t tear her eyes away. Just when she thought it was all coming together, just when she and Will had finally found their way back to each other – he did this. Could she trust
any
man with her heart, her soul, her life?

No. It didn’t look like it.

Patty’s voice tried to speak deep within her mind, but Bella shut it down. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any bloody O’Haras, ever again.

‘It’s just you and me, kid,’ she whispered to the babe stirring gently within her belly, just as Prowsy’s fake laughter tinkled through the glass.

Bella took one last look through the window to confirm what her brain was telling her heart: Will was a dirty, double-crossing two-timer, and he was out of her life.

It was at this moment, when Bella started to turn away, that Prowsy slightly raised her head to stare straight through the window into the night, right into Bella’s eyes.

Prowsy smiled.

Will had been serving up a mixed grill for himself when he heard the distant drone of a vehicle high up beyond the ridge. He stood at the kitchen window, which sat squat above the sink, and gazed across the paddocks towards Aunty Maggie’s. He could just make out the crisp lines of the house against the darkening twilight, a shadow of black angles against a steel-grey and violet sky. A light twinkled from panes of glass. He wished he’d been able to get back earlier so he could have made definite plans to see Bella.

In his mind he could see her at work at the kitchen table, head bent over her laptop, concentrating. He knew she was working hard to finish the final project report for her boss. His imagination wove images of those lapis eyes intent on the task. His heart lurched slightly as he remembered those eyes intent on him.

He wondered just how late was
too late
to go wandering up the road. The bunch of flowers he’d picked up from the Burrindal store, delivered fresh just this morning, sat in water at the sink. He smiled to himself and hummed along to the country CD playing quietly in the background.

The rumble of a diesel engine drowned the music out. The vehicle stopped outside his gate. A visitor. Damn it. He cast a longing glance towards Bella’s beckoning light. He hoped they wouldn’t stay long.

Whoever it was, was obviously opening the gate and the rumble started again, louder this time as the vehicle swung down his drive. He frowned. The driver hadn’t stopped to close the gate. There was only one person he knew who didn’t follow that country law; only one person who thought that unwritten rule was far beneath them.

Prudence.

‘So, William, how’s things? Still playing with cows?’ Prue’s forced laughter still rankled. ‘Got enough in that pan for me? You always did do a mean fry-up.’

Will leaned against the sink, his arms crossed. He didn’t move to greet his former wife. He just stood, watching her enter his house and his life once again. He didn’t say a thing; he’d said it all years ago when she left.

‘My oh my, the cat got your tongue? Or maybe something else?’ Her eyes flicked quickly towards the window, the light and Maggie’s, so quickly he might have imagined it.

She padded towards him. ‘And what’s this?’ she said, moving right into his personal space. ‘Flowers for me? Oh William, you shouldn’t have. I guess Shelley told you I was in town visiting Mummy and Daddy.’ Prue picked up the bunch of gerberas and roses, contaminating the flowers with her presence, stifling their sweet scent.

Will decided then and there he was throwing them in the bin. Bella wouldn’t be tainted by this girl ever again. He’d take something else to her tonight. Maybe the bowl of blackberries he’d picked from up in Blind Man’s Gully, or the multicoloured feather he’d found from a crimson rosella. He’d find another way to woo his girl. He caressed those words in his mind.
His girl.
Finally.

Prowsy interrupted his thoughts. ‘I heard Bella Vermaelon was back in the valley. Knocked up, too.’

‘You can’t talk.’

Prue looked down. Shrugged. ‘True. Leyton’s promised me a nanny.’

‘What do you want, Prue? We were about to have our tea and there’s only enough for Nala and me.’

‘Of course, I should have remembered. The dog comes before your wife.’

‘
Ex
-wife,’ clarified Will. By Prue’s piqued expression, he could see she was wishing she could suck those nasty words she’d uttered right back in. Interesting. What
did
she want?

Prue smoothed her face and shrugged again. ‘Let’s head into the lounge and make ourselves more comfortable.’ At Will’s raised eyebrow, she went on irritably, ‘Oh don’t worry, I won’t be staying long. Leyton’s playing darts with Daddy at the hotel and I want to be back before he gets home.’

Prue walked into the lounge and waited until Will had sat down on the single chair, before sinking to her knees in front of him, setting her head upon his lap. Will stiffened. ‘Get off, Prue.’ He went to move her head off his legs.

‘I feel faint.’ Her hand fluttered towards her forehead. ‘Just let me rest here a moment.’

Prue’s voice held that familiar lilting whine that he’d come to loath so much when she was his wife. But he couldn’t bring himself to push her away. He sighed. She was a manipulative piece of work, that was for sure, but for once in her life she just
might
be telling the truth.

Nala started to growl. Trees rustled outside. Will sat up straighter, looking towards the window.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it, William, it’s probably just a roo.’

Will mumbled a few quiet words to the dog, who whimpered then settled.

‘I want something.’ Prue rubbed her hand along his lower leg like a cat.

‘Not much has changed, then.’

Prue pursed her blood-red lips and then thrust her blonde head further into his lap. ‘I want to come back, Will. I want
you
.’ Red nails came up to stroke his inner thigh.

Rearing back, Will clamped down hard on the hand. ‘Years ago I might have fallen for that.’

Prue went on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘I never really wanted a baby anyhow. Not now. It doesn’t suit my lifestyle. But Leyton insisted and I thought, well, surely one little dabble into motherhood wouldn’t affect my life too much. But . . .’ Prue looked down at her rounded belly in disgust. ‘It
has
and it
will
when the little brat arrives.’

She turned to look up at him and for a moment Will thought he saw vulnerability flicker across her face. And terror. It was in that instant he actually felt pity for his ex-wife; he saw clearly that she was unable to love anything more than she loved herself.

‘I’ve realised I was wrong to leave you. I just want to come home. To you, to the farm, to Tindarra.’

‘And what about Fowler?’

‘Oh him!’ Prue flicked her free hand negligently. ‘Don’t worry about him. I’ll let Leyton have the baby . . . whatever . . . I just want to come back . . .’ There was a pause before she added with a doe-like look in her pale eyes, ‘to you.’

Will had seen that look on her beautiful face before. When she wanted more Paspaley pearls and he needed a new tractor. When she wanted that bloody Chesterfield lounge and all the other flash furniture and he needed a new hard hose for the irrigator. He’d ended up borrowing Wes’s tractor, and patched the old hose. And she
still
hadn’t been satisfied. It was then he knew that whatever he did would never be good enough.

His eyes centred on the fireplace; anywhere but Prue. He was saddened by the way their relationship ended, but the feelings of revulsion he felt for her were strong. Leaving him for that bloody horse-breeder who obviously wasn’t quite as flash or rich as she thought; wanting to come back to him after she’d already taken him for half of the farm, every spare cent he had; prepared to abandon a defenceless baby, just because it suited her – he was so disgusted he nearly missed her last words, ‘. . . in return, you can fuck whoever you like. Just don’t do it under my roof.’

Nala started a low-pitched growl, directed towards Prue. His ex-wife lifted her head slightly and seemed to smile at her own reflection in the window. She obviously thought she’d won him over.

He stood up. He felt nothing as he watched Prue reel back and scramble to get to her feet, grossly inelegant – all limbs and baby. The gloves were off. He was sick to death of her manipulations. How had he been so blinded by her beauty and honeyed words all those years ago?

‘Get out. Now!’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, William. I said you could fuck whoever you wanted. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for Bella Vermaelon again?’