Her Galahad (13 page)

Cameron yelled, tore around on his heel and back for his car.

Jirrah shoved the gun back
in
the glove box. "If he tries that he'll tip. The car might be built for the terrain, but he's not."

She careened over the crazy potholed surface, sweat pouring dripping between her breasts, making her shiver. "But what if—"

"Don't think about it. We're going to make it, Tess."

"How do you know?"

"Because I won't let a slimy lowlife bastard like Beller beat me, that's why!"

A sudden grinding sound, followed by a metallic shriek, made her shoulders sag in blinding relief. She laughed, a weak, exhausted sound. "He's blasted your truck and torched your house, and you're still going to win?"

"We just did." He grinned at her, still caressing her neck and shoulders, and it didn't occur to her to pull away. She needed the reassurance right now—needed his touch—like an addict needed their next fix. "That was the sound of his axle tearing. Not even Beller's mad enough to follow us on foot. He'll have to walk back to the highway for help."

She drew a deep breath, gaining strength from his calm belief in their imminent safety. "But will you keep winning? He could have killed us then!"

"You betcha I'll keep winning. I'll blast his career and torch his life, and make sure the woman he wants is free of him for good. Tess, you'll hit something if you don't slow down. Don't look at me.
Drive!
We'll laugh about this whole crazy adventure in five minutes. Let's go. There's the side path."

She tore her wondering gaze from him, and turned right down an even smaller path than the first, narrow and winding.

"Stop the car, Tess. I'll take over here. There's six exits, so time's on our side. Could you get a stronger elastic bandage for my wrist while I check the chassis—"

But Tessa unlocked her belt and threw herself on him, covering his face with little frenzied kisses, seeking his mouth with a desperation for human touch she hadn't felt in too many years to count. Because this was Jirrah—the man she'd never been able to leave behind—and he'd just saved her life.

He proved more than happy to oblige her need. With a half-smothered groan he pulled her close, opening his mouth under hers, giving her the same frantic passion she unleashed on him.

After so many years of revulsion at a man's touch, Tessa never imagined she could become lost, drown so deep in the unbridled eroticism of a simple kiss, or revel in the feel of an aroused male body against hers. She couldn't remember the past, couldn't envision Cameron's hot, eager, repulsive sexuality. Her mind and body was full of Jirrah, and the warm, dark magic of his kiss.

Hungry for more, she pulled him hard against her, moving sinuously. Little gasps entered his mouth from hers; his groans filled her throat. Her hands moved beneath his T-shirt, her hands caressing his skin like wildfire. His warm, dark skin, with its superb muscle tone, filled her with an arousal made stronger for being laced with sweet trust—for Jirrah would always leash his strength with her. He was man enough to follow her lead, to give her control. His hands caressed her back, hair and face, awaiting permission for more intimate touch. His tongue twined with hers when she wanted it. And oh, how she wanted it. A raging storm of desire filled her—

"Tess." A hoarse whisper against her mouth. "We have to stop. There's six exits, but he might find the right one. We've got to outrun Beller before he can get to help."

Like a cold dousing, the mention of Cameron's name froze her veins. She jumped out of the car to get the bandages, waiting in silence by the door as he checked the axle and chassis. She couldn't look him in the face as she strapped his wrist—but she could feel him watching her with unnerving depth. Seeing more than she wanted him to see

He said nothing until he'd negotiated the van out of the forest. "We can't risk staying somewhere overnight. We're too obvious here in the country—a Koori man with a white woman—not to be remembered. You make a bed up in here. I'll use the tent."

"All right." She looked to where the slow-setting sun turned a field of growing sorghum to a waving sea of rich golden-brown.

"Tess. I wanted that kiss, too."

She looked around, arrested, hoping. Terrified.

Watching the road, he touched her cheek with his damaged hand in gentle reassurance. "It was a natural thing. We were in a life-and-death situation. We wanted to celebrate getting away from that jerk. And because we were lovers before, it lowered the scare factor. You knew I'd want to kiss you back."

She closed her eyes. After all these years, he still knew her, still understood her needs, her motivations.

"I've been wanting to touch you since I first saw you again, and even more since last night. But I won't," he added, as she jerked away. "I know, Tess. Being unable to control your life is the most humiliating experience anyone can go through." Another fleeting touch on her cheek made her ache with the most beautiful pain she'd ever known. "So you're in the driver's seat with this, Tess. Just know that whatever you want from me, I won't reject you, and I won't push you further than you want to go."

A single tear trickled down her cheek. She turned away before he could see it, but watched him through the reflection on the window. "I know you want to help me, but you can't. I have to find my own healing, my own way and time,"

He stared ahead to the unending stretch of tarred road. "I wasn't there when you needed me the most. You gave birth to our daughter alone. You lost her. They tricked you into marrying him because I didn't expose their lies—because I never bothered to call you from lockup. Damn it, Tess, I owe it to you to try!"

If he'd reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart in his bare fist, he couldn't have hurt her more. "You can't heal me with pity, Jirrah," she said huskily, her heart and throat aching. "You can't cry magic tears or kiss me better. Just help me find Emily, use your papers to get Cameron out of my life, and we'll consider the nonexistent debt canceled."

An uncomfortable silence filled the van for a minute. "Don't try to kid yourself you can live your life alone, Tess. The illusion of control can vanish like smoke, or blow up in your face like my truck. If I've learned from the past six years, it's that we all need to have someone we can believe in. Living alone, isolating yourself to hide from pain, only creates worse problems."

She stared out the window, unable to answer.

"You know I'm right," he pushed her, aggressive, but not angry. "You trust me, much as you want to deny it. That's why you came with me—why you're here now—why you kissed me. You've been on the run, closed away from the human race too long. Somewhere deep inside, you know you have to open up to someone again. You need to know you can trust a man, especially in a physical way. And you can." He added, low, "It will be making love, not forced sex. It will happen when and where you want it. I'll never beg, bribe or blackmail you into it, and I swear to God I'd never force you. I won't let you down, Tess. I'm here for you."

For now. Until you know the whole truth.

If he knew, he'd never speak again of wanting her. He'd never touch her again, or even look at her. She could hardly stand looking at herself sometimes.

She made herself sigh. "Look, it was just a kiss, all right? A way to break the tension. Like you said, a quick celebration after getting rid of Cameron." She kept her gaze trained outside so he wouldn't know the lie she spoke. "He's gone for now, but he's not gone forever. So let's find Emily before he does."

He said softly, "Don't count on too much with Emily, Tess. Nothing in our lives has been a fairy tale from the day we met. She might be a happy kid in a big family, with brothers, sisters and fantastic parents. She might not know she's adopted, or want to know us. She might never be yours again."

Tessa shuddered, knowing he'd looked into her deepest heart; he'd seen, and understood, her soul-deep yearning to have her daughter in her arms, in her life, to be her mother—her
real
mother. "Then I'll just have to be content with seeing Cameron behind bars, won't I."

When he spoke, his voice was tight and hard. "Don't cheat yourself. Revenge isn't enough. It's living in the shadows."

She turned on him, her face white. "And you're so free of the need for revenge, you give me advice? I'd have thought you the expert on wanting to punish them for what they've done to you!"

"Yeah, I am. I lived and breathed and ate revenge for six years, and it's nothing but a cheat—just cold, dark emptiness. Hatred without healing." His eyes burned into hers. "You did that to me. Watching you with the kids. After all they did to you, you can still give. You can forgive. You can heal, Tess! Damn it, don't lose yourself in bitterness now. You're better than that!"

Her heart jerked, and something inside her grew warm and gentle at his fierce, giving honesty. "You survived prison," she said softly
.
"You went through that for me, believing I betrayed you, and still came to save me.
You're
better than that, too."

He gave her a slow, lopsided grin. "Dam it, Tess, how do you do that? Every time you show up in my life you change it—change
me—
in
seconds."

"Like
Nagasaki
or
Hiroshima
," she retorted.

"I was talking about you, not your father, your brother or Beller. You're not responsible for what they do. Not to you, to me, or anyone else. Only they can take the rap for that."

Her heart shut down. She blinked hard and fast, feeling like a sleepwalker coming awake to a bizarre landscape she couldn't awake from. In just two days, her whole existence had become a lie, and she didn't know how else to cope with it than in anger. "If you say so," she muttered, trying not to cry. "You appear to be the expert on who's to blame for what in my family life."

He shrugged, and switched on the radio to the only station in the vicinity, a country music station, and sang Troy Cassar-Daly's latest ballad in his warm voice.

They bought another car at Dubbo, three hundred miles northwest of
Sydney
, and dumped Tessa's van on a graveled dirt track northeast of the town. They bought clothes, stored them in the back of the battered green four-wheel-drive, and they continued via little-used back roads for the northern route toward
Sydney
.

Toward
Burragawang
Community
Hospital
, and the first step in unraveling the truth from the tangled web of lies her family had woven around her life.

Chapter 8

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A
bundled-up blanket of darkness lay all around, still and quiet. The only sound was a rustling whisper of gum leaves from the tiny breeze filtering through the trees above; the only scent a vague tang of crushed eucalyptus leaves drifting up from the loamy forest floor.

In a lonely highland hideaway northeast of Dubbo off the road to Burragawang, Tessa lay in the cool soft darkness, her ears straining for any unnatural sound, but heard only the thundering of her heart and the whirling of her fears in her mind.

Jirrah was right. Northeast was the least likely way for them to go. As a precaution, he'd covered the bumpy mountain track with a fall of rocks after they'd passed the entrance, and even brushed away the tire tracks from the main road at the turnoff.

But she'd lived with the need to run for so long it was almost a friend. She didn't know how to live without looking over her shoulder for Cameron's Lucifer-like face: so beautiful, hiding a vile heart beneath. She didn't know how to stop mourning for the innocent, loving girl she used to be before he touched her—