Her Galahad (36 page)

"You should have died!" Beller screamed, startling them both. "She must have known you were alive the whole time. She left me when you came up for parole! I'll make sure she knows you're dead this time, you and the kid both!"

In a flash his gun turned on Jirrah; but Jirrah flew at Beller in a diving tackle, yelling, "Grab Tani and run!"

Tess pulled Tani from Beller's slack arm and dived with her behind the tree. Jerking sideways from Tess's pull, Beller took a startled second to react—and Jirrah was on him, using his legs to trip him back, his arms to pin him down, one with a viselike grip on the arm holding the gun.

Beller fell back, screaming in fury—and he fought back with the savagery of obsession, trying to lift the gun hand. Jirrah held it down with grim desperation, bashing it over and over on the hard ground.
Let go, Beller, you crazy jerk—let go!

But Beller struggled madly against him, trying to roll around to get on top, while Jirrah held him down. Beller's free hand socked him in his ribs, still tender from the car bomb, taking his breath with the pain.

Beller would be on top of him in a second. "Someone call the cops!" He dropped on top of Beller in a wrestling motion, feeling his enemy grunt with a sudden loss of breath. And again and again, Jirrah hit that gun hand on the rocky ground, willing the gun to fall. Again and again the free fist flailed. Jirrah dropped on him hard, hearing the
oof
of pain as he landed on unprotected ribs.
Damn it, you stupid jerk, give up!

The wail of a police siren came closer. Only a minute more—

Beller jerked his arm up. There was a strange
pinging
noise; burning pain seared the arm holding the gun. "Ssssssss … aaargh," he grunted, fighting with all his strength to keep holding on. "Tess, run to the cops!" He couldn't last much longer—and he saw the lust to kill in Beller's eyes. If he let go, Beller would take him down before the cops got here; but at least Tess and Tani would be safe.

A sudden evil grin on Beller's face warned him even before Jirrah saw the shadow behind him. "Duncan, get this piece of dirt off me. I'll take it—"

But the fist Jirrah tensed for landed in Beller's surprised face. He fell back, gaping. "Duncan?" he gasped.

Duncan kneeled over his longtime close friend and partner, his face twisted in fury. "I might be going down—and I made sure you are, too—but you won't take my sister down anymore!" Duncan knocked Beller out with a quick, hard punch, and plucked the gun from Beller's slack hand. He looked briefly at Jirrah. "You take that end. I'll hold his arms."

Exhausted, half reeling with the shock, Jirrah worked with his brother-in-law in silence.

"Duncan?"

Both men looked up. Tessa, holding a shaking Tani on her hip, walked toward her brother, a rock in her hand—presumably to hit Beller with—and her face filled with anguished hope.

Duncan gave his sister a wry, slanted smile, lopsided like her own. "After the police let me go—after they showed me what Cam had been up to—I went to the hospital he put you in, and finally asked the right questions." The smile faded; his eyes closed tight. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, Tessa. What I did to you out of blind devotion to him—and hate. You were right. I hated your husband because he's like our mother, like the man she ran off with. I had to believe you'd be happier with the life I wanted for you. I closed my eyes to the truth. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I had to stop him hurting you again if I could."

Tess bit her lip over a gentle smile. "You called me Tessa." She didn't have to say any more.

Duncan Earldon's wary eyes met those of his real brother-in-law, with weary expectation; but Jirrah only grinned. "Nice TKO, mate. Thanks for coming when you did. I was just about out."

"Better late than never." Duncan gave that tight, wry smile again. Then he looked up at Tani. "So this is my niece," he said softly. "Hi, Tani. I'm your Uncle Duncan."

Tani didn't answer; she was still shaking, her teary eyes wide, her thumb half in her mouth in self-comfort.

Duncan's gaze swiveled to Tess. "After the trial, I'll be gone for a while. I need to reinvent myself, think about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life."

"Going walkabout, eh?" Jirrah laughed. "Maybe you got more of the blood in you than you know, Duncan Earldon."

Duncan bit out a laugh. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's time I found out who I really am."

"M-Miss Honey, I think I'm gonna puke…"

Tess gathered a shaking Tani even closer, both arms around her, kissing her daughter in loving reassurance. "It's all over now, sweetheart. We would never have let that naughty man hurt you, baby. Never."

Vincent and Esther, frozen by the back verandah, ran to Tani, snatching her from Tessa's arms, petting her, soothing her until her hiccupping sobs fell quiet. Tess stood beside them, touching Tani's face. Wanting, needing to be a part of that circle of love, to comfort his daughter, Jirrah struggled to his feet.

"Stand still. You're bleeding," Tess gasped. She turned to him, and quickly pressed down on his arm.

"I'll be fine, Tess," he protested, loving her fuss, her care. "Just a flesh wound." Even if it hurt like hell.

"It could get infected. Tani, could you get a clean cloth? We need to fix
Jirrah's arm."

"Yes, Miss Honey." Tani, still shaking with shock, struggled from Esther's arms and bolted for the house. Vincent and Esther followed her.

"Don't worry, Tess. I'm fine," he assured her, wondering if she even realized Beller lay doggo beneath them—and that Duncan was keeping a foot on his old friend's chest, just in case.

The sirens finally stopped. Within seconds, two uniformed policemen ran around the house. "Is everyone all right?"

Jirrah turned to them, ignoring Tess's anxious murmurs to hold still. "This man's Cameron Beller. There's an APR on him. He's wanted by the City of Sydney Police on about fifteen charges."

"We know." The policemen hauled a groaning Beller up. "A Keith Earldon QC called half an hour ago, saying we'd find this man here, armed and threatening his daughter and granddaughter."

Tess, still holding his wound together, looked at Duncan, then up at him, her face filled with a dawning of hope so lovely, so delicate and agonizing it cut him to his core.

The police handcuffed a semiconscious Beller and had to half drag, half carry him to their car out front. "Can you come to Lynch Hill to make statements?" one of them returned to ask.

Jirrah grinned. "Only if you want extra paperwork. You'll find there's already enough on Beller for six to ten years inside. We've got a bit of cleaning up to do. If you still want us after you've talked to the Sydney cops, you know where we are."

The policeman shook his head. "This was attempted abduction and attempted murder, among other charges, sir. We can't leave it. Can you come in soon?"

Jirrah nodded. "Sure. About an hour?"

"Earlier, if you can. Thanks." The policeman walked away.

Tani ran back with a towel, torn in strips. "Is this good, Miss Honey? Will it help my other daddy?" she panted, anxiously gazing up to Jirrah.

His heart melted, looking at the little face so like his, with the loving heart just like Tess. A permanent bond between them … and a beautiful girl all on her own. "I'm fine, Tani." He ruffled her tangled mop of curls with his free hand. Tani took it, holding it between hers.

Tess lowered her face a moment too late; for he'd seen the tears swimming in her eyes, the flash of pain streak across her features. "Take this and push against the bridge of your nose, but let the blood run out," she murmured. "Just apply pressure."

He did as he was told, and waited.

"My family helped me. Dad called Tani his grandchild," she murmured, soft and husky, with a little quivering catch in her voice. "They even helped get Cameron arrested to save me."

"Yeah," he replied, feeling only gladness. Tess deserved this happiness from her family. "Maybe they're changing. Maybe even Duncan here might get to like me one day." He gave a mock-challenging look at his brother-in-law, who was dusting off his high-tech running shoes.

"Maybe," Duncan shot back, the anguished guilt in his face at Tessa's words changing to a slow grin. "Don't hold your breath."

Tessa pushed his shirt from the wound, fussing with the strips of toweling, looking only at his arm. "So you have your life back, everything you wanted, without putting my family in prison." She looked up briefly, seeing Tani clinging to his free hand with lingering pain in her eyes. "Thank you—David."

She was right. He could take his name back now. He'd disabled the men who'd taken his life from him. He'd cleared his name, found his daughter, taken control. He could be David again now.

Except that he wasn't David anymore.

It wasn't David who stood up to fight the mighty Earldon-Beller Goliath. It wasn't David who'd taken on the world and won. David was the boy who suffered in silence. David Oliveri, the boy he'd been, died two and a half years ago, and Jirrah McLaren, the man he'd become, had taken his place.

He threw away the towel, and Tani grabbed his hand again. "Jirrah's fine," he replied gruffly. "I'm kind of used to it now." He looked at her lowered head, the heavy fall of hair she used so often to hide her pain from him. "You can have the life you want now, too. You're free to fly, Tess."

She shrugged. "Free from everything but being a fool." She looked up for another too brief moment before turning away.

Treasuring the feel of Tani's little hands in his, he still wished for nothing more at that moment than to touch Tess, to hold her and kiss her pain away. "Say it, Tess," he said softly. "Let it out."

"You risked your life for me," she muttered in a low voice. "You should have taken Tani and run. I'm not worth it. I've never caused you anything but grief."

Ah, God, how he loved this woman … and how she punished herself, blamed herself for the twists of fate that tore them apart. "The pain always came from somewhere else. You've given me far more joy than pain. And you gave me our daughter. You're worth any risk to me. I love you, Tess. That's all there is to say."

She finished binding the wound, doubling the end over in a makeshift pressure bandage. Then she took a few steps toward the tree, fiddling with the bark with her fingers, her lovely, slanted face in shadow. "Did you mean what you said to Cameron? About loving someone as they are, not how you want them to be?"

She couldn't even look at him. He could taste her fear on his tongue.
Oh, God, give me the strength to accept my future. Help me to give Tess this final healing.
Since she couldn't see him nod, he replied, "Yes, mulgu. I meant every word."

She stared at the tree as if it alone held all the answers to life. "Can you live with me, knowing I likely can't give you any more children?" She lifted a hand as he started to speak. "Think carefully before you answer. If you say yes, I'd never let you go … and it's a lifetime without the family you want."

But he had no doubt, for last night, two visions had entered his dreaming mind, over and over.

Belinda big with his son, the pain always in her eyes because he didn't love her. Living the rest of his life without Tess in it.

"Then we'll just have to love the two we have all the more, won't we?" She stared at him. "Don't forget my son, Kalkara—Michael. We can go get him from Leslie's, now that Beller's gone." He watched her bite hard on a trembling lip; he could feel her resistance, all her barriers, come crashing slowly down. "Would it bother you, bringing up Belinda's son?" he asked softly.

"No—oh, no." She shook her head. "But you want six or seven kids. With me, two is all you'll ever have."

Slowly he moved forward, bringing Tani with him, who by some minor miracle had remained silent—most probably she was already planning their family life, the adorable little imp. "Yeah, I'd have liked four or five more kids. But I realized something last night—I'd rather have two kids with you as my wife than seven with any other woman. Living with Belinda taught me that."