ACT III: Scene 1
On the Street Ranch [Station] Where You Live
CHERRINGTON DOWNS, STATION, VICTORIAN ALPS, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
In which our hero picks up the thread of the tale once again, hurrah! And finally! Because isn’t he the most delicious part of the story?
“Hyah! Hyah!” The confounded steer had its horns caught in the honey myrtle bush near the creek-side where it had gone to water, and I cracked my whip to scare him into backing up, but he was having none of it. “Hyah, get shut of there, you little—”
“Henry. Give the creature a break.” Jonno rode up beside me, too close to my whip to be flinging lectures at me. “You’ve been off your game ever since you came back from the States. Did something worse happen to you than losing your favorite sunglasses in that big pit they call the Grand Canyon?”
I shot him a look. Yeah, I was cranky, but Jonno wasn’t going to know why. Some things a man didn’t tell anyone, even his top hand on the station.
“Hyah!” I cracked the whip one more time, and the steer finally got the message and backed his way out of the brush. “There you go. Now, get on. Get on.”
Down at the stable a few hours later, Jonno offered me a cold drink while I rubbed down the lather on Gypsy’s flanks. She’d worked hard today, after being out of practice for a couple of weeks while I was gone. She’d get back in shape again.
“Quite heroic the way you saved that steer today. He was young enough if we’d left him there, the dingoes would’ve made a meal of him overnight.”
Heroic. I scoffed.
“It wasn’t any heroism.” It didn’t involve a vertical horse ride, a snowy field or a calf in distress away from its mother. Which still made me a liar to Eliza, and that stuck like a bone in the throat, even though I’d hinted that I’d swiped that fabrication from a movie. I’d misled her, at least for a while, and that didn’t sit well.
Jonno left me to go attend to other things. I put Gypsy in her stall and headed back to the house. Home felt big and hollow.
It needed someone else there. I needed someone else to be there.
That was probably why I’d asked Frank and Georgia and the kids to come eat here practically every night, instead of at their place down the way.
Dinner smelled like meat and potatoes as I came in through the back to the kitchen. Frank and his family were waiting for me, and we sat down to our steaks. I tried not to be surly, but my attitude must have bled through my exterior.
“Something’s not right with Uncle Henry.” Frank’s six-year-old son Hollis said, through a mouthful of banana. “It’s like he ate something sour when he went on his trip and now he can’t stop tasting it.”
Just the opposite. I’d tasted the sweetest thing life had ever offered me, and now I’d never taste it again. That was my problem. Not that I’d tell a six-year-old.
My brother Frank scooped all the potatoes from the middle, including the entire melting pool of butter atop the mash like he was nine years old, not twenty-nine, and then passed me the dish. Butterless.
I looked at it in irritation.
“You bet something’s not right with me, Hollis, my boy. It’s because of your father.” I scooped a dry pile of potato starch and plopped a blob of it on my plate. “He pinched all the butter.”
I knew I was being unreasonable, and that any food some other kind person made for me should be fine. It shouldn’t trigger surliness. However, I’d been hungry and on the point of delirium once, and a beautiful girl fed me, and since then, no other food had ever quite tasted the same.
“Maybe he accidentally dropped his good humor in that Grand Canyon.” Hollis had a high, squeaking voice at six. “That’s what Mommy said.” An uncomfortable looking-back-and-forth between everyone at the table ensued. “Maybe he should go back and look for it.”
A unison chorus of “No!” rose.
“Fine. Fine. I get it. I’ve been on edge. I’ll buck up.”
“I know why he’s sour.” Frank’s ten-year-old daughter Matilda poked her head up from staring at her phone. “He met a girl in America.” She looked back down at it immediately, sinking away into texting land.
Phones! What were young kids doing with them? Didn’t parents know that the only way to make life start to happen was to lose your phone?
“What makes you say that?” Her mother eyed Matilda, who just shrugged and continued to tap the screen.
I wondered the same thing, about why some ten-year-old ankle-biter could see through me. I hadn’t told anyone about Eliza. Not a soul. Not about how I felt about her, or anything about the way I’d just left her: homeless, unemployed, on an island of sharks who cared nothing about her—two days before Christmas?
When held up for comparison, no one alive could be more different to Eliza than I was. Eliza was kind and caring. She noticed people in distress. She helped them, gave them food and clothes, a place to stay—the promise of a phone, even, when she had little to gain. Actually, nothing for herself. All that quid pro quo stuff wasn’t about Eliza herself, it was for the baby girl she nannied.
She was legend, and I was a jerk.
Eliza would never up and fly away in a helicopter and not even offer a ride to the mainland to the stranded person. Sure, she’d brushed off my invitation to go see Dr. Smith, but what would she want with a geneticist? Nothing.
Now, I sat umpteen thousand miles away, and I felt like dirt. Like the clod of dirt I had just pried out of Gypsy’s hoof in the stables.
How could Eliza think of me as a quality person, caring or genuine, after that? After I’d told her about Cherrington Downs Station, and about my work trying to continue Granddad’s legacy, she’d been confused. Completely. I’d seen that, and instead of clarifying, I got a little amusement out of it. Her pity entertained me. I loved watching how she’d treat me when she was busy assuming I was down and out, not up and coming—like so many of the girls in Melbourne did.
I should have insisted she sit down and listen while I told her who I really was; but her misunderstanding had given me a laugh, and so I let it ride. And chances were, that ended up hurting her.
My dishonesty weighed on me.
One, I’d hurt her, and two, I’d left her standing in the wind on the cliff, the cliff that scared her more than anything else in the world.
Jerk.
So, yeah, I was surly at myself, and my family would just have to deal with it until—well, until I could figure out what to do with my feelings for Eliza. Eliza Galatea was the first girl I’d ever met who really turned my head and kept it turned. Gorgeous, caring, loyal, a beautiful heart—and could shoot a rattlesnake or at a bear to defend a calf on the range. Not to mention the kiss.
Cowabunga, what a kiss that woman had on her. If I’d ever been kissed like that before in my life, I would have fallen on my knees and asked the woman to marry me. It was a brain-melter—which was my only excuse for climbing in that helicopter and not telling her how I felt, or offering to take her along, or being at all smart.
That kiss had obliterated all thought, just like the mere memory of it was doing now, blurring out all the voices and eating sounds around me. Eliza Galatea and her thunder-strike of a kiss had ruined me for every other girl from now on.
“Are you hearing this, Frank?” Frank’s wife’s voice went up a notch, jerking me back into the present. “I told you, we have to take away that phone. She’s not old enough to—”
I tuned in just in time to see Frank pluck the offending device from Matilda’s hand and see her face fall.
“GossipMonger.com? Are you kidding me right now?” For a second I assumed he was scolding Matilda, but now I realized she wasn’t Frank’s target: I was. He held the screen up and showed me. “You’re the star of a Hollywood tabloid?”
“I told you—” Matilda complained “—that’s from two months ago. He’s not the star anymore. He’s old news. So what’s the big deal if I’m just re-reading it now? It’s my uncle. He’s famous, and The Twins are still offering that reward for—”
“You’re done with this device.” He wrenched aside when his daughter made a grab for it, and Matilda let out a feral whinge. “No more gossipmongering for you, young lady.” Frank turned toward me, but he was still scrolling down the screen.
“Great honk, brother. How did all this happen and you didn’t tell us?” He wasn’t actually laughing. He was accusing me. “This was what you were doing while we all mourned for weeks assuming you were dead at the bottom of a canyon?”
“We suffered, Henry,” Georgia said, her voice full of pathos. “For over a week, we pictured you at the bottom of a cliff.”
Mention of the word cliff bombarded me with memories of Eliza. Again. She was everywhere I looked and heard and thought and felt.
“He was with a mystery woman.” Matilda apparently didn’t know when to quit. “I saw her picture on a different site. She was way pretty in a blue dress. The Twins hate her.”
Someone had snapped a picture of Eliza?
“Show me.” I reached for the phone, but Frank kept it away.
“Nope. Not until you tell us what was going on.”
“Or at least what she’s like.” Matilda got a dreamy voice and put her hands up under her chin. “Is she nice? Does she like riding horses? Does she kiss well? Would she make a good aunt?”
Yes to all of the above.
“I bet she’s amazing, if you like her, Uncle Henry.”
“You are not bringing some Hollywood floozy to Cherrington Downs Station. It’s too remote. She’ll be miserable and make all of us miserable. Isn’t that why you refused to date any girls from Melbourne who wouldn’t stop beating down our doors? The fact that they hated being away from the nearest David Jones department store?” Frank’s voice was getting loud now. “It can only be worse if she’s from the States. They’re used to having shopping and internet and fast food needs instantly gratified.”
That might be true, but not of Eliza. Eliza was not that girl.
“You don’t know her.” I had to defend her, if only in the abstract, but Frank wasn’t finished berating me.
“Bringing a girl like that this far into the bush would be considered cruelty to a human female animal.”
“She’s not like that. I guarantee it. Not Eliza.”
“Oh, so she has a name.”
“I was right!” Matilda looked vindicated and triumphant, which seemed to lessen the blow of the loss of her phone.
“Yes, she has a name. Eliza Galatea.” I hated that saying her name made my skin burn with desire, desire that could never be satiated.
Whatever I said now wouldn’t matter anyway. I’d hurt her and abandoned her. She’d never want me, whether or not Cherrington Downs and its cattle business life was part of the equation.
Lucky Eliza had experienced my twisted version of the Golden Rule: Don’t Do Unto Others As She Had Done Unto You.
I’d never forget the forlorn look on her face as I lifted off in the chopper and left her on the cliff. I’d replayed every minute I’d spent with her over and over on a loop in my head ever since I got back home. The worst was the memory of lying in that so-called guest cottage larger than Cherrington Downs’s bunk house for the station-hands. I’d lain there, trying to sleep when she was in the cottage next door, gorgeous and alone, and so desirable, and yet so untouchable. It killed me, wanting her so much I could give a primal scream right now even at the memory of it.
“If she’s that great, why don’t you call her up?” Hollis said. “I want to talk to her. Can I talk?”
The mashed potatoes on my plate got even drier.
“I can’t call her.”
“Why not, Uncle Henry? If she’s nice, she wants to talk to you.”
Because she’s nice she doesn’t want to talk to me, I responded silently.
“Leave Uncle Henry alone. He’ll sort it out.”
Sort it out, eh. Over the past weeks, I’d sorted and sorted myself thin. I’d come up with exactly one solution. Up until this meal, seeing Matilda and Hollis and how good Frank had it, I hadn’t let myself consider following up on it. If she’s nice, she wants to talk to you, the little voice said.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the contacts, ignoring what a phone-hypocrite I was to use it at the table. There, I found the name: Dr. David Smith, and his number.
I’d practiced the phrasing a thousand times, asking him to share Eliza Galatea’s dad’s contact information with me, knowing I’d sound unprofessional and possibly bang-on crazy.
But, I’d been considered crazy by Americans for over a full week, and nothing bad had come of it, so I really shouldn’t get too worried about that.
“I’m going to make a call,” I said, excusing myself from the table.
But before I could dial, my phone rang.
“Henry Lyon? This is Dr. David Smith.”
Dr. Smith. I bobbled the phone and had to grab it before it dropped.
“Doctor. How you going? It’s mighty early there in California. Must be four a.m.” It was after eight at night here, and I knew the time difference to be sixteen or seventeen hours.
At the word California, all the eyes of Frank and family were upon me, and I waved them away and walked out into the stable yard for some privacy.
“You know a day starts early in this business.”
“Speaking of business, how’s it looking for ours?”
“Extremely well. Every time I tell another rancher about your breed with a perfectly marbled beef that can still subsist on high elevation vegetation and not the oat mash and beer the Japanese feed them to create Wagyu, their eyes light up and they ask where they can get the breeding material. You’re sitting on a gold mine. Aussie beef is about to turn the steak-eating market on its ear.”
“Exactly what I want to hear.” I meant that truly, but he’d also emailed similar sentiments, so they weren’t news. Why was he calling? There might be a follow-up but. “Did you want me to do something else to make these deals?”
“Actually, ah,” he was hemming and hawing, which raised my worries. “This call isn’t business. I’m not really even sure how I ended up being the emissary for this message.”
What message? I leaned against my old ute to steady myself, like my body knew something big was coming at me before my brain did.
“I got a call late last night.”
“Okay.” This could be good or bad news. I braced myself against my Toyota Hilux, its steel body frame barely enough to keep me upright. Tremors of something big from this call shook me through and through.
“It was from a young woman I don’t recall ever meeting, though I know her father well. Good cattle man.”
I planted my feet in the dirt hard. Let it be her. Let it be Eliza.
“She asked for me to give you her phone number, but I thought I’d check with you first. Do I need to tell you her name?”
He did not.
***
Seventy-two of the longest hours of my life later, even longer than the hours it had taken me to stumble my way from the rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona to the seediest spot in California’s biggest city, the Cherrington Downs helicopter touched down on its landing pad behind the stables, spooking all the horses, as it always did.
In all my days, I’d never looked forward to its landing more.
Seventy-two was twice as many hours as it should have taken to get Eliza here to my side once she’d said yes, she’d come to Cherrington Downs. Jonno was slipping. Maybe I’d have to use that harpy Monique-Noelle’s Three Strikes method on him.
The helicopter spun a couple of times, and then it touched down on the flat spot west of the stables. My breath lodged in my throat, and my heart beat faster than that of a trapped rabbit.
Jonno jumped out and came around to unlatch the passenger door. Out tumbled a woozy but gorgeous brunette, whose blue eyes had captured me prisoner two months ago and never for a second let me go.
My heart went from rabbit speed to hummingbird. Everything about Eliza shot my every cell full of adrenaline. I couldn’t believe she was here. Here, at my station, with that incredible smile on her face. She let me take her hand and help her out of earshot of the noisy machine, her soft skin’s thrill rushing through me, making me ache for more of that contact, more of her, in the hours and—hopefully—days and weeks to come.
“So, you’ve flown over it now. What do you think of Cherrington Downs? You’ve seen it from the sky.” I led her away from the still-pounding sound of the chopper motor. “I would’ve come to pick you up myself, but it’s a two-seater, and Jonno’s the one with the current chopper pilot’s license.”
Plus, I’d had several things I wanted to personally prepare before Eliza arrived.
“Cherrington Downs is incredible. All my life I thought the Australian ranches I’d seen in films were nothing more than movie sets. But this is real, it’s…” She sighed, and a spot deep in my chest cavity unwound three knots. She liked the place—loved it.
This was why Eliza was here, and not any other girl in the world.
“You’re not put off by how far it is from…anything else?” We rounded the vegetable garden, passed the trout pond and made our way up the grassy hill to where the house sat overlooking the outbuildings. I wondered if she’d like its white paint and black shutters, or whether a wraparound porch appealed to her. Suddenly, I cared what she thought about all the details of the station house.
“Oh, brother. That’s the best thing about it, if you ask me.” She heaved a sigh. “Before my job on San Nouveau, can you even imagine how sick of the city I was? Smog and noise were the two main components of being outdoors in L.A. That was a big reason I said yes to working for Monique-Noelle on San Nouveau, even though she was the Third-Worst Person Alive.”
“There’s a lot of quiet on San Nouveau, and no air pollution.” The whole Mo-No situation started to make a little more sense. She’d longed to be outdoors. “Good golf course, too.”
“Terrible golf course!” she cried. “The worst!”
“I’ll give you that. It rivals my stable yard in terribleness.”
“Tell me, though. How did Jonno get this helicopter to San Nouveau? No way did it cross the Pacific. That’s suicide.”
“That? It wasn’t ours. He just arranged to rent one.” I couldn’t wait to show her the entire place, but first, I should be a little bit hospitable. She’d been on a long journey. “You tired?”
“Not at all. I’m dying to see your ranch. Er, station.” At the word station, a deep blush reddened her cheeks, as if she was remembering the confusion the term had caused between us for several days. “I want to see every acre.”
“That could take a while. There are twelve thousand—”
“Acres?” she gasped. “Head of cattle?”
“—square kilometers.”
At this she looked like she might faint.
“Whoa. I thought the Circle G was huge with a thousand acres and cattle.”
Cherrington Downs was the last privately held station in the Victorian Alps, the rest of them being bought out and absorbed by the national forest and national park systems. When grazing was temporarily outlawed thirty years ago, somehow Cherrington Downs had its rights grandfathered in—probably due to lobbying by my grandfather, based on his insistence that his research into lower grazing acreage needs would eventually pan out. He could be convincing.
I’d explain all this to Eliza later, at leisure. While we lay on our backs with a picnic and a vast view of the stars above, her head resting in the crook of my shoulder, her body curled next to my side.
Well, a guy could fantasize, anyway.
“You look hot.” I reached for her jacket, and when she laughed nervously, it dawned on me that my words could be taken another way. “I, uh, meant that literally.”
Of course I meant it in the slang as well.
She removed her jacket, and her long hair tumbled down over her shoulders like a waterfall, and I knew exactly where I wanted to take her first on the station today—whether it was jumping the gun or not. I’d waited six weeks, plus seventy-two agonizing hours to be in her presence again, and I wasn’t going to let the sun set without taking action like I should have done before I left that blasted rock off the California coast at Christmastime.
“Do you want to see your bed?” Oh, great. Now I was throwing out bedroom references, too. How smooth could I get? Why didn’t I just… never mind. “We’ll tour the house, then I have some places upcountry I’d like you to see if you’re not too worn out from traveling.”
I let my eyes linger on her curvaceous, tall figure a little longer than was proper. This girl had every amazing, gorgeous quality a girl could possibly have. I knew she wasn’t perfect. But she was perfect—for me. When she’d agreed to drop everything and come to Cherrington Downs the minute I’d called her, I started believing she might feel the same, that she’d let my abandonment of her be forgotten, or at least forgiven.
Instead of giving him permission to tell her my number, I’d just taken Eliza’s from David Smith. And no, I hadn’t waited a full minute to make that call.
Taking her by the hand, I led her inside.
“This is your house? How many people live here?”
“Just me. It used to be my granddad’s back when.” It had history, if not proximity to the fast life so many girls clamored for. “It’s not Pickering Place, mind you, but it has some amenities, considering how far we are out of the city.”
I led her all through the downstairs, popping open doors, giving her a glimpse of the place.
“It’s not Pickering Place. It’s…bigger.” Wonder laced her words. She ran her fingertips along the wood trim of the wall, and looked a lot like she had when she rode that black horse Trafalgar—like she was in love. “It’s got more rooms than any other house I’ve ever seen.”
Well, there was that. Cherrington Downs’s main house had eleven bedrooms: one for each of my granddad’s kids, plus one for him and grandma. The others had left the cattle business and gone toward Melbourne or Adelaide or the Gold Coast. My dad had let the station seep into his bones and built a house of his own down the way, where Frank lived now.
“When do I meet your brother and his family?” she asked, seeing a photo of Matilda and Hollis I’d taped to the refrigerator in the kitchen as we passed through. For the first time, I was really glad I’d gone to the trouble of remodeling it two years ago. It didn’t have a hand pump at the sink anymore, like from Granddad’s day. Now it had everything from granite countertops to apron sinks to a built-in ice machine.
Georgia had insisted I’d never get a wife to come here without it.
But Eliza had come.
“That’s Matilda and Hollis. Later on, I’ll introduce you to my brother Frank and his family. They live down the road. His wife Georgia is probably the most patient woman you’ll ever meet.”
“You mean to put up with your brother?”
“Exactly.”
See, this woman could read my thoughts.
I wasn’t usually nervous around women, but my fingers wouldn’t stop tapping against my thigh. They were itching to take her hand, to feel the strands of her hair between my fingertips, to caress her skin.
“How’s Sylvie?”
“Her father has her. He’s remarried. She’ll be fine.”
“You’re relieved, I guess.”
“That little girl deserves to be loved.”
As did this one, I thought, looking over at Eliza, with her amazing blue eyes that made me think of fathomless sapphire pools I’d like to swim in forever and ever. My lips itched. I didn’t know how long I could hold out before kissing her again.
I took her upstairs to the room where she’d be staying and showed her the bed, but then my thoughts started churning about all kinds of things that our future might hold. They were all beautiful.
Whoa, pardner. Slow things down. She hasn’t said yes to anything yet, except a visit to the station.
However, the way she was looking at me right now, with her chin down and looking up at me through half-lidded eyes fringed with the darkest lashes of all time, I was reading the word yes coming off her in every language.
She wanted me.
I coughed, discombobulated by her beauty and by the sheer pheromones coming off her. She made me feel like a boy. And a man. And everything in between.
I wasn’t going to do anything to cheapen her. I was going to do everything right this time.
“You’ll have the run of the house, since it’d be better if I took a flop in the bunkhouse while you stay.” If I had to sleep in the room next to her—not even separated by being in different guest cottages—I couldn’t vouch for what I’d do. Not when I’d already tasted that burning kiss.
“Gypsy is down at the stables. Would you like to meet her? I had Jonno saddle Valiant for you, if you’re up for a ride.”
We descended the staircase, and went outside to the stables near where she’d landed a half-hour before.
“Only if you’ll show me the station—which you own.” She colored saying this. “I am such a dimwit, you know.”
“Never. I should have explained everything to you more clearly.” We came downstairs and out into the burning late-summer sun. “But I did laugh when you told Monique-Noelle I owned the bus station.”
I reached for her hand her fingers interlaced with mine, like an automatic reaction. The contact sent an electric tremor up my arm.
“Yeah, about that.” Her embarrassed smile might be my favorite, it was so cute. “I’m sorry I assumed you were…er…”
“Barking mad?”
A new smile broke out across her face, like the dawn—bright and rosy. It sent me into the stratosphere. From the looks of things, Eliza wasn’t angry with me after all, and she hadn’t agreed to this trip just so she could have a yarn face to face and tear me to pieces for leaving her stranded on that island.
If she wasn’t holding a grudge against me, maybe I should let it go against myself, too.
We walked into the dim air of the stable, and after our eyes adjusted we found where Gypsy and Valiant stood saddled and waiting.
“It smells so good in here.” She inhaled deeply and shut her eyes. “The smell makes me feel like I’m home and not however many thousand miles away.”
It could be your home, I wanted to blurt like a besotted fool.
“Thank Jonno for getting this ready, would you?” Eliza examined Valiant. “I could have done the saddling and prepping myself, you know. Jonno didn’t have to.”
I knew that. It was yet another thing I liked about her.
“He really is useful sometimes. Even if it does take him a full three days to get you here. I mean, it’s only an ocean away. Shouldn’t take three full days.”
She introduced herself to Valiant, rubbing his neck and talking softly to him. Smart girl. Every single thing she did—magic, casting a web of spells over me so thick I might never escape, whether she wanted me to or not.
“Now you’re the Horse Whisperer.”
“Keep it coming with the movie references, pal.”
“I’ve got plenty more.” I would have lifted her onto Valiant, but she didn’t need any help. She took to it like a frog to water, and we headed out onto the flat behind the stable before heading into the foothills.
“There’s something I want to show you.”
“Just one thing? But I seriously want to see the whole ranch. I mean, station.”
“That could take several days. Cherrington Downs is the eighth largest station in Australia.”
“I’ve got several days.” She shot me a flirtatious look. My skin tingled. I wanted her for more than several days. I’d spent the last seventy-two hours making plans of how to let her know just that. “Tell me, is this place called the Alps?”
“The Victorian Alps. Melbourne is in the state of Victoria. These mountains are nothing like the European Alps, but they’ll do for me.”
“That suddenly makes a lot of things clear.” She shook her head again, with that cute, embarrassed smile, and I fell for her harder with every step of our horses.
Riding along, we picked our way through some brushy area, up over the rise of the first hill. She took them like they were nothing at all, and so I kept pulling her higher, until we came to a wider place where we could ride side by side for a fair bit.
“I hope by the end of the day everything is clear, Eliza, and all the mysteries are solved—from why is the sky blue, to how much chocolate should I put on my ice cream sundae. You will be a living, breathing internet search engine.”
“Henry.” Her laugh rang high into the treetops like the call of a sweet bird, and I wanted to hear it again and again. “No, I meant to ask, why am I here?”
“Besides the fact I didn’t want to go another day without seeing your gorgeous blue eyes?” I glanced over at her and watched to see how she’d take this, gauging what kind of a reaction my forwardness with her would get.
“You think my eyes are gorgeous?” She blinked a few seconds, as if taking in the compliment and then refocusing on her questions. Good, I’d made an inroad, I could tell. I had to get her to know I was serious about her.
“Come on, that’s another thing that should be pretty obvious by now.”
“It took a lot of courage for me to get in touch with Dr. Smith, since I didn’t know how you’d react, considering what went down on San Nouveau.”
“Are you talking about that mind-blowing pash we shared on the cliff by the breakers?” Would she know that a pash was a make-out? As far as I was concerned, our kiss was the main thing that went down on San Nouveau. I’d like to recreate that event as soon as possible. “Because if that was the event you had in mind…”
“No. I mean, while I held you hostage, your family had to be worrying about you. I didn’t think about them or their feelings. They probably hate me.”
“Hate you! Ha. Hardly. You rescued me from the bus stop.” And she hadn’t even known they existed, assuming I was a vagrant of some kind, penniless and devoid of family connections. “They were furious with me, but they’ll get over it, especially once they’ve met you.”
“And that will be…when?” She sounded nervous.
“After I’ve had you to myself for a while.” I pulled Gypsy to the side to avoid getting a tree branch in my face. It put me closer to Eliza, and I reached over and ran the back of my fingers down the soft skin of her arm. What if I pulled her off Valiant’s saddle and we shared this one instead? “Besides, they weren’t that upset. They’re used to my being gone for long stretches at a time with no contact.”
“My dad does that.” The harsh realities of the cattle grazing life didn’t seem like they fazed her. Again, points for Eliza.
“This is breathtaking,” she said as we came up over the next rise and the whole expanse of the station came into view. Trees and mountaintops stretched as far as the eye could see. The house itself was near the summit, but you had to ride up another thousand feet to get the full effect. Chills went up my spine, seeing how much she appreciated what I considered to be the best view in all the world. “You come up here every day? I would. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re the beauty, Eliza.” She was looking more and more perfect to me with every passing moment.
She laughed, saying, “You probably bring all the girls here so they can have their Pemberley moment.” Another movie reference. We were starting to have a thing between us that was our thing. Luckily, Frank’s wife had forced us all to watch Jane Austen a few months back so I caught it, knowing that a girl saw a beautiful piece of property owned by a guy she wasn’t sure she liked, and then her doubts fled.
Was Eliza having a Pemberley moment as she overlooked the Alpine Ash forests of Cherrington Downs? My stomach did a full-on gallop and took a steeplechase hedge at the thought of her deciding I was all right and a good catch.
“Actually, you’re the first girl I’ve brought here.”
Eliza whipped around, looking at me as if she didn’t believe me. But it was true. And the place I was taking her next, I’d never brought anyone outside the family to see, not even Jonno.
“Why me?”
“I should think that, too, should be more than obvious.”
Color rushed up into her face. She stared at me and then pressed her heels into Valiant’s flanks. I followed suit, and I led her down the rise to a stand of close trees that hid a ravine. I’ll admit I rode a little behind her part of the way up here so I could take a nice long gander at the length of those legs of hers. Eliza did have great legs.
“Now I have a question of my own. Why’d you say yes when I called?” I had to turn it around on her—before I went blabbing on about any feelings I might be having for her. I didn’t want to put her in an awkward situation if she wasn’t feeling it. She looked like she was feeling it, but I needed to be smart. Eliza frankly held a lot of power over me at this point. She could hurt me pretty badly. I had to be the tiniest bit careful.
“It all happened so fast. You called, and I was on a plane before I knew it.”
“So you leaped before you looked. Any regrets?”
“None yet.” A sparkle lit the sapphire of her eyes. I reached out and touched her again, my fingers testing the silken strands of her hair. “But you still didn’t tell me why I’m here.”
All in good time.
We hit the next descent in the trail. Ahead a hundred meters or so, I spotted the little notch between the hills that led to the place few had seen since the Lyon family took over Cherrington Downs in the 1870s, a secret location not even visible on satellite maps. It was where my dad had proposed to my mom—and where Frank had begged Georgia to marry him.
The waterfall.
And, throwing caution to the wind, I was taking Eliza there, after she’d been in my presence for less than three hours out of the last two months.
It might make me the biggest, rashest fool on the Australian continent, but I didn’t care. There was a fair chance she’d reject me, but despite that fact, I wasn’t going to let a chance slip away. If she didn’t say yes to me today, I’d bring her up here again and again until I wore her down with my ardent love.
Plus, as another incentive, if we were married, I wouldn’t have to go backing out of her bedroom in a cold sweat and sleep in the bunkhouse eating my heart out every night. In fact, my mind sped, maybe we could arrange for a way to put me out of my misery, something like an elopement while we waited for the big wedding I imagined her mother dreamed of for her only daughter.
Yeah, I needed to cool my jets. Take things fast, but still do them right by Eliza and her family. Family mattered—to both of us.
Our trail paralleled a streambed, which babbled and splashed over time-worn smooth rocks. Beside it, the air was cooler. Soon we’d be enclosed by the trees.
“So, Eliza. You claim you’ve shot a rattlesnake from horseback.”
The notch closed in over us, the tree branches creating a bower of shade and seclusion. It felt like we were the only two people on earth.
“Why? Is there one?” She didn’t seem that alarmed. Cool. “And that depends. With a pistol or a rifle? I’m better with a .22 rifle than with a pistol.”
“That, my sweet Eliza, is the answer to the question of why you are here.”
“Because I can take care of my own problems, or because I can shoot a rattlesnake that’s threatening a baby calf?”
“Yes to both. And because of fish dinners for homeless men, and Channel Foxes, and Sylvie and Chachi, and freshly-bought socks for a stranger.” Not to mention the burning sensation her lips gave mine—actually, they were burning now in anticipation.
“I’m here because of clean socks.” Her laugh rose up again, but this time it was muffled by the sheer number of trees surrounding us. “Do you know how much I love socks right now?”
Here, the tree-flanked trail ended, and we entered the little hollow, where the stream drizzled over an embankment, and trees gave way to a dark, calm pool that I knew better than any other body of water on earth. At its far side, a waterfall splashed into it, rippling its surface near the entry point.
“Oh, Henry. It’s gorgeous!” On her lips, my name sounded regal. I’d like to hear her say it again and again. “I would never have guessed this pool was here. And what kind of trees are these? Do I smell eucalyptus? They had these on the California coast. I used to take a walk on this one street when I was at UCLA and just breathe the air. They made me forget I was also breathing the smog.”
She took Valiant’s reins, pulling him up to a halt. It looked like she was getting ready to dismount, but she couldn’t until we went a little higher.
“Don’t stop riding yet. Keep a-coming.”
“But it’s hot out, and Valiant could use a drink, right?”
Always thinking of others. That was yet another reason why Eliza Galatea was here at this place where I’d never bring another woman.
“Are you up for a swim?”
“That sounds excellent.”
Gypsy led us up a rocky spillway beside the waterfall. Gypsy and Valiant knew the area and were sure-footed even on the slick ground beside where the waterfall splashed and sprayed. I trusted them both. At the top, I dismounted, and then I helped Eliza to the ground, not because she needed it, but because I wanted to hold her in my arms as she came down.
She didn’t resist. In fact, she stepped closer and almost melted into my arms. I pressed her to me. She smelled like some combination of fruit and floral, the same way as when I’d held her in my arms on that cliff the first day I’d set foot on the island with her. She’d been so frail in that moment, I’d just wanted to enfold her and make her safe.
But now, I could see all her strengths. She was a willow branch, strong. She’d bend but never break. With that understanding of her, I still wanted to hold her now. And later today. And tomorrow. And forever.
“Come this way.” With our fingers interlaced, I guided her to the exact place. It was a rock that protruded out into the sun above the pool, just beside the waterfall. Beside it, the river fell in ripples and splashes, down into the green depths below. I’d jumped from here ten thousand times.
I was ready to jump again.
“We never really got around to answering that burning question, did we,” I said. The spray of the waterfall misted against my neck and face. A hot day like today, I would normally dive right in to cool off, but I liked the heat—at least the heat escalating between Eliza and me. That I liked a lot.
“What question is that?” she asked, nuzzling up against me, and I lost all memory of any questions that might have remained.
I ventured to move my hands from her hips to the place where her waist curved in. She relaxed her back up against my torso. Her height fit so nicely with mine. We stood just staring at the water.
“Mm. I don’t know.” I knew she had to be feeling the chemistry brewing between us as much as I was, so thick I could cut it with a machete. “All I have in this moment is a slew of answers.”
They were all Eliza, Eliza, Eliza.
“Now I remember the burning question,” she said, breathy and low, and leading me to believe even more that the chemistry was mutual here. “It was, why did you ask me to come? You haven’t answered. It’s still burning there.”
She turned around and let me wrap my arms around her.
“Burning, huh?” I gazed down at her lips now. “Don’t ask me to be the fireman. I’m planning on being more of an arsonist.”
Eliza’s sapphire eyes looked up into mine, and the sparks turned to a conflagration. I had to have her kiss, and soon. I leaned in to take it, but stopped myself, seeing cloud in her face.
She gulped and looked at the ground.
“Why me, Henry? I’m nothing.”
“Nothing!”
“By that I mean, I’m homeless, unemployed, and can’t even finish my Ph.D. I’m…dust.”
“Those are all words that would describe me the day we met.”
She grimaced.
“Not truthfully. It was just what I assumed at the time.” Our eyes met again, and hers held an apology. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I curled my fingers and ran the backs of them down her cheek. Her skin was soft like the velvet of Gypsy’s nose, an unflattering comparison for some girls, perhaps, but one Eliza might appreciate. Which made me appreciate her all the more. “But you’re describing yourself by things that don’t matter.”
“I worked so hard for that doctorate, and it seemed to have slipped away, like sand through my fingers.”
“If a fancy degree matters to you, we have a few good schools in Melbourne that’d take you in a heartbeat.” This offer presumed she’d be staying here long-term. I was all about shortening up timelines today. “It’s a drive, but we could make it work.”
“We could?” Her question came a little breathy. I was having an effect. And better yet, she hadn’t been taken off guard by my hint that I’d love to have her stay on at Cherrington Downs for good, if she’d have me.
“Sure. Unless you’d rather just be done with all that school and spend all your time doing this instead.”
I’d waited long enough; I took her mouth with mine, sinking into the deliciousness of Eliza. Her mouth responded with tentativeness at first, but soon, she returned my kiss with the level of passion I’d had building in me for weeks and months, ever since I met this incredible girl. I gave her the kiss of my life, and she gave one back. Luscious, tender, a fresh sweetness with every taste of her lips.
The sun pressed hot against our skin and the sound of the waterfall rushed below, and I was the kiss.
All I was was this kiss. All I wanted was this woman, this moment, this world. Her body pressed against mine, the earth spinning just for us.
She pulled the sugar of her mouth away, and I caught my breath. I felt her chest rise and fall against mine as she found her breath as well.
“I can hear my blood rushing in my ears,” she said. “You make my heart race.”
It had happened, I’d brought the right girl to this place. Every synapse in my nervous system knew it too. Maybe I was moving things along quickly, but she merited it.
“That kiss was legend.” I pressed my forehead against hers, and we leaned up against a rocky wall, finding a bit of shade.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “It made me forget all about wanting a doctorate, or anything else. Ever.”
“A mind-emptying kiss.” I pulled her into my arms again, and she leaned her head up against my chest. Again, something about how she fit against me was right. So right. A bird sang in one of the eucalyptus trees, and Eliza expelled a long sigh, melting against me.
I could stay here in this moment forever.
“First,” she said, “it was your smile.”
In the last several minutes I hadn’t asked the question, not even mentally, about what made her get on the plane, come across the ocean when I called her up, but here she was answering it.
“My smile. Is that right?”
“I’ve always been a sucker for great teeth.”
“Thank you, Dr. Mortensen, and your orthodontic wonders.”
She thanked Dr. Mortensen, too, and then raised an eyebrow. “Then it was your gait.”
“My gate?”
“The way you walked.” Oh, that gait. “Like you were a man who knew horses.”
“And as a rancher’s daughter…”
“I would notice.” She offered me a shrug that said naturally. “Even if you seemed like someone who stumbled around in a bus station taking dried food from tour bus drivers and babbled about coyotes and girls named Lori who picked up hitchhikers.”
“Hey,” I protested a moment, but said, “I guess that’s fair. I probably did seem crazy, being that hungry and discombobulated. In fact, I can’t believe you even let me walk up to you. You should have pepper-sprayed me.”
“It crossed my mind. But then…the teeth.”
“See? You’re a good person, kind and caring. It’s what made you irresistible.”
“Oh, so I’m irresistible now?”
“Much like myself.”
“So that’s how it is?” She followed this with an irresistible bat of her eyelashes that made my heart do a flip into my stomach and back. She really did have the most gorgeous eyes.
“Exactly. And I’m up for hearing all the reasons why I’m impossible to resist. Is there anything else, after the orthodontics and the fetching cowboy walk?”
“Oh, you mean besides the way you charmed the movie stars at the worst movie adaptation of all time, or the fact that you treated Monique-Noelle nicely even though she’s subhuman? Or do you mean besides your willingness to be game for anything, even if it might risk humiliation, or perhaps how well you handle yourself in the rough on a golf course? Besides those things?”
“Sure. Besides those.” I could listen to her list things she liked about me all day long, even though the sun beat down on us and the water beckoned below. “Was it my hot Aussie accent? I hear American girls lose their inhibitions when Australian guys start to speak.”
Or maybe that was just my fantasy, wishful thinking that it could occur in this moment, with Eliza in my arms.
“That’s just it.”
“What is?”
Her head went back and she laughed, up into the trees again, like a happy bird’s lilt.
“Don’t you see? I only came to your accent after all the other things that attracted me to you. It goes against the very thesis the committee approved.”
“The committee?”
“My Ph.D. committee. They rejected three very good ideas—to help the deaf or speech-impaired, as well as an idea to rescue a dying aboriginal language. Then, then they approved a study to prove that American women are highly susceptible to a man with an Australian accent.”
“We don’t need university research to test how that works. We can handle that right here on Cherrington Downs Station. I’ll be the professor, you be the test subject. This intrigues me.” I shifted into a fake news reporter voice. “Just how susceptible is Eliza Galatea? Can the hot Australian cowboy entrance her even now, as her approved topic suggested?” That would be pure gold, if it were the case. “What words should the Aussie say to test this theory on the chosen subject? Should I quote Shakespeare, or perhaps a good movie? Should I ask you to—”
She stopped me with another kiss, one that took me to not just the Grand Canyon, but to all Seven Natural Wonders of the World. By the time she finished, I was ready to name her kiss as the Eighth.
“So, I take it from your kiss that it worked.”
“There are too many variables.” She laughed. “It can’t be a valid study.”
“Variables like what?”
“Like the inner essence that is you, Henry.”
“Me.” I’d like to hear more on this subject. My personal committee of one approves this research topic.
“Well, even while all the women at the red carpet or on the golf course were panting and saying they loved a man with an Aussie accent and would have thrown themselves at you in a heartbeat, and Mo-No, too—except the accent had to be accompanied by a huge bank account to make that woman powerless against the accent’s charms—I guess I either didn’t hear it or I was too busy falling for every single other thing about you to get caught up in your accent.”
“Really. Every single thing?”
“Including how you calmed me beside the breakers and let me see their beauty for the first time.”
“I notice you’re not the least bit shaky here overlooking the waterfall.” It splashed and rumbled beside us, its din only a fraction as loud as the ocean at San Nouveau, but she wasn’t exhibiting any nerves.
“I guess you cured me.”
“Is that so?” I slid my arms from around Eliza’s waist and grasped her hand, leading her toward the edge of the drop-off. I bent over and tugged off my boots. “So, with that said, are you afraid to jump?”
“Jump? Like off this ledge?” As she protested, I pulled off her boots, too. “Into that?”
I couldn’t tell whether her voice was quavering, even though I listened hard for any sign of nerves.
“Sure.” Dropping the syllable casually, I hoped she’d let herself try this new thing.
She tiptoed to the edge and looked over at the pool below, its deep green waters churning where the waterfall entered it, but calm and dark farther out, including beneath the overhang where we stood.
Worry crossed her face. “Have you done it before? It’s not shallow here?”
“A thousand times.”
The cloud of worry passed, and the blue of her eyes sparkled. “Then I’m in.”
I stepped forward and pressed her hand in my grasp. She took a sidelong look at me, one side of her smile lifting into a grin.
And then we jumped.
Together our bodies splashed into the cool water below. When she came up, she wiped the water from her eyes and pushed her long hair back, and I’d never seen anything so gorgeous in my life as this woman. Then she swam into my arms, and wrapped herself around me, her lips a millimeter from mine, her warm breath caressing my skin.
Eliza, stunningly beautiful and willing to take a shot at a bear from horseback, had flown thousands of miles when I beckoned, faced her fear of heights and leapt into a dark pool with me, at the best place in the world.
Now with her soft curves pressed up against me, it was almost like when I was hanging onto that cliff-side at the Grand Canyon to save my own life: I knew I never wanted to let go.
“I’m so into you, Eliza.”
“I can’t imagine ever being away from you again.”
Excellent. That could be arranged.
My arms encircled her waist as we floated in the cool of the pool. Later, I had several things to ask her, along the lines of what my dad had asked my mom, and my brother his wife, at this place. I had a pretty good idea of how she’d answer, considering the way her lips caressed the skin of my neck, and the rush of breath that she expelled when I ran my arms up and down her back. Yeah, there were a lot more things to say and do with Eliza, soon-to-be Lyon.
“I’m ready to do that research,” I said for now. “Shall we see what effect I can have on you as my test subject?”
“Okay, cowboy. Talk Aussie to me.”