Helpless against it, almost panic-stricken by the sheer force of her response, Copper clutched at Mal’s shirt as if trying to anchor herself to the solid security of his body. The dust and the light, the very earth beneath her feet had vanished, leaving her weightless, adrift in a world.where nothing existed but Mal-the taste of his mouth, the touch of his hands and the searing intensity of his kiss.
Her body was pounding, her head whirling, and when Mal let go of her face to gather her more closely into his arms she didn’t even think to protest. Instead her fingers released their frantic grip on his shirt and crept around his waist, spreading over his back as if impelled by a force of their own.
Their kisses were deep, breathless, almost desperate as the doubts and confusion of the last two weeks swirled away, and all that mattered was the feel of Mal’s hands, hard and possessive against her, and his taut male strength, gloriously real again after so many years of mere memories. Copper was lost, but she didn’t care. She cared only that his arms were around her and that he was kissing her and that she never wanted him to let her go.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Mal? Are you-?’ Brett’s voice broke through the dizzying pleasure that had them in its thrall. It stopped abruptly as he took in the scene. ‘Uh-oh!’ he said, and, even lost in a different world as she was, Copper could hear him grinning.
Mal didn’t even tense. Without haste, he lifted his head and looked at his brother. ‘What is it?’ he asked, with not so much as a tremor in his voice.
Copper, dazed and shaken, almost fell as he made to release her, and if he hadn’t tightened one arm around her once more she was sure that she would simply have collapsed in a heap on the track. Her legs were trembling uncontrollably and her cheeks burned. She couldn’t have spoken if she had tried.
‘I was coming to see if you were ready for a beer,’ said Brett, still grinning broadly. ‘But I can see that you’re busy!’
‘We were until you interrupted us,’ said Mal. How could he sound so normal? Copper’s heart was pounding, her head spinning, her body aroused and gasping for air, and he wasn’t even out of breath!
Brett refused to take the hint. ‘I thought it was my job to kiss the housekeepers,’ he said, pretending to sound aggrieved.
‘Not this housekeeper.’ Mal glanced down at Copper, who was still struggling to adjust to the abrupt return to reality. ‘This one’s mine.’
He looked back at his brother and his voice held a distinct note of warning. ‘Copper’s going to marry me, so you’ll just have to count her as the one that got away.’
‘I knew it!’ Brett gave a shout of laughter and bounded forward to slap his brother on the shoulder and sweep Copper into an exuberant hug. ‘I knew it! Mal thinks I can’t read that poker face of his, but I could tell how he felt about you right from the start!’
‘Really?’ she croaked. When he set her back down on the ground, her knees were so weak that she clutched instinctively at Mal, who drew her back against the hard security of his body.
‘I didn’t realise you were so observant, Brett,’ he said, and Copper wondered if the sarcastic edge was as obvious to Brett as it was to her.
Apparently not. Brett was nodding vigorously. ‘I notice more than you think. You pretended to ignore each other but I could tell by the way you watched each other when you thought the other wasn’t looking that it was real love!’
‘What would you know about real love?’ asked Mal, not even bothering to hide the edge to his voice this time.
‘Not much,’ his brother admitted. ‘But I can recognise it when I see it all right, and I think you’re both lucky.’ The blue eyes sobered briefly. ‘Very lucky,’ he added seriously, and then grinned. ‘Come on, let’s celebrate!’
‘I-‘ Copper was appalled to hear the squeak that came out when she opened her mouth, and cleared her throat in a desperate attempt to pull herself together. She couldn’t stand here clutching Mal for ever. ‘I’d better go and fetch Megan.’ She tried again, not that she sounded much better second time around. But how could she be expected to sound normal when the world was still rocking around her and that wonderful, glorious, heart-stopping kiss was still strumming over her skin?
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Mal easily.
‘I’ll go and make sure the beer’s cold,’ Brett offered. ‘Don’t be too long.’
‘Let’s hope everyone’s as easy to convince as he is,’ muttered Mal as his brother strode off towards the homestead. He looked down at Copper, who was leaning against him and trying to work up the determination to move away. ‘Are you all right now?’
The concern in his voice snapped her upright. The last thing she wanted was for Mal to think that that kiss had meant any more to her than it had to him! ‘I’m fine,’ she said sharply, pushing her hair defensively behind her ears.
She set off down the track at a cracking pace, but as Mal refused to hurry, and she could hardly walk the whole way with him a ridiculous ten paces behind, she was forced to stop until he caught up and then carry on more slowly. The silence was agonising.
‘Fancy Brett thinking we were in love all along!’ said Copper at last, with a nervous laugh.
‘Fancy,’ Mal agreed expressionlessly, and she wished that she had kept her mouth shut.
The evening deepened as they walked back to the homestead with Megan. She skipped along between them, full of how naughty one of Naomi’s toddlers had been and delighted to have been able to look down on his behaviour from the lofty heights of four and a half years. Copper was very aware of Mal, bending his head to listen gravely to his daughter’s chatter. His gentleness with the little girl, somehow unexpected in such a strong, silent man, always wrenched at her heart. He must love
Megan very much if he was prepared to marry a woman he didn’t love just for her sake.
The thought steadied Copper’s nerves. The future might be an unknown quantity, her own feelings for Mal confused and uncertain, but for now it was enough to walk beside him through the hush of evening and smell the dryness of the gums drifting up from the creek.
Megan released their hands to run ahead, legs and arms completely uncoordinated. Stampeding up the steps, she disappeared into the kitchen and let the screen door clatter behind her.
‘Are you going to tell her tonight?’ Copper asked, worry beginning to seep back. Megan was used to having her father to herself; what if she was jealous?
‘I may as well,’ said Mal.
At the bottom of the verandah steps Copper faltered. The brief moment of serenity had dissolved, leaving her once more with all her doubts and uncertainties about the marriage and what it would mean. Once they had told Megan there would be no going back. They were going to walk up these steps and into a new life. For the next three years they would both be playing a part, deceiving everyone except each other.
‘Do you really think we can carry it off?’ she asked, abruptly apprehensive.
Mal had stopped beside her, and he turned now to look down into her troubled eyes. ‘Of course we can,’ he said, taking both her hands in a compelling clasp. ‘I’ll remember Megan and you remember your project, and we’ll make it work together.’ Strength seemed to flow through his hands, and Copper’s fingers curled instinctively around his as she felt herself steadied.
They stood like that in the dusk, and the air between them shortened with a new intensity. Mal’s grip on her hands tightened. ‘It will be all right,’ he promised quietly and slowly, very slowly, he bent his head and touched his lips to hers. The giddy excitement of before dissolved into tenderness and warmth and infinite reassurance, and Copper relaxed, leaning into his kiss for one enticing moment before Mal lifted his head.
Fingers entwined, they looked at each other in silence, as if dazzled by that unexpected glimpse of sweetness, and then Brett was banging through the screen door and calling to them to hurry up.
‘Hey, break it up!’ he ordered after one look at the tableau below him. ‘You’re not alone and the beer’s getting warm!’
Inside, the kitchen seemed very bright, and Copper avoided Mal’s eyes. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. They felt very conspicuous, as if branded with the imprint of his fingers, and her lips tingled still with that brief, sweet kiss. Had he meant to kiss her? Had he been caught unawares, as she had, or had he just been trying to reassure her? Or had he heard Brett coming out from the kitchen and forced himself into his new role?
Megan was puzzled by the atmosphere until Mal took her on his knee and explained that he and Copper were going to be married so that Copper could stay with them all at Birraminda. ‘Would you like that?’
Megan wasn’t prepared to commit herself yet. ‘How long will she stay?’
‘A long time.’
The big blue eyes looked at Copper with unnerving directness. ‘For ever?’ she insisted, and Copper’s smile went a little awry. Her eyes met Mal’s for a fleeting moment over the small head.
‘I hope so, Megan,’ she said. By the time she left Megan would be seven, nearly eight. That would seem like for ever to a child of four.
Megan seemed to take that as the end of the discussion. Copper had somehow envisioned the child rushing into her open arms, but Megan had seen too many strangers come and go to put her trust in anyone immediately. She simply slid off her father’s knee and carried on with what she had been doing before, but when she was tucked up in bed, and Copper bent down to kiss her goodnight, two small arms shot up to cling around her neck.
‘I love you,’ said Megan fervently, and Copper’s eyes stung with tears.
‘I love you too, sweetheart.’
‘I’m glad you’re going to marry Dad,’ she confided in a small voice.
‘So am I,’ whispered Copper, only to look up and see Mal watching them from the doorway.
‘So is Dad,’ he said.
‘I can see him!’ Megan tugged at Copper’s hand, dancing up and down with excitement as she spotted Mal’s lean, rangy figure appear through a door at the other side of the terminal, Brett close behind him. They paused for a moment, searching the crowd with their eyes.
Copper saw Mal at the same moment as Megan. Two weeks she and the child had been in Adelaide and now suddenly he was here, looking as quiet and as cool and as self-contained as ever, and all the careful composure that she had practised had crumbled at the mere sight of him. She wished she could be like Megan, running towards her father, confident in the knowledge that he would reach for her and smile and catch her up in his arms.
Pride forced Copper to follow more decorously, although her heart was hammering and her breathing uneven. ‘Hello,’ she said with a wavering smile as she reached them, and Mal stilled as he saw her at last.
She was wearing a summer dress in a faded yellow print, with a scoop neck and a soft swirl of skirt, and she was carrying a simple straw hat in her hands. Mal drew a long breath. ‘Copper,’ he said, and then stopped as if uncertain how to go on. His voice sounded odd, almost strained as they looked at each other.
Then he shifted Megan into one arm and reached slowly for Copper with the other, drawing her into his side, and she found herself lifting her face quite naturally for his kiss, her own arm creeping instinctively around his waist so that she could cling to him for the reassurance she hadn’t even known she craved until then.
The touch of his mouth was electrifyingly brief. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said as he raised his head.
Did he mean it, or was it just an act for Brett, who was watching them indulgently? ‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said huskily.
In her case it was true. She had brought Megan down to Adelaide over two weeks ago, and she had missed Mal more than she had thought possible. She had got used to him being there, used to the way he’d smile when he came in every evening. There had been times when she had almost forgotten that it was all a pretence.
Sometimes, when Mal had taken her riding along the creek, or when they’d sat on the verandah and watched the moon rise, it had seemed utterly natural that they should be together, talking easily about the day. It was only when their eyes had met unexpectedly that the tension would seep back into the atmosphere and Copper would remember that they weren’t really in love. They were just pretending.
It wasn’t as if Mal hadn’t made his position absolutely clear. Judging by his ostentatious absence every night, Brett had no doubts about their relationship, but Copper had been all too conscious of the fact that she and Mal said a polite goodnight in the corridor and retired to their separate rooms.
‘I suppose he thinks he’s being tactful,’ Mal had sighed that first evening, when Brett had taken himself off with much nodding and winking.
‘You realise he’s expecting us to fall into bed the moment the door closes behind him?’ said Copper. She tried to sound amused but it didn’t quite work.
‘Of course he does.’
Copper fidgeted by the sink. ‘Do you want
do you want to start now? Sharing a room, I mean,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Do you think it’ll look odd if we don’t?’
‘Let Brett think we’re making the most of it while he’s out,’ said Mal, unconcerned. ‘It won’t be long until we’re married, and there’ll be plenty of time for you to get used to sharing then.’
Copper should have felt relieved, but instead was left faintly disgruntled. In the face of such indifference she could hardly insist on dragging him to bed, could she?
During the day there was so much to do that it was easy to forget, but at night the knowledge that Mal didn’t really want her was a constant reminder of the reality of the deal they had made, and as the weeks went by the contrast between the way things seemed and the way they were left Copper feeling increasingly edgy and irritable.
In the end, it was a relief when Mal flew her to Brisbane with Megan and put them on a plane to Adelaide to organise the wedding, but being apart hadn’t done anything to lessen the knot of mingled apprehension and anticipation inside her. It was permanently lodged somewhere in her stomach, and it tightened whenever she thought about Mal. As the prospect of marrying him drew nearer she grew more and more tense, until she felt hollow with nerves that looped and dived inside her. Now, in the busy airport building, she could feel them still, quivering distractingly just beneath her skin.
Things had been so busy at Birraminda that Mal and Brett had left it until now, two days before the wedding, before flying down in the small six-seater plane that sat on the landing strip. When they all flew back together afterwards, Copper would be Mal’s wife. At the thought, a slow shiver snaked down her spine, and her shoulders flexed in response.
‘Hey, Megan!’ called Brett. ‘Come and give me a hug so that Dad can say hello to Copper properly!’
Mal put his daughter down and she ran happily over to her uncle, who swung her up and tickled her until she squealed. Copper hardly heard. Mal had turned back to her, a smile lurking in the depths of his brown eyes, and the gentle trembling inside her erupted into a frantic flutter at the knowledge that he was going to kiss her again.
Only because Brett had reminded him that a brief touch of the lips wasn’t enough for lovers who had been apart for two weeks, she told herself feverishly as Mal took both her hands and tugged her gently towards him. Her head struggled to hang onto the shreds of her pride and be the business-like Copper he expected her to be while her heart urged her to stop fighting the longing that unwound itself inside her. She had promised to act as if she was in love with him, instinct reasoned, and instinct won, allowing her to relax against Mal with a tiny sigh. It was only pretending, after all.