Runaway Wife

“Why are you being so nice?”

All at once Laura’s heart was beating fast. All wrong, in the circumstances.

“You’re a woman on your own, aren’t you?” Evan said reasonably. “I’m the kind of man who likes to lend a hand.”

“Then I’m very grateful.”

“Besides, I’ve had a good time.” He looked at her and that white melting smile. “Laura Graham, you scare me.” Before he could prevent himself he had touched her cheek lightly with his finger. It had the velvety texture of a magnolia.

For a moment they stared into one another’s eyes. Laura felt oddly as if the air might explode. She felt so drawn to him, but she had no doubts that before he’d come to Koomera Crossing he’d been someone very different. She realized that Evan saw her as a vulnerable little rich girl on the run from some demanding boyfriend. She wondered what he would think if she told him the truth.

Dear Reader,

Runaway Wife is the story of a sensitive, gifted young woman who marries for love, only to find that her husband, in public a well-respected surgeon, behind closed doors is an abusive bully who uses any means at his disposal to control her and strip her of all confidence and self-respect. Violence against women is a terrible disease. It knows no boundaries of race, culture or social position.

Our heroine, Laura, finds the courage to make her escape from an intolerable situation. She flees to the Outback where, with the help of an ally, Dr. Sarah Dempsey of the Koomera Crossing Bush Hospital, she sets about taking the first steps toward rehabilitation.

In this remote Outback town her destiny becomes powerfully entwined with that of mystery man Evan Thompson. Evan, too, bears terrible scars. He has come to the Outback to heal. Together Laura and Evan forge the most vital emotional connection of all. They fall in love. But first Laura has to overcome her great battle with past fears and humiliations to lay her trust at Evan’s door. Only in doing so can she begin the process of facing up to her husband and reconstructing her life.

The first book in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries was the Harlequin Superromance novel Sarah’s Baby. Look for Outback Bridegroom and Outback Surrender, coming November and December 2003 in Harlequin Romance.

Runaway Wife

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

SHE never felt safe any more. Not living with Colin. Though she struggled to live normally, the truth was she was frightened all the time. Laura knew all the signs. Emotional and physical exhaustion, trembling limbs, fluttery pulse, sick panic inside her.

After another of Colin’s irrational and unprovoked attacks on her the previous night, she knew she had to go somewhere he would never find her. She had to make a decision and stick with it. She had to reclaim herself, her body, her mind, her drastically fractured self-esteem. Reared gently by loving parents, she found Colin’s behaviour entirely incomprehensible.

Since their big society marriage almost a year before, reality had become a far cry from their public image of glamorous, affluent couple. The thrill of being married had died before it had ever begun. Their marriage was a nightmare. Her dream of a happy partnership, of security, children, shattered.

Her brilliant young husband, a rising star in open-heart surgery, had turned out to be dangerously unstable—though such was his public persona no one who knew him would ever have guessed. His mother, maybe? Laura had always thought Sonia Morcombe recognised her son had a dark side, but instinctively chose to ignore it. It was easier that way. After all Colin was brilliant in every other way. Respected in his profession.

But the much-admired Colin had taught his bride not to love but to fear him. Because of his unpredictable moods, his sexual demands, his never-ending put-downs and profound jealousies, he had lost her love. Most certainly he had lost her most of her friends, subtly isolating her from anyone who was smart and confident and might help her. She saw far less of everyone.

Her music was out. He had forbidden her to continue with her studies. It was his role to “take care” of her, to make all her decisions for her. Clever, manipulative, psychotic Colin. He acted as though it had been ordained from On High he would occupy the central position in her life. She would rely on him for her every want, her every need. He lived to possess her.

After every terrifying outburst of rage, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, he insisted he loved her dearly. The fault lay in her. For a while he’d had her believing she wasn’t a real woman at all. He blamed her pampered upbringing for what she was now. Pathetic. He was sick to death of hearing about her father, the special closeness they shared. It had obviously been an unhealthy fixation.

“Daddy’s little girl!”

The way he said it, so contemptuous and scathing, hurt her terribly but it could not dim her loving memories of her father. Her father, unlike Colin, had been a man who inspired love. Not Colin. He reminded her constantly he was the brilliant one, the man who saved lives. The best she could do was play the piano. What sort of a job was that?

She couldn’t hold a decent conversation. Compared to him she was relatively uneducated. An “unsophisticated nothing” before he married her. A pretty object he’d bought and paid for. If she’d acquired any polish it was through him.

“You’ll never leave me, Laura,” he assured her, his voice deadly quiet. “You wouldn’t know how to function on your own. You need me to survive.”

She knew perfectly well it was a warning. She wished she was stronger, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t had enough life experience. She felt more as if she was fragmenting into little pieces.

There were a good many ways of expressing love. Flinging her up against walls with one violent sweep of the arm wasn’t one of them. Neither was insatiable lovemaking so rough she cried out in pain.

Up until last night Colin had taken good care not to damage her face. The face he “adored”. He’d actually said that. She had a sickening image of him standing over her, expression enraged, as she huddled on the floor, her arms wrapped protectively around her body.

Colin was a slim man but very fit, an inch under six feet. She was a light-boned five-three, her body weight constantly dropping as she lost appetite. She had learned from her beautiful, gracious mother how to be a good cook, a good hostess, a good homemaker, but Colin had never been satisfied with her. There was no way she could please him. Not even in bed, which was crazy, because he couldn’t get enough of her. Sex, too, was a way of controlling her.

“Just as well you’re beautiful, Laura,” he’d taunted her, and she was too hurting, too demoralized to fight back. “Because you’re bloody useless in bed. You don’t know the first thing about pleasing a man. You need to get out a few books. You act so guilty you’re like some frigid little nun.”

She was frigid now. With him. Mentally and emotionally removing herself as much as she possibly could from the act. Was this marriage, or rape? She felt demeaned, defiled, humiliated beyond all telling, her mind bent on strategies for escape even as she lived with the underlying fear he would find her wherever she went.

Laura realized with dread she knew her strange husband better than anyone, outside his mother, who would probably defend her son to the death.

They’d met by chance. Overnight the whole tenor of her quiet, studious life had changed. He had bombarded her with attention: fine restaurants, red roses, chocolates, champagne, books he wanted her to read—he never read them himself. He was so charming, so attentive, so handsome and cultured, and their romance had flowered.

She had realized too late she was simply filling the deep void left by the premature death of her beloved father in a road accident when she was seventeen.

The stage had been set. She’d ceded him power. A virgin still, because she’d wanted to be absolutely sure she was giving herself to someone she loved and who loved her, she’d been ridiculously high-minded. She thought of herself now as having been incredibly naïve.

She’d been studying classical piano—very motivated, self-disciplined, a born musician. Her parents had always been so proud of her and her accomplishment. She’d worked hard to give something back to them.

Her father’s death had been a tremendous blow to her and her mother, striking grief into their souls. She’d been an only child, living a near idyllic existence.

She grew up overnight.

Strangely, her mother had adjusted to their loss much more quickly than she had. Her mother had confided she couldn’t face life being alone. She’d had one happy marriage, a marvellous partner. She desired another. It wasn’t a betrayal of Laura’s father. She had his memory locked away in her heart. It was a recognition of the great joys a happy marriage could bring.

Her mother had eventually found a good, caring man, a fellow guest at a wedding. Six months later her mother had married her sheep farmer and gone to settle with her new husband in the South Island of New Zealand, a most beautiful part of the world.

Laura had stayed behind, though they’d both wanted her to join them. Laura believed the marriage would develop better if her mother and her new husband were left alone. She could always visit.

She’d already graduated from the Conservatorium and started on a Doctorate of Music at the university. She’d taken private pupils as well, for experience and to supplement her income—though her father had left her and her mother well provided for. Her father had been absolutely wonderful. She’d had to struggle to survive without him. And she’d been struggling ever since.

She hadn’t taken a fine man like her father for a husband. She had taken Colin, a man with serious problems, a man who took pleasure in hurting her.

The first time she’d met him was at a concert given by a visiting piano virtuoso, a wonderfully gifted woman who really made the keyboard sound. Colin had remarked in a patronising aside that no woman pianist could ever hope to match a man. She should have told him he’d do better to stick to surgery, where he could play God. Colin, the dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist. She should have been warned then.

As chance or malign fate had it, they’d each attended the concert on their own. She and a girlfriend had had tickets, but her friend had had to cancel at the last minute through sickness. In the intermission Colin had shifted in his seat to seek her opinion, smiling with open pleasure and admiration into her eyes. He had suggested a glass of champagne in the foyer.

It was the first time ever she’d allowed herself to be “picked up”, as she thought of it, but he had seemed eminently respectable, especially when he’d told her he was a doctor from a well-known medical family.

After the performance they had gone on to have coffee at a popular night spot. There she had opened up as she’d never done before. She had been lonely. That was the reason. Still cast as the beloved, indulged only child at twenty-two. Her life, in a sense, had been cloistered.

She recognised it all now. She’d been in a very vulnerable situation, badly missing her mother and father. Colin had seemed so sympathetic. She supposed because of her father she gravitated towards older men. Also Colin loved music, which she had intended to make her profession.

She soon learned Colin had only pretended to love music. In actual fact it meant little to him. A friend had given him the ticket. At a rare loose end, he had decided to go along. He was a man of culture after all. That was the image he liked to project.

Their meeting, he told her exhaustively, had been destiny. She had been there waiting for him to come and carry her off to a new life together. She’d thought he meant they were perfectly matched. She couldn’t count the number of times he’d told her she looked beautiful. Before their marriage.

“Your long gleaming dark hair, your green eyes, white skin! The gentle haunting beauty I admire above all!”

What he had really been saying was he thought she would be not only easy to control, but exquisite to torment.

If only she’d been older. Had known more about life. If only her father had lived. If only her mother hadn’t remarried and gone away. The endless ifs.

She hadn’t been ready for commitment. She’d needed a little time. But Colin had swept her off her feet. He was already in his early thirties, which he perceived as exactly the right age for a man to marry. She was an innocent ten years his junior.

Colin had accomplished their whirlwind engagement within three months. His parents—she’d had to hide from herself the fact she couldn’t like them—seemed to recognise she was the sort of young woman their adored son wanted. Someone he could dominate. Certainly someone who would look up to him and allow herself to be moulded by his hand.

Her mother and stepfather had journeyed from New Zealand to meet Colin a scant fortnight before the wedding. Her mother had been genuinely delighted with her prospective son-in-law. Colin had gone all out to be charming. Craig hadn’t been quite so forthcoming, simply saying it was very obvious Colin was “very much in love with his lovely, gifted, fiancée.”

The wedding had been lavish. The planning having been taken out of her control by Sonia Morcombe. Their whole future had stretched ahead of them.

The abuse had started on their honeymoon, profoundly shocking her. She’d gone into a stupefied withdrawal, wondering if she was going to end up dead when all he seemed to want to do was take her to bed.

She mustn’t flirt with every man she met. She mustn’t be provocative in her conversation. She mustn’t smile and tilt her head, so. The accusations had never finished; his temper had snapped so easily. She had been overwhelmed by terror and—incredibly—remorse. Maybe she was being unconsciously provocative? Maybe she was doing what he was saying?

She knew she was attractive to men. Her looks had seen to that. Even her girlfriend, Ellie, teased her endlessly about her “certain smile”. “What a come-on, Laura!”

She, herself, was at a loss to know why.

“You’re my wife, Laura. Mine,” Colin always told her as he delivered another hard lesson. “I won’t tolerate your coy glances elsewhere.”

An hour after the abuse stopped he was cordial, composed, even tender. She could never believe it was the same man. He acted as though nothing disturbing had happened. It was simply that it was a man’s right to chastise his wife. It was the only way she would ever learn.

So, on her honeymoon her marriage had taken a giant leap backwards. Even as she had strived to please him she had despised herself for not standing up for her rights. How could he say he loved her when a lot of the time he acted as though he hated her? She hadn’t known where to turn. Her father would never have allowed this situation. But her father had gone. In truth she had felt orphaned, utterly defeated, down.

There wasn’t going to be any pitter-patter of tiny feet either. Not for a good long time.

“We’re happy just the two of us!”

From his laugh and the light in his cold grey eyes it had sounded as though he believed it.

Now she had to escape. It wouldn’t be simple, but she had thought it through. She couldn’t continue to allow Colin to abuse her. She had to reach safety.

She’d made one previous attempt, seeking the aid of a girlfriend, but Colin had quickly convinced her friend she was experiencing “problems”. He was a doctor, after all. But now she was ready.

She was frustrated by the fact she simply couldn’t move out of the house and take an apartment somewhere. She knew Colin would find her. Teach her a lesson with his clever, damaging hands. Part of her even believed he might kill her if she expressed her fervent desire to be free of him. She had to go so far away it would be difficult to trace her.

She already knew the place. Koomera Crossing in far Western Queensland. There could be nowhere more remote than the Outback. She knew the name of a woman who might help her cope with the crippling fear she’d been living with. An absolutely steady woman who’d impressed her every time they’d met. A woman not all that much older than herself. Highly intelligent, caring, a doctor now in charge of the Koomera Crossing Bush Hospital.

Her name was Sarah Dempsey. Laura had met Sarah many times at various functions she and Colin had attended in their role of “perfect” couple. Laura had formed the opinion Sarah Dempsey was a strong, supportive woman, unusually kind and sensitive. The sort of woman who might help her win back her life. Or at least provide the safety net she desperately needed until she felt strong enough to stand on her own two feet.

CHAPTER ONE

SARAH had given her a list of three rental houses that were available in the town. She could make her own choice. It was Sarah who had come along to pick out the reliable used car she was driving. She could have bought a new one from the considerable cash stash she had with her, withdrawn from her private account, but she didn’t want to draw too much attention to herself. Sarah had helped immensely by introducing her around as an “old friend”. It had instantly assured her acceptance in the town.

In the course of a few days Sarah had become her friend and confidante. A sister in arms. Laura knew from the moment she’d laid eyes on Dr Sarah at the hospital she’d made the right decision finding her way to Koomera Crossing. Simply by talking over her sad situation with someone who seemed eminently qualified to listen and offer strategies for change had made her feel so much better about herself.

Laura felt reasonably normal, though she never lost the feeling of being in jeopardy, or visualizing Colin’s angry face many times a day. She knew with a certainty Colin would have begun tracking her, most probably through some investigation agency, but she’d been surprisingly adept at getting away. How had she allowed him to make her feel so incompetent when all her life up to that point she’d been regarded as very bright? Such was the pain-inducing power of the domineering male.

Now, with Sarah’s help, she was beginning to stop blaming herself for the disastrous failure of her marriage. She was beginning to see Colin had worked so hard to instill in her a sense of worthlessness he had almost succeeded. Sarah’s opinion of Colin as a sociopath, a condition in which he considered himself beyond the normal rules, was that he was the one who truly needed counselling.

Laura was young, inexperienced, grieving for her father, lonely for her mother—ill-prepared to cope with a man like Colin Morcombe with his anger and aggressions.

As soon as she felt stronger and more confident Sarah would encourage her to do something about her situation. Liberate herself from Colin and the bonds he had forced on her. Divorce him and change her life.

It sounded simple but Laura, the victim, like all other victims of abuse, knew it wasn’t. She had suffered far too much emotional damage living with Colin, but she wasn’t beyond repair. Though Colin had tried so very hard to break her she had found the strength to make her escape.

But for how long? Colin would come after her. Hadn’t he near convinced her there was no way out?

All this Laura thought as she drove around the town, looking for the best place to live. Koomera Crossing boasted a picture-postcard town. It was very neat and clean with a lot of picturesque colonial buildings, but the majority of the houses she drove past were humble compared with what she’d been used to.

Her own family home, the house where she had grown up, now sold to family friends who had always admired it, was a gracious “Queenlander”, set in a large garden, a luxurious tropical oasis, that had been her mother’s pride and joy.

Laura and Colin had lived in a starkly modern edifice—she’d never thought of it as “home”—with a commanding view of the river and the city. An architect friend of Colin’s had designed it. There had been much talk of clean, open spaces, energy flow and creative processes—about which, for all the notice they took of her, she knew nothing. When she had attempted to say what she liked both men had shrugged her and her opinions off. The client was Colin. Not his wife. Her needs—warmth, colour, comfort—were just too “precious”. Traditional was out. What they got, to Colin’s delight, was a massive white pile. Geometric and pompous.

“Let’s keep the whole thing white,” Colin had suggested, as though she had any say in the matter. “Inside and out. You have to think modern, darling. Not that Gone With the Wind old barn you came from. Try to look happier. Most women would be very excited about living in our house. If you want a bit of colour you can get it from steel and glass. Glass has a beautiful blue-green edge.”

The houses she was driving past, cottages with tiny porches, would have fitted comfortably into their living room, with its giant sofas and huge abstract paintings—mostly black, silver or charcoal on white.

“Challenging,” Colin had said, the self-deluded art connoisseur.

“Why do we need a living room so big?” she’d been brave enough to ask.

“For entertaining, you silly goose. That’s if you ever become confident enough to try it.”

They rarely had entertained.

“You poor kid, stuck with this!” her friend, Ellie had said, giving the interior a quick, assessing look. “Gee, after what you came from you must be finding all this very different?”

“Challenging.” She’d laughed with good humour, giving an excellent imitation of Colin’s ultra-confident tones.

She knew Ellie wouldn’t have been fooled. Ellie was a very independent person, very sure of herself. She held her own with Colin. Needless to say Ellie had been one of the first to be struck from the list.

Laura wasn’t concerned where she’d be living now, as long as it was clean and safe.

Twenty minutes later she decided where she wanted to live. It was a modest dwelling, by far the smallest in the street. She supposed it had originally been a settlers’ cottage, constructed of timber and corrugated iron with a small front verandah to keep off the powerful glare of the sun and the rain. She had to wonder just how often it rained out here on the desert fringe.

The cottage was painted white, with sunshine-yellow shutters and trim. It was surrounded by a low picket fence hung with masses of Thai Gold bougainvillaea in abundant flower, giving the place a delightful welcoming look. Whoever had lived in it previously had maintained a pocket handkerchief cottage garden filled with bright yellow and white paper daisy flowers and a dazzling blanket of waxy pink flowers with sparkly silver-pale green leaves backed by tall, rather regal-looking lilies, the heraldic cream and orange blooms swaying slightly in the breeze.

There didn’t appear to be anywhere to garage the car. Indeed, the whole cottage wasn’t as big as the six-car garage Colin had insisted upon to house his collection of classic cars and her Volvo. A safe car for a “truly dreadful driver”. She’d soon stopped driving Colin anywhere because he heckled her so much. It had been equally grim in the kitchen, where he’d told her constantly she’d never make a living as a chef.