Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

Now she didn’t have to. She’d lost everything she’d ever wanted.

It was time to take back, to have a life that belonged to her, not hemmed in and surrounded by the expectations or happiness of others.

‘Life in a house with people who expect me to be The Curran, just like my father. Life on a property so isolated the loneliness became my only friend, the only one I could talk to.’ She turned away from the look in his eyes, as hard as coal crystallising into a diamond, and just as black. ‘Being tied to a man who wants things I can never give, and has never given me the one thing I truly want.’

‘There’s one thing you want, asleep behind us,’ he replied in a voice so cold she shuddered beneath the ice he poured on her. ‘If Rosie doesn’t come back, I’ll be committing perjury to give you what you want, despite the sugar coating you put on it. Little white lies are worth prison time if anyone finds out.’

‘Yes,’ she managed to say, feeling small and almost sick at his ruthless ripping apart of her delusions. ‘But while I’m truly grateful, I don’t want to sleep with you again.’

‘I don’t remember saying I expected that—or that I wanted it.’

At his cool, amused tone, a heat far drier than the steam-room kind seeping into the plane now the engine was off scorched her cheeks. ‘You kissed me like that. I guess I assumed it’s what you wanted.’

He lifted one shoulder: his I couldn’t care less shrug. ‘I thought you wanted to come back. Jarndirri’s half yours—and you’re the real Curran. Kissing used to make you happy.’

Swallowing the unexpected lump in her throat, she closed her eyes and willed control. Why did she ever bandy words with him, or expect to get her point across? His few words could always slay her into silence. ‘All right, Jared. You win,’ she said wearily. ‘You always do.’

Jared swore with efficient fluency, rough and angry. ‘Anna, that isn’t what I wanted.’

Too numb to get into an argument she knew she’d only lose, she muttered, ‘Then why won’t you look me in the eye when you say it?’

Silence met her reluctant challenge.

She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. You always end up getting everything you want, one way or another. I don’t think you could stand to lose at anything.’ When he turned to look at her then, moving closer as if to touch her, hold her—knowing it always softened her—she shook her head. ‘Can you please see if it’s clear to go into the house?’ she whispered, fighting tears with everything she had. She’d shed enough for a lifetime.

After a moment that hung between them like a corpse, he swore again and climbed out of the cockpit, stalking to the house across the half-acre of yard that had once been her little veggie patch in dry season.

To her surprise, Jared walked in the straight lines of the plough, because her little patch of ground wasn’t dead. There were green shoots of carrots, the lumps for potatoes and onion, and full heads of broccoli and cabbage everywhere.

She was surprised someone had cared enough to plant more. It was probably Mrs Button, who appreciated that they didn’t have to fly in vegetables every week.

Lifting Melanie out of the car seat, she cuddled the baby and waited in the shadows of the hangar until Jared returned. She wasn’t in a hurry to go back to the house: the beautiful pale yellow homestead with double-glazed windows and wide verandahs that had been her mother’s and grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s home before her, but had never felt like hers.

So many Currans had lived at Jarndirri, with so much history—so much of it forever unspoken. Strong women had married tough, silent men who had worked the land, struggled against the elements and illness, women who’d borne their children in the rooms inside that house because doctors hadn’t existed out here. The Curran women were the perfect complements for their men. Even her mother had taken six long years to surrender to the breast cancer that had killed her, and had only taken to her bed after four of those years. Until then she’d worked the land, run the house, looked after their staff and cared for her daughters, even given birth to her, Anna—she’d been given the breast cancer diagnosis when she’d been pregnant.

And she, the last Curran woman, had only ever felt like a fake. Less than a woman, less than strong, bonded to the land in a love-hate relationship because it had taken the only thing she’d ever wanted from her. She’d even risked her life to try one final time for a child when the doctors had advised against it, because Jared needed a son.

‘They’ve all gone.’

Jared’s voice soaked into her consciousness like the history of this, the land she loved and loathed—and she wondered when he’d become a part of that love and loss and hate. She nodded. ‘Go and do what you have to. I’ll get the bags once Melanie’s settled.’ Words as dead and emotionless as her heart felt.

As she walked past him, holding Melanie against her like a shield and bulwark against the enemy, he said, low and fierce, ‘I didn’t want to win, Anna.’

For a moment she almost turned back. He touched her shoulder, and she shuddered with her body’s betrayal of her heart. ‘Then why does talking to you, touching you, always feel like a contest I’ve already lost?’

When he didn’t answer, she moved out of the hangar into the bright-and-darkness of the heavy-clouded air, thick like soaked cotton wool, glistening with diamond-bright moisture and a touch of sunlight breaking through in tiny slivers.

Coming home again felt like a farewell. The beginning of the end … and this time goodbye would be for ever. She couldn’t go through this again—and after Melanie’s life was settled, one way or the other, she hoped to have the strength to leave Jared and Jarndirri for ever, and, finally, never yearn to come back.

CHAPTER FIVE

JARED took his time feeding the animals in the massive sheds on the high ground, and making sure the gates were securely closed and the electric alarms on—the storm was closing in hard now—before returning to the homestead. He kept trying to think of what to do to get things back to the way they used to be with Anna; but even after all the years of being her lover and husband, and after everything they’d been through together, he felt as if he was locked inexorably in square one.

Her words kept chiming in his head like a bell tolling. Talking with you always feels like a contest I’ve already lost. Well, he knew how it felt now. That was how he’d felt every time she’d thrown him out of her place at Broome. And if he hated it, if he couldn’t stand being in last place with her, how had always losing made her feel? In his driving need to do it all, be it all, to win at any cost, had he left her behind, left her out in the cold and, worse, not even noticed?

Maybe it’s time things changed. Maybe it’s time we both won.

He strode in through the back verandah to the kitchen. After a spare breakfast and no lunch, he was more than ready for dinner—but there was nothing cooking. Anna was no cook, but she could do a steak and salad when Mrs Button was sick, so why hadn’t she …?

Distant cries gave him his answer. He followed the wailing sound to the spare room where she’d slept for so many months. Anna’s bags were on the floor, unopened, but the baby’s things were strewn all over.

So she was still resisting coming back to their room? He squashed the urge to grab her bags and take them where they belonged—for now. He’d change her mind soon enough. He’d make her melt for him.

Then he forgot his needs, his plans. Holding the baby, jiggling her in an awkward attempt at comfort, Anna was striding the floor, totally frazzled as the baby wailed without let-up.

He knew better than to offer help with the baby right now. ‘Should I make our dinner, or warm a bottle for her?’ He took care to not sound superior or triumphant. This isn’t a contest between us, Anna—and whatever it is, I haven’t won in a long time.

‘She’s had a bottle, had her nappy changed. She doesn’t have a fever or anything. I’ve tried playing with her, singing to her—I don’t know what to do,’ Anna all but wailed.

He frowned, looking at the baby. She seemed more angry than exhausted, and she’d slept really well on the plane. A thought occurred to him. ‘How old do you think she is?’

Anna wheeled around on him, flushed and pretty in her dishevelment, and needing him … at least for now. And she was holding a baby in her arms … but it wasn’t his baby son, his Adam.

Jared ached, thinking of what could have been—if the baby was Adam he’d have the right to hold him, to kiss her better, to walk him at night—anything to lighten Anna’s load. He’d look into his son’s eyes and feel that love, that bond—the sense of future, of destiny fulfilled.

Adam …

‘Rosie started coming around three months ago, and she was …’ She frowned down in anxiety at the baby, whose face was mottled and her wails upgrading to ear-piercing shrieks. ‘She must be about six months—why?’

‘At that age, babies eat stuff like mashed bananas and vegetables,’ he said gruffly, still locked into the pain of useless longing for his son, his child, and for the loving wife he’d somehow lost. You always end up getting what you want. ‘Cereals too. Mum gave us all cereal.’

‘I fed her this morning,’ she replied in clear impatience. ‘There was cereal in her bag.’

‘Mum always fed the babies at night, too—usually vegetables or cereal with banana or mashed apple in it. She said they slept better. If the baby’s used to that, not eating would make her cranky.’

‘But she threw out the teething rusk I gave her and screamed louder,’ she retorted, looking like she was about to tear her hair—or already had, by the looks of her. Apart from the lack of chocolate smears, she looked as she had the day he’d first kissed her, all mussed and kissable …

But lustful thoughts weren’t going to help either of them now. She was trying to get this right on her own and failing—and he had minutes to help her before she turned away from him.

So he grinned at her to lighten her lack of knowledge. ‘Have you ever tasted those things?’

She caught the smile, and her eyes glimmered in return, her mouth slowly curving. ‘Obviously not for too long a time. So it’s cereal and banana?’

His heart soared at the first real smile she’d given him for over a year. ‘Yes, so long as the bananas are ripe enough. Come on, let’s see.’ He led the way into the kitchen, resisting the urge to do anything stupid like touching her, no matter how badly he wanted to, or how easily he could make her want it. He’d made too many mistakes with her, it seemed.

He just wished he knew what all his mistakes were, so he didn’t repeat them. Now she was finally back where she belonged, he couldn’t afford to blow it again.

‘How ripe is ripe enough?’

He hid the grin this time; she sounded as touchy as anxious, hating it that he knew more about babies than she did. ‘They need to be soft and sweet, but not bruised. Don’t worry, Anna, we can steam an apple if the bananas are too hard or soft.’

‘They’re all spotted—that’s overripe,’ Anna grumbled over the screams, rocking the baby on her hip in a futile attempt to soothe her. ‘What else can go wrong today?’

‘Don’t worry.’ Jared grabbed a red apple and a peeler. ‘I’ve done this hundreds of times for my brothers and sisters. Five minutes and I guarantee she’ll be happy.’

Anna reached up to the hanging ladder that had served as a pot rack for a century, and grabbed a small saucepan. ‘How much water do you need?’

Busy peeling the apple as fast as possible, he said, ‘Half an inch, and turn the heat down as soon as it’s boiling. In the meantime … ‘He reached into his precious store of childhood favourites, his arrowroot biscuits, and handed one to Anna. ‘She can have this—it’s what the cereal’s made of.’

She grinned as she took the semi-sweet cookie. ‘You must be desperate for quiet to give up your night-time treats.’

How she managed to do insane things to his body with a grin when she looked like an extra on a horror film, he had no idea. But she did it as no other woman ever had or would, and he accepted it. She was his woman.

‘Desperate,’ he agreed, smiling back at her, wondering if he looked as incredibly aroused and needing as he felt. ‘The kid’s louder than a city street.’

‘Not now,’ she said softly, as the baby grabbed the arrowroot from her hand, and gurgled over the biscuit, slobbering in a chattering ecstasy only babies and children knew how to show. ‘Thanks for the biscuit. It was inspired.’

He shrugged, feeling like a total idiot. She was thinking about the baby while he was thinking of how to get her into bed. ‘I was the oldest of five kids. I had to mind them a lot.’

‘That’s a definite advantage right now.’ She cocked her head towards the stove. ‘The water’s boiling.’

‘Oh. Right.’ He turned back from his rapt contemplation of the picture before him: a messy Madonna smiling for the first time in a year, holding a yabbering baby who was covered in milk and chewed biscuit. As he peeled and pared the apple and dropped slices into the water, he made a vow—he’d do whatever it took to give Anna the motherhood that had brought her back to life: the life he’d never been able to give her, despite spending over a hundred thousand on IVF implantations and specialist visits.

He’d had all his dreams come true, thanks to the Currans—especially because of Anna. He knew what he had—he’d never taken it for granted. He’d worked day and night to make life perfect for her, without the financial fears that had turned his mum grey before her time, and sent his father into the downward spiral that ended with a noose and debts that had taken him, Jared, ten years to pay off.

Even when her fertility problems meant frequent trips to Perth and massive cheques to cover the treatments, he’d made sure Anna was never burdened with the feelings of negativity and fear that his dad had pushed on his mum. Anna had never once had to worry where the next meal was coming from or how they’d pay the next round of bills, as his mum had had to for as long as he could remember.

But somehow all his hard work, everything he’d done to make their lives secure hadn’t been enough to make her happy or want to stay with him. And worse still, he couldn’t see how to make this fantastic life, the only life he wanted, enough for a woman like Anna.

No. I’ll find the way. I’ll make her happy this time. I’ll work harder, tell any lie, even play daddy to this kid, if it keeps that smile on her face.

‘Can you find the strainer?’ he asked abruptly. Hiding the emotion as she’d accused, yeah, but at least he didn’t carry on like his father had, dumping all his problems and feelings onto her. He still remembered the way Mum had tried to shut Dad up at the dinner table. Not in front of the children, Rob! He still remembered the low-voiced arguments over money at night, his mother’s weary Well, what do you want me to do, Rob, wave a magic wand for you?, and his father’s alternate pleading love and despairing coldness.

A family with cracks in it as wide as the dried-out red land before the Wet, the Wests had patched it together with more children, more bank loans, until the shaky edifice had collapsed around them. Then his dad had taken the easy way out. Overwhelmed with the sudden load alone, Mum had asked Bryce to take him; the next oldest, Sam, had gone to their grandparents. She raised the three little ones, Nick, Andie and Dale at his Aunty Pat’s place in Perth until she’d sold off enough of the pieces of Mandurah they’d still owned to buy a house in the suburbs.

Now his mother was coming back, Nick and this bloke she was marrying coming with her.

‘Why do you need a strainer?’ Anna broke into his morbid reverie, her tone like his mother’s had been, withdrawn and hard.

Damn, he’d done it again, broken the fragile accord just as she’d started to smile at him at last—either that or she really hated knowing nothing about babies.

If there was one thing he knew, it was that once a fence was broken completely, all you could do was build a new one from scratch. He’d broken their marriage somehow. Now he had to build their relationship over again … and this time it would be made to last. He’d build it with drought-proof, fireproof materials.

So she thought he sucked at communication?

Fix it. Talk to her. ‘Mum always strained the fruit and cereal, until the kids were walking.’

She opened a drawer and handed the strainer to him without a word.

He squashed the apple through the sieve into the bowl with the mixed cereal and made-up formula, and stirred the concoction. The baby was making protesting noises again and he shoved the bowl at Anna. ‘Get this mush into her and fast. She’s starving, I think.’

‘I doubt John or Ellie would hear much of anything, even if she wasn’t hard of hearing,’ Anna said dryly, pointing out the window, where a boom of thunder followed hard after a sheet of lightning wide enough to split the house in two. ‘Looks like we got here just in time.’

Great. He wanted to prove they could communicate, and they were already reduced to talking about the weather. ‘I’ll make dinner while you feed her.’

‘You can cook?’ The faint emphasis on you was almost an insult … or was it teasing?

She hasn’t teased me for so long …

Already heading for the fridge, he twisted around to grin at her. ‘I’m a man of many talents—so long as you like scrambled eggs and bacon on toast, or omelette and chips with some salad.’

The ready laugh told him she’d actually been teasing him—then she hastily put another spoonful into the baby’s mouth when she protested. ‘That’s something I didn’t know about you.’

‘I can also do a mean barbecue at a pinch,’ he added, revelling in hearing her voice again, angling for her laugh. An awkward, high-pitched giggle with a tiny snort at the end, ee-yaw, like a donkey, it was infectious, making him laugh just to hear it.

And it came again, making him chuckle. ‘Well, I’m no top chef, so we might resort to your barbecues, omelettes and salad until we can let Mrs Button back in the house.’

Elated by a stupid conversation about cooking, he swept a mock-bow. ‘So which is your pleasure this evening, my lady?’

Anna stared, blinked; her mouth opened a little in pure surprise—and there was something else there, too—a touch of the sensual woman he’d refused to believe she’d buried with Adam, which was why he’d come to Broome and taken her by storm.

‘What?’ he asked huskily.

She shrugged, her cheeks tinged with pink. She’d either read his mind or she wanted him, too—and he chose to believe the latter. ‘I haven’t heard you make a joke in a long time.’ Lifting the baby onto one hip, she said, ‘I’ll get this one bathed and to bed. She looks exhausted.’

So simple teasing and laughter made her want him? If he’d known at the start that was what she’d wanted, he’d have made her laugh constantly. But he could do it from now on …

Then he looked at the baby. She was yawning and rubbing her eyes a lot, considering she’d slept the entire trip home—and a memory stirred. ‘She’s either not a good traveller or she’s teething—probably teething.’

Anna blinked. ‘How would—?’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Don’t tell me, your mum always said it when the kids were grumpy, right?’

He waved a pot at her. ‘Don’t knock my mum, it’s the only source of baby information we’ve got right now.’ Unless you want to ask Lea, he almost said but didn’t. Some time in the years they’d lost babies and Lea had had one, Anna had turned her sister into the competition, even believing he’d wanted Lea. He might not know much about women, but one thing he was good at was knowing when to keep his mouth closed.

He was glad he’d kept quiet when, alight with laughter and mock-fear, she backed off, one hand up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay, you and your mum are the fount of all baby knowledge. I worship at your feet.’

‘Oh, if only,’ he retorted, a hand over his heart in playful teasing to hide how much he meant it. He’d always loved the way she’d looked at him as if he was the closest thing to perfection she’d ever find. Thinking he’d never see it again—or that she’d found him out for the fraud he was—had brought the inner darkness spinning up from a buried corner of his mind, until the savagery overtook him and, desperate for relief, he had to see her, to touch her—

Anna stilled, looking at him with a depth of doubt that shook him to his soul. It made him want to run a million miles—or bolt into her arms and tell her—

Yeah, tell her what? When did you ever say the right thing?

It seemed to him he only got it right with Anna when he communicated without words.

Go slow, or you’ll lose her again.

Failure was not an option—but his craving body was taking to common sense with a battle axe and battering ram, breaking down pathetic defences. Screaming, Take her to bed and love her into submission. You know she wants to … or you can soon make her want to.

Then the baby gave a mighty belch, and the moment broke; they burst out laughing. ‘Oh, what a good girl,’ Anna crooned, her face flushed as she caressed the baby’s spiky hair.

Yeah, she was far from ready to touch him, by her body language—he had to play it smart here. So he grinned again. ‘Isn’t it funny the way we tell babies they’re good when they burp or fart, and then tell them to stop it by the time they’re about two?’

‘Better out than in, I always say.’ She chuckled. Her face buried in the baby’s soft skin, he still saw her smile, and it was infectious. ‘I’ll be back in time for dinner—I hope.’

Jared decided on a barbecue at that moment. The uncertainty in her voice showed her confidence levels on bathing a slippery, soapy baby. He might not have bathed a baby in a long time, but he knew the basics—he could help her while the meat defrosted in the microwave. Anything that brought them together, kept them talking, was good right now—even a baby he didn’t want coming between them.

He threw a salad together first, giving her five minutes to undress the baby and run the bath. Then he went into the bathroom and Anna joined him at that moment with a naked, grumpy baby on her hip, a bottle of baby shampoo in the other hand. ‘What are you doing in here?’

Her tone was cold, almost suspicious. He didn’t let it get to him, but held out his arms. ‘I’ve done this hundreds of times. Everyone needs one lesson at baby-bathing in their lifetime,’ he said with a grin that felt dogged even to him. ‘My mother watched over me about ten times before she trusted me not to kill the kids.’

She didn’t laugh; the suspicion in her eyes dissipated a touch, but she frowned, and the watchfulness remained. ‘All right,’ was her only response. She handed the baby over to him as if yielding up buried treasure. Everything in her body language was screaming, Mine.

If laughter was the best medicine, as people said, it seemed their relationship was sick enough to need it in five-minute doses. And right up until the day she’d left him, he’d thought everything, apart from her trouble having babies, was perfect for them.

Had he been so totally blind to her unhappiness? He’d thought her only unhappiness lay in needing a child.

He put the baby in the four inches of water, leaving her sitting up. ‘When they’re really little you have to put your hand around and under them, holding them by the shoulder so they don’t go under, but …’ He frowned for a second, then remembered the baby’s name and added, ‘Melanie’s old enough to sit, so it’s easiest to make this playtime for her. You need toys and stuff to distract her while you wash, or she’ll scream her way through it.’

‘I know,’ she said so dryly he knew she’d had a bad time of it at least once. How many times had Rosie left the baby alone with Anna?