Captivated By The Single Dad. Barbara Hannay
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Holly tried to make amends. ‘I suppose she dropped in to chat to the dance companies here and—’
Suddenly, she wasn’t sure how to finish what she’d started. She was trying to defend her cousin when she had no idea really…
‘This place had everything Chelsea needed,’ Gray said bleakly.
Holly wondered if this had been the heart of the problem with their marriage. ‘Did you ever—’ she began hesitantly. ‘I mean, I don’t suppose you…um…considered moving here? Or…or living closer…’
‘No.’
There was quiet vehemence in that single syllable. Gray’s face was a grim stony mask as he stared down at his almost empty glass.
‘I guess it would have been difficult to move.’
She was trying to be diplomatic, but she knew she was on shaky ground. Just the same, she couldn’t help thinking that if Gray had really loved Chelsea he might have been prepared to make sacrifices. Couldn’t he have given up cattle farming and tried something more suited to his wife’s temperament and talents?
If he’d wanted to save his marriage…
‘Moving was out of the question,’ he said with a marked air of finality.
Right.
It was time to drop this line of conversation. Holly wondered if stubborn inflexibility was Gray Kidman’s Achilles heel.
Or was that a bit harsh? After all, her cousin had been adamant when she married him that she was happy to give up her career to live with him in his Outback.
Whatever. It’s none of my business.
To change the subject, Holly said, ‘I’m looking forward to tomorrow and finally getting to see your place.’
She saw Gray’s shoulders relax then, and he looked directly into her eyes and smiled slowly in a way that started her tummy fluttering. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘I’m always glad to get home.’
The warmth in his eyes suggested that he wasn’t just voicing a cliché. He really meant it. He felt nostalgic about his home in the vast empty Outback. Holly understood this. She always felt a catch in her throat whenever she drove back to her family’s farm and saw the green pastures and red barns of Vermont.
Tomorrow Anna and Josh would reach their new home. Holly hoped, for their sakes, but more especially for Gray’s sake, that they liked it. Actually, it was her job to make sure that they did.
Gray couldn’t sleep.
Leaving his bed, he prowled the length of his hotel room, trying to shrug off the tension that kept him awake. He’d lied to Holly tonight. He’d told her that feelings and memories faded with time but, after his mother’s cool reception at the airport today, and his conversation with Holly about Chelsea, he was once again battling with the feelings of inadequacy and failure that had dogged him all his life.
As a child he’d never lived up to his mother’s expectations. Hell, he hadn’t even come close. He could still hear the way she’d yelled at his father.
The boy’s hopeless. Unteachable. A disgrace.
Even now, the memory brought his clenched fist slamming into his palm.
Was he never going to shake off these patterns of failure? First his mother had left Jabiru, never to return, and then his wife had left, and both times he’d known he was a major cause of their problems.
If he’d been able to, he would have taken Chelsea to live in Sydney, as Holly had so innocently suggested. He would have taken her to New York or wherever she wanted to live.
But, thanks to his lack of schooling, he was unemployable in the city, and even if he’d sold his property and invested in stocks and shares to eke out a living, he would have gone mad in the claustrophobic city. After twenty-four hours, he was always chafing at the bit to get away to the bush.
He’d tried his best to love and support Chelsea at Jabiru. When the twins arrived, he’d done everything he could to hold his little family together. He’d been a hands-on father, taking his turn at bathing and changing and walking the floors with the crying infants.
But the timing had been lousy. The babies’ arrival had coincided with a downturn in the cattle industry. Overseas markets had collapsed. Money had been tight and, before the babies were six months old, he’d been forced to lay off the fencing contractors and the mechanics he’d hired, and he’d taken on these jobs himself.
When these tasks were added to the usual demands of running a vast cattle property, his available time to help at the homestead had been minimal. He’d kept on his housekeeper, who’d also helped with the twins, but the toll on Chelsea had been visible.
Gray had been shocked to see her growing thin and drawn and faded, so he’d sent her to Sydney for short breaks. And, as he’d admitted to Holly, the times she’d spent away had become longer and longer.
When his wife had told him she needed to go home to New York, he’d let her go, taking the children with her, even though he hadn’t been free to accompany them. By then he’d known that to try to hold her was too cruel.
When she’d rung from New York to tell him she wasn’t coming back, Gray had been heartsick but not surprised. He’d agreed to the divorce, accepting that he’d had no other option.
He’d tried his hardest and failed, and he had no idea what else he could do. He would rather admit defeat than watch his wife become trapped and embittered the way his mother had been.
But his sense of failure was overwhelming, even worse now that Chelsea had passed away. He hated to think that his love had made any part of her short life unhappy and he was determined that he wouldn’t fail her children as well. He couldn’t, he mustn’t.
These next two months were critical. He would be guided by Holly and he wouldn’t be too proud to accept her advice. Sure, there were bound to be humiliating moments when his inadequacies were exposed once more, and Holly would probably be as disdainful of his home as Chelsea had been.
But he could face another woman’s scorn—as long as his kids still looked up to him—and as long as he didn’t let them down.
By the following afternoon, they were finally in Far North Queensland, barrelling over flat, pale grasslands in a big four-wheel drive which threw up a continuous plume of dust. The vehicle had a luggage rack on top, and bull bars protecting the engine—from kangaroos, Gray told them—and there were water tanks on board as well. To Holly it felt like an expedition.
Wide open plains sprinkled with straggly gum trees and silvery grey Brahman cattle stretched in every direction. Flocks of white birds wheeled in the blue sky like fluttering pieces of paper.
In the back seat, the children watched the panorama excitedly, waiting for their first kangaroo sighting.
‘This is my country,’ Gray told Holly and his emphasis on the word country seemed to instil it with special meaning.
Holly had to agree there was something primitive but almost spiritual about the vast stretch of empty space. She could feel an awareness of something greater than herself and, strangely, it wasn’t unlike the way she’d also felt the first time she’d walked into the huge book-lined silence of the New York City Library.
Every so often their vehicle would climb over a rocky ridge, giving a view of grasslands stretching for ever. At other times the road would dip downwards to cross a single lane wooden bridge over a stream. Some creeks only had a concrete ford disappearing beneath brown muddy water.
‘There’s no water here at all in the dry season,’ Gray told her.
They came to a wider river, so deep that when Gray pushed the vehicle through, the water threatened to seep under the doors.
He grinned at Holly. ‘This is where I did my ankle in, but the creek was flowing a lot faster