cheekbones, her straight, dark eyebrows. He’d felt it deep in his bones, in his blood, in his breath.
He had, of course, seen Nell in Tegan, too. She’d been there in the tilt of the girl’s head, in the slender shapeliness of her long legs. And that led him to thinking about Nell Ruthven née Harrington, about their meeting today. After so long.
He’d been way too tense. Everything about it had been wrong.
So many times during the past twenty years, he’d imagined a parallel universe in which he’d met Nell again. He had never deliberately sought her out, not once he’d learned she was married, but he’d imagined a scenario where they would bump into each other quite by chance. They would drop whatever they had planned for that day and go somewhere just to talk.
They’d smile a lot and chat for ages, catching up. Their reunion would be so poignant that time and Nell’s marriage to another man would become meaningless.
‘I want to go on seeing you,’ he’d say.
She’d smile. ‘I’d love that.’
Problem was, this fantasy was based on the twenty-year-old assumption that Nell had been wrong about her pregnancy, that it had simply been a case of a late period. Jacob knew through gossip his mother had passed on that Nell’s adult life had never included a child and he’d never dreamed their baby had been given away for adoption.
Tomorrow was going to be difficult. He had questions that demanded answers, but it would also be his one chance to enter that parallel universe, to reconnect with Nell’s world. And, even if it was only for a day, he didn’t want to get it wrong.
It would be easier to stay calm if he wasn’t plagued by bitter-sweet memories of their amazing, devastating summer at Half Moon, if he couldn’t still remember painful details of those two short months with Nell, right back to his first sight of her.
Home from university, she had been riding Mistral, a grey mare, and she’d come into the stables where he’d been working. Her cheeks had been flushed from the wind, her eyes bright and she’d been dressed like a glamorous, high-society equestrian in a mustard velvet jacket, pale cream jodhpurs and knee high, brown leather boots.
The fancy clothes had fitted her snugly, hugging the roundness of her breasts, cinching her waist and accentuating the length of her legs. Her pale hair had rippled like water about her shoulders and her eyes had been as blue and clear as icy stars. She had been beautiful. So incredibly beautiful…
But what had happened next was one of those unbelievably zany moments that should only have happened in B grade movies. Nell was leading her horse when she saw him and stopped. And instead of exchanging polite hellos, they’d stood there, open-mouthed, staring at each other, while Jacob’s blood had rushed and roared and his heart had become a sledgehammer.
Looking back, he guessed they must have spoken, but the rest of that afternoon was a blur to him now. Much clearer was their meeting the next morning.
He’d gone to the stables just after dawn and noticed immediately that Mistral was missing. He’d guessed that Nell had taken her for an early morning ride and within a dozen heartbeats he’d mounted another horse and taken off.
Half Moon was a huge property and he had no idea where Nell was, but he’d been quite sure at the outset that he would find her, that she’d wanted him to find her. Perhaps the mysterious sixth sense that the gods bestowed on destined lovers had whispered that she would be waiting for him.
It wasn’t long before he’d found her horse tied to a tree beside the river where white mist lifted in curling, wispy trails from the smooth, glassy surface of the water.
‘Hey there, Jacob.’
Nell’s voice seemed to come from a paperbark tree and when he peered through the weeping canopy he saw her sitting on a branch overhanging the water. She was wearing a blue checked shirt and ordinary blue jeans this morning, and dusty, elastic-sided boots. Apart from the golden gleam of her hair, she looked more like the everyday Outback girls Jacob was used to.
‘G’day,’ he called up to her as he tied his horse’s reins to a sapling. ‘Looks like you’ve found a good perch.’
‘It’s gorgeous out here. Come and see for yourself.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘I don’t think that branch would hold the two of us.’
She bounced lightly. ‘Oh, it’s strong enough. Come on, the river looks so pretty at this time of the morning and I can see right around the bend from here.’
Talk about spellbound. There was no way he could have resisted Nell’s invitation.
Knot-holes in the tree’s trunk made it easy for Jacob to climb to her branch. He stepped on to it gingerly, pausing to test that it could take his weight. So far, so good, but the branch narrowed quickly.
Nell smiled, her blue eyes dancing with merriment, her white teeth flashing. ‘Dare you to come right out.’
She was flirting with him.
And he loved it.
Arms extended for balance, he made his way along the branch. His extra weight sent the leaves at Nell’s end dipping into the tea-coloured water, but she only laughed.
‘No fancy jodhpurs this morning?’ he asked as he got closer.
She screwed up her nose. ‘They were a birthday present from my parents. I only wore them yesterday to please them, but they made me feel such a poser.’
‘You looked terrific,’ he insisted, taking another step closer. ‘You’ll wear them to the picnic races, won’t—’
A loud crack sounded and the branch exploded beneath them, sent them plummeting into the river.
It was summer so the water wasn’t very cold. Jacob fought his way to the surface, looked about for Nell and panicked when he couldn’t see her. Heart thrashing, he dived again into the murky green depths. Where was she? He prayed that she hadn’t been hit by the falling tree branch.
Lungs bursting, he broke the surface again. Still no sign of Nell. Was she pinned to the river bed?
Once more Jacob dived, groped in the grass and the submerged branches at the bottom, desperate to find her, but again he was forced back to the surface, empty-handed.
‘Jacob!’
Thank goodness. He turned to see her breast-stroking towards him.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said. ‘I was worried that you’d drowned.’
‘I thought you’d drowned. I was looking for you.’
They swam to the bank. Jacob reached it first and, because it was steep and bare, he offered his hand to help her out. She accepted gratefully and they began to climb.
The bank quickly turned slippery beneath their wet boots and they had quite a scramble. As they neared the top, Jacob grabbed at a sapling for an anchor and pulled Nell towards him.
She came faster than he expected, bumped into him, in fact, and suddenly they were clinging together, her soft curves pressing in to him through their wet clothes. Her clear eyes and parted lips were mere inches from his and, despite the wet hair plastered to her skull, she was beautiful. Breathtakingly so.
She smiled. ‘Now this is a new way of breaking the ice. My college social club would be impressed.’
He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he understood very well the invitation in her eyes. And so he kissed her.
It wasn’t a long kiss and it shouldn’t have been a sexy kiss. Their lips were cold from the river and Jacob was clinging to the sapling’s trunk with one hand while he held Nell to prevent her from falling.
But it was a kiss Jacob would never, to the end of his days, forget. From the moment their lips met, he adored the feel and the taste of Nell, loved her response—so