drew in a breath of relief, and moved aside to let Jared in. ‘Come in and sit down. I’ll put the kettle on and make coffee in a minute.’ She ran into her bedroom to check on the baby.
In the middle of the big queen bed, surrounded by every chair in the house, carefully wrapped in a blanket, Melanie lay sleeping peacefully in the bassinette Rosie had brought. Melanie’s cheeks were flushed pretty pink in the humidity; her fingers were curled around her nose as she sucked her thumb. Her bare toes twitched.
Anna’s heart filled with relief, and overflowed with joy. She couldn’t resist … She crept over to the bed and whisper-caressed the pudgy cheek, warm and pretty pink. ‘Hello, beautiful girl, I’m back,’ she murmured. ‘Did you wear your poor mummy out?’ The word jerked in her heart. Such a beautiful word, mummy, so taken for granted.
‘What the hell …?’
The explosive words from the doorway made the baby start, and give a tiny wail. She sounded tired, querulous. ‘Be quiet,’ Anna whispered frantically, soothing the baby with gentle touches. ‘She’s only been asleep an hour.’
After a moment’s protest, Melanie’s eyes closed, her thumb went farther into her mouth and she drifted back to dreamland.
White-faced and dark-eyed, like a cloud filled with unleashed thunder, Jared barked from the doorway, ‘Whose baby is that? Where did you …?’
The kettle began whistling. Frantic to keep the place quiet for the baby, she shoved at his chest and pushed him right out the door, and closed it silently behind her. ‘Get into the kitchen, now.’
The menace was about to unleash. He stalked to the tiny, functional room, and pulled the kettle from the gas. When he turned to her, his face was even paler, his stormy eyes almost as black as the turbulent clouds outside. ‘Anna, tell me what that baby’s doing in your bed and who it belongs to.’
‘Not it, she,’ Anna corrected, pulling the coffee down from the cupboard with unsteady hands. She couldn’t face him as she spooned grounds into the plunger.
If anything, his voice grew darker at her correction. ‘Is this the Rosie you talked about? If so, you’re insane. You can’t put a kid that age on a train.’
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘I might not know much, but I know that, Jared. Her name’s Melanie. Rosie’s her mother.’
‘Okay, she,’ he amended, still grim. ‘Where is this Rosie, who is she, and why is her kid here?’
‘We don’t have time for this,’ she said, pulling out mugs as an excuse to keep her eyes averted. ‘We have to get Rosie on the train, and take Melanie to Jarndirri—’
Jared interrupted, with ruthless ice. ‘I’m not doing a thing but going straight back to Bill to contact Child Services unless I find out exactly what’s going on here.’
She felt the blood drain from her cheeks. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Watch me,’ he said grimly, with a suspicion she’d never heard from Jared in all the years they’d known each other. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I doubt it’s legal.’
Her mind blanked out. ‘I … um, it’s not illegal.’
He grabbed her arm, swung her around to him. His face was right in front of hers, his eyes blazing in disbelief. ‘Dear God, Anna, did you kidnap that baby? Are you so desperate for a child you’d steal someone else’s? Why didn’t you talk to me? If I’d known—I have a solution for us—’
She felt the colour drain from her face at the questions she’d never thought he’d ask. ‘How could you even think I’d—I’d do that …’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘kidnap’ ‘… knowing how I’ve been since we lost Adam? Do you think I could put another set of parents through the loss we endured?’ She said it almost as indignantly as if he hadn’t read her mind every time she’d seen a little boy or girl Adam’s age in the past few months and put an unerring finger on the pulse of her secret shame. Because, oh, if she could get away with it … to hold a precious baby in her arms, to have chubby arms around her neck, to watch it grow, and hear it calling her Mummy.
He sighed and released her arms. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered, wiping at his brow. She saw the beads of sweat there, and she knew it hadn’t been caused by the heat.
‘You honestly think I could be capable of such an act?’ she shot at him, but her voice wobbled. Guilt, shame, passion, craving, loneliness …
Why couldn’t I just say yes to Rosie’s impassioned proposal of last night? If I had, right now I’d have all I’d ever dreamed of.
‘After a night in the slammer, and you desperate to get rid of Bill, it wasn’t a big leap in logic once I saw the kid.’ He paced over to the back door and opened it, breathing in a silence of relief, fear released. ‘So whose baby is she?’
She gulped down the pain; her hands fluttered up. ‘I told you, she’s Rosie’s child—and she needs our help for a few weeks.’
‘Right, got it. So where is this mysterious Rosie?’ he queried dryly. ‘And who is she?’
‘Rosie Foster. You remember her, Maggie Foster’s girl? She grew up here, but left for university two or three years back.’ Anna sighed when he shrugged; she was sure he did know, because everyone knew everyone else here. The Kimberleys might be bigger than France, but had a population about the size of Liechtenstein. ‘She’s asleep in the spare room, I guess, or packing. She’s heading to Perth today. I—She’s got postnatal depression, and nobody to turn to. We’ve become good friends in the past few months. She asked me to take Melanie for a few weeks while she gets help.’
Jared frowned again. ‘Hang on. That makes no sense. Those places take the mother and child. Why isn’t she taking the kid with her?’
‘Melanie. Her name is Melanie,’ Anna repeated with icy patience, but Jared merely shrugged, waiting for her to answer. ‘Look, we can talk about this in the plane to Jarndirri, and, first, Rosie needs to get to the station. There’s just one train going to Perth this week, and it leaves today.’
‘No,’ he replied, with a quiet inflexibility that told her this wasn’t up for negotiation. He wasn’t taking her anywhere until he had the details. ‘That kid is not coming to Jarndirri. I’m already facing court for your sake, Anna. I won’t be an accessory to kidnapping a child—and in the eyes of the law, that’s what taking her to Jarndirri would be. Taking her one step out of this house without calling the cops means serious prison time—and it looks to me like Bill would love any excuse to lock me away, at least,’ he added with a penetrating look.
Anna felt herself flushing, feeling almost as guilty as if she’d accepted any of Bill’s many offers to have dinner, coffee or watch a DVD together. ‘I didn’t ask you to break any laws in getting here,’ she snapped, exasperated and uncomfortably aware that her pleading tone over the phone had been its own request to a take-charge kind of man like Jared. ‘I haven’t broken any laws either. Taking Melanie to Jarndirri in no way constitutes … abduction. We have the mother’s written permission to look after her for a few weeks.’
‘Will you just tell me how the kid got here?’ He spoke with a frown, with an exaggerated kind of patience that made her flush—and stop beating around the bush. She answered him in a crisp, cool voice that hid her defensiveness.
‘Rosie came to me last night. She’s been struggling to cope since she had the baby. But she’s just been diagnosed with postnatal depression. She wants me to mind Melanie for a few weeks while she gets help.’
‘Hasn’t she got any family?’ Now the tone was leashed; she felt the impatience straining from him. Wanting to know why—and what it had to do with him—but he must have picked up on her reluctance to tell the story all at once. Felt her longing to run, hard and fast, at the same time she yearned to look