drew a deep breath, and said the words he’d expected. “When did they set all this up?”
“The cops arrested me on the way to your dad’s house.”
It had finally been spoken, her worst fear: the connection in time between the wedding and his arrest. Tessa slumped in her seat, reliving the slow horror of that morning.
The day after their secret marriage.
She’d had to come alone to tell her widowed father about her marriage to an Aboriginal carpenter. Only she could tell him that she, his most cherished and beloved child, had gone against his will in a way he’d never forgive. Keith Earldon, millionaire barrister, loving, overprotective father and inconspicuous racist always had, always would consider David Oliveri to be a man far beneath his daughter, in every possible way.
It was hard, so hard. She endured her father’s pleading, his recriminations and coldness; she even took his eventual disowning of her in unflinching silence. With tears streaming down her face she packed her bags, knowing this choice had been inevitable from the moment she met the man she loved. She dearly loved the father and brother who’d brought her up, but her heart belonged to David. They’d surely come around….
She’d stood outside the gates of the exclusive beachside acreage, waiting for her husband to come for her. Waiting with all the sweet confidence of young love. Waiting. And waiting.
And then the slow, chilling realization came creeping into her soul. David wasn’t coming to face her father with the reality of their marriage. He wasn’t here to take her away, to start their life together. He wasn’t coming for her at all.
She’d never forget the utter desolation of the next three days, the confusion, fear and unwanted sense of betrayal, not knowing what happened to the man she loved. Then Duncan told her about the fatal accident. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” her brother had murmured, rocking her while she sat stunned, silent, too empty to cry, the certificate held like a priceless treasure in her hand.
The certificate of death that was as fake as her brother’s sympathy for her.
“Like hell he was sorry,” she muttered. “He set it up. He handed me to Cameron like—like a human sacrifice.”
“Beller was in on it, as well,” he informed her grimly. “They were the star witnesses for the prosecution in my court case. I apparently robbed Beller’s apartment and hit him over the head with a crowbar. I got five years but made parole after three and a half for good behavior.”
“A-assault—with…?” She blinked, trying to clear the thick cloud of confusion dulling her brain. She looked at him—at his splendidly muscled body, then up to the face filled with dark, masculine strength, the single stud earring and the curly hair worn in the bead-banded ponytail he’d had when they were lovers. After all these years, his nearness could still draw her gaze to him like a magnet, fill her with a blooming of feminine warmth she thought she’d never know again. Even with the new lines on his face, and a slight hardness in his eyes, his face and body—his mere presence—still shook her as no other man ever had.
Strange to call a man beautiful, but it was the only word for Jirrah. Strong, masculine, with a dark male beauty beyond definition, beyond words.
He still looked the same.
Had he changed so much inside that he’d set up this whole insane scheme? Or had her own brother—maybe even her father—destroyed her life without a single twinge of conscience?
“Cameron came to see me after you, um, disappeared. He had stitches. He said he’d been attacked, that he’d pressed charges. That was you?” He nodded. “I don’t understand. With an alibi, and no eyewitnesses…surely they couldn’t frame you?”
He shrugged his shoulders—the broad, sculpted shoulders she’d once loved to touch. “They claimed I did it when I was waiting for you before our wedding, at the park. I was alone. And your brother was the ‘eyewitness’ to my crime,” he informed her, curt and clipped. “They found his stuff in my truck. My fingerprints were all over Beller’s place, and his things. They conned me into doing a job there the week before.”
Her voice shook as she asked; but she had to know the truth. “Did you ever see my father? Was he a part of this, as well?”
A little silence. “I haven’t seen your father since the week before our wedding.”
She hung on to the handle above the door as the van careered around a pothole, then up and over a gradient full of rocks. “But you suspect him. You’re so obsessed, you even think Dad broke the law to get rid of you! I understand why you suspect Duncan, but what did Dad ever do to hurt you? I know he thought you weren’t good enough for me because of your background—”
“Despite the fact that he married a woman who had a native Canadian background,” he put in. “Don’t you think it’s weird that he has such an aversion to having an Australian Aborigine in the family when he married a Canadian one?”
She frowned. “I—I don’t know. Dad and Duncan never speak about my mother.” Even now, she knew little about her mother apart from the words on the memorial stone in her father’s garden. Rachel Beckwith Earldon, beloved wife of Keith, loving mother to Duncan and Theresa. She knew nothing of her mother’s heritage. She’d only discovered Rachel’s family ties when Duncan lost his temper during a fight over her relationship with David.
Not David—Jirrah. This quiet, intense man, so focused on revenge, wasn’t David, the happy-go-lucky young man she’d loved. If his story was true, she wasn’t Theresa Beller, either. Her brother, a staunch upholder of the law, had committed a felony. As had Cameron, maybe even her father. Respected barristers were the real criminals. Jirrah, the ex-con, was an innocent man.
Was nothing as it appeared any more?
“Haven’t you ever wondered why they never talk about your mother, and her background?” Jirrah said quietly, interrupting her turbulent thoughts. “Haven’t you thought about why you had to find out about her the way you did?”
A fleeting memory of sobbing the sad little story in his arms crept into her mind. Then she swept it out. “No, I don’t, and right now I don’t care. Why do you want me to suspect my father? Do you honestly believe my whole family went to the crazy lengths of having you locked up just to get you away from me, or do you want to leave me with no one to believe in, no one who cares about me? Do you hate me that much?”
“We don’t have time for this right now,” he said through a clenched jaw, holding his temper with an obvious effort. “Let’s get to the house before we play Twenty Questions. I have some questions myself, as I said. But I can’t carry on an emotional argument while I’m trying to stop Beller from killing us!”
Realizing the validity of his words, she closed her mouth, but the questions remained. Questions she had to have answers to before she’d listen to his story—
Then a thought, blinding in its sudden brilliance, burst into her mind. He didn’t know about Emily.
Would he still want to help her escape from Cameron when he knew?
Chapter 3
In the deep velvet hush of an unlit country night, they arrived at their temporary sanctuary.
Through the light
