deal with, without adding his to the score. But when she looked up into his face, she found she didn’t have the strength to do that. Just for a moment he looked as tired and defeated as she felt each morning when she woke up. Before she’d had a chance to remind herself that she was on a cattle station in the Outback and that she had a riding lesson that very morning to look forward to.
He eased down beside her. She studied him for a moment—the downturned mouth, the slumped shoulders, the way it seemed an effort to draw breath into his lungs, and a lump formed in her throat. It was obvious he needed to share this with someone. Why not the temporary nanny who’d be gone again in six weeks’ time?
It’s just a job, she reminded herself.
But it felt like so much more and she didn’t know when that had happened. She bit back a sigh. So much for keeping her distance.
He was sitting beside her on the bench in the warm night air, their arms and shoulders not quite touching. This time she didn’t prompt him. She sat there and stared out at the sky, breathing him in and waiting.
Finally he spoke. ‘Last Christmas was our first Christmas without Fran.’
Her heart clenched at the pain in his voice.
‘She’d left about four months earlier, but …’
He dipped his head and raked his fingers through his hair. She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm. The muscles tensed beneath her fingertips. ‘You really don’t have to tell me any of this, you know?’
He laid his other hand over hers and squeezed it, and then he placed her hand back in her lap. It felt like a rejection but she didn’t know why. She stared straight out in front of her and focused on her breathing.
‘I think it’s probably best if you know.’
She didn’t say anything, just gave a curt nod.
‘Fran left us all here at Waminda in late August and went to Brisbane.’ He paused. ‘I thought she just needed a break. It can be hard getting used to the isolation of a cattle station, and with two small children—one barely three months old—I could understand her going a bit stir-crazy.’
Nicola frowned. ‘You mean … you’re saying she left Ella and Holly here?’
Even in the dimness she could see him smile, but it didn’t hold any mirth. ‘That’s what I’m saying.’
She bit her tongue and turned back to stare straight out in front of her. She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to leave Ella and Holly behind, not for any reason. Unless … ‘Post-natal depression?’
‘That’s what she told me. She was seeing a therapist. I even spoke to the damn therapist.’
She understood his frustration, his anger, but … ‘She wouldn’t have been able to help it, you know.’
The smile he sent her held a world of weariness. ‘Depression was something I was fully prepared to deal with, Nicola. I’d have done anything I could’ve to help her through it. I set her up in an inner city apartment so she could see her therapist as often as she needed, and so she could have the change of scenery she claimed to so badly need. I wired her as much money as she asked for. I took the girls to visit as often as I could, and all the while I made endless excuses for her distance and her erratic behaviour. I mean depression, right? It’s out of her control. I might be doing it tough, but she was doing it a whole lot tougher, right?’
With each right his voice rose. She swallowed and nodded. ‘Right,’ but her voice came out on a breath of uncertainty. She gripped the edge of the bench and turned to face him fully. ‘But?’
He rested his head back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. ‘But it was all a lie.’
‘A lie?’
‘A blind, a decoy, a red herring to throw me off the trail of what was really happening.’
Her mouth had gone as dry as the soft red sand of the Outback. ‘What was really happening?’
‘For three months she let me go on thinking that our marriage had a chance, but all the while she was planning to leave me and Ella and Holly for another man.’
She couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping. ‘She strung you along for three months?’
His eyes opened. His lips twisted and he pointed to his forehead. ‘Can’t you see the word Stupid branded here?’
‘You weren’t stupid! You trusted her, supported her and … You were married, for heaven’s sake!’ She pressed fingertips to her temples. Thank God Brad had dumped her before they’d married.
‘Apparently returning to Waminda was her backup plan if things didn’t work out with her Texan millionaire.’
She eyed him for a moment, swallowed. ‘I guess they did. Work out, that is.’
‘They did.’
‘I guess telling you you’re better off without her isn’t any comfort at all?’
‘A little.’ This time his smile was genuine. It faded. ‘But Ella and Holly aren’t better off without a mother.’
She shook her head. ‘No.’ She couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice. ‘Whose decision was that?’ She understood Cade’s anger, his bitterness, but would he prevent his ex-wife from seeing their children?
‘Hers,’ he replied in a dead voice and she immediately kicked herself for what she’d just thought. She’d seen him with his children. He didn’t have that kind of spite in him.
‘Quote: “I’m not taking any extra baggage like children from a previous marriage into my new life. Chip wouldn’t like it.”’
‘God!’ She didn’t try to hide her disgust. ‘Where on earth did she pick him up from?’
‘The Internet.’
She slouched back. ‘Poor Ella and Holly.’
‘You said it.’
And poor Cade.
She glanced at him, and roused herself. ‘The girls,’ she ventured, ‘seem to have bounced back okay. Ella is remarkably well adjusted considering all she’s been through.’ The young girl could be clingy at times, but she understood why now. Holly was still just a baby. Who knew how this would affect her in the years to come?
‘I feel we’ve finally come out the other side.’
His voice told her it had been hell.
‘And this Christmas is a … a signal of a new start?’
‘It’s an attempt to make up to them in some small way for the wretchedness of the last year.’ His hands clenched. ‘It’s my attempt to make amends for all but ignoring Christmas last year.’
If Fran had left him in late August and then strung him along for three months … ‘Fran broke up with you in late November?’
‘Early
