The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Page 52

  Billy looked surprisingly hopeful instead of annoyed. He was a good boy, and I knew Jason McAllister, the station owner and Billy's paw, kept hoping I'd take a liking to his son instead of moving on like every other teacher he'd tried to lure out into the middle of the Western Australian outback. Tanga Station was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.

  A boy … hah! Billy was three years older than me! I remembered what Linda Hastings had said about the difference between a woman and a man.

  My smile faded as I subconsciously rubbed my bracelet; my beautiful, black leather aboriginal bracelet that each day I told myself today would be the day I cut it off, but then I would touch it and remember what it had been like to love a man.

  "Please, Billy," I said more politely. "I'll go see your paw after I give the kids their final lesson."

  Billy nodded, and then faded back as I strode out of the schoolhouse, my boots thudding softly on the floorboards. I grabbed my drover's hat off the coat-hook hung on the bare, un-plastered walls and strode outside into the sunburned heat of the merciless Australian sun where already the kids had begun to line up at the fence. I could feel Billy's eyes on me, as well as perhaps two dozen other adults, some of them the kid's parents, but most of them unattached jackaroos just getting off of work, all come to watch me run the ponies through their paces.

  "Alright boys and girls," I said. "What's the first thing you must teach a larger animal?"

  "Who is boss," the biggest of the boys said, one who spent part of the year traveling with his parents mustering cattle from their ten-thousand acre paddocks.

  "That is true," I smacked my riding crop on my hand, "but it's much more than that. A Jimeta rider not only wins his horse's respect, but also his love and trust. If your horse doesn't trust you, you will never get him to do amazing things."

  The littlest one, a kindergartener, tugged at my arm. Her name was Jennifer and both of her parents were out right now on a drive. Whenever possible, husbands and wives were sent out on drives together, for otherwise a Jill-at-home turned into a Jill-who-threatened-to-file-for-divorce, and the broken-hearted Jack would usually follow his wife into the suburbs. The sooner they could teach their kids to make some of the less dangerous rides with them, school work permitting, the bigger the chance they would all remain a happy family.

  "Can I ride Luna today?" Jennifer begged.

  "I don't know." I pretended to purse my lips. "Your alphabet was rather sloppy, and you did take a bite out of Jimmy's apple when he wasn't looking."

  "But I was hungry!" Jennifer protested. "And I tried real hard to make the letter 'Q'."

  I pretended to think it over.

  "Okay. But next time you're hungry, ask for food. Don't just take it. I don't want your parents accusing me of teaching you to snatch food like a dingo."

  Jennifer skipped over to the fence to announce that she would get the first ride on Luna today. The other children led their mounts to the riding ring. Some of the horses had once belonged to the children's parents, but the rest of them were broken-down old stock horses I'd rehabilitated into riding ponies. Jason McAllister had been surprised at the price I'd demanded to accept his position out here in the middle of nowhere, but he'd taken it because it was a good deal.

  "Saddle up!" I hung my riding crop off my belt. The crop was a training tool to indicate direction, not to whip the horses, but nothing got a kid's attention faster than the crisp 'snap' of the crop across my palm.

  Luna tugged at her lead until she'd broken the hold of the older boy who'd led her out of the stable. I never did find out who'd left her in such a horrid condition, but whoever they were, if they saw her now, they would be very envious of the plump, pretty white pony they'd thrown away.

  "Hello, Miss Luna," I greeted as she cantered over and snuffled softly into my face. "Beautiful girl. Would you like to teach Miss Jennifer how to dance today?"

  I rubbed her soft, grey muzzle and her snow-white coat which had grown back in to cover her scars … at least the physical ones … the emotional consequences would take longer to heal. She was a saucy little thing, difficult to control whenever one of the boys tried to ride her, but she'd taken a liking to Jennifer, likely because she sensed Jennifer missed her mama and papa while they were off at work.

  I gave Jennifer a hand's-up into the saddle, and then signaled the other boys and girls to take their horses and gather around so they could watch Jennifer put Luna through her paces.

  "Dch-dk-dk," Jennifer clucked. She grasped the reins against the saddle horn with one hand and patted Luna's neck to signal it was time to begin.

  "Tighten those reins," I said. "And keep your heels down in the stirrups."

  Luna cantered around the paddock once, and then with a second round, Jennifer coaxed her through a not-very-tightly controlled piaffe. For a six-year-old, it was a pretty impressive display of horsemanship.

  "Make her dance!" the bigger kids began to chant.

  Jennifer grinned. She began to maneuver Luna in the tightly-reined circles, starts and stops of a traditional Spanish Jimeta horseman, not the fancier dressage moves my father taught me to win so many ribbons, but the purest form of Jimeta the toreadors used when they rounded up the bulls from the hills in Spain.

  "What's the difference between a toreador and a matador, Rosie?" one of the kids asked, a boy about twelve years old. In a mixed-age school where some of the kids came and went according to their parents work schedule, my lessons were, by necessity, one of teaching multi-leveled things, often around the medium of telling stories. Today's lesson included a history and geography lesson about Spain, as well as a math lesson centered around the economics of raising cattle. The kids were entranced to hear about my one and only trip to visit my father.

  "A toreador is someone who herds the bulls," I said, "while a matador is a bullfighter who kills the bull by stabbing it with a sword. A matador is a showman like a circus performer, but a toreador isn't all that different than a jack or jill, just a better rider because in Spain, they have a lot more hills and less land to run their cattle down."

  Jennifer coaxed Luna to do the showiest maneuver I'd taught her to date, to side-step in a graceful canter that made it look like the pony was dancing. The kids clapped as Jennifer beamed.

  "Okay, Jennifer," I called out. "It's time to let somebody else take a turn." Jennifer didn't have her own horse yet, so I let her take 'Bumblebee,' an older stock horse whose owner had been happy to donate him rather than send him to auction with the cattle. That was the deal I'd cut with Jason McAllister to take his job … I'd teach his station's kids … and then I'd teach his station's kids how to give his retired stock horses a second chance at life.

  I glanced at Billy McAllister, standing at the fence with all the other idle jackaroos. The station owner kept hoping I'd give Billy a ride and rescue him, but thus far I'd kept all the horny little jackaroos at arms-length.

  I directed the kids through their modified dressage moves, for I knew their parents would have little use for any training that did not have some correlation with mustering cattle. I'd begun to gain an appreciation of the rough life which had shaped Adam's father. I searched for ways to make my training relevant not only to the children, but also to their skeptical parents. My father's training as a Spanish Riding School horseman had left him too proud to bend his old world horsemanship to the realities of life in a new world, but like my mother, I could be ruthlessly pragmatic when I needed to be.

  I rubbed my bracelet, the bracelet I knew that someday I would have to cut off before I could give myself a second chance at love. Perhaps I should cut it off before I went to sleep tonight? Cut it off so I would no longer dream of Adam Bristow?

  Luna trotted over, having escaped (again) the boy who wanted to ride her.

  "Luna," I said. "You're such a naughty girl!"

  The boy threw up his hands.

  "Ride Saint," I pointed at my own preferred gelding. "I'll take care of Luna."

  At 11.2 han
ds, Luna was a petite little mare, too small for any but the lightest students. I could ride her long enough to train her, but I looked ridiculous riding a little girl's pony with my legs stretched far below her belly. She was perfectly sized for a pony club, and I suspected that was where she had started out her life before her owner stopped caring about her and finally sent her off to slaughter.

  Yes, Luna was spoiled. I admit it. I broke my own rules when it came to the care and feeding of Pippa's pony. I rubbed the scar on her forehead which had never fully healed; the wound Pippa claimed was where an evil ogre had cut off Luna's horn.

  "Yes, I miss her too," I said. "But I still have you, and Pippa still has Adam. And that's the best I was able to do."

  The sound of a distant airplane broke up the cheerful banter of the kids riding through their paces. Tanga Station was large enough to have its own airstrip, a necessity since the next nearest station was almost a day's ride by ute, but the supply plane usually only came once a week. Whenever an unscheduled airplane came, it was usually the Royal Flying Doctor Service because somebody on the station had gotten injured.

  "Listen up!" I shouted at the kids. "Just keep riding, because if you miss today's lesson, I'm not going to cut you any slack."

  The kids grumbled, but kept riding as I instructed them to set up the jumps. If someone had been injured, the last thing the RFDS needed was to have eighteen curious school children show up and get in their way.

  The plane did not pass us over, but circled once and landed on Tanga Station's airfield. I frowned as I realized it wasn't the RFDS's usual white-red-and-blue Hawker 800-XP2, but a sleek private jet, the kind that was owned by the super-wealthy. It wouldn't be the first time some cattle baron had flown in to chat with Jason McAllister about his stock, but this was, by far, the priciest airplane I'd ever seen.

  "Sweet…" the older kids whistled.

  "Rosie, Rosie, we want to go see!" the younger kids exclaimed.

  "Stay put!" I said. "Mr. McAllister will be really mad if I let my students harass his guests."

  My entourage of silent male observers melted into the dust and all went to investigate something more interesting than me. Ohthankgod! How glad I was to be rid of the all single jackaroos who outnumbered the jills six-to-one! The kids sulked, for once not happy to be performing their showy horseback riding lessons which made them the envy of every rider on the station. Horsemanship was about discipline, and I'd be darned if I taught them it was okay to dump their horses to go chase after a whim!

  Sometime later, a bark in the distance interrupted my teaching Jennifer to perfect Bumblebee's piaffe. I glanced up to see a black ball of fur race towards us, barking. It was an Australian Shepherd, there were many of them here on the station, but this Australian Shepherd was headed for the kids.

  "I think somebody's parents just came in off the range," I said.

  The dog ran closer, barking ecstatically, and behind it drove a Land Rover enveloped in a cloud of reddish dust. The dog bounded up to me and wiggled around my legs, whining and howling in that happy dog-talk all dogs have when you've been gone for a while, and then they finally see you again.

  "Thunderlane? Is that you?"

  Impossible! How had he gotten all the way out here?

  The dog ran back to the approaching truck.

  The cloud of dust caught up to the truck as it stopped and enveloped it so completely that, had I not already known Jason McAllister's Land Rover was white, I would not have known its color. When the dust settled, I could see the owner of Tanga Station had gotten out, and standing beside him stood a second man.

  I put my hand over my mouth as my eyes drank in a tall, muscular figure with golden-brown hair and broad shoulders. No! It couldn't be.

  The sound of laughing children and soft clop of horse's hooves in the sand grew very far away as the man who made love to me each night in my dreams walked towards me in the flesh, tall and lean and oh-so-gorgeously male, dressed much the way he'd been dressed the very first time I'd ever laid eyes upon him.

  Luna whinnied. She pushed past me to run up to the paddock fence, trumpeting a welcome to Adam Bristow.

  He leaped over the fence it in a single practiced move that only someone who had spent their entire childhood herding cattle could perform and strode straight towards me, ignoring the horses and the kids. His face was set with firm determination, a man on a mission, a mission to find me.

  I thought he might hug me, but Adam had always been restrained. He stopped a meter in front of me, suddenly awkward, his expression a blend of tortured hope and fear.

  "I found you."

  His voice warbled with emotion. I clamped my hand over my mouth, fearful that something bad had happened. My voice came out as a strangled cry.

  "Pippa?"

  "Is fine," Adam said.

  We stared at each other, neither one of us certain how the other might receive them.

  Adam glanced at the bracelet on my wrist.

  "You still wear it."

  "Yes."

  A flush of pink crept up to my ears. If Sienna was right, that a man bought a woman jewelry because he wanted to mark her as his, than I wondered if Adam knew that when a woman refused to take a man's jewelry off, it was because she wanted to be marked as his?

  A long, awkward moment passed between us. I was painfully aware that Jason McAllister had made his way to the fence and stood there watching us, him and eighteen children. And a bunch of jackaroos. And some of the kid's parents. Oh, and about forty other cowpokes who'd come traipsing out of their houses and barns, all wanting to see what the commotion was about. On a remote cattle station, this was the most exciting occurrence since the B&S we'd had after last season's cattle drive.

  I swallowed.

  "Adam. Why have you come?"

  Every nerve-ending screamed to throw myself into his arms, but the heart which had been broken whispered caution. Adam reached for my face. I took a step backwards. No. This was all too good to be true.

  Adam's hand trembled, still outstretched. His face took on that same look of anguish he'd worn the day I sent him back to his wife.

  "Rosie?"

  "Why have you come, Adam," I shook my head. "I've done everything in my power to stay away."

  Adam looked crestfallen.

  "I came for you, Rosie," Adam said. "I've come to take you home."

  I took another step backwards.

  "I don't have a home. This is where I live."

  The older kids and adults all began to chatter about the mysterious stranger who had flown in to talk to their reclusive teacher; the one who didn't want anybody to tell her about the outside world and spurned each jackaroo who tried to woo her, even the station owner's son.

  'This must be the one,' they said. 'This must be the guy she's hiding from.'

  The younger jackaroos and my three oldest students circled around behind him, ready to beat the crap out of him if I so much as flinched. I held up my hand in the signal all the kids knew meant 'stop.'

  "I'm okay," I said. "This is between me and him."

  Adam shoved his hands into his pockets. This was not, I imagined, the welcome he'd hoped to receive. He glanced over to where Luna, traitorous horse, nudged him in the arm in that bossy move she used whenever she wanted some grassy-hay. She pressed her face into his chest.

  "Hello, Luna." Adam scratched her face. "Pippa has missed you. She asked me to bring you and your mummy home."

  No … fair. No fair talking to me through my horse. I hated it when somebody talked sense to me through my horse. My father had done that whenever I'd been too obstinate to listen to him as a kid. Talking to me through my horse was dirty-fighting!

  Luna put her chin on Adam's shoulder and let out a long, soulful whicker. I gasped for breath so I wouldn't cry as Adam pressed his forehead against the scar on Luna's forelock. It was, I understood, a proxy for the hug I wouldn't let him give me.

  And the bloody bastard knew it was working…

  "O
kay kids!" Jason McAllister shouted. "Show's over for the day! Settle in your horses for the night, and then come over to the main house! Mr. Bristow has just brought us a plane full of goodies!"

  We stood at an impasse, me and him, as the kids led their horses out of the paddock until there was no one left but me and Adam.

  "How did you find me?"

  "It wasn't easy," Adam said. "Julie Peterson uploaded the pictures you sent her of you and Luna surrounded by your students to Luna's fan page. From there we realized we should have been looking deeper into the outback, at a cattle station large enough to support a school." He gestured at the brand one of the stock hands had burned into the paddock fence. "My brother finally recognized the brand on one of the horses."

  "Your … brother?"

  "Haven't you kept up with current events at all?"

  "No. I came out here a few weeks after you went back to Eva."

  "They found him," Adam grinned. "A group of Yanks sprung him from a POW camp run by some Afghani warlord. He's alive, Rosie! My brother is still alive!"

  He hadn't smiled much when I'd been with him, all twisted up inside from his dying marriage and protecting his daughter from Eva's goons, but he smiled now, a free, happy smile that made my heart palpitate far worse than that tortured, haunted look he'd always worn.

  I glanced over to where Billy McAllister had faded into the shadows, watching the man who'd come to take away the 'jill' he had his eye on.

  "We have a rule around here," I said. "Don't tell anyone where I am, and don't tell me any news. It was the condition I put upon taking a position here as a teacher."

  "So Jason McAllister explained," Adam said. "He was less than pleased when I radioed in and told him I was on my way whether or not he would admit you were here." His cheek twitched with emotion. "Did I really hurt you that badly, that you turned your back upon the world?"

  My chest hurt and I found it hard to breath. I started to speak, but it came out as a sob.

  "You left me and went back to her."

  "You didn't give me a choice," Adam said. "It was what I had to do."