The Outback Marriage Ransom

That’s all there’d been between them.

Just one kiss…

He turned abruptly as though suddenly sensing her presence. She couldn’t look into his eyes—eyes that had to know where she was at now. Shame curled around her heart, squeezing unmercifully. How had her life come down to this hopeless prison of fear? It had been like a slippery slide…once on it, no way back.

‘Hello, Lara.’

The soft deep voice caused her pulse to flutter. Still she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. She stared at his mouth—a full lower lip and an emphatically curved upper one. Sexy and sensual. An oddly compelling contrast to the strong chisel chin and the very masculine Roman nose.

She remembered how he’d kissed her…slowly, and oh so seductively, wooing the romantic soul she’d had then. If only she could go back to the past, make different choices, take different paths…

‘Ric…’ she forced herself to say with an acknowledging nod.

He gestured to the envelope in her hand. ‘It was taken at the airport and sent to my Sydney Agency this morning. For sale to anyone interested in buying.’

‘You haven’t sold it on yet?’ she pleaded in a frantic rush, unable to contain the flooding well of panic.

‘No. And I won’t, Lara,’ he assured her. ‘In fact, I’ve just called my executive assistant who told me she’s secured the copyright.’

‘I’ll pay whatever the price was.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s irrelevant.’

Lara gestured haplessly. ‘I don’t understand. Why have you come if not to…’

‘Make good on my investment?’ His mouth quirked into an ironic grimace. ‘Oddly enough, I came for you.’

‘Me?’ It came out as a squeak. Her throat was almost choked by a huge lump of chaotic emotion. She dragged her gaze up to his. Was it caring in his eyes? They burned with some indefinable purpose which certainly encompassed her, making her feel weirdly skittish.

‘Take your sunglasses off, Lara. You don’t have to hide from me.’

‘I’m not…’ She bit down on the lie, but to show her naked face…it was too humiliating. ‘Can’t you leave me with some pride, Ric?’

‘This isn’t about pride. It’s about truth. Just between you and me,’ he stated quietly, giving a promise she instinctively believed.

Besides, he had the photograph. Which he’d effectively quashed from publication. Didn’t that prove he was keeping her situation under wraps?

With a defeated little shrug of resignation, she removed the glasses, revealing the swelling that reduced one of her eyes to a narrow, bloodshot slit. ‘Black truth,’ she said self-mockingly, fighting back the pricking of tears.

He nodded. ‘I never told you my mother was a battered wife.’

Lara flinched at the brutal labelling of what he was seeing.

‘She died of injuries my father inflicted when I was eight,’ he went on, hammering home what could happen. ‘As many times as I tried to protect her, to get in the way, to deflect his violence, I couldn’t save her.’

‘I’m sorry. I…’ She shook her head, swallowing hard to hold back the threatening tears. ‘No, you never told me,’ she choked out, trying desperately to hang on to some dignity.

‘But I can save you, Lara. If you want me to.’

‘Oh, God!’ Control was beyond her. She moved blindly to the closest chair, dragged it out from the table, collapsed onto it, and covered her face with her hands, propping her elbows on the table for some solid support as she wept over the impossible prospect of being saved from a husband who was never going to let her go.

She was horribly conscious of Ric Donato watching her, waiting. At least he didn’t try to touch her or speak comforting words, which would have been unbearable. He remained on the other side of the table, as still as a statue, saying nothing, doing nothing, just giving her time to get herself together again. Which she did eventually, pride in terrible tatters, but as Ric had already said, this wasn’t about pride.

‘Thank you. But there’s nothing you can do.’ She lifted her head, letting him see that stark truth in her eyes. ‘Except what you’ve done…with the photograph. I’m very grateful to you for…for blocking it, Ric.’

Still that dark burning in his eyes. ‘At the airport…you were running from him?’

‘I failed,’ she admitted wretchedly. ‘Everyone here…they all report to him. I can’t go anywhere…without his knowing.’

‘No support from your family, Lara?’ he asked, frowning over her helplessness.

‘My father suffered a stroke.’ Her eyes mirrored the bleak irony of the situation. ‘He’s in one of the Chappel nursing homes. My mother doesn’t want to hear anything against Gary. It’s too…threatening…’

She didn’t go on. Ric knew she was an only child. No siblings to turn to. As for friends, Gary chose them. She’d lost touch with the girlfriends who’d shared her modelling years.

‘But you do want to leave him,’ he pressed.

‘Oh, yes.’ She flashed him a derisive look. ‘I’m not a masochist, Ric.’

‘How much, Lara?’ he challenged. ‘How far would you be willing to go to have Gary Chappel out of your life?’

She shook her head defeatedly. ‘It’s not possible.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said with such arrogant confidence it goaded her into a reply that snapped with a mountain of miserable frustration.

‘Do you think I haven’t tested what can and can’t be done?’

‘Would you spend a year on an Outback sheep station, away from everything you’ve known?’

The Outback? She’d never thought of that as an escape route. Had never been there. Knew no one there. Was completely ignorant of how people lived there. But they did live. And she’d be free of the fear—fear she knew all too intimately, ever constant.

‘Yes,’ she said, defying any other judgment he might make from the rich and privileged lifestyle that had always been her environment. Desperation bred desperate measures.

‘Are you prepared to walk out with me now? No baggage. Just you, walking out and leaving all this behind.’

‘With…you?’

Her mind whirled with this further shock. Ric Donato wasn’t posing some theoretical situation. He was actually asking her…and she didn’t know the man he was now. How could she agree to such drastic action when her only personal experience with him had become a teenager’s romantic memory? That had been…eighteen years ago!

‘I’m your safe passage, Lara,’ he stated without so much as a flicker of an eyelash. ‘I can get you to Gundamurra where you’ll be protected from any possible pursuit by your husband. You’ll have safe refuge there for the year it takes to get a divorce.’

Gundamurra…it sounded like the end of the earth…primitive…

‘It’s best if you choose quickly,’ he coolly advised. ‘If what you say is true, and everyone here reports to your husband, he may already know of my visit and be suspicious of it.’

‘How can I trust you to do what you say you’ll do?’ she cried, the fear of consequences paralysing any decision-making process.

‘I’m here. I’m offering. What have you got to lose by trusting me?’