Age of Consent Read online

  It seemed as if the polish she’d seen on the man she’d first met had been only a veneer, almost a disguise of the person inside. This, she realised, was the true Dane Curtis. A man equally at home in the crowds of the city streets or in the bush, but much more at ease where he now stood, in his own home, on his own land.

  His smile hadn’t changed, nor had his charm. But his eyes had; they were clearer, somehow more astute. He looked down at her as he handed across her drink, and his gaze was blatantly appraising, not really in a sexual fashion, and not meant to make her uncomfortable despite how easily he saw past her own veneer to the vulnerable person beneath.

  ‘Bit late to be wondering if you ought to have come, isn’t it?’ he asked with startling accuracy.

  Helen breathed in deeply before replying, half- tempted to stall by sipping at her drink, then wondering why she should suddenly have such trepidations in the first place.

  ‘I was more wondering why you thought I ought to come,’ she finally replied, ordering up boldness to cover the quiver inside. ‘There has to be more to it than just giving me chance to get my head together.’

  ‘Why?’ It was a blunt, direct question, but asked softly, so softly she barely heard it.

  ‘You were pretty firm about getting me to stand on my own feet a few years ago,’ she replied with equal softness. ‘And things have been a lot more desperate, once or twice, since then. So why drag me back now? I think it’s out of character.’

  He chuckled, the sound low and rumbling in his muscular throat. But he had no trouble meeting her eyes.

  ‘You’re getting awful suspicious and cynical for someone so young,’ he replied. ‘I warned you that would happen if you stayed in journalism.’

  ‘You warned me it had better happen if I was going to stay in journalism,’ she corrected without heat in her reply. ‘So don’t complain when — for once, anyway — I’ve followed your advice.’

  ‘About time.’

  ‘There’ve been other times.’ And she wondered what in hell they were doing, sparring like this. But then, what should she expect? She’d not seen him in two years, hadn’t written as regularly or informatively as she should. And how could he be the same ... with the death of a woman he’d loved so deeply, the total change in life-style, the probable loneliness.

  Loneliness! That would account for much, she thought. Oddly enough, she hadn’t even thought of the effect loneliness might have on a man she’d always thought of as something of a loner. But he hadn’t been, not really. He’d always had Vivian, until her death. But now ... how difficult it must have been for him since she’d gone.

  Her own loneliness over the past few years had been quite different, created as it was by the self-imposed conditions of her career. And she was younger, less rigidly set in her ways.

  Helen looked at him, words of sympathy forming on the tip of her tongue like dew on a flower petal, but the words remained unspoken, because he got in first,

  ‘Well I’m just glad you took my advice this time,’ he said, stepping forward to gather her into his arms, adding, ‘Welcome,’ as he pulled her against him, tucking her head neatly in against the firm, warm pulse of his throat as he held her close.

  Helen’s own arms flung themselves around his neck as the pot of her scalding tears boiled over, and for long moments they stood entwined in silence before she finally looked up through blurred eyes, offering her mouth not as a woman but as a child in need of that final phase of comforting.

  And he kissed her with the infinite gentleness her offering demanded ... at first. Then she could feel the held-in sexuality as her own response began to change, as her body began to react to the closeness of his own, her nipples thrusting against his chest, her bones turning to liquid rubber as her lips began searching for a new response, her femininity crying out to him silently and yet ever so loudly.

  For one, tiny instant, she felt his fingers begin a score of paradisiacal music along the keyboard of her spine, felt their bodies begin to flow together, but then his hands slid quickly to her waist, his lips releasing themselves. Gently, but oh, so damned firmly.

  And there was a resounding smack as the palm of his hand connected with her bottom, completing the separation process with that single gesture. And when his voice came, it was still gentle, still loving, but also filled with a no-nonsense aura she’d come to recognise when working with him.

  ‘You’re getting too big for this sort of thing. From now on you can wash your own damned back,’ he muttered, both admitting and denying their united response in the same breath. And, more important, levying his demand for her acceptance of his decision without denying his difficulty in making it.

  ‘But who’s going to wash yours?’ she managed to reply, voice unnaturally light, her eyes turned away to hide her tears as much as to keep her from seeing what glint of embarrassment might lurk in his own. Flippancy was her only recourse, and they both knew and accepted that.

  ‘Mine? Hell, there’s a list a mile long,’ he growled in reply. ‘I’ve got to beat them away with a bloody great stick, you ought to know that.’

  Dane, too, taking refuge in being flippant. Typically, she thought. Too inherently honest to deny what they’d both felt, what they both understood could have happened, but also too strong to have let it happen. And she? Was she also so strong? That question was best ignored entirely.

  ‘Oh, but of course,’ she replied with a false grin, adding an emphatic shake of her head for good measure. ‘So that’s why you invited me ... to help you make a choice. So what’s the strategy — are you going to trot up a new one every day for vetting, or what?’

  ‘Well I did think you ought to have a few days’ rest first,’ he replied, now striding over to pick up his drink again and yet still not quite meeting her eyes. Helen, for her part, was glad to pick up her barely tasted brandy, needing the fieriness of it to burn the taste of him from her lips.

  Given these few seconds of retrospect, she realised the danger of that impromptu intimacy, recognising almost instinctively his contrary need to show her he cared and yet to keep her at arm’s length just because he did care,

  ‘Oh, you can start tomorrow, for all of me,’ she grinned, throwing herself into the word-game wholeheartedly because in no other way could she remove the strain from both of them. ‘I’m young and tough ... a bit of flying doesn’t knock too much out of me. I can take it.’

  ‘Maybe, But I sure as hell couldn’t,’ he replied with a matching grin, ‘Now come look at the rest of the place, so you’ll be able to find your way round in the morning.’

  Afterwards, lying alone in the room where she suddenly felt terribly, terribly alone, Helen realised that her only real impression during the short lour of the house was how much of Vivian remained.

  Obviously, he either hadn’t bothered or hadn’t wanted to change things around; there were the same pictures, the same ornaments, the furniture layout was Vivian’s beyond doubt. Newer, different furniture, mostly, than she remembered from other places they’d lived. Solid, heavy pieces designed for comfort as well as style.

  The house, obviously, was very old and had been somewhat neglected before they’d bought the farm, Dane told her. He was still unsure if it was worth restoring, or if he should someday pull it down and replace it,

  ‘It’s got no historic value or anything, except that it’s at least twice as old as 1 am,’ he’d said. ‘And when things go wrong — as they seem to quite regularly — my first instinct is to throw a match at it and start fresh. But on the good days, well, it’s got something. Personality, character ... something. When you come right down to it, there’s only the kitchen that’s really bad, and wrongly located as well. So maybe someday I’ll put on an extension to shift the kitchen and modernise it.’

  Helen couldn’t help but agree with his assessment of the kitchen, which was laid out, it seemed, for maximum inconvenience and inefficiency. Useable, certainly, but she shuddered to imagine earlier residents trying to feed l
arge families from such a kitchen. Cooking for one or two wouldn’t have been too bad, but she wondered at Vivian’s reaction the first time she’d got involved in one of her almost-famous dinner party productions. Vivian would have hated that kitchen after a week, and yet ... she’d been using it nearly a year when she’d been killed. Helen wondered, then, why they’d done nothing to fix the problems.

  Sleep was very difficult, at first. She lay there, only just warm enough, trying to turn off her mind. It had been a long day, a day filled with minor tensions and excitements, but nothing, Helen thought to herself, that should make getting to sleep so terribly difficult.

  And suddenly, she knew what it was ... or wasn’t! It was the silence. She had heard Dane step outside to kennel the dog, heard him return to the house, stoke the fire for the night, and retire to his own bedroom. But since then ... nothing! It was an almost tangible silence, lacking as it did the traffic noises, the people noises that never quite stopped in the city.

  And so dark. Without the street lights, the passing vehicles, and since the night was moonless, the darkness outside her window was total. It was like peering into an ink bottle.

  Then memory took over, dragging her back to her childhood on the land, and memories of similar dark nights, similar still, quiet times, the feeling of being quite alone in the entire world, snug and warm and where nothing could intrude.

  Moments later, she was asleep, sunk into a warm, dreamless nothingness that lasted through until the first glimmerings of piccaninny dawn. But it wasn’t the dawn that woke her, much less having had sufficient sleep. And it was no gentle, slow awakening.

  What brought her leaping from the bed with a squeal of terror to plunge wide-eyed and terrified through the house was a moaning, gasping, choking cry of such anguish, such torment, that it seemed to continue ringing in her ears even as she lurched into the kitchen to find — astonishingly — Dane sitting calmly at the table, a cup of coffee before him and one dark eyebrow raised enquiringly at her sudden, dramatic entrance.

  But before either of them could speak, she heard it yet again, and could only point in mute silence towards the sound’s direction.

  Even as she did so, Helen realised that this time the sound was slightly different, further away. And while the first had been like a foghorn being tortured to death, this second moaning wail had overtones of a million rusty gate hinges being manipulated in unison. And Dane didn’t seem to hear them at all!

  ‘I’d have saved you a cup, you know? There was no need to come flying out as if the devil was after you,’ he grinned, gesturing Helen towards an empty chair and rising to pour coffee into a second cup already waiting. ‘White with two sugar, if I remember right ...?’

  ‘My God! Are you deaf!’ The words burst forth, followed quickly by more, words that were gasped into existence by the fright Helen felt. ‘You must be deaf ... or else I’m going mad. Something’s dying out there. Dying horribly. I heard it right outside the window and you’re just ... just sitting there. You must have heard it ... you must have!’

  ‘Settle down ... settle down,’ he said, putting the coffee before her with one hand and using the other to steady her, much as one might calm a frightened colt. And she looked up to see a strange, almost unholy laughter lurking in his eyes, a laughter that fought against the bonds which held it until it could burst free, exploding in a convulsive torrent that had him writhing in his own chair, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  And every time he looked at her, seeing the confusion she felt, reading the growing uncertainty in her eyes, hearing the stuttered questions that died half-formed, unable to match the totality of his laughter, it seemed to get worse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally managed to gasp. ‘It’s just that — oh, hell, you’d better come see for yourself. I can’t explain it, or at least I won’t, save to say that it doesn’t bode well for your career as a jillaroo, dear Helen.’

  ‘And I don’t think we can be thinking of the same thing,’ she retorted, half angry now. ‘Dane ... Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘Well of course I did, and so did you. The only difference is that I know what we heard and you, dear girl, obviously don’t. And, I suppose, it woke you out of a sound sleep. Oh dear, oh dear, I shouldn’t laugh, really I shouldn’t. You’re going to have my guts for garters when I show you!’

  And he was leading her, half-dragging her along as he strode off through the house, not pausing until he reached the door of Helen’s room. There, he paused.

  ‘You go look. Just go over and look out the window. I won’t come, because 1 want some running room in case you decide to do something that makes me sound like that,’ he said, and gently shoved her through the half-open door.

  His chuckles echoed in her ears as Helen walked determinedly over to pull aside the curtains, staring out into the mid-dawn light with a mixture of fear and curiosity. And then with sheer astonishment as her eyes met — not fifteen feet away — two huge, placid, blue-brown eyes that solemnly stared back at her. Warm, friendly eyes, a soft, pliable muzzle and two great long ears that seemed to wave a greeting at her.

  Helen was dumbstruck. She could only stand there, returning the large donkey’s patient stare and watching in silence as it wrinkled its lips to bray out yet another blood-curdling, yodelling command that was immediately answered from somewhere in the distance, out of her sight.

  A donkey. A big, big donkey, probably thirteen hands high. And a fair age, if her horse experience was anything to go by. Helen had seen donkeys before, but she’d certainly never heard one, much less right outside her bedroom window bellowing her out of a sound sleep. No wonder Dane had laughed, but it was ... not funny! Not one damned bit funny, she decided,

  Dane was sitting, nursing his coffee with apparent calm, when she marched back to the kitchen and stood just inside the door, glaring at him.

  ‘You ... you bastard!’ she hissed. ‘You dirty, rotten, scheming, underhanded ... You might have warned me, at least.’

  ‘About what? How the hell was I supposed to know—’ And he couldn’t go on. The laughter broke him up again, erupting in such infectious hysteria that her anger retreated before it, could do nothing else. Seconds later she, too, was laughing, realising how funny it was — in retrospect.

  ‘How ... how many of them have you got?’ she was finally able to ask, some long moments later and with half a cup of coffee inside her.

  ‘Four. You’ll meet them all when we go to do the morning feeding, which is rather overdue. That’s partly why Maria’s carrying on, apart from the fact I’m weaning her baby and she’s feeling all lonely and neglected. And really Helen ...’ with a chuckle ‘... I’m sorry she woke you up. But if I’d set one foot outside the door, you’d have been wakened anyway, as you’ll see when we go.’

  And she did! Having quickly thrown on some jeans and a sweatshirt, then one of Dane’s jackets and a pair of gumboots, she followed him out into the morning sunshine and a cacophony of sound that certainly would have wakened her ... it would have wakened the dead, she thought.

  They were no sooner out the door when Molly barked a greeting and thundered madly around in her kennel, demanding her freedom. A half-dozen huge geese, stridently demanding attention, arrived from somewhere to yammer at the garden gate, then several ducks joined in, some of them flying from a pond in the next paddock. An old nanny goat, baaing impatiently, thrust her way into the fray, followed by a black-faced lamb with an even more insistent wail.

  From a long, low structure beside the bam, she could hear the excited snuffling and grunting of several pigs, and a variety of cackling chickens streamed in from various directions.

  She and Dane walked to the barn surrounded by his menagerie, each one of them demanding food and attention and determined to be first in line. And as they approached the barn, several other goats and three donkeys lined up at the fence like spectators at a sporting match.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she cried, struggling in her over-sized gumboots t
o keep her footing amidst the horde of noisy, pushy animals. ‘What are you ... old McDonald reincarnated?’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder,’ he grinned. ‘I really do.’ But he didn’t, Helen realised. He didn’t wonder at all. He was so obviously enjoying himself that it was a pleasure to watch.

  And then to help. As she reached the barn he was already handing out a container filled with chook pellets and directions for her to go fling them ‘over there ... so we get some of this lot out of the way for a minute, anyway.’

  And then he was battling to get into the various stock food bins while at the same time keeping the old goat and the lamb from joining him inside the barn. A moment later, they were busy and eye-deep in buckets of feed, and Dane was striding off towards the piggery, Molly prancing happily beside him.

  Helen stood and watched as he ladled out feed, refilled water troughs and did the required other chores, then followed as he walked over to fling some hay across to where the other goats and the three donkeys waited patiently for their share.

  Only then did she realise that somehow, miraculously, the noise had all stopped. There wasn’t a bleat or a cackle or a grunt or a squeal anywhere.

  ‘Now that we can hear ourselves think,’ Dane said, ‘come and meet the rest of the crew.’ And he solemnly introduced her to Mistral, Maria’s foal, ‘Nine months old and look at the size of him. He’s going to be a good, big boy, this one,’ and Joshua, a chocolate gelding with cream-coloured muzzle and appealing, spectacle rings around both eyes, and his sister, a tidy, blue-grey donkey named Trumpet the Strumpet.

  ‘Which she is,’ he muttered. ‘That animal has every bad, stereotyped habit that’s ever been labelled feminine ... and more.’

  ‘I think she’s lovely,’ Helen replied, ignoring the fact that her instinctive preference was for the chocolate gelding with his spectacled, friendly eyes and calm manner. Trumpet was distinctly flighty, although it wasn’t much wonder, considering Dane’s explanation that neither was even halter-broken, yet.