Outback Sunset (38 page)

Bren’s fingers closed more tightly around Curtis’s denim shirt. ‘Make me, bro. Make me.’ Grey eyes glared at him, and before Curtis could answer, Bren’s right arm bent at the elbow, swung back and his fist flew forward into his brother’s face. He knocked Curtis off his feet. ‘Come on, get up. I’m going to enjoy beating the shit out of you.’

Curtis, lying on his back, tried to push himself up. He stared at the man towering threateningly over him. Since childhood he had never been able to beat Bren in a physical fight — that was something they both knew. Already the fall had jarred the healed scar where a section of his liver had been removed. Hell’s bells. He knew he didn’t have time to think about the irrationality of Bren’s behaviour, about his apparent frustration. Such thoughts would come later, in hindsight. Right now what he had to do was to diffuse his brother’s growing rage. He rolled away and bounced back to his feet to stare challengingly at him.

‘Are you both mad?’ Vanessa screamed as they circled each other. ‘Bren, Curtis saved your son’s life. Is this how you repay him? For God’s sake, think about what you’re doing.’

Bren jabbed towards Curtis, testing the distance. ‘Stay out of it,’ he snarled at Vanessa as he closed in with a confident smile. ‘Come on.’ He raised his chin provocatively at his opponent. ‘Maybe this time you’ll be lucky and show me what you’re made of …’

Curtis feinted with his left and received a fist to the side of the head. Shaking his overly long locks because his vision blurred for a few seconds, he managed to deflect a right to the stomach as he backpedalled. He knew that would frustrate Bren because he was lighter on his feet, and over the years had developed an in-built ability to elude serious blows.

‘Come on, you pansy, fight.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Curtis had the temerity to tease, trying to joke his way out of what was going to be a pretty one-sided contest.

‘Hurt me? You’ve never laid a glove on me and you know it.’

Bren’s concentration, askew because of his ill-temper, gave his opponent the opportunity he needed — one good punch. Balling the fist of his right hand Curtis crunched it into Bren’s solar plexus. It connected with a dull thud. With one eye closed, due to the first punch, Curtis, not seeing well, followed with a left to Bren’s jaw, making him stagger backwards.

Infuriated, Bren rushed in, close enough to deliver a blow to Curtis’s nose which started to bleed. Then he began to attack his ribs, one punch following another.

Stockhorses in the yard close by pigrooted and whinnied nervously at the disturbance on the other
side of the fence. Vanessa stood open-mouthed, watching Curtis land a glancing blow to Bren’s shoulder. He was taller but eight kilos lighter than his older brother who, now almost forty, had put on several kilos during their marriage. She couldn’t believe she was watching them fight, over what? Bren’s skewed imagination. Grown men, two brothers who loved each other were trading blows because one had spoken his mind and the other had taken offence to it. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Why was Bren reacting so aggressively? It made no sense. Being an only child Vanessa had little concept of sibling rivalry, especially that which might exist between two strong-minded males.

‘Damn you, Bren, you’ll kill him,’ Vanessa yelled though she knew she was wasting her breath. Her husband was beyond reason, beyond comprehending commonsense. For some peculiar reason, known only to him, he seemed intent on pummelling his brother into unconsciousness.

Desperate to stop the un-equal battle, she saw Warren jogging from the stockmen’s quarters towards the melee but she had to do something
now
. Looking around, she saw an implement that might help — the hose they used to shower horses down after a hard ride. Could that be of use? She ran to the end of the hose, picked it up then, holding it, raced to the fence where the tap was attached to a fence post. She turned it on as hard as she could.

First came a disappointing trickle then, thankfully, a strong spray of water gushed from the nozzle. Vanessa was about two metres away from Bren, facing him and she pointed the stream of water
straight at his face. As she did so she saw Curtis, hurt, drop to his knees. The blast of water was enough of a surprise to divert Bren.

‘Turn that bloody thing off,’ he shouted, using his hands to ward off the bore water’s force.

‘Come and make me,’ she said gamely, hosing him all over, then back again in the face. ‘Water is the best thing to cool down a hot temper like yours.’ As he advanced towards her, his features screwed up with anger, she retreated until her back came up against the yard’s fence and she could go no further. He grabbed the hose off her and threw it to the ground.

He looked so angry that she thought he would strike her. Her brown eyes, dark with anger at his behaviour, dared him to touch her. Then, via her peripheral vision she glimpsed Warren trotting up to them.

‘Aahhh, Warren. Good to see you,’ she said through clenched teeth as she eyeballed her husband. ‘I think Curtis needs help.’

Vanessa watched Bren’s features contort as he tried to regain control over his temper. And then, through her own anger at his disgraceful behaviour, came an unexpected rush of pity. Her hand, steady as a rock, reached out and touched his face. A small miracle happened. His features settled and he stared at her as if, suddenly, he was able to see her and himself clearly. Her eyes began to brim with tears as the enormity of what had taken place between the brothers set in. It made her own anger die quickly and emphatically.

‘Bren,’ she whispered, as if she were speaking to a child. ‘What’s the matter with you?
With us?’

E
arly next morning, after learning from Fran that Curtis and Regan were packing bags to take to Darwin, Vanessa went to the stone cottage. For an instant or two, when Curtis opened the door and before she said a word, there was a moment of acute embarrassment between them over what had erupted yesterday.

Vanessa spent five minutes pleading with Curtis not to leave and winced mentally as she visually catalogued the damage Bren had inflicted. Curtis looked dreadful. He had a black eye, a swollen nose and a bruise along his jawline, and his knuckles were bruised and skinned.

After listening politely to her plea Curtis had been adamant that the best thing to do until they both cooled down was to put a thousand kilometres or so distance between himself and Bren. He and Regan left soon after, taking the old Cessna, ostensibly for Regan to spend time with her grandmother. However, the small community on Amaroo knew the real reason. A rift, possibly one that could not be mended, had occurred between the Selby brothers — and between Vanessa and Bren as well.

Dressed in tourists’ garb — cap, sunglasses, shorts and singlet top, and sandals — Curtis wandered along The Esplanade, the road that bordered part of Darwin’s harbour and on which a multitude of three to five star high-rise hotels were built. Half an hour ago he had left his mother and daughter in the CBD, to indulge in a shopping spree. He had been walking around aimlessly ever since. He knew the city of Darwin almost as well as he knew every hectare of Amaroo, having spent his teenage years on holidays here. It was the largest city within reasonable flying distance of the station.

A park fringed the road down to the shoreline and he found a shaded bench to sit on and stare at the greenish blue waters of the Arafura Sea. He had been at Cullen Bay for a week now and Regan was revelling in the pampering his mother was giving her. It pleased him to see how well they got along. His daughter, he realised, and not for the first time, sometimes needed a woman’s touch and interest now that she was a teenager. Understanding that brought his thoughts to Vanessa. Regan got along well with Vanessa too.

He touched his nose gently. The swelling had gone down and he could breathe through it again, and even smell the slight saltiness coming from an onshore breeze. His sunglasses masked the leftover bruising from the black eye as well as the bleak expression in his hazel eyes as he studied the harbour’s smooth water. Hell’s bells, what was he going to do? The rare opportunity of being inactive
was giving him time to think, too much time, during which he was being forced to admit a truth he’d been hiding from for months.

He was in love with his brother’s wife.

Why hadn’t he realised the depth of his feelings for Vanessa before the fight? And why had the fight been the catalyst that made him aware of how he felt? Had it been because of the way Bren had treated her, his roughness? He nodded. The fight had brought everything to the surface for him, with an amazing clarity, making him see that he had been blocking the admission of his feelings for … He pulled a face. How long? Months, perhaps years! A sardonic smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He was in love with Vanessa Selby. Clever, talented, courageous Vanessa, who’d taught him several lessons in fortitude, in being good-natured, in showing strength of purpose, over the years he had known her. How could he ever, once, have thought her lacking in substance and being too soft? He slapped his thigh in rebuke. And … how had he managed to let such a stupid thing — falling in love — happen?

When had it started …?

Had it been the first time he saw her ride? Seeing her mastering the mustering or teaching her how to fly the chopper and her joy at getting her licence? Then there was her devotion to Kyle, her kindnesses towards Nova. The way she always knocked, so politely, on his cottage door when she wanted to borrow a book. Their discussions afterwards as to the merits of such books and the authors’ skills. Hell’s bells, there were so many instances. Like her
interest in astronomy, and … seeing her on location that last day of filming
Heart of the Outback
and realising how much talent she had.

When had admiration deepened to
love?
Had it happened so slowly and subtly that he hadn’t recognised it until the fight? Was being decked by Bren the action that had dislodged the wall around his heart to set the truth free? He shook his head, wondering and at the same time marvelling over the revelation of his love.

For a while, longer than was sensible, he let the admission of his feelings for Vanessa filter through him like the savoured appreciation of a splendid wine. He loved everything about her. The way she walked, how she curled a lock of hair around her index finger when she was thinking about something, a curiously childish trait. Her laughter. Oh, yes, her laughter. The tinkling, glorious sound it made as it rippled through a room and came back to envelop you in its warmth. Her compassion. He chuckled when he recalled the episode about castrating the weaners and her English outrage. Then there’d been her bravery, being lost after the dust storm and a little while ago, taking on those dingoes on her own.

No wonder she had been able to write a compelling script about a colonial, pioneer family. She was a modern-day reincarnation of that type of woman. He could feel his body becoming aroused as he thought about her, and for several moments he gave in to the joy of wanting her … so very much. But then came reality and the frustration that went with the wanting, heightened by the sobering
knowledge that he could never have her. That had a similar effect to a cold bucket of water being thrown over him.

All right, it had happened, he loved her. What was he going to do about it? A growling, unhappy sound, half sigh, half exclamation forced its way through his lips. Absolutely bloody nothing.

Bren had phoned him and apologised profusely, said he was all kinds of an idiot, which he was, so, in a few days he’d return to Amaroo and pretend that nothing monumental had happened. But something had and things would never be the same. He had to think ahead and … what he was thinking was that he couldn’t stay at Amaroo. He wasn’t enough of a masochist for that. Once Bren sorted out the development thing he and Regan would leave. There were always cattle stations in the Kimberley or the Northern Territory looking for competent managers. Or, if Lauren and Marc agreed, they could buy out his share of Cadogan’s Run. That would give him the wherewithal to start his own, small station, somewhere far away from Amaroo. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would be a starting point for him and his daughter. Yes, that’s what he would see if he could do …

The utility Nova had driven from Kununurra, one of two that belonged to her father, squeaked and bounced along the dirt road as she headed towards Amaroo. In the rear-vision mirror she saw a cloud of red dust in her wake, and to the left and right of her the land was scrubby and flat. In the distance, on the right, stood a row of light green trees bordering
Gumbledon Creek as it wended its way through Amaroo to join up with the Chamberlain River. Further back was a range of low foothills and right now, in the late afternoon light, they were a soft, mauvish-blue and a reddish-sandstone hue. How familiar and comfortable she was with the land around her, because she knew it so well. Still, she would be pushing it to reach the station before dark. She didn’t slow down and the Holden shuddered over another cattlegrid.

From the time she boarded the plane in Sydney she had been telling herself to contain her excitement, that she had to wait for the right time to tell all to Curtis. She had heard, via her father that, while Curtis and Regan had returned to Amaroo, things were still cool between himself and Bren. Thick-headed Bren and his temper — he’d always been a hot-head. Spoilt by his parents because he was the eldest, coddled by Hilary. He didn’t have Curtis’s strength of will or his character. Shit, she wished she had been there for the fight. She would have loved to see Vanessa’s reaction, though she was the one who’d been clever enough to break up the ruckus.

A wicked grin spread across her lips as she checked her reflection in the mirror. Damn, even if she thought so herself, she looked fantastic. New hair-do, new clothes and an air of confidence that came with being successful. This was the ‘new’ Nova. And with regard to Bren and Curtis’s fight, it was only the preliminary round. She chuckled as she thought that. Wait till the main event, when Curtis told his brother, correction, half-brother, that Stuart
was his real father.
There will be fireworks, big time
, her internal voice chuckled.
Vanessa is going to be out on her arse
. The truth would force her to forfeit her position as one of the most respected women in the Kimberley — with her public profile she had become that over the last several years. Vanessa and Bren would end up with nothing if she had any influence, though she supposed Curtis, being the loyal, honest man he was, would give Bren a fair financial settlement.