His voice was iron hard.
CHAPTER TWO
WRESTLING with her unsettled feelings, Carrie dressed for the gala dance. Her party dress at least gave her uncomplicated pleasure. It was of white silk chiffon, feminine and floaty. White always married well with the golden tint in her skin, a legacy of that generous dollop of Italian blood. The bodice of her evening dress was perfectly plain, dipping low into the cleft between her breasts and hung from double spaghetti straps. The midcalf swishy skirt was richly embroidered with swirls of tiny seed pearls and silver sequins. She wore her hair hanging loose down her back—the way Scott liked it—but pulled away from her face and secured behind her ears with two beautiful antique hair combs encrusted with dazzling faux jewels. She should have felt on top of the world, instead she felt…apprehensive as though something unpleasant was going to happen or she was going to make a single irreversible mistake. So that’s what meeting up with Clay Cunningham had done for her!
Her mind kept jumping back to the look in Scott’s eyes. The hardness, the jealousy and the defiance. Scott scarcely knew Clay Cunningham. Scott could only have been twelve when Clay’s father had finally packed up and moved his family away, but she could have sworn Scott’s antagonism to Clay Cunningham, perhaps buried deep within him, had re-surfaced with a vengeance. She already knew about Scott’s jealous nature, but usually he kept it under control. Scott actually disliked even his own friends smiling at her let alone attempting a playful flirtation. It was a terrifying thought he might have intuited her spontaneous reaction to the man Clay Cunningham had grown into. She realised, too, with a guilty pang ever since Clay had told her she used to wave to him in the town when she was a little girl, she had been trying very hard to evoke a forgotten memory.
Goodness, what’s the matter with me? she asked her reflection. She was usually very level-headed. She even felt an impulse to start praying the evening would go well. Glancing up at the silver framed wall clock she saw it was almost eight. She really should be on her way. Scott was going to meet her in the foyer It was only a short walk from Dougherty’s pub where she was staying to the new Community Hall. The band had been underway for at least an hour, the infectious toe tapping music spilling out onto the street. The band was good. Her mother had arranged for the musicians to come from Brisbane. She started to sing along a little, trying to lift her spirits.
A final check in the mirror. Turning her head from side to side, she saw the sparkling light of her hair combs, one of innumerable little presents from her mother. Her parents were staying overnight with friends. She had elected to stay with Vince and Katie at the pub, as they always looked after her. The pub was spotlessly clean, the food not fancy, but good. She stayed there overnight when she was working for Paddy at the Bulletin. It was preferable to making the long drive home, then back again the following morning. Victory Downs was over a hundred miles west of the town—no distance in the bush—but she had to multiply that by four when she worked in town as she mostly did, two days in a row.
She had her silver sandalled foot on the second bottom tread of the staircase when Scott, wearing a white dinner jacket, and looking dazzlingly handsome, swung through the front doors.
‘Hiyah, beautiful!’ His blue eyes travelled over her with pride of possession. ‘I am impressed!’
The overhead light glinted on his smooth golden hair and the white of his smile. If they had children—she wanted three, four was okay—they were bound to have golden hair, Carrie thought, holding out her hands to him.
‘There’s not going to be anyone to touch you!’ Scott continued to eye her, appreciatively. She looked as good to eat as a bowl of vanilla ice cream. He’d had a lot of girls over the years but Carrie was unique.
‘You look great yourself!’ she told him, sincerity in her velvety eyes.
‘All for you.’ He’d had a few drinks: now, he badly wanted pull her into his arms. He wanted to race her back upstairs, strip that pretty white dress off her, throw her down on the bed and make violent love to her. Only he was afraid of what might happen. Carrie, by his reckoning, had to be the last virgin over fifteen left on the planet. If that weren’t astonishing enough, she wanted it to remain that way until they were married. Could you beat it! He would never have agreed, only he saw her resolve was very strong. Or maybe she was playing it smart, teasing the living daylights out of him. She was his fiancée yet he had to keep his hands off her. Well, within limits. It was excruciatingly frustrating—more torture—when she filled him with such lust as he had ever known. Not that he had taken a corresponding vow of celibacy. He got release when he wanted it. Most girls were his for the asking including that bitch Natasha Cunningham. He’d had an on and off relationship with her for years. She was mad for him—and he knew it.
But it was innocent little Caroline McNevin he had always wanted. He guessed he had started to want her from when she was a yummy little teenager with budding breasts. He’d confidently thought virginity was a relic of the Dark Ages. He’d been stunned when Carrie told him she wanted to remain a virgin until their wedding night. At first he’d been sure it was a damned ploy to keep him interested, on a knife’s edge. As a ploy it certainly worked, but then he came to realise she was fair dinkum. It was impossible to believe! But, boy, wouldn’t he make up for the long hungry years of deprivation! Their wedding night couldn’t come soon enough.
They had scarcely made it into the packed hall with huge silver-blue disco balls suspended from the ceiling like glittering moons, when Scott’s grip on her arm tightened. Carrie let out a surprised little whimper. ‘Hey, Scott, you’re hurting!’
‘Sorry.’ He shifted his arm to around her waist, hauling her close to him. ‘That bastard has had the nerve to show up,’ he ground out, his eyes quickly finding Clay Cunningham’s rangy figure across the room.
So it wasn’t going to be a happy evening! Carrie’s heart began to thump. She lifted her eyes to Scott’s tight face. ‘Scott, please settle down. We’re here to enjoy ourselves aren’t we? Everybody will be watching. Clay Cunningham has a perfect right to be here. I expect there would be a lot of disappointed girls if he hadn’t shown up. Surely you’re not looking for trouble?’
‘He’d do well to steer clear of me,’ Scott gritted, unable to conceal a flare of jealousy so monstrous it startled even him. He tried to calm himself by sheer will power. So far as he was concerned it was Cunningham versus him! Across the packed hall Cunningham was standing head and shoulders above a group of silly giggling females. One let out a burst of ecstatic laughter, obviously thrilled there was an eligible bachelor in their midst. A man, moreover, who had expressed his desire to find himself a wife. Hadn’t they heard, the little fools, Jimboorie House was falling down? Didn’t they know Jimboorie Station would never be what it was again? Or would any man do? Girls fell in and out of love so fast. They were like kids with some wonderful new toy.
All right, Cunningham was handsome. Scott was honest enough to admit that. All the Cunninghams were. Even Natasha. And Cunningham had that look about him, he recognised, of a fine natural athlete. How had that little weed of a kid who he’d loved slapping around turned into this guy? Scott wasn’t even sure he could take Cunningham in a fight, even though he was a good amateur boxer, a welterweight champion at university. The fact Cunningham had beaten him for the Cup Scott took as a scalding defeat. And he’d been beaten so easily! That was what stunned and humiliated him. He was used to being king pin. To cap it off his fiancée had presented Cunningham with the Cup. He’d watched their eyes, then their hands meet. It had only taken him a second to register the look on Carrie’s face. It had filled him with jealousy and unease.
Cunningham had stirred her interest and attention. That wasn’t going to be allowed to happen. Carrie was his! He owned her. Or near enough. She was wearing his ring.
I mightn’t be able to stop you looking, but don’t touch, you bastard! Scott swung Carrie into his arms, whisking her onto the dance floor. At least the music was great. It filled up the room.
After each bracket of numbers, the crowd clapped their appreciation. One