The Last-Minute Marriage

CHAPTER TEN

WHAT followed were five very strained days.

‘Don’t you guys like each other any more?’ Harry demanded.

‘We like each other,’ Marcus told him. He was cooking-a beef casserole with red wine and mushrooms. Harry would eat with him and take home a plateful for Peta to eat when she came in from the dairy.

For she’d refused to eat with him again. She’d put herself to work. She’d thrown herself into the farm and Marcus had been free to fend for himself.

It hurt-but in a sense he accepted it was right. They couldn’t come near each other without sparks flying. He’d asked her to be his wife and she’d refused. That was her right and in a way it was nothing less than he’d expected. To love a woman was impossible.

To love anyone was impossible.

But he’d become attached to Harry-more attached than he cared to admit. While Peta spent her time with her cows, avoiding him, Harry hauled his homework to the pink house each night. He gossiped while Marcus cooked or worked on his laptop. He was inquisitive and friendly and bubbly with twelve-year-old enthusiasm, and Marcus knew that when this two weeks was up it wouldn’t just be Peta he’d miss.

So why didn’t he do something about it?

What could he do? He’d already asked her to take it further. He’d offered…

He hadn’t offered enough. He hadn’t offered himself.

‘I’m a loner,’ he told Harry now as they chopped onions over companionable tears. ‘Peta’s a loner, too. That’s why she eats her dinner by herself.’

‘She never eats dinner by herself when my brothers are at home. It’s just ’cos she’s avoiding you.’

‘So she doesn’t like me.’

‘Of course she likes you.’

Maybe she likes me too much. The words were there, unsaid. The thought…

It made him feel…

Scared. He sliced his last onion and turned to get the steak from the fridge. Giving him time to get his voice in order.

‘Peta and I are very different,’ he told Harry. ‘My life’s in New York and Peta’s is here. If we get…attached…’

‘You’re saying if you eat together you guys might fall in love?’

‘No!’

‘You might.’ Harry was an intelligent and perceptive twelve-year-old, and now his face creased into a smile of pleasure. ‘That’d be ace.’

‘Why would it be ace?’

‘You could stay here all the time. We could keep your cool little Morgan. You might even drive me to school in it.’

Some plans had to be scotched, and scotched fast. ‘My life’s in New York.’

‘Why? You’re working here. You work on the telephone and the computer. You don’t have to milk cows for a living.’

‘No, but there are other things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Harry, you don’t have a clue what my life entails.’

‘I bet this life is better,’ he said solidly.

‘I have a Porsche in New York,’ Marcus told him, trying to put his decision in terms Harry could understand. But could he understand it himself? He slammed the cleaver through the steak as if it had personally offended him.

‘But you’ve got your Morgan here already, and we’ve got an ace tractor. Our tractor’s practically veteran.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a Porsche?’

‘Why?’

‘All twelve-year-old boys like Porsches,’ he said with an air of near desperation.

‘I know what Porsches are, of course,’ Harry told him. ‘My mate Rodney’s got a bunch of posters up on his wall. And if you brought it out here I’d love to have a ride. But I don’t reckon they’re as good as Morgans. Is that what you want?’ He cocked his head to one side, questioning. ‘For Peta to go back to New York and drive your Porsche?’

‘Peta is staying here,’ Marcus told him and sliced the steak again. Hard. ‘And I’m going back to New York. I’m sticking with my Porsche and Peta’s sticking with her tractor.’

‘Yeah, but Peta’s got more than the tractor,’ Harry said wisely. ‘She’s got the cows and the dogs and the house and me.’ He grinned up at Marcus, confiding. ‘You’re going to have to come up with something better than a Porsche to compete with us.’

‘I don’t want to compete.’

‘Peta’s saying she isn’t going to fall in love with you, too,’ Harry told him, veering off at a tangent that was as stunning as it was perceptive. ‘I think the two of you are nuts.’

Harry and Marcus were down at Hattie’s house making dinner. Peta sat in her dairy longer than she needed. Much longer.

Soon she’d have to go home. There’d be a plate of something delicious in her oven, made by Marcus, brought home by Harry and left for her to eat by herself. Harry thought she was a dope.

He was right. She was a dope.

No. What was happening was dangerous. She knew enough about her own heart to realise how vulnerable she was.

She’d fallen so hard. Well, why wouldn’t she? she asked herself bitterly. He’d saved her world. He’d dressed her as a princess. He’d swept her off her feet and now he was offering her…

He was offering her his world.

So she should take it.

Be contented with crumbs?

That’s what he was offering, she thought. There was no way Marcus was offering his heart. He was holding himself separate, still playing the hero whose life didn’t change with the redemption of his heroine.

Yeah, great.

How did Cinderella cope? she thought. Being grateful for the rest of her life. Knowing you owed the whole of your life to one man.

But she could sleep at night in his arms…

Marcus was hardly even offering that, she thought. Yeah, sleep in his arms when it was convenient. And the rest of the time… Sleeping here in a great house built with his money, being grateful, being endlessly grateful, or sleeping in that dreadful, cold apartment in New York, being more grateful still.

Stupid.

‘The whole thing is stupid,’ she told Ted-dog when his greying head nuzzled her hand in concern. ‘He’s dreaming. He’s playing fairytales and one of us has to be sensible.’

I don’t want to be sensible. I want to go down there and eat with them, and laugh with Marcus and enjoy the work he’s helping Harry with, and walk home with him to my veranda and…

‘Cut it out.’

She had to cut it out. There was no choice.

She gave her dog one final pat and rose to fetch the hose. She’d sluice out the dairy. Slowly.

And then she’d go home to dinner. To bed. Alone.

It was mid-morning when they came.

Peta was down the paddock, cleaning out a water trough. She saw the car turn into the driveway. Marcus was home, she thought. At nine in the morning it was five at night back in New York so he’d be in mid-conference with someone important. Maybe she’d better go back to the house and intercept the visitors before they interrupted him.

Maybe if he was interrupted he’d come out…

No. It had only been that first day that he’d spent time with her. He wouldn’t come out. She’d told him to keep his distance and he obviously agreed.

Who would blame him? That night on the beach had been an aberration. She looked down at herself with a rueful smile. She was coated in mud. The trough had been overflowing and the ground around it was knee-deep mud. The float had blocked-the float that cut off the water flow when the trough was full-so she’d had to wade through mud and realign the float regardless of mess.

Urk.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and then wished she hadn’t. Yuk.

So who were the visitors?

No one important, she thought. Please.

Marcus was staring at his computer screen and seeing nothing. His razor-sharp mind seemed to have become fluff. Instead of the fierce concentration he applied to his work, his attention kept wandering to the window. Sometimes he’d see her, in her overalls and her gumboots, her hair pulled back from her face but wisping in escaping curls. Sometimes her face would be smudged with dirt. Usually her face would be smudged with dirt. She’d be doing something heavy and filthy, like carting buckets or driving the tractor or…

Or any of the things he’d offered to save her from. She shouldn’t have to do it. She shouldn’t want to!

And there was the rub. He’d envisaged his happy ever after and she wanted no part of it.

‘Are you there, Mr Benson?’ The online teleconferencing was in full swing and he should be concentrating. But Peta…

He could see her. She was down the paddock, delving in a trough of some sort. He could see the mud from here.

It looked…fun?

‘I’m here.’ It took a huge effort to haul his eyes from the window and back to the screen.

And then he heard a car turn into the driveway.

Great. He’d have to wrap it up now. Peta was too far away to welcome visitors.

‘I need to leave this, gentlemen,’ he told the screen, not even caring that the corporate problem they were discussing wasn’t near to being resolved.

He had his own problems and they were nothing to do with New York.

Or maybe they were. He walked outside and a car was pulling up before the main house. As he stared in astonishment, out stepped Darrell. Darrell gave him a wave, then walked around the car and opened the passenger door.

Ruby.

‘It was too complex to do from New York.’

They were all seated on the edge of Peta’s veranda. Peta had brought out lemonade and handed it out like a good hostess. She’d ditched her gumboots. Now she sat and swung her feet. One sock had a hole in it. Her toe peeped out.

Marcus was trying to concentrate on two things-what Ruby was saying and Peta’s toe. If anyone had ever told him he’d find a woman’s toe erotic he would have said they were crazy.

Her toe was driving him wild!

‘What was too complex to do from New York?’ he managed and Ruby beamed. She looked thoroughly pleased with herself. Darrell sat by her side and he, too, looked like the cat that had just got the canary.

What had got into the pair of them?

‘It’s about your will,’ Ruby said.

‘My will?’

‘Peta’s aunt’s will,’ Ruby told him, as if humouring a child. ‘For heaven’s sake, Marcus, focus here.’

Ruby-telling him to focus? ‘Okay.’ He put up his hands as if in surrender. ‘Hattie’s will. What about it?’

‘You asked me to find out about it before you left. There wasn’t time for any investigations before you needed to be married, but we’ve done it now.’ She turned to Peta. ‘You told Marcus that your aunt had high calcium levels and was confused in the last weeks of life?’

‘I… Yes.’ Peta frowned. ‘She was a bit confused. She wasn’t all that clear when she left here. I was really worried.’

‘Did you know that your doctor here took blood samples two weeks before she left Australia?’

‘She was having blood tests all the time.’

‘That’s right.’ Ruby pulled a form from her capacious bag. ‘One of the forms Marcus had you sign before you left gave us the power to check medical records. We put in a request for the information on the grounds that she’s now deceased and you stand to lose.’

‘How do I stand to lose?’

‘You stand to lose by her change of will. There’s an earlier will leaving you the farm.’

Peta’s frown deepened. ‘I remember. She always said she wrote one. But that was well before she went back to the States.’

‘Of course it was,’ Ruby told her. ‘And we found it. Our lawyers discovered that Hattie wrote a will two years before she died-long before she got sick-and she lodged it with a Yooralaa solicitor.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ Peta asked.

‘That’s why we’ve come,’ Ruby said triumphantly. ‘I knew you two couldn’t do the investigations. You had to stay on the farm and be happily married. I was planning on sending one of Marcus’s solicitors but then I thought, maybe I could do it. And Darrell decided to come, too.’ For the first time she looked a little disconcerted. Embarrassed, Marcus thought, stunned.

But she was moving on.

‘And guess what we’ve found?’ she told them. ‘Hattie’s medical records. Marcus was right. The tests here said her calcium levels were through the roof before she left Australia. Once she had medical attention in the States, her records there confirm it. The calcium levels would force any judge to concede that her judgement was significantly impaired for at least six weeks before her death. Darrell and I have been here for two days and we’ve been working hard. We’ve had legal opinions from Australian lawyers and we’ve had legal opinions from US lawyers. They concur. The new will doesn’t stand, Peta. The farm is yours. Married or not, Charles can’t touch you.’

Peta stared, not immediately comprehending. ‘It’s… The farm’s mine?’

‘It’s yours.’ Ruby was still smiling. She cast a sideways glance at Marcus, expecting him to be pleased. ‘Marcus told me to do everything to get the will overturned. He suspected this.’

‘He suspected…’

‘He wasn’t sure, of course, or he’d never have married you.’

‘No.’ Peta looked blankly at Marcus. ‘No. Of course he wouldn’t.’

‘So now all you have to do is get the marriage annulled,’ Darrell told them. And then he, too, smiled. Teasing. ‘You can use the old non-consummation line. Unless, of course, you have…’

‘No,’ Marcus snapped. ‘We haven’t.’

‘That’s good,’ Ruby told them, her smile fading. She looked from Peta to Marcus and back again, for the first time seeming to sense the deep undercurrents running between them. ‘I’m glad you’ve had that much sense.’

‘Ruby…’

‘Well, that’s what we came to tell you,’ she said, setting down her lemonade glass with a definite clink. ‘Adam and Gloria presented Charles with the legal evidence invalidating the will last night our time. The evidence is indisputable. Peta, the farm is yours and no conditions apply. So… There’s no need to keep on with the marriage. I’ve brought the annulment forms. If you both sign them you can go on with your lives as if this had never happened. Marcus, there’s no need for you to stay.’

‘No.’

‘Unless you want to,’ she added. ‘You really could do with a holiday.’

‘This isn’t much of a holiday,’ Marcus told her and Peta flushed.

‘Our accommodation isn’t quite five-star,’ Peta muttered. She, too, lay down her glass and turned to Marcus. ‘So you can go home?’

‘Yes.’ There was nothing else to say.

‘I need to thank you. So much…’

‘There’s no need.’

‘There is.’ It was an absurdly formal little tableau but there seemed no right way to go forward from here. ‘I can’t… I don’t know how to repay you. If I could think of anything…’

‘My offer still stands,’ Marcus told her while Ruby and Darrell watched in silence.

‘What-to make our marriage last?’

There was an audible intake of breath from Ruby but Marcus didn’t move his gaze from Peta.

‘That’s right.’

‘Marriage when you can fit me around the edges.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he told her. ‘We could do this. If you’d be prepared to give it a chance…’

‘It doesn’t have a chance.’

‘What doesn’t have a chance?’ Ruby demanded and Peta turned to her, despairing.

‘He wants to build me a mansion, right here, instead of my veranda. He wants to visit for a couple of weeks a year and for the rest of the time he wants to install me in his black marble apartment and keep his bed warm for the twenty minutes a day he can spare for me.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Marcus snapped.

‘What else are you offering?’

‘I run a financial empire, Peta,’ Marcus told her. ‘I’ve never asked anyone else to marry me…’

‘And I should be really grateful,’ Peta told him. ‘I’m sure Cinderella did it really well. But not me.’

‘What else do you want?’ They were almost unaware that Ruby and Darrell were staring, agog. This was too important to be distracted.

‘You.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Then figure it out,’ Peta told him. She sighed and her shoulders slumped as the rest of the world appeared to enter her consciousness again. She turned and faced Ruby and Darrell. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve been so good. Do you have to go back to the States immediately or can I put you up here for a night or so? My accommodation’s pretty basic.’

‘It looks great to me,’ Darrell told her. He looked sideways at Marcus. ‘I’ve spent months on a battlefield. Marcus has, too. I’ve no need for marble tiles.’

‘Will you go straight home?’ Ruby asked Marcus and Marcus tried to get his addled brain to think. He might as well. This was stupid. What was Peta expecting? That he share her gumboots? He hadn’t worked so hard all his life for this.

‘Yeah,’ he told them. ‘I will.’

‘I haven’t had a holiday for years,’ Ruby told him, still eyeing him with a dubious look that said her mind was running at a tangent. ‘Do you mind if I stay on?’

‘Go for it. Just as long as you like pink.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with pink,’ Peta flashed. ‘If you’re happy you don’t notice.’

‘Of course you notice.’

‘Get a life, Marcus,’ she told him.

‘It’s you who’s refusing-just because you don’t like black marble.’

‘If you think that’s the reason I’m refusing then you have rocks in your head,’ she told him. ‘I’m refusing because you can’t see that it’s not important. That I’ve offered the only thing that’s important and you haven’t a clue how to return it. And I’m not even sure that you want to. Ever.’

He left half an hour after Harry returned from school. He could have left earlier but the thought of leaving before saying goodbye to the kid was almost impossible.

And saying goodbye even then was incredibly hard.

‘I sort of hoped you guys might have made it long term,’ Harry told him, trying not to let his almost-manly chin wobble. ‘I sort of liked cooking. And you helping with projects and stuff.’

‘Your brothers will be home soon.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t stay and they’re not the same. And you made Peta smile…’

‘Only at the start.’

‘Yeah, but you could again if you wanted to,’ Harry said with perspicacity. ‘Couldn’t you?’

There was no answer to that. ‘I have to go.’

‘Did you say goodbye to Peta?’

‘She’s milking.’

‘You’re mean,’ Harry said. His jaw set a little and he moved around Marcus’s car and gave a kick to the tyre. ‘I thought you were a friend.’

‘Harry…’

‘See you.’ He picked up his school bag and sloped off into the house.

Darrell and Ruby were nowhere to be seen. Peta was in the dairy.

There was no one to watch him drive away.

He went.

Peta was putting cups on one of her favourite cows when she heard his engine start. She turned and watched as his lovely little Morgan turned out of the driveway and headed out towards the highway.

Terrific. He was gone.

She put her head on the cow’s warm flank and wept.

‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about?’

It was late that night. Darrell and Harry had both gone to bed, Harry reluctantly but Darrell because his head was still halfway between New York and Australia. Peta and Ruby were left alone. They gravitated towards the veranda and sat, watching the moon out over the ocean.

‘Are you saying he really asked you to stay married to him?’ Ruby demanded and Peta nodded.

‘You heard him. Sort of.’

‘Are you intending to explain?’

‘He didn’t say he loved me. He just said… He figured it could work. He kissed me and he liked it. He enjoyed playing fairy godfather, genie, whatever. He’d give us more. Build this place up to be a mansion and come and visit for a few weeks each year so he could see how benevolent he was. And I could visit him in New York-I think he actually used that word, visit-and stay in his horrible mausoleum of an apartment and be there waiting for him in between corporate necessity.’

‘It…it doesn’t sound like a romantic kind of proposal,’ Ruby said a trifle unsteadily and Peta eyed her with suspicion.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘Oh, my dear, I’d never laugh.’ Ruby hesitated and then placed a large hand on Peta’s. ‘You did the right thing. He has to see…’

‘He’ll never see.’

‘Sometimes miracles happen,’ Ruby said gently. There was a moment’s silence and then she continued. ‘For instance, me and Darrell…’

‘Now that’s something I don’t understand.’

‘Darrell needs me,’ she said simply. She closed her eyes. The sound of the sea intensified in the stillness and when Ruby opened her eyes again there was a peace about her that Peta had never seen. ‘Life’s been bleak,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t put my pain behind me. But with you…playing brides, seeing what was happening to Marcus while he thought you needed him… I don’t know. I let my guard down for a moment, I guess. And then Darrell took me home after your wedding and we got to talking. His body… He’s so scarred and he’s closed off as well. We talked and we talked and we’ve been together ever since.’ She smiled, a slow soft smile that contained all the joy in the world. ‘I guess we’ll be together for ever. It’s that simple.’

It’s that simple.

The words wafted around them. There was joy here, but also…

Sadness. Despair.

‘He can’t see it,’ Peta said.

‘You mean… You love him?’

‘Of course I love him.’

‘You told him?’

‘Mmm.’

‘And he ran.’

‘No. He offered me marriage. On terms.’

‘For a billionaire, he really is a dope,’ Ruby told her.

Silence. The silence went on and on. And on.

‘Well,’ Ruby said at last. ‘Well. What we need here, girl, is a plan.’

‘A plan?’

‘It’s what Marcus is principally good at. Corporate plans. Takeovers. Strategies. He’s spent eight years teaching me how to do it. So let’s get to work.’

‘Ruby…’

‘You telling me to butt out, girl?’

‘No,’ Peta told her, half laughing. ‘No. Ruby, I need all the help I can get.’

‘Spoken like a true Benson,’ Ruby told her. ‘We haven’t annulled that marriage yet!’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Silence.’

‘Is that all?’

‘He’s had a taste of something he didn’t know existed,’ Ruby told her. ‘Let’s leave him alone to think about it.’