He grinned and shook his head ruefully. ‘If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, maybe that was for the best.’
‘I envy you. Everything matters so much to me. It’s like-’ She fell silent, wondering at herself. Analysing also wasn’t like her. Her thoughts and feelings were her own private property, and she guarded them behind barriers. But something about Leo drew her out from behind those barriers. Into the open. Into places she’d never ventured before. That’s why he was a dangerous man, for all his quiet ways.
‘Like what?’ he asked, watching her with a little smile.
‘Nothing.’ She was retreating fast.
But he cut off her retreat, taking her hand gently in his, silently telling her she was safe with him.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘No, I-I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’ She laughed awkwardly.
He didn’t reply in words, but his raised eyebrows called her a coward.
Take the chance. Trust him.
‘It’s like all my life I was walking on a tightrope over a chasm,’ she blurted out. ‘I keep thinking I’ll reach the other side but-’ She waved her hands. Words came hard to her.
‘What’s waiting on the other side?’ Leo asked, still holding her hand in his.
She met his eyes, shaking her head. ‘I’m not sure there is one. Or if there is, I’ll never find it.’
‘You’re wrong about that Selena. There’s always another side, but you have to know what you want to find there. You just haven’t decided yet. When you’ve made up your mind, you’ll see the far ledge. And you’ll get there.’
‘Unless I fall off first. I keep feeling myself get wobbly.’
‘I can’t imagine you getting wobbly.’
‘That’s because I shout a lot, to hide it. Sometimes, the louder I yell, the more I’m like jelly inside.’
‘I don’t believe it. You’re too gutsy.’
‘Thanks but you don’t know me.’
‘Funny, but I feel as though I do. When we met up on that highway and you bawled me out, it felt like you’d been bawling me out all my life.’
She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Yes, I’m good at bawling people out.’
‘My back’s broad.’ He released her hand and leaned back against a tree, looking deeply content, like a man who already had everything life had to offer.
‘Leo, doesn’t anything faze you?’
‘Bad harvests. Bad weather. Big cities. Meanness, dishonesty, unkindness.’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, yes.’
He asked suddenly, ‘What do you want to do with your life, Selena?’
‘I’m doing it.’
‘But in the end?’
‘You tell me when the end’s going to come,’ she parried, ‘and I’ll tell you what I’ll be doing.’
‘I meant you can’t do this forever. One day it’ll be too much for you and you’ll have to settle down.’
She made a face. ‘You mean pipe and slippers?’
He laughed. ‘Well, not the pipe if you don’t want to.’
‘Domesticity. Home and hearth. No thanks! Not me! Four walls make me crazy. Staying in one place makes me even crazier.’
‘And the loneliness?’
She gave an incredulous laugh. ‘I’m not lonely. I’m free. No, no, don’t say it.’
‘Don’t say what?’
‘Something about loneliness and freedom being the same thing. Where does one shade into the other? Will I know the difference before it’s too late? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘You’ve heard that line before, huh?’
‘A dozen times. It’s such a cliche.’
‘Well, most cliches are true. That’s how they become cliches.’
‘But I’m talking about freedom. Nobody telling me what to do. Nobody expects anything of me, except Elliot, and I love him so that’s OK.’
‘But you might get to love a person,’ Leo suggested cautiously, ‘maybe almost as much as you love Elliot.’
‘Nah, people are tricky. You’ve got to watch your back all the time. Elliot’s better. He keeps it simple.’
‘I think you’re teasing a rise out of me.’ Leo was watching her carefully, like a man trying to decide which way a cat would jump.
‘No way. Give me a horse any day. Take the other night in the stable, did you see Elliot trying to paw me about, breathing whisky fumes all over me? Did you hear him neighing, “Go on Selena, you know you want it really.”?’
‘Yes, I heard Paulie’s line in charm,’ Leo said in disgust. ‘You should have socked him with both fists.’
‘No need. He got the message after one. I don’t like unnecessary violence. It’s wasteful and it hurts your hands.’ She added mischievously, ‘Never use two fists where one will do. I learned that early.’
‘I guess you’ve learned a lot of things most women never need to.’
She nodded.
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ Leo said. ‘What will you do when you have to give up rodeo?’
‘Get myself a farm. Breed horses.’
‘Won’t that mean living in one place all the time?’
‘I can camp out sometimes.’
‘Are you all alone on this farm?’
‘No, there’s the horses.’
‘You know what I mean, stop dodging the issue.’
‘You mean have I tied myself down to a husband? No way. What for? Having some guy drive me nuts. Knowing I was driving him nuts.’
‘That’s not always how it works out,’ Leo said, choosing his words carefully, because he’d often said the same, and it alarmed him to find himself defending the other side. ‘People can actually get on well, for a long time. Sometimes they even love each other. No, really, they can.’
‘Sure they do. At the start. Then she has a baby and her waistline goes, he gets bored and hits the bottle, she nags, he gets mad, she nags some more.’
‘That’s life in the foster homes speaking, is it?’
‘One after another. Wherever it was-always the same. And you can keep it.’
‘You don’t believe people can ever love each other for life?’
Her face lit up with hilarity. ‘Leo, you’re a sentimentalist. You believe in that stuff.’
‘I’m Italian,’ he said evasively. ‘We’re supposed to believe in “that stuff”.’
‘No kidding! I’ll bet you think moon rhymes with June, and love is for ever and a day. Oh, boy, you’re priceless. Well, it’s a better line than Paulie’s.’
He didn’t answer, and after a moment she was alerted by a new quality in the silence. Looking up, she saw Leo’s eyes dark with anger. He met her puzzled gaze with one of fire.
‘What did I say?’ she asked.
‘If you don’t know the answer I can’t tell you. But I’ll try. You reckon I’m no better than Paulie, that I’m handing you a line prior to pawing you about in the stable.
‘I didn’t mean-’
‘I think you did. Every man is the same in your eyes because you won’t take the trouble to look up.’
He jumped to his feet and strode away from the stream to where the land rose sharply. At the top of the steep incline was a rock, and he scrabbled up there until he could sit on the top, staring angrily into space.
Selena glared at him in her dismay, furious with him, herself, the world. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could hurt him. Her rough and tumble life had taught her directness but not subtlety. If you wanted something, you went for it, because nobody was going to give it to you. She had the tough skills of survival but not the gentle ones of beguilement, and for the first time it occurred to her that there was something missing in her armoury.
She scrambled up the incline until she was just below him, and was relieved to see that the anger had faded from his face. She didn’t fear his anger, but it was his gentleness that was beginning to weave spells about her
