other. Please stay and talk to him tonight!'
'I can't.' Copper's face was ravaged by tears. She couldn't stand to see the disgust in Mal's eyes again. 'I just can't!'
'But what will I tell Mal when he asks why you've gone?'
Copper picked up her case. She had torn her copy of the contract into two and left the pieces on her pillow. 'You won't need to tell him anything. He'll know why I've gone.'
Georgia was crying as she followed her out to the car. 'I wish you wouldn't go,' she wept as Copper turned to hug her goodbye.
'It'll be better for everyone this way.' Copper choked back her own tears. 'Look after Megan for me, Georgia, and tell Mal…tell him I'm sorry…about everything.'
'I'll put a brochure in the post tonight.' Copper put down the phone and rubbed her aching neck. Had she really used to love working in an office?
Over the last ten days she had struggled to pick up the threads of her old life, but she felt trapped in a dull sense of unreality where only the pain inside her seemed less than a blur. Every day seemed interminable, and when she got to the end of each one, like now, there was only the evening stretching bleakly ahead. In the past Copper had thrived on a frenetic lifestyle, but now she hated everything about the city. She hated the tarmac roads and the smell of cars. She hated the endlessly ringing phone and the hours spent making bookings or stuffing brochures into envelopes.
Copper lifted a pile of booking forms and then dropped them listlessly back onto her desk. All she was doing was pushing pieces of paper around, just as Mal had said. Once the very sound of exotic destinations like Quito or Kampala or Rangoon had been enough to thrill her, but now there was only one place she wanted to be.
Birraminda. Copper wanted the empty outback sky, the sharp light and the space and the scent of dust and dry leaves along the creek. She wanted the cockatoos squawking and screeching in the trees and the horses grazing peacefully in the paddock. She wanted the clatter of the screen door and the glare of the sun on the corrugated iron roof and Megan snuggling into her side for a story.
And Mal.
Copper ached with the need to hear his footsteps on the verandah, to watch him settle his hat on his head. She craved the lean, muscled grace of his body and his slow, sure hands on her skin. Most of all she wanted him to fold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her, to melt the ice around her heart and let her live again.
It had taken some time to persuade her parents that she really had left Mal. 'But we were so sure that you were right for each other,' her mother had said, bewildered when Copper had arrived, grey with misery and exhaustion.
'It was all just a pretence,' said Copper bitterly. 'We were just acting.'
Dan Copley snorted. 'If that was acting, you should both be in Hollywood!'
In the end, she had to tell them about the deal she had made with Mal. Her father's face darkened as he heard her story, and Copper felt crushed by guilt at the knowledge that she had thrown his dream away.
'I'm sorry, Dad,' she stammered. 'I know how much you wanted the project at Birraminda, but I'm sure I'll be able to find somewhere else if I-'
'The project!' Dan dismissed his dream with an angry gesture. 'What does the project matter? All I care about is you! I've a good mind to ring that Mal up right now and give him a piece of my mind! How could he have blackmailed my daughter!'
Seeing that he was working himself up into a state, Copper clutched at his arm and tried to calm him before he put too much strain on his heart. 'Dad, don't! It wasn't blackmail. I chose to marry Mal.'
'He must have forced you. How could you have chosen to marry a man you were only pretending to love?'
Copper's face twisted. 'But I wasn't pretending, Dad. That was the trouble.'
Although still doubtful, her parents had eventually accepted her decision to come home and Copper had thrown herself into work at the office. Anything was better than sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, or for a knock at the door that would mean Mal had come to find her. He must realise that she had gone back to her parents, but he had made no effort to get in touch with her. This time he had no excuse for not knowing where to find her.
If Mal had loved her, he would have come straight down to Adelaide to fetch her back. At the very least he would have rung to check that she was safe and hadn't broken down again in the middle of the outback. But there had been no word from him at all. That meant that Copper was just going to have to learn to live without him. She had got over Mal once before, she tried to tell herself, and she would again.
With a sigh, Copper pushed back her chair. Six o'clock. Her father would be here any minute. Her car was in for a service and he had promised to come and pick her up. Dully, she switched on the answering ma-chine and straightened the papers on her desk before running her hands wearily through her hair. The vitality that had always been so much a part of her had been drained by despair, and she didn't need to look in the mirror to know that her terrible sense of desolation could be read in her thin face and the green eyes that were smudged with exhaustion.
Outside the window, Copper saw her father's car slide to a halt and she raised a hand in acknowledgement. Locking the door behind her, she went over and got into the car, summoning a smile as she turned to thank her father.
But he wasn't there.
Mal was.
Copper's heart stopped and all the air went whooshing from her lungs as the world tilted alarmingly around her. Mal was there, quiet and contained and unbelievably real. He was wearing his moleskin trousers and a dark green shirt open at the throat, and there was an expression in his eyes that Copper had never seen there before. She might even have thought that it was anxiety if her gaze hadn't dropped to the piece of paper sticking out of his shirt pocket.
Copper recognised that paper all too well, and cold, cruel reality wiped out that first dazzling moment of joy with a brutality that clutched agonisingly at her throat. Mal had brought the contract with him and was going to try and force her to its terms.
Bitterness closed around her. There had been times when she had thought that it would be enough just to see him again, but she hadn't wanted it to be like this. 'What are you doing in Dad's car?' she asked him through stiff lips. It was the first thing that came into her head, and even as she asked the question she thought how irrelevant it was.
'He lent it to me.' Calmly, Mal put on his indicator, glanced over his shoulder and pulled out into the traffic. 'Did you think I had stolen it?'
'You've been to see my parents?'
He was concentrating on driving, not looking at her. 'I got here earlier this afternoon. I had to endure an unpleasant session with your father, but once I'd had a chance to explain what I was doing here he gave me the car and told me to come and pick you up myself.'
'And what are you doing here?' Copper cast a bitter glance at the contract. 'As if I don't know!'
'I would have thought it would be obvious, yes,' said Mal. 'We need to talk.'
She looked out of the window. How could he sit there, coolly manoeuvring through the traffic, when her world was reeling? 'We've said everything we had to say,' she said bleakly.
'I haven't,' he said.
'Well, I have!'
'That's all right,' said Mal. 'You can listen.'
He drove her to the beach and parked the car facing the sea. Copper felt curiously detached, too shaken by Mal's unexpected appearance even to wonder how he knew the way. It had been a sunny day, but not particularly warm for late summer, and the beach was almost empty-except for an occasional jogger and a few seagulls squabbling over scraps, their cries drifting on the sea breeze.
For a while they sat there without speaking, watching the waves rippling against the sand. Mal seemed to have forgotten that he wanted to talk to her. He was staring through the windscreen, his hands resting on the steering wheel and his shoulders tense.
'Well?' said Copper eventually. 'What is it that you want to say?'
'I wanted to know why you left without saying goodbye.'
'You must know why I left,' she said bitterly. 'You made it very clear what you thought of me the night before
