Free Her Galahad by Melissa James Page A

possible."
    He hesitated. "Tess, if we go ahead with this, it implicates your brother up to the neck. And we'll have to face Duncan and your Dad at some stage. You realize that, don't you?"
    She exhaled, making her face a calm mask. "I don't care what I have to do or who I have to see. I have to know what happened to my baby."
    "Even if you have to face Beller?"
    The very air around her stilled. Oh, dear God. Facing Cameron, whose wealth, sophistication and blindingly handsome face covered a tortured soul and diseased mind, wanting more than she could give. A seething mass of inner contradictions who had fixed his voracious heart on a fifteen-year-old girl, waiting twelve years with undiminished hope and hunger for the love, the healing that could never come from her, the woman he claimed to love yet never knew. Looking again at the lean hungry face, the hot eager eyes…
    Emily. She drew a deep breath. "Even that." She shuddered off the pinpoint shivers of revulsion that hurt her skin. "I have to know Emily's alive and happy. That's all that matters."
    A long silence. Then he asked in a neutral tone, "How come you didn't have more kids? You always wanted heaps of 'em."
    She allowed no expression to come into her eyes. "Do you think I'd want a permanent tie to Cameron by having his child?"
    "I suppose not." He got to his feet and walked the room, reminding her of a dark panther stalking prey. "The hospital's the logical place to start. Where did you give birth?"
    "Burragawang. A little town about four hundred kilometers northwest of Sydney ."
    Burragawang? Jirrah stopped pacing and stared at her. How had she never seen the truth of that one telling act? "Tess, didn't it seem strange that men obsessed with your social status took you to a place like that to have the baby?"
    "Of course it did," she retorted witheringly. "I might have been naive, but I wasn't stupid. They wanted her born where no one—you know, people who mattered—would know about her. They knew she was your baby. I didn't let Cameron touch me until after the ceremony, and I skipped a period before the wedding."
    "Fair enough." He nodded and sighed. "It never occurred to you they had another reason?" he asked carefully. "Like maybe they'd arranged anadoption behind your back?"
    Her eyes flashed; she reared up like a fighting stallion. "Do you think I'd have wasted five years before I followed it up if it did? We're talking about my only child! Call me naive if it never occurred to me that my family sent my husband to prison, kidnapped my baby to adopt out, and told me they both died, without feeling a single twinge of guilt for than five years. I suppose I have a pretty unimaginative mind, huh? Most people suspect things like that about their families!"
    "No—only the people whose daughters or sisters have been doin' it with a dirty half-breed," he retorted.
    She whitened. "Don't call yourself that!"
    He laughed, but it held only bitterness. "That's always been our problem—even now, you see me as a normal man. They see me as a bloody blackfella Abo—a pariah, a social disgrace to lock away and forget about. They put me inside for years and didn't care! Nobody but my family gave a damn what happened to me!"
    After a small silence, she said softly, "I cared."
    He stopped in his tracks, wheeling around to stare at her. Then he shook his head, laughing softly. "How do you do that to me? How do you shoot down my soapbox every time I try to get up on it, but make me feel like a million bucks while you do it?"
    She smiled a little, and shrugged. "I don't know."
    He hunkered down before her, his eyes dark and soft. "It's so good to see you smile. No woman can smile like you. It's crazy, but it makesyour eyes look like molten gold dipped in honey. You're still beautiful, mulgu." He lifted a hand, hovering close to her face. "So beautiful it almost hurts to look at you."
    Unnerved by the lovely totem name she'd never thought to hear again, Tessa could only