“I’m not avoiding it,” she said mildly, putting annoyance in her tone.
“Thought I asked you to stay out of my mind.”
“I find your mind far more poetic. You’re speaking rough and plain tonight, bushman.” Restless, she rose, moved down the several steps and stood in the yard, staring up at the sky, wondering how many stars might come out tonight. Stars that didn’t give a hang about vampires and how they were supposed to feel about human servants. It was a land that was so large that many found it overwhelming, a reverse form of claustrophobia that sent them scurrying back to the noise and comforting closeness of others in the cities, so that the stillness of so much open space couldn’t reach into the soul, unfold the things too large to be held inside.
A land that defied classification. According to geology, Australia had been unchanging, an island to itself, while the other land continents were still shifting for a few million more years, trying to sort themselves out. While the bulk of its people might be uncertain whether they were British or Australian, Australia herself apparently had no confusion on the matter. She was the one and only Oz. And that was what Danny liked about her. She liked a woman who knew her own mind.
Danny turned to look at Dev, sitting on the top step in his casual pose, his hat at a low-brimmed angle. The slope of his jaw, a dark shading from a day’s worth of stubble. He’d saved her life, but more than that, when he’d let her inside him, she found a man she wanted to keep close to her throughout her life. By her side, at her back. He was the type of man who’d try to be in front of her when there was danger, but he would readily turn around, let her walk into his arms.
She’d fought Ruskin, a purported nobleman. For a truly noble man, she’d needed to look no further than a dusty bushman she’d picked up in a pub. A bushman who’d avenged his family, stained his soul with blood. Had gone to war and tried to cleanse it with more blood, and then sought absolution in the damning silence of the bush. And he’d ended up with her, perhaps his penance, but perhaps her salvation, too. Maybe that was another vital element a servant provided—keeping Dev at her side was the key to keeping it in perspective, knowing right and wrong, the difference between power and enlightenment.
She took a deep breath and met his eyes, already seeing in that beloved crinkle around the green irises he could tell her answer.
She wanted him to see it in her face as well as hear it in her head, though.
I love you, Dev. I fell in love with you during that very first dance.
He smiled then, and that smile was like the sunset, stretching from one end of her existence to the other, lighting her way not by sight, but with a slow kindle inside she knew would never leave her bereft for the sun’s warmth.
As Lyssa said, may you serve me long and well, despite my bloody foolishness.
She moved back to the stairs, toward the embrace she was sure would always be there, and chose not to question that need in herself. As she put a knee between his feet on the step, his arms closed around her, strong and sure, bringing her in against the delightful planes of his hard body, his reassuring scent. Perhaps in the end, it wasn’t about vampire, human, or any other question of power or place. It was about finding the other half of the soul, in whatever vessel it rested.
Daft romantic nonsense, he’d say, if she let him hear her thoughts. Just like a sheila.
“Dev?” She spoke quietly.
“Hmm?”
“If it’s true about vampires and their servants being bound even after death, and if I have any say in it . . . I would release you. Tina and Rob had you first. They deserve to get you back.”
She felt the emotion fill him, thickening her own throat. “Ah, love,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I suspect whatever’s running things on the other side will know the best thing to do. It may not be as simple as being with one or the other. Maybe it’s like falling into a marvelous treasure chest, made up of green hills, cooling rain, beautiful beaches and all the people you’ve loved.
You don’t have to choose only one treasure from it.”
Raising his head and drawing her chin up, he quirked a brow at her. “In fact, having both you and Tina . . . that might be heaven.” And he gave her a vivid image of what he had in mind.
“Oh, you rat.” She managed to give him a smart smack on his head because of his bark of laughter. “That was from me and Tina.” Despite her reproof, his laughter warmed her to her toes, for it was the first time she’d ever heard him invoke his family without pain. When he caught her wrists, and brought her smile to his mouth, she thought he might be right about one thing. The treasures of love were bottomless, because she thought she’d found that treasure here, even outside the gates of Heaven.
She was sure of it a moment later. In the midst of the kiss, the beauty of the Outback closing around them, she felt the sense of home envelop him, within and without, making her heart rejoice.
He was truly hers.