Red Dust Dreaming by Eva Scott Page A

was gone and she was alone.
    With shaky hands Elizabeth pulled the chair out from the table and sat down, grateful for some stability. She rubbed her face with her hands, embarrassed at the way she’d responded to Caden’s kiss. Ashamed at the desire he’d evoked in her. He belonged to Angela and while she was no longer there Elizabeth would be damned if she was going to provide a handy replacement. And if he thought for a single minute he could seduce her into leaving Luke with him then Caden Carlyle had another think coming! She clenched her fists on her knees as anger re-emerged to take centre stage. Damn it! What did the man think he was doing?
    She stood up again and began pacing the length of the kitchen. Just who did he think he was? What gave him the right to pass judgment on her anyway? Repressed, weak and cowardly is what he’d called her. Okay, so he hadn’t used those exact words but he’d certainly made his feelings about her clear. So why kiss her? To shut her up? Probably. He was the kind of man to whom actions were better suited than words. So completely opposite to any other man she knew.
    Elizabeth stopped pacing and stood for a moment, her hands resting lightly on the back of the chair. The feel of the old wood beneath her fingertips grounded her even though her emotions threatened to carry her away. Taking deep breaths she waited until her heart rate returned to something approaching normal. While calmer her anger still simmered away.
    Angela had made decisions designed to annoy their parents. True, they had not had a great childhood. Instead of love and a sense of belonging they had received instructions on how to behave properly, a boarding school education and a series of nannies or minders to take care of them on the holidays. All they’d had was each other. Then Angela had dropped out of college, taken up with a soldier, and dropped off the grid entirely. Then stories of Luke had started to surface; a grandson the family had known nothing about. Elizabeth had been left behind to clean up the mess Angela had left. The long diatribes her mother saw fit to deliver on how Elizabeth better not shame them all by following in her sister’s footsteps, how if she did she’d find herself excommunicated, just like Angela.
    Elizabeth stared at the wall, covered in a vintage wall paper so long out of fashion it had come back in. The edges of the cabbage roses blurred through her tears. Memories, repressed for years, came flooding back. How she longed to go back in time and hug the little girl she used to be, and tell her things would work out. Kind of. That she’d get her parents approval in the end, become the lawyer they wanted her to be instead of the artist she’d dreamed of being. Art didn’t pay the bills, Law did. Life wasn’t so bad. Her life was far more comfortable than Angela’s had been. Even though Angela had found love, had a family she’d had to turn her back on all she knew run to the middle of some godforsaken country where even the grass didn’t grow. Elizabeth shook her head to shatter the images crowding her mind. Her throat constricted with unshed tears and she swallowed hard to dislodge them. She would not cry, not here under Caden Carlyle’s roof. Worried Thelma might return or worse yet, Caden himself, she hurriedly took herself off to bed.
    Slipping into her pyjamas, sensible button-ups with thin blue stripes, she crawled into bed. Her mind refused to settle as it formed and reformed arguments, things she should have said if she’d had her wits about her. Things she would have said if he hadn’t kissed her so unexpectedly, if she hadn’t completely lost the plot. When was the last time she’d been kissed? She couldn’t remember. Elizabeth lay staring at the pressed tin ceiling, her mind chattering away.
    Maybe Caden had a point about Luke going to boarding school. Why would her parents raise him any