The first harsh wind blew last week. Suppose that means I should have expected him. And I did. I just tried not to be feeling lighter than heat for the expectation of his approach.

Sometimes I think the only reason I stay here is for the winds of the cold months and the reappearance of a drover who comes to me in this season.

It rained this morning. I am not fanciful enough to believe in rainbows, mind you. I am not the sort to look for a pot of gold. When he is with me, I admit, I can believe in many things but they are like rainbows when he is gone. Hard to believe in after all.

As I walk to work this afternoon, I try not to imagine that the air is different after the rain. It is, but not in the fanciful way my mind wants to believe my body's inner core can feel.

Why does it surprise me that this is the day he shows himself to me this season? It is on the way to work that I see him, standing on the porch of Mrs. Galloway's guest house. I know why he is standing there, in the wake of the rain at that particular time. It is to watch for me as I walk to work.

Egan is not the sort of man who'd simply and easily ask someone when he came back into town if I still lived in that house with the peeling yellow shutters. Instead, he waits until he feels the day is right for him to make sure I see him.

But mostly, it is for him to see for himself that I still live here. And there is a tiny iota of seeing for himself if I want him. If he is welcome with me.

Why it is he will not just come to my house when he gets into town and see for himself that I am still living behind the yellow shutters and still always wanting him in my life - that I don't guess I'll ever understand. But he doesn't do that. It just isn't a part of his ways. What would it take? I don't suppose I may ever know. I suppose the real truth is that I may bleed for him, but until he bleeds for me, I don't want anything more than what we have.

There are times I lay in bed, months after he's gone, and I imagine him riding into town, descending the horse and just walking to my house, walking to the door, opening it, announcing he's there, taking me in his arms, giving me a reason that is so clear and solid that I will stay forever.

Other times, I picture myself not living here. I see myself back in Melbourne, living in some small, close house. Taking the bus to work every day to some office where I type and collate and answer the phone and try not to notice when my boss comes on to me. I try to imagine the loneliness of never seeing Egan again in this season when he returns to live in this town because it is too cold and snowy for him to stay in the high country. I try to imagine never spending long nights and cold days with Egan. To never again wonder what he really wants. To never wonder why I am convinced he loves me even if I know it's like a rainbow's pot of gold and destined to only be a mirage after all.

He is never going to be a man who'd just come to my house, walk up to the door, say he'd missed me, say how glad he was to see me again. I had accepted that. I have accepted a lot of things.

It wasn't exactly him who kept me here. But he was a reason when I needed one.

What you'll find odd, perhaps, is that I don't stop to speak with him as he stands there upon that porch. I'm not the sort of woman who runs to him, saying I'd missed him, telling him how glad I was to have him back in town. Besides, I am finally ready to admit it may be time for me to move on, that he may not be enough reason to stay anymore. I don't want him to see that and I know he would. I think it would surprise him to know I've stayed this long just to see how I feel when I see him this time.

I am not exactly what keeps him coming back here after his season up in the high country ends. But I have become a reason for him to winter here, if he needed one.

We've just never quite gotten it all neat and easy between us, I suppose.  These things often aren't. I do not know what I feel as I catch the first glimpse of him, standing upon the porch, watching me walk past.

What I see of him is more my memory of him, my imagination. All I really have is the momentary glimpse before I walk on. I can picture the way his hip rests against the post, how his arms are folded loosely over his chest. How one boot is resting on the bottom rail and the other leg is straight. I imagine the sharp light in his green eyes and the way he appears nonchalant in his gaze in my direction. Heaven forbid any man see overt evidence he is the least bit concerned about me. His mouth ... I half close my eyes as I linger in imagining his lips, parted, soft.

Perhaps if I had warning of these encounters. Not premonitions or yearnings or anticipation. No, I mean real warning. For if I had real warning, I think I could withstand the heat of his gaze as I walk past Mrs. Galloway's place.

I wonder what it would be like to have warning. Because then I could know where to be when he rode into town. I could go there, watch him on a horse. I could see him ride up, slow and steady as if he still had a herd he was responsible for riding along with him. I could go to him as he stopped his horse, sliding down off the saddle. My hands could be the first soft thing he touched when he turned from tying his horse's lead up to a post. I would enjoy the feel of the trail's dirt and grit upon his clothes and his hair. I would enjoy the frank smell of his miles of riding back to town. Maybe he'd even smile when he saw me.

But I'll never know him like that, I think with sadness and guilt as I keep walking without so much as a wave or nod to him.

One of these nights, soon, he'll walk into the pub here in the hotel. It may be tonight but I think it won't be just yet. I think he's thinking that him standing out there today, on that porch, was all the warning I was ever going to get from him.

So inside the pub, I put myself right to work, cleaning the top of the long bar as my uncle changes out the taps. I wipe down tables left gritty from air too heavy for itself.

Now, in comes the first clutch of the night's customers, drifting in as afternoon chill turns to evening cold. When the drinking gets heavy, I clean glasses as I go along, content with the mindless chore. Like always, I pull mostly drafts but every so often someone wants the harder stuff like rye or bourbon. I am mostly busy and I try to not be affected by knowing Egan is in town again.

But there's a very active part of me that is hoping each time the doors swing open, that it'll be Egan walking through them.

But not tonight.

Tonight's just the normal assortment of locals, mostly men, drinking themselves into various stages of inebriation while they either gather in groups to talk and laugh and shoot darts or they sit, solitary and still, at various tables, drinking to pass the time.

Several of them make crude jokes. Some are even about me and Egan. It's an open secret here that there is a fire between us. My uncle won't abide for the jokes at my expense. He tells the jokesters to piss off. They don't piss off but they also snigger out of our clear earshot. What they mostly don't like is that even when Egan is gone from here, I won't give another man a chance with me. Like all people in small towns, they are somehow prudishly shocked at the notion of what goes on between two lovers who are so private.

Whoever would have thought my life would have become a punch line in a town so insignificant I'd have never heard of it if not for my aunt and uncle coming to run a hotel left to them by my aunt's cousin. Why I came was one thing; why I stay is another.

That night, after the pub closes, I walk home and retrace my footsteps of so many hours earlier. I don't actually pause at Mrs. Galloway's but I do hesitate. I look up at the windows. Lights are on in several. If I knew which is his, would I go there and force him to put aside missing me?

No, I would not.

He might not be alone.

But I know he is. I just know it. Down deep. In the bones. Not in the heart, though. That's where it counts, I imagine.

More importantly, it is not how he wants it between us. And Egan is a man who decides. I may not be waiting for him, but it will be him who decides if there is an encounter. There's never going to be any forcing a man like him.

Many women have tried. None have succeeded.

I don't believe a man who's got to be forced is worth my time.

The hesitation is a faltering step in the cold of this night's wind. If anyone was watching me, they would think I had slowed just to bundle up a bit more against the wind. If Egan saw me, he would understand.

Morning brings a new rawness to the wind. It is full of red dust. The grit will be hard to clean off the floors of the pub. This is what's on my mind that day as I pass Mrs. Galloway's. That and the decision I have made to not look there, to not see if he's there, to not care for the first time in three years.

I feel him as I pass by.

This night begins like most in this season. Men shout at newcomers if they hold the door open too long as they make their way into the warmth of the pub. I am busy pulling drafts and pressing the glasses into clutching hands and noting payment on tab sheets.

Each time the door opens, I want it to be him. I want him to come to the bar, stand there, order something, touch my fingers when I press his glass in his hand. I want to feel a spark between us in that touch.

He never comes in that night.

I take a different route home. I wait in the dark and will him to show up at my home. To materialize in my bedroom. To be tender.

The next day, I am late coming to the pub. It's because I left at my normal time but then decided I will not walk past Mrs. Galloway's. So I have to retrace some of my steps, go a different way that is longer. When I hit the street leading to the hotel, it is with the purposeful stride of being embarrassed to have been so childish as to be late just to spite a man who will never know I am so ambivalent about him that I got scared that I might see him on that porch and even more scared that I would not.

I am passing the postal office when I see him. It is so unexpected. He is not surprised and I wonder if he will speak to me or just watch me walk by.

He speaks my name. We stand there. A truck drives past and someone yells to him. His eyes never leave mine but he tilts his head to acknowledge the greeting.

"Can I see you?" he asks me a moment too late for I am taking a step back from him so I can be on my way again.

"I don't know," I say a moment too quickly and he must think I rehearsed it but he knows me so much better than that.

He blinks and swallows. He is always too intense the first time I see him. It is this look upon his face that I dream of so many nights when the air is fetid with the heat. Once, after the haze of a dream of his eyes that came as I slept during the heat a few months ago, when he was up in the high country, I woke and decided to ride up to Killamonga because there was going to be an auction of the year's culled horse stock. I knew he would not be there but I went anyway and I went in part because I wanted a dream of his hands locked inside me.

I could never tell him about that trip I took. It wasn't about chasing him; it was about chasing a shadow I didn't want to catch.

Walking away from him, I am filled with the shadow I cannot ever define. I have never known if I even want to touch the shadow or if I am always going to be content with being touched by it.

My uncle is looking at his watch when I come in. He slowly puts it back in his pocket and life goes on.

This night, I don't watch the door. I don't have to anymore. I have had my first real encounter with Egan this season. Whatever will happen, it will be what will be.

I go through the night's routine with a routine mind. I am sure I smile and joke with the men. I know I keep the drink tab tally. I'm trying hard to understand that I know I should know I should want something more. If he left forever from this town where he was born and where I met him, I would cry. It would hurt to miss him every day, knowing another season will never come to see him again. I can't believe I don't know how long it's been since I stopped feeling invincible where he was concerned.

"Can I see you?" his voice asks me.

I look up to see him leaning across the bar. My heart speeds up. 

"Not tonight," I say, softly so that only he can hear. Let the others watch us, knowing how we hunger. But I am far too proud to share the reality with them. And I am far too proud to let him see how he makes me feel as he stands there gazing into me and knowing without any doubt that I will see him when he wants me to.

"When?"

"I'll think on it."

"You do that."

He sips at his ale; I pull another and slide it into someone else's hand as Egan moves off away from the bar.

All night, he sits at one of the tables with other men he considers friends. They are all drovers in from the mountains, back in town just before snows close down the passes home.

Egan watches me move from beneath lowered lashes. Our eyes meet often that night. His are the deepest green tonight; they are dark with thought and want. Mine are steady; far steadier than I am.

When he leaves tonight, he hesitates at the doorway as if he is bundling his collar up higher around his ears in anticipation of the wind that will chill him outside the pub. His eyes find me where I am bent over cleaning a table. My lips fall open. I don't know if I want to say something or if it is just the way he makes the breath catch in my core.

And then he is gone.

Of course I know I shouldn't love him. Of course I know.

On the air that is drifting and swelling around me as I walk home after work, there remains the scent of cigarettes. It is as if the pub lingers with me too long this night. I fill my tub with water, warm and scented, the moment I get home. I refuse to sleep with the smell of another night in the pub upon my skin and in my hair.

There is a knock at my door not long after I have turned off lights and settled restlessly into my lonely bed.

I know who it is.

It is the man whom I will let in.

The man who knows that I will never resist if he comes to me.

I gather a robe around me. I do not bother to tie the sash; one tiny hand, five fingers, hold its edges closed; the hand is just beneath my breasts, clutching folds of fabric, the only barrier to the man.

He leans against the post of my porch as I open the door slightly, looking into the semi-darkness, letting light behind me fall upon his outline and illuminate him for me.

We stare at each other for a moment.

I let go, finger by finger, of the edges of the fabric of my robe. All he can see is the movement of the robe and the slight crack between the edges that show the cream of my skin shimmering in a street lamp's diffuse glow toward the end of the street.

He takes his steps to me. I take steps back into the cavern of my house's entryway. He slides a cold hand between the folds of my robe, unerringly seeking and finding a breast to caress. I hear the door slam shut behind him and feel his body jerk with the force of him shutting that door even as he drives me before him.

"Tonight," he says, low and gravelly, letting me know he decided tonight was when he would see me and here he was, no matter what I might have said because he knew I didn't mean it.

"Missed you," I whisper a second before he kisses me.

"Missed everything about you," he murmurs against my neck when he finally ... finally ... finishes kissing me as if he really has missed me. "Need you, Kels. Need you so bad."

He has never said anything like this before. I am shaken; I shiver as he slowly takes my robe from me. His clothes are cold and rough against my skin. I would normally have had his belt open and he would have groaned to me to hold him. But I cannot move; that's how much his words and the emotion behind them move me.

His hands now cup my face and he watches me closely. His groin rubs against mine. His eyes are shadowed. "Take me out," he says, deep voice, pitiless. "Touch me, Kels. You know you want to."

I hold him. I stroke, fingers first, then grasping him, softly jerking. He just watches my face as I do this. When he asks ... asks, not tells ... me to do it harder, I do as he asks and I watch his eyes half shut. A heartbeat later, he is kissing me hard. His tongue gives me no pause; it explores and probes and shoves ... and his lips are so soft for the force of his tongue in my mouth. He switches tactics when I moan ... he suckles my tongue over into his mouth ... it is tender at first and then it is more insistent.

And then he is moving me, his hands on my hips. Shoving me, not that gently, over toward the couch. He lays me back on the couch with nothing more than the finesse of a man who knows where he wants his woman and strong enough to put her there. I love the feel of the arm that wraps around my waist as he lowers me to the couch's cushions.

His hands run up to my face where his thumbs rub slowly across the apple of my cheeks. "My beautiful girl," he says. "Sometimes when I'm up there, I get to thinking I have only just imagined how pretty you are. How soft you are. How good you smell."

"You think about me? Up there?"

"Sure." His hands trace the outline of my jaw, then trail down my throat until they caress open palmed over my nipples. "You think about me when I'm gone, Kels?"

"Every night. And most days."

"What do you think when you think of me?"

I shift under him. His hands squeeze and release my breasts, a rhythmic palpation that is all his own. What am I willing to admit to him?

"Tell me, Kels. Need to hear it, girl."

My tongue licks my lips. I cannot keep his gaze. His hands continue down my torso. As they pass over my hips, they travel toward my belly. One hand plays softly in my curls down there, above the soft mound of flesh that descends between my legs ... that secret place men have fascinating ways of enticing into blushing heat.

The other hand strokes one of my thighs before sliding between my knees and prodding me to open.

"Love ... please," he whispers as he kisses into my belly, his tongue leaving a trail behind as he looks up at me.

"I think of ... of your eyes," I say. His chin lowers; he smiles but it does not reach his eyes. I clear my throat. "I think of what you are doing when you are away from here. I wonder if you're all right. I think about how long it will be until I see you."

His head dips again. He kisses, softly, at that juncture between my legs. His hand at my knee prods my thighs to spread further. He kisses at the tender flesh inside my thighs. His eyes never leave mine. His eyes bore into me, demanding and needful.

"I think of a night like this and wish you were with me," I say, breathless at his intensity. He is always an ardent, enthusiastic lover, especially the first night he comes to me in this season. But he is not like this. I may be dreaming.

"I'm here, Kels, here with you. Here to be with you. You want me?"

"Yes. You make me weak ..."

His warm breath flows across the wetness between my thighs. He kisses me there again but this time, it is a kiss that deepens and ripens ... I feel his tongue; feel the sucking and him swallowing. Hear his grunt of satisfaction when I whimper and move and spread my thighs and hold his head. His thumbs on my hips dig in; his hands under me lift and I am so exposed.

I breathe his name at first but then come with it crying out of me as my body gives those shudders of release. My fingers are clutching at him; my hands go under his arms and try to drag him up my body. He responds with force. He is on his knees, on the couch, between my legs. His hands lift me up only far enough for him to be able to place himself at my opening. I grab whatever part of his body I can ... my legs wrap around him ... I know better than this because if we are not careful, if he just shoves in like I want him to and like he'd like to, then I'll be sore in the morning. But just then, I could give a holy damn about that.

He tells me I have to slow down or he'll hurt me. I tell him I don't care. I don't. Other times, I might. But not this night. Maybe I should. But not when I'm this hungry and he can sate me and when his voice is hoarse from his effort to not give in so freely to this wild need he has of me in this night.

Yet I want nothing more than to have him in me while he holds me. I'd crawl up inside him; I try to every time I try to forget I'm so lonely when he's gone.

I choke on a grunt when he hilts inside me.

Nothing makes slow sense after that. He is ravenous. I am starved. My brain registers somewhere that he's not even undressed while he fucks me, here on my couch, with me bare in so many ways before him.

Every so often I get a flash of what I've just said to him ... that I've told him that I miss him in this visceral way when he's gone ... that he needed me to tell him. And when I remember, I get scared. And when I get scared, I hold my breath and stop moving. He looks at me each time. I think he can see the momentary fear in my eyes. I hope he knows I'm not afraid of him ... I'm afraid that all this time I've spent waiting on him is going to be the last time he lets me do that. I'm afraid he'll walk away now.

But there is something in his eyes. This close to him, I can see kindness and a well of some sadness he's never shown me before.

How long have I loved him?

He slows his thrusting. "You okay?"

"Yeah ... just ... Can't say it, Egan."

"I know. I do."

"Do you?"

"Think so."

He kisses my neck; he's holding a breast. He thrusts harder, faster. My legs grip in tighter around him.

There is nothing else. It's a blurring, grunting, rough, sweaty march toward pleasure's release. We are not easy on each other. Maybe we never will be. My fingers rake down his back; I cry out when he bites into my neck. He comes, blazing, long after he's brought me to my own release and I have aftershocks that he feels as flutters around his slowly softening hardness that he mindlessly roots inside me even after he's come.

When he stops moving, he falls atop me. His body is heavy, whole, strong ... welcome. I have missed it. I've missed him and the promise of what might come with him even as I've let it go as if he's a rainbow only there for me in those fragile moments after the morning rain.

His mouth is open, he is panting; his tongue rests against the skin of my breast. I feel his wet breath upon my chest. I feel his wet forehead against the side of my neck. I run my fingers in his hair, pushing back the damp hair, blowing my cooler breath there to ease his way back to this earth from where he's just soared.

And I feel as I often do when with him after we have made love ... I feel soft. I feel protective. I feel released. I feel like swallowing him whole inside arms that would hold him forever if he only wanted them.

I don't mind where he goes while he's gone ... because when he's here, it's better.

His words to me, weeks later, after he's found the ease of mind to tell me things that trouble him, they come like a rainbow's sudden appearance after rain spoils the day.

He's been stormy for days. Prickly and edgy. I have despaired that this truly is the end of us. That now that he can tell I am wholly open to him, he will never again stand on Mrs. Galloway's porch, waiting to see if I'm still here in this town.

We fight about something stupid that night. About how he saw Nate Reynolds whispering in my ear that night in the pub. I tell him that if I was interested in Nate, who helps his father run the hardware store, that I certainly have plenty of other opportunities to see him when Egan's up in the high country for those long months each year.

He just looks at me at first. His jaw is tight with what I think is anger but then realize is fear ... fear that maybe, after all, I won't always wait for him. And so I say to him, to Egan who is standing with his chin up and his shoulders bunched, that I think he knows that I am loyal ... that I don't want any man but Egan in my bed.

I've never said that to him before. Never anything like it for its decisiveness. His eyes get watery and the anger seems to leach from him to fall down about his ankles, binding him in place there in my kitchen. Haven't you known I love you, I whisper to him.

Egan takes two steps and he is picking me up in his arms, high enough where he can kiss me. My legs dangle down, for I am too caught up in the feeling having said I love him and that he responds with this gentle, sweet kiss.

We make love in that same gentle, sweet way.

Later, light from the moon seeps into my bedroom, through the transom above the window. We lay in my bed while he plays with the moonbeams that linger on my belly.

And he tells me. In his own way. In the only way he can just then. 

He tells me by telling me of Thowra. King of the brumbies. Who has died. Who leapt to that death rather than let Egan touch him. Tame him. Capture him. Who has left Egan with a void where he never knew one was.

I let him hold me after he tells me. I listen to his heart beating in his chest. I listen to the sound of his body holding in tears.

Does he wonder if I will be like Thowra, leaving him now that he realizes he wants me in full? Is this why he has grown anxious these past few days? Is this why he told me his story tonight when I have said I love him for the first time out loud?

"How do you feel about me, Egan?" I ask him softly. I believe he needs me to ask him this. I believe for the first time in his life, he needs someone to ask him to choose his future in a deliberate way.

"I always thought the thing I liked best about you, Kels, was that you were wild and free," he says.

"I never think of myself that way."

"I do." His hand cups my cheek and I look up into his eyes as he gazes down at me. "What would you say if I were to ask you to settle down with me?"

"I would say yes."

He nods. He breathes in deep. "I'm asking."

This is how he tells me what he's been wanting to say for I don't know how long. What he's felt he has to say this season because he must have asked himself what it would be that he would take a leap for in order to find himself. This is how he tells me that he loves me.

This is why he leaps - to catch a shadow.