Kitabı oku: «Cattle Baron: Nanny Needed»

CHAPTER ONE

A SATURDAY afternoon in late spring. October in the Southern Hemisphere.

Glorious sunshine, vibrant blue sky, the sweet warbling of a thousand unseen birds sheltering in the cool density of trees. A white limousine pulled up outside the lovely old Anglican church of St Cecilia’s, one in a stately procession bearing guests to the “Wedding of the Year”. As a caption, “Wedding of the Year” was more hackneyed than most, but that was how Zara Fraser, society columnist for the Weekend Mail, phrased it at the behest of her boss, a golfing pal of Sir Clive Erskine, the bride’s grandfather. Be that as it may, it was difficult for Zara to quibble. This was definitely a big society wedding.

Nearly everyone on the bride’s guest list was mega-rich; on the bridegroom’s side the usual sprinkling of savvy young lawyers with their dressed-to-the-teeth partners, a lesser sprinkling of everyday folk struggling with the kids, the mortgage and keeping it all together. As for the bride’s soon-to-be in-laws, they had taken off on a round trip to Antarctica and thus couldn’t attend. It had been suggested at a mid-week dinner party that they had deliberately planned their trip to coincide with the wedding because their only son hadn’t lived up to the rules of behaviour they had endeavoured to instil in him. Doing the right thing was what got one through life. What today’s bridegroom was doing wasn’t right in anyone’s book. The word on the street was that the groom had sunk lower than a worm shuffling under a leaf.

Two hundred people had been invited to the church and two hundred and one were in attendance. Almost as many more had been invited along to the grand reception. The setting was idyllic. The magnificent shade trees, the jacarandas, the golden shower trees and the apple-blossom cassias were in radiant bloom all over the city, lifting the heart with their splendour. A particularly lovely jacaranda—the grass ringing the tree with spent lavender-blue blossom—dominated the precinct of the old Gothic-style church with its pointed arches and tall slender columns and much admired medieval-style marble pulpit. To either side of the stone building with its token buttresses lay large circular flower beds that literally teemed with fragrant pink roses. A picture-book setting for a picture-book wedding.

To one person at least—the uninvited guest—the whole thing was nothing less than a ghastly nightmare.

That person now emerged so gracefully from the white limousine that she appeared to flow out of it, quite mesmerizing to watch. She accepted a hand from the uniformed chauffeur, who couldn’t believe his luck that his boss had given him such a plum assignment. The young woman looked amazing—tall, very slender, a vision of female perfection and glamour. Looking to neither left nor right, she moved off in her sexy stilettos towards the short flight of stone steps that led to the church portals.

The wedding guests who alighted from the luxury limousines behind her, however, were frozen in their tracks. They gawped after her, some panic stricken, some downright intrigued.

“Surely that’s…?”

“It couldn’t be.” Shock and a touch of gleeful anticipation.

“She’s right, you know. It is!”

“For God’s sake!” A substantial matron, Rosemary Erskine, mother of the bride, wearing an amazing electric-blue hat sprouting peacock feathers, gasped, “Cal, you have to do something!” She looked to the tall, commanding young man at her side as though if anyone could save the situation he could.

“What’s the problem, Rosemary?” Callum MacFarlane, Outback cattle baron and a cousin to the bride, was busy watching the progress of a walking work of art. He had no idea who the goddess was, though he was aware that all eyes were riveted on her. Why not? She looked pretty darn good to him. In fact she would take a man’s breath away. Not him, mercifully. He had gained immunity to beautiful women the hard way. But there was no harm in looking, surely?

Maybe Rosemary was het up because the latest arrival looked dead set to outshine Georgie, the bride? Or was it something far more problematic? The only thing that could account for such a reaction was the ex-fiancée had turned up. He’d been assured that she was behaving impeccably, so that couldn’t be it. So publicly humiliated that she was bound to have taken off for the wilds of New Guinea. This young woman was beautifully dressed in what was obviously a couture two-piece suit of an exquisite shade of pink. A dream of a picture hat shaded her head and face from the hot rays of the sun, one side weighed down by full blown silk roses in pink and cream. Such a hat, while affording protection, offered tantalizing glimpses of her classically beautiful face with a truly exquisite nose. The sort of nose women paid cosmetic surgeons a fortune to try to recreate.

The trouble was that most people, unlike Cal MacFarlane whose Channel Country cattle station Jingala was just about as far off the map as one could get, were familiar with that face. They fixated—in the case of the male viewer salivated—on it every week night on television when she read the six o’clock news with Jack Matthews, the longtime male presenter who behind the scenes gave Ms Wyatt a bad time.

“It’s that dreadful Amber Wyatt!” Rosemary hissed, her formidable face working tightly. Not a pleasant sight. This was a woman who was known to make people’s hair stand on end.

Well, fancy that! Cal had to wrench himself away from imagining what it would be like to have a woman like the vision in front of him. Despite his multiple defensive shields he felt a lunge of desire; swiftly killed it. Euphoria only lasted the proverbial fifteen minutes anyway.

“Hell, Cal!” A relative standing just behind him came to Rosemary’s aid. “Everyone knows who she is. She’s—”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got it!”

So this seriously stunning young woman with what had to be the best pair of legs in the country was the woman Sean Sinclair, the bridegroom, had thrown over for Georgette. Would wonders never cease? It had fortune-hunting stamped all over it. Ms Amber Wyatt had been jilted. One had only to be jilted once, never to get it out of the system, he reflected grimly, his mind going off on a tangent. His ex-fiancée, Brooke Rowlands, had played as dirty as a woman could get. Like some knight of old, he had let her get away with it. The betrayal had happened while he’d been in Japan, part of a trade delegation. Brooke had taken a little holiday at the swank Oriental Hotel in Bangkok with one of his polo buddies. Ex-buddy. Ex-fiancée. He might have shaken off what black thoughts remained over that fiasco, but he had no illusions left about women.

No illusions about Sinclair either. He was a fortune-hunter. As fond as he was of Georgie, for her to believe she had utterly bewitched a man into abandoning a woman as beautiful as Amber Wyatt was as probable as her knocking back a previous proposal from George Clooney.

Cal had heard mentioned at last night’s family dinner that Ms Wyatt had won an award for a story about street kids, wringing admissions and follow-up promises from the Government. She should feel good about that. Nevertheless, in coming here today she had flagrantly disregarded the rules of wedding etiquette. How rash was that? And Rosemary had chosen him to be the Enforcer. This totally unexpected appearance was giving quite a few of his relatives a bad case of the jitters. Just when they’d thought the whole thing had been sorted out:

Enter the ex-fiancée.

How could he do this to me? Amber was experiencing a brief moment of wanting to turn tail and run. The malicious gods up there, the ones who toyed with human lives, would be expecting it, but that wasn’t going to happen. She was determined on keeping a lid on her emotions, even if this was possibly the most foolish and, let’s face it, the most unacceptable thing she’d ever done. Gatecrashing weddings was a serious breach of the rules, even for a fiancée cruelly dumped. She put it down to post traumatic stress. PTS was big these days. Even the courts listened.

Giving no outward sign of her nerves, she kept moving in line up the stone flight of steps. This was the very church where they had planned their own wedding. It was unbelievably callous. Sean couldn’t be allowed to get off scot-free. For every crime, one had to expect punishment. The bride had experienced no sense of guilt either at stealing another woman’s man. That put her on the hit list as well.

There was a shake in her now ringless hands. Of course she had sent the damned thing back by courier. Probably if she’d had the stone checked out she would have found it was a zircon. To counteract her tremulousness, she clasped the chain of her pink Chanel shoulder bag for support. She needed to be as cool as a cucumber to pull this off. There would be some satisfaction in making him cringe. Plenty of women, so cruelly jilted, had been known to run over their ex in a car, then try it in Reverse. She had an idea of herself that precluded violence. But, given the despicable behaviour of Sean and his bride, a frisson of fright was well within her parameters of revenge.

Payback time.

She had just the moment picked out. The symbolic moment when the Bishop, revelling in a role he was famous for, began to intone…. “I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry, to declare it now.”

That was her cue to rise. At near six feet in her stilettos it would be difficult not to spot her. Then, when all necks were craned and unbelieving eyes were focused on her, she would calmly turn and walk out of the church, leaving the guests either bitterly disappointed that there hadn’t been more drama or aghast at such an assault on wedding etiquette.

All she had to do now was get past the ushers and inside the church. Though she kept her eyes trained ahead, she was aware that her presence was causing a stir. Little whispers wafted to her on the rose-scented breeze.

“Oh, goodness, it’s Amber Wyatt!”

“Has she got some guts, or hasn’t she?” Admiration there from a sister-at-arms.

“If I were her I’d kill myself, poor thing!”

Come on, why should I kill myself? Amber reasoned. I haven’t done a thing wrong. Wrong has been done to me, just when life was going so great. God, she felt ill. Buck up, Amber. It won’t be much longer. She was the sort of person who regularly gave herself pep talks. Hundreds of them of late. She was dressed to kill. Confidence in how one looked always helped. One couldn’t pity her and gape open-mouthed in admiration simultaneously. Her suit was the exact shade of pink that complemented her hair—neither red nor gold nor copper but a combination of all three.

“We just have to call this little angel Amber!”

That had been her darling dad, holding his brand-new daughter in his adoring arms.

So Amber she was, though her bright, eye-catching hair was all but hidden by her masterpiece of a hat. It offered a modicum of camouflage. Her accessories were colour co-ordinated, perfect. The whole outfit had cost her way too much money, but her pride demanded she look staggeringly glamorous. She wouldn’t have been content with anything less. Her friend Jono, gay man about town who lived in the penthouse apartment above her and charged unheard of prices for writing other people’s software programs, a man who could be counted on to deliver a totally reliable verdict when it came to fashion, had given her the thumbs up and a spontaneous, “Wow!”

Ironically, it was her friend, the society columnist Zara Fraser, who had first broken the news to her…

* * *

She sat up in bed, bracing herself on one elbow as she made a grab for the phone. She nearly rapped, Who the blazes is this? but stopped just in time. There was a remote possibility it could be her boss. The digital clock on her bedside table read: A.M. 5.35. To make it worse, it was Sunday—her morning to sleep in. It couldn’t be Sean, although she hadn’t spoken to him for a few days. He wouldn’t ring at this time. Sean was safely in London on business, or as safe as one could be in the great cities of the world these scary days. Immediately the thought crossed her mind, she started to panic.

“Hi Amby?”

“Who else do you suppose? Is that you, Zee?”

“Jeez, love, I know it’s early. But you have to hear this.’

“If you’re ringing to tell me you’ve found Mr Right again, don’t dare put him on. I’m not in the mood.”

None of the usual infectious giggles from Zara. “Amby, love, you’ve got to listen. This is serious!”

Amber groaned. “They all are. Just remember, men aren’t to be trusted.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Zara sounded very down-mouthed. “This isn’t about me, Amby. It’s about you. Are you still lying down?”

“No, I’m not!” Amber swung her feet to the floor. “Spit it out, Zee. There’s a good girl.”

“Why should it be my destiny to have to tell you?” Zara moaned. “Okay, there’s no easy way to say it, so here I go. Your fiancé, Sean Sinclair—”

Amber was finding it difficult to swallow. “There hasn’t been another terrorist attack, Zee, has there? Please God, tell me no!” Disasters could and did come out of the blue.

Zara hastened to reassure her. “Not something as terrible as that, but bad enough on a totally different scale. Trish McGowan, you know Trish, she’s in London. She let me know. I didn’t get home until after three. I didn’t want to wake you then but I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t hang on any longer. Wait for it, girl. Sean, your fiancé, married Georgette Erskine, Sir Clive Erskine’s granddaughter, at a civil ceremony yesterday afternoon London time.”

“No kiddin’!” Amber crowed, not for a moment taking her friend seriously. “I know you like your little pranks, but that’s pathetic!”

“No joke, Amby. Proof of what a bastard he really is. This will come as a blow to you, but I can’t pretend I don’t think you haven’t had a lucky escape.”

Amber fell back on the bed as if she were taking a long backward fall off a cliff. “I suppose there’s no question Trish was having a little joke? It has April Fool’s Day written all over it.”

“No chance, love,” Zara said unhappily.” It’s October. I never had a clue the rat even knew her, did you?”

Recollections were filtering through. “He met her several times when she came into the office with her granddaddy. Nothing to look at, he told me. All she had going for her was the family fortune.”

“All?” Zara screeched. “He must have started thinking long and hard about that. Listen, give me twenty minutes and I’ll be over. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

Zara had arrived with freshly baked croissants and genuine Blue Mountain coffee. Zara had been wonderful to her. So had lots of other people, though inevitably there were some—like her co-newsreader—who got a warped pleasure out of seeing her suffer such a public king hit. This follow-up wedding ceremony was being held so the happy couple could seek God’s blessing. If they got it, God wouldn’t be winning any Brownie points with her. It was even possible Sir Clive Erskine had God onside.

The Erskines purported to be a pious bunch. Sir Clive was a billionaire who owned coal mines, gold mines, luxury beach resorts, shopping centres, a string of prize-winning racehorses, country newspapers, and had been the biggest contributor to the Cathedral restoration fund. The bridegroom, Sean Sinclair, was an associate with the blue chip law firm of Langley, Lynch & Pullman, a high profile practice whose clientele included major mining companies, multinationals and billionaires like Sir Clive Erskine. The bridegroom, smart and ambitious, was very good-looking if one found “boyish” attractive. Most women did. He had thick floppy golden-brown hair, dark blue eyes and an engaging whimsical smile. He wasn’t terribly tall but tall enough at five foot ten. The bride wouldn’t have struck even her mother as pretty, but she was said to be a very nice person, which counted for a lot.

How could that be? Georgie Erskine had stolen another woman’s man right from under her nose. Surely that made her a man-eater? No question it was immeasurably better to be from an immensely wealthy family than to be a working woman, however high on the ratings. One way or the other, Georgette Erskine thoroughly deserved the man who awaited her at the altar.

No one better placed than I am to sit in judgement, Amber thought bleakly. Why can’t I hate him? I want to hate him, but I can’t. Her own nature was betraying her. Was it somehow her fault? What had she done wrong? Was she too critical? Too ready to debate the issues of the day, instead of falling into line with Sean’s play safe opinions? Sean liked to keep his finger on the politically expedient pulse. But she was an intelligent woman with strong opinions of her own. She had even gained a reputation for defending the underdog, the little guy. There was the story last year that had won her an award. Whatever the problem, Sean should have been honourable enough to tell her. He should have broken off their engagement, then waited at least a few months before asking another woman to be his wife. She couldn’t have done to him what he had done so callously to her. Sean had only worn the façade of an honourable man…

Late wedding guests, cutting it fine, were still arriving. Up ahead, Amber could see the ushers, decked out in morning suits. Each wore a white rosebud in their lapel. She had to get past them, though by now she was feeling like a clockwork doll badly in need of a rewind. At least they weren’t burly bouncers, just good-looking youngsters probably just out of school or at university. They would have been given a list of guests, although they weren’t holding anything in their hands. Maybe they would only check on guests arriving at the reception, which was being held in a leading city hotel.

No matter what, nothing was going to stop her getting into that church.

Even as Amber plotted, a few feet behind her Cal MacFarlane considered ways and means of controlling a potentially inflammable situation. He couldn’t carry Ms Wyatt off screaming. He couldn’t very well slap her into a pair of handcuffs and make a citizen’s arrest, but it should be possible to avert a scene. He wished he could see her face properly. She had a beautiful body. Tall and willowy. She held her head high and kept her back straight. She moved as a dancer would. She looked enormously chic. In fact she was making the women around her look ordinary, although they had obviously gone to considerable pains over their wedding finery. The brim of the hat was perhaps a bit too wide. It called to mind the picture hats his beautiful mother had used to wear before she ran off with the man he had affectionately called “Uncle Jeff” for much of his childhood. His eyes glittered with the tide of memory even if he had grown many protective layers of skin.

One of the ushers had stopped her. A challenge, or did he want a close-up of the goddess? Rosemary prodded him so hard in the back, he actually winced. “Callum, I beg of you, see to it.”

Rosemary, mercifully not a blood relative, always had that combative look. Had he really travelled a thousand miles and more for this? He’d only met Sinclair the night before and had barely been able to disguise his scorn for the man. Whatever Georgie saw in Sinclair was invisible to him. Of course with Sinclair it was all about money. Money was the fuel that drove everything. Follow the money. Way to go. Money and ambition. Sinclair was a covetous guy.

“We just looked at each other and fell in love!” Georgie had told him, her myopic grey eyes full of stars. The truth was that Georgie was overwhelmed to be loved—and had been given the heaven-sent opportunity to get away from her mother. “I’m so desperately sorry we had to hurt Sean’s ex-fiancée but once he met me he knew he couldn’t go through with it.”

“Pity the two of you didn’t bother to tell her,” he had challenged her squarely but Georgie hadn’t been able to come up with a ready answer. Maybe too intellectual a question? It was all he could do not to enquire if being an heiress had anything to do with it. He wondered how long Georgie would go on hiding that fact from herself? Inwardly disgusted, Cal made a swift charge up the few remaining stone steps, lifting a hand in greeting to another young cousin who beamed at him. Nice kid, Tim. He’d always enjoyed having him out to Jingala, the MacFarlane ancestral desert stronghold, for holidays.

“How’s it going, Tim?”

“Great, just great, Cal,” the young fellow responded, feeling mightily relieved to see his dynamic cousin who so emanated authority. “I was just about to ask this lady…”

Cal turned away from his hero worshipping young cousin to centre his gaze on the “loose cannon”.

A voice in his head spoke as loud and clear as any oracle: This, MacFarlane, is your kind of woman.

The realisation made his whole body tense. Wouldn’t that be one hell of a thing—to get involved with Ms Wyatt, a woman on the rebound? Yet he swore a leap of something extraordinary passed between them—something well outside an eroticized thrill. Recognition? Such things happened. Instantaneous connection? The wise man would do well to ignore the phenomenon. The wise woman too. The question remained. How in the world had Sinclair given up this goddess for Georgie, even if Georgie came draped in diamonds, rubies and pearls?

Cal held the goddess’s gaze for long measuring seconds, more entranced than he cared to be. Even his cynical old heart seemed to have gone into temporary meltdown. He reined himself in. The sweetest woman could suck the life out of a man, as his bolter mother had sucked the life out of his dad.

“Sorry I’m late. I got held up by a phone call.” He took her arm in a light grasp, disturbed to find she was trembling.

Yet she had the wit to reply smoothly, “No problem.” If that weren’t enough, she reached up and calmly kissed his cheek. “As you can see, I made it on my own.”

“You look wonderful!” He didn’t have to strain to say that.

“Thank you so much.” She gave him a smile that would have taken most men’s breath away.

Okay, so that smile affected him! Lucky for him he’d built up an immunity to beautiful women with smiles like the sunrise.

“So do you,” she returned the compliment. “I’ve rarely seen a man wear a morning suit so well.” She had no difficulty in acknowledging the simple truth. He was a very handsome man in a style that hitherto hadn’t been her cup of tea. She went for a gentler look. If Sean’s looks were often described as “boyish”, this guy was hard set handsome, with electricity crackling all around him. Strong cleft chin. Very tall, very lean with a strongly built frame. Not macho. Nothing as self-conscious or as swaggering as that. Here was a guy who was strong in every sense of the word. Maybe too aggressively male for her taste. And how exactly was he eyeing her?

“Shall we go in?” Cal suggested smoothly. Obviously they couldn’t go back down the steps. She had exquisite creamy skin and the nearest thing he’d seen to golden eyes. It was the oddest thing, but he wanted to sweep off that confounded hat so he could see her hair, which appeared to be a wonderful vibrant bright copper…no, amber, which no doubt accounted for her name.

“Just what I was thinking,” she agreed in a sweetly accommodating voice.

It didn’t fool him one bit. This was one beautiful woman laden with intent. She was here for one singular purpose. To create an almighty stir. So far she was doing extremely well. Little whispers were being passed from one wedding guest to another. There was a lot of compulsive head swivelling, short gasps. Some were staring openly, making no bones about their avid interest. Not that he altogether blamed her for doing this. It took a lot of nerve. But it was his job to stop her. It must have been appalling for Amber Wyatt, squarely in the public eye, to be so publicly humiliated. Sinclair must come from a long line of jackals.

“See you later on, Tim,” he called to his young cousin, aware that Tim was looking after them in wonderment as he swept this gutsy, downright foolhardy young woman inside the church.

Who is he? Amber, despite appearances, was only just managing to keep her nerve. She had to admit this guy was something to behold—and chock-a-block with surprises. She had fully expected to be exposed as a woman in the commission of a serious crime, yet he was acting as though they were a couple. Did he feel desperately sorry for her? Or was he someone who would bundle her out of a side door after a few chastening words? It took her roughly ten seconds to hit on the last option. He wouldn’t have much difficulty doing it. He was several inches over six feet and looked superbly fit. She could see the ripple of lean muscle beneath the close fit of his jacket. He was enormously self-assured. Probably had every reason to be. The unshakeable air of male supremacy that generally put her teeth on edge was well in evidence. It warned against any outrageous behaviour on her part. That and a certain glitter in his eyes. They were—well—lovely, though he would probably cringe to hear that. Shots of sparkling colour in his bronzed face—the cool green of one of her favourite gemstones, the peridot. She couldn’t help registering that not only was the colour remarkable, so too was the intensity.

One thing was certain. She had never seen him before in her life. She’d remember. She liked the fact that she had to tilt her head to look up at him. Not something she did every day. Sean had been forever asking her to wear low heels or even flatties, when she was a girl for whom high heels were not only a necessity but a passion.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the cool interior of the church after the brilliant sunshine outside, she could see that it was beautifully decorated. She bit down hard on her lip lest a cry escape her.

Even so, it did. “Aah!”

“You’ll get through it,” he told her, his expression Byronic.

“How did I ever convince myself I loved him? Why did I choose him of all the men in the world to marry?” she wailed.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time? You couldn’t have been short of other offers.”

“So what does that say about me? I’m a very poor judge of character?” Zara, unfairly regarded by some as an airhead, had seen through him right from the beginning.

“Maybe love—or what passes for it—truly is blind.”

“It wasn’t love.” She shook her head. More being in love with love. The constant awareness that her biological clock was ticking away? She was twenty-six. She wanted kids. She loved children and they loved her. She had four godchildren at the last count. She was a real favourite with her friends. A marvellous, trustworthy babysitter.

Time to break off her philosophical meanderings with her new best friend.

Masses and masses of white and soft cream flowers shimmered before her distressed eyes. Roses, lilies, peonies, double cream lisianthus, carnations, gladiolus and the exquisitely delicate ivory-white petals of the Phalaenopsis orchids, all wonderfully and inventively arranged. And oh, the perfume! The rows of dark polished pews were lavishly beribboned in white and cream taffeta.

Amber just stood there, letting it all overwhelm her.

Her rescuer drew her to one side as the wedding guests continued to stream in. Amber watched dazedly as he acknowledged this one and that, giving what appeared to be a reassuring inclination of his head to a stony-faced society matron in a drop-dead ghastly misfit of a hat. If looks could annihilate, Amber was sure she would be gasping her last breath. But of course! It was the bride’s mother. As such, didn’t she have a right to demand Amber be thrown out? Mrs Rosemary Erskine in the flesh was an awesome sight.

It was all so unreal she might have been having an out of body experience. And who was this man who kept a light but secure rein on her? Obviously, he was well known. His thick crow-black hair, swept back from a high brow, had a decided deep wave that was clipped to control. The bronze of his skin wasn’t fake. That tan came from a life in the sun. The light grey morning suit, which a lot of men couldn’t successfully carry off, only served to accentuate his height, width of shoulder and the natural elegance of his body. A man of action? He wasn’t any man about town. Impossible to remain anonymous when you looked like that. He certainly wasn’t a friend of Sean’s—his friends tended to be much like himself—so he had to be from the bride’s side.