Kitabı oku: «Her Outback Commander»

Welcome to the intensely emotional world of Margaret Way where rugged, brooding bachelors meet their match in the burning heart of Australia …

Praise for the author: “Margaret Way delivers … vividly written, dramatic stories.” —RT Book Reviews

“With climactic scenes, dramatic imagery and bold

characters, Margaret Way makes the Outback come

alive …”

—RT Book Reviews

“Welcome to Katajangga,” Blaine said, taxiing the Beech Baron towards the huge silver hangar.

“This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen! A small country town in the middle of an endless ocean of red sand and rioting miles of wild flowers.”

Blaine too was feeling that excitement, like little darts piercing his skin. He was having seriously divergent thoughts about this beautiful young woman. A lack of trust, like a sleeping serpent coiled around a spinifex bush and yet always ready to strike. At the other extreme a deep pleasure in her company. She looked entirely innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with his late brother, yet his gut feeling told him he had to face the possibility she was lying, or at the very least hiding their connection. Blaine knew he would have to separate the truth from the lies.

About the Author

MARGARET WAY, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the subtropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatorium-trained pianist, teacher, accompanist and vocal coach, she found her musical career came to an unexpected end when she took up writing—initially as a fun thing to do. She currently lives in a harbourside apartment at beautiful Raby Bay, a thirty-minute drive from the state capital, where she loves dining al fresco on her plant-filled balcony, overlooking a translucent green marina filled with all manner of pleasure craft: from motor cruisers costing millions of dollars, and big, graceful yachts with carved masts standing tall against the cloudless blue sky, to little bay runabouts. No one and nothing is in a mad rush, and she finds the laid-back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over one hundred books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.

Her Outback Commander

Margaret Way

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

Vancouver Canada

HE KNEW her the moment she moved into the hotel lobby. The doorman in his natty top hat held the door for her, his face wreathed in smiles. Who could blame him? A woman like that inspired smiles. But just why he was so sure it was she he couldn’t fathom. Gut feeling? He didn’t question it, even when it went against all his preconceptions. But then his mental picture had been based on the description Mark had given his mother, Hilary, in a one-off letter sent months after he had married the Canadian girl. Nevertheless the feeling of recognition was so powerful it was almost a force in itself. It shook him when he was a man who shielded himself against shock.

For one thing, Mark’s description didn’t begin to do her justice. She was beautiful. No other word would do. She always would be, given her bone structure, he thought. She also radiated an air of refinement—a cool reserve that in itself was unusual. Not Mark’s scene at all. She was immaculately groomed, her stylishness understated. She was a recent widow, after all, he thought grimly. Obviously her lovely outward appearance camouflaged the shallowness of the woman beneath.

He had chosen the most inconspicuous spot he could find to wait for her. He reasoned it would give him a slight advantage, observing her before she had a chance to observe him. That way he might be able to form a better idea of what sort of young woman Mark had married. Right now he found himself unable to grasp the reality when set against his half brother’s description. Where, for instance, was the blonde hair? And surely she was supposed to be petite? But then she was wearing high heels, and women moved on, changing their hair colour as fashion or mood dictated.

He knew in his bones he hadn’t picked the wrong woman, despite the many discrepancies. He was supposed to keep an open mind. This had to be Mandy—Mark’s widow, Amanda. She didn’t look like a Mandy, or even an Amanda. Pretty names, but they didn’t suit her. Perhaps it was one of Mark’s little jokes? From boyhood Mark had revelled in deception, spinning an elaborate web of fantasies, half-truths and shameless lies that had tied everyone in knots. Their father had once confided he was worried Mark was becoming something of a sociopath. A harsh judgement when their father hadn’t been a judgemental man. But it had to be admitted Mark had barely registered the difference between right and wrong. Nothing had stopped him when his mind was set on something. He certainly hadn’t cared about people. His self-interest had been profound. That hadn’t been an easy truth for either his father or him to accept.

As for his tastes in young women? Mark had only been interested in pretty girls who had all their assets on show. Other qualities a young woman might offer, like warmth, companionship, spirituality or intellect, came right down the list. Mark’s type had always been the stereotypical glamour girl. “Air-heads” Marcia, his twin, had always called them acidly, with the exception of Joanne Barrett, the fiancée Hilary had picked out for her son and whom Mark had so callously abandoned. This woman he had finally chosen to marry presented a striking departure from the norm.

As she stood poised a moment, looking about her, he rose to his feet to hold up an identifying hand. Poor Joanne wouldn’t have been in the race beside this young woman, he thought, with regret mixed with resentment. There was no comparison. At least in the looks department.

No welcoming smile appeared on her face.

Nor on his.

His heart was locked against her like cold steel.

She walked towards him, a willowy figure, glancing neither to left nor right. She seemed to have little idea of the admiring glances she was receiving, from men and women alike. But then a beautiful woman would never escape constant attention. She was probably so used to it she didn’t notice.

His trip to Vancouver, beautiful city though it was, surrounded by mountains and sea, unfortunately wouldn’t entail pleasure, or even time for some sightseeing. He regretted that. But he would have to say he wasn’t at home in such cold—let alone the rain. Outside the centrally heated hotel it was freezing, with a biting wind. He had never known it to be so cold, even when wintering in Europe. He had been born and raised on a vast Australian cattle station on the fringe of one of the world’s great deserts, the scorching blood-red Simpson. But he was here for a specific purpose: to arrange for his half-brother’s body to be taken home and to invite Mark’s widow to return with him to Australia, to attend the funeral and finally meet the family. The family she had chosen to totally ignore for the two short years of her marriage.

He didn’t think she would ignore them now. There was a sizable legacy he wished to give her, for a start. Very few people knocked back money. Besides, a few deserving people had a right to know why Mark had acted the way he had. First and foremost his mother Hilary, his twin Marcia, and the cruelly jilted Joanne. He needed no explanations. Mark’s actions had never shocked him. And they had never shocked their late father, who had spent the last two years of his life as an invalid, his spine fractured so badly that two operations hadn’t helped at all. The titanium pins simply hadn’t been able to hold. To make matters so much more devastating, their father had suffered a rare type of amnesia since his near fatal accident. He remembered nothing of the day when he, a splendid horseman, born in the saddle, had been thrown violently from his favourite mare Duchess.

She walked towards him quite calmly, when inside she was anything but calm. This was Blaine Kilcullen. Mark’s brother. She would have recognised him even if he hadn’t raised that signalling hand. It was an authoritative hand—the hand of a man well used to getting instant attention. Yet the gesture didn’t strike her as arrogant. More a natural air of command. He was very tall. Much taller than Mark. Six-three, she guessed, with wide square shoulders, long lean limbs. Superbly fit. He cut an impressive figure. But then Lucifer had been a splendid angel before the Fall.

Memories shunted into her mind: Mark’s damning condemnation of his brother.

Handsome as Lucifer and just as deadly.

It had been delivered with a kind of primal anger, even hate. Mark had had a big problem with anger, she remembered. Indeed there had been quite a few aspects of Mark’s personality she had found jarring, and had done so right from the start. Charming one minute, and within the space of another he could turn oddly cold, as if the shutters had come down. Impossible to pinpoint the exact reason for the abrupt change.

Mark had claimed his brother was the cause of so much of the unhappiness and pain in his life. He might well have contributed, she reasoned, given the strength of Mark’s bitterness and his sense of abandonment.

“Blaine is the reason I had to get away. Leave my home, my own country. My dad died, but long before he died he rejected me—because of Blaine and his manipulative ways. Blaine was out to eliminate me and he did it in the worst possible way. He bitterly resented Dad’s love for me. In the end Dad pushed me away. I was never good enough. I could never measure up. Snow will blanket the Simpson before I speak to my brother again.”

Alas, Mark had got his wish. At least in part. He had been fated never to speak to his brother again. He had died in snow. A skiing accident after he had, despite warnings, left the trail they had been taking and not long after crashed headlong into a tree. She and Amanda had been watching at the time. It had been a horrible experience, one that could never be forgotten. But Mark had enjoyed playing the daredevil, like some macho adolescent. Perhaps his former life, the never-ending efforts to prove himself against a superior brother, had dictated his attitude? At times she’d had the awful dread he might be borderline suicidal. He’d definitely had issues. But then she had managed to convince herself she was most likely overreacting. She was no psychiatrist, after all.

“Amanda?” The cattle baron extended a lean, darkly tanned hand.

Time for her to unfold another one of Mandy’s stories.

She had spent so many years covering for her cousin she was starting to feel drained.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Kilcullen.” His handshake was firm, brief, but she felt a very real frisson of reaction—a kind of shock wave produced by skin on skin. She tried to hide her involuntary reaction, launching into an explanation. “There wasn’t time to let you know, I’m afraid. I’m Sienna Fleury, Amanda’s cousin. Amanda asked me to take her place. A migraine. It came on quite suddenly. She suffers from them.”

“I see.”

Exquisitely polite. But she had no difficulty reading his mind. More cold indifference from the woman Mark had married. More rejection of the Kilcullen family of him as the family envoy.

“Please allow me to offer my most sincere condolences.” She spoke gently. “I was fond of Mark.” It was far from the truth, but then it never did seem right to speak ill of the dead. At the beginning she had made a super-human effort to like Mark, but there had always been something in his eyes that disturbed her. Amanda, however, had fallen madly in love with him, so in rejecting Mark the family had known it would be as good as rejecting Amanda. Something she could not do, having looked out for Amanda for years like a surrogate big sister.

“Thank you, Ms Fleury.” He felt his grim mood softened by her lovely speaking voice. The musical Canadian accent fell soothingly on his ear. Looking back at her, he felt something click in his mind, pretty much as if a light switch had been turned on. Hadn’t Amanda’s bridesmaid featured quite a bit in Mark’s letter to his mother? At the time Hilary had confessed she found the talk of the bridesmaid quite odd. Could this be the anonymous bridesmaid? From believing she was Mark’s widow, he was now convinced she could be Amanda’s bridesmaid.

Sienna, quietly observing him, detected the shift in his attitude. She wondered what had caused it. From Mark’s account the brothers had been mortal enemies. Believing her husband implicitly, Amanda had made no effort to contact her late husband’s estranged family, no effort to effect some sort of reconciliation. She had even been obdurate in not wanting to advise them of Mark’s fatal accident. But that had been against the right code of behaviour. Sienna had contacted her father, Lucien Fleury, one of Canada’s most highly esteemed artists, and begged him to make the call as Amanda couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Always been problematic, hasn’t she? Poor little Mandy.” An understatement from her father, who rarely bothered to mince words.

Amanda was his niece. His sister Corinne and her husband had been killed in a car crash when Amanda was five. Sienna’s parents, Lucien and Francine, had taken in the orphaned Amanda, raising her with Sienna, eighteen months older, and Sienna’s adored older brother Emile, now a brilliant architect and interior designer working out of New York.

Blaine Kilcullen’s deep voice, with its clear cutting edge, broke into her thoughts. No discernible Aussie accent. More a cosmopolitan voice. “Shall we have a drink before dinner?” he suggested, his diamond gaze revealing nothing of what he thought of her and her unheralded role as stand-in for his half-brother’s widow.

“I’d like that.” What else could she say? She actually found him every bit as daunting as Mark had said. But then she had to give him a little leeway. These were unhappy times.

Inside the luxurious lounge, he helped her remove her cashmere coat, laying it over the back of a chair along with the deep yellow scarf she had worn around her throat. It was quite a while since she had been inside this downtown Vancouver boutique hotel. She glanced appreciatively around her. The hotel was famous for its European style: glossy, warm dark timbers, richly upholstered furniture, fine antique pieces, lots of lovely flowers, and beautiful works of art that adorned the public areas as well as the luxurious suites.

He held her chair. She sat down, smoothing back the long hair that had been caught into her woollen scarf.

“What would you like?” He diverted his gaze from the shining waterfall of hair, turning his attention to the ceiling-high, well-stocked bar.

“Perhaps a brandy cocktail?” She didn’t really want anything.

He settled for a fine cognac.

Careful not to stare, she was nevertheless making her own assessment with her artist’s eye. At twenty-six she already had several successful art showings behind her. She was also a talented photographer, with a good body of work. Her primary job, however, was managing her father’s gallery in Vancouver, and overseeing two others—one in Toronto, the other in New York. What was her take on the man in front of her? Blaine Kilcullen, Australian cattle baron, was without a doubt the most striking-looking man she had ever seen, even allowing for the severe expression on his handsome face. But then he would be in mourning for his brother. Bitter regrets, surely? Thoughts of “what might have been”?

He was wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit with a silk tie she very much liked: wide cobalt blue and silver stripes, the blue edged with a fine line of dark red. He would probably look just as elegant in traditional cattleman’s gear, she thought. The leanness and the long limbs made an ideal frame for clothes. The surprising thing was the Mark hadn’t resembled his brother in the least. Mark had had golden-brown hair and mahogany dark eyes, and he’d been around five-ten. This man was darkly handsome. His thick hair had a natural deep wave, and his strongly marked brows were ink-black. In stunning contrast his eyes had the glitter of sun on ice.

Their drinks arrived. She readied herself for what was to come. Conversation would be difficult. The great irony was that it wasn’t her affair at all. Amanda was Mark’s widow. It was Amanda’s place to attend this crucial meeting with a member of Mark’s family, albeit estranged. Only Amanda had pulled the old hysteria trick. Over the years she had turned it into an art form. The sad fact of the matter was Amanda really could make herself ill, thus giving her the upper hand. They had all bowed to her tantrums, acutely sympathetic to the fact she had lost her parents, but by the time she’d reached her teens it had become apparent that Amanda actually enjoyed wallowing in her feelings. Earlier in the day she had maintained, with tears gushing, she couldn’t possibly meet Mark’s cruel, callous brother.

“We’re talking about the brother who tried to wreck his life, Sienna. You expect me to head off to a pow-wow, smoke the peace pipe? Not likely!”

Mark had impressed upon Amanda and the family that he had hated his brother, blaming him for his banishment from the Kilcullen ancestral home—although he had been very sketchy about that. It was a desert fortress, apparently, set down in the middle of nowhere. She had checked the Simpson area out on the internet, reading about the breathtaking changes that occurred in the wilderness after rain. It sounded quite fascinating.

Mark had thought differently. “Canada suits me fine. God knows it’s far enough away—the other side of the world.” From time to time there had been such abrupt surges of anger, amounting to rants, flushed skin, darting eyes. She’d once suggested Mark might need professional help to Amanda, falling back defensively against Amanda’s hysterical tirade.

“How dare you? Dare you? Dare you?”

Sienna had never mentioned it again.

The odd thing was Mark hadn’t met Amanda in their home city of Vancouver. He had met her when she and Amanda were holidaying in Paris. Mark had been working behind the bar of their luxury hotel at the time.

“Just a fun job, and I get to meet all the beautiful girls.”

Mark had lived for fun, taking casual jobs here and there in the hospitality industry where—surprisingly—he had shone. But then Mark had been physically a very attractive man. Only he had committed to nothing. Amanda was a born flirt, who’d had a succession of boyfriends, but she had fallen for him good and hard— and in a remarkably short time. As for Sienna herself, the sensible one, she hadn’t taken to Mark—despite his good-looks and superficial charm. But he’d been the type Amanda had always been attracted to.

It hadn’t come as much of a surprise when Mark had followed them home less than a month later. He’d met the family, who had recognised an imbalance there, but felt compelled for Amanda’s sake to be tolerant. Amanda paid attention to no one, but in retrospect it would have been an excellent idea for her to listen. She would have no other. Within six months she and Mark had been married, at a small but lavish affair Lucien had turned on for them. There had been no one on Mark’s side, although there had been a goodly sprinkling of Fleurys and friends to swell the numbers and make an occasion of it. It had later been revealed Amanda had been pregnant the time—something she had kept from them—but sadly she had miscarried barely a month later. She had not fallen pregnant again for the remainder of their short and, as it had turned out, largely unhappy marriage.

Sienna had often wondered if that was the reason Mark had married Amanda—although to be fair Amanda was very pretty and she could be good company when the mood took her. It had never seemed to Sienna that Mark had been in love with her cousin. Using her, maybe? Their family was wealthy. Her father was an eminent artist, her mother a dermatologist and her brother was becoming quite a celebrity designer. For that matter she was doing pretty well herself. Only Mark had never seemed short of money. He’d appeared to have private means. The jobs he’d taken had seemed to be no more than hobbies. At one time he had tried to talk her into allowing him to join her at the gallery. No question of that. She hadn’t wanted Mark anywhere near her. He made her very uneasy. Barely a year into the marriage Mark had finally shown her why. She couldn’t bear to think about that awful, shameful evening. It still haunted her. From that night on she had loathed him …

Blaine Kilcullen was speaking, drawing her out of her dark, disturbing thoughts. “I do hope your cousin is well enough to speak to me tomorrow, Ms Fleury. I need to see her.”

“Of course you do,” she hastily agreed, thinking there

would be world peace before Amanda got out of bed.

“What is the real reason for her not coming, Ms Fleury?”

“Please—Sienna.” She took a sip of her cocktail. It

perturbed her, the effect this man was having on her.

It was as if he had a magnetic power. She was usually composed. Or that was her reputation. Amanda was the bubbly one. At least before her brief marriage had started to disintegrate.

“Sienna it is.” He smiled briefly. That was enough. The smile lit the sombreness of his expression like an emerging sun cut through clouds. “Sienna—a significant name. Was it inspired by the colour of your hair?” He let his eyes linger on her long, lustrous mane. It was centre-parted no doubt to highlight the perfect symmetry of her oval face. The colour was striking: a blend of dark red, amber and coppery-brown. Her large beautiful eyes were thickly lashed. The colour put him in mind of fine sherry when held up to the light.

“My father named me,” she said, a smile playing around her mouth. “Apparently even as a newborn my fuzz of hair was the colour of burnt sienna. That’s a paint pigment. My father is quite a famous artist here in Canada. Lucien Fleury.” She spoke with love and pride.

“It was your father, then, who rang Mark’s mother to let her know of the accident?” Things were starting to fall into place.

Mark’s mother. Why not our mother? “Yes, Amanda was so distraught she had to be sedated.” Not true. Amanda had been drunk. Another cover-up. Amanda had taken to alcohol big-time.

“I feel I should see your father’s work,” he said, surprising her. “My family have been great collectors over the years. I have a great-aunt—Adeline—living in Melbourne, whose house is like a private museum. Paintings, sculptures, antiques, Oriental rugs, the most exquisite Chinese porcelains behind glass. She tells me every time she sees me she’s leaving me the lot.”

“Does that please you?” He was a cattle baron, a man of action, of the Great Outdoors, though his whole persona was that of a cultured man of the world. “Not everyone likes such things.” She had friends who had little taste for art and antiques though they had the money to possess both.

His handsome mouth was compressed. A sexy mouth, very clean cut, its edges raised. She knew he wasn’t married. That had emerged during the course of the conversation between Mrs Hilary Kilcullen and her father. “In my case, I do. But God knows where it will all go. My current plan is to give the lesser stuff away. There’s quite a large extended family. But you wouldn’t know about that.”

“Unfortunately, no.” She lowered her gaze. “I should point out it’s Amanda who is your brother’s widow.”

“Half-brother,” he corrected a shade curtly, again surprising her. Mark had never said. “My mother died of the complications of malaria when I was going on six years of age. She and my father were staying at a friend’s coffee plantation in New Guinea at the time. Both of them had had their shots, but in my mother’s case the vaccine didn’t take. My father, our New Guinea friends, the entire family were devastated by the loss. I still remember my beautiful mother, though those memories have kept changing over time. Hard to forget what she looked like, however. My father commissioned a large portrait of her by a famous Italian artist to celebrate their marriage. It hung in the Great Room. It never came down.”

Not even when the second wife, Mark’s mother, took her place? That couldn’t have been easy for Hilary Kilcullen. Come to that, this cattle baron himself was eminently paint-able. She knew her father could do a wonderful portrait of him, but she very much doubted whether he would be up for a commission.

“So you have a permanent reminder of your mother,” she said with gentle compassion. “I’m so sorry for your loss.

The feeling of being deprived of your mother must never go away. I’m very close to my mother. I can’t imagine life without her.”

“Then you’re blessed,” he said, looking across the small circular table and right into her eyes.

Really looking—as though she was in some way important to him or his agenda.

“And you have both your parents,” he continued. “My father died a few years back.”

Just as Mark had said. She’d concluded Blaine Kilcullen was a man of iron control, but a flash of pain crossed his chiselled features.

“Dad remarried, according to Adeline, to give me a stepmother.” He didn’t tell her Adeline had actually said a ready-made nanny. Everyone in the family knew his father’s marriage to Hilary had been one of convenience, although Hilary, daughter of a pastoralist friend of the family, had long idolized Desmond Kilcullen from afar.

“Mark never made it clear you and he were half brothers. He always talked about you as though you were—well … full brothers.”

“Did he?” He took care to keep his tone even. He could well imagine what Mark had told them all, the damage Mark had done. Not only to him, but to the rest of the family. Mark had near destroyed himself with bitterness and resentment. “Mark was still engaged to a very nice young woman when he took off without a word to anyone,” he said, just to put part of the record straight. “He jumped on a freight plane that had flown machinery into the station, as it happened. From the look on your face you didn’t know about that either.”

“Remember, please,” she said again, “I’m Amanda’s cousin.” She needed to explain her lack of knowledge.

“But you are close?” He resumed his piercing silver-grey scrutiny.

She hoped she didn’t flush. She and Amanda had coexisted rather than ever growing close as she had hoped. The closeness simply hadn’t happened. “Amanda’s parents were killed when she was five. Her parents were returning from a long trip and her father apparently fell asleep at the wheel. My mother and father opened up their home and their hearts to Amanda. Amanda, my brother Emile and I all grew up together. He’s a highly gifted architect and interior designer.”

“So the artistic gift runs in the family?” he said. “May I ask what you do?”

He actually sounded interested. “I manage one of my father’s galleries, and I paint myself. As you say, it’s in the blood.”

“Do you show your work?”

She gave him a sparkling glance. He knew the sparkle was unconscious, but a man could find it powerfully seductive. “I’ve had four showings up to date. Each time they become more successful. I specialize in landscapes, the occasional still-life. My father’s speciality is portraiture, though he can paint anything. Many of his subjects have been very important people, and of course very beautiful women. My father worships a woman’s beauty. I’m not in his league—” she smiled “—but Lucien is wonderfully supportive. Which is not to say he isn’t highly critical when he feels the need. My brother loves Dad but he took off to New York to make his own way in the world. When Emile is home it’s like being around twins—Dad and Emile are so much alike.” She changed the subject, although she could see his interest was unfeigned. “Did you know Amanda and Mark actually met in Paris, not here in Vancouver?”

He gritted fine white teeth. “Sienna, it was Mark’s plan to vanish into thin air. At that time he was a very disturbed young man.” No need to add that he’d had chips as big as desert boulders on both shoulders.

“You don’t want me to press you about Mark?” At her question he gave her a searching look. It was as though he wanted to know everything that went on inside her.

“I think I have summed it up,” he said in a clipped voice.

“Perhaps you should know what he thought of you?” Unforgivably, she was returning his brusqueness.

“Not right now,” he said. “Mark was family. His death matters.”

He had turned the tables on her. She felt ashamed of herself. “Of course it matters. Please forgive me. I only thought it would explain so much about Amanda if I could tell you—”

“That Mark hated me?” His black brows rose. “Sienna, I know. It was a very bad case of sibling rivalry. We all live in isolation on a vast Outback station, yet Mark and I never really connected. We never did things together. It’s hard to explain.”

Not to me, she thought. It was almost exactly her experience with Amanda.

“I was my father’s heir. His firstborn. Mark grew up knowing I was the one who would inherit Katajannga. That’s the name of our cattle station. Not that he had any interest in being or becoming a cattle man.”

Her interest had soared. “That’s the name of your station? Katajannga? How extraordinary Mark never mentioned that.”

“Mark kept a lot of things locked up,” he said sombrely. “There’s a long story attached to the name. It more or less means ‘revelation’, or sometimes ‘many lagoons’ when translated from the aboriginal. One can understand why. After good rains the desert is indeed a revelation.”