Fool Me Once

by Karly Lane

  ‘I’ll go start dinner.’ Without waiting for a reply, she moved past him, chiding herself for taking that extra deep breath as she did and finding the mix of horse, dog, sweat and man had strangely become some kind of aphrodisiac.

  ‘Where did you learn to ride like that?’ Georgie asked later, after they’d finished their meal and were watching the sunset transform the land.

  ‘My father.’

  Georgie realised they’d never talked about his real father before. ‘You said you grew up on a property, how old were you when he died?’

  He wasn’t used to talking about his father. It still gave him that empty sense of loss if he allowed himself to dwell on it too much. ‘I was ten,’ he said quietly and shifted in his seat.

  ‘You must have learned to ride young.’

  He slid his gaze to her face in slight surprise. ‘Mum says I was riding my first pony at two.’ He smiled as her lips turned up at the picture of him at two seated on a pony. ‘Hard to imagine I was ever that cute?’ he teased.

  ‘Not really,’ she murmured.

  He raised an eyebrow but didn’t push her to elaborate. He was praying this tentative venture at conversation on Georgie’s part wasn’t going to end too soon.

  ‘How much time do you spend riding nowadays?’

  Reaching for his glass, he took a sip. ‘Not as much as I’d like. I spend as much time as I can out on the ground, but I usually end up dealing with paperwork or staff issues. Thanks to modern technology I seem to get harassed by phone calls and emails even out in the most remote places. It’s been nice the last few days to leave the phone behind.’

  ‘Won’t your empire fall apart without you?’ she asked with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘I’ve left it in good hands. I think it’ll survive for a week. There are some things that are more important than the livestock trade and profit margins.’

  Georgie lifted her chin slightly. ‘Like buying out broken farmers?’

  His frown returned and his jaw clenched. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve never forced anyone to sell me their land, Georgie. I’m not responsible for the bad management of others. I just buy properties once they’re put on the market.’

  ‘It’s not always through bad management. You can’t predict weather and bad prices,’ she argued quietly.

  ‘No, but if you’re smart, you figure out how to manage what you have and get yourself through the rough times. Farming is like any other industry, you have to keep up with the changes, be adaptable. You know that as well as I do. Relying on doing everything the way they did it fifty years ago won’t cut it nowadays. That’s the biggest problem with the industry, trying to get people to accept that they have to do things differently. Advance with technology.’

  ‘It doesn’t change the fact that I know first-hand the heartache that goes along with losing your home.’

  ‘You can’t think with your heart in business, Georgie.’

  ‘I guess no one can ever say that of your industry.’

  ‘I’m nothing like my stepfather—when are you going to open your eyes and see that?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Watching how he did business made me decide to do it differently.’ He softened his voice. ‘I know what he did to your father, Georgie. I know he hounded and threatened and bullied him, but I swear, I wasn’t involved with any of that at the time. And my business is nothing like his.’

  Michael toyed with his fork on the table silently for a few moments. ‘He accumulates things for the sake of it. I invest in property to use it. The land is my life. It’s my business, and it provides jobs and opportunities for people who otherwise would have to leave their communities and families to find work elsewhere. If my company had been around when your father was going bankrupt, there’s a good chance I could have bought it and you’d have still been living there. Working it. I’m not about buying properties and kicking people out to move in my own workers.’

  When he saw that she was listening to him—really listening—he stood up quickly. ‘Wait here, I have something to show you.’ He went to grab his laptop, returning quickly, knowing this was a fragile opportunity but one he had to push in order to show her what he’d been wanting her to see for a long time.

  Twenty-Six

  Georgie bit her lip anxiously as she waited for Michael to return. There was a strange emotion churning inside her that felt a lot like hope.

  He came back and placed the computer on the table between them.

  ‘I want to show you what we do.’

  She watched as he clicked on an icon and an impressive professional web page opened on the screen, the bold logo of his company displayed prominently across the top.

  He clicked on a side bar and opened a gallery of pictures showing the properties he owned. In the pictures, smiling faces greeted her, and he pointed out that the people who worked on each property were all from the communities surrounding the land. As he flicked through the photos on the screen, she suddenly sat forward and asked him to go back to the last picture.

  ‘These people,’ she said, peering at the photo intently. ‘I’ve seen them before,’ she breathed, her mind already connecting the faces with the image that occasionally flashed before her eyes. She hadn’t recognised the smiling faces on the screen at first because the last time she’d seen them they’d just lost everything they owned.

  ‘This was the family in the newspaper, in that article about you and your stepfather.’

  Michael nodded calmly, his eyes flicking from the screen to her face. ‘I bought their land and re-established them as managers on the property. Now they get a salary, holiday pay and they get to live in their own house without the financial stress of running the property.’

  Georgie blinked back a prickling sensation behind her eyes and stared at the smiling faces.

  Michael’s eyes glittered with a dark emotion she couldn’t quite interpret, but suddenly the foundations of the anger she’d been standing on all this time began to wobble beneath her.

  Michael dropped his gaze from her face as memories from one of the worst moments of his life came flooding back. It’d all started with that bloody article in the paper about his stepfather’s business—the one that had butchered any chance he might have had at a life with Georgie. At least that’s what he’d funnelled all his anger and grief into when Georgie had refused to listen to him and then vanished into the night without so much as a goodbye.

  He’d needed something … someone to take out his anger on. Derrick Matthew had been the source of years of frustration, and Michael, in no frame of mind to think rationally, had driven straight to his stepfather’s house and confronted him.

  The visit had not been the usual politely indifferent affair.

  His mother had been confused when he’d strode past her in the hall and headed straight for Derrick’s office. Like everything in the man’s life, the office was extravagant and unapologetically expensive. The whole house was for that matter, but the office—his domain—was something from an English manor with its timber panelling and leather chairs scattered around a huge marble fireplace. Stag heads and various other game were showcased on the walls, and a massive timber desk took up centre stage in front of a huge bay window.

  Derrick looked up sharply when Michael entered the room without knocking and strode across the room to stop in front of the desk.

  ‘If it isn’t the new holdings king,’ Derrick greeted him, nodding towards the folded newspaper on a stack of other rural magazines and papers. ‘Although I think the press have been a tad premature—one win can’t match forty-five years of experience.’

  ‘I’m not you. I didn’t come here to gloat.’

  ‘I should think not. It’ll take more than one fluke to impress me, son.’

  ‘I’m not your son,’ Michael bit out, staring at the man coldly. ‘I’ve never been your son and I’m sure as hell not trying to impress you.’

  ‘Come on, we both know everything you learned you learned from me. Before you threw a tantrum and
sulked away.’

  Michael had learned to ignore the insults Derrick wielded like weapons—he’d figured out early in life it was easier to let them roll off his back. Derrick was a hard man with little patience for anything in life that didn’t meet his high expectations. In all fairness, Michael hadn’t made it easy for the man to like him, he was the first to admit that. He’d been an angry, grieving and confused kid when his mother had remarried. Maybe deep down he had been trying to get Derrick’s approval, but he could never bring himself to actually admit it. In hindsight, he was probably just desperate for any kind of male approval. He missed his dad, and Derrick was the only role model he had. Although Derrick had been right—he had taught him everything he knew about business—and Michael suspected this recent win of his may have rattled his stepfather’s cage.

  ‘I left because I didn’t want to do business the way you do it.’

  ‘And yet here you are.’

  ‘I came here to tell you that win wasn’t my last. I intend to make sure you don’t get your hands on any more family-owned properties.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Your way of doing business is outdated. I’m just here to give you a friendly warning.’

  ‘Well, look at you,’ Derrick said, leaning back in his chair thoughtfully. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were threatening me. Are you tellin’ me there’s a spine in there somewhere after all?’

  ‘You ruin lives, and people suffer because of your decisions.’

  ‘I run a business, not a charity. And here’s a piece of friendly advice—you can’t do both and stay number one. You can outbid me as many times as you like … all I have to do is stand back and wait. You’ll go broke and I’ll scoop up your little business and merge it with mine. So go ahead. Do your worst. You’ll be helping me double my holdings in the long run.’

  ‘Darling, do you want something to eat? Can I get you something to drink?’ his mother interrupted smoothly, no doubt calculating the best way to defuse the tension in the room.

  ‘I just don’t get it—what do you see in this bastard?’ Michael asked, turning towards his mother. ‘He’s not half the man my father was and he never will be.’ He was too angry to feel remorse at the hurt on her face.

  ‘Get out,’ Derrick’s smug face was now thunderous.

  ‘The two of you need to calm down,’ his mother said, glaring at them.

  ‘If you think I’m going to allow this kind of disrespect in my house—’ Derrick fumed.

  ‘Our house,’ Michael’s mother snapped. ‘This is my home too and you’re right, there’s far too much disrespect in this house and you’re both to blame. Just once, could we have a visit without the two of you being at each other’s throats?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I can’t do this anymore,’ Michael said, walking out of the room.

  ‘Michael please,’ his mother said, following. ‘I know he can be argumentative.’

  ‘Argumentative?’ Michael stopped and stared at her. ‘He’s a mean old bastard.’

  ‘You two rub each other the wrong way—you always have. Neither of you has ever seen the other the way I see you. I don’t know how to make you understand that.’

  ‘I love you Mum, and I want to see you happy, but he’s always seen me as his competition and now he’s right, I am.’

  ‘You haven’t given each other a chance.’

  ‘He was never going to be the father Dad was.’

  ‘Michael, I know you feel loyalty to your father, he was a good man. A good father … but he was a terrible husband.’

  Michael stared at his mother, feeling sideswiped by her unexpected words.

  ‘I know,’ she nodded slowly, ‘it’s hard to hear. But you’re not a child anymore. Maybe I should have had this talk with you earlier, maybe it would have helped … I don’t know, but it’s time you heard my side.’

  ‘Your side of what?’

  ‘Of everything. You blamed me for remarrying so soon after your father’s death and I know how it must have seemed, but you were a child and there were things you didn’t understand.’

  Michael stared at his mother, perplexed.

  ‘I loved your father, more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life—besides you,’ she amended softly. ‘But sometimes love isn’t enough. It can hide faults—differences in people. That’s what happened with your father and me. We were so different, in upbringing, in how we reacted to things … He was reckless with money, spending what little we had on things he wanted, not things we needed. He’d go off chasing prize money from rodeos instead of swallowing his pride and asking for work locally. There were times when we had no food,’ she said, turning wide eyes on Michael. ‘Nothing. I’d have to go to our neighbours and ask for some bread and eggs just so you’d have something to eat until I could find some money to buy groceries. We were at breaking point so many times over the years.

  ‘I thought about leaving him, just taking you and going back to my parents, but then I knew how humiliating that would be, since they disowned me when I married your father in the first place. So really, I was just as bad as he was—refusing to ask for help because of pride. And then he died.’

  Michael saw his mother swallow painfully. ‘I was racked with guilt. I was mourning the love of my life, and yet at the same time a tiny part of me was thinking, “You’re free!” Do you have any idea how gut-wrenching that was to acknowledge? I became depressed and was on medication for a while. I knew I wasn’t able to continue the way I was, not when I had you to try to comfort and take care of, so I sold the farm to pay off our debts and I went home with my tail between my legs to face my family.

  ‘Derrick saved me, Michael. I know you don’t want to hear that, but he did. My parents took us in, but they hadn’t forgiven me. My depression got even worse, and then one day Derrick heard I was back in town and he came to visit. We’d grown up together, I’d known him since I was a child, and suddenly life got better. He swooped in like a knight in shining armour and put all my pieces back together.’

  Michael was shaking his head. This wasn’t how he remembered it. Sure, he remembered his mother was sad, but so was he … He didn’t remember their story the way she was telling it. For a minute his adult brain stepped in and interrupted his childhood memories. He knew there was no way she’d have allowed him to witness how low she’d got. She’d always protected him.

  ‘After all those years of having nothing … years of uncertainty … not knowing when we’d have money coming in or when your father would leave again, I craved stability and security, Michael, and Derrick offered that.’

  ‘That’s why you married him? Because he gave you a better life?’

  ‘He gave us both a better life,’ she corrected. ‘But no, it wasn’t only that. I had feelings for him. We’d known each other since we were children and I fell in love with him. You’re a grown man, Michael, surely you understand there’s more than one kind of love. It’s possible to love people in different ways.’

  Michael was feeling as though he’d been hit by a bus. Maybe it was the stress and emotion of the last few days catching up with him, or maybe it was discovering there’d been a whole other version of the history he remembered, but suddenly he was too tired to fight any more.

  ‘I’m sorry Mum, I know you just want us to get along but we’re too different. I’ll always be here for you, but I won’t set foot inside this house again.’ He kissed his mother’s cheek and hugged her before heading out to his car.

  And he’d been true to his word since. He’d never gone back.

  He’d left town and headed out to his most remote property, throwing himself into work, burying his pain and trying to prove himself to Georgie. Fat lot of good it had done. He hadn’t been able to convince her of anything, not even that his business was run on a whole different model to his stepfather’s. But now he had the chance he’d been waiting for, to show her what he did. Now, maybe, she was ready to see.

  Georgie stood abrup
tly and walked to the end of the verandah to stare out over the darkened landscape. She heard the nicker of horses and the restless shuffle of the cattle in the holding yards across the clearing. She felt him come to stand behind her, the warmth of his body behind her back radiating through her own.

  ‘I’m not my stepfather, Georgie,’ he said in a soft voice, barely more than a whisper.

  A sob broke free from her chest, and within seconds she was wrapped in his strong embrace. ‘You should have told me from the beginning. Do you have any idea how betrayed I felt having to find out through a newspaper article? To find out you were related to him, of all people?’

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ he murmured into her hair, his voice low and rough. ‘But I knew how much you hated him—us,’ he corrected bitterly. ‘I had no idea he was behind buying your father’s property until you mentioned Tamban. When I found out, it was too late. I was in love with you and I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you it had nothing to do with me. We hadn’t had enough time together.’ He rubbed his chin across the top of her head and his voice was husky with emotion. ‘I honestly thought once we’d spent enough time alone, once I’d taken you out to show you the places I run, you’d forgive me for not telling you earlier.’

  Georgie shook her head. ‘It all happened so fast. I’d never fallen so hard or fast for someone … it was so out of character for me. I think I talked myself into believing it was a mistake because it scared me … how much I loved you.’

  Michael leant back to look into her face with a fierce glint. ‘It may have been many things, Georgie, but it wasn’t a mistake. You think it was normal for me?’

  Pulling out of his arms, Georgie ran a hand through her hair, agitated. ‘Normal people don’t fly off to Hawaii after a couple of weeks and get married. It was insane.’

  ‘Maybe, but I hate to break it to you, there’s nothing normal about either of us. Look at your life. Look at mine. You really think we have any idea what normal is?’