by Margaret Way
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-bl
ock 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 gem-stones, 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.
“Ms Wyatt, isn’t it?” His voice, as classy as the rest of him, broke into her speculations.
“Round one to you. I can’t for the life of me figure out who you are and I’m really trying.” Though she spoke banteringly, she felt like a butterfly about to be pinned for his private collection. Indeed her heart was fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a cage. He had a beautiful mouth. How odd that she should even notice. Firm, very clean-cut, the rims slightly raised. He was someone Zee would describe as drop dead sexy. She was almost on the point of conceding that herself.
She wondered what he would look like when he smiled. Teeth were important to her. Good teeth. Even on this humiliating day, a woman publicly scorned, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off a perfect stranger. But then that was her training, she reassured herself. Her life as a journalist was spent checking people out, remembering faces. She was naturally observant.
“Cal MacFarlane,” he introduced himself. “I’m the bride’s cousin.”
Her heart shook. But she wasn’t ready to buckle. Instead, she levelled him with a dubious stare. “Really? You don’t look in the least like her.” He looked more like that British actor Clive Owen. The same uber-male aura.
“I’m a MacFarlane, but we do share a grandfather, Sir Clive Erskine.”
“Ah, yes, Sir Clive.” She nibbled on her lower lip as her memory bank opened up. “You’re the Cattle Baron, right?” She was tuned in to a degree.
“Exactly.” Amusement cut sexy little grooves into the corners of his mouth. “You’re awfully audacious coming here, aren’t you, Ms Wyatt?”
She decided to wing it. After all, he couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure. “How do you know Sean didn’t send me an invitation? We were very close up until very recently.”
“So you intend to go out in a blaze of notoriety?” Her skewed gallantry smote his hard heart.
“Mr MacFarlane, I don’t know what you mean.” She let some of the sweetness slide. “I’m dedicated to doing the right thing. Or I have been up to date. And where did it get me? Lighten up. I promise I won’t cause any real bother.”
“You’re causing it already,” he told her very dryly. “This isn’t a joyous occasion, is it? Not for you and not particularly for me. I think, ultimately, my cousin is going to have to pay for marrying Sinclair in more ways than one.”
Amber’s brows rose. “Sweet Lord!” she said reverently. “You’ve got Sean’s measure already! It took me ages.”
“How that must lacerate you.”
“It does. I take it you don’t like him either?”
He inched her further away from the front doors. “I only met him last night. I fear he may be totally unscrupulous which is one reason why I’m standing here with you instead of ushering you out the back.”
Her gaze turned appealing. “Come on, you wouldn’t do that?”
“Not if we can work something out.”
“Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t interfere.”
“Haven’t I just told you I’m family?” He smiled down into her face.
“Well, I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.” God, what a smile!
“I’m not sorry for you. I think you’ve had a lucky escape. So what are we going to do? Team decision. The bride will be arriving any minute.”
“Why, take our seats, of course.” She tried to peer around those wide shoulders.
“Tell you what, I’ll sit beside you.” Humour hovered around his mouth. “How’s that?”
“But I wouldn’t dream of taking you away from the bosom of your family Mr MacFarlane.”
“No problem. On second thoughts, I think we might slip up to the choir loft.” He cast a quick glance upwards. “We can’t be standing here when Georgie and her entourage arrives. By the sound of the clapping outside, it’s about to happen.”
“I do love it when they clap,” she said bleakly. “Supposing we stand here and goggle. After all, your cousin is
the wittiest, prettiest, richest girl in town. And the most underhand. She stole my fiancé—such as he is—right from under my nose.”
“And I understand your hurt. But my guess is you’ll live to thank her. I suggest the choir loft. Now. Move it, Ms Wyatt. I’m quite capable of picking you up.”
“What, and fling me over your shoulder?”
“If I have to.” He slipped an arm around her waist and steered her towards the curving flight of wooden steps.
“I don’t know that I want to.” She was endeavouring to resist him but not making much headway.
“I don’t care what you want. Just do it. Sinclair might deserve a bloody good fright but he’s not worth it.”
“Why don’t we get married?” she turned her head over her shoulder to ask with biting sarcasm.
“Well, you were about to do a hell of a lot worse.”
The organist and the well known lyric soprano who had been hired to sing a selection of the bride’s favourite hymns looked around, startled, as they made their unexpected appearance in the spacious loft.
“Go ahead. Don’t take any notice of us.” Amber wiggled her fingers when she really wanted to scream. The cattle baron could ruin everything. “You have a lot to answer for, forcing me up here.” She kept it to a mere whisper. His ears were set beautifully against his shapely head. Sean’s weren’t. That was why he always wore his hair full and floppy.
“You’ll thank me in the end. Why don’t we find somewhere safe and sit it out? Unless you really do want to see the bride arriving?”
“Don’t you?” She was taken aback. “I mean, you’re family.”
“So I am,” he reminded himself. “You look beautiful, by the way.” As exquisite as a long-stemmed rose. “All things pass, Ms Wyatt. I’m merely preventing you from making a spectacle of yourself. You could lose your job, do you know that? My grandfather has influence everywhere. I believe he was impressed with the way you’ve handled yourself up to date. Don’t give him cause to damage your career,” Cal warned. “My grandfather can be ruthless when opposed or seriously displeased. In coming here today, you’ve run a big risk.”