‘I am. I’m just taking a few hours off to make sure you’re coping, Mel.’
She broke open a roll and buttered it. ‘It’s going to be a bit of a battle, obviously, but—’
‘It’s going to be an uphill battle, Mel,’ he broke in, ‘let’s not beat about the bush. All your profits are going to go in repaying the mortgage on Raspberry Hill.’
She looked up, deep concern in her blue eyes. ‘Surely not. I mean, I can’t believe Dad would have let it get to this stage.’
‘Mel, as I probably don’t need to tell you, seasonal irregularities have made pineapples a dicey crop at the moment. Raspberry Hill would not have been the only property affected—it’s why more and more people have diversified. So it wasn’t so much that your father “let it get to this stage”. If anything the weather has been the problem or at least a significant part of it.’
She said nothing.
He put his knife and fork down. ‘But things having happened the way they have may mean that you have to face the fact that you won’t be able to save Raspberry Hill.’
Mel said huskily, ‘I can’t believe that. We all love it so much, the boys as much as I do.’
‘They…they’re young, Mel,’ he said.
‘Young enough to get over it? I don’t know. It’s also a unifying factor in our lives and our heritage.’ She stared at her plate with deep distress then pushed it impatiently away half-finished. ‘I will not,’ the distress was suddenly replaced with determination, ‘give up, Etienne. Whatever it takes to save Raspberry Hill I will do.’
‘Such as?’
The question came with businesslike precision.
‘I may have to subdivide it. That’s one thing I’ve been thinking of,’ she said slowly.
‘It’s a possibility,’ he agreed. ‘But then you face the prospect of a smaller holding being unviable.’
Mel swallowed hard. ‘Maybe a guest farm? I think there’s a market for real country experience holidays.’
Something in his dark gaze softened but he didn’t respond.
‘What’s so silly about that?’ she asked tartly.
‘It’s not that it’s silly but you’d need capital to start it off.’
‘A lot of misguided capital has been spent on this house,’ she said.
‘I take your point,’ he replied evenly, ‘but it may not be that easy to realise. There’s also the problem of who is going to stand in loco parentis of three young boys.’
Mel was crumbling what was left of her roll into tiny pieces as she struggled with perhaps the greatest of her problems, when a ball of white and tan fur erupted onto the veranda and Batman leapt onto her lap. He licked her face profusely, knocked her side-plate off the table then leapt down to do an ecstatic jig along the floorboards.
Mrs Bedwell arrived hot on his heels and scooped him up in her arms. ‘You little wretch! As if I haven’t got enough to do without babysitting you—why on earth didn’t that plate break?’
Etienne got up. ‘Here, I’ll take him. Whoa!’ he said as the dog was put in his arms. ‘No licking, mate!’ He sat down with him and Batman subsided with an ecstatic expression as he was scratched behind his ears.
‘You like dogs?’ Mel asked, still blinking at the whirlwind events that had just overtaken her.
‘Sure. I even had one of these as a kid. He was also as mad as a hatter but very loyal.’
She frowned. ‘I can’t picture that.’
‘Me or the dog?’
‘Uh—you.’
‘You assumed I came into the world all grown up?’
‘Truth to tell, since you had a French mother and both have—had—French names,’ she amended, ‘I’ve always associated you with an exotic background rather than a kid with a dog. I know Margot was born in Vanuatu.’
‘She was but I was born right here in Gladstone, and other than for the name,’ he looked humorous for a moment, ‘I escaped a lot of the exotic influence our French mother exerted on Margot. Our father was a fair-dinkum Aussie.’
‘You certainly sound like one. While she was certainly the essence of chic,’ Mel murmured and frowned again. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you didn’t seem to be very close. Although, of course, I could be quite wrong—but we didn’t see much of you at Raspberry Hill at all.’
He stared into a space for a moment, then down at the contented dog in his arms. ‘No, we weren’t that close. She was ten years older, which is quite a gap, but I guess the other reason is that my business has really expanded in the last five or six years so I’ve had my nose to the grindstone a lot.’
‘Hurst Engineering & Shipping,’ Mel said. ‘I don’t know about having your nose to the grindstone—I once heard Margot put it as “empire building”.’
He shrugged and looked amused.
‘Not only Margot. Even Justin is impressed,’ she added.
‘As a matter of fact, he came to see me about getting a part-time job last week.’
Mel’s eyes widened. ‘He didn’t tell me that!’
‘He—er—never shared your dislike, mistrust or whatever it was of me.’
Mel coloured but it was true. Despite their initial opposition to sharing their father with a stepmother, none of the boys, for that matter, had continued their resentment of Margot nor applied it to Etienne. None of them had realised how the property was going downhill either, she reminded herself drily.
‘Did you give him a job?’
‘I told him I would have one for him in the next school holidays, with your approval.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ Mel said.
‘Getting back to the boys,’ Etienne said, I—’
Mel scraped back her chair and stood up. ‘Etienne, I appreciate your concern but it’s really not your problem.’
Batman pricked up his ears.
Etienne looked down at him then up at Mel. Her expression was one of pride and dignity and it came to him that she could be exasperating at times. It also came to him that in some respects she’d led a very sheltered life, cocooned amongst her family and on Raspberry Hill, and might be less worldly than a lot of girls of her age.
Yet, contrary to what he’d expected, the attraction he’d experienced the day of the funeral was still there. Even looking so proud and unreasonably stubborn, she stirred him. The line of her throat fascinated him. The way she squared her shoulders, always a preliminary to saying something designed to tell him he wasn’t liked or trusted even if not in so many words, drew his attention to the curves of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist and the flare of her hips.
Was she at all aware of the effect she had on him, though? he wondered. What would her reaction be if he revealed his preoccupation with her figure?
‘OK,’ he said, ostensibly to the dog. ‘I rest my case—for the time being. But if you need me, just let me know.’
‘I will,’ Mel agreed.
‘And now I really must go,’ he said politely but with a glint in his eye that indicated to her he knew she was barely able to wait to get rid of him. ‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ he added, by way, she was quite sure, of adding salt to the wound.
‘I’ll pass your thanks on to Mrs Bedwell. It was all her doing,’ she replied with excessive politeness of her own.
He put Batman down and got up. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, Mel,’ he said softly.
Although she was five feet eight, he was a head taller, which put her at a disadvantage she rarely suffered. It didn’t stop her from saying haughtily, however, ‘Such as?’ as if it was inconceivable she should do anything she might regret.
But as he took his time about answering she realised her heart was beating a little erratically and that strange mixture of excitement and wariness was coursing through her veins again. Why? she wondered. How could he, just by looking at her in a certain way, produce this result in her?
He wasn’t even looking at her in that certain way right now, not as if he had her trapped in his sights as a woman to po
nder about. If anything, he was looking down at her with lazy amusement, which didn’t, most unfairly, stop her new awareness of him flooding her.
‘Such as kicking the dog,’ he said softly.
‘I’ve never kicked a dog in my life!’
‘You just had that look about you. But there’s no reason to be incensed over anything,’ he raised an eyebrow, ‘that I know of.’
She set her teeth then unset them. ‘Goodbye, Etienne.’
‘Au revoir, Mel; not quite the same thing.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU didn’t tell me you’d asked Etienne for a job in your holidays, Justin.’
‘I was going to present it to you as a fait accompli.’
The two younger boys were in bed and Mel and Justin were watching television in the den, the one room in the house that had escaped Margot’s make-over. The one room where you didn’t have to be careful of the furniture, could eat snacks and drink drinks with impunity and no one cared if you put your feet up on the battered old leather couch.
‘Why? I mean, why couldn’t you have told me?’
Justin was tall for his age, exceedingly bright and he had Mel’s blue eyes and chestnut hair. He flicked the remote and changed the channel, causing his sister to grit her teeth.
‘You’re not always reasonable on the subject of the Hurst family, beloved,’ he said, and went on flicking through the channels.
Mel grabbed the remote from him and switched the television off.
‘See what I mean?’ Justin offered.
‘That had nothing to do with the Hursts,’ she denied. ‘I can’t stand the way you switch from programme to programme!’
‘Only to avoid the ads.’
‘I like the ads; well, not precisely but,’ she looked heavenwards, ‘whatever, can we just talk?’
‘OK. It occurred to me that we have a few financial problems and that, as the oldest male, I should try and buck in and help.’
‘Fair enough,’ Mel said slowly, ‘but why Etienne?’
‘You may not know this, Mel, but he’s very successful. He took advantage of Gladstone being the largest port in Queensland and the fourth largest in the country to build up a marine-engineering works and a shipping agency.’
‘Granted,’ she said slowly.
Despite only being a medium-sized town in a rural area, the port of Gladstone handled millions of tonnes of coal, bauxite, alumina and other minerals and substances. It offered a deep-water port protected by close offshore islands, it was only ten or twelve days’ distance from the Asia Pacific region and was endowed with plenty of energy resources—water, coal and natural gas.
‘But still—why Etienne?’ she asked.
Justin looked at her ironically. ‘How many other millionaires do we know, Mel? Not only that but he’s also almost part of the family.’
Mel opened her mouth to deny this but closed it immediately.
‘How bad are things, Mel?’ Justin said into the silence.
‘Not good,’ she conceded.
‘Mrs B told me he came to lunch today.’
‘Mrs B invited him to lunch—well, he did come out to see how we were going.’
‘I never could work out what you’ve got against him!’
‘You’re not a girl,’ she retorted.
‘Plenty of girls find him irresistible, so I hear—is that it?’ Justin enquired. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve always had a crush on him!’
‘I have not,’ Mel contradicted. ‘And from what I’ve heard they’re not precisely girls either.’
‘Women, then,’ Justin said, ‘or whatever the technical term is. What have you heard?’
She shrugged. ‘You know that lighthouse he’s leased and renovated? Apparently there’s been a stream of gorgeous, sophisticated, definitely women more than happy to spend time with him up there.’
‘What a glorious thought!’ Justin laid his head on the settee. ‘I’ll have to ask him how he does it.’
‘Justin,’ Mel warned.
Her brother laughed softly. ‘If you could see your face! OK. Is that why you disapprove of him?’
Mel was truly tempted to tell her brother that she had the sneaking suspicion Etienne Hurst had, out of the blue, taken an interest in her along entirely different lines from the fate of his sister’s stepchildren, but she stopped herself.
‘Uh—no. That has nothing to do with me. He…he’s urging me to sell Raspberry Hill, well, not urging exactly but he pointed out today that there may be no other way to go.’ She stopped and sighed.
‘Oh, hell.’ Justin sat up and reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Mel. I knew things weren’t good but I didn’t realise it was that bad. What will we do? I can’t imagine losing this place.’ He looked around.
Not to mention each other, Mel didn’t say, but it was the core problem she always came back to.
‘I’m certainly not going to give up without a fight! The accountant will have a clearer picture in a few days—’
‘I can always leave school right now,’ Justin broke in.
‘No! I mean, no, it hasn’t come to that yet. And don’t pass any of this on to Tosh or Ewan.’
Justin cast her a speaking look. ‘What do you think I am? I know, you’re still thinking of the rum-rampage, but I’ve reformed.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that at all, but I hope you have!’
He grinned at her, although a touch ashamedly, and presently took himself off to bed, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
She began to tidy up absently, but one thing Justin had said stuck in her mind. It was something she’d never admitted to herself in so many words but there had been a time when Etienne had occupied her dreams. At fifteen, for a while, she’d thought about him rather a lot. However, she’d been so sure she was beneath his notice, it had all died a natural death.
She stopped what she was doing with a tennis racket in one hand and a pair of roller-blades in the other—or had it? Perhaps she’d resented being completely beneath his notice and it had been a contributing factor to her so-called dislike of him?
She put the racket in a wooden locker and the roller-blades on a shelf. Not an edifying thought, she conceded. But did that explain the effect he was having on her at the moment?
She couldn’t come up with an answer so she took herself to bed, not dreaming that she would have to encounter Etienne Hurst the very next day.
It started out like any other spring day.
Cool, dry and crisp but giving promise of becoming hot and glorious. Until she noticed a plume of smoke coming from one of the ‘resting’ paddocks, and raced down to find a bush fire. She called the fire brigade immediately but the difficulty was water; no convenient mains to hook up to, only a small dam a fair way from the fire.
And she worked as frenziedly as any of the firemen to contain it. There were no casual hands working on the property that day to help so she deployed a bag and a shovel with the best of them, resisting Mrs Bedwell’s entreaties to leave it to the men, until her bag was taken out of her fingers and she was bodily removed from the area of flames.
‘Who…? What?’ she spluttered. ‘Let me go! If I lose this feed—’
‘Shut up, Mel,’ Etienne Hurst said. ‘You’ve done enough.’
‘I haven’t!’
But she was clamped into a strong pair of arms and held there until she subsided, panting, against his chest.
‘How did you know about the fire?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘Mrs Bedwell rang me. She was convinced you were killing yourself.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You don’t look too good.’ He held her away and raised his eyebrows.
‘If you think I care how I look—’ But before she could finish tears welled in her eyes and brimmed over, making rivulets in the soot on her cheeks.
He pulled her back into his arms. ‘I think you’re extraordinarily brave. Why don’t you have a good cry?’
‘I will,’ she wept, ‘but only beca
use I’m…I don’t know what! I never cry,’ she added in extreme frustration.
But cry she did for a couple of minutes. Then it occurred to her that she didn’t feel like crying any more; she felt, on the contrary, safe and secure and as if she could stay in Etienne Hurst’s arms for a lot longer.
She moved her cheek against his shirt and was visited by an extraordinary mental image—rather than being hot, tired and dirty, she pictured herself rising out of a woodland stream in filtered sunlight, naked and with water streaming off her body. Natural enough since she was hot, tired and dirty, she conceded, but how on earth did Etienne get into the picture?
Why was he there, waiting for her at the edge of the pool and taking the slim, satiny length of her into his arms?
‘Er—’ she blinked rapidly and cleared her throat as she desperately tried to clear her mind, and she looked up at him bemusedly ‘—th-thank you. How’s it going?’
He studied her pink cheeks then glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s out. But they’ll stay a while to keep an eye on it. What you need is a wash and a drink.’
He picked her up and carried her over to her ute. ‘Since we’re both dirty this time,’ he said to her with his lips quirking, ‘we’ll use yours.’ He set her on her feet.
Mel gasped as she realised that she’d transferred a considerable amount of her dirt to him. There were black streaks on his otherwise pristine white shirt and mud on his moleskins and shoes. ‘I’m so sorry!’
‘That’s OK,’ he said easily. ‘In you get.’
She climbed in and he drove them up to the house, commenting along the way that she needed to get her suspension and brakes checked.
‘What I need,’ she said ruefully, ‘is a whole new vehicle.’
‘There must be other vehicles—what about the cars your father and Margot drove?’ he queried.
She hesitated. ‘I had to sell them to pay some bills.’
‘You should have consulted me first, Mel.’
‘To be honest, it didn’t cross my mind,’ she replied, ‘but what could you have done? The bank manager explained to me that, whereas my father had a credit rating, I have none. Oh, he was very kind and concerned and he explained that, while he’d been quite sure Dad would have pulled Raspberry Hill through this reverse, I was a different matter.’ She tipped a hand and sighed.
The Unconventional Bride Page 2