All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
MILLS & BOON and Rose Device is registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. First published in Great Britain 1991 by Mills & Boon Limited © Yvonne Whittal 1991
Australian copyright 1991 Philippine copyright 1991
ISBN 0 263 12722 2
Set in Times Roman I6V2 on 18 pt. 16-9109-49257 C
Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Clowes, Beccles, Suffolk.
VALLEY OF THE DEVIL
' What you' re demanding is payment in Blood! It' s immoral!'
If Jo wanted to save her Brother and the family Business .she had to agree to marry Rafe Andersen and Bear hi.6 child. An impossible decision to make. Because Rafe was the husband from whom she had parted in Bitterness and anguish only three years ago. He was the last person on earth Jo wanted to see again. And she thought that he had finished with her. So why did he want to stir up the past again?
CHAPTER ONE
'I THINK it's time you told her, Danny.'
'Told me what?' Joceline Harris was instantly on the alert with a growing uneasiness clutching at the pit of her stomach when she looked away from her mother to dirccl a sharp, questioning glance at her brother. 'What is it that I haven't been told?'
Danny looked back at her grimly, and he was about to say something when their mother intervened impatiently to lift the lid on the problem.
'We could lose everything, Jo! Everything! Our home, the business...' Lavinia's grey-green eyes mirrored the note of panic in her voice. 'Your father would turn in his grave if he knew!'
Joceline wondered if she looked as convinced as she felt. Her mother had hinted at bankruptcy. Was it possible?
'If you don't mind, Mum,' Daniel Harris looked vaguely annoyed, 'I'd like to talk to Jo alone for a few minutes.'
Lavinia tilted her silvery head to look up at her son, who had risen from his chair to take up a familiar stance in front of the stone fireplace, and she sighed resignedly as she rose to leave; but she paused briefly at the living-room door to cast a quick, anxious glance at her daughter. 'Please, Jo. You've got to help us.'
Help? How could she possibly help? Jo wondered, waiting until she could hear her mother's footsteps echoing across the hall towards the stairs before she got up to join her brother in front of the fire. 'What's this all about, Danny?'
Her voice was warm and faintly husky. She had the natural ability to soothe and calm the most anxious patients in her hospital ward, but the soothing quality in her voice seemed to have no effect on the nervous agitation that gripped the fair-haired man who stood with his back to the glowing coals in the grate.
'Harris Construction is no longer the thriving company it used to be a couple of y e a r s ago,' he explained, frowning darkly into the glass of whisky he held in his hand. The economy in southern Africa has put a maniacal squeeze on the smaller companies.'
'Tell me something I don't know,' she prompted quietly, studying her brother closely for the first time that evening.
Danny was thirty, five years her senior, but he was under obvious stress that evening, and his greyish pallor seemed to add several uncomplimentary years to his age.
'Our home has been mortgaged to the hilt, the business has been running at a loss, and my credibility at the bank has reached down to a level where the bank manager has found it necessary to threaten me with the foreclosure of my existing loan.' Danny downed his whisky in one gulp and lit a cigarette with hands that shook. 'It sounds hopeless, but there is a way out of this financial mess,' he added, smoke jetting from his nostrils. 'I've just landed a contract that could pull us out of the red at the bank in a couple of years.'
'So what's the problem?'
'A shortage of liquid cash.' His eyes, grey-green like their mother's, were troubled and anxious. 'I'd be cutting my own throat if I delved into my capital to keep the bank happy. What I need is a private loan to pay the ten per cent guarantee on the contract, and if I don't want this opportunity to slip through my fingers I need to have the money within the next two weeks.'
Jo was beginning to feel the panic she had glimpsed in her mother's eyes. 'I can appreciate the urgency of the situation, Danny, but I fail to see how I can help you.'
There's only one person I can think of who might be in a position to give us the financial assistance we need.' Danny held Jo's steady, questioning gaze for a moment, then he looked away and drew hard on his cigarette. 'He never had a very high opinion of me, but he might consider it if you asked him.'
Understanding sent a shiver of icy shock racing up Jo's spine and her green eyes widened in alarm.
'Not Rafe! ' she exclaimed, her voice rising a pitch higher with 11 station. 'You can't be serious, Danny. Not Rafe!'
Danny had the grace to look embarrassed, but there was desperation in his eyes. He's my last hope, Jo.'
'I couldn't ask Rafe. I just couldn't do that, Danny. Not after...' The words became Mangled in Jo's throat, and she was visibly pale and shaken when she backed away from her brother to sit down heavily on the arm of the chair she had vacated earlier. 'What you're asking is impossible, Danny.' The Names in the grate were trapped in the richness of her shoulder-length hair as she shook her head. 'There has to be some other way!'
'Dammit, Jo, there is no other way except to ask for a private loan!' Danny was equally pale as he took an urgent pace towards her, and she could see pearly beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead and upper lip. 'Can you think of anyone else who might be in a position to help us?' he demanded, his voice cracking with anxiety.
'No, but—'
'Please, Jo!' He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the fire and reached for her hands. His fingers were cold and clammy when they gripped hers, and she could feel the terrible tremors of anxiety that were coursing through his body. 'I can't throw away everything Dad worked so hard for, and Rafe will help us if you ask him. I know he will! Please, Jo, say you'll ask him. Please!'
Joceline Harris stood tall and straight at the window. It was a hazy June morning, and the shiver that raced through her could not be blamed entirely on the chill of winter in the air. She was watching the people going quickly about their business in a street lined with tall pear trees, but she was recalling the conversation she had had with Danny two days ago, and hearing again the urgent plea in his voice.
'Rafe will help us if you ask him. I know he will!'
Would he? Would Rafe help them?
She was not so sure, and a faintly strangled sound passed her lips as she turned away from the window to lower herself into a chair. She had tried desperately to think of an alternative solution, but she had failed, and that was why she was sitting in this partly deserted lounge of the Mirage Hotel in Beaufort West... waiting. Waiting for Rafe Andersen to join her.
Jo was outwardly calm and composed, and she had her rigorous training as a nurse to thank for that, but inwardly she was quaking with nerves. Rafe Andersen was the last person on this earth she would have wanted to turn to for help, but the situation was desperate, and her personal feelings were not important. Danny was making a daring bid to save their home and the construction company, and she dared not let him down.
Rafe's deep voice had been abrupt on th
e phone when she had called him at Satanslaagte to make this appointment. Three years had elapsed since the last time there had been any form of contact between them, and if he had been surprised to hear from her, then he had hidden it well. But Rafe had always been good at hiding his feelings, she remembered whimsically. Except when...!
Jo tugged sharply at the rein of her thoughts, but they sped on regardless of her urgent desire to forget the past. For three long years she had tried to banish from her mind the memory of her marriage to Rafe Andersen, but she had failed, just as she was failing now.
She had known Rafe a month when he had asked her to marry him. It had been long enough for Jo to realise that he was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She had wanted to take care of him and keep house for him on his sheep farm in the Karoo, but, sadly, her plans had gone awry. Rafe's mother had still been very much the mistress of the house, and Averil Andersen had made it clear to Jo that she had no intention of relinquishing that task.
Jo had approached the problem with understanding, knowing that it must be difficult for Averil to accept the fact that her son's wife had the right to make certain demands in the home, but Averil's armour against Jo had been impenetrable.
'You belong in the city, not here on a sheep farm,' Averil had said when Jo's fear of horses had made her decline Rafe's offer to teach her to ride.
And then there had been Lorin Scheepers.
Lorin was the beautiful blue-eyed, dark-haired daughter of a neighbouring farmer. She had been twenty-one at that time, the same age as Jo, and she had made no secret of the fact that she had nurtured the hope of marrying Rafe. She had resented Jo's presence at Satanslaagte, and she had used every conceivable excuse to invade what little time Jo could have had alone with Rafe, who had had to work almost day and night during those months to recoup his losses alter the long, severe drought.
'You will never have the ability to give my son the happiness he deserves. He needs a wife like Lorin Scheepers who knows the land as well as he does,' Averil had announced one hot afternoon when they had watched Rafe and Lorin ride out on horseback across the semi-desert and into the shimmering summer heat.
Jo's growing despondency had robbed her of the desire to dispute her mother-in-law's theories. The truth had been undeniable. Lorin, like Rafe, had lived all her life on that semi-desert land, they had spoken the same language, and it was Jo who didn't belong.
The frustration and boredom of having nothing to do had finally taken its toll on Jo after long, agonising months of being treated like an outsider in her husband's home. Her dissatisfaction had led to petty arguments erupting between Rafe and herself, arguments which had always ended in Rafe accusing her of not making an effort to settle down, and Jo's inability to defend herself had filled her with a smouldering resentment. The truth would have raised the level of friction in the home, and that was the last thing Jo had wanted while she had still harboured the faint hope that her patience with Averil might eventually be rewarded.
That hope had faded swiftly when Jo finally realised that pressure of work on Rafe's side, and idleness on her own, had made them drift further and further apart until they no longer had anything to say to each other. The physical side of their marriage had become their only bond, but Jo had wanted more from marriage than that, and so, she believed, had Rafe.
It had been their inability to reach each other on any level other than the physical which had driven the final wedge between them, and Jo could still recall the look of obvious delight on Averil Andersen's face the day she had discovered that Rafe had moved out of the master bedroom.
'I knew you couldn't make my son happy.'
That 'I told you so' statement had had the effect of a heated rod entering a raw, aching wound. It had cauterised Jo's emotions, leaving her too numb to feel anything except oddly relieved when Rafe had confronted her that same day with the request for a divorce.
'Our marriage was a mistake,' he had said.
That was three years ago; three years of failing to understand how a marriage which had seemed so right could have gone so wrong.
Jo's thoughts shifted back to the present when a tray of tea was placed in front of her on the low circular table, and the muscles at the pit of her stomach contracted savagely as she signed the chit and handed it back to the waitress. Her appointment with Rafe was for ten o'clock, and it was almost that time now.
How do I look? Jo passed a shaky hand over her rich auburn hair coiled into a sensible knot at the nape of her neck and nervously fingered the heart-shaped silver pendant hanging on a chain about her throat. Have I changed much? Has Rafe?
A group of German tourists had gathered around a low table at the opposite end of the long lounge. They discussed their itinerary enthusiastically, but it was their laughter that captured Jo's attention briefly. Her glance shifted in their direction, and that was when she saw him.
Rafe!
He stood in the doorway, his tall, broad-shouldered frame almost blocking the entrance. He was a businessman of repute with an interest in computer and engineering companies across the country, but farming was in his blood, and even in his impeccably tailored cream trousers and brown suede jacket he still seemed to bear that indefinable stamp that classified him as a man of the earth. It had been that, rather than his rugged good looks, which had attracted Jo to Rafe in the first place, and she was dismayed to discover that the attraction was still just as powerful.
Dark eyes met hers across the room with a familiar stabbing precision that pinned her helplessly to her chair, and her heart was suddenly pounding in her throat, almost cutting off her air supply as Rafe crossed the carpeted length of the room with those firm, long-legged strides she remembered so well. She panicked for an instant when he stood towering over her, but she regained control just as swiftly to extend her hand to him with a forced smile on her lips.
'Hello, Rafe.'
'Joceline.'
The cool, firm grip of his fingers on hers did not unnerve her as much as the abrupt usage of her full name, and then there was also that familiar hint of his favourite aftershave quivering in her nostrils.
'I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of ordering tea.' She slanted a quick, nervous glance at him as he lowered his long, muscular body into the chair close to hers. 'May I pour you a cup?'
Rafe nodded. 'I take it black and without sugar.'
'I remember.' There were so many things that Jo remembered; so many things she knew she would never forget. She forced her rigid facial muscles into a smile and prayed silently that Rafe wouldn't notice the slight tremor in her hand as she poured their tea and passed him a cup. 'How are things on the farm?'
'Why the sudden interest?'
Jo's breath caught in her throat when her attempt at civilised conversation was flung back at her. Rafe had always been a man of few words—it had been one of the many qualities she had admired in him—but now each word was a vicious barb, and it hurt.
'This is an extremely awkward situation for me, Rafe.' Jo thought she had prepared herself well for this meeting with the man who had once been her husband and her lover, but she had not foreseen the difficulties of having to face him like a stranger when everything about him was still so familiar. 'How is your mother?' she tried again.
'She's well.'
'Is she still living with you at Satanslaagte?'
'She is.' Rafe looked away briefly, giving Jo a glimpse of that tanned and familiar profile with the broad forehead, aquiline nose and square, determined jaw. 'My mother happens to be on a three-month visit to some of her relatives in England, and she's not due back for another two months.'
Jo hid her surprise behind a mask of indifference, but it was hard to imagine Averil Andersen leaving her earthy domain to indulge in something as daring as a lengthy visit to another country.
'I suppose you have Lorin to take care of you while your mother is away.' The words were out before Jo could censor her thoughts or put a leash on her tongue, a
nd Rafe's dark, heavy eyebrows rose a fraction above eyes that flashed briefly with annoyance.
'I seldom see Lorin. She has a farm of her own to manage these days, and she doesn't have much time for anything else.'
An odd sense of relief washed over Jo. 'You haven't married her?'
The words were out again before she could stop them, and there was a gleam of derisive mockery in the narrowed eyes that drew hers like a magnet. 'What made you think I would?'
'You share so many similar interests,' she said with more caution this time. She was not relaxed, but she wanted to give Rafe the impression that she was and, leaning back in her chair, she crossed one leg over the other, but she regretted the action. The swish of her stockings drew Rafe's gaze to her booted foot before it lifted higher to follow the shape of her thigh beneath her blue tartan skirt, and the slow, intimate appraisal of those dark, hooded eyes made the blood drum faster through her veins.
Oh, no! It wasn't possible that he could still affect her in this way. Damn him!
'Why haven't you married again?' he asked, cutting into her angry, distracted thoughts, and it took a moment for Jo to gather her scattered wits about her.
'Once bitten, twice shy, I guess.' She squared her shoulders beneath her beige knitted sweater. 'I took back my maiden name after the divorce. The lawyer arranged it for me.'
Rafe accepted that statement in stony silence, but Jo felt like kicking herself. She could not imagine why she had considered it necessary to mention that fact. After three long years was there still enough bitterness left inside her to arouse a desire to hurt Rafe?
'I don't believe you drove all the way from Cape Town to Beaufort West to make polite conversation, Joceline, so let's get down to the reason why you wanted me to meet you here this morning.' Rafe brought matters sharply to a head when they had finished their tea, and Jo's hand shook visibly as she leaned forward in her chair to place her empty cup on the tray.
She had been mistaken in her belief that Rafe had not changed much since the last time she had seen him. There was a strange, savage quality about him that frightened her, and she felt sick inside at the thought of what she had to ask him.
Valley of the Devil Page 1