The Outback Engagement

by Margaret Way

  Darcy watched in amazement as Curt and Courtney moved toward each other as if drawn by powerful magnets. It hit her right between the eyes. Curt and her radiant little sister?

  Well, it didn’t have her blessing. He bent his shapely head and kissed Courtney’s apple-blossom cheek. He hugged her. He did hug her.

  Courtney went very sweetly into Curt’s arms, not even reaching his heart. Darcy’s own heart gave a great sick lurch. Some trembling voice inside her began to shriek. Don’t take him. He’s mine. He’s mine. He’s always been mine.

  Darcy felt herself flush a hot red. It was all her own fault. She had blundered through her love life. Maybe Courtney was in search of a husband? No woman in her right mind would overlook Curt. But Curt was her rock and she couldn’t bear to see another woman in his arms. Even her own sister. Her own sister worst of all!

  Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves hunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

  Look for the continuation of The McIvor Sisters in Marriage at Murraree

  Harlequin Romance® #3863

  Books by Margaret Way

  HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

  3767—RUNAWAY WIFE*

  3771—OUTBACK BRIDEGROOM*

  3775—OUTBACK SURRENDER*

  3803—INNOCENT MISTRESS

  3811—HIS HEIRESS WIFE

  3823—THE AUSTRALIAN TYCOON’S PROPOSAL

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE®

  762—THE AUSTRALIAN HEIRESS

  966—THE CATTLE BARON

  1039—SECRETS OF THE OUTBACK

  1111—SARAH’S BABY*

  1183—HOME TO EDEN*

  MARGARET WAY

  The Outback Engagement

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  DARCY walked quietly across the Persian rug towards the still figure in the massive canopied bed. The bed was a monstrosity really, elaborately carved and wide enough to sleep a half a dozen but her father was very attached to it. It had once been the property of a McIvor Scottish ancestor. Her father’s eyes were closed, his face the dreadful grey that spoke of severe physical trauma. A fuzz of mottled grey and marmalade coloured hair showed at the neck of his pyjamas lending a peculiar vulnerability. The once powerful hands that could handle anything from the wildest brumby and the biggest bullock to every kind of station machinery rested like fleshless talons on the folded top sheet.

  Splendid health had accompanied Jock McIvor all the days of his life now he was a wraith of his former self. Almost overnight, the flesh had dropped off his impressive frame. His nurse, Wilma Ainsworth, an angular white-clad figure, competent but not particularly motherly or compassionate had been and gone taking with her the tray that held the medicines and syringes to bring temporary relief to her suffering patient.

  Big Jock McIvor had not recovered from his first heart attack as everyone had expected. Jock McIvor was dying. Of that there could be no doubt. As she leaned over his prone figure Darcy hardly dared draw breath for fear of waking him out of his drug induced slumber. She withdrew to the wide verandah that enclosed the homestead on three sides. Like everyone experiencing a crisis she desperately wanted to change things. To turn back the clock. To insist on her father having regular medical checkups, knowing he had never been ready to listen to her anyway. Jock McIvor was a law unto himself. It was a strategy that in the end hadn’t worked in his favour.

  Darcy stared out over the extensive homestead grounds with their magnificent date palms and diverse array of desert plants. The palms had been planted well over a century before by a Afghan camel driver her great great grandfather Campbell McIvor had befriended. Midafternoon the grounds were shrouded in the quivering white fire of a heat haze. It caused a legion of parrots in their glorious colours to descend on the lagoon at the foot of the homestead for a drink. Otherwise the home compound bore a strangely deserted air. Jock McIvor was no longer in charge and it was manifestly obvious. She had been neglecting her duties while she attended her father after that first frightening heart attack. In these last stages despite his agitated protests she’d been forced to call in a full time nurse.

  Curt had flown over from Sunrise to urge her to do it. Curt Berenger was another one who was a law unto himself especially since the death of his own father in a helicopter mustering accident leaving Curt master of Sunrise Downs and the entire Berenger chain. Though she found numerous ways of telling him how interfering he was, the truth was Curt followed his family’s tradition of looking after his friends and neighbours in time of need. Not that he was an admirer of Jock McIvor. Their relationship was as strained as it could be with her in the middle. Curt saw her father as a tyrant who’d had far too much influence shaping her life. Part of her recognised that. Her father was very controlling but the things Curt said cut her to the quick. Things do when there’s a basis in truth.

  Now Jock McIvor was dying and she was about to be abandoned again. What a long terrible struggle she’d had with that first abandonment. A double whammy. Mother and sister. She could never put the wrenching psychic separation, the painful moods of loneliness and not being loved behind her. She still saw their tearful faces in her dreams. She had loved Courtney with all her heart assuming they were going to be the closest, dearest friends forever. Her mother had always promised her a baby sister. Everything should have been perfect but in the end the dream had been shattered. Childhood innocence had been replaced by painful moods of sadness and loneliness. How had she lived through her adolescence with no mother present? By becoming what her father wanted. She had lived off the dollops of affection he handed out like the desert flora survives on rare showers.

  Anxiety was having the effect of a steel band tightening around her head. Fit as she was, many long sleepless nights had exhausted her. Nurse Ainsworth always urged her to go to bed saying she would wake her if she saw the need, but Darcy was not happy with that. This was her father. He was all she had. Didn’t the woman realize that? She had to be there at her father’s side. She sensed she would know the exact moment when all life would leave him.

  What then?

  What will my life become? She sought to push back all thoughts of freedom as a betrayal but it continued to hover on the periphery of her mind. She had never known real freedom. By fair means or foul—she became agitated when she thought about it—her father had tenaciously kept her tied to his side. After his marriage break up he had made it a purpose in life. She could understand it in a way. He was a proud man who had suffered bitter losses. Worse, he had been publicly humiliated. Now he was waiting to die and the atmosphere was charged with powerful emotions.

  She couldn’t run Murraree by herself. It was a big job, not an Outback adventure. Her father had been King of the Castle. The Boss. Jock McIvor always made the decisions. As efficient as he had trained her to be, essentially she carried out orders. What would happen to Murraree with her father gone? She knew the men liked and respected her. Some of them had watched her grow up. She knew how to handle herself, but she wasn’t a hard, tough man in a hard, tough man’s country.

  “You can’t cure yourself of being a woman, Darcy,” Curt had told her,
a kind of pity in his eyes. “Don’t you realize you define yourself in relation to your father? It’s high time you started being your own person, your own woman.”

  Curt refused to allow her to avoid issues. Just one of the reasons their arguments were legion. Fighting was a protection against feeling. A way of protecting herself against the pain of a dream that had never come true. Sometimes she didn’t know if she loved Curt or hated him. He made her so angry, upset, mad, excited. Wide swings of mood from turmoil to elation. It was like being on a swing, soaring skywards then falling back to earth. Too often she submerged her tempestuous feelings in defying him. It made it that much easier for her to keep control. That was her lot in life. Keeping control.

  Now she had to watch her father make his exit from life. It was an eerie experience, rather like a nightmare from which she would surely wake up. Jock McIvor’s heart attack at fifty six had not only rocked her to her core, it had rocked the entire Outback. Jock McIvor was in his way a legend. Millionaire cattle man, lady killer, sportsman (only a year before he had still been enjoying his favourite game of polo), raconteur, owner of an historic cattle station with its rambling old homestead that had in its heyday, to be strictly honest, her grandfather’s day, hosted many a visiting dignitary and V.I.P. Her father was a true bush identity though Darcy was painfully aware some people described him as a ruthless bastard. Still Jock McIvor was known the length and breadth of Outback Queensland and into the Northern Territory.

  Unbelievably only six months before he had been a marvellous looking man, still outrageously handsome with flashing blue eyes, wonderful white teeth and a leonine mane that had slowly turned tawny from its once copper glory. Darcy had many fond memories of sitting around the camp fire listening to her father recount his stories to a fascinated audience who hung on his every word. On the down side it had to be said her father had been a hard-drinking, hard-living womaniser. There was no getting away from it. He was a big man with big appetites. It had been a problem. It once caused a crisis when photos surfaced of Jock and a well-known station wife caught in a public display of affection for want of a better word. The wronged husband had threatened a shotgun solution. Jock who had a lawless streak in him had only laughed when his daughter had been saddened and deeply embarrassed.

  Yes, Jock McIvor had generally been acknowledged to be larger than life. Darcy had thought him invincible.

  “When no man is!” Curt again. The entire Outback community knew Darcy and Curt had a powerful attachment both sought to play down. People argued there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for why they were not together. Except maybe Jock McIvor’s running interference. They all knew Jock wasn’t a man to share.

  A small sound from the bedroom tore Darcy from her troubled reverie. Her father was stirring, a whistling moan on his breath.

  “Dad!” For once she didn’t bother with the “Jock” her father preferred her to call him. In the stress of the moment she didn’t care. She was a woman. Damn it! Emotional.

  By the time she reached the bed her father’s eyes were opening slowly, painfully, as though it cost him a great effort. “Darcy.” His brow puckered. “Here as usual?”

  Something about the way he said it took her aback. “Where else would I be?” She touched his hand tenderly willing herself not to cry. Her father hated tears so much sometimes she thought she had almost lost the ability to cry. She had been brought up to be brave, ignoring her sensitive female side as she tried to turn herself into the heir her father had always wanted yet somehow for all his dalliances had failed to produce.

  “I’m finished, girl.” It was said flatly, without acceptance. More a hard digust that in former days would have been rage.

  She was helpless to deny it. “Dad, I love you so much.”

  “That’s the way you are. Loyal.” He fixed his sunken eyes on a life size portrait across the room. It had been painted not long before the inexorable break-up of the family. Two young girls about twelve and ten in immaculate riding gear, white silk shirts and fitted jodhpurs leaned towards a ravishingly pretty, blonde woman who was seated on a burgundy leather couch, similarly attired.

  Dress for the portrait had been decided upon by Jock. Marian McIvor hadn’t cared for horses or riding. Courtney had followed suit. Courtney, an adorable miniature version of her mother had her arm around her mother’s waist. Darcy was perched like some long legged brolga on the arm of the couch, long straight dark hair falling over one shoulder, slanting aquamarine eyes staring gravely out at the viewer.

  It had always seemed to her her colouring looked startlingly out of place beside Jock’s benchmark of beauty, the enchanting gold and blue of her mother and sister. From family photographs she knew she resembled her long dead paternal grandmother who had been famous for her stoic resilience and everyday heroisms in a vast lonely harsh environment. She even bore her grandmother’s maiden name, D’Arcy.

  “You were always the serious one.” Her father gave a muffled groan, the marks of suffering all over him. “Look at you there. Poker faced. Beside your mother and sister you look damned nearly plain. But you were always as smart as a tack and you’ve been good. So good. I haven’t appreciated you enough. You were the one I could always trust.”

  Sometimes the things her father said Darcy found horribly wounding. Anything but vain, she knew she was far from plain but her father had never wanted to accept her attractiveness or femininity. Perhaps as Curt continually pointed out her father saw great danger in allowing her to realise her womanly potential.

  Father and daughter continued to stare at the portrait, one feeling a sense of attachment, the other, God knows what! “Why have you always kept the portrait in your room?” Darcy felt driven to ask. Her father’s harsh views were entrenched in her consciousness. Jock had always claimed he despised Darcy’s mother for leaving him, yet he opened his eyes on her first thing in the morning and closed his eyes on her at night.

  “It’s the way it’s got to be!” A grim smile lifted the corner of Jock McIvor’s mouth. “I keep it, Darcy, to remind me what Marian did to me. She sucked all the love from my system. She should never have left me. It was cruel and it was wrong.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough to get her back, Dad. You let them go.” The words were torn from Darcy like a bandage from a wound.

  “It was your mother’s duty to return to me.” The gaunt face worked, the talons on the white sheet tensed. “When she refused I was finished with her. No woman makes a fool of Jock McIvor. A wife should follow her husband everywhere. She knew what she was getting into when she married me, what she had to accept. She was a bad wife.” His expression was at once bitter and bereft.

  “Why didn’t she want to take me?” Darcy’s plaintive eyes were fixed upon her mother’s painted face. How many million times had she asked herself the question?

  Her father shot her a peculiar glance. One she missed. “She wanted Courtney, the pretty one made in her own image. That was the deal. You were the changeling with your dark hair and those slanty eyes. Your mother and your sister subjected us to a massive betrayal, girl. Then she had the hide to punish me with an outrageous divorce settlement when she was the one to move out. Remarried, the faithless bitch. You know she wanted you to go to the wedding?”

  For a minute Darcy looked at him blankly. “Oh…Dad, you’ve never mentioned this before.” The admission devastated her. She was left with the sick hollow feeling there might be many things her father had never told her when she had given him all her loyalty and trust.

  “For God’s sake, be your age!” he said, anger seething behind his eyes. “There are lots of things I never told you. Because you didn’t need to know. The two of us had to cast your mother and sister aside to survive. Your mother was the enemy. We had to resist her with all our strength. Fact is, Courtney still remains my child. Your mother destroyed our relationship but now I’m dying I’ve had to confront certain issues. Because you’ve been the one to stay with me doesn’t mean I’
m going to leave you Murraree, girl. It would take more than a woman to run it.”

  Darcy took a deep breath, feeling like she had been plunged headfirst into a powerful disbelief. “What are you saying? Murraree is my home. My heritage. I know you’ve always wanted a son but haven’t I demonstrated my love for the land? I’ve worked long and hard. I carry my weight. If I can’t handle the station all on my own, there’s always a good overseer.” The idea of losing her birthright was absolutely intolerable.

  “Overseer!” Jock McIvor rallied to spit out the word. “Damn it all, girl. When I’m gone men will try to take advantage of you. Don’t you realise that? How are you supposed to protect yourself? They’ll be after you like vultures, not for you, but the station.”

  Darcy studied her father with the shutters all but fallen from her eyes. “I’m confident I can manage my own life, Dad. Murraree might be a top station but I haven’t been short of marriage proposals these past years. For me alone. You were supposed to live forever.”

  “Never got one out of Berenger.” There was deliberate cruelty in the taunt.

  Darcy came perilously close to cutting her father down. But it could have the profound and damaging effect of snuffing the life out of him. All too often he’d been wrong. Then again it was typical of him to try to catch her out, to goad her into revealing what he was too fearful to face.

  “Curt and I would never have worked,” she said, holding in the anger she had controlled for years. Outwardly calm, inwardly she was dealing with the old desolation. It was essential she keep a lock on her tongue. She had survived. Her father was dying.

  Jock spluttered cruelly. “What the hell do you take me for, girl? You’ve been hooked on Berenger since you were a kid. Any other woman would have taken him into her bed. I counted on you to resist him.” He treated her to a searching stare.