by Margaret Way
It was midmorning of the next day and they were all assembled in Jock McIvor’s study. It was so crowded with objects and artifacts it would have been difficult for a visitor to know where to look first. Adam was seated behind McIvor’s mammoth desk which would have accommodated a parliamentary front bench, in McIvor’s custom made black leather swivel chair. McIvor had never been comfortable with anything that wasn’t big. Curt, by his own decision, sat to Adam’s right, the two sisters had comfortable arm chairs drawn up for them in front of the desk. Courtney, seated, was looking anxious, Darcy was standing, rocking back on her high heeled boots, full of fight. A portrait of their deceased father, marvellously flamboyant, hung on the wall behind the desk, dominating the room. It was McIvor in his prime, his vast sexual appeal apparent. Forty-five years of age; a big handsome aggressive man with a dent in his chin, a fiery leonine mane and calculating sapphire blue eyes, a colour that was repeated in the casual open necked shirt he wore with his work denims. A rakish touch was a scarlet bandanna he wore loosely tied around his neck.
Bookcases and cabinets that held all his sporting trophies completely covered another two walls along with an extensive collection of framed photographs of Jock with Prime Ministers, parliamentarians, pastoralists, relatives, various visiting V.I.P.’s, in one, his arm flung around the slim shoulders of a visiting screen star of yesteryear. The far wall was hung with all kinds of aboriginal artefacts some of them pretty gruesome. McIvor had grown up in a world where the kurdaitcha man in his special slippers made from emu feathers stuck together with blood carried out many a revenge expedition.
“Let’s get cracking,” Curt said, his handsome features businesslike. “Darcy, could I prevail on you to sit down?”
“I still have some thinking to do.” Darcy’s eyes were jewel bright. “To think Dad couldn’t trust us with our own money!” She tossed her head. Her sable mane for once was not confined in a plait but tied at the nape with a silk scarf.
“The short answer to that is no. There’s no use getting hostile with us. We’re just trying to do a job thrust upon us,” Curt explained.
“What a joy that must be!”
“Your father didn’t move with the times, Darcy,” he said patiently. “He followed his own rules. To be fair he genuinely believed there would be problems in allowing you to take control of the estate.”
“What about you, Curt?” she challenged. “You believed it as much as Dad did. All men are despots. They want control. They don’t want to hand over any power to women. Until they do we’ll never be free.”
“Hear, hear!” Courtney suddenly exploded. “I for one am quite capable of looking after myself. I know Darcy is.”
“Capable of looking after yourselves in the normal sense,” Adam intervened. “It can’t be forgotten your late father was a multi-millionaire with a big portfolio. Handling it would cause a lot of business men trepidation. You haven’t been singled out solely because you’re women.”
“Please, Adam, don’t insult our intelligence,” Darcy scoffed. “You know darn well that’s exactly the case. Curt didn’t even begin to deny it.”
Curt looked up at her, feeling like throwing up his own hands in despair. “I doubt at this point you even know how much your father was worth, Darcy? He let you in on his affairs up to a point. After that, you were kept very much in the dark. That’s the way he wanted it.”
“In retrospect I should have stood on my own two feet,” Darcy fumed. “Instead of doing everything I could to support him, I should have made a life for myself. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me, Curt?”
“Did you ever listen?” he fired back. “What’s done is done, Darcy. The caravan moves on and we have to move with it. Try and look on it as though you’re getting a good team to support you.”
“Oh thank you, Curt,” Darcy said with extreme sarcasm, hauling back her chair and sitting down. “That means you and Adam and the other lawyer who didn’t have the decency to get here—”
“He’s overseas, Darcy. We told you that.”
Darcy ignored Curt and his testy expression. “Are going to be our Protectors?” She turned to look at her sister. “Is that clear to you, Courtney? Curt and Adam here are going to be our Protectors. We have to go to them cap in hand to ask for everything we want. Curt, I believe, has power of attorney.”
“Darcy, it’s not going to be a serious problem unless you’re hell bent on making it one,” he said. “I repeat, I prefer you to look on us as a team. Your father felt he could trust me. Strange after all these years you’ve decided you don’t.”
“Things have changed,” Darcy said darkly. “It all comes down to power. I thought I was being trained to take over but all along my father was opposed to that. He believed women didn’t understand the first thing about power. I supported him in every way I could. I gave him all the encouragement in the world and what did he do? He rewarded me by handing over my inheritance to you!”
“You’ve forgotten Courtney,” Curt pointed out with as much patience as he could, giving Courtney a sympathetic glance.
“Don’t worry about me, Curt,” Courtney said gently. “I’ve been standing on my own two feet for quite a while.” Having said that she flashed Adam a quelling glance as though he had spoken out against her. “I don’t want even a slice of our father’s estate.”
“What do you want?” Darcy flashed, “the whole pie?” She felt shame at saying it, but all morning she’d been intercepting some quite unendurable melting glances between her sister and Curt. She had to acknowledge beneath her anger was an unacknowledged emotion. Sexual jealousy. It made her want to scream.
Courtney’s lovely skin coloured up. She looked bitterly rejected. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” Darcy’s over wrought voice cracked. “From the moment you arrived, you fulfilled all Dad’s expectations a thousand times over. I got pretty short shrift in his last days. Anyway, what the hell!” Darcy threw up her hands in self-disgust.
Curt recognised her sense of betrayal. “For once I agree with you, Darcy. Now, may we now get on with the discussion?”
“I just want you to know, Curt, I have enormous respect for you,” Darcy looked at him directly, challengingly. “You too, Adam. McIvor’s daughters need top financial brains to handle their affairs seeing they lack a brain between them.”
“We understand how you feel, Darcy,” Adam said, and he did. “You’ve worked so hard, you’ve sacrificed so much, you’ve lost your father, I know your heartache.”
“What do you know about me?” Courtney demanded of him, her voice stripped of its normal sweetness. “I find it very strange you’re remarkably unsympathetic to me.”
“Darcy was the one who stayed with her father,” Adam argued mildly, but there was a confrontational note in his voice as well.
“I should tell you now,” Curt intervened, giving Darcy a serious glance, “in his last days your father made several changes to his will.”
“No, what else is new?” Darcy pleaded.
“You’re having us on, aren’t you?” Courtney asked warily.
“I’m deadly serious, Courtney,” Curt responded, looking across the huge desk.
“Well he installed Courtney as his favourite,” Darcy continued to address Curt. “Once she arrived he didn’t want a bar of me. Courtney is Dad’s heiress? Go on, surprise us.” Curt wouldn’t be averse to a rich bride. A beautiful one to boot.
“It appears your father developed a great deal of feeling for Courtney in those last days.” Adam’s clever, hawkish face was impassive.
“It had nothing to do with me!” Courtney protested, thinking her worst fears were being confirmed. “Dying people often get contrary. If he appeared to have forgotten Darcy—”
Darcy leapt to her feet, her heart beating a frenzied drum. “What do you mean, appeared? He did!”
“Your father wanted you to share equally,” Curt said, endorsing what Adam had said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think you should
n’t fight it, Darcy. Adam and I don’t believe you’d have a problem. It’s patently unfair.”
“I agree!” Courtney tried to reach out for her sister, but Darcy was on a roll. She flashed her startling, aquamarine eyes. “I’m not listening to any more of this. I have difficulty believing what I’m hearing. If my father were a real man, instead of a moral coward, he would have come right out and told me to my face. I had no problem with Courtney getting a share. A substantial share, but, excuse me, not the bloody lot.”
“It isn’t the lot, Darcy,” Adam said. “You could fight it in any case.”
“With the money you’re going to give me?” she retorted, wound up like a spring. “Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest seeing you’re Courtney’s trustees too.”
Courtney stood up, taking a quick step towards her sister. “Forgive me, Darcy. I should never have come. The father who ignored me for nearly all my life took to me on a delirious whim. It wasn’t real. It was designed to get him through the pearly gates. I was a passing source of wonder!”
“The golden haired, blue-eyed angel come down from Heaven,” Darcy said it without anger but a tremendous amount of hurt. “You have the sweetest prettiest face, the prettiest profile just like when you were a little kid. The thing is, you shone in the darkness for him, Courtney. I didn’t.”
“Why don’t we stop for a while,” Curt suggested, rising swiftly to his feet.
“No keep going,” Darcy urged, striding to the door. “For me it’s ended! I’m only surprised Dad didn’t turn me loose without a cracker.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Courtney moaned, her face betraying her extreme upset. “I never in my wildest dreams thought it was going to turn out this way.”
Adam, hardening his heart, found he was critical of that. Women with faces like angels could influence all sorts of events.
“I’ll go after her.” There was dismay in Curt’s smouldering eyes. “People didn’t call Jock McIvor a ruthless bastard for nothing.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HE HAD to break into an Olympic sprint to catch up with her. She was heading for the stables, already calling for Zack to saddle up Nabila, a proud and spirited ebony mare with a white star in the middle of her forehead. Nabila was an amalgam of thoroughbred and pure Arabian. It had been his present to Darcy on her twenty-first birthday, a present which had elicited from her tears of joy and in the dawn of the morning after, her virginity to which she had attached great importance.
It had been the most glorious, unforgettable idyll about which neither of them spoke as though it had happened in a dream.
Nabila was fast. Very fast. A princess among her own kind.
He could do nothing else but watch as Darcy took off on the mare’s back, heading for the open plain. He knew what it felt like. Flying without wings.
In the mood she was in she could kill herself. Darcy was a lot more hot-blooded than she knew.
Zack, the part aboriginal stable boy, ran out to do Curt’s bidding. “Ain’t Miss Darcy somethin’?” he asked, his glossy amber face split in a smile. “I never seen her so mad. Goin’ after her I expect? Centaur right for yah, Boss?” Zack figured Mr. Berenger would have no trouble with that one. Mr. Berenger was a horseman.
“Thanks, Zack and make it snappy. I don’t want her to get too far ahead.”
“She turn into a Spirit Woman right before me very eyes.” Zack drew a wondering breath. “Miss Darcy can ride like the wind.”
“When Allah created the horse he cried out to the South Wind: I will that a creature should proceed from thee,” Curt found himself saying.
“No kiddin’?” Zack was impressed. “Gee, that’s good, Boss. Who’s this fella anyway?”
“Not fella, Allah. Forget it, Zack. I’m in a hurry.”
Moments later Curt was galloping across the open plain on the silver-grey stallion Centaur which had been McIvor’s favourite. The stallion responded to Curt’s signals with lightning quickness, revelling in a good gallop when it had only been exercised and not ridden for some time. Though Zack and his pal Jaffa, another stable boy were as accomplished as many a successful jockey the stout hearted but temperamental Centaur was near to being a one-man horse.
Curt could see Darcy up ahead at full gallop, light as smoke on the mare’s back. A good gallop wouldn’t harm her so long as she stuck to the rolling open plains with its sea of wheat eared Mitchell grass. The top of the grass was embroidered with little gold centred gilla flowers so the stallion’s flying hooves left a broad trail of crushed petals behind them.
Their mad gallop had excited the birds. Glorious coloured parrots, sulphur crested white cockatoos, pink and pearl galahs, the undulating legions of budgerigar. They filled the sky. Even a wedge tailed eagle, bigger and more powerful than the golden eagle of Europe stayed with him as though overseeing happenings.
What a piece of work was McIvor, Curt inwardly raged. It was only natural Courtney get something but Darcy who had given her father all her support had been betrayed. He had thought he and McIvor had thrashed out early Darcy would be the major beneficiary, but at the last minute McIvor had changed his instructions.
Curt had no difficulty recalling the conversation. “I know you don’t agree with it, Curt, but as my appointed executor and trustee you have to respect my wishes. Now that I have seen Courtney again I won’t have it any other way. Her sweetness and warmth have stirred my poor old heart. Darcy has nothing to complain about. She’ll be a rich woman.”
“So what’s Courtney’s secret?” Adam had asked him later in confidence, not bothering to hide his own suspicions. “It’s easy for a beautiful woman to get under a man’s guard. This clearly isn’t going the way it was meant to go. I think we’d have to be pretty naïve to believe Courtney didn’t influence her father’s emotions. As a lawyer, I’ve never met a single soul who wasn’t interested in the money. Courtney might say she isn’t interested, but she’d be less than human if she weren’t. Chances are she’s like everybody else.”
Swiftly the powerful stallion gained on the mare. How many times had he actually seen Courtney over the years? Less than a dozen. He had been prepared to stand by her but what did he really know about her? Next to nothing beyond the fact she had a lovely face and a very engaging manner. There wasn’t the slightest hint of avarice about her. He was convinced of it. But one thing couldn’t be discounted. She had been brought up by a mother who must have hated McIvor. Surely a bit of that hatred came out in the daughter? Jock McIvor was a trouble maker until the end of his days.
They had almost reached the hill country before the race was over.
Curt exhaled sharply. “Stop, Darcy!” he thundered, his handsome face grim.
The budgerigars decided to respond, dipping and flashing only a scant twenty feet over their heads.
Darcy did not, could not reply but gradually she gathered the mare in.
In the distance the mirage was flowing like a silver river. “Let’s get out of the sun,” Curt said, aware his presence was inflaming her more than calming her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded to know, looking glorious in her anger.
“Are you going to order me to leave?”
“How can I do that?” she asked in a voice that shook. “Everything is under your control.”
“Don’t be stupid, Darcy. Please don’t be stupid,” he begged. He had turned Centaur’s head away from the jagged line of hills towards a waterhole a short distance off. It was screened by flat topped acacias and some purple bush fruit with a pearlescent sheen. In the heat the pond’s glitter had enormous appeal.
The mare had automatically fallen into step with the stallion, both animal coats darkened with sweat.
Beneath the leafy canopy Curt dismounted first, tying the stallion’s reins to a low branch. Darcy seemed to sway in the saddle. He went to her, reaching up to lift her down. Even when she was standing she didn’t pull away as he expected but almost laid her head against his chest.
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br /> “Are you all right?” He stared down at her in concern. She had lost so much weight recently she was positively breakable.
“Sure.” She jerked back immediately, removing the cream akubra that had been angled down hard on her head and throwing it onto a bed of bottle-green curling ferns. Curt attending to the mare, watching distractedly as Darcy walked away from him across the creamy-yellow sand, dotted with grey boulders of varying size. When she reached the moon shaped pond, she bent and splashed her overheated face with water.
He crossed the sand to join her, letting the surprisingly cold water run over his face and into his mouth, half drenching his shirt. “In the old days you’d be pulling off your clothes to go for a swim,” he said.
“A swim isn’t what I have in mind.”
“Oh? Do you want to kill me first?”
She didn’t deign to answer but pulled off her silk scarf with an unselfconscious air and began to dab her face dry.
Curt kept perfectly still, his stomach muscles contracting violently. Her beautiful sable hair swirled free around her face and over her shoulders. The beauty she sought to down play was fully exposed. Her cascading hair so thick and lustrous was the perfect frame for her fine boned oval face. Its darkness emphasized the startling colour of her eyes and the gold of her skin. Her mouth was luscious, full and soft, coloured a fuchsia pink to match her cotton shirt. The thin damp fabric revealed the taut nipples of her small, high breasts. They were unconfined. It was incredibly erotic
“How beautiful you are!” he said in an involuntary rush.
She looked up at him, caught the storm of expression in his eyes. An answering heat was wrapping her body in a tight sensuous veil. “We can’t do this,” she warned, shaking her head.
“Strangely enough I’m going to.” An immense frustration overcame him. It couldn’t be borne. “You can rant and rave later.”