by Margaret Way
To Rebecca it didn’t seem possible Stewart was dead. Only she and Brod had seen him die. Nothing had prepared her for such a shock.
Back at the homestead, people milled through the main reception rooms and out onto the surrounding verandahs, partaking of the food and drink that had been prepared for them. Most stuck to tea and coffee with the selection of sandwiches but some of the men were knocking back whisky like it was mineral water. The conversation, though subdued, created such a persistent buzz it drove Ally, her nerves much on edge, to the far end of the side verandah. Worse yet to come. At some point she had to face Rafe. The very last thing she needed was hundreds of eyes on them.
Like most of the other women she had taken off her hat. Now damp tendrils of her curly hair that she had worn in a thick upturned roll at the back clung to her temples and nape. She turned away to look out over an avenue of palms. The home gardens were ablaze with colour. Soon the desert would burst into flower. Give it a month. The big storm that had robbed her father of his life would bring to Kimbara a marvellous profusion of wildflowers, millions and millions of everlastings, papery pink, bright yellow and white. When she was a little girl she had rejoiced in the way the everlastings didn’t wilt. The Sturt Peas, named after the explorer, would trail their long stems of crimson flowers across the mulga plains, the fleshy leaved parakeelyas forming radiating patterns in the sand. The incredibly tough spinifex would turn from sun-scorched gold to deep green then later when it sent up its seed bearing stems great tracts of spinifex country were transformed from desert to a landscape that almost resembled vast fields of wheat.
How she missed it all! Though she had become successful at what she did—had indeed inherited some of her aunt Fee’s great talent—she never felt truly at home in the city. This was her world, this incredible living desert; this sun-scorched land of fiery colours. The lush seaboard had its own unique beauty, marvellous Sydney Harbour, but nothing spoke to her like her own fascinating home, Kimbara. Brod’s now. Lost in her thoughts, Ally started visibly when a man addressed her.
“Ally?”
She turned away from the white wrought-iron balustrade to find Rafe studying her out of half-hooded gold-flecked hazel eyes. She willed on herself calmness but her head had gone spinning. A big man, even with her wearing her black high heeled shoes, she had to look up at him. His attitude was courteous. Rafe was always the gentleman, but a remoteness was there in his narrowed gaze. In the heat of the afternoon like most of the men he had taken off his jacket, his crisp white shirt showing the breadth of his shoulders, the top button of his collar undone so he could loosen his black tie. He looked as stunning as ever, the straight chiselled nose, the squarish chin with its distinctive cleft, the wide mouth, the clear gold skin that was so arresting with his thick shock of gold hair.
“Well am I looking better or worse?” he broke into her examination, his deep voice faintly wry.
“You look great, Rafe,” she said. A masterly understatement. Like Brod he had found an impressive maturity.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you how shocked we were, Grant and I, by Stewart’s death,” he said with formal sincerity. “Please accept my condolences. Grant will catch up with you. He’s still paying his respects to the rest of the family.”
“Thank you, Rafe,” she murmured, her emotions intensifying by the second.
“You’re too thin,” he said abruptly when he hadn’t intended to say it at all.
“Have to be,” she answered flippantly to cover her own agitation at seeing him. “The camera adds pounds.”
Again he allowed his eyes to move over her. “You look like the breeze might blow you over,” he said finally, dismayed by the stirring in his blood. “So, your career? Is it going as planned? You seem to have hit the jackpot with your show. Top of the ratings.”
She leaned back against the railing. “It is a lot of hard work. I go straight home when the shooting is over. I have to learn my lines. I have to be up very early in the morning.”
“That shouldn’t leave you looking so stressed out,” he said, disturbed despite himself at her look of strain.
“Is that how I seem?”
“Even given the shock of your father’s death, you’ve altered.” He wasn’t going to tell her she looked beautiful, if too fragile for her height. The Ally he had held in his arms had more cover on those long classy bones. More curve to her warm, sweet breasts. How marvellous it had been then. Fantastic when they were alone together. Ally, his heart’s desire. On the very day he intended to ask her to marry him, she provoked a blazing argument that left him dazed….
“I want it all to stop for a while, Rafe,” she had cried, the tears smudging her cheeks, dust streaked from their ride, her long thick lashes stuck together spikily. “I want my own space!” When he finally calmed her down she claimed she loved him too much. That made him laugh. Not for long. Ally of the dark brown hair and slanting green eyes had made a fool of him with a capital F. She had run away to Sydney leaving him bereft. His heart broken until he picked himself up determined never to believe a woman again.
And what was he supposed to say to her now she was back? If only for her father’s funeral. He knew, couldn’t help knowing, he could have just about any woman he wanted. He’d had his casual affairs. He had to take it for granted Ally had had hers. She had it all. Beauty, freedom, style, wealth, a career that put her face on the cover of glossy magazines. God help him he had even bought a few. For what purpose? Another man might have thrown darts at her image. The great thing was he was over her. The Ally he had loved never really existed.
“You look so serious, Rafe,” she was saying, lifting her emerald-green eyes to him. “Even grim. What could you possibly be thinking about?”
“I don’t think you’d want to know,” he said.
She couldn’t bear the look in his eyes. “Not if it’s about me. I know you despise me.”
He heard his own deep-throated laugh. “Ally, beautiful as you are, it might be as well for you to know I’m now indifferent to your many charms. Fact is you’re not the girl I knew all my life.”
“You’ve written me off?” She stayed very still.
He nodded. “Had to.” When he would have moved heaven and earth for her. “What about you? Anyone important in your life?”
She pushed tendrils of hair from her aching forehead. “People come and go, Rafe,” she said, careful not to look at him. Not a one of them could measure up to you.
“How long are you staying?” He, too, sounded careful.
“A week. That’s all I can spare. It’s wonderful to be home. The comfort of it.”
“Even if you were driven back by your father’s death?”
She lifted her beautiful sad eyes. “You know all about our family, Rafe. You know why I’m not crying though I’m in mourning for what might have been. Like Brod. Dad never cared for me, Rafe. Think of that! He broke my heart.”
He fought against saying it. Lost. “There’s evidence you’ve got one?” One step. One error and he would pull her into his arms.
“I loved you. You were my world.” With so many onlookers she managed to keep her face composed though her voice was unsteady.
“But you couldn’t rest until you tried something else?”
“If only that were all of it!” she exclaimed. “I was too young, Rafe. I couldn’t handle what we had. Our relationship was so powerful.”
“Is that how you analyse it?” He spoke as though it were a clinical question.
“For what it’s worth!” She managed to nod at people who were looking their way. Amanda Someone was staring. She seemed jealous.
“Well it doesn’t matter now,” said Rafe.
Grant followed Francesca’s slender, black-clad figure out into the corridor. “How’s the jet lag?” he asked, real concern on his open, strong-boned face.
“I made a fool of myself didn’t I?”
He looked down at her and smiled. “I’d probably have fainted myself aft
er such a long, gruelling trip.”
She was amused by the very idea. He exuded such strength. “At least you were there to catch me.” Within moments of walking into the bush terminal she, who prided herself on being a good traveller, had crumpled like a doll.
“I had the feeling I was catching a flower.” He held her with his eyes gazing into what he considered the prettiest face he had ever seen. He knew Ally, the Kinross who had broken his brother’s heart was beautiful in her vibrant challenging way. The young woman who had come to write Fee’s biography, Rebecca, was beautiful as well, but so cool and controlled she might have been carved out of ice. This lovely creature had a warmth, a sweetness, a kind of innocence written all over her. It affected him powerfully.
“Don’t write me off, Grant,” she teased him gently. “There’s a lot more to me than you can see.”
“Was I doing that?” One tawny eyebrow shot up comically. “Writing you off?”
She nodded her head, all the while smiling at him. “I can see you don’t think I’d fit in here.”
Show me a rose growing in the desert, he thought. She was soft voiced. A lovely voice. Cut-glass accent but natural. She put him irresistibly in mind of a rose. Pink rose in a sterling-silver bud vase. “I do have that feeling, yes,” he admitted. “For one thing you wouldn’t be used to the heat.” Yet he couldn’t see the tiniest bead of perspiration on her flawless skin.
Francesca could have hooted. “You’re not going to believe this but I think the heat’s fantastic. I left some very miserable cold and wet weather at home. I want to thank you again, Grant, for coming to my rescue. For flying me in. I know you’re a busy man.”
That he was. “There aren’t enough hours in the day. I’ve got plans. Big plans. I want to—” He broke off and shot her a wry look. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come all the way to hear Grant Cameron’s visions.”
“No, tell me.” She took his arm. Beautiful, gentle, soft. “I know you run the helicopter service, of course. But you want to start your own airline to service the Inland. Is that right? Passengers and freight?”
He gave her a surprised, interrogating look. “Who told you that?” An elderly couple moved out into the corridor so Grant took Francesca’s elbow moving her further down the parqueted passageway towards a side verandah.
“It was Brod.” Francesca stopped walking to look up at him, struck again by his rare tawny colouring, the depth of copper in the thick burnt-gold hair swept off his wide forehead, the gleaming near-topaz eyes. “Brod is tremendously interested in your schemes. So am I.”
He saw the sincerity. Was warmed by it. “That’s wonderful.” He grinned. “But are you sure you’ve got the time? I thought you were going home to your glamorous life in little more than a week?”
The topaz eyes were twinkling but Francesca knew what he was thinking. “I have to tell you, Grant Cameron, I’m finding it a lot more glamorous here.”
Where else could you find a grand mansion in the frightening isolation and extraordinary savage beauty of the Australian desert? Where else could you find such a magnificent man? She might be setting herself up for a little heartache, a brief romance with no hope of resolution, but one thing was certain—Grant Cameron drew her like a flame.
Long after the household had retired, all of them diminished by the events of the day, Rebecca, more shocked than she knew, sought medication for a headache worse than anything she had experienced for a long time. Perhaps she was running a high fever. She seemed very hot. She stumbled into the adjoining bathroom to see if there were any aspirin left.
One. No good. She was going to need more pain-killer. It was downstairs in the large first-aid room stocked like a pharmacy. Her mind was whirling from her compulsive reviewing of the day. She couldn’t forget Stewart Kinross’s last words to her.
“There’s no way I’ll let him have you.”
She couldn’t possibly tell Brod that. It would drive him crazy.
She remembered the way she urged the mare Jeeba away. Poor Jeeba! It upset her terribly the mare had to be destroyed. Horses with their delicate legs. She didn’t want to think about it but loving horses so much she couldn’t push it away. Although the women of the family, Fee, Ally, and Francesca had supported her fully throughout the long afternoon, Brod hadn’t come within ten feet of her. Of course people never stopped coming up to him, keeping him contained until it was all over but he had kept his distance from her as though she were poison she thought bleakly.
And there was still something he didn’t know. He didn’t know she had once been married. He didn’t know that marriage had ended disastrously. Shattered beyond repair. He had invited her to talk to him but she had built up so many defences she doubted if she could speak of that awful time.
Dear God, she didn’t want to be reminded. She didn’t want to be reminded of the dreadful mistake she had made. The number of times she had cried. The shame of the things Martyn had done. She certainly didn’t want to be reminded of Martyn’s mother’s visit.
Meredith had accused her—if Rebecca hadn’t caused her injuries herself!—of driving him to hurting his wife with her demands for freedom, for a career. She had reneged on her sacred marriage vows. Back and forth they went, she losing the argument in the light of her mother-in-law’s unswerving belief in her son, the fineness of his character.
Meredith had pleaded with her to go back to Martyn. He loved her. Didn’t she know that? He would give her whatever she wanted if only she would go back.
Anything was better than going back. She was certain Meredith would face this problem again. Martyn liked making women suffer. Perhaps he was getting square with a suffocatingly possessive mother.
How could she tell Brod all about that? Though God knows it couldn’t have been easy for him and Ally growing up in this house. Even Fee had spoken about her brother’s destructive qualities. Now Rebecca began to see Lucille Kinross, like her, had been forced to flee a desperately unhappy marriage.
With a little shake of her pounding head, Rebecca caught up her robe, tying the sash tightly around her waist. There was no hope for her. She would live with her guilts forever. Real or imagined. She had never given Stewart Kinross the slightest encouragement. Indeed the thought had never entered her head but perhaps she had overresponded to his many kindnesses to her? She cursed some quality in her that drew certain men to her.
Downstairs she thought she heard a sound. She stood perfectly still for a moment trying to trace breathing, soft footsteps, anything. Both floors of the huge house were dimly lit with wall sconces, brighter at the head of the central staircase so no one could miss their footing if they descended during the night. She was conscious her heart was beating fast within her.
No one at all. Just all the little sounds of a darkened old house.
She had come downstairs for a purpose. Now she almost flew down the corridor that led to the kitchen taking a right turn to the large, well-stocked first-aid room. Lots of accidents, big and small went on at Outback stations. Kimbara was always prepared. When she snapped on the switch the light almost blinded her so brilliantly did it bounce off the white walls and fittings. She saw her own startled face in a mirrored cabinet. She might have been a ghost her skin was so pale but her floating black hair was very real, the sleeplessness was in her shadowed gaze.
She needed something to work a miracle. She walked to one of the cabinets she knew housed a range of painkillers, letting her eyes run along the packages.
“I didn’t think I dreamed it,” a dark, eloquent voice said behind her.
“Brod!” She swung around, in her agitation dropping a packet to the black-and-white tiled floor. Now colour whipped into her skin as though a switch had been thrown.
“What’s the matter?” He bent to retrieve the package, turning it over in his hand. “A headache?”
She lifted her hand to her temple. “I don’t think I’ve had such a bad one in my life.” Take that back, she thought dismally. In the last few years.
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br /> “Maybe these won’t be strong enough.” A frown drew his black brows together.
“I’ll try them anyway.”
“Why are you whispering?” He walked to another cupboard, took out a clean glass and filled it at the sink.
“Because it’s very late. Because you frightened me.” She gave a husky laugh. “What the heck else do I need?”
“Don’t let’s get into an argument.” He turned to her, his eyes moving over her. “You look very pale. The fact is, Rebecca, I know how you feel. Only I’ve been drowning my pain with a few shots of whisky.”
He pushed two tablets from their silvered sockets into the palm of his hand. “Here,” he said quietly. “I hope they do some good.”
She took them from him, feeling the rough calluses on his palms, wondering for a rocky moment how those same hands would feel on her body. She choked a little as the tablets seemed to stick in her upper chest, but swallowed more water at his urging.
“Come and talk to me,” he said in a deep, low voice. “I’ll let you lie quietly. I don’t want to be alone.”
Neither did she, still she hesitated. “Maybe…”
“Maybe what?” He looked down at her, so small in her slippered feet, her silky robe like the pale green sheaf of a flower.
“Maybe it’s not a good idea, Brod.”
“I can’t think of one better.” He took her hand, his handsome face taut and angular, his magnificent body in his everyday jeans, his soft blue shirt near undone to the waist in the sultry heat.
“Where are we going?” she asked, captured by his touch.
“Don’t panic. I’m not taking you up to bed.”
God, in her confusion she nearly cried out. Take me. Take me. Hold me. I want to be lost. Instead she walked with him very quietly. They paused at the study and he reached around with his hand to find the light switch. “You can lie down on the sofa,” he told her, releasing her hand. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to I just need you to be there.”