by Julie Mac
She screamed when he scooped her up, his hard arms imprisoning her body against his chest. ‘Put me down,’ she yelled, kicking at his legs. She tried to punch at him with her fists, but to her mortification he trapped them both in one of his large hands and held them immobile. He strode up the beach, over the grass and onto the deck.
‘Right, lady.’ She heard the barely controlled impatience in his voice. ‘I can put you down now—ouch—’ she scored a direct hit on his thigh with her heel, ‘—and you can go into that bedroom sensibly and put some clothes on and come with me up to the big house. Or I can carry you in there and dress you myself.’
She heard him sucking in air in deep, decidedly unfriendly breaths and she knew he was perfectly capable of carrying through his threat. And the thought of him touching her naked body with his angry, lying hands was so humiliating she wanted to cry out loud, to sob and scream and kick like a kid who has lost something precious. Instead, she settled for kicking and screaming.
He dumped her on her feet and spun her to face him, his hand gripping one of her wrists painfully. Anger had etched deeper the vertical line between his brows, and the grooves that bracketed his mouth. Which I kissed so tenderly last night, Kate thought, her heart splintering. He closed his eyes momentarily in a look of pure exasperation and dragged in another deep breath.
‘You’re a grown woman, for God’s sake, Kate,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, ‘will you stop behaving like a—a naughty little kid. I know this is confusing, but just for now, for the sake of what we shared last night and may possibly share in the future, will you do as I ask? Please!’ He let go her wrist.
She stared at him for a moment then turned and walked through the open sliding door into the bedroom, pain in her heart and the salty scent of his heated body thick in her nostrils.
She headed to the bathroom for a two-minute shower then dressed quickly in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from her overnight bag. He pulled on the still-damp, sand-encrusted shorts he’d discarded on the beach last night. She wanted to drive the company ute up to the big house, but he insisted on her riding with him in his Range Rover. The keys, she saw, were still in the ignition: he’d been in a hurry to find her last night. Guilt mixed with anger, and made her long to be somewhere else—anywhere but here with this dark-haired stranger. They didn’t speak on the short journey up to the big house.
***
Yesterday, she’d been afraid she would find the emptiness of the big house unbearable, especially in Grandma’s kitchen, and in the living room, where Grandad had reigned forever with his booming voice and forthright opinions on everything and anything.
But now, when she followed Sam into the big kitchen, he seemed somehow to fill it, and when she thought of Grandma standing in her pinny at her sink, scrubbing potatoes, or rolling pastry on the bench for Christmas mince pies, she felt a strange sense of comfort.
He told her to help herself to coffee or tea, and then he went to change.
He returned quickly, dressed in clean shorts and a T-shirt the colour of his eyes. He took one of the cups of coffee she had made and opened the pantry to find some muffins he must have brought up the day before.
He invited her to sit in the living room. She shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay in the kitchen.’ Grandma was closer there.
She declined food: it would, she knew, stick in her throat. She leaned against the thick blackwood breakfast bar, sipping her coffee; he stood by the sink bench. He spread butter on his muffin and ate hungrily, watching her through slanted sapphire eyes flecked with tiny specks of gold. The big cat again, she thought uneasily, the predator stalking its prey.
He finished his muffin and his coffee, and made himself another cup. She shook her head at the offer of more and wished she’d refused to come up here with him.
Outside, it was raining again, heavily, pouring over the veranda guttering in little rivers. She thought of the rain spilling onto her face when they made love. To stop herself from crying, she gripped her hands tightly together. ‘I think you’d better get on and say whatever it is you want to say to me.’ She took a steadying breath. ‘And please, I’d rather you didn’t lie to me about your lady friend.’
He surprised her by walking across the kitchen, prising her hands apart and taking them firmly in his. ‘This is not about lady friends,’ he said. She waited, hearing only the drumming of the rain on the iron veranda roof.
‘Look at me, Kate.’
She allowed her eyes to be captured by his. The kitchen had grown dark in the rainstorm; his irises had increased in size, so his eyes were dark inky pools.
He breathed deeply once, twice.
‘My darling Kate,’ he said softly, increasing the pressure on her hands.
‘Darling Kate’ be damned, she thought, experimentally pulling her hands away from his, but he was holding on tight.
Two more deep breaths. ‘Your Aunt Rose—your father’s sister—’ Another deep breath. More pressure on her hands. ‘Your Aunt Rose is … my mother.’
She felt the blood drain from her face. Momentarily, she sagged against him and then, summoning a great strength from somewhere, hauled herself upright.
‘No! She can’t be.’ But even as the words escaped in a desperate whisper she knew it was true. His eyes, his hair. His mother’s story, her aunt’s story. It was all there for her to see, if only she hadn’t been so blind. His presence at the farm, his interest in her family. His anger yesterday when she’d spoken of Aunt Rose, his interest in the business …
‘You’ve come for revenge,’ she breathed. ‘You want what your mother missed out on. You want to punish my father—me—you want everything.’ She shook her head from side to side. ‘No wonder you want to be head of the business.’
‘Forget the business for now,’ he said wearily.
She turned her head away from him; firmly, he cupped her chin and turned her back to face him.
‘It’s not important. The business is not important. This is about you and I.’ He squeezed the hand he still held. ‘You and I, Kate.’
She looked at him, at the blue eyes so like her own, at the dark, wild, unbrushed hair, the face she’d come to love. She touched her free hand to the halo of her own unfettered bush of hair.
‘You and I,’ she repeated, her voice scarcely audible. ‘But there can be no “you and I” because we’re …’
‘Cousins? I think that’s the word you’re looking for. My mother and your father are brother and sister.’
‘Brother and sister.’ She pulled from his grasp and stepped away from him, hugging her arms around her. ‘Brother and sister? Then why didn’t my father ever tell me about you? And why would he let you come here to talk to the board without first warning me? He would never do that to me.’ Her voice had risen. Her knees began to tremble.
‘This is not your father’s fault. Let me explain. Please, Kate.’ His mouth had tightened, but unlike hers, his voice was calm. His control threatened to sweep away whatever remained of her own. She closed her mouth and waited, conscious of her breath entering her nostrils in hard little puffs.
‘Your father didn’t tell you about me because he didn’t know about me—not until very recently anyway. And he didn’t know I was coming over here to New Zealand. He had no clue, and I made sure it stayed that way. I wasn’t supposed to meet with anyone from McPherson’s until the formal interview process begins. It was my idea to meet the board earlier. My idea to talk to you. And your father … I understand he didn’t want to be contacted—’
‘While he was on his honeymoon. Of course …’ she shook her head slowly from side to side, ‘… this was perfect timing for you, wasn’t it?’
Her dad had asked them all—Kate, the board, his PA, everyone at work—to hold off contacting him about anything to do with work while he was on his honeymoon, unless it was an absolute emergency. It was at his bride Maude’s instigation, but everyone had agreed. Her dad deserved a break for his long-planned honeymoon. Of course
it was a great idea. Of course no one would contact him just because another CEO contender had come in for an informal chat with the board.
‘You make me sound like some sort of schemer.’
‘And?’
‘I’m not a schemer.’
‘But my father … he’d met you—he knew you—I saw a photo of the two of you together at Continental’s new plant opening … he said nothing to me.’ She felt sickened and betrayed. Betrayed by her father, betrayed by this man standing before her with compassionate eyes.
‘We met then, yes, but he didn’t know I was his sister’s son.’ He paused, the kitchen filled only with the sounds of steady fall of rain on the roof and the ticking of the big clock hanging on the wall behind Kate.
‘I knew, of course. My mother had told me about her family when I was a kid. I knew everything—about the feud, the bitterness and my mother’s disinheritance. But without the family connection, I still would have known who Robert McPherson was—he’s head of New Zealand’s leading forestry company. Anyone in the business in the Southern Hemisphere knows who he is.
‘When I found myself standing beside him at that opening, I was surprised at how I felt. He is very like my mother in mannerisms and speech. I liked the man.’ He raked his fingers through his hair.
‘I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the right words. Anyway, we were never together privately for long enough.’ Sam frowned slightly and shook his head.
‘He never knew about me, Kate, I swear, not until he came to see my mother when he brought Maude to Australia on their way to Europe for their honeymoon. He was as … shocked as you are.’
She swallowed. ‘How could he not have known?’ she demanded. ‘Didn’t you say your mother phoned home after your father was killed, and told them about everything?’
‘She phoned, yes. But she spoke to her father. He told no one about the conversation. Not your father, not our grandmother. The stubborn old man kept quiet about that conversation for the rest of his life.’
She saw the dark, bitter shadows in his eyes.
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted revenge.’ It hurt her to say the words, but she knew they were true.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Not revenge. Never! By God, I felt like it though, when I was a teenager. One day I found my mother crying over a photo of my sister, taken when she was a day old. At that moment, I wanted revenge very much.
‘I thought of the stinking little flat my mother had to live in when we first went to Sydney. I thought of the rats running around in the walls at night, and the holes we used to stuff with newspaper so they couldn’t get out.’ He slapped his hand down on the breakfast bar.
Kate flinched.
‘I thought of the hours she spent washing dishes in some back street restaurant in those early years. And I thought of the baby she’d given away. I wanted nothing more than to come over here and smash the old bastard’s face in.’
His chest rose and fell rapidly.
‘But you didn’t,’ she said quietly.
‘I didn’t.’ He exhaled a long breath, his anger blunted. ‘My mother convinced me bitterness and a lust for revenge were poisonous, destruction emotions. She was right, of course. And by then, things weren’t too bad for us. We’d moved much further out to a tidy little house on the fringe of the city. She made me see that, in the end, the old man would suffer far more than we had. He had to live with his guilt, you see.’
Kate nodded. She remembered only too clearly her grandfather’s last few weeks in the rest home and then in hospital. His mind had started to wander, and he walked the corridors, opening doors and asking people if they’d seen Rose. ‘She’s my daughter, you see,’ he’d tell them. ‘And I’ve lost her. There’s something I have to tell her.’
Sam walked over to Kate and reached for her hand.
‘So you see, your father knew nothing about me. Don’t blame him. He did try to make contact—you were right—but my mother rebuffed him. She’s a very proud woman … it was all very well her telling me to forget about revenge, but I don’t think she was ready to forgive at that time. And Robert was too close to her father.’
He drew a long breath. ‘It was different with our grandmother.’
There it was again. ‘Our grandmother.’ She felt her spine stiffen. ‘What do you mean?’
He smiled then. ‘She was another woman of pride and spirit—like her daughter and like you, Kate. She couldn’t disobey her husband openly, so she disobeyed him secretly. She tracked us down very early on—God knows how. She knew about the baby and me, she knew my father had died. She and Mum wrote regularly, right up until my—our—grandmother died. She had the letters sent to the address of one of her old school friends. We knew she had gone because her letters stopped.’
‘Oh,’ said Kate softly. ‘We tried to contact your mother, but she would have known anyway.’
‘She knew. It wasn’t an easy time for her. My—our—grandmother was a truly good woman. She was Mum’s anchor, really.’
He paused, looking around the room. As if his thoughts could conjure her up, Kate thought. She bit on the inside of her lip to stop it from trembling.
‘Gran had a little fund of money—her own money, a small sum she’d inherited before she married. She never sent us a cent of her husband’s money but over the years, she sent every scrap of her inheritance. It was her money that enabled me to ride and compete.’
Kate turned then and walked into the living room. She came back, holding a photograph of her grandmother. She held it out to Sam. ‘This is my favourite picture of her.’ She trailed her fingertips lightly over the glass.
‘Mine too,’ said Sam. ‘If it wasn’t for our grandmother, I wouldn’t feel right about being here. On the farm, and in this house, I mean.’
‘Why are you here, Sam?’ She asked the question quietly. It dangled in the air between them. She crossed to the kitchen window, and stood looking out, her back to him, waiting. The tall manuka trees at the bottom of the lawn were almost invisible behind a grey curtain of rain. She heard him move to stand behind her, and smelt the salty scent of the sea. Her mind was filled with a sudden memory of his naked body behind hers in the shower, cradling her in its strength, his hands on her skin, his mouth on her neck. My body remembers too, she thought bitterly, registering the sweet ache flaring deep in her belly.
‘Why?’ she repeated, a dangerous edge to her strained whisper.
‘I came to look,’ he said softly. ‘I wanted to make some sense of this whole sorry mess and I wanted to do it in my own time—not at some orchestrated meeting. I wanted to see the farm, the business, you—’
‘You came to look me over!’ She whirled to face him. He stepped back suddenly, his eyes dark. ‘You came to look me over and look the business over.’ Her voice had risen. ‘Did you think it would be fun to knock your spoiled brat cousin off her throne? Oh, you might not have craved revenge, but you must have thought it would be a bit of sport to punish me. After all, I have everything you could have had.’
‘It’s true. What you’re saying.’ He shook his head as if trying to clear unwanted thoughts from his head. ‘Absolutely true. I looked at pictures of you, I read stories about you. I thought all those things you just said.’
‘So … I was right, wasn’t I?’ Anger spread its dark tentacles deep in her tummy, her chest, her throat, followed quickly by even blacker despair. Last night, she’d thought he loved her.
He shook his head again. ‘I’m not proud. But Kate—’ He reached out to take her hands again. ‘When I met you, when I saw you—even up he at the airstrip when … Trojan …’ He shrugged. ‘I knew then, I could see what sort of person you were.’
‘What did you see, Sam?’ She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded, when really she wanted to cry or scream—or both.
‘I saw a woman who cared. A woman who was smart. A woman with a brain and a conscience.’
‘But still a woman to be punished for the sins
of her grandfather and father. A woman who had something you wanted.’
‘Kate! Stop. You’ve got—’
‘Oh, you certainly had the board members impressed. Some smooth talking and you were the golden boy. And when everyone knows you’re the prodigal nephew returned, the sky’s the limit! You’ll have my job, Dad’s job, any job you want.’
‘Stop!’
He hissed angrily and grabbed her arms in a vice-like grip. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not interested in taking anyone’s place in the business. I’m not interested in punishing anyone—not now … now that I’ve met you.’
‘Oh, but you are! I saw how angry you were yesterday when … when we were talking about the farm.’
‘That was because of your bloody arrogant assumption that your aunt—my mother—couldn’t possibly want the farm she had just inherited, and that because she hadn’t mentioned children, she couldn’t possibly have any. You didn’t ask her the question directly, did you? You didn’t want to know, did you?’
He tightened his grip on her arms.
‘You wanted the farm, and what Kate wants, Kate gets, isn’t that right?’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘See. You do want to punish me for the sins of my grandfather.’
‘Do you really think—’
‘Why did you seduce me … when all the time you … you knew?’ She felt the hot wave of rage rise up to engulf her body, threatening to spill over as tears. Her eyes prickled and her throat was tight. She raised her chin and stared at him defiantly. To her humiliation, he gave a short hoot of laughter. He dropped his grip on her arms and lifted one hand to trail his fingers along her jawline.
He smiled, a wide smile, which showed his teeth and stretched up to crinkle the corners of his eyes.
‘Some might say, darlin’, that you seduced me.’
With a sharp jerk, she turned her face from him and reached up to bat away his hand.
I gave him my body. He took my love and my trust and now he is laughing at me. She felt her heart shrink to become a hard little pebble.