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Home To Eden
Margaret Way


It's been more than a decade since Nicole Cavanagh's mother was found dead. But the people of Koomera Crossing are still talking about the rift that her death caused between the Cavanaghs and the McClellands - two powerful and formerly friendly families.Now Nicole has come home to the Outback determined to find out the truth behind her mother's death. Who would have thought that her one ally would be a McClelland?






“Lord knows how I didn’t visit you last night. I came close.”


“What stopped you, Drake?” Nicole picked up a pebble and sent it skimming across the water. The movement startled a flock of white corellas that exploded into the air in protest.

“I have to let you decide what you want.” He glanced down at her. She wasn’t wearing makeup—she didn’t need any with her skin—not even lipstick, which he found strangely erotic. “Which isn’t to say I’m going to wait a long time.”

“For me to decide to sleep with you?” Her head tilted, her eyes more green than blue in the shade of the wide-brimmed Akubra.

“You will, whenever, wherever. We both know it.”

She looked back at the peaceful, unspoiled scene. “It could be a mistake. Neither of us is exactly reconciled to the past.”

“I’m trying, Nic. You find it very hard to trust.”

“I’m concentrating on getting my life right.”

“You think increasing intimacy with me will interfere with that?” His tone was deeply serious.

She nodded. “I can’t deal with you like I’ve dealt with other men in my life.”


Dear Reader,

Home to Eden is the final book in the KOOMERA CROSSING series. I hope both my loyal, much-valued readership and welcome newcomers will have enjoyed the previous four in the series. I burned the midnight oil on one of them. I’ll leave you to guess which!

Throughout the series, indeed my long career, you will have noticed I enjoy writing about families—in particular, dysfunctional families. These problematic families crisscross society, from the most privileged to the severely disadvantaged.

Small wonder I’m drawn to exploring family life. There are so many mysteries connected to families: past secrets, double lives, things that are never spoken about but forever hover in the consciousness. Most bondings bring comfort, friendship and support. Some emotional attachments, however, can go beyond the norm. I’ve drawn on this for Home to Eden, coming at it from the angle of obsessive attachments. One can readily see such attachments could be a by-product of certain conditions such as loneliness and isolation. Families who live in remote areas are more dependent on each other for survival and emotional support. Outback stations certainly qualify as remote. The wonderfully inspiring, frightening and funny, tragic and violent stories of Outback life are legion. There are heroes and heroines and, inevitably, as anywhere else, villains.

The heart is a very strong yet very vulnerable organ. Love and hate coexist there. Human beings can love fiercely, yet still be capable of hurting the object of that love. Jealousy has to be regarded as a great catalyst for disaster. Some jealousies pave the way to tragedy and death. Home to Eden is such a story. My aim, as always, is to give my readership good stories they can enjoy. I hope I’ve succeeded with KOOMERA CROSSING.

Best wishes,

Margaret Way




Margaret Way

Home to Eden










CONTENTS


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




PROLOGUE


TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Nicole Cavanagh in her lacy white nightdress stands at the first landing of Eden’s grand divided staircase nursing a terrible apprehension. Her small fists are clenched tight. She can’t seem to get enough air. She is trying to guess the reason for all the commotion downstairs, even as the thought keeps rising that it is all about her mother, Corrine. The thought is terrifying.

It is barely dawn, the light seeping in through the great stained-glass window directly behind her in waves of jeweled splendor: ruby, emerald, sapphire, topaz, amethyst. Nicole pays no attention even though the effect is entrancing.

Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. There is always turbulence when her father, Heath, is at Eden. Suddenly overcome by a gnawing premonition, she starts to tremble, reaches out to grasp the smooth mahogany banister as though she’s gone blind and is petrified of falling. Her ears strain to pick up exactly what the voices are saying. Her father’s voice blustery like wind and thunder overrides all others. He is such a violent man. She can easily pick out Aunt Sigrid’s tones, clipped but slightly hoarse; Aunt Sigrid once had a tracheotomy. Her aunt is a severe woman, her manner imperious, a consequence perhaps of being born a Miss Cavanagh of Eden Station. She is quite without her younger sister’s beauty and charm—“Left you in the dust, didn’t she, Siggy,” was her father’s cruel comment. But her aunt has always been good to Nicole in her fashion. As had Louise, her lovely grandmother, a kind and devoted woman who now sounds shaky and deeply worried. Grandfather Giles’s cultured tones reassure her, calm and reasonable as ever.

Nevertheless, Nicole can measure what it all means. Child of a highly dysfunctional family, she has inbuilt antennae that track trouble. A frantic family row is in progress—she picked up on that almost from the moment she swung her legs out of bed. Aunt Sigrid always says she is way too knowing. From the sound of his voice, her father has worked himself into a frenzied rage. She has learned over the years from her practice of eavesdropping—the only way she can ever find out anything—that her often absent father is, as Aunt Sigrid said, “a disgrace to our proud name, an adventurer, a compulsive gambler, money spills through his fingers like water, he brought nothing to the marriage. Even the big diamond engagement ring he presented to Corrinne is a fake.”

Yet he is very handsome in a dissolute kind of way. Nicole has looked that word up in the dictionary. Dissolute. It meant all those things. Perhaps that was what brought her mother to the marriage, his sheer animal sex appeal. Aunt Sigrid never failed to point that out. Aunt Sigrid’s own husband, Alan, “largely maintained by Father,” is nearly devoid of that quality and has no hope of ever gaining it.

She can’t hear her cousin Joel’s voice. Almost four years her senior, already six feet tall, Joel is probably fast asleep. Joel’s ability to tune out family arguments is impressive. He professes to despise his father for being such a wimp, hates his mother’s constant nagging—who doesn’t?—calling his grandfather a “throwback to the feudal age” with his insistence on the importance of family, the proper respect, good manners, the sense of responsibility that should go hand in hand with privilege. Joel is something of a misfit.

“I love only you, Nikki. You’re beautiful and good. You’re the closest person in the world to me.”

She isn’t good at all. Even at twelve she is, as her aunt puts it, “hell-bent on establishing her place in the world.” That means eventually inheriting Eden. Her grandfather has promised it to her. She loves her historic home with a passion. She has that in common with her grandfather and her aunt Sigrid, but Aunt Sigrid will never inherit. Nor will Joel. That, too, her grandfather has confided. Eden is hers. She is the chosen one with special qualities which her grandfather claims he sees in her. Her grandfather’s love and faith sustains her. He plays the dominant male role in her life. He is Sir Giles Cavanagh of Eden Station.

Her father starts to roar again, a sound that reverberates through the house. She steps back instinctively, overcoming the sensation he has actually struck her. Which he has on occasion and she never did tell Grandpa.

“I’ll tell you who she’s with. Bloody McClelland, that’s who. The arrogant bastard. Always thinking herself a cut above me. But she chose me, not him. Now she’s picked up with him right under your noses, the arctic bitch.”

“And where have you been all this time, Heath?” Her aunt’s voice cracks with contempt. “What do you get up to in Sydney apart from gambling? You’re never far from the racetrack or the casino. Do you think we don’t know that? You’re an addict. Gambling is a drug.”

“There’s more attraction in gambling than living here,” her father answers furiously. “The lot of you looking down on me. The Cavanagh black sheep. Always so chillingly polite, but you bloody hate me. You just don’t have the guts to say so. What is a man to do when his wife doesn’t return home? To be humiliated like this! I tell you she’s finally gone off with that bastard. He never stopped loving her.”

“What you’re saying is crazy!” Now her grandmother speaks with intensity. “Corrinne would never leave her child. She adores Nicole.”

“But she’s done it this time, hasn’t she, dear Louise?”

Nicole’s grandfather cuts in as though he’s reached breaking point. “Instead of your usual ranting, Heath, I’d be obliged if you’d focus on what might have happened to your wife. I very much fear an accident. Instead of wasting time, we should be organizing a search party. Corrinne has the Land Cruiser. It could have broken down somewhere.”

“In which case she’ll soon be home.” Her grandmother sounds to anyone who knows her achingly unsure. “Corrine is a loving mother. She would never abandon Nicole. Never.” She repeats it like a mantra.

A low growl issues from her father as if he’d momentarily turned feral. “Who are you trying to convince, Louise? Your beloved Corrinne is no more than a common whore. You realize you’re admitting she’s taken up with McClelland. She’d leave me, but never Nicole.”

“I have no idea,” her grandmother, so proud, lies. “You were the one who snatched her away from him, Heath. Almost on the eve of their wedding. To think I was the one who invited you here for Corrinne’s engagement party. You were kin, after all. A Cavanagh. I felt sorry for you. I felt the family was too hard on you. How you repaid us.” A wealth of misery and regret in her voice, she went on, “You broke up two families who’d been the best of friends. The Cavanaghs and the McClellands. We’ve been here since the earliest days of settlement. The Cavanaghs even before the McQueens. We all stood together in this vast wilderness in order to survive. Our families would have been united but for you. Do you think I’d be speaking like this if you were a good husband and father? But you’re not, are you. I know you’re still obsessed with Corrinne. I know the black jealousy that prowls around your brain and your heart. Your mad suspicions. You never let her alone. But you scarcely have time for your own daughter, Nicole.”

No hesitation. A thud like a hand slamming down on a table. “If she is my daughter,” her father snarls.

Chaos is easy to create. It takes so few words. Glued to the banister, Nicole has trouble breathing.

“She’s yours, all right.” Aunt Sigrid is all contempt—and something more. What?

Grandma’s quavery voice gives the impression she is on the verge of tears. “How can you say that, Heath?”

“Sorry. I need proof.” Her father laughs. Not a nice laugh. A laugh utterly devoid of humor.

Her grandfather intervenes, speaking with grave authority. “My daughter would never have married you knowing she was carrying David’s child.”

“Perhaps she didn’t know at the time.” Her father produces another sneering laugh followed by the sound of boots scraping on the parquet floor. “To hell with the lot of you! You all idolize Corrinne, but she’s a cruel bitch. God knows why she married me. It had little to do with love.”

“Lust more like it!” The words seemed ripped from Aunt Sigrid’s throat.

Another mirthless laugh. “I bet you’ve spent a lot of time weeping over what you’ve never had, Siggy.” Her father speaks as though his sister-in-law is trash, not one of the Cavanaghs of Eden. “I’ll get this search party started. I can do that much. My bet is we won’t find her. She’s gone off with McClelland at long last. And none of you could stop her.”

At that, twelve-year-old Nicole collapses on a step, starting to succumb to a great sickness inside her. “Please, God,” she begins to pray, “don’t let anything bad have happened to Mummy.”

“For God’s sake, Nicole, what are you doing there?” Her father unleashes another roar, striding out into the hallway only to see her hunched up on the stairs. “Answer me, girl.”

No answer. No point. Not anymore. He isn’t her father.

“Leave the child alone, Heath.” The iron command in her grandfather’s voice then changes to tender, protective. “Nicole, darling, go back to bed. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Go, sweetheart.”

Go? When her mother is out there somewhere in the desert? “I’d rather go look for Mummy.” Nicole finds the strength to pull herself up, though her legs are wobbly with shock. “Please, Granddad, may I go with you?” She cannot bring herself to address the man, Heath, standing tall, staring up at her with his black eyes. Probably seeing her mother. Doesn’t everyone say she’s her mother’s mirror image?

Grandma rushes into the entrance hall, crushing one of her beautiful lace handkerchiefs to her mouth. “No, Giles!”

“There may be comfort in it for the child.” Sir Giles draws his wife tenderly into his arms.

“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if the secretive little bitch knows where her mother is.” Heath Cavanagh spits anger and venom. Definitely not Daddy anymore. “Corrinne takes her everywhere. Tells her everything. Where’s your mother, girl?” he thunders.

In a flash, the secret forces within Nicole gather. It’s as though she can see through her mother’s sightless eyes. Searing whiteness. Nothing.

“Gone forever,” she says.




CHAPTER ONE


NICOLE WAS NEARLY twenty minutes late arriving at the Bradshaws’ splendid East Side apartment, although, Carol had confided earlier, she was the guest of honor. Today was her twenty-sixth birthday and Carol had arranged one of her “little dinner parties,” which usually turned out to be sumptuous affairs with glamorous and often famous people in attendance and “someone special” for her to meet. Carol, who had all but adopted her as the granddaughter she’d never had, was determined to find her the right husband and thus keep her in New York, or at the very least within easy traveling distance. That didn’t include far-off Australia, the home of her birth. The Outback was worlds away from New York, the fabulous hub of the New World.

The Bradshaws had taken her under their wing almost from the time she’d arrived in New York two years before, fresh from a three-year stint in Paris where she’d been living and studying painting. As fate would have it, the Bradshaws were visiting a SoHo art gallery the same afternoon Nicole took shelter there. The rain was coming down in buckets with intermittent booms of thunder. As she’d removed her head scarf, Carol Bradshaw, standing nearby, had burst out with, “What lovely hair! Like a glass of fine wine held up to the light.”

From that chance meeting a genuine, mutually rewarding friendship had evolved. The Bradshaws had lost their only child, a brilliant young man with the expectation of a full life ahead of him, to a freak skiing accident when he was about Nicole’s age; now stepping in to fill that gap was Nicole, a young woman reared in the isolated Australian Outback but severed from her country by a family trauma about which she hardly spoke.

Just once in the early days did Nicole confide in Carol about her mother’s tragic death, saying only that she was killed in a car accident when Nicole was twelve. She never divulged that the accident was on her family’s huge historic cattle station. She never said it was she who had led her poor grandfather, now dead from shock and grief, to the four-wheel drive at the bottom of Shadow Valley; she who first sighted the bodies in the sizzling heat. Her beautiful mother thrown clear of the wreckage, body splayed over an enormous boulder, sightless eyes turned up to the scorching sun; the man’s body still behind the wheel of the vehicle, windshield smashed, blood all over his face, just as dead. The man was David McClelland, whom her mother had jilted, on the eve of their wedding to marry Heath Cavanagh, a distant cousin and the black sheep of the family.

So many lives ruined all in the name of love!

The coronial inquest had brought in an open finding, leaving both families to endure years and years of cruel speculation, not the least of it the tricky question: who was Nicole Cavanagh’s real father? Everyone knew about the old love triangle, comprising Corrinne Cavanagh and the two young men who’d loved and fought over her. Inevitably doubts about Nicole’s paternity were sown. Rumor had it the victims of the accident may have been arguing—which was likely, given the highly explosive situation that promised to get worse. Corrinne may have made a grab for the wheel, causing McClelland to lose control of the vehicle. The vehicle went over the escarpment plunging to the floor of Shadow Valley. Heath Cavanagh’s account of his movements was accepted—one of Eden’s stockmen vouched for him in any case—but the enmity between Heath and David was legendary. Two neighboring pioneer families, once the greatest friends, had been estranged for several years after Corrinne had jilted her fiancé, David McClelland. Somehow the families had patched it up in a fashion to accommodate Nicole, who was the innocent victim of all this unhappiness. This allowed her to form a deep attachment to the young scion of the McClelland family, Drake. But the early estrangement was nothing compared to the bitter war that broke out after the tragedy.

Without the evidence to prove it, everyone in Koomera Crossing and the outlying cattle stations held Heath Cavanagh responsible, as though he were a demon capable of being in two places at one time. Either that, or it had been a murder-suicide, which no one wanted to believe. Nevertheless no one was really satisfied with the theory of death by misadventure. As a result the speculation continued to run wild.

Nicole told her American friends none of this. Like her, they’d known family tragedy, but not so much as a whiff of scandal had touched their respected name. In the Bradshaws, Nicole saw two handsome, aristocratic people in their mid-sixties who were friends when she truly needed them, alone as she was in another country. They became like family to her.

It was the Bradshaws who had found her her light-filled SoHo loft with its vast industrial windows. The Bradshaws who had introduced her to their wide circle of friends, a good many with sons and daughters her own age. When the Bradshaws saw her paintings, they’d insisted on helping her to get them shown. Through his contacts, Howard Bradshaw had even engineered her TV appearance that afternoon. Brief but important. She’d been introduced as a “sunny, up-and-coming young Aussie artist.” As near-perfect a misnomer as Nicole could think of, for her background was too full of black trauma. One day she reasoned she would confide in Carol fully, but not yet. The past was too close. Too filled with grief. Grief was the worst illness of all.

Carol came to the door to greet her, her face warm and welcoming, shining with pleasure.

“Nikki, dear!” They kissed. Not air kisses, but real displays of affection.

“So sorry I’m late. Traffic, forgive me.”

“Of course. You’re here. We watched your guest spot. You came over wonderfully well. So beautiful and articulate. Howard and I are proud of you.”

“It would never have happened without you and Howard,” Nicole said, smiling, then arm in arm with Carol accompanying her across the spacious and sumptuous entrance hall. A magnificent neoclassical parcel gilt console stood along one wall, overhung by an equally magnificent black lacquer and gilt mirror with two antique English gilt figurine lamps to either side of an exquisite flower arrangement. The Bradshaws were wealthy on a scale that made her own family’s fortune modest by comparison. She could see the elegantly dressed people gathered in the living room, which Carol had recently had made over—God knows why, for it had been beautiful before. Several heads were already turned in their direction. A little knot of people broke up, parting to either side.

Shock sucked the breath from her lungs as she felt the color drain from her cheeks. She put out one hand, then the other. Her mother was staring at her intently from across the Bradshaws’ opulent living room. The most marvelous apparition, astonishingly young and beautiful, a half smile caught on her mouth, her whirling auburn hair floating around her bare white shoulders.

The long years were as nothing. Yesterday. Whoever said time heals all wounds? Someone incapable of great depths of emotion. True love is eternal. Unchanging. It endures beyond death.

The apparition was very slender and delicate, like a fine piece of porcelain. She was wearing Nicole’s favorite color—violet-blue—with an all-over glitter of silver. A beautiful, feminine gown. Shimmering, light as air. Romantic.

Just like hers.

Rapture drained away as pain and despair flooded in. The long wall facing her, she saw now, was set with tall mirrored panels to reflect the chandeliers, the museum-quality antiques and the paintings. There was no apparition. She’d had no miraculous acquisition of psychic powers. How ridiculous to think so.

What she’d seen was her own reflection. An outwardly composed, inwardly disturbed young woman. One who had suffered a shocking childhood trauma and had never broken free of its horror. All those years of therapy, futile. There was no hiding place from grief. The memory of her beautiful mother still held her in its spell. She wanted her back so badly she was capable of unconsciously conjuring her up.

“Nikki, darling, whatever is the matter?” Carol held her arm, gazing at her in dismay. “You’re not ill, are you?”

Howard, tall and distinguished, a worried frown on his face, hastened to their side. “Nikki, dear?” He bent his silver head solicitously to hers.

“I’m so sorry.” From long practice Nicole held herself together. Tried to smile. “I’ll be fine in a minute. I felt a little faint, that’s all. Too much rushing about and the excitement of appearing on the show.” How could she possibly say she thought she’d seen someone long dead?

“I imagine you haven’t taken time off to eat,” Carol scolded gently. “Never mind. I’ve got all your favorite things. There now, your color is back,” she exclaimed in relief. “Howard, be a darling and fetch us both a glass of champagne.”

“Of course.” He hurried off.

Steady, Nicole thought. Steady. She took a calming breath, aware that a silence had fallen over the huge living room. She ran the point of her tongue over her lips. Her mouth was bone dry. A reaction to what she thought she’d seen, no doubt. But Carol and Howard were so very kind, she knew she’d be able to get through the evening.



IN THE EARLY HOURS of the morning the phone woke her, shrilling her out of the tormented dreams that had ceased to plague her for many long months but had returned suddenly in full force. The brain had an extraordinary power to relive the past just as it chose to throw up impenetrable walls. Though she returned to Eden only twice a year—for a short visit at Christmas and for her grandmother’s birthday in June—she couldn’t drive out its demons. They walked with her, talked with her, slept with her, appeared in her paintings, but never, ever would they reveal their secrets.

Moaning softly, her head muzzy, mouth parched, she rolled to the right-hand side of the bed, picking up the receiver without bothering to turn on the bedside lamp. All these years she’d been unable to sleep in complete darkness, so it was her practice to leave a light on somewhere in the loft. The digital readout on the clock radio said 3:24 a.m. She could think of nothing but trouble.

She spoke into the mouthpiece, straining ineffectually at the top sheet that wrapped her like a mummy. “Hello?”

“Nicole?”

Her heart spasmed. She tried to focus on one of her paintings that hung on the opposite wall. A painting of the ruined tower on Eden. It was where her mother and her lover used to go. Hadn’t she followed them as a child, already tuned in to tragedy?

“Nicole, are you there?” Aunt Sigrid spoke across thousands of miles of underwater cable as though she were no more than a block away.

“Siggy, I was asleep. Do you know what time it is here?” She glanced again at the luminous dial of the clock.

“To hell with that!” Siggy, being Siggy, replied. “It’s the early hours, but I had no option.”

Knowing her aunt so well, Nicole snapped together, throwing off the nightmare that clung to her like a shroud. “Bad news?” Why ask when cold certainty assailed her?

“It’s not your grandmother,” Sigrid said, obviously following her niece’s line of thinking. “She’s fine. But you have to come home. Your father has found his way back to Eden.”

“Father? What father?” She felt it like an electrical jolt, kicking out wildly to free herself from the clinging sheet. That wicked man she’d once called Daddy? Never!

“Your father, Heath,” Sigrid reminded her curtly.

“I don’t know him as my father.” Nicole could hear the coldness in her voice.

“He’s your father, Nicole, much as you’ve disowned him.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Finally she was able to sit up, absolutely astounded by the way her aunt kept pulling the rug out from beneath her feet, championing Heath Cavanagh at the most inappropriate times. “I was raised to believe he was my father. That all changed the day they found my mother.” She lost control, finding herself shouting into the phone. “Your sister, Siggy.”

“Don’t try to rattle my cage, girl,” Siggy warned. “You’d feel sorry for this creature if you saw him. He’s come to Eden to die, Nicole. He’s got nowhere else to go. His whole life has been one terrible failure.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “And you’re asking me to feel sorry for him? That’s one heck of a request. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the whole Outback believe he killed my mother and David McClelland? The McClellands sure did.”

Sigrid protested strongly. “There was absolutely no proof. It was a terrible accident. Your mother was known to have a hot temper just like you.”

“Don’t talk like that, Siggy!” Nicole cried. “My mother was a victim. Dead and not even yet thirty-five. A victim of either David McClelland or Heath Cavanagh. She was not suicidal. She would never have left me, I know it. But we’ll go to our graves with all the doubts they left behind. How dare that wicked man come back to Eden when Eden belongs to me.”

“You’d think you deserved it!” Her aunt’s voice rose as though she, too, had been dealt a rotten hand. “What right did I have to inherit, after all? I was only the other daughter, the plain one with the sharp tongue. What right Joel, my son? It had to be you, Corrinne’s daughter. And Heath Cavanagh’s. She was madly in love with him once, I can tell you that.”

“You could tell me lots, but you never have,” Nicole retaliated sharply. “I’m not coming, Siggy. He can stay if there’s nowhere else for him to go, but I never want to lay eyes on him again.”

Sigrid’s anger vibrated over the line. “What makes you think you can treat him like a leper?”

“Sure you weren’t in love with him yourself?” Nicole challenged, her mind in a chaotic whirl. “He’s not my father. And he’s the one who said that, not me.”

“He only said it because he was in a terrible state. He thought Corrinne had left him. He was obsessed with her from the moment he laid eyes on her.”

“So she betrayed her fiancé.” Her throat constricted. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. She swallowed and the awful feeling passed.

“Precisely! She couldn’t help herself. Heath was a magnificent lover.”

“And how would you know?”

“My sister told me,” Sigrid said, seemingly untouched by her niece’s implication.

For an instant Nicole hated her aunt utterly and completely. “No more than that?”

“No more. For God’s sake, Nikki, what are you on about?” Sigrid demanded furiously. “We’re talking about your poor father. He’s in dreadful shape, cirrhosis of the liver. He hasn’t got long. Your grandmother wants you to come home. It’s unforgivable the way you flit in and out, can’t wait to get back first to Paris, now New York. Anywhere else but Eden, where you belong. God knows we’ve all given you time. You should be here. That’s why my father left Eden to you.”

“But surely you enjoy playing boss, Siggy,” Nicole retorted, stripping away all pretense. “We’re made of the same stuff, aren’t we? We’re not crazy about men. We’re crazy about a grand historical station called Eden. When it suits you, you forget Dr. Rosendahl thought it crucial I get away. I was only twelve when I found my mother dead, not a great age to be crushed by horror, so hold on to your compassion.”

Sigrid’s harsh, impatient tone softened. “Do you think I don’t feel for you, girl? You’ve got plenty of guts. You were always strong, even as a child. More guts than my boy. Listen to me now. This is very, very important. I swear on your mother’s grave, David McClelland wasn’t your father. I beg you to believe me. Even the McClellands never entertained the idea you’re one of them, even if you liked to rouse the devil in Drake by suggesting you might be cousins.”

Nicole gave a brittle laugh. “Is he married yet?” She’d never be sufficiently free of her memories of Drake, so glamorous and charismatic in manhood; the boy she’d looked up to in childhood, though she’d had the companionship of her cousin, Joel, Siggy’s son, who’d harbored a nasty jealousy of Drake.

“Why would you be interested?” Sigrid asked dryly. “Hostility between the two of you is the norm whenever you chance to meet. But no, he’s not. Too busy buying up properties. You might consider this. He wants Eden.”

“Be serious, Siggy!” She spoke through clenched teeth. “He’ll never get it.” Yet wasn’t she plagued by that very fear? Siggy was right. Her real place was at Eden, guarding her inheritance.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Sigrid snapped. “You’re no match for Drake McClelland, I can guarantee that. He’s as tough as they come and a brilliant businessman. He’s taken off like a rocket since he inherited Kooltar. It’s no secret, either, he has no love for us Cavanaghs. He could destroy us all.”

Nicole’s answer was unimpressed. “Let him try. I’m not in awe of Drake. We grew up together, remember? I mean, come on, once we were pals.”

“That’s quite a while ago, Nikki. The tragedy changed everything, even if his family couldn’t block him from seeing you. I know some sort of bond still exists, but Drake is the one person who can bring us down. You must know that in your heart.”

Nicole felt cornered by her aunt’s charges. She had seen Drake during her adolescence—they were both invited to every social function that came along as a matter of course—but past events had destroyed any chances of their sunny childhood relationship blossoming into something else. She was hated if only for her looks, which had once belonged to her mother. Still, like Siggy, she had the unshakable conviction Drake McClelland would play a major role in her life.

As the McClelland heir, he’d possessed a juggernaut drive toward achievement. It wasn’t just fame and fortune, and the power that went along with them; Drake wanted a real stake in the country’s future. He wanted to make a contribution, building on everything his forebears had achieved. Eden in anyone’s language was a rich prize.

“Are you there, Nicole, or have you gone into a trance?” her aunt asked testily.

“I’m here,” she answered. “Sorry, I did drift off.”

“And I’m almost out of strength.” Suddenly Sigrid’s voice had a weak flicker. “Are you coming home?”

“I don’t think I could with that man there.”

Sigrid didn’t pause. “Your father. He’s in a sorry plight even if he did bring it all on himself. But I’m sorrier for you, Nicole. You haven’t got a heart.”

Nicole was so shocked tears sprang into her eyes. “Thanks a lot, Siggy. If I don’t have a heart, how come I didn’t toss you and your dear husband out?” Now she didn’t fight the urge. She slammed down the phone, feeling intense pressure build up in her chest.

If only she could be perfectly happy with the life she’d made for herself here. Why she couldn’t was a great puzzle. She had the Bradshaws with their endless kindness. Through them she’d made her own circle of friends. Attractive, accomplished young people, full of hope and ambition. She’d even met someone tonight she felt it might be possible to fall in love with. But the passionate love her mother had inspired in two very different men had destroyed her. And them. Small wonder Nicole had a profound distrust of strong emotions.

She did have her painting, though. That was her release. And she’d been assured by people whose opinion she valued that she had a genuine gift. It was Dr. Rosendahl, healer and mentor, who’d first suggested she use her gift as therapy to exorcise her demons. Rosendahl who had actively encouraged her to continue further study in Paris. Her cup should be overflowing.

Except it wasn’t. Despite everything going so well for her, she was haunted by a strong sense of loss. She had frequent mental images of her desert home. The Timeless Land, where the ancient earth was a rich fiery red, where the sun looked down in unwinking splendor from a cloudless opal-blue sky. Birds were the phenomena of the Outback, and here great colonies of birds screeched their lives away: brilliant parrots, white cockatoos, the gray and rose-pink galahs, the myriad small birds of the vast plains, orange and red, the great flights of budgerigar wheeling and flashing green and gold fire. Endless varieties of waterbirds lived in the maze of waterways, lakes, swamps and billabongs that crisscrossed the vast inland delta that was the Channel Country, a region of immense fascination, rich in legend.

A desert yet not a desert. She knew all it needed was the miracle of rain to turn into the greatest garden on earth.

The station had been named Eden for the impossible, wondrous blossoming in that vast arid wilderness. To be there was an experience forever retained. In her SoHo loft she could almost smell the perfume of the trillions of wildflowers. She could see herself as a child swimming through infinite waves of paper daisies, pure white and sunshine yellow, rushing back to her beautiful mother, standing a little way off, with a chain of them she had fashioned to adorn her mother’s glorious hair.

She knew she wasn’t as beautiful as her mother. She couldn’t be. No one could be. Yet they had had to bury all that beauty on Lethe Hill. Had to leave it to the silence of the desert in plain sight of the eternal red sand dunes that ran to the horizon in great parallel waves.

Nicole settled back on the bed, running her hand through her auburn hair that fell in long loose locks over her shoulders and down her back. What was she to do? Siggy had confirmed her niggling fears. Drake wanted Eden. Why wouldn’t he? It was a strategic, important station with permanent deep water. Maybe he even wanted to raze the historic homestead to the ground and rebuild. Drake had worshiped his only uncle just as she had worshiped her mother. The friendship they’d once shared had proved impossible to sustain; it was as though each was constrained to blame the other for the sin that had been committed. Each had armed themselves with a long sword, letting fly whenever chance brought them together. Their relationship had been damaged beyond repair. These days she seldom surrendered to the luxury of giving her mind over to memories of Drake.

But he was there all the same.




CHAPTER TWO


THINGS DIDN’T RETURN to normal after Siggy’s phone call. Or what passed for normal for her, though recently she had begun to feel her life was starting to come right. Only there was no escaping the past. The more one tried to push it away the more it fought back like some noxious weed that festered and spread.

The truth was, Siggy’s news had upset her badly, bringing back a sharper agony than she’d known in a long time. It stirred up all her old memories of the tragedy that had alienated two families and sent her fleeing halfway around the world in an effort to rebuild her life.

So Heath Cavanagh had landed on Eden’s doorstep to die? He had no right whatever to be there.

Unless he’s your father?

She could never escape that voice in her head. If only she knew without resorting to DNA testing. That would be too humiliating, except it could uncover a huge truth. Or a lie. Though she’d searched for evidence of him in her face and in her behavior, she couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize any Heath Cavanagh in her. No characteristic, no expression. Neither could she mark any resemblance to David McClelland. So who would know? She’d had to totally reappraise her mother’s life. Her adored mother had not been Miss Goody Two-shoes; most certainly David McClelland had been her lover. Before and after her marriage. Well, they’d certainly paid an appalling price for their infidelity.

Her grandparents had refused to talk about it. Siggy was adamant Heath was her father. While she was vocal in condemning him, Siggy could, on occasion, defend him with vigor. One had to wonder why. From all accounts Siggy had been jealous of her beautiful sister. Was it crazy to think at some stage Siggy might have indulged in some petty revenge by stealing Corrinne’s husband, if only one single time? Either that or she’d fallen under Heath Cavanagh’s spell and couldn’t help it. So much that couldn’t be spoken of. No wonder she’d been desperate to get away.

Her grandmother always understanding, never demanding, would love to have her home, though her grandmother had been the first to say the family should listen to Dr. Rosendahl’s advice and send her away from Eden. At least until such time as she felt she could cope.

Who said she could cope now, even after five years of living abroad? Was she strong enough to confront the lingering ghosts? To visit the escarpment, Shadow Valley? Basically she was scarred, and those scars weren’t going to go away. Sometimes she thought she would never be free to get on with her life until she had the answers to all the questions that plagued her.

Perhaps she could find them if she returned home. She was older, a survivor, albeit with unresolved grievances. In some ways it seemed the decision had been made for her. If she found Heath Cavanagh wasn’t in the terrible condition Siggy would have her believe, she’d send him packing. Then there was the threat of Drake and his ambitions. She needed to be home to keep an eye on him. She could see the big advantages that would open up for him and the McClelland cattle chain if Eden fell into his hands, but Eden was her ancestral home. He would never take it from her.

Nicole checked out Qantas flight schedules on the Internet. By the time she disconnected, her plans were already made. It may not have been exactly the thing to do, but she had no intention of notifying the family until the last moment. She’d arrive quietly, before Siggy could cover all bases.



A WEEK LATER she arrived in Sydney thoroughly jet-lagged but thrilled to be back in Australia. She’d left a subzero winter in New York and arrived to brilliant blue skies and dazzling sunshine of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. She always found it impossible to sleep on planes, so she was groggy with exhaustion, her body clock out of whack. She was in no condition to take a connecting flight to Brisbane, so she booked into a hotel and slept. The next day she awoke refreshed, ready for the hour’s flight to Brisbane midafternoon. That meant another night in a hotel and more phone calls before she could arrange a flight out west to the Outback that lay beyond the Great Dividing Range, and from there a charter flight to Eden.

Flying was a way of life in the Outback, with a land mass that covered most of the state of Queensland. The Channel Country where she was heading was home to the nation’s cattle kings. Her people. A riverine desert, it provided a vast flat bed for a three-river system that in the rainy season flooded the distinctive maze of channels that watered the massive stretch of plains. The Channel Country covered a vast area, one-fifth of the state, with the nearest neighbor—in Eden’s case the McClellands—one hundred and fifty miles away. Chances were she’d be completely played out by the time she got home.



AT EAGLE FARM AIRPORT in Brisbane, the same old routine, minus the intensive obligatory checks that had taken place when she’d arrived from overseas. A lengthy process she accepted without complaint in this new dangerous age. Passengers resembling a benign flock of sheep headed off to Baggage Claim, where they milled around waiting for the luggage to come through. When it did, within moments a crush of bodies appeared at the conveyor belt, all eyes glued compulsively on the flap. As the luggage made its way around, it was seized triumphantly and hauled away.

She couldn’t sight her matching Louis Vuitton bags, a going-away present from her grandmother years before. A young woman behind her suddenly rushed forward, nearly knocking her over, and heaved off a great canvas bag covered in travel stickers.

“Sorry!” A rueful grin.

“No problem.”

After a while she began to get worried. Everyone else was picking up their stuff, so where was hers? Maybe someone had taken a liking to her expensive luggage. Absurd to spend so much money on luggage when it got treated so roughly, she thought wearily. Just as she was starting to feel this was no joke and her luggage had been left in Sydney, the first of her cases tumbled out onto the conveyor belt.

Thank God! Still she’d have a battle to get two of the heavy suitcases onto the trolley. She moved forward, prepared to marshal her fading strength.



HIS DRIVER was a short round balding man who stepped forward to identify himself.

“Mr. McClelland?”

“Yes.”

“Jim Dawkins,” the man said cheerfully. “I’m here to drive you on to Archerfield. Mr. Drummond sent me.”

“Yes, I know. I spoke to Harry last night.”

“Just the one case, sir?”

Drake nodded briefly. “It was only an overnight trip.”

“I’m parked out front and down a bit.”

“We might as well get under way.”

“Right, sir.” Dawkins took charge of the overnight bag.

God knows what made Drake turn back to look around the airport terminal. And at that precise moment. But if he hadn’t, he’d have missed her. For a moment he stood immobilized by shock, feeling as if a hand had reached in and twisted his heart.

Nicole Cavanagh. He could count the days since he’d last seen her. June, when she’d returned briefly as she always did for her grandmother Louise’s birthday. June and Christmas, like clockwork before she flew away again.

She had her back to him, standing at the conveyor belt waiting for her luggage. He’d recognize her anywhere by that glorious mane. It was difficult to describe the color, but it always made him think of rubies. Today the familiar cascade of long curling hair was pulled into a loose knot. As she turned—a young woman keen on collecting her luggage surged forward and nearly knocked her down—he saw that flawless skin, milk-white with fatigue, large, blue-green eyes set at a faint slant. Even at that distance, he could see they were shadowed with exhaustion.

Not that anything could dim her beauty and the aura she gave off, a mixture of cool refinement and an innate sexiness he knew she was almost totally unaware of. Every woman he met fell short of Nicole. She was wearing a sleeveless, high-neck top in a shimmery golden-beige, narrow black slacks, high heeled sandals, a tan leather belt with an ornate gold buckle resting on her hips. She looked what she was. A thoroughbred. High-stepping, high-strung and classy. No matter their dark history, he found it impossible to quietly disappear, to simply go on his way and ignore her. He’d heard Heath Cavanagh was back on Eden. Obviously Nicole was returning home to assess the situation.

“Wait for me, could you?” he asked Dawkins who, as an employee of an employee was obliged to do whatever he wanted, anyway. “I’ve just spotted a friend.”

“Right, sir.”

A friend? he asked himself, feeling his nerves tighten. These days they were more like veiled enemies. Too much history between them, old conflicts aired whenever they came face-to-face, but the magnetic attraction that had grown out of their childhood bond somehow survived tragedy and loss. Probably the tensions between them would never go away. But Nicole, like her tragic mother, took hold of the imagination and never let go.

He moved toward her, glad for the little while she couldn’t see him but he could see her. Words would only tear them apart.



NICOLE HAD READIED herself to grab the first case, when a man’s arm shot past her and a familiar male voice said near her ear, “Won’t you let me? The Vuitton, is it? What else?”

She was paralyzed by shock, and her heart leaped to her throat. She spun around, feeling desperately in need of several deep breaths. “Drake?”

For a mere instant there was that unspoken recognition of their physical attraction. “Nicole,” he answered suavely.

“You of all people!” She experienced a strong sense of dislocation, staring up at the commandingly tall young man in front of her. Two years her senior, Drake McClelland emanated strength and confidence, an air of authority he wore like a second skin. He had a darkly tanned face from his life in the sun, singularly striking hawkish features, thick, jet-black hair and dark eyes that were impossibly deep. “How absolutely extraordinary. I’ve hardly been back in the country twenty-four hours, yet you’re one of the first people I meet. What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer for a few moments, apparently preferring to concentrate on collecting her heavy suitcases and depositing them on the trolley, a task he made look effortless. “Like you I’m a traveler returning home. You are returning home, Nicole?”

She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “Yes. Were you on the flight from Sydney? I didn’t see you.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you to,” he found himself saying unkindly, for he hadn’t sighted her, either.

She winced slightly in response to his tone. “So things haven’t changed, it seems.” The last time she’d seen him, in June, it was at a picnic race meeting when inevitably their conversation, civil to begin with, had degenerated into passionate confrontation. Grievances were ageless.

“No.” His features hardened, but there was also a kind of sadness there.

“Have you picked up your luggage yet?” she asked, simply for something to say. She was unnerved, amazed it was so, when for some years now they had lived in different worlds, coming into contact only when she was home. The place of her birth, though vast in size, was populated by a relative handful of people. Station people all knew one another. They were invited to the same functions and gatherings as a matter of course. She rarely refused an invitation when she was home, even if she knew perfectly well Drake would be there.

“I didn’t have luggage, only an overnight bag,” Drake replied over his shoulder. “It’s with my driver. I’m flying out of Archerfield. The plane’s there. How are you getting home?”

No smile. Curt tone. Always the overtones of authority.

“I’m not ready to go home yet, Drake.” She studied his compelling face for a few seconds, then looked away. It made no sense to ache for what you weren’t allowed. “I’m too tired. Too much traveling. I can’t sleep on planes.”

“Neither can I.” He gazed down at her moodily. “So what’s the plan? Stay overnight at a hotel and fly on tomorrow?”

“Something like that.” She flipped back a stray tendril, conscious she was swaying slightly on her feet and unable to do much about it.

His hand shot out to steady her. “You look utterly played out.”

“Thank you, Drake,” she responded wryly, immediately aware of skin on skin, the crackling tension between them.

He dropped his hand abruptly. “Where are you staying?”

“The Sheraton.”

“Then I’ll give you a lift into the city.”

She shook her head, feeling extraordinarily close to tears. Exhaustion, of course. “You don’t have to do that, Drake.”

“I know,” he said, “but since I’ve known you all your life, I don’t feel right leaving you when you’re so obviously jet-lagged. My driver is waiting outside.”

She hesitated, hoping against hope the usual antagonism wouldn’t flare up. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“Right, well…I have to say yes and thank you. But I’m taking you out of your way, aren’t I?”

“It would hardly be the first time,” he said tersely. “I suppose I could change my plans to accommodate yours. It won’t matter much. We could fly back tomorrow. The alternative for you would be many more hours spent arranging connecting flights.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” She spoke quietly, feeling all the distrust and conflicts just below the surface.

“Why not? It’s not as though you don’t have enough on your plate. I heard your father is back on Eden.”

She shrugged. “Heath Cavanagh?”

“There’s no remote possibility your father is anyone else.” The last time they’d met, they’d managed to fight bitterly about her paternity. Accusations full of impotence, despair and fury. The acridity still hung in the air between them.

“Don’t let’s go over that again.” Her breathing was ragged.

“It’d please me greatly never to hear you insinuate it again.”

“What do you know, anyway, Drake?” She stared directly into his dark eyes.

“I know you’re your own worst enemy.” As had happened so many times in the past, their conversation jumped to the deeply personal. No in-betweens. “You’re incredibly bitter about your father.”

“And you aren’t?” Her eyes blazed.

Briefly he touched her arm, a calming gesture that nevertheless had steel in it.

“No one could call us friends anymore, could they, Drake.” She made an effort to pull herself together, conscious that people were looking their way.

Drake moved to the relative privacy of a broad column. “Fate took care of that,” he said dryly, “but we’re still neighbors.”

“So we are. We get invited to the same places.”

“How else would I have seen you in the last five years?” he went on, looking into her face. “Christmas parties, a wedding or two, polo matches…the last time, a picnic race meeting. One has to be grateful for small mercies. Things could change if you really wanted them to, Nicole. You have one solution at hand for this ongoing cause of conflict.”

Hope spurted, died. “You’re talking my father, DNA?” She tipped her head. Tall herself, she still had to look up at him.

“It would settle the paternity issue once and for all.” There was challenge in his voice.

“I couldn’t bring myself to ask him.”

“You don’t have to ask him.”

“I need permission. That’s how it works.”

He kept his eyes on her. “You have a question. I have the answer. The decision is up to you. So far you’ve just made things hard for yourself. And me, too.”

She shrugged, conscious of the truth of his claim. “Have you seen him?”

“I don’t normally pop over to Eden to say hello.”

“Once you did.”

“Yes.” Images of her as a bright and beautiful young girl flashed into his mind. She’d been quite the tomboy, determined, adventurous, brave in her way. Never the sort of kid that tagged along like her cousin, Joel. She had a wonderful natural way with horses, too, which had created an additional bond between them, plus a great love of their awe-inspiring desert homeland.

“Heath is supposed to be dying,” she found herself confiding. “At least that’s what Siggy said.”

“Why does it sound like you doubt her?” He couldn’t help frowning.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said, stalling. “In fact, I don’t want to talk about Heath Cavanagh at all. He’s not a very nice man. He could have blood on his hands. You McClellands long believed it.” She drew a breath, and her next words held a conciliatory note. “I’m afraid of going home, Drake. That’s why I don’t go home.”

“Do you think you have to tell me that?” he responded, his voice rough with emotion. He wanted to reach out for her. Comfort her. Once he would have. “We’d better cut short this conversation,” he suggested. “You’re sagging on your feet. I can’t leave you here while I fly back home alone. I just can’t. I’d be abandoning you to a series of very tiring flights.”

“Indeed you would, but I’ve survived so far.” She straightened her shoulders.

“At this point I doubt much further.” He put a supportive hand under her elbow. “Let’s call a truce. We can go back to being sparring partners after I land you on Eden.”




CHAPTER THREE


NOTHING HAD CHANGED.

From the air Eden looked timeless. Primordial. Majestic. The homestead and its satellite buildings nestled in the shadow of the ragged escarpment that commanded the empty landscape. The colors were incredible. They reminded her of the ancient pottery she’d seen in museums. Orange and yellow, fiery red, molten cinnabar, indigo, the silvery blue of the mirage that danced over the spinifex plains. Vast areas that in the Dry resembled great fields of golden wheat. In the shimmering heat of the afternoon, the lawns and gardens that surrounded the homestead, fed by bores, were an oasis in the desert terrain.

“Eden!” All her love for it was revealed in the one word.

“Home of the Cavanaghs for one hundred and fifty years,” Drake said with a glance at her proud yet poignant expression. “No time at all compared to the Old World.”

“But plenty of time to put down roots.” She stared down at her desert home, knowing it might be already under siege from the very man who sat beside her at the Beech Baron’s controls. “Eden is our castle and we guard it from all comers.” Her voice was charged with emotion and more than a hint of warning. “The ruined tower…” Her voice faltered. That was a slip. She never mentioned the tower.

“Is a relic from the bad old days when it was used as a lookout and fortress against the marauding tribes.” He wouldn’t force her to bring up the personal significance of the tower. “That’s the story, anyway. Personally I think the Aborigines were only trying to defend themselves or cut out a beast for food.”

“We don’t really know. There were mistakes on both sides. Eden and Kooltar suffered several incidents in the same years, the mid 1860s. So did the McQueens farther to our north. A member of my own family and two of the station hands were speared to death barely a hundred yards from the tower door.”

“With the expected reprisals afterward.” His tone suggested the reprisals had been too severe. “Didn’t a tribal sorcerer put a curse on the Cavanaghs?”

A faint shudder passed through her body. “Thanks for reminding me. No one took it lightly. We still don’t.” After the tragedy, hadn’t her grandfather said repeatedly the family was cursed?

He glanced at her sharply. God she was beautiful, and in the way that most moved him. Yet everything about her was dangerous to him. Danger to his self-assurance, his assumption he was in control of his own life.

“It all happened, Drake.” She paused a moment, twisting her fingers. “They went to the ruined tower to make love. My mother and your uncle.”

“There, you’ve said it.” His eyes flashed triumph. “Uncle. That’s it. My uncle. My blood relation. Not yours.”

“Whether I believe it or not is another thing,” she answered, knowing the subject always led to a fierce row.

Just to prove it, he snapped back, “I’m not your cousin, Nicole.” His voice that could sound so attractive suddenly grated. “I have no cousinly feelings whatsoever toward you.”

“Maybe not, but where did the affection we had for each other go? Remember how we used to roam? We’d ride miles into the desert. Come back overheated by the sun to dive into a cool lagoon. You used to let me ride your palomino, Solera, now and again. Even Granddad liked to see you, despite the troubles. He always said you had a great future.”

“Not everything disappeared in a puff of smoke,” Drake mused. “I’m building very successfully on the inheritance Dad left me. The McClelland Pastoral Company is doing well. Making money isn’t hard. Sustaining relationships is a lot harder.”

“So how do you regard me now?” It wasn’t said provocatively, but very quietly.

“The truth?”

“I don’t want you to lie.”

“As your mother’s daughter.” The words came out in an involuntary rush.

She gave him a sad look. “In your eyes, then, a huge flaw. I am my mother’s daughter, Drake, but I’m proud of it. She wasn’t the only one who committed the unforgivable. Your uncle was her lover.”

His remarkable eyes flared. “A very dangerous thing to be. Fiancée, then mistress. It brought their lives to an untimely end.”

“All because they wanted each other. No one really believes it was an accident.”

“Well, if someone else’s responsible, they’re still out there.”

“Supposedly dying.” Her tone was flat.

“I don’t think your father had anything to do with it,” he confounded her by saying. “For all his faults he was far too much in love with your mother to kill her. My uncle maybe. Not her.”

The great shift in his thinking confused her. “What are you trying to do? Rewrite history? Why are you saying this, and why now?”

He shrugged, but kept his eyes on the landscape below. “When were we ever able to discuss the subject without anger? You’ve had five years away to think. So have I.”

“But you believed Heath was responsible somehow?” she protested. “Your whole family did. No one more than your aunt Callista. She was the loudest in her condemnation.”

“That isn’t surprising. She adored her younger brother.”

“So did your father, but he was never cruel. He and your mother simply withdrew into a shell. I heard your mother remarried?”

“Hardy Ingram, the M.P. We’ve known him for years and years. He’s a good man. He’ll look after my mother well, but he’s no substitute for Dad. He was a one-off. He died too young. These past couple of years without him have been sad. My mother couldn’t stay on Kooltar.”

“I can understand that.” She didn’t say that having her difficult sister-in-law around all the time would make things hard, but instead asked, “Is your aunt still living with you?”

“Kooltar is her home.” Clipped, ready to defend.

“She should have married. Gone away.” Nicole sat in sober judgment.

“None of your business, Nicole. We couldn’t all run.”

That stung. “Now, that was cruel.”

His hands on the controls clenched, knuckles whitening. “Yes, it was. Bloody cruel. I apologize. You suffered more than any of us.”

“I found them. How many hundreds of times have I been back over that horrible day? It’s like a video you don’t know how to stop.”

“I can understand that. The shock and the grief killed your grandfather. My own father was never the same after. The way the investigation ended! It as good as left everything up in the air.”

She looked down at her locked hands. Didn’t she live her own life on the brink, just waiting for someone to shove her off? “I’m sorry, too, Drake. But it was never my fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t!” He gave a grimace of dismay. “At the end of the day we were all betrayed. I’ve thought hard about this. As I said, I believe your father had nothing to do with what happened.”

“Then you’re the only one.” She sighed. “If you’re right, that leaves the glaring question of who did. What about Heath’s alibi? What if the stockman was lying? He left the station not long after and conveniently got killed when his ute ran off an Outback track. That’s like having a two-car crash in the middle of the Simpson Desert.”

“It was reported, as well, he’d been drinking heavily for days.”

“Probably had one hell of a guilty conscience. Does your aunt still hate me?”

Drake’s features tightened. “She doesn’t hate you, Nicole.”

“Don’t be daft. Of course she does! When it comes to intuition, men aren’t half as smart as women.”

“I’m not about to disagree,” he answered.

“Good. Around you, Callista was always very careful. Brothers and nephews are sacred. To hell with the rest of us. She never shared your liking for me, even as a child.”

He glanced at Nicole through narrowed eyes. “Can you imagine how difficult it was for her with you the living image of your mother?”

“There are differences,” she declared. “I’m me. I’ll never be unfaithful to my husband. I’ll never abandon my child. Oh, God, Nicole, shut up,” she bid herself, shocked at coming so close to condemning her mother.

“Let it out.”

“I’ve had years of letting it out.”

“Maybe the struggle has been too much. Maybe you have your own secrets you don’t want to be known. At least you have a source of release through your paintings.”

“Yes, maybe. Certainly mine aren’t happy paintings, Drake, although critics seem to find them powerful.”

“I hope I can see them.”

“Sure, I’ll bring some over to the house,” she suggested with heavy irony. “I just know I’d be welcome. Dear Callista hated my mother long before she hated me. Even as a kid I saw glimpses of it.”

“The devil you did! Cally was all set to be your mother’s maid of honor.”

“A piece of diplomacy.”

“You know nothing about it. You weren’t around.”

“Well, you were only a toddler and I could have been already in the womb.” Her voice was perfectly calm, accepting. “I was a premature baby. You’d almost believe it, except I was robust from day one. My mother and I talked a lot, you know. We were very close.”

The gaze he turned briefly to her was piercing. “Are you trying to tell me your mother confessed to you that Heath Cavanagh wasn’t your father?”

She stared back, hot color coming into her cheeks. “No need to look so intimidating. You don’t scare me. She never said anything of the sort.”

“I never believed for a minute she did,” he retorted with complete conviction. “But you must have felt tormented. Did you ever ask?”

“Lord, no!” Nicole gave a violent shake of her head. “I wanted to believe it.”

“What?” A single word delivered like a shot.

“That Heath was my father.”

He gave a short laugh. “He is your father. Your mother would never have lied to you about that.”

“She didn’t lie, either, when she told me Callista hated her. Callista believed her brother’s love for my mother threatened her own relationship with him. You’ve heard of envy, haven’t you? It’s one of the deadly sins. Even Siggy envied my mother, her own sister.”

He shook his head wearily. “What else did you expect? It must have been very difficult for Sigrid to have a sister as beautiful and as fascinating as Corrinne. Poor Sigrid lacked those qualities.”

“And Heath Cavanagh never let her forget it.”

Hadn’t he always thought there was something there? Drake pondered. Sigrid’s unrequited desire for her brother-in-law? “Corrinne besotted them all,” he said finally. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but your relationship with Joel might have similarities.”

She shot him a horrified glance. “You’re insane!”

“I wish.” His sidelong glance was deadly serious. “I think your mother had a few concerns Joel was too much around you.”

Nicole couldn’t restrain herself. She threw out a hand, clasping his strong wrist as hard as she could.

“Don’t do that, Nicole.” He shook her off, suddenly seeing a vision of his uncle behind the wheel, the beautiful woman beside him, striking out in anger, perhaps making a dangerous grab for—

“You make me so angry!”

“You always did have a temper,” he observed grimly. Something she shared with her mother?

“Well, you arm yourself with your tongue, I think. You’re making up all this business about Joel.”

“I don’t make things up, Nicole. You should know better.”

“But Joel and I were reared together. He’s my first cousin.”

“So he is. Maybe he finds that a problem. He can’t focus on anyone else.”

She averted her head. “Why do you hate Joel?”

“I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anyone. But even when we were kids, he was never harmless.”

“What do you mean?” Oddly she half understood.

“You’re never going to get your head out of the sand, are you.”

“Are you implying something was wrong?” She found the whole subject too difficult to deal with.

“Of course not. But didn’t your mother who spoke to you of so many things ever suggest to you Joel was too dependent on your company, your affection?”

“No, she didn’t!” Nicole’s answer was vehement. “What have you got Joel pegged as now? An incestuous psycho?” Had her mother ever mentioned something on the subject? If she had, Nicole was unwilling to open the door of her memories even a crack.

“First cousins can and do marry. Forgive me, it’s just that I’m not comfortable with Joel. I never was. I remember him forever hovering, always wanting to know what we were talking about. He was right there at the race meeting in June. Hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Probably thinking he should break us up. Joel really cares about me.”

“We all know that. Nevertheless, a word of warning won’t go astray now you’re back on Eden.”

Her mind turned over his words, rejected them. “Why oh why do people get things so wrong?”

“I’m only trying to put you on guard. The protective streak I developed a very long time ago.”

“If there’s any threat to me, it could come from you,” she said quietly. “We both know you’d like Eden. You’d like the Minareechi.” She referred to Eden’s largest, deepest, permanent stream that in flood turned into a tremendous sheet of water, the breeding ground for huge colonies of nomadic waterbirds.

He said nothing, so she continued, “You’d like to add it to the McClelland chain?”

Finally he spoke, his tone mild. “I’d be right there if Eden ever came on the market. Why not? If I didn’t get it, someone else would. Has someone been dropping little hints in your ear, Nic?” He shocked her by using his childhood name for her. “Most probably Sigrid, while she was delivering the news that your father had returned.”

“Siggy’s no fool,” Nicole said.

“I’ll happily acknowledge that. But Eden has gone down, Nicole, you have to admit. It’s no longer the same as it was in your grandfather’s time. Sigrid does her best, but she’s no replacement for Sir Giles. Her husband is little use to her. Alan’s an odd bird, actually. You could know him for years and years and yet never really know him. And Joel isn’t performing well as manager. You must have felt the weight of that when you were last here. He’s arrogant. He has a harsh tongue on him. He’s devoted to heavy arguments, instead of getting on with the job. Eden has had trouble holding on to good men. I’d say that was testament to Joel’s style of management.”

“No doubt you’ve poached them away,” she accused him, perturbed by the truth of what he was saying.

“As it happens, three of your stockmen found work on Kooltar in the last couple of months. One of them said your cousin scared the hell out of him.”

Color flew into her cheeks. “Is this an all-out attack on Joel?”

“If that’s how you see it. Ask around, Nicole,” he suggested grimly. “Joel has developed quite a reputation for violence. There was an incident in Koomera Crossing that left the locals pretty disturbed. A bar fight. Apparently unprovoked. It took four men to hold Joel down. He’s been barred from Mick Donovan’s.”

Her whole body tensed. “So he crossed the line once. He’s aggressive, just like all men are. Why are you telling me this?”

“For the obvious reason you need to know. Your cousin Joel isn’t Eden’s future.”

“Eden belongs to me.”

“Are you sure you want it?” His words were very direct.

“Of course I want it. Eden’s my heritage. It’s in my blood.”

“But you prefer to live in New York?”

“You think that means I don’t love and miss my home?” She stared at his strong profile. “New York has been my safe haven. It’s a fabulous place. A city I’ve come to know and love. The city and its people. All the more so since September 11. I have wonderful friends there who’ve helped me rebuild my life. I take my painting seriously. I’m becoming known. I’m making an impression.”

“So I’ve heard.” His voice was filled with admiration.

“How? Through the family?”

His response was ironic. “I told you, I don’t have casual conversations with any members of your family. I have my own sources.”

Her tone was caustic. “They’re usually called moles.”

“We were all desperately concerned for your safety after we discovered the full extent of the destruction in New York. I was glad of my moles then. So, believe it or not, was Callista. Are you returning to the States?”

She took a deep breath, staring down at her locked hands. “Not for a while, Drake. There are things I need to address. Conflicts and identifications. Perspectives.” Maybe even Joel’s problematic impulsiveness.

“If solving once and for all who your biological father is, the answer is at hand. For all you say, Nicole, you have no real hope of moving forward until you face the truth.”



JOEL WAS THERE to greet her when they landed. Tall and lanky, broad shoulders, dressed in jeans and a bush shirt, high boots on his feet, a black akubra rammed on his sun-streaked blond head. No one who saw them together would recognize them as blood relatives, Nicole thought. She was a Cavanagh, while Joel took after his father, Alan. They both had narrow heads, narrow faces, and sharp regular features that could look foxy on occasions.

“Are you going to speak to Joel? Try to patch things between you?” Nicole asked Drake, her tone with a certain appeal in it.

“No chance! We’ve never really communicated.”

“Oh, please, Drake.”

Her look of anxiety weighed on him. “I can’t see it doing much good, but okay.”

“God, what an honor! The great Drake McClelland!” Joel approached at a lope, glittery-eyed, confrontational, despite his lopsided grin. He opened his arms wide for Nicole to walk into them.

It was so much easier to do so than not, regardless of what Drake had said about Joel. “The prodigal returns.”

His kiss of greeting was startling, for it was not on the cheek as she’d expected but on the corner of her mouth.

“Nikki!” He gave a nervous laugh, hugging her so tightly she was afraid she’d have bruises. “Boy, is it good to see you!” His eyes shot sparks. “You can’t know how I missed you.” He drew back a little, searching her face.

“I missed you, too, Joel. I missed everyone. I miss my home.”

“I hope you mean that.” Joel’s gaze turned still and serious before he brightened. “They’re all waiting for you. Including your dad at death’s door. Eden is like the dark side of the moon without you, Nikki.”

His words sounded so extravagant that for a moment she didn’t know what to say. “I needed space, Joel. Time. I never want to hurt anyone with my continuing absence.”

“It’s taken having your father back to bring you home again. Never mind. I don’t care what the reason is, just the fact you’re here. You look marvelous. More beautiful every time I see you.”

“Molecules, Joel,” she told him lightly. “The way they’re arranged. You look great, too.” Gently so as not to offend him, she withdrew from his embrace. For the first time ever she felt self-conscious with her cousin and she blamed Drake.

Joel’s eyes moved briefly to Drake, who had never been his friend, preferring Nicole every time. “How you two managed to run into each other I’ll never know.” He eyed Drake closely as though he suspected it was no accident at all.

“The element of chance,” Drake drawled. “Now that Nicole is safely delivered, I’ll be on my way.”

“Why rush off? Long time no see.” Joel’s tone was bright, but Nicole clearly saw the venom. Like his father, Joel had a giant chip on his shoulder.

“Things to do. Always things to do,” Drake declined in an easy, casual voice.

“If what I hear is true, you’re negotiating to buy out Vince Morrow.”

Drake shrugged. “First rule of business, Joel. Don’t give out advance information.”

“You never change, do you.” A definite sneer. “Always the big man. The big action hero. Or that’s how everyone seems to view you. Not me.”

“That seems certain,” Drake responded. “I think I’ll go before this gets nasty.”

“Only fooling. Just testing,” Joel said, and suddenly grinned. “Fact is, Drake, I’ve always admired you. You always were someone. Even as a kid. A kid destined to go places, according to my dear grandpa. ’Course, you had a head start, being your dad’s heir.”

“I think I’ll skip the compliments, too,” Drake said, secure in his ability to handle difficult customers like Joel Holt. He turned his head to Nicole, who was looking on in dismay, no doubt waiting for the right moment to intervene.

“Thank you so much for the flight, Drake,” she said quickly. “You saved me a heap of trouble.”

“My pleasure.” He looked at her steadily, making up his mind. “I’ve done a lot of changes on Kooltar. Maybe you’d like to see it sometime?”

“My God, is that an invitation?” Joel cut in, his tone high and derisory.

“The invitation is extended only to Nicole.” Something flickered in Drake’s eyes, signaling he wasn’t going to take much more.

“And I accept it.” Nicole threw Joel a quelling look, which he promptly mimicked.

“Don’t tell me you two have made up,” Joel said incredulously.

“We’re simply being civilized,” Drake said. “We’re neighbors. Our families were once close. Nothing can be accomplished when people are divided. I’ll give you time to settle in, Nicole, before I ring you to set a time.”

“Thanks again, Drake.” Given Joel’s aggressive attitude, she was on tenterhooks waiting for Drake to go.

“Be seeing you.” He sketched a brief salute, then strode to the Beech Baron. He didn’t so much as glance back.

“God, would you look at him!” Joel muttered, tanned skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. “Arrogant son of a bitch. Always did have that contemptuous air. Magnet for the women, though. A real stud. He’s as good as engaged to Karen Stirling.”

“Really? He never said.” Nicole felt a betraying hot flush.

“What does it matter to you?” Joel asked, eyeing her closely. “For years now the two of you can’t even look at each other without a fight starting. You launched right into an argument the last time you were here.”

“You really saw it like that?”

“Are you telling me it wasn’t like that?” Joel’s gray-green eyes locked onto hers.

“I’m telling you I’m tired of the fighting. I’m tired of the hostility. As Drake said, our two families were close once. We still share a common bond. We love the land. I’m hoping with a little goodwill on both sides we can narrow the chasm that’s divided us.”

Joel guffawed. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Are you hiding something from me, Nikki?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s high time we buried the hatchet. Granddad’s gone. So’s Drake’s father. The result of a single tragedy. It’s so damn sad.”

With a callused hand, Joel grasped her face and turned it to him. “You’d be the biggest fool in the world to trust Drake McClelland,” he warned. “He’s a devious bastard. He wants Eden.”

“Well, he can’t have it.” Nicole considered her cousin squarely. “Let go of my face, Joel. You’re getting much too aggressive. I want to go up to the house. I’m like they say in the song, I’m tired and I want to go home. I’ve done an awful lot of traveling. I’m not a good traveler.”

“Sure, Nikki. I’m sorry. But I’ve been through a bad time, too.”

“How exactly?” Nicole asked him quietly.

“I miss you so much when you go away. This coming and going is torture.”

She exhaled. “That sounds so…oppressive. You don’t depend on me for your happiness, Joel. If you do, there’s something wrong.”

He lifted his palms, dropped them again. “Is it wrong to miss you when you go away? God, Nikki, we grew up together. Under the same roof. Doesn’t my missing you make sense?”

Unsure of herself, Nicole expressed regret. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“But you’re home now.” Joel smiled, leaning forward to impulsively kiss her on the forehead. “I’m just so grateful.”




CHAPTER FOUR


SHE COULD SMELL the scents of her country. Feel its intense dry heat, bask in the radiant light so different from the light of the northern hemisphere.

Eden homestead faced her across a great down-sweep of lawn, the broad stream of the Minareechi at its feet, meandering away to either side. Black swans sailed across its dark green glassy surface as they always had. There was a small island in the middle of the river, ringed by great clumps of white arum lilies, heavily funereal. A life-size white marble statue of a goddess stood on a marble plinth at its center, the base almost obscured by a purple mass of water iris. It should have been a romantic spot. In better days it had been. Her mother had loved it. Now the place bore a faintly haunted air.

Joel pulled up at the base of the semicircular flight of stone steps that led to the front entrance of the homestead. Eden was a departure from other historic homesteads. A large country house in the grand style, it showed more than a little of French influence with its great mansard roof and round viewing tower in the west wing. The first chatelaine of Eden, Adrienne, had been French. No expense had been spared to please her, uprooted as she was from a land of immense beauty and culture to a vast, arid, primitive wilderness, scarcely explored. Nevertheless, Adrienne had not only survived but flourished, bearing six living children. The French connection persisted. One of her great-aunts had married a distant French cousin and still lived in a beautiful house outside of Paris, Nicole’s base when in Europe. A Cavanagh relative had brought a French bride home from the Great War.

Now Eden faced her with its proud tradition of service to its country. Her grandfather had been knighted for his services to the pastoral industry, as had his father before him. No such honor for Heath Cavanagh even if the queen’s honor system hadn’t been disbanded in favor of Australian honors. Drake McClelland would have been in line for that.

The great columns that formed the arcaded loggia were smothered not in the ubiquitous bougainvillea, but the starry white flowers of jasmine. The perfume was a potent blast from the past. Jasmine and its terrible associations. The day of the funeral… She tried to block its cloying scent, deciding then and there to have the whole lot pulled down and replaced with one of the gorgeous African clerodendrums.

“Welcome home,” Joel declared, his hands on her shoulders possessively. “Let’s go up. They’ll all be waiting for you. Gran is nearly sick with excitement.”

“I’m excited myself. I can’t wait to see her.” Neither of them mentioned Heath. Nicole looked around at her luggage.

“Barrett can take care of it.”

“Who’s Barrett?” she asked halfway up the stairs.

“The Barretts,” Joel told her carelessly. “Mother hired them fairly recently.”

“So what does Mrs. Barrett do? Help Dot?”

“Dot? Mum pensioned her off.”

Nicole’s first reaction was outrage. “Without speaking to me?” She heard the heat, the bewilderment, in her voice. “Dot’s been with us forever.” In fact, Dot had been born on Eden to a couple in service to the family. They’d lost Dot for a few years when she was married to an itinerant stockman who regularly beat her up and tried to sell her off to his friends. Afterward she’d returned to Eden penniless, defeated, permanently scarred, to ask for her job back. It was given to her gladly.

“Dot looked after us as kids, Joel,” she reminded him. “She was our nanny. She was wonderfully kind and patient. Did she want to go?”

“Don’t ask me.” Joel shrugged the whole matter off. “I don’t interfere in the domestic arrangements. She was getting on, you know. Hell, seventy or thereabouts.”

“All the more reason to keep her. I thought you were fond of her.”

“Nikki, the only person I’ve ever cared about is you.” Joel gave her a strangely mirthless smile. “I thought you knew that. Don’t worry about Dot. Mum would have looked after her.”

“I should hope so,” Nicole muttered, thinking this wasn’t the end of it. Siggy had no business sending Dot on her way. Even if Dot had wanted to go, Siggy should have told her. Eden was hers, not Siggy’s, wasn’t it?

“Please don’t be cross, Nikki,” Joel begged with a quick glance at her face. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Who’s happy? Are you?” she asked briskly. “Occasional flashes of it are all we can expect.”

“I need you to be happy,” Joel said, putting much emphasis on you.

Once they were inside the huge entrance hall, the symbolic center of the house with its great chandelier, magnificent seventeenth-century tapestry and elaborate metalwork on the central staircase, a man and woman suddenly made their appearance. The woman was tall, rail thin, with short dark hair and deep-set eyes; the man was noticeably shorter. Neither of them looked particularly pleasant.

Joel introduced them briefly as Mr. and Mrs. Barrett. Dislike at first sight? Nicole wondered. It wasn’t until she moved closer that she registered that the blankness of their expressions was actually shock. They looked the way people did when they saw a ghost.

Ah. It was her mother’s portrait in the drawing room. Of course. She could have posed for it herself.

“Right, Robie, you can collect the luggage and take it up to Miss Cavanagh’s room,” Joel ordered sharply, irritated by the pair’s demeanor. “Where’s my mother?”

Mrs. Barrett was the first to recover. “Mrs. Holt will be here directly, sir. She asked to be told the minute you arrived. Lady Cavanagh is resting. I’ll let her know you’re here, Miss Cavanagh.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Barrett. I’ll see to that myself,” Nicole was quick to answer.

Mrs. Barrett inclined her head respectfully, now a model of deference. “Mr. Holt is in his study.”

In fact, Alan was coming down the central staircase that very minute. Nicole looked up quickly, caught his expression before he had time to change it.

It wasn’t welcome. It certainly wasn’t joy as in, Darling Nicole’s home! It was even possible he wasn’t happy to see her at all. Uncle Alan had always played his cards close to the vest. No one ever knew what he was thinking, and he didn’t even seem to have a past. Her mother had always said it was impossible to say what lay behind that bland exterior. Alan Holt escaped into his own world, but because of his fortuitous marriage lived exceedingly well.

Now around sixty Alan was still a handsome man, very elegant in his bearing. His full head of hair, once as blond as Joel’s, was an eye-catching platinum. Did he enhance it? She wouldn’t be in the least surprised, though Alan would keep them all in ignorance. His eyes behind his trendy rimless glasses were a frosty gray-green. “Fanatic’s eyes,” Heath Cavanagh once called them. Nicole thought that ridiculous. She’d never seen Uncle Alan get worked up about anything. Except after the tragedy, when he had sealed himself off in his own private tomb. Inside the extended Cavanagh family, some of them admittedly terrible snobs, no one could understand why Sigrid had married him. He wasn’t “solid, one of us.” He’d been an actor touring with an English repertory company when Sigrid, quite out of character, fell madly in love with him and married him before she’d had time to think about it; a quick private ceremony without benefit of family. Something she was never to live down. At least the marriage had lasted, though her grandfather had once remarked wryly, Alan would be terrified at the idea of going back to earning his own living.

Now he came down the steps holding his arms out to Nicole as though she was the nicest thing he’d seen in years. Pure theater. “Nicole, dearest girl!” An actor’s good carrying voice, plummy accent, real? Religiously acquired? Who knew? That was privileged information.

“Uncle Alan! How wonderful to see you again.” Hypocrisy was everything in polite society. Much as he had tried to win over her affections, Nicole had always found it difficult to get close to this man. Her grandmother, rather like Drake, was fond of saying, “One could live with Alan for fifty years and never know him.”

As always he was impeccably groomed, a light jacket over his moleskins, smart open-neck yellow-and-white checked shirt. Pleasant whiff of cologne. A dandy. Useless around Eden. He didn’t need to be busy. In the early days Siggy had been afraid that her sister’s beauty would turn Alan’s head. Of course, no such thing happened. David McClelland had been the center of her mother’s life then, only there’d been no future for either of them.

They talked for a few moments about her long, exhausting journey getting there. “One would have to try covering the distances to know!” Amazement was expressed that Drake McClelland had elected to fly her home. How was he?

“As splendid as ever!” Nicole couldn’t help saying, even though she knew Joel would take umbrage.

She excused herself to go to her room. Tidy herself up before she went in to see her grandmother. She didn’t have a room exactly. She had almost an entire wing. Clear the furniture, and Joel and his friends could have a polo match in her bedroom. Siggy had arranged it all in a vain bid to keep her at home. A leading decorator had been flown from Sydney to take charge of extensive refurbishments. The upshot was a suite of rooms that wouldn’t have looked amiss at Versailles. All the rooms in Eden were huge by modern standards, with lofty richly decorated ceilings. When the decorator had seen the scope of his commission, he had gone crazy with joy, muttering excitedly to his sidekick about how much it would all cost. Normally very thrifty for a rich woman, Siggy had given the decorator and his team carte blanche.

It didn’t add up to a decorating triumph. The designer had gone right over the top, creating lavish spaces only Marie Antoinette could have handled. Nicole would have to make a few changes even if Siggy didn’t like anyone to challenge her judgment. A lot had changed since she’d grown up and Granddad had died and left her Eden. Shifts in authority. Power. Roles.

Dinner was always at eight. She knew they would all meet downstairs in the library at half-past seven for drinks. Inside the well-appointed bathroom, with far too many mirrors—she wasn’t that keen on an aerial view of her bottom—she took a quick shower to freshen up. Someone, probably the dour Mrs. Barrett, had laid out soaps, body lotions, creams, potions, a series of marvelously ornate bottles containing products for the bath. That was okay. Every woman liked a bit of pampering. In a mirrored cupboard she found a variety of over-the-counter painkillers of different strengths, tubes of antiseptic cream, bandages—in case she decided to slit her wrists? Everyone had heard her story, knew she’d seen a psychiatrist for years. She remembered the time when even Siggy, the hardest-headed of all, had major concerns she might turn into, if not a nutter, a complete neurotic.

Satin-bound monogrammed pink towels had been set out, along with a pink toweling robe. She slipped into it, tying the belt, then opened her suitcases and put her clothes away. She spent several minutes deciding what to wear. Finally she dressed in a simple, white linen top and matching skirt, embellished with a fancy belt. She took two regular headache tablets, and only the thought of seeing her much-loved grandmother and not-so-much-loved aunt kept her from collapsing in a heap on the bed. Her hair had more life than she did in the summer heat. She brushed it back severely, twisting the curling masses into a heavy loop.

Her grandmother Louise and Aunt Siggy were waiting for her in her grandmother’s sitting room, which adjoined the master-bedroom suite.

“My darling girl!”

The woman she loved most in all the world. “Gran.” She flew to her, sending her aunt a sideways warm greeting. Her grandmother remained seated in her armchair, a sure sign of aching bones, graceful and amazingly youthful-looking for a woman approaching seventy. She was beautifully groomed from head to toe—Nicole had never seen her any other way—but frailer than the last time Nicole had seen her.

“I’ve been praying and praying you’d come home.” Louise Cavanagh held her granddaughter’s face between her hands. “If only for a little while, Nikki. Just seeing you gives me so much joy and strength.”

Nicole blinked back smiling tears. “I think of you every day, Gran. I dream of you when I sleep.”

“I love you so much, my darling.”

They were cheek to cheek. Hair touching. One a rich deep red, the other snow-white. When each drew back, their eyes glittered with tears.

The three women kept off the subject of Heath Cavanagh until all other questions had been raised and answered. Louise and Sigrid had long since heard about the Bradshaws—both from time to time had spoken on the phone to Carol, thanking her and her husband for looking out for Nicole. They were very grateful. They wanted to know all about her painting, her recent TV appearance, her continuing success. They wanted to know more about New Yorkers. And had Nicole met anyone—a man—she really liked? They knew of Carol’s efforts, Nicole’s few aborted relationships, the difficulty she had sustaining them. Most of all they wanted to know how she and Drake McClelland had got on. Just imagine, what were the chances of the two of them running into each other at Brisbane airport?

At one time her grandparents had lived for a happy union between the two families, planned a beautiful big wedding to be held on Eden. Their beloved daughter, Corrinne Louise to David Michael McClelland. It was to have been perfect. Only, scarcely a month before the wedding, Corrinne shocked and enraged both families by eloping with the devilishly handsome, hard-drinking, compulsive gambler Heath Cavanagh, a distant cousin. He not only stole Corrinne away. He stole the grand plan both families had laid down when Corrinne and David were little more than babies. Deprived them of the union of two pastoral dynasties. David was pitied. For a time he suffered severe withdrawal—there was a rumor, never substantiated, he had once attempted suicide—but the love of his family and the dynamic support of his older brother, Drake’s father, saved his sanity.

Until he became involved with Corrinne again. The moth to the flame. Heath Cavanagh as a husband wasn’t long in favor. David, her first and last lover, returned. After that it was only a question of time before tragedy overtook them. There was no way, given that particular triangle, they could escape their brutal destiny.

“So where is Heath?” Nicole asked finally, knowing there was no putting it off.

“He keeps to his room mostly,” Sigrid said. “As I told you he’s very ill.”

“Shouldn’t he be in hospital with the proper care?”

“It may come to that, but for now he desperately wants to stay here. He’s come home to die.”

“This isn’t his home,” Nicole said flatly.

“My darling, he is your father.” Louise spoke in a near whisper. “He may have done lots of things to cause the family shame, but he’s one of us. Our blood.”

“Do you really believe that, Gran?”

“I certainly do,” Sigrid suddenly barked. “Corrinne chose him. She had David, but she couldn’t keep herself in line. She was a man-eater, and she looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You’re not a cold person, Nicole. Just the opposite, but you’re so bitter about your father. He suffered, too, you know.”

“What a lie.” Nicole’s blue-green eyes flashed.

“You were too young to see it,” Sigrid said, her throat flushed with emotion. “Too much in shock. That man suffered.”

“That monster! I’ve never spoken of it, but he used to slap me.”

“I know nothing of this!” Louise said in amazement.

“I didn’t want to start anything. Upset you or Granddad. He tried to throw a scare into me. It didn’t work.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sigrid said in a derisive voice. “You were just so…”

“What?”

“Spunky, I suppose. Cheeky. Too precocious.”

“She was adorable,” Louise protested, never one to find fault in her even when she deserved it, Nicole knew.

“That man didn’t love me. He didn’t want me around.”

Sigrid snorted, loud as a horse. “That’s not true, even if no one really rated beside Corrinne.”

“I don’t understand how you can defend him, Siggy—when it suits you, that is,” Nicole said.

This time Sigrid inhaled forcefully. “Because I feel sorry for him.”

“Well, I hate him. I mean, I really hate him. I could have had my mother—”

“You can’t get off it, can you? You’ve got some incredible block.”

“Block, be damned!” Nicole saw red.

“My dears, please stop.” Louise held a lavishly be-jeweled hand to her head.

“I’m so sorry, Gran.” Nicole broke off immediately. She and Siggy had always gone at it.

“There has to be hope for us,” Louise said. “If Drake has asked you over to Kooltar, surely we can see that as a thawing, can’t we?”

“Gracious me, who’d want to call on Callista?” Sigrid hooted. “You surely don’t think you’re going to fall into her outstretched arms, Mother. She bloody hates us, the cold bitch. She blames us all for the loss of her brother. She worshiped at his feet. Everyone knows that. If I’d have been her mother, I’d have sent her packing.”

“To where?” Nicole asked. “That’s hardly fair. She was the daughter of the house.”

“They should have sent her to one of her relatives in Sydney or Melbourne,” Siggy said sternly. “Opened up her life. Station living is too isolated. We’re too much in one another’s pockets. Callista was positively fixated on her brother. A byproduct of a lonely life. I tell you, if he hadn’t been her brother, she’d have tried to bag him. She was too close. A bit kinky, I’d say.”

“Like Joel is too close to me?” Nicole shocked her by saying.

Sigrid, on the voluptuous side when young, now bone thin, let out a swearword that made her mother wince. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not at all the same. Tell her, Mother.”

Louise sighed deeply, flapping her right hand helplessly. “I’m not sure if Nicole isn’t right.”

A worse swearword escaped Sigrid. “You’ve only just come home, Nicole, and you’re already stirring things up.”

“I’m trying to understand what’s going on in my life, Siggy,” Nicole responded hotly. “I don’t want to upset you, especially when you let fly like a station hand. This may not be the time to ask, either, but why did you get rid of Dot?”

“Why talk about bloody Dot?” Sigrid made a gesture as though she was swatting a fly. “It was time she retired. She wanted to live on the coast.”

“I never, ever heard her express that desire.” Nicole lifted her eyebrows.

“It seems she did, darling,” Louise intervened gently.

“She said that to you, Gran?” Nicole was amazed. “She said nothing to me and I was here in June. Why so sudden?”

“I don’t know, darling, but she seemed quite happy to leave. I was most surprised. I thought Dot was a fixture on Eden.”

“If you give me her address, Siggy, I’d like to contact her.” Nicole turned to her aunt.

Sigrid nodded stiffly. “I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere. If you don’t trust me, Nicole, to make decisions…”

“Of course I trust you, Siggy.” Nicole felt free to lie. “You should have told me, all the same. Dot was devoted to Joel and me when we were children. How much severance did you give her?”

“Certainly not a blank check.” Sigrid pulled a long face. “But enough to keep her comfortably for the rest of her life. That’s if she’s careful.”

“If you don’t want to say it, Siggy. Write it,” Nicole suggested acidly.

“All right, twenty thousand.” Sigrid compulsively smoothed her thick caramel-colored hair, her best feature for all her tendency to hack at it with nail scissors.

Nicole shook her head in dismay. “That was supposed to be generous? She could live for another twenty years unless she meets up with a bus.”

“I don’t think so,” Sigrid replied briskly. “Dot smokes like a chimney. I thought anyone who smoked was a leper these days. No one could stop her, though she didn’t dare smoke in the house. She’ll probably finish up with lung cancer.”

“Dot, poor Dot, what a vulnerable soul!” Nicole moaned. “This isn’t the end of it, Siggy. I have to ensure Dot is secure. That’s the least I can do. I suppose I can even meet Heath Cavanagh if I put my mind to it. If he’s not as ill as you’re saying, I’ll put him on the first plane out of here.”

“What about Zimbabwe?” Sigrid challenged. “Is that far enough?”

“You won’t want to when you see him, my darling,” Louise promised very quietly.




CHAPTER FIVE


WHERE WAS the handsome, rather bullish man she remembered? Where was the bulk of chest, the width of shoulder? The florid patches in darkly tanned cheeks? The voice like an erupting volcano? The intimidating demeanor? The glitter in large, mesmerizing, black eyes? Gone, all gone. His illness had reduced him to a haggard shell.

“Hello, Heath,” she said softly, venturing into the large elegant room this man had once shared with her mother. Even with fresh air streaming through the open French doors, it had a sickly fug.

“Nicole.” He moved to stand up, but fell back coughing into the deep leather armchair someone must have brought in for him. Siggy, probably. Nicole didn’t remember its being there.

“You look ill.” He looked far worse than ill. Despite herself she felt badly shaken.

“I am ill, bugger it, but the heart is still pumping.” A faint echo of the bluster. “How beautiful you are, girl. Aren’t you going to kiss your dear father?”

“That’s one heck of a question to ask. No, I’m not. You’re lucky I have such a sweet nature, otherwise I wouldn’t have come to visit you.” She didn’t have the heart to say she half believed her real father was dead.

“Don’t blame you,” he mumbled. “Terrible father. No skills for it. No skills for husbanding. The only bloody thing I was ever good at was bedding women. And on my good days backing the right nags. Please sit down. I hope you’re going to stay a while.”

“So we can chat?” The animosity was unfolding. Nevertheless she did as he asked, taking a chair several feet away, facing the balcony.

“Sarcastic little bitch!” he grunted, his near-affectionate tone defusing the insult. “All right, so I’m a beast and a brute, but I care about you, Nicole. In my own miserable, insensitive way. Didn’t have much to give after your mother— Adored her. The plain truth.”

“I expect you’ve convinced yourself that’s true.”

“What do you know about passion, girl?” The sunken eyes flashed.

“Not much, but it’s nice of you to be concerned. Most days I walk about frozen inside. That comes from finding the bloodied and smashed bodies of my mother and her lover in the desert with the carrion circling. Some people might call that a fairly seismic trauma. And the name’s Nicole, by the way. I don’t answer to girl. It’s on my say-so that you’ll be staying on Eden.”

He looked amused. “Pardon me, but is that a threat, my lady?”

“It sure is,” she answered laconically.

“Even as a kid you knew how to crack the whip. Granddad’s little princess.”

“All destroyed.”

“Yes.” His sigh rattled. “I beg your pardon most humbly, Nicole, even if you were reared an uppity little madam. Not my doing.”

“Maybe you never knew how to speak to me properly, you cruel man.”

“When was I cruel to you?” He appeared genuinely taken aback.

“You used to take swings at me all the time.”

“When did one land?”

“I was too quick.”

He started to laugh, stopped, hand on chest, as though it pained him greatly. “You never told on me to your granddad. I admired that. I’d like to stay here, Nicole, if you can stand me. I haven’t got a lot of time…”




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