Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family: Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family
Margaret Way
Barbara Hannay
OUTBACK BACHELORMargaret WaySkye McCory grew up dreaming of dating the heir to the famous McGovern cattle empire but Keefe McGovern was way out of her league. Now she’s a high-flying lawyer and back in Dinjara… But Skye and Keefe coming together would blow their families apart…THE CATTLEMAN’S ADOPTED FAMILY Barbara HannayTall, rangy, and stop-and-stare gorgeous in his battered jeans and faded shirt, Outback cattleman Seth Reardon sets Amy Ross’s nerves jangling. There’s no time for distractions, Amy’s come to Serenity in the driving rain to tell Seth he’s a father!
Praise for the author:
‘Margaret Way has over 80 books in print, all with a few things in common: glorious scenery, strong characters, and a powerful style of writing that keeps the reader turning the pages to see how it will end.’
—Diane Grayson, www.theromancereader.com
‘With climactic scenes, dramatic imagery and bold characters, Margaret Way makes the Outback come alive…’
—RT Book Reviews
Outback Bachelor
By
Margaret Way
The Cattleman’s Adopted Family
By
Barbara Hannay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ud3738482-fc36-5232-a57c-59f6ab8d9e8b)
Praise (#u6425d7dc-3fcd-5fcf-bc60-ae6d63eedb56)
Title Page (#u51814ae6-dd1c-5d05-83f8-3ad786cf94c1)
Outback Bachelor (#ub97beaed-8578-5d4a-b676-adc3ee3b36af)
About the Author (#ubeb078d2-1581-5c90-b06e-b80235413a04)
Prologue (#u8cad1dca-1d29-5a14-b926-587e8591faeb)
Chapter One (#u466ee407-d3b0-5f04-8705-c25b40ef6d99)
Chapter Two (#uce3b7369-06af-5512-a882-10fc1c157e92)
Chapter Three (#u0ed64f31-2281-5e99-9696-83e865149e00)
Chapter Four (#ua7d956a0-f814-5450-89ae-5b941297ab1d)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
The Cattleman’s Adopted Family (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Outback Bachelor
By
Margaret Way
Margaret Way, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the subtropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatoriumtrained pianist, teacher, accompanist and vocal coach, she found her musical career came to an unexpected end when she took up writing—initially as a fun thing to do. She currently lives in a harbourside apartment at beautiful Raby Bay, a thirty-minute drive from the state capital, where she loves dining al fresco on her plant-filled balcony, overlooking a translucent green marina filled with all manner of pleasure craft: from motor cruisers costing millions of dollars, and big, graceful yachts with carved masts standing tall against the cloudless blue sky, to little bay runabouts. No one and nothing is in a mad rush, and she finds the laid-back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over one hundred books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.
PROLOGUE
THE night before she was to make her sad journey back to Djinjara, after a self-imposed absence, Skye’s dreams were filled with vivid childhood memories of life on the great station. Those had been the halcyon days when Djinjara had been the centre of her universe, the days before she had become overpowered by the McGoverns, cattle barons prominent among the nation’s great landed families. Broderick McGovern had been master of Djinjara when she had been growing up; a man with tremendous obligations and responsibilities, greatly respected by all. Keefe, his elder son, had been the heir. Scott, next in line, the difficult one, burdened with sibling rivalry issues, always making it his business to stir up discord. Rachelle, the youngest, was rather good at stirring up trouble herself, but happily for the McGovern dynasty Keefe was everything he was supposed to be. And much more.
By the time she was five she had fallen totally under his spell. She couldn’t imagine life without Keefe in it! A deprived child, struggling with the loss of a mother and a mother’s love and guidance, she found Keefe to be a source of continual comfort, delight and admiration. He commanded her world. It was a role her hard-working, grieving father didn’t seem able to fill. At least not for a long time. Skye’s father, Jack McCory, was a man who had never come to terms with losing his beautiful young wife Cathy in childbirth. Thereafter, he lamented it would never have happened only Cathy had insisted on having her child on the station instead of at Base Hospital.
By such decisions was our fate determined.
In her early years Skye couldn’t understand her father’s deep melancholy, neither as a child could she be expected to, though she always tried to ease it by being a good girl and putting her mind to her lessons at the station school. Her teacher, Mrs. Lacey, always embarrassed her, instructing the other children, offspring of station employees, “Let Skye be an example to you!”
With Mrs. Lacey, an excellent teacher, she could do no wrong.
“Why shouldn’t she praise you?” Keefe commented lazily when she complained. “You’re one bright little kid. And you’re really, really pretty!” This with a playful tug on her blonde curls. Keefe was six years her senior. From age ten he had been sent as a boarder to his illustrious private school in Sydney. The times he was home on vacation were, therefore, doubly precious to her.
Times changed. People changed with them. It wasn’t unusual for the bonds of childhood not to survive into adulthood. By the time Keefe became a man he was no longer the Keefe who had laughed at her, listened to her, tolerated her showing-off, taken her up on his shoulders while she squealed her pleasure at the top of her lungs. The adult Keefe not only filled her with awe, he came close to daunting her. Even when he was looking straight at her she imagined he was looking through her. Something absolutely fundamental between them had changed. What made it all that much harder to bear was it seemed to happen overnight.
Their respective roles became blindingly clear.
She could never, not ever, enter Keefe McGovern’s adult world.
Despite her strenuous efforts to distance herself, and make her own way in life, Keefe continued to live on in her mind and her dreams. He was her shooting star, with all a star’s grandeur. Not with the best will in the world could she change that. Obsessions, unlike many friendships, remained constant.
It had been devastation of a kind after she had made the break to go to university. It had become very important for her to separate herself from the McGoverns. Separate from Keefe, her hero. Even the thought made her weep, but her tears fell silently down the walls of her heart.
Keefe! Oh, Keefe!
Had it really happened those few years ago, or had she imagined it all? Remember. Oh, yes it had happened.
No young men she had met thereafter—and she had met many who were attracted to her—could measure up to Keefe. Now twenty-four she was making a success of her life even if she continued to feel deeply obligated to the McGoverns. Their interest in her had secured her bright future. McGovern money had paid for her expensive education. Her father explained years later that Lady McGovern, grandmother to Keefe, Scott and Rachelle, had insisted that fact be keep quiet.
“Skye is not to know. But she’s such a clever child she must be given the best possible chance in life.”
Although Lady McGovern had always been a majestic figure, as aloof as royalty, in all truth she had been oddly protective of a lowly employee’s young daughter. That alone had caused the ever-deepening rift between Rachelle and herself. Rachelle had a jealous nature. She loved both her brothers, but it was Keefe she adored. It was Keefe’s attention Rachelle always fought for. If it were true that some mothers couldn’t give up their sons to girlfriends and wives, it was equally true that some sisters were unwilling to take a back seat in their brother’s affections. Rachelle hung in there, determined Skye would never be allowed to stake a claim on the family. Skye was always “the pushy little daughter of—can you believe—a station hand? Always trying to ingratiate yourself with our family.” Reading between the lines, that meant Rachelle’s adored brother, Keefe. These were just a couple of the insults Rachelle tossed off like barbed arrows.
Over time, the insults worsened.
“You’re to be pitied. You may be chocolate-box pretty, but you’re so disadvantaged by your background. You’ll never be accepted into our world. So don’t even try!” The tone Rachelle employed was so caustic she might have been trying to skin the younger girl alive. Skye learned early in life all about jealousy. It was to her credit such jealousy hadn’t crushed her. Rather, the reverse. She learned to stand up for herself. McGovern wealth, status and their pastoral empire gave them uncommon power. They certainly had power over her. Even in her dreams Keefe and Djinjara didn’t let go.
As she lay sleeping on that heated and stormy November evening, with the air-conditioner running full blast, she became trapped in that idyllic past as images began to flood her mind. So vivid were they, they brought into play all five of her senses. She could actually smell things, feel things, hear things, taste things. She could see all the rich colours, observe the legions of tiny emerald and gold budgies that flew overhead in their perfect squadron formations. It was stunning how clearly she was able to open a window on the past, a traveller in time…
She was five and back on Djinjara. Her father Jack was then a Djinjara stockman, later a leading hand, rising to overseer by the time she was ten. It was around about puberty that life abruptly became different. Suddenly out of nowhere she felt the weight of strange longings; an urgency and a hunger for sight and sound of Keefe, a pressing need for his company. She only saw him when they came together in the school vacations. It was way too long in between. What she was feeling, had she known it, was desire, but she was too young to recognise it. That was as well, for it was ill advised. Whatever Skye desired, it was never going to happen. Her intuitive response was to modify her warm, open manner to avoid embarrassing herself and, God forbid, Keefe.
In the academic year following her twelfth birthday she was stunned to learn she was to be sent away to Rachelle’s prestigious girl’s school. She had never thought such a thing could happen. The fees alone were way, way beyond her father’s modest means; the choice of such a college not even considered by a parent in Jack McCory’s position in life. This was a school for the social elite.
It took Skye years to find out the McGoverns had paid the fees. But back then, to make her father proud, she had worked very hard, graduating five years later with a top score. That score had enabled her to go to the university of her choice and study law. Her driving interest had become women’s affairs. She wanted to be in a position to help women facing serious legal problems, especially women facing such problems alone.
In her dream that hot, humid night, she was a child again, standing transfixed, holding fast to Keefe’s hand. They were looking out on an enchanted world of wildflowers. Never in her short life had she seen such an extraordinary spectacle! It was so beautiful it made her heart ache.
“The miracle after years of drought!” Keefe’s voice lifted on a note of pride and elation. “The desert wildflowers have arrived, little buddy!” He often called her “little buddy” in those days. It was like real affection flowed between her and this Outback prince. That year, when she turned five, the flowers were out in their millions. They came in the wake of a major cyclone in the tropical Far North. The run-off floodwaters poured in great torrents down the interior’s Three Rivers System. They reached right into the Red Heart, spilling out of the infinite maze of intricate, interlocking waterways of the Channel Country, bringing great rejoicing even though station after station was left stranded in an inland sea.
In her dream, the flowers blazed their way across the great golden spinifex plains, climbed the fiery red pyramids of the sand dunes, spread right to the feet of the distant hills that always appeared to her child’s eye like ruined castles full of mystery and past splendours. The flowers were dazzling white, bright yellow, all the pinks and oranges, mauve into violet, vibrant reds, their colours dancing in the breeze. They were the loveliest creations she had ever seen, their beauty hazy under the golden desert sun.
“Thought you might like to see them.” Keefe smiled down at her, pleased with her evident excitement, an excitement he shared. Marvellously handsome and clever, he was home for the long Christmas-New Year vacation.
“Oh, Keefe, it’s magic!” She clapped her hands, transported out of herself with joy. Even at that age she felt deeply. “Thank you, thank you, for bringing me.”
In retrospect it was a very strange thing for him to say, though as a five-year-old she accepted it as a joke. In return she gave him her purest little girl smile, thrilled and excited he had thought of her. Really, she was just another little kid on the station, yet he had actually come in search of her, taking her up before him on his beautiful, fleet-footed thoroughbred mare, Noor, one of the finest in Djinjara’s stables. Keefe could ride her. Keefe could ride anything. He was tall for his age, with the promise of attaining over six feet in manhood.
In her dream he was holding firmly to her hand lest she run excitedly into the shimmering sea of paper daisies that could easily shelter a dragon lizard that might not take kindly to being disturbed. Keefe was there to protect her as well as show her the wild flowers. He was no ordinary boy. He didn’t look it. He didn’t sound it. Even then he had been one of those people with enormous charisma. And why not? He was Keefe McGovern, heir to Djinjara.
Her father was often required to go away on long musters, leaving Skye for days, sometimes weeks. She was almost an orphan, except everyone on the station looked out for her. She even had a nanny called Lena, a gentle, mission-educated aboriginal lady appointed by Lady McGovern, stern matriarch of the family. When her father was away on those long musters Lady McGovern allowed her and Lena to stay at the Big House. That was the name everyone on the station called Djinjara homestead. It was a palace, so grand and immense! She and her dad lived in a little bungalow that would have just about fitted into Djinjara’s entrance hall. Her dad had impressed on her that it was a “great honour” to be allowed to stay at the Big House. So she had to be a good girl.
It was easy. No one upset or frightened her. Well…Rachelle did, but she was finding her way around that. There was something nasty about Rachelle, two years her senior. But even though she was little, Rachelle didn’t intimidate her. It was her duty to be a good, brave girl and not worry her father, who worked so hard.
In her dreamscape she was weaving her small fingers in and out of Keefe’s strong brown hand. “I really love you, Keefe.”
He smiled, his light eyes like diamonds against his tanned skin. “I know, little buddy.”
“Will you marry me when I grow up?”
At this point Skye woke abruptly. It was then the tears came.
Chapter One
FOLLOWING instructions, she took a domestic flight to Longreach, where she was to be met by Scott who would fly her back to the station. She was none too happy about that. She hadn’t forgiven Scott. And she had tried.
The news of Broderick McGovern’s death had been broken to her by her father, who had worshipped the man. A short time later the news broke on radio, T.V. and the Internet. Broderick McGovern, billionaire “Cattle King”, had been killed in a helicopter crash while being ferried to a McGovern outstation on the border of the Northern Territory. He, the pilot and another passenger, a relative and federal politician, had been killed when the helicopter, flown by an experienced pilot, simply “fell out of the sky”, according to a lone witness who had been rounding up brumbies at the time.
No one had been prepared for this violent assault by Fate.
Keefe McGovern, 30, Broderick McGovern’s elder son, was now master of Djinjara, the historic Outback station. Mr McGovern could not be reached for comment. The family was said to be in total shock. Broderick McGovern had only been 55 years of age.
Such had been his stature, not only as one of the country’s richest men, a philanthropist and premier cattle producer, that the Prime Minister announced with genuine regret, “This is a man who will be sorely missed.”
Skye stood under a broad awning, waiting for Scott to arrive. Scott was another one who had a hold on her memory. She wondered if he had matured at all since she had last seen him; wondered if his fierce jealousy of his older brother had abated over time. Both Scott and Rachelle were very much affected by having a brother like Keefe. Instead of making their own mark, they chose to remain in Keefe’s long shadow. Scott, who had been trained in the cattle business and played an active role, sadly lacked Keefe’s extraordinary level of competence, let alone the leadership qualities necessary in a man who had to run a huge man-orientated enterprise. Still he raged, secretly secure in the knowledge he would in all probability never be called upon. Rachelle, the heiress daughter, made no effort at all to find her own niche in the world. She preferred to live on Djinjara and take numerous holidays at home and abroad whenever she found herself bored.
To Skye it was an empty, aimless life. She had no idea what would have happened had Scott been his father’s heir instead of Keefe. Instead, Scott and Rachelle acted as if their lives had been mapped out for them.
Goodness, it was hot! Far, far hotter than it ever was in subtropical Brisbane, but this was the dry heat of the Outback. Oddly its effects on her were invigorating. She had grown up in heat like this. Even the slight breeze was bringing in the familiar, tantalising scent of the bush. She drew in a breath of the aromatic fragrance, trying to calm herself and unravel the tight knots in her stomach. It wasn’t easy, returning to Djinjara, but it was unthinkable not to attend Broderick McGovern’s funeral. He had always been kind to her and to her father, who was in genuine mourning.
It wasn’t the time to wish it was Keefe who was coming for her. She knew perfectly well Keefe wouldn’t be able to get away. He had taken on his dead father’s mantle. But she still had many reservations about Scott. He had always been a chameleon when they had been growing up. Sometimes he had been fun, if a bit wild, other times a darkness had descended on him. He idolised his brother. No question. But to Scott’s own dismay he’d had to constantly battle a sometimes overwhelming jealousy of Keefe, the heir. It had made him angry and resentful, ready to lash out at everyone on the station who couldn’t answer back without the possible risk of getting fired. That included her father who felt pity for Scott McGovern, the classic second string with all its attendant problems.
When Scott was in his moods, especially as he grew older, station people learned to steer clear of him until the mood passed. Skye in later years realised she was perhaps the only one who had missed out for the most part on Scott’s sharp, hurtful ways. It had taken a while for her to become aware that Keefe had always appeared to keep a pretty close eye on them.
Why?
She had found out. And a lot sooner than she had ever imagined. When she had been around sixteen and Scott almost twenty he had fancied himself either in love with her or determined to take advantage of her. Either way, it was the cause of an ongoing simmering tension between the two brothers. One that stemmed from a single violent confrontation.
Over her.
All these years later, Skye remembered that traumatic episode as though it were yesterday…
As she stepped into the deep emerald lagoon, catching her breath at its coldness, Skye became aware someone was watching her. She spun about, calling, “Who’s there?”
She wasn’t nervous. She felt perfectly safe anywhere on the station. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. There wasn’t a soul on the station who hadn’t kept an eye on her as she was growing up. They had all known her beautiful mother. They worked alongside her father. The entire station community had as good as adopted her. No one would harm her. She called again, startling a flock of sulphur-crested, white cockatoos that set up a noisy protest. A few seconds later, lanky Scott appeared. He had the McGovern height but not Keefe’s great shape. He was dressed in his everyday working gear—skin-tight jeans, checked cotton shirt, riding boots. His hat was tipped down over his face. He had the McGovern widow’s peak that looked so dramatic on his older brother but vaguely sinister on him.
“Why didn’t you speak?” she asked in surprise. How long had he been watching her from the cover of the tree—three minutes, four? She had stripped down to her turquoise and white bikini, leaving her clothes neatly folded on the sand.
He didn’t move. Didn’t respond. He remained where he was at the top of the sloping bank, the loose sand bound by a profusion of hardy succulent-type plants with pockets of tiny perfumed white and mauve lilies in between.
“Scott?” she questioned, shading her eyes with her hand. “Is something wrong?”
Suddenly he smiled, spread out his long arms, then half ran, half skidded, like they had done when they had been kids, down the bank to the golden crescent of sand. “Boy, oh, boy, you should get a look at yourself,” he whooped. “That’s some bikini, girl!”
It wasn’t the words, normal enough, but the way he said them that caused her first ever flurry of unease. “Like it?” She answered in a deliberately casual voice, nothing that could remotely sound like a come-on in her tone. “It’s new.” This was Scott. This was a McGovern. Much was expected of them.
“You have a beautiful body, Skye, baby,” he drawled, his eyes moving very slowly and insolently over her. “Beautiful face. That blonde mane of hair and those sparkly blue eyes!”
He moved closer, tossing his wide-brimmed hat away. “I’m coming in.”
She wanted to shout, No! Some expression on his face was causing her alarm. Instead she managed, “Don’t, Scott.”
For answer he began to strip off his shirt. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Skye McCory.”
It sounded remarkably like a threat. That put the fight into her. “Well, you’ll have to swim alone,” she announced crisply. “I’m coming out. I have things to do.”
“What things?” He spoke disparagingly, sounding a bit too much like his sister for comfort. “Don’t try to disappear on me,” he warned.
Now he was stripping off his jeans.
A voice inside told her things had changed. In his briefs, she couldn’t avoid seeing he was sexually aroused. Immediately she decided to change tack and strike out for the opposite bank. What then? She was a good swimmer with a lot of pace. Scott was coming after her. What was his plan, to trap her? Not only cold water washed over her. She felt the icy finger of panic. She couldn’t help knowing males got intense pleasure from looking at her these days. Even her friends at boarding school teased her all the time about the crushes their brothers had on her.
She reached the jade shallows, pulling herself up out of the water, her heart banging against her ribs. Swiftly she shook back her long hair. It had come free of its plait. Where to now? Take one of the trails?
Scott pulled himself out of the water seconds after her, his grin tight. “What’s the matter with you?” he challenged.
She put her arms around herself, shielding her small breasts, their contours enhanced by the snugly fitting bra top from his view. “What’s the matter with you is more to the point?” she said sharply. “You’re upsetting me, Scott.” Indeed, he was changing her perception of him.
His answer was to lurch towards her, fixing her with a look that dismayed her. He easily pinned her wrists, because he was very much taller and stronger. “I want to kiss you. I want you to kiss me back.”
Part of her brain searched for words to stop him but couldn’t find them. He was overstepping the boundaries and he knew it. “Are you mad?” She got ready to aim a well-deserved kick at his groin. She was an Outback-bred girl. She knew all the ways a lone woman could defend herself.
“Mad for you.” There was the fierce glow of lust in his eyes.
She looked around her quickly. On this side of the lagoon the trees grew more thickly. There was sunlight coming in streams through the canopy, lighting up the trails taken by horses and riders. This particular lagoon was her favourite swimming spot, one of many on the vast station, but today the whole magnificent wild area seemed threatening and deserted. “Take a deep breath, Scott,” she cautioned, wishing Keefe would miraculously ride that way. “Stop this now.”
“Stop what?” He leaned closer to her.
“What you think you’ve started. It’s not on. So get yourself together. Remember who you are.”
Scott set his jaw, his handsome face turning grim. “I’m not Keefe. Is that it? I’ll never be Keefe. Keefe is the one you want.” His grip on her wrists became punishingly hard as his pathological jealousy grew.
She responded with heat. “You’re hurting me, Scott.” She wasn’t about to show her fear. She stood her ground, even if inwardly she cringed.
Abruptly he released her, but just as she relaxed, one of his hands reached out to caress her breast. He wasn’t toying with her. He was dead serious.
She flung herself backwards and dashed a tear from her eye. Surely she wasn’t crying? She never cried. A small fallen branch lay on the sand. She bent sideways to pick it up. If she had to defend herself, she would. She knew with Scott in this mood something bad could happen to her.
He found it too easy to create fear in her. Scott appeared to be enjoying her efforts at evasion. “Give up,” he advised with a brittle laugh. “I’m really mad about you, Skye. That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Don’t you care?”
There was a hard knot at the base of her breastbone. “I care that you’re making a huge mistake, Scott.” Her voice was tight with strain. “You’re my friend. You’re Scott. You can’t be anything more to me.”
He struck like lightning. She landed a stinging lash on his arm. The tanned skin reddened immediately but he didn’t look at the welt, or appear to feel it. No matter how much she wished otherwise, there was no mistaking her imminent danger and his raw intent. Scott meant to have his way. Kiss her? Or take her forcibly? Anything was possible. Who was she to him anyway? Only the overseer’s daughter. Dozens of girls would gladly have swapped places with her, no matter the risk. Scott McGovern mightn’t be his brother, but he was still a great catch.
“Now, what makes you think that?” he asked with slow menace. “I tell you, Skye, you’ve turned into the sexiest thing on two legs.”
I’m scared but I can’t show it.
Find me, Keefe. Find me.
She concentrated on sending her message out into the great plains. “This isn’t going to work, Scott. You’d better find someone else.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” He cut her off with a chopping motion of his hand. “And when I make up my mind, I don’t change it.”
“Then go to hell!” she shouted, adrenalin flooding into her blood. “You’re acting like a bully and a coward.”
It was a mistake.
Scott reached for her, wrapping one arm around her. “This can work, Skye if you let it.”
“No. No. And no!” She fought back, digging in her nails.
“Too ordinary for you, am I? I’m not Keefe.”
She threw back her head. “Keefe would never force a woman,” she cried with utter conviction.
“Wouldn’t have to, would he? You’d let him take you in a minute!” There was rage and bitter resentment in Scott’s blue eyes as he repeated his resentment of his older brother. He went to kiss her and she turned her face, both of them recoiling abruptly as a familiar voice came from behind them in a barely contained roar of ferocity.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Keefe’s tall, wide-shouldered, lean figure came stalking along the narrow sunlit corridor. His body language was wrathful. He looked blazingly angry, angrier than Skye could ever have imagined. Keefe was famous for keeping his cool.
Now it was Scott’s turn to be intimidated. Instead of attempting an answer, he appeared ludicrously shocked, while Skye found herself moaning her relief. With no thought to her actions, she ran to Keefe’s side, grasping his hard, muscled arm, feeling the heat of rage sizzle off his skin.
“Okay, I guess I know what was happening,” he rasped, shoving Skye bodily behind him. “You can’t help yourself, can you, Scott? The only thing that concerns you is getting what you want.”
“And I would have got it if you hadn’t turned up. Skye has the hots for me.”
“Believe that, and you’ll believe anything,” Keefe bit off with disgust. He closed the short distance to where his brother stood, grabbing hold of his bare shoulder with such force Scott winced. “Goddammit, Scott,” Keefe groaned in a kind of agony. “I’m repulsed by you. Where’s your sense of decency? Your sense of honour?
“You got the lot,” Scott retorted with sudden venom, trying unsuccessfully to break his brother’s iron grasp. “You want her yourself.”
Keefe’s expression was daunting. “What you’re saying is what I want, you must take for yourself.”
“Well, she is one alluring little chick!”
That was when Keefe hit him. Scott dropped to the sand with blood streaming from his nose. He tried to get up, fell back again, moaning. “Can’t say I didn’t have that coming,” he wailed, as unpredictable as ever.
“You bastard!” Keefe raged with a mix of horror and regret. “You never can deal with the consequences of your actions. Why do you let your dark side take you under?’
Skye, who had been frozen to the spot, now rushed to Keefe’s side. She had to make an attempt to allay his rage. “Don’t hit him again, Keefe. Please. Nothing happened.”
“Keep out of this,” Keefe warned, with the blackest of frowns. “Get dressed and go home.”
His anger sparked an answering anger in Skye. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
He turned on her, his silver-grey eyes so brilliant they bored right into her. “A child?” he ground out. “You’re no longer a child, Skye. You’re a woman, with all a woman’s power. My brother isn’t such a monster.”
“She’s temptation on legs,” Scott offered from his prone position on the sand. To his mind that exonerated him from all blame.
“Shut up!” Keefe violently kicked up the sand near him,. “Apologise to Skye. Tell her you were acting crazy. Tell her such a thing will never happen again. And it won’t, believe me. This is your one and only warning. You’ll have me to deal with.”
Scott wilted beneath his brother’s fury and disgust. “You won’t tell Dad,” he choked, his hand pressed to his bleeding nose.
“Dad?” Keefe roared. “Apologise to Skye. How could you begin to betray her trust?”
Shaking all over, Skye fervently wished for her clothes, which were lying in a tidy pile on the opposite bank. As it was, she had to stand there, receiving the attention she didn’t want. Her brief bikini barely covered her. Even now she couldn’t believe what Scott had done. A woman’s beauty came with inherent dangers. Beauty brought fixations and unwelcome attention. The last thing in the world she wanted was to rouse the brute in a man. Now Scott! She had never dreamed she would be in this position, coming between the two brothers. She was the innocent party here, yet Keefe appeared to be so furious with her she might as well have been as guilty of wrongdoing as Scott.
Scott took the opportunity to stagger to his feet, gingerly feeling his jaw. Pain lanced up into his head. “I’m sorry, Skye,” he mumbled. “You know a lot about me so you know from time to time I run off the rails. I would never hurt you. I just wanted a kiss.”
“A kiss and the rest!” Keefe shouted, hooked into his rage.
“You sure pack a punch, Keefe. You really hurt me.” Unbelievably Scott appeared to be feeling sorry for himself.
“You’re lucky I didn’t pummel you into the ground,” Keefe cried.
“Damn! Damn everything,” Scott moaned. “So what am I supposed to do now, avoid her?”
“What you’re supposed to do is what you’ve been reared to do. Treat Skye—all women—with respect. You think Dad would be angry? What about Gran? She’d have you horsewhipped.”
“She would, too.” Scott suddenly grinned.
“Oh, please, please, stop,” Skye begged.
Only then did Keefe turn to stare at her. “Are you okay?”
She was caught in that diamond-hard star, so fierce she almost felt terror. “I told you. He didn’t touch me.” All she wanted was for this dreadful episode to be over.
Keefe’s laugh was a rasp. “Only because I turned up. I’ll never know why I came this way. I thought I heard you calling me.”
She had been.
The part of him beyond reason had clearly heard her.
A few minutes elapsed before a small airport runabout swept into sight. It pulled up beside her and the driver got out, coming around the rear of the vehicle. Skye gave a convulsive gasp. Some emotions were so extreme they couldn’t be put to rest.
Keefe.
The world she had tried hard to build up for herself started to disintegrate and turn to rubble.
All you’ve got to do is breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
It was the voice of reason, only it took several seconds before she could even swallow. Inside she felt a piercing thrill of the old excitement. Outside a near-paralysis. Focusing hard, she drew a deep calming breath into her lungs. It didn’t quell the clamour. Her nerves were bunched tight. How did she hide her enormous vulnerability when it was pitted against a towering wave of pleasure?
He was even more handsome in maturity, but harder, tougher, severe of expression. All traces of that wonderful tenderness had gone. Some might say his arresting good looks were a bit on the intimidating side, given the air of gravitas and authority he projected. She knew strangers had sometimes mistaken that aura for arrogance. They were wrong. It was Keefe’s heightened sense of responsibility, of being who he was, instilled in him from childhood. He looked stunningly fit from a lifetime of hard physical activity. His darkly tanned skin glowed richly. His thickly curling sable hair worn longer than was usual—hairdressers were few and far between in the bush—was swept back from his forehead in the manner of some medieval prince. Strong and distinctive as his features were, they were dominated by his remarkable wide-set eyes. They were a mesmerising silver-grey, brilliant, crystal clear, yet impossible to read.
He didn’t smile. Neither did she.
The air crackled as it did when an electrical storm approached. They stood there studying one another in silence. Skye felt a deep, sharp sadness. As for Keefe, she couldn’t read him. As in everything, for so long now, he was an enigma. He had distanced himself from her as she had distanced herself from him. But what did he really want of her? What did she want of him? What were the changes each one of them saw in the other? She was ill prepared for this confrontation. Had she known Keefe was to come for her, she could have worked on some defence strategy.
Don’t kid yourself, girl. Such a strategy doesn’t exist.
There was always drama around the McGoverns. Instead of Scott, Keefe had appeared. The man she dreamed about, so often and so vividly, that it was as if he was in bed with her. He was dressed in a khaki bush shirt with epaulettes and buttoned-down pockets, close-fitting jeans, beaten-copper-buckled leather belt, glossy riding boots on his feet. Everyday wear, but quality all the way. There was something utterly compelling about a splendid male body, she thought raggedly, the height, the width of shoulder, the narrowness of waist and hip descending into long, long straight legs.
“It’s good to see you, Skye.” Finally he spoke. “Weren’t waiting long?”
She readied herself. His voice, like the rest of him, carried a natural command. It had become more and more like his father’s; the timbre deep and dark, the accent polished and slightly clipped. “No more than five minutes,” she said with admirable composure. She had to force the adrenalin rush down. “I wasn’t expecting you, Keefe. I was told Scott was coming.”
“Well, I’m here,” he said, looking directly into her eyes.
He was so beautiful! All strength and sinew with an intense sexual aura. Her entire body leapt to vivid life, sparks coursing like little fires along her veins. What she felt for Keefe couldn’t be easily governed. Even her nerves were like tightly strung wires humming and vibrating inside her. How long had it been since she had felt this mad surge of excitement? Not since the last time she had been with him. Years of loving Keefe. Years of unfinished business. It was like they were tied together against their wills. She pulled in a deep breath, keeping her tone neutral.
“And thank you. I appreciate it.” No way could she betray the tumult in her heart. “I’m so very sorry about your father, Keefe. I know how hard it must be for you.”
His glittering gaze moved to the middle distance. “Forgive me, Skye. I can’t talk about it.”
“Of course not. I understand.”
“You always did have more sensitivity than anyone else,” he commented briefly, reaching for her suitcase. It was heavy—she had packed too much into just one case—but he lifted it as though its weight was negligible. “We’d best get away. As you can imagine, there’s much to be done at home.”
She shook her head helplessly. “You didn’t have to come for me, Keefe.”
He paused to give her another searing glance. “I did.”
Ah, the heady magnetism of his gaze! She moved quickly, letting her honey-blonde hair cascade across one side of her face. Anything to hide the wild hot rush of blood. She opened the passenger door, then slid into the seat. All the years she had spent mounting defences against Keefe…!
You still have no protection.
Their flight into Djinjara couldn’t have been smoother. Keefe was an experienced pilot. But, then, his skills were many, all burnished to a high polish. He had been groomed from childhood to take over leadership from his father.
They were home.
Djinjara was still—would always be—the best place in the world. The vastness, the freedom, the call of the wild. There was a magic to it she had never found in the city, for all the glamour of her hectic life there. She had made many friends. Some of them in high places. She was asked everywhere. She had a stack of admirers. She knew she was rated a fine, committed advocate. Her clients trusted her, looked to her to get them through their difficult times. Her career was on the up and up. Yet, oddly, though she had hoped to gain great satisfaction from it all, that hadn’t happened. Sometimes she felt disconnected from her city life. Other times she felt disconnected from everything. Successful on the outside, when she allowed herself time for introspection, she felt curiously empty. Starved of what she really wanted.
Such was the pull of love; the elation, the sense of completion in being with Keefe. But along with it went long periods of loneliness.
On the ground, beneath a deliriously blue sky, she marked the familiar spectacular flights of birds, the shadows beneath the rolling red sand dunes that stretched across the vast plains. The sands were heavily embossed with huge pincushions of spinifex scorched to a dark gold; in the shimmering distance the purple of the eroded hills with their caves and secret, crystal-clear waterholes.
Skye drew the unique pungent aromas of the bush into her lungs, realising how much she had missed Djinjara. The mingling wind-whipped scents, so aromatic like crushed and dried native herbs, to her epitomised the Outback. She had a very real feel for the place of her birth, even though her mother had died here giving her life. Not everyone fell under the spell of the bush but Djinjara, from her earliest memories, had held her captive.
They were met by her father. He had been lolling against a station Jeep, a tall whipcord-thin man with a lived-in, interesting sort of face and love for his daughter shining out of bright blue eyes.
“Skye, darling girl! It’s marvellous to see you.” Jack rushed forward, his hard muscled arms wide stretched in greeting.
“Marvellous to see you, Dad.” Skye picked up her own pace, meeting up with her father joyously. She went into his embrace, kissing his weathered mahogany cheek. He smelled of sunlight, leather and horses. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Missed you.” Jack looked down into his daughter’s beautiful face, revelling in her presence, the glorious grace of her. She was so like his beloved Cathy. The way she smiled. The way she shone.
“Sad about Mr McGovern,” Skye spoke in a low voice.
“Tragic!” her father agreed, dropping his arms as Keefe, who had given father and daughter a few moments alone, came towards them.
Keefe was a stunning-looking man by any standard, Skye thought. Quite unlike any other man she had ever seen. “I’ll take you up to the house first, boss,” Jack called. “Then I’ll drop Skye off.”
“Fine,” Keefe responded. The force field around him was such it drew father and daughter in. “I know you’ll want to spend this first night together, Jack. You must have much to catch up on—but I thought as the bungalow is on the small side, Skye might be more comfortable up at the house for the rest of her stay.” He looked from one to the other. “It’s entirely up to you.”
Skye’s heart leapt, then dropped like a stone. She had no stomach for the rest of the family, other than Lady McGovern. “I’ll stay with Dad,” she answered promptly, “but thank you for the kind thought, Keefe.” Despite herself, a certain dryness crept into her tone.
“You might want to change your mind, my darling,” Jack said wryly, looking at his beautiful daughter. He was immensely gratified she wanted to stay with him, but worried the bungalow really was too small.
“Well, see how it goes,” Keefe clipped off.
“It’s very good of you, Keefe.” Jack looked respectfully towards the younger man.
“Not at all.” Keefe turned his splendid profile. “My grandmother will want to see you, Skye.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t miss out on an audience with Lady McGovern, who would be devastated by the loss of her son. Pity rushed in. Besides, she could never forget what she owed the McGoverns for what they had done for her. Albeit without her knowledge.
Jack watched on, sensing an odd tension between the boss and his daughter. It hadn’t always been like that. Skye had adored Keefe all the time she had been growing up. Keefe had been there for her, like an affectionate and protective big brother. It was only half a joke, suggesting Skye might change her mind. His beautiful girl, his princess, belonged in a palace, not a bungalow. Keefe was right. The bungalow wasn’t a fitting place for her now she had grown into a lovely accomplished woman. A lawyer no less! At home in her city world. His Skye, far more than the caustic Rachelle, the McGovern heiress, looked and acted the part, Jack thought with pride. Skye’s beauty and her gifts came from her mother. They certainly didn’t come from him. He was just an ordinary bloke. He still couldn’t believe Cathy, who had come into his life as Lady McGovern’s young visitor, had fallen in love with him and, miracle of miracles, agreed to marry him. It had been like a fairy-tale. But, like many a fairy-tale, it had had a tragic end.
Chapter Two
GRIEF was contagious. The faces of the hundreds of mourners who attended Broderick McGovern’s Outback funeral showed genuine sadness and a communal sense of loss. There was no trace of mixed emotions anywhere. This was a sad, sad day. He had been a man of power and influence, but incredibly he had gone through life without attracting enemies. The overriding reason had to be that he had been a just man, egalitarian in his dealings; a man who had never wronged anyone and had never been known to go back on his word. Broderick McGovern had been a gentleman in the finest sense of the word.
All the men and most of the women, except for the elderly and the handful of young women who were pregnant, had elected to make the long walk from the homestead to the McGovern graveyard set down in the shadow of a strange fiery red sandstone monolith rising some hundred feet above the great spinifex plain. The McGovern family from the earliest days of settlement had called it Manguri, after one of the tribal gods. The great sandstone pillar did, in fact, bear a remarkable resemblance to a totem figure, only Manguri was the last remaining vestige of a table-topped mountain of prehistory.
Like all the desert monoliths, Manguri had the capacity to change colour through the day, from the range of pinks commencing at dawn, to the fiery reds of noon, to the mauves and the amethysts of evening. It was a fascinating phenomenon. Generations of McGoverns had been buried in Manguri’s shadow. Curiously, Skye’s own mother was buried in an outlying plot when the custom was for station employees right from the early days to be buried at another well-tended graveyard. In the old days there had been some talk of Cathy being distantly related to Lady McGovern. The rumour had never been confirmed. Certainly not by the McGoverns. As a lawyer, Skye could have checked out her mother’s background had she so chosen. Instead, she found herself making the conscious decision not to investigate her mother’s past. She didn’t know why, exactly, beyond a powerful gut feeling. Was she frightened of what she might find? She would admit only to an instinctive unease. Her father had always said her mother had been an orphan Lady McGovern had taken an interest in. Much like her own case.
She wasn’t the only young person on the station the McGoverns had sent on to tertiary education either. Most of the sons and daughters of station employees elected to live and work on Djinjara. It was home to them. They loved it and the way of life. But others, of recent times, all young men of exceptional academic ability, had been sent on to university by the McGoverns. One was a doctor in charge of a bush hospital. The others were engineers working in the great minefields of Western Australia.
All three were present today.
Keefe had made it perfectly plain she was expected to come up to the house afterwards, even if her father was not. Jack held an important position as overseer but he knew and accepted his place in the social scheme of things. It was the last thing Skye wanted to do, but her father had urged her and she was painfully aware of her obligations. The scores of ordinary folk who had made the long hot overland trek in a convoy of vehicles were being catered for in huge marquees set up within the extensive grounds of the home compound. The more important folk, the entire McGovern clan, fellow cattle barons and pastoralists along with their families, and a large contingent of VIPs crowded their way into Djinjara’s splendid homestead, which had grown over the years since the 1860s when Malcolm James McGovern, a Scottish adventurer of good family, had established his kingdom in the wilds. Oddly, Djinjara with its fifty rooms looked more like an English country mansion that anything else, but Malcolm was said to have greatly admired English architecture and customs and had kept up his close ties with his mother’s English family. The bonds remained in place to the present day. Lady McGovern was English, and a distant relative. She had come to Australia, a world far removed from her own, as Kenneth McGovern’s—later Sir Kenneth McGovern—bride. In her new home, despite all the odds, she had thrived. And, it had to be said, ruled.
Try as she did to move inconspicuously about the large reception rooms and the magnificent double-height library, Skye was uncomfortably aware that a great many people were looking at her. Staring really. She had to contend with the fact she would never melt into a crowd. Not with the looks she had inherited from her mother. Some people she recognised from her childhood but she wasn’t sure if they recognised her. Others acknowledged her with genuine warmth and kindly expressed admiration for her achievements. She was dressed in traditional black but she couldn’t help knowing black suited her blonde colouring. She had discarded the wide-brimmed black hat that had protected her face and neck from the blazing sun, but she still wore her hair in a classic French pleat. As a hairstyle it looked very elegant, but the pins were making her head ache.
She had sighted Scott with a dark-haired young woman always at his side. She was rather plain of face, conservative in her dress for her age—the black dress was slightly too large for her—but she had a look of intelligence and breeding that saved the day. Jemma Templeton of Cudgee Downs. Skye hadn’t seen her for a few years but she was aware Jemma had always had a crush on Scott. Rachelle, stick thin, fine boned and patrician-looking—the McGoverns were a very good-looking family—kept herself busy moving from group to group, carrying her responsibilities, it could be said, to the extremes. Rachelle was more about form than feeling. Doing what was expected. The show of manners. She had never shown any to the young Skye. Skye knew Rachelle had spotted her but had determined on not saying hello unless forced into it. Rachelle didn’t have friends—hadn’t even at school. As a McGovern she only had minions.
I bring out the worst in her, Skye thought regretfully. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Rachelle will never make peace with me. She resents me bitterly. And it’s all about Keefe.
She turned away just as a rather dashing young man with close-cropped fair hair rushed to stand directly in front of her, obscuring her view. “Skye, it is you, isn’t it?” he burst out with enthusiasm. “Of course it is! Mum said it was. That blonde hair and those blue eyes! You’re an absolute knockout!”
Skye had to smile at such enthusiasm. “Why thank you, Robert.” Robert Sullivan was one of the McGovern clan, the grandson of one of Broderick McGovern’s sisters. He had had three. There had been a younger brother too. But he had died tragically when he had crashed his motorbike on the station when he was only in his early twenties. “You look well yourself. It’s been a long time.” The last time she had seen Robert had been at a McGovern family Christmas Eve party some years back.
“Too long.” He gave an exaggerated moan. “I say, why don’t you come and sit with me? I’ll find somewhere quiet. Look at this lot!” His hazel glance swept the room. “They’re knocking back food and drink like it was a party. Terrible about Uncle Brod.”
“Indeed it is,” Skye lamented. “He always seemed so indestructible. The family will miss him greatly.” She broke off as her eyes fell on Lady McGovern, who was seated in an antique giltwood high-backed chair not unlike a throne. She was indicating with a slight movement of her hand that she wanted Skye to come over. “Rob, would you excuse me one moment?” she said, placing a hand on Robert’s jacket sleeve. “Lady McGovern is beckoning me. I haven’t had a chance to offer my condolences as yet.”
“Tough old bird,” Robert murmured, with not a lot of liking but definite respect. “Not a tear out of her. Stiff upper lip. Straight back. Father was a general, don’t you know?”
“Yes, I do,” Skye answered a trifle sharply. Robert’s words had annoyed her. “Because Lady McGovern doesn’t cry in public, it doesn’t mean she’s not crying inside, Robert. I know she will be grief stricken even if it’s her way not to show it.”
“Okay, okay.” Robert held up placating hands. “Training and all that. She’s always made me feel as though I’m not quite up to scratch. Of course, no one could be beside Keefe. Come back to me when you’ve finished paying your respects. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing, you clever girl! Mother is very impressed. She spotted you the instant you walked into the room. You do stand out. ‘Why, that’s little Skye McCory all grown up! And she looks simply stunning! One would never know she had such a humble start.’”
Skye hadn’t forgotten how patronising the McGoverns were.
“There you are, my dear,” Lady McGovern said, indicating with her heavily be-ringed hand an empty chair beside her. Lady Margaret McGovern was a diminutive woman but she had enormous presence. Even at eighty it was easy to see she once had been a beauty. The bone structure was still there. Her skin stretched very tight over those bones was remarkably soft and unlined.
Skye obeyed. “I’m so very sorry, Lady McGovern,” she murmured as she sat down. “I couldn’t get to you before with so many people wanting to offer their condolences. I know how much pain you’re in. I feel so sad myself. Mr McGovern was a wonderful man. He was always very kind to me.”
“Who could not be?” Lady McGovern said. She took Skye’s two hands in her own, her face carefully in control of emotions. “Welcome home, Skye.”
It was so unexpected, so enormously comforting, that tears sprang to Skye’s eyes. Home? With an effort of will she forced the tears away. Too many people were watching.
“Let me look at you,” Lady McGovern said, turning her full scrutiny on Skye. “You’re even more beautiful than your mother. But the colour of your hair is exactly the same. The same radiant blue eyes full of expression. She would have been very proud of you.”
“Oh, I hope so!” Skye released a fluttery breath. “But I wouldn’t be where I am today without you, Lady McGovern. I will never forget that.”
“Enough of the Lady McGovern!” The old lady spoke as if she were heartily sick of the title. “I want you to call me Margaret, or Lady Margaret if you feel more comfortable with that. Margaret is my name. It’s a name long in my own family. I would like you to use it. I rarely hear it any more. It’s Gran and Nan, Aunt and Great-Aunt and, I dare say, the Old Dragon. Don’t try to tell me you can’t do it. I look on you as family, Skye.”
That touched a finger to an open wound. Some things would seem to be hidden, but they couldn’t be hidden for ever. “I’ve always felt something of it,” she confessed. “But why? Can’t you tell me?” The plea came straight from the heart. “Who was my mother really? I never knew her, which is the tragedy of my life. Dad always said she was an orphan.” Skye’s frown deepened. “He said she spoke beautifully. Not an educated Australian accent, but an English voice. Like you. Was she English?” There was something in Lady McGovern’s fine dark eyes that was making Skye very uneasy.
“As a solicitor, Skye, you’ve made no attempt to trace your mother’s background?” Lady McGovern asked with a grim smile. Could it be pain or disapproval?
“Very oddly, no, Lady Margaret.” Now that she had said it, “Lady Margaret” came surprisingly easily to her tongue.
“You had concerns about what you might find?” Again the piercing regard.
Skye shook her head. “After all, my mother had a connection to you.” Though she didn’t expect to be answered, Skye prepared herself for whatever might come.
In vain. “I was very fond of her,” Lady McGovern said briefly, then changed the subject. “Your use of my name comes sweetly to my ear. Kindly continue to use it, no matter what. I’m fully aware my granddaughter has always been jealous of you. Jealous of Keefe’s affection for you. That is her nature. She’s going to find it very hard to find a husband if she’s expecting someone like Keefe to come along. It won’t happen.”
“No,” Skye agreed quietly. “Rachelle loves both her brothers, but she adores Keefe.”
“Exactly.” Lady McGovern brushed the topic aside. “I want you to know Cathy herself chose your father.”
“But of course!” Skye was startled. “She fell in love with him.” She knew she was supposed to hold her tongue but it got away from her. “But how did they find the opportunities to meet? She stayed at the house on her visits. My father at the time was a stockman. Times have changed somewhat, but there was a huge social divide.”
“Of course,” Lady McGovern acknowledged, as if the divide was still firmly in place. “Nevertheless, Cathy knew Jack McCory was the man for her. And a fine man he is too. He mourns your mother to this day. As do I. Let’s not talk any more about this, Skye. It upsets me. I don’t know if Jack ever told you, but Cathy knew the baby she was carrying was a girl. She had the name Skye already picked out for you. And doesn’t it suit you! Somehow she knew you would have her beautiful sky-blue eyes.”
Skye stayed a few minutes more talking to Lady McGovern, but it was obvious others wanted the opportunity to express a few words of sympathy to the McGovern matriarch. She no sooner moved away than Robert Sullivan made a beeline to her side.
“I don’t really know why but you and my great-aunt look more comfortable together than she and Rachelle,” he announced. “Why is that, do you suppose?”
“I have no idea, Robert,” she responded calmly.
“Neither do I. Just one of those quirky things.” Robert took her arm and began to lead her away. “Look, how long are you staying?” He stared down at her smooth honey-blonde head.
“No more than a week.” Actually, she had weeks of her leave left. “I only came for the funeral.”
“But we’ve got to meet up.” Robert spoke with extraordinary determination. “I’ve thought of asking Keefe if I can spend a little time here. I’m sure he won’t mind. The house is big enough to billet an army.”
“But won’t you be expected back home?” Robert worked for his father, a well-known pastoralist running both sheep and cattle on a large property on the Queensland/New South Wales border.
“I could do with a break. I’ll check it out with Dad. He was as impressed with you as Mother. I want you to come over and say hello. That’s if I can find them in this crush. Even in this huge house there’s hardly room to move. And just look at Keefe!”
Look at him! Skye couldn’t drag her eyes off him. Everything about him pierced her to the heart.
“The minute he enters the room, he’s the stand-out figure,” Robert said with undisguised envy. “And it’s not just his height. He really takes the eye. He’s a man with power. And money. Poor old Scott is still as jealous of him as he ever was. Scott really ought to go away and make a life for himself. Rachelle, too, though she spends plenty of time in Sydney and Melbourne.”
“I see Scott with Jemma Templeton,” Skye sidetracked. She didn’t want to discuss Rachelle. “What I remember of Jemma is good.”
“But isn’t she plain?” Robert groaned, with a pitying look in his eyes. “Talk about a face like a horse!”
“A particularly well-bred one.” Skye’s eyes were still on Keefe’s tall, commanding figure. He looked beyond handsome in his formal funeral attire. “I don’t consider Jemma plain at all. She has a look of breeding and intelligence.’
“I suppose. But I bet she’d love to be pretty. And you are being kind. I suppose a woman as beautiful as you can afford to be kind. Poor old Jemma must be nuts if she’s looking to land Scott. She’s mad about him, poor thing!” Robert rushed on with characteristic candour. “Who knows why. Doesn’t say much for her intelligence in my book. Scott is trouble. It’s the way he goes off like an out-of-control rocket from time to time.”
“Whatever, he’s always got a whole string of girls after him.”
“And Keefe?” Couldn’t she control her tongue?
Robert didn’t appear to notice the tautness of her tone. “Who knows what’s on Keefe’s mind?” he mused. “A couple of stayers are hanging in there. Fiona Fraser and Clemmie Cartwright. You remember them. My money’s on Fiona. She’s swanning around somewhere. She’s stylish, well connected, knows the score, sharp as a tack but beneath that she’s the worst of things—a snob.”
“And you’re not?” Skye gave him a sweetly sarcastic smile.
“Of course I’m not!” He denied the charge. “Mum is, maybe. Clemmie is nicer, totally different, but I don’t believe she can fit the bill.’
“Surely it’s all up to Keefe?”
“Maybe he hasn’t found the woman to measure up?” Robert pondered. “He’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong. I admire him enormously. I’m not in his league. None of us are, for that matter. The guy’s a prince!”
He’s always been a prince. My prince.
By late afternoon everyone, with the exception of a few relatives who were staying overnight, had made their way home in the private planes and the charter planes that had been dotted all over the airfield, the half-dozen helicopters, bright yellow like bumblebees, and the convoys of vehicles that would make the return journey overland. Skye, who had returned to Lady McGovern’s side as requested, found herself one of the last to leave. She had made her way to the entrance hall when Rachelle suddenly confronted her, a smile on her lips, her eyes cold and flat.
“So, Skye! Sorry I didn’t get a minute to speak to you earlier. How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you, Rachelle.” Skye spoke gently. “Please accept my condolences. The manner of your father’s premature death was terrible. I know you will miss him greatly.”
“Of course. He was a great man,” Rachelle said stiffly. “How long exactly are you staying?” As usual she was talking down to Skye.
“A few days.”
“I’m sure Gran asked you to come up to the house,” Rachelle challenged. “To stay, I mean.”
“Both Lady Margaret and Keefe invited me but I’m quite happy staying with my father. I won’t get in your way, Rachelle, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
Rachelle’s face took on an expression of extreme hauteur. “You couldn’t bother me if you tried. And I certainly don’t like the way you refer to my grandmother as Lady Margaret. She’s Lady McGovern to you.”
“Why don’t you check with your grandmother?” Skye said quietly, preparing to move on. “It was she who asked me to call her that.”
Rachelle’s dark eyes held a wild glare. “I don’t believe you.”
Skye ignored her, continuing on her way. On this day of days Rachelle, incredibly, was looking for a fight.
She hadn’t been at the bungalow ten minutes before she heard footsteps resounding on the short flight of timber stairs. They didn’t sound like her father’s. Not at all. They sounded like…She hurried to the front door, gripped by tension. The door wasn’t shut. She had left it open to catch a breeze. The bungalow had ceiling fans, but no air-conditioning.
To her complete shock, Keefe stood there, his brilliant eyes stormy. He had changed out of his funeral attire into riding gear. “I tried to catch you at the house,” he bit off, almost accusingly, ‘but you were pretty quick to get away.”
A flicker of temper, born of high emotion, flashed over her face. It had been the most dreadful day. “Let me stop you there, Keefe. I was one of the last to leave. Your grandmother didn’t want me to stray too far from her side. I don’t really know why.” She broke off, her eyes filling with apprehension. “Is something the matter?” she asked quickly. “Surely not her?” Lady McGovern was eighty years old.
“No, no.” Swiftly he reassured her. “She’s retired, of course. Losing Dad has robbed her of all vigour. She was in fine form up until then. But God knows what will happen now! She’s lost two sons. And a husband.”
“I know,” Skye said sadly. “In one way she has lived a life of privilege, but she has suffered a lot. Losing a child must be the greatest loss a woman can ever know.” Her head was aching so much she ripped at the pins in her hair, pulling them out one by one and setting them down on the small table by the door. Afterwards she shook her hair free with a sigh of relief, letting it settle into shining masses around her face and shoulders.
“Sometimes you’re so beautiful I can hardly endure looking at you,” Keefe said abruptly. He reached out suddenly for a handful of her hair, twining it around his hand, pulling on it slightly to draw her closer to him.
“You haven’t had to endure me of late,” she reminded him with a flare of bitterness.
“Your decision.” His tone was just as harsh. He released the silky swathe of her hair. “Can you do something for me, Skye?”
She relented. She had to on this day of days. “Of course I can.” She could see the pressure that had been building in him all day. There was a faint pallor beneath his tan. Another sign of his anguish.
“Then get out of that dress.” His tone was so short it sounded like an order. “I have the most desperate need to get away from the house. Put your riding gear on. Don’t tell me you didn’t bring it. I need to ride off some of this torment. It’s all been such a nightmare. Dad gone. The memory of that last morning. So businesslike, so matter-of-fact. I never got a chance to tell him how much I loved him, admired and respected him. He was my role model.”
“Keefe, he knew!” She wanted desperately to touch him but held herself back with an effort of will. “You’re everything he wanted and needed in his son, his successor. He knew the empire he built was safe with you. He never mentioned your name without it ringing with love and pride.”
He turned his dark head away, his skin drawn taut over his chiselled bones. “Do what I ask. I want to gallop until I drop.”
“Why me?” She issued it like a challenge. “You have a brother, a sister, yet you come looking for me.”
“Of course, you,” he responded roughly. “Who else?”
It was mutual validation of sorts. “I don’t understand you, Keefe,” she said on a note of despair. “You push me away. You draw me back in. You make life a heaven and a hell.”
“Maybe I only feel complete when you’re around.” He turned to her with intensity. “I missed you. You didn’t come.”
That almost sent her over the edge. “You surely didn’t think I was about to forgive you for breaking my heart?” she cried fiercely. “You showered me with affection, Keefe. As a child, as an adolescent. You made sure I was never lonely. Your kindness and your patience. It’s all etched into my memory. You might have been years and years older instead of only six. Then I grew up. And you took it all away. But not before you took me.” Her blue eyes blazed.
Colour rose in a tide under his bronzed skin. “It was what you wanted.” He grasped her by two arms, agony in his expression. “What I wanted. Neither of us could stop it. Neither of us tried. It was like it was ordained. Knowing your body meant everything in the world to me, Skye. Don’t ever forget it, or downgrade it. It was another stage in our incredible bonding. The intimacy. I have a sister who’s struggled all her life with jealousy of you. Consider her feelings for a moment. It was you I loved. You, Skye. You were so full of life and fun and endless intelligent questions. You sparkled. I love Rachelle. She’s family. We share the same blood but, terrible to say, often times I don’t like her.”
“And you think you should?” Skye asked a little wildly. “Rachelle was never nice to me. Not for one single minute. She let her jealousy eat her up. Anyway, it’s not unusual not to like someone in your family, though I didn’t have one, except Dad. Thing is, we can’t pick our families. We can’t always like them.”
“I guess.” A muscle throbbed along his jaw. “I have to contend with Scott’s jealousy as well. The two of them, my sister and my brother, ruining their lives with jealousy and resentment. Neither of them will find a life for themselves. Rachelle won’t consider getting herself a job. There are things she could do, but she’s falls back on her trust fund. Who knows what Scott’s thought processes are? I’ve offered him Moorali Downs. It’s a chance for him to find his feet. But no! It’s all about focusing his weird enmity on me.”
“Maybe if he falls in love?” Skye suggested, feeling his distress and frustration. “Finds the right girl? Marries her?”
Keefe laughed grimly. “Scott’s fantasy is all about you.”
That hit her like a blow “But surely he’s forgotten me.” Her expression revealed she was shocked and appalled. “I saw him with Jemma. She’s a very nice young woman.”
“Who is wasting her time.” Keefe rejected that solution with a kind of anger. “I like Jemma too. She’ll make some lucky man a fine wife but it won’t be Scott. Scott’s choice has to be my choice. Scott will always want the woman I want. As Gran once said, ‘Scott wants to be you, Keefe’. That’s his huge problem in life. Sibling rivalry is part of Scott’s deepest being.”
“Then that’s a hell of a thing,” she said. “Maybe he needs professional help.”
“You think he doesn’t realise it?” Keefe spoke with a mix of anger and sorrow. “Scott does have an insight into his own behaviour. He knows what drives him. The tragedy is he doesn’t want to change things.”
“So this is what it always comes to. I shouldn’t have come back.” Skye was painfully convinced it was so. “There’s no place for me here, Keefe. I only make matters worse. Remember who I am.”
His eyes flashed like summer lightning. “Who you are? I’ll tell you. You’re a beautiful, bright, accomplished woman. What more do you want? I don’t give a damn that you were raised as Jack McCory’s little motherless daughter. Jack is a good man. But who in God’s name was your mother? That’s the real question.”
Her head shot up, all sorts of alarms going off. “What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you have the courage to allow your concerns—our concerns—to leap to the centre?”
“I have no idea what you mean.” She did. There were critical parts of her mother’s life that were totally unknown.
“You do,” he flatly contradicted, “but I can’t handle it now. Take that black dress off, though heaven knows it makes your skin and your hair glow. Leave a note for Jack. Say you’ve gone riding with me. He’ll understand.”
“Of course he will!” She cut him off with something of his own clipped manner. “He’s my father.”
Chapter Three
BIRDS shrieked, whistled, zoomed above their heads, filling the whole world with a wild symphony of sound. They had left the main compound far behind, driving the horses, initially unsettled and hard to saddle, at full gallop towards the line of sandhills, glowing like furnaces in the intermittent, blinding flashes of sun. Aboriginal chanting so ghostly it raised the short hairs on the nape at first floated with ease across the sacred landscape. Now the sound was fading as they thundered on their way.
From time to time crouching wallabies and kangaroos lifted their heads at their pounding progress, taking little time to get out of the way of the horses. Manes and tails flowing, they raced full pelt across the plains, their hooves churning up the pink parakeelya, the succulent the cattle fed on, and sending swirls of red dust into the baked air.
The heat of the day hadn’t passed. It had become deadly. Thunderclouds formed thick blankets over a lowering sky. But as threatening as the sky looked—a city dweller would have been greatly worried they were in for an impending deluge—Skye, used to such displays, realised there might be little or no rain in those climbing masses of clouds. A painter would have inspiration for a stunning abstract using a palette of pearl grey, black, purple and silver with great washes of yellow and livid green.
Probably another false alarm, she thought, not that she cared if they got a good soaking. Any rain was a blessing. Her cotton shirt was plastered to her back. Sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and down into her waistband. There could be lightning. There was a distant rumbling of thunder. She had seen terrifying lightning strikes. A neighbouring cattle baron had in fact been killed by a lightning strike not all that many years previously. Yet oddly she had no anxiety about anything. She was with Keefe.
Half an hour on, as if a staying hand had touched his shoulder, Keefe reined in his mount. Skye did the same. Riders and horses needed a rest. In a very short time the world had darkened, giving every appearance of a huge electrical storm sweeping in. It confirmed to her distressed mind this had been a very sad day. Wasn’t that the message being carried across the vast reaches of the station by an elaborate network of sand drums? The chanting and the drums acted as powerful magic to see Byamee, Broderick McGovern, safely home to the spirit world.
Keefe took the lead, in desperate need of the quiet secrecy and sanctuary of the hill country. He loved and respected this whole ancient area, with all its implications. The ruined castles with their battlements had a strange mystique, an aloofness from the infinite, absolutely level plains country. It was as though they were secure in the knowledge it was they that had been there from the Dreamtime, created by the Great Beings on their walk-abouts. The hill country exerted a very real mystical force that had to be reckoned with. Many a Djinjara stockman, white or aboriginal, had over the years claimed they had experienced psychic terror in certain areas, a feeling of being watched when there was no other human being within miles. Keefe knew of many over time, including the incredibly brave explorers, who had tasted the same sensation around the great desert monuments that had stood for countless aeons, especially the Olgas, the aboriginal Katajuta. Ayer’s Rock, Uluru, sacred to the desert tribes, was acknowledged as having a far more benign presence, whereas the extraordinary cupolas, minarets and domes of Katajuta projected a very different feeling.
They dismounted, their booted feet making deep footprints in the deep rust-red loam. They saw to the horses, then began moving as one up a sandstone slope to where stands of bauhinia, acacia, wilga and red mulga were offering shade. The powerful sun was sending out great sizzling golden rays that pierced the clouds and lit up the desert like some fantastic staged spectacle.
Skye knew this place well. She had been here many times, mostly with Keefe, at other times on her own to reflect and wonder. This was Gungulla: a favourable place. A place of permanent water and a camping spot for white man and aborigine alike. Up among the caves there were drinking holes in the form of big rock-enclosed bowls and basins. There was bush tucker too, all kinds of berries and buds packed with nutrition. One could survive here. She turned to witness a thrilling sight. The summits of the curling, twisting, billowing clouds were rimmed with orange fire.
Keefe had pulled a small blanket from his pack, letting it flap on the wind before spreading it on the sand beneath the clump of orchid trees. He looked up at Skye, standing poised above him, twirling a white bauhinia blossom with a crimson throat in her hand. She had picked the orchid-like flower off one of the trees as she had passed beneath. Keefe indicated that she should sit beside him. She did so, feeling a blend of longing and trepidation. Immediately the little sandhill devil lizards scurried for cover.
“I can’t get my head around the fact my father is dead.” Keefe spoke in an intense voice. “He was only in his mid-fifties. No great age these days. There’s Gran eighty. Dad was needed.”
Sympathy and understanding were in her blue eyes. “His death has put a huge burden on you, Keefe. I know that. You thought you would have more years to grow into the job but the truth is you’re ready. You can be at rest about that.”
“Well, I’m not!” He wasn’t bothering to conceal his grief from her. This was Skye. He was letting it out. “The numbers of us killed in light plane crashes!”
She couldn’t argue with that. “But it can’t prevent you from flying. Out here flying is a way of life. You were able to come for me.”
He made a short bitter sound, more a rasp than a laugh. “I’d come for you no matter what.”
She had to press her eyes shut. Block him out. “Don’t fill my head with impossible dreams, Keefe.” Goaded, she pitched the bauhinia blossom aside. He had hurt her so deeply the wounds would never heal. Yet here she was again defying all common sense.
“Do you dream of me?” he asked abruptly.
It took her breath.
“I dream of you,” he said, lying back on the rough grey blanket and staring up at the sky.
She looked down at his dark, brooding face. “If we weren’t who we are, would you marry me?” How absurd could she get? She waited. He didn’t speak so she answered her own question. “I think not.” All these years wasted. Only they were unforgettable years. She would remember them to her last breath.
“Who are we exactly?” Abruptly he pulled her down to him in one swift, fluid motion.
She allowed him to do it even when she knew she could ill afford the least sign of surrender. To prove it, high emotion kicked in in a heartbeat. Keefe’s sexual magnetism was unquestioned, and so proprietorial. He knew he owned her. That alone aroused a certain female hostility. Being owned was wrong. “Are you saying there are secrets, Keefe?” She turned on her side to challenge him. They were so close, the pain was scarcely to be borne. Whatever had happened between them, they could never truly lose the old unifying bond. In his own way he needed her. But never as much as she needed him. There was nothing really normal about their relationship, she thought.
Again he didn’t speak. Groaning with frustration, she flung her arm across his hard, muscled chest, feeling the rhythmic thud of his heart beneath her hand. Sometimes she thought she would simply expire with the pain of loving Keefe, when there seemed to be no resolution to the matter. It was here, almost this very spot, where he had first made love to her. Taken her virginity. Captured her heart. Held it so fast he had denied her the freedom to enjoy another lover for a long time. Even then, those few relationships had never taken real shape. There was no one like Keefe. The way he made love to her. The things he did. The things he said. It was magic and music. Unforgettable.
“Secrets, yes,” he muttered. With a strong arm he fitted her body to him, as though her proximity gave him all the comfort this world could offer. “But does every secret need to be told?”
Her vulnerable flesh was pulsing with desire, causing deep knife-like sensations in her groin. He hadn’t asked a rhetorical question. He needed an answer. “You’re saying not every secret needs to be exposed to the light? Are you worried I’m family, Keefe?” Finally she threw her hidden anxieties into the ring.
“Isn’t that the fear locked away in your own Pandora’s box?” he countered, a correspondingly sharp note in his voice. “Let it out and who knows what will happen? Family!” he groaned. “There’s nothing family about the way I feel about you.”
Such an admission, yet she had a fierce desire to lash out at him. “Feel, certainly. Never act on those feelings. They could be taboo.” Why not hurt him as he always managed to hurt her? “Just give me a simple answer. What do you feel?” She stared at him with her black-fringed radiant blue eyes.
He brushed the question aside as if she had wasted her breath asking it. “Is that some kind of a joke? Neither of us can let go of the other. More to the point, I need to ask, is it a safe time for you?” There was a great urgency in him she couldn’t fail to miss.
“Safe?” She considered that with a brittle laugh. “No time is safe with you.” She didn’t think she could withstand the heat of his scrutiny. “Oh, Keefe!” Her breast rose and fell with her deep troubled sigh. Impossible to sustain the illusion she was her own woman. She was a woman who couldn’t let go. Worse, he wouldn’t let her go.
He shifted position, half pinning her beneath his powerful body but withholding most of his weight. “I want to make love to you. Tell me you’ll let me?” The very first sight of her at the airport had triggered a desperate need in him for the mind-bending pleasure of knowing her body again. He needed her to lessen the pain of this dreadful chaotic day. Make it bearable.
“It’s always what you want,” she said. “Shades of the old droit de seigneur!” Tears sparkled in her eyes.
“Never heard of it,” he darkly mocked, lifting skeins of her golden hair then letting them slide through his fingers. “I said, only if you want it.”
“What a concession, Keefe!” Hostility was coming off her like steam. She knew it had its genesis in status. His. Hers. Though successive generations were easing up on the status war. Once it would have been considered a disgrace for the scion of a great pastoral family to become involved with the daughter of a lowly employee. But she was an educated woman living in the twenty-first century. She could take her place anywhere. Except, it seemed, at Djinjara.
“Do I want it?” She considered his question bleakly. With a tremendous effort of will she exerted enough strength to break free of him. High time she made it perfectly plain she was her own woman. “Do you really believe I’m happy to think of myself as a woman possessed?” A high flush of colour had come to her cheeks.
“Possessed and possessing,” he answered bluntly. His hand, with a life of its own, moved up to caress her breast, shaping its contours within his palm, his thumb teasing the berry-ripe nipple. “I can feel your heart racing. It beats for me.”
The truth of it cut her to the bone. One had an intellectual life. And one had an emotional life. Sometimes the two were at war. “So arrogant!” she lamented. “I exist only to worship at your feet?” Deliberately she removed his hand from her breast. She knew about love. She knew about total seduction. He had long since mastered the art.
“Maybe I am arrogant,” he agreed flatly. “Maybe that’s what you do to me, Skye.”
He resumed his position, in all probability waiting for her to come round. Instead, she sat rigid with self-control, watching an eagle hawk swoop on its prey. “Are you ever going to free me, Keefe?” she asked eventually. “Or are you just holding onto me until you find someone else?”
He didn’t appear to be listening to her. As though what she was saying made no sense to him. “This is almost the precise spot where I first made love to you,” he said in a quiet, serious voice, an element of—was it regret?—in his tone.
“The heir to Djinjara having sex with the young daughter of a station employee.”
Again he didn’t choose to hear her. “The world was perfect that day. You made me feel like a titan. Capable of taking on the world. Sweet, funny little Skye with her ceaseless questions grown into a beautiful woman.”
“You always took the time to answer those questions.”
“They were always so intelligent. You had a great thirst for knowledge.”
Her released breath had a soft, shaken sound. “You were so kind to me in those days. Then overnight you drew back. You kept your distance.”
His handsome features tightened. “What would you have had me do? Keeping a distance between us was the only course open to me.”
“Of course.” There was brittle acceptance in her tone. “Keefe McGovern and Skye McCory. What a no-no! That was never going to work.” Her gaze went beyond him. “It’s going to storm.”
He didn’t move. “Right this minute I don’t care if we’re heading for Armageddon. I want to crush you. You won’t let me. I want to take every little particle of you into me.”
“That would seem to be our misfortune,” she said with the greatest irony.
“I call it destiny.” Abruptly he sat up. “I’ve missed you so much, Skye. You were supposed to come in August.”
To be here with him, remote from everyone and everything, and hold herself aloof was an excruciating test of her resolve. “And sow more discord?” she challenged. ‘No, Keefe, I couldn’t. What was the point? Besides, you might have found yourself a fiancée by then.”
His expression hardened. “Be damned to that! Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“And what is that?” She spoke in a strung-out voice, knowing she was coming close to tumbling over the edge.
“You’re the only woman I want.”
The admission was like a blinding illumination.
Isn’t that your lifetime passion? said the voice in her head. To be Keefe’s woman?
When she spoke she spoke sadly. “The things you say are enough to blow my mind. I’m the only woman you want? If that’s true—if I can possibly believe you—what in heaven or hell is wrong with us both?”
“Nothing good, it seems.” On a wave of agitation he reached out to pull her back into his arms.
He was strong…so strong…the male scent of him the most powerful aphrodisiac. Pride made her put up a struggle of sorts, her blonde head lolling away from him, her eyes glistening with tears. Was there something missing in her that left her so vulnerable?
“Skye, please. Don’t fight me,” he begged.
“Can’t you see I must?” She had to find it within herself to pull back from this point of no return.
“No, don’t!” He lowered his head, hungrily covering her mouth with his own. His tongue lapped the moistness that slicked her full lips like it was the most luscious of wines. “Don’t, don’t, don’t!”
Her heart contracted; her senses reeled. Desire came at her in an annihilating rush. This was black magic at its highest level. Keefe was the magician, ready to transport her to a different world. All she had to do was give herself up to his stunning sexual supremacy. His hands were moving down over her body. Soon she would stop thinking altogether. Mind and body would become two entirely separate regions.
Only…she couldn’t shed all her painful memories like a snake shed its skin. Memories had the power to come crashing through. She wanted him desperately—she was starving for what only he could give her—yet she gathered herself sufficiently to pull away. Perhaps she should have pulled away that first time. Said No, Keefe, instead of Yes, Keefe and saved herself a whole world of pain. Memory opened up like a book…
Second-year exams were over. She thought she had done well. She had promised her closest girlfriend Kylie Mitchell—a fellow law student—she would spend part of the long summer vacation with her and her family at their beautiful beach hide-away on one of the Great Barrier Reef islands, but she was to spend Christmas and the New Year with her father. He was so looking forward to seeing her it was impossible to disappoint him, even if she knew she was going back into the lion’s den. She hadn’t forgotten Scott’s near-assault on her. Mercifully it had never been repeated. In his heart Scott knew his brother would destroy him if he ever hurt her. From her sixteenth year, she had become off limits to Scott and his attentions. But from that day on she had never trusted him. On the surface they managed to get by quite well. There were pleasantries and jokes, but Skye thought she always saw at the back of Scott’s eyes a familiarity bordering on insolence that exposed what was really at his heart.
Scott still fancied her. The only thing that stopped him from doing something about it was fear of swift retribution from his brother. From time to time Skye had rather horrible nightmares about Scott coming after her. Then, when it seemed he was about to physically overcome her, Keefe was always there to rescue her.
Keefe, her knight in shining armour. Only confusion reigned. Keefe remained her knight, but his whole attitude towards her had changed. It was as though she had lost her sweet innocence and turned into some sort of siren. In short, Keefe kept her at a distance. Just as he made sure his brother maintained a safe distance from her, he maintained that distance himself. What had happened that summer years ago had caused Keefe to shut a door on her.
A big Christmas Eve party was being held at the House. Lady McGovern herself had issued Skye an invitation.
“I won’t take no for an answer, Skye,’ she said, gauging from the expression on Skye’s face she was about to make some excuse. “Your father won’t mind in the least. You’re a beautiful, clever young woman. A credit to us all. Quite a few young members of the family will be here. You’ll enjoy yourself. Have you something pretty to wear?”
Luckily the perfect get-out had been handed to her on a plate. “Nothing to wear to a party, Lady McGovern, I’m afraid. You must excuse me, but thank you so much for thinking of me. I know you’ll understand I’d feel awkward and out of place in the one dress I’ve brought with me. It’s a cotton sundress. I’m sure Rachelle and her cousins will be beautifully turned out.”
“So they will,” Lady McGovern agreed with an unsmiling nod. Rachelle’s cousins, all from wealthy families, were out earning their own money, carving out careers, not relying on trust funds like Rachelle. Nothing she said made any difference to her granddaughter. Rachelle lacked drive. Worse, she had no sense of reality. Her feet didn’t even touch the ground. That’s what wealth did to some people. Why bother earning money when you had plenty? Here in front of her was young Skye McCory—the image of her mother—taking up life and developing her character. At the end of Skye’s first year of law she was among the top five students. Lady McGovern fully expected she would repeat or even gain standing when the results for year two were posted in the New Year.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said, fixing Skye with her regal stare. “I took the opportunity of having something appropriate for you to wear sent in from Sydney. Think of it as an extra Christmas present.” Djinjara’s staff were given suitable Christmas presents. It was a long-standing tradition, as was their big New Year’s Eve party held in the Great Hall. “Come along with me and I’ll show it to you.” The civility of the tone didn’t conceal the fact it was an order. “Shoes to match so don’t worry about them either. I have countless evening bags. I’m sure you can pick out something from among them.”
Skye, at twenty, felt overwhelmed. “But Lady McGovern—”
“No buts about it!” The old lady turned on her, her tone so sharp it was like a rap over the knuckles. “Come along now.”
Skye knew better than to argue.
As always, Rachelle was on hand to upset her.
She was almost at the front door when Rachelle tore down the grand staircase. “What have you got there?” she demanded, her dark eyes riveted to the long, elegant box in Skye’s hands with its distinctive packaging and label.
Normally poised in the face of Rachelle’s obvious dislike, Skye felt acute embarrassment. Colour swept hotly into her cheeks. “Lady McGovern has been kind enough to give me my Christmas present,” she said.
“A dress?” Rachelle’s upper-crust voice rose to a screech. “How come you rate a dress from Margaux’s?” She advanced on Skye, looking shocked to her roots. Margaux’s was arguably Sydney’s top boutique, carrying designer labels from all over the world.
“Yes, a dress, Rachelle.” Skye was recovering somewhat. “I’m thrilled.”
“So you should be!” Rachelle’s tone lashed. “Gran hasn’t asked you to come to the Christmas Eve party surely?”
Skye held her temper. “She has. I’m sorry if that upsets you, Rachelle. I’ll endeavour to keep out of your way.”
Rachelle’s face registered a whole range of emotions, fury uppermost. “I don’t believe this!” she cried. “How could Gran do this to me?” Her eyes abruptly narrowed to slits. “I believe you begged her for an invitation. That’s it, isn’t it? You’d have the hide!”
“Wrong again.” Skye shook her blonde head. “If you ask your grandmother, you’ll learn the truth. But do remember to ask nicely. You’re losing all your manners.”
“I hate you, Skye McCory.” As if she needed to, Rachelle laid it on the line. A McGovern to a McCory. A McGovern with a streak of vengeance.
“You have no right to,” Skye replied, keeping her tone level, although she felt sick to her stomach. She was sick of Rachelle’s drama. In fact, she wanted to pitch the elegant box at this appalling young woman’s head.
She had to walk away.
Right now.
The McGoverns still had her in their power, even if she was subsidising her own way with two part-time jobs. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. But she had long since made the vow she would repay every last penny she owed them, even if it took years.
Surely her skin had never looked so luminous? Her thick, deeply waving honey-blonde hair formed a corona around her excited flushed face, animated to radiance. She couldn’t help but be thrilled by the way she looked. She had never expected to own a dress like this. Not for years yet, and then she would have to be earning a darned good salary. It was gossamer light, the most beautiful shade of blue that, like magic, turned her eyes to blue-violet. The fabric was silk chiffon, with jewelled detailing, the bodice strapless, draped tightly around her body to the hips, from where it fell beautifully to just clear of her ankles. Her evening sandals—like the dress a perfect fit—were silver, as was her little evening bag that inside bore a famous Paris label.
“Oh, my darling girl, aren’t you dolled up!” her father exclaimed in pride and pleasure when she presented herself for his inspection. “You look every inch a princess! I’m enormously proud of you, Skye. If only your mother was here to share this moment!”
Always Cathy, her mother. For her father there had never been any other woman. “I’m enormously proud of you, Dad,” she countered, giving him a hug. “I suppose we’d better get going.” Her father was to drive her up to the homestead, which was blazing with light.
“You enjoy yourself, hear me,” her father urged as she alighted from the station Jeep. “Don’t let that Rachelle get under your skin. Poor girl has problems.”
Skye, blessed with a generous heart, hoped Rachelle would one day solve them.
Days later she was still in a daydream, her head crammed with the long silent looks Keefe had given her that splendid Christmas Eve. All the other looks and stares. Many had looked for a very long time at Skye McCory in their midst, but the close attention had slid off her like water off a duck’s back. What she hadn’t realised was she had the arresting air of someone not conscious of her own beauty. Her looks were simply a part of her. Part of her genetic inheritance. She wasn’t and never would be burdened by personal vanity. Rachelle of the patrician features was a beauty. But Rachelle brought to mind the old saying that beauty was only skin deep. Far better a beautiful nature. A beautiful nature could not be ravaged by time.
But the way Keefe had looked at her! It had made her feel rapturous, yet madly restless, like her body was a high-revving machine. Not like the old days when she had still been a child. Like a woman. A woman he desired. Her own feelings were still locked in the realms of dreams, but Keefe had looked at her as if anything were possible. He was the Prince who could claim his Cinderella. For Cinderella she was. At least to the McGoverns. That evening had been the most disturbing, the most exciting night of her life. She didn’t think her memories would ever fade.
Had Keefe forgiven her for having distracted his brother? Lord knew, it hadn’t been deliberate. Did he finally understand that? She had given Scott not the slightest encouragement. It was Scott who had had the willful drive to take what he wanted. With Keefe, it was like the start of something quite new and wondrously strange. A wonderful, sumptuous, brilliant night of tens of thousands of glittering stars and the Southern Cross hanging overDjinjara’s huge tiled roof. Some memories lasted for ever.
She took her camera out to the sandhills. She had become very interested in photography since attending university. Her friend, Ewan, a fellow law student, had introduced a few of the others to the art form, fanning their enthusiasm to the point they had all pored over the various magazines on the market once they had moved past the basic techniques. The best magazines had taught her how to get great outdoor shots. She had quickly moved onto the intermediate level, such was her eye and her interest.
“You have an amazing talent, Skye!” Ewan had said, quite without envy. He had a big talent himself. “You’re a born photographer. You should give up law.”
“As though I could find work as a photographer!” she had scoffed. “If I’m so good, why don’t you all chip in and buy me a decent camera?” Of course she had been joking but to her shocked delight Ewan had run around with the hat, raising close to eight hundred dollars with a very nice contribution from a top woman lecturer who admired Skye’s work.
Skye had read up on all the great photographers, including Ansel Adams, recognised as one of the finest landscape photographers of all time. Landscape had been what she was particularly interested in. Considering where she had been born and lived, the savagely beautiful Channel Country, the home of the nation’s cattle kings, was high up on her list of must-take photographs. She had thought she might even be able to make a bit of a name for herself, but she wasn’t all that hopeful. Ewan, now, was far more interested in people. He had taken numerous photographs of her, which had captured her essence, according to her friends. The only time she had ever turned Ewan down had been when he had wanted to photograph her nude. Not that the shots wouldn’t have been tasteful. Ewan was dead serious about his work. It was just that she was too darned modest—modesty, had she known it, was part of her charm—and she had been worried where the photographs might eventually turn up. Ewan had already been offered a showing at one of the small but interesting galleries.
That afternoon she had taken herself out to the hill country with her brand-new camera. In a year she had raised enough money on her own to trade in the camera her friends’ generosity had bought her for the next model. The new camera had many extras, options and problemsolving capabilities. It had already augmented her natural ability to capture just the image she was striving for. She was starting to think of herself as a photographic artist seriously setting about taking impressions of her own country. On Djinjara there were countless special locations. Even then one needed patience for just the right light, just the right shot. She intended to wait it out to capture the amazing vibrance of an Outback sunset. City people didn’t realise the fantastic range and depth of colour or the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. Outback sunsets and sunrises were overwhelmingly beautiful. In them one could see the hand of God.
Of special interest to her were the ghost gums. What wonderful trees they were, with their pure white silky-to-the-touch boles. They made such a brilliant contrast to the rich red soil and the bright violet-blue sky. She was lying on her back, trying to get as low as possible so she could get in as much as she could of the trees and their wonderful sculptural branches
That was the way Keefe found her. He must have spotted the station Jeep at the base of the foothills and followed her trail. He knew about her burgeoning interest in photography but he hadn’t as yet seen her work. She and Keefe were separated these days, weren’t they? But in their own way they remained tied.
It was really strange, the connection. A silver cord that could never be cut.
“Won’t be a minute,” she said, trying to bring full concentration back to her shot. She had been thinking so much about Keefe lately she had almost driven herself crazy.
“Take your time.” With a faint sigh he lowered his lean frame onto a nearby boulder. Curiously it was shaped like a primitive chair, the back and the seat carved and smoothed to a high polish over aeons.
“I was hoping to take a few shots of the sunset,” she explained, beginning to get up. “Djinjara’s sunsets are glorious.”
He stood immediately, put out a hand, helped her to her feet.
Skin on skin. For a disconcerting moment it was almost as though he had pressed her hand to his lips. How susceptible was the flesh! It had been a blazingly hot day so she was wearing brief denim shorts and a pink cotton shirt tied loosely at the waist over one of her bikini tops. Quite a bit of her was on show. She wasn’t supposed to be on show, was she?
“You’re really into this, aren’t you?” he asked, a trace of the old indulgence in his voice.
“Love it,” she said, whisking a long shining wave of her hair off her flushed face. She had tied it back in a ponytail but the wind had gone to work on the neat arrangement. “It would take a lifetime but one of my ambitions is to photograph as much as I can of our great untouched land,” she confided, knowing he would understand. No one loved the land more than Keefe. The land was a passion they shared. “I can’t wait for the miracle of the wildflowers.”
“Your special time,” he said.
His diamond-bright eyes moved to rest on her with such an unsettlingly tender expression that her body might have been a long-stemmed blossom.
“Our special time.” She managed a smile, tingling to the tips of her fingers. “I loved every moment I spent with you as a child. But those were the halcyon days, weren’t they? We’ve moved on.”
“You’ve moved on,” he said, a touch grimly. “I’m still here.”
“You wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she scoffed.
“Don’t you miss it?” He leaned into the boulder with a characteristically elegant slouch. Keefe had such grace of movement. He had discarded his wide-brimmed hat, his luxuriant black hair thick and tousled, his darkly tanned skin glittering with the lightest sweat.
“Of course I miss it!” she said fervently, betraying her sense of loss. “I’ll probably miss it all my life.”
“So what’s your life going to be, Skye?” he questioned, his eyes a sharply observant silver.
“I haven’t figured that out yet.” Immediately she was on the defensive.
“Well, you’re only twenty.” He shrugged. “But you must have a whole string of admirers by now?”
“No more than you,” she shot back.
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous at all,” she said heatedly. “What about Fiona Fraser? She stayed glued to your side at the party. Then there’s Clementine. I like Clemmie. Your second cousin Angela has become very glamorous. And she’s a gifted pianist.”
“So she is,” he nodded. “A conservatorium graduate. Angela is a city girl.”
“Here we go!” she answered breezily. “That counts her out, then. City girls are trouble. So we’re back to Fiona.”
“You’re back to Fiona, and I thought you were a hell of a lot smarter. I’m twenty-six years old, Skye. Twenty-six to your twenty. I have no thought of marriage on my mind.”
“As yet. You have to be aware you’re one of the biggest catches in the country.’ It came to her that she was deliberately winding him up. It was really crazy of her, wanting to pick a fight.
“Then you know way more than I do.” He dismissed that impatiently. “I’m the guy who’s being groomed to one day take over not only a cattle empire but Dad’s numerous business interests as well. We’ve been diversifying for a long time now.”
“No one ever said the McGoverns weren’t smart.” She made a wry face, one hand making a move to button up her shirt. Only it was too darned obvious. The bikini top was pretty skimpy. Not that Keefe was looking at her in that way. The sad thing was he could arouse her most potent, erotic feelings with a single glance.
She wanted…wanted…What did she want? She was still a virgin. No frustration attached to that state. She had plenty of friends. Male and female. It was simply that no young man she had met had come close to measuring up to Keefe. That was the pity of it.
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love. Blake, his “Songs of Innocence”. She felt like an innocent, a babe in the woods.
There was a frown on Keefe’s dynamic face as he watched her. “Don’t you feel safe here, Skye?” he asked.
The seriousness of his tone cut across her reverie. “What a question!” Her hand dropped to her side. Why was she so nervous of revealing her body to Keefe? She was oblivious to all the stares she received whenever she visited a beach. Then she thought: It’s Keefe! It’s always Keefe.
Dusk was closing in. Shrieking, the legions of birds were starting to home into the density of trees that lined the maze of watercourses, lagoons, swamps and creeks on the station. It was an awe-inspiring sight, the sheer numbers.
“Answer it,” Keefe said in a firm voice.
She stared at him. “You sound stressed.”
“Maybe I am.” He swatted at a dragonfly with iridescent wings. It seemed bent on landing on his head. “Scott won’t bother you,” he said, his expression formidable.
Scott? Scott wasn’t even an afterthought. “I’m not worried about Scott, Keefe,” she assured him quickly. “We’re getting along. You warned him off. He heeded your message. You love your brother, don’t you?”
He plunged an impatient hand through his hair, fingers splaying into the distinctive McGovern widow’s peak. “Of course I do,” he said edgily. “But like you I know he has a callous streak. I don’t want to see that turned on women.”
“Of course not!” She couldn’t control a shudder, acutely aware he was monitoring her every movement and expression. “Is he interested in Jemma Templeton?” She knew for a fact Jemma had always had a crush on Scott.
“Why do you want to know?” His silver eyes blazed.
She swallowed at his tone. It was so clipped it provoked a flash of anger. “No particular reason,” she answered shortly. “Just making conversation. I have no interest in Scott, Keefe. Take my word for it.”
It’s you I love.
“Sometimes I get so tired of it all.” Unexpectedly he made the admission. “Not the job. I can handle that. Handle the lot.” He paused, studying her closely. “Nothing is the same between us, is it, Skye? The ease has gone with the wind.”
He hadn’t moved, yet she felt she had been taken into a passionate embrace. “You sound like you’re grieving for what we lost.” Despite that and the angst of his tone, she had an escalating sense of excitement, so intense she knew it was carrying her close to peril.
His silver eyes blazed. “If I touch you I’ll make love to you. Do you know that?”
He had said it yet she seemed hardly able to take it in. Even her heart rocked in shock.
“No answer?”
She began to shiver in the dry heat. How could she answer? She needed time to react to the pulverising shock. Besides, his tone seemed as much savage as sensual, as though he had found himself unwillingly caught in a dilemma.
“Here in the shadow of the sand dunes with all the Dreamtime gods around us,” he intoned. “I’m convinced this is a sacred place. That’s one reason why I’d like to spread a blanket on the sand, take you down on it. You’ve always been little Skye to me. Now you’ve become pure desire.” He spoke with such intensity his luminous eyes had darkened to slate grey. “I didn’t tell you how beautiful you looked in your blue dress the other night.”
Her stomach was churning, her limbs seized by trembling. Yet incredibly she said, “Maybe your eyes told me.” Even her body was swaying towards him like a flower swayed towards the sun.
“Eventually I was bound to give myself away,” he said, a twist to this mouth. “I’m sure I’ll remember how you looked that night to the end of my days. No one wears the colour blue like you do.”
Whatever he said, he wore the demeanour of a man who was in the process of making a hard decision. A decision he meant to stick by come what may. “I don’t want to leave you here.” He turned his head abruptly, his tone a shield. “It’s getting late. You can come back tomorrow if you like. There’s always another sunset.”
“It’s okay, I’ll stay.” He was hurting her, punishing her. For what? Growing up? Turning into a desirable woman? She could see the pulse drumming away in his temple.
“It’s me, isn’t it, Keefe?” She took a hesitant step towards him, her blue eyes full of entreaty. “I’m the one causing you tension. You don’t really want me here. I’ve turned from your ‘little buddy’ into a woman, thus an unwanted distraction.”
The air between them fairly crackled. “You want me to tell you that?” he challenged roughly. “Well, I can’t. I do want you here, but my job is to protect you. It’s always been my job. Gran really suffered when your mother died. Did you know that?”
Skye shook her head helplessly. Why was he going off at a tangent? And now? “No, I didn’t,” she admitted. “If she suffered, she must have loved my mother?”
“Love.” He reached for her in a blind rush, hauling her right into his arms.
His grip was so powerful, so perfect, she felt as weightless as a china doll.
Breathe, Skye. Breathe. Her emotions were running so high, her response so headlong, it was possible she could pass out.
“God!” he breathed, turning up his head to the cobalt dome of the sky. It sounded to her ears like a cry for help. Like he knew he shouldn’t do this. Whatever the desire he felt for her—she couldn’t help but be aware of his arousal—he felt compelled not to give in to it. “We have to go. Really, we have to go.” His grip eased abruptly so she could move.
Only she couldn’t. She wanted to stay there with him for the rest of her life. Even if it sounded as if his heart was being torn out of him. That gave her wild hope. “No, stay here with me,” she begged. Where had that alluring tone of voice come from? She had never used it before.
From the heart.
Unable to control the mad urge that had come upon her, she brought up her arms to lock them around his neck. The thought of having power over him was absolutely dizzying. She heard him groan like a man ensnared in some inescapable golden net. “What are you doing to me, Skye?” he muttered. “You know what will happen?”
“So?” Her eyes were devouring each separate feature of his face. The set of his extraordinary eyes. The arch of his black brows that formed such a stunning contrast. His tanned skin bore a prickle of dark beard. And, oh, his mouth! That wide, strong, sensual mouth, the outline so cleanly cut it might have been chiselled.
“You’re a virgin?” He looked down into her eyes, his hands spreading out over her back burning through the cotton.
“I am.” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper.
“You wouldn’t lie to me.”
It was a statement, not a question. Was he that sure of her? So aware she had an emotional dependency on him? “Are you lying in some way to me now, Keefe? Tormenting me? Or are you promising to take me where you believe I want to go?”
His handsome face showed stress. “Let me try.”
All nature seemed to be listening. Even the birds, though they wheeled overhead, gave no cries to stay her. She should be listening too. Not making it so easy for Keefe to win her over. “You?” she questioned. “The never-puts-a-foot-wrong Keefe McGovern to cut loose with Jack McCory’s daughter?”
“The more I try, the fiercer the longing gets.” Keefe’s answer was harsher than he had intended but he felt himself on a knife edge. Attraction this strong, this elemental rendered a man nearly powerless. Slowly he closed his roughened hands around the satin-smooth planes of her face, caressing her cheekbones as he would caress an exquisite piece of porcelain.
It was too much for Skye. Little silver sparks were dancing wildly in her breast. She had to close her eyes to contain the powerful shooting sensations. Excitement that had started as a dull roar was turning into a raging flame. If there was a taboo, it was about to be broken…
In the next breath she felt his mouth, warm and lushly male, come down over hers. He tasted wonderful! Delectable! She could scarcely get enough of him. Her knees were buckling from the sheer weight of emotion. She had to cling to him, throw her arms around his waist to anchor her to the ground. Sexual desire—no it was much more: an undying passion—was mounting at such a rate it had become a turbulent flood of hunger ready to surge over her and take her under. Keefe did things better than anyone. Better than anyone could.
Keefe drew her lips up with his own, taking deeply erotic exploratory breaths, sipping and sucking at the sweet nectar within, while he continued to hold her against him with unknowing strength. The intimacy was so intense it was almost unbearable. The light clear pure bonds of childhood had turned into an adult force so powerful it was intimidating. He had always looked at her with such fondness, like a much-loved little cousin, with respect for her high intelligence. How, then, could he allow himself to become a threat to her? Worse, possibly destroy what they had?
“Is it wrong to go from protector to lover?” he asked, never more serious in his life. He drew back quickly so he could search her face. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she looked, or how highly aroused. Her beauty and desirability leapt at him.
He had to bend low to hear her whispered answer. “Couldn’t we see it as entirely natural?” she asked. He was so absolutely perfect to her in every way. No one could replace him.
“Then God will forgive me,” Keefe answered in a strange near-mystical tone. What had befallen him had befallen her.
Kismet.
Skye allowed her heavy lids to fall shut. She felt as though Heaven had given her permission to allow ascendancy to the blind yearning she felt. This moment in time had been accorded her. Therefore she had to seize on it, feeling like a mortal maiden about to couple with a young god.
Chapter Four
The Present
HER father sat down to a dinner with a sad and haunted look in his eyes. The colour was a bright blue like hers but they were a different shape.
“I’m glad you went riding with Keefe,” he said, picking up his knife and fork. “He mightn’t have shown it but he was really labouring to get through today.”
“I know, Dad.” For a moment she wondered if denying Keefe the comfort of her body was not a failure on her part. For his part, he had accepted her decision and moved on.
“This looks great, love!” Jack praised the unfamiliar dish.
Skye had to smile. He was her dad. He was forever praising her. Everything she did was just great.
“Thai stir-fried beef with a few vegetables and noodles. Hope you like it.”
“I like anything you make,” he told her, quite unnecessarily. “How did you turn into such a good cook?”
“I took lessons in the city,” she said, forking a slice of bell pepper. “Everyone should be able to cook. I enjoy cooking. I’m quite domesticated, really.”
“You know what? So was your mother!” The sad expression lifted like magic. “Cathy was a bonzer little cook. Very fancy. Presented a meal beautifully. Not like your poor old dad. It’s steak and chips mostly and lashings of tomato sauce. At least the steak is prime Djinjara beef. Tender enough to melt in your mouth.” Jack paused, to look directly into his daughter’s eyes. “I thought I spotted a bit of tension between you and Keefe when you arrived. I was pretty keyed up myself.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” she replied gravely. “Mr McGovern’s death came as a terrible shock. As for Keefe and me, nothing is as easy as the old days, Dad. They’re gone. We’re adults now. I have to accept it. Keefe is Keefe, Master of Djinjara and everything else besides. It’s a huge job he’s taken on. In many ways it’s been unfair. There’s always been great pressure on Keefe. Little or no pressure on Scott. All Rachelle has to do is marry more money.”
“She won’t be an easy target,” Jack pronounced. “Keefe will have been left in charge of the McGovern Trust. No fortune-hunter will get past him.”
“Well, I don’t wish any bad experience on Rachelle,” Skye said. “You’d think she’d interest herself in one or other of the McGovern enterprises. I’m sure she’d make a good businesswoman if she tried.”
Jack looked unconvinced. “Very unpleasant young woman, I’m sorry to say.” Jack was never the one to talk badly of anyone. “No one likes her. She’s an outstanding example of a first-class snob, when Keefe, the heir, is anything but. Don’t worry about Keefe, love. I know what he means to you. He’s up to the job. Count on it. I’ve never seen a man prouder of his son than Mr McGovern was of Keefe.”
“True, but he had two sons, Dad,” Skye felt obliged to point out. “Perhaps without meaning to Mr McGovern, while lavishing his love and pride on Keefe, turned Scott into a bitter young man.” She pondered that a moment, then rejected it. Broderick McGovern had loved both his sons.
“No, dear.” Jack McCory shook his head. “Scott sprang from his poor mother’s womb, bitter.”
“Seems like it!” Skye gave a regretful sigh. “Still, many gifts and attributes were showered on Keefe at birth. Not the other son.”
“Not simply the luck of the draw, Skye. Mr McGovern did love Scott. He worried about Scott’s mood changes. Scott was given every opportunity to make a success of himself with that job on Moorali. It would have been a big leg up. He turned it down flat. Both Scott and Rachelle take after the mother’s family, the Crowthers. Mrs McGovern was never really at home on Djinjara, although as a Crowther she was Outback born and raised. Rachelle is like her, in looks as well.”
“I barely remember her,” Skye said. “Lady McGovern has always ruled. I must have been ten or eleven when Keefe’s mother died. Melanoma wasn’t it?”
Jack nodded.
Skye set down her knife and fork seeing an opening. “We never talk about my mother, Dad. There’s only one good photograph of her in the house.”
“And aren’t you the image of her!” Jack exclaimed. “Even then I couldn’t take it out for years and years. The pain of loss was too great. That’s the danger in giving your heart away.”
Gently she touched his hand. “Dad, I understand the pain—”
“No, darlin’, you don’t,” Jack said with conviction. “You only think you know. One has to experience the death of that beloved person to know the total devastation. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
“Of course not.” Skye felt chastened, but determined to persevere. “Lady McGovern avoids the whole subject, as you do. It’s like venturing into dangerous territory, but you must understand, Dad, there are things I want to know, things it’s taken me far too long to ask.” Like who exactly was my mother? That was the issue Keefe had referred to as a “Pandora’s box”.
Jack’s head shot up. “Oh, darling girl, I’m sorry. I’m just plain selfish,” he apologised. “All I’ve thought of is my own pain, my own loss. You’ll have to forgive me. The worst of the pain—the most brutal, heart-wrenching grief—has eased. A man couldn’t continue to live with it. But I can never forget. I loved my Cathy with all my heart. She died giving me the best and most beautiful daughter in the whole wide world.”
Skye’s eyes filled with tears. She rose from her chair to put her arms around her father’s shoulders, kissing his weathered cheek. “All right, Dad, we won’t talk now. Finish your meal. There’s coconut ice cream with lime and ginger syrup for later. Maybe when we have our coffee you’ll feel able to answer just a few of my questions.”
Jack had his work cut out, giving his daughter a smile. When all was said and done there was a great deal about his beautiful Cathy he didn’t know. Cathy had been such a private person not even he had been able to intrude.
Skye returned to her chair feeling a prickling of unease. If her mother had been a member of Lady McGovern’s family in England—maybe extended family—what relationship did she herself bear to the McGovern family? According to legend, her mother was the daughter or niece of a friend of Lady McGovern’s. No one knew exactly, it was all terribly vague. Deliberately vague. But why?
She was soon to discover her father knew amazingly little about his beautiful young wife’s background…
“I married Cathy because I loved her, not because of any background,” he said, resting back in his armchair. “She was like an angel from Heaven, bringing glory into my life. I couldn’t believe it when she consented to marry me.”
Skye had no difficulty accepting that. Wasn’t her own situation with Keefe a reversal of the situation that had existed between her father and mother; the social divide which would have been far greater in their day? Then there was the issue regarding her mother’s exact connection to the McGoverns. “But how did the relationship grow, Dad?” she asked, covering her bewilderment. “You were a stockman at the time. She was a guest of Lady McGovern. How could it be? Where did you meet? How often? How long did it take you to fall in love?” She knew from her father’s expression that the whole topic was causing him distress, but she felt driven to continue.
“Me?” Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, the instant I laid eyes on her! And she knew. I must have given myself away that very day. She was so beautiful, so fresh and sweet. Nothing stuck-up about her. She was someone who spoke to everyone on the station. Everyone loved her. That love has been passed on to you. When I was out of it with grief, there was always someone keeping an eye on you. Lady McGovern placed you in Lena’s care.”
“And wonderful she was to me too!” Skye was still in contact with Lena, who now lived with a family in Alice Springs.
Jack nodded. “True blue was Lena. I tried once to get her to talk—fill me in about Cathy and her connection to the family—but Lena wouldn’t open up. Still, I think Lena knew a lot.”
“About what, specifically?” Maybe she could get more information out of Lena than her father if she tried?
“Oh, an amazing amount of stuff,” Jack said, looking like he wanted to terminate the whole conversation. “I guess we should have had this discussion years ago, but in all truth, love, I never did know a lot. Cathy wouldn’t talk about her past. She’d started a new life. With me. Whatever she wanted I went along with. So in a way I’m accountable for her death.”
“No, Dad, no!” Skye protested strongly. “You have to stop all that. It was a tragedy.”
“Yes, a tragedy,” Jack groaned. “She died in my arms. My little Cathy. Do you suppose it could have been because you arrived early?”
This was way beyond Skye. There had never been any mention that she had been a premature baby. All her life she had enjoyed excellent health. Unease struck harder.
“Who attended the birth? Who was the doctor, the midwife, whatever?”
Jack’s face was showing strain. “Tom Morris. A good bloke, a good doctor. He’s dead now, Tom.”
“Who called him?”
Jack looked stunned. “Why, Lady McGovern got him here fast. He was flown in. I remember him saying practically right off he had concerns.”
“Why didn’t she go to hospital?”
“She didn’t want to,” Jack said broken-heartedly. “She was adamant about it. She was happy to be on Djinjara. She loved it here. She loved being with me. ‘You’re my minder, Jack,’ she used to say with a laugh. I minded her. Yes, I did. Until the end. I don’t know what her reasons were for leaving her own people. All I know is she found sanctuary with Lady McGovern. Lady McGovern used to talk to Cathy like she was her own child. Of course she wasn’t. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there was some blood connection.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t, love.” Jack shook his head. “And I wouldn’t dare ask the old lady.”
So her father had lived with his own demons. High time for her to face up to her own. Lady McGovern would know the truth. Probably she was the only one living who did. But she had the dismal notion Lady McGovern wasn’t about to help anyone out. Bizarre as it sounded, even Broderick McGovern might never have known a great deal about Cathy. He would have been married by then with a wife and children.
Time to visit her mother’s grave. Then time to go back to her city life. Back to the life she had forged for herself. She had to confront the fact the same aura of unease regarding her background surrounded Keefe as it did her. Maybe the crucial bits that were missing explained why neither of them seemed able to move forward. Only Lady McGovern knew exactly what had happened all those years ago…
She took one of the horses to the McGovern graveyard, tethering the mare in the shade of the massive desert oaks. A huge wrought-iron fence enclosed the whole area, the iron railings topped by spikes. The gates were closed, but unlocked. She opened one side and walked through, shutting it with a soft clang behind her. This was the McGovern graveyard, scrupulously tended, with generations of McGoverns buried here. Everywhere there were markers and plaques, tall urns, a few statues. A classical-style white marble statue of a weeping maiden marked the grave of the wife of the McGovern founding father.
What was her mother doing, lying here among the McGoverns? She had asked Lady McGovern once when she had been about twelve and had failed to get any answer whatever. Just a stern silence. She had never asked again. Broderick McGovern’s grave as yet had no headstone. No one had expected him to die so prematurely, leaving his son at barely thirty to take up the reins.
She had brought flowers with her. Not from the home gardens, though she could have asked and been given as many armfuls as she wanted. Instead, she had broken off several branches of pink and white bauhinia, arranging them in a sheaf. Oddly, although the cemetery wasn’t a cheerful place, it wasn’t depressing either. Surrounded by such incredible empty vastness, in the distance the ancient temples of the sandhills glowing an orange-red flame, it wasn’t difficult to get one’s own life into perspective.
Her mother’s grave was marked by a child-sized white marble angel with outspread wings. The inscription read:
Catherine Margaret McCory, 1964-1986.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there
Silently she mouthed several more lines of the famous bereavement poem. She knew them by heart. All around her the silence was absolute except for the soft tranquil swish of the desert breeze. For an instant she fancied the breeze very sweetly kissed her cheek. Perhaps it was a greeting from her mother? Why not? It was hard to believe one simply ceased. There was mind, spirit. Only the body was consigned to the ground.
Cathy could well be in the thousand winds that blew, the swift uplifting rush of birds, the soft stars that shone at night. Though the stars that shone in their billions over Djinjara were ten times more brilliant than city-soft.
“Where are you, Cathy?” Without being aware of it Skye spoke aloud. “Who are you?” She desperately needed reassurances. Tears for what might have been pooled in her eyes. She bent to place the bauhinia branches, weighed down by exquisite blossom, on the white stone. There were so many mysteries in life. She couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of the mystery of her own family. Had her mother lived she could have bombarded her with questions and got answers. She had always been a questioning child. Now it seemed her mother’s short life had been defined by her death.
She paid her respects at Broderick McGovern’s resting place then made her way slowly along the gravelled path to the tall gates. Along the way she passed a brilliant bank of honeysuckle that adorned one side of the fence, pausing to draw in the haunting perfume. Life might be many things, she thought, but in the end it all came down to one thing. Great or small, the body returned to dust. She chose to believe the soul roamed freely…
Just as she reached the gate, a station Jeep pulled up so hard it raised a great swirl of red dust and fallen dry leaves. Deliberate, Skye thought. Rachelle was at the wheel. Resolutely Skye turned to face her. She could hardly remount and gallop away. Unpleasant and abrupt as Rachelle was, this was Djinjara. Rachelle was a McGovern. She had to be accorded respect.
Rachelle was out of the vehicle with the speed of a rocket being fired. She was dressed in a cream silk shirt and jodhpurs, riding boots on her feet when it was well known Rachelle didn’t particularly enjoy riding, though she was competent, as expected of a McGovern.
“What are you doing here?” Rachelle whipped off her big black designer sunglasses.
“I wonder you ask, Rachelle,” Skye managed a quiet answer. “My mother is buried here.”
“Highly unusual, I’d say.” There were shadows under Rachelle’s fine dark eyes. She looked faintly ill and nerve-ridden. Yet even in the tranquillity of the graveyard, with her father laid to rest not far away, Rachelle couldn’t rein in her dislike and resentment.
“You should speak to your grandmother some time,” Skye suggested. “She was very fond of my mother. My mother could only have been buried here with her approval.”
“It’s all seriously odd,” Rachelle said, a vein throbbing in her temple. “That’s all I can say. Your mother should be all but forgotten. You didn’t know her. We were only little kids when she died yet we can’t seem to get rid of her. Or you either.”
Skye gave the other woman a saddened look. “Why do you hate me so much, Rachelle?”
Rachelle looked back with huge disbelief. “You don’t know?” she hooted. “You robbed me of my brother for years and years of my life.”
“No.”
“You did.”
“Maybe he saw you weren’t going to be my friend?”
“Please! You could never be numbered among my friends.”
“Where are all your friends, Rachelle?” Skye retorted, suddenly firing up. “You didn’t have any at school. I’m fairly modest by nature but you might recall I did. I was also head girl in my final year.”
“How impressive!” Rachelle sneered. “Who knows why Gran wanted you there in the first place. I guess she had to be fond of your mother. Who was she anyway? Over twenty years have gone by and Gran won’t say a word about her.”
Wasn’t that the truth! “You surely must know if she was a relative? One of Lady McGovern’s relatives in England?” Skye challenged, so desperate for clues she would ask even Rachelle.
Rachelle’s outraged expression rejected that. “I’d have a heart attack if I thought you and I were related,” she snapped off. “Your mother was just some stray Gran befriended. I don’t know from where. Like I care!”
“But you do care.”
It had got to the stage where they all cared. “Nonsense!” Rachelle’s cry was a near shriek. “You’re the bane of my life, Skye McCory.”
“Sounds like you should get a life,” Skye advised, turning away.
“Keefe might have loved you when we were kids,” Rachelle called after her. “But he doesn’t love you now. You’ll never get him. That’s what he told me, I swear. Though I expect that cuts your heart to ribbons. You love him. Don’t think I’m a fool. You’ve always loved him. But nothing will ever happen between you and him. Keefe has his life planned differently. He’s way out of your league.”
Skye had to wait until the initial shock had worn off. “Where did you learn to be such a terrible snob, Rachelle?” she asked quietly enough, though Rachelle’s words had landed like punches.
“It’s called knowing who you are,” Rachelle explained with a lofty tilt of her chin. “I’m a McGovern. You’re Jack McCory our overseer’s kid. He’s a real rough diamond, isn’t he, your dad?”
Skye felt heat burn up her veins. Steady. Steady. She got herself under control. “He could teach you some manners,” she answered with cool disdain. “I can see there’s never going to be a way for us to start over, Rachelle. In a way, I’m sorry about that. I know you’re not good at taking advice, but if I were you I’d jettison the bitterness and save your sanity. Hatred and jealousy hold bad karma.”
“Bad karma?” Rachelle’s laugh held more than a hint of ferocity. “Tell me about it! And what’s this with Rob? He only stayed over thinking he could hang around you. Except Keefe put a sock in it and set him to work. Using Rob as a back-up, are you, dear? Can’t have Keefe. Scott isn’t interested. Maybe Robbie will do?”
Introducing Cousin Robert at this point caught Skye by surprise. She hadn’t laid eyes on Rob since the day of the funeral.
“Well?” Rachelle gave Skye a disgusted look.
“Sorry, I need time to digest that, Rachelle. Rob is nice. I like him. But I have no romantic interest in him whatever.”
“Maybe not but you do need a leg up in the world. A Sullivan would certainly do. But there again too much of a reach.” Rachelle laughed with bitter triumph. “You’re nothing but—”
She broke off hastily as a tall shadow fell. Both young women turned round to see Keefe standing barely a few feet away. How had he moved so silently? Skye marvelled. It didn’t seem possible. But, then, Keefe managed to do some pretty incredible things.
“Is this really the place to have an argument?” he asked tersely, his light eyes blazing from one young woman to the other.
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