An Outback Affair/Runaway Wife/Outback Bridegroom/Outback Surrender/Home To Eden (57 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eden belongs to me.”

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

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

“But you prefer to live in New York?”

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

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

“How? Through the family?”

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

“Oh, please, Drake.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You really saw it like that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How exactly?” Nicole asked him quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Barrett can take care of it.”

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

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

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

“Dot? Mum pensioned her off.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My darling girl!”

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

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

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

“I love you so much, my darling.”

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

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

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