Australian Outback Kings / The Cattle King's Mistress / The Playboy King's Wife / The Pleasure King's Bride (11 page)

“Today we took a booking for a Mr and Mrs Bobby Hewson…”

“Ah yes, made it for him myself. He and his wife had planned to fly on to Broome. Another couple we have staying here—you'll remember them—John and Robyn Trumbell—apparently raved on about King's Eden and they decided to take in a weekend there. Lucky you could accommodate them.”

“Yes. Would that be the Bobby Hewson of the Regent Hotel chain?”

“Certainly is,” came the dry reply.

Miranda's heart dropped like a stone.

“And his wife is a member of the Parmentier family who owns the Soleil Levant chain,” the manager ran on, confirming their identities beyond any possible doubt. “It's her first trip to Australia. Keen to see the sights.”

Coincidence…sheer rotten coincidence that they had connected with the Trumbells! And finding available accommodation here! Miranda felt too sick to speak.

“Mr Hewson mentioned that you'd been trained up to a managerial position at the Regent in Sydney. Sounded as though he was interested in finding out how you're dealing with an outback resort.”

Bobby
knew
she was here! It wasn't just a trick of fate. He
knew
. John or Robyn Trumbell must have spoken of her. And that was why he was breaking his trip to Broome to come to King's Eden. Nothing to do with
the sights
, though he'd probably played that line to his wife. Bobby Hewson, Miranda knew with stomach-churning certainty, had
her
in his sights!

“I thought it might be him,” she forced herself to say through the bitter taste of bile. “Thank you for filling me in.”

“Well, I guess you now know what to expect.”

“Yes. I do. Thank you again.”

She hung up, her mind crawling with scenarios of what she could expect, and every one of them was a nightmare from hell. Tears started welling, tears of miserable frustration at not having escaped the punishment Bobby Hewson would inevitably deal out to her for having flouted his plans. She remembered only too well her last meeting with him, her eyes cleared of the gullible scales that had blinded her to the man he really was…seeing the totally selfish ego behind his smiling charm.

He had expected her to give in to him.

She'd walked away. Flown away.

And now he was going to catch up with her.

The tears overflowed and trickled down her cheeks. She bent over, pulled off her shoes and socks, then curled up on the bed, hugging a pillow for comfort. She was facing a totally wretched situation. He'd arrive tomorrow, then all day Saturday, all day Sunday, three nights…and he'd be getting at her every chance he had. She knew he would.

Regrets for ever having fallen in love with him savaged her as she wept into the pillow. It hadn't been a real love. More a prolonged affair, sugared and peppered by the excitement and glamour Bobby always brought with him on his flying trips to Sydney. He'd swept in and out of her life, dazzling her with his charm, seducing her with honeyed words, always leaving with the promise of having more time with her on his next visit, making her feel important to him, necessary to him.

She'd fitted in with what he'd wanted. He hadn't cared about her needs. Didn't care about them now, either. He was coming here to satisfy himself, and he'd be scoring off her any way he could…subtle little digs in front of his wife, then seeking her out privately, maybe even trying to get into her bed again. He would see that as a triumph over her bid to put him out of her life. And if she didn't
oblige
him…Miranda shuddered, every instinct telling her no one frustrated Bobby Hewson and got away with it.

A knock on her door broke into the train of misery. She swiped at her tear-sodden face and looked at her watch. It jolted her to see it was a few minutes past five. The current homestead guests were probably back from their day trips and she hadn't been on hand to deal with any requests or problems. The knock meant someone was looking for her.

She scrambled off the bed, grabbed some tissues, rubbed her eyes and cheeks, shoved her feet into sandals, finger smoothed her hair back behind her ears. The knock came again as she struggled to calm herself enough to answer it. Probably Val, she thought, wanting to pass some message on before leaving for the day.

She opened the door and shock hit her again.

Nathan!

“Ah! You're here.” He smiled, his eyes warm with pleasure.

Having steeled herself to face responsibility, Miranda was totally undone by Nathan's smile. The steel collapsed and her whole body turned to jelly.

“I was looking for you to give you Sarah's diaries,” he went on, holding out the package he was carrying. “Just as well you are here in your private quarters. Makes it easy to put them in a safe place.”

Somehow she lifted her hands to take the package. Her gaze dropped to it as her mind tried to change gears, adjusting to Nathan's presence and recalling what she had anticipated…hoped…from it. Except it all felt unreal now, shaky, without substance. She stared down at the diaries—Sarah's diaries—of a life that was in the past.

“Miranda?”

She heard the query but it seemed to come from a long distance. Her past was all too alive, threatening to mess her up again and she didn't know when or where that would stop, now that Bobby had access to her.

“Is there something wrong?”

Wrong
…the awful sense of wrongness was so twisted up inside her… Nathan here at the wrong time… Bobby coming to do more wrong…another wave of tears swam into her eyes. She shook her head, too choked to say anything.

“You did say you wanted to read them.” The edge in his voice seemed to slice into her heart. “If you've changed your mind…”

She swallowed hard, fighting to order her mind to come up with something that might cover her failure to welcome his company. “I'm sorry, Nathan. I'm not…” Her voice was wobbling. She scooped in a quick breath and forced herself on. “This is bad timing. But thank you for…”

Her chin was forcibly tilted up. The swift action halted her erratic little speech. She was startled into looking at him, though the moisture in her eyes blurred her vision, preventing any clear view of his reaction to her all too obvious distress.

“You've got a problem. Best you use me to talk it over with, Miranda,” he stated firmly.

Before she could raise a protest or deter him from his purpose, he pushed her door wide-open and was steering her around, his arm hugging her shoulders as he walked her to the closest armchair in her sitting area. He set her down in it, retrieved the diaries from her hold, placed them on the bench that divided off the kitchenette, then closed her door, sealing their privacy.

“Now tell me what's upset you.”

She shook her head, knowing he had no control over this situation. “It doesn't have anything to do with you, Nathan.”

“If it's resort business, Tommy would want me to help, Miranda,” he asserted strongly.

Hopelessly agitated by his insistence on getting involved, she pushed herself out of the chair to plead for him to leave her. “It's personal. You can't help. Please…”

“Try me!”

He stood there, a strong mountain of a man, emitting immovable purpose, and Miranda could feel her own will crumpling under his. She didn't know what to do, couldn't see a way of resolving anything. She wasn't aware of her hands fretting at each other, wasn't even aware that her tear ducts were betraying her inner distress again.

Then he was coming at her and suddenly she was enveloped in a warm embrace, her head was pressed onto a broad shoulder, and a hand was stroking her hair.

“It's okay,” he murmured comfortingly. “We'll sort it out. A problem is always better shared.”

“No, it's not,” she cried, even as she passively accepted his physical support, inwardly craving more.

“Trust me.” It was more of a command than an appeal. “Sooner or later you'll have to learn to trust me, Miranda. You might as well start now.”

She wanted to, but the thought of explaining everything was so daunting, her heart cringed from it. And what if he misunderstood her position? He hadn't lived in Bobby Hewson's world.

“It's not good,” she blurted out.

“So what? Who's perfect?”

Anguish splintered her mind. She could no longer find the point of arguing. “It's the man I told you about,” she confided in a fearful rush. “Bobby Hewson. He's coming tomorrow. With his wife. And he knows I'm here. He knows.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
ENSION
! B
EING PRESSED
so close to Nathan, Miranda instantly felt it whipping through him, transmitting a stiffening jolt to her shredded nerves. The firm wall of his chest expanded. The hand stroking her hair clenched. The muscular thighs supporting hers tautened to rock-hardness. It seemed for several seconds, he didn't breathe at all. And neither did she!

Sheer panic threw her mind into chaos. What had she done by spilling that information? He'd wanted to know. He'd asked her to trust him. But words spoken couldn't be taken back. If he was thinking badly of her again…

A primitive savagery seized Nathan's mind.
I will not let him have her. I will not let him hurt her. He's a dead man if he so much as touches her!
Then some spark of rationality pulled him back from that violent edge and argued that he had to handle this situation with some finesse. Miranda was not his and only God knew what she felt for the scum who didn't have the decency to leave her alone.

* * *

His breath whooshed out, making her scalp tingle with apprehension. The feeling that she was poised on the edge of an abyss with her whole life in the balance made her heart clench with fear. A surge of adrenaline spurred a need to fight for what she wanted. Though she didn't know how she was going to go about it, she lifted her head, ready to face whatever she had to.

“Right!” he snapped, easing away from her, his hands grasping her upper arms to hold her steady.

She braved meeting his eyes, her own completely dry now, and was stunned by the blue blaze of purpose burning from them.

“So he's the cause of your stress. What are you expecting him to do and why, Miranda? Spell it out to me. I'll be able to help you better if I'm aware of all the nuances to this situation.”

Relief! Nathan wasn't judging. He was going to listen…to help. Dizzy from the wrangle of emotions still seizing her brain, Miranda took a deep breath to feed some oxygen into her bloodstream, and tried to focus her mind on delivering the salient facts.

Her mouth was dry. She worked some moisture into it and started to outline the problem, her eyes begging his understanding. “The Hewson family own the Regent Hotel chain. They're…they're very rich, influential. I didn't want to continue any kind of relationship with Bobby once I heard he was committed to marrying Celine Parmentier. Her family owns the Soleil Levant hotels. The marriage was going to give Bobby more power. He said I could ride up the ladder with him or…”

The bitter disillusionment of that scene rushed in on her again, the terms Bobby had laid out, ringing with the kind of corrupt promises that had taken her mother down a road that had emptied her heart of all love.

“Or?” Nathan prompted.

She sighed away the dark, grievous memory and pushed on with the deal Bobby had pressed, the revulsion she'd felt reflected in her voice. “If I didn't see sense, I might find my career on shaky ground. If I sought a position elsewhere, a good reference could be withheld.”

Nathan frowned. “But it wasn't. My mother said your references were excellent.”

“Bobby didn't expect me to leave. He thought he had me. So he didn't bother instructing the manager to withhold the truth about my capabilities, or cast any slur on them.”

“So you left without telling him you were going.”

“I told no one about applying for this job or getting it. Once I was notified I had it, I packed up my possessions, handed in my resignation and walked out of the Sydney Regent the same day. To all intents and purposes, I disappeared.”

“Drastic action,” he mused, as though measuring all it meant.

Sensing some criticism of her decisions, and discomforted by it, Miranda broke out of his hold and paced around the two armchairs that faced the television set before turning to confront him again, her hands gesticulating the urgency she'd felt to escape any rebound effect from walking out on Bobby Hewson.

“I wanted a clean break. King's Eden offered me that. It was out of his reach, not connected to people or places he knew. I thought he couldn't get at me here or do me any damage by bad-mouthing me because this was outside the normal hotel trade.”

“Get at you?” Nathan picked up sharply, his eyes searing hers with questions.

She flushed, hating the admission she had to make. Her arms instinctively hugged her midriff, holding in the awful vulnerability she felt. “We were together for three years. You don't just forget all that intimate knowledge, Nathan. And he'll use it. I know he will.”

The muscles in his face tightened. A wave of disapproval seemed to come at her and it instantly struck a fierce well of resentment. What about him and his two years with Susan? At least she had thought of marriage with Bobby.

“Do you still want him?” he shot at her.

“No!” she flared, throwing out her hands in exasperated denial. “What do you think this is all about? I don't want anything more to do with him. Can't you see that?”

“I see how upset you are by his coming, which suggests to me the relationship is not dead for you. If it were dead, he couldn't get at you, Miranda,” he argued tersely.

“You miss the point,” she fiercely retorted. “It's not dead for him. And if you think he's going to leave it alone on my say-so…” She shook her head. “My exit from his life told him I wanted out and he's ignoring it. He's deliberately pursuing me, breaking the other plans he'd made the moment he heard where I was. I didn't invite him.”