In Her Husband's Image
Author
Vivienne Wallington
Reads
19,5K
Chapters
14
Chapter One
“Mummy, will you buy me a gun for my birfday? Then I can go out shooting wild pigs with Vince.”
Rachel nearly fell over. “Mikey, you’re only three years old—”
“I’ll be four in three more sleeps. Vince says I can’t go out shooting wif him till I get my own gun.”
Rachel silently cursed her head stockman for not telling her son outright that guns and wild-boar hunting were only for grown-ups. Maybe when Vince had children of his own, he’d have more sense. “He meant when you were grown up, Mikey. Only grown-ups can use guns. Come and help me feed the chickens. And let’s see how many eggs we can find.”
“Okay.” Mikey brightened and ran on ahead with Buster, his frisky Blue Heeler.
Rachel vowed to have a word with Vince the minute he returned from checking the water bores. She was already peeved with the sandy-haired stockman for not consulting her more on station matters and making decisions that were rightfully hers. She was in charge here at Yarrah Downs now that her husband was gone, not Vince.
But of course Vince didn’t expect her to stay on here. Nobody did. Widows with young children weren’t usually interested or capable of running outback cattle stations. Especially pampered city-born widows.
Rachel glowered into the dust. The lack of any good spring or summer rains and the continuing hot dry spell was the last straw. If they didn’t get some real rain soon, the already low dams would dry up, the parched paddocks would run out of feed and they’d be in even bigger trouble than they already were. A couple of brand-new water bores would help, but she simply couldn’t afford them.
As she trudged after Mikey, she heard a light plane coming in. Her father wouldn’t fly up here today, surely, three days before Mikey’s birthday. He would never stay at Yarrah Downs overnight, let alone for three nights. He hated the outback, and besides, he was always far too busy running Barrington’s.
Her frown deepened. Had he flown up here expressly to try again to talk her into selling and coming back to Sydney? Hedley Barrington never gave up!
She could hear him already. “This is no place for a woman without a husband, or a boy without a father. You can’t possibly run this huge, isolated place on your own, Rachel, now that Adrian’s gone. Nobody would expect you to.”
She kept telling him that she intended to try, that Yarrah Downs was her home, and Mikey’s, too. But she never got through.
“And what about Barrington’s? You’re my only child, Rachel. Running our chain of department stores is what you trained for and what I’ve always counted on. I won’t live forever—you lost your mother last year and I’m five years older than she was. I want you to come back and help me run Barrington’s so you’ll be ready to take over when I retire…or shuffle off altogether.”
“Dad, I belong here. I love it here. I feel free and at peace. I never felt like that back in Sydney. I felt stifled…suffocated…trapped in a life I didn’t want.”
“Rot! You always had everything you could possibly want and all the freedom you could need. I even let you go off and travel the world, on the understanding you’d come back when I needed you. I even let you marry that hick Queensland cattleman of yours against my better judgment. But he’s dead now. There’s no need for you to stay here any longer. I’m the one who needs you now.”
“But I want to stay. I’m going to stay. Out here in the bush I can breathe. I feel alive.”
“How can anyone breathe or feel alive in this heat? In these harsh conditions, without a husband to help you, how can you possibly survive? It won’t get any easier, taking on the sole responsibility yourself—it’ll get harder, the longer you stay. Don’t expect any help from me. I want you back home!”
Rachel kicked up the dust at her feet, shutting her mind to her father’s endless arguments. Was she about to hear them all over again?
“I’ll just go and see who it is,” she called out to Mikey. “You stay with Buster. You can start gathering eggs, but be careful with them!”
The sealed airstrip that Adrian had put in a year or so after Mikey was born and the light plane that had just arrived were out of sight from here. Maybe it wasn’t her father. Come to think of it, it hadn’t sounded like his Citation jet. Or any kind of jet. One of her neighbors, maybe? Or someone from the bank, heaven forbid! They’d already clamped down on her credit. What next? As if she didn’t have enough problems!
She cut across the yard, skirting around the sprawling ranch-style homestead with its shady, vine-covered veranda that still held humiliating memories she hadn’t been able to shake, even after all this time.
Her visitor should have had time by now to trudge up from the airstrip. She quickened her steps, weaving through the thick shrubbery and gum trees overhanging the garden path.
A man appeared. She stopped, her eyes drawn to his face. A whooshing sensation swept through her, as if the lifeblood was draining from her.
For a disorienting second, she felt as if she’d come face-to-face with the ghost of her dead husband!
Only, it was no ghost. It was solid, flesh-and-blood male. A male with the same handsome, square-jawed face, the same piercing gray eyes, the same whip-hard, broad-shouldered frame, the same unruly dark hair and deeply bronzed skin.
The same man, she realized in shock, who’d fooled her five years ago, to her eternal shame, who’d made her feel things she’d never felt before or since, who’d haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours for the past five years, even as she’d tried to despise him, to blot out the shameful memory of him.
Zac Hammond, her late husband’s identical twin brother. The brother she’d met only that one time, on that one fateful night, and saw again every time she looked at her son, Mikey.
She began to tremble. “You’re a little late.” Her voice cracked, but attack seemed the only way to deal with this latest, totally unexpected bolt from the blue. “Your brother’s funeral was a month ago.”
Adrian’s lawyer had notified his absent twin brother of the tragedy, sending Zac word in plenty of time to attend the funeral if he’d wanted to come. When Zac had failed to turn up, she’d assumed he wasn’t coming back at all. And she’d been relieved. Relieved and irked and bitter and angry, all at the same time.
But mostly she’d been relieved. It was one less problem she would have to deal with. Facing him again, dealing with what his return home would mean…
“I was stuck in a remote part of Zaire, out of contact.” His impassive tone gave nothing away. “I headed home as soon as I heard.”
But too late…
She drew in her lips. It was so like the excuse he’d used five years ago when he’d finally made the effort to come home after missing his brother’s wedding, not by a day or two, but five months. Zac, Adrian had complained on the rare occasions he’d mentioned his estranged, footloose brother, always put his work and his own needs first. He always had and always would.
Zac’s priorities, she’d come to realize, were himself first, family last, morals nonexistent. Well, she knew all about Zac Hammond’s morals. And she’d do well to remember the kind of man he was. She felt her cheeks heating. Had her own morals been so squeaky-clean?
But she’d had an excuse. Not knowing Adrian had an identical twin, she’d mistaken the man on her veranda that night for her husband of five months, thinking he’d come home early from his two-week cattle-buying trip down south. The darkness, the hot steamy night and her own foolish romantic yearnings and frustrations had done the rest.
“I wasn’t sure I’d find you still here.” Zac’s sun-sharpened eyes narrowed, raking over her in a way that made her feel he was undressing her, just as he had on that highly charged moonlit night. She took an unsteady step back, another rash of tremors quivering through her. She willed them away, maddened that a mere look could still spark a reaction.
“Oh, you thought I’d have bolted back to the city by now, did you?” Just like everyone else, she thought, eyeing him coldly. Not a word of sympathy on the loss of her husband, his own twin brother. Did he think that after the shameful way she’d thrown herself at him the last time he was here, she didn’t deserve his sympathy? Did he still believe she’d known all along who he was?
She clenched her hands in suppressed fury, offering him no sympathy, either. He didn’t deserve it. He and Adrian might have been identical twins, but they’d never been close, never had time for each other, never had a single thing in common.
“If you thought I’d already gone back to Sydney, why did you come back to Yarrah Downs?” The second the words were out of her mouth, the answer struck her. He wanted to see what he could salvage from his twin brother’s estate. From his old family home.
Maybe he even had thoughts of buying the property himself if it came up for sale.
Not to live here permanently, of course. Zac, with his remote work in the wilds, wasn’t the settling-down type. But having lived here in the past, he might still have some sentimental attachment to Yarrah Downs and want to keep it in the Hammond family. The vast central Queensland property had belonged to their father, Michael, and to their grandfather before that, before it passed to Adrian.
He could always put a manager in charge in his lengthy absences. Vince would be a prime candidate for manager.
Her breath burned in her throat. The sooner she disillusioned Zac the better! “Well, as you can see, I am still here. And I intend to stay. But you’re welcome to a bite of lunch before you go. How did you know, by the way, that we had an airstrip here now?”
Five years ago, he’d been driving a rented four-wheel-drive vehicle that had fooled her into thinking it was Adrian’s when it pulled up outside the homestead. As he’d fooled her when she first set eyes on him in the heady moonlit darkness.
Zac quirked an eyebrow. “I checked when I landed in Brisbane to see how far things had progressed here over the past five years. Nearly five, to be precise.”
Rachel’s skin broke out in a prickly sweat. Oh, my God, he remembered it was just under five years ago! Four years, nine and a half months, to be exact.
She thought of Mikey and felt a flare of panic. Would Zac guess the truth when he saw her son? Their son? But how could he know or guess, even if he saw the amazing likeness? Mikey was the spitting image of the only father he’d ever known—her husband, Adrian, Zac’s identical twin brother.
“I didn’t know you could fly a plane,” she said, quick to change the subject.
“I got my pilot’s license four years ago. It’s handy to know how to fly when you do a fair bit of flying in small planes.”
She shivered, having a sudden vivid image of the life Zac must have been leading over the past years—the dangers, the isolation, the remote areas he must have ventured into to photograph his wild animals. And the lack of human contact, the lack of responsibility to anyone but himself. A reckless, irresponsible adventurer, Adrian had called his brother.
But at least, by burying himself in the wilds, Zac wasn’t hurting anyone but himself. He only hurt people when he came back to civilization.
She scowled. She must keep remembering that, remembering how unthinking and unscrupulous he was. Already, just by seeing him again, she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel, things she mustn’t feel.
“So you’re still living and working in the perilous wilds? You haven’t married and settled down, obviously.” Regretting the comment the moment it left her lips, she swung her gaze to the sky, pretending an interest in a brilliant scarlet-and-blue parrot overhead. What did she care what Zac was doing with his life? She just wanted him to go.
Not waiting for an answer, she said briskly, “Well, I guess you’ll want to return your charter plane before dark, so we’d better stop prattling and have some lunch.”
“I don’t need to return the plane for a couple of days. I was hoping—having found you still here—that you might put me up for a night or two.”
His words stopped her in her tracks. Let him stay here overnight? Possibly two nights? This was getting worse by the second! To have him sleeping under the same roof! But how could she refuse? He was her late husband’s brother after all, and alienated as the two brothers had been, Zac must have felt something at the loss of his twin.
She gulped hard and came up with a compromise. “I guess you could bunk down here, just for tonight.” It wasn’t very gracious, but what did he expect after what had happened the last time he was here?
She almost moaned aloud. She’d tried so hard to forget that shameful night, to pretend it had never happened, but there’d been reminders every day since. Her own heated dreams…her husband’s inadequacies…and Mikey. Above all, Mikey.
“Only for one night? After I’ve come all this way?” Zac’s eyes glinted like pewter under her baleful gaze. “You’re not going to kick me out the way you did five years ago, are you, before I’ve even had a chance to look over the place? That wouldn’t be very…sisterly.”
Sisterly! As if there’d ever been anything the least bit sisterly between them! Just one fevered, uncontrollable night of passion.
She felt heat surge into her cheeks. How dared he remind her of that mortifying night! It just showed he was no gentleman. But she already knew that. Adrian had always said his brother was uncivilized and untamable and did whatever he wanted, caring for nobody but himself. She’d seen firsthand evidence of it.
“You’d better go inside and clean up.” She spoke curtly. “You can stay in the guest room next to the bathroom. The room’s always made up and ready—for guests who blow in,” she added deliberately, her eyes telling him that he could blow out again as soon as he liked. “I need to finish up out here. Be in later.” She turned on her heel and headed back the way she’d come, across the yard to the chicken shed.
She would have to prepare Mikey for the shock of meeting an unknown uncle—an uncle who was the spitting image of his dead father. Thank heaven Mikey had stayed out of sight until now. At least she had the chance to warn him.
As Zac strode back to the plane to fetch his bags—mainly photographic equipment, with only a small bag for his few personal belongings—he found himself fighting a gamut of emotions, none of them comforting. He’d hoped to feel nothing at all.
It was a shock to find Rachel still here. He hadn’t really expected to, though deep down he’d wanted her to be here. Wanted and dreaded it at the same time, nagged by an unwanted but overriding need to resolve the torment that had plagued him for the past five years.
He’d tried to erase his memory of her, initially by sheer will and ultimately in the arms of other women—on the rare occasions he’d had the opportunity. But it hadn’t worked. Rachel had haunted his thoughts and dreams in a way no other woman ever had. And it had been hell, because she was married to his brother and the guilt of what he’d done, losing control the way he had, had left a bitter scar in his heart and mind, a scar that, far from disappearing over the years, had grown only deeper.
Even when he’d heard that his brother had been tragically killed and that Rachel was widowed, he’d hesitated to come back. The inexcusable wrong he’d perpetrated on his brother—that he and a passionate, love-starved Rachel had perpetrated together—still tormented him, and he knew it would always be there between them, whatever happened in the future.
Yet he hadn’t been able to stay away. He hadn’t been able to forget the powerful feelings she’d stirred in him, the unbridled passion that had spun him completely out of control for the first and only time in his life. Only by seeing her again would he know if those feelings had been real, or simply magnified in his mind over the years.
As they could have been. It wasn’t every day a beautiful, half-naked woman threw herself at him—especially in his line of work, where he was more likely to be confronted by a hairy, naked gorilla. He was lucky even to see a woman for weeks and months at a time.
Yeah, that was more likely all it had been—a buildup of sexual need, raging, out-of-control hormones and the sweltering heat of that hot summer’s night, as he’d tried to tell a distraught Rachel as soon as reality had hit and they’d both been able to think straight. He’d been trying to convince himself ever since.
He’d had to come back to find out.
His first glimpse of her had blown that convenient theory to bits, proving that the mere sight of her still profoundly affected him, still sent blood racing through him, far hotter and more potent than any feelings of lust he’d had for any other woman.
It was the first time he’d seen her in daylight. Her clear, long-lashed eyes were as blue as a field of corn-flowers, her braided hair a gleam of gold under the hot Queensland sun. He’d found it hard to take his eyes off her, harder still to resist those soft lips, lips he’d tasted once and never forgotten.
So he’d better take care. He’d better take mighty good care, or he’d blow everything, just as he’d done the last time.
Rachel had baked bread that morning and made a large pot of soup, using her own homegrown vegetables and herbs. She hoped that the aroma, as Zac ambled into the kitchen while she was preparing lunch, would turn his thoughts to food and away from his first meeting with—she gulped, refusing to think of Mikey as his son—his nephew, who was already at the table, chomping away at a beef sandwich.
Only she knew the embarrassing truth—her own doctor didn’t even know—so there was no danger of Zac’s finding out unless she showed something in her face, and she’d had years of practice at masking that.
But it wouldn’t be so easy with Zac, because he knew her shameful secret, even if he was ignorant of the consequences, whereas Adrian had never known. Her husband had never even suspected, even when they’d failed to have another child. He’d blamed fatigue or overwork after his long days out on the station or even some medical problem of hers, never imagining that he might be at fault, possibly even infertile, which she’d finally begun to suspect. They’d been married for more than five years and he’d never made her pregnant. Mercifully, he hadn’t known that.
“Take a seat at the table, Zac,” she said, busying herself at the kitchen counter so she wouldn’t have to face him yet. “Help yourself to some bread while I slice some more cold meat and pour you some soup. And say hi to your nephew, Mikey. We named him after Adrian’s father. Well, your father, too, of course. I’ve already told Mikey he has an uncle who looks like his daddy, but forgive him if he stares.”
Oh, heck, she was babbling. She forced herself to slow down. “This is your uncle Zac, Mikey, your daddy’s twin brother,” she said as Mikey gaped at Zac. “If you’re a good boy, Uncle Zac might tell you about the wild animals he photographs in the jungle,” she said to give him something else to think about. Mikey was crazy about animals.
“Have you seen lots of lions and tigers?” Mikey asked in awe, breaking into Zac’s friendly greeting, which to Rachel’s relief sounded perfectly normal and unsuspecting. She relaxed a trifle.
“Yes, lots.”
“Tell me, Uncle Zac. Tell me now.”
With a slow grin, Zac launched into a string of colorful tales of close, dangerous encounters that held the boy spellbound. Rachel relaxed even more. She even felt able to join them at the table, seating herself at the far end to avoid facing Zac.
“I wish I could go hunting lions,” Mikey said as Zac paused to take a few mouthfuls of soup. “I’m going to when I grow up.”
Rachel felt a prickle of alarm. Her son had always had an independent, adventurous spirit—a wild streak, Adrian had often worriedly called it. Mikey was a child with boundless energy, forever getting into mischief—so unlike Adrian, who’d always been the quiet, steady, cautious type, a man who thought things through before taking action. Had Mikey inherited his reckless spirit from his father? His real father?
“I thought you wanted to muster cattle and break in horses?” she reminded her son.
“I want to do that, too,” Mikey said at once. “Can you ride, Uncle Zac?”
“Sure can. I was brought up with horses. Ever ridden a horse yourself?”
Mikey pulled a face. “Not on my own. Daddy wouldn’t let me. He said I’m too little. But I’m not. I’m nearly—”
“Mikey, drink your milk.” Rachel hoped she’d muffled her son’s “four” before Zac could catch it. “Then take this big soup bone out to Buster and check his water. And then you can take him for a run to see Uncle Zac’s plane. Well, it’s not really his own plane, he’s just—”
“Actually, I’m thinking of buying it,” Zac put in, cool as you please.
Her heart stopped. “Why would you want to buy a plane? You work on the other side of the world.”
“It just happens that my next assignment’s here in Australia. The wilds of far-north Queensland and the Northern Territory.” There was a teasing glint in his eye, a roguish look she’d never seen in Adrian’s more serious gray eyes. “I was hoping you might allow me to use Yarrah Downs as my home base.”
“Yeah!” The exultant cry burst from Mikey. “You can teach me how to ride, Uncle Zac. On my own.”
Rachel was glad she was sitting down. A wave of light-headedness was washing over her, making the room spin. She could feel a weakening in her bones, as if they were dissolving.
“You’re going to work here? In Australia?” She tried to take it in and what it could mean. So he hadn’t come back merely to pay his respects to his brother’s widow or to reclaim his old home. He’d come back here to work. How stupid to think he might have wanted to see her. Work always came first with Zac Hammond, Adrian had often said, in the derisive tone he’d used when speaking of his absent brother.
“Yeah…and it’s high time,” Zac drawled, his eyes dwelling on her face for a disconcertingly long moment. “There’s plenty of unusual wildlife in Australia. Much of it highly venomous.” The way his gray eyes glinted made him look highly venomous.
Unlocking her tongue, she asked, “For…for how long?”
“As long as it takes. I don’t have a deadline. I’m my own boss.” Zac let his gaze slide away as he spoke, clearly satisfied that at least he’d given her something to think about.
As long as it takes. Rachel swallowed and pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Zac’s assignment could take months, even years, if his previous assignments were anything to go by.
And in those months or years, he could turn up at Yarrah Downs at any time, staying just long enough to stir her body and emotions and revive memories she didn’t want revived before disappearing again, leaving her burning and riddled with renewed guilt for still having feelings for her late husband’s twin brother, a man she didn’t admire or respect or even like.
“I’ve finished my milk, Mummy.” Mikey put down his empty mug with a clatter. “Can I take the big bone out to Buster now?”
“Here.” She pushed back her chair and stepped over to the bench. “Give it to him away from the house,” she said as she handed it to him.
“Ta! See you, Uncle Zac!” The kitchen door slammed behind Mikey, rattling the windows.
“Don’t bang the door, Mikey!” she called after him, but it was a halfhearted, affectionate protest. Her son never walked when he could run and never closed doors without banging them. That was just Mikey.
“Fine boy you have there, Rachel,” Zac commented as she turned back to the table. “The image of his father. And his uncle, come to that.”
Her heart missed a beat. With effort she managed to find her voice. “Yes, Adrian was chuffed that his son looked so much like him. He adored Mikey.” Adored and despaired of him, convinced that his son’s exuberance would lead him to disaster one day.
“Seems to have plenty of energy. How old is he? I can never tell with kids.”
This time her heart stopped altogether. “Three,” she said, gathering plates and swinging away from the table to avoid looking at him. No need to mention that Mikey would be four in three days. By then Zac would be gone. Back to his solitary life among the wild animals and birds that meant more to him than any home or human being ever had or ever could.
He would be gone by then, wouldn’t he? Put me up for a night or two, he’d said. Not three nights.
“When do you start your assignment?” she asked. “Tomorrow? The next day?” After that, hopefully, she’d have some breathing space. She mustn’t panic! She’d rarely see him while he was working here in Australia, in the wilds of the far north. He only wanted to use his old home as a base. What his fleeting visits would do to her she refused to think about.
“The starting date will be up to me—or maybe you.” Zac reached for another slice of bread. “I’d just like to draw breath here for a few days first, maybe help you out a bit…”
A few days now, not just one or two! She felt her stomach knot as she realized that the longer Zac stayed, the more likely he’d be to find out that Mikey was four, not three, as she’d let him think.
But that still needn’t mean he’d suspect the humiliating truth. For all Zac knew, her husband could have made her pregnant at around the same time as Zac’s brief, ignominious visit.
Zac need never know that Adrian had been rushed to a hospital with acute appendicitis the day after Zac’s late-night visit, and that he’d caught an infection and hadn’t felt up to having sex for a month after he’d come home—by which time she’d known she was already pregnant. She’d delayed telling Adrian and been deliberately vague about the due date, hoping that her first baby would arrive late, which Mikey conveniently had.
Adrian had never suspected the mortifying truth, and Zac mustn’t, either. It was inconceivable to think of Zac Hammond, the irresponsible, unprincipled black sheep of the family, as Mikey’s father. Adrian had been the reliable, steady, home-loving brother, the kind of man any woman would have been proud to have as the father of her child. At least—
“Tell me what happened, Rachel.” Zac’s voice intruded, softly compelling.
“Happened?” Her throat tightened. Did he mean four years and nine and a half months ago, after she’d ordered him to leave Yarrah Downs and never come back? She could still remember Zac’s cold, flat words as she’d turned away from him before he could glimpse any other emotion in her eyes than anger—anguish, yearning or even regret. I’ll stay out of your life, Rachel, you can count on that. You and your husband have nothing to fear from me.
“All I’ve heard is that he was killed in a tractor accident.” Zac spoke gently, jolting her back to reality. He must have assumed, by her choked silence, that she was thinking of her late husband, not, thankfully, of him. “How the hell could that have happened? Adrian was the most safety-conscious man I ever knew. He never took risks.”
Rachel’s heart settled back into place. Of course Zac would want to know about her husband’s fatal accident. He was Adrian’s twin, after all.
“Not normally, no,” she agreed. She’d often wondered if Adrian had had something on his mind that day, some niggling doubt about what he was about to do that had diverted his attention for a fatal second. A second was all it had taken.
“He’d hired a bulldozer—it wasn’t a tractor—and had taken it up to Bushy Hill to do some work there. Apparently he was working on the steep lower slope of the hill when the bulldozer hit a huge wombat hole and tipped over. He was thrown out and…and crushed.” Cute and furry as the burrowing native wombats were, they did a lot of damage with their holes.
“What was he doing up at Bushy Hill with a bulldozer?” Zac was frowning, she noticed. He looked more angry than pained or sympathetic. “It’s supposed to be an animal and bird sanctuary and to be left untouched, in its natural state.”
She raised her brows. She’d known there was a lot of native wildlife in the thick scrub and eucalyptus forest of the big sloping hill, but a sanctuary? This was the first she’d heard of it. All she knew was that kangaroos and other animals had a habit of jumping or climbing under the fence skirting the cattle paddock below to drink at the small dam there, and that Adrian had been forever mending the fence.
“Adrian wanted to turn the hill into a vineyard,” she told Zac. “He said it was ideally positioned to grow vines—facing the right way and that kind of thing. He’d gone up there to start clearing the trees and undergrowth—”
“He intended to turn Bushy Hill into a vineyard?” Zac’s expression turned thunderous. “Our father made it quite clear to us that the hill was to be left as an animal and bird sanctuary. How much bush had Adrian cleared before his accident? Had he knocked down any trees? Have you gone ahead with it?”
She bristled. What right had Zac Hammond to come back after all these years and start bawling her out for something that was no business of his? He’d never even been interested in the family property, according to Adrian.
“No, I haven’t.” She snatched up Zac’s empty plate and whisked it away without asking if he wanted more. “Nobody’s touched the hill since. We couldn’t afford to, for a start—”
“You’re saying you still intend to go ahead with the vineyard when you can afford it?”
She glowered at him. “I didn’t know it was a sanctuary…or that it was meant to be kept as a sanctuary. Naturally, if that’s true—”
“Adrian never told you?”
She clamped her lips together. It didn’t feel right to be talking about her husband’s failings when he was no longer here to defend himself.
Zac swore softly. “I’ll need to see how much damage has been done. If he’s destroyed that hill and driven the birds and animals out…”
“What do you care about Yarrah Downs or what we do with the place?” she flung back. “Adrian said you couldn’t get away from here fast enough.”
Zac shrugged, drawing her reluctant gaze to the breadth of his shoulders. The same shoulders she’d once kneaded with feverish fingers and dug her fingernails into with frenzied yearning. She flinched and snapped her gaze away.
“Yarrah Downs couldn’t have two bosses,” he said mildly. “Especially two bosses who disagreed on most things. My father left the property to Adrian because being a cattleman was all he’d ever wanted to be, while I wanted to see and do other things before I thought of settling down in one place. And my brother was good at his job. He had the skill and experience a cattleman needs, even if he lacked judgment in certain areas.”
“While you were never interested!”
“Not true. I lived here for most of my life. I spent my childhood here and all my vacations. It was only when my father died and left the property to Adrian that I stopped coming back—except for that one time, a few months after he married you. He’d written to tell me about the happy event. It seemed a good time to finally shake hands and let bygones be bygones.”
His eyes caught hers and she flushed, remembering his short-lived visit five years ago. What had happened between them had put an abrupt halt to any happy brotherly reunion. And she couldn’t put all the blame on Zac. She’d virtually seduced him!
To cover her embarrassment she blurted, “You must have resented the fact that Adrian inherited everything. Is that why you’ve always been so jealous of your brother and so hostile toward him?”
“Where did you get that idea? From Adrian? I was never jealous of him. We just didn’t get on. Too different. Chalk and cheese. I assure you I haven’t been seething with resentment all these years. I didn’t miss out. My father left me a generous cash pay-out and a bundle of blue-chip stock that’s grown over the years. I’ve also made a lot of money from documentary films and feature articles. I can afford to help you, Rachel.”
Her eyes sparked. “To help Yarrah Downs, your old home, don’t you mean? You don’t want to see it go under, and you think it will, now that I’m in charge. A woman! What’s your secret agenda, Zac Hammond? Are you trying to sweeten me up so you can buy me out if I sell, like everyone expects? Though why you’d want the place…”
Her voice trailed off as she became aware of a dog barking outside. “It’s Buster,” she said, glad of the diversion. “Mikey must be back. Excuse me… I have things to do out in the yard.”
“I’ll come out with you. Mind if I borrow a motorbike, Rachel?”
She paused, frowning. “What for?” Did he want to check up on the state of the cattle and the paddocks to see what a mess she was making of the place? So he could criticize her some more, undermine her confidence some more?
“I want to see what damage has been done to Bushy Hill and if there’s anything I can do to salvage it.”
“Anything you can do?” She tried to sound withering—what right had he?—but how could she blame him for wanting to check? This had been his home once and the animal and bird sanctuary clearly meant a lot to him. And if his father had specified that it be kept as a reserve…
Funny that Adrian had never mentioned it. Had he thought she might try to stop him from planting his vineyard there? She probably would have tried if she’d known about the sanctuary. The thought of her husband keeping things from her was sobering. But hadn’t she kept far worse secrets from him?
She hadn’t been back to Bushy Hill since Adrian’s fatal accident. She wasn’t sure how much clearing her husband had done. She’d simply told Vince to stay away from the hill until she decided what to do with it. They had more-urgent priorities. But the truth was, to have squashed the idea of the vineyard outright would have felt like crushing Adrian’s dream.
Only now that she knew the facts…
“Quiet, Buster!” she shouted over the dog’s barking, wondering why he was making such a din. What was Mikey doing to him?
But when she stepped outside, Mikey was nowhere in sight. The yard was empty. “Where’s Mikey?” she cried as Buster’s barking grew even more frenzied at the sight of her. He started to run off, then wheeled back, whining and pawing at her, before scampering off again.
She got the message and broke into a run. “Something’s happened to Mikey!” The words whipped over her shoulder at Zac. “Find him, Buster!” she urged the cattle dog. “Take me to Mikey!”
