The Socialite and the Cattle King (12 page)

‘There has to be more to it than that now.’

‘Well, yes,’ she conceded. ‘I don’t know how reliable that is, though.’ She paused, then she said urgently, ‘Please, could you give me a little longer? It’s a huge step for me…’ She trailed off a little desperately.

He said after a long moment, ‘Only if I’m allowed to do this?’ He took her into his arms.

‘Do what?’ she breathed.

‘Kiss you.’

‘Well…’

But he did the deed anyway. As she stood in the protective circle of his arms afterwards, she was trembling with desire and conscious of the need to say
yes, I’ll marry you, I’ll marry you…

Some tiny molecule of resistance held her back. Something along the lines of
he always gets his own way
managed to slip above her other feelings. ‘Will you?’ she whispered. ‘Give me a little more time?’

Something she couldn’t decipher passed through his eyes, then his lips twisted. ‘All right. So long as you stay by my side. The wedding’s tomorrow evening—will you come?’

Holly hesitated.

‘Or do I have to make all the concessions?’ he asked rather dryly.

Holly shook her head. ‘I’ll come. But in the meantime perhaps we should get back in case people imagine all sorts of things?’

‘Such as, I’ve made off with you and seduced you?’
He looked briefly amused. ‘If it wasn’t for Mark and Aria that’s just what I’d like to do.’

Holly gazed at him and thought for a moment that, despite his dinner suit, he looked dark and pirate-like and quite capable of spiriting her off to a place of seduction. She shivered slightly.

‘Cold?’ He looked surprised.

‘No. But I do need to visit the bathroom. I don’t want to look…’ She stopped.

‘Thoroughly kissed,’ he suggested with a definitely pirate-like smile. ‘Believe me, it suits you.’

He took her hand and led her back inside.

Holly went to find the facilities. The only person she encountered as she crossed the foyer, other than staff, was Natasha Hewson in her beautiful bouffant shocking-pink gown that should have clashed with her hair but didn’t. They stopped, facing each other.

‘The bathroom is that a-way,’ Natasha said, indicating the direction she’d come from.

‘Thank you,’ Holly replied, then paused a little helplessly.

‘Do you think you’ll hold him?’ Natasha asked. ‘Do you think you’ll be the one he’ll give up his jungles and his endangered species for? Or were you planning to join him? Don’t,’ she warned, ‘be fooled by
this
Brett Wyndham.’

Holly couldn’t help herself. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Not many of us are immune from that charisma—the good company, the man who makes you tremble, makes you laugh and want to die for him. But he’s really a loner. He reminds me of one of the tigers he’s trying
to save: secretive, thrives on isolation and challenges, clever, dangerous.’

Holly blinked several times. ‘Natasha,’ she said then, ‘Do you have any hopes of getting him back?’

Natasha Hewson shrugged her sleek, bare, beautiful shoulders. ‘One day he’ll realize that even tigers need a tigress. And that will be
me.
’ She blew Holly an insolent kiss as she walked past her.

Fortunately, Holly found herself alone in the bathroom. Fortunately, because as she stared at herself in the mirror she could see how shell shocked she looked as she rinsed her hands.

It was printed in her eyes; it came from the fact that, whether wittingly or not, Natasha had pinpointed the core of her concerns about Brett.

Was he a loner who would never change? He himself had told her he’d probably always take off for the call of the wild. Would she ever get to know what that darkness she sensed in him was about? Would she be a convenient, handy wife who would give him roots, a family perhaps, but never be a soul mate?

She took a painful breath; that wasn’t the only cause of her shell shock, intensely disturbing as it was. No, there was also the fact that it wasn’t over between Brett and Natasha—it certainly wasn’t over for Natasha—and that brought back terrible memories for Holly. Memories of being stalked by a bitter woman pushed almost over the edge.

I can’t do it
, she thought, and felt suddenly panic-stricken.
I have to get away—but how?

She finally gathered enough composure to leave the
bathroom to find Brett waiting for her in the foyer. A rather grim, serious-looking Brett.

‘Holly,’ he said immediately. ‘I’ve just had a call redirected to my phone because they couldn’t raise you. Your mother—’ he hesitated ‘—has been taken to hospital. She’s going to be all right; it could be an angina attack, but they feel they have it under control. She’s asking for you.’ He put his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh!’ Holly’s eyes dilated. ‘I’ve got to get down to her. Oh, it’s late—there may not be flights. What will I do?’ She stared up at him, agonized.

‘Relax. It’s all organized?’

‘Organized? How?’

‘The company jet is here in Cairns on standby. It’s picking up some special wedding-guests in Brisbane tomorrow. It was due to fly out early tomorrow morning, but there’s no reason for it not to leave now.’

‘Thank you,’ Holly breathed. ‘I don’t know how to thank you enough.’

‘You don’t have to. Look, I’d come with you—’

‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s the wedding tomorrow. You need to be here for them.’

‘I’ll be down the day after. Promise me one thing.’ He cupped her face. ‘Don’t go away from me, Holly Harding.’

She made a gesture to indicate that she wouldn’t, but she did.

She wrote him a note while she was winging her way through the dark sky back to Brisbane and her mother. She told him she believed she’d never get to know him
well enough to marry him. She told him she’d come to know that Natasha hadn’t got over him, and maybe never would, and how that would always make her feel uneasy.

She bit the end of her pen and wondered how to point out that, if things hadn’t been resolved completely for Natasha, perhaps they hadn’t been for him either. But she decided against it. She asked him to please not seek her out because she wouldn’t be changing her mind.

Then she wondered how to end her note so he wouldn’t guess that her heart was breaking. Finally she wrote,
thanks for some wonderful experiences, and so long! It’s been good to know you…

She sealed it in an envelope and asked the stewardess to make sure it was delivered to Brett when the plane returned to Cairns.

Then she sat with tears rolling down her cheeks, feeling colder and lonelier than she’d ever felt in her life. How could she have grown so close to him in such a short time? she wondered. It was as if he’d taken centre-stage in her life and she had no idea how to go on with that lynchpin removed.

But it wouldn’t have worked, she told herself; it couldn’t have worked.

S
EVERAL
weeks later, Holly brushed another set of tears from her cheeks and wondered when she’d stop crying whenever she thought of Brett Wyndham.

What brought him to mind this early morning was the fact that she was walking down a beach on North Stradbroke island when she came across a fisherman casting into the surf.

North Stradbroke, along with South Stradbroke and Moreton islands, formed a protective barrier that created Moreton Bay. On the other side of the bay lay the waterside suburbs of Brisbane and the mouth of the Brisbane River. It was a big bay littered with sandbanks and studded with islands, and huge container ships threaded their way through the marked channels to the port of Brisbane. Holly was on the ocean side of North Stradbroke, affectionately known as ‘Straddie’ to the locals, where the surf pounded the beaches and where there was always salty spray in the air, and the call of seagulls. It was where her mother owned a holiday house, at Point Lookout.

Sylvia had recovered from what had turned out to be a chest infection rather than angina.

Holly had been coming to Point Lookout ever since
she could remember for school holidays, long weekends and annual vacations. Her father had loved it. The house was perched on a hillside with wonderful views of the ocean, Flat Rock and Moreton Island across the narrow South Passage bar.

She’d come over on the vehicle ferry in her car and some mornings she drove back to Dunwich on the bay side of the island. She had a fondness for Dunwich and for a particular coffee shop that served marvellous cakes and pastries, as well as selling fruit and vegetables.

There was also a second-hand shop, an Aladdin’s cave of room after room of ‘tat,’ from jewellery to clothes, china to books and everything in between. Outside there were bird baths, garden gnomes and logs of treated woods. You could lose yourself for hours in it.

She loved wandering through the Dunwich cemetery, beneath huge old tress with the thick turf beneath her feet, reading the inscriptions on the graves that went back to the first settlers to come to Brisbane in the eighteen hundreds. She loved wandering down to the One Mile Anchorage where the passenger ferries came in and all sorts of boats rode at anchor.

Point Lookout might be upmarket these days, but Dunwich was actually an old mining town—although the only evidence of that was the huge trucks that rumbled through the little town laden with mineral sands mined on uninhabited parts of the island.

This overcast, chilly morning she’d decided not to drive across the island but take herself for a long, long walk along the beach. Her thoughts had been preoccupied with how she’d managed to persuade her mother
that she needed some time on her own, although Sylvia rang her daily.

Of course, the reason she’d declared a need for peace and privacy and an inspirational setting was so she could write the Brett Wyndham interview.

Although she herself had heard nothing from Brett, to her amazement her editor Glenn had let her know that he’d been in touch and had given the go-ahead for her to write the piece, although he would still have the final say.

Why had he done that? she’d asked herself a hundred times. She could only assume he’d decided not to go back on his word in the interests of her career.

The magazine had given her two weeks’ leave after the plane crash and she’d tacked on to that the two weeks’ leave she was overdue. She had a week to go before she was due back at work, but she hadn’t written a word. A fog seemed to descend on her brain every time she thought about it. She’d spoken to Glenn and explained the difficulty she was having.

‘So if you’re holding a slot for it, Glenn, I may not be able to reach the deadline—I’m sorry.’

‘Holly.’ Glenn had said down the line to her. ‘You don’t walk away from a plane crash and three days of wondering if you’re going to survive without some mental repercussions. Don’t force it; I’m not holding any slot for it. If it comes, when it comes, we’ll see.’

Holly had opened her mouth to ask him if he’d heard from Brett again, but she’d shut it resolutely. Brett Wyndham needed to be a closed book for her now, but she’d clicked her tongue exasperatedly as soon as the
thought had crossed her mind. How could he be a closed book when she had this interview to write?

Why hadn’t she just admitted to Glenn she couldn’t do it? Perhaps she could hand her notes to someone else—but so much of it was still in her head…

On the other hand, why couldn’t she grit her teeth and get herself over him?

You did it once before,
she reminded herself.
Yes, but I came to hate and despise
that
person,
she answered herself.
I could never hate Brett…

If she’d had any doubts about that, they were quashed as she walked down the beach and saw a man fishing. She stopped to watch. She saw the tug on his line and the way he jerked the rod back to set the hook in the fish’s mouth, just as Brett had shown her, although she’d only had a reel. She watched him wind the line in and saw the silver tailor with a forked tail on the end of it.

She took a distressed breath and turned away as she was transported back to the lagoon in the savannah country, with its reeds, water lilies and all its birds, where she’d swum and caught fish; where she’d sat over a fire; where she and Brett Wyndham had made love without saying a word.

Wave after wave of desolation crashed through her like the surf on the beach as she acknowledged what she’d been trying to deny to herself: that he would always be with her. He would always be on the back roads of her mind. There would always be a part of her that would be cold and lonely without him.

How it had happened to her in such a short time, she still didn’t fully understand. She knew there were things about him she didn’t know, areas perhaps no-one, no
woman, would ever know. But it changed not one whit the fact that she loved him.

She knew that somehow he’d helped her overcome her fear of men and relationships. And she knew something else—that it wasn’t her old fears that had affected her so badly that evening at Palm Cove when confronted by Natasha, it was her dreadful sense of loss because she’d come to know that it could never work for them.

She didn’t notice that it had started to rain and that the fisherman had packed up and gone home after glancing uncertainly in her direction a couple of times. She ignored the fact that she was soaking wet, so consumed was she by a sea of sadness.

Then, at last, she turned towards the road and started to trudge home.

There was a strange car parked outside the house.

Well, not so strange, she realized as her eyes widened. It was a car she’d actually driven—a silver BMW X5—and as she came to a dead stop Brett got out of it. Brett, looking impossibly tall in charcoal jeans and a black rain-jacket.

They simply stared at each other, then he cleared his throat. ‘Holly, you’re soaked. Can we go in?’

She came to life, reached into her pocket for her key then stopped. ‘Why…Why have you come?’

‘I need to talk to you. You didn’t think I’d leave it all up in the air like that, did you?’

‘I don’t think there’s any more to say.’

‘Yes, there is.’ He closed the gap between them and took the key from her. ‘And you need to get warm and
dry before you get pneumonia. What have you been doing?’

‘Walking. Just walking.’

He took her hand and propelled her down the path to the front door, where he fitted the key and opened the door. With gentle pressure on her shoulders, he manoeuvred her inside.

The front door opened straight into an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area. The floors were polished boards, the furnishings comfortable but kept to a minimum. The view was spectacular even on a day like today as showers scudded across the land and seascapes.

‘Holly.’ He turned her round to face him. ‘Holly, go and have a shower. I’ll make us a hot drink in the meantime.’

She licked her lips.

He frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

She swallowed and made a huge effort to recover from the shell shock of his presence. ‘Yes. Fine. Oh.’ She looked down at herself. ‘I’m dripping! I’ll go.’ And she fled away from him towards the bedroom end of the house.

He followed her progress with another frown, then turned away and walked into the kitchen area.

Twenty-minutes later Holly reappeared, wearing a silky dressing gown tied at the waist.

She’d hastily dried her hair and, because it looked extremely wild, she’d woven it into a thick, loose plait.

‘I hope you don’t have anything against plaits,’ she said brightly as she reappeared. ‘There was
nothing
else to do with it. Ah.’ She looked at the steaming mugs on the kitchen counter and inhaled. ‘Coffee. Thank you.
Just what I need. Do bring yours into the lounge; we might as well be comfortable.’ She took her mug over to an armchair.

He followed suit and sat down opposite. ‘You seem to have made a bit of a recovery.’

She grimaced. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, although I had been thinking of you. I guess I got a bit of a surprise. How did you find me?’

‘I persuaded your mother to tell me where you were.’

Holly’s lips parted in surprise, which he noted with a faint, dry little smile.

Holly sat back. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t ring me.’

‘You have been out for quite a while,’ he pointed out.

Holly sipped some coffee. ‘So, why have you come?’ she asked quietly. ‘You don’t have to explain to me why you’ve gone back to Natasha. I understand.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Then you should.’

‘No.’ He put his mug down on a side table. ‘And I need to tell you why.’

‘Shouldn’t you be telling her?’

‘I have. Holly, will you just listen to me?’ he said with a bleak sort of weariness that was quite uncharacteristic.

‘Sorry,’ she said on a breath of surprise. ‘I’m sorry.’

He beat a little tattoo on the arm of his chair with his fingers. ‘This is not generally known outside the family, but my father had a very violent temper.’

Her lips parted. ‘I wondered—I mean, I sensed
there was something about your father…’ She couldn’t go on.

‘You were right. I hated him. I hit him once when he and my mother were arguing. She, and I, were usually the ones he took his temper out on. I can’t say she was blameless.’ He stopped and sighed. ‘She should have got out, but it was as if there was this life-long feud going on between them that neither of them could let go of.’

‘Why you, though?’ Holly whispered. ‘I mean you, as opposed to your brother and sister?’

He shrugged. ‘Oldest son—maybe he saw me as a threat. I don’t know. I do know he never stopped putting me down and I swore that when I took over I would never look back.

‘I haven’t. Things are in far better shape than they ever were when he was at the helm. But I guess I have to credit him with my interest in animals.’

Holly blinked. ‘How so?’

‘It was a world I could retreat into when things got impossible—my dogs, my horse and more and more anything on four legs. But the real irony is, much as I hated him, I’m not so unlike him.’

Holly stared at him, struck speechless.

‘I also have a temper at times. I also got into a relationship that was—explosive.’

‘Natasha,’ Holly breathed, her eyes huge.

He nodded and rubbed his jaw. ‘Once the first gloss wore off, we argued over the little things, we fought over the big things. We drove each other crazy, but she didn’t see it that way. Every grand reunion we had seemed to reassure her that while it might be tempestuous between
us—perhaps that even added a little spice to it for her—it was going to endure.

‘I don’t think she had any idea that I was really alarmed at the way I felt at times. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t put it into words, but I knew I had to get out. Whereas she thought that the fact we were so good in bed was going to compensate for the rest of it. But I could see myself looking down a tunnel at something that closely resembled my parents’ marriage.’

‘So—so you walked away?’

‘Yes, I walked away. I broke it off. I told her—All I told her was that I wasn’t cut out for marriage; I was a loner.’ He shook his head. ‘It was what I preferred to believe rather than admit the truth to myself. I hated the thought that there was any way I could resemble my father. Now, looking back, I can see it was always there. That’s why I prided myself on being on the outside in my affairs with women, never deeply, crucially involved. Until Nat managed to break through.’

Holly put a hand to her mouth. ‘Have you told her now?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘She didn’t believe me at first, but I had some other insights that I tried to explain. Such as—’ he paused ‘—how egos get involved in these matters. How we were two naturally competitive people with a penchant for getting our own way, and we always would be. But that real hole in the gut and the heart, that sense of loss for someone who is not there for you, hadn’t touched us. Not that kind of love.’

He got up and walked over to the windows.

Holly stared at his back and the lines of tension in his body.

‘She understood that?’ she queried huskily.

‘I don’t know. It made her stop and think. But it clarified things for me. We were never right for each other.’ He said it sombrely but intensely.

‘How can you be sure?’

He turned at last. ‘Because that hole in the gut and heart slammed into me when I got your note.’

Holly’s mouth fell open.

‘That sense of loss and love almost crippled me, because I knew you were right to go away from me.’

‘Brett,’ Holly whispered. ‘In light of all this, and the fact that you did ask me to marry you…’

‘Let me finish,’ he broke in. ‘I asked you to marry me out of respect, affection, admiration—the way you seemed to fit into my life. But I told myself it wasn’t a grand passion. I told myself I was safe from that,
you
were safe from that. Now I know I was wrong.

‘I feel more passionate about you than I’ve ever felt in my life. It wasn’t until you left I realized I’d got my grand passions mixed up. But the problem is that whilst how we are—you and I—is different from anything that went before, I keep wondering if my father will come out somehow and that scares me. Scares me far more than it did with Nat.’