“Wildflowers marching to the horizons!” His ancestor had written. “Mile after mile of them, as far as a man can see. A sight that gave me a sense of God; of great kinship with this ancient earth. Under those infinite desert gardens, surely the mightiest on earth, lay the bones of the explorers who had perished. Men like Kingsley and me. Ordinary men but adventurers, too. Men of vision. It seemed impossible such displays could exist under the blazing sun. There were countless millions of daisies with white and gold petals like paper. Pink succulents, yellow poppies, delicate, fragrant indigo, purple, brilliant red bushes that looked like they’d caught fire. And grasses of lilac, silver and pale green were waving their feathery plumes before the wind. A wonderful, wonderful sight, breath-taking in its unexpectedness. It was like entering Paradise after the savagery of the country through which we had passed, harsh and unforgiving enough to break a man’s spirit. The temptation to stay in this flowering wilderness was enormous but Kingsley rightly reminded me we had to meet up with the main party at an isolated settlement eight days hence.”
His intrepid ancestor had returned ten years later, to almost the exact spot, this time with his family, his wife and four sons, to lay the foundation for the McCord dynasty. It had proved a hard life with undreamed-of tribulations, but the family had survived and triumphed. The days of the pioneers had been meticulously recorded in several diaries.
It was a harsh code Jake had lived under himself. Not materially, the reputed family wealth was no fiction. His father deserved respect for the management of his heritage. Coori had prospered under his stewardship, but somehow from a twisted soul his father had set about trying to deplete his only son’s resources. But in the best tradition of his forefathers, it had only made Jake tougher. Survival of the fittest was the name of the game. A man still had to contend with the rules of the jungle.
As for Stacy? She hadn’t had much of a life. Married off at eighteen to a man of difficult character almost twenty years her senior. Just to add to it, Stacy had to live with the fact she was in a triangular marriage, even if her rival was a tragic ghost, the memory of his mother, Roxanne.
Her portrait had never come down. It continued to hang above the mantelpiece in the Yellow Drawing Room. A study of a beautiful young woman on the eve of her marriage to one of the most eligible young men in the country, Clive McCord of the McCord pioneering dynasty. He tried to remember his father as a young man. Certainly his early childhood memories had been filled with happy times. Enough to sustain him.
But the young Clive McCord had all but disappeared the day they brought his wife in on a stretcher, slender neck broken in a fall from her beloved Arabian mare, Habibah, though she’d been an experienced horsewoman. His father had shot Habibah where it stood, sweating and trembling. Jake remembered that bright, shining, beautiful animal crashing to the ground as vividly as though it were yesterday. He remembered his screams of protest, rushing to his father, grasping him around the legs in an effort to divert his aim. Habibah was his mother’s horse. She would never have wanted it destroyed. It was an accident, but it may as well have been murder so far as his father was concerned. Despite the agony of his son, Clive McCord had pulled the trigger, his insides burning with grief and rage.
I’ve such a memory, he thought, feeling a moment of depression, it burdens me. He stopped on his journey from the stables to the house to eye a falcon about to drop on its prey. He clapped his hands, looking skyward at the blazing desert sunset.
“Scat!” Immediately the falcon flew off with a sharp, predatory and mournful cry that startled the family cat, Tosca, who had the same colouring as Jake. It amused him, though Stacy always said he was more like a lion. He bent to the cat, as it purred in contentment and wound itself around his leg, stroking and murmuring a few endearments that Tosca seemed to enjoy. He loved all animals though he’d had his arguments with wild camels and dingoes. He loved horses especially, it was a love born and bred in him. Horses were essential to his unique way of life. He was highly skilled at educating them and keeping them fit and sound in tough conditions. He couldn’t help knowing that he was widely regarded as a superb rider and polo player, as well.
The truly frustrating thing was while he was a damned good judge of a horse’s character, he hadn’t had such luck with women. One in particular had hurt him, but that was in his university days. Her name was Michelle. She was a few years older, and a smooth, smooth, operator. She played games when one thing he prized in a relationship was trust. And he didn’t share. He was still waiting like a fool for that thunderbolt from the heavens, the perfect woman, or perfect for him, and he was twenty-eight years old. A man of strong passions, but he made damn sure they didn’t appear too near the surface. How different life would be with that one woman. He still hadn’t closed his mind on the idea he would find her. Or she would find him. God knows he had little time to go courting. That was the curse of the man on the land.
He heaved a weary sigh. He found sweet and endearing his stepmother and half sister. He loved them for their gentle caring natures but even at the best of times they weren’t women to lean on. They had an excellent housekeeper in Clary. Clary had her own little band of household staff, part aboriginal girls born on the station, gone away to school, but happy to come back. Still, the homestead by any standards was a mansion and Clary wasn’t getting any younger. The house girls needed direction. He certainly didn’t need Stacy and Gilly to help him run the station and their two out-stations hundreds of miles away in Central Queensland, but it would have been brilliant had they been more confident and competent, able to run things, order up supplies, manage the domestic staff, all the sorts of things women traditionally did on an Outback station.
Like Dinah, for instance. He could just picture Dinah Campbell running the Christmas functions Coori would be hosting this year, although he had given the job to his cousin, Isobel, who ran a very successful catering business for the well-heeled in Brisbane. Even so, Dinah had come close to telling him she would have been just as good at the job, humming softly to herself as she explored all the reception rooms of the house, making suggestions as to what needed changing, a seriously desirous expression in her eyes; laughing right under his nose about Stacy’s “problems” until she saw she was making him furious.
Dinah, a genuine platinum-blonde with pale green eyes, was a good-looking, totally capable and assured young woman but her strong point wasn’t tact or understanding, maybe you couldn’t have one without the other, and he didn’t care at all for her patronising his family. He’d known Dinah since they were children. Like him, she was Outback royalty, grand-daughter to his McCord grandfather’s closest friend. He had even romanced her on and off. Dinah could be good fun, as well as being good in bed. He knew she valued their long friendship, but there was something about her he couldn’t really cotton on to. Could it be her lack of feeling for others? God knows he’d had enough of that, though she was always incredibly sweet to him. He was aware Dinah and her family had high hopes that one day he would “pop the question” though he had never led Dinah to believe it was only a matter of time.
Yes, he could picture Dinah organising everything perfectly, compulsively methodical, looking glamorous while she savoured playing Coori’s hostess, circling the guests using all her practised charm, and supreme self-confidence that came with having a rich man for a doting dad. So why had he rejected her? In many ways she had fit the bill. She was strong, with energy to burn. She was Outback born and had lived his way of life. Moreover he needed someone. A woman he could love and live with for the rest of his life. Where the hell was she? If she ever turned up he knew he would recognise her right off.
Some of his more delicious dreams stirred… He kept seeing a pair of dark eyes. A wonderful fall of dark curly hair, glossy as a magpie’s wing. Even thinking about it drew all the blood into his loins. But he didn’t know a single girl with large lustrous dark eyes and a beautiful soft body that drew a man like a magnet. At one point he thought he had actually seen her someplace. Somewhere outside his dreams. Then he decided she was simply a figment of his imagination.
Stacy was waiting for him the moment he set foot in the homestead. Even after all these years she still had the capacity to surprise him. She was sitting cross-legged on the parqueted floor, flanked by the two coal-black Labradors, Juno and Jupiter, tails thumping in an ecstasy of greeting.
“What