as any two ping-pong tables shoved together—when she entered the room.
“Good morning, everyone,” she greeted them pleasantly, and received suave nods that hid a variety of feelings. Downright lecherous on the part of Geoff Bartz, their resident environmentalist and a very unattractive man. The hierarchy was still men, though not as inflexible as it once had been. The richest person in Australia was in fact a woman, the late mining magnate Lang Hancock’s daughter, Gina Rinehart, worth around twenty billion and counting. All of the men were Italian suited, Ferragamo shod, the one woman at the table as impeccably turned out as ever, cream silk blouse, Armani power suit. No one reached a position near the top of the tree without being exceptionally well dressed. Lord knew they were paid enough to buy the best even if they rarely strayed from imported labels. Cate trusted her own instincts, giving Australian designers a go. They were so good she stuck to them.
“Ah, Cate,” Hugh Saunders, CEO and chairman of the board of Inter-Austral Resources, oil, minerals, chemicals, properties etc. sat at the head of the table. He was credited with almost single-handedly turning a small sleeping mining company into a multibillion-dollar corporation. On Cate’s entry he exhaled an audible sigh of pleasure. A lean, handsome, very stylish man turning sixty, he had personally recruited Cate Hamilton some three years previously. He considered himself her mentor. If he were only ten years younger he privately considered he would have qualified as a whole lot more, sublimely unaware Cate had never entertained such a thought. “Come take a seat. There’s one here by me.” He gestured towards the empty seat to his right.
Territorial display if there ever was one, Murphy Stiller thought with a tightening of her lips and a knitting of her jetblack brows of one. Murphy Stiller was brilliant, abrasive, ferociously competitive. Murphy’s sole aspiration was to move into Hugh Saunders’ padded chair while it was still warm. The great pity was he was such a stayer! Before Hamilton had arrived on the scene she had been Queen of the Heap, able to command attention and a seat at the CEO’s right hand without saying a word. Then the newcomer she had mentally labelled upstart had from the outset started producing results. Corporate politics, balance sheets, marketing plans, impromptu presentations, refinancing. It could have been familiar territory. Hamilton was up for the challenge. A compulsive over-achiever, of course. Murphy knew the type. A multitasker, always up to speed. Saunders seemed mesmerised by her. Certainly he had carefully mapped out her career. But that was what men spent a lot of time thinking about, wasn’t it? Sex. Whether they were getting it. Or more often missing out. When Murphy had entered the boardroom she had naturally made for the seat on the CEO’s right—she never jockeyed, jockeying was beneath her—only to be forestalled by Saunders’ upraised hand smoothly directing her to a seat on his left, as though oblivious to her chagrin. Time to hot up her nightly prayers her young rival would get her comeuppance. Flunk something. Take a fall. Get married. Go into politics. Fall under a bus. Anything.
Murphy forced herself to stop daydreaming. It wasn’t going to happen.
All were now seated. All faces were turned to the chairman, who had glanced at his watch to check what time they had. “What we do and say here before our prospective client arrives is extremely important,” he announced with great earnestness. “This is a man used to meeting people at the highest level. I believe he even talks to the Prince of Wales on a first-name basis.”
Cate pretended to be lost in envy. She had her own understanding of the English upper classes, though the Prince was said to be a genuine egalitarian.
“He’s already acquired a small empire in different parts of the world,” the CEO was saying. “He’s now looking at our mineral wealth. Overseas the news is Australia is being driven by mining and resource. Not surprising their top entrepreneurs want in. We’re going to prove extremely helpful.” He paused as another project came to mind. “He’s also interested in acquiring a property in the Whitsundays. Virgin territory as it were, far away from the usual haunts of jetsetters and the current hot spots, the Caribbean and such. You all know the late George Harrison bought up there. Had a holiday home on our far-flung shores, then a virtual outpost. George knew what he was about. I know we can help our prospective client. Perhaps you, Cate. You’re very good at dealing with people. You might even be able to persuade Lady McCready to finally sell Isla Bella. She trusts you. Aren’t many places left in the world as pristine as Isla Bella.”
“Sure our prospective client doesn’t want to turn it into a resort?” Cate asked. “Lady McCready is totally against any such project.”
“Goodness me, no!” Saunders vehemently shook his head as though he’d had it straight from the horse’s mouth. “This is a man who shuns glitz. He wants a private sanctuary for him, his family and close friends. He will want to visit, of course, if Lady McCready is agreeable. She must be a great age now. Only the other day someone told me she had passed away.”
“Still very much alive, sir,” Cate said, watching the CEO hold up a staying hand as the mobile on the table rang. He listened for a moment, said a few words, then put the receiver down. “Ah, he’s arrived.”
It was delivered with such reverence the prospective client could equally well have been Prince Charles or even President Obama. The Clintons had made the great escape to North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef islands, pronouncing the whole area an idyllic destination. Perhaps it was Bill Clinton or some retired American senator, who just wanted to sit around all day without anyone taking cheap shots at him as political enemies tended to do.
Lara entered the boardroom cheeks glowing, her mouth curved up in a smile. After her came an extremely handsome man in a hawkish kind of way: aquiline nose—perfect to look down on people—finely chiselled aristocratic features, thick jet-black hair with a natural wave, extraordinary eyes, the colour of blue flame; immediate impact that would linger for a long time. He stood well over six feet, very elegantly dressed. Not Zenga; Savile Row made to measure. A tailor’s dream. Snow-white shirt, striped silk tie no doubt denoting something elitist, tied just so. So sophisticated was his appearance it held them all speechless for a while.
But none more transfixed than Cate.
Time collapsed. How vivid was memory; how powerful was the past!
For a fleeting moment she felt her breathing had stopped. Then as air came back into her lungs she knew such fright she thought she had actually fainted while still remaining conscious. Her whole body was shaking, her mind sliding out of kilter. Thank God she didn’t have a glass of mineral water in her trembling hand for everyone would have watched her drop it to the ground where it probably would have shattered.
This is it, she thought. The heavens had shifted. She knew he had taken her in at once.
Lord Julian Ashton Carlisle, Fifth Baron Wyndham.
The father of her child.
She had come to him a virgin, the man who had devastated her life. So this was the way Karma worked? Action, effect, fate. She was trapped in the same room as the man she had never succeeded in erasing from her mind or her heart and hated him for it. He was indelibly fixed there by lost love, sorrow and humiliation. She had tried with every atom of her being to put the past behind her, but the past had had its effect on all of her subsequent relationships. No other man measured up.
Now her brain was signalling warnings.
The Day of Reckoning is at hand.
Over the past years she had almost succeeded in convincing herself Jules was solely hers. A virgin birth as it were. She knew now she had lost all touch with reality. Jules at some point in his life was going to want to meet his father. Jules’ father might very well want to meet the son he had hitherto known nothing about. The only way she could avert such a thing happening was to keep them far apart. At least until Jules was of an age to undertake his own search for his biological father, who probably by now had children with his aristocratic wife. Impeccable breeding, of course. It was expected, after all. Someone had to inherit the baronetcy, keep up tradition. Social status was something to be cherished.
Cate made a massive effort to calm herself by focusing on how appalling things had been for her. Alicia, steely eyed, tall, rail-thin