world to me.”
She isn’t good at all. Even at twelve she is, as her aunt puts it, “hell-bent on establishing her place in the world.” That means eventually inheriting Eden. Her grandfather has promised it to her. She loves her historic home with a passion. She has that in common with her grandfather and her aunt Sigrid, but Aunt Sigrid will never inherit. Nor will Joel. That, too, her grandfather has confided. Eden is hers. She is the chosen one with special qualities which her grandfather claims he sees in her. Her grandfather’s love and faith sustains her. He plays the dominant male role in her life. He is Sir Giles Cavanagh of Eden Station.
Her father starts to roar again, a sound that reverberates through the house. She steps back instinctively, overcoming the sensation he has actually struck her. Which he has on occasion and she never did tell Grandpa.
“I’ll tell you who she’s with. Bloody McClelland, that’s who. The arrogant bastard. Always thinking herself a cut above me. But she chose me, not him. Now she’s picked up with him right under your noses, the arctic bitch.”
“And where have you been all this time, Heath?” Her aunt’s voice cracks with contempt. “What do you get up to in Sydney apart from gambling? You’re never far from the racetrack or the casino. Do you think we don’t know that? You’re an addict. Gambling is a drug.”
“There’s more attraction in gambling than living here,” her father answers furiously. “The lot of you looking down on me. The Cavanagh black sheep. Always so chillingly polite, but you bloody hate me. You just don’t have the guts to say so. What is a man to do when his wife doesn’t return home? To be humiliated like this! I tell you she’s finally gone off with that bastard. He never stopped loving her.”
“What you’re saying is crazy!” Now her grandmother speaks with intensity. “Corrinne would never leave her child. She adores Nicole.”
“But she’s done it this time, hasn’t she, dear Louise?”
Nicole’s grandfather cuts in as though he’s reached breaking point. “Instead of your usual ranting, Heath, I’d be obliged if you’d focus on what might have happened to your wife. I very much fear an accident. Instead of wasting time, we should be organizing a search party. Corrinne has the Land Cruiser. It could have broken down somewhere.”
“In which case she’ll soon be home.” Her grandmother sounds to anyone who knows her achingly unsure. “Corrine is a loving mother. She would never abandon Nicole. Never.” She repeats it like a mantra.
A low growl issues from her father as if he’d momentarily turned feral. “Who are you trying to convince, Louise? Your beloved Corrinne is no more than a common whore. You realize you’re admitting she’s taken up with McClelland. She’d leave me, but never Nicole.”
“I have no idea,” her grandmother, so proud, lies. “You were the one who snatched her away from him, Heath. Almost on the eve of their wedding. To think I was the one who invited you here for Corrinne’s engagement party. You were kin, after all. A Cavanagh. I felt sorry for you. I felt the family was too hard on you. How you repaid us.” A wealth of misery and regret in her voice, she went on, “You broke up two families who’d been the best of friends. The Cavanaghs and the McClellands. We’ve been here since the earliest days of settlement. The Cavanaghs even before the McQueens. We all stood together in this vast wilderness in order to survive. Our families would have been united but for you. Do you think I’d be speaking like this if you were a good husband and father? But you’re not, are you. I know you’re still obsessed with Corrinne. I know the black jealousy that prowls around your brain and your heart. Your mad suspicions. You never let her alone. But you scarcely have time for your own daughter, Nicole.”
No hesitation. A thud like a hand slamming down on a table. “If she is my daughter,” her father snarls.
Chaos is easy to create. It takes so few words. Glued to the banister, Nicole has trouble breathing.
“She’s yours, all right.” Aunt Sigrid is all contempt—and something more. What?
Grandma’s quavery voice gives the impression she is on the verge of tears. “How can you say that, Heath?”
“Sorry. I need proof.” Her father laughs. Not a nice laugh. A laugh utterly devoid of humor.
Her grandfather intervenes, speaking with grave authority. “My daughter would never have married you knowing she was carrying David’s child.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know at the time.” Her father produces another sneering laugh followed by the sound of boots scraping on the parquet floor. “To hell with the lot of you! You all idolize Corrinne, but she’s a cruel bitch. God knows why she married me. It had little to do with love.”
“Lust more like it!” The words seemed ripped from Aunt Sigrid’s throat.
Another mirthless laugh. “I bet you’ve spent a lot of time weeping over what you’ve never had, Siggy.” Her father speaks as though his sister-in-law is trash, not one of the Cavanaghs of Eden. “I’ll get this search party started. I can do that much. My bet is we won’t find her. She’s gone off with McClelland at long last. And none of you could stop her.”
At that, twelve-year-old Nicole collapses on a step, starting to succumb to a great sickness inside her. “Please, God,” she begins to pray, “don’t let anything bad have happened to Mummy.”
“For God’s sake, Nicole, what are you doing there?” Her father unleashes another roar, striding out into the hallway only to see her hunched up on the stairs. “Answer me, girl.”
No answer. No point. Not anymore. He isn’t her father.
“Leave the child alone, Heath.” The iron command in her grandfather’s voice then changes to tender, protective. “Nicole, darling, go back to bed. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Go, sweetheart.”
Go? When her mother is out there somewhere in the desert? “I’d rather go look for Mummy.” Nicole finds the strength to pull herself up, though her legs are wobbly with shock. “Please, Granddad, may I go with you?” She cannot bring herself to address the man, Heath, standing tall, staring up at her with his black eyes. Probably seeing her mother. Doesn’t everyone say she’s her mother’s mirror image?
Grandma rushes into the entrance hall, crushing one of her beautiful lace handkerchiefs to her mouth. “No, Giles!”
“There may be comfort in it for the child.” Sir Giles draws his wife tenderly into his arms.
“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if the secretive little bitch knows where her mother is.” Heath Cavanagh spits anger and venom. Definitely not Daddy anymore. “Corrinne takes her everywhere. Tells her everything. Where’s your mother, girl?” he thunders.
In a flash, the secret forces within Nicole gather. It’s as though she can see through her mother’s sightless eyes. Searing whiteness. Nothing.
“Gone forever,” she says.
CHAPTER ONE
NICOLE WAS NEARLY twenty minutes late arriving at the Bradshaws’ splendid East Side apartment, although, Carol had confided earlier, she was the guest of honor. Today was her twenty-sixth birthday and Carol had arranged one of her “little dinner parties,” which usually turned out to be sumptuous affairs with glamorous and often famous people in attendance and “someone special” for her to meet. Carol, who had all but adopted her as the granddaughter she’d never had, was determined to find her the right husband and thus keep her in New York, or at the very least within easy traveling distance. That didn’t include far-off Australia, the home of her birth. The Outback was worlds away from New York, the fabulous hub of the New World.
The Bradshaws had taken her under their wing almost from the time she’d arrived in New York two years before, fresh from a three-year stint in Paris where she’d been living and studying painting. As fate would have it, the Bradshaws were visiting a SoHo art gallery the same afternoon