Outback Bachelor (5 page)

Look at him! Skye couldn’t drag her eyes off him. Everything about him pierced her to the heart.

“The minute he enters the room, he’s the stand-out figure,” Robert said with undisguised envy. “And it’s not just his height. He really takes the eye. He’s a man with power. And money. Poor old Scott is still as jealous of him as he ever was. Scott really ought to go away and make a life for himself. Rachelle, too, though she spends plenty of time in Sydney and Melbourne.”

“I see Scott with Jemma Templeton,” Skye sidetracked. She didn’t want to discuss Rachelle. “What I remember of Jemma is good.”

“But isn’t she plain?” Robert groaned, with a pitying look in his eyes. “Talk about a face like a horse!”

“A particularly well-bred one.” Skye’s eyes were still on Keefe’s tall, commanding figure. He looked beyond handsome in his formal funeral attire. “I don’t consider Jemma plain at all. She has a look of breeding and intelligence.’

“I suppose. But I bet she’d love to be pretty. And you
are
being kind. I suppose a woman as beautiful as you can afford to be kind. Poor old Jemma must be nuts if she’s looking to land Scott. She’s mad about him, poor thing!” Robert rushed on with characteristic candour. “Who knows why. Doesn’t say much for her intelligence in my book. Scott is trouble. It’s the way he goes off like an out-of-control rocket from time to time.”

“Whatever, he’s always got a whole string of girls after him.”

“And Keefe?” Couldn’t she control her tongue?

Robert didn’t appear to notice the tautness of her tone. “Who knows what’s on Keefe’s mind?” he mused. “A couple of stayers are hanging in there. Fiona Fraser and Clemmie Cartwright. You remember them. My money’s on Fiona. She’s swanning around somewhere. She’s stylish, well connected, knows the score, sharp as a tack but beneath that she’s the worst of things—a snob.”

“And you’re not?” Skye gave him a sweetly sarcastic smile.

“Of course I’m not!” He denied the charge. “Mum is, maybe. Clemmie is nicer, totally different, but I don’t believe she can fit the bill.’

“Surely it’s all up to Keefe?”

“Maybe he hasn’t found the woman to measure up?” Robert pondered. “He’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong. I admire him enormously. I’m not in his league. None of us are, for that matter. The guy’s a prince!”

He’s always been a prince. My prince.

By late afternoon everyone, with the exception of a few relatives who were staying overnight, had made their way home in the private planes and the charter planes that had been dotted all over the airfield, the half-dozen helicopters, bright yellow like bumblebees, and the convoys of vehicles that would make the return journey overland. Skye, who had returned to Lady McGovern’s side as requested, found herself one of the last to leave. She had made her way to the entrance hall when Rachelle suddenly confronted her, a smile on her lips, her eyes cold and flat.

“So, Skye! Sorry I didn’t get a minute to speak to you earlier. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you, Rachelle.” Skye spoke gently. “Please accept my condolences. The manner of your father’s premature death was terrible. I know you will miss him greatly.”

“Of course. He was a great man,” Rachelle said stiffly. “How long exactly are you staying?” As usual she was talking down to Skye.

“A few days.”

“I’m sure Gran asked you to come up to the house,” Rachelle challenged. “To stay, I mean.”

“Both Lady Margaret and Keefe invited me but I’m quite happy staying with my father. I won’t get in your way, Rachelle, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

Rachelle’s face took on an expression of extreme hauteur. “You couldn’t bother me if you tried. And I certainly don’t like the way you refer to my grandmother as Lady Margaret. She’s Lady McGovern to you.”

“Why don’t you check with your grandmother?” Skye said quietly, preparing to move on. “It was she who asked me to call her that.”

Rachelle’s dark eyes held a wild glare. “I don’t believe you.”

Skye ignored her, continuing on her way. On this day of days Rachelle, incredibly, was looking for a fight.

She hadn’t been at the bungalow ten minutes before she heard footsteps resounding on the short flight of timber stairs. They didn’t sound like her father’s. Not at all. They sounded like…She hurried to the front door, gripped by tension. The door wasn’t shut. She had left it open to catch a breeze. The bungalow had ceiling fans, but no air-conditioning.

To her complete shock, Keefe stood there, his brilliant eyes stormy. He had changed out of his funeral attire into riding gear. “I tried to catch you at the house,” he bit off, almost accusingly, ‘but you were pretty quick to get away.”

A flicker of temper, born of high emotion, flashed over her face. It had been
the
most dreadful day. “Let me stop you there, Keefe. I was one of the last to leave. Your grandmother didn’t want me to stray too far from her side. I don’t really know why.” She broke off, her eyes filling with apprehension. “Is something the matter?” she asked quickly. “Surely not her
?
” Lady McGovern was eighty years old.

“No, no.” Swiftly he reassured her. “She’s retired, of course. Losing Dad has robbed her of all vigour. She was in fine form up until then. But God knows what will happen now! She’s lost two sons. And a husband.”

“I know,” Skye said sadly. “In one way she has lived a life of privilege, but she has suffered a lot. Losing a child must be the greatest loss a woman can ever know.” Her head was aching so much she ripped at the pins in her hair, pulling them out one by one and setting them down on the small table by the door. Afterwards she shook her hair free with a sigh of relief, letting it settle into shining masses around her face and shoulders.

“Sometimes you’re so beautiful I can hardly endure looking at you,” Keefe said abruptly. He reached out suddenly for a handful of her hair, twining it around his hand, pulling on it slightly to draw her closer to him.

“You haven’t had to endure me of late,” she reminded him with a flare of bitterness.

“Your decision.” His tone was just as harsh. He released the silky swathe of her hair. “Can you do something for me, Skye?”

She relented. She had to on this day of days. “Of course I can.” She could see the pressure that had been building in him all day. There was a faint pallor beneath his tan. Another sign of his anguish.

“Then get out of that dress.” His tone was so short it sounded like an order. “I have the most desperate need to get away from the house. Put your riding gear on. Don’t tell me you didn’t bring it. I need to ride off some of this torment. It’s all been such a nightmare. Dad gone. The memory of that last morning. So businesslike, so matter-of-fact. I never got a chance to tell him how much I loved him, admired and respected him. He was my role model.”

“Keefe, he
knew
!” She wanted desperately to touch him but held herself back with an effort of will. “You’re everything he wanted and needed in his son, his successor. He knew the empire he built was safe with you. He never mentioned your name without it ringing with love and pride.”

He turned his dark head away, his skin drawn taut over his chiselled bones. “Do what I ask. I want to gallop until I drop.”

“Why
me?
” She issued it like a challenge. “You have a brother, a sister, yet you come looking for me.”

“Of course,
you
,” he responded roughly. “Who else?”

It was mutual validation of sorts. “I don’t understand you, Keefe,” she said on a note of despair. “You push me away. You draw me back in. You make life a heaven and a hell.”

“Maybe I only feel complete when you’re around.” He turned to her with intensity. “I missed you. You didn’t come.”

That almost sent her over the edge. “You surely didn’t think I was about to forgive you for breaking my heart?” she cried fiercely. “You showered me with affection, Keefe. As a child, as an adolescent. You made sure I was never lonely. Your kindness and your patience. It’s all etched into my memory. You might have been years and years older instead of only six. Then I grew up. And you took it all away. But not before you took
me
.” Her blue eyes blazed.

Colour rose in a tide under his bronzed skin. “It was what
you
wanted.” He grasped her by two arms, agony in his expression. “What
I
wanted. Neither of us could stop it. Neither of us tried. It was like it was ordained. Knowing your body meant everything in the world to me, Skye. Don’t ever forget it, or downgrade it. It was another stage in our incredible bonding. The intimacy. I have a sister who’s struggled all her life with jealousy of you. Consider her feelings for a moment. It was
you
I loved.
You
, Skye. You were so full of life and fun and endless intelligent questions. You
sparkled
. I love Rachelle. She’s family. We share the same blood but, terrible to say, often times I don’t
like
her.”

“And you think you should?” Skye asked a little wildly. “Rachelle was never nice to me. Not for one single minute. She let her jealousy eat her up. Anyway, it’s not unusual not to like someone in your family, though I didn’t have one, except Dad. Thing is, we can’t pick our families. We can’t always like them.”

“I guess.” A muscle throbbed along his jaw. “I have to contend with Scott’s jealousy as well. The two of them, my sister and my brother, ruining their lives with jealousy and resentment. Neither of them will find a life for themselves. Rachelle won’t consider getting herself a job. There are things she could do, but she’s falls back on her trust fund. Who knows what Scott’s thought processes are? I’ve offered him Moorali Downs. It’s a chance for him to find his feet. But no! It’s all about focusing his weird enmity on me.”

“Maybe if he falls in love?” Skye suggested, feeling his distress and frustration. “Finds the right girl? Marries her?”

Keefe laughed grimly. “Scott’s fantasy is all about
you.”

That hit her like a blow “But surely he’s forgotten me.” Her expression revealed she was shocked and appalled. “I saw him with Jemma. She’s a very nice young woman.”

“Who is wasting her time.” Keefe rejected that solution with a kind of anger. “I like Jemma too. She’ll make some lucky man a fine wife but it won’t be Scott. Scott’s choice has to be
my
choice. Scott will always want the woman
I
want. As Gran once said, ‘Scott wants to be
you,
Keefe’. That’s his huge problem in life. Sibling rivalry is part of Scott’s deepest being.”

“Then that’s a hell of a thing,” she said. “Maybe he needs professional help.”

“You think he doesn’t realise it?” Keefe spoke with a mix of anger and sorrow. “Scott
does
have an insight into his own behaviour. He
knows
what drives him. The tragedy is he doesn’t want to change things.”

“So this is what it always comes to. I shouldn’t have come back.” Skye was painfully convinced it was so. “There’s no place for me here, Keefe. I only make matters worse. Remember who I am.”

His eyes flashed like summer lightning. “Who you are? I’ll tell you. You’re a beautiful, bright, accomplished woman. What more do you want? I don’t give a damn that you were raised as Jack McCory’s little motherless daughter. Jack is a good man. But who in God’s name was your mother? That’s the real question.”

Her head shot up, all sorts of alarms going off. “What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you have the courage to allow your concerns—our concerns—to leap to the centre?”

“I have no idea what you mean.” She did. There were critical parts of her mother’s life that were totally unknown.

“You do,” he flatly contradicted, “but I can’t handle it now. Take that black dress off, though heaven knows it makes your skin and your hair glow. Leave a note for Jack. Say you’ve gone riding with me. He’ll understand.”

“Of course he will!” She cut him off with something of his own clipped manner. “He’s my father.”

B
IRDS
shrieked, whistled, zoomed above their heads, filling the whole world with a wild symphony of sound. They had left the main compound far behind, driving the horses, initially unsettled and hard to saddle, at full gallop towards the line of sandhills, glowing like furnaces in the intermittent, blinding flashes of sun. Aboriginal chanting so ghostly it raised the short hairs on the nape at first floated with ease across the sacred landscape. Now the sound was fading as they thundered on their way.

From time to time crouching wallabies and kangaroos lifted their heads at their pounding progress, taking little time to get out of the way of the horses. Manes and tails flowing, they raced full pelt across the plains, their hooves churning up the pink parakeelya, the succulent the cattle fed on, and sending swirls of red dust into the baked air.

The heat of the day hadn’t passed. It had become deadly. Thunderclouds formed thick blankets over a lowering sky. But as threatening as the sky looked—a city dweller would have been greatly worried they were in for an impending deluge—Skye, used to such displays, realised there might be little or no rain in those climbing masses of clouds. A painter would have inspiration for a stunning abstract using a palette of pearl grey, black, purple and silver with great washes of yellow and livid green.

Probably another false alarm, she thought, not that she cared if they got a good soaking. Any rain was a blessing. Her cotton shirt was plastered to her back. Sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and down into her waistband. There could be lightning. There was a distant rumbling of thunder. She had seen terrifying lightning strikes. A neighbouring cattle baron had in fact been killed by a lightning strike not all that many years previously. Yet oddly she had no anxiety about anything. She was with Keefe.

Half an hour on, as if a staying hand had touched his shoulder, Keefe reined in his mount. Skye did the same. Riders and horses needed a rest. In a very short time the world had darkened, giving every appearance of a huge electrical storm sweeping in. It confirmed to her distressed mind this had been a very sad day. Wasn’t that the message being carried across the vast reaches of the station by an elaborate network of sand drums? The chanting and the drums acted as powerful magic to see
Byamee
, Broderick McGovern, safely home to the spirit world.

Keefe took the lead, in desperate need of the quiet secrecy and sanctuary of the hill country. He loved and respected this whole ancient area, with all its implications. The ruined castles with their battlements had a strange mystique, an aloofness from the infinite, absolutely level plains country. It was as though they were secure in the knowledge it was
they
that had been there from the Dreamtime, created by the Great Beings on their walk-abouts. The hill country exerted a very real mystical force that had to be reckoned with. Many a Djinjara stockman, white or aboriginal, had over the years claimed they had experienced psychic terror in certain areas, a feeling of being watched when there was no other human being within miles. Keefe knew of many over time, including the incredibly brave explorers, who had tasted the same sensation around the great desert monuments that had stood for countless aeons, especially the Olgas, the aboriginal
Katajuta
. Ayer’s Rock,
Uluru
, sacred to the desert tribes, was acknowledged as having a far more benign presence, whereas the extraordinary cupolas, minarets and domes of
Katajuta
projected a very different feeling.

They dismounted, their booted feet making deep footprints in the deep rust-red loam. They saw to the horses, then began moving as one up a sandstone slope to where stands of bauhinia, acacia, wilga and red mulga were offering shade. The powerful sun was sending out great sizzling golden rays that pierced the clouds and lit up the desert like some fantastic staged spectacle.

Skye knew this place well. She had been here many times, mostly with Keefe, at other times on her own to reflect and wonder. This was
Gungulla
: a favourable place. A place of permanent water and a camping spot for white man and aborigine alike. Up among the caves there were drinking holes in the form of big rock-enclosed bowls and basins. There was bush tucker too, all kinds of berries and buds packed with nutrition. One could survive here. She turned to witness a thrilling sight. The summits of the curling, twisting, billowing clouds were rimmed with orange fire.

Keefe had pulled a small blanket from his pack, letting it flap on the wind before spreading it on the sand beneath the clump of orchid trees. He looked up at Skye, standing poised above him, twirling a white bauhinia blossom with a crimson throat in her hand. She had picked the orchid-like flower off one of the trees as she had passed beneath. Keefe indicated that she should sit beside him. She did so, feeling a blend of longing and trepidation. Immediately the little sandhill devil lizards scurried for cover.

“I can’t get my head around the fact my father is dead.” Keefe spoke in an intense voice. “He was only in his mid-fifties. No great age these days. There’s Gran eighty. Dad was
needed
.”

Sympathy and understanding were in her blue eyes. “His death has put a huge burden on you, Keefe. I know that. You thought you would have more years to grow into the job but the truth is you’re ready. You can be at rest about that.”

“Well, I’m not!” He wasn’t bothering to conceal his grief from her. This was Skye. He was letting it out. “The numbers of us killed in light plane crashes!”

She couldn’t argue with that. “But it can’t prevent you from flying. Out here flying is a way of life. You were able to come for me.”

He made a short bitter sound, more a rasp than a laugh. “I’d come for you no matter what.”

She had to press her eyes shut. Block him out. “Don’t fill my head with impossible dreams, Keefe.” Goaded, she pitched the bauhinia blossom aside. He had hurt her so deeply the wounds would never heal. Yet here she was again defying all common sense.

“Do you dream of me?” he asked abruptly.

It took her breath.

“I dream of
you,”
he said, lying back on the rough grey blanket and staring up at the sky.

She looked down at his dark, brooding face. “If we weren’t who we are, would you marry me?” How absurd could she get? She waited. He didn’t speak so she answered her own question. “I think not.” All these years wasted. Only they were unforgettable years. She would remember them to her last breath.

“Who
are
we exactly?” Abruptly he pulled her down to him in one swift, fluid motion.

She allowed him to do it even when she knew she could ill afford the least sign of surrender. To prove it, high emotion kicked in in a heartbeat. Keefe’s sexual magnetism was unquestioned, and so proprietorial. He knew he owned her. That alone aroused a certain female hostility. Being
owned
was wrong. “Are you saying there are secrets, Keefe?” She turned on her side to challenge him. They were so close, the pain was scarcely to be borne. Whatever had happened between them, they could never truly lose the old unifying bond. In his own way he needed her. But never as much as she needed him. There was nothing really normal about their relationship, she thought.

Again he didn’t speak. Groaning with frustration, she flung her arm across his hard, muscled chest, feeling the rhythmic thud of his heart beneath her hand. Sometimes she thought she would simply expire with the pain of loving Keefe, when there seemed to be no resolution to the matter. It was here, almost this very spot, where he had first made love to her. Taken her virginity. Captured her heart. Held it so fast he had denied her the freedom to enjoy another lover for a long time. Even then, those few relationships had never taken real shape. There was no one like Keefe. The way he made love to her. The things he did. The things he said. It was magic and music. Unforgettable.

“Secrets, yes,” he muttered. With a strong arm he fitted her body to him, as though her proximity gave him all the comfort this world could offer. “But does every secret need to be told?”

Her vulnerable flesh was pulsing with desire, causing deep knife-like sensations in her groin. He hadn’t asked a rhetorical question. He needed an answer. “You’re saying not every secret needs to be exposed to the light? Are you worried I’m
family
, Keefe?” Finally she threw her hidden anxieties into the ring.

“Isn’t that the fear locked away in your own Pandora’s box?” he countered, a correspondingly sharp note in his voice. “Let it out and who knows what will happen? Family!” he groaned. “There’s nothing
family
about the way I feel about you.”

Such an admission, yet she had a fierce desire to lash out at him. “
Feel
, certainly. Never
act
on those feelings. They could be taboo.” Why not hurt him as he always managed to hurt her? “Just give me a simple answer. What
do
you feel?” She stared at him with her black-fringed radiant blue eyes.

He brushed the question aside as if she had wasted her breath asking it. “Is that some kind of a joke? Neither of us can let go of the other. More to the point, I need to ask, is it a safe time for you?” There was a great urgency in him she couldn’t fail to miss.

“Safe?” She considered that with a brittle laugh. “No time is safe with you.” She didn’t think she could withstand the heat of his scrutiny. “Oh, Keefe!” Her breast rose and fell with her deep troubled sigh. Impossible to sustain the illusion she was her own woman. She was a woman who couldn’t let go. Worse, he wouldn’t
let
her go.

He shifted position, half pinning her beneath his powerful body but withholding most of his weight. “I want to make love to you. Tell me you’ll let me?” The very first sight of her at the airport had triggered a desperate need in him for the mind-bending pleasure of knowing her body again. He needed her to lessen the pain of this dreadful chaotic day. Make it bearable.

“It’s always what
you
want,” she said. “Shades of the old
droit de seigneur!”
Tears sparkled in her eyes.

“Never heard of it,” he darkly mocked, lifting skeins of her golden hair then letting them slide through his fingers. “I said, only if
you
want it.”

“What a concession, Keefe!” Hostility was coming off her like steam. She knew it had its genesis in status. His. Hers. Though successive generations were easing up on the status war. Once it would have been considered a disgrace for the scion of a great pastoral family to become involved with the daughter of a lowly employee. But
she
was an educated woman living in the twenty-first century. She could take her place anywhere. Except, it seemed, at Djinjara.

“Do I want it?” She considered his question bleakly. With a tremendous effort of will she exerted enough strength to break free of him. High time she made it perfectly plain she was her own woman. “Do you really believe I’m happy to think of myself as a woman possessed?” A high flush of colour had come to her cheeks.

“Possessed and possessing,” he answered bluntly. His hand, with a life of its own, moved up to caress her breast, shaping its contours within his palm, his thumb teasing the berry-ripe nipple. “I can feel your heart racing. It beats for
me
.”

The truth of it cut her to the bone. One had an intellectual life. And one had an emotional life. Sometimes the two were at war. “So arrogant!” she lamented. “I exist only to worship at your feet?” Deliberately she removed his hand from her breast. She knew about love. She knew about total seduction. He had long since mastered the art.

“Maybe I am arrogant,” he agreed flatly. “Maybe that’s what you do to me, Skye.”

He resumed his position, in all probability waiting for her to come round. Instead, she sat rigid with self-control, watching an eagle hawk swoop on its prey. “Are you ever going to free me, Keefe?” she asked eventually. “Or are you just holding onto me until you find someone else?”

He didn’t appear to be listening to her. As though what she was saying made no sense to him. “This is almost the precise spot where I first made love to you,” he said in a quiet, serious voice, an element of—was it regret?—in his tone.

“The heir to Djinjara having sex with the young daughter of a station employee.”

Again he didn’t choose to hear her. “The world was perfect that day. You made me feel like a titan. Capable of taking on the world. Sweet, funny little Skye with her ceaseless questions grown into a beautiful woman.”

“You always took the time to answer those questions.”

“They were always so intelligent. You had a great thirst for knowledge.”

Her released breath had a soft, shaken sound. “You were so kind to me in those days. Then overnight you drew back. You kept your distance.“

His handsome features tightened. “What would you have had me do? Keeping a distance between us was the only course open to me.”

“Of course.” There was brittle acceptance in her tone. “Keefe McGovern and Skye McCory. What a no-no! That was never going to work.” Her gaze went beyond him. “It’s going to storm.”

He didn’t move. “Right this minute I don’t care if we’re heading for Armageddon. I want to
crush
you. You won’t let me. I want to take every little particle of you into me.”

“That would seem to be our misfortune,” she said with the greatest irony.

“I call it destiny.” Abruptly he sat up. “I’ve missed you so much, Skye. You were supposed to come in August.”

To be here with him, remote from everyone and everything, and hold herself aloof was an excruciating test of her resolve. “And sow more discord?” she challenged. ‘No, Keefe, I couldn’t. What was the point? Besides, you might have found yourself a fiancée by then.”

His expression hardened. “Be damned to that! Haven’t you forgotten something?”

“And what is that?” She spoke in a strung-out voice, knowing she was coming close to tumbling over the edge.

“
You’re
the only woman I want.”