Yesterday's Sins (42 page)

If you leave, I will never come after you.

"Dad stipulated his Will was to be read today after his funeral." Jared was first to break the silence. He made a low, disgusted sound in the back of his throat. "I thought the family reading of a Will was a discontinued, archaic relic."

Her heart slammed against her ribs. Harvey's Will? Was that behind the command she and Lacey attend his funeral today? And afterwards visit Totara Park?

"God knows what he's done." He slammed a hand against the steering wheel in frustration, amber eyes glittering.

She glanced at him, horrified.

Five years ago she'd left Totara Park vowing she would never again to set foot on Grainger land. Now, at Harvey's insistence, she was returning.

Gaelen and Paige would hate it.

Gaelen can only hurt you if you allow it
. Dr. Cartwright's gruff words seeped into her troubled mind, bringing immense comfort. She took a deep breath and then another, willing herself to relax.

As he turned to face her, the sunlight turned his tawny hair gold, every unruly strand slicked down and in its place. "Later, when afternoon tea is over, Max Harpur will read Dad's Will. I'm as apprehensive as you obviously are."

Jared?
Jared admitting to human frailties?

Winsome shook her head. She was obviously not the only one who had changed. "I didn't think you possessed fallible, human emotions."

He gave her a scorching look. It was a wonder she didn't melt into the seat. "This meeting isn't my idea. Raking over the past is pointless. It can't be changed. Let's keep this as civilized as we can."

What could she say? The burden of guilt grew heavier.

"This is just as difficult for my mother as it is for you." His clipped tone was unfriendly, his amber eyes dark with grief. "Try not to cause friction."

"I have never caused friction." Chin high with proud defiance, Winsome opened the door and escaped the claustrophobic confines of the car. She opened the rear door and unbuckled Lacey, lifting her from her booster seat.

"I don't like this place, Mummy," she whispered, her arms snaking around her mother's neck.

That makes two of us, kiddo.

Lacey was unnaturally quiet, and had been ever since they left Cambridge. At Harvey's wish, his farewell had taken place there, in the small Waikato town in New Zealand's rural hinterland, at the church where he'd worshipped all his life. His cremation was private, between him and his God.

How was she going to survive without the one person who never judged or accused? Grief wrenched at Winsome with the force of a physical pain.

"You'll be okay, sweetheart," she murmured, desperate to reassure herself as much the little girl.

Lacey gave Jared a scared, wary look that threatened to break Winsome's heart. In cutting her from his life, he'd also cut contact with his daughter. As he looked at Lacey, Winsome caught his anguished regret and her resolve firmed. Their separation was not of her making and he must know his own choices had denied him knowing his daughter.

"Are you my father?" Lacey's question caught them both off guard.

Jared stopped, and then crouched to her level. "Yes, I'm your father."

"Why don't you live with us like other fathers do?"

He can answer. I've fielded Lacey's questions ever since I explained we were coming to visit her father.

Winsome took a ragged breath. This close, tawny heads almost touching no one could mistake them for anything other than father and daughter. And seeing them together now, hurt her heart.

"Sometimes there are reasons little girls don't understand."

She flinched on a swift stab of anguish.
How did you explain to a little girl that her father didn't even want to know she existed?

"Susie's father doesn't live with her but she stays with him. Why don't I ever see you, if you're my father?" Lacey asked with unassailable four-year-old logic, her grey eyes shadowed with doubt.

"Susie?" Jared looked up at Winsome, amber eyes questioning.

"Her friend from kindergarten."

"I'm seeing you now. Perhaps you can come and stay with me sometime soon."

Over my dead body.
Winsome clenched her hands. If he thought this visit gave him any rights, he was in for one very rude shock.

"Can I really?" Lacey's voice rose with excitement. "Come and stay with you?"

Under the same roof as Gaelen?
Never.

"We'll see." Winsome blistered him with a furious glare. How dare he raise the child's hopes like this? "This is just a visit, Lacey. Remember we talked about it."

"Okay." She gave a resigned put-upon sigh designed to make her mother feel guilty.

Jared glanced at her, his icy glare chilling her to the bone as he held out a hand to Lacey. After a moment's hesitation, she slipped her small hand in his. He put his other hand under Winsome's elbow; it was a protective gesture she remembered well. Her arm burned at his touch and it took every ounce of self-control not to flinch or pull away.

As they walked up the wide front steps, she almost succumbed to panic.

What am I doing here?
She stopped in mid-step, wanting nothing more than to turn tail and run.

Jared noticed her hesitation and compassion softened his hard expression. In that moment Winsome caught a fleeting glimpse of the man she'd met and married so precipitously.

"Don't be scared," he murmured, the soothing tone meant to allay her fears. "Mother's looking forward to seeing you both. Come and meet your Grandmother, Lacey."

Biting hard on her lower lip, Winsome struggled to subdue a burst of hysterical laughter. Jared had expressed similar sentiments the day he'd brought her home to this house as his bride. And how tragically farcical that had proved to be.

Seven For A Secret

© Shirley Wine 2012

Why had she never known her life was one colossal lie?

After her father's sudden death Anna Belmonte is stunned to discover she's her father's love child with the family au pair.

Shocked, betrayed, her sense of self in tatters, Anna seeks her birthmother, determined to unravel the dark secrets surrounding her birth.

When she meets Megan's stepson Slade Haultain, she accepts his invitation to stay on Puriri Downs, his beef and sheep station and very quickly they forge strong emotional bonds.

Anna, a gifted artist, long ago decided art and marriage were incompatible, but with Slade, she glimpses a tantalizing vision. Art, marriage and children, for the first time she thinks that perhaps she can have it all.

Anna's meeting with Megan turns into a disaster.

Too late, Anna learns this was one secret that was never meant to be told…

The dead hand of Anna's manipulative father reaches from beyond the grave to destroy the young lovers' hopes and dreams.

How can Anna ask Slade to choose between her and his family? How can she ever prove she wasn't a party to her father's diabolical schemes? And how can she ask Slade take her word on trust…
 

This book was a finalist in the 2010 Clendon Award Run in conjunction with the Romance Writers of New Zealand.

Excerpt

W
hy had she never guessed her whole life was one colossal lie? Or had she at some subliminal level, always known?

Anna Belmonte hated this nightmare situation, hated her father's manipulation, hated him breaking the silence of a life time, and hated that he'd waited until after his death to do so.

But most of all, she hated that she cared.

Not that this was anything new. Paolo Belmonte was a controlling, manipulative man. She'd grown up knowing this about her father. Her decision to turn her art into a career had infuriated him and he'd done his level best to undermine her at every opportunity.

Now, she despised him. Paolo was a liar, a cheat, but worst of all, he was a hypocrite.

But at least he knew who he was.

The though was like a hand reaching inside her and tearing out her heart. Gripped by soul-deep despair, her hand shook as she replaced the tea cup in its saucer.
 

The clash of china on china made her wince.

A few patrons in the breakfast room of the Lansbury Inn not engrossed in eating or the morning papers looked her way, and then just as swiftly averted their eyes.

Embarrassed heat flooded Anna's face. Head bent, she buttered a piece of half cold toast. She was deliberately dawdling, at a loss as to know what she should do next. The dining room with its sleek glass and chrome furniture offered little inspiration and certainly held no answers.

In a mood as dark as the brooding sky, she looked through the plate glass windows of the dining room that overlooked the main Ocean Beach.

Huge waves crashed ashore. An offshore tropical cyclone was creating wild and turbulent seas. Great spumes of water crashed over a rocky outcrop. Sea birds wheeled and screamed as they ducked and dived above the boiling surf. The unbridled fury thrilled the artist in her soul; the violence fed the emotions tearing her apart.

A month ago, Anna had possessed the same certainty about her identity as her father. And while they'd never been close, she loved him, after a fashion, despite his overbearing and dictatorial manner.
 

Now the security of her identity had been ripped out from beneath her feet like a shoddy carpet.

What Anna wanted was an explanation.

And now, Megan Anderson was the only person alive and able to give her the explanation she craved.

But the woman was elusive.
 

Anna frowned, crumbling the uneaten toast onto her plate. She had yet to find anyone in Mt Maunganui, on New Zealand's east coast, willing to talk to her.
 
Either no one knew Megan, or they weren't talking.
 

And Anna feared it was the latter.

Fresh out of leads, she had no idea what to do next.

One thing was certain; she needed to find Megan before a lack of funds and a looming deadline forced her return home. How could she return home without answers to the questions that were driving her crazy?

Why?

What was Megan Anderson to her father?

And why had her father waited until he was dead to reveal that Sofia Belmonte had not given birth to Anna?

Had he intended to explode her sense of self?

Another frustrated sigh escaped. When had Paola Belmonte ever considered he had to justify his actions? And by having his lawyer deliver his letter after his death, Paolo made damn sure Anna couldn't demand the answers she was entitled too.

Moodily, she stared out the windows.
 

Just as the sullen clouds unleashed their burden and raindrops hit the earth in huge splats, a solitary magpie swooped onto the grass from one of the lofty Norfolk pines dotted along the foreshore.