Читать книгу Outback Angel - Margaret Way - Страница 7

THE heat and clamour of the day had been frightful, Jake reflected. Truly exhausting even for him. It had been easy enough rounding up the mob on the spinifex plains at the height of the Dry, fields of burnt gold like an endless harvest of wheat, but galloping after cattle in rough terrain was no fun. And dangerous.

Last year his Brit jackeroo, Charlie Middleton, had sustained a back injury as a result of his boundless derring-do and yen for action and had to undergo surgery, which mercifully turned out fine. Charlie, the Honourable Charles Middleton, no less, was back on the job a whole lot less inclined to go swashbuckling around the bush. He really liked Charlie and mostly looked on his enthusiasm and sense of adventure with favour, but the ever-present hazards had to be taken seriously. Driving cleanskins, the unbranded cattle, out of their hiding places was one of them. The horned beasts, dangerous on that count alone, buried themselves deep in the vast network of lignum thickets that wrapped themselves around the waterways and billabongs, finding green havens after the semidesert with its scorching red sands.

This was the final muster before Christmas. The Big One, though work procedures had been revolutionised since he was a boy. Today on the station good chopper pilots—and he was one of them—matched the skills of the pioneer stockmen when it came to moving cattle. The name of the game was efficiency and the use of helicopters had greatly increased the speed of the musters as well as cutting the workforce. But there were some places the choppers couldn’t safely go, so the horses got involved, every last one of them well trained. That was his job. Overseeing their management. A man had to be multi-skilled these days to survive on the land. He was a smart businessman, too. He had a degree in commerce behind him. A man for all seasons you might say.

And speaking of seasons, the Wet had officially begun in the tropical north of his giant state of Queensland, but not one drop of rain had fallen on his neck of the woods; the far south-west of the state, the Channel Country, riverine desert with some of the loneliest, most dramatic landscapes on the planet. Home to the nation’s cattle kings. He guessed he had to be one of them now.

Jake McCord. Cattle king. Jake was grittier than Jonathon, his real name. Of course his father had come up with the alternative. He supposed it was reasonably close. Only his mother had called him Jonathon. Three years after his father’s premature death—Clive McCord had been bitten in the leg by a poisonous copperhead while out on one of his solitary desert walkabouts—he still thought of himself as the heir apparent. The man in waiting. He supposed it was to his credit he had never thought of himself as being overshadowed by his father when his father had clearly enjoyed cracking the whip as a means of keeping everyone around him under control.

Especially his son. However, in his case, his father had never tasted success. Some inbred fighting spirit had allowed him to shrug and take it. He knew a lot of people in their far-flung Outback community put the discord between father and son down to Clive McCord’s not unrare jealousy of his heir and his deep-seated bitterness. The fact was, both of their lives had been tragically disrupted by the death of beautiful, much loved, Roxanne, wife and mother, in a riding accident on the station when Jake was barely six. From then on his father had turned into another person, with hardly a nodding tolerance for others, not drawing closer to his bereft child, but seeming to blame him for living when his wife hadn’t. There was ample proof that sort of thing sometimes happened.

The total lack of love and approval had left him damaged he supposed. It had certainly charged him with a lot of hurt and anger and an almost chronic wariness that even extended into his love life. He supposed it was all about his mother and his idealisation of her. It had been very hard on his girlfriends because one way or another they had all fallen short. Or perhaps he believed that love was an illusion. Yet he had known love when his mother was alive. He was still capable of remembering. Her loss had been overwhelming and it had come at a bad time in a child’s life.

Two years after his mother’s death, Stacy had come along. Stacy, his stepmother, his father’s second wife. Poor Stacy! God what a life she’d had with such a hard strange man who’d only married her because she was nothing like his late wife, but she was young, gentle and tractable and could provide from her delicate body more sons to work the giant station. All Stacy could manage was his half sister, Gillian, who had proved as easy to dominate as her mother, flinching whenever her father’s hard gaze fell on her. It would have been easier for Gillian had she been a McCabe in appearance. His clan tended to be really handsome people with a surplus of self-confidence. Gillian favoured her mother. Pretty, sure, but living life under a modern-day despot who never saw her as any kind of asset had clipped Gilly’s wings. Sometimes he thought it hadn’t helped anyone when he’d come so repeatedly to their defence. It had only made his father look more harshly on all of them.

McCord’s sudden violent death was an appalling shock when they all thought he was going to live forever, but in the end he hadn’t been mourned. Stacy and Gillian had made a pretence at grief—surely it was expected—but it wasn’t in Jake to play the hypocrite. All of them after the initial shock had felt a vast sense of release. For such a rich and powerful man, his father had had few genuine friends except for an old aboriginal called Jindii, an Eaglehawk man, who sometimes joined McCord on his wanderings. Jindii, a desert nomad, had passed back and forth across the station for as long as anyone could remember. In fact the old man had to be at least one hundred and looked every minute of it. Jindii still wandered the Wild Heart. So did his father for that matter. In spirit anyway. He had scattered his father’s ashes in a high-noon ritual, watching them disappear in a sea of mirage to become part of the eternal shifting sands.

So now he was McCord, the master of Coori Downs. Coori was an aboriginal word meaning flowers. And vast vistas of desert flora was what the first Scottish-born McCord settler in Australia had seen when he and an explorer friend had passed through the Channel Country on their journey to the Central Queensland plains in the early 1800s. Jake had whole sections of his ancestor’s diaries off pat….

“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 on earth are you doing down there?” He braced himself as the dogs bounded towards him.

Stacy smiled sweetly and shrugged. “Why not? It’s nice and cool. Besides I’ve never felt comfortable in those chairs.” She nodded at two very imposing and valuable antique carved mahogany hall chairs with sphinx-like figures for arms. At forty Stacy was in great shape. She still looked like a girl, with her fair hair and skin and large cloudy blue eyes. She’d lived a lifetime of constantly trying to please, but somehow she didn’t show the burden of endless stress.

Arrested development, one of the acerbic McCord aunts had observed. No one in the extended family could ever work out why the high-handed, difficult and demanding Clive had married such a consistently shy and ineffectual little thing. Stacy wasn’t considered interesting or exciting at all. Why, she couldn’t be more different to the beautiful, vivid Roxanne whom everyone had adored and greatly mourned.

Now Stacy stood up, swaying a little because she had pins and needles in her left foot, a neat figure in her cotton shirt and jeans, the great crystal waterfall that was the hall chandelier putting highlights into her short cap of fair hair.

“Isobel called,” she announced, as though conducting a conversation with his dynamo of a cousin had left her vaguely distraught.

“Oh?” At this time of year Isobel’s business was running full-tilt, but she had come to his rescue yet again. Isobel, married to a well-known Federal M.P. was particularly sensitive to his plight. Kinder than most of the McCord clan, even Isobel found Stacy’s lack of social and organization skills extremely unfortunate.

“So what did she want?” he prompted as Stacy seemed to have come to the end of her speech.

“Malcolm had a sick turn in the P.M.’s office.” She said it like it was the high point of Malcolm’s career. “He’s going into hospital in the morning so they can run a few tests.”

“Oh, Lord, I’ll have to call her.” He ran a hand through his thick hair, dismayed on two counts. He really liked Malcolm, and this could put paid to the up-coming Coori festivities. “Maybe exhaustion,” he mused, hopefully. “Malcolm works harder than most.”

“I didn’t know any of them really worked,” said Stacy who had no insight into a busy politician’s life at all. “But I’m sorry about Malcolm. He’s one of the few to never be nasty to me. And they’re such a compatible couple.”

“I guess some marriages have to work out,” he offered distractedly, his mind ticking over. Even his rock-solid cousin would be a mess if anything was really wrong with Malcolm, God forbid. And it would put paid to Isobel’s indispensable services. Maybe he would have to turn to Dinah, after all. She’d really love that.

“What if Isobel can’t handle our functions?” Stacy asked thoughtfully, not considering for a minute she should have a go. “You might have to fall back on Dinah. I hope you don’t have to.” She cast him a quick look. “Isobel flusters me, I almost have to run to catch up with her, but Dinah makes me feel an utter fool.”

“Why don’t you tell her off?” he suggested briskly, no longer embarrassed by his stepmother’s inadequacies. “That might give both of you a good shake-up. Eventually, Dinah might even stop.”

“But she’s your friend!” Stacy stared at him incredulously, as if somehow that gave Dinah free rein. “I’m not game to say a word to her,” she confessed, thinking even Dinah’s smile had a sneer in it. “I must be such a disappointment to you, Jake.” Stacy brushed her wispy fringe from her forehead. “I was certainly cut from a different cloth than the likes of Isobel and Dinah.”

Wasn’t that the truth! From his childhood his role had been to be supportive of Stacy. Even now Stacy couldn’t speak his mother’s name, though he had often caught her staring up at Roxanne’s portrait. Roxanne, who even as a young bride had handled the role of mistress of a great historic station with brilliant aplomb.

“From all McCord accounts an imbecile.” From nowhere tears suddenly rolled down Stacy’s cheeks, though he knew from long experience anything could trigger them.

After all these years it didn’t break him up. “Cut it out now,” he braced her automatically, feeling it would be wise to get Gillian started on some course or other. He didn’t want his half sister feeling such confusion about herself and her life. “Organising and running functions isn’t the only thing in the world.” The Lord is my strength and my shield, he thought wryly. He had been relying on Isobel to get them through.

“I’m really, really sorry, Jake.” Stacy’s tears stopped on the instant. It was taking time for her to remember with his father gone there was nothing to fear.

“Don’t worry, we’ll manage,” Jake reassured her.

Stacy sighed with relief. Nothing ever rattles him, she thought gratefully, looking up into her stepson’s dynamic face. Even terrible things. She supposed that was keeping up the McCord tradition, when the McCord tradition had beaten her down. As often happened, she had the sense of looking at his mother. The beautiful young woman her husband had never forgotten. Jake had the same glorious tawny colouring. The thick, thick, wavy hair, amber, streaked with gold. Roxanne, in the portrait, had great coils of it. Jake’s was a lion’s mane. They both had amber eyes to match, which were spectacularly beautiful, full of sparkle and life. The passionate nature of mother and son showed in the vitality of their expressions, the cut of the beautifully defined sensuous mouths. Mouths you couldn’t look away from. Jake was tall, as had been Roxanne. At six-three, even taller than his father, young-man lean, wide shoulders narrowing to a trim waist, long taut flanks. He was superbly fit from his hard outdoor life. Jake was a wonderful-looking young man, exotic in his tawny splendour. His mother, Roxanne, had been incandescent in her beauty. Even dead, she’s more alive than I am, Stacy thought ironically. She was quite quite certain she would never have survived living with Clive McCord if it weren’t for his son.

Malcolm as it turned out required surgery. An ultrasound confirmed he would have to have his gall bladder removed. It would be keyhole surgery with a minimum recovery time, but his devoted wife couldn’t think of leaving him. Isobel apologised to Jake twice. Jake said not to worry. But even then, worried Isobel took charge. By midmorning of the next day she left a message that she had found someone she thought would be perfect to take over her job. A wonderful young woman she had taken under her wing, with a background in fine food. Her parents owned and ran a prizewinning restaurant. Her protégée was a food writer with the up-market magazine, Cosima, sometimes she guested for other highly regarded magazines. She wasn’t a chef as such, but a darn good cook—she had helped Isobel with several important functions. Isobel could highly recommend her. The paragon whose name was Angelica De Campo, would ring Jake that very night. If he liked the sound of her, the deal could be stitched up. There was little time to lose.

Jake received all this information when he returned to the homestead at sundown. He started to relax as his worries began to fall off him. Isobel wouldn’t recommend anyone she didn’t have the utmost faith in. He was at his desk in the study looking over an industry report when Miss De Campo’s call came through.

“Mr. McCord?”

Her voice was so mellifluous, so much like honey, he actually slumped back in his leather chair, feeling a delicious lick of it on his tongue. “Miss De Campo. How good of you to call.” He on the other hand sounded quite sardonic. Sometimes, he thought ruefully, he even sounded like his father, which really bothered him.

“Isobel will have told you about me?” Honey Throat was asking. Hell, the effect on him was fantastic! He had to control the force of his exhalation.

“The only thing she omitted to do was send a picture. I’m sure, though, you’re most attractive.” God, he wanted her to be. That voice and good looks. A winning combination! And she could cook, and handle big functions anyplace, even the middle of the Outback. What a joy! He was stunned to think there were women like that out there. Maybe she also had huge dark eyes, and beautiful, womanly breasts. Of course, being a great cook there was more than a slight possibility she could be overweight and sensitive about it. He mustn’t place too much importance on a great voice.

“You can decide when you see me,” she laughed. “I hope I pass. That’s if you want me to take over from Isobel, Mr. McCord. You might like to ask me a few questions?”

“Indeed,” he answered, trying and succeeding in sounding the tough businessman. “My first. You’ve never handled functions of this size by yourself?”

“No, not as big, but that’s fine,” she returned with pleasing poise. “Size is no problem. I’ve had a lot of experience in catering to numbers. Isobel would have told you my parents are in the hospitality business. They run an excellent restaurant. I know all their sources, the top people to contact. I’ve done a lot of P.R. I’m currently working on a pre-Christmas party for Billie Reynolds, the millionaire stockbroker?”

She said it like it was a question and he nearly answered, “Bah!” Shades of his father again. “I do recognise the name.” Billie Reynolds fell into the serial-womanising category. Trying to count his ex-wives would be like trying to count sheep. “How do you think it will turn out?”

“Wonderful, even if I say so myself.” She sounded convinced. “Billie wouldn’t have hired me if I couldn’t deliver. He’s a perfectionist.”

“So you’re brilliant then?” he lightly mocked, positive she was.

“I work hard at what I do,” she told him modestly. “I’ve learned a great deal watching my parents and Isobel, of course. I admire her tremendously. She’s enormously successful. I was quite upset when I heard about Malcolm.”

“Then you’ll know his surgeon is speaking about a quick recovery.” She had obviously drawn herself into the family circle.

“Yes. Belle and I are constantly in touch.”

Well listen to that! Belle. “I gather you’re something of a protégée?” Another deadpan delivery. Just like his dear dad. What if this thing grew and grew? The thought was downright scary.

“Belle is very good at spotting talent.”

Was it possible she was having a go at him? He didn’t actually mind.

“I’m very flattered she recommended me,” she added.

“And I have to say I’m enormously relieved.” He whisked away the rest of his Scotch. “At this time of year I’m nearly running on empty. You realise how isolated the station is?” There would be plenty of opportunities for showing her around.

“Isobel has described everything,” she answered, totally unfazed. “As I understand it, you’ll be hosting the finals of the Marsdon Polo Cup with a luncheon followed by afternoon tea. Finishing up with a gala ball that evening. The following week, there’ll be a barbecue for all the staff and their families. And the Saturday before Christmas you’re hosting a large party for all your relatives and friends.” She sounded like she was ticking them off; she seemed a young woman of considerable competence who could handle things on her own.

Aside from Dinah, who didn’t have a voice like strawberry-flavoured brandy, he had never had such an experience.

“Do I have that right?” she asked.

“I should throw in it’s my birthday, as well.” That might faze her.

“Is it?”

He heard the smile in her voice, resolved to hold on to his cool. “No, but I’ve waited all my life to have one. A party, that is.”

A pause. “That sounds a little sad. But you’ve got plenty of time.”

“How could you know I’m twenty-eight?”

“Isobel must have mentioned it.”

“Then you also know I’m a bachelor?” It was perfectly clear they were flirting. Or at least he was. It amazed him. Proof positive he needed a woman clever enough to get under his skin. “My birthday’s in August by the way. I’m the definitive Leo.”

“That’s interesting. So am I. Shall I write a party down under Future Projects?”

He swung around in the swivel chair. “Well, you’d best work for me first, don’t you think?”

“Great idea! Say the word and I can start. You won’t find me a disappointment.”

“How expensive are you, Miss De Campo?” She told him. Wow! Pulling in money like that was something to brag about. On the other hand Isobel, even if she was his cousin, didn’t come cheap, either.

“Everything will be the best,” she explained. “That means expensive, but I say pay it every time. There’s no substitute for quality.”

“Sure,” he agreed laconically. “You must take your pay home in an armoured van.”

“No, but a security guard walks me to my car. Now, why don’t we discuss what you plan over Christmas?”

Why not? Maybe by August they’d be married. He let his sense of humour take over. If this woman had beautiful dark eyes he’d fall into her arms. He needed a really great love affair to free him up. It was so long since he’d had one. Hell, he’d never had one. They spoke back and forth for another ten minutes, both adopting a no-nonsense manner as they got down to detail. He asked many more questions of her, she gave all the right answers. Isobel knew her stuff. Miss Angelica De Campo was hired.

After he put the phone down, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. It struck him Miss De Campo’s effect on him had been dangerously seductive. Either that or it was the effects of a glancing blow to the head in the scrub.