Czytaj książkę: «The Shining Of Love»

CHAPTER ONE

THE LOST CHILD couldn’t survive in this searing heat. Not in the unforgiving outback. Not without water. Not without someone to find protection for her. The search was almost certainly futile. It was far too late for Amy Bergen to be found. Not alive, anyway.

Where she had wandered, or what had taken her away from the scene of her parents’ tragic death probably would never be known. It was a depressing thought to Suzanne, and her heart went out to the little girl’s family who had enough grief to carry without the added pain of never knowing the fate of a much loved child.

There was a finality about death that could be accepted. Eventually. But lost.... Suzanne knew the nagging torment of endless wondering all too well.

Her father had died when she was three years old. She knew that for a fact. The wonderful couple who had subsequently adopted her had been in Calgary for the rodeo when it happened, and they had told her the story many times. The Canadian officials had been unable to trace any family for her, so Suzanne didn’t know, and had no chance of ever knowing, what had happened to her mother.

Sometimes she believed her mother had to be dead, because she couldn’t accept a mother who deserted her daughter and never once looked back to find out how she fared. Yet if she was alive, where was she? What kind of life had she led? What kind of life was she living now?

It was the not knowing that hurt the longest. It never went away. It could be submerged for days or weeks or months, but it always crept out again in lonely moments. Or when something like this happened.

Suzanne ruefully thought she could do with a bit of cool Canada right now. Central Australia would have to be the starkest contrast to the country on the top half of the North American continent, but she had chosen to make her life here and she was content with her choice.

She drove through the township of Alice Springs with all the car windows open. It didn’t help much to lessen the heat in the car, but there was no point in switching on the air-conditioning while the interior was still like an oven. She used a towel on the steering wheel to prevent her hands from burning, and despite the protective seat cover, she felt as though she was sitting in a sauna.

Fortunately it was no great distance from the community services complex, where she held a morning clinic for the aboriginal women and their children, to the medical centre that claimed the rest of her working hours. Today was not the kind of day that stirred people to any unnecessary activity and there was little traffic in the streets. Five more minutes and she would be out of this oppressive heat and inside her blissfully cool office.

The thick mass of her wavy black hair was sticking to her neck by the time she alighted from her car. She pushed it up with her arm, wishing she had tied it into a high ponytail. There was not the slightest waft of a breeze. She let it drop to her shoulders again as she walked along the path from the car park to the main entrance of the medical centre.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a man stepping out of a taxi, but Suzanne didn’t really look at him. Her mind was savouring the thought of a long icy drink.

Their paths met under the portico. The man paused to let her precede him. She automatically flashed him a commiserating smile. A comment about the heat was on the tip of her tongue when recognition froze it there. Something more than recognition halted her feet.

She had the oddest sense of deja vu as their eyes met. Her mind reasoned that of course she had seen him before. The media coverage on the family tragedy that had brought this man to Alice Springs was still intense, and Suzanne had watched him being interviewed on television several times.

Nevertheless, that did not explain such an eerie impact at meeting him in person, almost as though they had always been meant to meet, to connect in some important way.

He was staring into her darkly lashed violet eyes, an intense, searching look, as though he also felt some inexplicable inner jolt.

Leith Carew.

Suzanne turned his name over in her mind, reviewing what she knew of him. He was the eldest son of the legendary Carew family of the Barossa Valley, winemakers for five generations, owning and adding to a vineyard that was famous not only in South Australia, but around the wine-drinking nations in the world. Leith Carew was the business manager, running the head office in the capital city of Adelaide.

It was his sister who had died out in the desert, his sister, Ilana, and her husband, Hans Bergen, the master vintner. The lost child was their two-year-old daughter, the first and only child of the sixth generation. Leith Carew was unmarried, and his twin half-brothers were in their early teens.

Suzanne had thought him impressive on television, a man in command of himself and those around him, using the media to get across the message he wanted and deftly turning away any attempt to sensationalise his role as the representative and driving force of the Carew family.

He was quite strikingly handsome, the combination of dark blond hair and green eyes lending an unusual attraction to what was essentially a hard face. His smoothly tanned skin seemed to be stretched tightly over prominent cheekbones and the angular cut of his jawline. There were few lines to indicate age, but the maturity of his features and the position of responsibility he held placed him in his early to mid-thirties. A slight bump on his strong nose suggested a break he hadn’t bothered to have straightened out. Probably playing football in younger days, Suzanne thought, considering his well above average height and muscular physique.

The light tropical suit he wore was as classy as the rest of him, quality fabric, restrained style. He didn’t need ostentation to stand out from a crowd. He had the air of being master of any hand he wanted to play.

Suzanne sensed he had been tipped slightly off balance in the last few moments. As she was. By some odd link between them.

Psychic?

Sexual?

As Suzanne hastily rejected this last thought she saw a sceptical gleam emerge in the piercing green eyes, mocking either her or himself. It evoked a wave of prickling heat that owed nothing to the high temperature of the day. She was suddenly and embarrassingly conscious of acting like a morbid gawker in the face of a man who had been forced into the public limelight by tragic circumstances.

“Can I help you, Mr. Carew?” she asked in a sympathetic rush.

His grimace expressed a weary resignation at her ready identification of him. His gaze flicked to her nurse’s uniform, making another assessment of her before he replied.

“You work here?”

“Yes. Most of the time.”

“It’s a fine service you people give to the outback community,” he remarked appreciatively.

Suzanne smiled. The medical centre was attached to the Royal Flying Doctor Base that served the remote outback cattle stations and the aboriginal settlements of inland Australia. It was a unique medical service that always impressed visitors.

“Someone has to do it,” she said with a touch of pride in what was achieved here, despite the difficulties that had to be overcome.

“Few would volunteer.”

“It depends on what kind of life you want.”

“Is it the life you want?” he asked curiously.

Suzanne considered for a moment before answering the question seriously. “It has more personal rewards than working in a big city hospital.”

“What about your private life?”

“It’s all I want.”

“Is it?” The soft challenge in his voice was reinforced by a suggestive simmer in his eyes.

Jolted by the overt sexual interest he was showing, Suzanne instantly retreated into formality. “Is there any way I can help you, Mr. Carew?”

The reminder of his business at the medical centre drew a grim mask over his expression. “I’m here to see a Dr. Forbes. Could you show me where to go?”

“I’ll take you straight to him,” Suzanne offered, unnerved at finding herself uncomfortably conscious of being a woman in the presence of this man.

He exuded a powerful masculinity that he was at ease with, and was apparently well aware of its effect. “Thank you,” he said with a knowing look that increased Suzanne’s disquiet.

He was used to women going out of their way for him, she thought with another hot feeling of mortification. She turned quickly, welcoming the cool air of the lobby as the entrance doors slid open automatically. She half wished she had only offered directions to Brendan’s office, but it was petty to let Leith Carew’s attraction sway her from a more sympathetic course.

It was bad enough that he had to suffer being in the public eye at a time of private grief. His mission here this morning certainly had nothing to do with capitalising on his good looks. Nevertheless, Suzanne felt a distinct unease as she led the way down the corridor to the administration offices.

Her initial response to Leith Carew should have been one of instinctive compassion. Why had a more personal feeling blocked that out? Even now she was far more tuned to the vitality of the man walking beside her than to the dreadful sense of loss that must be eating at him. It put Suzanne completely out of sorts with herself.

Her rap on the chief medical officer’s door was unnecessarily sharp. With an assurance that no-one at the centre would question, Suzanne did not wait for an answer. She opened the door and poked her head around it. Brendan lifted his attention from the stack of paperwork on his desk and shot her a warm welcoming smile.

It should have made her feel happy and secure. This was the man she loved for a host of good reasons. But quite unreasonably Suzanne was more aware of the man waiting behind her in the corridor, and somehow that awareness stopped her from returning Brendan’s smile.

“I’ve brought Mr. Leith Carew to see you,” she said bluntly.

Brendan was instantly all business, the smile wiped from his face as he rose from his chair to come and greet the visitor. Suzanne opened the door wide and ushered in the man who was still profoundly disturbing her.

“Mr. Carew.” Brendan offered his hand in sympathetic respect.

“Dr. Forbes.”

Suzanne watched them size each other up as they went through the formalities of establishing a professional rapport. They were approximately the same age, but Leith Carew was the taller, bigger man, his wider and more worldly experience of life somehow dominating this encounter.

Suzanne felt a stab of disloyalty at the comparison. Leith Carew’s harder edge did not diminish Brendan’s quiet assurance. Besides, it was the heart of a man that mattered more than anything else. There were always kindness and compassion in Brendan’s soft brown eyes, and while he might not be so handsome as to turn women’s heads, he had the type of face that inspired trust and confidence.

Brendan Forbes was a good man with a big heart. As big as Zachary Lee’s. And any man who measured up to her eldest adopted brother’s heart was number one with Suzanne.

His eyes flashed a message that she understood only too well as he spoke to her. “Would you tell reception to hold over all calls to me while I’m with Mr. Carew, Suzanne?”

Painful business, best handled without interruption. She nodded and started to withdraw, pulling the door shut after her.

“Suzanne...”

Leith Carew spoke her name as though rolling his tongue around it, tasting it, savouring it. It sent a shiver down her spine. She instinctively squared her shoulders, fighting off his unwelcome effect on her. Courtesy demanded she acknowledge him one last time. She looked, meeting a green-eyed gaze that held a determined promise he would find her again at a more opportune time.

“Thank you,” he said.

She bit down on the automatic response, “You’re welcome.” He wasn’t welcome. He had twisted the indefinable link that had leapt between them into something totally wrong and unacceptable.

She gave a brief nod to satisfy Brendan’s sensitivity to the situation, then firmly shut the door, leaving the two men to get on with what had to be done.

The post-mortem reports, most likely, Suzanne thought, wincing over the horror of hearing the grim results of what could have been avoided if only Ilana and Hans Bergen had understood the terrain they had travelled.

Tourist brochures billed the Australian outback as the last frontier, an adventure into a primitive timeless landscape that defied the encroachment of civilisation. The dangers involved in setting out without an experienced guide were well publicised, but every year there were people who believed they knew enough and were properly prepared to meet and beat any possible mishap on their own. And every year the outback took its toll of them.

Ilana and Hans Bergen had decided to travel the Gunbarrel Highway, so named because the track had been bulldozed in a dead straight line across the desert by a geological survey team. It was not maintained and was barely negotiable by the hardiest four-wheel-drive vehicle. What had drawn the Bergens off that track no-one knew. Perhaps the mirage of a lake. The area where they were eventually found was nicknamed the Dunes of Illusion.

The outcome was easy enough to piece together afterwards. They had driven over high spinifex, which had been caught up and compressed under the metal guards of their Land Rover. Since spinifex was full of combustible gum, it ignited against the hot exhaust.

The couple had obviously panicked and tried to put the fire out with their water supply. They were left with little or no water and an undriveable vehicle. Their fate was inevitable. In the Gibson Desert temperatures could reach fifty degrees Celsius at midday.

Suzanne delivered Brendan’s message to the receptionist and retreated to her own office. She automatically filed cards on the aboriginal families she had seen that morning. Although there was nothing of a serious nature to report, she was meticulous about keeping records. One never knew what might be important some day.

It was the lack of any records on her father that had made tracing any family impossible. Not that it really mattered now, Suzanne told herself. After all, she had been brought up in the greatest family in the world, fourteen lost children taken in by the kindest and most loving parents, who taught them how to blend together and support each other. She was proud to be one of the James family.

They had all been encouraged to be achievers in their own individual ways, and Suzanne had found a very real fulfilment in her nursing career. Brendan was the perfect partner for her. In that sense, Leith Carew had nothing to offer her, and she had nothing to offer him.

She frowned over his reaction to her. Why would such a man even bother to show an interest, let alone feel one? It wasn’t as though she was strikingly attractive.

She had a slim, trim figure nicely proportioned to her average height, but it was hardly spectacular. She was lucky with the natural wave of her hair, and her eyes were certainly attractive in shape and colour. She wished her nose wasn’t tip tilted, since it always caught the sun if she didn’t wear a hat, and she would have preferred not to have a dimple in her chin. But she counted herself passably pretty. More than passably compared to most of the young women who populated Alice Springs.

She had no doubt Leith Carew could choose from the cream of society in more than this continent, and in such a wide field of beautifully polished and sophisticated women, Suzanne felt sure she would be quite ordinary.

Perhaps, for him, she had simply been an on-the-spot diversion from burdens that were weighing too heavily on him. She wished he hadn’t reacted like that. It had made her feel wrong instead of...

Instead of what?

Suzanne shook her head in vexation. Forget it, she sternly told herself. It couldn’t have been important. And Leith Carew would soon go back to his own world, which was a long, long way from hers.

She immersed herself in paperwork, not looking up from her desk until a knock came on her door. Brendan, she thought, but it was Leith Carew who stepped into her office.

Again Suzanne was gripped by a sense of something meaningful that went beyond any logical reasoning. It ran through her mind that this man had a part to play in her life or she had a part to play in his. Improbable as that was, the strange feeling could not be easily dismissed.

He closed the door behind him and stood in front of it for several moments, his eyes probing hers for answers he wanted or needed. There was a rigidity about his body that suggested he was holding a tight control over himself. He looked sick.

“I wondered—” he started forward as he spoke “—if you were free this evening. I’d like to have your company.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carew. I’m not free,” Suzanne answered softly, realising the medical reports Brendan would have read to him must have conjured up images that would have been harrowing.

He picked up the solid glass paperweight from her desk, rolled it around in his hand, then gripped it hard as though he needed to hold onto something solid. His gaze slowly lifted to hers again, a compelling intensity in the dark green depths.

“I know we’ve barely met, but I feel you’re someone I can talk to. Be with. Won’t you give me your company for one evening? Help me forget...other things...for a while? There’s nothing for you to be wary of—” he winced “—unless being seen with me is too distasteful.”

“No, it’s not that,” Suzanne assured him gently. He was hurting badly, but she couldn’t give him the solace he was looking for. “I’m simply not free to be with you, Mr. Carew.”

He frowned. “Couldn’t you cancel whatever arrangements you’ve made? I’m only asking...”

“No. I’m sorry, but no,” Suzanne said firmly.

His face tightened. His mouth compressed in frustration with her outright rejection. The appeal in his eyes hardened to an arrogance that challenged her decision. “Tell me what arrangements you’ve made and I’ll speak to the person or persons concerned.”

He was not used to being refused. Suzanne offered him an ironic little smile. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Carew. I am not free. I have a husband. And you’ve just been speaking to him.”

He stared at her with a look of stunned disbelief. “You’re married...”

“To Dr. Forbes,” Suzanne finished for him with quiet dignity.

Leith Carew visibly shuddered. His gaze dropped to the paperweight in his hand. His fingers tightened around it, and from the way his knuckles gleamed white Suzanne thought he would have crushed the glass to powder if it was possible.

His tension stirred the same unease he had evoked earlier. Suzanne’s sympathy for him was stretched thin. Although his meeting with Brendan could never have pleasant associations for Leith Carew, surely he realised that was not Brendan’s fault. She resented the look of repugnance on his face.

“How long have you been married?” he suddenly shot at her.

Surprised by the question, she answered automatically. “Almost three years.”

“And the magic hasn’t worn off yet?”

The mockery in his voice suggested a soul-deep cynicism, and there was a flare of savagery in the eyes that slashed at hers. Suzanne recoiled both mentally and emotionally from all he was projecting at her, yet even as a cutting retort leapt to her tongue, she bit down on it. He was reacting like a wounded animal. She had disappointed him. It would be wrong to hit back at him for lashing out at her.

“Our marriage doesn’t depend on magic, Mr. Carew,” she said calmly, her eyes holding his with steady, heartfelt conviction. “It’s based on commitment to each other.”

“Till death do you part?”

“Yes. That’s how it is for Brendan and me.”

He challenged that contention for several angry moments before the feral glitter in his green eyes faded into a bleak sadness. He looked at the paperweight, then slowly replaced it on her desk.

“That’s how it was for Ilana and Hans,” he said with bitter irony.

“I’m sorry,” Suzanne murmured, compassion spearing through the turbulence he had stirred.

He gave her a twisted smile. “Forgive me for trespassing. And thank you for your time.”

He turned and walked to the door. Suzanne was riven by the sense of unfinished business between them, yet she knew she couldn’t answer the need that he had opened to her.

“Goodbye, Mr. Carew,” she said softly, hoping he would find solace for his pain with someone else.

“No. Not goodbye,” he rasped, then looked at her, his eyes burning with a conviction that defied barriers. “We’ll meet again, Suzanne Forbes. The timing isn’t right, here and now, but the day and the hour will come when it is.”

His words seemed to thump into her heart. He had felt it, too, she thought dazedly.

“Au revoir, Suzanne,” he said with very deliberate emphasis.

He closed the door on this encounter and walked out of her life. Until their paths crossed at another time and place. But when? And why? Suzanne wondered. Her hand reached out and picked up the solid glass paperweight. His fingers had dulled its natural gleam. It felt cold. She shivered and thrust it away from her.

I love Brendan, she thought fiercely. I’ll love him all my life. Leith Carew can’t change that. Nothing ever will.

A surge of totally irrational feeling made her snatch up the paperweight again and drop it into the bottom drawer of her desk. Out of sight.