I just had to get it off my chest. I don’t actually know why.”
“Then why are you trying to put us off?”
“I’m not,” Tim protested. “I’m only trying to say Bannerman mightn’t be quite the man he seems. Sounds to me like he’s been struck by lightning.”
“Lightning!” Brett said irritably. “How you give yourself over to the sensational!”
“Sensational?” Tim protested. “Men have been making complete asses of themselves over young women since forever. Besides, what man ever thinks he’s too old?”
“Look, Timmy, I’ve dreamed about doing something like this.” Jessica sought to calm Tim down. “You know you tend to worry about me too much.”
“True.” Tim’s face broke out in his easy smile again. “I wouldn’t mind if you were working within shouting distance, or even Sydney. But the Northern Territory! Hell, you might as well be rocketing off to Mars.”
“Tim, dear, stop talking,” Brett advised. “It’s all fevered nonsense, anyway. Jass wants the job. I want her to have it. It’ll be a considerable step up the ladder. If the slightest thing happens to cause her concern, she’s to drop everything and come home.”
“Hear that, sweetheart? You get on the phone right away. I’ll be there like a shot. I wonder what the son’s like?” Tim asked speculatively, then answered his own question. “Probably a dead ringer for his godawful father.”
“Okay, enough’s enough!” Brett lunged to his feet. “Where are we going to hang this painting?”
“Maybe above the console in the entrance,” Jessica suggested, giving the painting a tender, welcoming look for its own sake and not because the subject bore an uncanny resemblance to her. “She’ll be right at home there.”
CHAPTER TWO
FROM THE TOP OF THE ESCARPMENT, Cy had a near aerial view of the valley floor, semidesert in the Dry except for the ubiquitous spinifex and the amazing array of drought-resistant shrubs, grasses and succulents that provided fodder for Mokhani’s great herd, one of the biggest in the nation and thus the world. Today, four of his men were working flat out to round up of some forty marauding brumbies that were fast eating out the vegetation they desperately needed for the cattle until the blessing of rain. The wild horses had to be moved on. Not only that, two of the station mares were running with the mob, seduced by the leader, a powerful white stallion the men had christened Snowy. Snowy was too nice a name for a rogue, Cy figured. More like Lucifer before the fall. The stallion was so clever, it had long evaded capture, though Cy doubted the wild horse could ever be broken. He’d been close up to Snowy when they’d both been boxed into the canyon, so he knew he was dealing with a potential killer. There were few station pursuits as dangerous as trying to cut off a wild horse from its precious freedom. Ted Leeuwin, the station overseer, had lived to tell the tale of his encounter with Snowy. Just as Ted had been attempting to rope the stallion, it had closed in, terrifying Ted’s gelding before biting Ted on the shoulder. Not once but several times. Vicious hard bites that forced Ted, as tough as old boots, to give up.
Cy was aware of his own excitement as whoops like war cries resounded across the valley. He knew the thrill of the chase. The men were right on target to herd the wild horses into the gorge. Two of the station hands were on motorbikes; jumping rocks and gullies with abandon, another two were on horseback. He’d put one of the station helicopters in the air to flush the brumbies out and guide the men.
He’d have to leave them to it. His father, known as B.B. wanted him to fly to Darwin to pick up the interior designer, Ms. Jessica Tennant if you please, he was hell-bent on hiring. As usual, they’d argued about it. Any suggestion that amounted to a differing opinion caused his father rage. B.B. wasn’t a man to listen. Not to his only son, anyway. Often after such arguments, his father hadn’t spoken to him for long periods, by way of punishment. But punishment for what? There could be a hundred things, and Cy had narrowed it down to two: for daring to cross a living legend and for being alive when his mother wasn’t. He understood his father loved him at some subterranean level, but the very last thing B.B. would do was show it. Needless to say, they weren’t close, but they were blood. That counted.
As far as this latest development went, his father had taken them all by surprise. What would a young woman of twenty-four be expected to know about furnishing from scratch what was virtually a palace? For that matter, what was wrong with the old homestead even if Livvy, his great-aunt, claimed it was haunted? He was sick to death of it all. The old story distressed him. He’d grown up with it, had been taunted about it in his schooldays. Poor tragic Moira, the governess, had most probably been taken by a croc or she had fallen, her body wedged into some rocky crevice in a deeply wooded canyon, never to be found. God knows it happened. People going missing wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence in the Outback. So why had journalists over the years continued to rake up the old story, when all the family wanted was to bury it? No one had ever been able to unearth any proof as to what had happened to her that fatal day.
His mind returned to Jessica Tennant. She might work for a top design studio, but surely there were many people more experienced and more qualified in that firm to do the job? He couldn’t figure it out. B.B., who only dealt with the top people, never underlings, a man renowned for always making smart moves, had done something totally un-smart. He had hired a mere beginner to take charge of a huge project.
“She’s coming here, Cyrus. I’m still making the decisions around here. As for you, Robyn—” B.B. had turned to his stepdaughter “—I don’t want to hear one unpleasant word pass your lips when she’s here. Is that understood?”
In that case, Robyn had better take a crash course on manners, Cyrus thought. For a moment he almost felt sorry for Ms. Tennant. She would be living in the same house as a very dysfunctional family. Perhaps not for long, though. Cy could still hope Ms. Tennant might decide the project was beyond her. There was no way, however, to avoid meeting her. He’d agreed to pick her up because he had business in Darwin, anyway. Otherwise, he’d have said he was far too busy, which not even B.B. could dispute. These days he ran Mokhani while regularly overseeing the other stations in the Bannerman chain. Unlike everyone else directly under B.B.’s control, he didn’t toe the line unless there was substantial reason to. He had to accept his father was different. Never relaxed, never friendly, as though in doing so he would diminish his aura. The older he got, the more controlling B.B. became. Cy couldn’t remember a time when he and his father had been in accord. Not even in childhood. The precious days when his mother, Deborah, had been alive. A few years back, after a particularly bad clash, he had stormed off, thinking his absence would solve the problem of their angst-laden relationship. In the process, he’d realized he could be throwing away his chance of inheritance. But what the hell! He had to be his own man, not the yes-man his father wanted. The sad fact was that B.B. liked grinding people into the ground. He had treated Robyn’s mother, Sharon, like the village idiot. His own mother, who had won the love and admiration of everyone around her, had apparently been highly successful at standing up to her autocratic husband—a man given to unpredictable bouts of black moods—but a riding accident had claimed her when Cy was ten and away at boarding school. A riding accident, when she’d been a wonderful horsewoman. Cy was constantly struck by the great ironies of life.
On that last bid for freedom he’d been gone only a couple of months when his father had come after him. It’d been a huge backing down for B.B., who’d come as close to begging as that man ever could. After he’d had a chance to cool down, B.B. had seen the wisdom of not letting him go. For one thing, for B.B. to deny his own son would go down very badly in the Outback. Even he, Outback legend though he was, was afraid of that. And for another, B.B. knew that Cy was not only
