wanted to claim him as a local hero. However Tye had made his fortune, it hadn’t been by being nice.
It seemed that anyone who ever had to do business with him regretted it, and the press didn’t like him any better. Refusing to be interviewed or photographed, Tye Gibson was apparently content for people to think of him as heartless and amoral, and the richer and more reclusive he became, the more the myths about him proliferated.
Nor did the district he had grown up in have anything good to say for him. Lizzy had been a little girl when he’d left his father to struggle on his own, and anyway had never met him, but gossip travelled fast around the outback and she knew all about his unsavoury reputation. Nobody had been sorry to see him go.
But now it seemed that he was back—and it wasn’t hard to guess why.
‘Aren’t you a little late?’ she said.
Tye’s dark brows lifted. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your father’s funeral was a week ago,’ said Lizzy pointedly.
‘So?’
‘So couldn’t you have made the effort to get here in time for that?’
His face hardened. ‘I think that would have been a little hypocritical, don’t you? My father and I hadn’t spoken for twenty years. What would have been the point of me weeping crocodile tears over the coffin? Besides,’ he went on, glancing around him, ‘I doubt if I would have been very welcome. That’s been made very obvious today.’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘Not in the slightest.’ There was a cynical twist to Tye’s lips. ‘Nothing’s changed round here. I never expected to be greeted as the prodigal son.’
‘Perhaps if you’d come back to see your father when he was alive, you would have been,’ said Lizzy tartly.
She must have drunk more champagne than she’d thought. She wasn’t usually like this. Normally she had the sunniest of natures and wanted everyone to like her, but there was something about Tye Gibson that got under her skin and left her feeling ruffled and somehow aggravated.
‘He wanted to see you,’ she told Tye, who lifted a disbelieving eyebrow.
‘Did he?’
Lizzy lost some of her assurance. ‘Well…that’s what I heard. I heard that he’d begged you to come home so that he could see you before he died.’
Tye laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘I’d like to have seen my father begging for anything!’
It didn’t ring that true with what Lizzy remembered of Frank Gibson either, now that he mentioned it. Frank had been a proud man.
‘You mean it’s not true?’
‘Asking me to post a letter would have been giving in as far as my father was concerned,’ said Tye flatly.
Lizzy hesitated. ‘If he was dying, he might have looked at things differently,’ she suggested, but Tye only smiled ironically.
‘You didn’t know my father very well, did you?’
She looked at him in some puzzlement. ‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘I’ve come to sort out my father’s affairs,’ he said. ‘And to see Barra again.’
‘But I thought—’
Lizzy stopped, uncomfortably aware that she was repeating gossip.
‘You thought what? That my father had disinherited me?’
‘Well…yes,’ she admitted awkwardly.
Frank had made no secret of the fact that he had been bitterly hurt by his son’s rejection, and when Tye hadn’t come back when he was dying everyone had naturally assumed that he would do as he had long threatened and cut Tye out of his will.
‘No, he didn’t do that,’ said Tye, but his mouth was set in a grim line and Lizzy wondered what he was thinking about. It wasn’t anything nice, that was for sure.
What kind of man would refuse to visit his dying father? That had been cruel. She eyed him speculatively from under her lashes. No one had been the least bit surprised at his non-appearance, but it seemed to Lizzy that his face didn’t really live up to his reputation. It was guarded, yes, shuttered and stubborn, but it wasn’t cruel. He had the dark, difficult look of a wild horse that had refused to be broken, she thought. His mouth was hard, but maybe it hadn’t always been that way.
Maybe it would look quite different if he were happy. Lizzy’s blue eyes rested on his mouth, trying to imagine him smiling—not a cynical, mocking smile, but a real smile. What would make him smile like that? A woman? Maybe love? Lizzy found herself imagining what it would be like to see his face soften and his mouth curve, and something stirred treacherously inside her.
Jerking her gaze away, she took a slug of champagne. This was Tye Gibson, remember? Rumour was that he had had his heart surgically removed a long time ago. His idea of happiness was probably a nice day spent asset-stripping a company, followed by a relaxing hour of currency speculation.
A spoon was being banged against a glass for attention, and her father was climbing onto a chair to make a speech. Lizzy’s eyes softened as she watched him. Dear old Dad, so calm and quiet and unflappable. She would be lost without him. She couldn’t imagine not speaking to him for twenty years.
Her father was followed by Jack, who was very funny and made everyone laugh. He finished by toasting Lizzy as bridesmaid and they all clapped and cheered, turning to lift their glasses to where she stood with Tye at the edge of the woolshed.
‘To Lizzy!’ they cried, but she was uneasily aware that Tye was not included in their smiles.
Laughing, she blew a kiss of acknowledgment to Jack, but she was glad when everyone turned back to the bride and groom once more.
She slid a glance from under her lashes at Tye. In his place she would have been mortified by the obvious way he had been ignored, but Tye’s expression gave absolutely nothing away. Lizzy was sure that he had noticed, though. Those watchful eyes would miss nothing.
‘Lizzy!’ Ellie was calling her over the crowd, and Lizzy looked quickly away from Tye to see her sister waving her bouquet. ‘Catch!’ she shouted.
The flowers came sailing through the air towards her, ribbons fluttering. Instinctively, Lizzy thrust her glass into Tye’s hand and jumped, catching the bouquet between both hands, and the room cheered as she flourished them triumphantly.
‘Your turn next!’ someone called, and she laughed.
‘I wish!’
Her face was still alight with laughter as she turned back to Tye. He was watching her with an expression so peculiar that her smile slowly faded. ‘Thanks,’ she said, looking at the glass he still held, and he gave it back to her as if he had forgotten that he had it.
There was a pause. Lizzy was very conscious of Tye’s eyes boring into her face, and she put her glass down so that she could fiddle
