passenger seat of her car without further discussion, reaching across to open her door from the inside. He seemed to take up a great deal of space inside the compact car, she noticed.
“Have you inspected many properties in Sydney?” she asked, trying to switch into professional mode before her thoughts ran away with her again. Around James it seemed all too easy.
“My deputy has looked at a number of them, but none entirely suits the company’s needs.”
She cast a sidelong look at him, almost disappointed that the conversation had switched to business so readily. “What are your company’s needs exactly?”
“A top location, naturally. A substantial parcel of land. And a property that has heritage value so our visiting executives gain some sense of the Australian character while they’re here.”
“Then you’re not buying for yourself?”
He shook his head. “Not to live in, no. I already keep a penthouse in the city and my main residence on the border of the Watagan State Forest, a few miles north of Sydney.”
Her eyes widened with delighted surprise. “I know it. My grandparents lived not far from Wollombi. I used to hand-feed kangaroos outside their back door.”
His interest was clearly piqued. “Perhaps I know them.”
A pang shot through her. “They died some years ago, within months of each other. I haven’t been up that way in a long time.”
She couldn’t have been more than fourteen the last time she stayed with her grandparents, although she’d visited them often as an adult. The memory of walking through lush green rain forests and trying to carry on a conversation over the summer evening anthem of cicadas remained with her.
Was it because her grandparents’ house was the only real home she’d known as a child? Her parents had been botanists, well enough known in their respective fields, but genteelly impoverished. Most of their time had been spent out in the field while their only daughter was farmed out to relatives, since they couldn’t afford boarding-school fees.
After her father succumbed to a rare tropical disease on an expedition to South America, her mother had retired to the south coast of New South Wales, amid a jungle of a garden where she grew medicinal herbs.
By then mother and daughter were so estranged that Zoe couldn’t imagine living with her mother. Fortunately by then she was working as a nanny, living with her charge’s family, so the question never arose. Her mother wouldn’t have enjoyed an enforced family existence any more than Zoe herself would.
“And your husband?”
James’s voice snapped Zoe back to the present with a jolt, banishing the floodgate of memories opened by his mention of her childhood home. “My husband died two years ago in a car accident,” she said quietly.
She accepted James’s murmured condolences with a nod, not feeling inclined to explain to him that the only sorrow she felt on Andrew’s behalf was over his untimely death, not to any sense of loss of her own.
It had taken her months to stop feeling guilty because Andrew’s death had freed her from his obsessive jealousy. At first she had wondered what sort of woman she was, not to grieve for her husband, until Julie had reminded her sternly that Andrew himself had killed her love for him.
“I noticed the toys on your front lawn,” James went on. “How many children do you have?”
Surprise shot through her. Usually male clients weren’t the slightest bit interested in her domestic affairs once they established whether or not she was married. She told herself James was only making polite conversation.
She paid attention to the road. The turnoff to the Strathfield place wasn’t far. Then she became aware that James was regarding her steadily, awaiting her answer.
“I don’t have any children of my own,” she said flatly, wondering at the same time why she was telling him more than he probably wanted to know. “I have a foster daughter, Genie, who’s at playgroup this afternoon.”
He moved restively, his athletic body tensing against the restraining seat belt. Already regretting his interest in her family, she concluded. Well, he needn’t worry. She wasn’t about to drag out a sheaf of baby pictures.
His next comment caught her off guard. “I had a little girl of my own. They can be a source of great joy.”
His use of the past tense didn’t escape her. Had his child died? Her own all-consuming love for Genie made it easy to understand the anguish the loss of a child would mean. “Did something happen to her?” she asked gently.
Her sidelong glance caught the hardening of his jaw. “Yes, but it wasn’t some childhood ailment. That would have made some sense.”
Her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. Oh, no, not a kidnapping. His prominence in the business world made the possibility frighteningly real. “Then what?”
“My wife decided our marriage wasn’t to her liking,” he said. “She took my daughter to another country and used an assumed name to make sure I couldn’t find them.”
The pain in his voice vibrated through Zoe. Although she and Andrew had never had a child, she could imagine her despair if he had done such an awful thing to her. She blinked hard. “Do you know where they are?”
Her peripheral vision caught his taut nod. “It’s taken me a long time, but I do now.”
He added no more details, leaving her to speculate that wherever his wife had gone, there was no chance he could retrieve his daughter. Otherwise, she suspected, he would move heaven and earth to do so.
“How old is your foster daughter?” he asked.
The strain in his voice tugged at her. Far from being a polite question, it suggested that he wanted to discuss her child, perhaps to distract himself from thinking of his own loss.
“She’s four and a half,” she said, obliging him. “She starts school in a few months. I don’t know how I’ll get through the days without her.”
“You and your husband never had children of your own?”
“It…didn’t work out for us. We had a few problems,” she added with difficulty. Even now it was hard to talk about her marriage, which had started so well until Andrew’s true character emerged. “Genie has more than made up. She’s an adorable child, full of mischief like most children her age, but so loving that I can’t stay annoyed with her for long.”
James folded his arms across his broad chest. “Does that mean you spoil her?”
She flashed him a wry smile before returning her attention to the road. “Is it possible to spoil a four-year-old? She doesn’t get everything her own way, but when it comes to loving her, I don’t believe you can go overboard, do you?”
His weight shifted on the seat bedside her, attracting her attention. In profile, his features were half in shadow. “Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to find out.”
Horrified with herself, she fell silent. What was she thinking of, going on and on about the joys of parenthood when it only reminded him of his
