father leaning over the balcony that adjoined the master bedroom.
Dressed in his favourite navy silk dressing-gown and with a tan that a summer of swimming and yachting had produced, her father looked much younger than his sixty-two years. Of course, he did keep himself very fit in his home gym. A thick headful of expertly dyed brown hair didn’t hurt, either.
‘That’s the only reason I come home every weekend, you know,’ she replied. ‘For Mrs B.’s cooking.’
This was a lie, of course. She came home every weekend to spend time with her father, to feel his parental affection, up close and personal.
But Leah didn’t want to live at home twenty-four seven. Joachim Bloom was far too dominating a personality for that. Leah knew she would find herself giving in to him if she was always around, like her mother had. As happy as her parents had been in their marriage, Leah had always been well aware who was the boss in their relationship.
‘Rubbish!’ her father retorted. ‘You’re skinny as a rake.’
‘You can never be too thin,’ she quipped.
‘Or too rich,’ he finished for her. ‘Which reminds me, daughter, there’s something important I have to discuss with you over breakfast, so shake a leg.’
‘The good one?’ Leah shot back at him. ‘Or the gimpy one?’
Pretending to her father not to care about her scars had become a habit. She didn’t want him to know that they bothered her as much as they still did. Or that they were the reason she never went to the beach any more, or swam anywhere else but here, at home, when there was no one around but her father and Mrs B. to see them.
‘Very funny,’ he said with a roll of his eyes, and disappeared back inside.
Leah threw the towel over her shoulder and headed for her bedroom, one of six in the two-storeyed, waterside mansion that she’d been brought up in and which was probably worth many millions on the current market.
Vaucluse was the place to live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
For a while after his mother’s death, her father had thought of selling the house and buying elsewhere, but Leah had talked him out of it. And she was so glad she had. It was a comfort at times, to be around her mother’s things. To feel her presence in the rooms.
Such beautiful rooms. Such a beautiful house, Leah thought wistfully as she climbed the curving staircase that led up to the bedrooms.
The thought didn’t come to Leah till she was in the shower that her father might have changed his mind about the house. He might still want to sell. Maybe that was what he wanted to discuss with her.
I won’t let him, she resolved as she snapped off the water. I’ll fight him to the death!
A couple of minutes later, she was running downstairs, dressed in cutoff blue jeans and a pink singlet top, her long damp hair up in a ponytail.
Joachim’s heart lurched as his daughter raced into the morning room. How like her mother she was! It was like looking at Isabel in her twenties.
‘If you think you’re going to sell this house, Daddy,’ Leah tossed at him with a feisty look as she sat down at the breakfast table, ‘then you can think again.’
Joachim sighed. Like her mother in looks, but not in personality. Isabel had been a soft sweet woman, always deferring to him. Never making waves.
Leah looked soft and sweet. When she’d been younger, she’d even been soft and sweet. But over the past eighteen months, she’d become much more assertive, and very independent. Not hard, exactly. But quite formidable and forthright.
But who could blame her for turning tough, came a more sympathetic train of thought. Carl had a lot to answer for. Fancy leaving Leah when she needed him the most. The man was a weasel and a coward. Joachim wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.
His daughter had had two alternatives during that awful time in her life. Go to pieces, or develop a thicker skin.
For a while it had been touch and go. Joachim was very proud that Leah had eventually pulled herself together and moved on.
‘No, Leah,’ he told her with a reassuring smile. ‘I’m not selling the house. I know how much you love it.’
Leah’s relief was only temporary. Then what did Daddy want to talk to her about?
‘What’s up, then?’ she asked as she reached for a slice of toast from the silver toast rack. ‘You’re not going to make a fuss about my working, are you? I thought you were proud of my getting a job.’
Perhaps surprised would have been a better description of her father’s reaction. When Leah had first mentioned a year ago that she was going to find a job, her stunned father had asked her what on earth she thought she could do.
‘Even waitresses have to have experience these days!’ he’d told her.
Leah understood his scepticism after she went to have her resumé done. Because there was nothing much she could put on it, except a very average pass in her Higher School certificate—studying had not been high on Leah’s society princess agenda—plus that very brief creative writing course. She had absolutely no qualifications for employment other than her social skills and her looks and a limited ability to use a computer.
Which was why the only job she’d been able to find after attending endless interviews was as a receptionist. Not at some flashy establishment in the city, either. She currently worked for a company that manufactured beauty products, and had their factory and head office at Ermington, a mainly industrial suburb in western Sydney.
‘I am proud of your getting that job,’ her father insisted. ‘Extremely.’
Mrs B., coming in with a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, hash browns, fried tomato and bacon, interrupted their conversation for a moment.
‘This looks delicious, Mrs B.,’ Leah complimented her father’s housekeeper as she placed the plate in front of her.
Leah was privately thankful that she only had to eat Mrs B.’s breakfast one day a week, or she’d have a backside as big as a bus.
‘Just make sure you eat it all,’ Mrs B. said with a sharp glance at Leah. ‘You’re getting way too thin, missie.’
‘You won’t catch yourself another husband with that waif look, you know,’ her father agreed.
Leah could have pointed out that she turned down several offers of dates every week. Instead, she smiled sweetly and tucked into the food till Mrs B. left the room. Then she put down her knife and fork and looked straight at her father.
‘I have no intention of getting married again, Daddy.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘You know why not.’
‘Not every man is as weak as Carl,’ he grumbled. ‘You’re a beautiful young woman, Leah. You should have a husband. And babies.’
‘I don’t want to argue about
