In Her Husband's Image

“Have you seen lots of lions and tigers?” Mikey asked in awe, breaking into Zac’s friendly greeting, which to Rachel’s relief sounded perfectly normal and unsuspecting. She relaxed a trifle.

“Yes, lots.”

“Tell me, Uncle Zac. Tell me now.”

With a slow grin, Zac launched into a string of colorful tales of close, dangerous encounters that held the boy spellbound. Rachel relaxed even more. She even felt able to join them at the table, seating herself at the far end to avoid facing Zac.

“I wish I could go hunting lions,” Mikey said as Zac paused to take a few mouthfuls of soup. “I’m going to when I grow up.”

Rachel felt a prickle of alarm. Her son had always had an independent, adventurous spirit—a wild streak, Adrian had often worriedly called it. Mikey was a child with boundless energy, forever getting into mischief—so unlike Adrian, who’d always been the quiet, steady, cautious type, a man who thought things through before taking action. Had Mikey inherited his reckless spirit from his father? His real father?

“I thought you wanted to muster cattle and break in horses?” she reminded her son.

“I want to do that, too,” Mikey said at once. “Can you ride, Uncle Zac?”

“Sure can. I was brought up with horses. Ever ridden a horse yourself?”

Mikey pulled a face. “Not on my own. Daddy wouldn’t let me. He said I’m too little. But I’m not. I’m nearly—”

“Mikey, drink your milk.” Rachel hoped she’d muffled her son’s “four” before Zac could catch it. “Then take this big soup bone out to Buster and check his water. And then you can take him for a run to see Uncle Zac’s plane. Well, it’s not really his own plane, he’s just—”

“Actually, I’m thinking of buying it,” Zac put in, cool as you please.

Her heart stopped. “Why would you want to buy a plane? You work on the other side of the world.”

“It just happens that my next assignment’s here in Australia. The wilds of far-north Queensland and the Northern Territory.” There was a teasing glint in his eye, a roguish look she’d never seen in Adrian’s more serious gray eyes. “I was hoping you might allow me to use Yarrah Downs as my home base.”

“Yeah!” The exultant cry burst from Mikey. “You can teach me how to ride, Uncle Zac. On my own.”

Rachel was glad she was sitting down. A wave of light-headedness was washing over her, making the room spin. She could feel a weakening in her bones, as if they were dissolving.

“You’re going to work here? In Australia?” She tried to take it in and what it could mean. So he hadn’t come back merely to pay his respects to his brother’s widow or to reclaim his old home. He’d come back here to work. How stupid to think he might have wanted to see her. Work always came first with Zac Hammond, Adrian had often said, in the derisive tone he’d used when speaking of his absent brother.

“Yeah…and it’s high time,” Zac drawled, his eyes dwelling on her face for a disconcertingly long moment. “There’s plenty of unusual wildlife in Australia. Much of it highly venomous.” The way his gray eyes glinted made him look highly venomous.

Unlocking her tongue, she asked, “For…for how long?”

“As long as it takes. I don’t have a deadline. I’m my own boss.” Zac let his gaze slide away as he spoke, clearly satisfied that at least he’d given her something to think about.

As long as it takes. Rachel swallowed and pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Zac’s assignment could take months, even years, if his previous assignments were anything to go by.

And in those months or years, he could turn up at Yarrah Downs at any time, staying just long enough to stir her body and emotions and revive memories she didn’t want revived before disappearing again, leaving her burning and riddled with renewed guilt for still having feelings for her late husband’s twin brother, a man she didn’t admire or respect or even like.

“I’ve finished my milk, Mummy.” Mikey put down his empty mug with a clatter. “Can I take the big bone out to Buster now?”

“Here.” She pushed back her chair and stepped over to the bench. “Give it to him away from the house,” she said as she handed it to him.

“Ta! See you, Uncle Zac!” The kitchen door slammed behind Mikey, rattling the windows.

“Don’t bang the door, Mikey!” she called after him, but it was a halfhearted, affectionate protest. Her son never walked when he could run and never closed doors without banging them. That was just Mikey.

“Fine boy you have there, Rachel,” Zac commented as she turned back to the table. “The image of his father. And his uncle, come to that.”

Her heart missed a beat. With effort she managed to find her voice. “Yes, Adrian was chuffed that his son looked so much like him. He adored Mikey.” Adored and despaired of him, convinced that his son’s exuberance would lead him to disaster one day.

“Seems to have plenty of energy. How old is he? I can never tell with kids.”

This time her heart stopped altogether. “Three,” she said, gathering plates and swinging away from the table to avoid looking at him. No need to mention that Mikey would be four in three days. By then Zac would be gone. Back to his solitary life among the wild animals and birds that meant more to him than any home or human being ever had or ever could.

He would be gone by then, wouldn’t he? Put me up for a night or two, he’d said. Not three nights.

“When do you start your assignment?” she asked. “Tomorrow? The next day?” After that, hopefully, she’d have some breathing space. She mustn’t panic! She’d rarely see him while he was working here in Australia, in the wilds of the far north. He only wanted to use his old home as a base. What his fleeting visits would do to her she refused to think about.

“The starting date will be up to me—or maybe you.” Zac reached for another slice of bread. “I’d just like to draw breath here for a few days first, maybe help you out a bit…”

A few days now, not just one or two! She felt her stomach knot as she realized that the longer Zac stayed, the more likely he’d be to find out that Mikey was four, not three, as she’d let him think.

But that still needn’t mean he’d suspect the humiliating truth. For all Zac knew, her husband could have made her pregnant at around the same time as Zac’s brief, ignominious visit.

Zac need never know that Adrian had been rushed to a hospital with acute appendicitis the day after Zac’s late-night visit, and that he’d caught an infection and hadn’t felt up to having sex for a month after he’d come home—by which time she’d known she was already pregnant. She’d delayed telling Adrian and been deliberately vague about the due date, hoping that her first baby would arrive late, which Mikey conveniently had.

Adrian had never suspected the mortifying truth, and Zac mustn’t, either. It was inconceivable to think of Zac Hammond, the irresponsible, unprincipled black sheep of the family, as Mikey’s father. Adrian had been the reliable, steady, home-loving brother, the kind of man any woman would have been proud to have as the father of her child. At least—

“Tell me what happened, Rachel.” Zac’s voice intruded, softly compelling.

“Happened?” Her throat tightened. Did he mean four years and nine and a half months ago, after she’d ordered him to leave Yarrah Downs and never come back? She could still remember Zac’s cold, flat words as she’d turned away from him before he could glimpse any other emotion in her eyes than anger—anguish, yearning or even regret. I’ll stay out of your life, Rachel, you can count on that. You and your husband have nothing to fear from me.

“All I’ve heard is that he was killed in a tractor accident.” Zac spoke gently, jolting her back to reality. He must have assumed, by her choked silence, that she was thinking of her late husband, not, thankfully, of him. “How the hell could that have happened? Adrian was the most safety-conscious man I ever knew. He never took risks.”

Rachel’s heart settled back into place. Of course Zac would want to know about her husband’s fatal accident. He was Adrian’s twin, after all.

“Not normally, no,” she agreed. She’d often wondered if Adrian had had something on his mind that day, some niggling doubt about what he was about to do that had diverted his attention for a fatal second. A second was all it had taken.

“He’d hired a bulldozer—it wasn’t a tractor—and had taken it up to Bushy Hill to do some work there. Apparently he was working on the steep lower slope of the hill when the bulldozer hit a huge wombat hole and tipped over. He was thrown out and…and crushed.” Cute and furry as the burrowing native wombats were, they did a lot of damage with their holes.

“What was he doing up at Bushy Hill with a bulldozer?” Zac was frowning, she noticed. He looked more angry than pained or sympathetic. “It’s supposed to be an animal and bird sanctuary and to be left untouched, in its natural state.”

She raised her brows. She’d known there was a lot of native wildlife in the thick scrub and eucalyptus forest of the big sloping hill, but a sanctuary? This was the first she’d heard of it. All she knew was that kangaroos and other animals had a habit of jumping or climbing under the fence skirting the cattle paddock below to drink at the small dam there, and that Adrian had been forever mending the fence.

“Adrian wanted to turn the hill into a vineyard,” she told Zac. “He said it was ideally positioned to grow vines—facing the right way and that kind of thing. He’d gone up there to start clearing the trees and undergrowth—”

“He intended to turn Bushy Hill into a vineyard?” Zac’s expression turned thunderous. “Our father made it quite clear to us that the hill was to be left as an animal and bird sanctuary. How much bush had Adrian cleared before his accident? Had he knocked down any trees? Have you gone ahead with it?”

She bristled. What right had Zac Hammond to come back after all these years and start bawling her out for something that was no business of his? He’d never even been interested in the family property, according to Adrian.

“No, I haven’t.” She snatched up Zac’s empty plate and whisked it away without asking if he wanted more. “Nobody’s touched the hill since. We couldn’t afford to, for a start—”

“You’re saying you still intend to go ahead with the vineyard when you can afford it?”

She glowered at him. “I didn’t know it was a sanctuary…or that it was meant to be kept as a sanctuary. Naturally, if that’s true—”

“Adrian never told you?”

She clamped her lips together. It didn’t feel right to be talking about her husband’s failings when he was no longer here to defend himself.

Zac swore softly. “I’ll need to see how much damage has been done. If he’s destroyed that hill and driven the birds and animals out…”

“What do you care about Yarrah Downs or what we do with the place?” she flung back. “Adrian said you couldn’t get away from here fast enough.”

Zac shrugged, drawing her reluctant gaze to the breadth of his shoulders. The same shoulders she’d once kneaded with feverish fingers and dug her fingernails into with frenzied yearning. She flinched and snapped her gaze away.

“Yarrah Downs couldn’t have two bosses,” he said mildly. “Especially two bosses who disagreed on most things. My father left the property to Adrian because being a cattleman was all he’d ever wanted to be, while I wanted to see and do other things before I thought of settling down in one place. And my brother was good at his job. He had the skill and experience a cattleman needs, even if he lacked judgment in certain areas.”

“While you were never interested!”

“Not true. I lived here for most of my life. I spent my childhood here and all my vacations. It was only when my father died and left the property to Adrian that I stopped coming back—except for that one time, a few months after he married you. He’d written to tell me about the happy event. It seemed a good time to finally shake hands and let bygones be bygones.”

His eyes caught hers and she flushed, remembering his short-lived visit five years ago. What had happened between them had put an abrupt halt to any happy brotherly reunion. And she couldn’t put all the blame on Zac. She’d virtually seduced him!

To cover her embarrassment she blurted, “You must have resented the fact that Adrian inherited everything. Is that why you’ve always been so jealous of your brother and so hostile toward him?”

“Where did you get that idea? From Adrian? I was never jealous of him. We just didn’t get on. Too different. Chalk and cheese. I assure you I haven’t been seething with resentment all these years. I didn’t miss out. My father left me a generous cash pay-out and a bundle of blue-chip stock that’s grown over the years. I’ve also made a lot of money from documentary films and feature articles. I can afford to help you, Rachel.”

Her eyes sparked. “To help Yarrah Downs, your old home, don’t you mean? You don’t want to see it go under, and you think it will, now that I’m in charge. A woman! What’s your secret agenda, Zac Hammond? Are you trying to sweeten me up so you can buy me out if I sell, like everyone expects? Though why you’d want the place…”

Her voice trailed off as she became aware of a dog barking outside. “It’s Buster,” she said, glad of the diversion. “Mikey must be back. Excuse me… I have things to do out in the yard.”

“I’ll come out with you. Mind if I borrow a motorbike, Rachel?”

She paused, frowning. “What for?” Did he want to check up on the state of the cattle and the paddocks to see what a mess she was making of the place? So he could criticize her some more, undermine her confidence some more?

“I want to see what damage has been done to Bushy Hill and if there’s anything I can do to salvage it.”

“Anything you can do?” She tried to sound withering—what right had he?—but how could she blame him for wanting to check? This had been his home once and the animal and bird sanctuary clearly meant a lot to him. And if his father had specified that it be kept as a reserve…

Funny that Adrian had never mentioned it. Had he thought she might try to stop him from planting his vineyard there? She probably would have tried if she’d known about the sanctuary. The thought of her husband keeping things from her was sobering. But hadn’t she kept far worse secrets from him?

She hadn’t been back to Bushy Hill since Adrian’s fatal accident. She wasn’t sure how much clearing her husband had done. She’d simply told Vince to stay away from the hill until she decided what to do with it. They had more-urgent priorities. But the truth was, to have squashed the idea of the vineyard outright would have felt like crushing Adrian’s dream.

Only now that she knew the facts…

“Quiet, Buster!” she shouted over the dog’s barking, wondering why he was making such a din. What was Mikey doing to him?

But when she stepped outside, Mikey was nowhere in sight. The yard was empty. “Where’s Mikey?” she cried as Buster’s barking grew even more frenzied at the sight of her. He started to run off, then wheeled back, whining and pawing at her, before scampering off again.

She got the message and broke into a run. “Something’s happened to Mikey!” The words whipped over her shoulder at Zac. “Find him, Buster!” she urged the cattle dog. “Take me to Mikey!”

Chapter Two

As she rushed across the yard in Buster’s wake, she heard faint screams—a child’s petrified screams.

“Mikey!” she cried out. Where was he?

She faltered, her blood running cold. Ahead, down past the sheds, stood the big windmill, its glinting blades whirling in the warm May breeze. A small dark shape was huddled way up near the top, crouched on the uppermost rung of the narrow steel ladder, dangerously close to the rotating blades.

Oh, dear God. Mikey!

She felt Zac’s hand on her arm, steadying her, his touch, even in her panicked state, bringing a tingling heat to her skin.

“Try to be calm,” he rasped in her ear. “Don’t let him see how scared you are. You don’t want him to panic.”

Biting down on her lip, she covered the remaining ground at a sprint, managing not to scream at the terrified boy. Buster reached the windmill first, his barking giving way to whimpers and whines as he circled the foot of the steel ladder.

“Mummy’s here, Mikey. Don’t move!” Rachel called. Perilously close to him, the whirling blades glinted ominously in the midday sun, sending a black, twisting fear through her. “I’m coming up to get you.” She spoke reassuringly, though she had no idea how she would be able to hold on to her son and keep a firm grasp on the narrow steel ladder at the same time. “Don’t look down!”

She felt Zac’s hand on her shoulder, easing her to one side. “I’ll climb up and get him, Rachel. I’m stronger. I’ll keep him safe, I promise.”

Would he? She gripped his arm in agonized indecision. Would he be as careful as she would be, the boy’s own mother? Mikey meant everything to her, but what did he mean to Zac? He’d never met the boy until today, and he only knew Mikey as the son of a brother he’d never had any time for, a nephew he’d known nothing about until today.

But Zac was strong, far stronger than she was. With those powerful hands and shoulders he’d be more likely to bring Mikey down safely. She must trust him. She must trust the man who’d shown he wasn’t worthy of trust by betraying his own brother, as she’d unknowingly betrayed her own husband. But this was a matter of life and death, not morals.

“Please…take care,” she whispered, and let her hand drop away.

“I will, don’t worry.” He started scaling the ladder, his strong, tanned hands gripping the rungs in a way that gave her a measure of comfort. She’d felt those same hands on her body and knew they could be gentle, too….

She held her breath, clenching her teeth in a frenzy of suspense. Zac was nearly at the top now and she could hear him speaking gently to Mikey. Her heart leaped into her mouth as he managed to loosen Mikey’s frightened grip on the ladder and gather him in one arm, keeping his other hand firmly on the ladder. And then they were coming down, Mikey’s arms curled around his rescuer’s neck and his small plump legs wound around Zac’s upper body.

Rachel didn’t start breathing again until they were nearly at ground level, close enough for her to catch her son if he fell. She let her gaze dwell for a second on Zac’s strong, competent arms and broad shoulders, feeling a rush of gratitude.

The wayward thought popped into her head that Adrian, if he’d been here, instead of Zac, would probably still have been hesitating down below, or calling for backup, or putting a detailed plan into action, weighing up the pros and cons before acting—always the safe, precautionary approach, so different from his more risk-taking, man-of-action brother.

And who was to say which approach was the best? On the one hand, Zac could have lost his grip on Mikey or the ladder as he’d come down, while on the other, her son could just as easily have panicked and fallen while Adrian was preparing a rescue plan, with safety harnesses and bales of hay to provide a soft landing if the worst happened.

But all that mattered was that Zac had brought her son down safe and sound, without any delay or fuss at all. When the two reached solid ground, she gathered Mikey in her arms and held him tightly for a long moment, her eyes moist as they sought and found Zac’s.

“Thank you,” she said, and felt a tiny frisson of shock as his eyes caught and held hers for a heart-stopping second before she broke eye contact.

She could feel Mikey’s weight dragging on her arms and shoulders and was thankful she hadn’t been forced to bring him down from that great height herself. Already he was wriggling to be put down, which only added to his weight. She set him on the dusty ground but didn’t release him, instead placing her hands on his shoulders and leaning over to bring her face close to his.

“Mikey, you know you’re not to climb up the windmill. I’ve told you a hundred times. We’ve all told you. It’s far too dangerous. Why did you do it?”

His answer floored her. “I was spotting tigers from the treetops, like Uncle Zac.”

Like Uncle Zac… She tossed her brother-in-law a sharp glare, her gratitude disintegrating. Damn Zac and his exciting tales of wild animals. Already he was causing trouble and exerting a dangerous influence on her son.

“Mikey, there are no tigers in Australia. And a windmill is not a treetop.”

“Just a boy’s lively imagination.” Zac’s tone was benign, not the least concerned or penitent. “I was just the same. Always dreaming of adventure and excitement and travel to exotic places. Always getting up to mischief. Mikey must have inherited his high spirits from his uncle.” He said it with a certain amount of satisfaction.

Rachel’s heart did a double flip. “He’s more likely to have inherited it from me,” she said in her most squashing tone. “I was a tomboy as a kid, always getting up to pranks. But putting yourself in danger is a different thing entirely. I’m trying to raise my son to be responsible.”

“You can be too cautious, too careful, Rachel. It can make you vulnerable, tighten you up, cause you to make mistakes. Look where caution got Adrian.”

She sucked in a vexed breath. “That was a freak accident. It could have happened to anyone. It had nothing to do with being too cautious and tightening up.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he felt guilty about what he was doing to Bushy Hill and lost concentration just long enough to make a lethal mistake.”

She snapped her mouth shut. Hadn’t she had a similar thought herself?

Adrian had always tended to put the needs of the cattle station ahead of conservation and the rights of native animals—“vermin,” he’d called them. He’d been forever complaining about the kangaroos, wallabies and wombats and the damage they caused, kicking down fences and digging holes that tripped the horses.

And her husband had had a point. The wildlife often did cause problems. Only yesterday Vince and her young jackeroo, Danny, her recently arrived apprentice farmhand, had found a dead kangaroo in one of the outlying dams. If they hadn’t discovered it so quickly, by a sheer fluke, it could have polluted the water over time. Especially with the dam so low.

Worse, the dead kangaroo had been shot. Its body must have been deliberately thrown into the dam. She couldn’t imagine anyone at Yarrah Downs doing such a thing and had put the incident down to intruders, trespassing onto the property at night to hunt wild boar and shooting the ’roo in frustration after failing to find what they were looking for.

Her chest swelled in a sigh. Since her husband’s death, nothing had gone right. It had been one problem after another.

“You can take Adrian’s motorbike,” she told Zac. “It’s in that shed over there.” She waved a hand. “You’ll find bottles of water in the cool room in the same shed. Better take some with you.” She paused. “Let me know what damage has been done and I’ll see what we can do about it.”

“Whatever damage has been done,” Zac said grimly, “I’ll fix it—if it’s not too late.”

“Can I go with Uncle Zac?” Mikey begged. “Dad used to let me ride on his motorbike.”

Only once, Rachel recalled, and only around the homestead yards. Her husband had decided it wasn’t safe. Safety had been paramount to Adrian. Until he’d made his one fatal mistake.

“No, you can not go, Mikey.” Best to keep him under her eye and away from Zac. Away from further trouble. “You can stay here and help me. And later I might give you a ride on Silver.”

Adrian had bought the pale-gray gelding for her as a wedding gift, after she’d told him she’d taken riding lessons for years and had competed in show-jumping events. On the rare occasions she could find someone to look after Mikey for a few hours, she loved taking Silver out on musters or for invigorating gallops to blow the cobwebs away and feel the wind in her hair. More and more often lately, at Mikey’s urging, she’d been letting her son ride around the yard on Silver.