Her Outback Commander

“So you never could piece the exact sequence of events together?”

“No.” His expression grew darker.

Two tragic accidents that had claimed father and now son. “When did Mark abandon his family and fiancée, exactly?”

“Far too soon.” He didn’t tell her Mark had shied clear of visiting their father in hospital. Mark had been long gone before their father’s second unsuccessful back operation.

“Mark must have been crushed, given what had happened,” she offered, as some sort of mitigating circumstance.

“It was my father who was crushed.”

“Sorry, sorry—wrong word,” she apologized. “But Mark could well have felt guilt. Would you have shot the mare?’ She waited, wanting his answer.

“No.” His reply was emphatic. “My father wouldn’t have wanted it. I have to see it this way: something spooked the mare. An encounter with a camel in heat is a possible explanation. They can be ferocious. Male camels come on heat, not the female. They can’t be avoided. They’re part of the Outback now. They were brought in by Afghan traders in the early days of settlement. They thrived.”

“So it could have been a rogue camel, then?” she asked.

He shot her a searching look. “There was any number in the area. But we were all well aware of that. Dad had handled plenty of rogue camels. I have myself. One doesn’t waste a moment getting away. Or, if forced to, one takes the camel out. They come at full charge.”

“So there remains a question hanging over that dreadful day?”

He took his time to answer. “A question that will never be answered, Sienna. Dad is dead. A disaster that fell like an impenetrable fog over our lives. It has never lifted. Now Mark is dead too.”

“How much sadder could that be?” She bowed her head.

“Sienna, I must appeal to you to speak to Amanda on my behalf.” He spoke more urgently. “This is no time for inaction. Mark was her husband. I want her to come back to Australia with me. She won’t be alone in her grief. Hilary loved her son. She missed him every single day he was gone.”

“Of course she would, as his mother.” She well understood the strength of the bond. She was very close to her own mother. “And he did write to her, if only to inform her of his marriage. But his twin? Marcia? You seem to have avoided mentioning her much?”

She was proving very insightful. “Strangely enough, the twins didn’t get on all that well. They could be antagonistic, although they understood one another completely. Marcia isn’t feeling her twin’s loss like their mother. Which is not to reduce the close bond entirely—Marcia is deeply distressed. I’m afraid Mark’s behaviour put us all off side. Marcia and Joanne remain good friends. Marcia felt Joanne’s pain of betrayal. If Mark thought he was abandoned it wasn’t true. Leaving was Mark’s choice. It was his family and his fiancée who felt abandoned. I think it’s time now to bring closure. If Amanda can’t do it on her own, you’re the one who can help her.”

Some strong communication was passing between them. She couldn’t begin to speculate on what it was. All she knew for sure was that he had made it sound as if her very destiny hinged on her going to Australia.

CHAPTER TWO

SIENNA was hardly inside the door of her apartment when the phone rang. She didn’t hurry to answer it. It could only be Amanda, wanting a second-by-second account of how the evening had gone. That was Amanda! It was well after midnight. But time—everyone else’s time—meant nothing to her cousin. Maybe some time soon the family could start treating Amanda like a woman instead of an ever needful little girl. It was a role Amanda had settled into as the best and easiest way to get her through life. Now her husband’s tragic end. No one could have foreseen that. Amanda needed support. It always had been Sienna’s job to prop her cousin up. At such a time as now it would be cruel not to.

“Hell, Sienna, have you only just got home?” A slurred and highly irritable voice greeted her.

Amanda’s modus operandi was to put her on the back foot. Sienna drew a calming breath. “Hi, Mandy. Calm down, now. I fully intended to ring you first thing in the morning. Can’t it wait? It’s well after midnight.” Blaine Kilcullen had insisted on seeing her home. They’d had to wait for a cab. Despite all her earlier misgivings time had flown. One could even say on wings. The man was so charismatic a woman might well need to build protective walls.

“No, it can’t!” Amanda retorted. “I’m ill with grief.”

Of course she was. Sienna softened her stand. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I truly am. But drink won’t help.”

“Always the role model!” Amanda warbled. “As if that’s all there is to life—being a role model. My wonderful, clever, oh-so-beautiful cousin.” A pause while she took another gulp of whatever drink was to hand. Vodka, most likely. Amanda had started bending her elbow not all that long into her marriage. Now it was getting out of hand. “Tried to take him off me, didn’t you?” Amanda was back to her sickening accusations. “It wasn’t me who made my dear husband’s hormones soar. It was you—and I was powerless to do anything about it.”

It had taken Sienna many years to recognize Amanda’s jealousies and deep resentments. People had pointed it out to her over the years but she had chosen not to listen. “Amanda, please stop this” She tried to ignore the sick lurch in her stomach. “We’ve been over it too many times. I was not attracted to Mark. Mark was your husband. If he’d been the sexiest man in the world—which he wasn’t—he’d have been totally off-limits. I refuse to be drawn into any more discussions on the subject, much as you’re compelled to bring it up.”

Amanda must have made a wild sweep with her hand, because Sienna could hear glass breaking. Probably the glass she’d been drinking out of.

“Aren’t you forgetting I discovered the two of you together?” Amanda raged on, in that upsettingly slurred voice.

“Face it, Amanda. You know the truth.” Yet irrational guilt settled hard and heavy on Sienna’s shoulders. Her conscience couldn’t have been clearer in regard to that appalling evening. Still she felt a measure of guilt for the pain that had been caused to her all too vulnerable cousin.

“He loved you—don’t you realize that?”

Sienna held the phone away from her ear. “What Mark loved was creating great disharmony. You’re upsetting us both with this talk, Amanda. My sole loyalty is to you. Look, I can’t talk to you while you’re in this mood. I’m going to hang up now. Get some sleep. I promise I’ll ring you in the morning.”

“You’d better!”

The force of the threat stopped Sienna in her tracks. “Don’t make me withdraw my support, Amanda,” she said quietly. “And by the way, Mark’s half-brother—he didn’t tell us that, did he?—is nothing like Mark tried so hard to present him. He’s a very impressive man.” The polar opposite of everything that had been Mark.

“Such camaraderie in a few short hours!” Amanda hooted. “Just tell me this. Is there any money? Did he look like he’s got pots of money? God knows, Mark left me with nothing.”

But Amanda had always had a safety net in the family. They would have been expected to pick up the shambles Amanda had made of her life. But now there was Kilcullen money. “To be fair to Mark, he did keep you both in some style. Apparently his mother proved to be a bottomless well when he needed topping up. She must have done it pretty regularly. And just look how he treated her! I’ll tell you another thing, so you can sleep on it. Blaine—”

“Blaine?”

Sienna moved the phone away from her ear again. “I can hardly refer to him as Mr Kilcullen,” she said, suddenly sick to death of her cousin. “Your late husband’s half-brother very much wants you to accompany him back to Australia. He’s assured me you will be welcomed. Mark has a twin, by the way, name of Marcia. Apparently they weren’t all that close—unlike most twins.” Now definitely wasn’t the time for Amanda to learn about the scorned fiancée.

“Mark wouldn’t have deliberately lied to me,” Amanda asserted in a thick voice, when her normal tones were soft and breathy.

“Mark had a twin, Amanda,” Sienna said. “The truth was an alien concept to him. He lied to us all the time. He kept his true self and his true life well under wraps. Probably he was laughing at us. He had a cruel streak.”

“He was a fabulous husband.”

Clearly Amanda was in denial. “Mandy, you contradict yourself all the time. Why were you always so desperate for me to join you and Mark? You never did explain. Was the marriage all but over? Was that what it was all about, Mandy? Do you ever come clean?”

Silence for a moment, then Amanda’s harsh reaction. “I need you to understand something, Sienna. If my marriage was over, it was because of you. You had to take the one thing I had.”

Sienna was too appalled to continue. Drink turned some people happy. It turned others abusive. “I’m hanging up now, Amanda,” she said, thinking things would never get better. Amanda would most probably worsen. “You’ve been drinking. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re exhausting my good will. In case you’re thinking of ringing back, I’m taking the phone off the hook.”

“Do it. Go on—do it!” Amanda urged, her voice rising to a crescendo.

Sienna did, wrapping her arms around herself. There were only two ways to deal with Amanda. Put up with her, or remove her from her life. After all these years since decided she could never do that. Maybe a good man would come along to take care of her cousin.

Sienna was upstairs, talking to valued client and family friend Nadine Duval, when Amanda walked through the front door of the gallery.

“Sienna, where are you?”

Her voice was pitched so high and loud it was startling. It echoed right through the large open space, its white walls hung with stunning paintings from her father’s last sell-out showing. In the last fifteen years Lucien Fleury had moved on to international eminence with numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions. Sienna was enormously proud of him. He in turn was enormously proud of both his children. Both had been hailed as major talents.

“In the genes, Sienna, my darling.”

Of course he took the credit.

Nadine Duval, an extremely rich woman, who had paid a fortune for arguably her father’s finest canvas in the showing, gave her an understanding little smile. “That will be Amanda, poor girl. We all feel so sorry for her, but I just bet she’s giving you a bad time. You have to get free of her, Sienna,” Nadine warned, not for the first time. “The girl is trouble.”

“Well she’s suffering now,” Sienna explained, beginning to walk Nadine down the spiral staircase.

“Of course she is.” Nadine’s response was vaguely ironic.

“I’ll have the painting delivered this afternoon,” Sienna promised, when they arrived at the bottom.

Nadine reached for her hand. “Thank you, my dear. Tell Lucien I want to see him. Maybe lunch?”

“Will do.”

They exchanged kisses.

Amanda looked far more fragile than the strength of her voice had suggested. Indeed she looked waif-like. She had lost weight when she couldn’t afford to do so. Her skin, her best feature, was so pale it was almost translucent. She had violet half-moons beneath her eyes, and the silky curls of her pretty blonde hair had lost their lustre and bounce.

“I really don’t like that woman,” she growled.

It was a mercy Nadine had gone through the door to her waiting limousine.

“Your loss, Mandy. Nadine has so much character.”

“And of course she loves you too.” Amanda was looking hung over, and haggard for her years.

“I hope you haven’t come here to make a scene, Amanda.” Sienna was worried that just might happen. It was fortunate that, with the exhibition over, all that remained was for her to have the paintings delivered to their clients. That meant fewer visitors to the gallery.

“Nothing matters. Nothing matters any more,” Amanda said, face and voice full of woe.

Sienna’s tender heart smote her. “Come through to the office. Would you like a cup of coffee? You don’t look good, Amanda. I know this is a terrible time, but you have to take care of yourself.”

“Why, exactly?” Amanda asked bitterly, sinking her fingers into the skin of her face and dragging her eyes down. “I know I look awful. No need to rub it in.”

“I hope I wasn’t doing that. I care about you, Mandy. We’ll all help you work through your grief.”

“Who’s all?” Amanda shot back, as if she had been fiercely rejected all her life instead of cosseted. “I hardly see Aunty Francine.”

“She works, Amanda, as well you know. But she does ring you often,” Sienna reminded her. Like the rest of them, Francine had tried hard to take to Mark, but found she couldn’t. Consequently, as often happened, it had put distance between them all. “The family are busy people with busy lives, Amanda. But we’re all there for you when we’re needed. Come and sit down,” she urged, putting out a sheltering arm. “I have things to tell you.”

Once seated in the office, Amanda began to gnaw on her nails. “It’s taking all my energy just to stay alive.”

Sienna risked another caution. “You have to stop drinking, Mandy.”

“I need something to get me through,’ Amanda maintained doggedly.

Sienna made coffee from her excellent little machine, adding cream from the refrigerator and two teaspoons of sugar. “I have some cookies if you want them?”

Amanda laughed shortly. “I can’t get a thing down my throat.’ She looked up, her blue eyes moist, her expression wretched. “What am I going to do, Sienna? What sort of a job am I going to get? I was never a good student. Not like you. I didn’t make university. Not only did you get all the looks, you got all the brains and a gift for painting.”

“From Lucien,” Sienna acknowledged, taking a seat behind her mahogany desk. “Drink up, and I’ll tell you what Blaine Kilcullen had to say.”

“It had better be good,” Amanda warned. “What a shocking lot those people are. How cruel they were to Mark.”

“There are two sides to a story, Amanda,” Sienna said quietly, not wanting to provoke her cousin. “Mark did his level best to put us off his family.”

“He had good reasons.” Wrath registered on Amanda’s white face.

Mark had seen himself as a victim. It struck Sienna that was the way Amanda saw herself too. It showed a link between them. All the bad things that happened in life were never their fault. The fault lay with others. Both had dark places.

“Oh, my God, Sienna!” Amanda cried, when Sienna had finished outlining Blaine Kilcullen’s proposal. “There’s money!” She gave a great cry of relief.

“The Kilcullens aren’t going to see you in financial trouble, Mandy.” So much for the Fleury family’s generosity! She recalled one of her father’s recent comments.

“She’s not you, my darling, frail little creature that she is!”

“I don’t know exactly how much, but I’d say a substantial sum. Blaine administers a family trust. After meeting him, I have to say I don’t see him as the ogre Mark made him out.”

“Lucifer, don’t you mean?” Amanda cried, not about to put all the things Mark had said behind her. “The fallen angel. Does he look like Mark?” she asked. “I don’t know if that would make me feel better or worse.”

Sienna shook her head. “You wouldn’t spot the relationship, but he is a half-brother. He’s dark, with the most remarkable light eyes.”

“So he got to you, did he?” Amanda shot her a look full of malice. “Did you get to him? That’s your speciality, isn’t it? Getting to guys, fascinating them.”

Sienna threw up her hands in defeat. “You’d use a sledgehammer on me if you could, Amanda. At the same time you use me—and I allow it. Not for much longer.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Amanda backed off when she saw her cousin really meant it. “I’m just so sick with worry and grief.” Tears oozed out of her eyes.

“I understand that.” Sienna relented, as usual, although she knew Amanda could turn tears on and off at will. “Would you consider going to Australia?”

Amanda quelled the tears. “I could never go without you,” she declared flatly. “You’ve looked after me since we were kids. I need you, Sienna. Only you could get me through.”

Sienna felt a rush of warmth. Not at what Amanda had said, but at the involuntary exhilaration she felt at the idea of going to Australia. “Time is of the essence,” she said. “He has to fly back home. He has a vast cattle station to look after, big responsibilities.”

“And he doesn’t feel guilty?” Amanda with one of her lightning changes of mood, banged the table. “He got through to you, all right, but I’m a different story. I’m Mark’s widow. Mark told me everything, how his brother ruined his life.”

“Half-brother,” Sienna corrected. “There was a tremendous amount of conflict in Mark.”

“It’s not the first time you’ve tried to malign Mark.” Amanda made it perfectly plain Sienna’s observations were unwelcome.

“I’m not maligning him, Mandy. I’m trying to point out some reason for all the discrepancies. He never told you about his twin. He never told you he was getting money from his mother. Mark’s account of his past life was all we had to go on up until I met Blaine Kilcullen. If you agree to meet him you can make up your own mind. It’s your decision, Amanda.”

“Why can’t he just give me the money?” Amanda suggested, looking hopeful. “I’m entitled to it.”

“And Mark’s mother and sister are entitled to meet you,” Sienna said, more sharply than she had intended. “You gave permission for his family to ship his body home. Surely you can find it within yourself to meet them and attend Mark’s funeral?”

“I don’t want to.” Amanda started to work herself into one of her rages. “I hate them. I hate Mark for the things he did to me.”

“What things?” Sienna trapped her cousin’s darting eyes. “What is it you’re keeping to yourself? The reason you wanted me at the ski resort? I thought it very odd, considering the number of times you’d warned me off.”

“I wanted to have it out with him. I wanted you there.”

Sienna released a long breath. “You’re lying. You’ve been lying all your life—” She broke off abruptly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But you’re not telling me the truth.”

“The truth will go with Mark into his grave,” Amanda said bleakly. “When does this man want me to meet him? I can’t do it today. I have to have my hair done.”

“Does this mean you will go, Amanda? If you want me to go with you I have to make urgent arrangements.”

“Really? The only thing you need to do is tell your father,” Amanda sneered. “He’ll find a stand-in. Lucien adores his beautiful Sienna, with the marvellous hair and the matching amber eyes. He’s told everybody you are his favourite model.”

“After my mother,” Sienna contradicted. “I am no way as beautiful as my mother.”

“Who would believe you?” Amanda’s voice was brittle enough to break.

Sienna sat back, feeling defeated. “Amanda, we’ve all done our best for you, yet you keep slamming us with insults even when you put your hands out for money. I do care for you, Amanda. But I need your definite answer now.”

Tears sprang into Amanda’s eyes. “Do you have to be so dictatorial? You have to give me time.”

Sienna shook her head. “There’s little time available.” She rose as she heard the buzzer signalling someone had entered the gallery.

“If that’s another client get rid of them,” Amanda’s tears miraculously dried up.

“It might take a minute or two. Stay here.”

She walked out into the main room, startled to see the visitor to the gallery was none other than Blaine Kilcullen, cattle baron. She couldn’t help noting he looked marvelous: handsome, powerful, successful—someone very special. He had been studying her father’s remaining paintings—many had already been delivered—and now he turned his raven head to her. “Good afternoon, Sienna.”

She felt heat sweep her body when all he had done was say good afternoon.

“I thought, while I could, I’d take a look at the gallery,” he explained. “Your father has an international reputation, I understand? Looking at these paintings, I can see why. This portrait of you is stunning!”

He stood directly in front of the bravura portrait—a homage to a young woman’s beauty. The canvas shimmered with light. The treatment of her flesh was so good he had an urge to stroke, to check if the bloom was real. Her long hair had unfurled all around her face and cascaded down her back. The exactness of the colour of hair and skin was amazing. She was posed tucked into a roomy gilded armchair, clearly French, so the lovely pattern of the silk upholstery added to the arrangement. One bare arm hung over the side, her fingers curving over the gilded wood. She was wearing a long strapless dress in palest gold. Citrine and diamond drop earrings picked up the colour, as did a matching citrine and diamond pendant enclosed in swirls of gold that drew his eye to the high, youthful curves of her breasts.

“It’s not for sale,” she explained. “My father won’t part with it.”

“I don’t blame him.”

She felt the flush that came to her cheeks. “He looks on it as a lucky talisman for opening nights. I was about to turn twenty-one when he painted it. The earrings and pendant were my parents’ gift to me. I should tell you my mother is the real beauty in the family. I thought the portrait was going to be a present for me, but he kept it himself.” She laughed at the memory. “One never knows what to expect with Lucien. It flatters me.”

In no way was she fishing for compliments, he thought. She genuinely believed the portrait did flatter her. “I disagree.” He remained in place, studying the luminous canvas. “Have you had an opportunity to speak to Amanda?”

“I have, actually.”

“And?” He turned to her with his diamond-sharp gaze.

It was at that precise moment Amanda chose to appear—an actress entering from the wings to take centre stage. In the interim she had somehow managed to transform herself. From looking like a rag doll she was now looking almost perky. She had fluffed up her blonde curls and applied some make-up to good effect. She might even have used eyedrops because her blue eyes were wide and strangely bright.

“Blaine, at long last we meet!” She came forward with not one but two arms outstretched.

Award-winning material, Sienna thought. Not that she hadn’t seen such transformations in the past.

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