Mistaken Mistress

Owen’s deep dynamic voice greeted him.

“How’s it going, pal?”

“I can’t wait to get home.” The simple truth.

“Sure you love the place.” Owen chuckled, obviously in high good humour. “Listen I know I’ve been asking far too much of you for quite a while now, but there’s a couple of things I need you to do today. I want to take a quick trip to the Gold Coast. A guy there has a motor yacht I want to take a look at. From all accounts it’s pretty fine.”

“And what’s wrong with the Delma?” he asked, trying to temper the faint sharpening in his tone.

“Nothing. Nothing. I could put it on the market today and someone would snap it up. This yacht is handmade by Italy’s finest craftsmen. Highest quality materials, all the latest equipment. I’d like you to come along as well—we always look at boats together—but this trip we’re so pushed for time.”

Of course, he thought dismally. Owen intended taking his girlfriend along. Spend the day exploring the delights of the oceanfront. Why the hell couldn’t the man speak?

“So what is it you want me to do?” He had little choice but to ask. Owen was the senior partner.

“You could see Rod Burgess for me,” Owen said. “You can handle the man better than I can anyway, and maybe pay a courtesy call on the old patriarch, Brierly. He still has a stake in a few of our property developments, as you know. Again he’ll be pleased to see you. One aristocrat to the other. My polish is superficial. Yours isn’t.”

“Don’t you believe it,” he clipped off ironically. “Anyway since when did so-called polish have anything to do with success in business?”

Owen laughed. “I know, I know, but old man Brierly really liked you. Do it for me, pal? I want you to know the best thing I ever did was take you on as a partner.”

“And I salute you as my mentor. What time do you expect to be back? Our return flight is booked for 9:00 a.m. Means we have to be at the airport by…”

“Don’t fuss, don’t fuss,” Owen chortled, hugely happy. “By the way, I have some great news for you.”

God here it comes. His first reaction was a deep biting anger. Why? When it was all said and done he had no right to interfere in Owen’s life.

“It’s everything I’ve been seeking,” Owen was saying, his voice thick with emotion. “For all of my life it seems.”

“Sounds like it’s been making you very happy?” He tried to keep the sadness out of his tone. Who was he to sit in judgment on Owen? Owen had been almost a father figure to him; yet the muscles in his neck tensed as he waited for Owen to continue.

“The answer is a great big yes!” Owen’s deep voice boomed down the line. “But I’ll have to defer the telling. It needs time. Lots of time. I’ve wanted to tell you for ages, but the timing hasn’t been quite right. This has altered my life, Lang. I didn’t think it was possible to know such joy. I want to shout about it to the world. I want it proclaimed.”

“Can’t you tell me some of it now?” he as good as begged.

“I’d love to, mate, I know you’re the man to fully understand. I love you like a son, which you’re not, thank God. I’ve got plans for you. I know why people respect you like they do.”

“Hey what’s all this about?” Owen was throwing out question marks galore.

“Life’s too short not to say what we really feel,” Owen exclaimed, his emotions uncharacteristically showing. “Listen, pal, there’s a knock at the door. I’ll go. I’ve hired a car. See you tonight. We’ll have dinner. I want you to meet someone. Righto, righto!” This was obviously directed to the person at the door. “See ya, Lang,” Owen spoke briskly into the mouthpiece.

“See you,” Lang repeated. “Go with God.”

Now why had he said that? It sounded so sombre. Almost final. He sought an answer even as he hung up. Maybe it was a releasing of his own acute tension. Maybe it was because he feared for his friend. A man like Owen, a middle-aged man so much in love, could be badly damaged if things went desperately wrong. He was absolutely certain Owen had suffered emotional trauma in his youth. The poor man could be fooling himself he had found the answer to his life’s happiness. There was Delma. There was Robbie. With a divorce a shattered Delma would move away with Robbie. A child needed his father. He should know.

Was it so strange Owen was acting the way he was? Beneath the tightly controlled facade Owen was a passionate man. It was just that he was sorry, so sorry. Sorry for all of them.

Except the girl.

She was kidding herself if she thought snaring a much older married man, a very rich man, was her right. No one could blame her for falling in love but when the outcome was going to cause so much lasting damage it was time to muster real character.

His meeting began with Burgess, a very successful tourism entrepreneur whose operations extended from the Queensland Gold Coast with its glorious beaches and luxury resorts, to their part of the world, the tropical north of the state over a thousand miles away. Rod was delighted to see him, and after a while steered the conversation away from business to talk cricket. Rod was mad about the game and he’d heard he’d been a dab hand with the bat in his university days.

They parted on the most amicable of terms, Rod sending his best regards to Owen. “Tell him from me, his best years are to come!”

A prophecy?

He decided to grab a bit of lunch before seeing Sir George Brierly. Owen had some information he’d like to show the old man in his room. He’d borrow Owen’s key from reception as soon as he got back to the hotel. All his nagging worries seemed to be getting the better of him but his working philosophy was to keep going and concentrate on the job ahead. It wasn’t like him to feel morbid. A good strong cup of black coffee would clear his head. The coffee Rod served at his office was pretty darn terrible when he thought about it. There was no excuse, either. The coffee plantations of North Queensland were turning out very fine quality coffee, but he’d felt a little hesitant to point that out to Rod who drank his down with every appearance of pleasure. Obviously Rod was a tea drinker.

Reception handed over Owen’s key without a murmur. The management knew both of them well. Knew they were close friends and business partners.

In the lift he used the security key to get himself to the top floor. This was the first time Owen had bothered with a suite. Owen, like himself, usually settled for a deluxe room. After all, they spent precious little time in it. His dark thoughts were returning. Was this Owen’s little love nest when he came to town? Surely not? Owen wouldn’t expose himself or his young love in this way.

He opened the door, seeing the empty space before him; the suite was commodious, comfortable, stylish, a home away from home for the businessman under pressure. He went to the desk along a wall hung with a large genuine oil painting, a seascape, of considerable merit. The hotel liked to trust its up-market guests. He spotted the folder at once. It contained coloured photographs, designs, architectural drawings still in the planning stage for a challenging new project, some twenty-five spacious luxury villas they intended to build along the Hibiscus coast shoreline. The resort would include a private marina, seafront pool and twenty-four-hour security. Last year they’d won platinum in the Best of the New Millennium Awards. He was riffling through the folder when he heard a sound from the master bedroom beyond. He hesitated, frowning. Was it possible the suite was being serviced? With the large folder in his hand he walked to the corridor calling out, “Hello?”

Even as he did it, the warning bells rang. He knew in a very few moments he was going to come face to face with the love of Owen’s life.

Hell and damnation. He wasn’t ready for it.

She emerged from the bedroom looking disturbed before she even caught sight of him. She’d been dressing. That was clear. She’d probably spent the morning in bed. He took in the silky black masses of waves and curls tumbling to her shoulders, little tendrils still damp from the shower. She wore no shoes on her narrow feet. Up close he saw her eyes were lotus-blue, like her dress. Nor could he stop noticing, like last night, she was trembling. If he were truthful with himself he’d have to admit there was something approaching violence in the emotions that shot through him. He didn’t want it, but he couldn’t stop it. He despised this girl but he knew now he wanted to see her again. The full realisation shocked him.

“You!”

The word was a little cry, a reminder of the night before. If possible she was more agitated than he was.

“I’m sorry.” He knew his voice was curt to cutting. “I didn’t realise anyone was here. Lang Forsyth.” He introduced himself. “I’m Owen’s partner.”

“Yes.” There was such stillness about her. She might have been a painting. “Owen has told me so much about you.”

“How fascinating!” He recognised that as acid. “I must go now.” He had to get out of there before he told her what he thought of her. That would be much too much. The end of everything with Owen.

“Please…” It was an appeal and it stopped him briefly. “You were at the restaurant last night.”

“I wanted to be private. There’s no reason for you to tell Owen. I had no wish to disturb you.”

“You looked at me as though you hated me?”

The luminous gaze momentarily disarmed him. “How could I do that? You’re a total stranger.”

“Except you do have a reason. Your reaction was so strong.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “What the devil are you doing here in his suite? Half dressed.” He marvelled at the colour and texture of her skin.

“I’m a kept woman, is that it?” Such control for such a small-boned, small-breasted, willowy creature.

He knew his eyes were ice-cold. “Forgive me if I can’t be as civil as you’d like. All I can think of is what’s going to happen from now on?”

“You don’t want me in Owen’s life?”

He shook his head. “Definitely not.”

“But I am in it, Mr. Forsyth,” she said with no trace of triumph. “My position has been confirmed. Owen loves me.”

“Infatuation,” he cut in. “Owen is totally swept away by your beauty.”

“He’s seen it before.”

He couldn’t account for that. “What are you talking about? What tricks are you playing?”

“No tricks,” she said gently. “If you’d allowed me just a little time to justify my actions…”

He turned decisively to go on his way. “I’m sorry. You’d need all the time in the world.”

“You’re on dangerous ground, Mr. Forsyth,” she warned from behind him.

“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” He caught hold of the doorknob. “You’ve propelled yourself into Owen’s life but it’s not my relationship with Owen that disturbs me the most. Or the fact that our relationship might end. It’s Owen himself I’m worried about. Owen and his family.”

“Such pure motives. How high-minded you are.”

“While you are not.” He let her see his contempt.

“I think you’d better go now.”

How her flush accentuated the whiteness of her skin. “I intend to. From something Owen said to me earlier I think he was planning for us all to meet over dinner. That may not be possible.”

“I’ll allow Owen to persuade you,” she said quietly. “I have no desire to myself.”

CHAPTER TWO

EDEN first laid eyes on her father at her mother’s funeral. She had no idea then who he was or the remarkable fact that he, not Redmond Sinclair, was her natural father. Owen was her mother’s lover over twenty years before when they were both very young.

Owen—a ruggedly handsome man in his prime—would have stood out anywhere, but it had been the quality of his gaze that had seized and held her attention. Just as Lang Forsyth’s silvery lancing glance had compelled her to look in his direction in the restaurant last night. Now she knew who he was. Owen’s close friend and partner. Owen had portrayed Lang Forsyth as a wonderful guy. Brilliant! A man of great strengths, educated, polished, ambitious, a great mixer, the sort of man you’d want on your side. Not the man you’d ever need as an enemy, Eden has since concluded.

She put up her hands to cover the flush of helpless anger that rose to her cheeks as she relived that brief incident which had so affected her. Of course he harboured the belief she was Owen’s mistress. How ironic! She still saw his frozen gaze. Diamond-hard. Heard the vibrant voice, uncompromising, deliberately stripped of all softness. She comforted herself—just barely, he had upset her so much—he would soon know the truth. Not that she would ever forgive him his contempt, understandable or not. She had suffered enough anguish of recent times, but she had loved her mother dearly. It hadn’t been easy to accept Owen’s claim he had fathered her and not Redmond Sinclair, the man she called “Father.” They had never been close or so comfortable for her to call him “Dad.” Redmond Sinclair was a man who never showed emotion. Not even at her mother’s funeral when every other thing about him spelled grief and desolation.

Now at long last Eden knew what was at the heart of the lack of trust her “father” had shown in her mother. The fear, kept rigidly in control, one day she might leave him. In retrospect she realised Redmond Sinclair had lived with such a burden of suspicion it had poisoned him. It allowed her to understand his reserve with her. In his heart of hearts Redmond Sinclair had known she wasn’t his child, but so closely did she resemble her mother, the woman he loved who had never returned his love in full measure, it kept him from rejecting her child outright. That and the fact Redmond Sinclair always strove to please her grandfather who had pulled a lot of strings to further his son-in-law’s legal career.

Her grandfather had been shattered by her mother’s death. In the intervening six months his health had declined rapidly. It seemed he didn’t want to survive the loss of his only child or thought he didn’t deserve to. Eden had known since she was a child her parents’ marriage hadn’t been a happy one just as she had gleaned over the years it had something to do with her mother having obeyed her father’s wishes as to her choice of husband.

Eden sank into an armchair trying to recover from the great shock of Lang Forsyth’s dramatic entry into her life. The day had started out so well. She had stayed in town with her father rather than return to the “family” home where she no longer felt needed or wanted. These days she only presented a pain-filled reminder to Redmond Sinclair. Her real father, Owen, had turned over the master bedroom of his suite to her while he spent the night on the very comfortable day bed in the main room. He’d left early to inspect a motor yacht he was particularly interested in. It was moored at the Gold Coast, some fifty miles away. She intended to spend the day in town doing some shopping and having lunch with a girlfriend. Owen would be back late afternoon. He had everything planned. At dinner he was going to introduce her to his close friend and partner, Lang Forsyth, a man Owen clearly looked on as “family.”

How the best-laid plans came unstuck. Lang Forsyth had caught up with her many hours before Owen intended, his attitude harshly judgmental. In truth the sight of him at dinner last night, a stranger staring so fixedly at her, darkly handsome and authoritative, an easy elegance to his tall body, his beautiful clothes, had filled her with foreboding. His appearance in Owen’s suite this morning was as momentous in its way as her first meeting with her own father. Even when Forsyth found out who she really was, Eden had the feeling he would always be antagonistic towards her. Maybe that was her destiny. Always to be the outsider.

Eden sank further into her reverie. She and Owen had come a long way since their first meeting. After her mother’s sudden violent end in a car crash, she and Redmond Sinclair had been on compassionate leave from her grandfather’s legal firm, Redmond a full partner, she a recent associate. Owen had approached her one morning as she’d left the house to visit her grandfather. At first she’d been startled to see him again, thinking perhaps he was someone from the press—there had been some speculation her mother’s death hadn’t been an accident, but Owen by his sheer presence overcame any fears and suspicions. He told her he wanted to speak to her about her mother; Cassandra was someone he had known very well when they were young. Could they go someplace quiet and private where they could talk?

Strangely she had gone with him without a moment’s hesitation, his demeanour so gentle and protective it allayed all fear. They had coffee but it was actually when they were seated on a park bench looking at small children playing on the swings that Owen began to relive the past….

“My story, the central tragedy of my life is no means unique, Eden,” he told this beautiful young woman gravely. “It’s a story as old as time. Star-crossed lovers. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks meets and falls desperately in love with the adored only child of a rich man. You know your grandfather. He was, and I suppose remains, a man who had very exacting standards. Penniless young men of no family had no place in his scheme of things. Despite that, for long tumultuous months Cassandra and I were lovers. But in the end the pressure from your grandfather was all too much for Cassandra. She’d been reared like a princess. She couldn’t contend with a run-away marriage to me. I had absolutely nothing to offer her at that time. Save my love.”

“It wasn’t enough?” Eden asked, the tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Your mother did love me, Eden. I want you to know that. But your grandfather and security won out.”

“How sad. My mother was always sad.” Eden stared sightlessly at the playing children. There was more. She just knew it.

“As was I.” Owen sighed deeply. “It has been an unparalleled grief to me all these long years to know my beautiful Cassandra was carrying a baby when she married her store dummy.”

Eden was electrified. “My God, what are you saying?” It came out like a plea. For a long moment she couldn’t speak until Owen put his arm around her shoulders.

“I’m saying, my dearest girl, that baby was you. Had I known your mother was pregnant to me at the time, things would have been very different.”

“You mean she didn’t tell you?” Eden shook her head, shocked and aghast.

“Not for three long years into her marriage. I have a letter to show you. You will know her handwriting. It confirms what I’m saying. The letter was sent to my mother who died without even knowing she had a granddaughter. Cassandra couldn’t trace me. I was mad with grief after she married. I felt crushed by her betrayal. I packed up and left home. I went north of Capricorn to frontier country. My mother always regarded Cassandra with some trepidation. She foresaw what would happen.”

“Yet she sent you the letter?”

Owen’s voice was gentle. “She had great integrity. I never told her about you because I knew she wouldn’t have left things alone. She was the wise one. Your mother begged me in the letter to keep her secret just like the confessional. Though it opened the door to unimaginable pain, I did it. Cassandra could always manipulate me. She convinced me you were happy and secure. So was she. As some kind of sop, probably to diffuse the inflammatory nature of her revelation, she told me she had named you after my mother, of all people. Your grandmother, Eden Carter.”

Eden was silent, trying to absorb her shock. “This is unbelievable,” she managed finally. “I can’t take it in.”

“I understand. I understand all about pain, suffering and shock. Read the letter.” Owen withdrew the yellowed much-read, much-folded pages from his inside breast pocket. He passed it to Eden….

As she read it her eyes became so filled with tears she had to pass it to Owen to finish aloud. How had her mother ever done him such a terrible wrong? Had she no courage? Whatever had persuaded her to remain with Redmond Sinclair? The marriage, so badly foundered, had never been happy but as a highly “social” couple they had maintained a public fiction. She herself had missed out on a father’s love. She could feel it pouring out of this man she now knew to be her real father. Redmond Sinclair had tried hard to find a place in his heart for her but he never could get the portals open. Such love as he had, more like obsession, had been reserved for her mother.

It was a terrible story and they all had paid for it. Even her grandfather had been worn down, she now realised, by a sense of guilt. In persuading his daughter to marry “one of their own kind” he had committed her to a life of unhappiness and unfulfillment. A charade.

“You know there’s been some speculation my mother’s death wasn’t an accident?”

Eden turned her head to look directly into her real father’s fine dark eyes.

Owen looked off abruptly. “Cassandra would never have left you.”

“You didn’t know her all these long years. I expect my mother changed greatly from the girl you knew. She was a sad woman. But so gentle and beautiful, everyone loved her. The man I called Father all my life certainly did.”

Owen’s rugged features hardened to granite. “I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t want to hear about him. Sinclair was the one Cassandra chose over me. From the look of him he hasn’t weathered the years well. He used to have a shock of golden hair. He was very handsome, very eligible, a promising lawyer. I never got past grade ten. I had to leave school before I was sixteen to learn a trade. There was little money in our house to go around. Today’s a different story. I’m a very rich man.”

“Did you ever marry?” Eden asked, thinking of so many broken lives.

Owen nodded. “I have a wife and child. A little boy called Robbie. Robert after my father. My wife, Delma—she has Italian blood—calls him Roberto.”

“Then you’re happy.” She was glad.

“I should be happy.” Owen frowned. “I would have been happy if I hadn’t had you and Cassandra perpetually on my mind. Often when I’m alone in my boat I have the habit of calling your name. Eden! My little girl. Sounds desolate, doesn’t it? It used to frighten the gulls away. But now by the grace of God I’ve found you. Cassandra’s tragedy has set us free.”

They’d met regularly after that, a couple of times a month. Owen travelled from his home in far North Queensland to be with her. Such was the power of blood both found their relationship, though propelled forward at a great rate, an intensely accepting one. They talked easily and freely, both of them on the same wave length. In fact Eden had come to recognise she had inherited some of her father’s characteristics, even mannerisms, though she had grown up isolated from him. There was so much for them both to discover. They enjoyed hours and hours of discussions and confidences as they pieced together the past. Owen was determined she come to live with him, to be family. But Owen in his exultation at finding a lost daughter was running the risk of alienating his wife and the mother of his son, her half brother, Robbie. It was obvious in keeping his friend and partner, Lang Forsyth, in the dark he had done some considerable damage already. But Owen couldn’t be persuaded to speak out prematurely any more than she could. Both of them needed time to turn their lives around.

While her relationship with Owen blossomed, her troubled relationship with the man she had called “Father” for all of her life deteriorated to the point Eden felt Redmond Sinclair no longer had anything to say to her. It was time to move out. Not hastily. People were talking enough already about her mother’s untimely death. She had no wish to cause Redmond extra pain and embarrassment. Six months after her mother’s passing it mightn’t seem such a desertion.

She hadn’t confided in her grandfather. Had she any need to? Her grandfather doted on her almost as much as he had doted on her mother, but he had become so much frailer Eden held back from upsetting him in any way. He surely knew the truth. She was convinced he did. Her grandfather was a very clever, astute man. He and her mother had been so close; her mother would have poured out the whole sorry story. Then there was the time factor, though no doubt she had been passed off as premature. The depth of her grandfather’s grief—he was inconsolable—began to persuade Eden he had profound regrets at the way his daughter’s relatively short life had turned out.