Cattle Baron Needs a Bride / Sparks Fly with Mr Mayor: Cattle Baron Needs a Bride / Sparks Fly with Mr Mayor

Garrick knew Zara and her grandmother were coming his way. There had scarcely been a second when he hadn’t been aware of Zara, despite the audacious attentions of several young women so hell-bent on flirtation one would have thought their lives depended on it. The one he was with now fitted the bill. She was a real stayer. The sad thing was, he only had eyes for Zara. That was his bitter fate. Being anywhere near her was like being electrified. She looked so beautiful in that pink silk gown, her long dark hair falling like a bolt of shining silk down her back. He loved the exquisite pink roses that dipped in under her ear. It had been a monumental effort trying to keep his eyes off her.

You’re totally messed up, Rylance. He’d told himself that repeatedly. Didn’t do much good. His feelings for Zara would never die. They wouldn’t even die down and it was years later. Maybe he ought to arrange a session with a really good shrink, he thought with a flash of humour.

How to cure obsession—for one particular woman.

He had already spoken to Sibella, of course. He greatly admired her. Zara was very much like her in appearance. Sibella De Lacey, nearing seventy, remained a beautiful woman. She looked after herself and dressed superbly, no doubt aided by the fact that she had retained her slender figure. He knew Sibella liked him. He knew that if Sibella could wave her magic wand she would make everything come right between himself and Zara. That was if Sibella could ever find her lost magic wand.

Zara, still holding Miranda’s lovely bouquet like some magic charm, drew a deep breath. Said a silent prayer. Perhaps she and Garrick could never get back to what they had had, but she had to try.

Her time was running out.

Celebrations continued on into the night, with couples dancing on the rear terrace to a great band who were enjoying themselves as much as anyone else. Others roamed the extensive gardens, which were lit by thousands and thousands of white fairy lights that decked the trees. Flirtations aplenty were going on. A lot of tender hand-holding. Delectable kisses stolen in the scented semidark. One overeager, overenthusiastic young male guest for a bit of fun launched himself into the swimming pool with its flotilla of big beautiful hibiscus blooms, but further silliness on the part of others was swiftly discouraged by an unobtrusive security man, dressed like the other guests, who hauled him out.

Older guests retired to the house, agog at the wonderful renovations. They flowed through the main reception rooms and the library, chattering and exclaiming, coming to settle into the opulent sofas and armchairs to go over the great day in detail and catch up on all the latest news and gossip. Many who had thought of her often that day went to gaze with a moment’s sadness at the life-size portrait of Kathryn Rylance. It hadn’t been seen for quite a while. Certainly not during the reign of the second wife, Leila. Recently it had been taken out of storage, cleaned, reframed and it now hung above the splendid white marble fireplace.

“In its rightful place!” murmured one of Kathryn’s friends to another.

Kathryn Rylance had been such a beautiful gracious woman! How sad that she couldn’t have been here on this day of days, the wedding of her only son. All agreed that Zara was the image of her, both in looks and in manner. All had decided Miranda had deliberately thrown her bouquet to her sister-in-law. Didn’t that declare to the whole world that the two young women were very close? No one had seen such happiness in the Rylance household for far too long.

The King is dead. Long live the King!

By one o’clock in the morning the last of the guests departed in chauffeured limousines that stood waiting for them. This service had been planned well in advance, the thinking being that, very few would be in any condition to drive their own cars. One woman guest was so grateful and maybe so tipsy she started to cry.

“How enormously thoughtful!” she gushed as the chauffeur opened the door for her and her husband.

Her husband, an eminent barrister, agreed. “We’d never get home otherwise, my dear.”

“God bless you, Corin, old son!” another male guest yelled at the top of his voice amid more cheering. “This entire day has been perfect!”

Everyone knew a love match when they saw one. It was enough to make you bawl your eyes out with joy!

At long, long last the house was empty. The army of caterers had attended to every last detail of the clean up before packing their things and leaving. Corin’s housekeeper and the major domo, Hannah and Gil McBride, a very efficient couple in their late forties, taken on by Corin, had retired to their own secluded quarters perhaps an hour ago. Their comfortable bungalow was set in the grounds screened by a grove of luxuriant golden canes and only a short walk to the main house by way of an adjoining covered path.

Zara now felt free to roam.

Garrick had gone on with a party of revellers who obviously had no intention of allowing the night to end. She had no idea when and if he would be back but if he did he knew how to handle the state-of-the-art security system. Lord knew he’d made a huge impression on a number of young women looking for a rich handsome husband. The one in the beautiful blue dress came to mind—Lisa something. She had overheard Lisa telling a highly interested friend, “Garrick is simply gorgeous! He makes me go weak at the knees!”

She wasn’t the only one.

Include yourself!

Silently, Zara wandered in and out of the huge reception rooms, pausing to admire all over again the glorious flower arrangements. It was she who had suggested the florist to Miranda. Wayne was acknowledged as one of the country’s most creative florists and one of the most expensive by a country mile. Wayne had supplied all the flowers for the wedding, the exquisite bouquets for bride and bridesmaids, church, reception and the house. The effects were stunning. No expense had been spared. He could possibly retire if he so chose.

Someone once said the scent of a flower was its soul. She stooped to inhale the intoxicating sweetness of masses and masses of white gardenias arranged in a very tall famille verte Chinese vase with long trailing sprays of jasmine. The whole arrangement was supported by fig branches with their green fruit. She remembered her mother had often used this particular vase for her arrangements. Out of nowhere, she was assailed by the vision and, strangely, the unmistakable perfume of pink frangipani branches. Her mother had liked to mix them in with pink or red azaleas. She retained a little snapshot of her childhood—she and her mother picking armloads from the garden, the two of them so happy, so much the loving mother and daughter. No one should have to lose their mother. It was an awful business. She had mourned her father and, to a degree, Leila. Death required attention. But in no way had their deaths caused the enormous grief and feeling of utter loss she had suffered when she and Corin had lost their mother. Neither her father nor Leila had had room in their lives for her.

Tears pricked her eyes. One of the first things Corin had done after the death of their father was to go in search of their mother’s portrait. It had been painted by a famous Italian artist, commissioned by their father not long after the marriage. Their father had had it taken down within days of her death. She remembered with a feeling of pride that she had found the courage to volubly protest, Corin even more stridently. The two of them had all but yelled at their domineering, autocratic father. To no avail. Neither of them had had any idea where the painting had been stored. Not in the house. They had looked, risking severe discipline. Corin had finally located the painting in an art dealer’s storeroom.

“You’re so very beautiful, Mummy,” she whispered, looking up at the bravura portrait of her mother in her wedding gown. The irony of it—her wedding gown! “I’m sure you were here today. I felt you. So did Corin. So did Nan. We love you so much.”

For the first time she spotted a single white rose of exquisite form and fragrance tied with a silver ribbon. It lay on the white marble mantelpiece at the base of the portrait. She picked it up, curious to know who had put it there.

The tiny silver and white card said simply: From Miranda.

That a gesture could be so perfect!

Still holding the white rose, she went about quietly turning off banks of switches that controlled the lighting. She would take the rose upstairs with her. Pop it in a bud vase and keep it beside her bed. It was all so extraordinary when one thought about it. Lovely little Miranda, with her essential goodness and brightness, was Leila’s daughter. Hard to realise, given Leila’s cold, calculating, selfabsorbed nature. The connection had not come out—Corin had made sure of that. Not that it was the worst story in the world, but it was somewhat bizarre. No one had commented on the fact that Miranda had been given away by her New Zealand grandfather, a distinguished professor of medicine. Nor that a New Zealand cousin had made a beautiful bridesmaid. Maybe someone would uncover the true story as the years passed. It would make no difference to Corin and Miranda. Nor to her and her grandparents. Garrick was the only one who had raised a question about what appeared to have gone over everyone else’s head. But Garrick didn’t know.

Radiant moonlight was coming in through the many tall windows and the side lights of the front door. She could easily see her way across the entrance hall. She planned to leave a few lights on for Garrick, anyway. He had such a powerful effect on women. Always had, even if he had been genuinely unaware of it. Yet the highly eligible Garrick seemed no more successful at putting back the pieces than she was. The one had altered the life of the other.

She felt anger rising in her at her father’s multiple deceptions. The way he had worked on her to strip her of all confidence. Her father, therefore, had been her enemy. Good fathers affirmed their children’s value. She had received no such validation from him. She had to accept, too, that somewhere along the line Garrick must have become a point of bitter antagonism. When one considered it, her father had shown all the signs of pathological jealousy. Business giant or not, Dalton Rylance had been a very strange man.

She had only walked a few feet towards the grand staircase when the front door suddenly opened. It had to be Garrick. She spun just in time to see his tall, muscular figure outlined against the exterior lights.

“Garrick!” She felt the breathless vibrations of her heart.

“Well, what do we have here,” he mocked, “a welcoming party of one?” He slowly approached, devastatingly handsome in his formal pearl-grey morning suit. He hadn’t bothered to change. That would have been an additional excitement for the young women in his party.

His tone was so sardonic she waved the taunt away with her hand. “Have no fear. I didn’t think you’d even come back. You seemed to be getting along so well with…Lisa, wasn’t it?”

“Louise,” he said with a drawl. “Call me Lou!”

“Well, I was close.” She shrugged, the jewelled strap that held the one-shouldered bodice of her gown giving off sparkles of light. “Didn’t work out?”

“I prefer to do the chasing,” he said, turning back to reactivate the alarm system. Then he recommenced his graceful walk, sleek as a panther, across the expanse of black and white marble tiles. “Still wearing your bridesmaid gown?” There was an oddly seductive note in his voice, given he had done his level best to avoid her the entire evening. One more or less obligatory dance, both of them remaining silent, their bodies locked in tension, the two of them divided even when his arm was tight around her.

“I haven’t been upstairs yet.” The raggedness of her breath betrayed her. “I’m not in the least tired.”

“You should never take that dress off.” He didn’t sound as much admiring as maddened by how she looked. Her small perfect breasts were outlined against the luminous silk. “Why is it you’re so extravagantly beautiful, Zara?” It came out like an unrelenting lament. “Why is it a part of me still madly wants you? God, sometimes I think you nailed me when we were only kids. Zara, the little princess! I’d never seen such a beautiful little girl before or since.”

Her limbs felt heavy, as though heat was bearing down on her. She turned fully to confront him. “Drink has loosened your tongue, Garrick.”

“Maybe it has,” he admitted with a wry laugh, moving ever closer. “How come you got over me just like that—” his fingers clicked “—when I can’t seem to put you behind me?”

She managed a sceptical laugh, tilting her chin. “You’re just wound up.”

And you aren’t?

“You did put me behind you, Garrick,” she said. “Very successfully, I would say.”

“A matter of opinion, my dear,” he drawled. “I’d say not terribly well. More’s the pity! What have you got in your hand?”

She held the white rose up to the shimmering moonlight. “A beautiful little gesture from Miranda. She left it in front of my mother’s portrait.”

“How very sweet!” He smiled, sounding unsurprised. “Corin is a lucky man. Miranda has my full approval. I’d like to drink a toast to your mother, Zara. I had the feeling she was here today—in spirit, anyway. I didn’t see as much of her as I would have liked, but I remember her as the loveliest woman. She was so kind to me when your father lived to bawl me out. I remember my mother receiving the news of her death with tears rolling down her cheeks. She doesn’t cry easily; she’s learned to hide her tears.”

“Some of us have to,” Zara pointed out quietly.

“Did you cry for me?”

She couldn’t bear the hurtful edge to his voice. “A million times!”

“Liar!” He shook his handsome dark head. “Just a mad fling, wasn’t it?”

“It was mad, certainly!” The most exultant experience she had ever had. There was all the difference in the world between being passionately in love and giving and receiving the loving affection that brought a lot of people to marriage. So many degrees of loving! Piled one upon another.

“Well, you got over it soon enough.” In the intimate semi-darkness he reached for her. “Come with me.”

Her legs felt like those of a newborn foal, barely able to support her. Every time he looked at her she remembered the rapture, then the heartbreak. Unsurprisingly, she lost her composure. Emotion could be uncontrollable. At least that was her experience with Garrick. “What is it you want, Garrick?” she asked in a soft ragged voice. “You want to see me cry?”

“Zara, darling, I have seen you cry, remember?” His answer was sardonic. “All crocodile tears.” He drew her into the opulent living room, switching lights back on as they went.

“Why did you never answer my letters?” Her accusation flew at him. Her voice sounded the old heartbreak. Yet he made no response. She dragged back against his strong hand. “Answer me, you ghastly, ghastly man!”

At that, he jerked them both to such an abrupt halt that her body slammed into his. “Do you understand nothing?” he asked harshly. “Sweetheart, I never read any of them.”

She had always held on to the hope that he had at least read some of them. Now she felt shattered. She had poured out her heart in those letters, telling him of her hatred for herself for being such a fool as to be so effortlessly manipulated by her father. “But I sent you so many!” Her expression was eloquent with pain. “God, how many? You never read any of them. You can’t be telling the truth!”

“Even more serious than that, Zara, my lost love; I burnt the lot of them.” There was a bitter twist to his beautifully shaped sensuous mouth. “Had a little bonfire. You made it very plain you were done with me, remember? You revealed yourself for what you were. Probably still are. A woman who has the power to bring a man to his knees. Were you planning on keeping the torture going? Now that’s sick! I wasn’t having any. I have my pride. You ought to consider you’re more like your father than you think.”

“What?” She reacted with horror, stunned that he should say such a thing. Indeed, her shock was so great that the air turned red before her eyes. Anti-violence all her life, without a second’s thought, she brought up her hand and struck him as hard as she possibly could across the face. He could easily have stopped her by grasping her wrist, his reflexes were such. But for some reason, he didn’t. He took the blow. “I’m nothing like my father,” she said very tightly. “He was a cruel, cruel man.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.” His answer was as dry as ash. “You took a chance hitting out at me, Zara.” As he spoke, he was making a production out of rubbing his cheekbone. His skin was so tanned the red imprint of her fingers barely showed. “I could have retaliated.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she wasn’t at all ashamed of her actions. He deserved it. There was immense pleasure in connecting, if only in a blow.

“No, you’re not,” he bluntly contradicted. “You loved it!”

“I did!” She admitted to it in a low voice, moving closer and staring into his burning blue eyes.

“Course you did!” he taunted. “So…I’d say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Tears of rage filled her eyes but he grabbed her, hauling her into his arms. How many times had he wanted to do that since he’d arrived? It was perilous being around Zara. She could have resisted, but she made no movement to draw back. “Hartmann a good lover?” With an effort, he kept his tone purely conversational.

Diamond pinpoints of light stood in her desperate eyes. He pulled her ever closer. “Did he tell you you have the most beautiful, the most kissable mouth in the world? Don’t bother struggling. You won’t get away.” He held her strongly with his left hand, brought up his right to touch her long hair, tipping her face up to his. “Be careful now how you answer,” he warned.

Anger burned past raw pain. “He did. He did!” She laughed in his face, her own face pale. “Of course he d—” She got no further.

He was under too much strain. Cursing her. Cursing himself. There was no reprieve with Zara.

He opened his mouth wide over hers, claiming it completely, sick to death with wanting her. It was a brutal kind of rapture to be with her, to have her captive in his arms, to kiss her again after such an eternity. The fire would never burn out. He had to believe she was feeling the heat too because her whole body was undulating, as though her tender woman’s flesh was melting at his touch.

Once she tried to draw back, making a sound of dissent as if she were in a rage. But he knew it for what it was. No more than excited defiance. He knew. He definitely knew. She could no more subdue the powerful sexual flame that sprang fiercely between them than he could—a flame that had been ignited years before. He wasn’t going to listen to any play acting. He’d had more than enough of that. He plunged his fingers into her long heavy hair, keeping her face up to him.

“Damn, damn, damn you, Garrick!” she cried, as though her emotions were too powerful to be contained.

“Sounds more like praying to me,” he taunted. “Anyway, I’ve damned you a thousand times.” His tongue worked over and around her closed lips, increasing the pressure, prising them apart. It had to be driving her crazy because her mouth opened fully and her breath mingled with his.

Paradise regained.

He was kissing her the way he wanted to kiss her. The way he kissed her in his dreams. Not tenderly, but a furious combative passion that demanded release. Sensation swirled all around them. Images of them together filled his mind. Now and in the past. He had her back where she belonged. In his arms. He couldn’t seem to care about all the rest. Her flight from Coorango. The betrayal he’d felt. He had her with him right now. He wasn’t going to let her go.

Not tonight. He hadn’t planned it. How so? When he knew it was going to take place.

Zara had a fear she might faint. So much pressure was building in her. In her back, in her stomach, her breasts and her legs. Her body swayed against his, her aching breasts pressed hard against the muscular plane of his chest. She hungered for him so much she was shaking uncontrollably. The strength of his hold on her increased. It came to her belatedly that he was supporting her. The rose had slipped out of her fingers. It was crushed somewhere between them. Its sweet fragrance was scenting the air. She felt trapped. At the same time she felt she was where she belonged.

“I could have picked any other girl in the world,” he muttered, his lips against her throat, “but it had to be you! So let’s choose a bed,” he said with a shuddering laugh. Yours or mine?” He raised his hand, clasping her neck beneath the heavy fall of her hair.

“Don’t sound so cynical, Garrick,” she begged, her voice a jagged whisper.

“Ah, be damned to everything!” he cried, as though the situation was utterly intolerable. He caught her chin, turned her face up to him. “You can’t be crying?” he rasped.

A single tear had escaped, edging down her cheek.

“Do you think your tears make me fair game?” His expression carried no gentleness whatever. It showed tension as tight as a piano wire strung to perfect pitch.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” she lashed back. “You and your abominable pride! Well, it cost us.” She closed her eyes against him, realizing he would never forgive her until the day he died. Her heart was drumming in her ears, the beat strong enough to make her deaf. A great flush of sexual excitement was covering her body in a tide. She thought of a dam, its massive walls giving way.

“Drop the tears, Zara,” he advised. “They won’t work. Tonight you’re mine. It will be just like old times!” He put one steely muscled arm beneath her and then swept her off her swooning feet.

There were no words in her mind to stop him. She knew it would happen. They both knew it would happen. Both of them wanted the torture over. If only for a single night. She needed no man in her life. Unless it was Garrick. He needed no woman. Unless it was her. Both of them were in the fierce grip of obsession. A maelstrom of passion that had at its core a fatal flaw.

There could be no real love, no real future without trust.

She could never hope to make him trust her again. He had not even read one of her letters. The pain of it seared her so badly she doubted she would ever mention those letters again. Her father was dead. She couldn’t confront him, make him confess to Garrick what he had said and done to drive them apart.

All she knew was that it was her lot to love Garrick. Every which way. No matter what happened. Until death did them part.

Chapter Four

THEY flew into Coorango at noon on a blazing blue day. It had been a smooth flight, now they were taxiing into the massive silver hangar that housed the Beech Baron and a metallic blue Eurocopter with a broad white stripe. This had to be the latest addition to the fleet, Zara thought. She was familiar with this particular luxury helicopter. Her father, now Corin, retained one for private use. Two other helicopters, chartered aircraft, sat like fat yellow birds just off the concrete apron. Aerial mustering was obviously in progress.

Coming in over the airstrip, she could see Garrick’s mother, Helen, was on hand to greet them. Helen was standing with her back against a four-wheel drive, no doubt to ferry them up to the homestead. She had started waving minutes before they touched down. Zara waved back, appreciative of the fact that Helen had made the effort to come down herself. She could easily have sent someone. It made her feel very welcome. She hoped Garrick’s father, Daniel—lovely man—was having a good day. She knew he lived his life in constant pain, but dealt with it without complaint. Apparently his response to all enquiries regarding his state of health was “getting there!” Garrick had told her rather tensely that his father’s health was a source of great concern to his mother, to him and his sister Julianne, and everyone who knew and loved Daniel Rylance. This was a man greatly respected in the Outback.