Required: Three Outback Brides: Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife / In the Heart of the Outback... / Single Dad, Outback Wife

‘You never thought to get even?’ he asked. ‘Sorry, I withdraw that. I know you didn’t.’

‘You’re dead right. I respected my marriage vows. I respected myself. That’s why I had to get out.’ She steadied herself to look into his eyes. ‘I liked the way you checked the minute I said it wasn’t the right time to have sex.’

‘Why of course! You surely didn’t think I would force the issue?’

‘I didn’t, but I was responding an awful lot. In a way it was a crisis and you dealt with it the way it had to be. Mark messed me up for a while. He’s quite a bit older. Nearly ten years. He set out to mould me to his ways but he failed. He actually believed his little affairs were harmless. He swore over and over he loved only me. I was his wife. That put me on a pedestal instead of exposing me to ridicule. He swore he’d get help.’

‘And did he?’ Rory was having difficulty understanding a man like Mark Hamilton.

‘I didn’t wait around to find out,’ Allegra replied flatly. ‘I believed I did at the time, but I didn’t love Mark. He was more a replacement father figure. Had I really loved him I’d have been devastated at the divorce, instead of just plain mad at myself. The state of my home life—the way I grew up—pushed me into trying to find someone safe. Mark had every outward appearance of being safe, except he wasn’t safe at all. I made one hell of a mistake. I can’t possibly make another.’ She was too close to tears to say another word.

He drew her within the haven of his arm.’ Did you tell your stepmother and Chloe about this?’

She nodded. ‘But not all that much. They thought the world of Mark. In their eyes if anyone was to blame for the breakdown of our marriage it was me. Val has been compelled to find fault with me since I was a kid. I couldn’t do a thing right. She used to make up stories for Chloe to believe and Chloe did. I used to be devastated. Not anymore. Over the years, Val has brainwashed my sister. Chloe would be a much better person away from her mother. In her heart Chloe knows it. Anyway there’s nothing I can do there. It’s all too late. There’s a lot of deep resentment. Not love.’

‘Was there any happiness in your marriage?’ he asked.

‘I can remember some good times,’ she said. ‘At the beginning.’

‘Then let me make up for all you’ve missed.’ His hand slid to her nape, cradling her head. He allowed himself the sheer bliss of kissing her again, only breaking it by force of will. ‘You’ll have to be really, really patient for the rest.’ Mockery sparkled in his eyes.

‘I guess I have to be okay with that.’ Her voice was soft. He had taken her breath. Sunlight was filtering through the trees, warming them in its streams of golden light.

‘I suppose we could live together first like couples do these days?’ He put forward the idea as a way of giving her an option. ‘Does that appeal to you? A trial run? We could take it in stages if that would make you feel easier in your mind. You can have all the time you want to get used to me. The same goes for me.’ He gave a sardonic ripple of laughter. ‘Although I’ll never get used to you if I live a hundred years.’ She had stopped him in his tracks when he had first laid eyes on her. She was even more beautiful to him now.

‘You’ll make some woman a terrific husband, Rory Compton,’ she told him, thus stating her clear preference.

‘Then that woman better be you! ‘

CHAPTER SEVEN

VALERIE’S face was a study. She jumped to her feet, moving towards Allegra as though she would like to slap her. ‘How long now is it since your divorce and you’re planning to remarry?’ Her voice rang so loudly it bounced off the walls. ‘Even knowing you the way I do, I can scarcely believe it.’

Chloe sat trembling, on the verge of tears. ‘What did you do when we were away?’ she demanded to know, her voice sounding thick in a clogged throat.

‘Do?’ Allegra repeated. She fell back from the kitchen table, as ever feeling outnumbered. ‘I hardly think it’s got a damned thing to do with you, Chloe. You should be thrilled I managed to get extra for Naroom, instead of questioning me like this. I haven’t heard a word about the better offer.’

‘Did you sleep with him?’ Valerie threw out an arm so precipitously she knocked over a glass on the sink. It smashed on the terracotta tiles but all three women ignored it.

Allegra sat there wondering why after all these years, she was still stunned by their reactions. ‘That’s absolutely none of your business.’

A dark look crossed Valerie’s face and her jaw set hard. ‘I bet you did. ‘You take no notice of the conventions. Mark was too much the gentleman to say a word against you.’

‘Mark was no gentleman,’ Allegra said, sick to death of the way they defended him. ‘A gentleman is a man of decency.’

‘And Mark wasn’t?’ Chloe’s pretty mouth twisted bitterly.

Her tone struck Allegra as odd. So odd, she thought suddenly of those old photographs. ‘You didn’t by any chance sleep with him?’ Allegra’s voice was so tight it was devoid of expression.

Chloe flushed a deep scarlet, then swiftly turned her head away, the very picture of guilt, colour flooding her face.

‘What a criminal thing to say. Apologise now.’ Valerie was breathing hard, her eyes fixed on Allegra and not her daughter. ‘You’re beautiful to look at, but you’re not beautiful inside. That’s the paradox with women like you. Apologise to your sister.’

Allegra ignored her, studying her half sister with contemptuous eyes. ‘Did you, Chloe? I always had a sneaking suspicion you did.’.

‘Are you quite m-mad!’ Valerie stuttered, looking like she thought Allegra beyond the pail.

‘You, Val, are a fool.’ Allegra spoke without looking at the woman. ‘So am I for that matter. You did didn’t you, Chloe. You did it as much to spite me as surrendering to Mark’s charms.’

Valerie, openly incredulous, shook her head, but Chloe, unable to disguise her guilt but without a glimmer of remorse, put her face down into her hands and promptly burst into floods of tears as her only way out.

‘Found out at long last!’ Allegra said quietly, feeling sick to the stomach. ‘What a hypocrite you are, Chloe. Always playing the role of Goody Two-shoes while you betrayed me in my own house.’

Chloe adopted a victim’s expression. ‘He wanted me. He waited for me.’ She lifted her tearstained face to steal a look at her mother.

‘The bastard!’ Valerie erupted predictably. Nevertheless she took Chloe’s shoulder in a hard grip. ‘Sit up straight. You’re always slouching about. You slept with your sister’s husband?.’ She gave her daughter a look of the utmost reproach.

‘Like I wanted to? He was after me. Anyway, what does it matter?’ Chloe moaned. ‘I was nothing to him. The only one who was ever important to Mark was Allegra.’

‘And to think I’ve been defending him!’ Shock was written all over Valerie. ‘You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, young lady.’ She stared down at her daughter’s mock penitent head. All Chloe was sorry about was she had been exposed. ‘What was in your mind to do such a thing?’ Valerie demanded to know.

‘I don’t really have an excuse. He took advantage of me. I’m sorry,’ Chloe mumbled, managing to sound shattered, which in a way she was.

‘Sorry? Is that the best you can do?’ Valerie was suddenly seeing her daughter very differently.

Allegra just stood there, her head spinning. ‘Only Dad saw through Mark,’ she said. ‘But Dad unfortunately held back because he thought I loved him.’

‘Which you never did.’ Valerie reverted to making Allegra the scapegoat. ‘You just needed a stepping stone.’

‘You saw that, did you?’

Valerie smiled grimly, but didn’t answer.

‘Not loving Mark isn’t something I’m proud of, Val. I thought I loved him at the time. In retrospect it’s pathetically clear I really wanted a home of my own. Someone to love me.’

Valerie turned away to sweep up the fragments of the broken glass. ‘What a swine he was! He seduced my Chloe.’

‘Don’t believe it!’ Allegra scoffed. ‘Chloe was right there in the middle of it, ready to take whatever was going. I don’t think I want to talk to you again, Chloe,’ she said. ‘Not after today.’

‘Who would care!’ Chloe shouted. ‘All you do is burn people. Now it’s Rory Compton who has to pay for coming into your orbit. You seduced him. I haven’t the slightest doubt of that. You have seduction down to perfection.’

‘My dear, I could take lessons off you,’ Allegra said.

‘What did happen with Rory Compton,’ Valerie asked. her tone condemnatory.

Allegra studied her. ‘Nothing as if you have any right to know. Rory came with a second offer, just as I told you. He had no idea you were away. He was enormously helpful shifting the stock to high ground. The creek was running a bumper. It’s still high if you want to take the time to go down and look. He had to stay the night. It was raining far too heavily for him to drive back to Jimboorie.’

‘And you lured him into your bed,’ Chloe hit back. ‘That’s unforgivable, Allegra. You’ve always done it. As soon as any guy takes a liking to me you have to take him off me.’

‘Haven’t I told you that all along.’ Valerie gave Allegra a venomous look. ‘What are people going to say? Think of the scandal and so soon after your father’s death. Let alone your divorce. But you scarcely care about that. You don’t even know this man. You could destroy him.’

Allegra lowered her head in resignation. ‘Val, you should have sought help a long time ago. The animosity that’s in you is corrosive to the soul. I’ll go back to Sydney until Naroom is sold. I can’t stay here the situation being what it is. It’s a thirty-day unconditional contract. Rory already has bank approval.’

‘I want you to leave tomorrow,’ Valerie said, slamming her two palms flat on the table.

‘To hell with you and what you want. You forget yourself, Valerie. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.’ Allegra’s voice was so authoritative Valerie backed off. ‘I’d be grateful if you could keep a civil tongue in your head until then. I’ve put up with your viciousness until now, but no more!’

‘Viciousness?’ Chloe jumped in to champion her mother.

‘It’s about time you stopped playing the ingénue, Chloe,’ Allegra said. ‘You’re much too old for it. In your heart you know the situation. Your mother hates me.’

‘Mum doesn’t hate anyone,’ Chloe declared, mostly because she needed her mother on side. ‘I know she can be a little sharp tongued from time to time, but she doesn’t hate you, Allegra. I don’t hate you. But you’ve never let me shine. Can you understand what that does to me? I’ve always been overshadowed. You’re the beautiful sister, the clever sister, the one people ask after. They come up to me and say, ‘How’s your beautiful sister?’ I hate it.’ Her blue eyes flashed anger. ‘That’s why I slept with Mark. To get back at you. I hated myself afterwards. I had to pretend it never happened to live. It was only the once anyway.’ That at least was the truth. ‘I didn’t like it. Rory is different. He would have liked me if you hadn’t been around.’

‘Wishful thinking, my dear,’ Allegra said disdainfully, and walked away from them without a qualm.

Allegra shocked a lot of people when she handed in her resignation.

‘But you had such a future with us, Allegra,’ Juleanne Spencer, the Editor-in-Chief and something of a national icon, told her, staring in dismay across her magnificent antique desk. Their meeting had already lasted forty minutes but Juleanne, who had great persuasive powers, was distressed she wasn’t about to sway her clever and, she would have thought, highly ambitious Fashion Editor. Allegra Hamilton had real style and an uncanny ability to combine glamour, excitement and

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