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THE STORY SO FAR…
After her father’s death, Gemma Smith made two astonishing discoveries: amongst his possessions she found a priceless black opal, and an old photograph that made her believe that she could be nearly twenty—almost two years older than her father had led her to believe. Gemma decided to leave the Outback to find out more about her mother, who had died when she was born, and to start a new life.
Fate introduced her to Nathan Whitmore, a successful screenwriter and the acting head of Whitmore Opals. Highly attracted to Gemma and struck by her vulnerability, Nathan offered her a reward for the black opal, which he suspected had been stolen from Byron Whitmore, his adoptive father, more than twenty years before. Nathan also offered Gemma a home and jobs in Sydney—first as “minder” to his wayward teenage daughter, Kirsty, and then, when Gemma had mastered Japanese, on the sales force of Whitmore Opals. Gemma found herself falling for her new protector, although various members of the Whitmore household warned her that Nathan was a heartless seducer.
But, to her delight, Nathan proposed marriage, though Gemma still had her doubts: she may have been about to become the second Mrs. Nathan Whitmore, but did she really know her husband-to-be…and what about the intriguing secrets of her real origins, and the black opal?
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK
GEMMA SMITH-WHITMORE: after her father’s death, Gemma discovers a magnificent black opal worth a small fortune and an old photograph that casts doubt on her real identity. In quest of the truth and a new life, she goes to Sydney, and fate introduces her to Nathan Whitmore, her husband-to-be…
NATHAN WHITMORE: adopted son of Byron Whitmore, Nathan is acting head of Whitmore Opals and a talented screenwriter. After a troubled childhood and a divorce, he is ruthless and utterly emotionally controlled. Will he ever drop that mask and give Gemma the love that she needs…?
JADE WHITMORE: the spoiled, willful only daughter of Byron and late Irene Whitmore (nee Campbell). Her wild-child ways give the wrong impression to everyone except, perhaps, Kyle Armstrong?
KYLE ARMSTRONG: the new marketing manager at Whitmore Opals. He is unforthcoming about his background—does he plan to use the Whitmore family for his own ends?
BYRON WHITMORE: recently widowed, he is the head of the Whitmore family, and a stranger to love.
LENORE LANGTRY: talented stage actress, ex-wife and Nathan Whitmore and mother of Kirsty, Lenore has finally found love with top lawyer, Zachary Marsden.
MELANIE LLOYD: housekeeper to the Whitmores, Melanie has been on emotional autopilot since the tragic deaths of her husband and only child.
AVA WHITMORE: Byron’s much-younger sister, she struggles with her weight, her unmarried state and her fear of failure.
KIRSTY WHITMORE: the wayward fourteen-year-old daughter of Nathan and Lenore.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
JADE woke to daylight and confusion.
Where on earth am I? she wondered fuzzily, her head thick with the after-effects of sleeping tablets.
And then she remembered.
She was back in her old bedroom at Belleview. Back home.
‘Oh, God,’ she groaned, and rolled out of bed, clutching her pounding temples while she staggered, naked, across the white shag carpet and into her white and gold en-suite bathroom.
‘Oh, God,’ she groaned again when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her short white-blonde hair was sticking out in all directions, her dark blue eyes like black holes in her pasty face.
But it was her bruised breasts that drew and held her attention. She hadn’t realised...
Jade stared at them for a long moment before shuddering violently. Suddenly, the full horror of what she’d narrowly escaped hit her, and she sank down on the side of the bath, her head dropping down between her knees as the nausea rose from her stomach. For a few seconds, the room spun, but the moment passed. Jade braced herself with hands on knees and slowly lifted her head. She still felt a little clammy and decided to sit there for a while longer.
Her thoughts kept going round, however. Regretful, recriminating thoughts.
She shouldn’t have agreed to let Roberto use the spare room of her unit till he could find a place of his own. She definitely shouldn’t have agreed to his holding a small party last night.
But in truth, she hadn’t seen any danger. After all, Roberto was gay. And so were all his friends. Jade had always found gay men not only sweet, but kind and gentlemanly and very interesting to talk to. They made good friends for women. Safe friends.
But one of Roberto’s friends had not been safe.
The horror washed in again, bringing another wave of nausea.
Jade stood up abruptly and walked over to the shower, snapping on the water and standing there testing till it was hot enough. Stepping into the steaming spray, she shut her eyes and turned her face upwards, closing her mind to everything but the steady beating of its cleansing, reviving heat.
It was a mental trick she had learnt long ago. When things got too painful, she just clicked off her thoughts to everything but the most immediate and superficial needs. Washing. Eating. Sleeping.
For the first time, it didn’t work. She couldn’t seem to forget that hand over her mouth, that steely arm clamped around her breasts, those filthy words whispered in her ear. If she hadn’t managed that lucky kick to her assailant’s groin, God knew what would have happened.
But she had, and unexpectedly she’d been free. Snatching up her car keys from the hall table, she’d bolted for the door, wearing nothing but a silk robe, driving home to Belleview at a speed which owed thanks to its being three o’clock in the morning, with the streets of suburban Sydney almost deserted. Heaven knew what would have happened if she’d been stopped by the police. God, she could see it now, being arrested for dangerous driving and hauled, half-naked down to the police station. Then a sour-faced Nathan arriving the following morning with the family solicitor in tow. Like the last time.
Only the last time her arrest had been for possession of drugs. Zachary Marsden had defended her on that occasion as well.
Of course, it hadn’t been her marijuana in the glovebox of her car. She detested drugs. It had belonged to a so-called friend who’d vowed she’d given up the habit. Luckily, Zachary was a top defender—would her father employ any other kind?—and he’d soon proved her innocence to the satisfaction of the magistrate and the charges had been dropped. Zachary had really believed in her innocence, too, which was more than could be said for Nathan.
What a hypocrite her adopted brother was!
He pretended to be holier-than-thou, just like her father. But she knew what he’d been up to before Byron found him on the streets of King’s Cross. Yet he had the hide to judge her over her supposedly loose lifestyle, to criticise her for being sexually provocative.
Jade had to laugh at that. Nathan oozed sex. Why, there wasn’t a woman within fifty feet of him who hadn’t wanted him at some stage, her own mother included.
Immediately, Jade’s mind closed in on the subject of her mother. In her opinion, she hadn’t had a mother. End of story.
Back to Nathan.
Jade switched off the shower, her generous mouth curving into a bitter smile. She had that cold-blooded devil taped, all right. People felt sorry for him because of his supposedly unfortunate background. Well, she didn’t. No way. He’d loved every minute of his decadent existence with that crazy mother of his.
Yes, Nathan was as hard as nails and an opportunist of the first order, conning his way into her father’s heart, getting Byron to adopt him, securing a cushy lifestyle and a fantastic job that he wouldn’t have had a hope of winning with his pathetic education. People said he was clever and perhaps he was—not many people could whip off an award-winning play every year in their spare time—but he didn’t even have his HSC, let alone a university degree, which was what her father had said she had to have before she was allowed to set one foot inside Whitmore Opals.
Nathan’s cleverness, for want of a better word, lay in his ability to psychoanalyse people and play on their weaknesses.
From the word go, poor Byron had believed Nathan had turned over a new leaf where his morals were concerned. Pity her father hadn’t kept his eyes open to what had happened around his own home from the moment he brought that walking phallic symbol into Belleview all those years ago.
But Byron hadn’t, perhaps because he’d rarely been home himself. The head of Whitmore Opals was a workaholic of the worst kind, meaning well, but invariably neglectful of his family except in short bossy bursts. He was also totally ignorant of their true feelings and real natures. Even when it came to Nathan’s marriage, Byron had a tendency to blame Lenore for everything from its shotgun beginning to its inevitable demise. As if any woman other than the most martyrish could endure marriage to a machine. Yes, Byron was blind to the real Nathan.
But that was understandable. Nathan could make others believe he was something he wasn’t if it meant achieving one of his selfish ends. Look at how she’d adored him for years. Hero-worshipped him. Loved him.
She’d thought he’d at least liked her back. What he’d liked was wallowing in her unthreatening adoration, the adoration of a little girl. Now that she was a woman, with a woman’s needs and desires, he’d turned on her. Not because he didn’t desire her. She knew he did. My God, he’d had to scrape up every ounce of that amazing will-power of his to stop making love to her that afternoon a few months ago. But he’d managed, because an affair with her would have endangered what he desired more: Whitmore Opals. The Whitmore fortune.
With Jade being Byron’s only natural-born child and a female to boot, Nathan probably figured he had a good chance of inheriting at least control of Whitmore’s. Byron was a chauvinist of the first order who believed a woman’s place was in the home, most certainly not in the boardroom of a company! His tirades against women like Celeste Campbell were never-ending.
Jade secretly admired the female head of Campbell Jewels. The woman was bold and beautiful, and more than a little brazen in the way she conducted her private life. But so what? If she’d been a man, there wouldn’t be a whimper of protest or criticism. Alas, however, Celeste was a woman, and the old double standards applied. Her usually younger lovers were denigrated as toy-boys. She was slyly called a slut.
Which was what Nathan had said she was in danger of becoming, Jade recalled with a twisting inside. Now that was the pot calling the kettle black in her opinion! And not true, either. She could count her so-called lovers on one hand, and still have enough fingers left over to play ‘Chopsticks’!
An angry indignation had her grabbing a towel from the nearby rail. But when she started vigorously rubbing herself dry, her bruised breasts moaned a protest. Looking down at them again, she suddenly burst into tears.
It took quite a while before Jade felt sufficiently in control to leave the sanctuary of her bedroom and face her family.
The house seemed unnaturally quiet as she made her way slowly down the huge sweeping staircase. Where was everyone? Sighing, she headed for the kitchen and laundry wing, where Melanie was sure to be located.
Jade was right. Belleview’s highly efficient housekeeper was filling the dishwasher, looking her usual stark self, and quite out of place in the newly renovated all-white kitchen with its bright shiny surfaces. One could well imagine Melanie, with her solemn Madonna face, prim black top-knot and severe black dress, as the housekeeper in a Gothic novel, gliding silently through dimly lit rooms, the only lights in those dead black eyes of hers the flickering reflection of the candle she was holding.
Jade gave a little shiver at this highly evocative and almost frightening scenario.
Melanie straightened, turned and saw her. ‘Hello, Jade,’ the housekeeper greeted her in that expressionless voice of hers. ‘I put your car around in the garages for you. You seemed to have a little trouble finding them last night,’ she finished drily.
‘What? Oh...oh, yes. Thanks, I was a little—er...’
‘Blind?’ Melanie suggested.
Jade laughed. If there was one thing she could count on at home, it was everyone’s bad opinion. There would be no sympathy here, no understanding. Her reputation was totally shot around Belleview. What would be the point in telling Melanie that the sight of home with its solid safe walls had flooded her eyes with tears last night, making her run off the circular driveway, across the front lawn and into the cement surrounds of the large, lily-filled pond? Or that, still terribly shaken from her ordeal, she’d left her car there and staggered inside, taken more sleeping tablets than was good for her and crashed into blessed oblivion?
‘Will you be staying for dinner tonight?’ the housekeeper asked.
‘If it’s all right with you.’ She was hoping to inveigle Nathan into going back with her to her unit tomorrow to see if Roberto and co were still there. Big brothers—even adopted ones who despised you—had to be good for something.
Melanie shrugged. ‘Whatever. I have tomorrow off, though. You’ll have to do for yourself or get Ava to cook for you.’
‘Good God, no. Auntie’s cooking is even worse than her watercolours. I’ll rustle something up myself. Where is the old dear, by the way? And everyone else, for that matter? This place is like a morgue today.’
The housekeeper looked up with those dull black eyes of hers, giving Jade a droll glance before turning away to start loading the dishwasher. The clock on the oven said two-fifty, Jade noticed. The sleeping tablets had knocked her out for nearly twelve hours.
‘Nathan’s not here, if that’s who you’ve come looking for,’ Melanie informed her. ‘He’s taken Kirsty and Gemma with him to the beach-house at Avoca for the weekend.’
‘Gemma?’ The name was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place it. ‘Who’s Gemma?’ Jade asked, ignoring Melanie’s assumption she’d come visiting just to see Nathan.
‘Kirsty’s minder. Kirsty’s living here for a while.’
‘Oh? Why’s that? Lenore found herself a lover at last?’
Jade suspected that after twelve years married to Nathan Lenore might find it hard to replace her husband with another man. From what she’d heard—and her own limited experience with him—the man was dynamite in bed.
‘I have no idea what Lenore’s private life is like,’ Melanie said with cool rebuke in her voice. ‘She was simply fed up with Kirsty’s behaviour and thought a few weeks with her father might do her good. But with Nathan working late at Whitmore’s every day, he felt he had to hire someone to personally supervise Kirsty before and after school.’
Jade laughed. ‘I’ll bet Kirsty just loves having a minder at fourteen.’ Suddenly, the penny dropped on where she’d heard that name. ‘This Gemma person wouldn’t happen to be a lush young thing with big brown eyes, would she?’
Melanie’s eyes snapped round, confirming Jade’s intuitive guess.
‘I happened to drop by a couple of weeks back,’ Jade elaborated wryly. ‘Nathan was just getting out of his car with the aforesaid nymph sitting in the passenger seat, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Nathan was doing a good imitation of a protective father figure but he didn’t fool me for a second. I take it she’s living in?’
Melanie nodded, and so did Jade. Slowly. Cynically.
‘I’ll bet she’s not the same innocent young thing today that she was a couple of weeks ago.’
‘I wouldn’t bet too heavily on that,’ Melanie said. ‘Gemma’s a strong-minded young woman with a wealth of character.’
‘She’ll need to be,’ Jade muttered, surprised by Melanie’s defence of this Gemma. And her confidence in the girl’s will-power. Despite her deadpan exterior, Melanie was still a woman. She couldn’t be ignorant of the magnetism of Nathan’s sex appeal, even if only as an observer. The answer to the housekeeper’s high opinion of the girl had to lie in the girl herself.
‘So tell me about her,’ Jade resumed, her curiosity piqued. ‘Where did Nathan come across this gem of a Gemma?’
Melanie looked up. ‘Careful...your claws are showing.’
Jade laughed, recognising the truth of this statement. Her feelings for Nathan perhaps weren’t as vanquished as she’d thought they were.
‘OK, OK,’ she agreed. ‘I sound like a jealous cat. So where does she come from?’
‘Lightning Ridge.’
‘The opal town way out back of Bourke?’
‘That’s the one. Nathan was out there buying opals for Byron and Gemma sold him some. It seems her father had just been accidentally killed—fell down a mine shaft—and she was selling up everything to come to Sydney. Nathan made her the offer of a job if she ever needed one.’
‘Which she took him up on, of course,’ Jade said ruefully. ‘What girl wouldn’t, after meeting Nathan? Say no more, I get the picture entirely.’
The housekeeper’s sigh sounded exasperated.
‘You can sigh, Melanie, but I saw the way that girl looked at Nathan the other week. Are you telling me she’s not smitten by our resident Casanova?’
‘All I’m saying is that she’s not a pushover.’
‘Meaning I am?’
Melanie gave her a sharp look. ‘Don’t go putting words into my mouth, Jade. You know better than anyone what sort of girl you are. I wouldn’t dream of making such a judgement. I’ve only known you two years, six months of which you haven’t even been living in this house. You weren’t home much, even when you were living here.’
Jade’s laugh was wry. ‘I don’t need to live here in person for you to have found out all the dirt on me. My mother used to adore telling everyone how bad I was. And it’s all true. The climbing out of windows to meet boys in the middle of the night when I was only fifteen. Everything! I’m a bad ‘un, Melanie. No doubt about it.’
‘You and I both know you’re not nearly as bad as you pretend to be, Jade,’ Melanie astonished her by saying. ‘Your teenage rebellions were revenge on your parents for their supposed lack of love, as well as some other imagined—or even real—transgressions.’
‘My,’ Jade returned caustically, ‘What are you? The resident psychoanalyst around here?’
‘I’ve had my share of experience with analysis,’ Melanie said with not a flicker of retaliatory emotion.
Sympathy for this sad, soul-dead creature replaced Jade’s anger. She knew about Melanie’s past, how her husband and baby son had been killed in a car accident right before her eyes. It had been a horrific tragedy.
Yet while Jade could appreciate the numbing effect that would have on any wife and mother, it had been years now, for heaven’s sake. Time to live again. Either that or put yourself out of your misery and throw yourself off a cliff or something.
Jade knew she herself would never commit suicide. She refused to let life get her that down. Life was meant to be lived, and, goddammit, she was going to live hers. To hell with her father, and Nathan, and even what had happened last night. And to hell with her mother. Irene was already probably in hell, anyway!
‘Are you all right, Jade?’ Melanie asked.
‘Yes, of course.’ She blinked rapidly, then tossed her head in memory of when her hair had recently been long and brown. After Nathan’s rejection she had gone out and had most of her hair cut off, the remainder dyed whipped-cream blonde, shaved at the sides and spiked on top. Oddly, the outrageous style and colour suited her. Men now pursued her even more than they had before. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied blithely.
‘You don’t look fine. You look terrible.’
‘Oh, that’s just because of the sleeping tablets I took last night. They always leave me dopey the next day.’
‘You shouldn’t be taking sleeping tablets,’ Melanie reproached seriously. ‘You shouldn’t even have them in your possession. They’re like having a loaded gun around. People say they never mean to shoot anyone but if they didn’t own a gun they couldn’t. Same thing with sleeping tablets.’
Jade stared at the housekeeper, and wondered if she had once overdosed on sleeping tablets. Unexpectedly, Jade felt the urge to try to make friends with this woman whom she’d always pitied but never really liked. Now, she wanted to extend the hand of friendship, to see if she could help her in some way. But what to say, how to start? They were hardly of the same generation. Melanie had to be over thirty. If not, she sure looked it!
‘Let’s not talk of nasties,’ Jade started up in her best breezy voice. ‘How’s things going with Auntie Ava? I presume she’s up in that studio of hers, fantasising about Prince Charming sweeping into her life on a white charger. Has she finished any of those infernal paintings of hers, yet?’
‘I would have thought your first concern would be your father, Jade, not your aunt.’
‘I said no nasties, remember. Hopefully, Pops will stay put in that hospital a while longer. I can just about tolerate visiting him there. It’s rather amusing seeing him trussed up in that pristine white bed with his leg in a sling. Of course, I haven’t seen him for over a fortnight. We had the most frightful row over my appearance and that was that. What’s he done? Has he been a bad boy? Banged up his leg again trying to seduce one of the nurses? He certainly wouldn’t have tried it on the matron. What a tartar that woman is!’
Melanie smiled at Jade’s ravings, shocking Jade. Why, the woman was quite striking when she smiled, with dazzling white teeth and eyes like glittering jet jewels. Not only striking, but sensual. The mock scenario of Byron trying to seduce the nurses seemed to have tickled the housekeeper’s fancy, lending a decidedly sexy flavour to her smile.
Now Jade was floored. Melanie... Sexy? The idea was preposterous. And yet...
Jade looked at the housekeeper, really looked at her, mentally stripping away that shapeless black dress, trying to see the real woman behind the sexless façde. Her slender shoulders were broad, her breasts full, her waist and hips trim. And when she bent down over the dishwasher, her buttocks showed shapely and firm through the black gabardine. Her knees—what Jade could see of them—were very nice indeed. As were her ankles. Those ghastly thick beige stockings distracted from, but not entirely hid, the slender coltish lines of the legs inside them.
Jade tried to imagine what Melanie would look like in a slinky black dress, scarlet gloss on that sultry mouth of hers and sexy earrings swinging around that long white neck she had. Everyone’s eyes round Belleview would fall right out of their sockets, her father included. He wouldn’t recognise his prim and proper housekeeper.