Close Relations

Cover Page

Except

Dedication

Title Page

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

Copyright

“Don’t play your sexy games with me,”

Jarrod said hoarsely.

Georgia’s lips parted with involuntary provocation and her tongue tip moistened her dry mouth. She lifted her hand to rest it gently along his jaw, moved her fingers to trace the outline of his mouth.

“Leave it, Georgia, for both our sakes. Unless you want to take the consequences.”

His words cut through her and the old wounds bled, transporting her agonizingly back in time. She was that naive, trusting, so-in-love nineteen-year-old again. “Don’t you want me, Jarrod?”

“Want you? Oh, yes, I want you, Georgia. That’s one of the jokes of my life. I’ll go on wanting you with every breath…”

LYNSEY STEVENS was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in Australia, and before beginning to write she was a librarian. It was in secondary school that she decided she wanted to be a writer. “Writers, I imagined,” Lynsey explains, “lived such exciting lives-traveling to exotic places, making lots of money and not having to work. I have traveled. However, the taxman loves me dearly and no one told me about typist’s backache and frustrating lost words!” When she’s not writing she enjoys reading and cross-stitching and she’s interested in genealogy.

Close Relations

Lynsey Stevens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

JARROD took the new exit off the main Brisbane to Ipswich highway and approached the roundabout. There weren’t many people about but he remembered that at certain times of the day this area could become chock-a-block with local traffic.

The small shopping centre had mushroomed in the four years he’d been away and he grimaced. It was hardly the sleepy little town it had been when his father had first brought him here when he had been a troubled thirteen-year-old.

He accelerated out of the turn and took the right fork past the Honour Stone. On his right was the small group of businesses that used to constitute the sum total of the village’s commercial centre. Groceries. Fruit shop. Drapery. Bank.

A car shot out of the parking area in front of the shops and sped up the hill. That much hadn’t changed. Disaster Alley they’d half-jokingly called it. One car tried to leave and other shoppers vied aggressively for the vacant parking space.

He followed the winding road lined with houses that ranged from the wooden Queenslanders with their wide verandas to the aesthetic angles of architectural designs in brick and tile. Rolling paddocks had now well and truly become sprawling suburbia.

At least the fifty acres around his father’s home would still be intact. His father would never sell his land. Apart from the one block he’d sold to his best friend, Geoff Grayson. And his wife. Why wouldn’t his father want Geoff Grayson’s wife nearby? he asked himself bitterly.

Pushing a surge of painful memories out of his mind, he increased the speed of the car, for the first time wanting to see the large old house that had been home to him for his adolescence. And that need overcame his reluctance to revisit his father and stepmother-the family he had turned his back on four years ago.

His father. He’d never managed to call Peter Maclean that. And yet Peter Maclean was his biological father. A mere accident of conception, one of nature’s jokes, he reflected wryly. without bitterness.

He’d learned the truth about his parentage just before his mother died of cancer. She’d told him of the brief affair she’d had with the handsome Queenslander. Peter Maclean had been visiting Western Australia as a consulting engineer and his mother had been the temporary secretary assigned to him.

Three weeks later Peter Maclean had left for home, unaware that the young woman he’d spent most of his time with in Perth was pregnant. His mother had had no inclination to contact his father and had decided to raise her son alone.

And she’d done her best to do so. When he’d questioned his mother about his absent father she had told him his father was dead, killed in a construction-site accident before he was bom.

The construction-site accident had been partially true, he’d learned later. The accident had happened after he was born but his father had not been killed: Peter Maclean had returned to the west some years later only to be very badly injured when a mobile crane collapsed on a building he was working on.

At first he’d been blazingly angry when his mother had told him the truth-that his father was alive. He’d been angry with everyone, especially with his mother for lying to him and for getting ill. And he’d been angry with the man he’d seen as shirking his responsibilities.

His anger had driven him to reckless behaviour. He’d played truant, become wild and uncontrollable, and he’d had a run-in with the local police. It had been the local police sergeant who had contacted his father when his mother had died.

In retrospect he had to admire Peter Maclean. It must have come as something of a shock to discover he’d got a teenage son, let alone to have the boy foisted on him out of the blue. But Peter had flown immediately to Perth and had spent a couple of weeks getting to know his son before bringing him home.

Home. He sighed. Strangely, all those years ago it had felt like coming home.

Home. Where the heart is. Where his heart was broken. His lips twisted self-derisively. He was being rather fanciful, wasn’t he? Yet deep inside him he knew he’d left his heart here. He also told himself that if it hadn’t been for his father’s declining health he wouldn’t be returning. But his father was gravely ill and he owed him this visit, this accepting of the olive branch extended to the prodigal son.

Home. Yes, for all that it was worth, he was coming home.

Home. Georgia Grayson sighed as her workmate turned her car and pulled up on the gravel verge in front of the weathered old house. Home at last.

She specially appreciated the lift tonight because she felt so exhausted, as though the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. Usually when she was at work in the bookshop Georgia could put any troubles on hold, but not at the moment. She had too much on her mind-that was the problem. Everything seemed to have happened at once.

Until recently her life had been drifting along just the way she liked it to be-well ordered, no highs, no lows. Now all that had changed.

That change had begun two weeks ago, when her father had gone up the coast, taking on a house-renovation job that would keep him away for anything up to a couple of months. Then her parked car had been extensively damaged by a runaway truck, leaving her without transport.

On top of that her young sister had announced she was leaving home to share a flat with her boyfriend. Morgan was only seventeen and unemployed and Georgia had tried valiantly to dissuade her, to convince her she was making a mistake.

But last week the thing she had feared most had occurred. Uncle Peter Maclean had had another massive heart attack and his condition was grave. It was only the old man’s iron will that had kept him alive this long. Now even that strong will was fading.

So his only son had come home. After four long years. And she knew he’d been back for nearly a week.

Pain twisted inside Georgia, clutching at her heart. Miraculously she’d managed to be out on the two occasions he had called at their house but she knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid him for much longer. He was, after all, their cousin. Well, their step-cousin.

‘Thanks for dropping me home, Jodie,’ she said as she opened the door of her workmate’s car. ‘Saves me the twentyminute train trip and then a taxi ride to the house.’

‘No worries.’ Jodie grinned in the dim interior light. ‘It was rotten luck about your car.’

‘Could have been worse, I guess. I could have been in it at the time.’ Georgia smiled wryly. ‘But the insurance company assures me it will all be settled in a couple of weeks.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Famous last words. If you can believe them. I didn’t realise how much I depended on the car. Living out here off the bus route has decided disadvantages, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, I don’t mind giving you a lift when we’re on the same shift.’ Jodie glanced over at the lighted house. ‘Looks like your brother’s home,’ she said casually, and Georgia suppressed a smile.

Jodie was a little smitten by Georgia’s brother and had been very disappointed to discover that Lochlan was already engaged.

‘Did he tell you we went along to see his band play the other night?’

‘Yes. He said he’d seen you.’ Georgia gathered up her bag.

‘The band’s really hot. I think they’re going places. Lockie said they’d been asked to return to the venue for another stint in a month or so.’

‘Yes. He was pleased.’ Georgia climbed out of the car. ‘See you tomorrow. And thanks again, Jodie.’ She closed the door and Jodie drove away.

With a sigh Georgia pushed open the gate. What females saw in her brother she didn’t know. It was true that Lockie was quite nice-looking, and he was a fine musician, but-well, they didn’t have to live with him.

The lights in the house were blazing so her brother must be home. She noticed his van wasn’t standing in its usual spot in the driveway so he’d probably parked it around the back of the house. Unless he’d gone off and forgotten to lock up again.

Slowly Georgia climbed the steps, the old weathered treads rattling a little loosely on their wooden stringers. The house, a high-set old colonial building with a wide veranda on the front and down one side, badly needed attention, but their father always seemed to be busy working on other people’s houses.

She pushed open the lattice door at the top of the stairs and crossed the veranda to step into the hall that ran the length of the house.

‘That you, Georgie?’ Her brother put his head around the living-room doorway. ‘I thought you were going to be late tonight.’

Georgia joined him, tossing her bag onto an old but comfortable lounge chair, unbuttoning the short-sleeved navy jacket that matched the skirt she wore. ‘Don’t call me Georgie and I am late. It’s nine-thirty. And I would have been later if Jodie hadn’t been kind enough to give me a lift home. Where’s Mandy?’

Lockie sighed despondently and Georgia noticed for the first time that her usually exuberant brother was uncharacteristically subdued.

He was six feet tall and wore his fairish hair over-long, and his thin, artistic features made him look the musician he was. And although Lockie was nearly five years older than Georgia’s twenty-three years, at times she felt as if things were the other way around, that she was the older of the two.

Amanda Burne, Lockie’s fiancee of six months and the lead singer in his band, Country Blues, lived with the Grayson family and had a part-time job as a waitress in a local restaurant.

‘I didn’t think Mandy was working tonight,’ Georgia prompted.

‘She wasn’t-and as a matter of fact she won’t be, it seems.’ Lockie grimaced and sank onto the arm of the chair opposite his sister. ‘She’s gone home.’

Georgia raised her eyebrows. ‘To New Zealand?’

‘I put her on a plane a couple of hours ago.’

‘Lockie, what happened?’ Georgia asked him quietly.

‘No big deal.’ Lockie shrugged. ‘Her sister’s baby arrived early and she’s gone home to help out.’

‘Is that all it is?’ Georgia asked him. She knew that Lockie and Mandy had been at odds over what Mandy termed ‘Lockie’s lack of drive’.

‘Well, you know how motivated Mandy is.’ Lockie stood up and moved restlessly across the room. ‘She’s sort of used this family event to issue me with a bit of an ultimatum.’

Georgia frowned. ‘What sort of an ultimatum? You don’t mean she’s called off the engagement, do you?’

‘No. Not exactly. You know she hasn’t been happy about—well, about things lately, and she wants some changes made.’

‘By “things” I suppose you mean the band?’

He nodded and Georgia watched him as he continued to prowl about the room.

‘Mandy says we’ve been going nowhere and she’s sick and tired of all the two-bit gigs Country Blues has been doing. She wants me to get organised and work out a plan to get the band ahead, otherwise…’ He pursed his lips.

‘Otherwise?’ Georgia encouraged gently.

‘Otherwise she’s going to leave Country Blues and take up an offer from a group in Sydney. She has a month to decide on the Sydney offer and she’s going to make the decision when she comes back from New Zealand in a few weeks’ time.’

‘And if she takes the job in Sydney?’

‘Then I guess we’re all washed up. The band because we need a female lead singer, and Mandy and I because-well, just because.’ Lockie looked down at his hands.

‘Do you want to break your engagement?’ Georgia asked him.

Lockie sat down again, his long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘What do you think, Georgie? You know how I feel about Mandy. I want to marry her and if I had the money I’d do it tomorrow-you know that.’

‘Then for heaven’s sake do something about it. You can’t just sit back and hope it will all come good, Lockie. I know how Mandy feels too, and I can understand it. You’ve dragged her around the countryside in that clapped-out old van barely making ends meet. You must see it can’t go on for ever.’

‘But you have to pay your dues in this business and it’s the only business I want to be in. My music is my life.’

‘And Mandy knows that, but it doesn’t mean she has to forfeit what she wants from life. There has to be some compromise.’

‘I guess. And I suppose I was expecting too much of her. I thought perhaps I wasn’t ready for marriage but when I tried to imagine my life without Mandy I knew I couldn’t give her up. And I don’t want to, Georgia.’ Lockie looked at her directly.

‘So what are you going to do?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What about that chance of doing the recording you were talking about last week?’

‘With D.J. Delaney and Skyrocket Records? That was all talk, sis. We’d need to be seen and heard to even stand a chance. We can’t just front up and say, Here we are. We wouldn’t get past the front desk.’ He stood up again and crossed to the window. ‘We’d have to get an engagement at somewhere like the Country Music Club in Ipswich.’ His thin features brightened. ‘Now, if we could get to work there it would be a stepping stone to anything-recording, television-who knows?’

‘Then try for it, Lockie,’ Georgia encouraged, and he gave a short laugh.

‘Oh, sure, sis. Just walk in and offer the services of the best popular country band in Oz? They’d say, Country Blues who?’

‘Why not?’ Georgia could almost laugh at herself. Who was she to be offering such earth-shattering advice? She could barely help herself when she had to. She hurriedly pushed that thought out of her mind with an ease borne of an old habit. ‘What alternative do you have, Lockie?’

He shook his head. ‘Right. About none, I’d say.’ He pulled a face but before he could comment further the phone rang and Georgia leant across to lift the receiver.

‘Hello?’ she said tiredly.

‘Georgia? Thank goodness it’s you. Can you come and get me?’

‘Morgan!’ Georgia could hear the agitation in her young sister’s voice. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Do we have to go into that now? I just want to come home.’ Morgan’s voice rose. ‘Is Lockie there? Can you come in his van?’

‘Yes, of course. But why? Where’s Steve?’

‘He’s gone out and I don’t want to be here when he gets back. We had a fight.’

‘What about?’ Georgia raised her hand to massage her tern ple. The headache that had been threatening all day now really made its presence felt, beginning to pound relentlessly.

‘For heaven’s sake, Georgia!’ Morgan exclaimed shrilly. ‘It was just a fight. Can’t we leave it at that?’ She sighed loudly. ‘If you must know, Steve hit me and I’m not staying here another day.’

‘Steve what?’ Georgia asked in dismay.

‘If you don’t come and get me, Georgia, I’ll start walking.’

‘You can’t do that at this time of night—’ Georgia began.

‘Then come and get me.’

‘All right Wait there. We should be down in about thirty minutes. And Morgan—’

‘Not now, Georgia,’ Morgan broke in. ‘I’ll explain later. I just want to get away from here, OK? So hurry.’ With that the young girl hung up.

‘What was all that about?’ Lockie came to stand beside Georgia as she replaced the receiver.

‘Morgan wants us to go and get her. She wants to come home,’ she explained.

‘Oh, great. That’s all we need.’ Lockie threw his hands in the air.

‘She said she had a fight with Steve and he hit her.’

‘Steve? I don’t believe it!’ Lockie exclaimed. ‘Morgan probably hit him first’

‘Oh, Lockie, please.’ Georgia ran a hand over her forehead. ‘We’ll have to go and get her. I’ll lock up while you bring the van around.’ She went to pick up her bag.

‘The van’s not here.’

Georgia stopped. ‘Not here?’

Her brother shook his head. ‘Andy and Ken have got it. Remember I told you Andy’s landlord had complained about his drum-practising? Well, he got another place and they borrowed my van to shift his stuff after I took Mandy out to the airport. I don’t know when they’ll be back.’

Georgia’s stomach churned, her tiredness forgotten. ‘Then we’ll have to call a taxi.’ She turned back to the phone, mentally tallying up how much money she had left out of her pay.

Lockie put his hand on her arm. ‘It’s OK, Georgie. We won’t need a taxi.’

Georgia raised her eyebrows and he coughed nervously. ‘Jarrod’s coming over. He can drive us down to collect Morgan.’

Georgia froze. She felt as though she’d been transformed into stone. And then she turned her head slowly to face her brother. ‘Why is he…?’ Her voice faltered and died.

‘Why wouldn’t he, Georgia?’ Lockie asked quietly, his gaze holding hers. ‘He’s my best friend and he’s just returned from the States.’

Georgia fought gallantly to pull herself together as she continued to gaze at her brother. And it was taking more than a little effort to still her galloping pulse, to dislodge the breath that had caught somewhere in her chest.

‘Jarrod hasn’t seen you yet,’ Lockie continued, ‘and when I told him you’d be home after nine-thirty he said he’d drop by.’

‘I see.’ Georgia took a calming breath. ‘And I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might not want to see him.’

‘You can’t live in the past, sis. Four years is a long time, and besides, you’ll have to face him some time.’

Four years ago she’d told him hell would freeze over before she’d want to set eyes on him again.

‘He’s changed a bit,’ Lockie was saying. ‘He looks older.’ He smiled a little awkwardly. ‘I told him he was getting quite long in the tooth.’

At that moment they both heard the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel verge in front of the house.

She couldn’t face him! You’ve had four years to recover from his duplicity, a cruel voice reminded her, and she drew a shallow breath.

‘Here he is now.’ Lockie stated the obvious and his long fingers gently squeezed her arm. ‘And, as I said, what’s past is past. It is, isn’t it, Georgia?’

She nodded resignedly. If only that were true. ‘I suppose it is,’ she agreed. ‘And we do have to get Morgan. It’s lucky he…Jarrod…’ the name almost stuck in her throat ‘…was coming over,’ she finished breathily.

Jarrod. There, she’d said his name. For the first time in four years she’d said his name, the sound of it so foreign…and yet so achingly, so hauntingly well-known.

Well-known? She almost laughed out loud. Well-known in what sense? In every sense, she told herself ruthlessly. How could she forget his name? Or him? Jarrod. Jarrod Peter Maclean. Uncle Peter Maclean’s only son.

‘Georgia?’ Lockie touched her arm again and she blinked, coming back to the present with a jolt.

‘Yes. We should go,’ she said softly, and moved into the hallway.

‘Right.’ Lockie sounded relieved and headed towards the open front door as a tall figure was taking the steps two at a time with long-legged ease.

‘Hi, Lockie.’ He smiled a greeting, unaware of Georgia standing like a statue behind her brother.

She made herself move, face him, and her entire body remained numb for just a few seconds. And then it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Her heartbeats accelerated, sending heated blood rushing through her veins. Her hands wanted to reach out to him, to follow the hard lines of his strong jaw, feel the smoothness of his freshly shaved cheek. And her lips longed to taste his again.

With no little effort she pulled her wayward thoughts away from their traitorous yearnings and made herself meet his gaze.

His blue eyes looked black in the dim light yet Georgia was sure she saw them flicker with the same awareness she knew she felt at the sight of him, and she quelled a moment’s heady delight.

‘Hello, Georgia,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m sorry to be calling at this hour but Lockie said you were working late tonight. Until now I’ve always seemed to miss you.’

‘And as it turns out it’s lucky you did turn up.’ Lockie broke into the heavy atmosphere that seemed to Georgia to be pressing in on them as they stood on the wide veranda. ‘Do you think you could run us down to Oxley? We’ve just had a frantic call from Morgan and she wants us to bring her home.’

‘Sure.’ Jarrod drew his gaze from Georgia and turned back to Lockie. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Morgan. She’s one big problem—’ Lockie began.

‘And we’d better be going. I did tell Morgan we’d be there in half an hour.’ Georgia took a stiff step forward. “That is, if you wouldn’t mind, Jarrod. We could get a taxi.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ he said easily as he turned to retrace his steps.

They were almost down the wide front steps when Lockie stopped. ‘I’d better leave a note on the door for Andy just in case he drops the van back before we return. I won’t be a moment.’ He returned to the house.

And Georgia could only continue on alone with Jarrod. Down the path. To the car.

CHAPTER TWO

JARROD was using one of the company station wagons, ‘Maclean Constructions’ emblazoned on the side, and he reached around to open the front passenger door for her.

Georgia’s nerve-endings were jangling and her stomach churned. She could barely stand, let alone move to get into the car. So she stood there, and after a tense moment of interminable length Jarrod seemed to relax, leaning back, one arm resting along the top of the door.

‘Lockie tells me your father’s up the coast. How is he these days?’

‘You mean, is he drinking?’ The words were out before she could draw them back and she sensed the tightening of Jarrod’s lips in the darkness.

‘No, I wasn’t asking that,’ he said levelly. ‘Peter told me your father hasn’t touched alcohol for years.’