In Her Husband's Image

Only it was no ghost. It was a solid, flesh-and-blood male. A male with the same handsome, square-jawed face, the same piercing gray eyes, the same whip-hard, broad-shouldered frame, the same unruly dark hair and deeply bronzed skin.

The same man, she realized in shock, who’d fooled her five years ago, to her eternal shame, who’d made her feel things she’d never felt before or since, who’d haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours for the past five years.

Zac Hammond, her late husband’s identical twin brother. The brother she’d met only one time, on that fateful night, and saw again every time she looked at her son.

Dear Reader,

Well, it’s that time of year again—and if those beautiful buds of April are any indication, you’re in the mood for love! And what better way to sustain that mood than with our latest six Special Edition novels? We open the month with the latest installment of Sherryl Woods’s MILLION DOLLAR DESTINIES series, Priceless. When a pediatric oncologist who deals with life and death on a daily basis meets a sick child’s football hero, she thinks said hero can make the little boy’s dreams come true. But little does she know that he can make hers a reality, as well! Don’t miss this compelling story….

MERLYN COUNTY MIDWIVES continues with Maureen Child’s Forever…Again, in which a man who doesn’t believe in second chances has a change of mind—not to mention heart—when he meets the beautiful new public relations guru at the midwifery clinic. In Cattleman’s Heart by Lois Faye Dyer, a businesswoman assigned to help a struggling rancher finds that business is the last thing on her mind when she sees the shirtless cowboy meandering toward her! And Susan Mallery’s popular DESERT ROGUES are back! In The Sheik & the Princess in Waiting, a woman learns that the man she loved in college has two secrets: 1) he’s a prince; and 2) they’re married! Next, can a pregnant earthy vegetarian chef find happiness with town’s resident playboy, an admitted carnivore…and father of her child? Find out in The Best of Both Worlds by Elissa Ambrose. And in Vivienne Wallington’s In Her Husband’s Image, a widow confronted with her late husband’s twin brother is forced to decide, as she looks in the eyes of her little boy, if some secrets are worth keeping.

So enjoy the beginnings of spring, and all six of these wonderful books! And don’t forget to come back next month for six new compelling reads from Silhouette Special Edition.

Happy reading!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

In Her Husband’s Image

Vivienne Wallington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For John

VIVIENNE WALLINGTON

lives in Melbourne, Australia. Previously a librarian and children’s writer, she now writes romance full-time. Reading, family and travel are her other main interests. She has written nineteen Harlequin Romance novels under the pseudonym Elizabeth Duke and now writes for Silhouette Books under her real name. Vivienne and her husband, John, have a daughter and son and five wonderful grandchildren. She would love to hear from readers, who can write to her c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279 or e-mail viv.wallington@bigpond.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Rachel Hammond: Her husband’s death had put her in charge of their family cattle station, Yarrah Downs, and she was determined to make it a success. But Zac, her handsome as sin and twice as tempting brother-in-law, kept intruding on her thougths….

Zac Hammond: In the wake of his brother’s death this nomadic photographer had finally come home and found Rachel, the one woman who made him yearn to settle down. But the flaxen-haired beauty was a forbidden desire.

Mikey Hammond: An adventuresome little boy sorely in need of a father figure…one he found in his uncle Zac. They shared the same wild streak—and love for Rachel. Little did they know their bond went even deeper than that.

The Saboteur: The nameless, faceless enemy bent on destroying Yarrah Downs. Rachel and Zac would stop at nothing to save the cattle station. If only they knew who it was they were fighting.

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 One

“Mummy, will you buy me a gun for my birfday? Then I can go out shooting wild pigs with Vince.”

Rachel nearly fell over. “Mikey, you’re only three years old—”

“I’ll be four in three more sleeps. Vince says I can’t go out shooting wif him till I get my own gun.”

Rachel silently cursed her head stockman for not telling her son outright that guns and wild-boar hunting were only for grown-ups. Maybe when Vince had children of his own, he’d have more sense. “He meant when you were grown up, Mikey. Only grown-ups can use guns. Come and help me feed the chickens. And let’s see how many eggs we can find.”

“Okay.” Mikey brightened and ran on ahead with Buster, his frisky Blue Heeler.

Rachel vowed to have a word with Vince the minute he returned from checking the water bores. She was already peeved with the sandy-haired stockman for not consulting her more on station matters and making decisions that were rightfully hers. She was in charge here at Yarrah Downs now that her husband was gone, not Vince.

But of course Vince didn’t expect her to stay on here. Nobody did. Widows with young children weren’t usually interested or capable of running outback cattle stations. Especially pampered city-born widows.

Rachel glowered into the dust. The lack of any good spring or summer rains and the continuing hot dry spell was the last straw. If they didn’t get some real rain soon, the already low dams would dry up, the parched paddocks would run out of feed and they’d be in even bigger trouble than they already were. A couple of brand-new water bores would help, but she simply couldn’t afford them.

As she trudged after Mikey, she heard a light plane coming in. Her father wouldn’t fly up here today, surely, three days before Mikey’s birthday. He would never stay at Yarrah Downs overnight, let alone for three nights. He hated the outback, and besides, he was always far too busy running Barrington’s.

Her frown deepened. Had he flown up here expressly to try again to talk her into selling and coming back to Sydney? Hedley Barrington never gave up!

She could hear him already. “This is no place for a woman without a husband, or a boy without a father. You can’t possibly run this huge, isolated place on your own, Rachel, now that Adrian’s gone. Nobody would expect you to.”

She kept telling him that she intended to try, that Yarrah Downs was her home, and Mikey’s, too. But she never got through.

“And what about Barrington’s? You’re my only child, Rachel. Running our chain of department stores is what you trained for and what I’ve always counted on. I won’t live forever—you lost your mother last year and I’m five years older than she was. I want you to come back and help me run Barrington’s so you’ll be ready to take over when I retire…or shuffle off altogether.”

“Dad, I belong here. I love it here. I feel free and at peace. I never felt like that back in Sydney. I felt stifled…suffocated…trapped in a life I didn’t want.”

“Rot! You always had everything you could possibly want and all the freedom you could need. I even let you go off and travel the world, on the understanding you’d come back when I needed you. I even let you marry that hick Queensland cattleman of yours against my better judgment. But he’s dead now. There’s no need for you to stay here any longer. I’m the one who needs you now.”

“But I want to stay. I’m going to stay. Out here in the bush I can breathe. I feel alive.”

“How can anyone breathe or feel alive in this heat? In these harsh conditions, without a husband to help you, how can you possibly survive? It won’t get any easier, taking on the sole responsibility yourself—it’ll get harder, the longer you stay. Don’t expect any help from me. I want you back home!”

Rachel kicked up the dust at her feet, shutting her mind to her father’s endless arguments. Was she about to hear them all over again?

“I’ll just go and see who it is,” she called out to Mikey. “You stay with Buster. You can start gathering eggs, but be careful with them!”

The sealed airstrip that Adrian had put in a year or so after Mikey was born and the light plane that had just arrived were out of sight from here. Maybe it wasn’t her father. Come to think of it, it hadn’t sounded like his Citation jet. Or any kind of jet. One of her neighbors, maybe? Or someone from the bank, heaven forbid! They’d already clamped down on her credit. What next? As if she didn’t have enough problems!

She cut across the yard, skirting around the sprawling ranch-style homestead with its shady, vine-covered veranda that still held humiliating memories she hadn’t been able to shake, even after all this time.

Her visitor should have had time by now to trudge up from the airstrip. She quickened her steps, weaving through the thick shrubbery and gum trees overhanging the garden path.

A man appeared. She stopped, her eyes drawn to his face. A whooshing sensation swept through her, as if the lifeblood was draining from her.

For a disorienting second, she felt as if she’d come face-to-face with the ghost of her dead husband!

Only, it was no ghost. It was solid, flesh-and-blood male. A male with the same handsome, square-jawed face, the same piercing gray eyes, the same whip-hard, broad-shouldered frame, the same unruly dark hair and deeply bronzed skin.

The same man, she realized in shock, who’d fooled her five years ago, to her eternal shame, who’d made her feel things she’d never felt before or since, who’d haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours for the past five years, even as she’d tried to despise him, to blot out the shameful memory of him.

Zac Hammond, her late husband’s identical twin brother. The brother she’d met only that one time, on that one fateful night, and saw again every time she looked at her son, Mikey.

She began to tremble. “You’re a little late.” Her voice cracked, but attack seemed the only way to deal with this latest, totally unexpected bolt from the blue. “Your brother’s funeral was a month ago.”

Adrian’s lawyer had notified his absent twin brother of the tragedy, sending Zac word in plenty of time to attend the funeral if he’d wanted to come. When Zac had failed to turn up, she’d assumed he wasn’t coming back at all. And she’d been relieved. Relieved and irked and bitter and angry, all at the same time.

But mostly she’d been relieved. It was one less problem she would have to deal with. Facing him again, dealing with what his return home would mean…

“I was stuck in a remote part of Zaire, out of contact.” His impassive tone gave nothing away. “I headed home as soon as I heard.”

But too late…

She drew in her lips. It was so like the excuse he’d used five years ago when he’d finally made the effort to come home after missing his brother’s wedding, not by a day or two, but five months. Zac, Adrian had complained on the rare occasions he’d mentioned his estranged, footloose brother, always put his work and his own needs first. He always had and always would.

Zac’s priorities, she’d come to realize, were himself first, family last, morals nonexistent. Well, she knew all about Zac Hammond’s morals. And she’d do well to remember the kind of man he was. She felt her cheeks heating. Had her own morals been so squeaky-clean?

But she’d had an excuse. Not knowing Adrian had an identical twin, she’d mistaken the man on her veranda that night for her husband of five months, thinking he’d come home early from his two-week cattle-buying trip down south. The darkness, the hot steamy night and her own foolish romantic yearnings and frustrations had done the rest.

“I wasn’t sure I’d find you still here.” Zac’s sun-sharpened eyes narrowed, raking over her in a way that made her feel he was undressing her, just as he had on that highly charged moonlit night. She took an unsteady step back, another rash of tremors quivering through her. She willed them away, maddened that a mere look could still spark a reaction.

“Oh, you thought I’d have bolted back to the city by now, did you?” Just like everyone else, she thought, eyeing him coldly. Not a word of sympathy on the loss of her husband, his own twin brother. Did he think that after the shameful way she’d thrown herself at him the last time he was here, she didn’t deserve his sympathy? Did he still believe she’d known all along who he was?

She clenched her hands in suppressed fury, offering him no sympathy, either. He didn’t deserve it. He and Adrian might have been identical twins, but they’d never been close, never had time for each other, never had a single thing in common.

“If you thought I’d already gone back to Sydney, why did you come back to Yarrah Downs?” The second the words were out of her mouth, the answer struck her. He wanted to see what he could salvage from his twin brother’s estate. From his old family home.

Maybe he even had thoughts of buying the property himself if it came up for sale.

Not to live here permanently, of course. Zac, with his remote work in the wilds, wasn’t the settling-down type. But having lived here in the past, he might still have some sentimental attachment to Yarrah Downs and want to keep it in the Hammond family. The vast central Queensland property had belonged to their father, Michael, and to their grandfather before that, before it passed to Adrian.

He could always put a manager in charge in his lengthy absences. Vince would be a prime candidate for manager.

Her breath burned in her throat. The sooner she disillusioned Zac the better! “Well, as you can see, I am still here. And I intend to stay. But you’re welcome to a bite of lunch before you go. How did you know, by the way, that we had an airstrip here now?”

Five years ago, he’d been driving a rented four-wheel-drive vehicle that had fooled her into thinking it was Adrian’s when it pulled up outside the homestead. As he’d fooled her when she first set eyes on him in the heady moonlit darkness.

Zac quirked an eyebrow. “I checked when I landed in Brisbane to see how far things had progressed here over the past five years. Nearly five, to be precise.”

Rachel’s skin broke out in a prickly sweat. Oh, my God, he remembered it was just under five years ago! Four years, nine and a half months, to be exact.

She thought of Mikey and felt a flare of panic. Would Zac guess the truth when he saw her son? Their son? But how could he know or guess, even if he saw the amazing likeness? Mikey was the spitting image of the only father he’d ever known—her husband, Adrian, Zac’s identical twin brother.

“I didn’t know you could fly a plane,” she said, quick to change the subject.

“I got my pilot’s license four years ago. It’s handy to know how to fly when you do a fair bit of flying in small planes.”

She shivered, having a sudden vivid image of the life Zac must have been leading over the past years—the dangers, the isolation, the remote areas he must have ventured into to photograph his wild animals. And the lack of human contact, the lack of responsibility to anyone but himself. A reckless, irresponsible adventurer, Adrian had called his brother.

But at least, by burying himself in the wilds, Zac wasn’t hurting anyone but himself. He only hurt people when he came back to civilization.

She scowled. She must keep remembering that, remembering how unthinking and unscrupulous he was. Already, just by seeing him again, she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel, things she mustn’t feel.

“So you’re still living and working in the perilous wilds? You haven’t married and settled down, obviously.” Regretting the comment the moment it left her lips, she swung her gaze to the sky, pretending an interest in a brilliant scarlet-and-blue parrot overhead. What did she care what Zac was doing with his life? She just wanted him to go.

Not waiting for an answer, she said briskly, “Well, I guess you’ll want to return your charter plane before dark, so we’d better stop prattling and have some lunch.”

“I don’t need to return the plane for a couple of days. I was hoping—having found you still here—that you might put me up for a night or two.”

His words stopped her in her tracks. Let him stay here overnight? Possibly two nights? This was getting worse by the second! To have him sleeping under the same roof! But how could she refuse? He was her late husband’s brother after all, and alienated as the two brothers had been, Zac must have felt something at the loss of his twin.

She gulped hard and came up with a compromise. “I guess you could bunk down here, just for tonight.” It wasn’t very gracious, but what did he expect after what had happened the last time he was here?

She almost moaned aloud. She’d tried so hard to forget that shameful night, to pretend it had never happened, but there’d been reminders every day since. Her own heated dreams…her husband’s inadequacies…and Mikey. Above all, Mikey.

“Only for one night? After I’ve come all this way?” Zac’s eyes glinted like pewter under her baleful gaze. “You’re not going to kick me out the way you did five years ago, are you, before I’ve even had a chance to look over the place? That wouldn’t be very…sisterly.”

Sisterly! As if there’d ever been anything the least bit sisterly between them! Just one fevered, uncontrollable night of passion.

She felt heat surge into her cheeks. How dared he remind her of that mortifying night! It just showed he was no gentleman. But she already knew that. Adrian had always said his brother was uncivilized and untamable and did whatever he wanted, caring for nobody but himself. She’d seen firsthand evidence of it.

“You’d better go inside and clean up.” She spoke curtly. “You can stay in the guest room next to the bathroom. The room’s always made up and ready—for guests who blow in,” she added deliberately, her eyes telling him that he could blow out again as soon as he liked. “I need to finish up out here. Be in later.” She turned on her heel and headed back the way she’d come, across the yard to the chicken shed.

She would have to prepare Mikey for the shock of meeting an unknown uncle—an uncle who was the spitting image of his dead father. Thank heaven Mikey had stayed out of sight until now. At least she had the chance to warn him.

As Zac strode back to the plane to fetch his bags—mainly photographic equipment, with only a small bag for his few personal belongings—he found himself fighting a gamut of emotions, none of them comforting. He’d hoped to feel nothing at all.

It was a shock to find Rachel still here. He hadn’t really expected to, though deep down he’d wanted her to be here. Wanted and dreaded it at the same time, nagged by an unwanted but overriding need to resolve the torment that had plagued him for the past five years.

He’d tried to erase his memory of her, initially by sheer will and ultimately in the arms of other women—on the rare occasions he’d had the opportunity. But it hadn’t worked. Rachel had haunted his thoughts and dreams in a way no other woman ever had. And it had been hell, because she was married to his brother and the guilt of what he’d done, losing control the way he had, had left a bitter scar in his heart and mind, a scar that, far from disappearing over the years, had grown only deeper.

Even when he’d heard that his brother had been tragically killed and that Rachel was widowed, he’d hesitated to come back. The inexcusable wrong he’d perpetrated on his brother—that he and a passionate, love-starved Rachel had perpetrated together—still tormented him, and he knew it would always be there between them, whatever happened in the future.

Yet he hadn’t been able to stay away. He hadn’t been able to forget the powerful feelings she’d stirred in him, the unbridled passion that had spun him completely out of control for the first and only time in his life. Only by seeing her again would he know if those feelings had been real, or simply magnified in his mind over the years.

As they could have been. It wasn’t every day a beautiful, half-naked woman threw herself at him—especially in his line of work, where he was more likely to be confronted by a hairy, naked gorilla. He was lucky even to see a woman for weeks and months at a time.

Yeah, that was more likely all it had been—a buildup of sexual need, raging, out-of-control hormones and the sweltering heat of that hot summer’s night, as he’d tried to tell a distraught Rachel as soon as reality had hit and they’d both been able to think straight. He’d been trying to convince himself ever since.

He’d had to come back to find out.

His first glimpse of her had blown that convenient theory to bits, proving that the mere sight of her still profoundly affected him, still sent blood racing through him, far hotter and more potent than any feelings of lust he’d had for any other woman.

It was the first time he’d seen her in daylight. Her clear, long-lashed eyes were as blue as a field of corn-flowers, her braided hair a gleam of gold under the hot Queensland sun. He’d found it hard to take his eyes off her, harder still to resist those soft lips, lips he’d tasted once and never forgotten.

So he’d better take care. He’d better take mighty good care, or he’d blow everything, just as he’d done the last time.

Rachel had baked bread that morning and made a large pot of soup, using her own homegrown vegetables and herbs. She hoped that the aroma, as Zac ambled into the kitchen while she was preparing lunch, would turn his thoughts to food and away from his first meeting with—she gulped, refusing to think of Mikey as his son—his nephew, who was already at the table, chomping away at a beef sandwich.

Only she knew the embarrassing truth—her own doctor didn’t even know—so there was no danger of Zac’s finding out unless she showed something in her face, and she’d had years of practice at masking that.

But it wouldn’t be so easy with Zac, because he knew her shameful secret, even if he was ignorant of the consequences, whereas Adrian had never known. Her husband had never even suspected, even when they’d failed to have another child. He’d blamed fatigue or overwork after his long days out on the station or even some medical problem of hers, never imagining that he might be at fault, possibly even infertile, which she’d finally begun to suspect. They’d been married for more than five years and he’d never made her pregnant. Mercifully, he hadn’t known that.

“Take a seat at the table, Zac,” she said, busying herself at the kitchen counter so she wouldn’t have to face him yet. “Help yourself to some bread while I slice some more cold meat and pour you some soup. And say hi to your nephew, Mikey. We named him after Adrian’s father. Well, your father, too, of course. I’ve already told Mikey he has an uncle who looks like his daddy, but forgive him if he stares.”

Oh, heck, she was babbling. She forced herself to slow down. “This is your uncle Zac, Mikey, your daddy’s twin brother,” she said as Mikey gaped at Zac. “If you’re a good boy, Uncle Zac might tell you about the wild animals he photographs in the jungle,” she said to give him something else to think about. Mikey was crazy about animals.