The Shining Of Love
Emma Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

A NOTE FOR THE AUTHOR

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 SIXTEEN

A LAST WORD

A Note from the Author

Fourteen of the world’s unwanted children were gathered into the James family from different countries, and at different ages, some of them suffering from experiences they had been subjected to before being rescued by the two wonderful people who adopted them and turned their lives around.

Tiffany had the easiest path into the family. She had no memory of any other life. Although not Fijian, she had been left on the doorstep of a church in Suva, a newborn baby whose mother could not be found or identified. This never troubled Tiffany. To her mind, she belonged to the greatest family in the world and wanted no other. Every day was an adventure, and life was to be seized and made beautiful. Determined to set up the best possible future for her crippled brother, Tiffany plunged into organising a tourist development on the Gold Coast of Queensland, and it was her zest and optimism for this project that brought her to the man she was to love in the story Ride the Storm, HP#1401.

Rebel was seven years old when she was adopted into the James family. Her English mother had been one of the war orphans shipped to Australia in 1944. Whoever her father was, he was long gone before Rebel was born, and when she was five years old, her mother died and she was fostered out to people who exploited such children. She continually ran away and was labelled as an uncontrollable child by the welfare people. Found and rescued by the James family, she grew into a woman who could take on the world in her own inimitable style, and in the book Dark Heritage, HP#1511, she took on the Earl of Stanthorpe over his treatment of a child. This story is set in England, at Davenport Hall, where Rebel’s mother had been briefly housed before being shipped to Australia. Childhood memories of her mother’s stories took Rebel there. Unbeknownst to her, her mother’s parents had traced their lost daughter to the same place. In the course of her battle to win the hearts of both the earl and the child, Davenport Hall became the meeting ground for Rebel and her maternal grandparents to find each other.

Suzanne was three years old when she was adopted into the James family. She was orphaned by the death of her father in a rodeo event at the Calgary Stampede in Canada. No-one came forward to claim her. She never knew what had happened to her mother. Suzanne’s story reflects the person she has become. It begins in the Australian outback where... But you can read all about it in this book, The Shining of Love.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LOST CHILD couldn’t survive in this searing heat. Not in the unforgiving outback. Not without water. Not without someone to find protection for her. The search was almost certainly futile. It was far too late for Amy Bergen to be found. Not alive, anyway.

Where she had wandered, or what had taken her away from the scene of her parents’ tragic death probably would never be known. It was a depressing thought to Suzanne, and her heart went out to the little girl’s family who had enough grief to carry without the added pain of never knowing the fate of a much loved child.

There was a finality about death that could be accepted. Eventually. But lost.... Suzanne knew the nagging torment of endless wondering all too well.

Her father had died when she was three years old. She knew that for a fact. The wonderful couple who had subsequently adopted her had been in Calgary for the rodeo when it happened, and they had told her the story many times. The Canadian officials had been unable to trace any family for her, so Suzanne didn’t know, and had no chance of ever knowing, what had happened to her mother.

Sometimes she believed her mother had to be dead, because she couldn’t accept a mother who deserted her daughter and never once looked back to find out how she fared. Yet if she was alive, where was she? What kind of life had she led? What kind of life was she living now?

It was the not knowing that hurt the longest. It never went away. It could be submerged for days or weeks or months, but it always crept out again in lonely moments. Or when something like this happened.

Suzanne ruefully thought she could do with a bit of cool Canada right now. Central Australia would have to be the starkest contrast to the country on the top half of the North American continent, but she had chosen to make her life here and she was content with her choice.

She drove through the township of Alice Springs with all the car windows open. It didn’t help much to lessen the heat in the car, but there was no point in switching on the air-conditioning while the interior was still like an oven. She used a towel on the steering wheel to prevent her hands from burning, and despite the protective seat cover, she felt as though she was sitting in a sauna.

Fortunately it was no great distance from the community services complex, where she held a morning clinic for the aboriginal women and their children, to the medical centre that claimed the rest of her working hours. Today was not the kind of day that stirred people to any unnecessary activity and there was little traffic in the streets. Five more minutes and she would be out of this oppressive heat and inside her blissfully cool office.

The thick mass of her wavy black hair was sticking to her neck by the time she alighted from her car. She pushed it up with her arm, wishing she had tied it into a high ponytail. There was not the slightest waft of a breeze. She let it drop to her shoulders again as she walked along the path from the car park to the main entrance of the medical centre.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a man stepping out of a taxi, but Suzanne didn’t really look at him. Her mind was savouring the thought of a long icy drink.

Their paths met under the portico. The man paused to let her precede him. She automatically flashed him a commiserating smile. A comment about the heat was on the tip of her tongue when recognition froze it there. Something more than recognition halted her feet.

She had the oddest sense of deja vu as their eyes met. Her mind reasoned that of course she had seen him before. The media coverage on the family tragedy that had brought this man to Alice Springs was still intense, and Suzanne had watched him being interviewed on television several times.

Nevertheless, that did not explain such an eerie impact at meeting him in person, almost as though they had always been meant to meet, to connect in some important way.

He was staring into her darkly lashed violet eyes, an intense, searching look, as though he also felt some inexplicable inner jolt.

Leith Carew.

Suzanne turned his name over in her mind, reviewing what she knew of him. He was the eldest son of the legendary Carew family of the Barossa Valley, winemakers for five generations, owning and adding to a vineyard that was famous not only in South Australia, but around the wine-drinking nations in the world. Leith Carew was the business manager, running the head office in the capital city of Adelaide.

It was his sister who had died out in the desert, his sister, Ilana, and her husband, Hans Bergen, the master vintner. The lost child was their two-year-old daughter, the first and only child of the sixth generation. Leith Carew was unmarried, and his twin half-brothers were in their early teens.

Suzanne had thought him impressive on television, a man in command of himself and those around him, using the media to get across the message he wanted and deftly turning away any attempt to sensationalise his role as the representative and driving force of the Carew family.

He was quite strikingly handsome, the combination of dark blond hair and green eyes lending an unusual attraction to what was essentially a hard face. His smoothly tanned skin seemed to be stretched tightly over prominent cheekbones and the angular cut of his jawline. There were few lines to indicate age, but the maturity of his features and the position of responsibility he held placed him in his early to mid-thirties. A slight bump on his strong nose suggested a break he hadn’t bothered to have straightened out. Probably playing football in younger days, Suzanne thought, considering his well above average height and muscular physique.

The light tropical suit he wore was as classy as the rest of him, quality fabric, restrained style. He didn’t need ostentation to stand out from a crowd. He had the air of being master of any hand he wanted to play.

Suzanne sensed he had been tipped slightly off balance in the last few moments. As she was. By some odd link between them.

Psychic?

Sexual?

As Suzanne hastily rejected this last thought she saw a sceptical gleam emerge in the piercing green eyes, mocking either her or himself. It evoked a wave of prickling heat that owed nothing to the high temperature of the day. She was suddenly and embarrassingly conscious of acting like a morbid gawker in the face of a man who had been forced into the public limelight by tragic circumstances.

“Can I help you, Mr. Carew?” she asked in a sympathetic rush.

His grimace expressed a weary resignation at her ready identification of him. His gaze flicked to her nurse’s uniform, making another assessment of her before he replied.

“You work here?”

“Yes. Most of the time.”

“It’s a fine service you people give to the outback community,” he remarked appreciatively.

Suzanne smiled. The medical centre was attached to the Royal Flying Doctor Base that served the remote outback cattle stations and the aboriginal settlements of inland Australia. It was a unique medical service that always impressed visitors.

“Someone has to do it,” she said with a touch of pride in what was achieved here, despite the difficulties that had to be overcome.

“Few would volunteer.”

“It depends on what kind of life you want.”

“Is it the life you want?” he asked curiously.

Suzanne considered for a moment before answering the question seriously. “It has more personal rewards than working in a big city hospital.”

“What about your private life?”

“It’s all I want.”

“Is it?” The soft challenge in his voice was reinforced by a suggestive simmer in his eyes.

Jolted by the overt sexual interest he was showing, Suzanne instantly retreated into formality. “Is there any way I can help you, Mr. Carew?”

The reminder of his business at the medical centre drew a grim mask over his expression. “I’m here to see a Dr. Forbes. Could you show me where to go?”

“I’ll take you straight to him,” Suzanne offered, unnerved at finding herself uncomfortably conscious of being a woman in the presence of this man.

He exuded a powerful masculinity that he was at ease with, and was apparently well aware of its effect. “Thank you,” he said with a knowing look that increased Suzanne’s disquiet.

He was used to women going out of their way for him, she thought with another hot feeling of mortification. She turned quickly, welcoming the cool air of the lobby as the entrance doors slid open automatically. She half wished she had only offered directions to Brendan’s office, but it was petty to let Leith Carew’s attraction sway her from a more sympathetic course.

It was bad enough that he had to suffer being in the public eye at a time of private grief. His mission here this morning certainly had nothing to do with capitalising on his good looks. Nevertheless, Suzanne felt a distinct unease as she led the way down the corridor to the administration offices.

Her initial response to Leith Carew should have been one of instinctive compassion. Why had a more personal feeling blocked that out? Even now she was far more tuned to the vitality of the man walking beside her than to the dreadful sense of loss that must be eating at him. It put Suzanne completely out of sorts with herself.

Her rap on the chief medical officer’s door was unnecessarily sharp. With an assurance that no-one at the centre would question, Suzanne did not wait for an answer. She opened the door and poked her head around it. Brendan lifted his attention from the stack of paperwork on his desk and shot her a warm welcoming smile.

It should have made her feel happy and secure. This was the man she loved for a host of good reasons. But quite unreasonably Suzanne was more aware of the man waiting behind her in the corridor, and somehow that awareness stopped her from returning Brendan’s smile.

“I’ve brought Mr. Leith Carew to see you,” she said bluntly.

Brendan was instantly all business, the smile wiped from his face as he rose from his chair to come and greet the visitor. Suzanne opened the door wide and ushered in the man who was still profoundly disturbing her.

“Mr. Carew.” Brendan offered his hand in sympathetic respect.

“Dr. Forbes.”

Suzanne watched them size each other up as they went through the formalities of establishing a professional rapport. They were approximately the same age, but Leith Carew was the taller, bigger man, his wider and more worldly experience of life somehow dominating this encounter.

Suzanne felt a stab of disloyalty at the comparison. Leith Carew’s harder edge did not diminish Brendan’s quiet assurance. Besides, it was the heart of a man that mattered more than anything else. There were always kindness and compassion in Brendan’s soft brown eyes, and while he might not be so handsome as to turn women’s heads, he had the type of face that inspired trust and confidence.

Brendan Forbes was a good man with a big heart. As big as Zachary Lee’s. And any man who measured up to her eldest adopted brother’s heart was number one with Suzanne.

His eyes flashed a message that she understood only too well as he spoke to her. “Would you tell reception to hold over all calls to me while I’m with Mr. Carew, Suzanne?”

Painful business, best handled without interruption. She nodded and started to withdraw, pulling the door shut after her.

“Suzanne...”

Leith Carew spoke her name as though rolling his tongue around it, tasting it, savouring it. It sent a shiver down her spine. She instinctively squared her shoulders, fighting off his unwelcome effect on her. Courtesy demanded she acknowledge him one last time. She looked, meeting a green-eyed gaze that held a determined promise he would find her again at a more opportune time.

“Thank you,” he said.

She bit down on the automatic response, “You’re welcome.” He wasn’t welcome. He had twisted the indefinable link that had leapt between them into something totally wrong and unacceptable.

She gave a brief nod to satisfy Brendan’s sensitivity to the situation, then firmly shut the door, leaving the two men to get on with what had to be done.

The post-mortem reports, most likely, Suzanne thought, wincing over the horror of hearing the grim results of what could have been avoided if only Ilana and Hans Bergen had understood the terrain they had travelled.

Tourist brochures billed the Australian outback as the last frontier, an adventure into a primitive timeless landscape that defied the encroachment of civilisation. The dangers involved in setting out without an experienced guide were well publicised, but every year there were people who believed they knew enough and were properly prepared to meet and beat any possible mishap on their own. And every year the outback took its toll of them.

Ilana and Hans Bergen had decided to travel the Gunbarrel Highway, so named because the track had been bulldozed in a dead straight line across the desert by a geological survey team. It was not maintained and was barely negotiable by the hardiest four-wheel-drive vehicle. What had drawn the Bergens off that track no-one knew. Perhaps the mirage of a lake. The area where they were eventually found was nicknamed the Dunes of Illusion.

The outcome was easy enough to piece together afterwards. They had driven over high spinifex, which had been caught up and compressed under the metal guards of their Land Rover. Since spinifex was full of combustible gum, it ignited against the hot exhaust.

The couple had obviously panicked and tried to put the fire out with their water supply. They were left with little or no water and an undriveable vehicle. Their fate was inevitable. In the Gibson Desert temperatures could reach fifty degrees Celsius at midday.

Suzanne delivered Brendan’s message to the receptionist and retreated to her own office. She automatically filed cards on the aboriginal families she had seen that morning. Although there was nothing of a serious nature to report, she was meticulous about keeping records. One never knew what might be important some day.

It was the lack of any records on her father that had made tracing any family impossible. Not that it really mattered now, Suzanne told herself. After all, she had been brought up in the greatest family in the world, fourteen lost children taken in by the kindest and most loving parents, who taught them how to blend together and support each other. She was proud to be one of the James family.

They had all been encouraged to be achievers in their own individual ways, and Suzanne had found a very real fulfilment in her nursing career. Brendan was the perfect partner for her. In that sense, Leith Carew had nothing to offer her, and she had nothing to offer him.

She frowned over his reaction to her. Why would such a man even bother to show an interest, let alone feel one? It wasn’t as though she was strikingly attractive.

She had a slim, trim figure nicely proportioned to her average height, but it was hardly spectacular. She was lucky with the natural wave of her hair, and her eyes were certainly attractive in shape and colour. She wished her nose wasn’t tip tilted, since it always caught the sun if she didn’t wear a hat, and she would have preferred not to have a dimple in her chin. But she counted herself passably pretty. More than passably compared to most of the young women who populated Alice Springs.

She had no doubt Leith Carew could choose from the cream of society in more than this continent, and in such a wide field of beautifully polished and sophisticated women, Suzanne felt sure she would be quite ordinary.

Perhaps, for him, she had simply been an on-the-spot diversion from burdens that were weighing too heavily on him. She wished he hadn’t reacted like that. It had made her feel wrong instead of...

Instead of what?

Suzanne shook her head in vexation. Forget it, she sternly told herself. It couldn’t have been important. And Leith Carew would soon go back to his own world, which was a long, long way from hers.

She immersed herself in paperwork, not looking up from her desk until a knock came on her door. Brendan, she thought, but it was Leith Carew who stepped into her office.

Again Suzanne was gripped by a sense of something meaningful that went beyond any logical reasoning. It ran through her mind that this man had a part to play in her life or she had a part to play in his. Improbable as that was, the strange feeling could not be easily dismissed.

He closed the door behind him and stood in front of it for several moments, his eyes probing hers for answers he wanted or needed. There was a rigidity about his body that suggested he was holding a tight control over himself. He looked sick.

“I wondered—” he started forward as he spoke “—if you were free this evening. I’d like to have your company.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carew. I’m not free,” Suzanne answered softly, realising the medical reports Brendan would have read to him must have conjured up images that would have been harrowing.

He picked up the solid glass paperweight from her desk, rolled it around in his hand, then gripped it hard as though he needed to hold onto something solid. His gaze slowly lifted to hers again, a compelling intensity in the dark green depths.

“I know we’ve barely met, but I feel you’re someone I can talk to. Be with. Won’t you give me your company for one evening? Help me forget...other things...for a while? There’s nothing for you to be wary of—” he winced “—unless being seen with me is too distasteful.”

“No, it’s not that,” Suzanne assured him gently. He was hurting badly, but she couldn’t give him the solace he was looking for. “I’m simply not free to be with you, Mr. Carew.”

He frowned. “Couldn’t you cancel whatever arrangements you’ve made? I’m only asking...”

“No. I’m sorry, but no,” Suzanne said firmly.

His face tightened. His mouth compressed in frustration with her outright rejection. The appeal in his eyes hardened to an arrogance that challenged her decision. “Tell me what arrangements you’ve made and I’ll speak to the person or persons concerned.”

He was not used to being refused. Suzanne offered him an ironic little smile. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Carew. I am not free. I have a husband. And you’ve just been speaking to him.”

He stared at her with a look of stunned disbelief. “You’re married...”

“To Dr. Forbes,” Suzanne finished for him with quiet dignity.

Leith Carew visibly shuddered. His gaze dropped to the paperweight in his hand. His fingers tightened around it, and from the way his knuckles gleamed white Suzanne thought he would have crushed the glass to powder if it was possible.

His tension stirred the same unease he had evoked earlier. Suzanne’s sympathy for him was stretched thin. Although his meeting with Brendan could never have pleasant associations for Leith Carew, surely he realised that was not Brendan’s fault. She resented the look of repugnance on his face.

“How long have you been married?” he suddenly shot at her.

Surprised by the question, she answered automatically. “Almost three years.”

“And the magic hasn’t worn off yet?”

The mockery in his voice suggested a soul-deep cynicism, and there was a flare of savagery in the eyes that slashed at hers. Suzanne recoiled both mentally and emotionally from all he was projecting at her, yet even as a cutting retort leapt to her tongue, she bit down on it. He was reacting like a wounded animal. She had disappointed him. It would be wrong to hit back at him for lashing out at her.

“Our marriage doesn’t depend on magic, Mr. Carew,” she said calmly, her eyes holding his with steady, heartfelt conviction. “It’s based on commitment to each other.”

“Till death do you part?”

“Yes. That’s how it is for Brendan and me.”

He challenged that contention for several angry moments before the feral glitter in his green eyes faded into a bleak sadness. He looked at the paperweight, then slowly replaced it on her desk.

“That’s how it was for Ilana and Hans,” he said with bitter irony.

“I’m sorry,” Suzanne murmured, compassion spearing through the turbulence he had stirred.

He gave her a twisted smile. “Forgive me for trespassing. And thank you for your time.”

He turned and walked to the door. Suzanne was riven by the sense of unfinished business between them, yet she knew she couldn’t answer the need that he had opened to her.

“Goodbye, Mr. Carew,” she said softly, hoping he would find solace for his pain with someone else.

“No. Not goodbye,” he rasped, then looked at her, his eyes burning with a conviction that defied barriers. “We’ll meet again, Suzanne Forbes. The timing isn’t right, here and now, but the day and the hour will come when it is.”

His words seemed to thump into her heart. He had felt it, too, she thought dazedly.

“Au revoir, Suzanne,” he said with very deliberate emphasis.

He closed the door on this encounter and walked out of her life. Until their paths crossed at another time and place. But when? And why? Suzanne wondered. Her hand reached out and picked up the solid glass paperweight. His fingers had dulled its natural gleam. It felt cold. She shivered and thrust it away from her.

I love Brendan, she thought fiercely. I’ll love him all my life. Leith Carew can’t change that. Nothing ever will.

A surge of totally irrational feeling made her snatch up the paperweight again and drop it into the bottom drawer of her desk. Out of sight.

CHAPTER TWO

THE PROBLEM of Leith Carew did not go away. Suzanne wished she had not met him. The memory of his powerful presence and personality kept sliding between her and Brendan, intruding on the natural intimacy they had built up between them.

Normally she talked to Brendan about everything of interest that happened at the clinic or the centre, but something held her back from relating the details of Leith Carew’s private visit to her. She even affected a disinterest in Brendan’s comments on the man, quickly turning the subject aside in favour of a less disturbing topic of conversation.

Rightly or wrongly, she felt Leith Carew was somehow a threat to the happiness of her marriage. He had left her with a sense of inevitability that could not be denied or repressed. The day and the hour would come when they would meet again. Suzanne was afraid of what it might mean to her, so she did her best to deny him any space in her life.

Three days after his visit to the medical centre, Leith Carew was on the evening news. His strong face leapt out at her from the television set, making her heart skip a beat. She could no longer view him as a two-dimensional person.

“I’ll start putting on dinner,” she said, leaving Brendan to watch the news alone while she raced off to the kitchen to busy herself with their evening meal.

He followed a few minutes later. “They’ve called off the search for Amy Bergen,” he said with a grimace that expressed his repugnance for any unnecessary loss of life.

“Why?” Suzanne cried in dismay. Her mind told her there had been no hope of survival for the little girl, yet as long as she wasn’t found, hope persisted anyway.

“They’ve recovered a piece of her clothing.”

“Not the child?”

Brendan shook his head. “Only the clothing. But it was close to a dingo’s lair.”

“Oh, God!” It instantly recalled the Azaria Chamberlain case, when a nine-week-old baby had been taken by a dingo from the camping site at Ayers Rock. “But Amy Bergen was two years old,” Suzanne protested. “Surely...”

“The police think it’s conclusive.”

“No other trace of her?”

“Apparently not. It’s hardly to be expected after this length of time, Suzanne,” he added softly.

Her shoulders slumped. “No. I suppose not.”

“Leith Carew isn’t prepared to accept it. Understandable enough.”

“Yes,” she bit out, concentrating fiercely on tearing up lettuce leaves. The Leith Carews of this world weren’t good at accepting anything they didn’t like. But he had to, she thought grimly, when he had no other choice.

Whether that triggered the next thought that came into her mind, Suzanne did not stop to consider. She turned impulsively to Brendan and the words spilled from her lips. “I think it’s time we started a family. Are you ready to be a father, Brendan?”

The change in his expression lifted Suzanne’s heart. His grin was a glorious beam of delight and his eyes sparkled with happiness. “More than ready if you are, my darling,” he said as he swept her into his arms.

There followed a night of sweet plans and intense loving that comprehensively wiped Leith Carew from Suzanne’s mind.

The idea of having a baby was still a warm glow inside her the next morning as she checked the progress of the babies brought to the clinic by their proud mothers. Suzanne had always loved this part of her work at the community services complex.

It had taken a while for the aboriginal people to accept her as someone who could give helpful advice on health problems. It had probably been easier for her than for any other nurse, because both she and Tom James had been adopted into the same family, and although there was no blood link between them, she was accorded the status of his sister.

They trusted Tom. It was he who had persuaded the government to build this facility, and he had been the driving force behind establishing the progressive programs that not only focussed on their present and future welfare, but kept their ancient culture a positive and proud force in their lives.

Here their art and folklore were practised and preserved for future generations. Community councils were held to settle disputes and set goals that concentrated on self-sufficiency rather than a reliance on government funds. In former years there had been much misunderstanding about the social system of the indigenous Australians but it was given more respect now, thanks to people like Tom, who formed a bridge between the old world and the new.

Since she had married Brendan, Tom had been teasing Suzanne about starting a family of her own, but it wasn’t something she had wanted to rush into. She enjoyed her work and the sense of sharing it gave her with Brendan. Now, the decision felt very right to her. She was twenty-six years old and ready to be a mother.

When the clinic was over, she couldn’t resist dropping by Tom’s office to tell him her plans for the future. He could stop teasing her from now on, and start looking forward to being an uncle. She was grinning over the pleasure that would give him as she entered his secretary’s office. Before she could inquire if Tom was free, Suzanne heard the raised voice of Leith Carew, its tone terse and angry.

“What’s this about?” she asked the secretary.

A shrug and a helpless gesture pleaded ignorance.

Suzanne looked at the door into Tom’s office. Every self-protective instinct urged her to leave right now, avoid any further involvement with Leith Carew. But anger meant he wasn’t getting his own way, and he probably didn’t realise that his way was not Tom’s way, and never would be. If he was looking for trackers to continue the search for his niece...

Suzanne shuddered. Despite the police interpretation of the clothing found near the dingo’s lair, she knew in her heart that if this was her family, she wouldn’t give up, either, no matter what the odds against finding the child alive. She could well imagine the endless torture of wondering if enough had been done to find her. Not to have a decisive resolution would be very hard to live with.

Compassion fought with common sense and won. Or perhaps something else drew her to the door, something Suzanne did not want to recognise or acknowledge. She was aware of her pulse quickening as she turned the knob and pushed. Fear, she told herself, fear of how her life might be irrevocably linked to Leith Carew’s.

As she stepped into the room Leith Carew’s hand slammed down on Tom’s desk. “What more do you want?” he thundered in frustration.

Tom’s face wore the imperturbable look that was so deeply etched in his heritage, and Suzanne instantly knew that Leith Carew had inadvertently attacked values and beliefs that were sacred to her adopted brother, sacred to the ancient Pitjantjatjara tribe to which he belonged. Leith Carew could rage at him all day and Tom would maintain his ageless dignity, as little bothered by the other man’s words as he would be by flies buzzing around his head.

He saw her in the doorway and rose from his chair to greet her. “Suzanne...”

Leith Carew spun around, the energy he was expending suddenly focussed on her, enveloping her with electric force. The initial incredulity on his face was swiftly replaced by a look of satisfaction as though her appearance in his life answered some question that had disturbed him.

I shouldn’t have come in here. The thought flashed through Suzanne’s mind. A ripple of panic coursed through her body as her gaze was caught and held by the man she didn’t want to know. The feeling was stronger this time, the feeling that they had to mean something to each other. It must have to do with the child, Suzanne reasoned frantically. She couldn’t let it be anything else.

She tore her gaze from his and quickly addressed her brother. “Tom, please do whatever is necessary to continue the search for the little girl.”

He gave Leith Carew a look that clearly said the man had no understanding of what was involved.

“Do it your way,” Suzanne urged. “Please, for me, for all of us. She’s a lost child, Tom.”

He knew what she meant. Each and every one of their brothers and sisters in the James family had been a lost child in one sense or another before being adopted. Tom was the only exception, and Suzanne was not sure the appeal would strike home.

No-one knew Tom’s exact age. He had possibly been as young as nine or as old as twelve when he had been spotted alone in the desert by a scouting aeroplane for the Bureau of Mineral Resources. He had not been lost. He had been at home in territory that was familiar to him. But government welfare officers had subsequently found him and taken him to the Warburton Mission, believing it was for his own good.

There he had observed and despised how the ways of his people were corrupted by government hand-outs. When Suzanne’s adopted parents offered him a home with them, Tom took the opportunity to get out of the mission, determined to learn the white man’s ways, then use them for the benefit of his people.

He was doing a marvellous job of it, too, Suzanne thought proudly, but whether his commitment to his ancient culture would be swayed by the underlying ethos of the James family, a caring response to those in need, despite colour, race or creed, she truly did not know.

Leith Carew would never emit that kind of need to a fellow man. He was too arrogant, too inured in the power of his family’s wealth. But Suzanne had not appealed to Tom for the sake of this man. It was for the child, the helpless, innocent child who was in the desert through no fault of her own.

Tom slowly nodded acceptance. “For you I will do it. What can be done will be done, Suzanne,” he promised her.

She gave him a brilliant smile of relief, then without so much as glancing at Leith Carew, she stepped back and drew the door shut after her. She pushed her shaky legs into a brisk walk. The need to get away as fast as she could was not logical, if her only link with Leith Carew was to be the recovery of his niece, but Suzanne did not stop to analyse the feelings he stirred in her.

She heard footsteps running down the corridor behind her and didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Her heart pounded in panicky agitation. She hurried through the exit doors, fiercely willing Leith Carew to have second thoughts and go back to Tom. She had done all she could for him.

She was halfway to where her car was parked when he called to her. “Mrs. Forbes, please...would you wait a minute for me?”

It would be sixty seconds too long, Suzanne advised herself, yet her feet slowed as uncertainty clouded her mind. She did not want Leith Carew pursuing her to the medical centre. Better to deal with him here and now. Get it over with.

She stopped.

He caught up with her.

“I wish to ask you...thank you for what you just did.”

Suzanne steeled herself to meet his eyes and challenge any claim he might make on her. “Mr. Carew. I didn’t do it for you. It was for the child. I would have done it for anyone in such circumstances as these.”

“Why did you come? How did you know? Rarely am I surprised, but when you came through that door, you just seemed to appear out of nowhere like an angel sent to ease despair.”

“I’m not an angel, Mr. Carew, and I want to go now.”

“You can’t!” His green eyes warred with the guarded reserve in hers. “There’s something special happening between us. I sense it. I know it.”

“No. There’s nothing. Nothing at all,” Suzanne denied with vehemence, inadvertently revealing the inner turmoil he stirred.

“I’ve never been so drawn to any woman in my life before.”

She flushed, guiltily aware of the attraction he exerted over her. “You mustn’t say things like that. It’s wrong.”

She started to turn away. He grasped her arm to halt her. His fingers seemed to burn into her skin, making the heat of the day negligible in comparison.

“Do you love your husband?”

The question hurt. It jabbed totally unacceptable doubts into her mind. It squeezed her heart. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was anymore. Only that being with Brendan had never been like being with Leith Carew. This was so physical, so immediate, so terribly strong. Not a quiet growing together with many mutual satisfactions giving a sweet and satisfying depth to their feelings for each other.

She felt a dreadful sense of betrayal in even hesitating over her reply. Her eyes flashed wild defiance at Leith Carew. “What I share with my husband is...”

“Come with me. Be with me. Let what’s happening to us unfold in its own natural course.”

The urgent passion in his voice threw Suzanne into more emotional upheaval. “Have you no sense of morality?” she flung at him accusingly. “Of knowing right from wrong?”

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. To let it go without exploring it...” He shook his head, unable to express the compulsion burning through him. His eyes seared hers with blazing determination. “I won’t turn my back on it.”

“Then I will,” she bit out with equal determination. “Let me go, Mr. Carew. I will not be party to anything that hurts my husband.”

She tried to pull her arm out of his grasp. His hold on her tightened. “You can’t love him. I don’t believe it. We were meant for each other.”

“You don’t know anything about me!” Suzanne cried, desperate to break free of this soul-tearing encounter.

“I know how I feel.”

“And that’s all you care about, isn’t it?” she fired at him bitterly. “Never mind anyone else’s feelings! Did you stop to wonder why Tom didn’t respond to whatever you were offering him?”

He made a sharp dismissive gesture. Then as though struck by second thoughts, his eyes narrowed, and he asked, “Why did he respond to you as he did?”

She lifted her head proudly. “Because I’m his sister. And we share an understanding that you don’t have, Mr. Carew.”

“His sister?” Shock and puzzlement chased across his face.

“You see? You know nothing about me. Or Tom. Where we come from or who we are.”

“I know you can’t be any blood relation to him. Tom James is of the Pitjantjatjara tribe. I was told he lived in the Gibson Desert as a boy, and no-one knows it as well as he does.”

“That’s right! But you can’t go over the heads of the aboriginal trackers who assisted the police. Tom wouldn’t insult them by taking your offer. It’s a matter of respect. And sharing. Your best course is to give a donation that will benefit the whole community, and let Tom organise the search with the others. There are rules and customs that you’ll just have to be patient with if you want the best result. Listen to my brother and do as he says. And that advice is all I can give you, Mr. Carew.”

“No. It doesn’t end here,” he insisted, shaking off the distraction she had hit him with.

“Yes, it does!”

“I won’t let it.”

“Brendan Forbes is the most decent man I’ve ever met. Last night I hope I conceived his child. Does that tell you how I feel, Mr. Carew?”

She saw the colour drain from his face. The intense conviction in his eyes glazed to a look of tortured uncertainty. The strength of his grasp on her arm slackened. She pulled free and propelled herself towards her car, her whole body churning against the threatened violation of the life she knew, the life she had made for herself, the life she shared with Brendan.

She reached the car.

“Suzanne...please...”

His voice tugged at her. She fought against it, clutching at the door handle, yanking it, uncaring that the hot metal scorched her fingers.

“I beg you to reconsider.”

“No.” The word was torn from her. “No!” she repeated vehemently as she opened the door and stepped around it, ready to get into the car. Then she looked at Leith Carew for the last time, firmly enunciating the only involvement she had with him. “I hope Tom can help you. I hope they can find the child.”

Then she closed herself into her car and drove off.

It came as a shock when she found herself parking at the medical centre. She had no recollection of the trip across town. Not that it mattered now. She had arrived safely. And she had left Leith Carew behind.

Despite the oven-like heat of the car, Suzanne felt too drained to move. It was as though the encounter had sapped all her energy. She wished she could empty her mind of it. Wipe out the memory. Wipe out its impact on her.

She found herself wondering what might have been if she had met Leith Carew before she had met Brendan. A useless thought, with the unpleasant taint of disloyalty. She squashed it and pushed herself out of the car. A wave of dizziness caused her to sway. Her legs felt watery.

Get out of the sun, her mind dictated.

Get out of the heat.

Get on with your life.

CHAPTER THREE

AMY BERGEN WAS NOT FOUND.

Tom told Suzanne privately that the little girl had been taken from the scene of her parents’ tragic deaths, but not by a dingo. He had tracked as far as two aboriginal camp sites. The search had been defeated by limestone outcrops that made it impossible to pick up any direction. Who had taken the child and where they were now, weeks after the last trace of them had been left behind, was impossible to tell.

No more could be done. Not even an army could find aboriginal nomads who didn’t want to be found. The great outback held too many secret places for those who inhabited it.

A reward that ran into six figures was posted for any information that led to the recovery of the child.

Leith Carew left Alice Springs without making any attempt to see Suzanne again.

His departure lifted a weight off her mind.

* * *

EIGHTEEN MONTHS WENT BY, eighteen months that made devastating changes to Suzanne’s life.

The joy of becoming pregnant was shattered by a miscarriage at three months. Suzanne became obsessed with conceiving again. Somehow having a baby was all important. She did not allow herself to dwell on why. Subconsciously she knew it was connected to putting the insidious memory of Leith Carew behind her and making an absolute affirmation of her commitment to Brendan.

She became more and more desperate and uptight about it as month followed month and it did not happen. Brendan persuaded her that she needed to relax and forget about getting pregnant for a while. He decided to take her on a second honeymoon.

They flew to Sydney for a quick visit to relatives and a shopping spree. The plan was to fly on to Brisbane, then over to one of the Whitsunday Islands near the Great Barrier Reef. They didn’t make it past Brisbane.

Brendan became so ill on the flight that an ambulance was called to the airport to take him to the hospital. Suzanne could not believe it when the doctors told her he was a victim of a current variation of legionnaire’s disease. That was something that happened to other people. She and Brendan didn’t even live in Sydney. It had only been a brief visit.

Throughout her desperate worry over Brendan she was pestered by questions from health authorities who worked around the clock to pinpoint the source of the deadly bacteria. What shopping centres had they gone to? Had they stayed at a hotel? The bacteria was generally found in air-conditioning ducts or warm-water plumbing systems.

Suzanne answered automatically, questioning why she hadn’t caught the disease as well. No-one could explain. The incident of the disease, compared to the number of people exposed to it, was minuscule.

The doctors couldn’t make Brendan better. All they could do was treat the dreadful symptoms and ease the pain.

He died four days later.

Suzanne had stayed with him every hour she could, day and night, sitting by his bed, holding his hand, willing him to be one of the survivors.

It was her big American brother, Zachary Lee, who came to take her away. She couldn’t accept that Brendan was dead.

“He’s gone, Suzanne,” Zachary Lee told her, wrapping her in his gentle bear hug, enclosing her in the warm security of the caring he had always shown her. “There’s no more you can do.”

Somehow his soft words crumpled the hard shell of disbelief she had clung to in the shock of her bereavement. Nothing seemed real anymore. Only the firm solidity of her big brother gave substance to the truth she had to face.

It was Zachary Lee who had found her all those years ago amongst the bewildering crowd at the Calgary Stampede, alone and frightened and crying her eyes out because she couldn’t find her father. She clung to him now as she had clung to him then, a steady rock, emanating a comforting security that was totally dependable.

“I didn’t love him enough, Zachary Lee,” she sobbed in despair.

“Yes, you did,” he assured her.

“No. You don’t understand. I wanted a baby. We wouldn’t have made this trip if...”

“Don’t, Suzanne. You have nothing to blame yourself for. What happened was beyond your control. Anyone’s control. Don’t torment yourself with what might have been.”

Zachary Lee talked to her for a long time. But it didn’t help. It was one of those situations where no-one could possibly have foreseen the consequences, but in her heart of hearts, Suzanne had little doubt that if she’d never met Leith Carew, Brendan would not be dead.

The James family gathered to give their support to Suzanne, both at Brendan’s funeral and in the weeks and months that followed.

Nothing helped.

Her sister Rebel and Rebel’s husband, Lord Davenport, flew all the way from England to give her what consolation they could. Thirteen brothers and sisters of many different nationalities and backgrounds formed a cocoon of love and strength around Suzanne. The two people who had adopted them and welded them into a unique family remained close by, to be called on at any time.

There was a cold lonely place inside Suzanne that none of their warm caring could touch. She was grateful to them for being there for her, as she knew they always would be in times of need, but it did not make up for what she had lost.

The memory she held of Leith Carew became meaningless. Why did it take a disaster to reveal how much she cared for the man she had married? Brendan had been solid reality, Leith Carew a mere fantasy of what might have been in another time and place.

Her sister Tiffany and Tiffany’s husband, Joel, invited her to stay with them in their beautiful home on Leisure Island. “You need someone to look after you for a while,” Tiffany pressed, believing that her bright, optimistic nature could draw her sister out of her mental and emotional retreat from life.

Suzanne didn’t want to, but somehow it seemed mean to refuse when they were being so kind. Zachary Lee also urged her to accept. The island was close to Surfers Paradise, not far from Brisbane, where he lived.

Tom promised to look after her home in Alice Springs. Suzanne was not to worry about anything. The family would take care of whatever needed to be taken care of.

She numbly agreed to the arrangements made for her. She was vaguely aware of days passing, weeks passing. Tiffany organised activities. Suzanne went along with them. But they were meaningless. The only persistent thought in her mind was the wish that she could go back and relive the past, particularly the last year, giving Brendan all the love she should have given him instead of being preoccupied with needs of her own.

She was plagued with guilt over the way she had let Leith Carew seed the compulsion to start a family. Even though nothing of substance had happened between them, meeting him had affected her. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself that she had wanted a family anyway, she knew that if he had never walked into her life, it would not have become a matter of such urgency to her.

It was Tom who eventually rescued her from her morose apathy. He arrived at Tiffany’s home one day and asked Suzanne to accompany him on a journey.

“Where?” she asked without any interest.

“To my homeland. It will heal you, Suzanne.”

Despite her disinclination to make any concerted effort to do anything, Suzanne could not offend Tom by refusing his offer. She knew what a privilege it was to be invited to share a heritage that was unique to the people of his ancient tribe.

They flew to Alice Springs and Tom took her on a journey that was like no other she had ever experienced. It stirred her to taking an interest in learning to see through Tom’s eyes, and she gradually perceived that what was uninhabitable desert to most people was a place that lived and breathed to a different set of rules.

They were sitting in companionable silence around their camp fire one night when Tom’s head suddenly lifted, turned in quest of something Suzanne neither heard nor saw. Tom was unique. He could sense things that no other person, black or white, could feel, as though he was attuned to the vibrations and pulses of the universe.

She waited, aware of the listening stillness of his body, sitting absolutely still herself so as not to disturb his concentration.

The distant howl of a dingo carried faintly on the crisp night air. It did not strike any fear in her. Their camp fire kept the creatures of the wilderness at bay.

“Something’s wrong,” Tom murmured.

“What is it?”

“You don’t feel it?”

“No.”

But she knew he did. Tom’s deep affinity with this vast outback land was in everything he said and did. Even the way he walked over it had a sensitivity that no white person could ever appreciate. He came from a race that for over forty thousand years had taken this country into their minds and hearts, sharing a unity with it that no newcomer could comprehend. At least, that was how Tom explained it. The primitive tradition of the Dreamtime was very real to him.

He rose to his feet in a fluid unfolding that had all the instinctive grace of a wild animal sensing danger. “Wait here. Keep the camp fire burning.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know where.”

“Why do you have to go?”

“A life has passed. Another life calls. It calls to me.”

She didn’t question any further, sensing his urgency to follow the call that only he heard. “Take care,” she said, nodding her understanding.

A smile of assurance flashed from his dark face.

She smiled her trust in him.

He swiftly became a shadow of the night, needing nothing but the moon and the stars and his own instincts to guide him wherever he had to go.

Suzanne slowly turned her gaze to the fire and released a long, pent-up sigh. Tom’s softly spoken words lingered in her mind. A life has passed. Another life calls. They seemed to reflect her own situation.

Was there any meaning to life, she wondered?

Out here there was a timelessness that seeped into the soul. At night she could look at the brilliance of the stars and feel as though she was at the dawn of creation. By day, the sheer immensity of the landscape stamped a forever feeling in her mind, turning humanity into a mere speck of passing dust.

Yet even in this seemingly desolate world there was life, continually surprising her with its many fantastic forms. Without Tom to show her, she wouldn’t have noticed much of it. He unfolded the secrets of the desert, sharing his intimacy with all there was around them.

Suzanne felt intensely privileged to be with him, aware that it was only because she was his sister that he was teaching her a new appreciation of the cycle of life and death, and that at the very heart of nature there was a necessary passing from one to the other. To Tom, it was only a shift in form.

The night air was chilly. From time to time Suzanne fed the fire as Tom had instructed. She stayed awake as long as she could, but when she found herself dozing off, she climbed into her sleeping bag and settled herself for the night. She had no way of knowing how long Tom would be. He might not be back until morning and he would not expect her to wait up for him.

He was not back when she woke soon after dawn. All day went by with no sign of him. She knew it would be madness to go looking for him but she couldn’t help worrying. What was keeping him away for so long? She built a fire as the sun set, aware that he would expect it of her and would perhaps be looking for it after nightfall.

Suzanne knew she was in no personal danger. Their camp was by a permanent waterhole and she had plenty of food supplies. Tom, however, had taken nothing with him. She assured herself he knew how to survive in the desert and there was no need for her to worry. Tom would find his way back to her.

She ate a solitary meal, hoping that something else hadn’t gone wrong, that there would be no other disastrous turn of fate to blight her life.

She woke frequently throughout the night, her sleep disturbed by the need to keep feeding the fire. During the long hours of the early morning, she kept a vigil, growing more and more afraid that her brother was lost to her.

Something was happening. Something of importance. Otherwise Tom would not have left her like this. Whatever it was, she felt the weight of another turning point in her life.

Another long day passed. Suzanne was now so worried that she seriously considered calling in help. Tom could probably look after himself better than any other man alive in this environment, but if he’d injured himself... It didn’t bear thinking about. She busied herself with gathering more wood for tonight’s fire. She was watching the sunset when she saw the movement far off.

Her heart took wing at the wonderful sight of a dark figure loping past clumps of spinifex, heading towards her. Suzanne began to run, unable to wait, compelled to assure herself that it truly was Tom and he had returned to her. As the distance between them diminished, she saw that he carried a bundle. His arms were cradling it against his chest.

“Are you hurt, Tom?” she shouted.

“Of course not,” came the reassuring reply, a touch of scorn in his voice at the affront to his pride and dignity.

“What’s kept you so long?”

“It was far away.”

“I was so worried.”

“I had to carry the child.”

Suzanne rushed to meet him, to relieve him of the burden he had borne for the sake of the life that had called to him. The child was wrapped in a blanket. A little girl. Barely skin and bone. Asleep or unconscious.

“She’s breathing,” Suzanne said in relief.

“Yes. Given time and care, she will be all right.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She was alone with a woman of my tribe. An old woman whose life had passed. That was what I felt. Why I had to go.”

How Tom could feel such things was beyond Suzanne’s knowledge, but she had seen it happen before and she accepted it as normal. At least for Tom.

“The child is so fair. She can’t be of your tribe. Nor of your race.”

“That’s true. But she needs food. We should give her something to eat.”

They turned and walked to the camp site together. “It was good that you found her, Tom. If the old woman was alone...”

“Yes. The child would have died,” he said with the emotionless resignation with which he viewed death. Suzanne was suddenly struck by a possibility that squeezed her heart. “Tom, we’re over five hundred kilometres from the Gunbarrel Highway.”

“That also is true.”

He tipped some water into a mug and brought it to where Suzanne stood stock-still, holding the child with mounting emotion. It had been eighteen months ago. So far away. It couldn’t be...

“Who is she, Tom?”

“I’ve had a long time to think about it. I knew the old woman, Suzanne. From when I was a boy. She was childless and always walked alone. Perhaps, to her in her old age, she believed the child was a gift.”

He gently stroked the little girl’s cheek. Her lashes slowly fluttered open. She had green eyes. Tom put the mug to her lips and let her drink sparingly. Although she obviously wanted more.

“But I think this is the child you asked me to find, Suzanne,” he said quietly. “The one that was lost.”

“Amy,” she whispered. “Amy Bergen.”

And the child looked at her with Leith Carew’s eyes, as though the name struck some distant chord of memory.

The realisation came to Suzanne that her life was once more linked to the man who had refused to say goodbye to her. The man who had said there would be another time and place for them. She wondered if Leith Carew still thought about that. Whether he did or not, it was now inevitable that their paths would cross again.

CHAPTER FOUR

WITHIN HOURS of being notified that his niece may have been found, Leith Carew flew from Adelaide to Alice Springs to make an official identification.

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind as to the outcome. None in Suzanne’s. The photographs in the police file had been conclusive. The features of the child were the same as those of the two-year-old Amy Bergen, who had been lost eighteen months ago. Apart from which, she responded to the name, although her language was a garbled mixture of aboriginal words and pidgin English.

Suzanne heard the commotion outside her home when Leith Carew arrived, accompanied by the chief of police and other various authorities. Representatives of the media had been camped in the street ever since the news had broken. It was a big story and they intended to make the most of it, but the clamour of their demanding voices frightened the little girl, and she was Suzanne’s first consideration.

Four days of travelling with Tom and Suzanne was too little preparation for the adjustment from a primitive life in the desert to the bewildering strangeness of civilization. The child was stronger now from their careful nurturing, but Suzanne was concerned about the mental and emotional upheaval that this experience might have caused.

She had clung to Suzanne like a limpet from the moment they had hit Alice Springs. Prying her loose for a medical check had been traumatic enough. Handing her over to an uncle she almost certainly didn’t remember would undoubtedly be even more traumatic for her.

Suzanne tried to stay relaxed as Tom admitted the official visitors to her home, but she felt every nerve in her body tighten when Leith Carew stepped into the living room. He seemed to fill it with his strong presence, and Suzanne could not deny the tug of attraction she felt, despite all that had happened since they last met.

There was an immediate vibrancy in the air between them, an awareness that pulsed with memories and the possibilities of what might have been. Suzanne felt her skin tingle. Whether it was excitement or a sense of premonition, she didn’t know. In her mind and heart was a recognition that this man was important in her life.

His green eyes held a look of reserve. He stood very erect, shoulders squared, body rigid, his face wiped of all expression. “Mrs. Forbes,” he acknowledged her in the most minimal manner of greeting.

“Mr. Carew,” she returned stiffly, her manner affected by the memory of how fiercely she had spurned any further connection with him, the cutting words of condemnation she had used, her violent dismissal of his feelings. And her own.

“It’s kind of you to receive us here.” It was a polite recitation, nothing more.

He challenged the interest in her eyes with a relentless impassivity, as though needing to prove to her and himself that she had no power to affect him any more. He was comprehensively armoured against any form of rejection from her today, Suzanne thought, telling herself it was only to be expected.

“We didn’t want the child disturbed any more than she has to be,” she offered softly, hoping to put him more at ease.

It was a vain hope. “So it was explained to me,” he said, and in a pointed and deliberate dismissal of her, he dropped his gaze to the child cradled against her shoulder.

She, of course, was the prime focus of his interest, yet his attention seemed more directed at the way Suzanne had the child clasped in her arms. Suzanne had the distinct impression he would have preferred anyone other than herself to be involved in this situation.

A woman stepped up beside him, a tall, blond, beautiful woman who slid her arm possessively around his. It was not his sister. His only sister was dead. The woman was far too young to be his stepmother. The way she looked at Leith Carew evoked a weird little lurch in Suzanne’s heart.

He glanced at the woman then returned a hard, glittering gaze to Suzanne. “This is my fiancée, Danica Fairlie,” he announced. “Danica, this is Mrs. Forbes.”

“How do you do?” the blonde said with polite formality.

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