EIGHT SISTERS, EIGHT

SCANDALOUSLY SEDUCTIVE STORIES

THE

Balfour LEGACY

Scandal on the night of the world-famous one hundredth Balfour Charity Ball has left the Balfour family in disarray! Proud patriarch Oscar Balfour knows that something must be done. His only option is to cut his daughters off from their lavish lifestyles and send them out into the real world to stand on their own two feet. So he dusts off the Balfour family rules and uses his powerful contacts to place each girl in a situation that will challenge her particular personality. He is determined that each of his daughters should learn that money will not buy happiness — integrity, decorum, strength, trust … and love are everything!

Each month Mills & Boon is delighted to bring you an exciting new instalment from The Balfour Legacy. You won’t want to miss out!

MIA’S SCANDAL – Michelle Reid KAT’S PRIDE – Sharon Kendrick EMILY’S INNOCENCE – India Grey SOPHIE’S SEDUCTION – Kim Lawrence ZOE’S LESSON – Kate Hewitt ANNIE’S SECRET – Carole Mortimer BELLA’S DISGRACE – Sarah Morgan OLIVIA’S AWAKENING – Margaret Way

About the Author

MARGARET WAY, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the sub-tropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatorium-trained pianist, teacher, accompanist and vocal coach, her musical career came to an unexpected end when she took up writing, initially as a fun thing to do. She currently lives in a harbourside apartment at beautiful Raby Bay, a thirty-minute drive from the State capital, where she loves dining alfresco on her plant-filled balcony that overlooks a translucent green marina filled with all manner of pleasure craft, from motor cruisers costing millions of dollars, big graceful yachts with carved masts standing tall against the cloudless blue sky to little bay runabouts. No one and nothing is in a mad rush, so she finds the laid back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over a hundred books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.

THE

Balfour LEGACY

Olivia’s Awakening

MARGARET WAY

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

I’M UP for the challenge. Of course I am! Nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in her. At the same time she was experiencing a definite sense of panic—the fear of finding herself in a strange land where she could conceivably be a lot unhappier than she already was?

You’re not a Balfour for nothing, girl!

It was natural to her to talk to herself—a practice that had started very early in life. Maybe around seven, when she had found it hard to get attention. Still, she had grown up courageous—not too self-congratulatory a word, she fancied—and with a capacity for adjustment. Only these days her idea of herself had been badly shaken, something she didn’t confide in everyone. Or she stopped herself in the nick of time.

She had always met her obligations, stood resolutely by her code of conduct which she firmly believed to be high, both in theory and in practise. Only problem now, she had lost her guiding star—her faith in herself—the ability she had always prided herself on to keep calm and in control. It was an ability she had learned the hard way, as surrogate mother to her siblings. Sadly that cherished ability had deserted her, bringing on her current sense of devastation. She who had always been such a stickler for doing the right thing had totally lost it. And boy did that hurt!

“Olivia, dear God!” Her father, the British billionaire, Oscar Balfour, using his steely blue eyes as a weapon, had reeled away from her in shock. “How could you? I just can’t believe how you of all people have let me down.”

Naturally a degree of resentment had erupted. Such criticism was hard to take after years of going all-out to please him.

Only the debacle wasn’t just a bad dream. It had really occurred at the Balfour Charity Ball, instigated by her illustrious family a century before.

“The Balfour Ball has become an absolute must for anyone who is anyone in society.” This from Great-aunt Edwina Balfour, the perfect upper-class snob. “On a par with an invitation to the palace.”

Olivia could have responded she would throw over the Balfour Charity Ball any day for an invite to the palace, but had the great good sense not to. Nevertheless, the ball—the 100th no less—wasn’t the occasion where one would have thought anyone in their right mind would get into a catfight. But that was exactly what she and her twin sister Bella had done that fateful night.

“And screw you!” Bella had tossed at her crudely, landing a stinging slap on her twin’s cheek.

The silence thereafter had positively roared. Bella had never struck her, but the incident was now indelibly printed on their memories, possibly for a lifetime. Such a serious breach of etiquette was rarer than rare. Betrayal of family was not to be condoned. The only mitigating circumstance was both she and Bella had meant well. Their argument was all about the fate and future of their much-loved sibling Zoe.

Poor Zoe!

So there they were on that night of nights, all dressed to the nines, beautiful formal gowns and magnificent family heirloom jewellery, except for Bella, who always liked to be different, more daring, setting trends with avant-garde labels and loads of costume glitter. She, Olivia, the sensible, practical—might as well say it—sanctimonious one, the eldest of the “Beautiful Balfour Girls,” pitted against the highly volatile, sparkling Bella, who in retrospect could be judged as the one having the most heart. She could no longer blind herself to that telling fact.

Having laid all her cards on the table she recognised that, as much as she loved and cherished her twin, she had always been inclined to patronise Bella, regarding her sister as someone who, though very beautiful, perhaps lacked intellectual depth. Bella didn’t read books or ponder issues as she did. Bella had not completed her university degree as she had to some distinction. Bella had no great interest in the arts generally.

Their tastes weren’t the same. In fact, they were opposites. Bella played up her stunning beauty. Olivia deliberately played hers down. They weren’t identical twins, but fraternal. Bella closely resembled their dead mother, the exquisite Alexandra. Bella was more the Balfour, with the Balfour blue eyes.

Olivia was far more responsible than her twin. Bella was the first to admit that. She didn’t have Bella’s kind of freedom. Bella’s sole interest was to have a good time, leaving her, the elder by a few minutes, to toe the line. It was Olivia who often acted as her father’s hostess, kept up the Balfour charity work, supervised and instructed when necessary her younger siblings—her half-sisters—coped with their dependency on her, while Bella led her glamorous, very hectic social life always pursued by a conga line of admirers.

Be that as it may, their calamitous fight had been their only real argument.

“As twins we stick together! One for all and all for one!” This was their childhood swashbuckling mantra when they were heavily into Alexandre Dumas. She and Bella loved each other. They loved Zoe, who as it turned out was not their father’s child, but their late mother’s indiscretion. Their mother of all people! She, who they had regarded as being right up there with Mother Teresa.

“Mother must have been a saint. They say only the good die young.” She had actually said that once to Bella in an effort to curb her sister’s wildness, which went far beyond high spirits. Both of them at the time had believed it to be entirely true.

Now she had to pinch herself hard to remind herself that darling Zoe was therefore illegitimate. She and Bella had argued over whether to tell Zoe or conceal the fact from her. Their fiery debate had had devastating consequences for the entire family.

“If only I could go back in time!” She often found herself breaking the silence to lament. They hadn’t been foolish enough to conduct their argument in public. They had had the sense to retire to a private room to hurl insults at each other, but not the continuing good sense to shut the door firmly. Their heated discussion over Zoe’s legitimacy, a matter that consumed them, had been overheard by an unscrupulous member of the press.

The press and the paparazzi were forever hot on the trail of the Beautiful Balfour Girls, Bella in particular. The journalist must have thought all his coups had come at once. He got off a starkly telling photo of the two of them in the heat of their fury—hers self-righteous, Bella’s impassioned—plus all he had overheard of their argument which was practically verbatim. Next morning, story and photograph had been splashed across the front page of a national newspaper.

Another Illegitimacy Scandal Rocks Balfour Family

Even as she thought of it Olivia cringed in mind and body. When would the soul-searching stop? When would her disgust with herself begin to abate? She had to face the fact she could be left with eternal regret or, as Bella had said lying limply across her twin’s bed,

“Sooner or later, Olivia, we have to pay for our sins. When it comes down to it we’re no different from anyone else.”

What nonsense! Of course they were different. They lived in a stately home for one thing. The family was mentioned in Debrett’s and Who’s Who. To top it off their father was a billionaire. This time they were all paying, from her illustrious father down, when it was she and Bella who had finally toppled the grand Balfour edifice. How shocking was that?

Was it any wonder their father had reinstituted the Balfour Family Rules, a code of conduct that had been passed down from generation to generation within the Balfour family? All eight of Oscar’s daughters through their father’s three marriages, and both their mother’s and their father’s misalliances—had accepted his decision to send them away from the scene of the family humiliation.

“You need to face your limitations, my daughters, and hopefully find your strengths,” he had exhorted with as much gravitas as a hanging judge.

They could have refused. She had certainly considered it. But they didn’t.

“A point very much in your favour,” Oscar Balfour conceded.

Bella had been handed rule one. Dignity.

She had been given her own rule. Rule eight. Humility.

When their father had first handed her rule eight, she had looked back at him in blank astonishment.

“Humility, Daddy? What can you mean?” She felt enormously hurt.

He had taken up valuable time to explain.

Now in a moment of self-clarity she saw she just might have a need to develop that overrated virtue. She knew what people thought of her: aloof, cool to the point of glacial, supremely self-confident, self-assured, really a snob and a bit of a prude, the least approachable of the Balfour girls. Not true. At least, not entirely. The cool bit was in order. She was a private person. Indeed she had a passion for privacy. But at the heart of it she couldn’t do without her defence mechanisms any more than Bella, both of them cruelly robbed of a mother and a mother’s love and guidance when they had barely mastered the trick of abseiling down their cots.

“Doesn’t anyone realise what losing a mother does to a child? The effects are felt forever.”

“God, tell me something I don’t know!” Bella, clad in a gorgeous imperial-yellow silk kimono decorated with richly embroidered chrysanthemums and mystical birds, had cried. In many ways Bella was a bit of a drama queen.

So in the end she and Bella, who really didn’t have a personality disorder as she had so wrongly accused her, accepted their banishments.

“Both of us have to master the rule, Olivia.” Bella, for once, showed meekness.

It was certainly their father’s directive. A cue for obedience if ever there was one. “It will get you safely through life so you never again bring shame on the family name.” He had spoken as if he was throwing them all a lifeline. For herself, she had to confess she ever so slightly resented the fact he had omitted to mention his own part in the debacle. It was his “girls” who had to take the direct hit.

“We have to work out our punishment,” Bella had said, apparently not feeling the same degree of betrayal. “Take it on the chin.”

“Punishment? I prefer to look on it as a challenge.”

A challenge—far, far away from their comfort zone.

“Good grief, Daddy, not Australia!” She had a vision of that very large island continent not all that far off the South Pole. Surely they had sent convicts there?

“Australia, it is!” Her father had fixed her with the piercing Balfour eyes. “You’re to work in whatever capacity is required of you, Olivia. At least you have the Balfour good business head on your shoulders.”

She should have reminded him that had already been established. But to be obliged to work for a man she had only met briefly and had cause to intensely dislike? Could she even do it, much as she was made of stern stuff?

Clint McAlpine, Australian cattle baron, had been the only person in her life outside Bella who had had the temerity to tell her to her face—she had only been showing him her normal demeanour at the time—that she badly needed taking down a peg.

“Come down from your high ivory tower, ice princess,” he’d advised, a satirical twist to his handsome mouth. “Mix with mere mortals. I promise it will do you a power of good.”

She winced at the memory! Just because he was a billionaire like their father didn’t give him the right to tick her off. Maybe for that very reason his image, incredibly vivid, had stuck in her head. It had never diminished. Something she didn’t understand.

There was some distant family connection on her father’s side; that’s how they had met up. Functions, a family wedding. The McAlpines often visited London on business or pleasure or a mix of both. A few years back, her father had bought a large block of shares in the McAlpine Pastoral Company which must have prompted his decision to send her into the McAlpine stronghold. Evidently her father trusted McAlpine as he had trusted McAlpine’s late father, a man of good British stock. He must have been a much nicer man altogether. So now, a scant two days after the Balfour disaster she was on the threshold of taking up her challenge.

At the end of the earth.

Australia.

CHAPTER ONE

Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, gateway to Australia

NEVER a good traveller—her privileged lifestyle had ensured a great deal of international jet-setting—Olivia had come to the conclusion this had to be the epic journey of all time. First there was the flight from London to Singapore. Horrendous! Well over fourteen hours of claustrophobia. She had tried, largely in vain, to gather her resources with a one-night stopover at Raffles. Lovely hotel with a unique charm. She fully intended to revisit it at some future date, but for now on to Darwin, the tropical capital of the Northern Territory of Australia, yet another four and more hours away.

She couldn’t read. She couldn’t sleep. All she could do was dwell on her disastrous fall from grace. She knew she had no alternative but to fight back. And not take an age about it either. She and her siblings were due back in London five months hence to celebrate their father’s birthday on October 2. Nothing for it but to pull up her socks! Re-establish her aristocratic credentials.

Could be hard going in Australia.

Looking wanly out the aircraft porthole she could see the glitter of the Timor Sea. It was a genuine turquoise. That aroused her interest sufficiently to make her sit up and take notice. They continued their descent, and Darwin City’s skyline rose up.

Skyline! Good grief!

She craned her neck nearer the porthole. After London, New York and the great cities of Europe, all of which she had visited, it looked more like something out of a Somerset Maugham novel—a tropical outpost, as it were. It was bound to be sweltering. She knew the heat of the Caribbean where her father owned a beautiful private island, but she had a premonition the heat of Darwin was going to be something else again. And she the one who had often been described as the “quintessential English rose"! Anyone who knew the slightest thing about gardening would know roses hated extreme heat.

Yet her father had sent her here and she had obeyed his decision. But then hadn’t she obeyed him all of her life? Struggling to always be what he wanted, while Bella was out enjoying herself, men falling around her like ninepins.

“Only flings, sweetie! Something to get me through a desperately dull life.”

She had thanked Bella for sharing that with her. Far from being the quintessential English rose she was starting to think of herself as the quintessential old maid who, far from bedding lovers, burnt gallons of midnight oil reading profound and often obscure literature. She even dressed like a woman ten years her senior. Or so Bella said. How had that developed? Her father’s fault for expecting way too much of her, especially from an early age. Bella’s taunt aside, she thought she always looked impeccably groomed—that was her duty—but she saw now with her perfect up-do, her whole style could be too much on the conservative side for a woman of twenty-eight.

Twenty-eight! My God, when was she going to start the breeding process? Time was running out. Bella had had dozens of affairs and countless proposals. She’d had exactly two. Both perfect disasters. Geoffrey, then Justin. They had only wanted her because she was her father’s daughter. Bella’s men wanted just Bella. Wasn’t that a bit of a sore point? But could she blame them? Bella was everything she was not: sexy, exciting, daring, adventurous, not afraid to show lots of creamy cleavage, whereas she was as modest as a novice nun. She could see herself now as being as dull as ditch water. That image bruised her ego. Or what was left of it.

What would she make of Australia? The Northern Territory she understood was pretty much one sprawling wilderness area. She hadn’t wanted Australia. Too hot and primitive. But in the end she had accepted the commitment. She was a Balfour, British to the bone.

Darwin City. City? She could see a township built on a bluff at the edge of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sparkling blue-green water. It overlooked what appeared to be a very large harbour. Being her, she had made it her business to read up on the place so she knew the city had been destroyed and rebuilt twice. Once after the massive Japanese air raid in February 1942 during World War II, when more bombs were dropped on an unprepared Darwin than had been dropped on Pearl Harbor. Then again after the city was destroyed by a terrifying natural disaster, Cyclone Tracy, in 1974. She rather thought after something as cataclysmic as that she would pack up her things and move to the Snowy Mountains, but apparently the people of the Top End were a lot tougher than she.

She well remembered McAlpine as projecting a powerful image: tough, aggressive, a man’s man, but women seemed to adore him. It was a wonder his body didn’t glow with the force of that exuberant energy. Not that he wasn’t a cultured man in his way. Rather he projected a dual image. The rough, tough cattle baron with an abrasive tongue, and the highly regarded chairman and CEO of M.A.P.C., the McAlpine Pastoral Company. Her billionaire businessman father wouldn’t have bought into the company otherwise.

Much as she loved and respected her father she realised there was some ambivalence in her towards him. He hadn’t been what she and Bella had wanted. A doting, hands-on dad. Their father, always in pursuit of even more power and money—throw in women—hadn’t been around for his daughters most of the time. In a sense that had left her and Bella, in particular, orphans, mere babes in the woods. She had detected the same kind of brilliance and that certain ruthlessness in McAlpine.

Her father had worked his way through three wives, a catastrophic one-night stand and more than likely a number of affairs they didn’t know about. She chose to ignore the fact that her and Bella’s mother, Alexandra, had cheated on him—who knows for what reason? Might have been a good one. Their mother was their mother after all. They had wanted their memory of her to remain sacred. Ah, well! Sooner or later one had to face the realities of life.

She knew of McAlpine’s marriage to an Australian heiress with an unusual name. It had ended in an acrimonious divorce. She wasn’t in the least surprised. He was that kind of man. Probably he had treated his ex-wife badly, had affairs. There was a young daughter, she seemed to recall, who no doubt would have been swiftly dispatched to her mother to look after. One couldn’t expect a tycoon to work out a little girl’s problems. She and Bella hadn’t enjoyed much of their father’s attention or problem solving.

With an effort she shook herself out of what Bella liked to call “Your martyr mode, darling! There it is again!” She didn’t recognise it herself. She was no martyr even if she was practically a saint with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She had noted the cattle baron was big on sex appeal. Something women drooled over. He was devilishly handsome. In her view in an overtly sexy way. But she had to concede real sexual presence. She was prepared to grant him that but she, for one, had had no trouble combating it. Such men shrieked a warning to a discerning woman like herself. She preferred far more subtle English good looks and style—like Justin’s, even if he had turned out to be an appalling cad. Bella had called him a “love rat.” She couldn’t see McAlpine as a rat. But then what did she know? She, who appeared to be incapable of one lasting relationship with a man.

What she did know was, she neither trusted nor liked McAlpine. She didn’t doubt her ability to keep him in his place. She was a Balfour after all. A sensible, stable person who had never required being kept an eye on. Maybe she had blotted her near-perfect copybook, but she’d had the grace to accuse herself of her failures. Her task now was to regain her self-esteem and emerge as a more nurturing, more compassionate, more liberal-minded person willing and able to accept advice.

But not from McAlpine.

Inside Darwin International Airport she looked around her in disbelief. Was Darwin a beach resort? The atmosphere was torrid even for May when it surely should have been cooling down. The hot humid air was fitfully swept by cooling breezes off the harbour. Overhead domed a burning blue sky. Northern Hemisphere skies didn’t have that intensity of colour. Soaring coconut palms and spreading flamboyant trees were everywhere. She had to wonder if ever a stray coconut fell on some unfortunate head. She supposed one could always sue.

The vegetation was rampantly tropical, full of strong primary colours that assaulted the eye, the air saturated with strange fragrances. Sunlight streamed down in bars of molten gold. As for the quality of the light! Even with her sunglasses on her eyes were dazzled. So much so in the middle of her ruminations she nearly collided with someone.

“I’m so sorry.” She was tempted to tell the man who had accosted her he couldn’t have been watching where he was going.

“No worries, love.”

She registered in amazement his incredible outfit. Navy boxer shorts with a frog-green singlet.

“You need help, little lady?”

That, when she was some inches taller than he. She momentarily closed her eyes. “I’m fine, thank you. Someone will be meeting me.”

“Lucky devil!”

Olivia’s Balfour blue eyes glinted. Why did it have to be a man? She could have been meeting a favourite aunt. She continued making slow progress through the swirling throng, marvelling at the sights around her.

She had never seen such flimsy dressing in her entire life, nor so much bare skin. Not even on the Caribbean islands. Nor so many marvellously attractive children, girls and exotic young women with startlingly beautiful black eyes, and skin either gilded honey, café au lait, light fawn or chocolate. They were all petite, with lovely slender limbs. Not for the first time in her life she felt like a giraffe, more pallid than she really was. Even Bella might have a job being singled out here. She didn’t know if these people were part aboriginal, part Indonesian, part New Guinean, part Chinese—anywhere from South-East Asia.

She didn’t know this part of the world at all. But they were all Australians, it seemed. They spoke with the same distinctive Australian accent, so much broader than her own and—it had to be said—the voices so much louder. No comment seemed to be offered quietly. She recalled her own voice had often been referred to as “cut glass.” But then they all spoke like that, the Balfours.

Heavens, was it possible she was a snob after all? For a moment she wondered if she had caught herself out. Looking around her she saw Australia’s proximity to Asia was well in evidence. This was a melting pot. Fifty nationalities made up the one-hundred-thousand-strong population and they all seemed to be waiting for flights out or meeting up with relatives and friends. She remembered now Darwin was the base for tourists who wanted to explore the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park and the great wilderness areas of Arnhem Land. She could readily believe such areas would be magnificent, but she couldn’t think how they would find the strength to go exploring in such heat!

She hadn’t thought to take off her long-sleeved Armani jacket. No chance of her ever getting about in floral bras, halter necks and short shorts like the young women around her. Not that there was anything wrong with her legs. Or her arms. Any part of her body for that matter. The jacket she wore over a slim skirt and a cream silk shirt beneath. Now she wished she had taken off the jacket. She was melting with little chance to mop her brow. The humid heat was far beyond anything she was used to. By Darwin standards she realised she was ridiculously overdressed. Absolutely nobody looked like her. Even her expensive shoes felt damp and clonky.

She was fully aware of all the curious glances directed her way. She also had quite a number of pieces of luggage to be off-loaded—all necessary, all bearing the famous Louis Vuitton label. Now she wished she had bought some ordinary everyday luggage. It was starkly apparent she didn’t fit in. Worse, she must have looked helpless.

“All right, love, are you?”

Olivia turned, astonished. Obviously she did have helpless or hopeless tattooed on her brow. For out of the milling crowd had emerged a pretty dark-skinned woman somewhere in her thirties, a little pudgy around the tummy, wearing a loose, floral dress alight with beautiful hand-painted hibiscus and some kind of rubber flip-flops on her feet. Despite that Olivia could see with her trained eyes that this was a woman of consequence, albeit in her own way. She had that certain look Olivia recognised, the self-assurance in the fathomless black eyes. She also wore a look of kindly concern. Olivia valued concern and kindness. Olivia liked her immediately. Something that happened rarely with strangers.

“Thank you for asking, but I’m quite all right.”

“Don’t look it, love!” The woman flashed a smile, still observing Olivia closely.

Did all these people speak their thoughts aloud? Olivia felt giddy and terribly overheated, as though the sun had bored a hole in her skull.

“Yah pale, and that lovely porcelain face of yours is flushed and covered in sweat. What say we sit down for a moment, love.” She paused to look around her. “Long flight, was it? You’re a Pom, of course. No mistakin’ the accent.” The woman laughed softly. “No offence, love. Me great-grandad was a Pom. Sent out to oversee the Pommy pearling interest. Used to be big in those days. His family never acknowledged me but that’s OK. I never acknowledged ‘im. So come on.” She took Olivia’s nerveless arm in a motherly fashion. “Over here. Don’t want you faintin’ on us.”

Olivia’s laugh was brittle. “I’ve never fainted in my life.” Nevertheless she allowed herself to be led away.

“Always a first time, love. They reckon five out of ten people faint at some point of their life. I fainted when I got speared one time. Accident, o’ course, but I nearly died. Me and Rani were out fishin’ for barra—that’s barramundi, if you don’t know. Best-eatin’ fish in the world.”

“I have heard of it,” Olivia said, not wanting to be impolite. “It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?” She sank rather feebly onto one of the long bench seats arranged in rows.

“This is cool for us, love. By the sound of it you wouldn’t want to be here in the wet. It’s just over.” The woman took a seat beside her. “What are you doin’ here anyway? Don’t look like a tourist to me. Look more like the wind blow you in, the wind blow you out. A bit spooky!”

“Spooky?” Olivia felt what was left of her self-confidence ooze away.

“Something about you, love.” The woman looked searchingly into Olivia’s blue eyes. “Your spirit bin wounded. Somethin’ happened you weren’t countin’ on? Don’t worry, yah spirit will heal here, far, far away from what you left behind. You’re gunna be able to display your real colours.”

Olivia, who fancied she had something of a gift, recognised a prophecy when she heard one. “Oh, I hope so!” The strange woman continued to stare directly into her eyes. Just as hypnotists do. Probably she was one. Or a sorceress. Then again she might discover the woman wasn’t real.

“Yah bin like a bird in a cage strugglin’ to escape,” the woman continued, her tone at lullaby pitch. “Beatin’ yah wings and flingin’ yourself against the bars. You have to have the will to escape.”

“Maybe I’ve been frightened to fly alone?” Incredibly Oliva found herself divulging that startling piece of information.

“Escape is within reach.”

The one thing she hadn’t reckoned on was an airport clairvoyant. “I’m waiting for a Mr Clint McAlpine to pick me up,” she confided in another strange burst of friendliness. “I’m to work for him.”

It was the woman’s turn to be astonished. “Clint hired yah?”

“You call him Clint?” Olivia was somewhat taken aback. No one, for instance, outside of family and close friends called her father Oscar. Dear me, no!

“Now, now, love, don’t come over the Pom.” The woman tapped her hand lightly. “We all call him Clint. We love him up here. He’s the best fella in the world. A fittin’ heir for his dad, who’s up there in the Milky Way, the home of the Great Beings and our ancestors. I’m Bessie Malgil, by the way. I shoulda told yah. Everyone knows me around here. I paint.”

“Pictures?” Olivia stared at her with quickening interest.

“Not your kind of pictures, love. We’re talkin’ indigenous art. Now how about you? What’s your name? Lady Somethin', I’ll be bound!”

“Olivia Balfour.” Olivia gave the Good Samaritan her hand. “No title.”

“Don’t need one. Written all over yah. Nice to meet yah, Livvy,” Bessie said, giving Olivia’s elegant long-fingered hand a gentle shake.

Livvy! She had waited all her life to be called Livvy.

“My golly, girl, you’ve taken on a challenge comin’ down here to this part of the world. You look like you belong in one of them fine palaces.”

“No, Bessie, no!” Olivia shook her head, a movement that only increased her dizziness. “I’m just an ordinary person but I am interested in challenges.”

“Not today you ain’t!” Bessie pronounced firmly. “Look, love, let’s get you out of that straitjacket. Not that it ain’t dressy but we need to make a start. You’re overheatin', that’s for sure. Clint’s comin', yah say?”

“Oh, I do hope so.” Olivia rose in a rather wobbly fashion to her feet, while Bessie helped her out of her linen jacket, folding it neatly over the back of the bench.

“If he said he bin here, he’ll bin here,” Bessie stated with the utmost faith. “Blow me down if that’s not ‘im coming now!” Her whole face lit up. “Bin out on a muster by the look of it.” She chuckled. “Last week he was sellin’ two of the Queensland stations in the chain. People are lookin’ for cheaper beef. Global recession an’ all. We can deliver better up here in the Territory. Your worries are over, Livvy. Here he comes.”

Olivia started to her feet again, for once in her life standing awkwardly. McAlpine was coming. From where? What direction? Even as her eyes swept the crowded terminal she became aware of a ripple of pleasure, of recognition and excitement, in the crowd. She even detected a sprinkle of clapping. Something that always happened when royalty was around.

Bessie’s indicating hand came up. “Here he is, love. Right on time.”

Olivia followed her gaze helplessly. McAlpine?

All she could see was a strikingly tall, wild-looking man striding towards them. Some character that embodied the great outdoors, or the hero of a big-budget adventure movie set in the desert sands of Arabia or the jungles of the Amazon, the ones she avoided. This man was dressed in what she took to be the ultimate in bush gear. Khaki shirt, khaki trousers, a surprisingly fancy silver buckle on the leather belt he had slung around his lean waist. Polished high-heeled cowboy boots made him even taller than he already was. A wide-brimmed cream hat, theAustralian slouch hat, was set at a rakish angle on his head. His hair, a dark auburn in colour, was almost long enough to pull into a ponytail, for God’s sake! When had he last visited a hairdresser? Most of his darkly tanned face was covered by thick stubble that, left another few days, could turn into a full beard.

Just the sight of him rendered her fragile. In fact, she felt too shocked to move a muscle.

But the eyes were the eyes she remembered. Glowing and glittering like a full-grown African lion. She had no parallel for this. He hadn’t looked like this in London or at the family wedding in Scotland. Then he had fitted effortlessly into her world. But this was a far cry. Here in his own country he looked like a man who had never been tamed.

While she stared back in a kind of bemused horror, he suddenly put up his hand and swept off his wide-brimmed slouch hat in an extravagant gesture she interpreted as mocking. He looked quite extraordinary! A totally different breed. She could feel a blush further redden her face and neck. This was a dangerous man. Way outside her ken. And to think of it! She had put herself in his power.

Olivia did the only thing she could do.

She fainted.

A lot of things had happened to him in his eventful thirty-eight years, but he had never had a woman collapse in a dead faint into his arms. A beautiful woman no less—tall, elegant, with classic aristocratic features. His mind was suddenly filled with his irritating but surprisingly vivid memories of her. Olivia Balfour, ice princess, had only just arrived and already she was trouble.

“Poor little thing!” Bessie crooned, as he swiftly fielded the young English woman’s tall, too-slender body, lowering her so she lay flat along the empty bench.

“She’d be all of five-eight in her bare feet,” he pointed out drily.

“Yeah, but she looks kinda vunerable, don’t you think?”

“Vulnerable, Bessie,” McAlpine corrected, privately agreeing.

“Whatever!” Bessie shrugged. “I always say vunerable. Why don’t you never tell me before?”

“Never heard you say it, but you’re spot on.”

“'Course I am. Anyway, knew this was gunna happen. Too many clothes. I spotted that right off.” She leaned over to slip off Olivia’s low-heeled, very expensive leather shoes.

“Who wouldn’t?” McAlpine commented drily. He seemed to remember telling the high-and-mighty Ms Olivia Balfour to get off her high horse, pedestal, whatever. She had got under his skin and he hadn’t bothered to hide it. The divorce coming up. That was his excuse. Marigole had been giving him all the flack she could muster.

“Not used to our heat,” Bessie was saying. “How she’s gunna survive outback, boss, I dunno as yet.”

“It’ll come to you, Bessie, like it always does. You and I both know lilies thrive.” He stared down at Ms Balfour’s still, lily-skinned face. She had very long eyelashes. They were starting to flutter. A good sign. He moved his hand to undo a few buttons on her silk shirt. She had done it up almost to the neck despite the pressing heat which today was climbing to near forty degrees Celsius. Did she have no sense at all? Next he slipped the waist button on her tight pencil-slim skirt. “Cold water, Bessie, chop, chop.”

“Sure, boss!” Bessie spun on her thongs to obey, just as a terminal staff member hurried towards them, a very attractive brunette who had waited her moment to zoom over to them, physically beating off another female attendant in the process. She carried a plastic container of ice-cold water.

“Is she all right?” the brunette enquired, looking not at the faint victim as perhaps she should have, but full into the cattle baron’s extraordinary big-cat topaz eyes. They were stunning in his bronze face. She had been told he was a hunk. She wasn’t at all disappointed. Hunk was too tame. He was drop-dead gorgeous!

“She’s coming around.” Clint frowned slightly, taking Olivia’s pulse. A bit rapid but not overly weak. “Thanks for that.” He took the container from the attendant without really seeing her.

“No problem, Mr McAlpine.” Long heavily mascaraed eyelashes batted away, her fingers tingling deliciously from the brief contact with his. Gosh, he was awesome! And he was unattached. Everyone in the Territory knew his marriage hadn’t worked out. Unbelievable! The ex-wife had to be a blend of near blind and mentally challenged. “Could she need medical attention?” she asked helpfully. “I can arrange it.”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Gently Clint tapped Olivia Balfour’s cheeks. They were cool and damp and not worryingly hot and dry. “She’s exhausted from the long flight and she’s overdressed. The cold water will cool her down.” He realised after a moment the brunette was lingering on. He had got used to this kind of thing. Women worked hard at attracting him, often outrageously. Amazing how much more attractive having money made a man. “Thank you.” He gave her a smile that held a pleasant dismissal and reluctantly the airline attendant tore herself away, heading back to her mundane duties.

Olivia opened her eyes, trying desperately to reorientate herself.

Dear God, had she died and been transported to hell or what passed for it? She made a grab for someone’s shirt. Heat was swirling all around her. Surely she didn’t deserve this?

Full consciousness swiftly returned. She was looking straight into McAlpine’s lion’s eyes. She uncurled her fingers which were twined like tentacles of a vine around his arm. “God help me, did I faint?”

“Ah, the princess awakens from her slumbers!” he murmured suavely. “God help you, you did, Ms Balfour.” He rose to his impressive height. “Look, I’m going to lift you so your head is resting back against my shoulder. Then I want you to drink some cold water. Bessie will help.”

“Oh, good, Bessie …” She was enormously grateful Bessie, her Good Samaritan, hadn’t left her.

“I’m here, love, don’t you worry.” Bessie, who had already decided to take this beautiful, fragile lady under her wing, had moved in close, clucking like a mother hen. Why, the willowy creature had eyes as blue as a Ulysses butterfly’s wing and skin so white she might have been zoomed down from a celestial planet. Bessie took the container in hand.

“Really, I’m all right!” Olivia protested, when she felt like a rag mop.

“Really, you aren’t,” McAlpine drawled. He sat behind her, drawing her upper body against him. Immediately she slumped her golden head gratefully against his shoulder, clearly needing assistance. She might be terribly hot and bothered, he thought, but her skin gave off the most exquisite scent of roses. “Right, Bessie. Let’s get it into her.”

“Always wanted to be a nurse.” Bessie chuckled. “Like takin’ care of people.”

“Well, now’s your chance.”

“She’s lucky I sensed her,” Bessie said with satisfaction. “Not that me antennae bin flyin’ solo. The crowd had spotted her too. Never seen anyone so beatific in their whole lives.”

“Beatific?” Clint laughed. “That’s a good word, Bess.”

“Means angel, don’t it?”

“Looking like an angel.”

“Or mebbe a brolga in search of water. Jes’ standin’ there, she was.”

Brolga? Olivia felt a wash of panic. What was a brolga, for heaven’s sake? Some sort of slang for bird brain?

McAlpine’s body was disturbingly hot, hard and steely strong, the sweat on him clean—an arresting combination of pheromones and the vast outdoors, dead sexy in its way. For an insane moment she wondered what it would be like to know that body intimately. The next she wondered if it were possible she was on the verge of a spectacular mental breakdown. She had only set foot on this tropical outpost and already she was going troppo. She knew the term. Surely some Englishman who had spent too long in the tropics had invented it? She had never thought to experience it firsthand.

“Relax, no one is going to hurt you,” McAlpine said, as though humouring a fractious filly. “You need to cool down.”

“You’re gunna be OK, love.” Bessie gave her a big comforting smile, putting the plastic container to Olivia’s lips.

It was sooo good! Nothing in the world could have tasted better than pure cold water.

“Sip it,” McAlpine cautioned. “Don’t gulp.”

Even physically reduced, she bridled. “Hang on. I’m not—”

“Sip it,” he repeated, with a grimace of impatience.

Feeling childish, she slowly finished off the container of water, becoming aware she was the centre of attention. “Please, I can sit up.”

“Sure you can.” He was already in the process of helping her sit straight. Even with that loose wave of hair falling across her cheek, her shirt in slight disarray, the button of her skirt undone, she still managed to look elegant. No mean feat.

“How do you feel now?” Her eyes were the exact colour of the beautiful blue glaze on a Sung Dynasty vase at the house.

“Everyone is staring at me,” Olivia said worriedly. And so they were. Not rudely but sympathetically. She was sure the news had got about. The blonde lady fainted. A Pom. That explained it. Why wouldn’t she in the unaccustomed heat? The good news was she had Clint McAlpine, the Territory’s biggest cattle baron, to look out for her. The man might have been a national icon.

“How do you know they’re not staring at me?” he countered, watching yet another silky swathe of her beautiful blonde hair fall from her impeccable up-do. The few times he had seen her she’d always had her long hair pulled back tightly from her face and fashioned into some kind of knot. This was one repressed female. It would probably take a surgical team to get her out of her suit.

“So humiliating to faint!” Olivia murmured in embarrassment, as though it was on a par with jumping off a bridge only to land unhurt knee-deep in mud.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He was pleased to see a little of her colour had come back, warming her flawless skin. The fact her father had wanted to send her out to Australia, and to him in particular, had come as quite a shock and he didn’t shock easily. He knew about the scandal, of course. Even if it hadn’t made their newspapers, he had plenty of relatives, friends and contacts in the UK only too pleased to pass on the gossip. Frankly he couldn’t see her getting into a punch-up with her beautiful sister, the so-called “wild one.” Olivia was the ice princess, unwilling and seemingly unable to leave her marble pedestal. But for once she had lost it. From what little he knew of her she would be smarting badly.

He knew she needed a good long sleep. As a seasoned traveller—he was aware of her jet-setting—he had thought she would take the last leg of her flight from Singapore to Darwin in her stride. He knew she had made an overnight stay at Raffles. Only the best for Ms Balfour. He couldn’t chance flying her to the station. Not today. Another overnight stay was called for. He could take her to the harbourside apartment the family maintained. McAlpine money had built the luxury complex. Or perhaps it would be advisable to book them into the Darwin International Resort Hotel. It was only a short distance away.

On the face of it Ms Balfour didn’t seem right for any job he could easily set her. Probably she had never been inside a kitchen in her entire life. Not that any of the McAlpine operations needed a cook—even if he could send a woman like her to an outstation. Out of the question. He had Kath and Norm Cartwright, husband-and-wife team, running domestic affairs at Kalla Koori.

Maybe Ms Balfour couldn’t cook, or keep house, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to tackle the hardest game of all, mustering cattle, but she looked far from stupid. In fact, she looked highly intelligent. As she would have to be.

He knew she had often acted as her father’s hostess and done the usual things for a young woman in her privileged position: charity work, opening fetes and nursing homes, that kind of thing. If she could cut the swanning around bit, she would be quite an asset to him on the social side of things. He had functions to give, important guests to entertain. He fancied Ms Balfour would find acting organiser and hostess a piece of cake.

She would, however, have to lighten up on the upper-crust hauteur. He seemed to remember he had told her, among other things, she had elevated snobbery to an art form. Ouch! He could hardly expect her to like him any more than he liked her.

Yet she was here. Oscar Balfour had sent her. Oscar Balfour was a good man to have onside. His late father had liked the man immensely. Oscar Balfour did have patrician good looks and a great deal of charm. Also a great deal of money. Oscar Balfour was a significant shareholder in M.A.P.C. It followed that both of them, he and Ms Balfour, would have to make the best of things or kill off each other in the process.

CHAPTER TWO

MCALPINE had to be a celebrity.

Everywhere they went he was waved at, smiled at, greeted with a mix of awe, respect and enthusiastic friendliness. He could have been a rock star in town for a huge open-air concert.

Overnight the stubble had disappeared. Morning found him clean-shaven but still with that “wild man” look, ensuring women never took their eyes off him. She was sure what she was registering was plain primal lust. She didn’t know whether to feel disgusted or deprived. She had never seen anything like the combination of his thick, lustrous dark auburn hair, bronze skin—she’d never seen a tan richer, darker—and confronting golden eyes. He had even found time to have his hair trimmed. One couldn’t have said “cut.” No regimental short back and sides. Oh, well, it was beautiful hair after all. Most women would give up a valuable eye tooth to have hair like it.

Why couldn’t the man have been ordinary? A good twenty years older? A father figure. Even uncle figure would have done. Her father’s choice of McAlpine was the worst of the worst. They had absolutely nothing in common. Even more upsetting was the fact they were basically hostile to each other. He certainly brought out the offensive in her. She was good for a joust. If one wanted peace, one prepared for war. But then again, war wasn’t good when she had to work for the man, and he no doubt would be reporting back to her father.

There was one good thing, however. She had slept like the proverbial log. And he had let her. Until 9:00 a.m., that is, when he had called her hotel room to instruct her to come down for breakfast without delay, after which they were flying on. At least he had had the decency to enquire whether she had slept at all.

“Thank you for asking about the quality of my sleep.” She willed herself to be cool. Not easy when there was some extraordinary heat at her centre. “I slept very well, Mr McAlpine.” Even as she answered she had thrown back the light bedclothes and leapt to her feet. “I hope you weren’t worrying about me?” She couldn’t prevent the note of sarcasm in her voice.

“Not in the least, Ms Balfour. But it’s time to put a little pressure on you. I’m sure being a Balfour you’re up for it. We’ll have breakfast—I’ve already taken the liberty of ordering—then we must be on our way. Business beckons. I’m sure you’re well used to that kind of thing from your father. See you in the foyer.”

She had showered, dressed and was downstairs in under twenty minutes, a positive record for her. Unfortunately she hadn’t had time to arrange her hair in its customary neat pleat. She had to knot the billowy blonde masses with a gold clasp at the nape. The foyer was surprisingly busy, people going back and forth, all acting happy to be there. No sign of McAlpine; he had to be dead easy to spot with his looks and height. But no, he was nowhere about. No fan groups circling in tight knots.

“Ms Balfour, I presume.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” She actually backed into him. Or had he let her? She spun, acutely embarrassed, feeling the crescendo of heat that arose from his hands momentarily on her shoulders. A light pressure actually, yet she felt it right down to her toes. They instantly turned up.

“Let’s go in, shall we?” he suggested suavely.

He was appraising her with faint incredulity, as though she was made of strawberries and whipped cream, Olivia thought crossly. “It might have been an idea to meet up inside the restaurant,” she pointed out loftily, regaining her habitual cool.

“So what are you saying?” He rounded on her, so tall that for the first time in her life she felt dwarfed.

“Why, nothing.” She was determined not to let him rattle her.

An experienced traveller she had laid out what she would be wearing the next day before collapsing into the hotel’s very comfortable bed. White silk-cotton top with an oval neck, and long sleeves she had pushed up in a concession to the heat. White linen trousers—lovely flattering cut—and white-and-tan loafers. Borrowing a bit of Bella’s dash she added a studded tan leather belt to break up the all-white.

He was wearing an outfit only a notch up from yesterday. A torso-hugging black T-shirt with a white logo—I Love NY, of all things, the love represented by a red heart. She supposed he had been to New York many times. Brought the T-shirt back from a recent trip. Black tight-fitting jeans. He looked about as fit as a man could possibly get. Fit and disgracefully sexy. And goodness, the way he moved! She was right about the big jungle cat, she thought, swallowing on a slight obstruction in her throat.

“Don’t be so nervous,” he bid her, almost kindly, when they were seated. “I’m sure you’re fully expecting a giant Territory T-bone steak, sausages, fried eggs, fried tomatoes and a pile of hash browns?”

“I’m sure it’s a breakfast you frequently indulge in?” she countered sweetly. But how could he with that body? Next thought: as a cattle baron he would most probably work the calories off.

“You can hold the hash browns,” he said, with a twist of a smile. “Though I doubt very much if you could put such a breakfast together.”

Such a sensuous mouth! The four women at the table to the right of them couldn’t tear their eyes off him. “What do you know of me really, Mr McAlpine?” She concentrated her attention away from him.

“Hardly a thing,” he conceded. “Why don’t we get matters out in the open? I didn’t want you here, Ms Balfour, any more than you want to be here. But you can’t escape. Neither can I. Both of us are doing this for your father. I want to keep him on board and you want to redeem yourself as I hear it?”

“Redeem myself?” Her blue eyes glinted. “Spoken by a man who listens to gossip. I’m not here to redeem myself—”

“Take it up with your father,” he briskly interrupted, turning his arrogant head as a bestarched young waitress approached, wheeling a trolley.

“Good morning, Mr McAlpine,” the waitress trilled.

“Good morning, Kym.” That careless, megawatt smile. “What have you got for us there?”

He had a darn good voice too. Deep and dark, slightly grainy like polished teak, rather thrillingly vibrant, if one responded to that sort of thing.

“Just what you ordered, sir.” Pretty dimples flickered in the waitress’s cheek.

“No surprises, then,” Olivia remarked, utilising her caustic tone.

Only then did the waitress turn her big brown eyes on Olivia. “Hope you enjoy it, ma’am.”

Ma’am? Olvia allowed no one to see her reaction. She might have been taken for his maiden aunt. Cheek of the girl!

The waitress began setting out freshly squeezed fruit juice in frosted glasses—grapefruit for both—slices of a lush-looking papaya with quartered limes, leaving the remaining boiled eggs and piping hot toast under cover on the trolley. Tea or coffee would be served at the table. McAlpine had only to raise a lazy finger.

“Nice to see you again, Mr McAlpine,” the young woman gushed by way of farewell, injecting all she had in the way of oomph. As it happened, rather a lot.

“Another admirer?” Olivia enquired, after the waitress had gone, allowing the scoff to show.

“Do you mind, Ms Balfour?” He picked up his glass of fruit juice, toasted her with it. “Hope everything is to your satisfaction?”

“Thank you, yes,” Olivia admitted, deciding to be gracious.

“So eat up because we’re outta here!” His dynamic features tightened. Abruptly he had sprung into tycoon mode right before her eyes. Not that she hadn’t seen it all before. But had her father seriously considered in sending her to Clint McAlpine he had sent her in fathoms deep. Not that she wasn’t an excellent swimmer. She had come to Australia determined on setting her mind to the task and in so doing reaffirming her self-worth. It would hardly do to give up at the outset.

Onward Christian soldiers.

At school they had used to sing that in chapel. And, oh, yes. “Amazing Grace.”

Even so it would be a titanic effort.

He came to her room just as she was wondering what to do with all her luggage. In retrospect she had brought rather a lot. Probably what she really needed was some khaki bush clothes, a slouch hat and stout boots to ward off possible snake attacks. She had read all about the snakes, the dingoes, the wild buffalo and the wild pigs, not to mention the crocodiles. Maybe she should tell him she had some experience of the African bush, though the place she and Bella had stayed at—the owner was the father of one of Bella’s admirers—was extremely comfortable. No magnificent wild animals were shot when they had been taken out on safari. She couldn’t have tolerated that. But she and Bella had adored the sightseeing.

Now the Northern Territory, the Top End. Terra incognito!

She swung her head at the peremptory tap on the door, shocked that she felt nervous of the man.

“Do you usually travel so light?” he asked, his gleaming eyes on the pile-up of Louis Vuitton.

“Only when I’m on safari.”

“No chance, then, of seeing you naked?”

She reacted, if she thought of it, like an outraged virgin. “I beg your pardon!”

“Please, a joke, Ms Balfour.” He groaned, casting an eye on her luggage once more. “Might be an idea if you tried to lighten up a little. You’re not at home now. Bring a couple of the smaller pieces. What you most need. I’ll get someone to collect the rest and fly it back to the station.”

Olivia lifted a delicate shoulder. He was making her feel rather foolish. Pompous to boot. “As you wish.”

“Forget the safari—you couldn’t have brought more if you were boarding the QE2 for a trans-Atlantic trip.”

“I’ve brought nothing out of the ordinary, I assure you.” She turned away, to save face, picking out two pieces of luggage and her small make-up box. She had brought lashings of sunblock.

“Right, now we can get under way.” He hoisted her two pieces of luggage—quite heavy, in fact—and tucked one under his arm, carrying the other as easily as if it were a cardboard box. “I have a city apartment,” he told her in an offhand manner. “We’ll take a cab there.”

She reacted with a frown. “What for?”

He gave her a brief, impatient glance. “Certainly not wild sex, if you had that in mind. There’s a helipad on the roof. The complex was built by one of the McAlpine companies. We’re going by helicopter.”

“Oh!” She gave a nonchalant wave of the hand to cover immense flurry. Wild sex? Lead me not into temptation. “That’s OK. I’ve travelled by helicopter before. My father owns an island retreat in the Caribbean.”

“Squillions could only dream of owning one!” he cried satirically. “Good, then you won’t be nervous. Your father is a very rich man.”

“I believe you are so regarded.”

Unexpectedly he gave her one of his slashing smiles. “How quaint! So regarded! But should that worry me?”

She abruptly exploded. He was looking at her as though she was stuck in a time warp. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Money is a powerful aphrodisiac,” he pointed out.

As though she needed to be told that. “You’ll be pleased to know I have absolutely no interest in you, Mr McAlpine, romantic or otherwise.” So why was she feeling decidedly hot. There was the possibility if he so much as touched her she could go up in flames.

“For the record, that makes two of us, Ms Balfour. Anyway, no offence, but you’re a little too buttoned up for me.”

She didn’t deign to reply. On the other hand she was unexpectedly dismayed. Buttoned up, was she? In her view she had always been so well behaved that she should have been given a medal. The lift arrived, unloading two smiling guests and a porter with a luggage trolley.

“I’ll take those Mr McAlpine,” the porter said. “You’re going to the helipad?”

“Yes, thank you, Arnold,” McAlpine said with a smile.

“Beautiful day for flying.”

“Perfect!”

“Good gracious!” Olivia burst out in surprise as she looked towards the waiting helicopter where a group of men were standing.

“You can’t back out now, Ms Balfour,” McAlpine told her with a mocking sideways glance.

“I didn’t mean that at all. I’m actually looking forward to the flight. It’s the helicopter. I’ve never seen one like it before.”

“Goodness, and I thought you’d seen everything. Maybe not done everything.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Her tone, had she known it, was cool on the way to arctic. Victorian, really.

“A fairly harmless remark, I would have thought. What you’re looking at—what we’ll be flying in—is the newest addition to McAlpine Aviation which has a three-state charter. The Territory, Western Australia and Queensland. You may not know—then again you might, as I suspect you’re a very well-read woman—Qantas, the national carrier, spells out Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. It was founded in 1920 and it’s actually the oldest continuously operating airline in the English-speaking world.”

“I did fly Qantas from Singapore,” she said, finding herself caught up in the story.

“At the time of our worst cyclone ever—Cyclone Tracy which devastated Darwin—Qantas established a world record when six hundred and seventy-three people were evacuated on a single Boeing 747. I was just three at the time but I vividly remember it.”

“The cyclone or the flight?” She shaded her eyes to look up at him. It was surprisingly good to have to look up at a man. Even if it was McAlpine.

“Both. My family has always had a keen interest in aviation. My grandfather, Roscoe McAlpine, established McAlpine Aviation. General air charter, jet charter, helicopter, freight. Supporting government agencies with fire and flood operations. That kind of thing. We’ve grown exponentially since Granddad’s day. He would have been so proud. The irony is he was killed in a light aircraft crash when he was a very experienced pilot who had flown hundreds of hours in very hazardous conditions.” He shrugged fatalistically, but Olivia could see the hidden grief.

“Am I the only passenger?” she asked, looking uncertainly towards the waiting men.

“Do you need reassurance? They’re not cattle rustlers. All three are company employees. They’re coming with us,” he supplied briefly.

And pray tell exactly where?

She had the sense not to ask.

Words simply could not describe her feelings as Olivia looked down at the primeval wilderness that was to be her home for the next five months. It would be fair to say she was shocked out of her mind.

Dear God! she prayed fervently. How am I going to be able to withstand it?

God answered very promptly. Buck up!

The famous early explorers of this continent— splendid, intrepid men of British stock—would have quailed at the prospect of having to transverse such a place, which looked to her distraught eyes like no other kind on earth. What lay beneath her had to be one of the last remaining great wilderness areas on the planet.

There was no sign of human intervention, let alone habitation, apart from the lonely cluster of white buildings that looked like an outback version of Stone-henge. Extraordinary as it may appear, she couldn’t think she would enjoy her stay at all. This vast landscape glowed as fiery as Mars, the red soil held together by what looked like giant pincushions in the most amazing shades of burnt gold and burnt orange. And she with the English-rose complexion! She would probably shrivel up in a matter of days.

Don’t allow yourself to get fazed.

She knew it was extremely important to maintain order of the mind. Order, after all, was the bedrock of her being. She was a Balfour and a Capricorn to boot.

The two men McAlpine had taken on board were fortyish, lean outback characters in cowboy regalia. Both looked as if they could easily wrestle a bullock to the ground, but they were most courteous and soft spoken when introduced. They sat up close to McAlpine, the boss, often exchanging remarks in unison. The “great minds think alike” syndrome, she thought.

She had been allotted a seat in the farthest row, deciding there and then she wouldn’t let McAlpine see how the sight of his ancestral home was affecting her. She realised everyone couldn’t live in a stately home but this rather beggared belief.

She wouldn’t have need of any of the nice things she had brought with her. They would be as out of place in these surroundings as one of Bella’s outlandish sequinned party dresses.

Bella, oh, Bella, what did we do? She hoped her twin—she was missing her dreadfully—didn’t feel as scared as she did.

What are you scared of? McAlpine?

Minutes later they landed, smooth as a bird, on the front lawn of the homestead, a green oasis in the fiery red wilderness that went on and on and on, so it seemed to fill the known world. Towering palms, graceful unfamiliar trees and a riot of prodigally blossoming shrubs offered all-round protection to the building which looked hardly bigger than a cottage. She could see a silver stream snaking away into the distance. She wondered if crocodiles, flourishing as a protected species, sunned themselves on the banks, using them for slipways.

Safely on the ground now, she looked around her with stoicism. Eventually it came to her.

He’s having me on!

Well, she could take a joke as well as the next woman. Even with her sunglasses on she had to shade her eyes from the fierce, glittering sun. She tried to focus on the homestead and its square white facade. It was a genuinely small timber construction set on very high concrete piers, probably for ventilation and to keep the building above possible flooding. Latticework closed the space in, acting as a trellis for a magnificent flowering vine with huge bell-like golden-yellow flowers. And such a fragrance! One could get drunk on it.

The roof of the homestead was corrugated iron painted green, as were the shutters on the French doors that opened out onto the broad covered veranda. Planter-style chairs were set at intervals along with huge pots of rather wonderful tropical plants. More astonishing plants with great curling fernlike waves grew profusely out of hanging baskets. Hot or not, with a little TLC and a drop of precious water one could maintain a dream of an indoor garden. A vision of Balfour Manor’s splendid English gardens—especially the rose gardens—broke before her eyes.

Home! Oh, God! More than ever she felt like a fish out of water.

On the thick springy grass, she soon discovered she was wobbly on her feet. “OK?” McAlpine broke away from his men to take her by the arm with what seemed genuine concern.

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she said stiffly, somewhat intimidated by the vibrant male sexuality.

“That’s strange. I could have sworn you were thinking, Where the hell am I?“

“Then never distrust your intuitions, Mr McAlpine,” she returned coolly. “Where exactly are we?” Two could play at a joke.

“You’re on Naroo Waters.”

“And it’s charming.” She gave him a bright social smile, clearly feigned.

“I’m very fond of it too.” His eyes glittered pure gold as he looked at her. “I’ve visited it over and over since I was a boy. This is one of our outstations, Ms Balfour, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. I’ve stopped to offload Wes and Bernie and a few supplies. Wes manages the place. Bernie is his leading hand.”

“You weren’t willing to tell me before?” she asked sweetly.

“I operate on a need-to-know basis, Ms Balfour.”

“While I think you were testing me out.”

He laughed. Far too attractive a sound. “OK, you passed. Totally unexpected, I have to say. Now, while I have a talk to Wes, you might like to go into the house. Heather will make you a cup of tea. Heather is his wife. I’ll be along presently.”

“And who shall I say I am?” she asked haughtily. He did bring out the worst in her.

“Let’s pretend you’re a friend,” he said and walked away.

As she approached the homestead a small woman with a mop of orange curls wearing a green tank top and cream shorts to the knee ran out onto the veranda to wave.

“You must be Olivia,” she called in such a way Olivia felt a most welcome visitor, not a total stranger who had just landed very noisily on the lawn. “Please come in.” Again not in the polite meaningless way Olivia had often been guilty of in the past, but as though she really meant it. “I’ve got a nice cup of tea for you and a slice of my raisin cake. Just baked it.”

The cake was excellent, with a delicious walnut crunch. The tea was just the way she liked it. Added to that the sheer niceness of Heather Finlay—a good Scottish name—and it all went a long way towards calming Olivia’s nerves.

They sat in the homestead’s small living room which was as comfortable and attractive as anyone could make the postage-stamp space. Large white ceiling fans whirred overhead. The furnishings were cane, the two sofas and the armchairs upholstered in emerald-green cotton patterned in white, maintaining the tropical look. The feature wall held four huge blown-up photographs of different tropical flowers set in a frame. It was cost effective as well as striking.

Close to Heather, Olivia could see that she was older than she first appeared. At a guess early forties, with a trim figure, a redhead’s freckled skin and green eyes with dancing lights.

“I take it you’re on holiday?” Heather’s eyes lingered on Olivia as though she were a creature from a fairy tale with fairy-tale clouds of golden blonde hair.

Olivia decided to tell the truth. Shame the devil. She almost—not quite—believed in him. “I’m here to help out Mr McAlpine in any way I can, Heather. A business arrangement, really. My father is a shareholder in the McAlpine Pastoral Company. I’m very interested in learning as much as I can about it and of course being helpful while I’m at it.”

Heather’s face lit up with what looked like a triumphant smile.

Why was that?

“You’ll be perfect to help with the big end-of-the-year functions Clint hosts,” Heather supplied the answer. “I suppose Clint had that in mind. You’ll have met Marigole, his ex-wife?”

“Actually, no!” Marigole? Ah, the unusual name. Olivia set down her pretty teacup. Royal Doulton’s Regalia. She suspected Heather had used her best, which was nice. “I don’t know Mr McAlpine all that well. We’ve met at a couple of functions in London and once at a wedding we both attended in Scotland. There’s some family connection between the Balfours and the McAlpines from way back. But his wife—his ex-wife, I should say—wasn’t with him at the time.”

Heather gave an eye roll. “Well, I suppose it’s getting pretty close on two years ago the divorce came through.” Heather poured them a second cup of tea. “Good Scottish names. Balfour and McAlpine. Balfour means pasture land, doesn’t it?”

“You’re very well informed, Heather.” Olivia was taken by surprise.

“Scottish background me ain self.” Heather laid on an accent. “Same as Wes. I daresay your family retain a good many pastures?” She flashed a teasing smile.

“Nothing on par with this, Heather! I wasn’t prepared for this!”

“You sound like you’re a wee bit scared of the place?”

“I’d like to say no, but actually it is daunting,” Olivia confessed. “The vastness, the isolation, the lack of human habitation and the floods of light! Nature is supreme here.”

“That it is,” Heather agreed.

“You must get lonely from time to time?” Olivia asked, even though she could see Heather was a strong spirit.

“Sometimes I do!” Heather freely admitted. “Especially since we sent our boys off to boarding school. That’s a couple of years back. They’re twelve. Twins! They’ll be home soon for the June vacation. If it gets a bit much for me or if Wes is away on a long muster, I take a trip into Darwin. I’ve got friends there.”

“So you’ll be looking forward to having your sons home.” Olivia didn’t doubt it.

“Alex and Ewan.” Heather’s green eyes lit up. “I adore them.”

“I’m a twin,” Olivia confided, feeling an instant of crushing loneliness for Bella and home. “My sister’s name is Bella. She’s very beautiful.”

“Well, she would be.” Heather laughed, still looking at Olivia with unfeigned admiration. “Like you.”

“Goodness, no!” Olivia shook her head. “We’re fraternal twins, not identical. Bella takes after our mother. She was a recognised beauty. We lost our mother when we were toddlers.”

“Now that’s sad!” Heather’s expression sobered.

“One is shaped by it, I always think. At any rate one develops very finely tuned emotional antennae.”

“But you have your dad?” Heather was regarding her visitor keenly.

“Not as much as we would have liked,” Olivia found herself revealing. Her inner person as opposed to her outer person appeared to be emerging at a rate of knots. “My father is an important man and a workaholic.”

“Well, it does go with the territory, love,” Heather said consolingly. “I’m sure he’s very proud of you and Bella.”

Olivia further surprised herself. “Well, we hope to make him proud, Heather. We live to please him because we love him.”

Heather made a little face. “I can see I’m talking to a very modest young woman.”

They had slipped into conversation so easily it was obvious Heather was starved of female company and ready for a chat, if not a good gossip. What struck Olivia as out of the ordinary was that Heather appeared to have taken to her on sight, when she knew scores of people who called her standoffish and a lot worse behind her back. It would have shocked them to know how shy she really was when the layers of cool polished veneer were stripped off. The trouble was, as the years went by she got better and better at playing cool. But it was all a facade. All the people who loved her knew that.

So apparently did Heather. And Bessie, her Good Samaritan. She hoped to see Bessie again.

Heather spoke gently. “You’ll be a good mother when the time comes. I take it you’re not married?” She had taken note of Olivia’s elegant ringless hands.

Olivia sighed. “It would be fantastic to meet the right man.”

“But you must have heaps of admirers.” Heather wasn’t trying to flatter. She thought her visitor very beautiful and refined. Also, her upper-class English voice fell entrancingly on the ear. Heather was impressed.

“Bella is the one with the admirers.” Olivia’s smile held pride and affection. “She’s very quirky. Funny as well as being stunningly beautiful. I missed out on the quirkiness. I tend to keep a much lower profile. Bella is very much at ease with herself. I’m a bit on the bland side, I’m afraid.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said Heather, thinking her visitor anything but bland. Obviously the sister had a strong sense of her own beauty, whereas Olivia, for some unfathomable reason, did not. “Anyway, outback life instead of big-city life is guaranteed to bring anyone out of their shell. I know you’re going to love Kalla Koori. It’s one of the outback’s great showplaces.”

Of course it was, as befitting outback royalty.

“I’m looking forward to staying there.”

Heather leaned forward confidentially. “Just between you, me and the gatepost, which incidentally is a good few miles away, I should tell you Marigole still likes to pop in from time to time. Unannounced. As you don’t know her and you’ll be staying on the station, I feel a little word of warning mightn’t go astray. Marigole is very territorial, divorced or not. We’re all convinced she wants him back.”

“Really?” It wasn’t the discreet thing to do but Olivia decided to follow up Heather’s lead. Listening carefully, one always learned something interesting, or potentially useful. Just think of the journalist who had spilt the beans on her family. “How did they come to split up in the first place?” She knew her questioning Heather wasn’t the done thing but she really wanted to know. McAlpine wasn’t about to tell her a thing.

Heather leaned in. “Marigole put it about she was totally fed up with the lifestyle, the fact Clint was never there for her when goodness knows he has a huge job on his hands, but it was the other way around, I be thinking. You know they have a daughter?”

Olivia nodded and waited for Heather to continue.

“Georgina. Used to be a little honey but the divorce upset her terribly plus puberty hit her hard, as they say. Marigole pretty well abandoned her when this new guy came along. Lucas something, a merchant banker. Last year Clint’s aunt Buffy acted as his hostess and did a marvellous job of it but sadly her health has declined of recent times. It was a terrible grief and shock to her—to us all—when Mr McAlpine was killed. Lady Venetia—that’s Buffy—lost her brother and Clint lost his father.”

Olivia of the tender heart bowed her head. She had learned from her own father that Kyle McAlpine had been killed in a freak accident on a mining site. Clint McAlpine’s mother lived in Melbourne; one sister, Alison, had married a wealthy American business man and lived in New York. The other sister, Catriona, was a lawyer in London. Something to do with international law. She thought she had that right.

“Remember that character Joan Collins used to play on Dynasty?” Heather asked.

“I know of Joan Collins, of course. A beautiful ageless woman, but the series was before my time.”

“You should catch the reruns,” Heather advised. “Joan played a marvellous bitch, Alexis, the divorced wife, but I have to tell you, Marigole could give her lessons.”

Confidences were abruptly cut short.

“Hell, it’s Clint!” Heather turned in her chair so her eye was on the front door. “Not a word of this to him, love.”

“Goodness, no!” Olivia was aghast. “Mum’s the word.”

“It’s really not like me to gossip, especially not about the boss, but I spotted you for an innocent right off.” Heather hastily demolished what was left of her raisin cake. “In my experience—and I used to be a nurse for the Flying Doctors Service—a timely warning never goes astray.” She spoke as though her confidences were strategic manoeuvres Olivia should have at the ready. “As soon as Marigole hears you’re on Kalla Koori, she’ll descend like a bat out of hell.”

Olivia, blessed and sometimes cursed with a highly visual imagination, half covered her face. She had visions of a Caribbean fruit bat sinking its teeth into her like a ripe mango.

CHAPTER THREE

FROM the air she looked down on a great many deep pools of water that glittered an unearthly blue-green. Crocodile lagoons, she wondered with a shudder. Prehistoric monsters existing in such beauty. In the distance to either side were more pools of emerald green and a long winding river that cut through fiery low ridges and endless giant fingers of sand dunes.

A jagged cliff with sheer rock walls that glowed a range of dry ochres—pinks, reds, yellows, creams and blacks, with deep purple slashed into the narrow ravines—served as the most dramatic backdrop possible for Kalla Koori’s massive homestead. She had been expecting colonial architecture and the quintessential verandas. This was something completely different. More in keeping with a desert environment with a touch of Morocco. The house from the air had an endless expanse of roof line with a central two-maybe three-storey tower. It stood in the very centre of what looked like a fortified desert village.

Here at last was the McAlpine stronghold.

Presumably in times of torrential cyclones McAlpine could offer shelter to the entire population of Darwin beneath the homestead roof, Olivia thought, her breath taken by the spectacle beneath her. The base of the stand-alone cliff appeared to be in permanent shadow. It was marked by a border of lush green where water must gather and never entirely dry out. All else was a million square miles of uninhabited desert—a beautiful, savage place unlike anything she had ever seen. She could well imagine the most superbly engineered four-wheel drives sinking into the bottomless red shifting sands, never to be seen again. There was a great deal to be feared about this environment.

But goodness! One could well find passion and romance here.

Astounded by her flight of fancy, she endeavoured to get a grip even though her pulses were jumping wildly. It had to be one of her increasingly mad moments, or alternatively it could be taken as an indicator she had at long last become aware life was shooting by like a falling star. That’s what came of having to play the archetypal earth mother to her siblings. She was starting to imagine herself as a woman standing at the edge of a cliff like the one that towered beneath them. Either she could totter for ever as she had done all her life or take a spectacular dive. Truth be told, she was sick to death of being sensible. Bella was never sensible. Indeed a lot of her escapades had been hare-brained, but at least Bella had fun.

McAlpine landed the helicopter to the right of a giant hangar at least a mile away from the home compound. The interior looked as though it could well hold a fleet of Airbuses. The station insignia—Kalla Koori—was emblazoned in chrome yellow and cobalt blue on the roof. The Australian flag that stood on a tall pole nearby only moments before hanging limp suddenly whipped to attention, unfurling its length. Probably as much honouring McAlpine’s arrival as the buffeting from the chopper’s rotors, Olivia thought a touch sharply.

They were met by a tall bearded man in a check shirt and jeans, a huge white Akubra tilted back on his head. “Boss!” he said, straightening up. He had been leaning nonchalantly against a four-wheel drive, its metallic Duco throwing off iridescent lights. Again, the station insignia in blue and gold was on the door panel.

“Norm.” Briefly McAlpine introduced them. This was Norman Cartwright, who with his wife, Kath, ran the domestic affairs of the station—Kath with her team in the house, Norm with his team in the extensive compound grounds. She liked Norm on sight. She expected the same would go for his wife. Australians with the exception of McAlpine were warm and friendly. She bore in mind she was yet to meet the terrifying ex-wife, Marigole. Not that she hadn’t met her fair share of enormously pretentious women dripping hauteur. It was unsettling to remind herself McAlpine had called her an ice princess. She wasn’t an ice princess at all; she had simply perfected faking it.

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