The Return of Her Past

‘That’s exactly what you could provide, Miss Gardiner. So would you mind not wriggling around like a trapped pilchard?’

‘A trapped pilchard?’ Mia repeated in outraged tones. ‘How dare you, Carlos?’

‘Sorry. Not the most complimentary analogy. How about a trapped siren? Yes, that’s better, don’t you agree?’ And he ran his hands down her body, then cuddled her against him. ‘Pilchard. I must be crazy!’ he murmured.

Mia took a breath to tell him he was crazy but suddenly she was laughing. Then they were laughing together and it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to Mia.

So much so, she lay quietly in his arms and when he started to kiss her, she didn’t resist. She was powerless to be unaffected by the amazing rapture he brought to her as he kissed her and held her. As he told her she had the most luscious mouth, skin like silk and hair like midnight.

She was made conscious of her body in ways she’d never known before as delicious ripples of desire ran through her. She was deeply appreciative of his easy strength and his long clean lines, the width of his shoulders and the way his hands brought her so much pleasure.

In fact she started to kiss him back and, when it was over, once again she lay quietly against him, her arms around him and she was deeply affected by everything about him. Not only that but conscious that it wasn’t impossible for him to be attracted to an eighteenyear-old—why else would he be doing this? Why else would he tell her she’d grown up and grown gorgeous?

Surely it couldn’t be concussion?

Two days later Mia drove away from the O’Connor estate and set her course, so to speak, for Queensland, where she’d been offered a university place.

She’d said goodbye to her parents, who’d been proud but just a little sad, but she was secure in the knowledge that they loved their jobs. Her father had a great deal of respect for Frank O’Connor, who’d built his construction company into a multi-million dollar business, although he’d recently suffered a stroke and been confined to a wheelchair, leaving his son Carlos in charge.

It was Carlos’s mother Arancha, a diminutive Spanish lady, a beauty in her earlier days but still the epitome of style, who had given her only son a Spanish name and it was she amongst the O’Connors who loved the Hunter Valley estate of West Windward passionately.

But it was Mia’s mother who actually tended the homestead, with all its objets d’art, priceless carpets and exquisite linens and silks. And it was her father who looked after the extensive gardens.

To some extent Mia shared both her parents’ talents. She loved to garden and the greatest compliment her father had given her was to tell her she had ‘green fingers’. She also took after her mother in her eye for decorative detail and love of fine food.

Mia was conscious that she owed her parents a lot. They’d scrimped and saved to give her the best education at a private boarding school. That was why she always helped as much as she could when she was home with them and she knew she was fulfilling their dream by going to university.

But as she drove away two days after the storm, her thoughts were in chaos, her head was still spinning and she didn’t look back.

CHAPTER ONE

‘CARLOS O’CONNOR WILL be attending,’ Mia Gardiner’s assistant Gail announced in hushed, awed tones.

Mia’s busy hands stilled for a moment—she was arranging a floral display. Then she carried on placing long-stemmed roses in a standard vase. ‘He is the bride’s brother,’ she said casually.

Gail lowered the guest list and stared at her boss. ‘How do you know that? They don’t have the same surname.’

‘Half-brother, actually,’ Mia corrected herself. ‘Same Spanish mother, different fathers. She’s a couple of years older. I think she was about two when her father died and her mother remarried and had Carlos.’

‘How do you know that?’ Gail demanded.

Mia stood back, admired her handiwork but grimaced inwardly. ‘Uh—there’s not a lot that isn’t known about the O’Connors, I would have thought.’

Gail pursed her lips but didn’t disagree and studied the guest list instead. ‘It says—it just says Carlos O’Connor and partner. It doesn’t say who the partner is. I thought I read something about him and Nina French.’ Gail paused and shrugged. ‘She’s gorgeous. And wouldn’t it be lovely to have all that money? I mean he’s got a fortune, hasn’t he? And he’s gorgeous too, Carlos O’Connor. Don’t you think so?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Mia replied and frowned down at the tub of pink and blue hydrangeas at her feet. ‘Now, what am I going to put these in? I know, the Wedgwood soup tureen—it sounds odd but they look good in it. How are you going, Gail?’ she asked rather pointedly.

Gail awoke from her obviously pleasurable daydream about Carlos O’Connor and sighed. ‘I’m just about to lay the tables, Mia,’ she said loftily and wafted away, pushing a cutlery trolley.

Mia grimaced and went to find the Wedgwood tureen.

Several hours later, the sun went down on Mount Wilson but Mia was still working. Not arranging flowers; she was in the little office that was the headquarters of the Bellbird Estate.

It was from this office in the grand old homestead, the main house on the estate, that she ran the reception function business, Bellbird Estate, a business that was becoming increasingly well-known.

Not only did the old house lend its presence to functions but its contents delighted Mia. It contained lovely pieces of old furniture, vases, lamps, linen and a beautiful china collection—including the Wedgwood tureen.

She catered for wedding receptions, iconic birthday parties—any kind of reception. The cuisine she provided was superb, the house and the gardens were lovely but perhaps the star of the show was Mount Wilson itself.

At the northern end of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, it had been surveyed in 1868 and had gradually acquired a similar reputation to an Indian ‘hill station’—English-style homes with cool-climate English gardens in alien settings, this setting being bush and rainforest.

And anyone’s first impression of Mount Wilson had to be how beautiful it was. Yes, the road was narrow and clung to the mountainside in tortuous zigzags in places but the trees in the village—plane trees, limes, elms, beeches and liquid ambers, were, especially when starting to wear their autumnal colours, glorious. There were also native eucalypts, straight, strong and reaching for the sky, and native tree ferns everywhere.

The glimpses of houses through impressive gateways and beyond sweeping driveways were tantalising, many old and stone with chimneys, some smothered in creepers like wisteria, others with magnificent gardens.

All in all, she’d thought often although she kept it to herself, Mount Wilson shouted money—new money or old money but money—and the resources to have acres of garden that you opened to the public occasionally. The resources to have an estate in the Blue Mountains, a retreat from the hurly-burly of Sydney or the heat of its summers… .

And tomorrow Juanita Lombard, Carlos O’Connor’s half-sister, was marrying Damien Miller on Mount Wilson—at Bellbird, to be precise. Damien Miller, whose mother, rather than the bride or her mother, had booked the venue without mentioning who the bride was until it was too late for Mia to pull out without damaging her business reputation.

Mia got up, stretched and rubbed her back and decided enough was enough; she’d call it a day.

She didn’t live in the main house; she lived in the gardener’s cottage, which was in fact a lot more modern, though unusual. It had been built as an artist’s studio. The walls were rough brick, the plentiful woodwork was native timber and the floors were sandstone cobbles. It had a combustion stove for heating, a cook’s delight kitchen and a sleeping loft accessible by ladder.

It was an interior that lent itself well to Mia’s photography hobby, her images of native wildlife and restful landscapes, enlarged and framed, graced the walls. It also suited her South American poncho draped over a rail, her terracotta tubs full of plants and her chunky crockery.

It was also not far from the stables and that was where she went first, to bring her horse, Long John Silver, in from the paddock, to rug him and feed him.

Although it was summer, there were patches of mist clinging to the tree tops and the air was chilly enough to nip at your fingers and cheeks and turn the end of your nose pink. But the sunset was magical, a streaky symphony of pink and gold and she paused for a long moment with her arms around Long John’s neck to wonder at life. Who would have thought Carlos O’Connor would cross her path again?

She shook her head and led Long John into his stall. She mixed his feed and poured it into his wall bin, checked his water, then, with a friendly pat and a flick of his mane through her fingers, she closed him in.

That was when she came to grief. She’d collected some wood for her stove and was taking a last look at the sunset when, seemingly from nowhere, what she’d kept at bay for hours enveloped her—the memories she’d refused to allow to surface ever since she’d known who would be at tomorrow’s wedding flooded back to haunt her.

‘Surely I can do this,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve come so far since those days—surely I can do this?’

She closed her eyes but nothing could stop those memories as she allowed herself the luxury of picturing Carlos O’Connor in her mind’s eye. Luxury? Or was it a torment?

Whatever, how could she forget that night-dark hair that sometimes fell in his eyes? That olive skin his Spanish mother had bequeathed, yet the grey eyes that came from his Irish father and could be as cool as the North Sea or so penetrating his glance made you mentally sit up in a flurry and hope like mad you had your wits about you.

How could she forget the satanic edge to his looks that was so intriguing; irresistible but at the same time capable of making you feel you were playing with fire?

Or not remember the way he laughed sometimes and that wicked sense of humour?

Or the times when no one would have suspected he was at the helm of a multi-national construction company. Times when he exchanged his suit for jeans and T-shirt and indulged his favourite pastimes—sailing, riding, flying. In fact he was rarely formal when she thought about it. But above all how could she ever forget lying in Carlos O’Connor’s arms?

She stood perfectly still for a long moment, then she reached into her pocket for a tissue and mopped herself up, determined that she would recover her equilibrium before tomorrow.

Mercifully, when she woke early the next morning, it was to see that at least the weather was fine; the sun had just started to climb into a cloudless sky. She had all sorts of contingency plans for wet weather but it was a relief not to have to resort to them.