The Cattle Baron's Virgin Wife

‘Yes, but—now listen to me, Mum, I don’t want you to tell a soul otherwise I won’t come. It’s—we’re just friends.’

‘Your secret is perfectly safe with me,’ her mother said with a tinge of reproach, but added immediately, ‘That’s wonderful news. I’m so happy for you! Oh, darling, I have to go, I borrowed this mobile phone and it’s blinking red lights at me now. I think the battery may be going but we’ll talk soon…’

Her mother’s voice faded away.

Sienna switched off her phone, then banged her head against the corkboard on the kitchen wall, twice.

How could her pleasant if uneventful life have turned into such a minefield in the space of twenty-four hours?

I’ll tell you, she told herself grimly. Pride. And little white lies.

Then she sniffed and realized her pasta was burning. She turned the plate off, pushed the pan away, suddenly not hungry in the slightest. She poured herself a glass of white wine, which she took outside onto the balcony.

Dusk was drawing in and it was cooler but still humid. A family of squeakers, raucous, bright-eyed, inquisitive little birds, was settling down in a grevillea tree that clung to the slope below the building. The creamy cone-shaped grevillea flower heads with their delicate tendrils glowed almost candlelike in the gathering gloom.

But what occupied her mind was the distinct possibility that Finn McLeod could shortly find his name linked to one Sienna Torrance, whether he liked it or not.

So what do I do about that? she wondered.

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I have to nip this in the bud. No more pride, no more little white lies, and the sooner the better.

It was Walt who admitted her to Eastwood an hour later and showed her into the den.

Finn was sitting on a settee watching cricket on a large-screen television. There was a coffee-pot and two cups on a table in front of him. He wore a white cotton shirt and cargo pants. His cane was leaning against the settee beside him.

‘Sienna,’ he murmured in a way that she couldn’t identify as welcoming or unwelcoming—actually quite noncommittal, she decided, and flinched inwardly.

He also took his time about looking her over.

She’d changed after making the phone call to ask if she could come and see him, into a silky lemon blouse tucked into indigo jeans. Her hair, straight and shoulder-length and usually tied back in a pony-tail, was loose and naturally streaked light and darker honey-gold, and held back by a silver slide on one side.

For some reason, his appraisal of her caused her to look down at herself, but she couldn’t see anything wrong with her outfit and she looked up and into his eyes with a faint frown.

He shrugged. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of track suits, swimmers and pony-tails. You scrub up well.’

She blinked and a ghost of humour lit his eyes.

‘Believe me,’ he murmured.

‘I—thank you. So do you, for that matter.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Finn, I’m really sorry about coming to see you like this, but it is Friday, so I wouldn’t have seen you until Monday in the normal course of events and it wouldn’t be easy to do over the phone.’

‘That’s OK. Sit down and pour the coffee,’ he invited. ‘Something’s come up?’ he hazarded.

‘Yes, my mother,’ Sienna said exasperatedly and poured the coffee before she went on, sitting adjacent to him in an armchair. ‘Please believe me when I say I love my mother dearly, but this is what happened.’ And she recounted the recent conversation she’d had with her mother.

At the end he raised an eyebrow and said, ‘So?’

‘Well, not only is she convinced—because it’s what she wants to believe!—that you and I are—’ She paused.

‘Lovers?’ he suggested.

‘Oh, well—oh, well, on the way to it anyway—’ Sienna looked discomforted ‘—but—only in her happiness for me!—it’s quite possible she won’t be able to keep it a secret.’

Finn sat up and reached for his coffee-cup, but before he took a sip he said, with obvious amusement, ‘What a tangled web we weave—and I guess you know the rest of it.’

‘Exactly,’ Sienna responded with some urgency. ‘And because it’s you, it could get out of hand. The press could get onto it. Come to that, even without my mother—why didn’t I think of this sooner?—just your being at the wedding with me could spark all sorts of speculation!’

‘How terrifying,’ he remarked, causing Sienna to blink at him again.

‘You mean you—wouldn’t mind?’ She stared at him, round-eyed.

‘I never take any notice of the press in those circumstances,’ he drawled. ‘Besides, isn’t that the object of the exercise—to have your family and friends of the opinion you aren’t on the shelf?’

‘But—after what happened to you—and it’s not that long ago…’ She stopped and steepled her fingertips, rapping them together lightly. ‘I really don’t feel I could do that to you.’

He watched her tapping fingers for a moment. ‘Well, I appreciate that, Sienna,’ he said almost lazily, ‘but you don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.’

Sienna discovered herself to be counting beneath her breath, but she’d only got to three when she burst out frustratedly, ‘What do I have to do to get you not to come to this wedding?’

‘If you hadn’t brought it up in the first place, that might have helped. Besides, you’ve been a real inspiration to me, and it seems like one small way I could repay you.’

She opened her mouth, but closed it because nothing—coherent at least—would come out.

‘Anyway,’ Finn McLeod continued reasonably, ‘do you want this family turmoil of yours to continue?’

‘No, of course not—’ She broke off abruptly.

‘Do you want him back?’

‘No! Definitely not!’

‘Then this is one way to get a reunion over and done with. It’s one way to allow your sister to ride off happily into the sunset.’

‘But it’s a farce all the same!’

‘You know, my dear…’ he paused and studied her thoughtfully ‘…sometimes sticking to the straight and narrow truth-wise may be all very well—but it can also be a kind of self-righteousness that’s self-defeating.’

She gazed at him with her lips parted.

He smiled faintly. ‘You don’t want him back, you don’t want to be at odds with your family, you particularly don’t want to feel like a wall-flower at this wedding so—’

‘Don’t go on,’ Sienna interrupted stiffly.

He grimaced and rubbed his jaw.

‘I feel awful now,’ she continued. ‘Really awful. Proud, insufferably priggish—’

He laughed aloud. ‘Sienna, it was your idea in the first place! I’m just telling you I think it was a good one and a fitting exchange for all you’ve done for me.’