The Outback Engagement

The Outback Engagement
Margaret Way

Darcy is shocked at the contents of her late father's will. She might have inherited half his estate - but the other half has gone to her estranged sister! Not only that, her father has given overall control to Curt Berenger, a man whom Darcy once nearly married…. To Darcy's horror, her gold-digging sister is now making a move on Curt. Her Curt. Curt whom Darcy has to work with, despite everything.And Darcy knows that if she has any hope of being with Curt she'll have to tell him why she finished with him all those years ago….

Darcy watched in amazement as Curt and Courtney moved toward each other as if drawn by powerful magnets. It hit her right between the eyes. Curt and her radiant little sister?

Well, it didn’t have her blessing. He bent his shapely head and kissed Courtney’s apple-blossom cheek. He hugged her. He did hug her.

Courtney went very sweetly into Curt’s arms, not even reaching his heart. Darcy’s own heart gave a great sick lurch. Some trembling voice inside her began to shriek. Don’t take him. He’s mine. He’s mine. He’s always been mine.

Darcy felt herself flush a hot red. It was all her own fault. She had blundered through her love life. Maybe Courtney was in search of a husband? No woman in her right mind would overlook Curt. But Curt was her rock and she couldn’t bear to see another woman in his arms. Even her own sister. Her own sister worst of all!

Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves hunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

Look for the continuation of The McIvor Sisters in Marriage at Murraree

Harlequin Romance

#3863

The Outback Engagement

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

DARCY walked quietly across the Persian rug towards the still figure in the massive canopied bed. The bed was a monstrosity really, elaborately carved and wide enough to sleep a half a dozen but her father was very attached to it. It had once been the property of a McIvor Scottish ancestor. Her father’s eyes were closed, his face the dreadful grey that spoke of severe physical trauma. A fuzz of mottled grey and marmalade coloured hair showed at the neck of his pyjamas lending a peculiar vulnerability. The once powerful hands that could handle anything from the wildest brumby and the biggest bullock to every kind of station machinery rested like fleshless talons on the folded top sheet.

Splendid health had accompanied Jock McIvor all the days of his life now he was a wraith of his former self. Almost overnight, the flesh had dropped off his impressive frame. His nurse, Wilma Ainsworth, an angular white-clad figure, competent but not particularly motherly or compassionate had been and gone taking with her the tray that held the medicines and syringes to bring temporary relief to her suffering patient.

Big Jock McIvor had not recovered from his first heart attack as everyone had expected. Jock McIvor was dying. Of that there could be no doubt. As she leaned over his prone figure Darcy hardly dared draw breath for fear of waking him out of his drug induced slumber. She withdrew to the wide verandah that enclosed the homestead on three sides. Like everyone experiencing a crisis she desperately wanted to change things. To turn back the clock. To insist on her father having regular medical checkups, knowing he had never been ready to listen to her anyway. Jock McIvor was a law unto himself. It was a strategy that in the end hadn’t worked in his favour.

Darcy stared out over the extensive homestead grounds with their magnificent date palms and diverse array of desert plants. The palms had been planted well over a century before by a Afghan camel driver her great great grandfather Campbell McIvor had befriended. Midafternoon the grounds were shrouded in the quivering white fire of a heat haze. It caused a legion of parrots in their glorious colours to descend on the lagoon at the foot of the homestead for a drink. Otherwise the home compound bore a strangely deserted air. Jock McIvor was no longer in charge and it was manifestly obvious. She had been neglecting her duties while she attended her father after that first frightening heart attack. In these last stages despite his agitated protests she’d been forced to call in a full time nurse.

Curt had flown over from Sunrise to urge her to do it. Curt Berenger was another one who was a law unto himself especially since the death of his own father in a helicopter mustering accident leaving Curt master of Sunrise Downs and the entire Berenger chain. Though she found numerous ways of telling him how interfering he was, the truth was Curt followed his family’s tradition of looking after his friends and neighbours in time of need. Not that he was an admirer of Jock McIvor. Their relationship was as strained as it could be with her in the middle. Curt saw her father as a tyrant who’d had far too much influence shaping her life. Part of her recognised that. Her father was very controlling but the things Curt said cut her to the quick. Things do when there’s a basis in truth.

Now Jock McIvor was dying and she was about to be abandoned again. What a long terrible struggle she’d had with that first abandonment. A double whammy. Mother and sister. She could never put the wrenching psychic separation, the painful moods of loneliness and not being loved behind her. She still saw their tearful faces in her dreams. She had loved Courtney with all her heart assuming they were going to be the closest, dearest friends forever. Her mother had always promised her a baby sister. Everything should have been perfect but in the end the dream had been shattered. Childhood innocence had been replaced by painful moods of sadness and loneliness. How had she lived through her adolescence with no mother present? By becoming what her father wanted. She had lived off the dollops of affection he handed out like the desert flora survives on rare showers.

Anxiety was having the effect of a steel band tightening around her head. Fit as she was, many long sleepless nights had exhausted her. Nurse Ainsworth always urged her to go to bed saying she would wake her if she saw the need, but Darcy was not happy with that. This was her father. He was all she had. Didn’t the woman realize that? She had to be there at her father’s side. She sensed she would know the exact moment when all life would leave him.

What then?

What will my life become? She sought to push back all thoughts of freedom as a betrayal but it continued to hover on the periphery of her mind. She had never known real freedom. By fair means or foul—she became agitated when she thought about it—her father had tenaciously kept her tied to his side. After his marriage break up he had made it a purpose in life. She could understand it in a way. He was a proud man who had suffered bitter losses. Worse, he had been publicly humiliated. Now he was waiting to die and the atmosphere was charged with powerful emotions.

She couldn’t run Murraree by herself. It was a big job, not an Outback adventure. Her father had been King of the Castle. The Boss. Jock McIvor always made the decisions. As efficient as he had trained her to be, essentially she carried out orders. What would happen to Murraree with her father gone? She knew the men liked and respected her. Some of them had watched her grow up. She knew how to handle herself, but she wasn’t a hard, tough man in a hard, tough man’s country.

“You can’t cure yourself of being a woman, Darcy,” Curt had told her, a kind of pity in his eyes. “Don’t you realize you define yourself in relation to your father? It’s high time you started being your own person, your own woman.”

Curt refused to allow her to avoid issues. Just one of the reasons their arguments were legion. Fighting was a protection against feeling. A way of protecting herself against the pain of a dream that had never come true. Sometimes she didn’t know if she loved Curt or hated him. He made her so angry, upset, mad, excited. Wide swings of mood from turmoil to elation. It was like being on a swing, soaring skywards then falling back to earth. Too often she submerged her tempestuous feelings in defying him. It made it that much easier for her to keep control. That was her lot in life. Keeping control.

Now she had to watch her father make his exit from life. It was an eerie experience, rather like a nightmare from which she would surely wake up. Jock McIvor’s heart attack at fifty six had not only rocked her to her core, it had rocked the entire Outback. Jock McIvor was in his way a legend. Millionaire cattle man, lady killer, sportsman (only a year before he had still been enjoying his favourite game of polo), raconteur, owner of an historic cattle station with its rambling old homestead that had in its heyday, to be strictly honest, her grandfather’s day, hosted many a visiting dignitary and V.I.P. Her father was a true bush identity though Darcy was painfully aware some people described him as a ruthless bastard. Still Jock McIvor was known the length and breadth of Outback Queensland and into the Northern Territory.

Unbelievably only six months before he had been a marvellous looking man, still outrageously handsome with flashing blue eyes, wonderful white teeth and a leonine mane that had slowly turned tawny from its once copper glory. Darcy had many fond memories of sitting around the camp fire listening to her father recount his stories to a fascinated audience who hung on his every word. On the down side it had to be said her father had been a hard-drinking, hard-living womaniser. There was no getting away from it. He was a big man with big appetites. It had been a problem. It once caused a crisis when photos surfaced of Jock and a well-known station wife caught in a public display of affection for want of a better word. The wronged husband had threatened a shotgun solution. Jock who had a lawless streak in him had only laughed when his daughter had been saddened and deeply embarrassed.

Yes, Jock McIvor had generally been acknowledged to be larger than life. Darcy had thought him invincible.

“When no man is!” Curt again. The entire Outback community knew Darcy and Curt had a powerful attachment both sought to play down. People argued there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for why they were not together. Except maybe Jock McIvor’s running interference. They all knew Jock wasn’t a man to share.

A small sound from the bedroom tore Darcy from her troubled reverie. Her father was stirring, a whistling moan on his breath.

“Dad!” For once she didn’t bother with the “Jock” her father preferred her to call him. In the stress of the moment she didn’t care. She was a woman. Damn it! Emotional.

By the time she reached the bed her father’s eyes were opening slowly, painfully, as though it cost him a great effort. “Darcy.” His brow puckered. “Here as usual?”

Something about the way he said it took her aback. “Where else would I be?” She touched his hand tenderly willing herself not to cry. Her father hated tears so much sometimes she thought she had almost lost the ability to cry. She had been brought up to be brave, ignoring her sensitive female side as she tried to turn herself into the heir her father had always wanted yet somehow for all his dalliances had failed to produce.

“I’m finished, girl.” It was said flatly, without acceptance. More a hard digust that in former days would have been rage.

She was helpless to deny it. “Dad, I love you so much.”

“That’s the way you are. Loyal.” He fixed his sunken eyes on a life size portrait across the room. It had been painted not long before the inexorable break-up of the family. Two young girls about twelve and ten in immaculate riding gear, white silk shirts and fitted jodhpurs leaned towards a ravishingly pretty, blonde woman who was seated on a burgundy leather couch, similarly attired.

Dress for the portrait had been decided upon by Jock. Marian McIvor hadn’t cared for horses or riding. Courtney had followed suit. Courtney, an adorable miniature version of her mother had her arm around her mother’s waist. Darcy was perched like some long legged brolga on the arm of the couch, long straight dark hair falling over one shoulder, slanting aquamarine eyes staring gravely out at the viewer.