Cattle Baron: Nanny Needed

All she had to do now was get past the ushers and inside the church. Though she kept her eyes trained ahead, she was aware that her presence was causing a stir. Little whispers wafted to her on the rose-scented breeze.

“Oh, goodness, it’s Amber Wyatt!”

“Has she got some guts, or hasn’t she?” Admiration there from a sister-at-arms.

“If I were her I’d kill myself, poor thing!”

Come on, why should I kill myself? Amber reasoned. I haven’t done a thing wrong. Wrong hasbeen done to me, just when life was going so great. God, she felt ill. Buck up, Amber. It won’t be much longer. She was the sort of person who regularly gave herself pep talks. Hundreds of them of late. She was dressed to kill. Confidence in how one looked always helped. One couldn’t pity her and gape open-mouthed in admiration simultaneously. Her suit was the exact shade of pink that complemented her hair—neither red nor gold nor copper but a combination of all three.

“We just have to call this little angel Amber!”

That had been her darling dad, holding his brand-new daughter in his adoring arms.

So Amber she was, though her bright, eye-catching hair was all but hidden by her masterpiece of a hat. It offered a modicum of camouflage. Her accessories were colour co-ordinated, perfect. The whole outfit had cost her way too much money, but her pride demanded she look staggeringly glamorous. She wouldn’t have been content with anything less. Her friend Jono, gay man about town who lived in the penthouse apartment above her and charged unheard of prices for writing other people’s software programs, a man who could be counted on to deliver a totally reliable verdict when it came to fashion, had given her the thumbs up and a spontaneous, “Wow!”

Ironically, it was her friend, the society columnist Zara Fraser, who had first broken the news to her…

* * *

She sat up in bed, bracing herself on one elbow as she made a grab for the phone. She nearly rapped, Who the blazes is this? but stopped just in time. There was a remote possibility it could be her boss. The digital clock on her bedside table read: A.M. 5.35. To make it worse, it was Sunday—her morning to sleep in. It couldn’t be Sean, although she hadn’t spoken to him for a few days. He wouldn’t ring at this time. Sean was safely in London on business, or as safe as one could be in the great cities of the world these scary days. Immediately the thought crossed her mind, she started to panic.

“Hi Amby?”

“Who else do you suppose? Is that you, Zee?”

“Jeez, love, I know it’s early. But you have to hear this.’

“If you’re ringing to tell me you’ve found Mr Right again, don’t dare put him on. I’m not in the mood.”

None of the usual infectious giggles from Zara. “Amby, love, you’ve got to listen. This is serious!”

Amber groaned. “They all are. Just remember, men aren’t to be trusted.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Zara sounded very down-mouthed. “This isn’t about me, Amby. It’s about you. Are you still lying down?”

“No, I’m not!” Amber swung her feet to the floor. “Spit it out, Zee. There’s a good girl.”

“Why should it be my destiny to have to tell you?” Zara moaned. “Okay, there’s no easy way to say it, so here I go. Your fiancé, Sean Sinclair—”

Amber was finding it difficult to swallow. “There hasn’t been another terrorist attack, Zee, has there? Please God, tell me no!” Disasters could and did come out of the blue.

Zara hastened to reassure her. “Not something as terrible as that, but bad enough on a totally different scale. Trish McGowan, you know Trish, she’s in London. She let me know. I didn’t get home until after three. I didn’t want to wake you then but I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t hang on any longer. Wait for it, girl. Sean, your fiancé, married Georgette Erskine, Sir Clive Erskine’s granddaughter, at a civil ceremony yesterday afternoon London time.”

“No kiddin’!” Amber crowed, not for a moment taking her friend seriously. “I know you like your little pranks, but that’s pathetic!”

“No joke, Amby. Proof of what a bastard he really is. This will come as a blow to you, but I can’t pretend I don’t think you haven’t had a lucky escape.”

Amber fell back on the bed as if she were taking a long backward fall off a cliff. “I suppose there’s no question Trish was having a little joke? It has April Fool’s Day written all over it.”

“No chance, love,” Zara said unhappily.” It’s October. I never had a clue the rat even knew her, did you?”

Recollections were filtering through. “He met her several times when she came into the office with her granddaddy. Nothing to look at, he told me. All she had going for her was the family fortune.”

“All?” Zara screeched. “He must have started thinking long and hard about that. Listen, give me twenty minutes and I’ll be over. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

Zara had arrived with freshly baked croissants and genuine Blue Mountain coffee. Zara had been wonderful to her. So had lots of other people, though inevitably there were some—like her co-newsreader—who got a warped pleasure out of seeing her suffer such a public king hit. This follow-up wedding ceremony was being held so the happy couple could seek God’s blessing. If they got it, God wouldn’t be winning any Brownie points with her. It was even possible Sir Clive Erskine had God onside.

The Erskines purported to be a pious bunch. Sir Clive was a billionaire who owned coal mines, gold mines, luxury beach resorts, shopping centres, a string of prize-winning racehorses, country newspapers, and had been the biggest contributor to the Cathedral restoration fund. The bridegroom, Sean Sinclair, was an associate with the blue chip law firm of Langley, Lynch & Pullman, a high profile practice whose clientele included major mining companies, multinationals and billionaires like Sir Clive Erskine. The bridegroom, smart and ambitious, was very good-looking if one found “boyish” attractive. Most women did. He had thick floppy golden-brown hair, dark blue eyes and an engaging whimsical smile. He wasn’t terribly tall but tall enough at five foot ten. The bride wouldn’t have struck even her mother as pretty, but she was said to be a very nice person, which counted for a lot.

How could that be? Georgie Erskine had stolen another woman’s man right from under her nose. Surely that made her a man-eater? No question it was immeasurably better to be from an immensely wealthy family than to be a working woman, however high on the ratings. One way or the other, Georgette Erskine thoroughly deserved the man who awaited her at the altar.

No one better placed than I am to sit in judgement, Amber thought bleakly. Why can’t I hate him?I want to hate him, but I can’t. Her own nature was betraying her. Was it somehow her fault? What had she done wrong? Was she too critical? Too ready to debate the issues of the day, instead of falling into line with Sean’s play safe opinions? Sean liked to keep his finger on the politically expedient pulse. But she was an intelligent woman with strong opinions of her own. She had even gained a reputation for defending the underdog, the little guy. There was the story last year that had won her an award. Whatever the problem, Sean should have been honourable enough to tell her. He should have broken off their engagement, then waited at least a few months before asking another woman to be his wife. She couldn’t have done to him what he had done so callously to her. Sean had only worn the façade of an honourable man…

Late wedding guests, cutting it fine, were still arriving. Up ahead, Amber could see the ushers, decked out in morning suits. Each wore a white rosebud in their lapel. She had to get past them, though by now she was feeling like a clockwork doll badly in need of a rewind. At least they weren’t burly bouncers, just good-looking youngsters probably just out of school or at university. They would have been given a list of guests, although they weren’t holding anything in their hands. Maybe they would only check on guests arriving at the reception, which was being held in a leading city hotel.

No matter what, nothing was going to stop her getting into that church.

Even as Amber plotted, a few feet behind her Cal MacFarlane considered ways and means of controlling a potentially inflammable situation. He couldn’t carry Ms Wyatt off screaming. He couldn’t very well slap her into a pair of handcuffs and make a citizen’s arrest, but it should be possible to avert a scene. He wished he could see her face properly. She had a beautiful body. Tall and willowy. She held her head high and kept her back straight. She moved as a dancer would. She looked enormously chic. In fact she was making the women around her look ordinary, although they had obviously gone to considerable pains over their wedding finery. The brim of the hat was perhaps a bit too wide. It called to mind the picture hats his beautiful mother had used to wear before she ran off with the man he had affectionately called “Uncle Jeff” for much of his childhood. His eyes glittered with the tide of memory even if he had grown many protective layers of skin.

One of the ushers had stopped her. A challenge, or did he want a close-up of the goddess? Rosemary prodded him so hard in the back, he actually winced. “Callum, I beg of you, see to it.”

Rosemary, mercifully not a blood relative, always had that combative look. Had he really travelled a thousand miles and more for this? He’d only met Sinclair the night before and had barely been able to disguise his scorn for the man. Whatever Georgie saw in Sinclair was invisible to him. Of course with Sinclair it was all about money. Money was the fuel that drove everything. Follow the money. Way to go. Money and ambition. Sinclair was a covetous guy.

“We just looked at each other and fell in love!” Georgie had told him, her myopic grey eyes full of stars. The truth was that Georgie was overwhelmed to be loved—and had been given the heaven-sent opportunity to get away from her mother. “I’m so desperatelysorry we had to hurt Sean’s ex-fiancée but oncehe met me he knew he couldn’t go through with it.”

“Pity the two of you didn’t bother to tell her,” he had challenged her squarely but Georgie hadn’t been able to come up with a ready answer. Maybe too intellectual a question? It was all he could do not to enquire if being an heiress had anything to do with it. He wondered how long Georgie would go on hiding that fact from herself? Inwardly disgusted, Cal made a swift charge up the few remaining stone steps, lifting a hand in greeting to another young cousin who beamed at him. Nice kid, Tim. He’d always enjoyed having him out to Jingala, the MacFarlane ancestral desert stronghold, for holidays.

“How’s it going, Tim?”

“Great, just great, Cal,” the young fellow responded, feeling mightily relieved to see his dynamic cousin who so emanated authority. “I was just about to ask this lady…”

Cal turned away from his hero worshipping young cousin to centre his gaze on the “loose cannon”.

A voice in his head spoke as loud and clear as any oracle: This, MacFarlane, is your kind of woman.

The realisation made his whole body tense. Wouldn’t that be one hell of a thing—to get involved with Ms Wyatt, a woman on the rebound? Yet he swore a leap of something extraordinary passed between them—something well outside an eroticized thrill. Recognition? Such things happened. Instantaneous connection? The wise man would do well to ignore the phenomenon. The wise woman too. The question remained. How in the world had Sinclair given up this goddess for Georgie, even if Georgie came draped in diamonds, rubies and pearls?

Cal held the goddess’s gaze for long measuring seconds, more entranced than he cared to be. Even his cynical old heart seemed to have gone into temporary meltdown. He reined himself in. The sweetest woman could suck the life out of a man, as his bolter mother had sucked the life out of his dad.

“Sorry I’m late. I got held up by a phone call.” He took her arm in a light grasp, disturbed to find she was trembling.

Yet she had the wit to reply smoothly, “No problem.” If that weren’t enough, she reached up and calmly kissed his cheek. “As you can see, I made it on my own.”

“You look wonderful!” He didn’t have to strain to say that.

“Thank you so much.” She gave him a smile that would have taken most men’s breath away.

Okay, so that smile affected him! Lucky for him he’d built up an immunity to beautiful women with smiles like the sunrise.