Her Outback Commander

Inside the luxurious lounge, he helped her remove her cashmere coat, laying it over the back of a chair along with the deep yellow scarf she had worn around her throat. It was quite a while since she had been inside this downtown Vancouver boutique hotel. She glanced appreciatively around her. The hotel was famous for its European style: glossy, warm dark timbers, richly upholstered furniture, fine antique pieces, lots of lovely flowers, and beautiful works of art that adorned the public areas as well as the luxurious suites.

He held her chair. She sat down, smoothing back the long hair that had been caught into her woollen scarf.

“What would you like?” He diverted his gaze from the shining waterfall of hair, turning his attention to the ceiling-high, well-stocked bar.

“Perhaps a brandy cocktail?” She didn’t really want anything.

He settled for a fine cognac.

Careful not to stare, she was nevertheless making her own assessment with her artist’s eye. At twenty-six she already had several successful art showings behind her. She was also a talented photographer, with a good body of work. Her primary job, however, was managing her father’s gallery in Vancouver, and overseeing two others—one in Toronto, the other in New York. What was her take on the man in front of her? Blaine Kilcullen, Australian cattle baron, was without a doubt the most striking-looking man she had ever seen, even allowing for the severe expression on his handsome face. But then he would be in mourning for his brother. Bitter regrets, surely? Thoughts of “what might have been”?

He was wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit with a silk tie she very much liked: wide cobalt blue and silver stripes, the blue edged with a fine line of dark red. He would probably look just as elegant in traditional cattleman’s gear, she thought. The leanness and the long limbs made an ideal frame for clothes. The surprising thing was the Mark hadn’t resembled his brother in the least. Mark had had golden-brown hair and mahogany dark eyes, and he’d been around five-ten. This man was darkly handsome. His thick hair had a natural deep wave, and his strongly marked brows were ink-black. In stunning contrast his eyes had the glitter of sun on ice.

Their drinks arrived. She readied herself for what was to come. Conversation would be difficult. The great irony was that it wasn’t her affair at all. Amanda was Mark’s widow. It was Amanda’s place to attend this crucial meeting with a member of Mark’s family, albeit estranged. Only Amanda had pulled the old hysteria trick. Over the years she had turned it into an art form. The sad fact of the matter was Amanda really could make herself ill, thus giving her the upper hand. They had all bowed to her tantrums, acutely sympathetic to the fact she had lost her parents, but by the time she’d reached her teens it had become apparent that Amanda actually enjoyed wallowing in her feelings. Earlier in the day she had maintained, with tears gushing, she couldn’t possibly meet Mark’s cruel, callous brother.

“We’re talking about the brother who tried to wreck his life, Sienna. You expect me to head off to a pow-wow, smoke the peace pipe? Not likely!”

Mark had impressed upon Amanda and the family that he had hated his brother, blaming him for his banishment from the Kilcullen ancestral home—although he had been very sketchy about that. It was a desert fortress, apparently, set down in the middle of nowhere. She had checked the Simpson area out on the internet, reading about the breathtaking changes that occurred in the wilderness after rain. It sounded quite fascinating.

Mark had thought differently. “Canada suits me fine. God knows it’s far enough away—the other side of the world.” From time to time there had been such abrupt surges of anger, amounting to rants, flushed skin, darting eyes. She’d once suggested Mark might need professional help to Amanda, falling back defensively against Amanda’s hysterical tirade.

“How dare you? Dare you? Dare you?”

Sienna had never mentioned it again.

The odd thing was Mark hadn’t met Amanda in their home city of Vancouver. He had met her when she and Amanda were holidaying in Paris. Mark had been working behind the bar of their luxury hotel at the time.

“Just a fun job, and I get to meet all the beautiful girls.”

Mark had lived for fun, taking casual jobs here and there in the hospitality industry where—surprisingly—he had shone. But then Mark had been physically a very attractive man. Only he had committed to nothing. Amanda was a born flirt, who’d had a succession of boyfriends, but she had fallen for him good and hard— and in a remarkably short time. As for Sienna herself, the sensible one, she hadn’t taken to Mark—despite his good-looks and superficial charm. But he’d been the type Amanda had always been attracted to.

It hadn’t come as much of a surprise when Mark had followed them home less than a month later. He’d met the family, who had recognised an imbalance there, but felt compelled for Amanda’s sake to be tolerant. Amanda paid attention to no one, but in retrospect it would have been an excellent idea for her to listen. She would have no other. Within six months she and Mark had been married, at a small but lavish affair Lucien had turned on for them. There had been no one on Mark’s side, although there had been a goodly sprinkling of Fleurys and friends to swell the numbers and make an occasion of it. It had later been revealed Amanda had been pregnant the time—something she had kept from them—but sadly she had miscarried barely a month later. She had not fallen pregnant again for the remainder of their short and, as it had turned out, largely unhappy marriage.

Sienna had often wondered if that was the reason Mark had married Amanda—although to be fair Amanda was very pretty and she could be good company when the mood took her. It had never seemed to Sienna that Mark had been in love with her cousin. Using her, maybe? Their family was wealthy. Her father was an eminent artist, her mother a dermatologist and her brother was becoming quite a celebrity designer. For that matter she was doing pretty well herself. Only Mark had never seemed short of money. He’d appeared to have private means. The jobs he’d taken had seemed to be no more than hobbies. At one time he had tried to talk her into allowing him to join her at the gallery. No question of that. She hadn’t wanted Mark anywhere near her. He made her very uneasy. Barely a year into the marriage Mark had finally shown her why. She couldn’t bear to think about that awful, shameful evening. It still haunted her. From that night on she had loathed him …

Blaine Kilcullen was speaking, drawing her out of her dark, disturbing thoughts. “I do hope your cousin is well enough to speak to me tomorrow, Ms Fleury. I need to see her.”

“Of course you do,” she hastily agreed, thinking there

would be world peace before Amanda got out of bed.

“What is the real reason for her not coming, Ms Fleury?”

“Please—Sienna.” She took a sip of her cocktail. It

perturbed her, the effect this man was having on her.

It was as if he had a magnetic power. She was usually composed. Or that was her reputation. Amanda was the bubbly one. At least before her brief marriage had started to disintegrate.

“Sienna it is.” He smiled briefly. That was enough. The smile lit the sombreness of his expression like an emerging sun cut through clouds. “Sienna—a significant name. Was it inspired by the colour of your hair?” He let his eyes linger on her long, lustrous mane. It was centre-parted no doubt to highlight the perfect symmetry of her oval face. The colour was striking: a blend of dark red, amber and coppery-brown. Her large beautiful eyes were thickly lashed. The colour put him in mind of fine sherry when held up to the light.

“My father named me,” she said, a smile playing around her mouth. “Apparently even as a newborn my fuzz of hair was the colour of burnt sienna. That’s a paint pigment. My father is quite a famous artist here in Canada. Lucien Fleury.” She spoke with love and pride.

“It was your father, then, who rang Mark’s mother to let her know of the accident?” Things were starting to fall into place.

Mark’s mother. Why not our mother? “Yes, Amanda was so distraught she had to be sedated.” Not true. Amanda had been drunk. Another cover-up. Amanda had taken to alcohol big-time.

“I feel I should see your father’s work,” he said, surprising her. “My family have been great collectors over the years. I have a great-aunt—Adeline—living in Melbourne, whose house is like a private museum. Paintings, sculptures, antiques, Oriental rugs, the most exquisite Chinese porcelains behind glass. She tells me every time she sees me she’s leaving me the lot.”

“Does that please you?” He was a cattle baron, a man of action, of the Great Outdoors, though his whole persona was that of a cultured man of the world. “Not everyone likes such things.” She had friends who had little taste for art and antiques though they had the money to possess both.

His handsome mouth was compressed. A sexy mouth, very clean cut, its edges raised. She knew he wasn’t married. That had emerged during the course of the conversation between Mrs Hilary Kilcullen and her father. “In my case, I do. But God knows where it will all go. My current plan is to give the lesser stuff away. There’s quite a large extended family. But you wouldn’t know about that.”

“Unfortunately, no.” She lowered her gaze. “I should point out it’s Amanda who is your brother’s widow.”

“Half-brother,” he corrected a shade curtly, again surprising her. Mark had never said. “My mother died of the complications of malaria when I was going on six years of age. She and my father were staying at a friend’s coffee plantation in New Guinea at the time. Both of them had had their shots, but in my mother’s case the vaccine didn’t take. My father, our New Guinea friends, the entire family were devastated by the loss. I still remember my beautiful mother, though those memories have kept changing over time. Hard to forget what she looked like, however. My father commissioned a large portrait of her by a famous Italian artist to celebrate their marriage. It hung in the Great Room. It never came down.”

Not even when the second wife, Mark’s mother, took her place? That couldn’t have been easy for Hilary Kilcullen. Come to that, this cattle baron himself was eminently paint-able. She knew her father could do a wonderful portrait of him, but she very much doubted whether he would be up for a commission.

“So you have a permanent reminder of your mother,” she said with gentle compassion. “I’m so sorry for your loss.

The feeling of being deprived of your mother must never go away. I’m very close to my mother. I can’t imagine life without her.”

“Then you’re blessed,” he said, looking across the small circular table and right into her eyes.

Really looking—as though she was in some way important to him or his agenda.

“And you have both your parents,” he continued. “My father died a few years back.”

Just as Mark had said. She’d concluded Blaine Kilcullen was a man of iron control, but a flash of pain crossed his chiselled features.

“Dad remarried, according to Adeline, to give me a stepmother.” He didn’t tell her Adeline had actually said a ready-made nanny. Everyone in the family knew his father’s marriage to Hilary had been one of convenience, although Hilary, daughter of a pastoralist friend of the family, had long idolized Desmond Kilcullen from afar.

“Mark never made it clear you and he were half brothers. He always talked about you as though you were—well … full brothers.”

“Did he?” He took care to keep his tone even. He could well imagine what Mark had told them all, the damage Mark had done. Not only to him, but to the rest of the family. Mark had near destroyed himself with bitterness and resentment. “Mark was still engaged to a very nice young woman when he took off without a word to anyone,” he said, just to put part of the record straight. “He jumped on a freight plane that had flown machinery into the station, as it happened. From the look on your face you didn’t know about that either.”

“Remember, please,” she said again, “I’m Amanda’s cousin.” She needed to explain her lack of knowledge.

“But you are close?” He resumed his piercing silver-grey scrutiny.

She hoped she didn’t flush. She and Amanda had coexisted rather than ever growing close as she had hoped. The closeness simply hadn’t happened. “Amanda’s parents were killed when she was five. Her parents were returning from a long trip and her father apparently fell asleep at the wheel. My mother and father opened up their home and their hearts to Amanda. Amanda, my brother Emile and I all grew up together. He’s a highly gifted architect and interior designer.”

“So the artistic gift runs in the family?” he said. “May I ask what you do?”

He actually sounded interested. “I manage one of my father’s galleries, and I paint myself. As you say, it’s in the blood.”

“Do you show your work?”