His Heiress Wife

It wouldn’t be the first time in life certainties didn’t work out. Olivia had known that terrible day when Jason had come to her with his shattering news that could never bring herself to see him again. As soon as she was able she had moved nearly a thousand miles away to the State capital, Brisbane, enrolling for postgraduate studies so she could obtain her master’s. Study was the answer. Hard work. Delivering assignments right on time. It had been a constant battle for her but she had pushed herself along, fixing her mind on a goal.

She had never gone home, Uncle Harry had always come to visit her instead. On those occasions she did everything in her power to make sure he had a lovely time. Neither of them, of course, ever mentioned Jason—that would have spoilt everything. Jason had left her life in ruins. For a long time she had hated him with her every breath, but hatred was too extreme. She had to relinquish it for acceptance. She had taken the philosophical view—it had helped her in her struggle to fight back. Now with Harry dead a great deal more courage was required of her. She would have to go home.

A sense of deep nostalgia assailed her. She saw Harry in her mind’s eye. She felt his love all around her. A pulse in her temple throbbed as an image of Jason forced its way into her consciousness. The sun on his wonderful hair, a rich auburn, like a red setter’s coat, the impossibly deep, bold blue of his eyes, the surprise of his olive skin that unlike most redheads took on a golden tan. That was a legacy from his Italian grandmother, Renata. So was the laughter and daring in his nature, his love of the earth, his attitude to food and wine, to art, his capacity for passion. For her Jason Corey would always define the word “lover.” That was her tragedy. A lasting punishment when she had done no wrong. She was the victim, the one who had been betrayed.

As she continued to sit very quietly, her heart contracting and expanding with grief Olivia was faced with the thought that she was Harry’s heir. She had known that for many years. She was in his own words, “the daughter of my heart.” Now the tears started. How often had he told her that, or praised her with it in company? Havilah was hers. The realization carried enormous responsibility and enormous change. She was the only one bearing the family name left. There was extended family, of course—offspring of the daughters of the family—but she was the only Linfield. Havilah was the ancestral home, the Big House to what was once the largest and most prosperous sugar plantation in the North. When she was growing up, the sugar had been a major contributor to the nation’s economy. Directly or indirectly hundreds of thousands of people had depended on it for their livelihood, but various factors contributed to falling world prices and a downturn in the industry. Planters who had long enjoyed an enviable prosperity had had to learn to diversify to survive.

Havilah had led the way.

Before Jason had betrayed her and she’d been forced to leave home she had always taken the greatest interest in Harry’s wide business portfolio. He had encouraged her, proud of her acumen and her ability to act with grace and style as his hostess. There were always guests at Havilah, some of them quite important. She’d learned a great deal about the running of the plantation and the mill, the diversification into tropical fruits; Harry’s other share holdings in coffee, tea, cotton. Harry was not a man to invite risk in his ventures—he was a careful man by nature—sticking mostly to blue chip, but Harry would have been a wealthy man by any standards. He’d always bought her the most wonderful presents, spoiled her terribly. For her twenty-sixth birthday he’d bought her exquisite ruby and diamond drop earrings. She felt like a princess every time she wore them.

It was Jason who had all the potential to be a high flyer. Jason had often tried to talk Harry into going further afield with his diversification. Jason had been very interested in mining and mineral exploration. He had tried to persuade Harry to take a chance on a new Central Queensland gold mine but at the last minute Harry had backed off. Of course the operation had rocketed to success. To this day she couldn’t help noticing its soaring share prices in the financial pages.

Megan’s pregnancy had altered so many lives. She’d been forced away from Havilah to rebuild her life in Brisbane. Jason too had changed course, moving almost as far away as she had, across the Great Dividing Range that separated the vast sun scorched Outback from the lush coastal strip. She’d never understood why he had taken up the position of manager on an Outback cattle station. He didn’t know all that much about cattle—the owner could count on him to learn quickly—but he did have a brilliant business brain. He’d graduated top of his class in Commerce and Business Administration. Probably like her he’d wanted to get as far away as possible—try something entirely different. Or that was all that was offering with a wife and child to support. There hadn’t been any money in the Corey family. Jason had won his academic scholarships. She suspected Harry who’d always been very fond of Jason had helped out. In those days Jason had deserved to be helped to have his ambition applauded. Then came the fall.

Jason may have slept with Megan and made her pregnant but Olivia on the evidence had to accept it must have been a drunken, deplorable, one-night stand. That was what Jason had claimed. He had even confessed he couldn’t for the life of him remember what had happened. Even so she could never forgive him. At least he’d done the honourable thing and married Megan. He didn’t love her. The great irony was Jason had never really liked Megan claiming there was something secretive about her.

Now it seemed Jason and his family had returned home to their birthplace—who knew why—and it was Jason of all people who had found Harry dead. There seemed no way Jason Corey would remain in her past. As Olivia had learned to her cost there were no certainties in life. With Harry gone, she would have to face Jason again.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS scorching out in the fields. Jason, clad in a navy singlet and jeans, his skin sheened with sweat, sat in the ute draining off a soda and watching the bright red self-propelled harvesters cutting a swathe through the purple tipped ripe crop. The harvest reached an impressive four metres, stretching clear away to the indigo line of the ranges. The harvesters were lurching like dinosaurs along the rows removing the leafy tops of the cane stalks, cutting the stalks off at ground level and chopping the canes into small lengths called billets. The billets would be loaded into the wire bins that were being towed alongside by workers in tractors. Harvested cane deteriorated rapidly so it was imperative to get the crop to the mill for crushing as quickly as possible. Sixteen hours was the ultimate but on Havilah he’d seen to it no bin was in transit for more than a few hours. Computers tracked progress along the network of cane railways to the crush. The plantation and mill were run with the utmost efficiency, Harry depended on him. He wasn’t about to let Harry down. Harry had given him a second chance.

He’d spent the morning organising another big planting of the so called miracle fruit, a member of the Sapotacea family which was proving very popular for both the home and export market. The fruit which came from a small compact evergreen tree had the unusual characteristic of making sour and bitter fruit taste sweet. A piece of miracle fruit made eating a lemon easy. The mature trees were covered in a profusion of small bright red, olive shaped fruits with white flesh and a shiny seed. They’d moved on from the familiar tropical fruits such as mangoes, bananas, pawpaw-papayas and lychees to jaboticabas, sabotillas, rambutans, jackfruit, star apple, sapote and sapodillas, the very distinctive star-shaped succulent carambola, and the mangosteen to name a few. They all grew rapidly and thrived in the tropics. Havilah Plantation tropical fruit was much in demand.

Harry had asked him to join him at the homestead for afternoon tea. He wasn’t a tea man himself though Harry was part owner in both tea and coffee plantations on the Tableland. These days with Harry not as active as he used to be, it was part of Jason’s job to oversee them. He liked to keep Harry company and Harry despite everything still enjoyed his. In his heart he had to admit being with Harry made him feel Liv somehow was still part of his life.

How he’d loved her! It still made his heart swell to think about the rapture she inspired in him, though he tried not to think about Liv often. He’d grown used to a life of quiet desperation apart from his work. He’d thrown himself into that. In the two years he’d been back with Harry the people of the district seemed to have forgotten or at least forgiven him his crime of jilting the much loved Olivia Linfield, Harry Linfield’s heiress. Olivia had been and probably still was in a class of her own. She’d been the brightest, the most beautiful and the most popular girl in a district famous for beautiful and exotic women from a mixture of ethnic backgrounds. Great waves of immigrant Italian families, for instance, had opened up the North, contributing greatly to the prosperity and importance of the sugar industry. Italian blood ran through his veins, though his colouring was almost entirely his father’s whose background was Irish.

Olivia Linfield was their version of a princess. She enjoyed a privileged status. A prize for any man, yet she had chosen him. A princess wooed and won by a young man born on the wrong side of the tracks.

At sixteen, his father had started his working life as a cane cutter like his father before him. Those were the days before mechanical cane harvesters replaced manual labour. His mother had been a domestic up at the Big House—not that there was any sort of shame in that. In many ways it had been considered a plum job for those who hadn’t been in the fortunate position to go on to higher education. When Jason was twelve and almost a man his father had deserted his mother and him. One day he was there, a man of uncertain moods and temper, the next he was gone.

“Good riddance!” Jason’s Italian grandmother had cried, shaking her fist at the heavens. His grandmother was full of drama. “All he was, was a savage!” It was true his father had sometimes struck his mother. Those were the times he was drunk—not a happy drunk but ready to explode. Not that he was a bad man. There had been plenty of good times. But his father was a complicated man who detested living his life as an underdog. Basically he didn’t fit into the labourers’ scene. Surely he had been clever? And handsome. Jason remembered how handsome his father had been. Mesmerizing, his mother said. Tall, muscular, graceful like a sleek jungle cat. His father had loved to read. He devoured books, always eager to learn. His grandmother, jealous of her daughter’s love for the man, had called him a savage. He’d never been that.

Towards the end his father told them he had an urge to paint. Time was running out. He had much to learn. Niall Corey had always been able to draw. People. Animals. Birds. Whatever one wanted. He’d left a note for his wife saying he was following Gauguin’s example. Did that mean he’s sailed for Tahiti? Like Gauguin the famous painter he’d certainly abandoned his wife and family.

They’d never heard from him again.

Afterwards instead of burning them, his mother had gathered together all his sketchbooks like treasure. Jason couldn’t pretend they weren’t good though he hated his father for deserting them. His father had filled the sketchbooks with extraordinarily accurate and insightful sketches of all the people around him, his family, his co-workers, his bosses, the Linfields, exquisite pastels of his beautiful mother, Liv as a little girl. His father had always told him one day Liv would break his heart. How right he had been. He wished he hadn’t thought of Liv now. It brought the past crashing back.

He didn’t see Megan until she came alongside the car, tapping on the passenger window so he would open it.

“Hi, Megan.” He lowered the window, making himself smile at her when the very sight of her filled him with shame and a kind of creeping dread. He’d never much liked Megan Duffy. She was pretty enough but an odd little thing. Liv being Liv had always been kind to her. She had even asked Megan to be one of her bridesmaids which hadn’t been in his plans but it was the bride’s day after all. The truth was since the night of Sean Duffy’s twenty-fifth birthday party he absolutely dreaded running into Sean’s sister. “Anything wrong?” he asked, thinking there couldn’t possibly be. He was on his way to see Liv, the love of his life. Nothing could come between him and Liv.

“I have to speak to you, Jason.” Megan was all eyes, blue shadows beneath, pallid skin. She didn’t look well.

A sensation akin to fear ran through him. “Okay then. Hop in. I’m on my way to see Liv. I can drop you off on the way.” He tried to sound friendly but everything about her put him in a panic. It was so claustrophobic with her sitting beside him in the car. He had the weird notion he was going to suffocate. He swallowed on a parched throat—it seemed like his saliva glands had dried up—glanced at her, paying attention to her pallor. “What is it, Megan?”

Her voice was barely audible. “I’m over,” she said.

He was so frantic he laughed. “Over what?”

“Two months.” Now she began to cry, red blotches appearing almost instantly on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “I’m pregnant, Jason. I’m sick all the time.” Her voice rose to near hysteria. “It’s yours, Jason. Your baby. I was a virgin.”

Most of the guys thought she was. “Don’t do this to me! Are you sure, Megan?” he groaned, realizing with shock he had trembling hands. “It was only one time. I don’t even remember it. I’ve never been so drunk in my life. Oh, why talk about it! Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, feeling desperately ill himself.

“In this town?” Piteously Megan wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Besides, I had to tell you first, Jason. You’re the father. I’ve never been with anyone else.”

“Oh, Megan!” He slammed a fist into his knee, blazing with shame. “How did we let this happen?”

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Megan said feebly. “But you overpowered me. You’re so big and strong. It was near enough to rape but nothing would ever make me tell anyone else that.”

For all her cowered attitude suddenly that sounded like a threat. He trod on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt alongside the kerb. “No, Megan.” He fixed her with a searing stare. “I may have been all sorts of a fool, but I know I would never have forced you—that’s not my style. You’re entitled to be very upset but you must have given me some sort of encouragement?”

Very gently she touched his arm even though he visibly flinched. “You said it yourself, Jason. You were very drunk.” She stared at him, tears welling into her hazel eyes and slipping down her pale cheeks. “I’m so frightened. My father will kill me when he finds out. I’ve never been with anyone else, Jason. Couldn’t you tell? There was blood on the sheets.”

He recoiled. “I saw no blood.”

“You weren’t looking,” she pointed out mournfully. “I had to get you painkillers for your hangover. You were still sick the next day—almost out of it. Do you think I wanted this to happen, Jason? It was a terrible mistake. Olivia is my friend—she’s been so kind to me. She’s never looked down on us Duffys. Mum thinks Olivia’s a real lady. She’s always going on about it like I’m a slut, which you know more than anyone I’m not. This has been a dreadful shock for me, too. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been trying to keep myself together, locking myself into the bathroom. Mum asked me this morning if I had something to tell her. I think she knows.”

“That you’re pregnant?” Jason moved his eyes to her flat stomach.

“Yes,” she said, miserably. “I know what you’re thinking, Jason. You hate me.”

He rested his arms on the steering wheel, burying his face. He didn’t think he would ever smile again. “I don’t hate you, Megan. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Jason groaned in anguish wanting to shut the whole world out. He even had the sensation the blazing sun had disappeared. Where would he be without his beloved Liv? He might as well be dead. There was a taste like metal in his mouth, but he straightened up. “I’ll take care of you, Megan,” he promised. “This is my child, too. My responsibility. I always knew in my heart life didn’t promise me any rose-garden.”

Liv was a beautiful dream. Hadn’t he always had the feeling she was much too good for him.

Megan looked like she was about to reach out to him, but Jason backed right up against the car door, wanting to smash the window out. “Olivia loves you,” she said, her voice so tight the words might have been stuck in her throat.

“She’ll find someone else,” Jason muttered, thinking life for him was all over. Someone who deserves her.

Gradually Jason’s rage receded as pity gripped him. Megan was so small and desperate and her father, Jack Duffy was a brute of a man. A drunk and a failure, Jason could well imagine him being very tough on his daughter. Megan needed his support and so did the baby growing inside her. That baby was his. In the final analysis the baby was the one who mattered. Abandoned by his own father, Jason felt he had no other option but to front up to his responsibilities. “Our child deserves a future, Megan,” he said. “I’m not running away.”

An hour later he had sufficient control of himself to face Olivia. She ran down Havilah’s grand staircase to greet him, her long silky black hair flying behind her like a pennant in a breeze. So beautiful, so slender, so graceful, her smile so radiant it tore the heart out of him. He would never, until his dying day, get over Liv. Or cease missing her. “More presents have been arriving,” she said excitedly, lifting her face for his kiss.

Instead he drew her into the hollow of his shoulder. He had no right to kiss her anymore. He had forfeited that. “I have to talk to you, Liv,” he said, his voice conveying the raw intensity of his feelings. “Can we please go outside, take a walk.”

“Of course, darling.” She slipped her arm around his waist. “What’s the matter?” Love for him surged inside her, then a flash of naked fear. His handsome face was a mask of pain.

The only way to tell her was head-on. “I have bad news, Liv.” He led her out onto the colonnaded front terrace.

“It’s not your mother?” Olivia’s beautiful light grey eyes were full of concern. Antonella Corey didn’t keep good health.