Hidden Legacy

His smile was more of a grimace. “I wanted this chance to tell you I can never forgive myself for the things I said about her. I never meant a word of it, Ally. That was my jealousy talking. I’ve never loved a woman like I love you. I regret my behavior more deeply than I can ever say. I beg you to forgive me. I love you so much. I’ll never stop loving you.”

Alyssa nodded slowly. “I used to hear that all the time from men who beat up their wives and girlfriends,” she said. “I love you. I can’t live without you, followed by I’ll kill you and the kids if you don’t come back to me. Some of them did. You didn’t think you could get away with it, did you? With me?”

“I went crazy!” Brett said, abandoning that dull voice. “I’ve never struck a woman in my life before.”

“Somehow I have the feeling you have,” Alyssa answered, playing a sudden hunch. “I bet if I had the firm’s investigators make some inquiries, they’d come up with something. I’m reasonably sure I’m not the first female to suffer your aggression.”

Panic flashed across his face so quickly she would have missed it if she hadn’t been studying him intently. “You wouldn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” She shook her head. “But you have a violent streak, Brett. You didn’t keep it hidden for long. My advice is to seek help. I mean that. What would you have done if the crack to my head had been more serious? Would you have called a doctor, an ambulance, my parents? Would you have relied on me to lie for you? I wouldn’t have.”

“Yet you haven’t betrayed me, have you?” A flicker of triumph came into his dark eyes as he stared at her.

Alyssa stared back in stupefaction. “I kept quiet for the sake of what I thought we had, Brett. Also, I’m giving you a chance to seek professional help. I have no wish to harm your legal career, but if I ever hear you’ve attacked some other woman, I’ll come forward to back her story. So watch out!”

He took a step toward her and despite herself Alyssa felt her blood freeze. “Ally, that will never happen.”

She was in control again. “Don’t touch me, Brett.” She wondered why she felt such alarm. He didn’t look threatening, but appeared to be buckling beneath the weight of remorse.

He drew back, smiling at her so tenderly it made her ill. “Sweetest love, will no amount of repentance wash away my sin?”

Another person, another role! “What are you playing at now, Brett?” she asked. “As far as I know, you have no links with any religion.”

He looked puzzled. “I believe in good and evil, Ally,” he said with absolute conviction. “I mightn’t believe in God, but I believe in the devil.”

“Maybe that’s because you’ve seen him!” She had no idea where that remark came from. “But you can’t have one without the other. If there’s a devil, there must be a God. Pick which team you want to be on.” She was on the verge of walking away from him. “I won’t thank you for coming today, bearing in mind your attitude to Zizi. It was just a pretext to see me.”

“I admit it.” Persuasion poured into his hypnotic eyes. “Perhaps you’ll see me some other time?” he asked, his voice full of a touching hope.

Alyssa didn’t reply.

“I give you my word I’ll seek help. I love you, Ally,” he repeated passionately. “I want to be with you. You were never in any danger that awful night.”

“On the contrary, you enjoyed punishing me.” She spoke with intuitive certainty. “And you wanted a whole lot more. You wanted forced sex.”

He drew a hand across his mouth as if wiping away a bad taste. “I just snapped, Ally. It was the way you seemed to be abandoning me for your aunt.”

She felt furious and humiliated. “That was all in your own mind, Brett. Don’t say any more. It isn’t working. We’ve buried Zizi today.”

“And my heart goes out to you, Ally.” He assumed an expression of deepest sympathy she knew perfectly well was feigned.

“That does nothing whatever to comfort me, Brett.”

She walked away.

She didn’t look back.

CHAPTER TWO

THE INTERIOR DOORS were never shut. Not unless there was a cyclone. Yet several of them were closed. Perhaps the police had shut them? Or Adam Hunt, the kindly neighbor. She intended to call on him. She and her mother had not made the long trip north following Mariel’s decision to have Zizi’s casket flown back to Brisbane. No family member had entered the house until now.

Flying Clouds was hers. She was her great-aunt’s sole beneficiary, excluding some things Zizi had willed to her niece and goddaughter, Stephanie. That included the beautiful portrait of Stephanie painted shortly before her marriage. It now hung in a place of honor above the white marble mantelpiece in her parents’ elegant living room. Alyssa had often wondered why Zizi, the most generous of women, hadn’t given it to her mother all those years ago. But for whatever reason, Zizi had decided not to part with it. What was puzzling was the fact that Mariel hadn’t even been mentioned in the will. Obviously Zizi had thought there was no need to make provision for her as Mariel was sitting on her late husband’s millions.

“It makes sense logically,” Stephanie said, herself puzzled about Mariel’s omission. “And yet, they were sisters….”

ALYSSA HAD BEEN too depressed to avail herself of a nap on the long flight. Nothing improved her mood. In the weeks after Zizi’s funeral, she’d found herself unable to sleep. Sometimes she imagined Zizi sitting on the side of her bed watching her or standing at the window watching her, as if she wanted to tell Alyssa something. The feeling was so incredibly strong that one night her heart had almost seized. Not in fright but in the actual belief that Zizi was showing herself.

“Zizi?” she’d cried out, unable to stop her tears, but silvery Zizi had faded from sight. Such was grief. The living often saw their beloved dead. Maybe the recently dead stayed around for a time, watching, neither side able to completely break off communication.

ALYSSA HAD RENTED a car that had been waiting for her at the airport. It was parked in the garage now. Tears flowing, she’d let herself into the house. The key had always been “hidden” among the spectacular psychedelic colored leaves of a potted caladium on the front veranda—silly place to hide it. They both used to laugh about it. That was probably the most likely place anyone intent on breaking in would think of, but Zizi had never had the slightest bother in all the years she’d lived there. Occasionally they’d driven into the town together, leaving the front and back doors unlocked.

For many years Zizi had kept dogs for company, usually two Labradors, so each would have a friend to play with. But since the death of old age of her beautiful golden Labrador, Molly, Zizi confessed she hadn’t the heart to buy herself another pet. Of course there was Cleo, Zizi’s sleek Abyssinian, who not surprisingly greeted Alyssa ecstatically and now accompanied her on her tour through the house, every so often snaking around Alyssa’s legs.

She had to find some way of properly thanking Adam Hunt. Her father had spoken to him several times on the phone and formed an excellent impression. What a shock Adam must have received coming on Zizi as he had. She’d imagined the neighbor as someone Zizi’s age, but her father said he sounded much younger. Whatever his age, her father had taken to him and apparently so had Zizi. The really strange—and, she had to admit, hurtful part—was that Zizi had never mentioned him to her. That was decidedly odd, given that she and Zizi talked about anyone new in their lives. She tried to brush the hurt aside. Zizi would’ve had a reason. Perhaps he was too recent to the area? A fellow artist? No, Zizi would’ve said something. A would-be property developer was more like it. It was boom-time North of Capricorn. Yet this stranger or near stranger had attained such a degree of intimacy with Zizi that she felt comfortable with his looking in on her.

Zizi, the self-styled recluse, must have liked him a lot. Alyssa couldn’t see Zizi trusting just anyone. Maybe Hunt was an art scholar planning a book that included a section on Elizabeth Jane Calvert. But wouldn’t Zizi have said? She definitely had to meet this mystery man. What exactly had drawn him to seek Zizi out? Pure coincidence? Perhaps they’d met while doing some shopping at the village. Alyssa told herself to put aside all the questions buzzing around in her head until she felt more able to cope.

How different everything was without Zizi! She supposed the raw grief would lessen with time, but right now the sorrow was practically unbearable. She inspected the labyrinth of rooms downstairs. It was a huge house, but she knew it so well she could’ve found her way blindfolded. Afterward, she mounted the cantilevered staircase that led to the upstairs bedrooms and sitting rooms. She glanced into Zizi’s bedroom—ivory and pale-green with a lovely canopied bed and an antique writing desk covered in informal family photographs in silver frames. The portrait Zizi had painted of her shortly before her twenty-first birthday hung over the mantel.

Who’d made the bed? It was Zizi’s practice to turn down the covers before taking her bath. So many questions to be answered, Alyssa thought, her shoulders hunched in a sob. She avoided the adjoining bathroom. Just thinking about how Zizi had met her end was like an icy cold hand squeezing her heart. She knew she’d have to get around to it sometime. Not now.

In her own bedroom, the one she’d chosen all those years ago, redecorated as she passed from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, she unlocked the French doors and let herself onto the veranda. Her spirits lifted as she was enfolded by the breeze with its delicious tang of salt.

Another glorious day in the tropics. The sky was a cloudless electric blue, the sea like turquoise satin. She stood there, holding Cleo to her like a talisman. The cat had been fretting. It was obviously very glad of her company, although Abyssinians were usually standoffish. The grounds—the roughly thirty acres that was left—didn’t look at all abandoned. Zizi must’ve had someone in to do some slashing, although there was still a tidal wave of jungle in rampant blossom—oleander, hibiscus, frangipani, gardenia, allamanda, strelitzias, golden rain trees, angel’s trumpets—beyond the mown areas surrounding the house. There were always snakes in the undergrowth but neither she nor Zizi had ever been bitten. Unless one actually trod on a snake, they took good care to keep out of the way, except for the one Zizi had nicknamed Cairo, who liked to slide along the front railings. Cairo, mercifully, was harmless and even frightened of Cleo, who used to speed him on his way with many a hiss and a spit.

“We miss her, don’t we, Cleo?” Alyssa murmured, stroking the cat’s amber coat. Cleo meowed loudly in acknowledgment. Everyone knew cats had special powers, and in Alyssa’s opinion. Cleo was more gifted than most.

She had stopped in the village, where she was well-known, to buy herself a few basic provisions—milk, fresh bread, butter, eggs, a few slices of succulent ham—intending to return the following day to place a larger order. People had come up to her, expressing their sympathies before taking themselves off. It would’ve been evident to them that she was very upset. Eccentric Zizi might have been, but these people had loved her and guarded her privacy. It seemed that they were about to pass their loyalty on to her.

Alyssa sat down in one of the old chairs on the deck, cuddling Cleo, while she rocked gently back and forth. As always, the warm perfumed air of the tropics had a lulling effect, so in spite of her unhappiness, she drifted off….

SOME TIME LATER—she didn’t know exactly how long—she was jolted awake by the sound of a heavy vehicle driving onto the property. She sat up in confusion, startling Cleo, who registered her disapproval by digging in her claws.

“Ouch, Cleo, that hurt!” She tipped the cat on to the timber deck, then made her way back into the house, briefly checking her appearance in the mirror. She looked composed enough. She quickly ran down the staircase, to the entrance hall. There wasn’t a soul for miles around. Very few people ever ventured along the private road unless invited. For one dismal moment, the luxuriant jungle that enfolded the house now seemed like prison walls. Her father hadn’t wanted her to come until someone could go with her. Who knew when that would be, considering her parents’ heavy workload and her grandmother’s “illness.”

Alyssa’s first thought was that her visitor might be the local police chief, Jack McLean, checking on her. She knew him and his assistant, Constable Bill Pickett, well. Or it could be a neighbor? Maybe even the neighbor? She moved out onto the front veranda, seeing an unfamiliar dark-gray Range Rover pull beneath the canopy of trees, the ground beneath them carpeted with wind-stripped scarlet blossom.

Moments later a man climbed out, turned and looked toward the house.

He was tall, certainly over six feet. Even from a distance she recognized something dynamic about him. He was simply dressed, in a navy T-shirt and jeans, but his superb physique made the casual outfit look classy. Burnished by the blazing sunlight, his sweep of hair gleamed a rich mahogany. Thick and wavy, it was worn fairly long. None of the fashionable short spiky cuts for him. He walked like an athlete, loping along on the balls of his feet. Hero material dropped from the heavens, she thought cynically. After her experience with Brett she was feeling pretty wary of men.

This had to be Adam Hunt, Zizi’s mystery friend. A mystery to be solved, she reminded herself. It was important to her to get to the truth of people. She had taken way too long to get to the truth of Brett, in the process shaking her view of herself and her own judgment. She felt no fear of her visitor, yet her hand on the balustrade was trembling. She couldn’t have said why that was, but she made an urgent effort to steady it.

Her visitor covered the distance between them in no time. He was standing on the graveled drive a few feet away, looking up at her with a curious air of intensity. His eyes were startling in his tanned face, a true aquamarine like the shoals of the Reef waters. They compelled her into an extraordinary awareness of him. A sudden vertigo took hold, and she felt dizzy enough to pitch over the balustrade and into the gardenia bushes. That should get her even more attention.

He smiled faintly. “Miss Sutherland.” It wasn’t a question. He already knew the answer.

She realized belatedly that they were united in the intensity of their appraisal, matching glance for glance. He had a good voice. Voices were important to her. “Adam Hunt,” he said. “I’ve spoken to your father several times. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”