Mistaken Mistress

“I’ll allow Owen to persuade you,” she said quietly. “I have no desire to myself.”

CHAPTER TWO

EDEN first laid eyes on her father at her mother’s funeral. She had no idea then who he was or the remarkable fact that he, not Redmond Sinclair, was her natural father. Owen was her mother’s lover over twenty years before when they were both very young.

Owen—a ruggedly handsome man in his prime—would have stood out anywhere, but it had been the quality of his gaze that had seized and held her attention. Just as Lang Forsyth’s silvery lancing glance had compelled her to look in his direction in the restaurant last night. Now she knew who he was. Owen’s close friend and partner. Owen had portrayed Lang Forsyth as a wonderful guy. Brilliant! A man of great strengths, educated, polished, ambitious, a great mixer, the sort of man you’d want on your side. Not the man you’d ever need as an enemy, Eden has since concluded.

She put up her hands to cover the flush of helpless anger that rose to her cheeks as she relived that brief incident which had so affected her. Of course he harboured the belief she was Owen’s mistress. How ironic! She still saw his frozen gaze. Diamond-hard. Heard the vibrant voice, uncompromising, deliberately stripped of all softness. She comforted herself—just barely, he had upset her so much—he would soon know the truth. Not that she would ever forgive him his contempt, understandable or not. She had suffered enough anguish of recent times, but she had loved her mother dearly. It hadn’t been easy to accept Owen’s claim he had fathered her and not Redmond Sinclair, the man she called “Father.” They had never been close or so comfortable for her to call him “Dad.” Redmond Sinclair was a man who never showed emotion. Not even at her mother’s funeral when every other thing about him spelled grief and desolation.

Now at long last Eden knew what was at the heart of the lack of trust her “father” had shown in her mother. The fear, kept rigidly in control, one day she might leave him. In retrospect she realised Redmond Sinclair had lived with such a burden of suspicion it had poisoned him. It allowed her to understand his reserve with her. In his heart of hearts Redmond Sinclair had known she wasn’t his child, but so closely did she resemble her mother, the woman he loved who had never returned his love in full measure, it kept him from rejecting her child outright. That and the fact Redmond Sinclair always strove to please her grandfather who had pulled a lot of strings to further his son-in-law’s legal career.

Her grandfather had been shattered by her mother’s death. In the intervening six months his health had declined rapidly. It seemed he didn’t want to survive the loss of his only child or thought he didn’t deserve to. Eden had known since she was a child her parents’ marriage hadn’t been a happy one just as she had gleaned over the years it had something to do with her mother having obeyed her father’s wishes as to her choice of husband.

Eden sank into an armchair trying to recover from the great shock of Lang Forsyth’s dramatic entry into her life. The day had started out so well. She had stayed in town with her father rather than return to the “family” home where she no longer felt needed or wanted. These days she only presented a pain-filled reminder to Redmond Sinclair. Her real father, Owen, had turned over the master bedroom of his suite to her while he spent the night on the very comfortable day bed in the main room. He’d left early to inspect a motor yacht he was particularly interested in. It was moored at the Gold Coast, some fifty miles away. She intended to spend the day in town doing some shopping and having lunch with a girlfriend. Owen would be back late afternoon. He had everything planned. At dinner he was going to introduce her to his close friend and partner, Lang Forsyth, a man Owen clearly looked on as “family.”

How the best-laid plans came unstuck. Lang Forsyth had caught up with her many hours before Owen intended, his attitude harshly judgmental. In truth the sight of him at dinner last night, a stranger staring so fixedly at her, darkly handsome and authoritative, an easy elegance to his tall body, his beautiful clothes, had filled her with foreboding. His appearance in Owen’s suite this morning was as momentous in its way as her first meeting with her own father. Even when Forsyth found out who she really was, Eden had the feeling he would always be antagonistic towards her. Maybe that was her destiny. Always to be the outsider.

Eden sank further into her reverie. She and Owen had come a long way since their first meeting. After her mother’s sudden violent end in a car crash, she and Redmond Sinclair had been on compassionate leave from her grandfather’s legal firm, Redmond a full partner, she a recent associate. Owen had approached her one morning as she’d left the house to visit her grandfather. At first she’d been startled to see him again, thinking perhaps he was someone from the press—there had been some speculation her mother’s death hadn’t been an accident, but Owen by his sheer presence overcame any fears and suspicions. He told her he wanted to speak to her about her mother; Cassandra was someone he had known very well when they were young. Could they go someplace quiet and private where they could talk?

Strangely she had gone with him without a moment’s hesitation, his demeanour so gentle and protective it allayed all fear. They had coffee but it was actually when they were seated on a park bench looking at small children playing on the swings that Owen began to relive the past….

“My story, the central tragedy of my life is no means unique, Eden,” he told this beautiful young woman gravely. “It’s a story as old as time. Star-crossed lovers. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks meets and falls desperately in love with the adored only child of a rich man. You know your grandfather. He was, and I suppose remains, a man who had very exacting standards. Penniless young men of no family had no place in his scheme of things. Despite that, for long tumultuous months Cassandra and I were lovers. But in the end the pressure from your grandfather was all too much for Cassandra. She’d been reared like a princess. She couldn’t contend with a run-away marriage to me. I had absolutely nothing to offer her at that time. Save my love.”

“It wasn’t enough?” Eden asked, the tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Your mother did love me, Eden. I want you to know that. But your grandfather and security won out.”

“How sad. My mother was always sad.” Eden stared sightlessly at the playing children. There was more. She just knew it.

“As was I.” Owen sighed deeply. “It has been an unparalleled grief to me all these long years to know my beautiful Cassandra was carrying a baby when she married her store dummy.”

Eden was electrified. “My God, what are you saying?” It came out like a plea. For a long moment she couldn’t speak until Owen put his arm around her shoulders.

“I’m saying, my dearest girl, that baby was you. Had I known your mother was pregnant to me at the time, things would have been very different.”

“You mean she didn’t tell you?” Eden shook her head, shocked and aghast.

“Not for three long years into her marriage. I have a letter to show you. You will know her handwriting. It confirms what I’m saying. The letter was sent to my mother who died without even knowing she had a granddaughter. Cassandra couldn’t trace me. I was mad with grief after she married. I felt crushed by her betrayal. I packed up and left home. I went north of Capricorn to frontier country. My mother always regarded Cassandra with some trepidation. She foresaw what would happen.”

“Yet she sent you the letter?”

Owen’s voice was gentle. “She had great integrity. I never told her about you because I knew she wouldn’t have left things alone. She was the wise one. Your mother begged me in the letter to keep her secret just like the confessional. Though it opened the door to unimaginable pain, I did it. Cassandra could always manipulate me. She convinced me you were happy and secure. So was she. As some kind of sop, probably to diffuse the inflammatory nature of her revelation, she told me she had named you after my mother, of all people. Your grandmother, Eden Carter.”

Eden was silent, trying to absorb her shock. “This is unbelievable,” she managed finally. “I can’t take it in.”

“I understand. I understand all about pain, suffering and shock. Read the letter.” Owen withdrew the yellowed much-read, much-folded pages from his inside breast pocket. He passed it to Eden….

As she read it her eyes became so filled with tears she had to pass it to Owen to finish aloud. How had her mother ever done him such a terrible wrong? Had she no courage? Whatever had persuaded her to remain with Redmond Sinclair? The marriage, so badly foundered, had never been happy but as a highly “social” couple they had maintained a public fiction. She herself had missed out on a father’s love. She could feel it pouring out of this man she now knew to be her real father. Redmond Sinclair had tried hard to find a place in his heart for her but he never could get the portals open. Such love as he had, more like obsession, had been reserved for her mother.

It was a terrible story and they all had paid for it. Even her grandfather had been worn down, she now realised, by a sense of guilt. In persuading his daughter to marry “one of their own kind” he had committed her to a life of unhappiness and unfulfillment. A charade.

“You know there’s been some speculation my mother’s death wasn’t an accident?”

Eden turned her head to look directly into her real father’s fine dark eyes.

Owen looked off abruptly. “Cassandra would never have left you.”

“You didn’t know her all these long years. I expect my mother changed greatly from the girl you knew. She was a sad woman. But so gentle and beautiful, everyone loved her. The man I called Father all my life certainly did.”

Owen’s rugged features hardened to granite. “I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t want to hear about him. Sinclair was the one Cassandra chose over me. From the look of him he hasn’t weathered the years well. He used to have a shock of golden hair. He was very handsome, very eligible, a promising lawyer. I never got past grade ten. I had to leave school before I was sixteen to learn a trade. There was little money in our house to go around. Today’s a different story. I’m a very rich man.”

“Did you ever marry?” Eden asked, thinking of so many broken lives.

Owen nodded. “I have a wife and child. A little boy called Robbie. Robert after my father. My wife, Delma—she has Italian blood—calls him Roberto.”

“Then you’re happy.” She was glad.

“I should be happy.” Owen frowned. “I would have been happy if I hadn’t had you and Cassandra perpetually on my mind. Often when I’m alone in my boat I have the habit of calling your name. Eden! My little girl. Sounds desolate, doesn’t it? It used to frighten the gulls away. But now by the grace of God I’ve found you. Cassandra’s tragedy has set us free.”

They’d met regularly after that, a couple of times a month. Owen travelled from his home in far North Queensland to be with her. Such was the power of blood both found their relationship, though propelled forward at a great rate, an intensely accepting one. They talked easily and freely, both of them on the same wave length. In fact Eden had come to recognise she had inherited some of her father’s characteristics, even mannerisms, though she had grown up isolated from him. There was so much for them both to discover. They enjoyed hours and hours of discussions and confidences as they pieced together the past. Owen was determined she come to live with him, to be family. But Owen in his exultation at finding a lost daughter was running the risk of alienating his wife and the mother of his son, her half brother, Robbie. It was obvious in keeping his friend and partner, Lang Forsyth, in the dark he had done some considerable damage already. But Owen couldn’t be persuaded to speak out prematurely any more than she could. Both of them needed time to turn their lives around.

While her relationship with Owen blossomed, her troubled relationship with the man she had called “Father” for all of her life deteriorated to the point Eden felt Redmond Sinclair no longer had anything to say to her. It was time to move out. Not hastily. People were talking enough already about her mother’s untimely death. She had no wish to cause Redmond extra pain and embarrassment. Six months after her mother’s passing it mightn’t seem such a desertion.

She hadn’t confided in her grandfather. Had she any need to? Her grandfather doted on her almost as much as he had doted on her mother, but he had become so much frailer Eden held back from upsetting him in any way. He surely knew the truth. She was convinced he did. Her grandfather was a very clever, astute man. He and her mother had been so close; her mother would have poured out the whole sorry story. Then there was the time factor, though no doubt she had been passed off as premature. The depth of her grandfather’s grief—he was inconsolable—began to persuade Eden he had profound regrets at the way his daughter’s relatively short life had turned out.

Eden rose from the armchair and returned to the bedroom where she finished dressing. She was looking forward to lunching with her friend, Carly. They had gone to school and university together. Like her, Carly had taken a degree in Law and joined a firm specialising in Family Law. Carly would have to get back to work, but Eden had taken accumulated leave from her grandfather’s firm not only to maximize the amount of time she could spend with Owen, but to spare Redmond Sinclair the painful memories the sight of her must evoke. Cassandra had been the one to hold them together. Now that she had gone, so had the bond. Proof positive if she ever needed it she and Redmond Sinclair were not of the same blood.

After a companionable lunch with her friend, Eden did a little leisurely shopping then returned to the hotel late afternoon. Owen should be back from the coast by now. No doubt the new owner of a luxury motor yacht. Later in the evening they were to dine with Lang Forsyth. A dinner at which Owen proposed to reveal her true identity. That should put the arrogant judgmental Lang Forsyth very nicely in his place. Strangely enough she gained no pleasure from the thought. Owen thought the world of him.

Lang Forsyth looked what he was, a man from a privileged world who nevertheless knew what it was like to fight to survive. Physically he was very striking. Well over six feet, very lean but powerfully built; she had noted the wide shoulders. A highly individual face; dark, very definite features, arrogant high-bridged nose, the mouth quite sensuous, hollows under the high cheekbones. The whole impression was one of tremendous vigour and vitality, the excitement coming from the ice-grey eyes. A total surprise when his hair was near black and his polished skin was tanned to dark gold. She was sure that Lang Forsyth would never be her friend. Not in a lifetime. But he was Owen’s close friend and partner. She had to remember that.

The sound of the phone in the quiet suite surprised her. She picked it up, murmuring, “The Gold Suite.”

“Miss Sinclair?”

She drew a sharp breath, already aware of the caller’s identity. “Yes, Mr. Forsyth.”

“I’m in the lobby,” he said, his tone almost flat. “I’m coming up.”

Suddenly the air-conditioned room seemed cold. Unease entered Eden’s mind. What was it he wanted? This wasn’t the time for confrontation.

She went to the door at his knock, opening it and standing back. His striking face was drained of all expression though she thought there was a pallor beneath his tan.

“Sit down.” He spoke more gently than she had yet heard.

“What is it?” She was so used now to unhappiness and grief she instantly caught his mood. “Is it Owen?”

His dark brows contracted. “I don’t know a good way to tell you this. Owen has been involved in a three-car pile-up on the Pacific Highway. It seems the driver of one of the cars suffered a seizure of some kind, ploughed into the first car, while Owen’s ploughed into him.”