The Cattle King's Bride

He sat down again, bending his blond head almost to his knees. “And I don’t want to argue with you. But you are one strange woman, Mel.”

“I expect I am,” she said in a haunted voice. “You know your place in the world, Dev. All I know is I grew up without a father and a father’s love and wisdom. What I know about my mother wouldn’t fill half a page in a child’s exercise book. She’s the only child of Italian parents, Francis and Adriana Cavallaro, who migrated to Australia and settled in Sydney. It has a large Italian and Italian-descent population. There was no other family. My mother left home, a bit like Ava, to escape her father’s very strict control. I never got to know any of my family. God knows why she decided to shift as far away as North Queensland. That’s a long haul.”

“Do we even know if that’s true?” Dev muttered. “I wouldn’t put it past your mother to have been wearing an impenetrable disguise all these years. When she came to Kooraki no one would have questioned her background. Where she came from would have been considered irrelevant. She was simply Mike Norton’s young wife.”

“Terrible to think my mother’s past could be an invention, a construct of lies. I hate blacked out spaces, secrets.”

“Tell me about it,” Dev said. “Most families have them. You are letting them plague you to death. You have to make a leap of faith. Faith in me. Your mother has her story but it’s obvious she doesn’t want you to know it, even if it would offer you comfort.”

She gave him a despairing look. “Was her home life so bad she simply had to run away? Did she cast off her past like a snake sloughs off its skin? My dad would have known. But he’s not around to tell me,” she said with the deepest regret.

“One day your mother might confide in you, Mel.” Dev tried to offer comfort, but he had no faith whatsoever in Sarina Norton, whom he knew as a devious woman and most likely an accomplished spinner of lies. “She’s a secretive woman without your strengths. But she had no difficulty conning men into thinking they needed to protect her.” He hadn’t intended saying that. It just sprang out. His own view was that men needed protection from Sarina Norton.

“Con? Did you say con?” Mel asked, midway between wrath and shock.

“I did and that’s my theory,” Dev shot back unapologetically.

Mel was severely taken aback. Dev had never spoken harshly of her mother.

“Give it a bit of thought, Mel. Your mother is a born actress. If she’d made it to the big screen she would have won an award.”

“What, playing the role of conning men?”

“I can’t think of anyone better,” Dev said bluntly. “Didn’t you ever watch her with the male staff? In fact any man that moved across her path.”

Mel looked back at him, stunned. “What is this, Dev? Payback time? I didn’t realize you so disliked my mother.”

His expression hardened. “On the subject of your mother it pays to keep my mouth shut. I’ve never been out to hurt you, Mel.”

Disturbing thoughts were sweeping into her mind. “But she thinks the world of you, Dev. How could you attack her, unless she tried to con you?” It didn’t seem possible.

Dev picked a non-existent thread from his shirt. “Cons don’t go down well with me, Mel.”

“What sort of an answer is that?”

“Are we going to have a problem with it?” he asked in a decidedly edgy voice.

Not, she realized, unless she was prepared to launch into an all-out fight. “Did it help or harm her, do you suppose, the fact that she was so beautiful?” Mel asked, always looking for some way to unravel the mystery that was her mother.

“Hell, she still is.” There was a harsh note in Dev’s voice. “Beautiful women have a lot of power. You know that. You have to accept your mother’s nature, Mel. I know you wanted her to come live with you, but the reality was she wanted to stay on Kooraki.”

Mel responded with real grief. “She chose Kooraki over me. She chose your grandfather over me, a man old enough to be her father, but what the hell? He was anything but your average bloke.” With a defeated sigh, she picked up the laden tray. Dev stood up to take it from her, setting it down on the coffee table.

She let him eat in peace. She had poured two coffees. Now she sat opposite him, sipping at hers, the rich aroma tantalizing her nostrils and soothing her.

“That was good!” he exclaimed in satisfaction when he was finished. “I haven’t had anything since around ten this morning.”

“Why is Mum so set on my attending?’

“Why are you so set against it?”

“All your grandfather thinks he has to do is give the order and we all fall into line. Well, most of us do,” she said wryly. “Not you, of course, even when you were told you were being cut out of his will.”

“Big deal!” Dev exclaimed. “I was prepared to risk it. I never felt good about telling my grandfather to go to hell, Mel. It was just something that had to be said. And there’s another thing. Whether he meant it or not, he broke Dad’s spirit.”

“I can’t understand why your father never stood up to him.”

Dev’s brief laugh was without humour. “Not everyone is a born fire-eater, Mel. Besides, he had to contend with a double whammy. Between my grandfather and my grandmother, Dad had a rough ride. My mother tolerated the situation as long as she could before she had to take off. Self-preservation. I used to dream of her coming back. Poor Ava was the worst affected. But at least we see our mother now. The truly amazing thing is they’re still married. Neither of them filed for divorce. Both could have found new partners in record time.”

“I expect your grandfather forbade it.”

“Maybe he did.” Dev shrugged. “He might have stopped Dad, but not Mum. She broke free. My parents should have moved away from Kooraki after they were married. They should have had a home of their own. I remember they were happy once. I believe they still have strong feelings for one another.”

Mel thought so, too. “Will your mother come?”

Dev nodded. “If Gregory dies, there’ll be the funeral.”

“Is Ava happy?” Mel asked. Lovely, graceful Ava, the granddaughter shoved into the background.

Dev gave a brotherly howl of anguish. “We both know Ava chose marriage as a way out. She had no real idea of what she was letting herself in for. She always claims she’s happy, but I don’t accept that. If I ever found out that husband of hers was ill-treating her in any way—not physically. He wouldn’t dare—but trying to browbeat her, he’d better look out. And that’s a promise.”

Mel had no doubts about that. She stood up. “For your information, I did intend to go, Dev. I’m as good as packed. I’ll have to cancel my morning flight.”

“Better do it now,” he said, rising to his feet and carrying the tray back into the kitchen. “I’m not exactly sure where I’m to sleep. Obviously the master bedroom is verboten. No need to lock the door, by the way. I don’t bother women.”

“No. It’s generally the other way around.”

“I’m a man like any other, Mel.” He gave her a sweeping glance out of his aquamarine eyes. “Even for you I can’t swear off sex entirely.” There was a sardonic twist to his handsome mouth.

“No need to tell me,” she said with an acid edge. “Someone always manages to give me the latest gossip. I knew all about your little fling with Megan Kennedy.”

“Megan knew what she was getting into,” he said, unperturbed. “We’re still friends.”

She rounded on him, temper flashing. “Isn’t that lovely!” She hadn’t forgotten how fearfully upset she had been, how hard it had been to hide it. The “Megan” affair had been her worst case of jealousy yet. She had to remind herself she’d had her own little flings that were predestined to fail.

“Might I remind you the pot can’t call the kettle black?” he said suavely. “Now, where do I sleep?”

She waved an imperious arm. “There’s the second bedroom, as you well know. The bed is made up.”

“You only have to call out if you get lonely, Mel.”

“My head only has to touch the pillow and it’s lights out,” she assured him.

CHAPTER THREE

DESPITE her claim, Mel lay awake with the full moon casting its light across her bedroom. Maybe it was the coffee that was keeping her awake? That was the easy answer. The real answer? How could she sleep with Dev just down the hall? She knew what her problem was. She was sexually frustrated, assailed by desires she couldn’t control with him around. She had to ask herself—could there possibly be another man in the world for her but James Devereaux Langdon?

Restlessly, she kicked at the top sheet, freeing her feet. She punched the pillows yet again, then turned on her left side, only she wasn’t comfortable with the steady thud of her heart. Over to the right side, she checked the time. Twelve forty-five. She would be exhausted in the morning if she didn’t succeed in putting Dev and her body’s needs out of her mind. Ten minutes went by. Was there no way out of this? It was as though a tribal sorcerer had put a spell on her. There were one or two old sorcerers left on Kooraki. Magic and ritual with the Aboriginal people would never die out. Only she knew as well as anybody you couldn’t get everything you wanted in this world. She had wanted a career. She had one. She had gained the respect of her peers and notice from the hierarchy. She was earning really good money.