Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family: Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family

“A dress?” Rachelle’s upper-crust voice rose to a screech. “How come you rate a dress from Margaux’s?” She advanced on Skye, looking shocked to her roots. Margaux’s was arguably Sydney’s top boutique, carrying designer labels from all over the world.

“Yes, a dress, Rachelle.” Skye was recovering somewhat. “I’m thrilled.”

“So you should be!” Rachelle’s tone lashed. “Gran hasn’t asked you to come to the Christmas Eve party surely?”

Skye held her temper. “She has. I’m sorry if that upsets you, Rachelle. I’ll endeavour to keep out of your way.”

Rachelle’s face registered a whole range of emotions, fury uppermost. “I don’t believe this!” she cried. “How could Gran do this to me?” Her eyes abruptly narrowed to slits. “I believe you begged her for an invitation. That’s it, isn’t it? You’d have the hide!”

“Wrong again.” Skye shook her blonde head. “If you ask your grandmother, you’ll learn the truth. But do remember to ask nicely. You’re losing all your manners.”

“I hate you, Skye McCory.” As if she needed to, Rachelle laid it on the line. A McGovern to a McCory. A McGovern with a streak of vengeance.

“You have no right to,” Skye replied, keeping her tone level, although she felt sick to her stomach. She was sick of Rachelle’s drama. In fact, she wanted to pitch the elegant box at this appalling young woman’s head.

She had to walk away.

Right now.

The McGoverns still had her in their power, even if she was subsidising her own way with two part-time jobs. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. But she had long since made the vow she would repay every last penny she owed them, even if it took years.

Surely her skin had never looked so luminous? Her thick, deeply waving honey-blonde hair formed a corona around her excited flushed face, animated to radiance. She couldn’t help but be thrilled by the way she looked. She had never expected to own a dress like this. Not for years yet, and then she would have to be earning a darned good salary. It was gossamer light, the most beautiful shade of blue that, like magic, turned her eyes to blue-violet. The fabric was silk chiffon, with jewelled detailing, the bodice strapless, draped tightly around her body to the hips, from where it fell beautifully to just clear of her ankles. Her evening sandals—like the dress a perfect fit—were silver, as was her little evening bag that inside bore a famous Paris label.

“Oh, my darling girl, aren’t you dolled up!” her father exclaimed in pride and pleasure when she presented herself for his inspection. “You look every inch a princess! I’m enormously proud of you, Skye. If only your mother was here to share this moment!”

Always Cathy, her mother. For her father there had never been any other woman. “I’m enormously proud of you, Dad,” she countered, giving him a hug. “I suppose we’d better get going.” Her father was to drive her up to the homestead, which was blazing with light.

“You enjoy yourself, hear me,” her father urged as she alighted from the station Jeep. “Don’t let that Rachelle get under your skin. Poor girl has problems.”

Skye, blessed with a generous heart, hoped Rachelle would one day solve them.

Days later she was still in a daydream, her head crammed with the long silent looks Keefe had given her that splendid Christmas Eve. All the other looks and stares. Many had looked for a very long time at Skye McCory in their midst, but the close attention had slid off her like water off a duck’s back. What she hadn’t realised was she had the arresting air of someone not conscious of her own beauty. Her looks were simply a part of her. Part of her genetic inheritance. She wasn’t and never would be burdened by personal vanity. Rachelle of the patrician features was a beauty. But Rachelle brought to mind the old saying that beauty was only skin deep. Far better a beautiful nature. A beautiful nature could not be ravaged by time.

But the way Keefe had looked at her! It had made her feel rapturous, yet madly restless, like her body was a high-revving machine. Not like the old days when she had still been a child. Like a woman. A woman he desired. Her own feelings were still locked in the realms of dreams, but Keefe had looked at her as if anything were possible. He was the Prince who could claim his Cinderella. For Cinderella she was. At least to the McGoverns. That evening had been the most disturbing, the most exciting night of her life. She didn’t think her memories would ever fade.

Had Keefe forgiven her for having distracted his brother? Lord knew, it hadn’t been deliberate. Did he finally understand that? She had given Scott not the slightest encouragement. It was Scott who had had the willful drive to take what he wanted. With Keefe, it was like the start of something quite new and wondrously strange. A wonderful, sumptuous, brilliant night of tens of thousands of glittering stars and the Southern Cross hanging overDjinjara’s huge tiled roof. Some memories lasted for ever.

She took her camera out to the sandhills. She had become very interested in photography since attending university. Her friend, Ewan, a fellow law student, had introduced a few of the others to the art form, fanning their enthusiasm to the point they had all pored over the various magazines on the market once they had moved past the basic techniques. The best magazines had taught her how to get great outdoor shots. She had quickly moved onto the intermediate level, such was her eye and her interest.

“You have an amazing talent, Skye!” Ewan had said, quite without envy. He had a big talent himself. “You’re a born photographer. You should give up law.”

“As though I could find work as a photographer!” she had scoffed. “If I’m so good, why don’t you all chip in and buy me a decent camera?” Of course she had been joking but to her shocked delight Ewan had run around with the hat, raising close to eight hundred dollars with a very nice contribution from a top woman lecturer who admired Skye’s work.

Skye had read up on all the great photographers, including Ansel Adams, recognised as one of the finest landscape photographers of all time. Landscape had been what she was particularly interested in. Considering where she had been born and lived, the savagely beautiful Channel Country, the home of the nation’s cattle kings, was high up on her list of must-take photographs. She had thought she might even be able to make a bit of a name for herself, but she wasn’t all that hopeful. Ewan, now, was far more interested in people. He had taken numerous photographs of her, which had captured her essence, according to her friends. The only time she had ever turned Ewan down had been when he had wanted to photograph her nude. Not that the shots wouldn’t have been tasteful. Ewan was dead serious about his work. It was just that she was too darned modest—modesty, had she known it, was part of her charm—and she had been worried where the photographs might eventually turn up. Ewan had already been offered a showing at one of the small but interesting galleries.

That afternoon she had taken herself out to the hill country with her brand-new camera. In a year she had raised enough money on her own to trade in the camera her friends’ generosity had bought her for the next model. The new camera had many extras, options and problemsolving capabilities. It had already augmented her natural ability to capture just the image she was striving for. She was starting to think of herself as a photographic artist seriously setting about taking impressions of her own country. On Djinjara there were countless special locations. Even then one needed patience for just the right light, just the right shot. She intended to wait it out to capture the amazing vibrance of an Outback sunset. City people didn’t realise the fantastic range and depth of colour or the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. Outback sunsets and sunrises were overwhelmingly beautiful. In them one could see the hand of God.

Of special interest to her were the ghost gums. What wonderful trees they were, with their pure white silky-to-the-touch boles. They made such a brilliant contrast to the rich red soil and the bright violet-blue sky. She was lying on her back, trying to get as low as possible so she could get in as much as she could of the trees and their wonderful sculptural branches

That was the way Keefe found her. He must have spotted the station Jeep at the base of the foothills and followed her trail. He knew about her burgeoning interest in photography but he hadn’t as yet seen her work. She and Keefe were separated these days, weren’t they? But in their own way they remained tied.

It was really strange, the connection. A silver cord that could never be cut.

“Won’t be a minute,” she said, trying to bring full concentration back to her shot. She had been thinking so much about Keefe lately she had almost driven herself crazy.

“Take your time.” With a faint sigh he lowered his lean frame onto a nearby boulder. Curiously it was shaped like a primitive chair, the back and the seat carved and smoothed to a high polish over aeons.

“I was hoping to take a few shots of the sunset,” she explained, beginning to get up. “Djinjara’s sunsets are glorious.”

He stood immediately, put out a hand, helped her to her feet.

Skin on skin. For a disconcerting moment it was almost as though he had pressed her hand to his lips. How susceptible was the flesh! It had been a blazingly hot day so she was wearing brief denim shorts and a pink cotton shirt tied loosely at the waist over one of her bikini tops. Quite a bit of her was on show. She wasn’t supposed to be on show, was she?

“You’re really into this, aren’t you?” he asked, a trace of the old indulgence in his voice.

“Love it,” she said, whisking a long shining wave of her hair off her flushed face. She had tied it back in a ponytail but the wind had gone to work on the neat arrangement. “It would take a lifetime but one of my ambitions is to photograph as much as I can of our great untouched land,” she confided, knowing he would understand. No one loved the land more than Keefe. The land was a passion they shared. “I can’t wait for the miracle of the wildflowers.”

“Your special time,” he said.

His diamond-bright eyes moved to rest on her with such an unsettlingly tender expression that her body might have been a long-stemmed blossom.

“Our special time.” She managed a smile, tingling to the tips of her fingers. “I loved every moment I spent with you as a child. But those were the halcyon days, weren’t they? We’ve moved on.”

“You’ve moved on,” he said, a touch grimly. “I’m still here.”

“You wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she scoffed.

“Don’t you miss it?” He leaned into the boulder with a characteristically elegant slouch. Keefe had such grace of movement. He had discarded his wide-brimmed hat, his luxuriant black hair thick and tousled, his darkly tanned skin glittering with the lightest sweat.

“Of course I miss it!” she said fervently, betraying her sense of loss. “I’ll probably miss it all my life.”

“So what’s your life going to be, Skye?” he questioned, his eyes a sharply observant silver.

“I haven’t figured that out yet.” Immediately she was on the defensive.

“Well, you’re only twenty.” He shrugged. “But you must have a whole string of admirers by now?”

“No more than you,” she shot back.

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous at all,” she said heatedly. “What about Fiona Fraser? She stayed glued to your side at the party. Then there’s Clementine. I like Clemmie. Your second cousin Angela has become very glamorous. And she’s a gifted pianist.”

“So she is,” he nodded. “A conservatorium graduate. Angela is a city girl.”

“Here we go!” she answered breezily. “That counts her out, then. City girls are trouble. So we’re back to Fiona.”

“You’re back to Fiona, and I thought you were a hell of a lot smarter. I’m twenty-six years old, Skye. Twenty-six to your twenty. I have no thought of marriage on my mind.”