“Yes, lots.”
“Tell me, Uncle Zac. Tell me now.”
With a slow grin, Zac launched into a string of colorful tales of close, dangerous encounters that held the boy spellbound. Rachel relaxed even more. She even felt able to join them at the table, seating herself at the far end to avoid facing Zac.
“I wish I could go hunting lions,” Mikey said as Zac paused to take a few mouthfuls of soup. “I’m going to when I grow up.”
Rachel felt a prickle of alarm. Her son had always had an independent, adventurous spirit—a wild streak, Adrian had often worriedly called it. Mikey was a child with boundless energy, forever getting into mischief—so unlike Adrian, who’d always been the quiet, steady, cautious type, a man who thought things through before taking action. Had Mikey inherited his reckless spirit from his father? His real father?
“I thought you wanted to muster cattle and break in horses?” she reminded her son.
“I want to do that, too,” Mikey said at once. “Can you ride, Uncle Zac?”
“Sure can. I was brought up with horses. Ever ridden a horse yourself?”
Mikey pulled a face. “Not on my own. Daddy wouldn’t let me. He said I’m too little. But I’m not. I’m nearly—”
“Mikey, drink your milk.” Rachel hoped she’d muffled her son’s “four” before Zac could catch it. “Then take this big soup bone out to Buster and check his water. And then you can take him for a run to see Uncle Zac’s plane. Well, it’s not really his own plane, he’s just—”
“Actually, I’m thinking of buying it,” Zac put in, cool as you please.
Her heart stopped. “Why would you want to buy a plane? You work on the other side of the world.”
“It just happens that my next assignment’s here in Australia. The wilds of far-north Queensland and the Northern Territory.” There was a teasing glint in his eye, a roguish look she’d never seen in Adrian’s more serious gray eyes. “I was hoping you might allow me to use Yarrah Downs as my home base.”
“Yeah!” The exultant cry burst from Mikey. “You can teach me how to ride, Uncle Zac. On my own.”
Rachel was glad she was sitting down. A wave of light-headedness was washing over her, making the room spin. She could feel a weakening in her bones, as if they were dissolving.
“You’re going to work here? In Australia?” She tried to take it in and what it could mean. So he hadn’t come back merely to pay his respects to his brother’s widow or to reclaim his old home. He’d come back here to work. How stupid to think he might have wanted to see her. Work always came first with Zac Hammond, Adrian had often said, in the derisive tone he’d used when speaking of his absent brother.
“Yeah…and it’s high time,” Zac drawled, his eyes dwelling on her face for a disconcertingly long moment. “There’s plenty of unusual wildlife in Australia. Much of it highly venomous.” The way his gray eyes glinted made him look highly venomous.
Unlocking her tongue, she asked, “For…for how long?”
“As long as it takes. I don’t have a deadline. I’m my own boss.” Zac let his gaze slide away as he spoke, clearly satisfied that at least he’d given her something to think about.
As long as it takes. Rachel swallowed and pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Zac’s assignment could take months, even years, if his previous assignments were anything to go by.
And in those months or years, he could turn up at Yarrah Downs at any time, staying just long enough to stir her body and emotions and revive memories she didn’t want revived before disappearing again, leaving her burning and riddled with renewed guilt for still having feelings for her late husband’s twin brother, a man she didn’t admire or respect or even like.
“I’ve finished my milk, Mummy.” Mikey put down his empty mug with a clatter. “Can I take the big bone out to Buster now?”
“Here.” She pushed back her chair and stepped over to the bench. “Give it to him away from the house,” she said as she handed it to him.
“Ta! See you, Uncle Zac!” The kitchen door slammed behind Mikey, rattling the windows.
“Don’t bang the door, Mikey!” she called after him, but it was a halfhearted, affectionate protest. Her son never walked when he could run and never closed doors without banging them. That was just Mikey.
“Fine boy you have there, Rachel,” Zac commented as she turned back to the table. “The image of his father. And his uncle, come to that.”
Her heart missed a beat. With effort she managed to find her voice. “Yes, Adrian was chuffed that his son looked so much like him. He adored Mikey.” Adored and despaired of him, convinced that his son’s exuberance would lead him to disaster one day.
“Seems to have plenty of energy. How old is he? I can never tell with kids.”
This time her heart stopped altogether. “Three,” she said, gathering plates and swinging away from the table to avoid looking at him. No need to mention that Mikey would be four in three days. By then Zac would be gone. Back to his solitary life among the wild animals and birds that meant more to him than any home or human being ever had or ever could.
He would be gone by then, wouldn’t he? Put me up for a night or two, he’d said. Not three nights.
“When do you start your assignment?” she asked. “Tomorrow? The next day?” After that, hopefully, she’d have some breathing space. She mustn’t panic! She’d rarely see him while he was working here in Australia, in the wilds of the far north. He only wanted to use his old home as a base. What his fleeting visits would do to her she refused to think about.
“The starting date will be up to me—or maybe you.” Zac reached for another slice of bread. “I’d just like to draw breath here for a few days first, maybe help you out a bit…”
A few days now, not just one or two! She felt her stomach knot as she realized that the longer Zac stayed, the more likely he’d be to find out that Mikey was four, not three, as she’d let him think.
But that still needn’t mean he’d suspect the humiliating truth. For all Zac knew, her husband could have made her pregnant at around the same time as Zac’s brief, ignominious visit.
Zac need never know that Adrian had been rushed to a hospital with acute appendicitis the day after Zac’s late-night visit, and that he’d caught an infection and hadn’t felt up to having sex for a month after he’d come home—by which time she’d known she was already pregnant. She’d delayed telling Adrian and been deliberately vague about the due date, hoping that her first baby would arrive late, which Mikey conveniently had.
Adrian had never suspected the mortifying truth, and Zac mustn’t, either. It was inconceivable to think of Zac Hammond, the irresponsible, unprincipled black sheep of the family, as Mikey’s father. Adrian had been the reliable, steady, home-loving brother, the kind of man any woman would have been proud to have as the father of her child. At least—
“Tell me what happened, Rachel.” Zac’s voice intruded, softly compelling.
“Happened?” Her throat tightened. Did he mean four years and nine and a half months ago, after she’d ordered him to leave Yarrah Downs and never come back? She could still remember Zac’s cold, flat words as she’d turned away from him before he could glimpse any other emotion in her eyes than anger—anguish, yearning or even regret. I’ll stay out of your life, Rachel, you can count on that. You and your husband have nothing to fear from me.
“All I’ve heard is that he was killed in a tractor accident.” Zac spoke gently, jolting her back to reality. He must have assumed, by her choked silence, that she was thinking of her late husband, not, thankfully, of him. “How the hell could that