‘If you’d been in contact they would have told you I’d requested he be returned, but they need your consent.’
‘Um…’ She was regarding him as if he was slightly off balance. ‘Who are they?’
‘The child’s nanny and the immigration authorities,’ he snapped, and now he could control himself no longer. ‘You can’t object. You’ve shown yourself to be the world’s worst custodian. If I hadn’t been paying the nanny’s salary he’d be in foster care right now. You and your sister and your mother…you should be locked up, the three of you. Of all the uncaring—’
He caught himself. Anger would achieve nothing, he told himself grimly. This woman didn’t want the child. It was enough that she signed the papers and he could be done with the entire mess. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘But your sister’s dead, your mother doesn’t give a damn, and apparently neither do you. All I want is the release papers. You sign them for me, I’ll take Henry back to Broitenburg, and you’ll never see him again.’
Her look of confusion was absolute. ‘Henry?’
Hadn’t she even bothered to remember the little boy’s name? Marc thought back to the bereft little boy he’d left in Sydney and felt his anger rising all over again.
‘Your nephew.’
‘I don’t have a nephew.’
That took him aback. He stared up at her. ‘Of course you do.’
‘There’s no of course about it. You must have mistaken me for someone else. I only have one sister—Lara—who I haven’t seen for years. That’s the way we like it. Last time I saw Lara she was attached to a millionaire up on the Gold Coast, and if you’re asking me if she has children I’d say you’d have to be joking. Lara would no sooner risk losing her gorgeous figure through childbearing than she would fly. Now, if you don’t mind…’
It was absurd, Marc thought. The whole scenario was absurd. She was lifting a drill and any minute now she’d turn it on, drowning out his words with her noise.
But she’d said her sister’s name. Lara. It confirmed what he had already been sure of. This woman was Lara’s sister.
But what had she said? She hadn’t seen her for years? The anger faded. Dear God, then she didn’t know.
‘Lara Dexter was your sister?’
‘Is,’ she snapped, and he heard the sudden surge of fear behind her irritation.
He took a deep breath. He hadn’t expected this. What the hell was the mother playing at? If she really hadn’t been told… He stared up at the girl in the tree and thought, where on earth did he go from here?
There was nowhere to go but forward. There was no easy way to say what had to be said.
‘Miss Dexter, I’m sorry, but your sister was married to my cousin. They were married three years ago. Jean-Paul and Lara were killed at a ski resort in Italy five weeks back. They have a child, Henry, who’s currently living in Sydney. He’s being cared for by a nanny whose wages I’ve been paying, but his care…his care is less than satisfactory. He’s ten months old. I’m here to ask your permission to take him back to Broitenburg.’
Tammy’s world stopped right there.
She froze. The drill in her hands seemed suddenly a stupid thing to be holding, and she stared at it as if she didn’t know what it was.
She had a makeshift bench set up on the branch she was sitting on. Carefully she laid the drill down and stared at it some more.
Lara was…dead?
‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered, still not looking at the man below. She was concentrating on the drill, as if working out its function was the most important thing in the world. There was a part of her that didn’t want to move forward from this moment.
Thirty seconds ago this stranger hadn’t said any of this. That was where she wanted to be. Back in time.
Lara…dead?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and something inside her snapped.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she flung at him. ‘I’m sorry about this whole damned mess. I don’t believe any of it. You come here, in your outlandish, stupid costume, like you’re a king or something—which I don’t believe—with your stupid chauffeured car and your tame politician, and you stomp my ants and interfere with my work and tell me Lara is dead…’
‘Lara is dead.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Will you come down?’
‘No.’ She made to pick the drill up again, but his voice cut through her confusion and her rage.
‘Miss Dexter, you need to face this. Your sister is dead. Will you come down from the tree, please?’
She flinched—and she thought about it.
For about three minutes she simply sat on her branch and stared down at him. He stared back, his face calm and compassionate.
It was a good face, she thought inconsequentially, and maybe that was another way of avoiding acceptance of what he’d just said. Kind. Strong. Determined. His eyes were calm and sure, promising that he spoke the truth.
She could accept or reject what he was telling her. His eyes said that the truth was here for the taking.
The minutes ticked on, and he had the sense to let her alone. To allow her time to believe. His face stayed impassive.
His eyes never wavered.
And finally she faced the inevitable. She believed him, she decided at last. Dreadfully, she believed him. Despite the incongruity of the situation—despite the craziness of what he was wearing and what he was saying—what he was telling her was the truth.
And with that knowledge came the first ghastly wash of pain. Her little sister…
Lara had wanted nothing to do with her for years. Lara and their mother lived in a world of their own that Tammy had nothing to do with, but for the first years of Lara’s life it had been Tammy who’d cared, who’d acted as a surrogate mother as far as a child could, because their own mother hadn’t known what was involved in the job of mothering. Before Lara was born Tammy had nothing. When Lara had become old enough to join forces with their mother she had nothing again. But for that short sweet while…
Lara was five years younger than Tammy. Twenty-two.
Lara was dead?
A vision of the little girl she’d loved and cuddled through her childhood lurched into her mind, and with it came a pain that was well nigh unbearable. The colour washed from her face and she put a hand on her branch to steady herself.
‘Come down,’ Marc said strongly, and Tammy took a deep breath and came to a decision. There was no going back. She had to face it.
She swung her legs over the branch, adjusted the harness and slid down.
She came down too fast.
Tammy had been abseiling up and down trees since she was a child. She could do it in her sleep. But now… She was almost past thinking and her hands slipped as she adjusted the rope. She came down faster than she should have—not fast enough to hurt herself, but fast enough for Marc to step in urgently to catch her, to steady her and to take her weight as she hit the ground.
Which left her standing right against him, his hands on her shoulders to balance her, her slight body being supported by his stronger one.
Strong…
Strong described