“No,” Sunderland agreed with a heavy heart. “I expect she was acting out a fantasy. She was too young and inexperienced and he was crazy about her. So crazy he practically railroaded her into it. I somehow think she’d never choose someone like Blair Hartmann again though she won’t hear a word against him. I don’t think I could convince her to go although I know she can handle herself. Hell she was born to it but on principle I don’t like women along on those kind of trips. Most of them are trouble. They can’t handle the rough. They put themselves and consequently others at risk. It makes it harder for the men.”
It took another few minutes before he came out with what was really bothering him. “If Langdon suggests his sister comes along I’m walking.”
“Langdon? That’s the photographer right? And the sister was the bridesmaid at Cy Bannerman’s wedding?” Joe flashed him a shrewd glance. Joe had never met the young lady but unlike everyone else Joe found it easy to read the man he had known from infancy. “I thought you took a real shine to her?” He chuckled and stretched but Sunderland refused to bite.
“How would you know?”
“I know.” Joe smiled.
“Pretty weird the way you read my mind. You’re a sorcerer, Joe Goolatta.”
Joe nodded. “Been one in my time.”
“Think I don’t know that.”
Joe closed his eyes.
The memory was seared into his brain like a brand.
The first time he laid eyes on Samantha Langdon she was running down the divided staircase at Mokhani homestead one hand holding up the glistening satin folds of the bridesmaid dress she had just tried on. He and Cy had picked that precise moment to walk in the front door after a long back breaking day. He’d been helping Cy out with a difficult muster, riding shot gun from the helicopter to frighten a stubborn herd of cleanskins out of the heavy scrub. That’s what friends were for. He and Cy went back to the toddler stage. He was Cy’s best man. Cy would be his if he ever got around to getting married. The floating apparition—that was the only way he could describe her—was a close friend of Cy’s bride to be, Jessica, a beautiful young woman, clever, funny with something real to say. Samantha Langdon was the chief bridesmaid. One of four. They were to have a rehearsal later on after the men had washed up and had time to catch a cold beer…
The vision laughed, spoke, the words tumbling out as if she were unable to help herself.
“Oh goodness, we didn’t think you’d be back so soon!”
She spoke the words at Cy, but rather looked at him as though he possessed some kind of uncommon magnetism. He remembered he just stood there, in turn, mesmerized. In the space of a few seconds he was overcome by feelings he had never experienced before. Hot, hard, fierce. They swirled around him like plumes of smoke. The sweat on his body sizzled his skin. It wasn’t just her beauty, so bright he felt he had to shield his eyes; it was the way she moved. Grace appropriate to a princess and something more. Something that arrested the eye. He supposed ballerinas had it. He wanted to reach for this gilded creature. Close his arms around her. Find her mouth, discover the nectar within.
Then all at once he pulled himself together, regaining his habitual tight control, shocked and wary at her impact. Lightning strikes didn’t feature in his emotional life. Why would they? He knew what sorrow a man’s obsession bred. He couldn’t trust a creature as fascinating as this. The lovely laugh. The teasing voice. The grace and femininity she used to marvellous effect. Not after what had happened to his family. He and Belle had been devastated by their parents’ divorce. Their much loved and revered father had never recovered. The wrong woman could destroy a man. He had long assured himself it would never happen to him.
The vision came towards them in her lovely luminous gown, the power to captivate men probably born in her, a creature of air and fire. Her shoulders were bare, her hair a glorious shade of copper streamed down her back. She had beautiful creamy skin, the high cheekbones tinted with apricot almost the colour of her heavy satin gown. He had to tear his eyes away from the slope of her breasts revealed above the low cut bodice. This was a powerful sexual encounter. Nothing more.
“It’s Ross, isn’t it?”
Not content to hold him spellbound her charm and breeding was about to reduce him to an oaf.
Cy smiling, started to introduce them with his engaging manner. He on the other hand must have appeared an ill mannered boor by contrast, stiff and standoffish. A consequence he knew of his strong reaction A man could drown in a woman’s eyes. Large, meltingly soft velvety brown eyes with gold chips in the iris. He knew the colour in her cheeks deepened when he looked down at her. Stared probably, not doing a good job of covering his innate hostility. He remembered he made some excuse about not taking her hand, standing well back so the dust and grime off his work gear wouldn’t come into contact with her beautiful gown. He knew he looked and felt like a savage. He found out later there was a dried smear of blood on his cheek bone.
She had endured his severity well. Right through that evening and the great day of the wedding. It was all so damned disturbing. He wasn’t usually like that. Looking back on his behaviour he cringed, cursing himself for his own susceptibility. It was a weakness and it pricked his pride. Maybe the Sunderlands weren’t fated to have happy emotional lives. His dad, then Belle. The very last thing he needed was to be enslaved by a woman. The secret he was convinced was never to lose sight of himself.
“Hey, where dja go?”
Joe’s voice broke into his troubled reverie, sounding a little worried.
“Just thinking.”
“About that girl?” Joe studied the strong profile in the increasing light.
“About Belle.” He had no trouble lying.
Joe took it Ross didn’t want to talk about it. “Hell, man, better Miss Isabelle don’t mope about the homestead,” he said. “Is she gunna go with you tonight?”
Sunderland shrugged as if to say he wasn’t sure. “My sister at the great age of twenty-six has reached a crisis point in life. I’m just grateful she chose to come home. It was bad enough losing Dad the way we did. Two years later Belle loses her husband.”
Joe wondered as much as anyone else what exactly that last argument between husband and wife had been about. Miss Isabelle hadn’t just been grieving when she returned to the Sunderland ancestral home. She was and remained in a deep depression which led Joe to remembering what a glorious young creature she had been. The apple of her father’s eye, Ross his great pride. The Sunderlands had become a very close family after the children’s mother, Diana, who had been a wonderful wife and mother to start with fell in love with some guy she met on a visit to relatives in England. In fact a distant cousin. Within a month Diana had decided he meant more to her than her husband back home in Australia. She’d had high hopes of gaining custody of her children but they had refused to leave their father. Ewan Sunderland was a wonderful, generous, caring man. An ideal husband and father. He had idolised his beautiful wife. Put her on a pedestal. At least it had taken her all of fourteen years to fall off, Joe thought sadly. Such a beautiful woman! She laughed a lot. So happy! Always bright and positive. Wonderful to his people. Then all of a sudden put under a powerful spell. Love magic. Only this time it was black magic.
All these years later Joe’s eyes grew wet. Her defection had severed Ewan’s heart strings. The children had suffered. Three years apart. Ross, twelve, Isabelle only nine. Joe still couldn’t fathom how Diana had done it. The cruelty of it! Now Ewan Sunderland lay at peace struck down by a station vehicle that got out of control. A bizarre double tragedy because the driver, a long time employee had died as well, a victim of a massive heart attack at the wheel. The shock had been enormous and none of them had really moved on. Ewan Sunderland was sorely missed by his son and daughter and his legion of friends.
Isabelle woke