In Her Husband's Image. Vivienne Wallington

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СКАЧАТЬ could always put a manager in charge in his lengthy absences. Vince would be a prime candidate for manager.

      Her breath burned in her throat. The sooner she disillusioned Zac the better! “Well, as you can see, I am still here. And I intend to stay. But you’re welcome to a bite of lunch before you go. How did you know, by the way, that we had an airstrip here now?”

      Five years ago, he’d been driving a rented four-wheel-drive vehicle that had fooled her into thinking it was Adrian’s when it pulled up outside the homestead. As he’d fooled her when she first set eyes on him in the heady moonlit darkness.

      Zac quirked an eyebrow. “I checked when I landed in Brisbane to see how far things had progressed here over the past five years. Nearly five, to be precise.”

      Rachel’s skin broke out in a prickly sweat. Oh, my God, he remembered it was just under five years ago! Four years, nine and a half months, to be exact.

      She thought of Mikey and felt a flare of panic. Would Zac guess the truth when he saw her son? Their son? But how could he know or guess, even if he saw the amazing likeness? Mikey was the spitting image of the only father he’d ever known—her husband, Adrian, Zac’s identical twin brother.

      “I didn’t know you could fly a plane,” she said, quick to change the subject.

      “I got my pilot’s license four years ago. It’s handy to know how to fly when you do a fair bit of flying in small planes.”

      She shivered, having a sudden vivid image of the life Zac must have been leading over the past years—the dangers, the isolation, the remote areas he must have ventured into to photograph his wild animals. And the lack of human contact, the lack of responsibility to anyone but himself. A reckless, irresponsible adventurer, Adrian had called his brother.

      But at least, by burying himself in the wilds, Zac wasn’t hurting anyone but himself. He only hurt people when he came back to civilization.

      She scowled. She must keep remembering that, remembering how unthinking and unscrupulous he was. Already, just by seeing him again, she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel, things she mustn’t feel.

      “So you’re still living and working in the perilous wilds? You haven’t married and settled down, obviously.” Regretting the comment the moment it left her lips, she swung her gaze to the sky, pretending an interest in a brilliant scarlet-and-blue parrot overhead. What did she care what Zac was doing with his life? She just wanted him to go.

      Not waiting for an answer, she said briskly, “Well, I guess you’ll want to return your charter plane before dark, so we’d better stop prattling and have some lunch.”

      “I don’t need to return the plane for a couple of days. I was hoping—having found you still here—that you might put me up for a night or two.”

      His words stopped her in her tracks. Let him stay here overnight? Possibly two nights? This was getting worse by the second! To have him sleeping under the same roof! But how could she refuse? He was her late husband’s brother after all, and alienated as the two brothers had been, Zac must have felt something at the loss of his twin.

      She gulped hard and came up with a compromise. “I guess you could bunk down here, just for tonight.” It wasn’t very gracious, but what did he expect after what had happened the last time he was here?

      She almost moaned aloud. She’d tried so hard to forget that shameful night, to pretend it had never happened, but there’d been reminders every day since. Her own heated dreams…her husband’s inadequacies…and Mikey. Above all, Mikey.

      “Only for one night? After I’ve come all this way?” Zac’s eyes glinted like pewter under her baleful gaze. “You’re not going to kick me out the way you did five years ago, are you, before I’ve even had a chance to look over the place? That wouldn’t be very…sisterly.”

      Sisterly! As if there’d ever been anything the least bit sisterly between them! Just one fevered, uncontrollable night of passion.

      She felt heat surge into her cheeks. How dared he remind her of that mortifying night! It just showed he was no gentleman. But she already knew that. Adrian had always said his brother was uncivilized and untamable and did whatever he wanted, caring for nobody but himself. She’d seen firsthand evidence of it.

      “You’d better go inside and clean up.” She spoke curtly. “You can stay in the guest room next to the bathroom. The room’s always made up and ready—for guests who blow in,” she added deliberately, her eyes telling him that he could blow out again as soon as he liked. “I need to finish up out here. Be in later.” She turned on her heel and headed back the way she’d come, across the yard to the chicken shed.

      She would have to prepare Mikey for the shock of meeting an unknown uncle—an uncle who was the spitting image of his dead father. Thank heaven Mikey had stayed out of sight until now. At least she had the chance to warn him.

      As Zac strode back to the plane to fetch his bags—mainly photographic equipment, with only a small bag for his few personal belongings—he found himself fighting a gamut of emotions, none of them comforting. He’d hoped to feel nothing at all.

      It was a shock to find Rachel still here. He hadn’t really expected to, though deep down he’d wanted her to be here. Wanted and dreaded it at the same time, nagged by an unwanted but overriding need to resolve the torment that had plagued him for the past five years.

      He’d tried to erase his memory of her, initially by sheer will and ultimately in the arms of other women—on the rare occasions he’d had the opportunity. But it hadn’t worked. Rachel had haunted his thoughts and dreams in a way no other woman ever had. And it had been hell, because she was married to his brother and the guilt of what he’d done, losing control the way he had, had left a bitter scar in his heart and mind, a scar that, far from disappearing over the years, had grown only deeper.

      Even when he’d heard that his brother had been tragically killed and that Rachel was widowed, he’d hesitated to come back. The inexcusable wrong he’d perpetrated on his brother—that he and a passionate, love-starved Rachel had perpetrated together—still tormented him, and he knew it would always be there between them, whatever happened in the future.

      Yet he hadn’t been able to stay away. He hadn’t been able to forget the powerful feelings she’d stirred in him, the unbridled passion that had spun him completely out of control for the first and only time in his life. Only by seeing her again would he know if those feelings had been real, or simply magnified in his mind over the years.

      As they could have been. It wasn’t every day a beautiful, half-naked woman threw herself at him—especially in his line of work, where he was more likely to be confronted by a hairy, naked gorilla. He was lucky even to see a woman for weeks and months at a time.

      Yeah, that was more likely all it had been—a buildup of sexual need, raging, out-of-control hormones and the sweltering heat of that hot summer’s night, as he’d tried to tell a distraught Rachel as soon as reality had hit and they’d both been able to think straight. He’d been trying to convince himself ever since.

      He’d had to come back to find out.

      His first glimpse of her had blown that convenient theory to bits, proving that the mere sight of her still profoundly affected him, still sent blood racing through him, far hotter and more potent than any feelings of lust he’d had for any other woman.

      It СКАЧАТЬ