In Her Husband's Image. Vivienne Wallington

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      Zac Hammond was not the kind of man she wanted as a father for Mikey. Aside from his dubious character, he would seldom be around. Not that he would want the responsibility of a child, anyway. Zac wasn’t the type to take on responsibilities. He had his own life, his own world with his wild animals. That was how he liked it and would want to keep it.

      And what would the truth do to Mikey? As an acknowledged father—a largely absent father figure— Zac would be an unsuitable influence on the boy, unsettling him and putting wild, reckless ideas into his head. She wanted Mikey to grow up to be a steady, responsible adult, with a normal, settled home life and a family one day, not to be an aimless loner like Zac, without any ties or responsibilities or anyone to love and care about or to love and care about him.

      Yet how could she lie to Zac outright if he asked the question? Would it be right to stay silent, now that Adrian was gone and not here to be hurt? But how could she tell Zac the truth? What emotional turmoil and disruption to their lives would it lead to? She would have to sleep on it first.

      Zac looked a real mess when he walked in. Dirt had mingled with sweat, his naturally unruly hair was matted and more disheveled than ever, and his shirt was filthy. Yet something deep in the pit of her stomach stirred at the sight of him. He still looked breathtakingly sexy and strong and disturbingly virile.

      That he could affect her in such a raw, basic way brought a sharpness to her voice. “You’d better clean yourself up before you tell me what you’ve been doing.” What you’ve been doing to my land. “You can tell me over dinner. My head stockman, Vince, and his wife, Joanne, will be joining us.” She’d heard Vince’s Land Rover returning a while ago and had rushed out to meet it.

      She often invited Vince and his new bride to the homestead to talk over station matters. If not to dinner, to drinks on the veranda, sometimes joined by Danny and whoever else was working at Yarrah Downs at the time.

      “Can you wait for a cold beer until they come?” she asked Zac. “Or make do with some water for now?” How lucky that she’d asked Vince and Joanne for dinner tonight. Now she wouldn’t have to be alone with Zac.

      He grinned.

      “Sure. Where’s Mikey?”

      “He’s already in bed. He tired himself out.”

      “Reaction to all the excitement earlier in the day, hmm?” Zac’s dirt-smudged lips curved in that roguish way he had—so unlike his more serious twin brother, and so like Mikey. So disturbingly like Mikey.

      “Reaction to being scared to death, more like it,” she heard herself snapping back, her nerves suddenly on edge. “Are you going to go and clean up or not?”

      “Yes, ma’am.” He loped off, still grinning.

      While she was waiting for him to come back, Vince and Joanne arrived, freshened up after their day spent checking the water bores. They lived in the head stockman’s cottage on the far side of the yards, past the communal bungalow Danny shared with any other stockmen working on the property.

      Vince and his wife were both hardworking, rough-diamond types. Vince was short and muscular, with a shock of sandy hair normally hidden beneath a battered Akubra hat. Joanne, as strong and tough-talking as a man, had inherited her wiry strength from her stockman father and her dusky beauty from her Aboriginal mother. She pulled her weight with the men out on the station and acted as cook on musters.

      Rachel often worried that Joanne knew more about station life than she did. She had a feeling that Vince thought so, too, that he still thought of his new boss as a cosseted, wet-behind-the-ears “townie.”

      “Is there something wrong?” she asked the moment she saw their faces.

      Vince’s mouth was dragged down in a grimace. “We found that one o’ the bores—Boomerang Bore—has been tampered with and put out of action, maybe wrecked beyond repair. We’ll have to bring in a contractor quickly to fix it. If it can be fixed. We might need to sink a new bore.”

      Rachel’s heart sank. How on earth would she be able to afford to fix it, let alone pay for a new bore if they needed it? It would cost a fortune! Yet she had to find a way. Without water her cattle would die.

      Tampered with, Vince had said. “Who would do such a thing?” she cried. Her eyes clouded. Someone who didn’t want a woman running Yarrah Downs? Someone who wanted to demoralize her and drive her out?

      The person most likely to benefit if she did leave was Vince. He’d made no secret of the fact that he wanted to manage a cattle station one day, now he was a married man with responsibilities. He must think this a perfect opportunity—the city-bred widow, left alone with a young child, finding herself unable to cope with the demands of a busy cattle station. Putting a few obstacles in her way might drive her out all the faster.

      Rachel felt a wave of despair. How could she keep Yarrah Downs running if she couldn’t even trust her own head stockman?

      “Beats me.” Vince shook his sandy head. There was no sign of guilt on his sun-weathered face, no sliding away of his crinkled gaze, but then, Vince seldom showed any emotion. “Young hooligans? One of our neighbors, keen to buy up your land if you decide to sell? Or maybe some contractor who doesn’t like dealing with a female station owner.”

      “Is that how you feel, Vince?” she asked bluntly.

      “No, of course not.” But his ready denial wasn’t convincing. He didn’t expect her to stay. Not for the long term. Not when he knew her own father was doing his best to persuade her to sell and move back to town. Nobody expected her to stay. And Zac, she suspected, shared the sentiment.

      As if her thoughts had conjured him up, Zac appeared, his hair still damp from his shower, his clean shirt splashed with droplets of water. In place of the boots he’d been wearing earlier was an old pair of sneakers. He looked perfectly at home already in his brother’s house.

      She sensed Vince stiffen at the sight of him, heard Joanne’s quick intake of breath and said as coolly as she could, “I don’t suppose you’ve met Adrian’s twin brother, Zac Hammond? Zac, this is my head stockman, Vince Morgan. And this is his wife, Joanne.”

      “G’day, Zac.” Vince stretched out a freckled hand. By the mystified look on his face, it was clear that Adrian had never mentioned a brother to his head stockman, or if he had, he’d kept quiet about Zac being an identical twin.

      As Zac clasped the outstretched hand, Rachel could almost read Vince’s mind: couldn’t have been much brotherly love between ’em if the boss never mentioned having a twin brother. And how right he would be!

      To explain her brother-in-law’s long absence from Australia, she gave a sketchy background. “Zac’s a wildlife photographer. He works in remote parts of the world, taking photographs for geographic and wildlife publications and making documentaries. He’s come back to Australia to do an assignment here.”

      Was that a flicker of relief in Vince’s eyes? Or merely a flicker of interest? Had he wondered for a second if Zac had come back to take over the family property, dashing any hopes he might have had of running the station himself?

      “Good to meet you, Vince. Joanne.” Zac was all smoothness and charm as he turned to Vince’s bride, who gave one of her rare smiles and thrust out her own hand. Rachel had the strangest feeling, as Zac’s hand СКАЧАТЬ