In Her Husband's Image. Vivienne Wallington

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СКАЧАТЬ you know you’re not to climb up the windmill. I’ve told you a hundred times. We’ve all told you. It’s far too dangerous. Why did you do it?”

      His answer floored her. “I was spotting tigers from the treetops, like Uncle Zac.”

      Like Uncle Zac… She tossed her brother-in-law a sharp glare, her gratitude disintegrating. Damn Zac and his exciting tales of wild animals. Already he was causing trouble and exerting a dangerous influence on her son.

      “Mikey, there are no tigers in Australia. And a windmill is not a treetop.”

      “Just a boy’s lively imagination.” Zac’s tone was benign, not the least concerned or penitent. “I was just the same. Always dreaming of adventure and excitement and travel to exotic places. Always getting up to mischief. Mikey must have inherited his high spirits from his uncle.” He said it with a certain amount of satisfaction.

      Rachel’s heart did a double flip. “He’s more likely to have inherited it from me,” she said in her most squashing tone. “I was a tomboy as a kid, always getting up to pranks. But putting yourself in danger is a different thing entirely. I’m trying to raise my son to be responsible.”

      “You can be too cautious, too careful, Rachel. It can make you vulnerable, tighten you up, cause you to make mistakes. Look where caution got Adrian.”

      She sucked in a vexed breath. “That was a freak accident. It could have happened to anyone. It had nothing to do with being too cautious and tightening up.”

      “Maybe. Or maybe he felt guilty about what he was doing to Bushy Hill and lost concentration just long enough to make a lethal mistake.”

      She snapped her mouth shut. Hadn’t she had a similar thought herself?

      Adrian had always tended to put the needs of the cattle station ahead of conservation and the rights of native animals—“vermin,” he’d called them. He’d been forever complaining about the kangaroos, wallabies and wombats and the damage they caused, kicking down fences and digging holes that tripped the horses.

      And her husband had had a point. The wildlife often did cause problems. Only yesterday Vince and her young jackeroo, Danny, her recently arrived apprentice farmhand, had found a dead kangaroo in one of the outlying dams. If they hadn’t discovered it so quickly, by a sheer fluke, it could have polluted the water over time. Especially with the dam so low.

      Worse, the dead kangaroo had been shot. Its body must have been deliberately thrown into the dam. She couldn’t imagine anyone at Yarrah Downs doing such a thing and had put the incident down to intruders, trespassing onto the property at night to hunt wild boar and shooting the ’roo in frustration after failing to find what they were looking for.

      Her chest swelled in a sigh. Since her husband’s death, nothing had gone right. It had been one problem after another.

      “You can take Adrian’s motorbike,” she told Zac. “It’s in that shed over there.” She waved a hand. “You’ll find bottles of water in the cool room in the same shed. Better take some with you.” She paused. “Let me know what damage has been done and I’ll see what we can do about it.”

      “Whatever damage has been done,” Zac said grimly, “I’ll fix it—if it’s not too late.”

      “Can I go with Uncle Zac?” Mikey begged. “Dad used to let me ride on his motorbike.”

      Only once, Rachel recalled, and only around the homestead yards. Her husband had decided it wasn’t safe. Safety had been paramount to Adrian. Until he’d made his one fatal mistake.

      “No, you can not go, Mikey.” Best to keep him under her eye and away from Zac. Away from further trouble. “You can stay here and help me. And later I might give you a ride on Silver.”

      Adrian had bought the pale-gray gelding for her as a wedding gift, after she’d told him she’d taken riding lessons for years and had competed in show-jumping events. On the rare occasions she could find someone to look after Mikey for a few hours, she loved taking Silver out on musters or for invigorating gallops to blow the cobwebs away and feel the wind in her hair. More and more often lately, at Mikey’s urging, she’d been letting her son ride around the yard on Silver.

      “Wifout a lead?” Mikey gave her a beseeching look.

      She hesitated. Silver was a big horse and could be hard to hold. But if they stayed in the yard and she stayed close by…

      “If you do as I say.”

      Zac gave a quick grin, as if he’d helped Mikey win a point. “Well, be seeing you.”

      As he ruffled the boy’s dark curls and strode off to the shed, Rachel let out another sigh, remembering Zac’s comment about her husband’s assault on Bushy Hill. If it’s not too late, he’d said, in a harsh tone. There’d plainly been little love lost between the twin brothers.

      Zac raised a trail of dust as he roared across the paddocks. His brow was lowered, but he wasn’t thinking of Adrian. He was thinking of Rachel. She clearly didn’t want him here. She hadn’t forgiven him. He’d be lucky if she ever did. And how could he blame her? Hadn’t he been blaming himself for what had happened on that highly charged night ever since?

      He let out a savage groan. The only woman he’d ever wanted, ever cared about, ever lost his head over, and she could never be his, even now that she was free. She would never be able to forgive him or trust him again. She despised him. Damn his stupidity, his weakness, his pathetic loss of control. Damn it to hell!

      Even now, he couldn’t understand how it had happened. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. No woman had ever had that kind of power over him, making him forget everything but his scorching need for her and the mind-numbing, earth-shattering way she affected him. He’d always prided himself on his strength of character, his integrity, his loyalty.

      But they’d deserted him the moment his brother’s wife had thrown herself at him and pressed her fevered lips to his, at the same time running her hand down his body and over his shorts, boldly gripping him, setting off a reaction he would never have believed possible. Some power or demon stronger than himself had taken possession of him.

      If only he’d stayed away five years ago, today could have been their first meeting…and she just might have looked on him differently, despite what she’d heard about him from Adrian. At least she could have made up her own mind, with no preconceived ideas of her own to influence her.

      But now it was too late!

      He put his foot down even harder, almost flying through the air as he deliberately increased his speed, heedless of the danger, not caring in that black, reckless moment what happened to him. Even if he broke his neck, who would care?

      And then he thought of Mikey, his nephew, a true Hammond by blood, as well as looks. The boy had recently lost his father. To lose his newly discovered uncle, as well, a man who looked just like his father…what would that do to him? Zac ground out a curse, at the same time giving an ironic laugh when he had to jam his foot down hard on the brake. There was a gate ahead and he would have to stop to open it.

      By the time he’d reached the other side of the gate and shut it behind him, the black moment was past and his mind was focused on Bushy Hill.

      It was dinnertime before Zac came back. Rachel had already fed and bathed Mikey, СКАЧАТЬ