Heart Of The Outback, Volume 2

by Margaret Way

  “All right, what are you thinking about?” Sandra cut into Dan’s pondering.

  “I was wondering when you left home?”

  At the question put so probingly she began to move the salt and pepper shakers around like chess pieces. “To be perfectly honest, from which you might deduce I’m given to telling lies—I’m not—I’ve never really had a home.”

  “You and me both,” he confessed, laconically.

  Instantly she was diverted from her own sombre thoughts. “So there’s more?” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, all attention.

  “If you think I’m about to share my life story with you, Ms Kingston, I’m not!”

  She shook her head. “Is that a hint I’m communicating too much?” she asked tartly, slumping back in her chair.

  “Not at all. It strikes me you’ve spent a lot of time alone?”

  She sighed theatrically, then stole one of his sandwiches. “That’s what happens when your mother has had three husbands.”

  “One of them was your dad,” he pointed out.

  She nearly choked she was so quick to retort. “That son of a bitch Lloyd challenged that at least a dozen times before I was ten.”’

  The muscles along his jaw tightened. He knew all about labels. “He’s not a very nice person,” he said shortly.

  “He’s a bully,” she said. “And I’m going to prove that. He really really upset my mother. I know she wasn’t the woman to exercise caution but don’t you think she would have been completely insane to try to put one across my dad let alone my fearsome old grandpop. My dad always knew I was his little girl. He used to call me ‘my little possum.’ He told me every day he loved me. I think he was the only person in the entire world who did. Then he went off and left me. I was so sad and so angry. My mum and I needed him. It’s awful to be on your own.” She dug her pretty white teeth into her nether lip again, dragging them across the cushiony surface, colouring it rosy.

  “So a man does come in handy?” he asked.

  She looked into his eyes and he saw the sorrow behind the prickly front. “A dad is really important.”

  Hadn’t he faced that all his life? Even a bastard of a dad.

  “Getting killed was the very last thing your dad wanted, Sandra. Unfortunately death is the one appointment none of us can break. I’m sure your mother loves you. Your grandfather too in his own way.”

  “God that’s corny!” Now she fixed him with a contemptuous glare. “In his own way. What a cop-out!”

  “He made you his heiress,” he pointed out reasonably. “Do people who hate you actually leave you a fortune? I don’t think so. Your grandfather bypassed his son, your uncle, and his only grandson who is older than you by three years.”

  “I can count,” she said shortly, hungrily polishing off another one of his sandwiches. “I actually got to go to university. I was a famous swot.”

  “Head never out of a book?”

  “Something like that.” She shrugged, picking away a piece of rocket. “In a locked room. My stepfather, Jeremy Linklatter, IV, developed a few little unlawful ideas about me.”

  He who thought himself unshockable was shocked to the core.

  “You can’t trust anyone these days,” she said in a world-weary fashion. “Certainly not men. There should be a Protection Scheme for female stepchildren.”

  “Hell!” he breathed, hoping it wasn’t going to get worse. “He didn’t touch you?”

  Her expression showed her detestation of stepfather Jeremy. “Not the bad stuff.” How was she confiding all this to a stranger when she had never spoken about it at all? There was just something about this Daniel Carson.

  “Thank God for that!” He released a pent-up sigh. “The guy must have crawled out from under a rock. So when did you leave home?”

  She shrugged, licking a little bit of avocado off her fingertip. “I went to boarding school. Then I went on to uni and had on campus accommodation. It proved a lot safer than being at home.”

  “Did your mother know what was going on?” Surely not. That would have been criminal.

  She sighed. “My mother only sees what she wants to see. She can’t help it. It’s the way she’s made. Besides, Jem was pretty adept at picking his moments. I was always on high alert. Occasionally he got in an awful messy kiss or a grope.

  Once I pinched his face so hard he cried out. Then I took to carrying a weapon on my person.”

  He could picture it. “Don’t tell me. A stun gun?”

  “Close. A needle with a tranquillizer in it.”

  “You’re joking!” That was totally unexpected. And dangerous.

  “All right, I am. But I was desperate. I took to carrying my dad’s Swiss Army knife. You know what that is?’

  “Of course I know what it is,” he said, frowning hard at the very idea of her needing to carry such a thing as a weapon. “I have one, like millions of other guys. It’s a miniature tool box.”

  “You don’t have one like mine. It’s a collector’s item,” she boasted. “An original 1891 version.”

  “Really? I’d like to see it.”

  She laughed. “And I’d enjoy showing it to you only I couldn’t bring it on the plane.”

  “I wish I could meet up with this Jem,” he said grimly.

  “No need to feel sorry for me.” She tilted her chin. “Nothing catastrophic happened. He’s such a maggot. He just had all these urges. Men are like that.”

  “Indeed they’re not,” he rapped back. “Evil men give the rest of us ordinary decent guys a bad name. It’s utterly unfair. There’s something utterly disgusting about a predator.”

  “That’s why I like my gay friends,” she announced, wiping her hands daintily on a paper napkin before brushing back the damp curls at her temple.

  “How long was your hair?” he asked, his eyes following the movement of her small, pretty hands.

  “That’s a funny question, Daniel Carson.”

  He gave his dimpled, lopsided smile. “Oh, I dunno. I’m trying to visualise you as the girl you were.”

  “If you must know, I had a great mop of hair. A lot of people thought it was lovely. Say, those sandwiches were good. I think I must have been starving. I might even have another one of those little pastries. Oh, it’s yours!” she observed belatedly.

  “Take it,” he urged. “You’re the one paying.”

  “What?”

  “Just a little joke,” he said. “My shout this time.”

  “Which reminds me,” she said in quite a different voice. “I want you up at the house.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You can’t mean living there?”

  “I can mean and I do mean.” She sat back, fiddling with her thumbs.

  “Just forget about it,” he answered flatly.

  “Might I remind you, Daniel, I’m the boss. I want you about two steps up the hallway from me. I don’t know you very well, but I’d find having a great big guy like you around—especially one with a Swiss Army knife—reassuring.”

  He frowned direly. “Sandra, your fears are groundless.”

  “Sez you!” she responded hotly, sitting up straight. “Do you know how many people get killed over money?”

  “There could only be one in a million who don’t finish up in jail,” he told her in a stern voice.

  “A few more than that filter through,” she struck back.

  He studied the flare-up of colour in her cheeks. “Listen, Ms Kingston, if you’re under the impression your family would agree to that, you’re very much mistaken. Both your uncle and your cousin would see me gone only neither of them can do my job. It was your grandfather who hired me. It was your grandfather who gave me so much authority. As you can imagine your uncle and your cousin bitterly resented that fact, even if they didn’t want to take over the reins. After twelve months I’ll have no alternative but to quit.”

  “You won’t quit while I need you,” she told him imperiously. “And you will shift your gear up into the house, if y
ou’d be so kind. I may have been only ten when we were kicked out but I do remember it was so big you needed a bus to get around it.”

  “Just leave it for the time being, won’t you?” he asked in his most reasonable voice. “See how the family reacts.”

  “In that case, Daniel, you better be present,” she said. “So where did you come from anyway? Are you a Territorian?”

  “I am now, but I come from all over.”

  “You’re worse than I am,” she sighed. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

  “Maybe not today.”

  She looked at him searchingly. “So what about a compromise? Where precisely did you learn to manage a cattle station. You’re what?” Her blue eyes ranged over him.

  “You want me to produce a birth certificate? I’m twenty-eight, okay?”

  “Most overseers aren’t off the ground by then,” she observed, impressed.

  “Then I must be the eighth wonder of the world. As it happened, I learned from the best. My mother and I lived like gypsies moving around Outback Queensland until we came to rest in the Channel Country when I was about eleven. A station owner there, a Harry Cunningham, offered her the job of housekeeper after his wife died and there we stayed until he died some years back. His daughter sold the station almost immediately after. Something that must have the old man still swivelling in his grave. But such is life!”

  There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but the first was easy. “So where is your mother now?”

  His handsome face instantly turned to granite. “I’m like you, Alexandra. I’m an orphan.”

  “I’m sorry.” She saw clearly he had no more dealt with the loss of his mother than she had the loss of her father. Orphans. Hadn’t her mother been lost to her the day she married that rich, worthless scumbag, Jem?

  “Not as sorry as I am,” he said.

  “What happened to her?” She spoke as gently as she could, fearing she was about to be rebuffed. “I think we’ll just leave it,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE TOOK her on a journey that filled her with fascination. The landscape beneath them was so vast, so timeless in character Sandra found herself awestruck. The first hellish minutes, just as she expected, had been taken up with fighting down her fears. She would never be cured of them. Not just of helicopters. In a chopper one couldn’t look out on a fixed wing, causing not only in her, but in many people the sickening sensation the aircraft might simply drop out of the sky. She feared all aircraft. She’d been battling that particular phobia since she was a child and the family Cessna had taken a nosedive into the McDonnell ranges, not far from Moondai, with her father strapped into the pilot’s seat. That was the start of it.

  He did it, Sandy. Your uncle Lloyd. He caused it to happen. He’d know how. He was always jealous of your father. He couldn’t let him inherit.

  Some words are scorched into the memory as were some scenes, like her mother sobbing out accusations …

  He did it, Sandy. He couldn’t let your father inherit.

  So where did that leave her, her grandfather’s heiress, all these years later? No way was she sitting pretty. Just like her father she was a target. But unlike her trusting father she had learned the hard way to always be on red alert. It helped too to have backup. Small wonder she’d decided, very sensibly, to shift her overseer into the homestead for a time. Daniel Carson had an aura that made a woman feel safe. She suspected there was more than a hint of Sir Galahad about him. She even liked the way he stared down at her from his towering height, though occasionally it had made her feel like toppling backwards.

  He was an excellent pilot. He was handling the helicopter with such confidence and skill she was actually approaching a state of euphoria, where she believed nothing bad could possibly happen. Phobias were only there to be licked! The ride was so smooth! She gave herself up fully to the pleasure and excitement of the flight.

  The immensity, the primeval nature and the remoteness of the landscape, lit by the brilliance of a tropical sun left an indelible imprint on the mind. This was a land unchanged in aeons. It appeared far more splendid than she remembered as a child. Of course there was no better way to see it than from a helicopter with its three-dimensional visual effects. She felt as free as a bird, wheeling, skimming, darting across the glorious cobalt sky.

  Great inundated flood plains glittered below them. She stared out eagerly. Rivers extended wall to wall in numerous spectacular gorges. Such places were inaccessible in the Wet. They could only be seen as she was seeing them, from the air. A foaming white waterfall was coming up on the right. It crashed over the towering stone escarpment, throwing up a white haze like a great curtain. In contrast, the walls of the canyon glowed like a furnace, a throbbing orange-red streaked with bands of iridescent yellow and pink. Millions of litres of water were being delivered into the turbulent stream below, although the rains had abated some weeks back.

  Gradually as the inundated land began to settle there would be an abundant harvest. The animals and the birds would begin to breed. Wildflowers would open out, going to work to form a prolific ground cover over the warm, receptive earth. All the varieties of palms and pandanus would put out new fronds. The golden and crimson grevilleas would bloom, the hibiscus and gardenia would spread their scent and colour across a background of lush greens. Mere words couldn’t prepare a visitor to the Top End for the sight. Suddenly after years in the city, Sandra felt the tremendous pull of the great living Outback. The Outback had fashioned her. She had been happily content as a child. Maybe she could be again?

  Beneath her mile after mile of lagoons filled to the brim with beautiful waterlilies swept by. She knew the species: the sacred lily of Buddha, the red lotus, the pink and the white and the cream, and the giant blue waterlily with flowers that grew a foot across. The master of the waterways was down there, too. One could never forget that. The powerful salt water crocodile. She shuddered at the very thought. Moondai in the Red Centre was a long way from the crocs though according to the magnificent aboriginal rock drawings on the station they had inhabited the fabled inland sea of prehistory.

  Daniel turned his handsome head to smile at her with a real depth of pleasure in his eyes. She smiled back, both of them in perfect accord; both captive to the space, the vast distances, the sunlight and the colours, the incomparable beauty of nature. Here was the very spirit of the bush. The air was so clear, it was like liquid crystal. By now, Sandra was so enthralled she’d completely forgotten how initially she had wanted to turn back. She felt happily content to fly with Daniel, an almost telepathic communication between them. It struck her he was really her kind of person. One knew these things right away.

  It dawned on her very gradually their air speed was slowing. Steamy heat was rising from the waterlogged soil.

  “Everything okay?” She turned to him, an alarmed croak in her voice.

  His profile was set in stone. “We’re losing power. Sit tight.”

  Instantly Sandra jerked back in her seat. Panic surged through her chest, near driving the breath from her lungs. All illusions of safety were abruptly shattered. Her worst nightmares appeared to be coming true. They were in trouble. Didn’t trouble follow her around? The helicopter was losing power and altitude. She craned her head. Beneath them lay a forest of paperbarks with their slender trunks standing in who knows how many feet of water. At least she could swim. She thought of the crocs. Their bodies would provide a nice feed. Troubled though her life had been she felt a sharp nostalgia for it. She wanted a future!

  Okay, time to pray. What was the point, a dissenting little voice said. Her most fervent prayers hadn’t saved Nikki from a tragically early death. She would pray all the same. She couldn’t afford to get on the wrong side of God. Maybe her time was up? Hers and Daniel Carson’s. Maybe that was why he didn’t feel like a stranger? They were going to die together.

  She was suddenly indignant. There had been enough trouble in her life. She deserved a break. She cou
ldn’t submit to her fate without paying strict attention to their plight. Not that she could do anything, basically, but try to help Daniel spot a place to set the chopper down.

  Sandra stared fixedly at the magnificent landscape beneath them that had abruptly turned hostile. Daniel would have no other option but to force land.

  Tell him something he doesn’t know.

  But where? The vast terrain was covered in glittering swamps with a canopy of trees growing so close together if they were monkeys they could scamper across it. She even had a fevered thought if the worst came to the worst, they could bail out, land in the water then if they were lucky spring up a tree with a prehistoric monster snapping at their heels.

  If there was one thing Daniel had learned it was to stay cool under pressure. Even immense pressure like this. They were a few kilometres into a big, flooded paperbark swamp. The manifold pressure had dropped off and he was losing power and RPM. Air speed was declining as well. He knew the girl was only too aware of it and the consequent danger, though he was so focused on what he was doing he dared not turn his head to look at her or even speak.

  Seventy knots to sixty and bleeding off fast. No matter how he wished otherwise he had Alexandra Kingston with him. A girl whose father had been killed in a plane crash.

  He couldn’t lose another second. He used his radio to report a mayday, giving his bearings. What could be causing this failure? He scanned the control panel which was going haywire. Something was screwing the system. The helicopter was regularly serviced as a matter of course. Only he flew it. And Berne.

  He stared down, the muscles of his face rigid. There were huge paperbarks all around them fringed on the outer perimeter by pandanus.

  Fifty knots.