Gold Fever

by Lyn Denison

  Copyright © 1998 by Lyn Denison

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  Originally published by Naiad Press 1998

  First Bella Books Edition: 2005

  Second Bella Books Printing 2011

  Editor: Lila Empson

  ISBN 13: 978-1-59493-039-3

  Other Bella Books by Lyn Denison

  Always and Forever

  Dreams Found

  Dream Lover

  The Feel of Forever

  Getting There

  Past Remembering

  The Wild One

  For Glenda,

  my Little Treasure.

  And for my parents,

  gone too soon.

  About The Author

  Lyn Denison was born in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia’s Sunshine State. She was a librarian before she retired to become a fulltime writer. Lyn’s partner is also a librarian, which only goes to prove that tidying books is not all that goes on between library shelves. Apart from writing, Lyn loves reading, talking about books, cross-stitching, genealogy and scrapbooking. She lives with her partner in a historic suburb a few kilometers from Brisbane’s city center.

  CHAPTER ONE

  All Kate’s instincts for self-preservation demanded she escape to the refuge of her office as quickly as she could. But she made herself walk slowly, casually carrying the newspaper. She opened the door and stepped inside. Thank God the blinds on the glass panel were closed. She desperately needed to be alone.

  Quietly she closed the door behind her, and as the lock clicked into place she closed her eyes, letting out the breath that had caught painfully in her chest.

  Somehow her shaky legs carried her across the small room, around behind her desk, and she thankfully sank down onto her chair. Only then did she unfold the local newspaper she’d carried with such outward nonchalance. She set the paper in front of her on top of the acquisitions lists she had been working on earlier in the day. Then she slowly turned to the short article her assistant had so innocently drawn her attention to ten long minutes ago.

  It was an innocuous piece really, in what was little more than a light gossip column masquerading as social chitchat. Kate forced herself to read the words:

  Mr. and Mrs. Bill Maclean of Water Street will be at home this weekend celebrating Mrs. Maclean’s sixtieth birthday. Among those attending will be the couple’s four children—local businessman Baden Maclean and his wife, Susan; Belinda (Maclean) and her husband, Patrick Harrison, and family from Tully; Timothy Maclean and his wife, Gail, from Townsville; and Ashley (Maclean) and her husband, Dr. Dean Andrews, and family from Melbourne. Other relatives and friends will travel from as far away as Adelaide to join the celebration. Patsy and Bill then leave for a second honeymoon, a two-week cruise in the South Pacific.

  “Don’t you live next door to the Macleans?” Ryan Marshall, Kate’s part-time assistant, had asked just before the young man left work, and Kate had nodded vaguely.

  “Sort of. My house backs onto their property.” She paused, eyeing the newspaper in Ryan’s hands. “Why?”

  “Sounds like there’ll be a big party in a couple of weeks and, according to my elder brother, the Maclean boys had a reputation for partying, didn’t they?” Ryan asked lightly. “Your best bet might be to go away for the weekend yourself. Otherwise, maybe join them. For Mrs. Maclean’s birthday,” he added when Kate frowned uncomprehendingly. “You could always just drop in to wish Mrs. Maclean a neighborly happy birthday.”

  Ryan grinned. “Here, you might as well have the paper. I’ve finished reading it.” He handed Kate the newspaper, and she took it automatically. “By the way, did you get that fax this morning?”

  “Fax?” Kate repeated, as the thought of the Macleans seemed to be obliterating all else from her mind.

  “From our visiting author’s agent,” Ryan explained.

  “Oh. That fax. Yes.” Kate tried valiantly to concentrate on the conversation.

  “We’ve never had an author visit the library before, have we?”

  Kate shook her head. “Not since I’ve been here.”

  “I’m really excited about Leigh Mossman coming to the library, aren’t you? I mean, her book was just great. We all read it at home, and Mum and my sisters said the book had a hero to die for.”

  Last week Leigh Mossman’s agent had sent a fax suggesting the up-and-coming young writer attend a literary afternoon at Kate’s library as well as doing a book signing at the local bookstore. It seemed Leigh Mossman had spent part of her childhood in Charters Towers and she intended to revisit the town during a short holiday at the end of the month.

  “Gold Fever is the best book I’ve read in ages,” Ryan continued enthusiastically. “Apart from the fact that it’s set here in the Towers, it is a real romantic story that I reckon appeals to both men and women readers.”

  Ryan took his reading seriously, and usually Kate thoroughly enjoyed his youthful insights.

  “Have you read it yet, Kate?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, not yet. But I guess I should before Leigh Mossman gets here.”

  “Well, don’t start it late because it’ll keep you up reading all night, I promise you,” Ryan warned. “Strange that no one seems to have heard of this Leigh Mossman. It has to be a pseudonym. Unless she’s a descendant of Jupiter Mossman who discovered the gold here. What do you reckon?”

  “Probably would have mentioned that in the promos if she was,” Kate suggested, and he nodded.

  “I guess. Well, all will be revealed at the end of the month. See you tomorrow, boss lady.” Ryan waved cheerfully as he left.

  And Kate had to continue on as though nothing had happened. Until she’d finally made her escape to the solitude of her office.

  Just drop in to wish Mrs. Maclean a neighborly happy birthday, Ryan had said. Kate could almost smile at that if it wasn’t so painful. In reality Patsy Maclean would just as likely ask her to leave, Kate thought wryly.

  Then again, perhaps not. Since her aunt had died, she and Patsy Maclean had exchanged hellos a couple of times when they passed in the street. Maybe Patsy had begun to forgive after ten long years of silent condemnation.

  Yet in the beginning it had all been so different. Quite the opposite in fact. Patsy Maclean had become almost a second mother to the quiet and lonely child Kate had been. She had certainly been the only mother figure Kate had ever known. Her own mother, both parents in fact, had seemed so remote compared to Patsy and Bill Maclean.

  Kate grimaced self-derisively. With the benefit of her twenty-eight years she could understand her parents a little better. They had been respected academics, dedicated to their profession, and they must have been more than a little taken aback when in their late thirties they produced a baby daughter.

  Kate was ten years old when her parents were tragically killed, and once their house had been sold and monies paid there hadn’t been enough left for the expensive boarding school Kate was attending. So she had then been dispatched to the care of her only living relative, her father’s much older sister, an aunt she hadn’t known existed.

  Jane Ballantyne, a recently retired legal secretary, lived in the Ballantyne family home in Charters Towers, one thousand miles north of Brisbane.

  To ten-year-old Kate, compared to her reserved parents and equally withdrawn aunt, the members of the Maclean family were like colorful creatures from another planet. And Ashley Maclean, w
ell, Ashley was … The familiar pain clutched at Kate’s heart.

  She saw so clearly two ten-year-olds, one dark-haired and one fair, riding their bicycles at breakneck pace along a rough track through the eerie rubber vines. Then the same two youngsters were climbing a mullock heap in search of gold, thinking they’d discovered a mother lode until Ashley’s brother Tim had patronizingly told them the shiny metal was simply fool’s gold, glittering far more brightly than the real thing.

  Sitting behind her desk, she rubbed her eyes as the memories of the day she first met Ashley rose before her as clearly and vividly as if they were etched indelibly on her mind. If? She grimaced derisively. There was no if about it. Everything to do with Ashley Maclean had been carefully saved on the videotape inside her to replay itself whenever she dropped her guard. Even after all these years.

  When her parents died, Kate’s whole life had changed. Her father had left Charters Towers, his birthplace, some twenty-five years earlier, and Kate hadn’t ever heard him mention the town of his birth or his family. Later she learned he had cut all ties after an argument with his sister and hadn’t contacted her in all that time.

  To have an unknown aunt collect her from the airport in Townsville and drive her the eighty-four miles to what was to be her new home in the Towers had been indescribably terrifying for Kate.

  And the dry, russet tones of the historic inland mining town had been almost foreign compared to the relative greens of suburban Brisbane. She remembered the way her heart had sunk inside her young chest as her silent gaze went from her tall, austere aunt to the large old colonial house perched on its thick wooden stumps.

  In those days Kate knew an almost constant overwhelming need to escape. Not that she didn’t have her own room in her aunt’s house, a much bigger room than she was used to, but the house always seemed filled with her aunt’s abstemious presence.

  She had been with Aunt Jane for less than a week when she got up the courage to go exploring and discovered a refuge at the corner of the long back garden. There she’d found a sanctuary.

  A huge tamarind tree spread its branches over her aunt’s yard, and about a third of the way up the trunk there was a platform of planks. Someone had built a tree house of sorts. Rough, irregular pieces of corrugated-iron sheet formed a roof, and a crude ladder leaned against the back of the tree trunk, reaching the first huge branch.

  Kate couldn’t see her aunt constructing the tree house, and as it was out of sight of the house her aunt probably didn’t even know it was there. So who could have built it?

  Kate had tested her weight on the ladder and found it sturdy and solid. She climbed upward onto the lowest branch and then found footholds to reach the platform. She sat down on a wooden packing case and found herself smiling for the first time in weeks.

  This, she decided, would be her retreat. Here she could sit and read and surround herself with her own private piece of the world, or what was left of it after it had turned upside down on her.

  She stood up and moved gingerly on the platform to test its sturdiness, but it seemed quite safe and secure. Clutching a branch, she peered through the leaves at glimpses of hot tropical cobalt-blue sky.

  And then she heard the noise, the cries of children playing, of deeper adolescent voices teasing, of adult laughter. Standing on tiptoe she realized she could easily see over the high wooden fence into the property backing onto her aunt’s.

  There was a swimming pool, glittering in the sunshine, turquoise blue dotted with tanned and glistening bodies. Off to the side was a yellow slippery slide that fed into the pool, and there were screams of laughter as children shot down to splash into the water. In the heavy heat, just the sight of those bobbing bodies immersing in the water made Kate feel cooler.

  There seemed to be people everywhere. Adults, teenagers, young children. Even a couple of dark, shaggy dogs ran about enjoying the games and constant movement. And on the roof of a garden shed just on the other side of the fence a tortoiseshell cat disdainfully cleaned its paws.

  Kate could barely take it all in. The color. The incessant activity. The noise. Such bright, happy, joyful, laughter-laden noise.

  She had never seen anything like it in her life, couldn’t even begin to imagine being part of it.

  She learned later that the Macleans often had an open-house barbecue and that members of their large group of family and friends attended. But that first day she remained secretly in the tree house and watched, totally enthralled, until dusk. Then the outside lights were switched on, and the party continued. Kate would have stayed longer observing that other world, but she knew that her aunt would be looking for her for dinner and that she’d come searching if she didn’t find Kate in her room.

  So Kate took to spending every afternoon in the tree house, reading and watching the family next door. She even thought she’d sorted them out. A woman with short, curly dark hair and a stocky, sandy-haired man were obviously the parents. There were two tall teenagers, a boy and a girl, and a boy a little younger. And one young girl who looked to be around about Kate’s own age.

  The girl had long golden hair that flew about her head as she bounced and turned somersaults on her trampoline. Kate watched her the most. And wished she could change places with her, be part of that always active, vigorous, loving family.

  But of course she knew that was a pipe dream. She sensed she wouldn’t be able to play the role had it been offered to her. She had never run on the grass without her shoes and socks, never slid dangerously down a slippery slide to splash into the water, or soared fearlessly upward on a trampoline. She wasn’t adventurous enough to even try. Yet how she wished she was.

  One afternoon a few days later she was sitting in the tree house trying to read. All was quiet next door, so she decided the, family must be out. Disappointedly she turned to her book, but it wasn’t holding her attention.

  For some reason she kept remembering the quiet, book-cluttered house in Brisbane. Her father working in his study, half glasses on the bridge of his nose. Her mother in her own study marking student papers. The secure solitude of her own small room. Now this different, but still silent, house here in Charters Towers. The different heat. The different smells. And the disconcerting thought of a different school after the holidays. And she felt unaccustomed tears build behind her eyes.

  “Oh. You’ve found my spot.”

  The voice gave Kate such a fright she almost fell off the wooden fruit crate she’d been using as a seat. Embarrassed, she dashed at her damp eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Sorry. Did I nearly scare you to death?” The child had a pair of arrestingly clear blue eyes, and they crinkled at the corners as she smiled.

  Kate recognized the long golden hair and felt suddenly guilty about her daily spying. Her heartbeats thundered inside her. “This is private property,” she heard herself say pompously, and she stood up and glared down at the other child.

  “I know. But I sometimes sneak in here to get away from the boys.” Her small nose wrinkled as she inclined her head in the direction of the wooden palings and the exciting world on the other side of the fence.

  Kate remained gazing down at the owner of the blue eyes, and her heartbeats continued to hammer in her chest.

  The other girl’s grin widened, and she reached up and grabbed a branch overhead. In one lithe movement, she swung herself up onto the platform beside Kate.

  Kate stepped backward, keeping her space, and somewhere in the region of her heart something funny, something very strange, clutched at her chest.

  She blinked, unable to understand the feelings that rose inside her. Yet she somehow knew that before her stood the most beautiful girl she had ever seen.

  Afterward Kate was always reminded of sunshine after rain when she thought of Ashley. Ashley with her wide and smiling mouth and her thick golden hair, the ends bleached a shade lighter by the sun. Her eyes were the bluest blue, and a trail of light freckles crossed the bridge of her nose. She was shorter
than Kate was and not as thin.

  This was the child of the flowing hair, the one who turned miraculous somersaults on the trampoline. She was part of the alienness of that world on the other side of the fence. And Kate didn’t know what to say to her.

  “You must be Miss Ballantyne’s niece. We heard you were coming to stay with her.”

  Kate wondered who had told them. Somehow she couldn’t see her aunt volunteering any information.

  “I’m Ashley.” The girl held out her hand, and Kate automatically reached across and nervously took it.

  Warm fingers closed around hers, and she felt herself grow suddenly hot. She quickly pulled her hand away.

  “Ashley Maclean, actually.” The other girl smiled again. She put her fair head on one side and raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “So, what’s your name?”

  Kate hesitated a moment and glanced toward the house. Would her aunt want her to be talking to this child?

  “No one can see us from either house,” Ashley said lightly. “That’s why I picked this spot to build my tree house.”

  “You made this?” Kate couldn’t prevent herself from asking as she indicated the wooden platform.

  “Yes. And it was pretty difficult, I can tell you. I always had to wait until Mum and Dad and Miss Ballantyne were all out in case they heard me. And of course I had to sneak Dad’s hammer and nails and not get my brothers suspicious. If they knew, they’d have wanted the tree house for themselves. Brothers are the pits.” She sighed. “Have you got any?”

  “Any what?” Kate stammered.

  “Brothers, silly.”

  “Oh. No. There’s just me.”

  “Gee, you’re really lucky.” Ashley sighed again. “So, are you going to tell me your name or shall I guess?” She frowned and pursed her lips. “Mary Anne? Eloise?” She giggled. “I know. Susan!”

  Kate shook her head slightly, her gaze drawn to the other girl’s smiling mouth.

  “No? Okay. How about Rebecca? Or maybe Jennifer? I’ve always loved that name. In fact, I would have preferred being called Jennifer.”

  In that moment Kate could almost wish that was her name. “It’s Kate,” she said flatly. “Katherine, really. But I’ve always been called Kate.”