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She was accustomed to people hunting for her with job offers—which was crazy, as she didn’t intend to leave Australia ever again—but this was crazier still.
Charles discovered there were ants crawling over one of his shoes, and started shifting from foot to foot. He glanced up at Tammy and then at Marc before returning his gaze to the ants. Annoyed, or maybe to block out the silence, he started stomping on them.
His action gave Tammy more breathing space. ‘Excuse me, but those ants are protected,’ Tammy said at last, almost conversationally, as though the previous words had not been said at all. ‘You’re in a National Park. The ants here have more rights than you do.’
Charles swore and shifted sideways. Onto more ants. He swore again, and cast an uncertain glance at Marc, and then, when Marc didn’t speak, he shrugged and headed for the car. He’d done his job. He hadn’t taken on an ambassadorship to stand under trees being bitten by ants.
‘I said, I want to take your nephew—’ Marc said at last, and Tammy interrupted.
‘I know what you said. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Marc nodded. He’d expected as much. There’d been no wish to come to her sister’s funeral. There’d been no contact made with the child. If it wasn’t for the immigration authorities he could pick the little boy up and take him back to his country right now. She probably didn’t even admit responsibility for him. At the thought of Henry’s neglect, he felt his face darken with anger.
‘If you’d been in contact they would have told you I’d requested he be returned, but they need your consent.’
‘Um…’ She was regarding him as if he was slightly off balance. ‘Who are they?’
‘The child’s nanny and the immigration authorities,’ he snapped, and now he could control himself no longer. ‘You can’t object. You’ve shown yourself to be the world’s worst custodian. If I hadn’t been paying the nanny’s salary he’d be in foster care right now. You and your sister and your mother…you should be locked up, the three of you. Of all the uncaring—’
He caught himself. Anger would achieve nothing, he told himself grimly. This woman didn’t want the child. It was enough that she signed the papers and he could be done with the entire mess. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘But your sister’s dead, your mother doesn’t give a damn, and apparently neither do you. All I want is the release papers. You sign them for me, I’ll take Henry back to Broitenburg, and you’ll never see him again.’
Her look of confusion was absolute. ‘Henry?’
Hadn’t she even bothered to remember the little boy’s name? Marc thought back to the bereft little boy he’d left in Sydney and felt his anger rising all over again.
‘Your nephew.’
‘I don’t have a nephew.’
That took him aback. He stared up at her. ‘Of course you do.’
‘There’s no of course about it. You must have mistaken me for someone else. I only have one sister—Lara—who I haven’t seen for years. That’s the way we like it. Last time I saw Lara she was attached to a millionaire up on the Gold Coast, and if you’re asking me if she has children I’d say you’d have to be joking. Lara would no sooner risk losing her gorgeous figure through childbearing than she would fly. Now, if you don’t mind…’
It was absurd, Marc thought. The whole scenario was absurd. She was lifting a drill and any minute now she’d turn it on, drowning out his words with her noise.
But she’d said her sister’s name. Lara. It confirmed what he had already been sure of. This woman was Lara’s sister.
But what had she said? She hadn’t seen her for years? The anger faded. Dear God, then she didn’t know.
‘Lara Dexter was your sister?’
‘Is,’ she snapped, and he heard the sudden surge of fear behind her irritation.
He took a deep breath. He hadn’t expected this. What the hell was the mother playing at? If she really hadn’t been told… He stared up at the girl in the tree and thought, where on earth did he go from here?
There was nowhere to go but forward. There was no easy way to say what had to be said.
‘Miss Dexter, I’m sorry, but your sister was married to my cousin. They were married three years ago. Jean-Paul and Lara were killed at a ski resort in Italy five weeks back. They have a child, Henry, who’s currently living in Sydney. He’s being cared for by a nanny whose wages I’ve been paying, but his care…his care is less than satisfactory. He’s ten months old. I’m here to ask your permission to take him back to Broitenburg.’
Tammy’s world stopped right there.
She froze. The drill in her hands seemed suddenly a stupid thing to be holding, and she stared at it as if she didn’t know what it was.
She had a makeshift bench set up on the branch she was sitting on. Carefully she laid the drill down and stared at it some more.
Lara was…dead?
‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered, still not looking at the man below. She was concentrating on the drill, as if working out its function was the most important thing in the world. There was a part of her that didn’t want to move forward from this moment.
Thirty seconds ago this stranger hadn’t said any of this. That was where she wanted to be. Back in time.
Lara…dead?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and something inside her snapped.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she flung at him. ‘I’m sorry about this whole damned mess. I don’t believe any of it. You come here, in your outlandish, stupid costume, like you’re a king or something—which I don’t believe—with your stupid chauffeured car and your tame politician, and you stomp my ants and interfere with my work and tell me Lara is dead…’
‘Lara is dead.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Will you come down?’
‘No.’ She made to pick the drill up again, but his voice cut through her confusion and her rage.
‘Miss Dexter, you need to face this. Your sister is dead. Will you come down from the tree, please?’
She flinched—and she thought about it.
For about three minutes she simply sat on her branch and stared down at him. He stared back, his face calm and compassionate.
It was a good face, she thought inconsequentially, and maybe that was another way of avoiding acceptance of what he’d just said. Kind. Strong. Determined. His eyes were calm and sure, promising that he spoke the truth.
She could accept or reject what he was telling her. His eyes said that the truth was here for the taking.
The minutes ticked on, and he had the sense to let her alone. To allow her time to believe. His face stayed impassive.
His eyes never wavered.
And finally she faced the inevitable. She believed him, she decided at last. Dreadfully, she believed him. Despite the incongruity of the situation—despite the craziness of what he was wearing and what he was saying—what he was telling her was the truth.
And with that knowledge came the first ghastly wash of pain. Her little sister…
Lara had wanted nothing to do with her for years. Lara and their mother lived in a world of their own that Tammy had nothing to do with, but for the first years of Lara’s life it had been Tammy who’d cared, who’d acted as a surrogate mother as far as a child could, because their own mother hadn’t known what was involved in the job of mothering. Before Lara was born Tammy had nothing. When Lara had become old enough to join forces with their mother she had nothing again. But for that short sweet while…
Lara was five years younger than Tammy. Twenty-two.
Lara was dead?
A vision of the little girl she’d loved and cuddled through her childhood lurched into her mind, and with it came a pain that was well nigh unbearable. The colour washed from her face and she put a hand on her branch to steady herself.
‘Come down,’ Marc said strongly, and Tammy took a deep breath and came to a decision. There was no going back. She had to face it.
She swung her legs over the branch, adjusted the harness and slid down.
She came down too fast.
Tammy had been abseiling up and down trees since she was a child. She could do it in her sleep. But now… She was almost past thinking and her hands slipped as she adjusted the rope. She came down faster than she should have—not fast enough to hurt herself, but fast enough for Marc to step in urgently to catch her, to steady her and to take her weight as she hit the ground.
Which left her standing right against him, his hands on her shoulders to balance her, her slight body being supported by his stronger one.
Strong…
Strong described him absolutely, she thought. His whole body was rock-solid. Tammy was five feet six and slightly built, diminutive in the presence of this much larger man. He’d caught her and held her without apparent effort, and now he was staring down at her with the first trace of concern in his face.
‘Are you okay?’
She thought about it. Okay? Okay was a long way from how she felt right now. His hands were gripping her shoulders and she had an almost overpowering compulsion to place her face on his chest and burst into tears.
No. She hadn’t cried for as long as she could remember and she wasn’t about to start now.
‘I’m fine.’ But her voice wobbled.
‘You truly didn’t know your sister was dead?’
She concentrated fiercely on the row of medals pinned to his chest. She even counted them. Six. The fabric of his suit was a fine worsted wool, she thought. Nice. She could bury her face in his chest—hide from the pain that was threatening to overwhelm her.
‘You didn’t know?’ he said gently as he put her away from him, still holding her but forcing her to look up at him. His fingers were under her chin, cupping her face to meet his eyes.
A girl could drown in those eyes. A girl might want to. Anything but face this scorching, ghastly pain.
‘I…my sister and I have been…apart for ever,’ she whispered. ‘We don’t…’
‘I see.’ He didn’t. His voice said he was totally confused, and Tammy made a Herculean effort to make her voice work.
‘My sister and I didn’t get on.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ She let herself stay motionless for one more long moment, as if drawing strength from the warmth and size of him. Then she hauled herself bleakly together and pulled away. He released her, but the way he did it was curious. It was almost as if he was reluctant to let her go.
Questions. She had to ask questions. She needed to know—but she didn’t want to.
She must.
‘You said…she died in a skiing accident?’
‘Yes.’ His face was still calm. She was standing two feet back from him, gazing up into his eyes as if trying to read him. Trying to find some sort of comfort in his calmness.
‘H…how?’
‘They took out a bobsled.’ His face tightened for a minute, as if in anger. ‘They took it on a black run—a run for experienced skiers only. Bobsledding in those conditions is madness. I’m afraid…I’m afraid they’d been drinking.’
The knot of pain in Tammy’s stomach tightened. Oh, you fool, she thought bleakly. Lara, you fool. It took an almost overpowering effort of will to go on. ‘So…’ It was so hard to speak. It was as if her voice didn’t belong to her. ‘She…Lara was married to your cousin?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your cousin died, too?’
‘Jean-Paul died, yes.’
She couldn’t see what he was thinking. His face was still impassive. Was there pain there? She couldn’t tell.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I guess we’re both sorry.’
He had a nice voice, she thought dispassionately. Deep and rumbly. It was tinged with what sounded almost like a French accent, but it was very slight. He’d been well schooled in English.
She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this man’s voice. Or maybe she was still using thoughts to distract herself.
Lara was dead.
What else had he said? They had a baby?
‘I can’t believe that you don’t know about this.’ Marc’s voice was suddenly rough, tinged again with anger. ‘That your mother didn’t tell you.’
‘My mother knows?’
‘Of course your mother knows. I flew her to Broitenburg for the funeral. They were buried with a State funeral last month.’
Her mother would have enjoyed that, Tammy thought inconsequentially, going off on another tangent as her mind darted back and forth, trying to avoid pain. She thought of Isobelle Dexter de Bier as a grieving mother at a royal funeral. Isobelle would have done it brilliantly. She could almost guess what her mother would have worn. It would have been something lacy and black and extremely elegant. She’d have worn a veil, and there’d have been a wispy handkerchief dabbing at eyes that welled with tears that were never allowed to fall.
‘Was…was she alone?’
‘Your stepfather came with her.’
Oh, of course. Which stepfather was this? Tammy bit her lip, anger welling. Isobelle didn’t bother to marry her lovers any more, which was just as well. Tammy’s mother had been up to husband number four when Lara was born.
Lara was dead?
Lara was buried.
And there’d been a funeral. She should have been there, she thought bleakly. She should have been there as she’d been there for Lara since birth. Of all the things her mother had done to her, maybe this was the worst. To bury Lara with only her mother…
‘You were fond of your sister?’ Marc didn’t understand. He was staring at her with the same confusion she was feeling—maybe even more so.
‘Once,’ she said brusquely. ‘A long time ago.’
