Bride at Briar's Ridge Read online

  ‘As though I can remember so far back.’ Daniela tried for lightness even though she heard the hard edge in his voice. She knew he hated being forced to declare his innocence. She recognised and understood his upset.

  ‘I know you’re trying to make light of it, Daniela,’ he said. ‘But I know Cheryl. You’d better tell me.’

  Daniela shook her head, trying to control her own agitation. ‘I’d rather forget it. She won’t be bothering you any more.’

  He bit back a harsh laugh. ‘Cheryl isn’t famous for her IQ. And there’s another worrying thing. She doesn’t know my dad. I wouldn’t want to be the one to try to make a fool of him.’

  Daniela looked into his eyes, a quality of pleading in hers. ‘I thought I’d put a stop to it by telling her we were getting married.’ Her voice broke a little.

  His heart leapt. He wanted to take hold of her and kiss her in a way that would make her completely his. Of course they were getting married. The sooner the better so far as he was concerned. This afternoon, if she liked.

  He wasn’t at all sure why he didn’t cry that aloud. Instead, he asked with black humour, ‘And how did she take that?’ He bitterly resented Cheryl’s pouring lies into Daniela’s ears.

  ‘She bent double.’ Daniela opted for the truth. ‘The poor woman is mad about you.’

  Linc burned with the heat of impotent rage. ‘She’s not so much mad about me,’ he said tersely. ‘Cheryl is just plain mad. Chuck and I knew the moment we set eyes on her she was nothing but a gold-digger. If only you had known our beautiful mother!’

  ‘If only I had,’ Daniela said very gently. ‘But Cheryl is stunning in her way.’ She knew the instant she said it, it was all wrong.

  Carl’s eyes fairly blazed. ‘Well, I didn’t lust after her, if that’s what you’re implying.’

  ‘No, no. I wasn’t implying that at all.’ Daniela felt her own powerful wash of anger. This was so unfair. There was a lot Carl must have to say, but he wasn’t saying any of it. Was this going to develop into a fight? And all over an unscrupulous woman. So much for Carl’s secret birthmark—the mark Cheryl claimed she had seen. Carl didn’t have a mark on him.

  Anger only seemed to ratchet up Linc’s desire. This was the most captivating woman in the world. He loved the look of tenderness that was so much part of her beauty, the sheer mystery of her. He reached for her, pulling her into his arms. He could see he had made her angry, and that cut into him.

  ‘I hate these people who try to come between us. You’re the one I want,’ he muttered with great urgency. ‘I want to be inside your body. Inside your head. Behind your beautiful eyes.’

  He could feel the powerful drive to make love to her. He lowered his head, taking her mouth, kissing her harder and harder, desperately wanting to wipe all memory of devious Cheryl and what she had said away. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her neck, all over her face. Her mouth always tasted like the most delicious piece of fruit. His hands moved over her, but somewhere along the way she stopped him, her head jerking back.

  ‘Carl!’ She couldn’t contain this emotional level. Though it filled her with excitement, other emotions were caving in on her.

  Instantly he pulled back, his breath rasping in his throat. He felt lost and desperate. He half turned away in something like despair. Events of the past always had a hold on you.

  ‘We’re both upset,’ Daniela said, coming quickly behind him and touching a tentative hand to his shoulder.

  ‘Whatever she said, there wasn’t a sliver of truth to it,’ he bit off.

  ‘I know that.’ She knew he was hurting, and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.

  ‘But there were a few minutes when you doubted?’ He swung back to stare down at her with brilliant, piercing eyes.

  Daniela couldn’t answer for a few seconds. She was a fool to feel so weak. ‘Weren’t there moments when you doubted me?’ she quietly countered. They had been equally wronged.

  He nodded an admission. ‘But I soon got over it. You had some kind of a relationship with Templeton, however brief, and I accept his feelings became obsessive and caused you grief. Cheryl has caused me grief, and I had nothing to do with the woman. That’s the thing. Nothing! It was all in her head. I despise her. But mud sticks.’

  ‘Not in this case,’ Daniela said, hoping the deep sincerity of her tone would calm him. ‘I understand it was all untrue. Sometimes we have no control over what is happening in our lives, Carl. A lot of people could tell you about someone they’ve met who turned out to be destructive.’

  Still the tension between them was strung out like a live wire.

  Daniela sighed and dropped her hand. Maybe it was all the intensity that was in him that made him such a splendid lover. ‘Anyway, she’s gone and I must go, too. There are a lot of things I have to attend to before tonight.’

  He shrugged, his handsome face shut tight. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’

  Somehow she didn’t expect him to ask if she was coming back to him tonight. He didn’t. That filled her with sadness. Linc Mastermann was a fine man, way out of the ordinary. He was also a complex, difficult man.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE storm broke late afternoon, after hours of eerie silence. In the mood he was in, Linc had found the silence sinister. Now jagged flashes of lightning lit up a sky that was a dramatic study in silver-black, purple-black, with livid streaks of green. Great booms of thunder followed, causing squadrons of birds to take wing and head for shelter. Another dry electrical storm? Or maybe the valley would get some rain?

  He continued to stand, hands clenched on the white timber banister, looking up at the sentinel hills. Fast-moving cumulus clouds scudded across the vast bowl of the sky. There was a telling smell of ozone in the air that gave some hope. On the downside, a dry wind—hot like the blast from a furnace—had picked up, stripping leaves from the trees lining the long drive and sending them into whirling spirals mixed up with the colourful kaleidoscope of spent blossom.

  He felt very uneasy, and he couldn’t break out of it. He knew most of it was a result of the way he and Daniela had parted. Sometimes he couldn’t understand himself at all. Was he frightened of loving her so much? Was that it? Although he had always been popular enough with women, hadn’t he always deliberately kept his distance? God knew he had learned the hardest lesson of all, and learned it young. Loving meant loss. Hadn’t he suppressed his capacity for loving since his mother died?

  He and Chuck had watched their mother grow worse and worse, then die. Their father, although profoundly affected, had survived by shutting it all out. Maybe he had a bit of his father in him? How could you love a woman as he loved Daniela yet shut her out? It didn’t make a lot of sense. Sex was one thing; love was another. He had taken Daniela deeply into his heart, yet bizarrely he found himself acting as if it was just the opposite. But at least he was coming to recognise his feelings for what they were.

  Fear is at the root of it, pal! his inner voice said. Your problems hark back to your childhood.

  He felt like ringing Daniela, making contact, apologising, telling her how much he loved her and asking her if she would come back to him tonight. Only the knowledge she would be too busy to take private calls kept him from doing it. He fully intended making things right between them, but that wasn’t the way life worked. No time was absolutely perfect. First there had been Templeton and then Cheryl. Linc’s biggest mistake was letting such people get between him and the woman he loved.

  She had gone off so sad-faced. His beautiful Daniela. He had messed up yet again. From now on in he had to focus on getting things right. To lose Daniela would break his heart.

  The rain came down briefly thirty minutes later—no more than a shower bath and then the tap turned off. He was witness to a spectacular fork of lightning spearing into the hillside. Clearly it had hit a tree. Moments later he saw the upward spiral of grey smoke, an orange tint at its highest point, tapering to a dense dark grey.

  T
here wasn’t a moment to lose. He knew fires could run through open hillsides for hours before being brought under control. He had long since committed the phone number of the rural fire unit to memory, and the sooner they got here the quicker they could stop the spread of flames. He knew there was a helicopter in service. The community had raised the money to buy it with a big donation from Guy. The helicopter could drop a big payload of water and pink-coloured fire retardant on that hill. Fire travelled faster and burnt more intensely uphill than downhill.

  The homestead, standing on a gentle slope within a well cleared area, was as ready as ever he and George could make it. He looked out of the open French doors in time to see George just as much on the alert as he, huffing and puffing up the front steps. Linc made the call. Smoke had turned to flame.

  The minute Russ, his twenty-two-year-old assistant, raced into the Winery kitchen Daniela could tell something was wrong.

  ‘There’ve been lightning strikes all over the valley,’ he told them, tugging frantically at the quiff of his sandy hair. ‘Those poor firies must be having a time of it. I reckon it’s time for me to join up as a volunteer.’ His gaze had shifted around them all. It moved from Paul, the sous chef, to Daniela, who had visibly paled. ‘That friend of yours, Daniela—the new guy, Linc Mastermann—his property was the first to take a hit.’

  ‘And?’ she prompted, fear swelling up in her at a tremendous rate.

  ‘That’s all I can tell you.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘I know the chopper’s up. I saw it on the way in. The fire unit was pretty slick off the mark. I reckon if we hadn’t had that heavy shower things could be a whole lot worse.’

  ‘So the main valley road is open?’ Daniela knew Russ would have had to come to work that way.

  Russ slid onto a high stool, dangling his long legs. ‘No problems there. The hits were on the open hillsides.’

  Paul, an intensely sympathetic man, saw Daniela’s distress. He and Daniela had formed a quick bond. She had met his wife, Robyn, and his two teenage girls, who had taken to her just as much as he had. Daniela was a lovely person. He regarded her not only as a colleague but a personal friend. Though Daniela didn’t talk freely about her relationship with Linc Mastermann she had confided in him and Robyn that she had been seeing quite a bit of him. And Robyn, who had a sure instinct in these matters, had told him afterwards she was certain Daniela had fallen very deeply in love.

  Now Daniela turned to him, the panic she was trying to hold down mirrored in her beautiful dark eyes. That tugged at him. ‘Look, Paul, I know I’m asking a lot,’ she said, ‘but could you take over for me tonight? Everything is sorted. You’re just as capable as I am.’

  It wasn’t strictly true, but Paul found himself nodding. ‘Only one thing, Danni. You don’t really know the situation. Mightn’t you be putting yourself in danger?’

  At that moment she didn’t care. She had to get to Carl. She had to know he was safe. She had driven off with distance between them. That was terrible. She knew she didn’t want to face life without him.

  ‘Let me make a few phone calls,’ Paul said, whipping out his mobile. ‘If there’s real trouble the restaurant won’t be doing much business anyway.’

  Daniela turned away to hunt up her own mobile. Carl wasn’t answering. Her call went to his message bank. It struck her then how very vulnerable life was.

  Small grass fires had broken out along her route, but nothing that the volunteer firefighters, ordinary valley people, couldn’t cope with. Probably the grass fires had been lit by flying embers from the hills. Clouds of smoke were in the air, and the smell of burning leaves would have been wonderful had its presence not been so starkly serious. Paul had told her a house near where he and his family lived had been struck not once but twice, and had burned fiercely to the ground despite all efforts to save it. Once fire caught, it could be virtually impossible to stop.

  She doubted anyone would turn up at the restaurant tonight anyway. People would stay at home to guard their properties and their precious stock.

  She made the turn-off to Briar’s Ridge, then drove fast down its long avenue of trees. Her very real fears began to ease. She knew just how much back-breaking work Carl and his foreman George had put in, ploughing and harrowing and clearing wide areas all around the property. She knew the creek that meandered through the property was a natural fire break.

  But didn’t fire skip creeks?

  As she swept into the driveway she gave thanks aloud. The homestead and all the outbuildings remained untouched. It was hard to see up into the hills. Dusk had fallen and the hills were shrouded in smoke. She didn’t, however, see flames. The fire unit must have arrived just in time. She parked the car right at the foot of the steps. It wasn’t her imagination. The wind that drove fire had not only dropped marginally, it had dropped a lot, now blowing away from Briar’s Ridge. That was a great blessing.

  It was only when she stood on the verandah that she saw fire devouring a slope farther to the west. She thought that might be Narooma, the McDermott place. Her heart bled for them if it was. How did people survive the loss of everything they had worked for?

  The front door was open, but Carl was nowhere around. She knew once his own property was safe he would have gone to help any neighbour in trouble. That was how the bush worked. Bred to the city, she had had no experience of fire herself, but she had seen terrible fires on television, agonised over the tragic loss of life. When Carl came home—and he had to come home—she would be here waiting for him. She would wait for him as long as she had to.

  For ever.

  It was almost midnight before he got back, driving the tractor right up to the front steps.

  Danaiela flew down them, keening little cries of relief issuing from her throat. Another minute and she’d let the tears out. ‘Oh, thank God, Carl! Thank God! I was so worried. Are you all right?’

  Her need was so great she reached for him, not keeping in her love for him, but pouring it out.

  ‘Easy, my love,’ he breathed, as she threw herself against him. ‘I’m covered in grime. You’ll get it all over you.’

  ‘As if I care!’ He was indeed a mess, but Daniela was nearly dancing in an ecstasy of relief. ‘Oh, Carl!’ She couldn’t help herself. She burst into tears, her arms coming up to lock around his neck. ‘Are you hurt anywhere?’ she asked, thought there was nothing she could see. He was covered in dust and grime, and darn near black, but could there be burns beneath? ‘You must be sick from all the smoke you’ve inhaled?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He was now, but there were some odd throbs in his exhausted body. He could handle it. He drew her back against him, vowing to never let her go. Life was a journey—not all of it good—and he had found his safe haven. When he had seen his Daniela running out of the house towards him it had fulfilled a cherished dream of coming home.

  Home was this woman.

  ‘The Gregsons have lost everything,’ he told her sadly. ‘Their house went up before a fire unit could get to them. The McDermotts were lucky. They’ve lost a lot of fencing, but no stock. We brought it all down into holding yards. Sheep will have to be put down in the Wilcox area, but the losses were minimal—considering. All property owners have been right on the ball. None of us can adequately express our gratitude to the firefighters. They’re a marvellous team—so damned brave. We have to do something to raise more money for them. But right now I have to take a long shower to wash all this grime off me. Thank you for coming, Daniela,’ he said, his heart bursting with love for her.

  ‘Shh!’ She placed a gentle finger against his parched lips. ‘There’s nowhere else I would want to be.’ Her tone was exquisitely tender, like some miraculous balm.

  His underlying fear of love and loss suddenly ceased to exist. Her words were like the most beautiful music he had ever heard.

  Love reigned.

  Arms entwined, they moved into the house. ‘You’re going to stay?’

  She allowed herself her first laugh of the night. ‘I h
aven’t got my nightie.’

  His arm tightened around her narrow waist. His woman. His soon-to-be wife. ‘You won’t be needing it,’ he said.

  For those fortunate enough to find a soul mate in life, dreams really did come true.

  EPILOGUE

  IN ACCORDANCE with tradition, the engagement party for Daniela and Linc would be hosted by Daniela’s parents, Marc and Lucia. Linc had formally asked Marc for his daughter’s hand in marriage as a mark of respect, and it was one Daniela’s parents found both charming and affecting. In fact, in the weeks preceding the engagement party, Linc endeared himself to the entire Adami family. As far as they were concerned their Daniela had got things just right. This was a fine young man—one they were full of enthusiasm to make an important member of their family.

  It was an excited Lucia who came up with the idea of a theme for the engagement party, only she was a little tentative about how they would take it. She had thought herself it would be glorious fun, and would give the young women in particular a great opportunity to dress up.

  Twenty young couples had been decided upon, and the party would take the form of a banquet, catered by the family and celebrated at their new restaurant. They had become so popular, especially since Daniela had returned home, that they had desperately needed bigger and better premises. They had retained the name Aldo’s, but the new restaurant was almost three times as big, and much better situated, with a lovely view of the town park. Its décor showed the family’s Italian background. They had even imported from Italy six beautiful hanging light fittings like great starbursts. They had set them back quite a bit, but had proved well worth the money. These light fittings had been the inspiration for Lucia’s plan.

  ‘I thought Renaissance?’ She launched into this plan one Sunday night, over a family dinner, examining each face in turn. ‘Beautiful long floating dresses for the young women, lots of sparkle, gem-encrusted bodices, costume jewellery, perhaps an elaborate hairdo. Some licence for the young men, who mightn’t fancy the idea of wearing tights and tunics?’ A quick sideways glance at Linc. ‘Maybe a very fancy flounced shirt, fitted black trousers? Perhaps a velvet cap?’