In Her Husband's Image. Vivienne Wallington

dangers, the isolation, the remote areas he must have ventured into to photograph his wild animals. And the lack of human contact, the lack of responsibility to anyone but himself. A reckless, irresponsible adventurer, Adrian had called his brother.

      But at least, by burying himself in the wilds, Zac wasn’t hurting anyone but himself. He only hurt people when he came back to civilization.

      She scowled. She must keep remembering that, remembering how unthinking and unscrupulous he was. Already, just by seeing him again, she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel, things she mustn’t feel.

      “So you’re still living and working in the perilous wilds? You haven’t married and settled down, obviously.” Regretting the comment the moment it left her lips, she swung her gaze to the sky, pretending an interest in a brilliant scarlet-and-blue parrot overhead. What did she care what Zac was doing with his life? She just wanted him to go.

      Not waiting for an answer, she said briskly, “Well, I guess you’ll want to return your charter plane before dark, so we’d better stop prattling and have some lunch.”

      “I don’t need to return the plane for a couple of days. I was hoping—having found you still here—that you might put me up for a night or two.”

      His words stopped her in her tracks. Let him stay here overnight? Possibly two nights? This was getting worse by the second! To have him sleeping under the same roof! But how could she refuse? He was her late husband’s brother after all, and alienated as the two brothers had been, Zac must have felt something at the loss of his twin.

      She gulped hard and came up with a compromise. “I guess you could bunk down here, just for tonight.” It wasn’t very gracious, but what did he expect after what had happened the last time he was here?

      She almost moaned aloud. She’d tried so hard to forget that shameful night, to pretend it had never happened, but there’d been reminders every day since. Her own heated dreams…her husband’s inadequacies…and Mikey. Above all, Mikey.

      “Only for one night? After I’ve come all this way?” Zac’s eyes glinted like pewter under her baleful gaze. “You’re not going to kick me out the way you did five years ago, are you, before I’ve even had a chance to look over the place? That wouldn’t be very…sisterly.”

      Sisterly! As if there’d ever been anything the least bit sisterly between them! Just one fevered, uncontrollable night of passion.

      She felt heat surge into her cheeks. How dared he remind her of that mortifying night! It just showed he was no gentleman. But she already knew that. Adrian had always said his brother was uncivilized and untamable and did whatever he wanted, caring for nobody but himself. She’d seen firsthand evidence of it.

      “You’d better go inside and clean up.” She spoke curtly. “You can stay in the guest room next to the bathroom. The room’s always made up and ready—for guests who blow in,” she added deliberately, her eyes telling him that he could blow out again as soon as he liked. “I need to finish up out here. Be in later.” She turned on her heel and headed back the way she’d come, across the yard to the chicken shed.

      She would have to prepare Mikey for the shock of meeting an unknown uncle—an uncle who was the spitting image of his dead father. Thank heaven Mikey had stayed out of sight until now. At least she had the chance to warn him.

      As Zac strode back to the plane to fetch his bags—mainly photographic equipment, with only a small bag for his few personal belongings—he found himself fighting a gamut of emotions, none of them comforting. He’d hoped to feel nothing at all.

      It was a shock to find Rachel still here. He hadn’t really expected to, though deep down he’d wanted her to be here. Wanted and dreaded it at the same time, nagged by an unwanted but overriding need to resolve the torment that had plagued him for the past five years.

      He’d tried to erase his memory of her, initially by sheer will and ultimately in the arms of other women—on the rare occasions he’d had the opportunity. But it hadn’t worked. Rachel had haunted his thoughts and dreams in a way no other woman ever had. And it had been hell, because she was married to his brother and the guilt of what he’d done, losing control the way he had, had left a bitter scar in his heart and mind, a scar that, far from disappearing over the years, had grown only deeper.

      Even when he’d heard that his brother had been tragically killed and that Rachel was widowed, he’d hesitated to come back. The inexcusable wrong he’d perpetrated on his brother—that he and a passionate, love-starved Rachel had perpetrated together—still tormented him, and he knew it would always be there between them, whatever happened in the future.

      Yet he hadn’t been able to stay away. He hadn’t been able to forget the powerful feelings she’d stirred in him, the unbridled passion that had spun him completely out of control for the first and only time in his life. Only by seeing her again would he know if those feelings had been real, or simply magnified in his mind over the years.

      As they could have been. It wasn’t every day a beautiful, half-naked woman threw herself at him—especially in his line of work, where he was more likely to be confronted by a hairy, naked gorilla. He was lucky even to see a woman for weeks and months at a time.

      Yeah, that was more likely all it had been—a buildup of sexual need, raging, out-of-control hormones and the sweltering heat of that hot summer’s night, as he’d tried to tell a distraught Rachel as soon as reality had hit and they’d both been able to think straight. He’d been trying to convince himself ever since.

      He’d had to come back to find out.

      His first glimpse of her had blown that convenient theory to bits, proving that the mere sight of her still profoundly affected him, still sent blood racing through him, far hotter and more potent than any feelings of lust he’d had for any other woman.

      It was the first time he’d seen her in daylight. Her clear, long-lashed eyes were as blue as a field of corn-flowers, her braided hair a gleam of gold under the hot Queensland sun. He’d found it hard to take his eyes off her, harder still to resist those soft lips, lips he’d tasted once and never forgotten.

      So he’d better take care. He’d better take mighty good care, or he’d blow everything, just as he’d done the last time.

      Rachel had baked bread that morning and made a large pot of soup, using her own homegrown vegetables and herbs. She hoped that the aroma, as Zac ambled into the kitchen while she was preparing lunch, would turn his thoughts to food and away from his first meeting with—she gulped, refusing to think of Mikey as his son—his nephew, who was already at the table, chomping away at a beef sandwich.

      Only she knew the embarrassing truth—her own doctor didn’t even know—so there was no danger of Zac’s finding out unless she showed something in her face, and she’d had years of practice at masking that.

      But it wouldn’t be so easy with Zac, because he knew her shameful secret, even if he was ignorant of the consequences, whereas Adrian had never known. Her husband had never even suspected, even when they’d failed to have another child. He’d blamed fatigue or overwork after his long days out on the station or even some medical problem of hers, never imagining that he might be at fault, possibly even infertile, which she’d finally begun to suspect. They’d been married for more than five years and he’d never made her pregnant. Mercifully, he hadn’t known that.

      “Take a seat at the table, Zac,” she said, busying herself at the kitchen counter so she wouldn’t have to face him yet. “Help yourself to some bread while I slice some more cold meat and pour you some soup. And say hi to your nephew, Mikey. We named him after Adrian’s father. Well, your father, too, of course. I’ve already told Mikey he has an uncle who looks like his daddy, but forgive him if he stares.”

      Oh, heck, she was babbling. She forced herself to slow down. “This is your uncle Zac, Mikey, your daddy’s twin brother,” she said as Mikey gaped at Zac. “If you’re a good boy, Uncle Zac might tell you about the wild animals he photographs in the jungle,” she said