Outback Fire. Margaret Way

always there aren’t you? He has you to confide in.”

      “Well he doesn’t,” Luke responded curtly, all the feeling he had about her cruelly twisting. “I tried to speak to Tom Skinner but Tom clams up.”

      “Do you really think I haven’t tried to speak to Tom myself?” Storm flung up her head. “Tom does what Dad tells him. Just like everyone else. Including you.”

      “And you of course are the rebel?” He let his blue eyes wander over her body, so beautiful and so insufferable. “I’m sorry if it interferes with your professional and social life but I feel you should come home if only for a few days.”

      “Is that an order?”

      “It’s a request. Don’t close your heart, Storm.”

      “Then it’s that bad?” Her almond eyes glittered with unshed tears.

      “I wouldn’t be here otherwise. We’re never going to be friends, Storm, but I do care about your father,” he said, fighting down the mad desire to crush her in his arms.

      “And he loves you.” She had been exposed to that early. “What is it about you men that you value your sons above your daughters?”

      “I don’t accept that,” he said, thinking to have a little daughter like Storm would be utter joy.

      “It’s true in Dad’s case. I spent years of my childhood wishing I were a boy. Wishing I were you.” She shook her head. She had been wounded in so many ways perhaps no one would understand.

      The pathos of that stung him. “I’m sorry, Storm. I never asked for any of it.”

      “Of course not.” Her smile was bitter-sweet. “It was your destiny. What are you really after, Luke. We both know you’re ambitious. Is it Winding River? I swear you’ll never get it.” Her feelings for him, so complex, manifested themselves in inflicting hurt.

      His eyes flashed. “If anything happens to your father, Storm, I’m out. Nothing on God’s earth would persuade me to work for you. And you couldn’t run the station yourself. You’ve taken no interest in it for years.”

      “Who needed my interest?” she said, in reality a victim of her father’s blind injustice. “Who needs me when they’ve got you?”

      “God, Storm, I’m not a monster,” he rasped. “I’m no substitute for you when it comes to your father. He idolizes you, but you’ve always been too hot-headed to accept that. So he’s one of the old school who thinks women have to be protected and provided for; shielded from the harsh realities of life. I understand perfectly how important your career is to you. I applaud you. But your father has given you everything you’ve got including your apartment.”

      That he knew was a double blow. “You know that?” she asked.

      “You just told me.” He moved restlessly, rangy and powerful. “How could you have afforded it anyway? It’s only these last few years you’ve been making real money. I expect that your father makes you a handsome allowance. That dress must have cost a fortune.” It was exquisite revealing her beautiful shoulders and the swell of her breasts. “The sandals. The emeralds in your ears.”

      “My mother’s emeralds, Luke,” she pointed out dryly. “Columbian. Real emeralds are very hard to come by. You don’t know everything.”

      He drew a deep steadying breath. “Look, why don’t we put our little range war aside. I didn’t come here for you I came for your father. Because I care about him. Like you he’s given me just about everything but I work very hard to repay him. In fact I break my back.”

      “It’s just like I said, Luke,” she continued with the right mix of irony and humour. “You’re hero material. The son Dad always wanted.”

      “And therein lies a lifetime of grief.”

      “I don’t think it would be excessive to say you stole my birthright.”

      “That cuts deep. You know I didn’t steal anything,” he retorted with some passion. “Chance affected our lives.”

      “It certainly put paid to any civilised relationship between us,” she said, hiding her sick regrets. “I used to think when I was just a girl the two of you deliberately tried to exclude me.”

      As a man he could understand that. “Now you know better.” His expression gentled.

      “Maybe I can’t see the light even yet.” Abruptly her tone changed. “Did you fly Dad’s Cessna?”

      He responded curtly to the near taunt. “The quickest way to get here.”

      “When do you intend flying back?”

      “As soon as you’re packed.”

      She searched the eyes that blazed out of his tanned skin. “You truly think it’s that urgent? Dad likes to keep hold of us both. He says he’s proud of my success but he’d have been far happier if I’d stayed at home dancing attendance on him. No, don’t shrug it off, Luke. Listen. ‘You’re an heiress. You don’t have to work!’ What he really meant was he wants me to be financially and emotionally dependant on him. I’m not such a fool I don’t know my own father. He’s an important man, much respected, everyone speaks of him with such admiration—the way he reared me single-handedly.

      “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Dad is first and foremost the big man in a man’s world. He’s lived like that all his life. Athol McFarlane, the cattle baron. The Major. A man among men. He’s always said he never married because of his grief. He could have had any woman he wanted. He didn’t have to marry a one of them, and you know there were a few. Dad didn’t really want to remarry. He might have been having second thoughts about a son but you came along. Ready-made. To make the grand plan complete, you lost your parents.”

      He thrust a hand through his hair, the light above him capturing its dark fire. “I don’t appreciate your talking about my parents.”

      “Why not?” she flared. “You talk all the time about mine. Anyway I was close to them, Luke. Don’t forget that. Your mother used to call me Princess even if it was a joke.”

      “It was no joke,” he told her. “You gave her joy.”

      Storm’s green eyes turned deeply reflective. “Some people might think my father was rather cruel. Maybe unknowingly, he’s not the most sensitive of men, but he never for one minute sees a woman as an equal.”

      It was perfectly true. Women to the Major were ornaments to be worn on a man’s arm. “That might be, Storm,” he agreed, saddened all at once. “But in his own way he loves you dearly.”

      She pressed back in the armchair. “That love has been a bit destructive, wouldn’t you say? I’m also thinking this could be just a stunt to get me home. Since he’s been so inactive Dad sits around making plans. Much as I love him I know he manipulates us both.”

      “Agreed. I’m no fool, either.” The muscles along his chiselled jaw bunched. “I can only give you my spin on this. Your father is genuinely ill. Noni agrees with me. God, Storm, I didn’t fly all the way here for a psychological analysis, informed as it may be. You’re bitter and you feel betrayed. Maybe your father is ruthless but in the most benign way.”

      “As though there’s any such thing.” She half smiled, a poignant movement of her lovely full mouth.

      He had to look away. “If you love your father as much as you say, you’ll come. No one is asking you to bury yourself in the wilds. A few days. Hell, can’t you spare him that?” An image of the Major’s gaunt face filled his mind.

      Storm winced at the implication she was pitiless. In truth she felt defeated. Defeated by her love for her father, defeated by the messed up feelings she had for Luke. It seemed to her she had fought the both of them for most of her life.

      “All right, you both win.” She rose