Mistaken Mistress. Margaret Way

go on living. He must. He can’t die.” Eden didn’t realise she was muttering aloud. Finding her father had given her own life meaning. She couldn’t lose him now. Her distress communicated itself to Lang at an intense level. He found himself putting a supportive arm around her, encircling her slender body. At the same time he felt a deep thrust of desire within him which he didn’t much welcome. It was dangerous, even shameful. The odd part was she leaned into him for all the world like she trusted him utterly. It was as if they were friends. But then she was desperate for comfort and support from anywhere. Even from him.

      Only when the surgeon reached them did he give a brief but illuminating smile. He shook hands first with Lang, then Eden. “I’m happy to tell you everything went well.” He eyed them almost cheerfully. “Mr. Carter is a remarkably fit man. His heart is strong. We’ve repaired the internal injuries, stopped the bleeding. Orthopaedics will be looking at the collarbone. As you saw, he has some fairly extensive facial and chest abrasions, but they will heal. He’s been taken to the recovery room. You can see him for a few moments when he regains consciousness.”

      The relief was enormous. Eden could feel the swoosh of blood through her veins. “I’ve got so much time to make up.” She spoke with deep gratitude. “So has Owen. Now our whole world can expand.”

      He looked at her with disbelief. Keeping his tone level was a physical effort. “I wonder if you’ll say the same a year from now?” he asked soberly. “I’m not sure I could be happy walking over other people to achieve it. I know it happens all the time but these are my friends.”

      His tone though quiet all but savaged her. Eden felt if she couldn’t speak out soon she’d become unstuck. Thank God, Owen would be able to make things abundantly clear very soon. She wanted to wipe away Lang Forsyth’s deep concerns. She wanted to be free of that daunting stare. She wanted to come out with the truth.

      I’m Owen’s long-lost daughter. Just like in a work of fiction. I’m the daughter he never laid eyes on until six months ago. Only she knew Owen was set on revealing the whole story to his friend, rather than her.

      Once more, Eden watched Lang Forsyth walk away to make his phone call to Owen’s wife. She’d thought many times over the past months Owen could have told his wife of her existence. The fact he hadn’t made her wonder anew about the state of their marriage. If the marriage was strong, she had a chance of being accepted. If the marriage was rocky Owen’s wife wouldn’t want any reminders of her husband’s past love right under her nose. In his exultation at finding her Owen appeared to have given little, if any, thought to the repercussions on his marriage. And what of young Robbie, his father’s heir? He mightn’t want a ready-made grown-up sister. One, moreover, to whom his father found no difficulties with demonstrating his love. Eden knew intuitively many problems lay ahead. All of them were merely human with human faults.

      Eventually they were allowed to go to Recovery where they found Owen conscious despite his facial lacerations, looking better than they’d thought, but as expected, very groggy.

      “How’s it going?” Lang bent over his friend, showing his relief and affection.

      “Fine, pal.” Owen tried hard to sound normal but even for Owen the feat was beyond him. “Thanks for everything, Lang. I owe you so much. Where’s my beautiful girl?”

      “Here, Owen.” Eden went forward, as she did so, the expression on Owen’s face almost embarrassing in its exclusion of the rest of the world.

      Eden looked like she desperately wanted to hug him. She was half crying, her eyes for Owen alone.

      “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” Owen was imploring, his voice hurting but boundlessly tender.

      Lang found once more he had to turn away. This was all too damned disturbing. It was going to alter lives. He knew, too, when he was beaten. Delma, God help her, had yet to find out.

      In a little space of time they were ushered out. Owen was in no condition for more than a few words, though by sheer force of will he brought up his arm to wave at them as they moved through the door.

      In the corridor Lang turned to look down at her. Tears were sliding silently down her face, yet she looked radiant. It was fascinating to see and it was driving him crazy.

      He still had the use of the hire-car. It was parked in the leafy street, a short stroll from the hospital entrance.

      “Your overnight bag is in the car,” he reminded her as they walked down the driveway. “I have time to drive you home.” Some knight, he thought. She was evoking such strange contradictory emotions in him; he had to fall back on simple good manners.

      “I can get a cab,” she offered, giving him just a glimpse of a smile so sweet it touched the heart he had hardened against her.

      “I can save you the trouble. Just tell me where you live?”

      “Really you don’t have to.”

      He cut her short. “You’ve had a shock. Owen is my friend. He would want me to look after you.”

      “But you don’t have to?”

      The thing was, he did, but he denied it almost sharply. “I guess I don’t.” He took her arm quickly to cross the busy road. “Well, maybe not altogether. You’re so young.”

      “You can’t be all that much older?” She picked up the conversation when they were in the car, the strange intimacy reforming.

      He gave her a tight smile. “A thousand years. I’m sure of it. I’m nearly thirty-two as it happens and you’re…?”

      “Twenty-four. I can’t believe my mother would have gone and left me just before my birthday.”

      “It was a car accident, you said?”

      She didn’t answer; simply nodded her head. She knew she would choke up if she began to explain. Her grief over her mother’s death, so recent, would never subside. She was frightened, too, to begin thinking in terms of guilt. Had it really been suicide? Was she in some way to blame? She thought she had always been there for her mother yet her mother had never confided the true circumstances of her birth. That hurt her. Or hadn’t her mother been brave enough to say? Her true parentage had been a closely guarded secret until the very end.

      That fact alone presented Eden with an enormous emotional hurdle.

      They said nothing more to one another until they were on the freeway.

      “You must know the city well,” she ventured, deeply regretting her own lack of truth. He hadn’t asked how to get to her suburb.

      “Yes I do,” he clipped off.

      “Owen’s wife must be tremendously relieved,” she continued gently. “Is she flying down?”

      “Of course.”

      He wasn’t inclined to talk, his handsome profile remote. Eden glanced out the window. It was dusk and the glorious tropical sunset was turning the city’s glassed towers and high-rises to glittering gold. In another ten minutes night would fall, as it did in the tropics, suddenly and completely, as if someone had thrown a switch. The multi-coloured sky, now rose, gold, scarlet, indigo, lime green at the horizon, would turn to a deep velvety purple. There were people everywhere. The picturesque paddle wheeler, the Kookaburra Queen was returning from a river cruise; the City Kats busy ferrying passengers across the river to the parks where they kept their cars.

      She loved her home city. It had a delightful, leisurely way of life and a wonderful climate. Owen wanted her to go to live with him in North Queensland. To think of the number of times she had visited the Great Barrier Reef and the magnificent Daintree Rain Forest and had never known her birth father, Owen, was close by. She could even have driven past his home. There were some wonderful tropical homes in the far North. Fabulous sites overlooking the spectacular beauty of turquoise sea and emerald offshore islands.

      “It’s been an extraordinary day.”

      “Yes.”

      “Are