Outback Fire. Margaret Way
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Sara all but ignored him. “Don’t you want to meet Stephanie and Gill?” she asked.
“Oh God! I think I’m about to,” he said, watching the hosts break away from their other guests and walk towards them, looking highly interested.
“Sara, darling!” Stephanie Drysdale cried.
Lots of Euro kisses.
“This is Luke,” Sara offered brightly. “Luke Branagan. He’s Athol McFarlane’s right hand man. Storm’s father.”
“Of course!” The hosts, husband and wife started to beam. Handshakes all round.
“Forgive me for gate-crashing your party,” Luke smiled, “if only momentarily. I’m in Sydney to see Storm. I have a message for her from her father. It won’t take long but it’s important. Hence the flying visit. I’m needed back on the station. The Major hasn’t been well.”
“Nothing serious I hope?” Stephanie Drysdale asked, waiting on the answer.
“His health is a matter of concern, Mrs. Drysdale,” he said.
“Well we must get Storm for you.” Stephanie Drysdale turned to her husband. “Gill, why don’t you show Mr. Branagan into the study while I find Storm. You’ll want to be private.” She hesitated a moment. “Are you going on anywhere else this evening, Mr. Branagan?” she asked.
“Luke, please.” He gave her a smile. “I might catch a movie while I’m in town.”
“Goodness! In that case we’d love you to stay.” She flashed a glance at her husband, who nodded his handsome head in agreement. Sara, too, smiled excitedly.
“I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion,” he pointed out amusedly, glancing down at his jeans and high boots.
“Don’t worry about that. You look fine.” Actually Stephanie Drysdale was thinking she had never seen a man looking so utterly divine.
Gilbert Drysdale led him off to the study while his wife and Sara went in search of Storm. Guests were wandering around everywhere, champagne glasses in hand, laughing, talking, relaxed. They continued through one of the opulent reception rooms along a corridor until they came to the darkened study.
Drysdale switched on the lights, illuminating a very functional, very masculine room in complete contrast to the rest of the house. Gracious like his wife, Drysdale stayed on for a moment to ask more of Athol McFarlane’s health then he excused himself saying he had better get back to his guests. Luke took an armchair, upholstered in a rich dark green leather, allowing his eyes to wander casually around the room, his mind preoccupied with this coming meeting. Four long months since he’d seen Storm. It felt like years. Sick of her, sick with her. Hell it was like a disease!
He heard the tap of her high heels along the corridor, an excitement in itself as he forcefully inhaled a lungful of breath. She was there! Sweeping into the room in a cloud of some beautiful elusive perfume that made him flare his nostrils, a subtle blend of gardenia, orange blossom, freesia? What would a man know? What would a mere male know about the miracle of Woman? She bedazzled him in her sexy little sequined top in lime-green with a long side split ruffled skirt that had to be chiffon over silk, the tiny green iridescent beads that were sewn all over it catching the light. Her thick raven tresses were dressed more elaborately than he had yet seen, the volume increased so it winged back from her forehead and cheeks and spilt over her bare shoulders. Knowing her so well, he could see she had gone pale, her green eyes glittering like the emeralds she wore in her ears.
So near, yet so far! She made his head reel and she was using up his life.
“Luke, what is it? What’s the matter?” she asked urgently, closing the study door behind her and leaning back against it.
It was quite a pose, a sizzler, but he knew it was unconscious. “Hi there, Storm,” he said, getting slowly to his feet. “I’m really happy to see you, too. No need to panic. Your father sent me.”
She could hardly speak for her surprise. Luke, as handsome, as inflammable as ever. “About what? Has he taken ill?” Though her heart quickened with fright, it came out like a challenge.
“You mean you didn’t know?” he clipped off, his mood darkening. “Your father has been ill for years.”
She couldn’t bear the censure in his beautiful blue eyes. “I only spoke to him last night. He was perfectly all right then.”
He could feel the familiar tension invading his body. “Don’t be absurd, Storm. His leg gives him hell as you know.”
That had its effect, too. “What are you accusing me of, Luke?’ she asked heatedly, wondering if their clashes were to be repeated forever.
“Well, now we’re on the subject, I’m accusing you of neglect.”
She flushed, the upsurge of colour increasing her beauty. “Don’t you always pick the right words,” she said bleakly. “I love my father. I ring him regularly.”
“But you don’t visit.”
She shook back her long hair. The overhead light had burnished the ebony waves with purple. “I have a career, Luke. Can’t you understand? I have commissions I must complete. And I get them from people with the money to afford them. Like the people who are here tonight. I just can’t rush off at a moment’s notice.”
He looked at her unsmilingly. “Well you’re going to have to. Your father wants you home. I think you should come.”
She laughed. It was almost certainly not humorous. “You think…you think. Oh, yes, you decide what’s best.”
“Don’t start,” he begged. “I’ve had just about enough. You know and I know that you stay away because of me.”
“How you kid yourself!” The truth didn’t lessen the pain.
“I don’t. You can’t put anything over me. I’m not your father to be wound around your little finger. Busy or not I want you to come back with me. You have the wedding tomorrow, but Sunday.”
She stared at him, absorbing the aura of power that surrounded him. “You can’t be serious?”
“I’m always serious with you. Your father wants you.”
Anxiety was like a knife against her heart but she knew her father. He thought bringing her home was his right. Twenty-seven and he still treated her like a child. “It can’t be that serious, Luke. He would have told me.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“So you’re calling the shots now?” She was as defensive as ever. There was so much bottled up inside her it might never get out.
“I always act in the interests of your father. It’s over four months since you’ve seen him. I have to tell you he’s gone downhill since then.”
“Oh God!” She all but swayed into a chair, the slit in her long skirt revealing one long, slender leg. “I ring him every week without fail. Why does he never say anything? Why is everything so secret?”
“You know your father,” Luke sighed. “He plays it close to the chest. Besides the last thing he wants to do is cause you anxiety.”
“And what about you?” There was the pain again. Not jealousy. Rejection. “You’re 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