CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      VOLCANIC red dust puffed up under Bronte’s every step. It found its way into her expensive sandals, irritating her toes and the soles of her feet. Obviously her feet had grown tender since she had last left the jungle. Grit the colour of dried blood, she thought mawkishly, coated the fine leather. But then who in their right mind wore high heeled sandals to trudge down a bush track?

      “Damn!” She tottered to a stop, in the process wrenching her ankle. Moans gave way to muttered curses. She was about as irritable as she could get. What she should be wearing was lace up boots or at least a pair of running shoes. She set down her shoulder bag that had cost an arm and a leg. Never featherlight even when empty it had been growing heavier at every step. Her small suitcase followed. It weighed over a ton. Now she was able to shake the dust and grit first from the sole of one foot, then the other.

      Ah, the relief! She gulped in hot scented air.

      One of her bra straps had slipped off her shoulder. She fixed that. Her sunglasses needed propping back up her nose, a water slide of sweat. She was wearing a big wide-brimmed hat, yet the blazing tropical sun was burning a hole through the top of her head. Boiling and bothered she yanked at her designer label tank top. It was wet under the arms and glued to her back. She just knew her face was the colour of a ripe plum.

      “No wonder you’re so darned unhappy. You’re a fool, Bronte.” She often talked to herself. She’d grown into that habit as a lonely and isolated little girl. She’d even had imaginary friends. Great friends they were, too. There was a girl called Em who grew along with her. A boy called Jonty who was a very gentle person and lived in the rain forest. Once Gilly claimed she saw Em and Jonty playing tag around a giant strangler fig. Gilly always spoke to her as if she were an equal even when she was seven! Of course Gilly was having a little joke. Bronte knew her friends existed only in her powerful imagination.

      A whirlwind of dust blew up, rousing her to move off the track until it passed. It was her own fault that she had to walk. Death before dishonour was her motto. She was stuck with it. She hadn’t learned it. It had been passed out at birth. It got her into a lot of trouble, that’s all.

      It wasn’t right for the taxi driver to call Great-Aunt Gillian with a hard G “a crazy old bat!” accompanied by hoots of laughter she was expected to join in. That had made her hopping mad. Not that Gilly of the copious snow-white hair, once blue-black like her own, black eyes and wicked grin didn’t communicate with their dead ancestors on a regular basis. As an imaginative child Bronte, actively encouraged in her psychic powers by Gilly, had sensed long dead members of the McAllister family hanging around the place. They spent their time wandering the old sugar plantation and the big patch of virgin rain forest bordering McAllister land. They’d even been seen up on the main road, scaring the tourists. The locals took no notice whatsoever.

      Gilly, despite her solitary, secluded life, was right up there as a local character in an area that was legendary for its “characters.” Gilly was the Bush Medicine Woman. The plantation, the two hundred acres that remained from the original selection, would attract a lot of developers if it were ever put on the market, but Gilly lived a frugal life. Most of her inherited money had gone. “I’ve lived too long!” She supplemented what was left, by running a profitable little side-line selling herbal potions, concoctions, the odd aphrodisiac—said to work—facial and body creams guaranteed to alleviate the symptoms of every discomfort known to woman including the “infernal itches”. Gilly having been stood up at the altar fifty odd years ago didn’t give a hang what happened to the men. They could look after themselves.

      Bronte didn’t love men either. She was amazed anyone did! Most of them turned out to be bitter disappointments. Not that she’d been stuck on her lonesome in front of the altar. She was the one who found commitment darn near impossible. To prove it, with one week to the Big Day, she’d recently called off her much publicised society wedding, bringing her mother’s and her demented stepfather’s fury down on her head. She’d made a fool of them but she had learned that she was a fool already. Her actions, apparently, put her on a par with some sort of a criminal. A mass swindler perhaps? The humiliation was not to be borne. The disgrace! Worse, it was bad for business.

      Nat, her fiancé, had been angry enough to call her names, grinding his teeth as he did so. He wore not so much a devastated as totally baffled expression. What girl in her right mind would give him up? A girl could get tramped to death standing in line to meet Nathan Saunders.

      Nat’s mother had been livid! In fact she’d been astoundingly crude. Bronte hadn’t realized Nat’s mother knew let alone used four letter words. “No breeding!” sniffed Gilly when she heard. Nothing like scorning a son to bring out the worst in a mother. No one stood up Thea Saunders’s—one of society’s leading lights—wonder boy. She had demanded the 3 carat diamond solitaire back, not that Bronte had ever intended to keep it. Her finger felt a whole lot lighter without it. Bronte had consoled herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t the first girl to have second thoughts about tying the knot. The big problem was she hadn’t been able to work up the courage to voice her concerns until the last minute. Pathetic really! For that, she despised herself but she knew the turbulence her decision would create.

      Turbulence. Chaos. A tongue-lashing from the stepfather she detested. Nat had been hand-picked for her. She was ashamed to admit she was still trying to please her mother when let’s be straight about it, she never had. Her rejection of Nat Saunders had caused a huge scandal. Few of her so-called friends had sided with her. She was scolded and marvelled at at every turn. She had everything going for her and she blew it! What an idiot! The word had become an alternative to fool. Her mother had ended most sentences with one or the other.

      The handsome and popular Nat was the scion of media mogul Richard Saunders, a close friend and partner in various enterprises—probably dodgy—of her stepfather Carl Brandt. Of course she lost her budding career. A swift retribution that did nothing to raise her spirits. Over the past year she’d swum into the limelight as a popular character in the award winning TV police drama Shadows. Two weeks ago she had met with a very bloody end. A shoot-out. Officer down. It had blitzed the ratings and caused a storm of protests from her fans—she never knew she had so many—but she wasn’t going to be allowed to get away with shaming two outstandingly rich families.