Outback Surrender. Margaret Way
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the whole thing back into focus. By taking her out tonight Brock was probably trying to ward off the tensions of being home. Besides, she’d always associated Brock Tyson with excitement and—it had to be said—danger. It seemed to swirl around him like smoke.
He was a young man who had sustained many psychological wounds, even if the scars from his physical beatings had healed. The assaults by his autocratic grandfather had stopped with one fist-to-fist bout when Brock was fifteen and already topping six feet. One of the station hands who had witnessed it, open-mouthed and secretly overjoyed, had told the story to a mate, who’d told it to another mate in the Koomera Crossing pub. The gossip had spread like wildfire and the whole town had known within twenty-four hours.
“Old bastard Kingsley took a beating! And about time. I tell ya, it was something to see!” This along with plenty of chortles that hadn’t lasted long. The informer had been promptly sacked, finding it very difficult to get station work within a huge radius.
Brock had earned his badge of courage, but had shown that he had a dark side. It would pay Shelley to remember that now.
The last thing Brock had thought he would be doing this evening was socializing. Truth was, he’d been feeling incredibly bad since he’d buried his mother—as though her early death had been somehow his fault. He’d certainly given her plenty of grief by being always at loggerheads with his grandfather. Not that she had ever blamed him or breathed a word of it. But the wound would never heal; the grief would never be buried. He hated his grandfather, who had cast them off all alone. Hated him and wasn’t about to beg God’s forgiveness. Once he’d even accused his grandfather of getting rid of his own father, Rory, who supposedly had “run off like a cur”, to disappear without trace. But men in the Outback went missing all the time.
Was that what happened to his father? Knowing his grandfather, he could see him shooting anyone who challenged his authority in cold blood. He was that type. A megalomaniac. Having so much power and money could do that to an already mean man. His grandfather had been enraged by his only daughter’s runaway marriage. He had tried to have the marriage annulled, but failed. His mother had already been pregnant with him. God knew why his parents had allowed Kingsley to dictate to them, bringing them back to Mulgaree, where Brock had been born in an upstairs bedroom.
His father had stuck it out, enmity and harsh treatment notwithstanding. All for his mother, who had felt too helpless to know what to do. But six years on Rory Tyson had disappeared, leaving a note his grandfather had burned after showing it to Koomera Crossing’s police constable, who had been sent to investigate the disappearance.
After that—nothing. And there had been no news from Rory for all these years. Brock had investigated but drawn nothing but blanks trying to trace his father. He would get square with his grandfather for that. Getting square was important.
With a muffled oath Brock fought out of the bleak thoughts that threatened to swallow him up. He turned back to the task of getting dressed. His black hair was still damp from the shower, but already drying in the heat. He felt it was too curly, too long, though women always told him how much they liked it. In his experience women were always ready to say something nice. Men were the bastards.
Swiftly he pulled on a clean shirt. Lucky he had it with him. What the hell was he doing? These days he wanted to be by himself, to lick his wounds. So why a night out in town? The thing was he’d always found something endearing about the little Logan girl, who had grown into quite a woman. Her twin, Sean, had been the image of her. The drowning had been a terrible tragedy that had left the boy’s parents half mad; the sadness had affected the entire town and the outlying stations. The mother, it was said, still lay in bed crying all day, and the father, Paddy Logan, had allowed no one to forget that tragic day. Least of all his younger daughter.
They had been beautiful little creatures, those Logan twins. Everyone had thought it wonderful the way Shelley looked after Sean like a little mother. It wasn’t right the way she’d been treated since his death. She’d taken far too much punishment from her family. Like Brock had. It created a bond between them. Come to that, he hadn’t really forgotten kissing her at some dance. She’d been no more than sixteen but it had stuck in his memory, like a tune. He had a feeling that Shelley Logan with her lovely smile, on the outside so calm and collected, was bottling up a lot of passion. She was a redhead, after all. Red was nature’s fire sign.
But what sort of a person was her sister, Amanda? Sitting at the piano playing and singing while Shelley was probably toiling away in the kitchen, preparing a meal for her parties of tourists. He doubted if she’d get much help from her poor mother. The few people in town he’d spoken to about the Logans had assured him things were as bad as ever for the family—except for Shelley’s new venture, which had taken off. Everyone admired her. Shelley Logan was a capable, hard-working young woman with plenty of guts. That was the word according to Koomera Crossing.
All Brock knew was that sweet little female creatures like Shelley Logan eased a man’s soul. And Lord knew how he thirsted for some area of peace. But romance wasn’t on the agenda for him. Not even a brief affair. Certainly not with the girl he’d watched grow up. He couldn’t plan anything. Not with his future so undecided.
He knew he wouldn’t find peace at Mulgaree. But fronting up to his grandfather was a fierce necessity. Mulgaree was where he had been born, and his mother and his uncle Aaron, Philip’s father, before him. Philip, on the other hand, had been born in a private maternity hospital back in Brisbane, because Frances had been terrified of having her child on an isolated Outback station. Uncle Aaron, who he sort of remembered as kind, had been killed on the station, handling a wild steer, when Philip was just a little boy. The steer had gored him. Aaron had died without uttering a cry.
After that they had all lived in hell.
“Well, don’t you look pretty!” Brock stood in the open doorway staring down at Shelley, the delicate fastidiousness of her. She had braided her beautiful red hair so it coiled and glinted around her small head like loops of flame, complementing flawless skin smooth as a baby’s. A slick of bright colour decorated her mouth, and her green eyes were so big and mysterious they dominated her face. She looked as if he could cast spells if she so chose at any moment—even on him.
Watch out!
The thought made him laugh aloud. “‘Light she was and like a fairy!’ Brock spoke with an exaggerated Irish accent. “That’s an extremely pretty blouse.” Extremely pretty breasts. He felt a sudden wave of desire that made his stomach tighten into a hard knot. But he was obsessively involved with regaining his birthright, remember? Hadn’t he already decided he couldn’t get involved with Shelley Logan? Yet in the space of half an hour he had developed quite a taste for her.
Brock’s gaze moving over her left Shelley with a sensation of shivery excitement. He had one arm lazily resting above her head on the doorjamb, and was just staring down at her. He was so tall.
“I’m glad you like it.” It cost an effort but her voice came out normally. “I didn’t have anything suitable to wear so I raced down to the local dress shop. I found this in the nick of time.”
“My good fortune.” He grinned. “Shall we go? I’ve made reservations. They tell me Harriet’s menus are so great people have to book ahead.”
“Did you speak to Harriet herself?” She had to break through this confusion, this spell, otherwise the excitement would be impossible to stop.
He took the key of the door from her fingers. “That’s how we’ve managed to get in. Harriet told me she’d look after us. Harriet’s a big fan of yours.”
“That works both ways.” She looked at the span of his shoulders as he closed her door, suddenly bedevilled by the memory of what it was like to be swept up in his arms. Yet something about Brock Tyson, for all his macho image, made her heart break. What a dreadful penance it must have been for his mother and him, having to remain on Mulgaree after his father had deserted them. It was such a sad house. Like her own.
“I’ve not been to Harriet’s since it opened,” she remarked, pitching her tone to conversational.