Bride at Briar's Ridge. Margaret Way
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her beauty left to her. But even at the end she had been so incredibly loving, so selfless and brave, thinking only of them, her two boys, and his heart broke all over again. Suffering seemed to happen to the best people. His mother had been the one who’d held the family together. He was going to miss her until the end of his days.
Right now he had to make an effort to clamp down on his upsetting memories. No one seemed to realise it—he knew he projected the misleading super-confident image of a man right on top of things—but he was a pretty complicated guy, maybe even messed up. Only his mother had truly understood him. His father had been antagonistic even when Linc was a kid. He knew he had always asked too many questions—not trying to be the smart-ass his father had long since labelled him, he had actually wanted to know. He’d always had an enquiring mind. But his father hadn’t seen it that way. To him, being questioned about anything was rank insubordination. Ah, well! He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last not to get on with his dad. But that was all over.
He was in the valley for the best of reasons. Guy had asked him to be one of the groomsmen at his wedding. Something he had kept from the family. He had wanted to tell Chuck, but Chuck could unwittingly be conned into admissions he would never have made on his own. The wedding was to be celebrated the coming Saturday. Guy was marrying a very special girl by the name of Alana Callaghan—‘the most beautiful girl in the valley’—or so the legend went. Linc had been delighted to accept his friend’s invitation. Besides it would give him the opportunity to view Briar’s Ridge.
Alana and her brother, Kieran, had inherited the sheep farm from their late father. Guy had told him it was a good buy, and Guy was the man in the know. Guy also knew Linc was anxious to strike out on his own. Briar’s Ridge just might work.
It would be a huge challenge, even so. He did have money of his own, plus a nice little nest egg he had inherited from his maternal grandad—God rest his gracious, loving soul. His father, Ben, as tight-fisted as they came, would have refused point-blank to lend him a stake. Giving was out of the question. The only thing his father would have given was a few tips to Scrooge. Except where Cheryl was concerned. Linc felt a burning in his chest at the thought of Cheryl, who could have answered to the name Jezebel. Cheryl was another pressing reason he had to get away from Gilgarra. Cheryl, the third Mrs Ben Mastermann, had taken no time at all to fix her predatory china-blue eyes on him, of all people. He had taken it as a tremendous insult—both to his father and him.
Now nowhere was safe. A woman hell-bent on pursuing a man who in no way wanted her wasn’t a pretty sight. He might have earned himself a bit of a reputation with the ladies, but he considered himself an honourable man. Hell, he was an honourable man. His only option had been to approach his father and let him know of his ambition to strike out on his own. He wasn’t about to tell him that day was at hand. Ben Mastermann had been known to wreck more than one property sale.
‘Your place is right here!’ his father, angry as a bull, had bellowed, veins like cords standing up in his neck. Ben Mastermann had been furious that his younger son was willing to abandon their family heritage, even though everyone in the district knew father and son were nearly always at loggerheads.
What his father didn’t know, and Linc could never tell him, was the problem he was having freezing out Cheryl. Their mother had only been dead two years before their father had taken Valerie Horden, a socialite divorcee and a longtime acquaintances to wife. That hadn’t lasted, although Val hadn’t been a bad sort—kind to him and Chuck in an off-hand sort of way. Not that they’d seen much of her, what with school and university. The marriage was over after six years, with a ritual exchange of insults, laying blame, and a hefty settlement for Valerie. Nothing like marriage to bring out the best and worst in people. Val, a dedicated sportswoman, had plunged in, but had soon found herself way out of her depth with the demanding and autocratic Ben Mastermann.
Then had come a long hiatus, but just when Linc and Chuck had thought they had good reason to believe their father had abandoned any search for another wife, without warning along came Cheryl—who had seriously been searching for a rich husband along with the meaning of life. That had been a little over two oppressive years ago, and even now Cheryl was only a few years older than Chuck, which put her in her early thirties. The two brothers had spotted her as a gold-digger on sight. Chuck had put on a tortured smile for his father’s benefit—Chuck was such a good-natured guy, and he loathed confrontations—but Linc, who had adored his mother, had stood well back, realising there was going to be trouble. Big-time.
Their father still believed Cheryl had fallen as madly in love with him as he had with her. He even joshed her about her ‘chasing him’. That was something Linc and Chuck definitely believed. Not that their dad wasn’t a fine-looking man, but he was in his late fifties to Cheryl’s thirty-two or three, and of course there was the tiny fact their dad was loaded. Some ladies appreciated that sort of thing. A rich older guy was infinitely better than a young guy who wasn’t. There had even been talk of their having a baby. He’d wait for that to happen. The luscious Cheryl was obsessed with her figure, and he’d bet the farm Cheryl had no intention of getting pregnant. She would even convince his dad it was his fault without saying a word. Wasn’t that the way with older guys who had so much to prove?
It was all kind of sad. Worse yet, dangerous. Linc wasn’t a guy who frightened easily, but Cheryl had freaked him out when she had burst into his bedroom.
‘You can’t go, Linc!’ She had thrown herself headlong at him, clutching him around the buttocks, kneading his behind through his tight jeans with her talons, her pretty face contorted with what he’d been supposed to interpret as passion. ‘You can’t go and leave me. Just play it cool, okay, baby?’
Play it cool, baby? He’d marvelled at her language, let alone her damned effrontery. And he hadn’t been able to fault her nerve.
‘You’re married to my father, Cheryl. Or was that just for the money?’
She had looked at him with an injured little smile, indicating that was so unfair. ‘I think you’ll find I’m making him happy,’ she’d claimed, china-blue eyes smouldering not for his dad but him.
He couldn’t disagree with what she had said about making his dad happy. His father was still at the honeymoon stage, and thought all his Christmases had come at once.
What else could a man do? He had pushed her aside, leaving her staring at him like some vamp in a 1940s Hollywood movie. Probably a calculated piece of play-acting. Either way, he hadn’t been able to get out of his bedroom fast enough!
Not that woman trouble hadn’t been a part of his life. He didn’t go looking for trouble; it came to him. Married women had offered—coldhearted, toffee-nosed ones too—but they had never been accepted. Married women were off-limits in his book. Not that he had even met one who had inspired an uncontrollable urge. It was Cheryl who was at the uncontrollable urge stage. She had shelved all caution. It all went to show she didn’t really know his father. Any man fool enough to lay hands on Cheryl would finish up a corpse, with his dad going to jail.
How good it was, then, to make his escape! He’d have made it long, before only the entire district knew he was the one who actually ran Gilgarra. He was the ideas man, the power behind the throne. Chuck was a fine sidekick, a good hard worker, but he wasn’t an ideas man—as he freely acknowledged. Their father had all but retired to give his sole attention to Cheryl. He had left them with it. And not before time.
Wangaree Valley was distant enough from his family turf, in a region called New England in the north of the state, bordering Queensland. It encompassed the largest area of high land in the country. His mother’s family, the Lincolns, had quite a history in the area. They had raised merino sheep and bred cattle for generations. The Mastermanns had come later, and they had prospered on the sheep’s back. Now Linc was looking to raise a dynasty of his own.
He wanted kids. He really liked kids. Two boys and two girls. He didn’t care what order they came in. Just let them be healthy. But he just hadn’t run into the right woman yet—even if he’d never been lacking