Holding on to Alex

163 Pages·2010·0.62 MB·English

by  Way Margaret

HOLDING ON TO ALEX

Margaret Way
Beautiful, traitorous Alex
Alex had idolized Scott McLaren when she had come to live on his family's
Outback cattle station as a lonely, grief-stricken little girl. He had been so
protective of her, so vital and achingly handsome, but the wider world had
beckoned and she had rebelled against Scott, leaving the life they could have
created together.
Now she was returning home. Alex needed somewhere to recuperate after an
accident and Scott knew, deep down, that, despite his hurt, he couldn't leave her
to struggle on her own. She needed him for now, but Scott feared there'd be no
keeping Alex once she recovered--unless he could find a way to hold on to her.
CHAPTER ONE
L shadows were stalking the wild bush country before McLaren rode out,
ONG
signalling to Abe his senior stockman to hurry up. Abe looked a mess, his deeply
seamed face tired and disgruntled. All day long they had been tracking The
Ghost, the brumby stallion that had been stealing the best of the station mares. In
the harsh glare of noon they had sighted him running hard, his harem bunched
up tightly behind him, a few yearlings bringing up the rear. A dozen horses in all
and a stirring sight as they galloped recklessly down a steep, stony hill face and
into the sanctuary of the vine-shrouded lignum. He could smell the sweat off
their hides as his own blood began racing. He and Abe had given chase,
branches racking their faces, raising blood as they rode into the stallion's home
territory. Personal safety was a small thing compared to capturing the stallion.
Both of them expert horsemen with some of the brumby's own recklessness, they
had started to close, no mean feat in the scrub. Loving horses as he did, McLaren
felt a stab of pity at the thought of depriving the big chalky grey of its freedom
but The Ghost was no ordinary brumby. He was a fine-looking animal with good
station blood in him. The thing was he had to be stopped. Abe could break him
in and if Abe couldn't do it he'd have a go himself. Both of them knew how to
get into the mind of horses. He had learned almost everything he knew from Abe
Eagle Owl, yet as Abe freely admitted now, McLaren was master.
Even so, they lost them. The stallion won out. He was enormously cunning.
Three times he had beaten them although on the second chase they had picked
up two station mares, both of them heavily pregnant. As always with wildlife,
the stallion sensed danger even before it became apparent. What's more, the
stallion knew this stretch of country even better than they did.
"Cunnin' bastard," Abe swore as he rode alongside, his ebony skin covered with
sweat, streaks of blood and grit. A wind had got up, sending dust devils right at
them. "I did my best, Boss."
"Hell, it's not your fault, Abe," McLaren sighed heavily, pulling off his akubra
and raking an impatient hand through hair as black and shiny as a magpie's wing.
"We'll get him in the end." He veered off right to avoid a pair of little grey
wallabies, faces as sweet and innocent as babies. "Meanwhile, we'll set about
building a trap closer in to the swamp. Behind that wall of tea trees." He
gestured with an inclination of his head. "And make it strong."
"Plenty strong," Abe growled, weary to the point where he felt he could fall out
of the saddle. "The Ghost's a wild one. I'm thinkin' a rogue."
McLaren shook his head. "There's good blood in him, Abe. He'll behave once he
knows who's boss." He suddenly realised with a pang he had pushed Abe too
hard. Although always willing, Abe wasn't as young as he used to be.
The sunset revived them, breathtaking in its beauty. It swept across the gleaming
cobalt sky leaving great billowing trails of rose, violet and gold before the Sun
Woman turned the world to molten fire and the distant sand hills glowed like hot
furnaces. Abe with a rich Dream life within him and the music of the most
ancient of cultures began a soft, deep chant that McLaren found wonderfully
tranquillising; rising and falling it was an incantation that echoed through the
mists of time. He had enjoyed Abe's company since he was a small boy and his
father had told him Abe Eagle Owl was a lawgiver and a man of great power and
magic. According to the desert aborigines, Abe could weave mighty spells.
McLaren knew for a fact Abe could sing in the rain. His father had trusted and
respected the tribal elder, setting him to watch over his only son and heir.
"To guard you, Scotty, from possible harm."
Abe, the powerful medicine man, hadn't been able to guard his father. John
McLaren had ridden out one morning, vital, handsome, a man in his prime,
respected by the whole Outback, worshipped by his son, only to be carried back
to the homestead on a makeshift stretcher, his neck at a terrible angle, broken in
a freak fall. This the end to a man who had lived all his life in the saddle, a man
acknowledged to be a splendid horseman. It was really too much.
It had broken his mother's heart. For maybe two years. Maximum. After that, she
had found herself another rich husband and gone away. As a dutiful son, he had
continued to visit her in the city to pay his respects, but he had never forgiven
her for her defection, nor for so easily forgetting his father.
He'd been fourteen when his father was killed. Fourteen was a vulnerable
sometimes dangerous age for a boy, even if he had looked and acted like a young
man. That's what the mantle of responsibility and high parental expectations did
to one. But he had still needed his mother; the mother who felt she couldn't
possibly live out the rest of her life in isolation no matter how splendid. She had
to go back to the city, to her own people, to her own kind of life.
That was when Wyn had come back to Main Royal. Edwina McLaren, his
father's elder sister, unmarried, a woman of great character with a successful
career writing and illustrating stories with an Outback theme for older children.
Wyn had been enormously popular for twenty-five years and more. Loving,
patient, ever supportive Wyn. The mother he had never really had.
As he and Abe rode companionably side by side, great flights of birds winged
over them, their colours brilliant like flowers, making for the lagoons and
billabongs. Once a shining formation of budgerigars circled them, dipping and
swooping overhead like an undulating wave of emerald silk shot with gold.
Magic!
But even as he looked up, another image invaded his mind. Unbidden,
unwelcome, it sent the barriers he had built up crashing. His breath caught in his
throat and his hand involuntarily jerked the reins so his mare responding to the
signal came to a stop. Impatiently he urged her on, trying to crush the unwanted
image, obliterate it from his mind. Now, this minute. But it persisted, burning
brightly in his mind's eye.
A girl's laughing face, head thrown up, beautiful swan's neck, skin like polished
ivory, a glorious mane of hair the colour of brandy, thick and wavy, exotic cat's
eyes set at a slant, pure amber, wide tilted mouth, pointed chin.
Alexandra!
His beautiful, traitorous Alex. The girl who had filled him with such passion he
could scarcely live with the thrill of it. The girl who had shared his very soul. He
had marvelled at the thread of destiny that had brought them together. He had
asked Alex to become his wife, mistress of Main Royal.
God, what a fool! Like his mother, Alex had gone off, following her own star.
Alex had wanted it all ways. Marriage and a career. Private and public adulation.
Alexandra Ashton. Nowadays brilliant principal dancer of the Australian Ballet,
with rave reviews from Sydney to Moscow. Well, she could dance until she
dropped. He never wanted her in his life or on his land again. He had learned to
live with her rejection. Only sometimes, like now, the ache was as fierce as an
amputation.
He had known Alex since she was ten years old. That was the trouble. She had
been so deeply entrenched in his life. Alex too had known tragedy. Her parents
had been killed in a terrible six-car pile-up on the state's main highway. It was
then Alex had come to Main Royal, a heartbroken little girl. Wyn, as her
mother's dearest friend and Alex's godmother, had been appointed guardian in
their will, in the event, however remote, that anything should happen to them.
He had been seventeen when Alex came to Main Royal. Absurd to fall in love
with a child but Alex had always been special. A magical creature, with her
beautiful colouring and triangular face.
McLaren clenched his jaw and steadfastly pushed the image away from him. It
was the only way he could maintain his facade of indifference. It was hard on
Wyn loving Alex as she did, but when it came down to it Wyn loved him more.
Both of them understood there was only one subject in the world they had to
avoid even when Alexandra's bright shadow walked between them.
It was dark by the time he and Abe reached the main compound. McLaren bade
Abe goodnight, had a word with his overseer about what he required the next
day, then walked up to the homestead. The lights from within gleamed golden,
spilling out onto the wide verandas that surrounded the house on three sides.
Main Royal homestead was a single-storey building but it had been built on the
grand scale by his great-grandfather, the Scotsman, Colonel Andrew McLaren,
one of the earliest settlers in the state, after a long, distinguished military career.
The verandas alone were a masterpiece in design and construction, the whole
architectural concept strongly influenced by the Colonel's years in India with his
father who was then the commanding officer of the 75th Regiment. Guest wings
had been added in his grandfather's time, carefully in keeping with the design of
the main house, and a magnificent ballroom, enclosing the original rear
courtyard added for his parents' legendary wedding reception. Main Royal wasn't
only a homestead. It was his castle and the ancestral home of the far-flung
McLaren clan. Between the uncles, aunts and cousins, the McLarens presided
over a pastoral empire.
The double front doors gave onto a spacious parqueted entrance hall with the
main reception rooms opening off to left and right. On the circular rosewood
library table that stood beneath the splendid Waterford chandelier, Wyn had
arranged another magnificent floral display, using all the resources of the five-
acre home gardens watered by bores. The arrangements were changed every
other day, each seemingly more beautiful than the last. Wyn was a creative artist
in more ways than one.
He went straight to his room, showering and changing before he found himself a
nice ice-cold beer. His mind should have been on the many issues to hand. He
had a speech to write for an industry dinner given in honour of the newly elected
state Premier, but thoughts of Alex continued to invade his mind. It was almost
as though she was trying to connect with him. Like the old days when their
communication had been little short of telepathic.
Wyn had scrapbooks filled with Alex's achievements. Of course he knew where
she kept them. He had even in moments of weakness stolen glances at the many
glossy photographs of Alexandra Ashton in her many roles—Swan Princess,
Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Coppelia. Alex leaping free of gravity. Alex in
arabesque, turning, en pointe. Others (he hated) showing her smiling radiantly at
a partner. She always looked marvellously ethereal, a creature of lightness,
movement, poetry and magic. No one who could possibly withstand the rigours
of station life with the long, savage periods of extreme heat and drought.
It was Wyn ironically who had insisted Alex continue with her ballet lessons.
Even as a child she had been incredibly gifted. Her life had to be organised,
filled with pursuits that would leave her little time to make herself ill with grief.
After a period of adjustment, Alex had gone away to boarding school in Sydney
where he too was studying, taking his degree in law. Not that it was ever
intended he would practice. The reasoning was that McLaren commercial
interests were so vast, legal training could only stand him in good stead and
benefit the family interests.
During those years he had picked Alex up at her boarding school every "free
day'' to take her on some jaunt with one of his numerous girlfriends in tow.
Company he called it. One of his girlfriends had suggested with wry humour that
chaperone might better cover it. Every vacation Alex spent at the station where
she learned to ride like the wind, sleep under the stars, muster and cut cattle,
handle a firearm. She loved the life. Adored the space and freedom. So she said.
She had such a way with her she had charmed every last man, woman and child
on the station. Even Abe, the wise, had been her instant slave.
He drank a cold beer from the fridge, poured another into a silver mug and went
in search of Wyn. Funny she wasn't around. She usually appeared every time he
came back to the house.
He found her behind the desk in her book-lined study, head bent, one hand
shielding her forehead.
"Not still working, Wyn?" he asked, moving farther into the wonderfully inviting
room and sinking onto one of the leather sofas. She didn't answer immediately
and he turned his head in surprise. "Wyn?"
"Sorry, dear."
Her voice sounded husky, as if she'd been crying. Not Wyn. Not crying.
McLaren rose immediately, setting the silver mug down on the low coffee table.
"Wyn, what's the matter?"
The calm, elegant face with the classic McLaren features had a stunned, upset
look to it. Worse, little runnels of tears had left their mark on her lightly
powdered cheeks.
"What is it? Tell me!" His voice echoed his concern.
Wyn's eyes moved sadly over her nephew's marvellous face. Like his father
before him, he was all McLaren, very tall and rangy, with the same look of high
mettle, even arrogance and fine breeding. His features were chiselled to
perfection, the McLaren cleft in his chin, his fine-grained skin darkly bronzed by
the sun. Only the eyes bore witness to Stephanie. They were a wonderful
glittering aquamarine. She had never seen such beautiful eyes unless they were...
Alexandra's.
"You're not ill?" McLaren gave his aunt a disturbed glance.
She touched a hand to her hair, once as black as his own, now at sixty pepper-
and-salt. "No, dear. It's not that. Not something you'll want to hear, either."
"It's Alex? Isn't it?" he asked abruptly, his striking face clouding over.
"Yes, it's Alex," Wyn sighed, not surprised either by his intuition or reaction.
"She's had an accident."
"Accident?" That didn't make him happy. He never wanted Alex harmed.
"It's all here in the paper." Wyn rose stiffly from her chair, newspaper in hand.
"Here, give it to me." His vibrant voice sounded unnaturally harsh. Long-
suppressed feelings welled up in him.
"It was during rehearsal," Wyn went on. "That spectacular fish dive at the end of
Aurora when her partner has to catch her inches from the floor."
"God, you're not going to tell me he dropped her?" His voice cracked with anger.
"She took a bad fall. It's all there." Wyn waved a distracted hand. "So cruel. All
the work, the sacrifice. It may be gone. Oh, darling, I'm sorry." She turned to
him, her heart dropping like a stone at his expression.
"It's all right." His handsome mouth was cool and hard. "It says here she may not
dance again." He glanced up at the date. "This paper's a day old."
"Yes. Ed flew in late afternoon." She referred to the pilot of the air freight
company they used for their mail and supplies.
"At least you have the name of the hospital they took her to. It says she's
expected to undergo surgery. Probably it's already happened."
"My poor little Alex," Wyn moaned.
"She hasn't contacted you?"
"No. She knows..." Wyn faltered and broke off.
"Any mention of her is taboo."
"She knows how much she hurt you, Scott."