Buch lesen: «The Return of Her Past»

‘Surely I can do this,’ Mia whispered. ‘I’ve come so far since those days—surely I can do this?’

She closed her eyes, but nothing could stop those memories as she allowed herself the luxury of picturing Carlos O’Connor in her mind’s eye. Luxury? Or was it a torment?

How could she forget the satanic edge to his looks that was so intriguing—irresistible, but at the same time capable of making you feel you were playing with fire?

Or not remember the way he laughed sometimes and that wicked sense of humour?

Or those times when no one would have suspected he was at the helm of a multinational construction company? Times when he’d exchanged his suits for jeans and a T-shirt and indulged his favourite pastimes: sailing, riding, flying. In fact he was rarely formal, when she thought about it.

But, above all, how could she ever forget lying in Carlos O’Connor’s arms?

About the Author

LINDSAY ARMSTRONG was born in South Africa, but now lives in Australia with her New Zealand-born husband and their five children. They have lived in nearly every state of Australia, and have tried their hand at some unusual—for them—occupations, such as farming and horse-training: all grist to the mill for a writer! Lindsay started writing romances when their youngest child began school and she was left feeling at a loose end. She is still doing it and loving it.

Recent titles by the same author:

WHEN ONLY DIAMONDS WILL DO

THE GIRL HE NEVER NOTICED

THE SOCIALITE AND THE CATTLE KING

ONE-NIGHT PREGNANCY

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Return of Her Past

Lindsay Armstrong

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

MIA GARDINER WAS home alone and preparing dinner for her mother when the storm hit with very little warning.

One minute she was rolling pastry, the next she was racing around the big old house known as West Windward and home to the wealthy O’Connor family, closing windows and doors as raindrops hammered down on the roof like bullets.

It was when she came to close the front door that a dark, damp figure loomed through the outside gloom and staggered towards her.

For a moment her heart leapt into her throat in fright, then she recognised the figure.

‘Carlos! It’s you. What are you doing—Carlos, are you all right?’ She stared up at him, taking in the fact that he had blood pouring down his temple from a nasty-looking cut. ‘What happened?’ she breathed and clutched him as he swayed where he stood.

‘A branch came down as I was crossing from the garage to the house. Hit me on the head,’ he said indistinctly. ‘That’s quite a storm,’ he added.

‘You’re not wrong.’ Mia put her hand on his arm. ‘Come with me. I’ll fix your head.’

‘What I need is a strong drink!’ But he swayed again as he said it.

‘Come,’ she said, and led him through the house to the housekeeper’s sitting room. It opened off the kitchen and was small but comfortable.

Mia cleared her mother’s knitting off the settee and Carlos O’Connor collapsed gratefully onto it. In fact he lay down and groaned and closed his eyes.

Mia was galvanised into action. Half an hour later she had cleaned and dressed the cut on his head whilst not only rain but hail teemed down outside.

Then the lights went off and she clicked her tongue, mainly because she should have expected it. They had frequent power failures in the district when the weather was stormy. Fortunately her mother kept some kerosene lamps handy but in the dark she tripped around until she located them. Then she lit a couple and brought one into the sitting room.

Carlos was lying unmoving, his eyes were closed and he looked very pale.

She stared down at him and felt a wave of tenderness flow through her because the truth of the matter was that Carlos O’Connor was gorgeous. All the lean six foot plus length of him, the dark hair, testament to his Spanish heritage, that he often pushed out of his eyes, those grey eyes that sometimes glinted wickedly at you…

She’d had a crush on Carlos since she was fifteen—how could you not? she sometimes wondered. How could anyone be immune to that devastatingly sexy aura? He might be ten years older than her eighteen years but surely she could catch up?

Not that she’d seen an awful lot of him over the past five years. He didn’t live on the property but she believed he’d grown up on it; he lived in Sydney, but he did come back from time to time. Usually it was only for a couple of days but he rode, not only horses but quad bikes, and because Mia was allowed to stable her horse on the property, and because she kept a weather eye on his horses when she was home, they had a bit in common.

She’d had some marvellous gallops with Carlos and if he’d ever divined that sometimes he made her heartbeat triple he’d never given any sign of it.

At first her daydreams had been simple and girlish but over the last couple of years she’d graduated from alternating between telling herself to forget all about Carlos O’Connor—he was a multi-millionaire, she was only the housekeeper’s daughter—and some rather more sophisticated daydreams.

Still, he was way out of her league. What could she offer him over the gorgeous beauties who sometimes accompanied him on his visits?

‘Mia?’

She came out of her daydream with a start and saw that his eyes were open.

‘How do you feel?’ She knelt down beside him and put the lamp down. ‘Do you have a headache? Or double vision? Or any strange symptoms?’

‘Yes.’ He thought for a moment.

She waited, then, ‘What? Tell me. I don’t think I can get a doctor to come out in this—’ she gestured up towards the cacophony on the roof above ‘—but—’

‘I don’t need a doctor,’ he murmured and reached for her. ‘Just this. You’ve grown up, Mia, grown up and grown gorgeous…’

Mia gasped as his arms closed about her and somehow, she wasn’t sure how, she ended up lying beside him on the settee. ‘Carlos!’ she remonstrated and tried to sit up. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Relax,’ he murmured.

‘But—well, apart from anything else, you could have a fractured skull!’

‘If I did, quiet and warmth and comfort would be recommended, don’t you agree?’ he suggested gravely.

‘I…you…perhaps but—’ Mia broke off helplessly.

‘That’s exactly what you could provide, Miss Gardiner. So would you mind not wriggling around like a trapped pilchard?’

‘A trapped pilchard?’ Mia repeated in outraged tones. ‘How dare you, Carlos?’

‘Sorry. Not the most complimentary analogy. How about a trapped siren? Yes, that’s better, don’t you agree?’ And he ran his hands down her body, then cuddled her against him. ‘Pilchard. I must be crazy!’ he murmured.

Mia took a breath to tell him he was crazy but suddenly she was laughing. Then they were laughing together and it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to Mia.

So much so, she lay quietly in his arms and when he started to kiss her, she didn’t resist. She was powerless to be unaffected by the amazing rapture he brought to her as he kissed her and held her. As he told her she had the most luscious mouth, skin like silk and hair like midnight.

She was made conscious of her body in ways she’d never known before as delicious ripples of desire ran through her. She was deeply appreciative of his easy strength and his long clean lines, the width of his shoulders and the way his hands brought her so much pleasure.

In fact she started to kiss him back and, when it was over, once again she lay quietly against him, her arms around him and she was deeply affected by everything about him. Not only that but conscious that it wasn’t impossible for him to be attracted to an eighteenyear-old—why else would he be doing this? Why else would he tell her she’d grown up and grown gorgeous?

Surely it couldn’t be concussion?

Two days later Mia drove away from the O’Connor estate and set her course, so to speak, for Queensland, where she’d been offered a university place.

She’d said goodbye to her parents, who’d been proud but just a little sad, but she was secure in the knowledge that they loved their jobs. Her father had a great deal of respect for Frank O’Connor, who’d built his construction company into a multi-million dollar business, although he’d recently suffered a stroke and been confined to a wheelchair, leaving his son Carlos in charge.

It was Carlos’s mother Arancha, a diminutive Spanish lady, a beauty in her earlier days but still the epitome of style, who had given her only son a Spanish name and it was she amongst the O’Connors who loved the Hunter Valley estate of West Windward passionately.

But it was Mia’s mother who actually tended the homestead, with all its objets d’art, priceless carpets and exquisite linens and silks. And it was her father who looked after the extensive gardens.

To some extent Mia shared both her parents’ talents. She loved to garden and the greatest compliment her father had given her was to tell her she had ‘green fingers’. She also took after her mother in her eye for decorative detail and love of fine food.

Mia was conscious that she owed her parents a lot. They’d scrimped and saved to give her the best education at a private boarding school. That was why she always helped as much as she could when she was home with them and she knew she was fulfilling their dream by going to university.

But as she drove away two days after the storm, her thoughts were in chaos, her head was still spinning and she didn’t look back.

CHAPTER ONE

‘CARLOS O’CONNOR WILL be attending,’ Mia Gardiner’s assistant Gail announced in hushed, awed tones.

Mia’s busy hands stilled for a moment—she was arranging a floral display. Then she carried on placing long-stemmed roses in a standard vase. ‘He is the bride’s brother,’ she said casually.

Gail lowered the guest list and stared at her boss. ‘How do you know that? They don’t have the same surname.’

‘Half-brother, actually,’ Mia corrected herself. ‘Same Spanish mother, different fathers. She’s a couple of years older. I think she was about two when her father died and her mother remarried and had Carlos.’

‘How do you know that?’ Gail demanded.

Mia stood back, admired her handiwork but grimaced inwardly. ‘Uh—there’s not a lot that isn’t known about the O’Connors, I would have thought.’

Gail pursed her lips but didn’t disagree and studied the guest list instead. ‘It says—it just says Carlos O’Connor and partner. It doesn’t say who the partner is. I thought I read something about him and Nina French.’ Gail paused and shrugged. ‘She’s gorgeous. And wouldn’t it be lovely to have all that money? I mean he’s got a fortune, hasn’t he? And he’s gorgeous too, Carlos O’Connor. Don’t you think so?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Mia replied and frowned down at the tub of pink and blue hydrangeas at her feet. ‘Now, what am I going to put these in? I know, the Wedgwood soup tureen—it sounds odd but they look good in it. How are you going, Gail?’ she asked rather pointedly.

Gail awoke from her obviously pleasurable daydream about Carlos O’Connor and sighed. ‘I’m just about to lay the tables, Mia,’ she said loftily and wafted away, pushing a cutlery trolley.

Mia grimaced and went to find the Wedgwood tureen.

Several hours later, the sun went down on Mount Wilson but Mia was still working. Not arranging flowers; she was in the little office that was the headquarters of the Bellbird Estate.

It was from this office in the grand old homestead, the main house on the estate, that she ran the reception function business, Bellbird Estate, a business that was becoming increasingly well-known.

Not only did the old house lend its presence to functions but its contents delighted Mia. It contained lovely pieces of old furniture, vases, lamps, linen and a beautiful china collection—including the Wedgwood tureen.

She catered for wedding receptions, iconic birthday parties—any kind of reception. The cuisine she provided was superb, the house and the gardens were lovely but perhaps the star of the show was Mount Wilson itself.

At the northern end of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, it had been surveyed in 1868 and had gradually acquired a similar reputation to an Indian ‘hill station’—English-style homes with cool-climate English gardens in alien settings, this setting being bush and rainforest.

And anyone’s first impression of Mount Wilson had to be how beautiful it was. Yes, the road was narrow and clung to the mountainside in tortuous zigzags in places but the trees in the village—plane trees, limes, elms, beeches and liquid ambers, were, especially when starting to wear their autumnal colours, glorious. There were also native eucalypts, straight, strong and reaching for the sky, and native tree ferns everywhere.

The glimpses of houses through impressive gateways and beyond sweeping driveways were tantalising, many old and stone with chimneys, some smothered in creepers like wisteria, others with magnificent gardens.

All in all, she’d thought often although she kept it to herself, Mount Wilson shouted money—new money or old money but money—and the resources to have acres of garden that you opened to the public occasionally. The resources to have an estate in the Blue Mountains, a retreat from the hurly-burly of Sydney or the heat of its summers… .

And tomorrow Juanita Lombard, Carlos O’Connor’s half-sister, was marrying Damien Miller on Mount Wilson—at Bellbird, to be precise. Damien Miller, whose mother, rather than the bride or her mother, had booked the venue without mentioning who the bride was until it was too late for Mia to pull out without damaging her business reputation.

Mia got up, stretched and rubbed her back and decided enough was enough; she’d call it a day.

She didn’t live in the main house; she lived in the gardener’s cottage, which was in fact a lot more modern, though unusual. It had been built as an artist’s studio. The walls were rough brick, the plentiful woodwork was native timber and the floors were sandstone cobbles. It had a combustion stove for heating, a cook’s delight kitchen and a sleeping loft accessible by ladder.

It was an interior that lent itself well to Mia’s photography hobby, her images of native wildlife and restful landscapes, enlarged and framed, graced the walls. It also suited her South American poncho draped over a rail, her terracotta tubs full of plants and her chunky crockery.

It was also not far from the stables and that was where she went first, to bring her horse, Long John Silver, in from the paddock, to rug him and feed him.

Although it was summer, there were patches of mist clinging to the tree tops and the air was chilly enough to nip at your fingers and cheeks and turn the end of your nose pink. But the sunset was magical, a streaky symphony of pink and gold and she paused for a long moment with her arms around Long John’s neck to wonder at life. Who would have thought Carlos O’Connor would cross her path again?

She shook her head and led Long John into his stall. She mixed his feed and poured it into his wall bin, checked his water, then, with a friendly pat and a flick of his mane through her fingers, she closed him in.

That was when she came to grief. She’d collected some wood for her stove and was taking a last look at the sunset when, seemingly from nowhere, what she’d kept at bay for hours enveloped her—the memories she’d refused to allow to surface ever since she’d known who would be at tomorrow’s wedding flooded back to haunt her.

‘Surely I can do this,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve come so far since those days—surely I can do this?’

She closed her eyes but nothing could stop those memories as she allowed herself the luxury of picturing Carlos O’Connor in her mind’s eye. Luxury? Or was it a torment?

Whatever, how could she forget that night-dark hair that sometimes fell in his eyes? That olive skin his Spanish mother had bequeathed, yet the grey eyes that came from his Irish father and could be as cool as the North Sea or so penetrating his glance made you mentally sit up in a flurry and hope like mad you had your wits about you.

How could she forget the satanic edge to his looks that was so intriguing; irresistible but at the same time capable of making you feel you were playing with fire?

Or not remember the way he laughed sometimes and that wicked sense of humour?

Or the times when no one would have suspected he was at the helm of a multi-national construction company. Times when he exchanged his suit for jeans and T-shirt and indulged his favourite pastimes—sailing, riding, flying. In fact he was rarely formal when she thought about it. But above all how could she ever forget lying in Carlos O’Connor’s arms?

She stood perfectly still for a long moment, then she reached into her pocket for a tissue and mopped herself up, determined that she would recover her equilibrium before tomorrow.

Mercifully, when she woke early the next morning, it was to see that at least the weather was fine; the sun had just started to climb into a cloudless sky. She had all sorts of contingency plans for wet weather but it was a relief not to have to resort to them.

She got up, dressed swiftly in jeans and an old shirt and brewed herself a cup of tea, which she took out into the garden. She loved the garden, all five acres of it, and although Bellbird employed a gardener it was Mia who supervised what went in and came out, something that led her into frequent discord with the gardener, Bill James, a man in his sixties who’d lived all his life on the mountain. Bill and his wife, Lucy, lived in another cottage on the property.

Lucy James was away at the moment. She made an annual pilgrimage to spend a month with her daughter and her six grandchildren in Cairns. To Mia’s regret, Bill drove Lucy up to and back from Cairns but only ever stayed a couple of days with them.

That left Mia in the position of having to cope with Bill living on his own and hating it until Lucy returned. If he was cranky when his wife was present, he was ten times crankier when she wasn’t.

Still, it had been a huge stroke of luck how she’d come to be able to start her reception business at Bellbird in the first place. She’d met the two old ladies, sisters and spinsters and now in their late eighties, who owned Bellbird, at Echo Point.

It had been her first visit to the Blue Mountains’ premier tourist attraction, from which you could look over the Three Sisters and the Jamison Valley.

From the viewing platform she’d gazed out over the scenery and been enchanted by the wondrous views.

The elderly sisters had sat down on the bench beside her and struck up a conversation. Before long she’d learnt about the estate on Mount Wilson, the fact that the sisters now lived in a retirement home in Katoomba, which they hardly had a good word to say for. And the fact that they were looking for a use for their estate.

Mia had explained that she’d come up to the Blue Mountains with the idea of opening a function business—and things had progressed from there. Of course the sisters had had her vetted but what had started out as a business venture had blossomed into a friendship and Mia often visited them in their despised retirement home that was actually very luxurious and well-run. And she often took them bunches of flowers and snippets of gossip about the mountain because she could well imagine what it must be like living away from Bellbird.

If there was one area of concern for her regarding the estate it was that her lease was renewed annually and due for renewal shortly. Her two spinsters would be perfectly happy to renew it but had let drop that they were under some pressure from their nephew, their closest relative and heir, to think of selling Bellbird and investing the money for a higher return than the estate was earning them.

On the morning of the Lombard/Miller wedding, things at Mount Wilson were looking pretty grand. The gardens were in spectacular form and so was the house, Mia noted, as she reluctantly went indoors and did a thorough inspection.

The ceremony was to be conducted by a marriage celebrant in an elegant rotunda in the garden, whilst the meal was to be served in the huge main dining room that easily seated the estimated seventy-five guests. It was a spectacular room with a pressed iron ceiling and long glass doors that opened onto the terrace and the main rose garden.

Dancing would be in the atrium with its cool tiled floor, and tables and chairs were dotted around the main lawn.

‘Well, it all looks good,’ Mia said to the newly arrived Gail—she lived on the mountain only a few minutes’ drive away. ‘And here come the caterers. OK! Let’s get started.’ And she and Gail gave each other a high five salute as was their custom.

In the time she had before the wedding party arrived Mia took a last look into the wedding suite—where the members of the bridal party would dress and be able to retire to if need be. And, content that it was all spick and span, she jogged to her own quarters, where she took a shower and dressed herself for the event.

She studied herself thoughtfully in the mirror when she was ready. She always contrived to look elegant enough to be a guest but a discreet one, and today she was wearing a slim short-sleeved jade-green Thai silk dress with fashionable but medium heels in matching leather and a string of glass beads on a gold chain. She also wore a hat, more of a fascinator, to be precise. A little cap made from the same Thai silk with feathers and a froth of dotted voile worn on the side of her head.

He probably won’t recognise me, she reassured herself as she stood in front of her cheval mirror admiring her reflection, and particularly the lovely fascinator, which seemed to invest her with more sophistication than she usually exhibited.

But even without the hat she was a far cry from the kind of girl she’d been in those days. Always in jeans, always outdoors, always riding when she could get away with it. Her clothes—her hair alone must look different from how she used to wear it. She grimaced.

Her hair was a sore point with her. Nearly black, it was wild and curly, yet it never looked right when it was cut to be manageable. So she wore it severely tied back when she was being formal, something she’d not done when she was younger.

Nothing, she had to acknowledge, had changed about her eyes, though. They were green and Gail had once told her her eyelashes were utterly to die for and so was her mouth. She also possessed a pair of dimples that she wasn’t a hundred per cent keen on—they didn’t seem to go with the sophisticated woman of the world she liked to hope she resembled.

She turned away from the mirror with a shrug and discovered, to her horror, that she was trembling finely because she was scared to death all of a sudden.

No, not all of a sudden, she corrected herself. Ever since she’d realised who the bride was, she’d been pretending to herself that she was quite capable of dealing with the O’Connor family when, underneath that, she’d been filled with the desire to run, to put as much distance between them as she could.

Now it was too late. She was going to have to go through with it. She was going to have to be civil to Arancha O’Connor and her daughter Juanita. Somehow she was going to have to be normal with Carlos.

Unless they didn’t recognise her.

She took a deep breath and put her shoulders back; she could do it.

But all her uncertainties resurfaced not much later when she moved the Wedgwood tureen with its lovely bounty of hydrangeas to what she thought was a better spot—her last act of preparation for the Lombard/ Miller wedding—and she dropped it.

It smashed on the tiled floor, soaking her feet in the process. She stared down at the mess helplessly.

‘Mia?’ Gail, alerted by the crash, ran up and surveyed the mess.

‘I’m s-sorry,’ Mia stammered, her hand to her mouth. ‘Why did I do that? It was such a lovely tureen too.’

Gail looked up and frowned at her boss. At the same time it dawned on her that Mia had been different over the last few days, somehow less sure of herself, but why, she had no idea. ‘Just an accident?’ she suggested.

‘Yes. Of course,’ Mia agreed gratefully but still, apparently, rooted to the spot.

‘Look, you go and change your shoes,’ Gail recommended, ‘and I’ll clean up the mess. We haven’t got much time.’

‘Thank you! Maybe we could get it fixed?’

‘Maybe,’ Gail agreed. ‘Off you go!’

Mia finally moved away and didn’t see the strange look her assistant bestowed on her before she went to get the means to sweep up what was left of the Wedgwood tureen.

The wedding party arrived on time.

Mia watched through the French windows and saw the bride, the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride arrive. And for a moment she clutched the curtain with one hand and her knuckles were white, her face rigid as she watched the party, particularly the bride’s mother, Arancha O’Connor. She took a deep breath, counted to ten and went out to greet them.

It was a hive of activity in the bridal suite. Mia provided a hairdresser, a make-up artist and a florist and in this flurry of dryers and hairspray, perfumes both bottled and from the bouquets and corsages, with the swish of petticoats and long dresses, laces and satins, it seemed safe to Mia to say that no one recognised her.

She was wrong.

The bridal party was almost ready when Arancha O’Connor, the epitome of chic in lavender with a huge hat, suddenly pointed at Mia and said, ‘I know who you are! Mia Gardiner.’

Mia turned to her after a frozen moment. ‘Yes, Mrs O’Connor. I didn’t think you’d remember me.’

‘Of course I remember you! My, my, Mia—’ Arancha’s dark gaze swept over her comprehensively ‘—you’ve certainly acquired a bit of polish. Come up a bit in the world, have we? Although—’ Arancha looked around ‘—I suppose this is just an upmarket version of a housekeeping position, really! Juanita, do you remember Mia?’ She turned to her daughter. ‘Her parents worked for us. Her mother in the kitchen, her father in the gardens.’

Juanita looked absolutely splendid in white lace and tulle but she frowned a little distractedly. ‘Hi, Mia. I do remember you now but I don’t think we really knew each other; I was probably before your time,’ she said. ‘Mum—’ she looked down at the phone in her hand ‘—Carlos is running late and he’ll be coming on his own.’

Arancha stiffened. ‘Why?’

‘No idea.’ Juanita turned to Mia. ‘Would you be able to rearrange the bridal table so there’s not an embarrassingly empty seat beside Carlos?’

‘Of course,’ Mia murmured and went to move away but Arancha put a hand on her arm.

‘Carlos,’ she confided, ‘has a beautiful partner. She’s a model but also the daughter of an ambassador. Nina—’

‘Nina French,’ Mia broke in dryly. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of her, Mrs O’Connor.’

‘Well, unfortunately something must have come up for Nina not to be able to make it, but—’

‘Carlos is quite safe from me, Mrs O’Connor, even without Ms French to protect him,’ Mia said wearily this time. ‘Quite safe, believe me. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work.’ She turned away but not before she saw the glint of anger in Arancha’s dark eyes.

‘It’s going quite well,’ Gail whispered some time later as she and Mia happened to pass each other.

Mia nodded but frowned. Only ‘quite well’? What was wrong? The truth was she was still trembling with suppressed anger after her encounter with Arancha O’Connor. And it was impossible to wrest her mind from it.

Her skill at blending the right music, her talent for drawing together a group of people, her adroit handling of guests had deserted her because Arancha had reduced her from seasoned professional to merely the housekeeper’s daughter.

‘But he’s not here!’ Gail added.

‘He’s running late, that’s all.’

Gail tut-tutted and went on her way, leaving Mia in her post of discreet observer but feeling helpless and very conscious that she was losing her grip on this wedding. Not only that but she was possessed of a boiling sense of injustice.

She’d actually believed she could show Arancha that she’d achieved a minor miracle. That she’d begun and prospered a business that had the rich and famous flocking to her door. Moreover she could hold her own amongst them; her clothes bore designer labels, her taste in food and décor and the special little things she brought to each reception was being talked about with admiration.

But what had she proved? Nothing. With a few well chosen words Arancha had demolished her achievements and resurrected her inferiority complex so that it seemed to her she was once more sitting on the sidelines, looking in. She was no closer to entering Arancha and Juanita’s circle than she’d ever been. Not to mention Carlos’s…

She’d believed she could no longer be accused of being the housekeeper’s daughter as if it were an invisible brand she was doomed to wear for ever, but, if anything, it had got worse.

From a dedicated cook, a person to whom the smooth running of the household—the scent of fresh clean linen, the perfume of flowers, the magic of herbs not only for cooking but infusions as well—from that dedicated person to whom all those things mattered, her mother had been downgraded to a ‘kitchen’ worker.

Her father, her delightfully vague father who cared passionately about not only what he grew but the birds and the bees and anything to do with gardens, had suffered a similar fate.