Маргарет Уэй – Olivia's Awakening (страница 3)

Darwin City. City? She could see a township built on a bluff at the edge of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sparkling blue-green water. It overlooked what appeared to be a very large harbour. Being her, she had made it her business to read up on the place so she knew the city had been destroyed and rebuilt twice. Once after the massive Japanese air raid in February 1942 during World War II, when more bombs were dropped on an unprepared Darwin than had been dropped on Pearl Harbor. Then again after the city was destroyed by a terrifying natural disaster, Cyclone Tracy, in 1974. She rather thought after something as cataclysmic as that she would pack up her things and move to the Snowy Mountains, but apparently the people of the Top End were a lot tougher than she.

She well remembered McAlpine as projecting a powerful image: tough, aggressive, a man’s man, but women seemed to adore him. It was a wonder his body didn’t glow with the force of that exuberant energy. Not that he wasn’t a cultured man in his way. Rather he projected a dual image. The rough, tough cattle baron with an abrasive tongue, and the highly regarded chairman and CEO of M.A.P.C., the McAlpine Pastoral Company. Her billionaire businessman father wouldn’t have bought into the company otherwise.

Much as she loved and respected her father she realised there was some ambivalence in her towards him. He hadn’t been what she and Bella had wanted. A doting, hands-on dad. Their father, always in pursuit of even more power and money—throw in women—hadn’t been around for his daughters most of the time. In a sense that had left her and Bella, in particular, orphans, mere babes in the woods. She had detected the same kind of brilliance and that certain ruthlessness in McAlpine.

Her father had worked his way through three wives, a catastrophic one-night stand and more than likely a number of affairs they didn’t know about. She chose to ignore the fact that her and Bella’s mother, Alexandra, had cheated on him—who knows for what reason? Might have been a good one. Their mother was their mother after all. They had wanted their memory of her to remain sacred. Ah, well! Sooner or later one had to face the realities of life.

She knew of McAlpine’s marriage to an Australian heiress with an unusual name. It had ended in an acrimonious divorce. She wasn’t in the least surprised. He was that kind of man. Probably he had treated his ex-wife badly, had affairs. There was a young daughter, she seemed to recall, who no doubt would have been swiftly dispatched to her mother to look after. One couldn’t expect a tycoon to work out a little girl’s problems. She and Bella hadn’t enjoyed much of their father’s attention or problem solving.

With an effort she shook herself out of what Bella liked to call “Your martyr mode, darling! There it is again!” She didn’t recognise it herself. She was no martyr even if she was practically a saint with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She had noted the cattle baron was big on sex appeal. Something women drooled over. He was devilishly handsome. In her view in an overtly sexy way. But she had to concede real sexual presence. She was prepared to grant him that but she, for one, had had no trouble combating it. Such men shrieked a warning to a discerning woman like herself. She preferred far more subtle English good looks and style—like Justin’s, even if he had turned out to be an appalling cad. Bella had called him a “love rat.” She couldn’t see McAlpine as a rat. But then what did she know? She, who appeared to be incapable of one lasting relationship with a man.

What she did know was, she neither trusted nor liked McAlpine. She didn’t doubt her ability to keep him in his place. She was a Balfour after all. A sensible, stable person who had never required being kept an eye on. Maybe she had blotted her near-perfect copybook, but she’d had the grace to accuse herself of her failures. Her task now was to regain her self-esteem and emerge as a more nurturing, more compassionate, more liberal-minded person willing and able to accept advice.

But not from McAlpine.

Inside Darwin International Airport she looked around her in disbelief. Was Darwin a beach resort? The atmosphere was torrid even for May when it surely should have been cooling down. The hot humid air was fitfully swept by cooling breezes off the harbour. Overhead domed a burning blue sky. Northern Hemisphere skies didn’t have that intensity of colour. Soaring coconut palms and spreading flamboyant trees were everywhere. She had to wonder if ever a stray coconut fell on some unfortunate head. She supposed one could always sue.

The vegetation was rampantly tropical, full of strong primary colours that assaulted the eye, the air saturated with strange fragrances. Sunlight streamed down in bars of molten gold. As for the quality of the light! Even with her sunglasses on her eyes were dazzled. So much so in the middle of her ruminations she nearly collided with someone.

“I’m so sorry.” She was tempted to tell the man who had accosted her he couldn’t have been watching where he was going.

“No worries, love.”

She registered in amazement his incredible outfit. Navy boxer shorts with a frog-green singlet.

“You need help, little lady?”

That, when she was some inches taller than he. She momentarily closed her eyes. “I’m fine, thank you. Someone will be meeting me.”

“Lucky devil!”

Olivia’s Balfour blue eyes glinted. Why did it have to be a man? She could have been meeting a favourite aunt. She continued making slow progress through the swirling throng, marvelling at the sights around her.

She had never seen such flimsy dressing in her entire life, nor so much bare skin. Not even on the Caribbean islands. Nor so many marvellously attractive children, girls and exotic young women with startlingly beautiful black eyes, and skin either gilded honey, café au lait, light fawn or chocolate. They were all petite, with lovely slender limbs. Not for the first time in her life she felt like a giraffe, more pallid than she really was. Even Bella might have a job being singled out here. She didn’t know if these people were part aboriginal, part Indonesian, part New Guinean, part Chinese—anywhere from South-East Asia.

She didn’t know this part of the world at all. But they were all Australians, it seemed. They spoke with the same distinctive Australian accent, so much broader than her own and—it had to be said—the voices so much louder. No comment seemed to be offered quietly. She recalled her own voice had often been referred to as “cut glass.” But then they all spoke like that, the Balfours.

Heavens, was it possible she was a snob after all? For a moment she wondered if she had caught herself out. Looking around her she saw Australia’s proximity to Asia was well in evidence. This was a melting pot. Fifty nationalities made up the one-hundred-thousand-strong population and they all seemed to be waiting for flights out or meeting up with relatives and friends. She remembered now Darwin was the base for tourists who wanted to explore the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park and the great wilderness areas of Arnhem Land. She could readily believe such areas would be magnificent, but she couldn’t think how they would find the strength to go exploring in such heat!

She hadn’t thought to take off her long-sleeved Armani jacket. No chance of her ever getting about in floral bras, halter necks and short shorts like the young women around her. Not that there was anything wrong with her legs. Or her arms. Any part of her body for that matter. The jacket she wore over a slim skirt and a cream silk shirt beneath. Now she wished she had taken off the jacket. She was melting with little chance to mop her brow. The humid heat was far beyond anything she was used to. By Darwin standards she realised she was ridiculously overdressed. Absolutely nobody looked like her. Even her expensive shoes felt damp and clonky.

She was fully aware of all the curious glances directed her way. She also had quite a number of pieces of luggage to be off-loaded—all necessary, all bearing the famous Louis Vuitton label. Now she wished she had bought some ordinary everyday luggage. It was starkly apparent she didn’t fit in. Worse, she must have looked helpless.

“All right, love, are you?”

Olivia turned, astonished. Obviously she did have helpless or hopeless tattooed on her brow. For out of the milling crowd had emerged a pretty dark-skinned woman somewhere in her thirties, a little pudgy around the tummy, wearing a loose, floral dress alight with beautiful hand-painted hibiscus and some kind of rubber flip-flops on her feet. Despite that Olivia could see with her trained eyes that this was a woman of consequence, albeit in her own way. She had that certain look Olivia recognised, the self-assurance in the fathomless black eyes. She also wore a look of kindly concern. Olivia valued concern and kindness. Olivia liked her immediately. Something that happened rarely with strangers.