Australia’s Most Eligible Bachelor (14 page)

“I will. I have my darling husband.” Leila lifted her head to bestow on Dalton Rylance a shimmering, conspiratorial smile.

Obviously sex was on the agenda. Leila had to be terribly good at it. Here was a man dazzled on the outside, without bothering to get to know the woman on the inside.

Corin closed the front door, then leaned back against it, releasing a long drawn-out breath. “Damn, damn, damn!” He spat out the words, as though choking on his feelings. The cab had left, taking his father and Leila back to their hotel.

“My angel? Dearest girl?”
Miranda questioned with some irony. If proof were ever needed, it was evident one of the toughest businessmen in the world was putty in Leila’s hands.

“And who are
you
, dearest girl?” There was a catch of laughter in Zara’s voice, but an edge of perplexity too. “Miranda
Graham
?”

“I’ll be darned if I know why I said it.” Miranda stalled for time, the muscles of her stomach badly knotted. “Motive unclear.” Zara was no fool. This looked very much like crunch time.

“You didn’t want them to know who you are?” Zara looked at her searchingly. “That’s it, isn’t it? We saw Leila when she was talking to Corin. She was herself—the
femme fatale
, absolutely secure in her powers. But as soon as she spotted you she turned into a totally different women. It had to be
you
, Miri. The sight of you stunned her. I thought she was going to pass out.”

Miranda looked pointedly at Corin, who shrugged, his brilliant dark eyes full of a simmering anger. “I just want to know who the mole is back home. Someone who passes on my itinerary. Work itinerary, that is. Whoever it is, they’re sacked. Let’s go into the drawing room.”

Zara took Miranda’s arm. “There’s something you two are keeping from me? I knew it. What is it?”

“Sit down, both of you,” Corin said, though he remained standing, the dominant figure, obviously tense.

And now you’re going to lose Zara. Most probably the two of them. You don’t belong here. Leila has seen to that.

Zara was watching her brother very closely now. “You didn’t know Father was coming to London?”

“Zara.” He groaned. “Do you honestly believe I wouldn’t warn you? Of course I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Zara apologised. “It’s just that woman upsets me so. I’m perfectly all right when I’m fourteen thousand miles away from her. She’s turned Father against me. For all we know she drove our beautiful mother—”

“I don’t see that, Zara.” Corin stopped his sister from saying more. “I
have
been keeping something from you. But it was to protect you. I didn’t know how you would handle it then. I don’t know
now
.”

“Oh, God, Corin. Tell me,” Zara begged. “It has something to do with Miri, doesn’t it?”

Miranda thought it high time she spoke up for herself.

Take what comes on the chin.

“Leila and I are related, Zara,” she said.

Zara almost jumped out of her skin. “Related? In what way?” Her great eyes locked onto Miranda’s. “I can’t think of anyone less like Leila than you.”

“Thank God for that!” Miranda said gratefully. “I have no official standing in your stepmother’s eyes. She doesn’t know me. You know I’ve become very fond of you, Zara. You’ve been so kind to me. I look on you as a close friend. Someone I can turn to. It hasn’t been easy keeping my story to myself. You must believe that. I don’t think I could bear it if you didn’t.”

“Let me tell it, Miranda,” Corin said, coming to sit beside her. “Miranda has only been following orders, Zara,” he explained. “My orders.”

Is following orders a valid excuse?
Miranda now asked herself.

“I intended to pick the right time,” Corin explained, “but Leila showing up like that tonight—you’re quite right. She believes herself all-powerful. Dad backs her in everything she does and wants. Now she’s pulled the rug out from under our feet. But she didn’t get off scot-free. She’s been administered one almighty shock.”

“I
saw
that, Corin.” Zara matched his terseness. “Move on.”

Again Miranda intervened. She was her own person. She should speak for herself. “I’m sorry you had to learn it like this, Zara, but Leila is…no easy way to say it, so here it is…my
mother
.”

Zara blanched. She shook her head in seeming bewilderment, then jumped up, looking in a stricken fashion to her brother. “
Mother?
Did Miri really say that, Corin? Did I hear right? Leila, our stepmother, is Miranda’s
mother
?”

So much depends on how Zara takes this.

“Please don’t upset yourself, Zara,” Corin begged his sister quietly. “Miranda didn’t even know herself until a few years back.”

“Years?”
Zara’s voice soared. She looked at them both, obviously incredulous and deeply distressed they had kept such a thing from her.

“I was brought up by my grandparents, believing them to be my parents,” Miranda explained, desperate for Zara to understand. “I nursed my dying grandmother. That was almost four years ago. Only then did she tell me the true story. My mother abandoned me as an infant. She was only sixteen when she had me. Starting out in life. She didn’t want a baby to drag her down.”

Zara was all flashing dark eyes. “Dear heaven! This is shocking—
shocking
! So why, on reflection, doesn’t it surprise me? Leila had a child. You. Miri.” She collapsed into an armchair, shoulders drooping under the weight of this new knowledge. “We’ve been so
close
, Miri, and you didn’t
tell
me.”

“I’m sorry.” Miranda bowed her head, she too showing her upset. “So sorry. I might have lost you. I could lose you now.”

Corin took Miranda’s hand in his, tightening his grip. “Miranda did as
I
asked, Zara. Blame me if you want to blame anyone. Miranda was all for telling you, but it wouldn’t have done you a bit of good. The knowledge wouldn’t have given you any rest. You’d have come out with it some time. And who could blame you? All those years of provocation, of Leila’s conniving, her malice, behind the scenes stripping you of Dad’s affection. She kept you away. She lied all the time: concocted stories, complained of your stubborn refusal to meet her halfway. What do you suppose would have happened had you known about Miranda and confronted her?”

Zara stared back at him, then gave a wild little laugh. “I’d have
murdered
her, like she murdered our mother.”

“No, no, Zara.” He felt pain like a twisting knife inside him. Whatever he and Zara believed, he wasn’t going to lay that charge against Leila at Miranda’s feet. “I’m not having that.”

Zara shook her head again, trying to rid herself of shock. She realised Corin didn’t want to her to go on with her suspicions. Of course she shouldn’t have said what she had. The last thing she wanted to do was add to Miranda’s heartbreak.

Only Miranda sprang up, as though divining the truth. “I can’t help my mother, Zara. Any more than you can help your father. We don’t get to pick our parents. You can’t think I
want
to talk about this woman? This woman without a heart? I’ve only laid eyes on her for the first time tonight. I used to think I could fall from the sky and land on top of her and she wouldn’t acknowledge me. But she
does
know me. We saw the evidence of that tonight. You’re shocked? Consider
my
shock. And it hasn’t even hit me yet. Leila’s whole history is mind-blowing. Far better my grandmother never told me.”

Corin responded sharply. “Then you’d never have come into our lives.” He rose, drawing Miranda back to the sofa. “None of us wants that.”

Zara slowly lifted her head, her beautiful face full of a heartbreaking poignancy. “So how
did
you and Corin get to meet?” she asked.

“Pretty much as Miranda told you.” Corin regarded his sister with compassion. “She approached me for a Rylance Foundation scholarship. She was a very promising candidate. A top-level student. She explained who she was.”

“Not quite true.” Miranda decided to intervene. Set the record straight. “Corin is putting the best possible spin on it, Zara. What really happened was that I told him Leila
owed
me. I had already checked her out. Checked out your family. I lay in wait for Corin, more or less cornered him, forced his hand.”

“Very enterprising too,” said Corin, with the first trace of amusement.

Miranda wasn’t to be distracted. “My life’s ambition, Zara, is to become a doctor. It’s what my grandparents worked so very hard for. They were everything in the world to me, but even they didn’t tell me the truth. I have to see it as protection, not betrayal. Just as Corin believes he was protecting you by not telling you what he had learned.”

Zara sat motionless, head bent, locked in thought.

Miranda was strong by nature, Corin thought. Zara was far more fragile. Miranda had the priceless advantage of being brought up by loving, dedicated
parents
. He and Zara had experienced more than their share of trauma after their mother’s death. He had been scarred to a degree. But never to the same extent as Zara. He was the son, the heir. He was
male
. That made a huge difference. To his father and, sickeningly as it was to turn out, to Leila. His scars had healed over. He was forging ahead in life. So was Zara. Up to a point. It was any additional damage to Zara’s psyche that was in the balance. The
wicked stepmother
didn’t simply exist in fiction. She made her presence felt the world over.

Miranda hadn’t enjoyed being party to keeping the truth from his sister. He was well aware of that. She hadn’t refused because she trusted him. That was all-important. Up to date Zara had trusted him too.

But now Zara remained quiet.

Please, oh, please, Zara, don’t see it as a betrayal,
Miranda prayed.

Second by second dragged on. Miranda counted them with her heartbeats. Then Zara lifted her head, her lustrous dark glance embracing them both. “Start at the beginning,” she said.

Some note in her voice calmed Miranda’s trembling heart.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HEY
were in the apartment. Miranda had put distance between herself and Corin, her thoughts chaotic. The realisation that she had actually met her mother was starting to hit punishingly home. It wasn’t as though Leila, whatever her regrettable actions in the past, had transformed herself into a loving, caring person. Leopards didn’t change their spots. Leila was stuck with hers.

So where did that leave her, Leila’s biological daughter? She had studied the history of genetics, the chemistry of the genes. The word
heredity
referred to the way specific characteristics are transmitted from parent to child, from one generation to the other. Now she found herself dreading the thought that there could be traits of Leila lying dormant in her. Traits could express themselves at any time. Or had she escaped the major flaws in Leila’s character?

What did Corin think when he looked at her? Did he have nagging concerns at the corner of his mind? Who could blame him if he did? She knew sexually they were in perfect accord. But at some point he had to have fully registered she was Leila’s flesh and blood. Leila—his stepmother, the woman he loathed. Was it conceivable he was waiting for something beneath the surface in her to suddenly emerge? Tonight she had seen with her own eyes that Leila lusted after Corin. That was already gnawing away at her. It raised terrible questions. Had Corin at some time been caught in some taboo situation? No one could deny such things did happen when an experienced adult manipulated someone much younger.

Shame could encourage hatred.

Zara, before she had retired to bed, had turned to announce prophetically, “She’ll be back. You know that.”

“Nothing surer,” had been Corin’s response.

Corin’s greatest concern was to spare Miranda what was to come! Protective strategies had already begun to dominate his mind. Miranda, like his sister, was going into self-protective mode. He empathised with Miranda’s powerful experience of the night. Her encounter with her long-lost mother. She had been totally unprepared for such deep emotional upheaval. All things considered, she was handling it remarkably well. It only added to his admiration for her. Miranda had real character.

“Is there any way she could mount some attack on me?” she asked now, holding on to the back of an armchair as if for support. “Undermine me? Pre-warned is pre-armed. Will she get rid of me out of your lives?”

“Over my dead body,” Corin countered grimly. “Why are you over there, when I’m
here
?” he questioned tautly. He wanted her in his arms, but her mood was very sombre, warding him off.

Leila was no nice everyday mum. If Leila got so much as a hint he had a romantic interest in Miranda she would immediately turn to formulating ways to separate them. After all, she was mistress of that infamous art form. Though he did everything in his power to block it from his mind, he’d had plenty of experience of Leila’s seeing off anyone she saw as competition. Sick as it was, Leila still held hopes she could lure him into her bed. She’d been trying it on for years. Even now she wasn’t about to give up. She had no sense of honour. Worse, such was her colossal arrogance she thought she had only to catch him off guard. Arrogance was Leila’s defining characteristic.

“What sort of woman
is
my mother that she ties everyone in knots?” Miranda begged of him.

He looked back, brows knotted. “The straight answer? She’s a born manipulator. She breaks up families. She’s cunning. She’s cruel. She’ll stop at nothing to get her way. Dad is blind and deaf to all this. He’s mad about her.”

“That could stop if he ever knew the truth.” Miranda saw the strain in Corin.

“I doubt it,” he answered crisply. “She would come up with something. Some pathetic story. She wanted to tell him so often, but she loved him so much she couldn’t bear to lose his trust. She was so young, et cetera, et cetera… Sixteen. It was rape, of course. Or near enough. Overpowered by a man she knew and trusted. Her parents agreed to take her baby and rear it. She sent them all the money she could raise for years. Oh, she’s
good
, Miranda. Don’t underestimate her. Already she’ll be working on her case.”