Australian Outback Kings / The Cattle King's Mistress / The Playboy King's Wife / The Pleasure King's Bride (20 page)

“I've never worn my hair like this.”

Sam tentatively touched the copper curls that had been raked back and pinned into a crown around the top of her head. Usually they dangled in a mop around her face, hiding her ears and her feelings, when she needed to hide them. This style left her without any protection.

And she wasn't at all sure of the wisdom of wearing the artificial lilac rose, pushed into one side of the high nest of curls which Sam suspected would spring out and escape the pins sooner or later. However, this look was what Miranda wanted and she was the bride, so Sam had kept her mouth firmly shut while the hairdresser had done what Miranda had directed.

“Can't you see how elegant it is?” Elizabeth appealed. “Just for once your face isn't dwarfed by a riot of curls around it, and having your hair up bares the line of your neck and shoulders, showing off your milky skin.”

It made Sam feel
very
bare, especially with the strapless dress, and she simply wasn't used to
elegant
, which made her very nervous about having to carry it off. What if the rose fell out and her curls tumbled down? She could just see Tommy laughing at her as the elegant sham came apart.

“It's just not me,” she repeated with an apprehensive sigh, thinking she was bound to forget the eye make-up and smudge it. Probably end up looking like a clown. Especially if she wept at the wedding ceremony and the mascara ran.

“It
is
you.” Elizabeth grasped her arms and looked, for a moment, as though she wanted to shake her, but she took a deep breath and contented herself by forcing Sam to hold still and keep looking in the mirror. “It's the
you
that might have been if you hadn't been brought up on an Outback cattle station, always competing with the men, trying to prove you were as good, if not better, at everything they did, from breaking in horses to mustering by helicopter.”

A flush of denial scorched Sam's cheeks. “I wasn't trying to be a man, Elizabeth. I just wanted respect from them.”

“Well, maybe you were so busy winning respect, you forgot men want that, too.” She sighed and her mouth curled into an ironic smile. “You were always hell-bent on proving you could beat them at their own game, even to breaking in that maverick stallion Tommy wanted to break in for himself.”

Sam frowned at the criticism which had never been levelled at her before. Her recollection of that same incident was different. She'd been eighteen at the time and desperate to win Tommy's admiration and turn their relationship into something warmer, more personal.

“He was going the wrong way about it,” she said in mitigation of her actions, too sensitive about her unrequited feelings to lay out her motives. “That horse didn't want to be dominated.”

“So you showed him,” came the pointed reply.

Her flush deepened painfully as she remembered Tommy's furious reaction to her triumphant pleasure in presenting the gentled horse. “I wasn't trying to beat him. I meant it as a gift,” she muttered defensively. “I thought he'd be pleased.”

Elizabeth shook her head over the lack of understanding, and with sympathy in her eyes, explained, “Tommy has been competing against Nathan all his life. It's why he broke away from Nathan's authority over the cattle station and built up his air charter business. To become his own man. Which he demanded Nathan acknowledge and respect when he asked for a portion of King's Eden to be turned into a wilderness resort for tourists.”

She paused, then shot home the truth as she saw it. “Tommy doesn't want a woman competing with him, Sam. He wants a woman who will partner him. A woman…”

Sam bit her lip and swallowed the fiery retort that had leapt to her tongue, blitzing Elizabeth's view of what her second son wanted.…
Tommy's taste in women ran to nothing more than male ego-pumpers, not possible partners, and if he'd wanted a real partner in all his enterprises, a helpmate, a soul mate, there was none more capable and willing than she was and he was a fool for not seeing it
. The blistering thoughts left an awkward silence after Elizabeth had stopped saying whatever she had said. Sam didn't know if some comment was expected of her. She had none to make anyway. None Elizabeth would want to hear.

With a sigh, Elizabeth released her hold and fossicked in the silver bag hanging from her wrist. “I've brought you Nathan's gift for being Miranda's bridesmaid.” She lifted out a purple velvet box and set it on the dressing-table.

Sam wrenched her mind out of its dark brooding and stared down at the box. No one had ever given her jewellery. A new horse, a new saddle, a motorbike, helicopter-flying lessons…all the birthday presents she'd ever requested had been aimed at what she wanted to do with her life, not at embellishing her femininity.

“I wasn't expecting anything,” she half protested.

“It's traditional for the groom to thank the bridesmaid this way,” Elizabeth explained.

“Well, never having been a bridesmaid…” She opened the box somewhat nervously, hoping Nathan hadn't spent a lot of money on her, and gasped at the beautiful pearl pendant on a fine gold chain, accompanied by matching pearl earrings. “I can't accept this!”

“Nonsense! It's the perfect complement for your dress.” Elizabeth removed the delicate necklace and hung it around Sam's throat, proceeding to fasten it there.

“My ears aren't pierced.” She'd tried it once in an attempt to compete with the procession of Barbie doll women Tommy favoured, but it had been a miserable failure, the holes getting badly infected, despite her taking every care.

“They're clip-ons,” Elizabeth informed her. “Made especially for you. Put them on, Sam. I want to see the complete effect.”

Realising argument would be futile since Elizabeth had probably chosen the set herself, Sam fumbled them onto her almost nonexistent earlobes and tried to shut her mind to what such lustrous pearls would cost a normal buyer. To the King family it wouldn't be so much, with their ownership of the pearl farm in Broome, not to mention mining interests in gold and diamonds, as well as their legendary stake in the cattle industry and Tommy's enterprises.

Their wealth had never bothered her, never really touched her…until now. She'd always earned her keep at King's Eden, working on the cattle station and in more recent years, at Tommy's resort. Still, if this was Nathan's idea of a gift for her, a memento of his wedding and the part she played in it, there really was no other option but to accept it.

“Perfect!” Elizabeth declared, her dark eyes twinkling intense satisfaction as Sam lowered her hands, revealing this fabulous last polish to her appearance. “You have such dainty ears. You should show them off more.”

“Pixie ears,” Sam replied with a grimace, remembering the teasing she'd suffered at school. “These earrings will probably kill me by the end of the day.”

“Ah, but they set off your face and neck beautifully. Leave them on. You look absolutely perfect now. Luminous and alluring.”

She would never have attached such words to herself, yet the pearls did make a difference, adding a glow that seemed to make the lilac satin and even her copper hair more lustrous.

“The beautician should be finished with Miranda in another ten minutes,” Elizabeth said, checking her watch. “Better go along to her room then. She'll need help with her dress and veil. I'm just going to check on Nathan and Tommy. Make sure they're on schedule.”

She was at the door before Sam found wits enough to say, “Thank you for…for everything, Elizabeth.”

Her eyes locked onto Sam's once more. “Promise me…” She hesitated, grimaced. “I guess it's too much to ask.”

“Please…ask.”

A heavy sigh. Her eyes softened, pleading for understanding. “Don't take this unkindly. I mean it for the best, believe me. I don't think anyone enjoys the bickering that goes on between you and Tommy. He baits, you bite. You bait, he bites. Do you think you could let all that ride today? Nathan's wedding day? I know it's a habit you've got into but it's childish and I wish…”

She shook her head, pained at having to make the apologetic request. Then with an earnest look and an appealing smile, she added, “The elegant woman I see before me doesn't have to compete with anyone. Carry that thought with you, Sam. Win respect…for being a woman.”

Childish…The accusation burned through Sam for several minutes after Elizabeth had left. The worst of it was having to acknowledge the tit-for-tat game had started in their teens, probably a childish bid on her part to gain and hold Tommy's attention. But it had been fun in those days. It hadn't developed bite until after the horse-breaking incident, his furious resentment of her action stirring resentment in her. And sickening disappointment
.

Since then…ten years of bickering, with the pattern of behaviour between them so deeply set, Sam didn't know if she could stop it. In some perverse way, it had felt like a bond of intimacy between them, a running commentary on each other's lives that none of his simpering women could share because it went so far back and held so much familiarity
…

But she didn't want
to be his kid sister.

With despairing anguish clutching her heart, Sam turned to look again at the woman in the mirror. Not one trace of a childish spitfire in that woman. Elegant, luminous, alluring…could she be
her
today? Would Tommy treat her differently, see in her a woman he wanted in his bed, making love instead of making war?

Sam took a deep breath and made a fierce resolution.

Today, no matter how hard it might be to keep it up, she would be that woman, inside and out. She would hold that image in her mind and live up to it. Not because Elizabeth had asked her to. Not because it was Nathan's wedding. Because suddenly, she saw it as her only hope to change the ground between her and Tommy, and if it didn't work…perhaps nothing ever would.

CHAPTER TWO

H
AD SHE BEEN
too hard?

Elizabeth fretted over the question as she headed towards Nathan's quarters. She had never considered Sam fragile, more a fighter, a survivor against any odds, always bouncing back with a stubborn determination to win out in the end. But she was fighting the wrong fight with Tommy. And sometimes, Elizabeth firmly told herself, one had to be cruel to be kind.

All the same, it troubled her that Sam had looked so…
vulnerable
. Somehow it evoked the sense of its being make or break time for these two—the son who could always make her laugh and lift her spirits, and the child-girl-woman who'd become a thorn in his side instead of the smile in his heart. What should have turned out right for both of them had taken a wrong twist and Elizabeth wasn't sure if her interference could correct it.

After years of observing them at loggerheads, she had come to the conclusion that pride wouldn't allow them to change their attitudes. Maybe it was too late and the mutual sniping had killed what might have been. Laid it to waste. She'd tried to tell them, lecturing them on lost opportunities, time going past that could never be regained, but to no avail. If she couldn't jolt them into a new awareness of each other at this wedding…well, at least she would have tried.

Ultimately, they were responsible for their own happiness. The problem was—Elizabeth no longer trusted them to make it happen themselves. Not that she could make it happen, either. All she could do was push.

Nathan wasn't in his room.

Tommy's was vacant, as well.

She found all three of her sons sitting at the bar in the billiard room, Jared, her youngest, pouring champagne into glasses. In their formal black tie wedding attire, each one of them was strikingly handsome, though quite individual in their looks; Nathan so big and tall and strong and impressively male, with the bluest of blue eyes and straight black hair, almost the image of his father; Tommy, with his endearing, untameable tight black curls, and wickedly charming brown eyes, always the flash of a mischievous devil about him; and Jared, having a less obvious strength, a quieter charm, his eyes darkly serious and always receptive, just a wave in his black hair, subtly providing a balance between the other two.

For several moments Elizabeth stood still, enjoying her pride in them. Lachlan would be proud of them, too, she thought, wishing her husband was still alive and at her side today, celebrating the wedding of his firstborn. His boys were all men now, men in their own right and pursuing their chosen paths, and it did Elizabeth's heart good to see them so happily at ease with each other, enjoying a togetherness they rarely had time to share.

“I thought you would have all had more than enough to drink at last night's buck's party,” she remarked, finally drawing their attention.

“Just a last toast to the end of my bachelorhood,” Nathan excused with a grin.

“Settling his nerves,” Jared teased.

“I, for one, definitely need fortification,” Tommy declared. “Any man who partners Sam has to be fighting fit, and since I've been elected…”

“You could give it a break, Tommy,” Nathan suggested. “Treat Sam like a lady instead of a sparring partner. Then she'd have nothing to hit off.”

Elizabeth flashed her eldest son a grateful look, pleased to have a ready ally.

“Sam, a lady?” Tommy's mouth curled into a mocking smile. “First, she wouldn't know how to respond. Second, she'd accuse me of sending her up. Or she'd suspect me of some nefarious motive and see everything I did and said as a trap which I'd somehow spring on her when she'd most hate it.”

He swept out an arm, gesturing to Elizabeth, his eyes beaming warm admiration. “Now, there you see a real lady. And may I say you look wonderful, Mum. Doing Nathan proud today.”

“Thank you, Tommy. And I happen to think Samantha will do you proud…if you let her.”