Margaret Way - Home To Eden

“What stopped you, Drake?” Nicole picked up a pebble and sent it skimming across the water. The movement startled a flock of white corellas that exploded into the air in protest.

“I have to let you decide what you want.” He glanced down at her. She wasn’t wearing makeup—she didn’t need any with her skin—not even lipstick, which he found strangely erotic. “Which isn’t to say I’m going to wait a long time.”

“For me to decide to sleep with you?” Her head tilted, her eyes more green than blue in the shade of the wide-brimmed Akubra.

“You will, whenever, wherever. We both know it.”

She looked back at the peaceful, unspoiled scene. “It could be a mistake. Neither of us is exactly reconciled to the past.”

“I’m trying, Nic. You find it very hard to trust.”

“I’m concentrating on getting my life right.”

“You think increasing intimacy with me will interfere with that?” His tone was deeply serious.

She nodded. “I can’t deal with you like I’ve dealt with other men in my life.”

Dear Reader,

Home to Eden is the final book in the KOOMERA CROSSING series. I hope both my loyal, much-valued readership and welcome newcomers will have enjoyed the previous four in the series. I burned the midnight oil on one of them. I’ll leave you to guess which!

Throughout the series, indeed my long career, you will have noticed I enjoy writing about families—in particular, dysfunctional families. These problematic families crisscross society, from the most privileged to the severely disadvantaged.

Small wonder I’m drawn to exploring family life. There are so many mysteries connected to families: past secrets, double lives, things that are never spoken about but forever hover in the consciousness. Most bondings bring comfort, friendship and support. Some emotional attachments, however, can go beyond the norm. I’ve drawn on this for Home to Eden, coming at it from the angle of obsessive attachments. One can readily see such attachments could be a by-product of certain conditions such as loneliness and isolation. Families who live in remote areas are more dependent on each other for survival and emotional support. Outback stations certainly qualify as remote. The wonderfully inspiring, frightening and funny, tragic and violent stories of Outback life are legion. There are heroes and heroines and, inevitably, as anywhere else, villains.

The heart is a very strong yet very vulnerable organ. Love and hate coexist there. Human beings can love fiercely, yet still be capable of hurting the object of that love. Jealousy has to be regarded as a great catalyst for disaster. Some jealousies pave the way to tragedy and death. Home to Eden is such a story. My aim, as always, is to give my readership good stories they can enjoy. I hope I’ve succeeded with KOOMERA CROSSING.

Best wishes,

Margaret Way

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PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Nicole Cavanagh in her lacy white nightdress stands at the first landing of Eden’s grand divided staircase nursing a terrible apprehension. Her small fists are clenched tight. She can’t seem to get enough air. She is trying to guess the reason for all the commotion downstairs, even as the thought keeps rising that it is all about her mother, Corrine. The thought is terrifying.

It is barely dawn, the light seeping in through the great stained-glass window directly behind her in waves of jeweled splendor: ruby, emerald, sapphire, topaz, amethyst. Nicole pays no attention even though the effect is entrancing.

Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. There is always turbulence when her father, Heath, is at Eden. Suddenly overcome by a gnawing premonition, she starts to tremble, reaches out to grasp the smooth mahogany banister as though she’s gone blind and is petrified of falling. Her ears strain to pick up exactly what the voices are saying. Her father’s voice blustery like wind and thunder overrides all others. He is such a violent man. She can easily pick out Aunt Sigrid’s tones, clipped but slightly hoarse; Aunt Sigrid once had a tracheotomy. Her aunt is a severe woman, her manner imperious, a consequence perhaps of being born a Miss Cavanagh of Eden Station. She is quite without her younger sister’s beauty and charm—“Left you in the dust, didn’t she, Siggy,” was her father’s cruel comment. But her aunt has always been good to Nicole in her fashion. As had Louise, her lovely grandmother, a kind and devoted woman who now sounds shaky and deeply worried. Grandfather Giles’s cultured tones reassure her, calm and reasonable as ever.

Nevertheless, Nicole can measure what it all means. Child of a highly dysfunctional family, she has inbuilt antennae that track trouble. A frantic family row is in progress—she picked up on that almost from the moment she swung her legs out of bed. Aunt Sigrid always says she is way too knowing. From the sound of his voice, her father has worked himself into a frenzied rage. She has learned over the years from her practice of eavesdropping—the only way she can ever find out anything—that her often absent father is, as Aunt Sigrid said, “a disgrace to our proud name, an adventurer, a compulsive gambler, money spills through his fingers like water, he brought nothing to the marriage. Even the big diamond engagement ring he presented to Corrinne is a fake.”

Yet he is very handsome in a dissolute kind of way. Nicole has looked that word up in the dictionary. Dissolute. It meant all those things. Perhaps that was what brought her mother to the marriage, his sheer animal sex appeal. Aunt Sigrid never failed to point that out. Aunt Sigrid’s own husband, Alan, “largely maintained by Father,” is nearly devoid of that quality and has no hope of ever gaining it.

She can’t hear her cousin Joel’s voice. Almost four years her senior, already six feet tall, Joel is probably fast asleep. Joel’s ability to tune out family arguments is impressive. He professes to despise his father for being such a wimp, hates his mother’s constant nagging—who doesn’t?—calling his grandfather a “throwback to the feudal age” with his insistence on the importance of family, the proper respect, good manners, the sense of responsibility that should go hand in hand with privilege. Joel is something of a misfit.

“I love only you, Nikki. You’re beautiful and good. You’re the closest person in the world to me.”

She isn’t good at all. Even at twelve she is, as her aunt puts it, “hell-bent on establishing her place in the world.” That means eventually inheriting Eden. Her grandfather has promised it to her. She loves her historic home with a passion. She has that in common with her grandfather and her aunt Sigrid, but Aunt Sigrid will never inherit. Nor will Joel. That, too, her grandfather has confided. Eden is hers. She is the chosen one with special qualities which her grandfather claims he sees in her. Her grandfather’s love and faith sustains her. He plays the dominant male role in her life. He is Sir Giles Cavanagh of Eden Station.