Emma Darcy - The Shining Of Love

Here their art and folklore were practised and preserved for future generations. Community councils were held to settle disputes and set goals that concentrated on self-sufficiency rather than a reliance on government funds. In former years there had been much misunderstanding about the social system of the indigenous Australians but it was given more respect now, thanks to people like Tom, who formed a bridge between the old world and the new.

Since she had married Brendan, Tom had been teasing Suzanne about starting a family of her own, but it wasn’t something she had wanted to rush into. She enjoyed her work and the sense of sharing it gave her with Brendan. Now, the decision felt very right to her. She was twenty-six years old and ready to be a mother.

When the clinic was over, she couldn’t resist dropping by Tom’s office to tell him her plans for the future. He could stop teasing her from now on, and start looking forward to being an uncle. She was grinning over the pleasure that would give him as she entered his secretary’s office. Before she could inquire if Tom was free, Suzanne heard the raised voice of Leith Carew, its tone terse and angry.

“What’s this about?” she asked the secretary.

A shrug and a helpless gesture pleaded ignorance.

Suzanne looked at the door into Tom’s office. Every self-protective instinct urged her to leave right now, avoid any further involvement with Leith Carew. But anger meant he wasn’t getting his own way, and he probably didn’t realise that his way was not Tom’s way, and never would be. If he was looking for trackers to continue the search for his niece...

Suzanne shuddered. Despite the police interpretation of the clothing found near the dingo’s lair, she knew in her heart that if this was her family, she wouldn’t give up, either, no matter what the odds against finding the child alive. She could well imagine the endless torture of wondering if enough had been done to find her. Not to have a decisive resolution would be very hard to live with.

Compassion fought with common sense and won. Or perhaps something else drew her to the door, something Suzanne did not want to recognise or acknowledge. She was aware of her pulse quickening as she turned the knob and pushed. Fear, she told herself, fear of how her life might be irrevocably linked to Leith Carew’s.

As she stepped into the room Leith Carew’s hand slammed down on Tom’s desk. “What more do you want?” he thundered in frustration.

Tom’s face wore the imperturbable look that was so deeply etched in his heritage, and Suzanne instantly knew that Leith Carew had inadvertently attacked values and beliefs that were sacred to her adopted brother, sacred to the ancient Pitjantjatjara tribe to which he belonged. Leith Carew could rage at him all day and Tom would maintain his ageless dignity, as little bothered by the other man’s words as he would be by flies buzzing around his head.

He saw her in the doorway and rose from his chair to greet her. “Suzanne...”

Leith Carew spun around, the energy he was expending suddenly focussed on her, enveloping her with electric force. The initial incredulity on his face was swiftly replaced by a look of satisfaction as though her appearance in his life answered some question that had disturbed him.

I shouldn’t have come in here. The thought flashed through Suzanne’s mind. A ripple of panic coursed through her body as her gaze was caught and held by the man she didn’t want to know. The feeling was stronger this time, the feeling that they had to mean something to each other. It must have to do with the child, Suzanne reasoned frantically. She couldn’t let it be anything else.

She tore her gaze from his and quickly addressed her brother. “Tom, please do whatever is necessary to continue the search for the little girl.”

He gave Leith Carew a look that clearly said the man had no understanding of what was involved.

“Do it your way,” Suzanne urged. “Please, for me, for all of us. She’s a lost child, Tom.”

He knew what she meant. Each and every one of their brothers and sisters in the James family had been a lost child in one sense or another before being adopted. Tom was the only exception, and Suzanne was not sure the appeal would strike home.

No-one knew Tom’s exact age. He had possibly been as young as nine or as old as twelve when he had been spotted alone in the desert by a scouting aeroplane for the Bureau of Mineral Resources. He had not been lost. He had been at home in territory that was familiar to him. But government welfare officers had subsequently found him and taken him to the Warburton Mission, believing it was for his own good.

There he had observed and despised how the ways of his people were corrupted by government hand-outs. When Suzanne’s adopted parents offered him a home with them, Tom took the opportunity to get out of the mission, determined to learn the white man’s ways, then use them for the benefit of his people.

He was doing a marvellous job of it, too, Suzanne thought proudly, but whether his commitment to his ancient culture would be swayed by the underlying ethos of the James family, a caring response to those in need, despite colour, race or creed, she truly did not know.

Leith Carew would never emit that kind of need to a fellow man. He was too arrogant, too inured in the power of his family’s wealth. But Suzanne had not appealed to Tom for the sake of this man. It was for the child, the helpless, innocent child who was in the desert through no fault of her own.

Tom slowly nodded acceptance. “For you I will do it. What can be done will be done, Suzanne,” he promised her.

She gave him a brilliant smile of relief, then without so much as glancing at Leith Carew, she stepped back and drew the door shut after her. She pushed her shaky legs into a brisk walk. The need to get away as fast as she could was not logical, if her only link with Leith Carew was to be the recovery of his niece, but Suzanne did not stop to analyse the feelings he stirred in her.

She heard footsteps running down the corridor behind her and didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Her heart pounded in panicky agitation. She hurried through the exit doors, fiercely willing Leith Carew to have second thoughts and go back to Tom. She had done all she could for him.

She was halfway to where her car was parked when he called to her. “Mrs. Forbes, please...would you wait a minute for me?”

It would be sixty seconds too long, Suzanne advised herself, yet her feet slowed as uncertainty clouded her mind. She did not want Leith Carew pursuing her to the medical centre. Better to deal with him here and now. Get it over with.

She stopped.

He caught up with her.

“I wish to ask you...thank you for what you just did.”

Suzanne steeled herself to meet his eyes and challenge any claim he might make on her. “Mr. Carew. I didn’t do it for you. It was for the child. I would have done it for anyone in such circumstances as these.”

“Why did you come? How did you know? Rarely am I surprised, but when you came through that door, you just seemed to appear out of nowhere like an angel sent to ease despair.”

“I’m not an angel, Mr. Carew, and I want to go now.”

“You can’t!” His green eyes warred with the guarded reserve in hers. “There’s something special happening between us. I sense it. I know it.”

“No. There’s nothing. Nothing at all,” Suzanne denied with vehemence, inadvertently revealing the inner turmoil he stirred.

“I’ve never been so drawn to any woman in my life before.”

She flushed, guiltily aware of the attraction he exerted over her. “You mustn’t say things like that. It’s wrong.”

She started to turn away. He grasped her arm to halt her. His fingers seemed to burn into her skin, making the heat of the day negligible in comparison.