Close Relations

Jarrod took the new exit off the main Brisbane to Ipswich highway and approached the roundabout. There weren't many people about but he remembered that at certain times of the day this area could become chock-a-block with local traffic.

The small shopping centre had mushroomed in the four years he'd been away and he grimaced. It was hardly the sleepy little town it had been when his father had first brought him here when he had been a troubled thirteen-year-old.

He accelerated out of the turn and took the right fork past the Honour Stone. On his right was the small group of businesses that used to constitute the sum total of the village's commercial centre. Groceries. Fruit shop. Drapery. Bank.

A car shot out of the parking area in front of the shops and sped up the hill. That much hadn't changed. Disaster Alley they'd half-jokingly called it. One car tried to leave and other shoppers vied aggressively for the vacant parking space.

He followed the winding road lined with houses that ranged from the wooden Queenslanders with their wide verandas to the aesthetic angles of architectural designs in brick and tile. Rolling paddocks had now well and truly become sprawling suburbia.

At least the fifty acres around his father's home would still be intact. His father would never sell his land. Apart from the one block he'd sold to his best friend, Geoff Grayson. And his wife. Why wouldn't his father want Geoff Grayson's wife nearby? he asked himself bitterly.

Pushing a surge of painful memories out of his mind, he increased the speed of the car, for the first time wanting to see the large old house that had been home to him for his adolescence. And that need overcame his reluctance to revisit his father and stepmother - the family he had turned his back on four years ago.

His father. He'd never managed to call Peter Maclean that. And yet Peter Maclean was his biological father. A mere accident of conception, one of nature's jokes, he reflected wryly, without bitterness.

He'd learned the truth about his parentage just before his mother died of cancer. She'd told him of the brief affair she'd had with the handsome Queenslander. Peter Maclean had been visiting Western Australia as a consulting engineer and his mother had been the temporary secretary assigned to him.

Three weeks later Peter Maclean had left for home, unaware that the young woman he'd spent most of his time with in Perth was pregnant. His mother had had no inclination to contact his father and had decided to raise her son alone.

And she'd done her best to do so. When he'd questioned his mother about his absent father she had told him his father was dead, killed in a construction-site accident before he was born.

The construction-site accident had been partially true, he'd learned later. The accident had happened after he was born but his father had not been killed: Peter Maclean had returned to the west some years later only to be very badly injured when a mobile crane collapsed on a building he was working on.

At first he'd been blazingly angry when his mother had told him the truth - that his father was alive. He'd been angry with everyone, especially with his mother for lying to him and for getting ill. And he'd been angry with the man he'd seen as shirking his responsibilities.

His anger had driven him to reckless behaviour. He'd played truant, become wild and uncontrollable, and he'd had a run-in with the local police. It had been the local police sergeant who had contacted his father when his mother had died.

In retrospect he had to admire Peter Maclean. It must have come as something of a shock to discover he'd got a teenage son, let alone to have the boy foisted on him out of the blue. But Peter had flown immediately to Perth and had spent a couple of weeks getting to know his son before bringing him home.

Home. He sighed. Strangely, all those years ago it had felt like coming home.

* * *

Home. Where the heart is. Where his heart was broken. His lips twisted self-derisively. He was being rather fanciful, wasn't he? Yet deep inside him he knew he'd left his heart here. He also told himself that if it hadn't been for his father's declining health he wouldn't be returning. But his father was gravely ill and he owed him this visit, this accepting of the olive branch extended to the prodigal son.

Home. Yes, for all that it was worth, he was coming home.

Home. Georgia Grayson sighed as her workmate turned her car and pulled up on the gravel verge in front of the weathered old house. Home at last.

She specially appreciated the lift tonight because she felt so exhausted, as though the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. Usually when she was at work in the bookshop Georgia could put any troubles on hold, but not at the moment. She had too much on her mind - that was the problem. Everything seemed to have happened at once.

Until recently her life had been drifting along just the way she liked it to be - well ordered, no highs, no lows. Now all that had changed.

That change had begun two weeks ago, when her father had gone up the coast, taking on a house-renovation job that would keep him away for anything up to a couple of months. Then her parked car had been extensively damaged by a runaway truck, leaving her without transport.

On top of that her young sister had announced she was leaving home to share a flat with her boyfriend. Morgan was only seventeen and unemployed and Georgia had tried valiantly to dissuade her, to convince her she was making a mistake.

But last week the thing she had feared most had occurred. Uncle Peter Maclean had had another massive heart attack and his condition was grave. It was only the old man's iron will that had kept him alive this long. Now even that strong will was fading.

So his only son had come home. After four long years. And she knew he'd been back for nearly a week.

Pain twisted inside Georgia, clutching at her heart. Miraculously she'd managed to be out on the two occasions he had called at their house but she knew she wouldn't be able to avoid him for much longer. He was, after all, their cousin. Well, their step-cousin.

"Thanks for dropping me home, Jodie," she said as she opened the door of her workmate's car. "Saves me the twenty-minute train trip and then a taxi ride to the house."

"No worries." Jodie grinned in the dim interior light. "It was rotten luck about your car."

"Could have been worse, I guess. I could have been in it at the time." Georgia smiled wryly. "But the insurance company assures me it will all be settled in a couple of weeks." She rolled her eyes. "Famous last words. If you can believe them. I didn't realise how much I depended on the car. Living out here off the bus route has decided disadvantages, that's for sure."

"Well, I don't mind giving you a lift when we're on the same shift." Jodie glanced over at the lighted house. "Looks like your brother's home," she said casually, and Georgia suppressed a smile.

Jodie was a little smitten by Georgia's brother and had been very disappointed to discover that Lochlan was already engaged.

"Did he tell you we went along to see his band play the other night?"

"Yes. He said he'd seen you." Georgia gathered up her bag.

"The band's really hot. I think they're going places. Lockie said they'd been asked to return to the venue for another stint in a month or so."

"Yes. He was pleased." Georgia climbed out of the car. "See you tomorrow. And thanks again, Jodie." She closed the door and Jodie drove away.

With a sigh Georgia pushed open the gate. What females saw in her brother she didn't know. It was true that Lockie was quite nice-looking, and he was a fine musician, but - well, they didn't have to live with him.

The lights in the house were blazing so her brother must be home. She noticed his van wasn't standing in its usual spot in the driveway so he'd probably parked it around the back of the house. Unless he'd gone off and forgotten to lock up again.

Slowly Georgia climbed the steps, the old weathered treads rattling a little loosely on their wooden stringers. The house, a high-set old colonial building with a wide veranda on the front and down one side, badly needed attention, but their father always seemed to be busy working on other people's houses.

She pushed open the lattice door at the top of the stairs and crossed the veranda to step into the hall that ran the length of the house.

"That you, Georgie?" Her brother put his head around the living-room doorway. "I thought you were going to be late tonight."

Georgia joined him, tossing her bag onto an old but comfortable lounge chair, unbuttoning the short-sleeved navy jacket that matched the skirt she wore. "Don't call me Georgie and I am late. It's nine-thirty. And I would have been later if Jodie hadn't been kind enough to give me a lift home. Where's Mandy?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Close Relations by Lynsey Stevens Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.