The High Price of Secrets

* * *

As Tamsyn steered down the driveway, disappointment crashed through her with the force of a wrecking ball. The tears she’d battled to hold back while talking to the stranger now fell rapidly down her cheeks. She sniffed unevenly, trying to hold in the emotion that had been bubbling so close to the surface ever since she’d left Adelaide last night.

Why on earth had she thought it would be simple? She should have known better. Should have listened to Ethan, even, and tackled this another time—another day when she was in a stronger frame of mind. Well, she’d done it now, she’d gone to the address her late father’s solicitor had used to send her mother all those payments through the years and it had been the wrong one.

Disappointment had a nasty bitter taste, she’d discovered—not just once, but twice now in the past twenty-four hours. It just went to prove, that for her, acting out of character was the wrong thing to do. She wasn’t made to be impulsive. All her life she had weighed things up long and carefully before doing anything. Now she fully understood why she’d always been that way. It was safer. You didn’t get hurt. Sure, you didn’t have the thrill of taking a risk either, but was the pain you suffered when things went wrong worth it? Not in her book.

Tamsyn thought about the man who’d opened his door to her at the top of the hill. Over six feet, she’d been forced to look up at him. He’d had presence—being the kind of guy who turned heads just by entering a room. A broad forehead and straight brows had shadowed clear gray eyes the color of the schist rock used on the side of the house that was very definitely his castle. A light stubble had stippled his strong square jaw, but his smile, while polite, had lacked warmth.

There’d been something in his gaze when he’d looked at her. As if…no, she was just being fanciful. He couldn’t have known her because she knew full well she’d never met him before in her life. She would most definitely have remembered.

The sun was sinking in the sky and weariness pulled at every muscle in her body as all her activity, not to mention crossing time zones, over the past day took its toll. She needed to find somewhere to stay before she did something stupid like drive off the road and into a ditch.

Tamsyn pulled the car to the side of the road and consulted the GPS for accommodation options nearby. Thankfully there was a boutique hotel that provided meals on request about a fifteen-minute drive away. She keyed the phone number into her mobile phone and was relieved to find that while the room rate was on a par with the accommodation at The Masters, yes, they had a room available for the next few nights. Booking made, Tamsyn pressed the appropriate section of the GPS screen and followed the computerized instructions, eventually pulling up outside a quaint-looking early-1900s single-story building.

With the golden rays of the early-evening sun caressing its creamy paintwork, it looked warm and inviting. Just what she needed.

* * *

Finn paced his office, unable to settle back down to the plans that were sprawled across his wide desk. Plans that were going to go to hell in a handbasket if he couldn’t buy the easement necessary to gain access to the tract of land he wanted to use for this special project. He shoved a hand through his short hair, mussing it even more than usual.

The chirp of his phone was a happy distraction.

“Gallagher.”

“Finn, is there a problem?”

“Lorenzo, I’m glad you called.” Finn settled in his chair and swiveled it around to face the window, allowing the vista spread before him to fill his mind and relax his thoughts into a semblance of order. Thoughts that had been distracted all too thoroughly by his earlier visitor.

“What is it, my boy?”

Despite Lorenzo’s years in Australia, followed by the past couple of decades in New Zealand, his voice still held the lilt of his native Italian tongue.

“First, how is Ellen?”

The older man sighed. “Not good, she is having a bad day today.”

After Ellen began to show signs of kidney and liver failure, she and Lorenzo had relocated to Wellington, where she could receive the specialized care her advancing dementia required.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He could almost hear Lorenzo shrug in acceptance. “It is what it is. I have asked Alexis to make plans to return from Italy.”

“Ellen’s that bad?”

Alexis was Lorenzo and Ellen’s only child and had been working overseas for the past year. Currently, she was visiting with Lorenzo’s family still living in Tuscany.

“Si, she has no fight left in her anymore. If she recognizes me at all it is a good day, but they are few.”