Red-Hot And Reckless

About the Author Title Page 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 Copyright

About the Author

MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Red-Hot And Reckless

Miranda Lee

CHAPTER ONE

AMBER was preoccupied as she inserted the key in the front door. She was thinking of business, as was often the case these days. Amazing, really, how much she was enjoying running the family company. More amazing was the fact that she was pretty good at it.

Okay, so she hadn’t quite filled her father’s shoes as yet, but their accountant had commented only today that Hollingsworths was looking healthier than ever.

When Amber turned the key and pushed open the front door, she didn’t notice her stepmother standing there in the foyer, waiting for her.

‘Lord, Beverly!’ Amber exclaimed, once she did. ‘You gave me a fright. I didn’t see you there.’

‘Your father wants to see you,’ her stepmother announced, her tone terse. ‘Straight away.’

‘What about?’ Amber asked.

‘I have no idea.’ Beverly stared at her with cold eyes, blinked once, very slowly, then turned, just as slowly, and walked off.

Amber barely resisted pulling a face. Instead, she smothered a sigh and strode across the spacious foyer and down the wide hallway which bisected the right wing of the house, stopping at the first door on the right.

The room inside had once been her father’s study, an impressive and very masculine room which had suited its owner and occupier. Twelve months ago, after her father’s stroke, it had been converted into a bedroom with a private bathroom. The room opposite the study, once a billiard room, had also been converted—into quarters for her father’s live-in male nurse-cum-companion-cum-physio.

Amber’s knock was hesitant. Not so the ‘come in’ which roared through the door. Surprisingly, her father’s stroke hadn’t affected his speech, or his deep, loud voice. Just occasionally Amber wasn’t sure if she thought this fortunate or not.

Gathering herself, she opened the door and walked in.

‘Hi, there, Dad,’ she said breezily. ‘You wanted to see me?’

Dear heaven, would she never get used to seeing his once strong, tanned face looking so gaunt and pale? Or the wheelchair at the foot of the bed? Or that thin, withered leg which Bill was at that moment massaging quite vigorously?

‘Hi, there, Bill.’ She directed her words towards her father’s minder. Bill was a big, bald, plain man in his late thirties. He had a placid nature, which was just as well. ‘How’s the patient?’ Amber asked him. ‘He’s sounding a bit grumpy.’

‘The patient’s spitting chips, girlie,’ her father jumped in, while Bill merely shrugged and continued the massage. ‘So don’t try talking around me. It won’t work. Leave it, Bill,’ he said irritably, and yanked his near-dead limb away from Bill’s hold. It dropped onto the bed with a hollow-sounding thud. ‘Go and get yourself a drink or something. I have serious business to discuss with Sunrise Point’s Businesswoman-of-the-Year, here.’

Bill shrugged again and left the room. He was used to his patient’s irascibility. Edward Hollingsworth was not the sort of man to take meekly to inactivity. He was a mover and a shaker. A doer, even at sixty-two years old. Being partially paralysed and lying round in bed most of his day did little for his temper.

‘I take it you haven’t seen this week’s local paper?’ Edward Hollingsworth snarled, and leant over to snatch up the newspaper from where it was lying on the pillow next to him. ‘I dare say you haven’t, or you wouldn’t have been looking so pleased with yourself as you came in. Bill always gets me the first copy hot off the press, but shortly all the people in Sunrise will be taking their copies out of their postboxes and learning over their evening meals that Edward Hollingsworth is a ruthless, greedy bastard, and that his daughter is a chip off the old block!’

‘What?’ Amber gasped.

‘Here, read it yourself!’ he growled, and shoved the paper forward. She took it and sank down on the side of the huge bed. The headlines brought another gasp to her lips: ‘WIDOW DECLARES WAR ON HOLLINGSWORTHS!’ And then in smaller print...

Mrs Pearl Sinclair, 79, of Sinclair Farm, Potts Road, told the Sunrise Gazette this week that Hollingsworths is trying to pressure her into selling her home and her land to them. ‘It’s a disgrace!’ she told the Gazette. ‘A scandal! I don’t want to sell. I’m a war widow. I came to live here as a new bride nearly sixty years ago. I had my son and daughter here. All my memories are here. This is my home. How can you put a price on memories? Or a home? Hollingsworths say they need it for the car park of their new shopping centre and cinema complex. That it’s the only suitable site. But I say that’s rubbish. Edward Hollingsworth owns half the coast around here. Let him build his shopping centre somewhere else. I am not going to be bullied into selling him my home!

‘And as far as that daughter of his is concerned—you can tell Amber Hollingsworth from me that I won’t be emotionally blackmailed into selling, either. I see now what she was trying to do when she came to my house the other day and sat here in my kitchen and drank my tea and pretended to be nice to me. She was just trying to soft-soap me, giving me all that rubbish about wanting to do good for the town. When did any Hollingsworth ever do good for this town? Edward Hollingsworth only ever cared about doing good for himself. I can’t see any daughter of his being any better!

‘I dare say they’ll offer me even more money now. But they can offer me the world and my answer will be the same. No! A resounding no! You tell the Hollingsworth family that from me. And if Amber Hollingsworth comes here again, trying to con me with her sweet smiles and pretty ways, I’ll set my dog onto her! I’ll have you know that Rocky here was banned from racing because he was a fighter, and he’s a very vicious watchdog!’

The article was accompanied by a photograph of the old lady, looking defiant, standing on the front verandah of that wretched house of hers with a decidedly overweight greyhound standing guard by her side.

Amber couldn’t help it. She laughed. ‘Set the dog onto me? That dog almost loved me to death the day I visited!’

‘Amber, this is not a laughing matter,’ her father snapped. ‘You told me on Monday night that that sale was in the bag. Now, just forty-eight hours later, we have that to contend with! You and I both know there is no other site for that car park, because there is no other site large enough and flat enough for the complex. You can’t build shopping malls on the sides of mountains. And you can’t build them too far out of town or you defeat the purpose. ’We either get the Sinclair farm or this project of yours dies a natural death.‘

Amber knew her father was right. Sunrise Point couldn’t expand at will, like so many other coastal towns on the north coast of New South Wales, because of logistical reasons. Firstly, no homes or hotels could be built anywhere on the actual point, or right alongside the two accompanying beaches—a national park occupied the foreshores. Secondly, the Great Dividing Range kinked towards the coastline at that point, so that there simply wasn’t all that much room for development. As it was, most of the houses were built on slopes.

‘Look, I don’t know what that devious old lady is up to, Dad,’ Amber said, sighing, ‘but she couldn’t have been nicer or more agreeable on Monday. She said she thought my offer very generous, but just wanted a few days to think it over. She asked me to come back the following Monday. I got the impression the wait was just a formality, that she would sign on the dotted line.’

‘Well, something obviously happened during those few days to change her mind. Maybe she talked to someone in her family, and that someone convinced her your offer wasn’t generous enough. Call me a cynical old bastard, but I reckon that article there is a ploy to get more money!’ And he jabbed his finger at the newspaper.

Amber’s stomach tightened. ‘You could be right, Dad. And I think I know who that someone is, too. Ben Sinclair. Her grandson. I wouldn’t put it past him to want to milk Hollingsworths for every cent he can get.’

‘You sound like you know him pretty well, but I have no recollection of a grandson at all!’

‘Oh, Dad, surely you remember Ben?’ Amber asked irritably. ‘He was in my class at school. He came to live here with his grandmother when he was about sixteen. You must remember him. He shocked everyone by getting the best exam results of all of us. His tertiary score was in the top two percent of the state. They put his photo in this very paper.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Oh, dark hair and eyes. Quite good-looking, really, if you could overlook his permanently sulky expression.’

‘Nope. Can’t remember him at all. The only boy I remember from your class is Chris Johnson. Whom you would have done well to marry instead of that American playboy you latched onto when I was fool enough to give you an overseas trip as a graduation present.’

‘Yes, well, I was too young to marry anyone at that stage. I was only nineteen, you know. I wish you’d stopped me.’

Her father laughed. ‘That’s like trying to stop the rain falling on a rainforest. You’re as stubborn as me once you set your sights on something. No one could have stopped you marrying Chad. At least you had the good sense to divorce him in the end. Pity you took so long about it.

‘But back to the issue at hand. What are you going to do about this Sinclair business? I know how you’ve got your heart set on this complex, daughter, but is it worth a scandal? I’ve come to like having this town’s respect, even if it has been a long time coming. When I get better I’m going to run for Mayor.’

‘Then I suggest we do everything possible to get this project up and running. This town needs this complex, Dad.’

‘I agree, but to build it Hollingsworths needs the Sinclair farm. How do you aim to get it? By offering the old lady more money, like she said?’

‘I guess so.’

‘And how much money do you think that will entail?’

‘I’m not sure...’

Frankly, Amber wasn’t sure about anything at that moment. This startling new development had thrown her for a loop. Pearl Sinclair had not seemed all that interested in money the other day. Neither had she seemed the type to bow to pressure, not even Ben’s. She was as tough as teak.

Maybe she was attached to the ramshackle dump she lived in, Amber mused, but it was hard to imagine so. The house was falling around her ears, and the farm part had long deteriorated into nothing but a chicken coop and a dilapidated barn. The land had also recently had a one-in-twenty-five-year flood rating stamped on the council charts, so on the open market it wasn’t worth much.

‘Maybe we’re reading this all wrong,’ Amber speculated. ‘Maybe old Pearl just couldn’t face the move at her age. Or the search for somewhere else to live. Maybe it was all too daunting.’

‘My dear Amber,’ came her father’s exasperated reply, ‘that would not explain her vitriolic and quite personal attack on us. No, this grandson of hers has got in her ear and stirred her all up.’

Her father fell thoughtfully silent. Amber tried to keep her mind empty of thoughts she didn’t want to think, and memories she didn’t want to remember.

‘What about the son and daughter she mentioned?’ her father asked abruptly. ‘Where are they?’

Amber shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Either she’s estranged from them, or they’re dead. I think Ben is her only close relative. Or the only one who visits. And he doesn’t visit all that often any more. She was complaining over that cup of tea I had with her that he didn’t even come home last Christmas. He lives down in Sydney now, and went off with some new girlfriend. She was pretty upset about it.’

‘I see. Well, my guess is the dear boy will be home soon. With bells on. What does he do, do you know?’

‘He’s a lawyer. Works for some big Sydney law firm.’

‘Dear God, that’s all we need—having to contend with some clever-boots city lawyer. No doubt he’s sniffed a huge profit to be made in all this.’

‘He’s probably sniffed more than that,’ Amber muttered.

Her father’s sharp blue eyes narrowed on her. ‘What the hell does that mean? Was there ever something between you and this Ben Sinclair? Tell me the truth, daughter. Don’t lie. You’re a terrible liar, anyway.’

No, I’m not, she thought. I’m a very good liar. I lived a lie all during my six-year marriage to Chad. No one knew how wretched I was. Or what a failure I felt.

‘No.’ She lied again. ‘There was nothing personal between Ben and myself. But he was dirt-poor back then, and as antisocial as you could get. I think he disliked me merely because I was rich.’

‘When he reads this article in the paper, he’ll dislike you even more.’

‘Maybe he won’t read it.’

‘Pigs. He’s responsible for it, I’ll warrant. We can expect Ben Sinclair on our doorstep any day now.’

‘How delightful,’ she said drily.

Her father’s eyes narrowed on her further. ‘There’s certainly no love lost between you two, is there?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. We’ve hardly spoken two words to each other in the past ten years. But he was a nasty piece of goods at school, and I see no reason to believe he’s changed. I would imagine that as a man he’s just as disagreeable.’

Amber had actually run into him several times during the three years since her return home. A couple of times in the main street but mostly in church, at Easter and Christmas. Not this last Christmas, however.

She’d known, before his grandmother had told her, that Ben hadn’t come home last Christmas. She’d looked for him at the church service. And missed him, she realised all of a sudden. Perverse, when on each previous occasion he’d reduced their encounters to nothing but a distantly cool nod, or a chillingly polite, hell, Amber.‘

‘Disagreeable or not,’ her father snapped, ‘you’ll have to deal with him if you want to build that complex.’

‘We’ll see, Dad,’ she said, trying not to sound as rattled as she was suddenly feeling. ‘We’ll see.’

‘I have a feeling there’s more to this than meets the eye. Watch it, daughter. The last thing I want to see is our family name splashed across next week’s headlines in another souped-up scandal!’

CHAPTER TWO

BEN scooped up this week’s copy of the Sunrise Gazette from the floor then kicked the front door shut behind him. He stripped off the wrapping, tossed the rolled paper onto his favourite armchair for later perusal, then strode out into the kitchen to stuff the shrivelled ball of plastic into the bin.

He grimaced as he reached for the whisky bottle which was sitting in readiness on the starkly white kitchen counter. His other hand up-ended the clean glass which sat next to it. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, he poured himself a well needed measure.

What a day! What a life! Wall to wall bulldust!

He loosened his blue silk tie with a frustrated yank then retrieved a tray of ice from the fridge, plopping several cubes into the straight Scotch. He was scowling as he snatched up the glass.

Strange. He had always thought being a big-city lawyer would make him supremely happy. He’d have money and kudos. People would look up to him and think he was someone. Women would fall at his feet.

Well, he certainly had money. Corporate law paid very well. How else could he have afforded this snazzy unit overlooking Sydney Harbour? Or the sleek black Saab 9000 CD Turbo which occupied one of his two private car spaces in the underground car park, twenty storeys down?

He gulped down a large swallow of liquid tranquilliser, then frowned at his need for it.

A top-flight legal eagle earned more than most doctors these days, and Ben’s six-figure salary satisfied his craving for monetary success. But he hadn’t been basking in too much community admiration lately.

The status of lawyers worldwide had slipped somewhat in the past ten years. In a recent poll, public opinion had had them just above politicians and used-car salesmen. People generally thought of lawyers as shysters and rogues who charged exorbitant fees for services which were often ineffectual and inefficient.

The law firm where Ben worked as a junior partner was actually very effective and efficient, but very, very expensive. The rate per hour for a consultancy alone was exorbitant. Once a client actually hired them, the costs began to soar. Certainly they got results, which perhaps justified the high fees. Ben appreciated the adage that you only got what you paid for. It was the petty but hidden charges which rankled.

When he’d noticed yesterday that they’d started billing clients two dollars for every miserable photocopy, he’d seen red. But when he’d pointed out this questionable charge to one of the senior partners this afternoon, he’d been told curtly and coldly that crusading lawyers worked for Legal Aid, not one of the largest and most successful law firms in Sydney.

‘Maybe working for Legal Aid might not be such a bad idea,’ Ben muttered into his drink, feeling quite dissatisfied with his professional life at that moment.

Admittedly, he could not complain over his private life and his score rate with the opposite sex. There were an incredible number of beautiful women in Sydney who obviously weren’t as discriminating as the public over where or how you earned your money, as long as you drove a great car, dressed in even greater suits and took them to the greatest restaurants.

Over the past few years Ben had dated a steady succession of society beauties and career colleagues, plus the odd sprinkling of unashamedly ambitious gold-diggers. In a weird kind of way he rather preferred these last steely-hearted souls, because he empathised with what drove them to be so accommodating.

Poverty.

Or an aversion to it.

Ben knew about being poor. And he didn’t plan on being poor ever again. Or being without a pretty woman on his arm. It was just a pity his choice of profession hadn’t won him the personal esteem and respect he coveted as well.

‘Still,’ he muttered as he lifted the straight Scotch to his lips once more, ‘two out of three ain’t bad. Stop griping, Ben. Would you rather still be living with Gran back at Sunrise Point? Every time you become disgruntled with your life, think about the life you once had—living with a crotchety old lady on a ramshackle farm, being treated by everyone in town—and at school—as an outsider. And, worst of all, being looked down upon by the one girl you so desperately wanted.’

Amber Hollingsworth...

Ben’s top lip curled as he thought of her—as he still did far too often. What an insufferably spoiled, self-centred little snob she’d been!

But so bloody beautiful. The type of girl boys like him could only dream about. Blonde, of course. With hair down to her waist, legs up to her armpits and perfect, perky breasts which had jiggled tauntingly as she walked along.

And what a walk that had been! A cross between a wanton wiggle and an arrogant strut. That prettily pert nose always up in the air, her slender shoulders well back, her spine straight, but her hips swaying seductively from side to side as those long legs propelled her along.

There hadn’t been a boy in school—or a man in town—who hadn’t stopped to watch Amber Hollingsworth walk by.

Except me, Ben recalled, with the beginnings of a rueful smile.

Oh, he’d watched. But surreptitiously. Sneakily.

He’d never stopped and gawked. He would never have given the bitch the satisfaction.

And she had been a bitch. To him. But only to him.

To all the other boys at school, butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. She’d been so sweet to them, flashing that megawatt smile of hers, widening those falsely innocent big blue eyes and fluttering those impossibly long, curling eyelashes.

All he’d got from the first day his gran dropped him off at school, the day after his sixteenth birthday, had been pitying glances, soon followed by scornful comments.

‘Really, Ben. Don’t you own any other clothes?’

‘Really, Ben. I don’t know how they do things down in the city, but up here we wear deodorant.’

‘Really, Ben. Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to stare?’

He scowled as he thought of that one time she’d caught him doing just that. Staring at her.

It had been a year or so after the welfare department had sent him to live with his gran. On that particular summer’s day Amber had been lying on the grass under a tree in the school grounds during the lunch-hour. It had been very hot, and she’d undone the top two buttons of her white school blouse. From where Ben had been sitting on a nearby bench he’d been able to see all of her cleavage and most of one of those perfect breasts, inadequately encased in expensive white lace.

Ben had been pretty sure she’d known he was ogling her all along, and had even shifted her body slightly to give him a better view. Finally, when he’d been totally engrossed in drooling over those luscious curves, her head had snapped round to catch him in the act. He hadn’t looked away, as he might usually have done. He’d just kept on staring.

For a split second he could have sworn she’d blushed—although it might have been the thirty-five degrees centigrade warming her cheeks—but then she’d tossed her hair back, lifted her nose and delivered that scathing reproach about his mother and his rude staring.

Ben had hated her from that moment. Hated her and wanted her at the same time. He’d vowed to get even with the high and mighty Miss Amber Hollingsworth if it was the last thing he did.

His need for revenge, however, had not been as great as the other, far more basic need she’d evoked in him—as had been demonstrated the night of their graduation ball.

He hadn’t taken a partner. Not because he couldn’t find one, but because if he couldn’t take Amber Hollingsworth, he wouldn’t take anyone. Such had been his obsession with her.

Actually, there had been several girls in class who would have happily been his partner—not to mention his latest girlfriend. By then, at nearly nineteen, Ben’s tall, lean frame had filled out nicely, and some of his female classmates had suddenly seemed to find his looks quite sexy.

Ben had cut his sexual teeth on their unexpected and quite brazen willingness during his last two terms in high school. But none had held his interest beyond a couple of encounters. For one thing he hadn’t had enough money to date a steady girlfriend. For another he’d quickly grown to despise their easiness.

Despite her overt sensuality and nymph-like beauty, Amber Hollingsworth had still been a virgin. Everyone in school had known that. If she hadn’t been, her latest boyfriend would have shouted his success to the rooftops and beyond.