LITMIR.BIZ

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seafood was renowned. The lamb was just as good. He was contemplating dessert, maybe the terrine di gelato al spezie con pan alle spezie. Fluent in Italian—tropical North Queensland and the sugar industry owned a great deal to its Italian migrants, he knew that meant a three-spice ice cream with spiced bread and red wine syrup. Like most men, he had a sweet tooth. The waiter was hovering, ready to take his order, only as he looked up he encountered a sight that transfixed him.

      Uncertainty became an inescapable reality.

      Being ushered to a table was Owen, radiating power, his tanned handsome face glowing with pride. Preceding him was the most beautiful young woman Lang had ever seen and he’d seen plenty of good-looking women. Tallish, very slender, she had masses of silky sable hair, curling loose to her shoulders. The centre part pointed up the perfect oval of her face. Her skin in the soft lighting had the perfection of a white camellia. But the most breath-taking feature was her eyes. From a little distance they looked purple. Surely no one had purple eyes, or were they a very dark blue? Above the eyes arched finely marked brows. Her features were small. It was a style of looks that put him in mind of the young Vivien Leigh of Gone With the Wind fame, but for all her beauty and the cool chic of her dress it wasn’t admiration he felt. It was condemnation. Pure and simple.

      So this was Owen’s mystery woman. The catalyst that had released Owen from the traumas of the past. Lang stared at her for endless moments. Without actually looking for Owen’s mystery woman, he had found her. She had to be the answer to the great change in his friend. He had never seen naked emotion plain on Owen’s face. But he saw it now. Owen had fallen head over heels in love with a woman young enough to be his daughter. The thought filled him with dismay. The sight turned the fine wine he was drinking to vinegar.

      How could Delma contend with this? Delma, herself a striking-looking woman, who worked with what God had given her. He couldn’t fail to know Delma had never felt totally secure in her marriage, indeed she trusted him enough to confide in him, though God knows Owen gave her every material thing she and the boy wanted. Everything it seemed except his heart. It was Delma who worked to keep the marriage alive. She was an excellent hostess and a high-ranking committee woman on just about every committee in town. Now everything was threatened just as he feared. He had never seen Owen look so happy, so triumphant, like a man in possession of some grand secret.

      Or could it simply be the seven-year itch? An affair that started brilliantly and could only end badly? Owen was a fine-looking man. He had a full head of dark hair, good strong features, a Celtic nose and fine dark eyes. Sadly he had never deeply loved his wife yet love was written all over him now as he moved to a secluded table for two along the glassed wall. Owen was infatuated with this girl. Totally seduced. A blind man would have felt his deep involvement.

      Lang exhaled a deep troubled breath. How was he going to get out of here without Owen seeing him? God, he couldn’t remember a worse situation. Owen wasn’t only his partner, he was his friend and mentor. He couldn’t bowl right up and take Owen to task. That would be a massive invasion of Owen’s privacy, an invasion Owen, a proud man, wouldn’t take too kindly, even from him. All he could do was wait for Owen to confide in him, yet Owen hadn’t said a word for the past six months. Obviously he was planning something and he didn’t intend telling anyone about it until that plan was finalised.

      Seated at their table, Owen had his back to him, broad shoulders square beneath the jacket of his expensive suit. He was free then to observe the way the young woman’s eyes were focused on Owen as he spoke. Not once did her gaze wander casually around the dining room as most people’s did. It was as though she in her turn was spellbound by him. Once Owen must have said something funny. He heard the sweet peal of her laughter. God, what was going on? For all his suspicions had prepared him, he was shocked to actually see Owen with this girl.

      Now she was touching Owen’s jacketed sleeve. Owen hungrily caught her hand, held it. Where and how had he met her? Don’t do it, Owen, he thought. You’re a married man with a child. She’s much too young for you. Early twenties at the outside. Owen had ordered champagne. The best. He saw the waiter take it from the ice and refill the glasses. It seemed vaguely indecent to watch them like this, but he couldn’t look away. They clinked flutes before they drank. Toasting one another, the girl’s beautiful eyes smiled at Owen over the glass’s transparent rim. Her glance was sparkling, young, tender. She probably made Owen feel like he was twenty-two again. Only he wasn’t twenty-two. He was more than double that age. Dangerous and irresistible yet a beautiful young woman made some men want to be young again. Only the Owen he knew was acting out of character.

      They seemed to have a lot to talk about. He watched Owen catch her hand often. He saw the strength of the grasp.

      Suddenly he felt disgusted. Disgusted with himself for sitting there like a voyeur, and disgusted with Owen for betraying his wife and ultimately his son. He was even more outraged at the girl. She had to know Owen was married. He had to have told her. So deeply involved with each other, wouldn’t she have asked? Or was it possible Owen had lied to her? Told her perhaps he was a widower or divorced. Or was it she simply didn’t care? Owen was a very rich man.

      Their appearance together put quite a blight on his evening. Lang signalled a waiter, asked him if there was a discreet way he could leave the restaurant, his manner suggesting there was someone he preferred not to see on his way to the main entrance. It was easily arranged.

      He paid with his card, waiting for the waiter to return, drumming his fingers on the table.

      One could have thought her hearing was so acute she caught the sound. Either that or the quality of his gaze had somehow alerted her. The acuteness of her sensibilities caught him off guard. Those beautiful luminous eyes looked directly into his. They widened at what they saw there. Her mouth parted on a little gasp as though she had read the condemnation of his thoughts without his saying a word. The colour over her cheekbones deepened. The little smile that illuminated her face had completely disappeared. He saw all this in an instant of stunning clarity though he narrowed his eyes as if the fall of light in the dining room was too bright. He found to his self-contempt he could sympathize with Owen’s blind infatuation with this girl. She was not only beautiful, she had a look of exquisite refinement. Fresh. Innocent. Unflawed. Qualities at variance with her character. He made no attempt to look away, unable in that instant to soften the hostility he knew must emanate from him. All sounds in the dining room appeared to be absorbed by the density of the atmosphere between them. He swore he caught her fragrance. Yet there was no defiance in her expression, no challenge. Instead she looked so vulnerable his gaze might be damaging her.

      And then she looked away. Broke the connection as if the impact was too great. She turned her dark head to stare out into the star-studded night, the city’s glitter reflected in the broad, deep river.

      For a moment he’d worried Owen, so clearly protective of her, would turn around so he could follow her fraught gaze. But Owen, mercifully, was still studying the menu. The waiter returned. Lang rose abruptly, unwilling to admit to himself he had found that brief exchange unnerving. There were some women who haunted a man. She was one of them. He followed the waiter to a rear exit, which took him through the busy steaming kitchens, the chefs hurling instructions to assistants who scurried to oblige. He’d have climbed onto the roof rather than encounter Owen and his beautiful dinner companion.

      As he made his way out into the back alley, he couldn’t help but make comparisons between the girl and Delma. Delma had the style and the particular confidence of a mature woman, but the young face he’d looked into was quite unforgettable.

      He slept badly, sure of two things. Owen was never going to release his hold on this girl and two, there was little if anything he could do about it.

      He was coming out of the shower when the phone rang. Swiftly he grabbed the hotel’s white bathrobe and shouldered into it.

      Owen’s deep dynamic voice greeted him.

      “How’s it going, pal?”

      “I can’t wait to get home.” The simple truth.

      “Sure you love the place.” Owen chuckled, obviously in high good humour. “Listen I know I’ve been asking

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