A Wish and a Wedding Read Online Free PDF

libraries with light. A portrait of his greatly loved grandfather, Quentin, dominated the wall behind the massive partner’s desk. This was a man’s study, the furnishings and décor very much in the style of a gentleman’s club. His grandfather had called it his inner sanctum, but he had always allowed him into it, even as a small child. Floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted mahogany cabinets housed books and trophies of all kinds, countless silver cups, ribbons, awards,photographs of family with famous guests at the station. A magnificent gilded bronze horse stood on a tall plinth in front of a glass panel that had been cut out of the wall. By daylight it gave a view of the garden and two splendid date palms planted by an Afghani trader in the late 1880s.
    There were two photographs of Tori on the desk. He had put them there himself. One had been taken when she was about twelve, mounted on a horse much too big for her, the other by a professional photographer on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. Her enchanting smiling face looked out at him, vibrant with life. That was before the day had gone to hell.
    Abruptly he picked up the three or four e-mails Lucinda had sent. Pip had printed them off and put them in order, securing them with a paperclip. They all said roughly the same thing: Lucinda was desperately worried about her granddaughter, especially the crowd she was mixing with currently. Most of them were years older. Tori—unfortunately—had moved out of her own age group. Lucinda fully appreciated he was “an extremely busy man”, but she wouldn’t ask if she didn’t believe the situation called for his active intervention. Tori only listened to him anyway.
    That was news to him.
    It wasn’t possible to get away until the end of the week. He would let Lucinda know he would be arriving the coming Saturday. They could have a good talk then.
    The beautiful Rushford heiress, of all people, an Outback schoolmarm. The thought gave him a wry laugh.
    Sydney, Capital of New South Wales
    Tori had spent the afternoon at the shelter for which she was a silent patron. She had a few other pet projects—breast cancer research was high up on the list; she had had no idea a woman could contract the disease so young —but she always insisted her philanthropy be kept strictly private. So far her requests had beenhonoured. Whenever she visited the shelter she always wore a dark wig and a headscarf tied pirate fashion. Her long red hair was a dead giveaway. To aid anonymity she dressed Gothic, black from head to toe, with the obligatory black boots on her feet. She thought she looked suitably disguised, but despite the less than flattering gear, her natural beauty shone through.
    The mother of one of her girlfriends, Tiffany, had focused her interest on the shelter. Tiffany’s million-a-year barrister father—street angel, home devil—regularly beat up on Tiffany’s mother. Never in places that showed. Incredibly, Tiffany’s mother, a beautiful woman, bore the abuse in silence, full of shame, until her teenage son Luke had, one momentous night, threatened to kill his father if he didn’t stop. Right there and then. The threat had come as a rude shock, and mercifully had worked. Luke’s father had picked up on the avenging light in his son’s eyes—and on the golf iron in his son’s strong young hands. So it had been Tiffany’s mother who had told her about the women’s shelter on Wyndham Street, and the good work they did. Tori had become a patron first day out.
    Her visit to the shelter, talking to the women and children there who lived in constant fear, only served to draw attention to the extravagant harbourside party that was now going on all around her. All the bigwigs and the high rollers were there, and the so-called celebrities who always appeared in the society pages—she was one of them—anyone, in fact, on the Rich List. Getting