Page 5 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

Hallie turns to me, eyes wide. “Oh my God, Elora! Why didn’t you tell us you knew him?”

I blink, my head spinning. “It was such a long time ago. And I didn’t know he was famous. I haven’t heard about him or seen him since I was fourteen.”

“He’s got a Wikipedia page! Have you never Googled him?”

I shake my head. “I’ve tried not to think about him…” I glance at Fraser, who’s frowning, pity in his eyes.

“What happened?” Zoe asks, leaning on the table with wide eyes.

I feel suddenly embarrassed. It felt like the love story of a lifetime back then, but now it feels like a childish crush.

“He was a student at our father’s school,” Fraser tells them when I don’t say anything.

“At Greenfield?” Zoe asks.

I nod. My father runs Greenfield Residential School near Hanmer Springs in the South Island. It’s a school for troubled adolescents. Dad—who’s a deacon, and the chaplain at Greenfield—holds what he calls adventure therapy programs, which involve taking youths out into the mountains and forests and using team-building techniques to encourage them to talk and work with one another. He’s helped so many young people, and I’m immensely proud of him.

He and Mum live in a house on the grounds of the school, and it’s where Fraser, Joel, and I grew up. We were encouraged to mix with the students as a kind of civilizing influence, I guess; Dad always hoped our manners and wholesome attitude would brush off on the other kids. Most of the time, he discouraged them from coming to the house, but Linc was a special case.

“What was he like back then?” Hallie asks.

“He was fourteen when he came to the school. I was ten.” I think back to the first time I met him. He was already tall, with flashing green eyes and a rebellious glare. “He was gorgeous even then,” I admit. His face had borne scars from where his father had beaten him so badly that he’d put him in hospital, but I don’t tell the girls that.

“How long was he at Greenfield?” Zoe wants to know.

“Four years,” Fraser says. “He wasn’t interested in archaeology when he first arrived, but he spent a lot of time at the house with us, so he was bound to get hooked.”

Archaeology is my father’s second love after the church, and he instilled a passion for it in all his children, as well as many of the kids who came to the school.

Zoe looks from Fraser to me and back again. “So… what happened?” She can obviously sense there’s more to the story.

Fraser slides his hands into his pockets and doesn’t say anything.

“We spent a lot of time together,” I say, somewhat flatly. “I had a crush on him, and… well, I’m not sure what his feelings were for me. One afternoon, he kissed me. But we didn’t realize my father was watching.”

Zoe’s jaw drops. “Oh shit.”

“He went ballistic.” I shudder at the memory. My father doesn’t get angry very often, which is probably why I found his white-hot rage so upsetting at the time.

“You were only fourteen,” Fraser reminds me, “and Linc was eighteen.”

“I wasn’t pre-pubescent,” I say sarcastically. “If this was medieval England I would have been married with six kids by then.”

“Dad saw Linc as another son and thought he was abusing that relationship,” Fraser says.

“We weren’t related,” I reply hotly, pissed off that he’s defending Dad, and that he didn’t tell me Linc was coming here.

“That’s not what I mean,” he replies with irritating calmness. “Dad invested a lot of time and affection in him, and he trusted him. He thought Linc was taking advantage of you.”

“It was one kiss!”

“But that might have led to more, and you were Dad’s baby girl.”

“There’s no ‘were’ about it,” I grumble, because our father still treats me as if I’m a kid.

“What happened?” Hallie asks.

“It was late-ish in the day, and Dad sent me to my room, so I went to bed.” I cried myself to sleep, although I don’t tell them that. “When I got up the next morning, Linc had gone. Apparently, he contacted TAG18 and asked them to send him wherever they had a vacancy.” The Archaeology Group finds places for students on excavations all across the world. “I think they sent him to Egypt. That’s all I know. I never heard from him again.”

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