Seduction Under the Southern Stars (Southern Stars #1)

Chapter One

Friday, January 26th

Elora

“Love Under the Southern Stars.” My older brother, Fraser, swipes his hand from left to right in front of him to illustrate how the title would form a banner. “What do you think?”

Zoe, sitting next to me, blows a raspberry. “Boring! Let’s do an exhibition called Murder Under the Southern Stars. That would be much more interesting.”

“But less suitable for Valentine’s Day,” Fraser points out.

“Not where my exes are concerned,” Zoe mumbles, and I giggle.

“It sounds great,” I tell him. “I’m sure it’ll be really popular.”

The National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington isn’t the country’s biggest museum, but since Fraser became director, it’s grown in both size and prestige due mainly to his vision and hard work. I joined him after graduating from university and have worked here for a couple of years now. I adore the historic building that sits right on the Wellington waterfront, with its elegant entrance framed by marble pillars and its curved staircase, and I especially love the conservation room, where we X-ray, clean, and treat archaeological artifacts. If I had more bookshelves and an endless supply of coffee and Jaffa Cakes, I could live here.

“Hallie,” Fraser says as another young woman enters the room, “come and join us. I was just telling the others about my idea for a new exhibition.”

“Oh, cool.” She draws up a stool at the table and sits beside me.

Hallie, Zoe, and I are part of the museum archaeology team. The three of us couldn’t be more different in both looks and personality, but we’ve formed a firm friendship, and work together well. Hallie is in her late twenties, sophisticated and calm, with long brown hair and gentle brown eyes. Zoe is the same age as me, twenty-four, with black hair cut in a quirky bob and flashing green eyes, and she’s outspoken and feisty, but she has a heart of gold.

I’m blonde, blue-eyed, and quiet, and can usually be found with my nose stuck in a book. That’s about it, really.

“Love Under the Southern Stars,” Fraser repeats for Hallie’s benefit.

“Do the thing,” Zoe tells him. “With the banner.”

He says the words more dramatically, this time sweeping his hand across in front of him with a theatrical gesture.

“Sounds amazing,” Hallie says.

“I thought the centerpiece could be the Hatfield Love Letter,” he announces, naming a document the museum acquired recently, written by a captain who won the Victoria Cross in the New Zealand wars of the nineteenth century. “And then I’d like each of you to find me a new artifact for the exhibition.”

“What?” I stare at him.

“Yes, Elora, which means actually leaving the museum and going out to talk to real, live people.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Even so. I’m sure the three of you will come up with some amazing pieces if you put your minds to it. You haven’t got long, so you’d better get a move on.”

“And they’ve got to be romance-related,” Hallie confirms.

“For this exhibition, yes. Either newly excavated artifacts, or you can apply to get something on loan from another museum.”

“So you mean, like, Rasputin’s knob or something,” Zoe suggests, opening a pack of Maltesers.

He gives her a patient look. “Zoe…”

“It’s floating in a pickle jar somewhere in St. Petersburg,” she insists, offering him the pack.

He takes one. “As much as I’d be interested in seeing the preserved appendage of Russia’s greatest love machine, I was hoping for something a little more… romantic.”

“I’m sure Queen Victoria’s vibrator is in the British Museum,” Hallie teases, also taking one. “I think it’s steam powered.”

He rolls his eyes as we all start laughing. “I should’ve known better than to bring up a topic like this.”

“Maybe we’ll just put you in the exhibit,” I suggest, accepting a Malteser and popping it in my mouth.

Fraser looks down at himself. He’s wearing brown corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. A pair of round spectacles sits on his nose. He’s only just turned thirty, and he’s gorgeous, but he does insist on dressing as if he’s time-traveled from Victorian England.

He looks back at us. Hallie presses her lips together, trying not to laugh. Zoe grins openly.

“What are you implying?” he asks indignantly.

“Nothing at all,” Hallie soothes. “Anyway, I think I might apply to borrow the Venus de Willendorf from Vienna. Although I’ll probably get asked if I modeled for it.”

That makes us all chuckle. The Venus figurine, which is nearly thirty thousand years old, portrays a woman with… how do I say it politely… big boobs and wide hips. Hallie is curvy, but she doesn’t have quite the same proportions as the figurine.

“Not at all,” Fraser says, “You’re not… I mean you have very…” Her eyes gleam, and he gives up and clears his throat. “Well, you only have two weeks before Valentine’s Day,” he continues, “so get your thinking caps on. I was planning to…” His voice trails off as he looks behind us, and his eyes widen. We all turn to follow his gaze.

For the first time in my life, I do a double take, and I inhale sharply.

A man stands in the doorway. He’s wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie, and he looks like James Bond, a stark contrast to Fraser in his tweed and the three of us girls in our casual clothing. He’s tall, the same height as Fraser, so probably six-two, broad shouldered, and drop-dead handsome. Something about him suggests he’s wealthy—the cut of his suit, maybe, his fancy tie pin, or the way his dark hair is styled with a fashionable fade. He’s clean shaven, his jaw so smooth it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d used a cut-throat razor. He also has the greenest eyes I think I’ve ever seen, a light sage color, so striking I can see them from across the room.

I haven’t seen him for ten years, but it’s unmistakably the guy who broke my heart when I was a girl.

He’s staring at me, but he doesn’t look shocked, just… interested. He knew I was here.

My head spins, and I feel faint as all the blood rushes from my brain. I don’t want to think about where it’s going.

“Linc!” Fraser strides across the room and throws his arms around the guy.

Linc holds his arms out to the side for a moment as if surprised at Fraser’s reaction, then laughs and wraps them around him, and the two men exchange a bearhug.

“Bro,” Fraser says, releasing him, “I didn’t know you’d arrived.”

Wait, what? Fraser knew he was coming?

“Got in yesterday,” Linc replies. His voice was deep back then, but it’s huskier now, more mature. He’s grown from a boy into a man.

I’ve thought of him so much over the years, wondering what happened to him, and what he looks like today. I know my other brother kept in touch with him, but after what happened I didn’t want to ask any questions, and I certainly couldn’t ask my father. So just like the One Ring, history became legend, and legend became myth, and while Linc didn’t exactly pass out of all knowledge, he’s preserved in my mind as if in amber, forever eighteen, so it’s a huge shock to see him grown up.

I knew he would have filled out. Developed real facial hair rather than the bum fluff he sported back then. Probably lost the intense earnestness of youth, become more serious, more cynical. But would he have become less passionate about the things that mattered to us in those days? Or lost the spirit of adventure I’d found so attractive in him?

Did he think of me at all? I had no way of knowing.

Judging by the look on his face as Fraser steps back and Linc looks at me, he hasn’t forgotten me. He opens his mouth to say something, but turns as, behind him, my other brother, Joel, appears at a run, skidding to a stop as he sees the scene.

“Ah,” Joel says, “I wondered where you’d gone.” He looks at me and frowns. Joel is twenty-eight and an underwater archaeologist, which goes some way to explaining why his hair always looks as if he’s just dried it with a towel.

So Joel knew Linc was here too. My brothers were obviously hoping to ensure we didn’t meet.

Does my father know he’s here?

“I was looking for Fraser,” Linc says. “I didn’t realize… there would be other people here.” He looks at me. I know it’s a lie.

I can feel Zoe and Hallie looking at me curiously, but I keep my gaze fixed on him as Fraser walks toward us and Linc follows.

“Let me introduce you,” Fraser says smoothly. “This is Hallie Woodford, and this is Zoe Moon, two of the museum’s archaeologists. Ladies, this is Lincoln Green.”

“And before you ask, no, I wasn’t named after the color of Robin Hood’s tights,” Linc says, holding out his hand to Zoe.

Her lips curve up as she slides her hand into his. Two seconds in, and he’s already charmed her. He hasn’t changed a bit.

“Hello…” she says with interest, about an inch from tweaking her bow tie and saying, ‘Ding, dong!’ like an actor from the 1950s.

“Hello, Zoe, pleased to meet you.” He turns to Hallie. “And hi, Hallie.”

“Linc,” she says warmly, “I’m so excited to meet you. I’ve never met a real divvy!”

My eyebrows rise. “A what?”

“A divvy,” she replies. “You know. A diviner? It’s usually used in antiques. It means someone with the ability to find artifacts or distinguish fakes or forgeries from the genuine article.”

My jaw drops. “What?”

She laughs as Linc’s lips twist. “He works for iDigBritain. They made a program about him last year, singing his praises. Jeez, Elora, you didn’t see it? He’s quite famous.”

I’m not surprised. There was always something exceptional about him. I am shocked that he’s here, though. Standing in front of me looking so… real.

He walks up to me. “Hello, Lora,” he says softly. He always used to call me that, or occasionally add my middle name, Elora-Rose.

“Hello, Linc.” Should I shake his hand? I look into his eyes, and then he smiles, and I can’t help it—I lift my arms around his neck, and he wraps his arms around my waist. He squeezes, tight enough to force the air out of me, and lifts my feet off the ground a fraction before lowering me back down.

“It’s good to see you,” he whispers, releasing me.

Touching him scrambles my brain, like an egg whisked with a fork on a hot plate, and I step back, head spinning. “So… um… you did become an archaeologist?” I say breathlessly, conscious of the others watching.

“I did,” he says. “Thanks to you.” He glances at my brothers. “And your family.”

“He discovered the Framlingham Hoard,” Hallie says. “It was the second largest hoard of Roman coins ever found in the UK. Over ten thousand coins, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Linc says, “nearly fourteen thousand.”

“You must have made a fortune from that find,” Zoe says, mouth open.

“Zoe,” Hallie scolds.

“That’s all right, I don’t mind,” he says. “The British Museum bought them for 1.75 million pounds, split between me and the landowner.”

“And you found the Heacham Hoard too, didn’t you?” Hallie continues. “All those Iron Age torcs and bracelets. The article said you had a nose for gold.”

“The Midas Touch,” he says, and smiles.

Oh my God, I didn’t know any of this. I read a lot of books, but I’m not as well-versed in today’s archaeology news as Hallie.

There’s an awkward silence as the others watch Linc and me stare at each other. There’s so much I want to say, so many questions I want to ask, and yet my lips refuse to form a single word.

Eventually, maybe sensing how flustered I feel, Zoe rests a comforting hand in the middle of my back as she says to him, “I’d ask if you want to help clean some artifacts, but you look as if you’re going to a funeral.”

“I am, as it happens,” he says. “In an hour, so I should get going soon.”

“Shit.” Zoe looks aghast. “I’m so sorry. I’m always putting my foot in it.”

“Not at all.”

“Is that why you’re in New Zealand?” I ask him, wondering whose death would bring him back.

Linc nods. “I wanted to make sure they nailed the coffin shut.” It’s a throwaway comment, said with some amusement, but bitterness drips from the words.

“Your father died?” I conclude.

He nods again, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

I stare at him, tongue-tied. I feel that I should say I’m sorry, except I’m not, and he obviously isn’t, either. But even though at times I’m sure we’ve both wished his dad was obliterated from existence, nobody remains unscarred by the death of their father, and he must be dealing with a confusing array of emotions right now.

Fraser clears his throat. “We were just discussing our next exhibition.”

“Love Under the Southern Stars,” Hallie says, swiping her hand in front of her the same way Fraser did. “For Valentine’s Day.”

“I’m going to ask to borrow Rasputin’s knob,” Zoe announces, “and Hallie’s going to source Queen Victoria’s steam-powered vibrator.”

Joel snorts. Linc laughs. The gap in his front two teeth where one of them was a little twisted has disappeared, and now they’re beautifully straight. His eyes sparkle when they meet mine. “So what artifact are you going to bring?”

“Fraser’s only just told us about it,” I reply, “so I haven’t had much chance to think yet.”

“Shame you never found the Bell Ring.” Joel steals the last Malteser from Zoe’s packet, prompting her to glare at him.

At Hallie’s curious look, I say, “Our great-great…”

“Two more greats,” Joel says.

“Three more,” Fraser corrects.

“Okay,” I continue, “four or five greats-grandfather—called Atticus, same as my dad—fell in love with a Māori girl during the Gold Rush of the 1860s. The story goes that she told him she’d only marry him if he gave her a ring containing a piece of greenstone from her birthplace in Milford Sound.” Greenstone is also known as jade or, in Māori, pounamu . “He sailed from Christchurch around to Fiordland and took one of the perilous mountain trails, where he personally fished a piece of greenstone out from the river there and he had it set in a ring made from the gold he mined near Arrowtown. Legend says as soon as she laid eyes on the ring, she fell in love with him, because he’d gone to so much trouble to make it. After that the ring was supposed to grant true love to whoever touched it.”

“It went missing though,” Fraser says, “sometime in the mid-twentieth century.”

I look at Linc, wondering if he remembers the story. I told him about it one rainy afternoon in the living room of our house at Greenfield. I was ten at the time, and he was fourteen, and he’d only recently started at the school. I’d constructed a tent from one of my mother’s sheets, and I was lying beneath it, reading a book about the history of my family, when Linc ducked under the flap of the tent, flopped to the ground beside me, and said, “Whatcha reading?”

He’d known practically nothing about history at the time, and, used to spending his time smoking, drinking, or stealing from shops, he’d laughed at my dusty books and atlases. But that day I must have spoken with passion about my family history, because he’d pulled the book toward him and started flicking through the pages. “Where’s Milford Sound?” he’d asked when he read the story. I’d dragged out an old atlas, and we’d scoured the mountains and valleys of the South Island together.

“I remember,” he says now, obviously following my train of thought. “That’s where it all began. I have you to thank for that.”

Our eyes lock, and a shock passes through me like static, so sharp and fast I’m surprised my hair doesn’t stand out from my head. For a moment, it’s as if no time has passed at all, and nothing has changed. He’s still the handsome boy with the startling green eyes that I fell in love with, and I’m still the young girl he kissed.

Then Joel coughs, breaking the spell, and I blink and drop my gaze. What am I thinking? Everything’s changed. My heart was like a priceless Greek urn, and Linc dropped it and fractured it into a hundred pieces and left them lying on the ground. He left, and I never heard a single word from him. I had to pick up the pieces myself, one at a time, and glue them back into some semblance of the shape it once was. But it hasn’t been the same since. Other men have only weakened those cracks, so you can still see the lines where it broke. It remains so fragile that I keep it locked up like the priceless artifact it was. A once-beautiful treasure, now sitting on a plinth in a glass cage with a light shining on it, meant to be viewed, not handled. Never to be touched again.

“I might know where the Bell Ring is,” Linc says.

My gaze snaps back up to his. “What?” Joel and Fraser also stare at him.

“A couple of years ago, I was at a conference in Rome,” Linc says, “and I met an Australian archaeologist called Graham Tucker. We were talking about family heirlooms, and I mentioned the Bell Ring. It turned out that he had a colleague who said a friend of his acquired what he thought was the Bell Ring in the 1990s. He ran an antique shop.”

I blink as I try to sift through the complicated trail of relationships. “Oh my God, Linc! Can you remember the name of the guy or his friend?”

“No, sorry.” He checks his watch again. “Look, I really have to go, but if you like I can come back afterward, and we can talk about it some more.”

Joel and Fraser exchange a glance. They know how I fell apart after Linc left, and I’m sure they’re worried about what effect his being here will have on me. That’s why they didn’t tell me he was coming. But it’s been ten years. I’ve moved on. I’m not the innocent girl I was. I’m not going to fall at his feet at the snap of his fingers again. I’ve learned my lesson.

And anyway, it would be amazing if he was able to track down the Bell Ring. Oh my God, imagine Mum’s face—it would mean so much to her.

“If that’s okay,” I say to Linc, “it would be great to catch up.”

He nods. “All right, I’ll probably be an hour or so, I’d imagine.”

“You’re not going back to the house afterward?” Joel asks.

Linc gives him an amused look. “I might not even make it into the church. I just want to check the old fucker’s really dead.”

That’s a touch of the old Linc rising to the surface, and it makes me smile.

“See ya,” he says, and, with a last glance at me, he walks away, out of the room.

Joel hesitates, then follows him out.

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.”

“Oh, Elora…” Hallie’s voice is soft. “I’m so sorry.”

“No wonder you were shocked to see him,” Zoe says.

I force a laugh as Fraser lifts a brow. “Oh, it was a long time ago now. It was hard, but I got over him. I assumed he’d stayed in Europe somewhere. I didn’t even think to look him up.”

The truth is, though, that I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to see him on Facebook or Instagram, and look at photos of him living another, better life. Of him with other women. I didn’t think I could bear it. He’d gone, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming back. Why would he, for a fourteen-year-old girl with whom he’d exchanged one single kiss? I was young, but I thought enough of myself to be determined not to pine for him forever.

So I pushed him to the back of my mind, where he has remained like an old book on a shelf, gathering dust.

But I’ve never gotten over him. And now he’s back, looking a thousand times more handsome.

Oh my. How am I going to cope?