The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

She broke off as he moved impatiently.

‘Enough! Let’s get inside. We’ll take all your gear.’

‘What for?’

‘So I can go through it with a fine-tooth comb.’ He clicked off the overhead light and jumped out.

She had no choice but to follow suit. The shed had doors and he pushed them closed and latched them, so unless you knew to look, there was no sign of her car. Then he gestured for her to precede him into the hut.

He did go through her things with a fine-tooth comb, but after he’d secured the hut and lit a fire in the rusty combustion stove from a store of chopped wood and old newspapers.

The wooden hut was small and rudimentary. It had a half-loft storing some bales of old straw, but the ladder to it was broken. There were a couple of uncomfortable-looking narrow beds, a table and two hard chairs, one dilapidated old armchair, a small store of dry and tinned goods and a couple of milk cans filled with water.

There was one high window, but it had been broken and boarded up, and one door. All the same, as a precaution against any light being seen, Jo gathered, he hung a blanket over the door and a rough, dingy towel over the window.

Two things he did she could only approve of: the light and warmth from the stove were welcome against the cold, dark night, and the aroma from the pot of coffee he set on the stove caused her to close her eyes in deep appreciation as she took her anorak off.

On the other hand, two things she noticed while they waited for the coffee added to her confusion. He looked at his wrist, as if to check his watch, then with a grimace of annoyance, pulled it from his pocket and laid it on the table. It had a broken band, she saw, but, although it was plain enough, it was also sleek, platinum and shouted very expensive craftsmanship.

A faint frown knitted her brow. A demented boundary rider with a couple-of-thousand-dollar watch? Then there were his jeans. Torn and dirty they might be, but they were also designer jeans if she was any judge.

‘No milk, but there is sugar,’ he said presently, and handed her an enamel mug. ‘Help yourself.’ He indicated a sugar caddy.

She took two spoonfuls and looked around as she stirred them in.

‘Take the best chair, ma’am,’ he said with some irony and indicated the armchair.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured and sank down into it. A small cloud of dust rose but she was too tired and tense to care and she realized she was still wearing her beanie. She plucked it off irritably, and turned to look at her captor as he made an involuntary sound.

She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘What have I done now?’

‘Er—nothing,’ he responded. ‘Why on earth do you cover your hair?’

Jo ran her fingers through her cloud of dark gold hair. Someone had once told her it was the colour of beech leaves in autumn. True or not, she regarded it as her crowning glory, perhaps her only glory, and it was certainly her only vanity, her long, thick, silky hair.

She pushed her fringe back and shrugged. ‘It’s cold and dusty out there.’

His blue gaze stayed on her in a rather unnerving manner and she felt a tinge of colour steal into her cheeks because she had no doubt he was contemplating her figure.

She would have died if she’d known that it had crossed his mind to wonder whether that deep rich gold colour of her hair was duplicated on her body…

He turned his attention rather abruptly to her two bags, unpacking the entire contents of the smaller one onto the table.

Jo sipped her coffee and watched as he went through every item of clothing she’d brought, her writing case, books, sponge bag and make-up, her first-aid kit. He upended her canvas tote bag and her diary, her phone, a map and her purse fell out together with a bag of sweets and some tissues.

He picked up the phone. ‘This isn’t any good to us out here, we’re out of mobile range.’

‘So I gathered,’ she said bitterly.

He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Did you try to get in touch with them after you left Cunnamulla? I would have thought they’d have warned you about that—or supplied you with a satellite phone. Joanne Lucas,’ he read as he examined her credit card, her diary, her Medicare card and her driver’s licence.

‘If you go back to the diary, you’ll find my address, my doctor, my dentist and possibly my plumber and electrician.’ She eyed him ironically.

He didn’t respond, but started to repack the bag. The sight of him handling her underwear again annoyed her intensely, however, and she jumped up. ‘I’ll do that!’

‘OK.’ He pushed it all down the table towards her and reached for the bigger bag. ‘Painting gear, from the earlier look I took at it,’ he said.

He took out a collapsible easel, a heavy box of oil crayons, charcoal pencils, a sheaf of cartridge paper and a smaller box of sharpeners and rubbers. ‘Now that—’ he sat back ‘—has to be an inspired bit of camouflage, Ms Lucas.’

‘You can believe what you like but, as I tried to tell you earlier, I was commissioned by Mrs Adele Hastings of Kin Can station to do her portrait. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Mrs Adele Hastings is not on Kin Can.’

Jo stared at him. ‘But I spoke to her only a few days ago to make the final arrangements!’

He shrugged and folded his arms.

‘How do you know she’s not there, anyway?’ Jo asked.

‘I…made it my business to know.’

Jo frowned. ‘Are you some demented, latter-day bushranger? Or a boundary rider gone berserk? Is that what this is all about?’

‘Go on.’

‘What do you mean, “go on”?’ Her frustration was obvious. ‘All I’m trying to do is make some sense of it.’

‘Fascinating stuff,’ he commented. ‘Just say I were either of those, what would it lead you to assume?’

She gestured with both hands. ‘You…held up the homestead, got sprung maybe, escaped, mistook me for reinforcements and took me hostage—’ She broke off abruptly and her grey eyes dilated as she castigated herself for even mentioning the possibility.

He smiled. ‘Well, it so happens I did escape, Jo. And not long before I did so, I heard them calling their back-up, by the name of Jo—Joe—whatever, and requesting confirmation of what the back-up vehicle would be. They repeated what they were told—a silver-grey Range Rover.’

This time her eyes virtually stood out on stalks. ‘That’s…that’s—’

‘Coincidence?’ he suggested sweetly. ‘I don’t think so.’ His mouth hardened. ‘Then there’s the fact that you drove in by the back gate, as instructed, which took you a long way out of your way but, being a woman, I presume, you neglected to think of the extra petrol you might need.’

Jo opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then, ‘So that’s why it seemed a lot further than I’d calculated. But—’ she stopped to think briefly ‘—what happened to the front gate?’

His gaze narrowed on her. ‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘you might be whole lot cleverer than I first thought. You’re certainly an inspired liar—what the hell could have happened to the front gate?’

Jo gritted her teeth. ‘According to Mrs Adele Hastings, the front gate, the main gate, the only gate she mentioned should have been about fifty kilometres back from the gate I drove through. And it should have been well signposted. “You won’t miss it,” she told me. “It’s a big black truck tyre with the name painted in white on it.” Believe me, I kept my eyes peeled but I saw nothing like that.’

His eyes narrowed but he maintained the attack from a different direction. ‘And you just kept on driving all those extra kilometres?’ he taunted.

‘Yes, I did! But only after I used my mobile phone to contact Kin Can only to find I’d gone out of range. That road was quite good, though, and I thought—what’s fifty kilometres to country people?’

A glimmer of a smile lit his eyes but it was gone as soon as it came.