The Cattle Baron

“Charming.”

“He’s also at the very top of his profession. His book on the life and culture of Australian Aborigines is a classic. His fieldwork attracts big grants. In a word, he’s got to be taken very seriously.”

Banfield considered briefly. “Speaking of grants, who’s funding this?”

“Presumably Graeme’s department.”

“Really? Well, surely they realize that even the most brilliant scientists can have a few bats in the belfry. My concern is that Porter’s using him, and Marley’s making it easy because he has this burning desire to keep confounding his peers. Finding the Winjarra paintings was a huge success. But success can’t stand still. Next, a tremendous discovery confirming once and for all that there was an ancient Egyptian presence in Australia.”

Rosie lifted her face to the heady perfume of the night. It seemed to be coming from the cascades of gardenia-scented white trumpet vine that smothered the lattice screens. “But is it so impossible?” she asked. “How did all the relics get here? The jewelry, the artifacts, the coins—some of them were apparently buried for four thousand years. Then there’s the pottery, the bronze and copper tools, the amazing hieroglyphics carved into rocks. Graeme thinks Australia was actually the Land of Punt, the mysterious southern continent referred to in Egyptian carvings. They could even have mined gold and silver and left their relics behind. Look at this gold necklace.” She fingered the gleaming lotus flowers.

“I’ve been looking at it all evening, oddly enough.”

“Where did this necklace come from?”

He glanced down at her, all his senses alive. “Again, try Porter’s safe,” he said wryly. “Speaking of gold, there could be gold deposits on Three Moons, for all I know. There were rich lodes up here in the old days. Tin. Collecting is an obsession with my uncle. He’s run through most of his own fortune and now he has to find ways of making more. If there is gold on Three Moons—and one of my people, a tribal elder, believes there is—Porter as a Banfield would have a claim.”

“So it’s more complicated than I thought.” Rosie picked a flower, then stuck it carelessly in her hair.

“It always is, especially with my uncle around.”

“And you’re worried about Mick, aren’t you?” Her voice was quiet and sympathetic.

He stopped, took her by the shoulders, turned her around to face him. “How did you know?”

“Easy.” She smiled. “I’m sensitive and highly intelligent.”

And she had a strong, very womanly sexuality. It enveloped him like the perfume of the gardenias. Once again he had that hard wild urge to kiss her, taste that luscious, full-lipped mouth. He was a passionate man, but of necessity he kept it under control. There was no point at all in starting something with Miss Roslyn Summers, despite the attraction between them. Slowly he dropped his hands, walked on. “Mick has suffered badly since he lost his wife,” he said levelly. “He loved her dearly and she loved him. Mick’s feelings go deep. At some stage he took to the bottle to ease the pain. He’s not a natural drinker. He doesn’t really enjoy it. But it serves to keep his mind anesthetized.”

“And you’re concerned that after the initial enthusiasm wears off, he’ll return to heavy drinking?”

Banfield sighed heavily. “He’s not the man to mastermind an exploration of the up-country. Only a few years ago, he would have been. But I have good reason to believe he’s not going to reform overnight.”

“You’re going to say no.” She felt a surge of disappointment. Not the least of it because she’d be losing all contact with him.

“I can’t bury my disquiet. I’m of two minds about everything, which doesn’t suit me at all. On the one hand, it was great to see Mick show such enthusiasm. He’s always been on about the Egyptian connection. A lot of people up here still are. My own grandfather claimed to have seen massive ruins of stone walls in the wilds of Cape York, which is as remote a place as one can get.”

She stared at him in amazement, struck by the male beauty of his strong features. Michelangelo would have loved him. “You never mentioned that before.”

He threw her a sidelong mocking smile. “There are lots of things I haven’t mentioned, Miss Summers, much as you’ve tried to beguile them out of me. You wouldn’t know, but the old Aboriginal witch doctors around here used ‘knot magic,’ much like the ancient Egyptians did. The knots represented blessings or curses. Where do you suppose they learned it? How did the ancient Egyptians come by their golden boomerangs, for that matter? Why did the Torres Strait natives mummify their dead using the Egyptian method? It’s all fascinating stuff, I agree. I do have some imagination, but I also have a big enterprise to run.”

“And you’re afraid to let us go off by ourselves with only Mick and, I presume, your uncle for guides?”

He answered with some force. “I’m afraid to let you go off, Miss Summers. I appreciate that you’ve had terrifying times covering your war stories, but you can equally well get lost or killed in the jungle. No joke. Where you’re going, the river is teeming with crocs. There are wild boar, pythons, snakes, spiders, among the deadliest in the world.”

“I’m game.” She’d have to take good care that nothing happened to her.

“I thought you might be.” He looked down at her moodily. “And all you expect to get out of this is a story? A world scoop?”

“What’s wrong with that?” She didn’t add she was mad keen to know him better. Instead, she stopped to stare at a bed of Indonesian torch ginger with its fantastic ten-inch red flowers. Such a clump of them! Unbelievable! “I also get to keep this necklace,” she added with a self-satisfied little smirk.

“Really?” His voice was very dry. “Porter has never been known to give anything away.”

“One of the perks of the job. An inducement, obviously.” She shrugged with apparent nonchalance. “It’s a pity you’re such a busy man.”

“You’re so good at this,” he groaned.

“Well, you are the ideal man to head this safari.”

“So what would I get out of it?” he demanded.

A nearly audible chord of excitement vibrated in the air between them as attraction assumed real shape and substance.

Rosie couldn’t laugh. She had never felt so vulnerable in her life, literally quaking. “You can hardly be suggesting we become lovers.” Even saying it aroused her. Inside her head. All over her body.