Required: Three Outback Brides: Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife / In the Heart of the Outback... / Single Dad, Outback Wife

She was standing beneath a glowing wall sconce. It gilded the dark rose of the long hair that framed her face. He saw she was wearing a magical silk robe, a golden-green, with pink and cerise flowers all over it. It had fallen open down the front so he could see her nightgown, the same cerise of the flowers. It gleamed satin. So did the curves of her breasts revealed by the plunging V of the neckline. For a minute his strong legs felt like twigs.

Allegra drew her robe around her, scorchingly aware of his intimate appraisal. She was so aroused she was nearly on fire.

So why aren’t you moving?

‘We’d better go back to bed,’ she said in another furious whisper. ‘You go up.’

‘Why not leave those two wall sconces on?’ he suggested, not wanting and wanting so much to delay her. No words could describe how he felt. There was something magical about her. ‘There’ll be enough light to see us up the stairs.’ He could only wonder at how composed he sounded when his body was flowing with sexual energy.

‘The rain seems to be slowing.’ She switched off the main lights, then padded on her slippered feet to the base of the stairs. ‘Coming?’

He was awed by the electric jolt to his heart. ‘Coming where?’ He had a sudden overpowering urge to tell her how much he wanted her.

Only she cut him off. ‘You can’t come with me!’ Her voice trembled. She didn’t confess she was terribly tempted.

‘I can’t help wishing I could.’ He stared back at her, hot with hunger. ‘Don’t be scared, Allegra. I would never offer you a moment’s worry.’

She almost burst into tears she was feeling so frustrated. ‘I’m not scared of you,’ she said. ‘I’m scared of me. Haven’t we progressed far enough for one night?’

‘Years have passed off in a matter of hours,’ he said wryly. ‘Even then you haven’t answered the burning question.’

There was a breathless pause. ‘Ask it quickly. I’m going up to bed.’ She fixed her jewelled eyes on him.

‘What was so wrong with your marriage you had to abandon it?’

She might have turned to marble. ‘Don’t go there, Rory,’ she said.

‘You have to get it out of your system.’

She shook her glowing head. ‘Believe me, tonight’s not the night. Good night, Rory!’

‘What’s left of it.’ He shrugged. ‘See you in the morning, Allegra. I’ll be up early to check everything’s okay.’

‘Thank you.’ She was already at the first landing, intent on getting to the safety of her bedroom and shutting temptation out. ‘If you knock on my door, I’ll join you.’

With that she fled.

CHAPTER SIX

THE rain stopped in the predawn. The air was so fresh it was like a liqueur to the lungs. The birds were calling ecstatically to one another secure in the knowledge there was plenty of water. In the orange-red flame of sunrise they drove around the property, Rory at the wheel of the Jeep, revelling in the miracles the rain could perform. Overnight the whole landscape had turned a verdant glowing green. Little purple wild-flowers appeared out of nowhere, skittering across the top of the grasses. Hundreds of white capped mushrooms had sprung up beneath the trees that were sprouting tight bunches of edible berries.

They checked on the herd together. It had been little affected by the torrential downpour. The stock had come through the night unscathed and without event. The hail Allegra had feared had not eventuated. Cattle were spread out all over the sunlit ridges to the rear of the homestead. It was great to see them so healthy, their liver-red hides washed clean by the downpour.

The creek as expected had burst its banks. They stood at the top of the highest slope looking down at the racing torrent. It was running strongly, and noisily, carrying a lot of debris, fallen branches from the trees and vast clumps of water reeds torn up by the flow. When the water hit the big pearl-grey boulders the height reached by the flying spray was something to see. The area around the big rocks churned with swirling eddies of foaming water.

For a time neither of them spoke, simply enjoying the scene and the freshness and fragrance of the early morning. Both of them knew what this life-giving rain meant; how important it was to the entire region. A flight of galahs undulated overhead in a pink and magenta wave. Exquisite little finches were on the wing, brilliantly plumaged lorikeets chasing them out of their territory with weird squawks. Waterfowl, too, were in flight. They came in to the creek to investigate, fanning out over the stream. Allegra and Rory watched as the birds skimmed a few feet above the racing water, then collectively decided it was way too rough to land. They took off as a squadron, soaring steeply back into the sky again. Water was a magnet to birds. They would be back, from all points of the compass just waiting for the raging of the waters to slow and the creek to turn to a splendid landing field.

‘Rain, the divine blessing!’ Rory breathed as he watched the torrent downstream leap over a rock. ‘No rain our way as yet.’

Our way! His beloved Channel Country. They had listened to the radio for news. The late cyclone that had been developing in the Coral Sea was now threatening the far North. Drought continued to reign in the great South-West.

‘When it comes, the creeks, the gullies, the waterholes, the long curving billabongs will all fill up,’ he continued in a quiet but compelling voice. ‘The billabongs cover over with water lilies. None of your home garden stuff. Huge magnificent blooms. Pink, in one place, the sacred blue lotus in another, lovely creams, a deep pinkish red not unlike the colour of your hair. When the rains come the landscape just doesn’t get a drenching, the vast flood plains go under.

‘We’ve been totally isolated on Turrawin before today, surrounded on all sides by a marshy sea. When the storms come they come with a vengeance. It’s all on a Wagnerian scale—massive thunderheads back lit by plunging spears of lightning. Getting struck and killed isn’t uncommon. We had a neighbour killed in a violent electrical storm a few years back.’

Allegra turned to him, registering the homesickness on his handsome face. ‘How are you going to be able to settle here, Rory, when your heart is clearly somewhere else?’

He adjusted his hat to further shade his eyes from a brilliant chink of sunlight that fell through the green canopy. ‘I told you, Allegra, I can’t go back. My home is lost to me.’

‘You couldn’t find a suitable property in your own region?’

He gave a humourless laugh. ‘I could find one, maybe, but I couldn’t pay for one. No way! We’re talking two entirely different levels here. Our cattle stations—kingdoms are what they’re called and it’s not so fanciful—dwarf the runs in this area. I have to start more or less around the middle and work my way up.’

Her brows were a question mark. ‘But are you going to be happy doing it?’

‘Okay, I understand you.’ He shrugged. ‘The Channel Country is the place of my dreaming. It speaks to my soul like Naroom speaks to yours. This is beautiful country, don’t get me wrong. Maybe it hasn’t got the haunting quality of the desert, or its incredible charisma, but I’ll settle here. I have to.’

‘I don’t think I’d count on it,’ Allegra said, shrugging wryly. ‘Your love for your desert home won’t be shaken off any more than my father’s love for my dead mother. Some loves go so deep nothing and no one can approach them.’

‘Thinking twice about selling then?’ he asked, filling his eyes with her. Her lissom body was clad in a navy and white top and close fitting jeans No makeup again, save for a pink gloss on her mouth. Her thick hair was woven into a rope like plait. He’d never seen a woman look better.

‘Valerie and Chloe, when they return, will demand Naroom be sold,’ she answered. ‘I don’t think we could ask for anyone better than you to take it on. You’re an astute, ambitious man. I haven’t the slightest doubt you’ll make a big success of Naroom. And then you’ll move on.’ She spoke with a lowered head and saddened eyes.

‘Hey, that’s quite a few years down the line!’ He tried to reassure her. ‘But isn’t that the way of it, Allegra? One expands, not stands still. Which doesn’t mean to say Naroom couldn’t and wouldn’t remain a valuable link in a chain.’

‘How good a cattleman is your brother?’ she asked abruptly, moving a step nearer the top of the grassy slope to check it was a log that had smashed into one of the creek boulders and not a lost little calf.

‘Jay got pushed into it,’ he answered. ‘He works as hard as any man. Harder, but—’

‘He wasn’t born to the job,’ she cut in gently.

‘I told you he wanted to be a doctor. It’s a bit late but he could still be. I wouldn’t know but he was a straight A student. Jay has a more sensitive side to him than I have.’

She gazed at him out of her black fringed eyes. ‘I don’t know if that’s exactly right. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Jay, but I would describe you as pretty deep, Rory Compton. You display your sensitivities in many ways.’

‘As when?’ he asked the question, then broke off abruptly, seized by a mild panic. ‘Don’t move,’ he ordered. ‘You could take a tumble.’

Even as he spoke the ground shifted beneath Allegra’s feet. ‘Oh … hell!’ She threw out an arm. He grabbed it strongly, but the soles of her riding boots were slick with grass and mud. She slipped further down the bank with Rory straining to hold her. Allegra almost righted herself, about to thank him for his help, but in the next second a section of rain impacted earth gave way and the two of them began to roll over and over down the wet grassy slope, gathering momentum as they went. Their bodies crushed the multitude of unidentifiable little flowers that grew there in abundance, releasing a sweet musky smell.

Allegra, though powerfully shocked by their tumble, was experiencing a rush of emotions that included exhilaration and a blazing excitement. They were going to go into the stream. She knew that even if she couldn’t look. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d found herself in deep, fast running water. She was a strong swimmer. He would be, too. She didn’t even have to consider it. His powerful arms were around her. What did she care if they had to fight the torrent? They were together. She felt like a woman is supposed to feel when she was with one particular man. A man who walked like he owned the earth.

Rory was taking the brunt of it, trying to protect her body from any hurt along the way. They were to an extent cushioned by the thick grasses that gave up a wonderfully pure, herbal aroma. As they careened towards the rushing creek he crushed her to him. He couldn’t risk flinging out an arm. That meant taking one from her, but he was straining to gain purchase with his boots. Finally he hooked into something—a tight web of vines—that slowed their mad descent.

Another four feet and he was able to slam a brake on their rough tumble. They rolled in slow motion to a complete stop, finding they were almost at the bottom with the roar of the creek in their ears and the near overwhelming scent of crushed vegetation in their nostrils.

‘Bloody hell, woman!’ It was an eternity of seconds before Rory could speak. Then his words came out explosively. He was poised over her, staring down into her beautiful face vivid with exhilaration. ‘Just hold it right there!’ He held her captive, as if he believed her capable of jumping up and taking a header into the creek just for the hell of it!

She laughed with absolute delight. The sound was crystal clear. Transparent like an excited child’s.