Outback Angel

“You obviously don’t mind getting personal?” She came a step further, strangely appealing in her tallness.

“I fail to see what’s personal about that.”

“Talking about the length of my skirt was. Your lady friend is a fellow rancher, I understand?”

He marvelled at her cheek, giving her a cool stare. “You’re not getting paid to ask questions like that, Miss De Campo. As it happens, I’m a committed bachelor.”

She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or having her on. Not the time, really, to tell him he could very well be the man of her dreams. That would come later. Now she settled for, “You don’t look like one.” Indeed he looked like the hero of some big-budget adventure movie. The sort who kept a woman’s eyes glued to the screen.

He didn’t appear to be taking her seriously. In fact he moved off abruptly in the direction of his lovely plane, causing her to utilise some of what she thought of as her beanstalk height to catch up.

Equally abruptly, he turned back, smiling so tigerishly, he surprised her into slamming into him. Multiple little shocks like a charge of electricity rippled through her; a little sound suspiciously like excitement escaped her. The big cat’s eyes swished over her.

“And you know them all?”

Angelica felt his condemnation like an actual burden. She didn’t care how long it took, she’d convince him there’d been absolutely nothing between herself and Trevor Huntley, no matter what his eyes had deceived him into thinking. Things weren’t always what they seemed yet he’d already brought in a verdict. It was awful to be accused of a crime like indecent exposure when one was perfectly innocent.

“So what about my luggage?” she prompted, although she’d just remembered it herself. Some measure of proof her customary aplomb had collapsed. “Surely you don’t intend taking off without it?”

He laughed, a sexual sardonic sound. Something he was good at. “If all your clothes are as brief as what you’re wearing,” he observed, “I’m surprised you’re not carrying it over your shoulder.”

Good-natured as she was, she couldn’t contain a flicker of temper. “Obviously you don’t realise what’s going on in women’s fashions. I expect it comes with the landscape. You’re a very long way from the big city.”

“Which doesn’t mean I don’t get there part of the time to catch up.” He hesitated a moment, his gleaming gaze speculative. “Any chance you’ve packed a few things a couple of inches longer?”

She responded sweetly though sparks were crackling between them. “To bring all this off successfully, and I so want to, Mr. McCord, perhaps I could arrange a showing of my wardrobe for you. You could tell me what you like and what you don’t. The kind of thing a nice girl wears. We could talk about it.”

His amber eyes sparkled with half malice, half amusement. “Which calls for time I don’t have. You are the same woman I spoke to on the phone?”

“You have doubts?” She seemed to be gravitating towards him, drawn by his powerful magnetism.

“It is a concern,” he mocked. “You don’t seem like my initial choice.”

“I’m me, I can vouch for it.”

The handsomely defined mouth compressed. “In that case, you’d better come along. Your luggage, unless it’s been stolen, should be beside the plane by now. I know the guy who drives the van.”

“Let’s hope he’s not a cross-dresser,” she joked.

“I beg your pardon.” He paused to look down at her, eyes narrowed.

“I said—”

“I know what you said.” Despite himself he had to laugh. Whatever else the ravishingly wanton Miss De Campo might prove to be—and he just knew she was going to be an extravagant handful—she wouldn’t be dull. That’s what he had liked about her in the first place.

CHAPTER THREE

FROM the air, Coori homestead, surrounded by its satellite buildings, resembled a settlement constructed on the site of an oasis. The vast areas around it, thousands upon thousands of square miles, in comparison, was practically the far side of planet Mercury. The burning, mirage-stalked earth was coloured a brilliant red, scattered densely with golden bushes like great mounds. Angelica guessed before McCord told her it was spinifex. Spinifex and sand. Out here the two went together.

“The cattle will eat it if nothing else is available,” he told her casually, secretly pleased she’d been such a good passenger. She was fearless—they’d hit a few thermals—she showed great interest in her latest adventure, and she asked intelligent questions. “But spinifex has little food value for the stock. The seeds on the other hand we use to fatten horses to prime condition.”

“From here it looks rather like wheat,” she observed, fascinated by the spectacle, the sheer size and emptiness of a giant primitive landscape that was crisscrossed by maze after maze of water channels—swamps, lagoons, billabongs, desert streams—that appeared to be running near dry.

He nodded. “Especially at this time of year. The interior of the bushes, strangely enough, is quite cool. For that reason the lizards make their home there, but the wax content is so high the bushes can burn fiercely. When they do, they send up great clouds of black smoke for days.”

“It doesn’t look like you’ve had any rain,” she said quietly, thinking drought must be really terrible to the man on the land.

His laugh was ironic. “Not for a year. Not a drop during winter-spring. Not a single shower, but we’ve seen great displays of storm-clouds like a Wagnerian set that got wheeled away. We’re hoping the Wet season up north will be a good one. But not too good. We can do without the floods. Just enough to flush out every water channel. When the eastern river system comes down in flood, the waterbirds fly in in their millions. The Channel Country is a major breeding ground for nomadic waterbirds. Great colonies of Ibis nest in our lignum swamps. They do us a big favour by feasting on the destructive flocks of grasshoppers that strip the grass and herbage for the stock. Then there are all sorts of ducks in their countless thousands—herons, shags, spoonbills, waterhens, egrets.”

“So where do they come from?” she asked, turning to admire his handsome profile. He was a marvellous-looking man.

“Good question. No one seems to know. It’s one of those great mysteries of the Outback. One day there’s not a sign of them, but then a sudden storm, the billabongs fill and they’re there literally overnight. Most other birds take days to arrive, when they sense water. Pelicans—I love the pelicans. I used to try to find their nests as a boy—turn up in favoured years to breed in our more remote swamps. Those are just the waterbirds. What will dazzle you here is the great flights of budgerigar, a phenomenon of the Outback, like the crimson chats and the finches. The hawks and the falcons prey on them. The largest bird is the wedge-tailed eagle. You’ll identity it easily in flight from the wingspan. At least seven foot. The wingtips curve up. Wedge-tails can take a fair-size kangaroo.”

“Goodness.” She tried to visualise it. “Swooping on a medium-size kangaroo must take some doing?”

“They don’t have a problem. There are plenty of predators around.” He shrugged. “The huge flocks of white birds you’ll see are the corellas. They cover the coolabahs so densely you can scarcely see a leaf. Or a branch. And the noise when they take off is deafening. All our beautiful parrots prefer the scrub. Not that you’ll have much time for sight-seeing, Miss De Campo. You’re here to work.”

“I’ll get up very early,” she murmured. “What a truly extraordinary place you live in.” It had to have moulded him, made him special. “You must feel like a desert chieftain?”

He glanced at her with those amazing exotic eyes. Everything about him said, “Don’t go trying to fascinate me.” What a challenge! He confirmed it by saying, “Don’t go getting any romantic notions. I’m a hardworking cattleman. I haven’t the energy to ravish females.”

“I guess desert chieftains don’t have to be mad rapists,” she joked.

“Have you been raped?” he asked very seriously indeed, giving her a direct stare. Huntley, brute that he was, was probably capable of it. That, he couldn’t bear.

“No such terrible thing has happened to me, the Lord be praised.” She shuddered. “No woman knows for certain if she’s going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s woman’s universal fear. I have a guardian angel I pray to to look after me. A father who adores me. A brother who thinks a lot of me. He’s built like a commando and he has a black belt.”

“Whereas all you’ve got is a cupboard full of basketball trophies.”

“I’m sorry I told you that,” she said.

“You also told me you were frequently asked, ‘How’s the weather up there?’”

“My favourite was how did I cope with altitude sickness. People are cruel. The plainer they are, the crueller they get.”

“Whereas you’re a most beautiful woman.”

“Am I?” she asked with a small degree of surprise. She’d had plenty of compliments in her time but she hadn’t been expecting too many from him. Not after that flinty-eyed reception.

“Miss De Campo, I have no intention of going soft on you,” he assured her, as though he found her mind easy to read. “I hope you believe it, though I’m sure your successes have been legion. I’ll be watching your every move. You may have won the battle but not the war.”

“Why should there be war between us? A war would get us nowhere. I’m looking for your co-operation.”

“And you’ll get it providing you don’t take it into your head to send the senses of the male population reeling.”

“As though I’d be capable of such a thing,” she answered breezily. “Are we coming in to land?”

“We are,” he confirmed crisply, thinking he was coming off second best with this woman. “So you can tighten your seat belt.”