Outback Fire

“I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion,” he pointed out amusedly, glancing down at his jeans and high boots.

“Don’t worry about that. You look fine.” Actually Stephanie Drysdale was thinking she had never seen a man looking so utterly divine.

Gilbert Drysdale led him off to the study while his wife and Sara went in search of Storm. Guests were wandering around everywhere, champagne glasses in hand, laughing, talking, relaxed. They continued through one of the opulent reception rooms along a corridor until they came to the darkened study.

Drysdale switched on the lights, illuminating a very functional, very masculine room in complete contrast to the rest of the house. Gracious like his wife, Drysdale stayed on for a moment to ask more of Athol McFarlane’s health then he excused himself saying he had better get back to his guests. Luke took an armchair, upholstered in a rich dark green leather, allowing his eyes to wander casually around the room, his mind preoccupied with this coming meeting. Four long months since he’d seen Storm. It felt like years. Sick of her, sick with her. Hell it was like a disease!

He heard the tap of her high heels along the corridor, an excitement in itself as he forcefully inhaled a lungful of breath. She was there! Sweeping into the room in a cloud of some beautiful elusive perfume that made him flare his nostrils, a subtle blend of gardenia, orange blossom, freesia? What would a man know? What would a mere male know about the miracle of Woman? She bedazzled him in her sexy little sequined top in lime-green with a long side split ruffled skirt that had to be chiffon over silk, the tiny green iridescent beads that were sewn all over it catching the light. Her thick raven tresses were dressed more elaborately than he had yet seen, the volume increased so it winged back from her forehead and cheeks and spilt over her bare shoulders. Knowing her so well, he could see she had gone pale, her green eyes glittering like the emeralds she wore in her ears.

So near, yet so far! She made his head reel and she was using up his life.

“Luke, what is it? What’s the matter?” she asked urgently, closing the study door behind her and leaning back against it.

It was quite a pose, a sizzler, but he knew it was unconscious. “Hi there, Storm,” he said, getting slowly to his feet. “I’m really happy to see you, too. No need to panic. Your father sent me.”

She could hardly speak for her surprise. Luke, as handsome, as inflammable as ever. “About what? Has he taken ill?” Though her heart quickened with fright, it came out like a challenge.

“You mean you didn’t know?” he clipped off, his mood darkening. “Your father has been ill for years.”

She couldn’t bear the censure in his beautiful blue eyes. “I only spoke to him last night. He was perfectly all right then.”

He could feel the familiar tension invading his body. “Don’t be absurd, Storm. His leg gives him hell as you know.”

That had its effect, too. “What are you accusing me of, Luke?’ she asked heatedly, wondering if their clashes were to be repeated forever.

“Well, now we’re on the subject, I’m accusing you of neglect.”

She flushed, the upsurge of colour increasing her beauty. “Don’t you always pick the right words,” she said bleakly. “I love my father. I ring him regularly.”

“But you don’t visit.”

She shook back her long hair. The overhead light had burnished the ebony waves with purple. “I have a career, Luke. Can’t you understand? I have commissions I must complete. And I get them from people with the money to afford them. Like the people who are here tonight. I just can’t rush off at a moment’s notice.”

He looked at her unsmilingly. “Well you’re going to have to. Your father wants you home. I think you should come.”

She laughed. It was almost certainly not humorous. “You think…you think. Oh, yes, you decide what’s best.”

“Don’t start,” he begged. “I’ve had just about enough. You know and I know that you stay away because of me.”

“How you kid yourself!” The truth didn’t lessen the pain.

“I don’t. You can’t put anything over me. I’m not your father to be wound around your little finger. Busy or not I want you to come back with me. You have the wedding tomorrow, but Sunday.”

She stared at him, absorbing the aura of power that surrounded him. “You can’t be serious?”

“I’m always serious with you. Your father wants you.”

Anxiety was like a knife against her heart but she knew her father. He thought bringing her home was his right. Twenty-seven and he still treated her like a child. “It can’t be that serious, Luke. He would have told me.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“So you’re calling the shots now?” She was as defensive as ever. There was so much bottled up inside her it might never get out.

“I always act in the interests of your father. It’s over four months since you’ve seen him. I have to tell you he’s gone downhill since then.”

“Oh God!” She all but swayed into a chair, the slit in her long skirt revealing one long, slender leg. “I ring him every week without fail. Why does he never say anything? Why is everything so secret?”

“You know your father,” Luke sighed. “He plays it close to the chest. Besides the last thing he wants to do is cause you anxiety.”

“And what about you?” There was the pain again. Not jealousy. Rejection. “You’re always there aren’t you? He has you to confide in.”

“Well he doesn’t,” Luke responded curtly, all the feeling he had about her cruelly twisting. “I tried to speak to Tom Skinner but Tom clams up.”

“Do you really think I haven’t tried to speak to Tom myself?” Storm flung up her head. “Tom does what Dad tells him. Just like everyone else. Including you.”

“And you of course are the rebel?” He let his blue eyes wander over her body, so beautiful and so insufferable. “I’m sorry if it interferes with your professional and social life but I feel you should come home if only for a few days.”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s a request. Don’t close your heart, Storm.”

“Then it’s that bad?” Her almond eyes glittered with unshed tears.

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. We’re never going to be friends, Storm, but I do care about your father,” he said, fighting down the mad desire to crush her in his arms.

“And he loves you.” She had been exposed to that early. “What is it about you men that you value your sons above your daughters?”

“I don’t accept that,” he said, thinking to have a little daughter like Storm would be utter joy.

“It’s true in Dad’s case. I spent years of my childhood wishing I were a boy. Wishing I were you.” She shook her head. She had been wounded in so many ways perhaps no one would understand.

The pathos of that stung him. “I’m sorry, Storm. I never asked for any of it.”

“Of course not.” Her smile was bitter-sweet. “It was your destiny. What are you really after, Luke. We both know you’re ambitious. Is it Winding River? I swear you’ll never get it.” Her feelings for him, so complex, manifested themselves in inflicting hurt.

His eyes flashed. “If anything happens to your father, Storm, I’m out. Nothing on God’s earth would persuade me to work for you. And you couldn’t run the station yourself. You’ve taken no interest in it for years.”

“Who needed my interest?” she said, in reality a victim of her father’s blind injustice. “Who needs me when they’ve got you?”

“God, Storm, I’m not a monster,” he rasped. “I’m no substitute for you when it comes to your father. He idolizes you, but you’ve always been too hot-headed to accept that. So he’s one of the old school who thinks women have to be protected and provided for; shielded from the harsh realities of life. I understand perfectly how important your career is to you. I applaud you. But your father has given you everything you’ve got including your apartment.”

That he knew was a double blow. “You know that?” she asked.

“You just told me.” He moved restlessly, rangy and powerful. “How could you have afforded it anyway? It’s only these last few years you’ve been making real money. I expect that your father makes you a handsome allowance. That dress must have cost a fortune.” It was exquisite revealing her beautiful shoulders and the swell of her breasts. “The sandals. The emeralds in your ears.”

“My mother’s emeralds, Luke,” she pointed out dryly. “Columbian. Real emeralds are very hard to come by. You don’t know everything.”

He drew a deep steadying breath. “Look, why don’t we put our little range war aside. I didn’t come here for you I came for your father. Because I care about him. Like you he’s given me just about everything but I work very hard to repay him. In fact I break my back.”