Her Outback Protector

She shrugged, licking a little bit of avocado off her fingertip. “I went to boarding school. Then I went on to uni and had on campus accommodation. It proved a lot safer than being at home.”

“Did your mother know what was going on?” Surely not. That would have been criminal.

She sighed. “My mother only sees what she wants to see. She can’t help it. It’s the way she’s made. Besides, Jem was pretty adept at picking his moments. I was always on high alert. Occasionally he got in an awful messy kiss or a grope. Once I pinched his face so hard he cried out. Then I took to carrying a weapon on my person.”

He could picture it. “Don’t tell me. A stun gun?”

“Close. A needle with a tranquillizer in it.”

“You’re joking!” That was totally unexpected. And dangerous.

“All right, I am. But I was desperate. I took to carrying my dad’s Swiss Army knife. You know what that is?’

“Of course I know what it is,” he said, frowning hard at the very idea of her needing to carry such a thing as a weapon. “I have one, like millions of other guys. It’s a miniature tool box.”

“You don’t have one like mine. It’s a collector’s item,” she boasted. “An original 1891 version.”

“Really? I’d like to see it.”

She laughed. “And I’d enjoy showing it to you only I couldn’t bring it on the plane.”

“I wish I could meet up with this Jem,” he said grimly.

“No need to feel sorry for me.” She tilted her chin.

“Nothing catastrophic happened. He’s such a maggot. He just had all these urges. Men are like that.”

“Indeed they’re not,” he rapped back. “Evil men give the rest of us ordinary decent guys a bad name. It’s utterly unfair. There’s something utterly disgusting about a predator.”

“That’s why I like my gay friends,” she announced, wiping her hands daintily on a paper napkin before brushing back the damp curls at her temple.

“How long was your hair?” he asked, his eyes following the movement of her small, pretty hands.

“That’s a funny question, Daniel Carson.”

He gave his dimpled, lopsided smile. “Oh, I dunno. I’m trying to visualise you as the girl you were.”

“If you must know, I had a great mop of hair. A lot of people thought it was lovely. Say, those sandwiches were good. I think I must have been starving. I might even have another one of those little pastries. Oh, it’s yours!” she observed belatedly.

“Take it,” he urged. “You’re the one paying.”

“What?”

“Just a little joke,” he said. “My shout this time.”

“Which reminds me,” she said in quite a different voice.

“I want you up at the house.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You can’t mean living there?”

“I can mean and I do mean.” She sat back, fiddling with her thumbs.

“Just forget about it,” he answered flatly.

“Might I remind you, Daniel, I’m the boss. I want you about two steps up the hallway from me. I don’t know you very well, but I’d find having a great big guy like you around—especially one with a Swiss Army knife—reassuring.”

He frowned direly. “Sandra, your fears are groundless.”

“Sez you!” she responded hotly, sitting up straight. “Do you know how many people get killed over money?”

“There could only be one in a million who don’t finish up in jail,” he told her in a stern voice.

“A few more than that filter through,” she struck back.

He studied the flare-up of colour in her cheeks. “Listen, Ms Kingston, if you’re under the impression your family would agree to that, you’re very much mistaken. Both your uncle and your cousin would see me gone only neither of them can do my job. It was your grandfather who hired me. It was your grandfather who gave me so much authority. As you can imagine your uncle and your cousin bitterly resented that fact, even if they didn’t want to take over the reins. After twelve months I’ll have no alternative but to quit.”

“You won’t quit while I need you,” she told him imperiously. “And you will shift your gear up into the house, if you’d be so kind. I may have been only ten when we were kicked out but I do remember it was so big you needed a bus to get around it.”

“Just leave it for the time being, won’t you?” he asked in his most reasonable voice. “See how the family reacts.”

“In that case, Daniel, you better be present,” she said. “So where did you come from anyway? Are you a Territorian?”

“I am now, but I come from all over.”

“You’re worse than I am,” she sighed. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

“Maybe not today.”

She looked at him searchingly. “So what about a compromise? Where precisely did you learn to manage a cattle station. You’re what?” Her blue eyes ranged over him.

“You want me to produce a birth certificate? I’m twenty-eight, okay?”

“Most overseers aren’t off the ground by then,” she observed, impressed.

“Then I must be the eighth wonder of the world. As it happened, I learned from the best. My mother and I lived like gypsies moving around Outback Queensland until we came to rest in the Channel Country when I was about eleven. A station owner there, a Harry Cunningham, offered her the job of housekeeper after his wife died and there we stayed until he died some years back. His daughter sold the station almost immediately after. Something that must have the old man still swivelling in his grave. But such is life!”

There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but the first was easy. “So where is your mother now?”

His handsome face instantly turned to granite. “I’m like you, Alexandra. I’m an orphan.”

“I’m sorry.” She saw clearly he had no more dealt with the loss of his mother than she had the loss of her father. Orphans. Hadn’t her mother been lost to her the day she married that rich, worthless scumbag, Jem?

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said.

“What happened to her?” She spoke as gently as she could, fearing she was about to be rebuffed.

“I think we’ll just leave it,” he said.