A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return: A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return

‘And humans don’t eat lanternfish. Too oily.’

It hit him then, why this mattered to her so much. ‘The seals are no threat to human fisheries.’

‘None. In fact they probably help it, because our fish and their fish prey on the same smaller species. So by keeping lanternfish numbers down the seals help ensure there’s more smaller-prey fish to support the fish we haul up by the netful.’

‘Thus protecting a multi-million-dollar industry.’

‘Exactly.’

Well, damn. The seals were probably essential to Castleridge’s thriving fishing industry. The same kind of feeling that he got when he found the weak link in a competitor’s contract hit him, a mini-elation. Except hot on the heels of the rush came a dismal realisation, and this one sank to the bottom of his gut. ‘Who knows about this?’ he asked carefully.

‘So far? My team. Leo knew. And now you know.’

‘Is that why my father gave you his support?’

‘It was your father that put me onto the lanternfish in the first place.’

His gut clenched and it had nothing to do with the stench. ‘Bull.’

She seemed surprised by his vehemence. ‘He never believed the seals were a problem. He’d watched their habits. He grew up with them too.’

True. How could he have forgotten that? Had Leo spent the same lazy days he had as a boy, hanging out with the forbidden seals? Had he sought sanctuary there when his father went off at him?

Her eyes gentled. ‘He was stoked when the results started coming in showing he was right.’

That was what she’d want him to believe, to improve her case. ‘You’re telling me he was happy his land was going to be accessioned?’

Her eyes dropped.

‘I thought not.’ Look at what he’d done as a result.

Brown almond eyes lifted to his. ‘He was conflicted, Grant. He wanted to do what was right. But he knew what it would do to the value of the farm.’

The almighty farm, the god to which Leo McMurtrie prayed. It had always been his beginning, middle and end. ‘And now you expect me to simply follow suit?’

Kate frowned and clutched the photograph. ‘I thought …’

‘You thought this would make a difference? Why?’

‘Because you’re a lawyer. You pursue justice. These animals are being unjustly persecuted and we hold the evidence in our hands.’

‘I’m a contracts lawyer, Kate. I don’t do the whole “scales of justice” thing. I lock down minor details, I screw down better deals, I hunt for loopholes and make sure no-one can get out of something they’ve committed to. Or, in this case, I’ll be doing my best to get out of the agreement my father had with you.’

Kate paled. ‘But how can you, now that you know? You can protect these seals. Help save them. Your whole property could become a sanctuary.’

Her naïve idealism was like a foreign language to him. ‘I can’t protect anyone, Kate. They won’t be mine to protect.’

She blinked. ‘What do you mean? I’ve been watching you improve the place. Getting it back in shape. Giving Tulloquay its life back.’

‘To sell, Kate. I’m doing it up to sell it as soon as it passes into my name.’

She seemed to stumble briefly but caught herself on a rocky outcrop. ‘You’re selling your farm?’

She said it as though he’d announced he was going to slaughter the seals for their coats. ‘My father’s farm. It was never mine, even when I lived here. I’m not a farmer. I’m a lawyer. I never wanted this.’

And Dad knew it. The final irony—leaving it to a son who wouldn’t want it, making all of this his problem.

‘But the seals …’

‘Three months, Kate. I did warn you. You’ll just have to wrap up early.’

The panicked glitter to her eyes wheedled its way straight into his subconscious. He didn’t like distressing her. ‘We can’t wrap up early. Breeding season starts in two months and we need to establish where that happens. It’s a key piece of the cycle to ensure we have a full year of foraging behaviour established for this year.’

‘Then you should have done it before now.’

Colour roared high along her cheekbone. ‘Do you think we didn’t try? We’ve been searching for two seasons to work out where they go. It’s unusual for any group to breed somewhere other than their rookery, but these ones do. The TDR’s don’t record positioning, only depth. We’ve lost the colony two seasons running during breeding season.’

‘Then who’s to say you wouldn’t have lost them again this year? I’m sure the bulk of your research will still stand. Whatever you have now has got to be more than science has ever had before. Two years is not a bad innings.’

She stared at him with eyes as big as the seal pups’. ‘How can you be so different to your father?’

His head came up like whiplash, his gut sucking up as tight as the vacuum-seal lid on the eskies. ‘Whatever you think you know, Kate, you’re wrong. My father gave his life to this farm. He wouldn’t have stood by and watched it get carved up.’

Her mouth gaped. ‘Yet you’re going to sell it off to some stranger?’

‘As a going concern. To someone who’ll work it the way it was meant to be.’

Her colour rose with her voice. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a farm. It’s meant to be a delicate coastal ecosystem for all creatures to enjoy, except we came along and colonised the south coast for ourselves and filled it with hard-hoofed livestock!’

‘People don’t buy delicate ecosystems.’

Hurt and disappointment washed over her face. ‘Shutting us down early makes it harder for me to get my results finalised, but it doesn’t invalidate the study completely. The research will still go through. You can’t stop it.’

In the moment when he should have been saying something, he saw the lightbulb come on over her head.

She gasped. ‘But it will stall ratification by the conservation commission. You’re going to rush this sale through before the conservation status changes.’

His choices were reflected back to him in the disgust in her pale expression. Infinitely worse than the hard, callused glares of some corporate types he routinely nailed down. At least there the playing field was relatively equal. Discomfort burned low in his throat.

‘I told you, Kate. Loopholes and weaknesses are what I do. You’ve shown your hand too early.’ He peeled off his gloves and tossed them into the bag at her feet, feeling about as worthy as the slimy muck that splattered off them.

‘You have three months.’

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR the next month, Kate’s days started at half-past four in the morning as she drove out daily to Tulloquay, arriving just after sunrise and staying until dark. The looming deadline of the settlement of Leo’s probate pressed down on her relentlessly—and now the addition of a possible new owner to negotiate with. How many times would she have to fight this battle? How many times would she see her world slide into disarray?

She hated it. When her parents had died, her life had been ripped comprehensively out of her hands. She’d been voiceless amongst strangers making decisions for her, people who’d thought a pre-teen wouldn’t have a problem with having a brand-new life mapped out for her. But she had.