Heir To Danger

She stood about five-seven and wouldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds wringing wet. Hair as dark as midnight hung halfway down her back. Her skin was the color of milky coffee and her violet gaze locked with his in silent challenge. She definitely wasn’t from around here. Her cream shirt and tailored jeans, even caked in red dust, screamed European designer. The jeans were tucked into calf-hugging leather boots that Tom would bet were worth several months of his salary.

He sighed inwardly. Now he had an explanation for the deserted car, if not for its lovely occupant.

“I didn’t mean to trespass by coming in here,” she said in a cultured voice tinged with an exotic accent.

Tom struggled to place it. Where had he heard that voice before? “I’m Shire Ranger Tom McCullough. Who are you?” he asked quietly.

He detected the slightest hesitation before she said, “My name is Shara.”

Had she been about to say Mrs. Somebody? He knew he’d have been disappointed if she had. No, she’d hesitated as if she wasn’t accustomed to having to explain her identity. Who was she and what the devil was going on?

“This place is off-limits to all women, Shara,” he said. “You’re breaking indigenous law by entering.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” she assured him. “I was merely—driving around. A kangaroo hopped in front of my car and I bumped it very slightly. I didn’t think it was injured but I followed it up here to make sure. When I saw the opening in the rock and the paintings, I decided to take a closer look.”

As a ranger, Tom knew a lie when he heard one. Not about the kangaroo, but what she was doing in the area in the first place. “Driving where?” he asked.

“Just—around.”

There it was, that hesitation again. The growing impatience in Andy’s body language put an end to Tom’s probing. Not even their long friendship would stop the other man from doing his sacred duty, Tom knew.

He looked at the spear held unwaveringly on her. “She didn’t know any better, Andy. Let me take care of this. I’ll see she never makes a mistake like this again.”

The other man’s frown deepened. “You know our laws, Barrak.”

Hearing his clan name used, Tom’s heart sank and with it his hope of salvaging the situation.

To Wandarra’s people, the cave spirits weren’t gods, watching the people from on high. They walked among their people, controlling the natural world. If they were offended, they could turn nature against the people, causing untold misery and hardship. If Andy allowed her to walk away, the clan elders could hunt her down and possibly kill her for defiling the sacred place. Andy would also suffer for his part in the transgression.

Tom was uncomfortably aware of Wandarra waiting. “We’ve known each other long enough that you know some things can’t be handled the traditional way anymore,” he said carefully. He sensed the other man’s resolve, but he had to try. “When someone does wrong, I talk to the wrongdoer, make sure they understand their mistake so they don’t do it again.”

Wandarra shot him a look of anger. “Talk won’t help. This is sacred clan business.” He tapped Tom’s chest hard. “Your business, Barrak.”

“What does he mean, your business? And why does he call you Barrak?” Shara asked. Her voice was thin with fear but held steady, earning his grudging admiration. Whoever she was, she didn’t spook easily.

He grasped the lapels of his khaki uniform shirt and pulled them apart, hearing her breath catch as he revealed a pattern of whorls and cicatrices, the result of long-healed scars cut into his chest.

“The name means white dingo. I’m an honorary member of Wandarra’s clan,” he said.

“But you’re not Aboriginal.”

“Not entirely.” Like many people in the Kimberley, he had a thin trickle of Aboriginal blood in his veins and sometimes wished he had more. It would have been an improvement on the heritage he did have.

As boys, he and Wandarra had been initiated into manhood together. For Andy, it had been a necessary rite of passage. No one had expected Tom to participate, but as teenagers he and Wandarra had been so close, he’d wanted to do everything his friend did. When the elders sent Andy into the desert for three days to survive on his own, existing on what food and water he could find, Tom insisted on undertaking his own survival trek, returning tired, hungry and dehydrated, but triumphant.

His feat had so impressed the elders that they’d agreed to include him in the final initiation rites. His foster father had tried to talk him out of it but Tom had refused to believe Des’s description of the ceremony, thinking the older man meant to scare him out of doing what he wanted to do. When Des realized Tom was determined to undergo the ritual, he had locked the boy in his room.

Tom had slid a sheet of paper under the door, jiggled a pen-knife in the lock until he dislodged the key. When the key dropped onto the paper, he’d pulled them both through to his side and escaped.

By the time he found out that Des hadn’t exaggerated the ordeal ahead, it was too late. Along with Andy and the other boys on the brink of manhood, Tom had forced himself to endure the grueling physical challenges, nightmarish confrontations to test his courage and the agony of having tribal markings carved into his chest. The alternative was to remain forever a boy in his friend’s eyes, and that would have been far worse.

The elders had gone easy on him, he knew now. Andy’s markings were far more extensive than Tom’s own. Nevertheless, he had been a mess, feverish and delusional by the time Des found him and carried him back to the homestead. Without recrimination, Des had tended the cuts on Tom’s chest until they healed into the pattern that now identified him as a man of Wandarra’s clan.

A man with frightening responsibilities.

Shara recognized it in his face, and he saw the color leave her features. “What is this man going to do?” she asked.

“What he must,” Tom said tautly. He saw Andy lift the spear as if testing the weapon’s weight.

Her eyes saucered as she caught the gesture. “You’re as mad as he is. You can’t let him put a spear through me. This is the twenty-first century. There are laws even in the wilderness.”

“Outback Australia has its own laws.”

“And I’m to be punished for my ignorance by being speared?”

To her credit, although her voice faltered, she held herself proudly, her chin lifted.

“It is the traditional penalty,” Tom said, remorse tingeing his tone.

She eyed the insignia on his shirt. “You’re an officer of the law. Can’t you stop this?”

“The outback has more than one kind of law. I try to uphold both kinds, white and traditional.”

Disbelief shadowed her violet eyes. “You really mean to let him do this, don’t you?”

His gut twisted. He had never seen eyes quite that shade before. They were ringed with some dark makeup that made them look huge in her heart-shaped face. He felt as if he was about to kick a puppy. “I have no choice.”

He grasped her shoulder, noting how fragile her body felt beneath the thin shirt. Feeling the delicate outline of her bones, he amended his assessment of her weight downward by a few pounds. She felt as slender as a child. And she was shaking.

She was putting on a good act, but he felt her trembling like a leaf.

His throat felt dry as he pressed her back against the sandstone wall. “Brace your palms against the rock, and whatever happens, don’t move an inch. Understood?”

The lambent gaze she turned on him was almost his undoing. “Please don’t do this.”

He roughened his tone, not wanting to drag this out. “Understood?”

A ragged breath escaped her full lips, making him feel even more brutal. “Yes.”

“It might help to close your eyes,” he said.

Wandarra made an angry sound of impatience and Tom knew he couldn’t stall any longer. If he didn’t take care of this, the other man would, and it would be far worse for Shara.

Her heart beat so hard Shara thought it would fly out of her chest. Some of her own country’s older customs seemed barbaric to her, but this was a nightmare. First a man in a loincloth had threatened to spear her after finding her looking at the ancient cave paintings. When the ranger had arrived she’d expected him to intervene. Instead he seemed to condone the cruel ritual. What kind of men did this country breed?

Awesome ones, she concluded reluctantly. Primitive they might be, but both men were incredible examples of masculine perfection. Wandarra’s loincloth hid almost nothing of his physical beauty. Tom’s uniform was more concealing, thank goodness, but when he’d ripped open his shirt to reveal the tribal markings, she’d glimpsed solid muscle under the uniform.

Not that it was any help to her now.