Heir To Danger

Slowly her own fury ebbed. “I haven’t thanked you yet for what you tried to do.”

Tom kept his head down. “No thanks needed. You didn’t know what you were getting into.”

She still didn’t, she thought, trying not to flinch when he used a razor blade to slice the leg of her jeans open to just above her knee. She wouldn’t be wearing them again. It came to her that this could be a problem. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have a dozen more pairs where they came from.

As Tom cleaned her injury and wrapped a piece of gauze bandage around it, the touch of his fingers against her heated skin was deft, almost a caress. “Are you a doctor?” she asked.

“In the outback you have to be a bit of everything.” He lifted his head. “That’s the best I can do for now. I’ll take you to Diamond Downs homestead where they’ll do a more thorough job. I have some painkillers on me if you need them.”

“The antiseptic stings a bit, that’s all. I prefer not to cloud my thinking with painkillers.”

He repacked the first-aid kit efficiently. “Pity you didn’t think of that before you blundered into the gorge.”

“You think I don’t know that now? I may be many things, but stupid isn’t usually one of them.”

He rested an arm against the open door of the vehicle, trapping her within the angle of his body. His speculative gaze raked her, sending fresh waves of heat coursing through her.

“You don’t strike me as stupid. Naive, but not stupid.”

“You’re too kind.” She laced her tone with regal sarcasm more reminiscent of her life in Q’aresh than her present situation.

Instead of quailing, as her subjects would have done when she took that tone, Tom gave a sharp laugh. “Why do I get the feeling you expect me to fall at your feet and beg your forgiveness?”

Because part of her did expect it. As the only daughter of the King of Q’aresh, she was accustomed to having her slightest wish obeyed. Here, she had to get used to being treated like everyone else. “You’re imagining things,” she said.

“I don’t think so. You don’t exactly fit in here, do you?”

“Not like Barrak, the white dingo.” She couldn’t help sounding bitter, knowing she was jealous because he so obviously belonged here, while she was the interloper.

“The name was given to me when I was initiated into Wandarra’s clan. To everyone else, I’m Tom, the shire ranger,” he informed her.

He waited for her to volunteer information about herself. When she remained silent, he shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll find out who you are one way or another. You’re obviously foreign, but you must have someone I should notify that you’re all right.”

Panic welled inside her. “No, you mustn’t. I mean, there’s no need. I can look after myself.”

His gaze swept her slitted jeans and bandaged calf. “So I see.” He gestured toward the car slewed at an angle a few yards behind his. “I assume you got here in that. Care to tell me what you’re doing with Des Logan’s car? Or is that classified information, too?”

“I’m a guest of Mr. Logan’s.”

Tom’s dark eyebrows swept upward. “Des is my foster father.”

Suddenly she remembered where they’d crossed paths before. Tom’s familiarity had nagged at her. She had met him in the nearby township of Halls Creek when her father brought her with him on a cattle-buying expedition several years before.

Chagrin gripped her. Tom obviously didn’t remember her. Not that she wanted him to. The fewer people who knew her identity, or where she was hiding out, the better. “I simply wanted a safe—that is, a place I could have some time to myself,” she improvised. “Mr. Logan was kind enough to let me stay in the old cottage.”

Tom didn’t miss the hasty correction. Safe from what? “Des told me he had a guest staying out here, but that’s all.”

“Surely he doesn’t have to tell you everything? I understand you don’t live at Diamond Downs now.”

He nodded. “I have my own place outside Halls Creek.”

“What were you doing here?”

His mouth thinned. Then to her dismay, he said, “I’m not answering any more questions until you answer a few of mine, princess.”

Chapter 2

Feeling the color drain from her face, she let her head drop against the leather headrest. What had he called her?

“That does it, I’m getting you back to the homestead.”

She forced her head up. “I don’t feel faint, just…” What? Alone in a strange land? Terrified that she would be caught by her fiancé, Jamal, before she could get evidence of his true nature to her father? If she hadn’t been so distracted with these worries, she would have braked more quickly when the kangaroo leaped across her path. Then she wouldn’t have needed to follow the animal to ensure it wasn’t hurt, and come across the forbidden site.

A lot of ifs, she thought. She bit down hard on her lower lip to control the threatening tears, recognizing them as a product of mild shock. Tom didn’t know who she was. He’d called her princess as a nickname.

“Have you had your tetanus shots?” he asked.

“I’ve had every immunization possible.”

His eyes narrowed. “How long since you’ve eaten something?”

“I—I’m not sure. Breakfast, I think.” She had eaten some crackers and an apple, too unsettled to face anything more.

“That was hours ago. Des should have warned you against setting off alone without water, at the very least.”

“I have food and a water bottle in the car.”

He unscrewed the top of a canteen and handed it to her. As soon as the water spilled down her throat she realized how thirsty she’d been. How hungry she was.

He watched her grimly. “You really are a babe in the woods, aren’t you, princess?”

She lowered the canteen warily. “Why do you call me that?”

“Because of your haughty manner, as if everyone else is a rung or two beneath you on the social ladder.”

It was truer than he knew, at least in Q’aresh. “I’ll try to appear more sociable,” she said as much to herself as to him.

“I recommend it if you want to last long in the outback. And speaking of lasting long, if you run into any more trouble, the first rule of survival is to stay with your vehicle.”

His warning sent a stab of alarm through her. She’d never intended to last long in the outback, as Tom put it, only to eavesdrop on a meeting between Jamal Sayed and some of his cronies aboard the private plane Jamal would take to Australia on an assignment for her father.

She’d planned to leave the plane when it dropped the other men off at a coastal airstrip, but Jamal had caught her taping his conversation, and forced her to accompany him to Australia, telling her father she couldn’t bear being separated from her fiancé for so long.

Before he’d searched her bag, she’d managed to push her taped record of his treasonous meeting into a secret compartment under a seat. With luck, the tape was still on the plane. Her only hope of convincing her father that the man he expected her to marry was a traitor.

When the king had brought Shara with him to the Kimberley eight years before, she had never imagined she would return under such circumstances. Or that she’d find her life depending on the Logan family whom she’d met on that visit.

She was sure that the Logans, and by extension Tom, weren’t involved with Jamal. Shara had remained in touch with Judy Logan after meeting her at Diamond Downs on that first visit. Drawn together as the only teenage girls in the party, they’d discovered a mutual passion for rock art. Shara had been fascinated by the ancient sites in Q’aresh, deciding to set up an exchange program between the traditional artists in Australia and her country as soon as she came of age. Judy had become the scheme’s contact in Australia. Judy had been the logical person for Shara to turn to, although getting away from Jamal at the airport hadn’t been easy.