by Valerie Parv
Maybe he should hope that Jamal would whisk her back to their magic kingdom, then she’d stop filling Tom’s thoughts.
He felt a sensation like a punch in his midsection, momentarily grabbing his breath. He didn’t like the idea of her returning to Q’aresh as Jamal’s bride. As anybody’s bride. Except maybe—
No, he halted the thought in its tracks. With his background, he wasn’t in the marriage market now or ever. The more attracted he was to Shara, the more reason he had to keep his distance, emotionally and physically.
Nobody said he had to enjoy it.
Blake turned from studying the muddy water. “You’re here because you’d rather wrestle an amorous crocodile than try to convince Max Horvath that the diamonds he’s so anxious to possess exist only in legend.”
Tom shot his foster brother a look that said “smart-ass.” But Blake was right. “Andy Wandarra has always said the mine is real and the elders of his clan knows how to locate it. Only the spirit of our great-grandfather keeps them from revealing the secret. If it’s true, Eddy Gilgai might be able to lead Horvath to the place.”
Blake used a long pole to probe among the reeds at the water’s edge. “Max must have promised him a lot to get him to betray his clan. Shows how strongly Max believes in the legend.”
Tom kept a wary eye on the deceptively still waters. “If he didn’t, he would have sold out right after his father died. This way he gets to stay in the area and keep looking.” He made a sound of annoyance. “He has a law degree. Why can’t he use it to fleece rich clients instead of harassing a sick man?”
Blake ventured ankle deep into the mud. Without turning, he said, “Max likes the idea of being a wealthy landowner. The trouble is, he has too much land and not enough wealth.”
“When did you get your psychology degree?” Tom’s tone was grudging but his foster brother’s assessment of their neighbor sounded valid. Max Horvath had never liked the demanding life of a cattleman. He and his father had fallen out because the younger man hadn’t wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He’d been more interested in making money, but even law hadn’t made it as fast as Max liked to spend it. “If there really is a mine, why wasn’t it located long before this?”
“You know the taboos as well as I do,” Blake said.
“Yeah, yeah. Great-grandfather’s spirit haunts the place. That might have worked on the tribal people, but not on some of the current generation, like Eddy. Unless there’s nothing to be found.”
“Is that why you stopped looking?”
Blake’s casual question didn’t fool Tom. As boys, he and his foster brothers and Judy had talked about finding the mine and becoming rich beyond their wildest dreams. As Tom grew older, the dream had never completely died, although it had been pushed aside in favor of more grown-up pursuits.
“I stopped because I had more pressing things to do. What about you?” he asked Blake.
Before Blake could respond, the pool exploded into a mass of leathery scales and snapping jaws. Although he’d expected this, Tom’s heart slammed against his ribs and he stepped back instinctively.
Blake was ready. On the end of the pole was a catching rope that he looped expertly over the crocodile’s top jaw, settling it behind the strong back teeth before pulling it tight. His muscles bulged with the effort of keeping the rope taut as he hauled the creature out onto the bank.
Tom dodged the thrashing tail that could snap a man’s legs off, and waited for the right moment before throwing himself on the crocodile’s back, using brute strength to restrain the animal until it had expended its initial burst of energy. His job was to control the massive head while Blake draped a wet sack over its eyes, the darkness meant to have a calming effect.
Under him he felt the powerful saurian try to launch itself into the death roll crocodiles used to drown their prey. He kept his elbows locked and jammed against his sides, his splayed fingers gripping the torpedo-shaped body as he fought the movement. If he was tossed off before Blake got the croc’s massive jaws tied, they were both in trouble.
A croc could snap its jaws shut like a steel trap, but had little muscle strength to force them open, Tom knew. With Blake’s rope wound around its snout, the crocodile couldn’t do much damage.
He stayed put while Blake tied the animal’s back legs, before jumping clear and expelling a huge breath of relief. “I hope lover boy in the next pen is up to handling this lady. She’s got plenty of fight in her.”
“Delilah,” Blake supplied, looking at the crocodile with what Tom thought was almost fatherly pride. “I caught her near Three Rivers Crossing after she developed a taste for cattle. Don’t worry, Hambone can handle her. He’s sixteen feet of pure crocodile testosterone.”
Tom slanted his eyebrows upward. “Hambone? Let me guess, he likes wild pigs.”
“His favorite food.” Blake bent over the trussed crocodile, checking to ensure all was well. “Come on, Delilah. Time for your blind date.”
Tom rolled the crocodile toward himself to let Blake slide a carrying board under the animal, then they hefted it between them to the next pen. By the time they’d followed the catching routine in reverse and Delilah was splashing her way into Hambone’s pond, Tom was soaked in mud and perspiration.
“I need to get more exercise,” he said, rotating his arm at the shoulder and grimacing with pain as he saw the sixteen-foot Hambone surface and make his first courtship moves.
“You need to get more of something,” Blake countered wryly. His head jerked toward the fence between them and the new couple. “Even a crocodile with a brain the size of a pea knows it’s not meant to be a solo act.”
“You think I should set something up with Delilah?”
Blake looked at the male crocodile arching his tail and head out of the water, and setting the water dancing with shivers from his powerful body, a ritual designed to arouse the female’s mating instincts. “She’s already spoken for. I was thinking of someone from your own species.”
Tom rotated the other arm the female croc had almost jerked out of its socket. “You wouldn’t have anyone specific in mind?”
Blake looked studiedly casual. “I don’t know. You seemed taken enough with a certain Middle Eastern princess.”
“She’s a stunning looker. I may not be involved with anyone right now, but I’m not dead.”
“Then the interest Judy detected at Des’s place the other night was purely academic?”
Tom kept his gaze averted but felt himself redden. Of his three foster brothers, Blake knew him the best. Soon after Tom joined the Logan family, Blake had managed to get through to him when nobody else could. Tom didn’t exactly endorse taking your new brother out to the woodshed and fighting him until he agreed to communicate, but it had worked. Tom had learned that he wasn’t the center of the universe. Nor was he such a bad apple that nobody would want to bother with him.
He owed Blake a lot, but some things weren’t meant to be shared. “Purely academic,” he insisted.
Blake nodded. “Like Tonia Winters.”
“Tonia was a mistake. A man’s entitled to one.”
“One? What about Susan and Jemma? You’re starting to look like a rolling stone, brother.”
“And you’re starting to sound like Judy. ‘When are you going to settle down? When are you going to get married?’”
His falsetto imitation of their foster sister didn’t deter Blake. “Tonia and Susan I can understand. They were only marking time until they could get away from the Kimberley to the bright lights. But what was with you and Jemma? She shared your interests and your lifestyle. You could have had a good thing going with her.”
“She was the one who ended it,” Tom stated flatly, his tone suggesting an end to this line of discussion.
Blake propped a booted foot on a crossbeam of the enclosure fence. “Her decision wouldn’t have had something to do with your real dad?”
Tom whirled on Blake, fists raised before he realized what he was doi
ng. An icy sensation shafted through him as he studied his clenched hands before lowering them slowly. Over the years they’d had this conversation several times in different forms. It always pushed his buttons, and for the same reason. “If you must know, I was in love with her. When I told her, she said I scared her. She was afraid that if we got too involved, I could blow up and hurt her the way my father did my mother.”
“Did you give her a reason to think you might?”
“She said it was in my manner. What the blazes is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you probably came across to her the way you’re doing now, as if you’d like to take somebody apart with your bare hands,” Blake suggested.
“Then she was right to leave.”
Blake shook his head. “If she hadn’t known your background, she wouldn’t have read so much into it. You’re not the violent type, Tom. You could have slugged me just now but you didn’t.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t if I’m provoked far enough. My dad never meant to hit my mother and he always felt like a louse afterward. But sorry didn’t mend her bruises or broken bones. Any more than it could bring her back to life the day he used a knife instead of his fists.”
Blake watched the crocodile courtship ritual for a few minutes before saying quietly, “By now I know it doesn’t help to remind you that you’re not your father. But I’ll say it again anyway. You’re different. I’ve seen you risk your neck to rescue idiots who should know better than to cross a river in flood in an ordinary car. I’ve been around when you nursed sick animals for half the night, and suffered when they didn’t make it despite your best efforts. None of that suggests you’ll wind up in a prison cell for killing someone.”
Tom felt his features harden. “Jemma left me because she was afraid of what I might do. Can you guarantee she wasn’t right? Unless you can, there’s no point having this discussion. I won’t put any woman at risk of my mother’s fate.”
“Not even a woman you really care about?”
“Especially a woman I care about.”
Blake slapped him on the shoulder. “If you don’t get cleaned up, the problem will solve itself. No woman wants a man who smells as rank as you do right now.”
Tom wrinkled his nose, well aware of the fishy odor of crocodile clinging to him. “News for you, brother, that’s not a smell, it’s an echo. Race you to the shower.”
A short time later he was clean, wearing the change of clothes he’d brought with him and already tasting the beer Blake was opening, when his cell phone rang. He dug the muddied and battered object out of its holster. “McCullough.”
He ended the call as Blake placed two cans of Foster’s on the table. “Trouble?”
Tom gave his beer a regretful glance. “That was Judy. She was flying over Cotton Tree Gorge on the way back to the homestead airstrip when she spotted a truck heading for the old cottage. It belongs to Max Horvath.”
A slight sound outside made Shara almost drop the battered copper kettle she was filling to make coffee. From the window she saw a kangaroo leap away into the scrub. She told herself she had to stop jumping at every sound, but it was hard not to when Jamal was so close by. He wouldn’t leave her alone until she was his wife and couldn’t get in the way of his ambitions.
He needed to own things to prove his worth to himself. Palaces or people made no difference. First he would own her in marriage, then he would go after her country. Then a neighboring country. Every new conquest would sate his insecurity but only for a limited time.
She frowned, remembering a personal assistant Jamal had hired two years before. The young woman, Amira, had been fresh from the country, extraordinarily beautiful and naive. Shara had assumed the woman hadn’t been hired for her office skills.
Shara had no way of knowing what went on within the walls of Jamal’s apartments, but gradually Amira’s vivacious beauty had waned. She became painfully thin and edgy, shadows darkening her lovely hazel eyes. The fearful glances she gave Jamal were enough to tell Shara the reason. He had taken the young woman as his mistress and had mistreated her when the novelty wore off. The doctor Shara had ordered to check on Amira had diagnosed overwork, and sent her home to her province. Jamal had a new assistant the next day.
Shara felt her jaw firm. There was no way she would let any man bend her to his will until her inner fire was quenched and her spirit broken. Under Q’aresh’s ancient laws, a man could physically discipline the women in his household if they betrayed him in some way. Women had the same right, but their strengths were rarely equal, so it was inevitably the woman who suffered at the hands of the man. No matter that the law was rarely used these days. It had never been repealed and Jamal took every advantage of the fact. When she had petitioned her father to change the law he had readily agreed, but always there were more pressing concerns. Nothing had changed.
No matter, she was in Australia now, she told herself. For the moment she was free.
Ironic laughter bubbled up inside her. If she was so free, how come she was hiding out in a rustic old cottage in the middle of nowhere, spooning the tasteless powder the Logans called coffee into a thick ceramic mug? In her apartments at her father’s palace, servants would be doing this, and the heavenly aroma of real coffee would envelope her before she took her first sip out of a china cup so fine it was practically translucent.
Stop it, she ordered herself. When she had dealt with Jamal, she could return home to her good coffee and her own fine china. They were trifles. Her thoughts were a disservice to the kindness Des Logan and his family had extended to her.
Stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into the steaming coffee to disguise the taste, she carried the mug to the couch where a ceiling fan churned the air, making little impact on the stifling afternoon heat.
Forcing herself not to sigh for the air-conditioning back home was as useless as trying to convince herself the coffee was delicious. Or keeping her thoughts from returning to Tom McCullough.
“You can’t stay there by yourself,” he’d insisted when she’d asked him to drive her to the cottage after dinner with his foster father.
In his own way Tom was as forceful as Jamal, but she hadn’t resented his attitude, aware that Tom spoke out of concern for her, not out of a desire to control her.
He would have more subtle means of getting his own way. A shudder of possibility shook her as her imagination worked overtime. In her country, women had a saying about men—stillness cloaks the tiger within. Where Jamal’s inner tiger was a rampaging beast, seldom cloaked, Tom’s was leashed but, she sensed, immensely more powerful for that.
What would his tiger be like, once unleashed?
She rubbed her calf absently, having had a glimpse when his friend threw the spear at her. Only a slight ache reminded her of where the point had penetrated her flesh. A lesser man would have allowed Wandarra to punish her, and she would have suffered more as a result. Tom’s bold action had saved her. A desert warrior indeed.
Irritated with herself for letting him dominate her thoughts, she reached for her notebook. In case she was unable to retrieve the tape of Jamal’s meeting, she had decided to reconstruct what she could remember. The task would take her mind off everything, including Tom.
On impulse she got up again and fetched the loaded rifle he had left with her when he couldn’t persuade her to remain at the homestead. She had assured him she knew how to use a firearm, having been taught to shoot in Q’aresh, although she had never targeted a living creature. Wasn’t sure she’d be able to. But she felt better having the weapon near at hand.
How long would she have to endure this hunted existence? If Judy’s prediction proved true and their neighbor gained control of this land, Diamond Downs might not provide a sanctuary for much longer. What would she do then? What would all of the Logans do?
Their connection with this place evidently ran as deep as hers to her native country. She wished there was something she could do to help them.
Some time later
she closed the notebook with a feeling of dissatisfaction. She had a reasonably clear account of the plans Jamal and his cronies had talked about, but it still wasn’t enough to convince her father. To do that she had to get hold of the tape hidden aboard the plane. Easier said than done, she was sure.
Taking a sip of now-tepid coffee, she lifted her chin. Where there was a will, there was a way, as her Australian-born grandmother had told her often enough.
A fierce longing for her grandmother gripped Shara. In spite of her love of Australia, Noni was fiercely loyal to her adopted country. But having her close by even for a short time would have made the cottage feel more like home to Shara.
The sound of a car pulling up outside made her pulse spike. Jamal? If it was him, he was in for a shock. She hadn’t come this far to let him win now. Dragging the rifle across her knees, she aimed it at the door and waited.
When the door creaked open and a bulky male shape filled the opening, she lifted the rifle. “Take one step closer and I’ll shoot.”
Chapter 5
“I’d rather you didn’t,” said a husky voice.
“Tom?”
He lowered the hands he’d raised to shoulder height and came to take the gun from her. He had to pry it from her tense fingers. “You would have used it, wouldn’t you?”
She nodded, blinking hard, letting anger chase away tears. “You’d better believe it. Why didn’t you call out to let me know it was you?”
“Everything was so quiet that I thought you must be resting.” Or gone, he’d thought but didn’t add. His heart had started to race at this possibility.
She massaged her eyes as if they were tired. When she lowered her hands, he saw the fear in her liquid gaze. He eased on the safety catch and propped the rifle against the couch before grasping her hands and bringing her to her feet. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
A tremor shook her. “I thought you were Jamal.”
