by Valerie Parv
At the hotel they were likely to run into dozens of people she knew. She’d have to talk about her father’s problem endlessly, meet their friends’ concern with reassurances she barely believed herself. “I’d rather go home.”
“There’s still that bottle of wine in the fridge at the cottage.”
She gave up trying to make sense of her feelings, knowing only that his suggestion was the best one she’d heard all evening. “Sounds good to me.”
About to get into the car, she was waylaid by a man hurrying up to them. Tall and tanned, he appeared fit enough until you looked closely and saw the signs of too much good living. Unlike most bosses in the Kimberley, Max Horvath preferred to let his men do the hard work around the cattle station he’d inherited from his father. So where he might have been muscular, there was a hint of flab that was set to get worse as he got older. His charcoal hair was streaked with premature gray and his brown eyes were dulled by too many late-night drinking sessions.
“Judy, sweetie, I called at the homestead and they told me the news. Is your dad all right?” Max asked.
As he approached, her heart sank. “It was a false alarm brought on by stress, Max,” she said, thinking how much of that stress could be laid squarely at their neighbor’s feet.
He went on, seemingly unawares. “You should have called me. I’d have brought you to the hospital and stayed with you.”
Precisely why the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. “It all happened too quickly. Luckily Ryan was available to drive me to town.”
Max had barely given Ryan a second glance. Now he looked at the other man with more interest. “You’re new here. Do you work for Des Logan?”
“Ryan is…”
“Ryan Smith. I’m looking for work around here.” He cut across her smoothly. “Judy was interviewing me for a job when Mr. Logan collapsed, and I offered to give her a ride.”
“Late hour for an interview,” Max said stuffily. “Still, you probably have your hands full with everything that’s been going on. I didn’t know you were looking to hire more people, Judy.”
He didn’t know she could afford to hire more people, she translated. “We’re not really hiring,” she said, taking her cue from Ryan. “Ryan was recommended to us by a friend, so the interview was a courtesy. Under the circumstances, we can’t afford to take on anyone new. I’m sorry to be so blunt after you’ve been so helpful,” she said with a deliberately apologetic look at Ryan.
“That’s okay, something will turn up,” he said. “I’m not fussy what I do.”
She could hardly believe her eyes. In a few seconds Ryan had somehow transformed himself from a take-charge figure into a slump-shouldered ne’er-do-well who could barely manage to meet her eyes. It was all she could do not to laugh. How could Max possibly be taken in by such a performance?
However, it seemed he was. “Maybe we should talk. My name’s Horvath. My place borders Diamond Downs to the northwest.”
“That would be good, Mr. Horvath. Judy’s letting me sleep at the bunkhouse tonight, so I’m not far away. “
“Come and see me tomorrow at nine. Judy can give you the directions.”
With that, Max dismissed Ryan as no more than a lackey who might be useful to him, and turned his full attention to Judy. “What’s happening with Des now?”
“They’re keeping him in the hospital overnight as a precaution, then releasing him tomorrow. He’ll be staying with Blake for a while.”
Max nodded. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
Start by tearing up the mortgage over Diamond Downs as Clive had intended to do, she wanted to scream at him, but she kept silent. Max was a different character from his father, who’d been one of the most generous people in the district. Clive would never have taken advantage of Des the way Max was doing.
“There’s nothing,” she said, meaning it.
“Then let me buy you a drink at the pub before you head home.”
She let her shoulders drop. “Can I take a rain check? I’ve had a rough night.”
“Sure. I should have thought of that myself. Why don’t I look in on you tomorrow morning? Smith and I can talk then, if it’s okay with you?”
Inviting Max home was the last thing she felt like doing, but knowing what Ryan was up to, she gave a weary nod. “You can use the office.” When they attacked Cade and stole the file, Max’s men had already taken what he wanted from there anyway.
She tensed as Max leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. His drink at the pub wouldn’t be the first of the night, judging by his whiskey breath. She restrained a shudder as his cheek rasped against hers. “Good night, Max.”
“See you tomorrow, then. You, too, Smith.”
Ryan reached to tip an imaginary hat. “Good night, Mr. Horvath.”
“Snake,” she muttered as the other man walked back to his vehicle.
“Me or lover boy?” Ryan asked, coming around to open the door for her.
“You decide.” She was capable of opening her own door, but allowed the gesture in case Max was still observing them. Or so she told herself.
“What was that all about?” she asked when they were on the road at last.
“I’ve seen him before,” Ryan said.
In the darkened car her startled gaze went to him. “I thought you’d never met Max.”
“He was involved in the insurance scam that got me into the P.I. business. We were sure he was part of the money-laundering end in Perth, but there wasn’t enough evidence to lay charges against him. He went by an alias for that deal, so the name Horvath didn’t mean anything to me.”
“Why am I not surprised? You’re lucky he didn’t recognize you.”
Ryan’s fingers drummed a tattoo on the wheel. “People like him are users. To them, the likes of me are dirt under their feet. They don’t even see us most of the time. We were never introduced, so he would only have seen me from a distance, and he was away when I lived around here. He took me completely at face value.”
She would have done the same, she thought, still amazed that he could transform himself so effectively. No wonder he was good at undercover work. Uneasily she wondered how she would know when he was sincere about anything, then dismissed the thought. They weren’t going to get involved, so why did it matter? “Did you notice how he reacted when you said you weren’t fussy what you do?”
He nodded. “Exactly why I said it. I wanted to sound desperate enough that he’d think of me as a potential replacement for Eddy Gilgai.”
Fear gripped her anew. “Most of the work Eddy did was probably shady.” And had cost him his life, she couldn’t help thinking.
“So Max needs someone with the same low morality to fill Gilgai’s shoes. Don’t be surprised if Ryan Smith acquires a police record by tomorrow.”
“You’re good at this,” she said, not sure she meant it as a compliment.
“I’m good at a lot of things. I’m also very, very persistent,” he added, his tone redolent with meaning.
“You will take care, won’t you?”
“Worried about me, sweetie?” There was laughter in his voice as he mimicked Max, lacing the endearment with a heavy dose of saccharine.
“Only if you keep calling me that. I think I liked you better when you were acting tame and meek.”
They cleared the town limits and twin beams of light leaped ahead of them as he switched the headlights to high beam. A red kangaroo trampolined across their path, disappearing into the well of darkness beyond the road. “You’d never be happy with tame and meek.”
She felt as jumpy as the kangaroo. “How do you know what I’d be happy with?” Particularly when she didn’t know herself.
“I know you better than you want me to. We’re two of a kind.”
Cleansing anger washed away some of her diffidence. “Is that supposed to be flattering?”
“It’s simply fact.”
“I take back what I said. You’re definitely not meek or tame. You’
re bossy and pigheaded.”
He gave a low laugh. “As I said, two of a kind.”
He’d achieved one thing. No longer drained and tired, she felt charged with energy and a desire to lash out at something—or someone. She simmered for the rest of the drive home, only remembering that she’d agreed to share the bottle of wine with him when they pulled up outside the old cottage.
She stayed where she was. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather go home.”
He got out. “Suit yourself. I won’t be long.”
Watching him go inside, she was sorely tempted to slide across and drive herself back to the homestead. But she was too well schooled in outback courtesy. If anything went wrong, he would be stranded here. She couldn’t do it.
“One drink, nothing else,” she muttered to herself and followed him inside.
He was already levering the cork out of the chilled Chablis with an old-fashioned opener. “Don’t jackeroos just knock the top off the bottle?” she asked.
“Waste of good wine.” He poured some into glasses. Two glasses, she noted. He’d been very sure she’d decide to join him.
Accepting the drink he offered, she was annoyed to find that her hand was less than steady. She raised the glass to her mouth, pleased when she didn’t spill any. The icy liquid was refreshing as she waited for the alcohol to counteract the nervous strain of a hellish night.
With the white cloth and candle still on the table, the memory of his kiss clogged the air. Unfinished business. She put her glass down. “I want to make something absolutely clear. I have no interest in getting married, so I don’t want any more talk of love between us.”
“I can live with that,” he said, putting his glass down beside hers.
She looked away, unwilling to admit to feelings of regret. How could she be disappointed when he was giving her what she’d asked for? “I’m glad that’s settled,” she said, not sure how convincingly.
The next thing she knew, she was in his arms. Instantly fire rocketed along her veins, the flames blazing around her heart as she was dragged against him, her softness meeting a hardness she’d suspected and now encountered in blatant arousal. Her senses ran riot, her voice almost deserting her as she demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You said you wanted no more talk of love.”
His mouth closed over hers, hot and heavy with demands she was far from ready to meet. So why did her body betray her by arching against him? “We can’t…this isn’t…” she gasped, finally managing to fling out, “I said I didn’t want this.”
He lifted his head, his gaze passion-fogged. “You said you wanted no more talk. This isn’t talk. This is action.”
Chapter 5
She might have expected such a trite response from him. Ryan Smith was a cowboy, hardly the poetic type. Just because he’d made more of himself than she’d expected, didn’t mean anything else had changed.
Especially not Judy’s reasons for staying uninvolved.
She should have laughed at his presumption and, if necessary, stepped on his instep with the full weight of her heeled sandal. Instead she felt as if she were balanced on the rim of a deep chasm, the strong arms around her the only thing keeping her from falling.
Clinging to a man wasn’t her style. As the only, longed-for child of older parents, she’d had to fight for her independence from the day she’d struggled to her toddler feet. Having four males added to the family had been like having a team of bodyguards wished on her. Oh, she’d loved all the boys once she’d gotten to know them and her parents had smoothed out some of their rougher edges. But their protective instincts had threatened to stifle her.
Only in the air had she enjoyed true freedom. The trial flying lesson she’d begged her father to give her on her fifteenth birthday had given her a taste for soaring with the birds. She’d begun saving to buy her own plane the next day.
Now she felt trepidation at the renewed possibility of having her wings clipped, but another sensation, too. A sense of adventure almost as seductive as being at the controls of her Cessna, or having the controls of a helicopter throbbing in her hands.
In Ryan’s arms, she was also flying but he was in the pilot’s seat. His kiss was as enticing as an open vista of sky in front of her. The temptation to let herself soar with him was strong.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again and pulled back. His hold didn’t allow her much room, but her rigidity and the resolve she put into her expression sent him a message he couldn’t misread.
His hold slackened, but he didn’t let her go. “What’s the matter?”
Summoning her voice took surprising effort. “I don’t want this.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t argue or try to change her mind. She told herself she wasn’t disappointed. “Aren’t you going to try to talk me around?”
“Do you want me to?”
He could have done so with ridiculous ease, she suspected. All the more reason to step back and keep her distance. “I thought you he-men types don’t take no for an answer.”
His shoulders lifted fractionally. “No always means no to me. I don’t play games.”
“And you think I do?”
“No. You say what you mean, Judy.”
What about now? She wished she knew for sure. She hadn’t wanted him to kiss her. Yet at some level she regretted pulling away. Why couldn’t she make up her mind what she wanted?
Her hand went to her hair. “I can’t deny I find you attractive.”
His long lashes shuttered his expressive eyes. “But you don’t want to.”
She shook her head. “I like my life. I don’t see any reason to change.”
“I’m not asking you to. Only to deal with what’s between us.”
“You don’t call that a change?”
He made a dismissive sound. “You’ve been reading too many romance novels. Satisfying sex is only part of a life, one of the good parts. You don’t have to give up anything important, just make a little extra room.”
This sounded too simplistic even for Ryan. “When did you get to be such an expert on relationships?”
“I’ve been around some good ones. You met an example at the hospital tonight. Heather Wilton.”
Once again the thought of Ryan having an affair with the lovely former TV presenter struck uncomfortably close to Judy’s heart. “Were you involved with her?”
He gave an amused snort. “Heather has eyes for only two men in her life—her husband, Jeff and their little boy, Daniel. From the moment she saw Jeff on the set of a talk show, giving an interview about cattle ranching in the Kimberley, she was smitten. The way they tell it, the attraction was powerfully mutual. They kept in touch and she vacationed up here a couple of times, then resigned her TV job and married him.”
Judy walked to the open door of the small cottage, staring out into the night. The silence beckoned, making her ache with nameless longings. Over her shoulder she asked, “Why did she have to follow him? Wouldn’t he move to Perth for her sake?”
“According to Jeff, he would have gone anywhere she wanted. This was her choice.”
A choice Judy found hard to comprehend. She loved the outback and had never wanted to live anywhere else, but neither did she intend to give up being a person in her own right. Was there a middle course? For all her hours in the air, she had still to find one. A streak of stubbornness kept her searching.
She turned back, angling her body against the door frame and finding comfort in the creak of the old timber at her back. “Let’s allow for a second that Heather and Jeff have the most perfect marriage on earth. They’re good role models for anybody. What about closer to home? Your own parents were hardly examples of true love.”
Seeing a shadow cross Ryan’s rugged features, she felt a pang of regret. But she was only stating facts. Still, facts could hurt. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up,” she said.
“Not talking about something doesn’t make it go
away.” He picked up his wine glass and fiddled with the stem. “I don’t know what drove my dad to leave. For a time, with the conceit of a kid, I thought he’d left because of something I’d done. Later I accepted that it was his choice, nothing to do with me. He told me he’d been in a car accident that had killed his mother when he was little. He wouldn’t go into details of how and why it happened, and only talked about the accident at all after a few beers, but I got the impression the experience had damaged him. He’d been raised by distant relatives who’d taken him on as a duty. As an adult, he had trouble settling down anywhere.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Recently I talked to a man who thought he’d met him. According to his information, my dad headed back to Kalgoorlie, dying in a head-on collision on the highway outside town. I checked and the accidental death of a Nicholas Smith is on record, but it’s a common name. Could have been him or a complete stranger. They’re one and the same to me by now anyway. But I do know he loved my mother. They were good together while it lasted.”
“I’d never have picked you for a romantic,” she said.
“Or you for such a cynic,” he rejoined. “Although you were putting out the No Trespassing signs for as long as we’ve known each other. Haven’t you let anyone get close to you?”
“I’m not a hermit. I like men well enough.”
“At a distance,” he said.
“You make me sound like some sort of nun. I assure you I’m not.”
His rugged features hardened and she saw reflected in his gaze an all-too-familiar expression. He was jealous of her unnamed lovers. She wondered what he’d say if she told him there’d only been one man other than Ryan himself, who’d made her want more than was good for her.
Neil Quinlan was a pilot who mustered cattle by plane. He was based on a large property near Derby to the north, and when they’d met at the airport over a mix-up in cargo manifests, she’d fallen hard. Divorced, he’d spoken of not wanting to be tied down again, unwittingly speaking Judy’s language.
She felt her mouth curve into a smile as memories of shared enjoyment flashed through her mind. Rendezvous on remote outposts, flings in hotels in Broome or Derby. And enough flying talk to bond together like members of a rare species who couldn’t believe their good luck in finding each other.
