by Valerie Parv
Ryan sat down again. “Then I’ll keep you company.”
Her gaze went to the dressing gleaming whitely against his tanned skin. “There’s no need. You should rest.”
“Nah. Now the tablets have kicked in, I’m fine.”
She eyed him dubiously. “Are you sure?”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” he recited.
“Then I won’t ask. But you must promise to let me know if the pain gets worse or there’s any sign of infection.”
“Yes, Nurse Judy.”
She swatted at his hand on the table. “A gunshot wound isn’t funny.”
He caught her fingers and twined them with his. “No news to me. I have the headache to prove it. But you are.”
Her fingers tensed in his. “I don’t like being considered funny.”
“Not funny ha-ha, funny cute.”
She drew herself up, unable to move away because of his grip on her hand. “The last man who called me cute is now a permanent member of a boys’ choir.”
“Ouch. You wouldn’t take advantage of an injured man?”
“I was taught to fight by experts—you and the other boys. I’ll use every advantage I can get.”
“Spoken like a Logan,” he said with a grin, then sobered. “What happened between you and Max on your date tonight?”
Since he still gripped her hand, she picked up the beer can with her other hand and drank before answering. “I let him rub me up the wrong way and ended up walking out in the middle of dinner. I blew it and you got hurt as a result. I’m sorry.”
Not wanting to give away how delighted he was by her response, he said, “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. Horvath’s housekeeper heard me moving around, and called Coghlan. He got in a lucky shot. Max coming home early made no difference, although I assume you and Blake rushed over there to warn me. If you hadn’t turned up when you did, I would have been in far worse straits. I don’t think I could have driven home as I was.”
She lowered her lashes and her fingers tightened around his. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Absently he stroked the base of her thumb with his own, eliciting an indrawn breath.
She looked down at their joined hands but didn’t pull away. “Letting me off the hook. I was furious with myself for letting Max needle me. He had the nerve to tell me I’d have no choice but to turn to him after he got his hands on the diamonds.”
Ryan hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in a long time. Had he been in the café, he’d have cheered. Right before he flattened Horvath on her behalf. “You’ll never be that desperate,” he assured her.
“I told him the same thing before I walked out. I was standing in the street before it dawned on me that my grandstanding had put you and our plan in jeopardy. When I realized you’d been shot…”
Her voice wobbled and he saw she was near to tears. She hadn’t cried over losing ownership of Cotton Tree Gorge, despite everything the land meant to her and her father. But she was close to shedding tears over Ryan being hurt. He felt a huge lump rise in his throat. She might say otherwise but the proof of her caring was right here in front of him. He felt as if he’d been given the most valuable gift in the world.
Acting on instinct he stood, drawing her up with him by the fingers still twined in his. He tightened his grip and pulled her in closer. Her other palm came up against his chest and for a panicky moment, he thought she might push him away. But he hadn’t misread her feelings. She let her hand trail down his body and slide into the small of his back, then she subsided against him with the smallest exhalation.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said in the same tremulous voice.
He kissed the top of her head. She’d never guess how okay he felt now that she was in his arms. When she lifted her head, he trailed his lips across her forehead, kissing each eyelid in turn in homage to the tears he’d seen gathered there. One droplet slid down her cheek now and he kissed it away. She tried to turn her head so he wouldn’t see, but he found her mouth and stole her breath with a kiss so deep he felt as if he were drowning in her.
Everything receded in the poetry of the moment. When she opened them, her eyes shone like diamonds and he could feel her pulse racing under his fingers. The taste of her lingered on his mouth, making him hungry. After being shot, he’d felt light-headed and he did so again now, but this was pleasant, like floating. His feet felt as if they were no longer touching the floor.
She gave a shaky laugh, almost but not quite breaking the spell. “You must think I’m such a fool.”
“For crying on my account? Have you any idea what that does to a man?”
Still she refused to see it his way. “I’m not normally such a—a girl.”
He fluffed her hair with his free hand and lowered his voice to a murmur. “From where I stand, that’s no bad thing.”
“Then how come it doesn’t feel good?”
“Obviously my technique needs more work.”
Confusion marred her lovely features until she caught up with his logic. “I didn’t mean your kiss. I meant caring so much, these blasted tears. Damn it, Ryan, you know what I meant.”
He shook his head. “When the lady in my arms tells me my kiss doesn’t make her feel good, honor requires that I make amends.”
This time, she didn’t argue. “What are you going to do?”
“What would you like?”
“We could try kissing again, to practice your technique, I mean.”
Reflecting her serious look, he subdued the urge to smile. “So this is strictly for my benefit, right?”
“Right.”
Her less-than-assured response made primitive needs claw at him. Breathing became difficult as the smell of her hair filled his nostrils and the curl of her lithe body against him brought dreams of discovering the wonders of her in hot, urgent togetherness. She might prefer not to need him, but it was there in the fast beating of her heart, the flutter of the pulse at her throat and the innocent way she lifted her face to him.
Spellbound, he lowered his mouth and took hers again, slowly, possessively, fighting the urge to plunder as he filled himself with the heady taste and feel of her. Her lips, were parted slightly and he probed gently. She responded by shaping her mouth to his, her tongue skimming his lips then meeting his, heating his blood to boiling point
He whispered in her ear, “Do you know how much I want to make love to you?”
Chapter 8
Judy hadn’t known she could feel so needy. Even as her rational self tried to reject the feeling, her deeper yearnings refused to be denied. Not tonight, when she could so easily have lost Ryan. Another inch deeper, a slightly different trajectory and she wouldn’t have the chance to lose herself in his arms ever again.
As his hands cupped her body, sculpting her against him, she decided that for once in her life she wouldn’t rationalize, only feel. The longings were alarming enough to make her want to retreat into logic, but she held on to him, her anchor in terrifyingly deep waters.
Feeling herself sinking, she didn’t know what answer to give him; the one her head told her was safe, or the one her heart dictated.
He solved the dilemma by answering his own question. “But not yet. The time isn’t right.”
Judy felt Ryan’s rejection almost as a physical blow. She knew he was right, but that didn’t satisfy the hunger holding her in a relentless grip.
Her fingers lightly skimmed his temple near the dressing. “Because of this?”
“Partly. I don’t want us to make love out of sympathy or reaction.”
Both of those would be factors tonight, she knew. “Are you in pain?”
“Oh, yes.”
She started to pull away. “I can get you more tablets.”
His smile teased her as he held her in place. “As far as I know, pain meds wouldn’t fix what ails me right now.”
The pressure of his erection against her told its own story, and she felt the blush race up her face. Then sh
e understood. Giving in now would be the easy thing to do.
He pushed her hair away from her face, the gesture starting her pulse thundering again. “When we make love, I want it to be for all the right reasons.”
“You’re right.” If only intellectual knowledge were accompanied by physical compliance, she’d be fine, she told herself.
Gently, he untangled her and stepped back. “Soon.”
“When?”
“When all this is sorted out.”
Her breath caught. “What if it never is? Or if everything turns out wrong?”
“Not everything. We’ll still have each other.”
“You’d want me even without…” She couldn’t bring herself to say more.
His features darkened. “I don’t want you because of Diamond Downs any more than you want me because of the deed to Cotton Tree Gorge.”
The denial was instant. “Oh, no. You must never think that.”
“I don’t. What’s between us has nothing to do with land or diamonds. It never did have.” He let her go and began to pace. “To me, you were never the boss’s daughter. You were the girl who made my arrival here bearable, like a promise that however badly I was hurting from being hauled through the welfare system like a piece of flotsam, my life would get better.”
“You got all that from your first sight of me?” She wasn’t sure she wanted so much responsibility.
“You must remember the way I looked at you?”
She nodded. “As if I was the eighth wonder of the world.”
“To me, you still are. When I was fourteen, you were a lifeline. Still are.”
She’d known the attraction existed, of course. But she’d never imagined he could feel so strongly toward her. Elated and a little awed by the role she’d played in her life, she pulled in a steadying breath. “Was it so bad for you back then, being forced to come here?”
She’d always believed Ryan hadn’t known what was best for himself when he arrived, seeing her father as his rescuer. Now she wondered if he hadn’t been better off by himself, as he’d always maintained.
“When the welfare people decided I couldn’t keep living on my own, I felt insulted. I’d been doing fine, as I saw it. I didn’t see the house falling apart for lack of maintenance, or my own health failing through poor nutrition. And I was scared stiff.”
She thought back to the tough kid who’d acted as if he’d owned the world. “You were scared? I don’t believe it.”
He glanced away, then back. “Believe it. My father had left us, never to return. Then my mother had died. How could I risk getting attached to a new family when you might all disappear without warning, too?”
She’d never seen the situation through his eyes before. “So you built a wall around yourself as protection.”
He nodded. “And left before I could get too attached to you all. Or so I thought. One member of the family had gotten under my skin so completely, she never left.”
For something to do, she picked up the empty beer cans and took them to the kitchen. At the door, she paused. “After you left, I never stopped wondering where you were and how you were doing. One of the reasons I loved doing the charter work was because there was a chance I’d find you again. Something told me I would.”
“The same something that had me picking up the phone to call Diamond Downs practically every week.”
She put the cans down in the kitchen and came back to him. This was news to her. What a difference a call would have made to her peace of mind. “Why didn’t you call?”
He spread his hands wide. “What could I have said? Des, I can’t come back and live with you because I’m smitten with your daughter, and nothing on Earth is going to make me settle for being a brother to her.”
In spite of her tension, she chuckled. “I can see how Dad might have had a problem with that.”
“I wanted to come back in my own way and time.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I guess I dreamed of riding in on a white charger, the conquering hero returning.”
“The battered jalopy wasn’t what you had in mind?”
“Leave my jalopy out of this.”
His comment defused some of the tension. “I’ll have you know, the conquering hero of my fantasies drives a Branxton.”
“You have expensive tastes.”
“Not really. Your jalopy didn’t let us down tonight. I got the feeling it could have gone much faster if Blake hadn’t been setting the pace.”
“Zero to one eighty in nine seconds,” he said, pride in his tone, then grinned sheepishly. “When I built the car, I installed a Branxton engine.”
She clutched a hand to her chest. “You built that thing? Be still my heart.”
“Now I see the way to your heart,” he said. “All I had to do was build a bigger and better engine.”
Her shoulders lifted. “What can I say? Some women are turned on by sparkly things. With me, it’s torque.”
“As long as it’s not all torque and no action,” he said.
They’d come full circle to the attraction this conversation had strived to avoid. Maybe they would always return to this point.
“It’s almost dawn. We should go to bed. To sleep,” she said pointedly.
“For the moment.” His tone was equally loaded with meaning.
“Or we could make love and get it out of our system,” she suggested, aware of her heart gathering speed at the very idea.
He shook his head. “When we make love it will be a beginning, not an ending. And we will make love,” he promised, as if reading her thoughts. Then he added, “Once upon a time, I thought that running away was the only solution to my problems.”
Tension bristled through her. “Are you saying that’s what I’m doing now?”
“Only you know the answer. I do know you’re running scared about something. I hope it isn’t me.”
“No,” she said without hesitation.
“Then it’s something inside yourself. When you turn and confront it, you’ll learn, as I did, that the monsters inside us are never as powerful as we make them.”
“You make life sound simple.”
“Mostly it is. People make everything complicated. Now go to bed. We’ve been through a lot tonight. You can safely postpone any life-changing decisions until you’ve had a few hours sleep.” He rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger. “We’ll need our wits about us after this. We’ve both managed to pi—to aggravate Horvath tonight. He won’t take that lying down.”
Even without worrying about Max, Ryan was right, she knew. So she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, telling herself she was content to leave things as they were for now. Knowing she was being less than honest with herself. “Good night, Ryan. Sleep well.”
She hadn’t expected to sleep and when she did, she was disturbed by dreams of faceless enemies shooting at Ryan and watching him fall. When she turned and tried to confront the enemy as he’d advised, the shadowy figure wore her own face.
As a result, she awoke feeling less rested than before she went to bed. When she came into the kitchen in long pajama pants and a sleeveless T-shirt top, he was already dressed in a khaki shirt and jeans and his R.M. Williams boots. The white dressing at his temple was brown-stained as if the injury had bled during the night.
She knew better than to fuss, and helped herself to coffee, shuddering when he offered her some luridly colored cereal. “How can you eat that stuff?”
“Contains all the five food groups—sugar, sugar, sugar, calcium and grain,” he informed her. “Energy to burn. You look like you could use the boost.”
“Thanks,” she said sourly. “Toast and Vegemite will do for me.”
He sat at the table and poured milk over the cereal, watching as she made toast and poured fresh juice into a glass. “Bad night?”
“Too short.” She joined him at the table. “How’s your head?”
“Next question?”
“That bad, huh?” She took a sip of juice. �
�I’d feel happier if you saw a doctor.”
He shook his head and winced, then quickly covered it up with a grin. “No need, it’s just a graze. I have other things to do today.”
She spread the toast with a thick layer of black, yeasty spread. Foreign visitors to Diamond Downs usually shuddered at the sight, but she’d been eating Vegemite since she was two years old. When she bit into the toast, the familiar sharp taste comforted her now. “You should rest.”
“Plenty of time for that when I’m dead.”
She leaned across the table. “Ryan, you nearly were last night.”
He concentrated on his cereal, but not before she saw pain shadow his features. He wasn’t as fighting fit as he wanted her to think. She could imagine the size of the headache he must have, and winced in sympathy.
“Nearly doesn’t count. I want to get up to Cotton Tree Gorge and explore Jo’s hidden valley,” he said.
“Your hidden valley now,” Judy reminded him.
“Yes, well, that’s moot.”
“Not according to the deed you found.”
“Right now, the ownership isn’t important. What matters is finding that mine before Horvath does. After last night, he won’t wait around while I put my feet up.”
“Don’t you see? Your ownership of the mine changes everything. Even if Max or his creditors foreclose on our land, he won’t get what he’s after now. You’re not in debt to him. You could actually save us from him.”
He’d thought of that, too, she saw from his quick nod of agreement. “Will finding the mine mean anything to you if you lose Diamond Downs?”
She looked down at her plate, letting her silence answer.
“I didn’t think so.” Finishing his cereal, he stood up and carried the bowl to the dishwasher. Without turning, he said, “I’d rather not have Horvath as my nearest neighbor, either. This has been Logan land for generations. I intend to make sure it stays that way.”
“But not today,” she insisted. “You’re in no shape to go exploring.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Yes, Nurse.”
Her heart gave a lurch. “If you’re admitting it…”
