‘Now what?’ Jackson managed a rueful grin at the predicament they were facing. He was lifting the bundle high out of the water, but already the ’roo was starting to struggle free.
‘You go up and I’ll push,’ Molly told him.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope.’
‘I have a better idea.’ He rewrapped the ’roo until he was sure those claws couldn’t come free and handed the whole thing to Molly. He hauled himself in against the cliff and cupped his hands so she could use them as a step.
‘Up you go.’
She looked at Jackson and looked at the cliff. ‘I can’t.’
‘Of course you can, girl,’ he said equitably. ‘After all, there’s no choice-so what choice do you have?’
Somehow their crazy scheme worked. Somehow Molly was propelled upwards to land in a laughing sodden heap on the grassy verge. Then she reached down to grab Jackson’s hand as he hauled himself up. He came in a rush and almost landed on top of her-a soggy ball of ’roo, man and woman.
And they were safe.
‘We’ve done it,’ Molly gasped as Jackson untied their bundle of baby ’roo.
Yes. They’d done the thing. Jackson looked down at her and his mouth twisted in a rueful smile. She was battered and soggy and exhausted. She was limp with relief. And he’d never seen anything more beautiful…
‘He’s gorgeous,’ Molly murmured as the blanket fell away from the sodden joey.
The baby ’roo did look gorgeous. Kind of. But then, so did the girl. With a huge effort Jackson managed a response. ‘Yeah, right. Gorgeous. But stupid.’ The joey was shaking its head in disbelief. They’d landed on the opposite bank from where they’d started-on the same bank as the joey’s mother-and already the mother ’roo was peering towards them, trying to see what was happening.
‘Stupid! What a thing to say!’
‘I’m a pragmatist,’ he retorted. ‘Someone has to be. If I wasn’t a pragmatist you’d have tried to rescue the joey without a rug, and you’d be bleeding to death right now.’
She managed a grin, albeit a shaky one. ‘Then I’m glad you’re a pragmatist. But I’m also… Oh, Jackson, he’s going to jump!’
‘Mmm.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you okay?’
Suddenly he was okay. More than okay. He felt great. They’d struggled against the odds and they’d won, and it was as far from the everyday white-collar wheeling and dealing as he’d been for years. His eyes met Molly’s and they were full of laughter and of triumph. ‘Oh, well done. Well done us.’
‘Jackson…’
There was no need for more. He heard the warning in her voice and turned to see the mother ’roo thundering down from along the bank. The ’roo had seen her baby and was now taking steps to get him back.
‘Give him a push away,’ Molly urged, half-laughing, half-serious. These ’roos were big! Bull kangaroos were dangerous enough, but to stand between a ’roo and her joey…
‘I’m trying.’ Jackson grabbed the blanket and lifted it away-and then retreated. Fast.
Freedom…
The joey gave one more unbelieving shake of his head, he reared on wobbly legs-and then took off for his mother as if Molly and Jackson were the cause of all his problems rather than his saviours.
‘Well, will you look at that?’ But Jackson was grinning with a smile that almost split his face. The joey had reached his mother. The ’roo nosed him all over and then the joey dived straight down, deep into his mother’s pouch. The ’roo took off before the joey’s legs had disappeared, and gave the strange humans not so much as a backward glance as they headed for the safety of the mob. ‘That’s gratitude for you.’
‘I’m grateful,’ Molly said before she could stop herself-because she was. She couldn’t have saved the joey herself. Maybe it had been dangerous to try, but there’d been too much death in her life over the last few months. If she could stop just one death…
‘You know, you can’t save the world.’ He was watching her face and guessing what she was thinking.
She flushed. ‘I can try.’
‘Molly…’ And then, before he even knew what he intended, he reached for her.
Why? He hardly knew. But she was so alone. Kneeling on the sandy bank, watching the ’roo with worried eyes that still reflected her fear of unnecessary death… She was sodden and bruised and shaken and there was suddenly no choice but to take her in his arms. To hold her hard against him so her breasts moulded to his chest.
To comfort…
No. This was more than comfort. This was need! He could feel her heart beating against his and it felt right. He kissed the top of her head, and when she raised her face to him in mute enquiry it was entirely natural that his hold became tighter. It felt right that his mouth should lower onto hers…
He kissed her. Of course he kissed her. And what a kiss! She tasted of salt-of the sea. She tasted of…
Of what? He didn’t know. All he knew was that this was a kiss such as he’d never experienced.
He’d kissed so many soft, pliant, lipsticked mouths that pursed into perfectly formed kisses and claimed him as their right. But there was no cool expertise here.
Their first touch fell awry, as if she hadn’t expected it-wasn’t wanting it-didn’t know what to do with it when she received it.
But she didn’t pull away. Her response was almost wondering. As if she didn’t understand that she was being kissed. Didn’t understand why.
And she wanted nothing from it but the touch. She needed comfort. She needed reassurance that here was life in the face of death. That she’d tried and she’d won and here was the man who had helped her achieve it. And he was solid and strong and male and wonderful…
She asked for nothing more. Her hands came up to take his face in her palms and her lips parted under his. Welcoming the kiss. Deepening. Glorying in the triumph of the moment-of the triumph of him-of the triumph of life itself!
The sun was warm on their sea-soaked bodies. With every moment they were recovering. Soon they’d surface to sanity, but until then they took each other in a desperate hunger that had nothing to do with the courting rituals each was accustomed to. Here was a man and a woman, and the sun and the sand, and the world around them was a mere backdrop to their need.
And when finally they pulled apart-as pull apart they must, though neither wanted it-there was no confusion between them. Only a deep assurance that it had been right. The right place. The right time. The right man for the right woman.
There was laughter in Molly’s eyes-not the carefully rehearsed confusion he’d come to expect from the women who saw his money coming before he did. There was no false coyness here. She was laughing at him and she was reaching up to touch his hair.
‘You’re wearing a crown of seaweed, King Neptune.’
‘Ditto for you.’ He lifted a strand from her shoulder and tossed it aside. ‘Hell. We must look like…’
‘Shipwreck victims?’ She was still laughing, glorying in the moment. ‘But for what better reason? Oh, Jackson, wasn’t that marvellous?’
‘Marvellous,’ he agreed, and he couldn’t agree more.
Her eyes were dancing with joy. ‘Want to do it again?’
‘I suspect our kangaroo won’t be that stupid!’
‘Was I talking about the ’roo?’ But she chuckled, letting him off the hook. ‘Okay. I was talking about the ’roo.’ She’d pulled right back from him and was hauling up the leg of her jeans. ‘And I definitely don’t want to do that again. I hit my leg on a stump as I came up the bank. Look at the size of this bruise!’
Damn, it was as if the kiss had never happened. Despite himself Jackson couldn’t help feeling a little piqued. After all, he had kissed the girl. He wasn’t accustomed to kissing a woman and having no reaction at all.
Especially when the kiss had felt so perfect.
It was because it was the result of triumph, he told himself. Nothing more. It was the emotion of the moment.
Molly would know as well as he did that the kiss could mean nothing-that they’d move back to business from this point on.
So keep it light, he told himself. Despite the fact that he quite suddenly-quite desperately-wanted to reach for her again. Wanted to take her in his arms again…
‘I have matching bruises,’ he told her, and only he knew what an effort it was to keep his voice light.
‘Can I see?’
That brought a laugh. ‘Nope. They’re in places a good realtor shouldn’t look.’
‘Uncharted territory, eh?’
‘Something like that.’ They were grinning at each other like fools, and then the tension sprang back and he didn’t know what the hell to do with it. Because he couldn’t kiss her again-could he?
No. He couldn’t. Not without starting something he couldn’t stop. Because having a light flirtation with Molly Farr…
No! The thing was impossible, and he didn’t know why. It would be like starting a wild fire, he thought. He wouldn’t know how to put it out or even if he’d want to.
What was he thinking of? Of course he’d want to put it out. Had he learned nothing over the last few months? Hadn’t he and Cara made a pact? No relationship with anyone they could fall in love with-that was the deal.
He shook his head as if dispelling a dream, then managed a smile at Molly as he hauled himself to his feet. He held out a hand to help her to hers.
She looked at the hand for a long moment, then placed hers in his. It was as if she was coming to some sort of decision. Her hand in his felt warm and strong and sure-and…right?
Yeah. Pigs might fly, he told himself harshly. Right? Hardly. Wrong and wrong and wrong.
‘We’d best get back to the house,’ he managed, and she smiled up at him as if she was unaware of the tumult of emotions running through his head. He looked across the river, concentrating on anything but Molly, and found something there to concentrate on. ‘Oh, hell. Your horse is gone. You mustn’t have tethered it.’
‘Then we go back fast. She’ll head to the homestead unbridled and start a panic.’
‘And that would never do.’
‘I won’t scare Sam,’ she said bluntly, and started walking back along the bank to where the river narrowed and it would be quicker to swim across.
He fell in by her side, his pique increasing by the minute. He wasn’t accustomed to being treated as this woman was treating him. ‘But you’ll jump into the river to save a kangaroo and risk drowning yourself into the bargain? How does that equate with not scaring Sam?’
She stopped then and turned back to him, responding to the note of anger in his voice with bewilderment. ‘I was never in danger. If I couldn’t have saved the ’roo I would have swum back.’
‘And if the current had been too strong?’
‘You know very well the river broadens at the mouth. The water becomes shallower and the current less strong. If I’d been in danger of going past the point of no return I could have swum back before I reached the rocks.’
‘Damn, Molly, you could have died.’
‘I couldn’t. Don’t make me out to be some sort of heroine.’
‘Isn’t that what you are?’ Still there was anger in his voice, and he couldn’t figure it out himself. ‘Doing rugby tackles to save a frog? Leaping into the breach to save a drowning ’roo? Taking on an orphan-’
‘Don’t do this.’ There was no mistaking her matching anger. It was blazing from her brown eyes, slashing at him with fury. ‘I took in Sam for me. Me. Sure, Sam needs me. But I need him, too. I lost my sister and my brother-in-law and my way of life. I don’t have anyone but Sam. I took Sam in for me-if you want to cast anyone as a heroine then go find yourself a storybook damsel, but don’t pick on me. I’m not it.’
‘I-’
‘And don’t think I’ll fall trembling into your arms like good heroines should,’ she threw at him before he could recover.
‘I never thought that.’
She forestalled him. ‘So why did you kiss me?’
‘Hey, it wasn’t just me. You kissed me back.’
Her hands were on her hips, her curls were sodden and awry, there was still a streak of seaweed in her hair-and again he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful. ‘I might have kissed you, but I didn’t mean it,’ she snapped. ‘I was cold.’
‘You were trembling.’
‘So were you.’
That made his eyebrows rise. ‘Me? Tremble?’
‘Yes.’ Her grin surfaced, anger receding. ‘You were definitely trembling. So there, Mr Hero Baird. Heroes shake, too.’
The woman was incorrigible. ‘I did not shake.’
‘You did, and I couldn’t have you dying of shock. It’d do me all sorts of damage.’
‘Worried you’ll lose a valuable client?’
‘Certainly I am. I’ve told you. Trevor would kill me if I brought you back dead. So that’s the only reason I kissed back.’
‘Yeah, right.’
There was nothing else to say. They slithered down the riverbank into the water and struck out for the opposite shore, side by side.
There was still this intimacy between them. It was unbelievably intimate to swim with her, matching stroke for stroke. It was sort of…two becoming one.
Which was crazy…
Then they gained the point where one horse still stayed tethered. They reached for their boots and he looked doubtfully down at them. At last: a topic of conversation that wasn’t fraught with tension.
‘My socks are squelchy.’
‘I’m taking mine off.’ She sat on the riverbank and proceeded to do just that, then swivelled to find him watching her with a very odd expression on his face. ‘What? Haven’t you seen bare feet before?’
He had. Of course he had. And why the sight of a sodden Molly hauling off even more sodden socks had his insides turning handsprings he didn’t know. All he knew was that it did.
‘Unimaginably erotic,’ he murmured, and she gave one of her lovely low chuckles.
‘That’s me. Mata Hari has nothing on me. Dance of the seven veils be damned. This is the saga of two soggy socks.’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘You’re not joining me?’
‘In a striptease? I hardly think so.’ He sat and hauled his boots over his socks regardless, and she looked at him in astonishment.
‘There’s modesty and there’s modesty. And then there’s plain stupidity. You know, I won’t faint if I see bare toes.’
‘No, but my boots will feel like the very devil on bare skin.’
‘You don’t have to walk. Your horse is still here-mine’s bolted!’
‘You can ride mine.’
She grinned again. ‘What a hero. Thank you very much, but, no. Not me.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘And have you tell Trevor I made a client walk? Not on your life. I know what my job’s worth.’
‘I won’t tell Trevor anything of the kind. Of course you’ll ride.’
‘Of course I won’t.’
‘Then we’ll both walk.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous or not, that’s the way it is.’
CHAPTER FIVE
SO HALF an hour later Gregor came out of the yard to find a sodden Molly and Jackson trudging up to the house, their one horse walking easily between them. The frown on Gregor’s old face lightened. The mare had indeed come home, and the sight of her had shaken him badly. He hadn’t told Doreen-he hadn’t wanted to worry her-but he’d been about to get on the farm bike, regardless of his bad hip, and go and find out what the damage was.
However, there was apparently no damage at all. They were walking easily. The girl was laughing. Even the horse looked undamaged. But why weren’t they riding him…?
‘Did we scare you?’ Molly called, and his trouble receded even further. There was no problem behind that light, lovely laughter.
‘No, miss. Well, yes you did a bit. I didn’t like to see the mare come home withou
t you. I thought you must have come off over a bump.’
‘No such thing. I didn’t tether her right.’
‘We stopped to rescue a joey that had fallen in the river,’ Jackson added, but his eyes were on Molly. She had him fascinated. She still looked crazy. Soaking and tumbled and sanded like the coating on a rissole. Cara would die if she was seen like this, he thought suddenly. Cara and every other woman who moved in his circles. But Molly seemed not to even notice.
‘Sam wasn’t worried?’ she asked, and the old man shook his head.
‘I didn’t tell him. No use spreading trouble before you need to.’
‘Very wise.’
‘The ’roo?’
‘Tried to cross the river on a bunch of leaf litter that wasn’t the least bit stable.’
‘Hell. I know where that’ll have happened.’ Gregor nodded. ‘It’s happened before. I lost a calf that way once. Things wedge in that bend in the river.’ He grimaced. ‘It ought to be checked every day.’ His face set, as if expecting a blow.
Molly knew what he was thinking. If Jackson bought the place Gregor would hardly have recommended himself as a future farm manager. But he didn’t try to absolve himself from responsibility. He braced himself and confessed all. ‘I didn’t do the rounds this morning, and I should have.’
‘You’re the only full-time man on the place?’ Jackson asked slowly, and Molly watched Gregor’s face fall even further. Here we go, she thought. Jackson’s going to suggest retirement.
‘Yes.’ Gregor took the bay’s rein and Molly saw his shoulders go back into brace position. Waiting for the inevitable.
It didn’t come.
‘According to the title there’s two smaller houses on the property.’ Jackson was still frowning. ‘I assume you and Doreen have one?’
‘Yes. The caretaker’s cottage.’
‘And the other?’
‘It’s empty.’
‘But it’s liveable?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Gregor told him. ‘It’s a nice little place, overlooking the bay to the south of the river. Time was when the farm manager lived there.’
A Millionaire For Molly Page 6
