by Nikki Logan
And he was Reilly Martin, the king of the circuit, independent and successful despite his lousy upbringing. He relied on no one. It was how he’d taken a sprawling but picturesque dud of a cattle station and turned it into a successful equine breeding-and-training concern: determination. Focus. Being alone.
He shouldn’t be itching to get back to either of them. He slowed Pan’s progress. His nerve-endings might want one thing, but his mind knew better. Reilly Martin didn’t hurry home to anyone.
He was halfway back when Pan’s altered gait and sudden nervous dance caught his attention. He looked round and his breath caught deep in his chest: thirty healthy horses of different colours spread out across a distant clearing like a spilled bag of jellybeans.
Lea’s brumbies. He reined the mare to a halt and twisted in his saddle to watch the mob.
They were relaxed and grazing while their leader kept a watchful eye on the stranger on horseback. Reilly’s eye moved across the herd just as keenly, recognising some of the finest wild horseflesh he’d ever seen. Then he looked at the stallion and knew why—he was wild, savage and utterly spectacular. Lucky these horses were under Lea’s protection or the best of them would be in trucks heading south to the sale yards.
The rest would be on their way to the dog-food factory. Wild horses were at the bottom of the food chain in the north.
The brumbies had the right idea, living in isolation, limiting contact with outsiders, focussing solely on the business of survival. And the continuation of their mob.
Survival and family. Family and survival. There was something in that.
Reilly calmed Pan and turned her for the homestead. Maybe there was a difference between wanting and needing. He wanted to get to know his daughter, and if his explosion of sensation for little Molly during their ride was any indication, one visit a month was not going to be enough. But he’d agreed to it and he’d written it up in the contract that Lea had signed. She had no obligation to offer him more and, despite the brief rapport of this morning, he doubted she’d be in a hurry to have him around.
He looked back over his shoulder at the disappearing brumbies and squinted as an idea began to take shape.
Chapter Six
WAS it mid-October already? The scorching temperatures confirmed it—the dying weeks of the dry season; everything bleached and crunchy, wildlife lean, water-sources scarce; the land beneath her feet gasping, with air hot and dry enough to suck the moisture right out of your eyeballs.
A terrible time for a little girl to turn five. But at least Molly had made it that far.
‘Happy birthday, chicken.’ Lea shook Molly awake an hour earlier than her usual seven a.m. waking-time, but it would give her enough time outdoors with Reilly before they had to retreat indoors from the heat for the first of Molly’s three therapeutic naps of the day.
It was Reilly’s third monthly access visit; three-and-a-half months since she’d been impregnated with his child. With Molly’s stem cells. Lea rubbed her hand down her belly, looking for signs of development. If not for the ongoing nausea and test results, she wouldn’t really believe she was pregnant at all.
Five years and many months ago, she’d paid exhaustive attention to every change in her body, every twinge in her belly as the extraordinary miracle of pregnancy had unfolded. This time, she was doing everything she could not to look inwards. Not to obsess on the tiny being growing inside her. She was taking care, of course—eating the right things, avoiding the wrong things, resting—to ensure that the stem cells she was making would be as healthy as possible for Molly.
But, other than that, she was doing her honest best to forget that there was a life growing in there at all. It was going to get harder once it started to move around, started to engage with her body, to mess with her mind. But for now, while it really was just growing cells, she could almost forget it was there at all.
If she concentrated.
‘Is Reilly coming today?’ Lea helped a bouncing Molly peel off her nightdress.
She sighed inwardly at the excitement in her daughter’s eyes. Reilly’s September visit had been heaven for Molly, but a nightmare for her mother. It seemed the energy he was putting into Molly had to come from somewhere, and that meant from Lea. He’d barely engaged with her all day last month and, when he had, it had been critically civil. And entirely cold.
But Molly’s bad case of hero worship hadn’t diminished any with the passing of another month. If her five-year-old’s infatuation had lasted this long then it was no passing fad.
Lea should know. She’d caught herself thinking about Reilly once too often these past weeks. Of the crescent-moon wrinkle that appeared in his left cheek when he smiled. Of his long, artistic fingers. On the up side, it was a tremendous distraction from not obsessing about the life growing inside her, but she really didn’t want him in her head at all.
In less than six months, she’d be handing over his baby and resigning herself to seeing it only occasionally, which was almost worse than not seeing it at all—something she’d seriously considered. She swallowed hard. She had no idea what a Kimberley station-owner was going to do with a newborn infant. Maybe he’d find himself a wife. A nanny, perhaps? Another woman raising her child…Lea’s lips pressed together as she tugged Molly’s T-shirt down over her bony body.
Not her concern, despite being genetic half-owner of the cell-clump inside her. If she started worrying about that sort of thing, she’d start getting attached. And if she started getting attached…
She ran her fingers through Molly’s dark hair to calm it, and confessed on a sigh, ‘Reilly’s already here.’
The birthday girl exploded out of the room with far more energy than a child in her condition should and ran out of the timber house.
Lea hurried close behind. ‘Molly, walk!’
‘Hey!’ Reilly caught the human bullet and swung her round and up into his arms, as Molly squealed with delight. It was such a perfect TV moment, and it immediately generated a dense stone in Lea’s gut. Molly chattered between wheezes like the willie wagtails that ducked and darted around the horses’ feet, high-pitched and in machine-gun bursts. Reilly smiled and nodded in all the right places but Lea could tell by the harried little twist between his brows he had only half a clue what Molly was on about.
She intervened. ‘Molly, how about we let Reilly catch his breath a minute? He’s only just arrived.’
Molly agreed with a five-year-old’s lack of grace and scampered off to visit the chickens in the pen at the side of the house. She greeted them as though it had been a month since she’d seen them too.
Lea’s lips twisted. That would put a dampener on any ideas that he was special.
‘Is she always like this in the mornings?’ Reilly turned to her.
‘Only on birthdays and Christmas.’
Reilly’s brown eyes met hers. ‘You didn’t tell me it was her birthday.’
She tossed her thick hair back. ‘You didn’t ask. Besides, I didn’t want you thinking we were angling for a gift. You’ve only known her five minutes.’
‘Fortunately,’ Reilly said, leaning into the back of his four-wheel-drive, ‘I did the maths. I’ve been carrying this around with me since last month.’
Lea dragged her eyes off those perfect fitting jeans as he turned back to her, large, pink-wrapped parcel in hand.
‘You brought a gift.’
‘I did.’ He looked more closely at her. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘I…Gifts between Molly and I are usually smaller.’ She regarded the enormous pink present with a sad smile. ‘She’s never had one quite like that.’ Intentionally.
He hesitated, glancing towards the chicken yard. ‘What did you get her at Christmas?’
‘I got her me. I was hers to do whatever she wanted with, all day.’
Reilly tipped his head in that way of his and chuckled. ‘That must have been some day for you.’
‘Oh, it was. We ate ice cream and redecorated the house wi
th her toys. And we swam at Joyce’s pool to cool off, not once but twice.’
His chuckle turned serious as he glanced at the box in his hands. ‘Do you want me to put it back in the car?’
Lea blew her breath out slowly. She never wanted Molly to know how much her treatment cost, how deeply it ate into the meagre family budget. She managed everything—just—from the income derived from the investments her mother’s legacy had bought. But the ICSI treatment and all the medical costs of a new pregnancy weren’t coming cheap, either. She’d already sold off half of her portfolio to pay for her daughter’s early treatment. It would be a long time before Molly saw a gift this big again.
She eyed it sadly. ‘No. Give it to her. She’ll be beside herself.’
Reilly’s gaze narrowed as he knocked the four-wheel drive’s door shut with his hip. ‘Do you need money, Lea?’
Heat flooded up her throat, blazing into her face. Did the man have no sense of the appropriate? She crossed her arms as though it was chilly and not thirty-four Celsius. ‘Reilly, you can’t ask that.’
‘Why not? You’re the mother of my child. My children. I have a vested interest in…’ He stumbled. ‘In Molly’s well-being.’
‘I still deserve the basics of courtesy, and that means not reminding me of how stinking rich you are.’
He followed her to the house, carrying the ridiculous pink box. ‘I’m no better off than half the property-owners in the district.’
‘You’re better off than this property owner.’ She took the box from him and set it on the table on the ancient timber porch, conscious for the first time of just how rickety the porch was. She thought of Minamurra’s perfectly maintained wroughtiron balustrades, and the freshly polished veranda-timbers, and kicked the dirt off her boots on the ancient boot-pull.
‘I’m not judging you, Lea. You’ve had to raise a child alone. On no income.’
She stiffened. ‘Do you want to see a profit and loss statement?’ Her hand slipped to her belly. ‘To ensure your investment is sound?’
‘Lea…’ His deep frown should have made him less attractive. ‘I don’t expect you to foot the entire expense of this. You’re carrying my child.’
‘Thanks for the reminder.’
‘You’re raising my other child.’
‘Molly is my child.’
He ignored that. ‘I want to contribute financially.’
‘I don’t want your money. I just want the—’
‘The stem cells. Yes, I know. But the contract you signed provided for assistance. What have you done with the money that was transferred to your account?’
She hadn’t touched it, knowing that she would be giving it all back at the end of this if—when—she could figure out a way to break the agreement. ‘I didn’t ask you for money.’
‘No. You’ve worked hard to keep my contribution purely biological.’
She struggled for something witty to say. Something sharp. But she couldn’t; he was way too perceptive.
‘Lea, relax. If you’d give me half a chance, I was working my way round to proposing a business arrangement. A lucrative one.’
Lea moved through into the kitchen and swung the half-filled kettle onto the hob of her grandfather’s ancient stove. She turned and leaned back against the kitchen bench. The heat coming off the man in front of her matched the heat of the antique at her back.
‘What sort of arrangement?’
‘I was hoping to have a look at some of your stock.’
She frowned. ‘The brumbies? Why?’
‘I’m looking for some new breeding lines. I’m aware that you have a different line from most of the others in the district.’
Yeah, wild horses that others would shoot in a heartbeat. ‘The horses aren’t mine to sell. They’re wild; they just live under my protection.’
‘You’re one of the only properties around here with fences.’
‘They’re not to keep the horses in. They’re to keep opportunists out.’ Most poachers wouldn’t exactly knock at the front door.
‘Then your horses aren’t wild.’
Lea frowned. ‘Not for lack of trying. In all other ways, I encourage them to be wild. It’s make or break on Yurraji.’ As devastating as it was to come across one that hadn’t made it. Anything less and they’d lose all of their wild behaviour. The behaviour that made them Australian brumbies.
Reilly perched on her timber kitchen-island, looking unconcerned. ‘I’m interested in sourcing one stallion and two mares. I’m willing to pay you above market-rate for them,’ he offered.
Lea frowned. Money again—was that all he was about? ‘I told you, they’re not mine to sell.’
Exasperation leaked through his words. ‘Then I’ll make a donation to their upkeep. Or pay for some kind of improvement. I assume you do occasionally like to make improvements?’
Her throat tightened against the criticism of her family home. ‘This house was good enough for my grandparents and my mother. It’s good enough for my child.’
My child.
He didn’t bite. Just stared steadily at her. The more he waited, the more curious she became about his proposal, offensive as it was. The idea of a donation was nibbling at her resistance. Her inner accountant started paying attention—funds that might go to Molly. ‘Are you talking about sale or loan?’ she hedged.
‘Loan. Only until their offspring wean. I’d work from second-generation stock and then you could have the founders back. Release them back to the mob to live out their lives.’
Lea paused, not because she wanted his money, but because it was rare to find someone who thought brumbies had value outside of a tin can. The thought that a little of the wild bloodline might end up in every station in the district was perversely tempting.
The deep voice grabbed at her hesitation. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we discuss this on the trail? I’d like to look at your stock.’
‘They’re not my stock, and they don’t exactly hang out near the homestead. You’ll have to ride out quite a way.’
Bark-coloured eyes assessed her. ‘Minamurra’s ten times Yurraji’s size. By my standards, they’re practically corralled.’
And just like that, Lea’s willingness to play nice evaporated. Her land may be small compared to his, but it was particularly stunning; her grandfather had chosen it for its mix of natural bush, red-rock ravines, rocky pools and spectacular terrain. Its terrain was too undulating and its boundaries too small to be of interest to the mega-graziers in the region, but it was perfect for wild horses—deep, thick cover and plenty of water sources even in the dry season. It was paradise on earth for her. And would be for her children.
She slapped herself mentally. Child. Singular.
Her skin tightened. Corralled. Still, she’d tolerate Reilly’s condescension if he wanted to help develop a local bloodline from wild-brumby stock. Blood seemed that much more important to her these days.
She took a deep breath. ‘When would you like to go out?’
They had to tear Molly away from her gift to take a nap, but she fell asleep within minutes. Reilly’s heart had clenched at the saucer size of her eyes on realising the parcel was for her. His own childhood had been full of expensive, exciting gifts that cluttered up his enormous bedroom. That had been delivered by courier. What he wouldn’t have given for a Christmas gift like Molly’s last one: a single day of his mother’s undivided attention.
Yet his very first instinct had been to buy Molly something, the bigger the better. Actually, the best. He’d even driven all the way to Broome to find it.
Was Lea right? Was he trying to build himself up in his daughter’s eyes? Would she really remember the expensive Middleton Stables miniature horse-and-stall set longer than their special but completely free ride together that first day?
His eyes strayed to Lea, leaning forward and tidying up the mess Molly had made in the living area. The move straightened her back and stretched her long neck and shoulders. Reilly’s pulse quickened
at the uninvited memory of dragging his mouth up that length of golden flesh, how she’d tasted. His eyes retraced the trail, reliving a hint of the former sensation. Lea glanced up in time to catch his expression. Her gaze tangled in his, wide and alarmed. Unwelcome awareness echoed between them. It settled hot and heavy at the base of his spine. Waiting.
She flushed, and it dawned on him for the first time that he made her nervous.
Interesting.
She stumbled to fill the awkward moment. ‘Do you still ride horses? Rodeo, I mean. The broncos?’
‘Rodeo, but not the broncs. I ride pick-up now.’
She sat back on her haunches. ‘What’s that?’
‘If anyone gets in any trouble, the pick-up guys ride in and help out.’
‘Does that include the livestock or just the riders?’
He tipped his head. That wasn’t the first sarcastic comment she’d made about rodeo. It was like she was trying to rev him up. He cleared his throat somewhat uncomfortably. ‘You don’t approve?’
‘Nope. Not a fan of rodeo. Two degrees from animal cruelty, in my book.’
His coffee mug practically frosted over in his hand. ‘Is that so?’
She took a deep breath, held his stare. Stood straighter. ‘In my book.’
It was strangely stimulating, that mix of fear and courage painted so honestly on her face. His voice dropped a few tones. ‘We must read different books.’
His comment triggered an unexpected laugh in Lea. ‘Reilly, I suspect we’re in completely different libraries.’
He blinked. She didn’t do enough of that—laughing. It tumbled from her lips like a waterfall and it birthed a vibrant sparkle in her hazel eyes. The sound warmed him, which made it unacceptable.
‘I’m not going to argue with you about the relative merits of rodeo, Lea. I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever agree on that point.’
‘I’m not looking for agreement. I just want to understand how you reconcile your passion for horses with rodeo riding—morally.’
His head snapped around to pin her with his eyes and he spoke softly. ‘Much the same way I imagine you reconcile having kept a child from its father…morally.’
