Outback Surrender

by Margaret Way

  Brock permitted himself a cynical sigh. "Tell me something I don't know."

  "I'll have to grow a new layer of skin around you."

  "Why?" He held her green eyes.

  "Because you're so damned caustic."

  "Which is why you prefer Phil?"

  She chose her words carefully. "At least Philip isn't dangerous to know."

  He laughed grimly. "I feel duty-bound to tell you that you don't know Philip as well as you think you do. There's obsessiveness in his nature. It's not ardour. And don't forget," Brock continued arrogantly, "you loved being kissed by me."

  "Hah!" Shelley almost leapt away. "You're excessively sure of yourself, aren't you?"

  "Put it this way. I've learned a lot about women."

  "That's not lost on me, but I'm not about to burn my fingers."

  "A lot of women need excitement, Shelley. They can't get it fast enough. Charming, worldly women, bored to distraction."

  "Are you telling me you helped out?"

  "Absolutely!" he mocked. "I needed to get a whole lot out of my system."

  "And you're still not cured?"

  "I didn't expect the girl next door to turn me on."

  Heat flushed her whole body. "Just how long do your dalliances with physical attraction last?"

  "Well, I'm not over you yet! Go easy, there."

  Flustered, she'd been tearing an iceberg lettuce to near shreds without realizing it. "I bet a few women have wanted to kill you."

  "None that I know of."

  "Did you ever come close to falling in love with any one of them?" She dared to glance at him for a moment. "Why do you want to know?" His brilliant gaze locked on hers.

  "Just curious."

  "Being in love ain't for me, baby." He laughed and picked up a juicy red apple, biting into it with his fine white teeth.

  "Too bad." She reached for a large serving platter that already held a colourful galaxy of green beans, red peppers, spring onions and chillies, lining it with the lettuce. Next she garnished the whole with olives, black and green. Finally she added dressing from a small jug.

  "Voild!" he said. "I'm impressed."

  "By which part of it?"

  His hand came forward to clamp on her wrist. "You're turning into a flirt before my very eyes.

  "I am not," she protested. "You enjoy challenging women, Brock Tyson. You always did. Don't forget I remember you from your lordly days, when you played at having all the girls in love with you."

  "Rubbish. The charge is quite untrue."

  "Charm. Deadly charm," she continued, as though he hadn't spoken. "It works all the time."

  "Not on you?" He started to play with her fingers.

  "I'm too sensible. Stop that!" She pulled her hand away, feeling quite peculiar.

  "You just have occasional flashes of letting your hair down?"

  He stood there staring down at her, thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, elegant hands splayed over his lean hips. He looked marvellous, bitter, proud. The most physical man she had ever known. "You can use up some of your abundant

  energy and carry the food out," she said, exasperated but even more thrilled.

  "Yes, ma'am. Would you like me to take both platters?" He indicated thickly sliced cold chicken breasts on a bed of tnulti-coloured pasta.

  "Think you can manage it?"

  He gave her a droll look. "Do you know, my mother couldn't cook? She never had to. I don't think she even knew what the inside of a kitchen looked like before we left Mulgaree. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but Grandfather always employed a housekeeper. We always had servants. Eula has been at Mulgaree ever since I can remember."

  "Yes, I know," she answered quietly. "I often run into her in the town. She was dreadfully upset when you and your mother left. She must be thrilled you're back?"

  He nodded. "Devastated about my mother, however."

  "Of course. She told me she adored her. She's very tightlipped about Philip's mother."

  "The woman of the iron will." He grimaced. "I think we might leave Frances to heaven."

  "Okay." Shelley swiftly backtracked in an effort to calm him. "So, you're trying to tell me you were the cook?"

  "Is that so hard to believe? And take care how you answer."

  "I believe you could do anything you wanted to do, Brock. No problem."

  "What if I told you I want to kiss you this minute," he said abruptly, not even bothering to suppress the desire in his eyes. Nothing gentle. But fierce, deep, burning into her flesh. He longed to make love before all love was lost.

  Shelley didn't answer at once. Her throat was blocked with emotion. "What good would come of it?" she managed finally.

  "Who knows?" She was like a flower. A rose. Something natural and lovely. "I'd better shut the hell up," he pronounced edgily. The longer he stayed near her the higher his desire would mount.

  "I don't want that. I don't want you not to talk to me.'

  It came out far more emotionally than she'd intended. "Shelley-! "

  But whatever he was going to reply she wasn't to hear.

  Both of them were alert to the sound of footsteps tapping along the polished floor of the hallway. Amanda.

  Shelley tried hard to clear her face of expression.

  "I'd never hurt you, Shelley." His voice was rich and deep, deliberately pitched low.

  "It could happen without your trying. You know it. I know it." In the bright light of day she fancied they were back in a moonlit night, locked in one another's arms.

  "I'm not playing a game with you. Don't think that. This is my head and heart in conflict. I'd like to change my life, but I can't. And I won't. My future is in the balance."

  Tension stretched between them, so strong that for a moment Shelley felt unable to function-only Amanda appeared in the open doorway, blue eyes flashing from one to the other.

  "What's keeping you two?" she demanded, her voice loaded with implication. "I thought you said lunch was ready, Shel?"

  Shelley was abruptly re-energised. "All bar the finishing touches," she replied, amazed her voice sounded near enough to normal. "I never dress the salad until the very last moment. Now you're here, Mandy, would you like to grab the basket of rolls?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT CAME as no surprise when Amanda and Philip tagged along on the bush trek that Shelley had planned to take Brock on.

  Philip had insisted on helping Shelley to clear away, while Amanda finished off an icy light beer with Brock. There was no way Amanda was going to be done out of the opportunity of getting to know Brock Tyson a whole lot better. Something about the way he turned his silver gaze on Shelley alarmed her but Shelley was already taken, she reassured herself.

  Philip would make an excellent husband. Rich and sober, he was the highest bidder-already a firm favourite with the family. As for Brock? Men like that knew how to enslave a woman. Plus the fact there was always the possibility Rex Kingsley would reinstate his prodigal grandson in his will. Amanda rather -fancied joining the ranks of the idle rich, having been idle, though not necessarily rich, nearly all her life.

  Brock drove. It just happened like that. He didn't even bother to use his persuasive power. Shelley sat up front beside him, with Philip and Amanda in the back. Shelley was the navigator, pointing out various spots of particular interest to the station's guests, and Amanda kept interjecting, saying there were better places they could go.

  "It's so hot in the back," she complained. "Why don't we find somewhere cool, like Malkie Creek? We should have brought our swimsuits," she purred suggestively.

  Amanda looked like an ice-cream, begging to be licked, Brock thought. But did she interest him? No. Though Amanda's blue eyes, meeting his in the rear-vision mirror, were telling him the answer should be, Hell, yes! Evidently she was looking for an affair-except it was her sister who tempted him, without even trying.

  The heat of the afternoon was compensated for by the glowing colours of the vast landscape. Every hour of the day had its o
wn colour palette: the rocks, the distant eroded hills and ridges with their weird formations, softened by a larkspur haze, the eternal Spinifex that clothed the harsh, fiery earth gold. They presented the full range of dry ochre colours: flaming red, orange, cinnabar, pink, white and yellow, brown and black. Colours that stood out in bold contrast to the deep blue of the clear skies.

  Such was the sweeping flatness of the mulga plains they travelled across, the areas of rock formations, naked of any vegetation, and the chains of giant boulders, taking on the dimensions of towering hills. The country was in drought. so the sun-drenched earth was watertight, iron-hard. The wind-sculptured clay pans were crazed and cracked, encrusted with salt so the yellow sands were bleached white.

  "No drought lasts forever," Brock said, reading Shelley's mind.

  "We haven't had rain for almost two years," she mourned.

  "Pray the skies will open up in a thunderstorm or a tropical cyclone will swing in from the North."

  "Then we'll have a flood," Amanda crowed from the back seat.

  "Maybe, but wherever flood waters spread a new cycle of life begins for the desert," Brock said. "The response to water is truly stupendous. All those countless millions of newly germinated seeds, spreading like wildfire across the red earth. Anywhere the water has gravitated. I've seen some very beautiful sights over the last few years but nothing that moves me as much as our own Channel Country after rain. Wildflowers to the horizons! A spring to end all springs. Surely paradise couldn't look or smell better. It's the visual extravagance, I suppose. The infiniteness. That incredible desert vastness under an ecstasy of flowering."

  His words burned pleasure deep inside Shelley. "That sounds lovely, Brock." He understood. He felt as she felt, finding great joy and consolation in the timeless landscape. "I've had the most wonderful times of my life recording varieties of wildflowers," she confided, her voice full of her own quiet pleasures.

  "Isn't that pathetic?" Amanda scoffed. "It must be really bad when your best times are drawing flowers. Anyway, don't get her started. Shel can go on for hours about all the little paper daisies, the desert pea and the desert rose, the pink mulla-mullas and the parakeelya, the Star of Bethlehem and the wild cockscomb, and so forth and so on. It's so boring for the rest of us!"

  That went down badly with Philip. "Shelley is an artist," he told Amanda heatedly. "Her drawings are perfectly beautiful. She should be allowed to follow her talent, not wear herself out trying to make a go of this bloody station."

  "I enjoy it, Philip," Shelley corrected him quickly, throwing a quelling glance over her shoulder. "I've learned a lot."

  "You could learn a lot more if you travelled," he sighed. "Saw something of life. I hate the way you have to work so hard."

  "Then isn't it about time you asked her to marry you?" Amanda dared him.

  "Thank you, Amanda, but that's our business," Philip said stiffly.

  "Why are neither of you considering Shelley doesn't want to?" Brock spoke in an even tone, strongly at variance with fury in his eyes.

  "Oh, she wants to," Amanda said with a playful, provocative grin. "I guess she tells me so just about seven days a week."

  Even knowing her sister, Shelley was shocked. "Do me a favour and stick to the truth, Amanda," she said sharply, thinking that if it were true Amanda wouldn't have hesitated to betray her trust.

  "Oh, look-we've embarrassed her." Amanda turned sideways to poke a resistant Philip in the ribs. "Okay, Shel. whatever you say."

  Angry, and wondering just how far her sister would go, Shelley lightly touched Brock's arm. "The grand tour seem

  to be over. We might find some cool at the creek." She pointed through the screening trees to where the permanent waters glinted like green glass.

  "Fine," he clipped off.

  Brock parked the Jeep on the high ground, beneath ;i stand of the drought-resistant bauhinias. They showered pink and white blossom on the hood and the bonnet.

  The waterholes, billabongs, lagoon and creeks that criss crossed the Channel Country's great cattle stations, the fin est in the nation, were an enormous unexpected contrast to~ the glaring red of the arid plains. On their banks it was cool and green, an oasis lined by river gums white and smooth of trunk, feathery wattles and many species of flowering desert shrubs that drew on subterranean moisture.

  Malkie Creek was a favourite haunt. A marvellous swimming pool in the Dry, and in the Wet a raging torrent. Now it was aglow with dozens of desert eucalyptus, with massed pale yellow flowers and silvery buds. Even the litter layer of shed bark and leaves around the trunks looked pretty, acting as valuable mulch. Higher up, wreathing the tree trunks, were the white cassias, their leaves covered with some white powdery substance that acted as protection and gave the plant an alien appearance.

  At their approach large numbers of parrots flew up from an isolated pool of water, a dazzling flash of brilliant enamelled colours.

  Amanda ran on ahead, playing the femme fatale to the hilt. She looked a very provocative figure in a tight lownecked blue T-shirt that matched her eyes, her slim tanned legs flashing from beneath short, short white shorts that showed a little too much of her pert bottom.

  Amanda in an outfit like that, with her big blue eyes, blonde curls aflutter, usually stopped men in their tracks, Shelley thought, but neither Brock nor Philip appeared to he taking any notice. In fact Shelley had the dismal thought that they seemed to be exchanging a few heated words. Philip looked very agitated.

  It turned out she was correct. "Your sister is the biggest troublemaker it's ever been my misfortune to know," Philip burst out the moment he reached Shelley's side. "She doesn't caree what she says or when she says it. She's irritated me more times than I can remember."

  "It's nothing more than showing off," Shelley soothed. "Anyway, she's my sister, Philip, and I love her."

  "God knows why!" Philip huffed.

  "Were you and Brock having a few words?" she asked carefully, turning so she could see Brock stroll down to the water's edge. She was struck by the fluid grace of his body in motion. One could pick him in a crowd.

  "Who does he think he is, taking me to task?" Philip crossed his arms over his chest. "He shows up after all these years just in time to get himself reinstated in Grandfather's will-then tells me to stop putting pressure on you. As if I am!"

  It was an opening. She had to take it. "Actually. you are, Philip."

  "The heck I am!" He looked deeply hurt and shocked. "Don't you know how much I care about you, Shelley?" He stared at her intensely. "Do you know the things I want to do for you? I've been holding back, waiting to see about Grandfather, but much as I hate to say it Amanda's right. I should ask you to marry me."

  She felt like slamming her head against a tree. It was getting so bad one might have thought she had a duty to her family and to Philip to say yes. "Philip, we're friends," she said firmly. "We're certainly nothing more. This romance you've got going exists in your own mind. I've never given you the slightest encouragement for our friendship to become romantic."

  "How come your family thinks so?" His eyes locked on hers with something like triumph. "Your father and mother approve of me. You heard what Amanda said. You know perfectly well I'd marry you in a minute."

  "A minute is about as long as our marriage would last. I'm not in love with you, Philip. I'm sorry. I like you, and I don't wish to hurt you."

  "You could begin to love me if we had some quality time together," he persisted, believing it to be true.

  "You can't take a simple no?" She saw Brock turn away from Amanda's splashing antics. He began to walk back their way.

  "Never!" Philip kept his eyes on his cousin. "You're the one for me. I've known it for a very long time. But you have to cut free from your family. We can look after them, of course. I know you'd want that."

  "I don't want to talk any more about this, Philip." All at once she felt like bursting into tears. It was an awful feeling to be backed into a corner.

  "I lo
ve you." Philip shook his head mournfully. "Wc just haven't had a chance. And now Brock's back to complicate things."

  "Philip, you don't even know me," she said, very quietly.

  "I think I do." He squeezed her hand. "Just beware of Brock, that's all. Unlike me, he'd snatch you up and then Irt you drop. I can see his eyes on you, damn him!"

  As Brock closed the narrow gap Philip moved of abruptly, bending to pick up a few pebbles he intended to skip across the water.

  °Everything okay?" Brock's voice was casual. His eyes were not

  "It's the damdest thing, but your coming back, or your grandfather's dying, or both, has resulted in all Philip's ambitions coming together."