by Ann Major
His voice was cold. Her own heart fluttered painfully. But she kept her chin as high and proudly defiant as his.
Everywhere there was the sad evidence of the drought. The sky was a pitiless copper-blue, and the few clouds seemed to scoff at the dry, cracked earth with their dry, cotton puffiness. Tad flew low over his dams, which only had a little water in the center of them. The creek was a string of muddy water holes.
Again his frosty, toneless voice broke the silence.
"We have twenty bores, pumps, windmills, but when it gets like this, water alone will not sustain cattle because they can't find forage. We've got to provide feed, but when it doesn't rain, feed's too expensive to buy. The cattle die. Out here the distances to market are enormous. This is a heartbreaking business in a heartbreaking country. A few years ago, a lot of Aussies began selling out to Americans. Now the Americans are selling. Six years ago I was buying land from the Martins. Now they're buying mine."
"Surely there must be something else you could do before you give up."
Tad just looked at her, his expression so dark and hard and cynical that she glanced out the window, chagrined.
The land did seem big. Ruthlessly big. Bigger than any one man. Bigger than any group of men. The kind of land that had broken the backs and the hearts of the grittiest of adventurers. There was a reason why most Australians had chosen to cling to the green fringes of their continent rather than venture into the interior.
"In America, our desert, our West has always inspired us with a sense of freedom," he said. "Maybe because it was the path to California and a new life. But the Aussies have never seen their outback in that same light. This was a convict nation, and the Never Never was like the bars of a prison. They've always been scared of it."
Beneath them the forbidding landscape became wrinkled by deep-scored gorges, cliffs, ravines and mountains.
"I wouldn't want to crash here," she said.
"As a matter of fact this is where my neighbor Holt Martin's plane went down a few years back. He died instantly, and that was probably a lucky thing. The wreckage of his plane was in a ravine and couldn't be seen from the air. He would have needed to climb out of the ravine to signal, and it's almost always suicide for a man to abandon his plane or vehicle in the bush. We're a hundred miles from the nearest cow camp or homestead. Noelle didn't find him for nearly a month."
"Noelle?"
Tad's face darkened. "His American cousin. She's probably behind everything that's been happening."
“That seems like a leap.”[JO22]!"
He muttered a low, mercifully inaudible curse.
"Why are you so sure it's her?"
"Well, she's a newcomer."
"Circumstantial."
"Do you always make up your mind in an instant?"
"When the facts are as nonexistent as these, yes."
He made a sound like he was grinding his teeth. "All I know is we didn't have any trouble till she got here. Her family threw her out of Louisiana, and it wasn't because she was behaving herself. She's the type who causes problems wherever she goes. Ever since Holt died, she's been poking her nose around where it doesn't belong."
"She sounds like me."
He made a grimace. "That's hardly a recommendation. Before Holt died, she even stirred him up against his brother, Granger. And Granger against me."
"I thought he was buying your land."
"He is."
"Why couldn't it be him?"
"His property's been hit nearly as badly as mine."
"I thought you said he was sick of Australia. Why would he be buying more land?"
"Damn it, if I knew the answers, I wouldn't have a problem."
Turbulence shook the plane, and Tad lapsed into his stubborn silence once more. Hours passed, and he didn't speak again. Not until the sun was so low and so bright he could no longer shield his eyes from it. And then he wasn't addressing her.
"Damn!" he muttered as he squinted into the sun.
At first she thought he meant the sun as he leaned forward. Then she saw a thin, black coil of ominous smoke against the fiery sky.
"What's that?" she whispered.
His mouth thinned, but he said nothing.
Beneath them were an immense two-story house and its outbuildings—the store, office, quarters for the staff men, laundries. They seemed to cower under an eerie, deepening twilight. Beyond she saw the stables and stockyards.
One of the buildings was burning. Men were running about wildly.
"It's the homestead. Jackson Downs is on fire," he said grimly.
Then he set up their approach.
*
The Cessna bumped its way to an abrupt stop on the dirt runway. Tad threw open the door, jumped down into the whorls of choking dust. Then he turned to help Jess and the others down.
The landscape was bleak, desolate and vast—cut off from civilization by hundreds of miles of dry, baking land. The air was oven hot. The red dust seemed to have settled on everything—the buildings, the scraggly trees, her clothes. Two Land Rovers and a forlorn Jeep looked like they had just come out of a red brick kiln.
The gritty hand Tad gave Jess jerked her roughly to the ground. For an instant her weight dangled against him in an undignified manner.
For a fleeting moment she was aware of how beautiful the house was, even covered as it was with its mantle of dust. It was an oasis in the middle of a desert. The two-story house had adobe walls two feet thick with wide, shaded verandas along every side. The house was set high on a rise of red earth and nestled amidst the shade of tamarind trees. Despite the steaming heat and her own wretched exhaustion, Jess felt drawn to it because it was Tad's home. She was determined to make it hers, as well.
She caught the faint scent of spinifex resin, the stronger smells of smoke and fire. The desert was like an inferno suffocating her, making her tongue go dry and tacky in her mouth.
Nearby horses screamed in terror.
"The stables!" Tad yelled before he cast her aside and broke into a run.
Jess chased after him.
A huge wooden building with a rusted corrugated-iron roof was the source of a fountain of orange flame and black smoke spurting fifty feet into the air and billowing higher. As they reached the building, Tad shouted at a bulky man who was fumbling with the locked doors of the stable.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, McBain?"
Ian whirled, his hard face panicked. Tad reached him, and together the two of them managed to shove the doors aside.
A dozen horses stampeded out the open doors. Tad grabbed Jess and shielded her with his own body. Chasing after this terror-crazed herd was a tall, dark man whose shirt was ablaze. He cracked a whip in the air.
As soon as the man got outside, he crumpled to the ground in agony and used the last reserves of his strength to roll himself in the dirt.
Tad and Jess reached him at once. His ruined shirt hung in ribbons upon his broad, muscled back. His handsome face was contorted with pain and exhaustion and covered with black grit and red dirt. Rivulets of sweat had etched crazy grooves into this fierce mask of accumulated grime. There was the scent of singed cloth and flesh.
Other men came running up, jackaroos, and the native children who'd been silently watching the fire. Jess was scarcely aware of them as she knelt with Tad beside the injured man.
"Kirk! You fool!" Tad began to swear softly to himself as he and Ian helped his brother-in-law stagger to his feet. "The bloody bastards!"
"I told you things were heating up," Kirk said, sagging against him. "When I went inside to get the horses, somebody locked me in. You damn sure took your time getting back here. What kept you?"
Then Kirk cast his beautiful black-lashed, green eyes upon Jess. "Deirdre... You found her..."
"No. This is Jess, her twin."
"Well, I’ll be damned," Kirk said to Tad.
Black lashes sealed over the dazzling green. Kirk's voice became a whisper as he fainted.
&
nbsp; Jess leaned closer and caught the faint name that was the last sound from his lips.
Jess stared questioningly at Tad and asked, “Who’s Julia?”
"She's my little sister. His wife. And she's back in Texas, pregnant. If anything happens to him, she’ll never forgive me."
"But I thought she died when she was a child."
"That's what we all thought, but she survived the kidnapping. Kirk went through hell to get her back for us. She became a world-famous ballerina. When she was kidnapped again in the Middle East, he rescued her. It's a long story." Tad winced as he inspected his brother-in-law's wounds. Then Tad's hand closed over Jess's. His gaze was intense, pain-filled.
"Please," Tad begged, "don't let him die."
“It’s a good thing, I came home with you, isn’t it?”
His jaw was set; his eyes were hard.
Of course, being the man he was, he was much too stubborn to admit the obvious.
Twelve
There is nothing like a medical emergency to give a doctor total power. With horror Tad saw that despite everyone else's terror, including his own, the opportunity to boss him and his employees had put Bancroft in an excellent humor. Her smug little smiles told him that she was enjoying herself hugely, while she mined this rich vein of drama for all it was worth. He could do nothing but grit his teeth and pray she was as good as she conceitedly believed herself to be.
Tad's scowl was bitter as he watched Jess bark orders and two of his jackaroos scurry away from the sickroom at a dead run across vast expanses of cool, terra-cotta-tiled halls. His two toughest, hardest jackaroos, men who never let a woman boss them, scampered like children every time Jess's voice rose above a whisper.
In less than an hour, Bancroft had taken over his house, his station, his men. What made him maddest was that he was used to being the one in command. She made him feel useless and...yes, jealous. Oh, sure he'd begged her to save Kirk. Sure, he'd done what he could himself. He'd sent his stockmen after the runaway horses and had guards posted at every outbuilding as insurance against another attack. But in everyone's eyes, it was Bancroft who was the heroine of the hour.
While Tad had been occupied outside with his stockmen, Jess had entrenched herself firmly inside his homestead. Every one of his thirty employees, including the lazy, fat Mrs. B., was in complete awe of her. Jess had won the older woman over with a single sympathetic remark about her plight as the victim of oppressive male tyranny. Mr. B., who had the temperament of a bad-tempered rattler, was as gentle as a lamb [JO23]around Jess.
"More cold towels, please," Jess ordered crisply.
Mrs. B. didn't even frown as she usually did when commanded to do something. Indeed, she nearly knocked Tad down as she rushed past him to obey this order. Hell, never once had she jumped like that to obey one of his orders.
Ian, too, was impressed as he watched Jess gently work over Kirk who lay sprawled on his stomach across Tad's bed. When McBain's hard gaze shifted to Tad's glum face, the lawyer all but laughed out loud at him. No doubt McBain thought this woman was probably running him, too.
Well, wasn't she? But what could he do? As long as Kirk was down, Tad's hands were tied.
Kirk's gray face was beaded with perspiration. Tad had promised Julia that he would get Kirk back to Texas safe and sound before their baby's birth.
"How is he?" Tad muttered ungraciously, conscious of an acute annoyance toward Bancroft because she had proved herself so thoroughly indispensable so quickly.
"He's going to be okay. He's in pain, but his burns are pretty superficial. What he needs now is rest."
Tad cleared his throat, started to say something, thought better of it and slouched deeper into his chair by the bed.
"We need to leave him alone, now," she commanded softly, ushering everyone into the hall. "You, too, Jackson."
"All right. Damn it." He got up quickly. "It's not as if I don't have a million things to do—things that are more important than supervising you." He slapped his thighs and a cloud of red dust issued forth from his jeans.
She watched the dust settle on the furniture, the floor.
"So do I," she murmured with that irritating tone of self-importance. Then she smiled quirkily, cockily, making him even more annoyed.
Did all female doctors think they hung the moon the way she did? Such conceit was insufferable.
"Leave Jackson Downs to me," he growled. "I won't have you taking over."
"I'm here to help you," she chirped defiantly.
Tad was aware of Ian watching them from across the hall.
"Just remember one thing," Tad said. "I didn't invite you here. As soon as Kirk is better, I want you gone."
Her face went very white.
"I was through with you when you got on that plane. You proved then that this thing between us wouldn’t work. I don't give a damn how good you are in bed or what you do here to help me, I’m the kind of man who doesn’t like being pushed around."
“By a woman?”
Her eyes flared brightly with hurt, and although that silent look of pain that followed her impertinent question got to him, he forced himself to go on. "Nothing you do is going to make a bit of difference. You're just too damned bossy—I mean, for a man like me."
"Admit it, Jackson," she said softly. "What makes you maddest is that you know you need me. You know you want me, and not just in bed. Do you really want a woman who'll let you bully her? You walked all over Deirdre, and you weren't happy with her."
"That wasn't the reason!"
"This is a big place. Do you really want to run it all by yourself? Kirk—"
"To hell with Kirk. You're just using him to get power over me."
"Jackson, that's unfair—even from your bullheaded brain."
He knew she was right, but he was tired of her always being right, of her always being wiser. Tad stormed out of the room, determined to get as far from her as he could.
But he was aware of her, of her brilliant, pain-glazed eyes, of her competent efficiency, of everything she'd said and done the minute he'd turned his back on her.
Ian stopped him on his way out of the house. "Hey, Jackson, what about the papers?"
Tad was tempted to agree to everything just to be stubborn and show her, but he turned back and saw Jess in the shadows at the far end of the hall. "I'll sign them tomorrow," he muttered roughly.
Jess's low gasp knifed through Tad.
"What?" Ian was about to go on. Then his thoughtful gaze shifted uneasily to Jess and then back to Tad. “Another day of my time will cost you.”
"I need a night to sleep on it," Tad insisted.
"But you already agreed."
All Tad could see were Jess's haunted eyes.
"Damn it, Ian. I said I need a night."
*
Tad slept in the bunkhouse that night, if one could call twisting and turning on that wretchedly narrow, rock-hard bunk sleeping, and it wasn't selling Jackson Downs that was worrying him. The air conditioner that was fueled by his own natural gas wells was broken, and the holes in the screens let in some persistent blowies. They kept up a perpetual buzzing at his mouth and eyes, and he kept up a nearly constant swatting at them. If it hadn't been for the bottle of whiskey he kept taking frequent swigs of, he'd never have made it through the long, dark misery of those hours.
The yellow porch light was on. Every time he opened his eyes, his gaze fell on a poster-sized picture of a sexy nude blonde opposite his bed. The lady was a bit of provocative decoration that the jackaroos had nailed to the wall. The trouble was that this particular big-breasted starlet bore a too-striking resemblance to Jess, and it was torture to look at her and to remember that Jess was asleep in a soft, clean bed somewhere in his cool house. Only last night he had had her—again and again. She'd been a wanton, wild for him. Sexually, they were a perfect match.
Just the memory of her and his throat felt hot and dry, his body tense and aching. He loathed himself for the power she had over him. He liked
good, hot sex; it was something he'd done without for too long.
It was infuriating that just a female image on a scrap of paper, just an image that only faintly resembled the warm, luscious woman asleep in his house could arouse him so that every time he looked at it, his insides quivered hotly.
Damn her. There would be no peace in his life until she was gone.
He kept opening his eyes, staring at the feminine image on the wall that so taunted him, saluting it with his bottle. It was hell remembering, hell fantasizing, hell doing without the one thing he really wanted.
In the end he resorted to drink to dull his senses, but the drunker he got, the hotter he became every time he looked at the picture, until every muscle was so tense he felt like he was going to explode. It was almost dawn when he finally fell fitfully asleep, but in his dreams he couldn't fight her off.
Jess came to him, and her eyes were as darkly passion-filled as his own. When she began to strip, he welcomed her into the narrow bunk. She crawled on top of him and drove him wild, so wild that he awoke thrashing. Ned, who was in the bunk under him, had slugged him in the arm to make him stop kicking their bunk.
"Some dream," Ned joked, his dark, chubby face too close.
"Shut the hell up."
*
The next day there was no new violence on Jackson Downs or Martin Reach, and yet the unspoken threat of it hung menacingly in the air.
Maybe that was what set everybody on edge. The jackaroos seemed to find special delight in tormenting Tad by speaking with amazement of Jess's accomplishments. Their praise made Tad want to howl with rage over Jess's clever treachery. She was killing him, killing them all with her kindness, with her usefulness.
"MacKay's doing real good today. He was on the radio talking to his wife in Texas for an hour a while ago. And the doctor's on a rampage, cleaning your house," Ned told him that morning while he was still in the bunkhouse nursing his hangover.
"I liked it the way it was," Tad muttered in a low voice. He plunged his painfully throbbing head into a lavatory and ran tepid water through his hair.
"She's even set Mrs. B. to work."
