‘No,’ Jenna said flatly. ‘He won’t.’
‘You don’t want to contact the police?’
That was a thought. But…contact the police and say what? That they’d been conned? She could get a message to her father, but she wasn’t at all sure that her father wasn’t in cahoots with Brian. There was no guarantee that he’d help.
They were two like pieces of low-life. Her father and Jenna’s father.
And their mother was dead.
‘We’re on our own,’ she said, with what she hoped was an attempt at cheerfulness. ‘Just Karli and me. But if you could put us up we’d be very, very appreciative.’
‘As opposed to very, very dead if I threw you out into the heat.’
‘Like your cattle,’ she agreed bluntly. ‘Yes. We’ll try not to be any trouble.’
‘I can’t afford you to be any trouble,’ he told her. He pushed back his chair and rose. The decision had been made and he obviously needed to move on. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he told her. ‘I’m hot and filthy and exhausted and I’m having difficulty making my head work. I need to dip myself under cold water before I play host.’
Once more he smiled down at Karli. His smile was warm and strong and caring-but it didn’t include Jenna.
‘We’ll discuss food and beds when I’m clean,’ he told her. ‘But I’m carrying too much dust to be sociable. Don’t go away. Or if you do, make sure you fill a few water bottles first. It’s a good four days’ walk to my nearest neighbour and as far as I know no one’s ever walked it. No one would be mad enough to try.’
And he walked out of the kitchen and left Jenna to her confusion.
The first thing she needed to concentrate on was Karli. The little girl’s eyes were closing and her body was slumping.
Jenna thought again of Brian and her anger rose to almost overwhelm her.
Damn him, damn him, damn him, she muttered to herself. Damn them. Because suddenly it was a group. Jenna’s father. Her father. Her mother. And Riley was there too. All rolled up into one ball of fury.
Which was illogical, she told herself. Riley wasn’t to blame. He was stuck.
He had a lovely, gleaming aeroplane that could transport her to a comfortable hotel somewhere near an airport and…
And his cattle would die. She had no doubt he was telling the truth. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who was working far harder than a man should. The way he’d left to have a shower seemed almost an act of desperation. It spoke of a man past the limits of exhaustion, trying to clear his head and see things straight.
No. She couldn’t blame him.
And the rest?
Her mother was dead.
She thought of Nicole, and tried to dredge up a feeling of sadness, but all she felt was bitterness. Bitterness at how she herself had been treated, but, worse, bitterness at what had happened to Karli.
Nicole was dead. Of course. It wasn’t the least surprising. What was surprising was that, leading the life she had, their mother had survived so long.
It’s all about surviving, she told herself drearily. That was what she had to do now. Survive.
Karli’s eyes were now completely closed. Jenna rose, carrying her with her. At almost six years old, Karli should be too big to lift, but the child was seriously underweight. She carried her across to the cracked window and gazed out into the fading light. The land was disappearing into the dusk, but she could still make out the horizon-long and endlessly flat.
There was nothing here. Where were these cattle Riley talked about? Figments of his imagination? What on earth was the man doing, working a useless, barren piece of land?
Surely he can’t make a living off this place, she thought, but then she thought of his aeroplane and her confusion grew. The plane was obviously expensive. How could this farm generate enough income to provide such a thing?
‘Well, at least he’s not a drug baron growing cash crops of opium,’ she told the sleeping Karli. ‘There’s hardly a lush crop of poppies in this backyard. If he’s making money from this place he must have found a market for bottled dust.’
She turned back to the kitchen. It was littered with crates and cardboard boxes, with everything covered in dust. There was a small gas stove and a kerosene fridge and little else. Ugh.
What of the rest of the house? She hadn’t been invited to look-but she couldn’t keep holding Karli for ever. She had to find somewhere she could lay her down.
The kitchen door led to a sitting room-of sorts. It held a few chairs and an old settee. In the corner was an ancient gramophone. But one of the window-panes was smashed, and dust was everywhere.
What next? There were two rooms leading off the sitting room. Jenna pushed the doors wide and reacted again with horror. These must be the bedrooms. Iron bedsteads stood as islands in the dust, with lumpy mattresses on sagging springs. Both rooms had broken windows, and once again they were thick with dust.
Surely Riley didn’t sleep here? Neither room looked as if it had seen a human for years. She retreated in haste, Karli growing heavier by the minute.
Riley must sleep somewhere. Where was he now?
She returned to the sitting room and stared out. Beyond the filthy windows was a veranda, and a door opened out to it. This must be the formal front door.
Did anyone ever come here?
She shoved the door open and walked outside, wary of broken floorboards, but there was no need for caution. In the lee of the house, the veranda was out of the wind and thus protected from the all-pervading dust.
In the fading light, Jenna could see a big bed at each end of the veranda, one made up with sheets and what looked like comfortable pillows. This, then, must be where Riley slept.
Riley’s bed or not, it was the most inviting place in the house. She laid Karli down with care, and watched as the little girl snuggled contentedly into the pillows. Karli had no cares to stop her sleeping. Jenna would take care of her.
Would she? Could she?
What had she got them both into?
This was such a mess, she thought ruefully. How had it happened? Jenna had taken such care to be independent, but Karli had been catapulted into her life with a vengeance, and how could she walk away?
She ran a finger down Karli’s dust-stained face, aching with tenderness for a child she was starting to love in a way she’d never thought possible. Where to go from here? How could she cope with this situation? With Riley Jackson? With her future?
One step at a time, she thought. Just live in the moment, otherwise you’ll go mad.
She turned and stared at the other bed at the far end of the veranda. It had a mattress and a couple of pillows. It looked almost comfortable.
It was too close to Riley’s bed.
The alternative was the railway siding, she told herself, and grimaced. It wasn’t an alternative at all. But to share sleeping quarters with that man…
The door opened at the end of the veranda-and that man was right in front of her.
Naked.
He’d obviously just emerged from the shower. His hair was still dripping. His towel was draped over his shoulder-but it wasn’t covering what needed to be covered.
She was a nurse, she told herself desperately. She was used to naked men.
She wasn’t used to this one.
There was no mistaking the magnificence of Riley’s body. He was built like a Rodin sculpture, she decided as she bit back an exclamation of dismay and moved swiftly to block the line of sight between Riley and the sleeping child. Then, with her complexion fast changing colour, she made herself look at his face-which was a better place to focus on than where her eyes were automatically drawn.
Her colour deepened further. The man was laughing!
‘Whoops,’ he said as he slung his towel around his waist to make himself respectable. Almost respectable. ‘I’m not used to visitors. Um…welcome to my bedroom.’
Which made Jenna’s flushing face turn to beetroot. She was in his bedroom. Wh
at else did she expect?
‘I…I’m sorry,’ she muttered. She motioned back to Karli who was thankfully still soundly asleep. ‘I needed… She needed…’
He followed her gaze and his face softened with understanding. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I should have thought of that before I showered.’
‘I’ll move her.’
‘There’s no need.’ He snagged his clothes from the bedside chair, then caught his towel as it started to slip. ‘I’ll dress in the wash house. Meet you in the kitchen in five minutes.’
He disappeared and she had a fleeting thought that suddenly he was as discomposed as she was.
Was that possible?
Five minutes later when they met again back in the kitchen, her colour still hadn’t subsided. The gathering dusk helped, but then Riley produced a kerosene lantern and turned the little kitchen’s darkness to light. Her colour rose all over again.
He was respectable now, but only just. He was wearing faded jeans and nothing else. When he’d been covered in grimed clothes and dust, Jenna had thought the man was seriously good-looking, but now he was naked from the waist up, his broad chest was tanned and rippled, and his strongly boned face was rid of its dusty coating. The whole package meant Jenna had to fight not to gasp.
That and the memory of what she’d just seen…
She wasn’t interested in men, she told herself desperately. She’d never been interested in men. She’d seen what so-called romance did to women’s lives and she wanted no part of it. She’d been independent for ever and she intended to stay that way.
But the sight of Riley…
You can appreciate a good body without wanting it, she told herself fiercely, but still her face burned. She was way out of her comfort zone here. She was half a world out of her comfort zone.
Where was a magic carpet when she needed one?
‘I’m sorry we went into your bedroom,’ she managed and he smiled, a gentle, quizzical smile that was strangely at odds with the image she had of him as a man’s man. A threatening specimen of the male species. His smile was almost tender.
‘You hadn’t thought I might come out starkers.’ He took in her burning colour and grinned. ‘My apologies. I’m not used to women in my house. I’ll see that I stay respectable in the future.’
In future. Help. Jenna’s breath caught in panic as she stared across at this large, disconcerting male. She was stuck here for three days.
‘Can I interest you in baked beans?’
It was a thoughtful drawl from Riley and she looked up at his face, sharply suspicious. It was as if he could read her thoughts. She didn’t like the sensation.
Food. Concentrate on food. In truth, she must be hungry. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She needed to wake Karli and persuade her to eat as well. But baked beans? Karli hardly ate anything and to persuade her to eat beans seemed impossible.
Once more her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Riley’s dark eyes creased into laughter.
‘This place is not a five-star restaurant, lady,’ he told her.
‘No.’ Trying to get her face in order, she knelt by the crate that seemed to hold all the food cans. ‘Do you have nothing but beans? You’ll get scurvy.’
‘Yeah, but I’ll die happy.’ He was standing above her, disconcertingly male. Disconcertingly big. ‘I like beans.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Lady…’
‘And neither does Karli,’ she said, unconscious of the fact that he was staring down at her with a very strange expression on his face. ‘I need to make her eat. Surely you don’t just exist on baked beans. No one could.’
‘I’m tough.’
‘Yeah, but surely not stupid. Or not that stupid.’ She was lifting cans out and inspecting their labels. Spaghetti. Baked beans. Spaghetti. Baked beans. But at the bottom were a few different labels, tossed in as if the packer hadn’t expected them to be used but had put them in as if to satisfy a conscience. They were cans of interesting things like water chestnuts, snow peas and capsicum. There were a few packets of herbs and spices. A few withered onions lay ignored underneath, and there was also a large packet of rice.
‘Can I use these?’ she asked, and Riley stooped beside her to take a look. His bare chest brushed her arm. He was so close. She edged away and almost toppled over. His hand came out and steadied her-which didn’t steady her in the least.
‘I opened a can of those water chestnut things once,’ he told her as if he was totally unaware of how aware of his closeness she was. ‘I tipped them over spaghetti. They tasted like-’
‘I can imagine how they tasted,’ Jenna said faintly. ‘Why did you pack them if you don’t like them?’
‘I didn’t pack them. Maggie packs for me. I make her put in the beans and spaghetti, but she always shoves in a few of those foreign jobs.’ He grinned and held up his hands as if in surrender. ‘You and Maggie would get along fine. You have a common interest in scurvy. Maggie says at the first sign of bandy legs or bleeding gums I’m to open them and eat them, regardless.’
‘Sensible woman.’ She sorted through the cans some more, still achingly aware of his body. ‘So who’s Maggie? Your wife?’
‘A wife?’ Was she imagining it or was there suddenly a trace of bitterness in his words. ‘No, ma’am. Maggie is…well, Maggie is my resident scurvy defence.’
‘She’s not resident here.’
‘Very acute, Miss Svenson. No, Maggie is not here. This place was my woman-free zone until you and Karli arrived, and I hope it will be again very soon.’
‘You don’t like women, then?’ It was a stupid question, she conceded. She had no business asking, but it just came out of left field. Then she had to concentrate on her cans as Riley stared at her and disconcerted her all over again.
There was a long silence. Finally he spoke again, and when he did Jenna knew she’d been right when she’d thought she detected bitterness. She’d hit a nerve and the nerve was still raw.
‘It’s not that I don’t like women,’ he told her. ‘It’s just that I don’t have time for them.’
‘Except for Maggie.’
‘As you say.’ He smiled at that. ‘Yep. Hooray for Maggie.’ He lifted a can of beans. ‘Let’s get these heated. I need to go to bed.’
‘Let me cook,’ she told him, rising with her hands full of the smaller cans. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll throw together something that’s edible.’
‘Beans are edible.’ He sounded hurt.
‘Not in my book,’ she retorted. Then at the look on his face-for heaven’s sake, he looked like a pup who’d just been kicked!-she relented. ‘Tell you what. You try what I cook, and if you don’t like it you can heat your beans. How’s that for a deal?’
‘Very generous-seeing it’s my food.’
Jenna grinned. ‘Noble’s my middle name. Why don’t you go away and I’ll call you when it’s ready?’
‘What, sit in the parlour and watch television on my chaise longue?’ Riley settled his long body onto a chair and placed his bare feet on the table. He leaned back, tilting his chair at a precarious angle and crossing his arms with the air of a man settling down to watch a show. ‘No way, Miss Svenson. For one thing, televisions and chaises longues are thin on the ground around here. For another, if you’re cooking my food then it’s my job to supervise. I can see that it’s my duty and I’m not a man to shirk my duty-especially if I can do it with a can of cold beer in my hand.’
‘Fine, then.’ Jenna swallowed the qualms she was feeling about being supervised by such a disconcerting male and she even managed a smile. She plonked two onions on the table, turned to the sink to collect a knife, and then faced him square on. ‘There is just one decision to be made.’
‘Which is?’ Riley was watching her with sudden caution. Which might have something to do with the very large knife she was now holding.
‘You have a choice,’ she told him. ‘The menu at the moment is stir-fried vegetables and rice, Chinese st
yle. But unless those feet are removed, Riley Jackson, I’m adding fresh meat. Stir-fried toes, to be precise.’
She raised her knife.
There was a moment’s startled silence. He stared at the knife. He stared at his toes.
He stared at her.
His face changed.
It was as if he thought she meant her threat, she thought incredulously. Or maybe…maybe she was threatening something else. Something he didn’t want threatened.
The silence went on and on. Finally, still staring straight at her, he removed the offending toes.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he drawled and it was as if his drawl was to hide some deeper emotion. He sat back and steadied his chair. ‘My toes aren’t on anyone’s menu.’
‘Just as well,’ she managed, lowering her knife and looking at the man before her with a slight frown. It was as if there were an electric charge underlying this light-hearted banter and she didn’t understand it one bit. ‘It’s my bet any toes of yours would be as tough as old boots.’
CHAPTER THREE
IF THERE was one thing Jenna prided herself on, it was her ability to cook. Years of long school holidays where she’d been alone and a childhood where her only friends had been servants had driven her into the kitchen of her parents’ various homes and hotels. There she’d met possibly the only kindness she knew. In the process she’d learned fabulous cooking.
She needed all her skills now. To make a decent stir-fry with two fresh(ish) onions and everything else from cans was a skill in itself.
‘Why don’t you just chuck the lot together and stir?’ Riley demanded as she drained and dried every can of vegetables.
‘Because I’d end up with stew.’
‘What’s wrong with stew?’
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