by Linda Turner
Suddenly focusing on something else she’d said, he scowled. “And what the hell do you mean, your father would have stayed if you’d been small and petite? There’s nothing wrong with you the way you are!”
She was, in fact, damn well just the right size, as far as he could see. He’d never understood why anyone would look twice at a woman who was little more than skin and bones. Give him a real woman to fill his arms, not one he constantly had to worry about crushing.
“I never said there was,” she said stiffly. Annoyed, she gave him frown for frown and wanted to kick herself for confiding in him. Her relationship with her father was no one’s business but her own, and she didn’t normally discuss it with anyone. But then again, she’d never met anyone who was quite so easy to talk to. He made her forget that he was not only an employee, but little more than a stranger. She’d have to watch that in the future.
“Anyway, when did this conversation become about me?” she demanded irritably. “We were talking about you. So what brought you to Australia besides a job? I would have thought cowboy jobs were a dime a dozen in the States, so it had to be something else besides that.”
Steve didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash. Giving her a slow, intimate smile, he replied, “That’s easy, darlin’. I’d always heard the women Down Under were something to see, so I thought I’d check them out for myself. So far, I’m not disappointed.”
Rolling her eyes, Lise sternly ordered herself not to be flattered. He’d only been in the country two days, and as far as she knew, he’d spent that time hitchhiking to the station. Which meant, in all likelihood, that she was probably the only woman he’d met so far. So much for compliments. It was easy to look good when you were the only female in sight.
“Then I guess that makes this my red-letter day, Yank,” she retorted mockingly. “I’ll be sure to mark it on my calendar for prosperity.”
Far from offended, he just laughed, and that only irritated Lise all over again. There was nothing so frustrating as a man who refused to be insulted. Damn the man, why did he have to be so likable? Couldn’t he tell she wanted nothing to do with him?
Yeah, right, a sarcastic voice drawled in her head. When was he supposed to realize that? Before or after you told him your life story?
Clamping her teeth on an oath, she swore she wasn’t going to say another word the rest of the way to town, and she was acutely aware that Steve seemed to enjoy watching her struggle to keep that promise to herself. Openly studying her, he made no attempt to hide his grin when a kangaroo bounced across the road a hundred yards in front of them and she had to press her lips tightly together to keep from making a comment.
Damn, she was something! he thought in growing admiration. Strong and sassy and spunky. He liked that in a woman. She stood up for herself and didn’t take garbage from a man. She had no idea how that appealed to him. Delighted, he almost told her this wasn’t the way to discourage him, but where was the fun in that? Settling back to enjoy himself, he let the silence stretch between them and wondered how long it would be before she broke it.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The wind suddenly picked up speed, and in the time it took to blink, they found themselves driving through the middle of a small dust storm. Swearing, Lise immediately lifted her foot from the accelerator, turned on her lights and slowed to a crawl. “I hope another roo doesn’t jump out in front of us,” she muttered, peering through the dust that surrounded them like fog. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“I guess you have a lot of dust storms out here,” he said casually, his eyes dancing with amusement as he glanced at his watch to see how long it took her to realize she’d broken her silence. “There’s nothing to block the wind.”
“It’s something you learn to live with,” she retorted. “When I was a kid, we got hit with a bad one one year when we were on roundup. It was awful. We ate dust for three days afterward.”
“You were out in the bush when it hit? What’d you do?”
“There’s nothing you can do but keep your head down and your face covered and try to get to shelter. The trick is not to get turned around in the storm. Sometimes it’s better to just hunker down and wait it out right where you are.”
“Sounds like a blizzard, only in reverse. I bet that blowing sand can hurt like hell.”
“It feels like you’ve been rubbed raw with a piece of sandpaper,” she replied, grimacing. “It gets between your teeth and in places you don’t want to th—” Apparently realizing just how personal the conversation had grown again, she snapped her teeth shut.
Glancing at his watch, Steve chuckled. Three minutes. And Roo Springs was still eighty miles away. If she kept not talking to him at this rate, he’d know everything there was to know about the lady by the time they reached town.
Roo Springs might have been classified a town by outback standards, but it was really little more than a wide spot in the road collecting dust. There were no springs, no pond, not even a water tower to justify the place’s name. There was a grocery store, a hardware and station supply store, as well as a vet who worked out of his home. A small bank and post office shared the only brick building in town, and a gas station and restaurant made up the rest of the business district, if you could call it that. With a dozen or more houses huddled in the dirt, it looked hot, weather-beaten and miserable.
Steve hadn’t seen much to recommend the place when he’d hitchhiked through there on his way to the Pear Tree Station, and a second visit did little to change his mind. If there’d just been something besides a few dusty gum trees to add a little more color, he might have found it more appealing, but there was nothing. No greenery, no flowers, no color. Baking in the late morning sun, the entire town was nothing but a dull reddish-brown blob.
In spite of that, however, it was a booming little metropolis, and it was easy to see why. Gas stations were few and far between in that region of the outback, and cars and pickups were lined up halfway down the street, waiting for their chance to fill up. And those who didn’t need gas were stocking up on groceries and ranch and household supplies.
When just about everyone they passed recognized Lise and threw up a hand in greeting as she drove past, Steve was surprised. She was over a hundred miles from home! But when he thought about it, he realized it only made sense. When you lived out in the middle of nowhere, you had to go where the stores were for supplies. Lise had probably been coming to town with Cookie for groceries since she was a little girl—and so had the rest of her neighbors.
“Looks like you’re pretty popular around here,” he told her as he opened the door to the station supply store for her. Following her inside, he arched a brow at the sight of the man across the store from them. “Who’s the tall skinny dude at the counter? He’s so happy to see you, he looks like he could kiss you.”
Apparently surprised that he’d opened the door for her, she glanced up and nearly burst out laughing when she saw who he was talking about. “Fred kiss me? I don’t think so! He’s just happy to see me because he knows I’m going to spend a lot of money in here.”
Far from amused, he frowned. “Don’t sell yourself short. Why wouldn’t he want to kiss you? Is he married?” When she shook her head, he growled, “Then what’s his problem? You’re a damn attractive woman. Is he blind or what?”
He made no effort to keep his voice down, and he didn’t care if everyone in the store heard him.
Color stinging her cheeks, she looked as if she wanted to sink right through the floor. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “Around here, I’m just one of the guys.”
Steve could already see that for himself. And he didn’t like it one little bit. As Lise walked up and down the aisles collecting the supplies she would need for the roundup, none of the men who greeted her even tipped their hats at her or showed her the least courtesy. When he’d opened the door for her, at least two more men could have done the same thing before he caught up with her, but they let it slam shut
behind them without even offering to hold it partially open for her. Steve had never seen anything like it in his life. What the hell was wrong with Australian men?
Irritation glinting in his gray eyes, he almost asked her, but he never got the chance. Their cart filled with the smaller items on her list, they stopped in the fencing department to see about getting metal fence posts and wiring brought to the loading dock so they could transfer it to the truck. Before they could find a clerk, however, they found their path blocked by a group of cowboys telling jokes.
Greeting Lise with a broad smile, a lean, bronzed man who looked as tough as boot leather said, “Hey, Lise, did you hear the one about the chicken farmer and the sex education teacher? The teacher had this thing about feathers….”
Encouraged by wide, expectant grins and masculine chuckles, he began to tell a joke that should have never made its way outside a locker room. Outraged, Steve couldn’t believe his ears. Was the jackass raised in a barn, or what?
Not caring that he was sticking his nose where some people might think it didn’t belong, he growled, “Hey, buddy, watch your mouth. There’s a lady present.”
That should have been enough to shut the other man up. Instead, he looked around and said, “Where?”
The loser wasn’t joking, Steve thought incredulously. The man didn’t even look at Lise, but instead glanced around to see if another woman had walked up while he wasn’t looking.
Infuriated, Steve wanted to tear him apart. “What do you mean, where?” he thundered. “I was talking about Lise, you bastard!”
To his credit, the other man suddenly realized what he’d said and had the grace to cringe with embarrassment. “Oh, God, Lise, I’m sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking of—”
“It’s okay, Gene,” she said huskily, quickly stepping in front of Steve before he could deck him. “No offense intended, none taken. Excuse us, will you? This is my new drover—Steve Trace. We need to talk outside. Now, Steve!”
She didn’t give him time to argue, but simply grabbed his arm and dragged him to the front of the store to pay for the supplies they’d collected. The second she finished paying, she hustled him outside and whirled on him, her blue eyes sparking fire. “What the hell was that all about?”
“That’s what I’d like to know! You should have let me pop that jackass. He deserved it.”
“That jackass,” she said through her teeth, “happens to be a very good friend of mine.”
“Some friend!” he retorted. “Does he always insult you that way?”
“He wasn’t insulting me!”
“No? Then what would you call it?”
He looked so indignant that Lise couldn’t help but be touched. But he couldn’t go around hitting people just because they didn’t treat her the way he thought they should treat a woman. “Look,” she sighed, “I appreciate the Sir Galahad routine, but you really don’t have to protect my tender sensibilities. Gene wasn’t being intentionally rude. He just doesn’t think of me as a woman. And neither do the rest of the guys. And that’s okay. It’s more important that they treat me as an equal.”
“They can treat you as both while I’m around,” he snapped, “or they’re going to find themselves picking themselves up off the floor. Now that we’ve got that settled, why don’t you bring the truck around to the loading dock so I can load this stuff and we can get out of here?”
Rolling her eyes, Lise could see that there was no arguing with the man. “Fine. Just try not to get in trouble while I’m gone, okay? I’d have to bail you out, and that wouldn’t make me very happy, and you don’t want to see me when I’m not happy.”
Grinning, he said, “I’ll be an angel. I promise.”
When Lise snorted at that, he winked at her and just that easily made her heart thump crazily in her breast. Angel, my eye, she thought, irritated with herself as she turned and fled for the truck. The man was a handsome devil and too good-looking for his own good. If he thought he was going to take her in with just a wink and a boyish grin, he could think again. She wasn’t that stupid.
Satisfied she had her emotions under strict control, Lise drove the truck around to the loading dock and backed into place. Before she’d even turned off the motor, Steve had pulled on the work gloves he’d brought with him and started loading the fence posts and barbed wire into the back of the truck.
“Here, let me help you,” she said as she quickly joined him. “You can’t do that all by yourself.”
“No.”
She was already reaching for some of the fence posts. She had hardly picked two of them up before he took them away from her. “Hey, give me those! What are you doing?”
“Loading the truck,” he retorted. “That’s why you brought me along, remember? So why don’t you grab a seat in the shade and let me do my job?”
Lise couldn’t believe he was serious. “Don’t be ridiculous. I can help.”
“Maybe so, but you’re not going to. I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.”
His jaw set at an angle she was just beginning to realize was as immovable as Gibraltar, he gave her a hard look and just dared her to argue with him further. She told herself he was kidding, but there was no glint of laughter in his steely gray eyes, no smile on his mouth. Obviously not caring that they might be drawing the eye of everyone on the store’s huge loading dock, he glared at her, silently daring her to pick up so much as a box of nails from the supplies still waiting to be loaded.
Standing toe to toe with him, she should have told him she was the boss and could load any damn thing she wanted. It would have been the wise thing to do. After all, who was supposed to be giving whom orders? But the darn man didn’t play fair. He’d done it again, made her feel like a dainty, feminine woman, and she didn’t know how to handle it. Without a word, she found a seat on a nearby wooden crate to watch him work.
That’s when alarm bells clanged in her head. What was she doing? she wondered wildly. Just because the man had opened a few doors for her and wanted to wrap her in cotton like a china doll didn’t mean he was interested in her. No one had ever looked twice at her before, and she didn’t expect that to change just because this cowboy had walked into her life. He might have told her stories about his childhood, but what did she really know about the man himself? Nothing. For all she knew, he was just a charming drifter who never stayed anywhere long and left a string of broken hearts behind him. He wouldn’t break hers, she promised herself. She wouldn’t make an idiot of herself over him and have every cowboy within a hundred miles laughing at her.
That didn’t mean, however, that she couldn’t enjoy watching him work. With an ease that stole her breath, he picked up a heavy role of wire as if it weighed no more than a matchbox and tossed it into the bed of the truck. Muscles rippled in his arms. His back strong and straight, his broad shoulders handling the task with no effort whatsoever, he didn’t even break a sweat. Fascinated, Lise had to admit that he really was something to see.
Chapter 3
From the outside, the Flamingo Café looked like a dive that would blow away in a stiff wind. Constructed of rusty corrugated tin with faded pink flamingos painted on the side, the entire building leaned slightly to the left. It had no class and very little eye appeal, and Steve loved it. The second he followed Lise inside, he couldn’t help but grin. Everywhere he looked, there were pink flamingos.
“This is great!”
Surprised, Lise arched a brow. “You like it?”
“Are you kidding? It reminds me of a place back home—the Lily Pad.” He laughed just at the thought of it. “God, I’d forgotten about it. It was wild! There were frogs everywhere, from all over the world. And the best frog legs you ever tasted in your life. On Friday and Saturday nights, they had a band, and you could forget about getting a table if you didn’t get there by seven o’clock.”
“Don’t tell Mabel about that,” she warned as a waitress arrived to show them to one of the few empty tables in the space. “She’s the
owner,” she explained when he lifted an inquiring brow. “And she’s always trying something new—which is how she got hooked on flamingos to begin with. Someone gave her some as a gag, people commented on them, and the next thing you knew, the place was full of them. If she thought she could do the same thing with frogs and actually sell frog legs, the place would turn into a zoo.”
From what Steve could see, it was that already. Every available inch of space was taken up by either a table or a flamingo, and whatever Mabel was serving, the locals were eating it up with a spoon. Picking up a menu, he flipped it open and blinked. Beef Wellington, steak tartar, grilled fresh salmon with dill sauce. Who would have thought it out here in the middle of nowhere?
Glancing up from her own menu, Lise smiled slightly. “Mabel likes to surprise people. Believe it or not, she studied in Paris. You name it, she can cook it.”
Steve didn’t know about the other items on the menu, but he soon discovered Mabel knew what she was doing when it came to the salmon. Taking his first bite a few minutes later, he groaned as it all but melted in his mouth. Swallowing, he told Lise, “Do you realize I’ve only been in this country two days. Two days! And I’ve already had the two best meals of my life! This is incredible.”
Suddenly noting that she’d hardly touched the beef Wellington she’d ordered for herself, he frowned. “What’s the matter? You’re not eating.”
“Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “I’m just not as hungry as I thought I was. I ate a big breakfast.”
Steve didn’t doubt that—he had, too. With Cookie’s cooking, who could resist pigging out? But breakfast was hours ago, and they’d left the station just as lunch was about to be served. Since they’d arrived in town, they’d been so busy collecting supplies that they hadn’t even had time for a candy bar, which was why they’d decided to have an early dinner before heading back to the station. Neither one of them had had anything to eat in hours.
