The Enemy's Daughter

by Linda Turner

  Disgusted, he exited the file, unable to find anything the least bit suspicious about it. He had a sinking feeling that the rest of the files would turn out to be just as innocent, but he searched them all, nevertheless. And came up with absolutely nothing. Swearing, he turned off the computer after an hour, but refused to be discouraged. All right, so Simon wasn’t stupid enough to leave damaging information on his computer for just anyone to find. That only meant it had to be somewhere else in the room.

  And there were lots of places in the study to hide damning records. One entire wall was lined with books that could conceal a safe or offer hiding places themselves. Slowly, methodically, he went through them all one by one, making sure there was nothing behind them or in them before returning them to the exact same spot they’d occupied on the shelf before he’d touched them. Then he started on the bookcases and other furniture that was tastefully placed about the room. He looked for hidden drawers and compartments, false bottoms, even a secret room behind the fireplace. And still, he came up with nothing.

  Frustrated, he was forced to concede there was nothing there. That didn’t mean, however, that he was giving up. The station was the one place Simon came to lie low when he needed a safe haven. His records had to be somewhere on the property. The question was where. The station was huge, and easily covered ten thousand square miles, if not more. And Simon no doubt knew it like the back of his hand. If he wanted to hide something, there were plenty out-of-the-way places no one ever went to. With no clue where to begin searching, Steve knew it could take him months, possibly years, to find what he was looking for. “Damn!” There was little more he could do in the house except take advantage of the privacy to call Belinda and report in. Taking a seat at the desk, he quickly produced his phone card and punched in the correct code. “Hi, Mom,” he said quietly. “How’s Dad?”

  “Still suffering from the Turkish virus, as far as the doctors can tell,” Belinda replied just as cautiously. “Were you able to find anything on a cure?”

  “There seems to be a new treatment in London that might work, but I wasn’t able to find out too much about it. There’s nothing on the Internet.”

  Knowing Belinda would know he meant he’d found nothing on the computer, he started to tell her that he didn’t expect to find anything in the places he’d been looking when a floorboard suddenly creaked outside the closed door in the hall. He froze.

  Later, he couldn’t have said how long he sat there without moving a muscle. He kept talking to Belinda, but she was too good an agent not to realize something was wrong. “If you’re having problems, you should have told me,” she said, reading his mind.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s a problem exactly,” he said as he quietly rose from his chair and soundlessly made his way to the door. His heart pounding and his cover possibly blown, he moved lightning quick and shoved open the double doors. The hall was empty; quiet echoed throughout the house. If anyone had been there within the last ten minutes, there was no sign of it.

  Slowly, carefully, Steve released the breath he’d been holding, but he didn’t relax his guard completely. He wouldn’t do that until the day he left the Pear Tree Station far behind. “Problems seem worse at night,” he told Belinda. “Your imagination plays tricks on you.”

  “It sounds like it might be time for you to try a different tactic in your research,” she said pointedly.

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Before he’d come to Australia, his mission had been spelled out to him in code. By telling him to try a different tactic, Belinda was instructing him to move to step two—the seduction of Lise. If he couldn’t find information on Simon any other way, he would have to get it from his daughter.

  Swearing silently, he wanted to balk at the order. As much as he was attracted to Lise, he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to go that far. He liked her, dammit! If he was going to take her to bed, he wanted what they shared to be personal and private and just between them, not something ordered by the agency so he could complete his mission. God, what a lousy state of affairs! he thought, only to grimace at the pun. Why did he have to like her so much? It made everything so damn complicated. He couldn’t trust his judgment where she was concerned. He wanted to believe she was as innocent as she appeared, but what if she took after her father more than he thought? It could all be a ruse.

  And he didn’t mind admitting it scared the hell out of him that he might have misjudged her so completely. He considered himself a damn good agent—he didn’t get taken in by his hormones or a pretty smile, and it was high time he remembered that.

  “You know I’ll do whatever I have to to help Dad,” he said grimly. “I’ll call you back as soon as I have any new information.”

  He would, he assured himself, seduce Lise without guilt if he had to. But only as a last resort. First, he intended to check as many places on the ranch as he could. As soon as he hung up with Belinda, he quickly glanced around the study to make sure his search of the place wasn’t evident. He took pride in the fact that he’d left no trail that could be followed. Everything was in its proper place. He’d even worn gloves to make sure he didn’t leave his fingerprints anywhere but where they were supposed to be—on the computer keys. Then he quietly slipped upstairs.

  The house was silent as a tomb. Standing at the top of the stairs, Steve gave his eyes time to adjust to the darkness and saw that only one door was closed. The one, he assumed, to Lise’s bedroom. A mere shadow in the night, he stepped soundlessly to the paneled door and pressed his ear to it. Through the wood, he heard a soft snore and grinned in the darkness. So the lady snored, did she? One day, he promised himself, he’d tease her about that.

  For now, though, he had to search the rest of the house and every outbuilding in the station compound. Quietly making his way down the hall, he slipped into each room and searched it. Two were guest rooms and were virtually empty of anything of interest. He found Simon’s room at the end of the hall.

  Even in the dark, he could see that the room looked like it belonged in a four-star hotel somewhere. A king-size mahogany poster bed dominated the room, its rich wood gleaming in the moonlight that spilled in through the windows. An arrangement of dried flowers sat on one nightstand, and on the other was a picture of a petite woman Steve assumed was Lise’s mother. It was the only personal item in the room.

  Swearing, Steve couldn’t believe it. This was the bastard’s bedroom, for God’s sake! And there was nothing in it. Nothing! No clothes in the dresser or closet, not even a comb in the bathroom. And that said far more about the man than he probably realized. The jackass didn’t even trust his own daughter. Why else would he make sure he left nothing there that might give some hint as to who and what he was?

  And Lise loved this man. That still amazed Steve. Granted, he was her father, and it was only natural to love the only parent she had left, but how could she have any feelings for someone who never allowed her to get close to him? How could she love someone she didn’t really know?

  Not sure if he would ever know the answer to that, Steve was left with no choice but to admit that the house was a total wash. He had little hope that he would find anything in the outbuildings surrounding the compound, but he had to check. Soundlessly, he drifted downstairs and slipped out the front door.

  The night sky was cloudless and brilliant with stars and a full moon. Glancing at his white shirt, Steve cursed himself for not having the sense to wear a black T-shirt. At least then he could have blended into the shadows. As it was, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Normally, that might not have mattered. It was late, and everyone had long since gone to bed. But he hadn’t forgotten the creak he’d heard outside the study door. And he damn sure hadn’t imagined it. His gut told him someone had been trying to slip up on him unaware and would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for one misstep. Even now, that same person could be watching him, probably at Simon’s orders. And he didn’t have a clue who it was.

  His face set in grim lines, he strode bol
dly into the moonlight and headed for the bunkhouse. If someone was watching him, let ’em look. After all, he had every right to be out and about at that time of night. Lise had given him permission to work on the computer as long as he liked, and he’d only just now finished. What was suspicious about that?

  His strides sure and easy, he stepped into the bunkhouse. In contrast to the house, it was far from quiet. In the dark, six cowboys snored like lumberjacks sawing wood—or at least they appeared to all be asleep and snoring. For all he knew, any one of them could have made it back to the bunkhouse right before he did and was pretending to be asleep. All his senses on alert, he stood there for the longest time, waiting for someone to move. No one did.

  Knowing he was taking a chance, he quietly stepped outside again, this time to check the barns and outbuildings. Slipping from the shadows of the bunkhouse porch, he darted to the barn and disappeared into the all-consuming darkness of its interior. From deep inside, he stared with narrowed eyes at the door to the bunkhouse. Five minutes passed, then ten. The wind played with a nearby bush, but the door remained shut. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, he faded deeper into the barn and silently went to work.

  An hour later, he returned to the bunkhouse without a sound. Not surprisingly, he’d struck out in the barn and the other outbuildings. And that could only mean one thing. He had no choice but to romance Lise in order to find out what she knew about her father’s traitorous activities. It wouldn’t be easy. Because not only couldn’t he trust her or himself when he touched her, he also couldn’t trust whoever had been listening outside the study earlier.

  Chapter 5

  Long before dawn on Monday morning, the station was a beehive of activity. The wind had picked up during the night, blowing dust everywhere, but the drovers hardly noticed as they bridled horses and loaded them into trailers so they could be trucked across the station to where the roundup would begin later that day. Breakfast—consisting of sausage and biscuits—was eaten on the run, but no one complained. Everyone wanted to get an early start, while it was still relatively cool. Even though the slightly cooler temperatures of autumn were practically upon them, the heat in the bush could be unbearable, and they had a long way to go. If they were going to reach their destination before nightfall, they would have to leave within the hour.

  Working to get his favorite mount loaded into one of the horse trailers, Steve saw that Lise was helping Cookie pack perishable food supplies into the propane-operated refrigerators in the chuck wagon, a specially constructed trailer that carried the cooking equipment. Not surprisingly, she was halfway across the compound from him and showed no sign of coming any closer. Ever since he’d kissed her the night of her birthday, two days ago, she’d avoided him like the plague.

  It couldn’t continue, of course. Especially with the roundup starting. Everyone would be going, leaving the house and compound deserted—and Simon the opportunity to slip back home without anyone being the wiser. SPEAR would have radar trained on the place and know the second someone flew in, but Simon was a slippery devil, and Steve wasn’t taking any chances. Simon might have disappointed Lise on her birthday, but Steve couldn’t believe he’d come back to the station without letting her know. She had to have a cell phone. Simon was bound to call her. And when he did, Steve planned to know about it. And the only way he could do that was by getting close to her again.

  She didn’t make it easy. Once he loaded his mount into the trailer and saw that the cowboys had the rest of the horses ready to load, he hurried over to help her with the large box of fresh produce she carried out of the house. “Hey, let me take that,” he said, reaching for it.

  That was as far as she let him get. “I’ve got it.” Edging around him before he could take the box, she nodded toward the corral. “Tuck could use some help with the gray mare. She’s going in next, and she hates trailers.”

  She wasn’t ordering him to help the other man, but she might as well have. Thwarted for the moment, he smiled ruefully. “Sure. No problem, boss lady.”

  Winking at her, he had the satisfaction of watching her eyes narrow dangerously before she stormed past him with her chin in the air. Grinning, Steve went to help Tuck, but he kept his eye on Lise, watching for another chance to help her. She seemed to know what he was up to and gave him no opportunity. Then, with a rush of last-minute activity, everything was loaded and packed and it was time to leave.

  The men began piling into the trucks, but Steve held back, biding his time until all the vehicles were full except one—the truck pulling the chuck wagon. With its double seats in the cab, there was plenty of room for Lise, Tuck and Cookie. And one more. Pleased, he strode over to the truck and slid in beside Lise in the back seat before she could guess his intentions.

  Startled, she stiffened like a porcupine. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Riding with you. You don’t mind, do you, ma’am?” he asked innocently. “All the other trucks are full.”

  She didn’t like that ma’am one little bit, but he had to give her credit—she hid it well. For just a second, her mouth thinned slightly in irritation, but then she reined in her temper and flashed him a cool smile. “Of course I don’t mind. There’s plenty of room.”

  The second the words were out of her mouth, Lise wondered how she could utter such a bold-faced lie without a smidgen of guilt. It was true that the truck was large enough that each bench seat easily held two average-size adults with no problem, but the second Steve slid in beside her, she felt crowded. And it had nothing to do with his size.

  It was the man himself, damn him. He had to know how impossible he was to ignore, especially after the way he’d kissed her the night of her birthday. She’d hardly slept at all since then, and it was all his fault. Every time she’d closed her eyes, he was all she could think of. Even now, she only had to look at him to feel his arms around her, holding her, offering a comfort she hadn’t expected.

  And then there was his kiss. How could she have known the man could kiss like that? He’d stirred a need in her she hadn’t known she had, making her want to kiss him again, to melt against him and make love…

  Suddenly realizing where her thoughts had wandered, she stiffened, mortified. What in the world was wrong with her? she thought wildly. She didn’t do this. She wasn’t the type of woman who fantasized about her drovers—or any other man, for that matter. Her mind didn’t work that way. Or at least it never had before. But then again, there’d never been a man like Steve in her life before.

  Ignore him, a voice in her head told her. He’s nothing but a flirt, and if you’re not careful, he’ll hurt you.

  Staring straight ahead, she promised herself she wouldn’t give him so much as the time of day, but she’d set herself an impossible task. Every time she drew in a breath, the fresh, clean, spicy scent of him teased her senses. And then there was the way he moved. He shifted in his seat, trying to find room for his long legs, and his knee accidentally brushed against hers. With nothing more than that, he set her heart pounding.

  And somehow, he knew it. She could feel his eyes on her, and she knew he was grinning. Heat climbing in her cheeks, she stared straight ahead, desperately trying to ignore him. She was fighting a losing battle.

  Angling slightly to face her, he said, “I’ve heard we’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

  Another woman might have been taken in by the innocent comment, but his tone was just a little too casual for Lise’s peace of mind. He was up to something, and only time would tell what it was. Cautiously, she said, “We’ll reach the first campsite late this afternoon.”

  Impressed, he whistled softly. “I didn’t realize the station was that large. I guess I’ve got time for a nap then, don’t I?”

  She didn’t particularly want to sit next to him while he slept, but a sleeping Steve was a much less disturbing one than a flirtatious one. Her eyes still trained straight ahead, she shrugged as if she couldn’t have cared less. “If you like. Don’t let me sto
p you.”

  “You can take one, too, you know. You can even stretch out, if you want to. I’ll scoot over, and you can put your feet in my lap.”

  His grin flashed wickedly in the pale light of dawn when Lise scowled at him, and from the front seat, she could hear Tuck choke on a laugh. And Steve was eating it up with a spoon. Apparently not the least concerned that she gave him a hard look that would have sent any one of her other cowboys scurrying for cover, he only winked at her.

  Oh, he was enjoying himself! she fumed. He thought he had her right where he wanted her. Well, they’d see about that!

  “Gee, Steve, that’s so sweet of you,” she said dangerously. “But do you really think there’s room in your lap for my feet and your ego, too?”

  Openly eavesdropping from the front seat, Tuck burst out laughing. “She’s got you there, Yank.”

  Not the least embarrassed, he grinned broadly. “The lady had me the moment I laid eyes on her. What do you think I’ve been trying to tell her?”

  “Then you were out in the sun too long yesterday,” Lise retorted, silently cursing her wildly beating heart. “You’ve obviously scrambled your brains.”

  It was the only explanation. She knew who and what she was, and she wasn’t the kind of woman a man lost his heart to. Steve might enjoy flirting with her, but she didn’t intend to let that go to her head. After all, who else was available? She was the only woman for a hundred miles in any direction.