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Clearly a tactical error, she thought, even if I was half asleep. I must have been cold and scared—I must have been mad!
The coffee-pot bubbled at that point, so she poured herself a mug and tried to turn her mind away from things she couldn’t change. Then she remembered her idea of doing his portrait in a bid to prove she was who she’d said she was.
It turned out to be an exercise with curious side effects as she opened her pencil box and tore a piece of cartridge paper in half…
She’d always been a sketcher. For as long as she could remember, she’d doodled and etched and found it a great comfort, but paints had never particularly appealed to her. She’d tried watercolours, oils and acrylics but found that none of them was her medium.
At eighteen, however, her life had changed dramatically and she’d gone to art school for a year. That was where she’d discovered oil crayons—and it had all fallen into place. It had not been a lack of colour appreciation, her failure with paint, it had been her difficulty in merging the two techniques, drawing and painting.
Oil crayons allowed her to draw in colour, and she virtually hadn’t stopped since the discovery. So that now, at twenty-four, she had a small but growing reputation in portraiture.
Of course, doing portraits had its downside. You were often at the mercy of less-than-likeable characters and your fingers itched to portray them that way. It had, however, gained her recognition, and once that reputation was well established she would be able to draw what she pleased and sell it—landscapes and particularly children, whom she loved to draw, although not necessarily as their parents wanted them portrayed.
As she organized herself as best she could, she practised a familiar technique. She breathed deeply and cleared her mind—and she called up her captor.
As always, some emotions came with the image she was seeing in her mind’s eye, her reaction to her subject, but what caused her to blink in surprise was the veritable kaleidoscope of emotions that came along with Gavin Hastings’s dark, good-looking face.
She discovered that her fingers longed to score and slash lines and angles onto the paper with her crayons in a caricature of the devil with very blue eyes.
Jo, Jo, she chided herself, if he’s to be believed, he’s been subject to a kidnap attempt so he’s bound to be antsy!
Doesn’t matter, she retorted. I don’t like him, but I especially don’t like the way I do like some things about this man I don’t like. And I resent wondering, actually wondering, what he thinks of me!
She stared down at the still-pristine piece of paper beneath her fingers and was horrified to find herself breathing raggedly. This isn’t going to work, she thought. There’s only one way I can draw Gavin Hastings with any peace of mind and that’s asleep.
She had no idea how much later it was when she heard the bolt being withdrawn on the other side of the door, but some instinct made her throw her anorak over all the evidence of her endeavours.
He came in looking as mean and nasty as any demented bushranger, daubed with mud and soaking wet.
Her eyes widened, then she looked at her watch and realized he’d been away for over an hour. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Concerned for me, maybe even missed me?’ he queried sardonically. ‘No, I’m not all right. Put some water on to boil.’
Jo opened her mouth to take issue with his manner, then changed her mind, and he started to peel off his clothes.
‘Uh—what happened to the umbrella and the poncho?’ she ventured.
‘They were about as useless as a pocket handkerchief so I threw them away.’
Joanne listened to the rain pounding on the roof for a moment. ‘Yes, well, they weren’t designed for this kind of downpour.’ She refilled the coffee-pot and set it on the stove. ‘Did you—achieve anything?’ She turned to look at him, but turned away abruptly—he was down to his underpants and socks. Then she took hold and told herself not to be spinsterish. ‘Here.’
She took a blanket off the bed and handed it over.
He didn’t thank her as he draped it around him. Instead, as their gazes met his was full of such chilling scorn that she flinched.
She had to say, ‘Look, none of this is my fault. It’s no good being angry with me. If anything, it’s counterproductive.’
‘Really.’ He sat down at the table. ‘Have you been able to come up with anything productive while you’ve been twiddling your thumbs?’ he asked unpleasantly.
She set her teeth.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing,’ he said. ‘Skulking around my own property, stealing my own fuel, which I then had to carry like a packhorse, while you’ve been—’ his gaze strayed to a corner of the pencil box protruding from beneath her anorak and he swept the jacket aside ‘—I don’t believe this—painting!’
‘It’s not painting. I don’t use paints. I use oil crayons.’
‘Nevertheless—’ He stopped and studied his portrait, but what he thought of it she was destined not to know because, although he blinked once, he then looked up at her with palpable menace. ‘Do you honestly think this proves anything?’
‘I…’ She bit her lip. ‘I was hoping it would.’
‘Then you thought wrong, lady. So—’ he relaxed somewhat, but the attack didn’t relax at all as he studied the portrait again ‘—you looked your fill while I was asleep, Jo?’
Some colour came to her cheeks. ‘It’s a habit I have. Bones, lines, angles, muscles are my stock-in-trade.’
‘What about cuddling up to strange men?’
The hiss of droplets turning to steam on the stove top told her the water had boiled, but she ignored it. ‘I must have been asleep. I certainly don’t remember doing it. I must have been cold—that’s all there is to it.’
He watched her set mouth and returned her level grey gaze for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It was very pleasant, as it happens. Would you be so kind as to clear the table, Miss Lucas, and would you lend me your pink razor?’
Jo parted her lips, but then closed them.
‘You’re right,’ he said as if she’d spoken, ‘I need a shave. It might even put me in a better frame of mind. You wouldn’t happen to have a mirror?’
She had more. She had a small cake of soap, a clean, slightly damp towel, a toothbrush and toothpaste, but the mirror was tiny.
He used it all the same, squinting at it humorously for any patches of bristle he’d missed. Then he cleaned his teeth with heartfelt relief.
‘I like a lady with a good, sharp razor,’ he commented at one stage. ‘New?’ He held it up to the light.
‘It was new,’ Jo agreed dryly.
He laughed. ‘Might not be good for much after ploughing through that beard, but if we ever get out of here, Jo, I’ll buy you another one. Ouch.’ He fingered his jaw. ‘You wouldn’t have any aftershave lotion, by any chance?’
‘If that’s designed to make me feel less than feminine,’ she said pointedly, ‘it’s like water off a duck’s back. No, I don’t, but you could try this.’ She handed him a bottle out of her toilet bag.
He turned it over in his hands and read the label. ‘Witch hazel? What’s that?’
‘A very good, natural astringent that should make your skin feel all tingly and fresh.’
‘Ah.’ He poured some into his palms and slapped it on his face. ‘You’re right! A woman of great resource. Incidentally—’ he screwed the cap on the bottle ‘—I thought I’d dispelled that less-than-feminine tag?’
During his ministrations, he’d shoved the blanket down to his waist and she had picked up his wet clothes and hung them on the other chair in front of the fire.
‘I don’t give a damn about what you think of me in that regard,’ she replied, but the truth was the sleek muscles of his shoulders, the springy dark hair on his chest, his tapering, rock-hard torso were all hard to ignore for two reasons. The funny little sensation they brought to the pit of her stomach and a very real desire to capture such male perfection on paper.
There was a little silence. Then he said ironically, ‘You’re a hard nut to crack, Josie.’
She shrugged and busied herself with making breakfast—this time tinned stew and biscuits. But her fingers stilled as she remembered what he’d said earlier, and she turned to him suddenly. ‘Fuel?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered when that would sink in,’ he murmured.
‘So you got some? How? Did you get up to the house?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s a machinery shed not that far away.’
She turned back to the stew. ‘So we’re…we can…go?’
‘No. There’s a creek up and running between us and the gate we wouldn’t get through even in a four-wheel drive at the moment.’
Jo served up breakfast. She handed him a knife and fork, then sat in the armchair with her plate balanced on her knees and chose her next words with care.
‘There are some things I don’t understand. Were you completely alone on the station when they kidnapped you?’
‘No, I wasn’t. The head stockman was—immobilized before they came after me.’
‘Not killed?’ Her eyes were dark with shock.
‘No. But captured and tied up and removed heaven alone knows where.’ He started to eat with evident hunger.
‘And there was no family, no one else?’ she asked with a frown.
‘Jo—’ he paused with his fork poised and glinted her an assessing look ‘—whoever they are, they’d done their homework. It’s a long weekend, it happens to be the district’s annual rodeo with all its attendant parties, B and S balls and the like. A lot of people are away from home, in other words. It so happens I was supposed to be away from home but I changed my mind at the last minute.’
‘Is that why your mother isn’t home?’ she asked perplexedly.
This time he waved his fork. ‘My mother took off for Brisbane two days ago. Some show she’d forgotten she had tickets for. I can only be grateful she wasn’t there and neither, particularly, was Rosie.’ Suddenly, his blue gaze seemed to drill right through her.
Jo blinked. ‘She mentioned a Rosie several times when we spoke on the phone—a child, I gathered, but I couldn’t work out whose.’
He stared at her for another long moment, then finished his breakfast and put his knife and fork together. ‘Mine.’
Jo digested this with several blinks. ‘Well, what about your wife?’ she ventured.
‘She died in childbirth.’ He pushed his plate away and there was something completely dark and shuttered in his expression. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’
‘Of course,’ Jo murmured and got up to attend to it. ‘Would…’ she hesitated ‘…would I be right in assuming your mother is a tad absent-minded?’
He looked heavenwards. ‘My mother, God bless her, has developed a memory like a sieve lately.’
‘Well—’ Jo put a mug of coffee in front of him ‘—that explains it!’
‘You mean it explains why she forgot you were due to descend on Kin Can?’
‘Yes!’ Jo put her hands on her hips.
‘Doesn’t explain why she never once mentioned anything about getting her portrait painted—drawn, whatever—to me.’
Jo subsided. ‘Perhaps she meant to surprise you?’
‘So how do you think she was going to explain you, in the flesh, away?’
‘I don’t know—she’s your mother!’
‘For my sins—yet again,’ he said dryly, and got up. ‘I don’t suppose you have any men’s clothing in your bag of tricks?’ he added moodily and hitched the blanket around him again.
Jo merely stared at him steadily.
‘Once again, if looks could kill I’d be six feet under. OK, Miss Lucas, assuming you are lily-white, above board and all the rest, do you have any suggestions?’
Jo resisted the urge to give vent to her feelings—she posed a question instead. ‘How many are there?’
‘Two. They wore balaclavas so I have no idea who they are.’
‘How did you escape?’
He sat down on the corner of the table. ‘Checking up on me, Jo?’
‘I do only have your word for it.’
He mulled over this for a moment, then grimaced. ‘They trussed me up like a chicken and locked me overnight in a windowless storeroom. What they didn’t know was that under the lino there was a trapdoor—the house is on stilts about two feet above the ground, handy in times of flood. I got away through it.’
‘How? If you were trussed up like a chicken?’
He rubbed his wrists and Jo noticed, for the first time, almost red-raw, chafing marks on the inside of each wrist. ‘I found a pair of old scissors and managed to saw through the rope with them. Not that easy since my hands were tied against my back.’
‘No,’ she agreed with a tinge of awe, which she immediately tried to mask by adding, ‘Why didn’t they take you away instead of storing you in the house for a whole night?’
He glanced at her. ‘Well, you see, Josie, I wasn’t their target.’
She stared at him blankly.
‘No,’ he said meditatively and rubbed his chin. ‘It was Rosie they’d planned to snatch, my six-year-old daughter—a much softer target.’
Jo’s mouth fell open.
‘As you say.’
‘But…are you sure?’
‘I’m quite sure. I heard all the discussion, all the recriminations going on throughout the night, all the new plans being made. They decided since they’d got me they’d take me in her place, but that’s why they called for some back-up.’
‘Thank heavens for your mother’s bad memory,’ Jo said a little shakenly.
‘All the same, not only do I have to get myself off Kin Can, I have to prevent my mother and Rosie waltzing back into their arms. They cut all the phone lines, you see.’
‘Won’t that make people—your mother—suspicious?’
‘Not necessarily. The system can have its problems out here and it is rodeo weekend.’
