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He frowned. ‘Surely my simple presence couldn’t provide that much of a blight?’
‘Your presence is not simple at all,’ she retorted.
He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘Does that mean you were rather intrigued about me, as I discovered I was about you, dear Lydia?’ he queried.
She’d never been a blusher, but she undoubtedly coloured. She could feel the heat of it beneath the smooth skin of her cheeks and down her neck, all of which he noted with a flicker of amusement twisting his lips.
It was his amusement that got her going again, when she really would have loved to crawl into a handy hole to hide. ‘How could you—apart from anything else—transfer from one sister to another just like…clicking your fingers?’ She demonstrated, and he laughed openly this time.
‘Funnily enough, I asked myself that,’ he murmured. ‘The only conclusion I could come up with was that your sister had singled me out from the herd, slightly against my better judgement, whereas you and I…came together differently.’
‘We didn’t,’ she protested. ‘We came together—we met—because of my sister!’
‘Whatever.’ He waved a negligent hand. ‘This interest we share, however, sprang up of its own accord. Daisy had nothing to do with it.’
‘I’m not admitting to…’ She bit her lip and suffered a moment of dread that she would blush again, but she didn’t. ‘I am not interested in you, Mr Jordan. Let’s put it like that.’ She stared at him defiantly.
‘I would have said your first assertion was more truthful, Lydia. The one about not admitting things. But let’s not get ourselves all tied up here and now. Pete’s got your gear off the plane. Would you allow me to drive you up to the homestead? Sarah has lunch waiting.’
Lydia was sorely tempted to press her point, if not to find some way of driving it home with a sledgehammer, but she contained herself and only looked supremely frustrated.
Joe Jordan watched her for a moment, then said, ‘Good. I wouldn’t have believed you anyway, and it’s hot enough without getting oneself unnecessarily hot and bothered. After you, ma’am!’ He walked round the ute and opened the passenger door for her.
She did say stiffly as they drove away, ‘It is hot, for the middle of winter.’
‘Ah, but the nights are deliciously cool at this time of year, in comparison. Ever been up this way before, Lydia?’
‘No.’
‘Then you’re in for a delightful surprise. The country is superb at the moment. We had a good wet season, everything’s still flourishing, you can get about easily—do you ride?’
‘Of course!’ She looked at him scathingly, then looked out of the window.
‘Excellent. Unless, that is, you intend to converse with me only in monosyllables for the next six weeks?’
She turned back to him wide-eyed. ‘You’re not going to be here for six whole weeks, are you?’
He shrugged. ‘More or less.’
‘But why? Surely you don’t usually spend so much time up here!’
‘How would you know?’ he countered.
‘I…well, I assumed you lived most of your life in Sydney,’ she offered—a shade feebly, she couldn’t help thinking.
‘As in making generalisations about people from the same family, one shouldn’t make assumptions based on very little knowledge of the facts, Lydia,’ he reproved gravely.
They were driving along a rocky dirt road towards a stand of tall trees and between them she could see a large tin roof with ‘Katerina’ painted in big black letters on the silver surface: the roof they’d flown over.
Lydia blinked several times and said tersely, ‘I was told you didn’t live here.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Pete, the pilot. I had no idea, of course, that he was talking about you!’
‘Sprung,’ Joe Jordan remarked with a charming smile as he wrestled the gear lever and they bounced over a large rock. ‘Must get this road fixed, by the way. Uh—no, I don’t actually live here, although I spend quite a bit of time up here.’
Lydia waited, then said pointedly, ‘So?’
‘Several things have happened, that’s all. Rolf and Sarah need a bit of a break. Modern technology means that I can still pursue my chosen career from up here, and—well, the other thing that happened may not recommend itself to you, so I might wait.’
‘Tell me!’ Lydia ordered through her teeth.
He brought the utility to a halt outside a low white pole fence surrounding a lush acre of garden that in turn surrounded the homestead. There were colourful parrots swooping amongst the trees, there was a carpet of thick green grass, the house was old and sprawling, but well maintained, there was a riot of purple, pink and white bougainvillea smothering the tank stands, and a woman standing on the front steps was waving to them.
‘All right.’ Joe Jordan cut the motor and turned to look at her fully.
He didn’t start to speak immediately, however, and, much as she would have wished otherwise, Lydia felt an erratic little frisson run through her at the proximity of this man. Nor was it so hard to define his attractiveness suddenly. It was all there in the lines and angles of his face, the well-cut mouth, those broad shoulders and lean hips, the pair of strong hands, those intelligent hazel eyes, and in the distinct feeling that not only might he be exciting to know, he was also a connoisseur of women.
And he waited until their gazes clashed before he said, ‘I’ve been plagued by the curious yet nevertheless powerful desire to see you without your clothes, Ms Kelso. And the way you walk has taken to invading my thoughts. I do apologise for putting it so plainly, but it is the truth and you did command me to tell you.’
Lydia washed her hands in the bathroom attached to her bedroom and brushed her hair vigorously.
She’d been welcomed warmly by Sarah Simpson, shown her room and asked if she’d like to brush up before lunch. She hadn’t responded to Joe Jordan’s statement, beyond bestowing upon him the fieriest of blue glances before she’d jumped out of the utility. It hadn’t abashed him in the slightest as he’d introduced her to his sister and brother-in-law.
How on earth she was going to face him over a lunch table and for the next six weeks she had no idea, she mused savagely as she flung her brush down and stood with her hands on her hips. And there was Daisy to think about. Daisy, putting her own advice into practice, unless she was much mistaken.
‘Rolf and I have to take a little while off, although it’s such a busy time of the year,’ Sarah said over lunch.
She was in her early thirties, Lydia judged, with the same colouring as her brother. She was also what one would call ‘horsey’ but in a not unattractive way. Horses were never far from her conversation, and the verandah room, closed in with glass louvres, where lunch was set out, was decked with ribbons and trophies she’d won for dressage and show jumping, and she wore jodhpurs with a pink blouse.
Another clue to Sarah’s preoccupation with horses was that, from what Lydia had seen of the house, and while it was comfortable enough, the furnishings were old-fashioned, and it didn’t give off the glow of a dedicated homemaker being in residence.
Sarah had also been boarding-school-educated, and there were photos on the wall depicting a young Sarah Jordan as school captain. She had a rather bracing, authoritative air, as if she were a school captain born and bred. One thing she wasn’t, by her own admission, was much of a cook.
Lunch, while plentiful, was plain. Cold meat and salad, a fruit bowl and cheese.
‘Do, do make free use of the kitchen, Lydia,’ she invited. ‘I only do the basics, I’m afraid.’
‘Watch it,’ Joe advised Lydia. ‘You could find yourself not only the resident vet but head chef.’
‘Just because you got my share of the cooking genes, Joe, there is no need to be smug. We’re twins,’ Sarah confided to Lydia. ‘I sometimes think things got a bit muddled up. I should have got the artistic bent, one feels, but…’ She shrugged.
‘Hang on, beloved,’ Joe advised his sister this time, ‘you could be giving the wrong impression here.’
Sarah blinked her hazel eyes at her brother. ‘Darling,’ she murmured, ‘one only has to count the trail of broken hearts you’ve left amongst the female population of the Territory alone to know otherwise.’
Joe Jordan looked hurt and outraged at the same time. ‘Now you’ve really done it, Sarah!’
‘Done what?’ She eyed him innocently.
‘Lydia already classes me with Casanova!’
Sarah transferred her gaze to Lydia with some interest. ‘Joe mentioned that you two know each other. I didn’t realise it was in that way.’
‘It’s not,’ Lydia replied coolly. ‘It’s my sister he knows in “that way”.’
Rolf Simpson, a man of few words so far—in fact to Lydia he epitomised the fair dinkum cattleman: tall, lean, sparse of speech and with far-seeing blue eyes—said, ‘It’s never a good idea to come between sisters, mate.’
Lydia flashed a triumphant look at the main shareholder of Katerina Station, then turned her attention to her lunch and the dodging of some uncooked pieces of potato in the salad of the same name.
‘I’m suitably chastened; however—’ Joe took a draught of his beer ‘—I didn’t seek out either of the Kelso sisters.’
‘Gosh!’ Sarah enthused. ‘We could be in for some interesting times, by the sound of it. I’m almost tempted to put our little holiday off, Rolf. She turned to Lydia. ‘I must tell you, if what I think is going on between you two, is going on between you two, I should be delighted to have a vet for a sister-in-law. Just think how handy it would be for my horses, let alone Katerina.’
This time it was Joe Jordan who flashed Lydia a look that, while not exactly triumphant, spoke volumes.
‘When, exactly, do you plan to take your holiday?’ Lydia enquired of Sarah.
‘In a fortnight,’ Sarah replied. ‘We’ll be taking three weeks. But Joe’ll be here, so it’s not as if we’re abandoning you!’
‘I imagine,’ Joe Jordan commented, ‘that Lydia doesn’t quite see it that way.’
‘Why ever not?’ Sarah looked perplexed.
‘She’ll probably tell you herself; she’s a plain speaker, our Lydia.’
‘Joe, I wish you’d stop talking in riddles,’ Sarah protested, then turned her attention to Lydia with a smile. ‘You do look awfully young to be a fully qualified vet.’
‘Twenty-six, although I agree she looks younger,’ her brother commented. ‘But I can assure you she’s very strong.’
‘Ignore him,’ Sarah said to Lydia. ‘He can be impossible.’
But it was Rolf who changed the subject. ‘We are Brucellosis and TB free in the Territory now, Lydia—did you know?’
‘I…yes!’ Lydia murmured, wresting her mind from his brother-in-law, who was sitting back in his chair with the most devilish little glint in his hazel eyes.
‘What do you want now?’ Lydia asked arctically, much later in the day.
It was after dinner, and she’d spent the rest of the day with Rolf and Joe, doing a tour of the main yards and the vet station, and she’d even been able to practise her science on a lame stock horse. She’d found a nail in its hoof and been able to extract it.
Neither man had said much during the operation, but she’d known they were watching keenly. After the nail had come out, and she’d injected the horse with an antibiotic and a tetanus needle, Rolf had remarked that no one else had been able to come up with the cause of the horse’s lameness. It had been a way of saying well done, she gathered.
But instead of going to bed after dinner, despite yawning several times, she’d pulled on a dark green pullover, moved a comfortable cane lounger from the verandah onto the lawn and sunk down in it to watch the millions of stars overhead. That was how Joe Jordan had found her.
‘Nothing. I thought you’d retired.’ He went away and came back in moments with another chair. ‘Mind if I join you?’
She glanced at him sardonically and shrugged.
‘Thank you,’ he returned politely. ‘Hang on again; I’ll be right back.’
This time he was away for five minutes, and he came back with a pottery wine cooler supporting a frosted bottle and two glasses. ‘Thought you might appreciate some kind of a nightcap. Because Sarah doesn’t drink, she forgets others do. And most people drink wine.’
Meg had followed him, and she put her muzzle in Lydia’s lap for a pat before lying down at her master’s feet.
‘I have no intention of drinking half a bottle of wine.’
He pulled the cork from the pocket of his jeans and showed it to her. ‘We can drink as much or as little as we like. It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?’ He gestured sky-wards.
Lydia hesitated, then accepted the glass he’d poured for her and laid her head back. ‘You’re not wrong.’
‘There’s only one better way, and that’s to be camped out. No tent, just a swag beside a small fire, the horses hobbled not far away.’
‘That’s the kind of stuff my father writes about,’ she said dreamily. ‘He was a jackeroo as a young man. He always says it got into his blood.’
‘I’ve read some of his work. It’s good. I’m surprised he didn’t take you outback.’
‘Oh, he did. Just not to the Northern Territory. Cooper Creek, the Barcoo, Lake Eyre—I’ve seen those.’
There was a long silence; Lydia sipped her wine and made no attempt to break it.
It was Joe who finally said, ‘Why are you so mad at me?’
Surprise held her further silent for a moment, then she said wearily, ‘I’m not.’
‘You could have fooled me, but if we discount Daisy as a possible reason—what’s left?’
It was no good trying to study his expression, it was too dark, despite the Milky Way seeming to hang just above their heads, but she had the feeling he was serious.
‘You don’t really hold being a cartoonist against me?’ he queried. ‘As you see, it’s not the only thing I can do.’
‘No…’ She sighed.
‘And you shouldn’t believe Sarah’s stories about a trail of broken hearts—’
‘Why not?’
He paused. ‘Because it’s not true. I… Lydia, are you laughing at me, by any chance?’ he asked ominously.
She sat up chuckling. ‘Yes. Heaven alone knows why, Mr Jordan, but I’m quite sure it is true, or was when you were a young man in these parts.’
‘What tells you this?’
‘You’d probably have to be a woman to understand.’
‘It’s funny you should say that—I read a quote the other day that intrigued me. On the subject of women.’
‘Do tell me,’ she invited.
