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‘Throw your things into the dryer,’ she said briskly, ‘and when you’re ready come to the kitchen.’ She would put her own wet clothes into the washing machine later. ‘You know where the kitchen door is.’ Let him come in from the verandah, not through the house. ‘Enjoy your shower!’ She swung away before he could catch the impish smile on her lips.
She raced upstairs to the main bathroom next to her big double bedroom overlooking the vast tree-lined lawn.
Being such an old house, it had no en suites off the bedrooms, though the rooms were large enough to put them in at a later stage. Her father had wanted to modernise the bedrooms and put spa baths in the planned en suites, but she’d insisted the rooms must be renovated in the authentic old Federation style, with old-style en suites to match, and no modern spas. And, since she would be spending the most time here at Fernlea, her father had bowed to her wishes.
O’Malley, no doubt, would see it differently. He’d see it as the pampered daughter getting her own way again. Getting whatever she wanted.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. What a sight! She looked like a drowned bush rat! Where was the pampered socialite now? Socialite! She snorted, her lip curling. O’Malley had a lot to learn!
She showered and dressed in double-quick time, throwing on a clean white T-shirt and her oldest, most faded pair of jeans. She wanted to avoid giving O’Malley a chance to taunt her for wearing expensive designer jeans or a famous-label shirt. Not that she didn’t possess such items...she did...mostly picked up at sales, and only well-cut, top-quality gear that she knew would last better than the cheaper variety.
She pulled back her still damp, shoulder-length hair into a ponytail, securing it with a black scrunchie. She left her face bare of make-up, not even bothering with lipstick. Her lips were full enough and pink enough to get away without lipstick, and her lashes, being as thick and black as her hair, needed no enhancing.
It was just as well she hadn’t been wearing make-up earlier, she mused, or her mascara would have run down her cheeks and her lipstick would have been smeared across her chin! She could just imagine how O’Malley would have teased her about that!
She suppressed a giggle as she ran down the stairs to the kitchen. Now she was going to get her chance to laugh at him!
There was no sign of him as yet She set about preparing the coffee, filling the pot and taking two mugs from hooks on the wall. It was a big old country-style kitchen with cupboards and benches lining the walls and a long table in the middle, with several chairs. She’d recently made new curtains and given the walls a new coat of paint.
She heard O’Malley’s voice at the door. ‘Hullo there.’
‘Come in,’ she called, glancing round, biting her lip in wicked expectation.
Her eyes bulged as O’Malley stepped into the kitchen, her face flaming as she saw that he’d outsmarted her. All he was wearing was a skimpy white towel, wrapped round his waist!
‘Wh-what happened to the dressing-gown I gave you?’ she squeaked, her eyes riveted for a stunned second to his bare, bronzed chest and powerful tanned legs. ‘I... It was the nearest thing I had to a—a smoking jacket.’
‘Pink’s not my colour.’ He shrugged, and spread his hands—both of them, causing her to bite back a gasp and jerk her head away, expecting the towel to unravel. ‘And it was a bit tight and flimsy across the shoulders. I didn’t want to rip it and incur your wrath. It’s obviously your very best negligee.’
She hissed in her breath. ‘I’ve never worn it,’ she growled, attending to the coffee as if her life depended on it. ‘My mother gave it to me. She likes frilly, frivolous things. I don’t.’
‘I’m sure it would look charming on you,’ he demurred, and she could almost feel his eyes undressing her.
‘I just keep it for guests,’ she muttered, her hand unsteady as she poured the coffee. Female guests—though she would have given anything to have seen O’Malley prancing around in it, frills and all. She felt a giggle bubbling to her lips.
‘You must have some very odd male guests,’ he commented gravely. ‘I’ve often wondered how you social set get your kicks.’
She flounced round, thrusting his mug of coffee at him. ‘OK, so you called my bluff,’ she scratched out. ‘Let’s drop it, shall we?’ She snatched in a horrified breath as his hand moved to the towel. ‘No! Not the towel!’ She shut her eyes. ‘Look, I’ll go and find you something else to wear...’
He caught her arm as she tried to dash past him. ‘No need. I’m not cold. Sit down and have your coffee. Haven’t you ever seen a naked male chest before?’
‘It—it’s not that—’ She snapped her mouth shut, horrified at the way she was stammering. It was so unlike her. Normally nothing fazed her.
‘It’s not my chest?’ he enquired blandly, pulling out a chair.
She held her breath and averted her gaze as he lowered himself down.
‘Look, if it’s any help,’ he drawled, sounding amused, ‘I’ve a pair of boxer shorts under the towel. The ones you threw in with the negligée.’ He paused. ‘One of your male guests must have left them behind.’
She sank into the chair opposite, relief trickling through her. She’d forgotten about the boxer shorts. ‘They—they’re my father’s...and they’re new. They were still in their original pack. I—I didn’t think he’d mind.’
‘I trust not. I felt I should avail myself of them...if only to save your blushes.’ Tilting his head at her, he added musingly, ‘You know, I expected Hugh Conway’s daughter to be older and more—’ he pursed his lips ‘—more hard-boiled. More the jaded, seen-it-all-done-it-all, sophisticate. Are you really as young and ingenuous as you seem? You look about sixteen.’
Sixteen! Sparks lit her eyes. This was too much!
‘I’m twenty-three years old,’ she snapped, ‘and I’ve just finished an arts degree at university.’
‘Goodness...twenty-three!’ Mock wonder danced in his eyes. She clenched her hands into fists, realising he’d teased her into blurting out the truth. ‘And an arts degree, eh? Well done. Not just a pretty face, then.’ The edges of his mouth twitched. ‘Perhaps not the idle, empty-headed socialite I imagined.’
Her fingernails dug into her flesh. He didn’t have to sound so surprised! ‘Are you being condescending because I’m the pampered Conway girl,’ she grated, ‘or are you always this patronising with women?’
‘I was congratulating you.’ He defended himself with an injured expression. ‘Do you intend to go on with your studies?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘There’s not much one can do these days with an arts degree on its own...’
‘I realise that, but no, I won’t be doing any more study for now. I’ll be too busy. It was just an interest, to keep my mind active.’ Damn, she thought. That sounds so smug and self-indulgent! No wonder he thinks I’m a bored, pampered socialite with nothing better to do!
She lifted her coffee mug and drained the contents, avoiding his eye. ‘I compete in horse shows, which means lots of training and travelling around,’ she told him, keeping her voice steady with an effort. She shouldn’t care what this insufferable man thought of her, but for some reason she did! ‘It meant I could only go to uni part-time, so I took longer to get my degree.’
‘So it was more of a part-time hobby...between horse shows,’ he murmured, ‘than a serious, full-time commitment with a professional career in mind?’ He nodded, as if it was no more than he expected. ‘You’re more interested in parading around the arena with your peers. Gathering ribbons. Gathering applause. That’s where your ambition lies.’
There was a new note in his voice, a coldly cynical note that raised her hackles.
She scraped back her chair. ‘My ambition,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘is to compete in the Sydney Olympic Games. Not just compete, but hopefully to win a gold medal for Australia!’ She jerked to her feet and stepped over to the bench. ‘More coffee?’ Rain was still drumming on the roof. She had an unhappy feeling that she was stuck with him for some time yet.
‘Thanks, I will.’
As she reached for the coffee pot, he added smoothly, ‘Well...the Olympics, eh? That’s some ambition. And aiming for gold...for the top...I’m impressed.’ If he’d only stopped there she might have believed him. But of course he didn’t. Not O’Malley.
‘Is it likely to happen?’ he asked, a bantering note in his voice now. ‘Or just wishful thinking?’
He didn’t think she was serious about her lofty ambition...let alone believe for one second that she would ever reach such an exalted standard. To him, she was the pampered socialite to whom everything came easily. The spoilt rich girl who’d had everything handed to her on a silver platter. To reach Olympic standard would mean hard work...sacrifice...a long, tough, arduous grind. Words the cosseted Conway girl wouldn’t know!
Well, I’ll show you, O’Malley, she vowed under her breath. One of these days you’ll come grovelling...begging my forgiveness for having doubted me.
The thought of O’Malley grovelling to anyone was a diverting thought. Not that she could imagine it happening in the next million years!
‘You’d cut quite a dash, I’d imagine,’ O’Malley drawled, his tone pure velvet now, ‘in tight-fitting jodhpurs and a smart nipped-in jacket, with a neat little helmet perched on your head.’
She could feel his gaze burning over her from behind, bringing a tingling warmth to her skin. And a spark of battle to her eyes. Swinging round, she stomped back to the table and poured coffee into his mug. Tempted to pour it over him. The condescending, patronising, insufferable... Words weren’t strong enough to describe him!
‘Thank you, Miss Conway.’ He glanced up at her. ‘Much obliged.’
‘Taryn,’ she ground out, hating that patronising ‘Miss Conway’.
‘Sorry?’
‘Taryn. That’s my name.’ She poured some coffee into her own mug, annoyed at the way her hand was shaking, then turned away to replace the coffee pot on the bench, taking her mug with her. Instead of sitting down again, she strolled over to the window, staring dismally across the rain-soaked yard to the misty hills beyond. Would this wretched rain never stop? What if it kept on until nightfall?
She muffled a groan, trembling at the dire—very real—possibility.
‘Taryn.’ He repeated the name. ‘Taryn Conway.’ The bantering note was back in his voice. ‘I might have known it wouldn’t be Jane or Mary. Nothing plain or ordinary for the Conway girl. That wouldn’t do, would it?’
She drew in her lips. Usually people reacted to her name with remarks like, ‘What a pretty name’ or ‘How unusual’, but O’Malley, of course, had to be different and make it into a personal attack. Not that he’d actually said he disliked the name. But it was obvious he thought it too elaborate, chosen purely for effect. As far as she knew, her mother had simply plucked it from a book of names because she’d liked it.
‘And your name is...?’ She cast him a withering look. Heaven help him if it was anything more unusual than Tom, Charlie, or Jack!
‘Mine? Oh, you can call me Mike.’
Mike... She pursed her lips. Well, she could hardly call that elaborate or unusual. Mike... Michael O’Malley. It suited him, she decided, distracted for a second. Sort of tough, masculine, no frills. And very Irish. Not that he sounded the least bit Irish. But then he wouldn’t. The O’Malleys, from the snippets she’d heard about them, had lived in Australia for generations.
‘Won’t your father be getting worried about you?’ she asked tetchily. ‘Especially if he happens to see your horse come back without you.’
‘If my father has any sense he’ll be sheltering inside out of the rain, and won’t even notice if Caesar’s there or not. As for Caesar, he’ll head straight for his food bin and a roof over his head.’
‘But he might be worried,’ she persisted. ‘You should give him a call and—and let him know you’re safe.’
She felt his eyes on her. ‘Your concern for my father does you credit, Miss Conway...sorry, Taryn.’ He paused, slanting his head. ‘Yes...the name does suit you,’ he decided, but he didn’t spell out why. ‘All right...I’ll let him know I’m here. I’ll get him to send his young farmhand to pick me up in the ute. Smudge is much younger and fitter than Dad, so you won’t need to be concerned about him.’
Something shimmered in his eyes as he said it, causing her own eyes to waver. Was he wondering if her concern for his father was genuine?
‘I’d better check on my clothes,’ he said, ‘and see if they’re dry enough to put back on.’ He rose slowly, with a sigh, as if reluctant to leave the table.
Or reluctant to let his father know he was at the Conways?
That was more like it. Patrick O’Malley had made it plain he wanted nothing to do with his new neighbours. Not simply because they were the rich, high-flying Conways—mere hobby-farmers or ‘townies’, as he apparently saw them—but for what he perceived they’d done to him. Buying the rich slice of land he’d wanted to buy. Or rather had wanted to buy back.
Within minutes Mike was back, fully dressed in the jeans and bush shirt he’d taken from the dryer—looking a bit crumpled, but dry. She breathed a sigh of relief. It had been getting harder and harder to avoid looking at that expanse of deeply tanned chest...the taut golden muscles...the trail of dark hair that ran—
She snapped off her thoughts.
‘The phone’s over there...on the wall.’ She waved a hand, her heart picking up a beat as he reached for it and stabbed it several times with his finger. How would his father take it when he heard his son was here at Fernlea? At the Conway house?
‘Damn.’ Mike lowered the phone with a frown. ‘Your phone’s dead. The rain must have soaked into one of the junction boxes. Or a tree’s come down somewhere.’
‘Are you sure?’ She grabbed it from him in disbelief. He had to be making it up! He didn’t want his father knowing he was here. Or he was using it as an excuse to stay here a bit longer. All night, perhaps?
Over my dead body, she thought, a prickling sensation crawling along her skin.
She clamped the phone to her ear. And had to gulp in suddenly needed air. There was silence at the other end. Dead silence. She banged it with her open palm. She frantically pressed some buttons. She shook it
‘I don’t think that’s going to do much good,’ Mike said calmly.
‘We’re completely cut off,’ she moaned. And touched her throat with unsteady fingers, realising what it meant. Now there was no way he could let his father know he was safe. No way he could let his father know he was sheltering here at Fernlea. No way he could get his father’s hired hand to come and fetch him.
Well, you’re not staying here, Michael O’Malley, her eyes told him. No way.
CHAPTER THREE
HER gaze swivelled to the window. ‘I think it’s easing off,’ she blurted. ‘I’ll take you home myself. We’ll have to leave now, so I can be back before dark.’ She knew she was gabbling, but she couldn’t help it. ‘Shall we go? I’ll just grab my purse and keys.’ She whirled out into the hall where she’d left them.
She expected him to argue, but he didn’t. Maybe he could sense that she was in deadly earnest this time. ‘Much obliged,’ was all he said as she came flouncing back into the kitchen, keys and purse in hand.
She snapped on lights as she dashed out of the door, not wanting to come back to a darkened house. Dusk would be falling shortly. Even nightfall, if they didn’t get a move on. Mike was right behind her, pulling the kitchen door shut after him.
‘You want to lock it?’ he asked, but she shook her head and plunged on. She could hear him behind her, taking long, swift strides to keep up.
She didn’t pause until she reached the double garage. There were two vehicles inside, the sturdy Toyota Land Cruiser they kept down here at Fernlea for use around the property and for pulling the horse-float, and her small, zippy Ford Laser, which she used between here and the city, and for running around back in Melbourne.
‘Like me to drive?’ Mike offered, hovering at her shoulder as she unlocked the big four-wheel drive.
‘You don’t trust me to drive you?’ she asked, her eyes coolly taunting him, even as her heart jumped at his closeness, her senses jangling at the faint scent of soap and freshly dried clothes.
‘Well, I hope you don’t drive as wildly as you rush around your yard,’ Mike remarked dryly.
Her dark eyes took on a knife-sharp glitter. So it wasn’t just a courtesy offer...or a male disliking being driven by a female. He was scared that she might land them in a ditch!
‘I guess you’ll just have to take the risk,’ she flung back, hauling herself up into the driver’s seat. He didn’t lend a hand, perhaps sensing that she’d snap his head off if he tried. He stepped round to the passenger’s side without further comment.
She backed out rather more quickly than she normally would, just to keep him on his toes. But once out of the yard and on the road—more a sealed lane than a road, though it would change to bitumen and widen at the old concrete bridge where the lane joined the main road—she slackened her speed and concentrated on where she was going. She had to. It was still raining, though thankfully not so heavily now, and the edges of the road were soft and slushy—to be carefully avoided if she didn’t want to risk sliding off or getting bogged.
Mike didn’t attempt to make conversation, obviously not wanting to spoil her concentration. Even without glancing round, she could feel the hawk-eyed tension in him, and knew that he was watching the road as attentively as she. There could be other dangers besides mud and slush. A wombat or kangaroo could emerge from the bush and cross their path. There were plenty around.
The last thing she expected to see was another car coming towards them. The road they were on led only to Fernlea. Who could be coming to visit her in this weather, she wondered, at this late hour in the day? It couldn’t be her parents. They’d gone back to town only this morning to attend a special dinner tonight.
‘Watch out!’ rasped Mike. ‘There’s a car coming.’
‘I can see it!’ she hissed, slowing down as the two cars drew closer. She reached down to switch her headlights on, just in case the oncoming driver hadn’t seen her. At once the other car’s lights sprang on too, as if the driver had had the same thought.
‘Who is it? Your father? It’s obviously someone who knows you, since he’s heading for Fernlea. Unless it’s someone who’s lost his way. It does happen around these parts.’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ She brought the Land Cruiser to a halt as far to one side of the road as she could—making sure the wheels were still on the solid ground—and opened her window to signal to the other driver to pull up too.
Mike gave a soft whistle as the other car, a sleek red sports car, pulled up a few metres away—not too close, as if the driver was wary of strange four-wheel-drive vehicles that might scratch or muddy his beautiful car.
‘Well...it’s obviously a friend of yours,’ Mike murmured. ‘Porsches don’t often appear in these parts. Or didn’t until the Conways moved in down here.’
A Porsche! Taryn’s stomach lurched. She only knew one person who drove a red Porsche. Rory Silverman...polo-playing playboy son of Rex Silverman, the mining tycoon. The Silvermans owned a huge property the other side of Warragul, less than ten kilometres from here. She’d met Rory at an equestrian function, and he’d rung her a few times since to ask her out. So far she’d had a ready excuse each time—he was far too smooth and full of himself for her liking—but he hadn’t taken the hint.
The last time he’d called her he’d told her that he might pop over to Fernlea one day to see her. ‘We must catch up with each other, Taryn,’ he’d purred, ‘before I go off overseas again.’
She’d hoped he’d forgotten. Or had been too busy. Or had already gone overseas.
Obviously not. No such luck.
‘You stay here,’ she rapped at Mike. ‘I’ll go and speak to him. I know who it is.’
She grabbed an umbrella from the back seat where she always kept one, and clambered out, snapping it open as she strode over to the Porsche.
The driver wound down his window. ‘Taryn...it’s you!’
