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Although everyone back home knew she was unavailable, out of habit she’d brought along her BlackBerry. While her father had been frosty about her request for this unscheduled break, he wouldn’t have left that message without good reason.
Maddy set the phone against her chin as her stomach flipped over.
Urgent …
Had Pompadour Shoes pulled the plug without having seen the campaign? Had another agency stolen their business? Or worse … had her father’s disappointment turned to action? Had he replaced her on the account?
Her thumb was poised over Redial when Nell appeared out of nowhere and sat herself down a few feet away. Maddy’s blood pressure climbed and she reached for Beau who, unconcerned, gnawed on a length of his rattle. But Nell’s attention was elsewhere … fixed on the hazy distance, her ears perked high.
Maddy breathed—slowly in, calmly out.
If the dog wanted to sit around, okay. She didn’t have dibs on this square of lawn, as long as Nell didn’t get any ideas about wanting to socialize. But when Beau began to grumble, Nell trotted over and the hairs on the back of Maddy’s neck stood up straight. Thankfully the collie didn’t stop and soon Maddy knew why. The sound of an engine. The same sound she’d heard leaving the property early that morning.
Jack was home.
Maddy’s heart began to thud. How would he tackle the subject of last night? Maybe he wouldn’t bring up that kiss at all, which was fine by her. During the hours before dawn, she’d reflected enough on the blissful way his mouth had worked over hers. Useless thoughts had wound a never-ending loop in her mind, like what if Cait had discovered them? Where would it have led if she hadn’t pulled away?
Maddy shuddered. The fallout didn’t bear considering. If not another word was mentioned about that accident, she’d be happy. Surely Jack—a man considering marriage—felt the same way. As far as she was concerned, that caress never happened.
Nell belted a path out into the open space and a few moments later reappeared, ushering in the late model four-wheel drive. The vehicle braked and when the door opened, Maddy’s limbs turned to jelly. Setting his Akubra in place, Jack angled out, looking taller and more formidable than she remembered.
Everything about him spoke of confidence and ability. Raw outback masculinity and pride. Good thing he was practically engaged or she might forget her resolve about last night’s embarrassment and launch herself at him.
He made a motion. Nell rolled over and he rubbed her belly with the toe of his big boot. Patting her damp palms on her khaki pants, Maddy pasted on a nondescript smile. When Jack’s gaze tracked her down, she gave a business-as-usual salute. He acknowledged her with a short nod and headed over. With each long, measured stride, her heart beat more wildly. She looked at those strong, large hands and felt them kneading her nape, pressing meaningfully on her back. She saw the shadow on his jaw and relived the delicious graze against her cheek, around her lips.
The next thirteen days would be tantamount to torture—not wanting to say goodbye to Beau, yet having to get back to Sydney. Needing to leave the memory of that kiss behind yet craving to know the sensation again. Talk about chronic inner turmoil.
Jack hunkered down beside the baby, his boots dusty and blue jeans stretched at the knee. When Beau’s rattle slipped from his tiny grasp, Jack picked it up and shook the plastic keys until Beau grabbed and stuck one back in his mouth.
A side of Jack’s mouth hiked up. “Guess he’s hungry.”
“He’s had lunch. I think he’s ready to be put down.”
Jack tickled Beau’s tummy and, enjoying it, the baby squawked and threw the keys down. Jack chuckled softly. “He looks like Dahlia. Same cheeky grin.”
Maddy smiled. Cheeky grins must run in the family. Whenever Jack smiled at her that certain way, whenever his gaze dipped to stroke her lips, she could dissolve into a puddle, no problem at all. Guess he’d worked that out last night.
Cait called from the top of the stairs. “Want some lunch, Jock?”
Still on haunches, he swiveled around on the toes of his boots. “I’ll get something later.”
Cait nodded. “Can I put the bairn down for you, Maddy?”
“I can do it,” Maddy called back.
But Cait was already on her way. “You can indeed. But he hasn’t been out of your sight since seven this morning.”
Jack scooped the baby up and gave him a little bounce in the air before handing him up to Cait.
Beaming, Cait brought him close. “Now it’s my turn for a wee cuddle.”
Beau looked so at home in Cait’s arms, Maddy had no reason to cut in … except, after Cait and Beau’s departure, she and Jack would be left completely alone. The idea set her pulse hammering all the more.
As Cait and the baby vanished back into the house, Maddy gathered her highly-strung nerves. She’d simply have to deal with this situation in an adult-like manner. She’d offer a sentence or two while keeping communication friendly but unquestionably aboveboard. Then, after a reasonably short amount of time, she could follow Cait inside. Distance, and safety from possible humiliation and regret, accomplished.
With a blithe air, she collected her BlackBerry off the blanket. “Interesting that Cait calls you Jock.”
“Jock. Jack. Jum. All short for James.”
Maddy’s insides clutched. Jack was James?
She remembered his reaction—the flinch—that first day she’d told him the baby’s name. He and Dahlia hadn’t spoken in years and yet she’d named her baby in part after her big brother—Beau James. Maddy could only imagine the stab of guilt when he heard. The gut wrench of regret and humility.
Her voice was soft. “It must’ve meant a lot to know Dahlia remembered you that way.”
He removed his hat and filed a hand through his thick hair. “It was our grandfather’s name, too. A family name. But, yeah, it was … nice.”
Staring at his hat, he ran a finger and thumb around the felt rim then pushed to his feet. Squinting against the sun sitting high in the cloudless sky, he glanced around.
“Great day. Not too hot.” He cocked a brow at her. “How about a ride? “
Maddy couldn’t help it. She laughed. He never gave up. Which could be a problem if he applied that philosophy to what had happened outside the stables last night. But he hadn’t needed convincing; when she’d put up the wall, reminded him of a couple of facts, he’d promptly taken his leave.
At his core, Jack was an old fashioned type. He’d had an emotional wreck of a week. Their talk beneath the full moon—the comfortable, dreamy atmosphere it created—had caught them both unprepared. Now, however, they were fully aware of the dangers close proximity could bring. He was involved with another woman. Maddy had no intention of kissing Jack Prescott again.
She had less intention of jumping on a horse.
With a finger swipe, she alleviated her phone’s screen of fine dust. “Think I’ll leave the rodeo tricks to the experts.”
“You don’t have to leap six-foot fences. We can start off at a walk. Or we could double.”
Maddy guffawed. With her arms around his waist, her breasts rubbing against his back … After seeing reason so soundly last night, surely he knew that suggestion was akin to teasing a fuse with a lit match.
“I’ll get you riding,” he went on, setting that distinctive hat back on his head, “even if I have to seize the moment and throw you on bareback.”
The oxygen in her lungs began to burn. Quizzing his hooded gaze, she knew she wasn’t mistaken. He wasn’t talking about horses anymore and he wanted her to know it.
“In the meantime—” he offered her his hand “—what say I take you on a tour of Leadeebrook’s woolshed.”
Her thoughts still on riding bareback, Maddy accepted his hand before she’d thought. The skin on sizzling skin contact ignited a pheromone soaked spark that crackled all the way up her arm. On top of that, he’d pulled too hard. Catapulted into the air, her feet landed far too close to his. Once she’d got her breath and her bearings, her gaze butted with his. The message in his eyes said nothing about awkwardness or caution.
In fact, he looked unnervingly assured.
After a short drive, during which Maddy glued her shoulder to the passenger side to keep some semblance of distance between them, they arrived at a massive wooden structure set in a vast clearing.
“It looks like a ghost town now,” Jack said, opening her door. “But when shearing was on, this place was a whirlwind of noise and activity.”
Maddy took in the adjacent slow spinning windmill, a wire fence glinting in the distance and felt the cogs of time wind back. As they strolled up a grated ramp, she imagined she heard the commotion of workers amid thousands of sheep getting the excitement of shearing season underway. Sydney kept changing—higher skyscrapers, more traffic, extra tourists—yet the scene she pictured here might have been the same for a hundred years.
When they stepped into the building, Maddy suddenly felt very small and, at the same time, strangely enlivened. She rotated an awe-struck three-sixty. “It’s massive.”
“Eighty-two meters long, built in 1860 with enough room to accommodate fifty-two blade shearers. Thirty years on, the shed was converted to thirty-six stands of machine shears, powered by steam. Ten manual blade stands were kept, though, to hand shear stud sheep.”
“Rams, you mean?”
“Can’t risk losing anything valuable if the machinery goes mad.”
She downplayed a grin. Typical man.
Their footsteps echoed through lofty rafters, some laced with tangles of cobwebs which muffled the occasional beat of sparrows’ wings. Through numerous gaps in the rough side paneling, daylight slanted in, drawing crooked streaks on the raised floor. Dry earth, weathered wood and, beneath that, a smell that reminded her of the livestock pavilion at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show.
Maddy pointed out the railed enclosures that took up a stretch of the vast room. “Is that where the sheep line up to have their sweaters taken off?”
He slapped a rail. “Each catching pen holds enough sheep for a two-hour shearing stint. A roustabout’ll haul a sheep out of the pen onto a board—” he moved toward a mechanism attached to a long cord—powered shears “— and the shearer handles things from there. Once the fleece is removed, the sheep’s popped through a moneybox, where she slides down a shute into a counting pen.”
“Moneybox?”
He crossed the floor and clapped a rectangular frame on the wall. “One of these trap doors.”
“Must be a cheery job.” She mentioned the name of a famous shearing tune, then snapped her fingers in time with part of the chorus and sang, “‘Click, click, click.’”
When his green eyes showed his laughter, a hot knot pulled low at her core and Maddy had to school her features against revealing any hint of the sensation. A wicked smile. A lidded look. Being alone with Jack was never a good idea.
“A great Aussie song,” he said, “but unfortunately, not accurate.”
Reaching high, he drew a dented tin box off a grimy shelf. Maddy watched, her gaze lapping over the cords in his forearms as he opened the lid. Her heart skipped several beats as her eyes wandered higher to skim over his magnificent shoulders, his incredibly masculine chest. When that burning knot pulled again, she inhaled, forced her gaze away and realized that he’d removed something from the tin—a pair of manual shears, which looked like an extra large pair of very basic scissors.
“A shearer would keep these sharper than a cut throat,” he told her. “The idea wasn’t to snip or click—” he closed the blades twice quickly to demonstrate “—but to start at a point then glide the blades up through the wool.” He slid the shears along through the air.
“Like a dressmaker’s scissors on fabric.”
“Precisely.” He ambled over to a large rectangular table. “The fleece is lain out on one of these wool tables for skirting, when dags and burrs are removed, then it’s on to classing.”
He found a square of wool in the shears’ tin and traced a fingertip up the side of the white fleece. “The finer the wave, or crimp, the better the class.”
When he handed over the sample, their hands touched. She took the wool, and as she played with the amazing softness of the fleece, she was certain that a moment ago his fingers had indeed lingered over hers.
“After the wool is classed, it’s dropped into its appropriate bin,” he went on. “When there’s enough of one class, it’s pressed into bales. In the beginning, the clip was transported by bullock wagons. From here to the nearest town, Newcastle, was a seven month journey.”
Maddy could see Jack Prescott living and flourishing in such a time. He’d have an equally resilient woman by his side. As she gently rubbed the wool, Maddy closed her eyes and saw herself standing beside a nineteenth-century Jack Prescott and his bullock wagons. She quivered at the thought of the figure he would cut in this wilderness. Confident, intense, determined to succeed. That Jack, too, would conquer his environment, including any woman he held close and made love to at night.
Opening her eyes, feelings a little giddy, Maddy brought herself back. She really ought to stay focused.
“What do you plan to do with this place now?” she asked.
He looked around, his jaw tight. “Let it be.”
“But it seems such a waste.”
“The Australian wool industry hit its peak last century in the early fifties when my grandfather and his father ran the station, but that’s over for Leadeebrook.” His brows pinched and eyes clouded. “Times change.”
And you have to move along with them,she thought, gazing down as she stroked the fleece.Even if your heart and heritage are left behind.
His deep voice, stronger now, echoed through the enormous room. “There’s a gala on this weekend.”
Her gaze snapped up and, understanding, she smiled. “Oh, that’s fine. You go. I’m good to look after Beau.”
“You’re coming with me.”
He was rounding the table, moving toward her, and Maddy’s face began to flame.
They were miles from anyone, isolated in a way she’d never been isolated before. No prying eyes or baby cries to interrupt. That didn’t make the telltale heat pumping through her veins okay. Didn’t make the suggestion simmering in his eyes right either.
What was this? She’d wanted to believe he was a gentleman. An enigma, certainly, but honorable. Yet, here he was, blatantly hitting on her.
She squared her shoulders. “I’m sure your fiancée wouldn’t approve of your suggestion.”
His advance stopped and his jaw jutted. “I spoke with Tara this morning. I was wrong to consider marrying her. I said we should stay friends.”
Maddy’s thoughts began to spin. Clearly he’d broken off plans with Tara not only because of their embrace last night but because he had every intention of following that kiss up with another.
Whether he was spoken for or not, it wasn’t happening. She hardly knew this man. While she was physically attracted to him—shamefully so—she wasn’t even sure she liked him. And if he thought she was the kind to cave to temptation and fall into bed with someone for the hell of it, he was sadly mistaken.
“Jack, if this has anything to do with what happened between us last night … I mean, if you’re thinking that maybe—”
“I’m thinking that while you’re here, you might as well experience everything there is to offer. This is Beau’s new home and you’re our guest.”
Was she a guest or, more than ever, a challenge?
Even as the consequences of such a thought burrowed in to arouse her, she shook her head.
“I’m sorry but I won’t be attending any gala. I’m not here on vacation. It’s not fair to leave Cait with Beau.”
“You’re going to have to leave Beau soon enough.”
His thoughtful look—that fundamental statement—knocked her off balance and her hand, holding the wool, flattened on the table to steady her tilting weight.
Soon enough she would be gone. Depending on what lay behind her father’s ominous text message, perhaps sooner than expected. Her pragmatic side said she should be grateful that Cait was so good with the baby and happy that Jack seemed to be resolved to forge a relationship with Beau. Happy her life would be going back to normal. back to Sydney at this crucial stage in her career.
“You’ll need to pack a bag,” he said. “It’s a half hour flight from here.”
Maddy’s thoughts skipped back to the present. But he’d lost her. Half an hour’s flight? He was still talking about that gala?
“Why would I need a bag?”
“Simple.” He stepped out from the shadows and a jagged streak of light cut across his face. “You and I will be staying the night.”
Six
