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She pursed her lips. He met her gaze steadily. She wanted to get a handle on this enigmatic neighbour of hers. Was he friend or foe? ‘Don’t you want to help save Bellaroo Creek?’
‘Sure I do.’
‘As long as you’re not asked to sacrifice too much in the effort, right?’
‘As long as I’m not asked to give up a significant portion of my potential income in the process,’ he countered.
‘How will our being here impact negatively on your income?’ Her understanding was that the Save-Our-Town scheme only offered unused farmhouses in exchange for ludicrously cheap rents. If their farmhouse was unused he couldn’t possibly be losing money. In fact, he’d be fifty-two dollars a year richer.
Her lips suddenly twitched. Cameron Manning didn’t strike her as the kind of man who’d stress too much over fifty-two dollars. Not that she needed to stress over money either. It hadn’t been the cheap rent but the promise of a fresh start that had lured her out here.
He drew in a breath and then pointed behind her. She turned. ‘Forty hectares,’ he said. ‘Forty hectares I had plans for. Forty hectares my mother had promised to lease to me.’
She slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘They were allotted to me in my tenancy agreement? That’s the mix-up you’re talking about.’
‘Yep.’
‘And you want them back?’
‘Bingo.’
She laughed in her sudden rush of relief. ‘Oh, honey, they’re all yours.’ What on earth did she want with forty hectares of wide, open space? She had a house and a backyard and a whole ocean of possibilities enough to satisfy her.
She clapped her hands. ‘Hey, troops, who’s for sultana cake?’
CHAPTER TWO (#u05d84099-629d-514d-b1e5-4198508a69f5)
IT TOOK TESS until her second bite of sultana cake to realise she hadn’t allayed her sexy neighbour’s concerns.
She stiffened. Umm…not sexy. Taciturn and selfcontained, perhaps, and, um…She dragged her gaze from shoulders so broad they made her think of Greek gods and swimsuits and the Mediterranean.
Sleep, rest, peace, that was what she needed. The last month had been a crazy whirlwind and she quite literally hadn’t stopped. The two months prior had been a blur of pain and grief.
She flinched at the memory and brushed a hand across her eyes. Bellaroo Creek would bring her the rest and the sleep she craved, but peace? She wasn’t sure anything on earth could bring her that.
And she wasn’t sure she deserved it.
Cameron hitched an eyebrow. ‘A penny for them.’
She stiffened again. Nu-huh. But the exhaustion made her silly—an after-effect of the nonsense she’d used all day to keep the children entertained and in good spirits. ‘Are you sure you can afford a penny when I’m only paying you a dollar a week in rent?’
His green eyes gleamed for a tantalizing moment. It made him look younger. She dragged her gaze away and rose. ‘I’ll just check on the kids. The promise of cake should’ve had them sprinting inside.’
On cue, the pair came racing through the front door. ‘We found a lizard,’ Ty announced, breathless with excitement.
‘Will it bite us?’ Krissie asked, wide-eyed.
She directed the question at Cam. He’d obviously become the source of trusted information. Tess’s chest cramped as she stared at them—took in their simple wonder.
‘That’ll be Old Nelson, the blue-tongue,’ Cam said, leaning back in his chair, one long, lean leg stretched out in front of him.
Krissie’s eyes widened even further. ‘He has a name?’
‘Wow, awesome!’ Ty breathed. ‘Will he bite?’
‘Only if you poke him or try to pick him up.’
‘Can we take our cake outside, Auntie Tess?’
With a laugh, Tess assented. She watched as they left the room and her chest burned. If only Sarah could see them now. If only—
‘You okay?’
She jumped, swung back patting her chest. ‘Tired,’ she said. She sat and forced a smile. She’d become good at that over the last couple of months—smiling when she didn’t feel like it—but she could see it didn’t fool Cam. She shrugged. ‘They’ve been through so much, but for this moment they’re happy and…and that’s no small thing.’
He stared towards the front of the house and then glanced back at her. ‘They’re great kids, Tess.’
She nodded. ‘They really are.’ And they deserved so much more than life had dished out to them. Focusing on the negatives wouldn’t help anyone, though—least of all Ty and Krissie. She sipped tea. Cam had made a pot while she’d sliced the cake. It was the best tea she’d ever tasted.
She lifted her cup. ‘This is seriously good.’
‘My mother was the president of the Country Women’s Association for a hundred years. Believe me, she made sure her sons knew how to brew a proper pot of tea.’
She made a mental note to join the CWA. But for the moment…‘You want to tell me why you’re still so worried about your forty hectares?’
His eyes widened a fraction, but he held her gaze with a steadiness she found disconcerting. ‘I had a contract drawn up. I need you to sign it before I can start planting.’
He whipped out a sheaf of papers, literally from thin air as far as her tired brain could tell. He flicked through to the final page and pointed. ‘I need your signature here.’ He handed her a pen.
She lowered her cup back to its saucer and dropped her hands to her lap. ‘I’m not signing anything I haven’t read.’
‘Fair enough.’ He placed the contract in front of her and leaned back.
‘And I’m not reading it now when I’m so tired.’
He frowned.
‘And if there’s something I don’t understand, I’ll be consulting my solicitor for clarification.’
He was silent for a long moment and the silence should’ve sawn on her nerves, but it didn’t. After a day of chatter and noise in the confines of the car, the silence was heaven.
‘You don’t trust me,’ he finally said, nodding as if that made perfect sense.
‘I don’t know you. Once upon a time I’d have been prepared to take spur-of-the-moment risks and trust my gut instincts, but I won’t now Tyler and Krissie are in my care.’ She leant towards him. ‘Are you saying you trust me?’ She waved a hand in the direction of the back door and his precious forty hectares. ‘By all means start planting tomorrow. I’ll keep my word. I’ll get the contract back to you by the middle of next week.’
His lips twisted but his eyes danced. ‘Nope, don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.’
Given his size and the breadth of his shoulders, she had a feeling he could throw her a long way if he so chose.
This time it was he who leaned in towards her, and that fresh-cut-grass scent danced around her and it was almost as relaxing as silence. ‘But I do need to get started on the planting soon if I’m to meet my obligations.’
‘I promise not to drag my feet.’ She wanted to be on good terms with her neighbours and the townsfolk of Bellaroo Creek. She just had to make sure she didn’t risk the children’s futures in her eagerness to fit in.
Without thinking, she reached out and touched his hand. He immediately stiffened and she snatched her hand back, her heart suddenly thundering in her ears. ‘I, uh…You said you’d bring your dog around to meet the children. Why don’t you aim to do that tomorrow morning some time—say, ten o’clock? I’ll try and have your contract read by then.’
‘If you need more time…’
Her pulse rate refused to slow. ‘No, no, it’s obvious that time is of the essence. Besides, the kids will no doubt be up early and we have a midday meet-and-greet luncheon at the community hall, so I should have plenty of time in the morning to go over this contract of yours.’
He rose in one swift motion. ‘I’ll see you at ten.’ And then he was gone.
She heard him say goodbye to the children. She supposed she should’ve followed him to the door to wave him off, but the strength had leached from her legs and she found herself momentarily incapable of even rising from her chair. She’d spent nearly ten hours in the car today. She was dog-tired. She’d just turned her entire life on its head—hers and the children’s. And if this move didn’t work out…
She shook that thought off. This move had to work out. In the meantime, she refused to allow her sexy neighbour to unsettle her.
She frowned. He wasn’t sexy.
She glanced at her empty plate, and then at Cam’s and realised he hadn’t touched his cake—he hadn’t even broken off the tiniest corner. She hadn’t been hungry for the last three months—ever since she’d received the phone call informing her of Sarah’s car accident. But now…
She stared at the cake. She pulled the plate towards her and then poured another cup of tea. She devoured both, slowly, relishing every single delicious mouthful.
The children made instant friends with Boomer, Cam’s border collie.
‘Will he fetch a ball?’ Ty asked, pulling a tennis ball from his pocket.
Cam’s mouth angled up in a lopsided smile as he surveyed Ty and Krissie and their barely concealed eagerness. ‘Believe me, he’ll fetch for longer than you’ll be prepared to throw.’ With whoops of delight, the children raced around the backyard with Boomer at their heels.
He had a way of smiling at her kids—and, yes, somewhere in the last month she’d started thinking of them as hers—that could melt a woman where she stood. ‘Morning,’ he finally said, the green of his eyes strangely undiluted in the mid-morning sun.
‘It will be,’ she countered, ‘if you’ll teach me the trick to making a perfect pot of tea.’
He laughed and it was only then she saw that while his eyes might be the purest of greens, shadows lurked in their depths. Shadows momentarily dispelled when he laughed.
He followed her into the kitchen. ‘One demonstration coming up.’
He should laugh more often. ‘Jug’s just boiled,’ she said, shaking the odd thought aside. Cam might well laugh a hundred times every single day for all she knew.
‘Did you fill the jug using hot or cold water?’
‘Hot. It makes it come to the boil faster.’
‘There’s your first mistake.’ He poured the contents of the jug down the sink and refilled it from the cold tap. ‘Cold water has more oxygen than hot. That’s key for the perfect cuppa.’
She sat and stared. ‘Well, who’d have known that?’ Other than a chemistry professor. And a president of the CWA… and her sons.
He sat too, his eyes twinkling for the briefest of moments. ‘It’s important to be properly trained in country ways.’
‘I never doubted it for a moment.’ She leapt up to glance out of the kitchen window to make sure the children were okay. When she swung back she could’ve sworn he’d been checking out her backside.
His gaze slid away. Her heart thumped. She’d imagined it. She must’ve imagined it. She frowned, scratched a hand through her hair and tried to think of something to say.
‘Did you get a chance to read the contract?’
Of course she’d imagined it, but the shadows were back in his eyes with a vengeance and it left a bitter taste in her mouth, though for the life of her she couldn’t explain why. ‘Yes.’ She took her seat again.
‘And?’
The contract had been remarkably straightforward. It hadn’t asked her to give up her firstborn or sign her rights away to the house and the acre block it stood on. It simply requested she sign over the attached forty hectares of land and to waive her rights to any profits he accrued from the use of the land. Except…
On the table, one of his hands tightened. ‘You have a problem?’
She hauled in a breath and nodded. ‘I do.’
‘You want more money for the lease?’
She hated the derisive light that entered his eyes. She pushed the contract towards him. ‘I made my amendment in black ink. That’s what I’m prepared to sign.’
Blowing out a breath, he pulled the contract towards him and flipped through the pages to the end. And then he stilled and rubbed his forehead. ‘You don’t want any payment at all?’
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. What kind of people was he used to dealing with? ‘Of course I don’t want any payment! I’m not entitled to any payment. Rightfully the land is yours. If you want to pay anyone a fee for leasing the land, then pay your mother.’
He sat back. ‘I’ve offended you.’
Why did the wonder in his voice suddenly make her want to cry? Since Sarah’s death, the silliest, most unexpected things could make her cry. ‘You will if you keep going on in that vein.’
Her voice came out husky and choked. His gaze lowered to her mouth and it gave her a moment to study him. He had a strong jaw and lean lips and she couldn’t tear her eyes away. She could keep telling herself that he wasn’t sexy, but he was. His eyes darkened. A pulse throbbed in her bottom lip, swelling it and making it ache. The heat in the air between them sizzled with such unmistakable intensity it made her head whirl. With an oath, Cam pushed away from the table. He seized the teapot and started making tea. She closed her eyes. She’d been surrounded by death, preoccupied with it. Life wanted to reassert itself. This—her body’s rebellion at her common-sense strictures—was normal.
The explanation didn’t make the pounding in her blood lessen any, but it did start to clear the fog encasing her brain.
She jumped when Cam set a mug of tea in front of her, his face a mask. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just used to paying my own way.’
She wasn’t. Not really. Her cold realisation dissipated the last of the heat. She’d always relied on staff or assistants to take care of her day-to-day needs. But she could learn. She was learning.
He hooked out his chair again and sat. ‘A free ride feels wrong.’
‘It’s not a free ride. A free ride is if I also did the planting for you. You’d discussed that land with your mother. You had her permission to use it. Like you said, the fact it ended up on my lease agreement was simply an error or an oversight. Cameron, I have no plans for that land. I’m not losing out on anything.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Besides, don’t knock a free ride. I’m getting one—a dollar a week rent! Who’d have thought that was possible?’
His lips turned upwards, but it wasn’t really a smile. ‘You’ve brought two school-age children into the area. You’re boosting the school’s numbers and increasing its chances of remaining open. The town will think it a very good swap.’
Speaking of children…She rose and went to the window again to check on them. She laughed at what she saw. ‘Are you sure they won’t wear Boomer out?’
‘I’m positive.’ He eyed her as she took her seat again. ‘They are safe with him. I promise.’
‘Oh! Of course they are. I didn’t mean…’ She could feel herself starting to colour under his stare. The thing was, most days she felt as if she didn’t know a darn thing about parenting at all. Maybe she did fuss a little too much, worry too much, but surely that was better than not fussing enough.
