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‘Tim! No! Please don’t go. Come back!’
Charity’s terrified cry woke her.
She tried to open her eyes. Ouch! Blinding stripes of sunlight blasted through the Venetian blinds and she snapped her eyes shut again as the trauma of her dream was replaced by reality.
Tim was missing. In Australia.
And then she was aware of physical pain. Her head. And yuck! Her mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird’s cage.
What had happened?
All she could remember of the previous night was having a long, cosy chat with Marsha. Actually…it had been rather a one-sided chat. She had listened while the other woman talked. Marsha had told her about Tim…about what a lovely fellow he was…And Charity had a vague memory that Marsha had insisted they keep drinking if she wanted to hear everything about her brother.
But if she’d learned anything significant it was lost to her now. At some point the conversation had shifted to Kane and his brother, Reid…but she couldn’t remember anything much. Except Marsha’s clear warning to stay away from Kane…
She felt vile. Awful. This had to be a hangover. Her first. And where on earth was she?
Keeping her eyes closed, she lay very still while she explored her surroundings with her hands. There was a mattress, a pillow beneath her head and a sheet covering her. Carefully she turned her head away from the bright window, opened one eye and squinted and discovered that the light on this side of the room was more hangover-friendly.
Okay. There was no doubt that she was in a bedroom. But where was this room?
Bravely, she opened the other eye and took in details. The room was simply furnished, its only decoration a dried arrangement of Australian wildflowers on an old-fashioned pine dresser. The walls were a dingy off-white and an ugly mustard and brown striped rug covered most of the floor. A doorway led to an adjoining room.
It had to be a bathroom, because she could hear the sound of running water. And splashes.
Splashes? Good grief. Splashes meant someone was in the bathroom. It meant…
Before she could come to terms with what it meant, the running water stopped.
For five seconds there was silence except for the desperate thumping of her heartbeats in her ears. And then footsteps.
And a tall figure appeared in the doorway.
Kane McKinnon.
She felt deprived of oxygen. How on earth had she ended up in a bedroom with him?
He was wearing nothing but blue jeans and, although she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help staring at him—at his bronzed skin, which looked as if it had been polished to a high sheen—at his broad shoulders, his taut torso, and his muscles—his exceptional muscles.
Kane and his muscles strolled into her room and he stood at the end of her bed, looking down at her.
She tried to ask him what he was doing in her room—what she was doing there—but when she opened her mouth no words came.
‘Good morning,’ he drawled.
So it was morning.
Which meant…there’d been a night. But where and when and…how?
‘Good—’ Charity gulped. ‘Morning.’ If only her mouth wasn’t so parched. ‘W-where are we?’
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘We’re in a cabin at the back of the Mirrabrook pub. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’ Pain pounded behind her eyes and she closed them, but she felt too vulnerable with her eyes closed while Kane towered at the foot of her bed, so she squinted at him. ‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Denham, but you should rephrase that question.’
‘Why?’ she asked faintly, dreading the answer.
‘This is my room.’
Her eyes flashed wide again. ‘Then how—?’ She had to stop and wet her lips with her tongue. ‘Why am I—’ Oh, help. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I carried you.’
Lord have mercy.
A mocking smile tweaked his lips. ‘I found you in the beer garden with Marsha, tossing back drinks like a ringer. Marsha’s used to grog, but you were on the verge of passing out and in need of a bed, and—’ He shrugged his massive bare shoulders. ‘This was the only room left.’
‘I see. I suppose I should thank you.’
He walked the length of the bed to her side and her breath caught. It was unnerving to have Kane McKinnon so undressed…and so close to her bed. What was he doing here? What had happened last night?
She shivered at the thought that this mega-masculine body might have lain next to her, that she might have…they might have…
Had she touched that satiny skin?
No. Surely not.
She realised he’d brought her a glass of water and two pain-killers.
‘I imagine you’ll need these.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, but she didn’t take them. There were too many important questions that had to be clarified. ‘You didn’t sleep here—with—with me, did you?’
His eyes were the silvery-blue of an early morning sky and now they glinted with suppressed amusement. ‘I didn’t have any choice. I told you this was the only cabin left.’
‘But why couldn’t you have gone home? Why did you stay here?’
‘I had to make sure you were okay.’
Was that true? Was she supposed to be grateful? What kind of man was Kane McKinnon? She had no idea whether he was trustworthy. The tanned skin on his face was cut by a pale scar that sliced through his right eyebrow and almost reached his eyelid and she couldn’t help wondering what had caused it.
‘What did we—? We didn’t—Did we—um—’ How on earth did she ask this? ‘We didn’t—make love or—or anything, did we?’
She saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. ‘Make love? Hell, no.’
‘Thank heavens,’ she whispered and felt some of her tension let go.
‘I don’t think I’d call it love,’ he said in a slow drawl.
Charity braced herself for the worst. The tension returned one hundred fold.
‘What we had was more like straight out lust—’
‘No!’
‘Simple, uncomplicated sex,’ he said and the blue eyes gleamed.
A horrified moan escaped her. Wrenching the sheet over her, she cowered beneath it. But now, with her eyes closed, she saw a vision of all the devout women in her father’s parish staring at their rector’s reprobate, drunken daughter with scandalised, open-mouthed horror.
Kane’s voice reached her through her shame. ‘Don’t worry, sweet Charity. It was wild.’
‘Go away!’
‘You were fabulous—sensational.’
Her head shot above the sheet. ‘Stop it! You’re despicable.’ She hated him.
But she was also beginning to suspect that he was lying. Surely he was teasing her?
Emboldened by the thought, she lowered her gaze…and saw…
…that she was fully dressed.
Every bit of clothing was still in its proper place, except for her shoes. Thank heavens.
She spun sideways to check the other side of the room and winced because the movement made her head hurt. There was another bed beneath the window, a twin of hers, and its rumpled sheets indicated that Kane had slept there.
He’d definitely been teasing her…which made him even more despicable, because she was left feeling foolish for leaping to assumptions.
‘If that’s Australian humour, I don’t think much of it,’ she snapped.
‘Come on, take these,’ he said again, pressing the tablets into her hand.
She had little choice but to sit up and accept the tablets and glass of water and to swallow obediently, but she wouldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see that mocking amusement in his eyes.
He said, ‘I’ve brought your bags up, so be a good girl and hop into the shower. Then you need a big recovery breakfast before you leave.’
‘But I don’t plan to leave.’ She couldn’t let this embarrassing situation throw her. No doubt Kane McKinnon was still trying to scare her away, but she had to remember her mission—why she was here. Tim was still out there in all that terrible outback. Still missing.
‘Of course you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘You should have left yesterday when I told you to.’
Running frantic fingers through her hair, she tried to tame its tousled disarray. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Mr McKinnon. I mean it. I have no plans to leave Mirrabrook. I’m here to find my brother and I’m not taking orders from anyone, especially from you.’ She remembered something she’d learned during her conversation with Marsha. ‘I understand you have a brother and a sister, so if you won’t help me I’ll talk to them. That’s what I plan to do next.’
‘Do you indeed?’
‘Yes, I do indeed. I assume Tim had dealings with them as well as you?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really and Annie’s away in the city at the moment, so she won’t be able to help you.’
She was determined not to be put off. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not leaving.’ Throwing off the sheet, she gripped the bedside table for support while she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood carefully. ‘I have a strong feeling that I’m going to get the answers I need right here in Mirrabrook. I’m not budging until I get to the bottom of all this.’
The phone rang, cheating her of the opportunity to hear Kane’s reaction to her brave little statement.
He snatched it up. ‘McKinnon speaking…Oh, hello, Reid…Yeah, I’m still in town…No, I didn’t have any luck, mate…There’s no one available. Yeah, of course, I really tried.’
Over his shoulder, he scowled at Charity and she hurried to her suitcase, grabbed the first items of clothing she found and disappeared into the bathroom.
As she closed the door behind her, she heard Kane snap into the phone, ‘What choice do we have? You and I will just have to manage on our own, won’t we? We’ll have to become New Age types and discover our feminine sides.’
In the privacy of the shower, Charity rested her aching forehead against the cool ceramic tiles and let warm water pour over her.
What was she going to do now? It was all very well to toss off some grand sounding words to Kane about her plans to stay in the Mirrabrook district to search for Tim, but who would help her and where was she going to stay?
She wondered how much a cabin like this one would cost her. She didn’t have much money and had been hoping to clear the problem up quickly.
When she emerged from the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a huge white towel, she was dressed rather inappropriately in the first clothes she’d grabbed—her best cream trousers and pale blue silk blouse. Kane had hidden his muscles beneath a cotton shirt and he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his expression morose.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Just a stubborn brother.’ He looked up at her and stared hard at the towel on her head.
She felt frozen by the sudden intense spark in his eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was wondering what colour your hair is when it’s wet.’
Surprised and flustered, she said, ‘I don’t know. It’s just red, I think.’
He stood and seemed to tower over her. ‘No, not red, Charity. Your hair could never be just red.’
For a moment she thought he was going to reach out and unwind the towel. But he didn’t. He just stood there and the intense way he looked at her caused a shivery pang—an empty hollow, deep inside her.
‘I came out to find my hairbrush,’ she said, sounding more panicky than she meant to. No man had ever looked at her with such unsmiling, focused attention. At home in Hollydean she’d had a few boyfriends—some unimpressive, others a little more serious. There’d even been a marriage proposal. But none of those men had made her feel so—so aware.
She dashed to her handbag, grabbed her hairbrush and hurried back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her again.
Safely inside, she used the electric hair-dryer to blow her hair dry. At home she usually let her hair dry naturally, encouraging it to fall into soft waves, but today she didn’t care if it went as straight as sticks as long as it stopped Kane McKinnon from looking at her that way.
The intensity in his eyes had awoken a strange longing deep inside her—a need so acute that it left her with the fear that it might never be eased.
Shocked by her reaction, she wound her flamboyant hair into a prim knot and secured it with several pins before she ventured back into the bedroom.
‘Now you look like a Sunday school teacher,’ he said, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were less intense.
‘Perhaps that’s because I am a Sunday school teacher,’ she replied with necessary dignity.
