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Her arm brushed his and with the touch... Things changed.
The tension was suddenly almost palpable. Were both of them thinking the same?
‘In your dreams,’ she said, sounding breathless.
Of all the stupid... Were the tensions between them so obvious? And she caught it. ‘I didn’t mean...you know I didn’t mean...’ she stammered.
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ he said, blankly, but he was lying.
‘Yes, you were.’
‘If I was, I shouldn’t have.’
‘I know nothing about you,’ she said and then caught herself. ‘But even if I did...’
‘I’m a farmer from the UK,’ he told her, feeling a sudden urge to explain himself. Get things on a solid basis. ‘Thirty-five years old, here on family business. I’m heading back to London tomorrow.’
‘It still doesn’t mean I’m going to bed with you.’
‘Of course it doesn’t.’ He managed a lopsided smile. What was it about the night that was making things so off kilter? ‘Maybe electrical storms act like oysters,’ he tried. ‘But we’re grown-ups now. We can handle it.’
‘Yeah,’ she said but sounded doubtful.
‘So let’s do introductions only,’ he said, trying to sound firm. ‘We’ll get this on a solid basis. Not as a preamble to anything else. Just to clear the air.’ More, he didn’t want to make it complicated. Keep it simple, he told himself, and did. ‘I’ve said I’m a farmer. I live a couple of miles from the Welsh border and I’ve been out here because my uncle’s...’
That brought him up. How to explain Thomas? He couldn’t. Not tonight. Hopefully not ever. He didn’t even want to think of Thomas. ‘My uncle’s been living locally for a while,’ he said at last. ‘He’s moved on, but I needed to deal with things he left behind. But it’s done now. What about you?’
She looked at him doubtfully, as if she wasn’t sure who he was and what on earth was happening. Which was pretty much how he was feeling. Tensions were zinging back and forth that had nothing to do with the lightning outside. Or maybe they did. Electricity did all sorts of weird things.
Like make him want...
Or not.
‘I’m an interior designer,’ she said at last. ‘I had... I have my own business in Melbourne. But right now I’m babysitting seven dogs, two cows and fifteen chooks, trying to find them homes. Waiting for a miracle, which is not going to happen. Meanwhile, Mr Morgan, I have things to do, and not a single one of them involves thinking inappropriate thoughts about anyone, much less you. So you get these ears scratched and I’ll get the soup on and we’ll go from there.’
‘And I’ll be gone in the morning.’
‘Of course you will,’ she said briskly. ‘Just as soon as I...’ And then she faltered. ‘I’m sorry. The tree...it’ll take money to get that cleared.’ But then her face cleared. ‘It’s okay though. As long as your car has decent clearance and the paddocks don’t flood too badly, we can cut through a few strands of fencing and get you out across the paddocks.’
Decent clearance...right.
‘We’ll worry about it in the morning,’ he said and she sighed.
‘That’s my mantra.’ She rose stiffly to her feet and looked down at him in the dim light. ‘That’s what I tell myself every night...worry about it in the morning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I didn’t have to?’
* * *
The first storm front passed. The wind and thunder and lightning eased. Bryn slept solidly, in a decent bed, a hundred times better than the hard-as-nails motel bed he’d stayed in for the last few days. Carlsbrook was a one-pub, one-general-store town and why his uncle had set up base there...
But he knew why. Carlsbrook was a far cry from the resort-style lifestyle his uncle favoured but it was a district of smallholdings, of farmers proud of their cattle. It also had an aging population and sparse and difficult Internet connection, a district often cut off from the outside world.
It was a population ripe for his uncle’s scumbag activities.
But tonight he hardly thought about his uncle. He slept deeply, in an ancient four-poster bed on the second floor, while the wind whirled around the ancient weatherboards and trees creaked and groaned. There was something about this house, this home... The dogs.
This woman...
It felt like home. It was a strange sensation. Home was a long way away, Ballystone Hall, hard on the Welsh border. It was a magnificent place to live, but he never slept well there. But here, in this bed with its tatty furnishings, he fell into a sleep that was almost dreamless.
He woke as the second storm front hit.
It hit with such force he felt the whole house shudder. The thunderclap was so loud, so long, that the shuddering was more than momentary, and the lightning that flashed across the sky made a mockery of the window drapes. It lit the whole house with an eerie light.
The second clap of thunder followed the first, even louder, even stronger.
And two seconds later a dog landed on his bed.
A second after that, five dogs followed.
He’d assumed they were sleeping with Charlie. They’d definitely abandoned ship though, or abandoned their mistress. The first one in, Stretch, was a sort of dachshund with a whiskery beard that said something had happened to impede an ancient pedigree lineage. He launched himself up onto the bed, and before Bryn could stop him he had his nose under the sheets, wriggling under the covers and heading down to Bryn’s toes.
The next five dogs were all for following suit, but by then Bryn was prepared and had the sheet up to his neck.
And then the next lightning sheet lit the room and he looked at the door and Charlie was standing in the doorway holding a lamp. She was wearing a faded lacy nightgown and bare feet. Her hair was tousled as if she’d had a restless sleep. Her eyes were huge in her face and in her arms she carried Flossie. Whose eyes were also huge.
‘I... I’ve been deserted,’ she whispered. ‘The dogs are scared.’
‘And so are you?’ He was trying not to smile. Dogs, woman, the whole situation... And a woman in a wispy nightgown with a lamp. But she did look truly scared.
‘If it hits the house...’
‘Have you seen the size of those trees outside? It’ll hit those first.’
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Her face bleached even whiter. ‘And the trees will hit the house.’
‘Not on this side,’ he said, struggling to think of the layout of the yard outside. His room backed onto the service yard out the back. The red gums were mostly at the front and the house was big. ‘But it’s really unlikely. I think the biggest has already been hit.’
‘My bedroom’s at the front.’
She stood there, her arms full of dog, and her face...
‘Tell you what,’ he said nobly. ‘How about you sleep in here and I go sleep in your room?’
‘N...no.’
‘Charlie...’
‘I don’t like thunderstorms,’ she whispered and there was an understatement. It was a big enough call that it had him throwing back the covers—shoving dogs aside in the process—and heading for the doorway. Heading for Charlie.
And when he got there, as soon as she was close, he realised the fear wasn’t just on her face. She was trembling all over. The dog in her arms was trembling, too, and he realised why the dogs had abandoned Charlie en masse. They wanted a leader who wasn’t terrified, and Charlie’s face said she wanted exactly the same.
A pack leader. He could do this. It was kind of compulsory—that he moved to reassure. That he took the final steps and took her firmly into his arms.
And held.
Flossie was in there somewhere, sandwich squeezed, totally limp, totally passive. Bryn was wearing boxers and boxers only because his pjs were somewhere under a burning red gum. As he felt Flossie’s rough coat against his bare skin he felt the dog trembling.
As Charlie was trembling.
He had Charlie around the waist. Her head was tucked into the crook of his neck as if she wanted to be close, closer.
He held her tight. His fingers splayed the width of her waist and his chin rested on her hair and he just...held.
And the feeling of home deepened, strengthened and something was happening...
Her hair was so thick, so soft, and it smelled of something citrusy, something gorgeous...
No, gorgeous was the adjective for the whole woman. For all of Charlie. That he be allowed to hold her...
She was totally still in his hold, yet not passive. She wanted to be held by him. There was a dog between them but he knew she wanted to be as close to him as she possibly could be.
Because she was scared. For no other reason. This was a frightened woman and he was comforting her.
But she was gorgeous.
There was that word again. It was as if the word itself had seeped into his head and was changing something inside him.
Gorgeous.
Another clap of thunder shook the house and he felt her flinch. If it was possible, dog and woman clung tighter.
From back in the bed there were six terrified whimpers.
What was a man to do?
‘Come to bed, sweetheart,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘You and me and seven dogs. We’ll ride out this mother of a storm together.’
‘Together...’ He felt the war within, the fear of the storm, the fear of the stranger.
‘We can do this,’ he said. ‘One bed, one man and one woman might be a problem. One bed, one man and one woman and seven dogs... I doubt there’s a problem at all.’
* * *
She slept and there were seven dogs between her body and his. There was one clap of thunder too much, though, and at some time in the night, even in her sleep, her primeval fears must have overridden every other consideration. She woke and she was spooned in a stranger’s arms. Totally spooned. She had her back to him, his arms were around her and her body was curved into his chest. His face was against her hair. She could feel his breathing.
She could feel everything else.
He was wearing boxers.
He wasn’t totally naked.
He might as well be.
Her nightgown was ancient lawn and flimsy, and she could feel his body against her. His chest was bare. His arms, muscled, strong, were holding her tight. Bare arms against bare arms. Skin against skin.
She could see chinks of sunlight through the drapes. Flossie was lying at the end of the bed—she could feel her warm, welcome heaviness across her feet—but the rest of the pack had obviously taken off to check out the day. The storm was over.
She should tug away, out of this man’s arms.
She’d wake him and he’d been so good...
It was more than that, though.
She really, really wanted to stay right where she was. For the moment the world had stopped. Here was peace. Here was sanctuary.
Here was... Bryn?
A man she’d known for what, twelve hours? Most of that had been spent sleeping. Oh, for heaven’s sake... Get up, she told herself. Check on Flossie’s leg. Go face the damage of the day.
But she didn’t. She lay and let the insidious sweetness of the moment envelop her. She could lie here and imagine there were no problems. That Grandma wasn’t dead. That she didn’t have debts to her ears. That she didn’t have to worry that she had no clue how to rehouse misfit dogs that she couldn’t keep.
That she hadn’t been betrayed by a low life herself, and that there seemed no one in the world who she could trust?
‘Nice,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘You think if we stay here for long enough the rest of the world will disappear?’
So he was awake. And he had problems in his life, too? Well, didn’t everyone? That made him...more human still.
Nice? No. Nice didn’t begin to cut it. His body...if she didn’t move soon...
And he got it almost the moment she did. ‘Charlie, if we don’t part I may well not be responsible for my actions,’ he said and there was all the regret in the world in his voice. But she felt his body stir—where she most definitely didn’t want his body to stir—and the fantasy had to end. As if in agreement, Flossie wriggled at the end of the bed and the day had to begin.
His arms released her. He shifted back. She struggled to sit up and it felt like the greatest grief...
Which was ridiculous. Her body was responding to the heightened emotions of the last weeks, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the body of the man pushing back the covers and rising to his feet...
Dear heaven, he was breath-taking.
Last night he’d said he was a farmer and his body confirmed it. He looked weathered, tanned, ripped, as if he spent his life heaving hay bales or shearing sheep or hauling cattle out of bogs or...whatever farmers did.
Which reminded her...
‘There’s probably stuff to do,’ he said as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘Dogs to let out? To feed? Other animals?’
‘Cows to attend,’ she told him. ‘And chooks to feed. That is, if they’ve survived the night. But there’s no need for you to stay. If the ground isn’t too wet you can run your car over the back paddock. I can cut the wire and let you out to the road.’
‘And leave you on your own to cope with the mess?’
‘It’s my mess. I’ve kept you long enough. Where were you headed last night? Melbourne?’
