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Blake gave a hollow laugh. “Eventually. After my first foster parents found out they were having their own child and I became surplus to their requirements. I decided if I was that unlovable, I may as well act the part, getting myself chucked out of a succession of foster homes.”
She swore colorfully, earning an answering murmur from him. “My thoughts exactly. Then I came up against Des and Fran Logan, who refused to give up on me.”
His voice held no trace of self-pity so although her heart ached for him, she felt bound to match his steadiness. “Des is a good man.” He’d made Blake into a good man, too, when the outcome could so easily have been different.
“Now it’s your turn,” Blake said.
She shifted uncomfortably. Turnabout was fair play, but she hated talking about herself. It was probably why she’d become a journalist—so she could probe other people’s histories without revealing too much of her own. “Not much to tell. Father and mother, both doctors, currently working on a research project in Vanuatu. Two older brothers, one a computer whiz kid, the other a money market expert. They’re married with kids, but they still think it’s their mission in life to protect me from absolutely everything.” They’d been horrified when she told them about this assignment and had tried to talk her out of coming; they backed off only when they saw her resolve hardening instead of weakening.
“Because you were abducted from a public event when you were six,” Blake put in.
She strove to keep the aversion out of her voice. “How did you find out?”
“Like you, I believe in doing my homework. I wanted to know why a city girl would voluntarily maroon herself in the outback for a month.”
“It’s my job,” she said, sounding defensive despite her best efforts. “Your research must have told you I was with my abductor for all of five hours before the police found me and took me home. The poor old woman had dementia and thought I was her little girl, who had to be in her thirties by then. While I was with her, we watched cartoons and she fed me ice cream. I thought it was pretty cool.”
“The way I thought being left on a doorstep was cool,” he commented.
“Maybe I do want to show my family they don’t need to protect me all my life. So what?”
Blake drove into the camp and cut the engine. The sound was immediately replaced with the buzz and rustle of nocturnal life. He let his hands slide off the wheel and turned to her. “First rule of handling a new species—find out what makes them tick.”
A sensation of raw need coiled through her, urgently pushed away. “For the record, I’m not a new species, and there’s going to be no handling involved.” The very idea made her throat feel dry and her hands go damp. Blake’s unexpected substitution for Nigel had thrown her, she told herself. Yet Nigel’s words had never made her heart beat this fast.
Thinking of what Blake might do with more than words drained the last of her strength. If she hadn’t been sitting in the car, she’d have sunk to the ground. Lifting her into his arms, Blake would have found her mouth, and the needs she’d been tamping down all evening would have flared into fiery passion.
She blinked hard, struggling back to full wakefulness. What was she doing, imagining herself in Blake’s arms? Just because she hadn’t found Mr. Right yet didn’t mean she was ready to fall into the arms of the first man who came along, even if he was a walking, talking female fantasy.
The fantasy unfastened his seat belt and reached into the back to retrieve his holdall and tropical sleeping bag. He’d collected both from Sawtooth Park after meeting Cade at the airport. At first, the prospect of his company had reassured her; now, she wondered if having him around was such a smart idea, given the way he made her feel.
“Out here, city girl is an introduced species,” he continued. “You’re checking out the new environment and uncertainty is making you defensive. You’ve spotted a promising male and you’re instinctively making overtures to attract his attention, but you’re uncertain if it’s the right thing to do.”
Was he reading her mind now? Her fingers froze on the seat belt release.
“Puh-lease. Next thing you’ll have us sending out mating signals.”
“What do you think we’ve been doing all evening? Humans are no different from animals. We dress up our mating rituals in fancy clothes and expensive restaurants, but the objective is the same—survival of the species.”
Because he was uncomfortably close to being right, she took refuge in sarcasm. “Good grief, I’ve walked onto the set of the Nature Channel.”
“We live on it. All humans do.” His tone warmed. “You felt the pull between us the second we met.”
A pulse jumped in her neck. “In your dreams.”
“That, too,” he said without missing a beat.
She got out of the car but kept a hand on it as if braced for flight. “I suppose having driven off your rival, you’re now staking out the female?”
“You’re getting the idea.”
Anger swirled through her, although some of it was at his perceptiveness, she recognized. She had picked up the signals flashing between them, and her responses were as primitive as his animal analogy suggested. Arousal stronger than anything she’d ever felt. Annoyance that he could read her so easily and completely.
And fear.
Blake Stirton was exciting but dangerous. He saw life in far more basic terms than she did. Thinking she should be scarred by her childhood experience, for example, when it was no more than a glitch on her life’s radar screen. Assuming because the sparks were there, she intended to act on them.
He was wrong on all counts. The outback might be his world, but hers was the city, with its nonstop excitement and shops where you had more than one choice of everything. The crocodile hunter and his habitat were an assignment, nothing more.
He came around to her side of the car and she tensed, but he brushed past on the way to the tent. One tent. Why hadn’t she asked him to set up another so they wouldn’t have to share? At least there were two cots, and he’d brought his own sleeping bag. Zipped up in hers, she’d have more to worry about than arousal. Like how to go to the bathroom without getting eaten by a crocodile.
And how to be around Blake for a month without falling for the crocodile hunter and becoming his prey.
Chapter 4
The phrase sleeping with the enemy kept popping into Jo’s head as she washed herself with water from a bucket behind the tent. The night was hot and sticky, and she’d give a lot for a proper shower before bed. A swim would have been wonderful but after this morning’s experience, she wasn’t going anywhere near the creek.
And Blake wasn’t the enemy. He was a lifesaver; his presence made it possible for her to stay and write her series. So why did she have such confusing feelings about him?
She finished swabbing her face and neck, wrung out the damp cloth and pressed it against the back of her neck. He was only trying to scare her away with his talk of mating signals between them. If she was sending any such things, surely she would know.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” she said, carrying the empty bucket around to the front of the tent for him to refill with clean water from their supply.
She stopped in her tracks. He had stripped down to khaki shorts and boots and nothing else. In the flickering light of the lantern, his flexing muscles gleamed as if oiled as he set the camp to rights for the night.
She watched, fascinated in spite of herself. Nigel had been happy to leave things where they dropped and had teased her for trying to keep order, calling her Miss Efficiency.
Now she was watching Mr. Efficiency as he began to get the campfire ready for next morning. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll do it tomorrow,” she said, her conscience nagging. He was supposed to be assisting her, not doing the job for her. Not that he was tough to watch, she thought.
“Old habits die hard,” he said mildly. “Leaving things lying around camp is asking for trouble in the outback.”
“Nigel didn’t think so.”
Blake lifted his head. “Missing him already?”
“What do you think?” she asked, avoiding answering his question.
He finished hooking the billycan over an arrangement of sticks he’d placed across the fire then speared her with an unnervingly direct look. “I think you haven’t given him a thought since he flounced off at the airport.”
Since she couldn’t defend herself, she felt bound to defend Nigel. “He didn’t flounce. He left because he was almost taken by a man-eating crocodile.”
“Hardly a man-eater,” Blake corrected.
His lack of feeling was as infuriating as her own overabundance of it. “The beast leaped out of the river and attacked him. In my book, that makes it a man-eater. Or don’t you count near misses? Perhaps you’d prefer to see actual blood.”
Blake straightened. “You’re overreacting. That crocodile has lived in this river system for fifteen years without bothering anyone. Ask the indigenous people. They’ve swum in this creek for years.”
“Maybe it only eats nonindigenous people,” she responded.
“And maybe someone has been feeding it from the landing, luring it in.” His gaze narrowed. “Crocodiles only recognize food and nonfood. To them, there’s no difference between a piece of meat and the hand holding it. All this animal has learned is that anything a human holds out from the rock landing is food.”
Her palms felt icy and she rubbed them together although the night was warm. “You think Eddy Gilgai deliberately taught the crocodile to feed close by so it would attack humans?”
“His presence in the area, coupled with the rotten remains Andy found, make the theory seem likely. The difficulty will be in proving anything.”
“Did Andy find any more clues after we left for the airport?”
“Plenty of tracks, but nothing that would hold up in court.”
“If he had found something, would you still be here?”
In the flickering lamplight, his eyes gleamed. “Why don’t you ask me outright why I decided to stay?”
Annoyance rippled through her, although she wasn’t sure if it was at him for being so smug or at herself for caring what he thought. “I know why you stayed. You think I’m an incompetent city type who can’t be let loose on her own in the bush. If I get into trouble, it looks bad for Diamond Downs.”
His wide shoulders lifted and fell. “You said it, I didn’t.”
“You’re wrong about me,” she snapped. “I was a news reporter before I joined the magazine. I’ve investigated crime, drugs, you name it, without falling apart. I’d already started building a shelter before you showed up.”
His gaze went to the bush building materials she’d piled on the camp fringe. “So I see.”
“I wasn’t counting on a crocodile trying to eat my partner.”
“From the look of things, your partner wasn’t much help anyway.”
“We’d barely settled in.”
Blake braced an arm against the tent frame. “This isn’t a holiday camp. If it was a real survival test, you wouldn’t have the luxury of settling in. You’d get moving and do what you must to keep yourself alive.”
She tried not to be distracted by muscles she couldn’t remember seeing outside a gym and rarely enough inside it. His body had been sculpted by hard use rather than vanity, she thought. With his build, he’d make a great male model, although she couldn’t imagine Blake being willing to pose for hours. “I intend to survive,” she assured him.
His gaze leveled. “I think you will.”
She brushed aside the glow his approval brought. “I won’t have much choice, since I’ll be on my own after tomorrow.” She was grateful that he’d interrupted his routine to help her tonight, but she couldn’t monopolize his time indefinitely.
No matter how appealing the idea, a traitorous inner voice insisted.
“Anxious for me to leave, Jo?”
“Yes. I mean no. Yes and no.”
He leaned closer, the warmth of his body enveloping her in a masculine glow. “Make up your mind.”
“This project is my responsibility. You have the crocodile park to run and your foster father to worry about.”
“I can keep a better eye on Des from here than from the park. And my deputy is accustomed to running the show when I’m away rounding up rogue crocodiles. He can consult with me by phone if he needs to.”
Her throat felt dry. “You can’t be planning to stick around for the whole month?”
“Depends.” He lifted a hand and brushed his finger lightly down the side of her face. Whispers of need coiled through her, hot and urgent, until she almost leaned into his hand.
Shaken by the strength of the temptation, she stiffened her spine. “On what?”
“On what you want.”
She found her voice with an effort. “I want to prove I can survive out here, so anything you can teach me is welcome.”
“Oh, I think we have plenty to teach each other.”
“I was talking about bush survival.”
“That, as well. Have you heard of the code of the outback?”
She shook her head.
“My brothers and I dreamed it up when we were boys. The code says you don’t give up and you don’t back down. You also stand by your mates.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“All of it. There is something between us, Jo. You felt it the moment we met. Under the code, we don’t back away from what we feel, and we don’t give up if what we feel is right. What I feel for you is very, very right.”
“This isn’t why I came to the Kimberley.” Why she had come, she couldn’t readily answer, but it couldn’t have been for this.
“Maybe not, but it’s why you’re staying.”
He made it sound like forever, which was impossible. He was right about the attraction. It wasn’t going to go away. Neither was he, she understood. Which left her where? Previously, when men had disturbed her emotional balance, she’d ended the relationship. But she couldn’t dismiss Blake while she needed his help with the assignment.
Things had been fine between her and Nigel until he’d told her how important she’d become to him, she thought. Instead of being flattered, she’d started to pull away, not wanting to have to live up to his expectations. So what did she want from a man? Spending this time in the outback, she hoped to find some answers.
She stuck her hands into her pockets. “If we’re going to work together, we need some ground rules. And I don’t mean that code of yours.”
“It works for me, but go ahead.”
She began to tick points off on her fingers. “First, you don’t mollycoddle me. I need to make my own mistakes and learn from them.”
“I guess bringing coffee to you in your sleeping bag in the morning is out?”
He sounded almost disappointed and she shook off the urge to smile. “Be serious. I’ll get up when you do and pull my own weight in everything.” If it killed her, she thought. Remembering the crocodile, she wondered if she should have stuck with Blake’s code of the outback while she was ahead.
“Sounds reasonable so far,” he agreed. “Anything else?”
This was the tricky part. “This is my show. I’m in charge.”
The muscle she saw working along his jaw told her he didn’t like the condition. He was probably used to being the leader, calling the shots. Well, not this time. The silence stretched as he thought.
“I can live with it,” he conceded, his easy tone belying his tense body language. “With one exception.”
She watched him warily. “What?”
