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‘I can feel it. I can smell it,’ he said. ‘Besides the rain is coming down in bucket loads in the North. The last report I heard a cyclone was forming in the Coral Sea. That’s all it will take. It’s either flood or drought. If the cyclone develops and we get torrential rain, the Big Three—that’s the Diamantina, the Georgina and the Cooper—will bring the floodwaters right down into our remote South-West corner. The Channel Country is one vast natural irrigation system as I’m sure you know. You’ve never been there?’
‘I regret to say, no. I spent years at boarding school, then university, then I married. But I will get there one day.’
‘It would be nice to take you,’ he said. ‘The whole region can flood without a drop of actual rain. Seen from the air it looks like the whole country is underwater.’
‘Of course!’ She looked across at him in quick realisation. ‘You would see it from the air. You have your own plane on Turrawin?’
He nodded. ‘A Beech Baron and a couple of Bell helicopters. We use the choppers a lot for mustering. We also use the services of an aerial mustering company from time to time. Choppers have revolutionised the whole business.’
‘I can imagine, with those vast areas.’ She stopped what she was doing to study him. ‘But it can be dangerous? I’ve heard of many instances of fatal light aircraft and chopper crashes.’
‘Very dangerous.’ He shrugged the danger off. ‘But it’s our way of life, Allegra. We have to keep our fears under control.’
‘That’s pretty amazing,’ she said dryly.
‘When fatalities happen our vast community shares in the heartbreak. We’re all in it together. I’ve been in ground searches and aerial searches in my time. We’ve had two major accidents in the last twelve years on Turrawin. One death I regret to say. A really good bloke, one of our regulars who could fly anything and land anywhere so no one worried about him for quite a while. The other was a crash landing, but mercifully the pilot walked away. I’ve had a close call myself. Once I came down in the middle of a big paperbark swamp. In the Territory I could have been taken by a croc, but we don’t have any crocs in the desert. Well not anymore.’ He smiled. ‘Though you can see them in our aboriginal rock paintings.’
She stared back at him fascinated. ‘You have cave paintings on Turrawin?’
‘We don’t advertise, but yes. Some of them are amazing. One cave in particular is guaranteed to make you believe in the Spirit Guardians. The hairs stand up on my forearms and I consider myself pretty cool.’
‘You are cool.’ She laughed. ‘I’d love to see that cave myself.’
‘I wish I could take you there.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ she admitted recklessly. ‘We don’t have anything like that around here.’
‘I know.’
His mouth, quirked as it was now, was framed by the sexiest little brackets. She realised she watched for those moments. That was what falling in love was all about. It seemed that for her this was the classic coup de foudre. Which by no means guaranteed things were going to turn out fine she reminded herself. As for it happening at such a turning point in her life she was beyond thought.
‘You’re very passionate about your desert domain, aren’t you?’ She said, knowing he would be passionate about most things.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ His crystalline eyes looked right into hers. ‘It’s like no other place on earth and Jay and I have managed to see quite a few. Australia is the oldest continent on earth. I think that accounts for a lot of the extraordinary mystique. It’s the timelessness, the antiquity, the aboriginal feel, the power of the Dreamtime spirits. Then there’s the colour of the place … the vivid contrast between the fiery red earth and the cloudless blue sky. Every country offers its great and its quiet wonders.
‘I’ve stayed a few times with friends, another cattle family, who own and run a magnificent ranch in Colorado. They have the Rocky Mountains for a backdrop. It’s like wow! Then we had a great trip to Argentina a couple of years back. Business and pleasure. A wonderfully colourful and exciting place. We loved it. We managed to get in a few games of polo while we were there. They’re the greatest as I’m sure you know. We even got to fly over the Andes. I love flight. I love flying. Being up there in the wild blue yonder all on your lonesome. It’s tremendous!’
‘Then you’re going to miss it, aren’t you?’ she said, getting a clear picture of him seated at the controls of a plane. ‘Naroom doesn’t run to light aircraft.’
He shrugged. ‘Well you are much closer to civilisation. Turrawin on the other hand is right on the edge of the Simpson. The sand dunes there peak at around one hundred feet and they run for a couple of hundred kilometres unbroken the longest parallel sand dunes in the world. It’s really eerie the way they bring to mind the inland sea of prehistory. I’ve stood on top of our most famous dune, Nappanerica—’
‘The Big Red?’ She smiled, glad she knew the answer.
‘The very same. A Simpson traveller, Dennis Bartell named it. It’s closer to one hundred fifty feet. The most amazing little wildflowers come out after a shower. Not the gigantic displays we get after flooding. But it’s fascinating to study the little fellas up close. There are so many you can’t move without crushing them underfoot, but then they release the most wonderful perfume. You think you’ve died and gone to Heaven.’ He purposely didn’t say he thought the fragrance akin to the fresh fragrance that came off her body.
‘And after flooding?’ she asked. ‘I’ve seen marvellous photographic shots in calendars.’
‘Allegra,’ he said dryly, ‘You have to see the real thing.’ As he spoke he was imagining her with a diadem of yellow daisies around her head. As young boys he and Jay had fashioned them for their mother. ‘After heavy rain, the desert flora has no equal,’ he said with unmistakably nostalgia. ‘The landscape is completely carpeted by pink, white and yellow paper daisies. It’s like some great inland tide. They even sweep up to the stony hill country. Even the hills come alive with thousands of fluffy mulla mulla banners and waving lambs tails. So many varieties of desert peas come out, fuchsias and hibiscus, our exquisite desert rose. Nature’s glory confronts you wherever you look.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said, moved by the controlled emotion in his voice and face. Nostalgia was written all over him ‘The central plains must seem pretty tame to you after your desert home?’
He raised both his wide shoulders in a shrug, but he didn’t answer.
‘Is there no hope of a reconciliation between you and your father?’ she dared to ask the question.
His face angled away from her, looked grim. ‘I need to get as far away from my father as is humanly possible.’
Good God as bad as that!’ she said, pondering the no-holds-barred bitterness and hatreds in family life. ‘It seems to me you’re a son to be proud of.’
He looked up then to smile at her, the smile that was impossible to resist. ‘Why thank you, Miss Allegra.’
‘I’m not trying to butter you up,’ she said, a shade tartly to counteract that sexual radiance. ‘Just a simple statement of fact.’ Belatedly she put the coffee on to perk. He was just so interesting to talk to she had forgotten all about it. ‘Take a seat.’
He pulled out a chair, resting his strong tanned arms on the table. He was wearing a red T-shirt with his jeans, the fabric clinging to his wide shoulders and the taut muscular line of his torso. It was hard to look past his physical magnetism. In fact it was making her jumpy. So jumpy she felt if he touched her she would fall to pieces. Wisely she stayed on the opposite side of the table.
‘So what have you got to tell me?’
He was as aware as she was of the glittering sexual tension that stretched between them, but he tried to play it cool as befitting a serious man. ‘I can go a little higher with my bid.’
She raised an arched brow. ‘How high is a little?’
He turned up his hands. ‘We’ll split it between $3.5 and $4 million. My final offer, Mrs Hamilton, is $3.75.’
‘That Mrs Hamilton might cost you,’ she said frostily.
‘What did he do to you?’ The intense desire to reach for her—the desire he was endeavouring to keep on simmer—damned nearly boiled over.
‘What’s made you change your mind about me?’ she asked. ‘When we first met it was like—What did she do to her poor husband?’
‘I’ve had an epiphany,’ he said, deciding there was safety in being flippant. ‘For one thing, you’re a great cook.’
‘So the fact I can cook swung it?’ The coffee was perking away merrily. She turned away to shift it off the heat.
‘I’m joking!’ There was amusement in his eyes.
‘I know you are, Rory Compton,’ she said tartly, betraying her stretched feelings. There was only one answer to all this. The question was when?
‘So what did he do to you?’ Rory repeated, his gaze very direct. He didn’t think he could stop until he knew. That in itself was a danger.
She set his coffee down in front of him and pushed a plate of homemade biscuits his way. ‘Isn’t this too early in our relationship—for want of a better word—to ask a question like that?’
‘One doesn’t have to go together a long time to have a relationship.’ He let his gaze rest on her. ‘I thought we’d agreed we’ve well and truly bypassed the preliminaries?’ He stirred three teaspoons of raw sugar into his black coffee.
‘That’s way too much sugar,’ she murmured, unable to deny the truth of what he had just said.
‘I take sugar to rally my flagging spirits. Not that I actually need it right now.’ The little sexy quirks bracketed his mouth again. ‘If you won’t answer my question about your husband, answer this. What do you think of my offer?’
Her hand reached up to brush back a fallen thick coil of her hair. ‘Well, I have to see what Valerie and Chloe think.’
‘Stop being so damned evasive,’ he said swiftly. ‘Valerie and Chloe were ready to take $3.5 million.’
‘Don’t you dare look triumphant,’ she warned him, seeing the silver glint in his eyes. ‘I can’t bear it!.’ To her horror she felt tears swim into her own.
‘Hey!’ Rory reached across the table in consternation. He took hold of her satin smooth fingertips, curling his own work toughened hands around them.
Electricity pulsed the entire length of Allegra’s body. She felt the shock of it as much as if he had taken hold of her and thrown her down on a bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ Rory asked. ‘Have I upset you? I didn’t mean to. It’s honestly all I can offer, Allegra.’
She blinked furiously. God, what was the matter with her? She was a quivering mass of nerve endings. ‘I know that,’ she said, looking down at their joined hands. She had never seen such a contrast in skin tones. ‘You can let go of me now.’
‘Fine.’ He did so before he burst into flames. ‘You’ve got skin like silk. It’s your home is that it? In losing it to me you’d be cutting the last ties with your dad.’
‘You’re very perceptive,’ she said shakily, convinced of it.
‘Why else would you look so sad?’
The deep note of empathy, smote her heart. ‘The grieving never ends, does it? It goes away for a little while then it comes back.’
‘Old wounds never cease aching,’ he agreed with a philosophic shrug. ‘Some people are far less able to cope with the pain than others.’ He was thinking of Jay now.
‘I don’t have anyone anymore,’ she said as though it had suddenly occurred to her. ‘No father, no mother, no husband, no stepmother, no half sister. No family. At least you have your brother. Someone you know loves you and you love him back.’
His brooding expression was back in place. ‘It’s going to be damned difficult to see him if I can’t set foot on Turrawin.’
‘Your father must be a monster,’ she exclaimed, leaning her head in her palm.
‘Is that why you left your husband? He was a monster?’ The fact he couldn’t let the subject alone proved he was in over his head.
‘He was a clown!’ The words burst from Allegra before she could take them back. ‘God that sounds awful. Forget I said it.’
He didn’t speak for half a minute, he was so surprised. Clown? He hadn’t been expecting that! ‘So you don’t hate him so much as despise him,’ he asked, registering an involuntary wave of relief.
‘Why are you so interested in my past life?’ she asked.
He smiled. Tantalising. Heartbreaking. It seemed to her that smile was coming more frequently.’ You know why, even if I am trying to slow myself down. I don’t want to frighten you away, but you’re the most romantic, the most glamorous woman I’ve ever met. And you smell like a million crushed wildflowers.’
Her heart faltered, plunged on. ‘That’s one sweet compliment for a cautious man, Rory Compton.’
‘I just can’t help myself. There’s something so right about you, Allegra. Too much danger, too.’
‘In what way?’
He looked past her. ‘I’m an Outback cattleman. You’re a woman with a glamorous career in Sydney.’
‘So I am,’ she said, suddenly plummeted into bleakness.
He wanted to pull her into his arms, stroke that melancholy expression away, instead he spoke bracingly, trying to keep both of them on an even keel. ‘It was one hell of a trip around the property with Chloe. Her driving isn’t so much dangerous as unlawful. What about the two of us riding out? I know you’ve still got some good horses.’
Instantly she felt a surge of pleasure that blew her troubles away. ‘Great minds think alike! I was planning that myself. You can ride Cezar if you like?’ She was aware of her desire to see him on horseback. She hadn’t the slightest doubt he’d been a superlative rider.
His eyes widened for a second. ‘I’d really appreciate that, Allegra,’ he said. ‘And I’m honoured. Cezar is a splendid animal.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Great!’ He stood up, cattleman coming to the fore. ‘I hope you’ve had your men shift the cattle off the river flats. If there is more rain the water will rise above the escarpments of the creek. It will run a bumper and then, you’ll have trouble on your hands.’
Allegra rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Do you think I don’t know? I’m not stupid, Rory Compton.’
‘I’m starting to think you’re a paragon,’ he said dryly.
Allegra took the final gulp of her coffee.
‘Right!’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Let’s get going while the sun’s out.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HE WAS already acting like Naroom was his own, Allegra thought, torn between acceptance and an understandable sense of loss. It was midafternoon, stiflingly hot and humid even though the sun had disappeared under a great pile-up of incandescent clouds. The smell of sulphur was in the air. It was as though one only had to strike a match for the whole world to go up in flames. Even the birds had stopped singing, lapsing into the silence that precedes a storm. Presently a wind sprang up, gaining velocity. Spiralling whirlwinds danced across the darkening landscape sending out their own clouds of dust, leaves and split, sun-scorched grasses.
There was a lot of water stored in those ominous clouds. The rain couldn’t have been more welcome but she dreaded the thought of hail. Many times in her life she’d seen it come down on Naroom with hellish fury, hailstones as big as cricket balls, bombarding the herd and sometimes killing the small game scurrying through the pastures.
Allegra roused herself from her thoughts. Rory hadn’t been at all happy with the distance north of the homestead Gallagher and his off-sider Mick Evans had moved the cattle so he rode off with steely purpose to let them know. Allegra sat silently on her horse watching. There was always work to be done on a station; always another job.
Rory would get the men moving, she thought with satisfaction. It seemed only a man, a tough cattleman with a superior knowledge and experience of cattle could fill the shoes of Boss Man. Women need not apply. The outer areas of the run would be safe but he wanted all the cattle concentrated in the home pastures mustered and moved off the creek flats. One of the major problems with the station hands since her father’s death, then the loss of their competent overseer—Valerie’s disastrous decision—was that the men were sinking deeper and deeper into lethargy, understandably uncertain of their future when times weren’t easy. Even the cook had taken off, but cooks were always guaranteed of a job.
Well, I gave them their orders, Allegra consoled herself. The right orders. ‘Remember now. High out of the creek’s reach!’ It was clear they had only half done the job. She had fully intended to check on them. She knew she had to, but Rory’s arrival had set her back. She watched him ride back to her, the stirring sight bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. Cezar was more than a touch temperamental but Rory wasn’t having the slightest trouble making a near instant communication with her father’s horse, essentially a one man horse although Cezar had gradually accepted her.
‘You’re not happy are you?’ she asked, studying his expression as he reined in alongside.
‘No, but there’s no use worrying about it. We have to get cracking. We need to shift all the cows and calves on the other side across the creek.’ There was a dark frown on his face. ‘I’ve told those two layabouts if they’re interested in holding on to a job they’d better shake themselves up. Big time. We’ll never get the stock across if the creek starts flowing any faster. As it is we’ll have to push them with stock whips. They’re certain to be nervous, especially with this wind blowing up.’ He glanced heavenward at the threatening sky. ‘I’ve sent Gallagher to get the Jeep and bring it down here. Some of those calves are pretty small. They’ll hold the rest up. We can pick ‘em up and shove them in the back of the Jeep.’
‘Right, boss!’ She spoke in a voice of exaggerated respect.
‘It needs to be done.’ He gave her a querying look.
‘Of course it does. Just having a little joke. I did tell them, you know.’
‘Obviously they weren’t paying the right amount of attention,’ he said crisply. ‘They will now. If you ride back to the stables you can tell young Wally we need a hand. On the double. Doesn’t anyone use their own initiative? What about you?’ He cast a dubious eye over her slender, ultrafeminine frame. ‘I’ll understand if you don’t want to join in. It’ll be hard work and we’re pushed for time thanks to those two. We need them otherwise you should sack them on the spot.’
‘They need sacking,’ she agreed. ‘And don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’ll help. That’s what I’m here for.’ She wheeled her horse’s head about. ‘They’re all docile beasts on Naroom. We don’t have your mighty herds to contend with. No rogues, no wild ones, no clean skins, either.’
‘Off you go then,’ he urged. ‘We’ve got a lot to do before the weather worsens.’
A big storm broke around dusk but by then they had every last lowing beast up on high ground. Allegra’s ears were ringing from the crack of the whips. They kept them sailing well above the backs of the herd while the loud sound drove them on. Darkness was closing in fast, the sun almost swallowed up. The familiar landscape was shrouded in a sodden mist that drenched them in seconds.
‘Dig your heels in!’ he called to her.
She didn’t need to be told twice. The temperature had dropped considerably and she was shivering. When they arrived back at the homestead, the two of them ran quickly from the stables towards the rear entrance of the house. Once she went for a sickening skid, floundered wildly for a moment before he caught hold of her, amazingly surefooted in the quagmire.
