by Valerie Parv
“Tough break. My mother’s gone, too. I still miss her,” Tom said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Were you very young when she died?”
“Twelve. It should never have happened.” His voice held a rasping quality she had already begun to recognize as emotion, quickly suppressed in the manner of Australian men. She also sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her. It sounded as if his mother had died in an accident. Did he blame himself? This was certainly something she could understand.
“I never knew my mother, but I felt responsible for her death,” she said.
“You didn’t ask to be born. If anyone deserves blame it’s fate, or your father.”
Again she had the uncanny feeling Tom was speaking of his own experience. She didn’t know him well enough to ask, but it didn’t stop her wanting to. “What about brothers?”
“I have three foster brothers. Blake runs the local crocodile farm. Ryan is a jackeroo on a property farther north. We don’t see much of him or Cade, who’s a wildlife photographer for magazines. Judy is the only girl. After she was born, Des and his late wife, Fran, found out they couldn’t have any more children so they became foster parents.”
Shara nodded. “And your real family?”
“They are my real family.”
Taking a hint from his gruff tone, she turned to the scenery jolting past the car window as he steered the heavy vehicle over the corrugated track. Since she wasn’t prepared to open up to him about herself, respecting his privacy was the least she could do.
“Am I keeping you from your work?” she asked.
“I started a couple of weeks’ vacation today. Most days I start work at dawn, before the heat builds up, take a break and catch up on paperwork about now, then finish anything that needs doing when the day cools down.”
“What were you doing out here?”
“Heading to the homestead for dinner with Des and Judy.”
At least she wasn’t dragging him out of his way.
“How long have you been here?” Tom asked.
“Two days. Des said I can stay as long as I like.”
Tom nodded. “He would.”
His gruff tone didn’t disguise his obvious affection for his foster father. “Judy told me he makes a habit of taking in strays,” Shara said.
“Like me and my foster brothers,” he agreed.
Like her, too, she thought with a pang. “Are they all as big as you?” she asked.
Tom slanted a grin at her. “We’re all taller than Des.”
“And you’re all from different families?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t seem to want to elaborate, then surprised her by adding, “My real mother was Irish and my dad’s one-eighth Aboriginal, if you hadn’t already guessed.”
His smooth skin had a tanned look she found disturbingly attractive. “Is it a problem?”
“Not around here. Maybe in the big smoke, the city,” he elaborated for her benefit. “Out here, you’re judged by your actions.”
What did his actions tell her about him? First condoning a barbaric punishment, then being prepared to endure it in her place? More hero than villain, she decided.
Carrying her, his arms had felt strong and supportive. Tending to her leg, his touch had been almost unbearably gentle. And she hadn’t missed the gleam of male response to the shapely calf her torn jeans had revealed. He had made her feel feminine and, yes, beautiful, restoring some of the pride in herself Jamal had threatened to crush.
She found herself warming to Tom, wanting to tell him the truth about herself, but still felt unsure. She knew nothing about him beyond what her instincts told her. Could she trust them?
“You’ve had a pretty poor welcome to the Kimberley,” he said.
He was making amends without knowing it. She put a hand on his arm, feeling the muscles tighten and her pulse skip in response. The temptation to trust became a certainty. “It’s over now.”
Tom wished he could dismiss his part in her injury so readily. Seeing the danger she’d been in, he’d tried his best to protect her, but doubt wracked him. Could he have talked Wandarra into letting her off? Or would Andy’s people have come looking for her later and inflicted worse harm?
According to the outback credo, what was done was done and you moved on. Tom knew he should also be moving on. But something about Shara made him wish the drive to the homestead was twice as long. Her touch on his arm felt like a fresh brand. Amazing that there wasn’t a mark on his skin.
Her skin was the color of milk coffee, satiny and soft in contrast to his own. Scratches marred her skin where she had tracked the kangaroo through the bushes into the gorge, more concerned for the animal’s safety than her own. He felt an un-characteristic urge to kiss them better.
Not sure what impulse drove him, he asked, “What are you afraid of, Shara?”
“What makes you think I’m afraid?”
“Before you thought better of it, you started to say you came here to be safe. Are you running away from something?”
“Not something, someone,” she confessed, sounding relieved by the admission.
“A man?” She nodded. Feeling a surge of jealousy, he asked, “A lover?”
She shrank closer to the car door. “Never. I’d die before I’d let Jamal touch me.”
Not liking the way she shied away from him, Tom said quietly, “You’d better tell me what this is all about.”
“Why? I’m nothing to you.”
He’d been asking himself the same question without coming up with an answer he wanted to hear. “I’m the nearest thing to the law out here for the moment. Maybe I can help.”
She shook her head, black hair tumbling like silk around her face. “You can’t. Jamal is too powerful. He has friends everywhere.”
“Not among my family.”
He had the satisfaction of seeing her uncoil a little, although the screen of hair still hid her expression. The sight whirled him back eight years. As if a door had opened in his mind, he remembered who and what she was. When he’d last seen her, her face had also been screened, but by a scarf crossing under her chin, the fringed ends tossed over her shoulders. The glimpse of beauty he’d gained had fired his imagination for weeks afterward.
Amid the heat and dust, she’d stood out like the rare desert flowers that sprang up only after rain. He’d felt sorry for her, forced to attend her father when she must have been bored witless. Judy had noticed and struck up a conversation, he remembered. If he was right about her, she and Judy had kept in touch ever since.
Only one way to find out. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked.
She nodded resignedly. “Eight years ago. A lifetime.”
“Princess,” he said slowly, his changed intonation bringing her head up, her eyes glittering with fear. “No wonder you looked so startled when I called you that. You are a princess. Shara—” he searched his memory “—Najran. Your father, King Awad, buys bloodstock for his breeding program from our neighbors, the Horvaths.”
She buried her face in her hands as memory flooded back. Her father had asked about some new breeding techniques being used in the Kimberley, and Clive Horvath had arranged for them to visit Diamond Downs.
While their entourage was being shown around the cattle yards, a handsome young man had ridden in, commanding Shara’s attention. The dust and heat had been choking but Tom had looked comfortable, happy, even, in the stifling atmosphere. She’d seen his gaze linger on her as he was being presented to her father. Tom wouldn’t have seen much of her face beneath her silk scarf, but she had certainly noticed him.
Des had invited Tom to join them, but he’d murmured his regrets and ridden away. She remembered admiring the easy way he’d melted into the landscape, wishing she could have gone with him, although her father would have been scandalized beyond words. As it was, he’d only allowed her to accompany him to Australia after she’d argued that she would need a broader experience of the world to share with he
r children one day.
Although the discussions about cattle had been tedious, her imagination had been captured by the beautiful, limitless vistas of the Kimberley. Finding a kindred spirit in Judy had been a high point. Almost making up for the slight she’d felt over Tom’s refusal to stay, Shara thought.
Almost.
From Judy, she’d learned that Diamond Downs covered over a thousand square miles. Now Shara wished it were larger, putting more distance between herself and Jamal.
“Tell me about Jamal,” Tom prompted, as if reading her thoughts.
“I’m promised to him in marriage, but he’s the most corrupt man in my father’s ministry. After he caught me trying to gain proof of his treachery, he forced me to accompany him to Australia. Under our law a wife can’t speak against her husband, so he intends to marry me before we return to Q’aresh.”
“Nice touch,” Tom murmured. “Can’t your father protect you?”
“He has no idea what Jamal is really like. Years ago he saved the life of my brother, the crown prince, putting my father in his debt.”
Tom nodded. “And you’re the payment. I see.”
She wound her fingers together. “I don’t think you do. As soon as Jamal gains access to my titles and dowry, he means to take the throne from my father.”
Tom released a whistling breath. “Have you told the king what you suspect?”
“I tried, but at that point I had no evidence beyond what I’d overheard. He thought I was making it up to get out of the marriage.” She gave a derisive snort. “In my country, a woman’s word—even that of a princess—counts for little against a man’s.”
“What happens if you don’t marry this man?”
She couldn’t suppress a shudder. “My father will keep me locked in the palace until I change my mind.”
“Talk about a rock and a hard place. What are you going to do?”
“Before I was caught, I recorded Jamal talking about his plans. The tape is hidden aboard the private plane that brought us here. I have to stay out of his clutches long enough to get the tape back and send it to my father.”
“Today’s adventure isn’t going to help.”
She straightened her leg, wincing at the pain of reminder. “Probably not, but I’m not going to let it stop me.”
“Do Judy and Des know what you’re embroiled in?”
She inclined her head. “They wanted me to stay with them, but I won’t expose them to more danger than I must.”
“So you exiled yourself to a rustic cottage, intending to take on Jamal all by yourself.”
“If I have to.”
“With respect, Princess, you’re crazy. If this man is as dangerous as you say, he’ll do whatever it takes to stop you getting that evidence to your father.”
Breathing deeply to bring her temper under control, she lifted her chin. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Quite a few, starting with going to the police.”
“They’d want to return me to Q’aresh for my own safety.”
“They could be right.”
“Without the tape, I may as well marry Jamal here and now.”
Tom didn’t approve, she saw, as his frown deepened and he tightened his grip on the wheel. His sense of justice must be offended, she decided. At least he was on her side. Realistically she couldn’t expect any more from him. If she found herself wanting more, it was her problem.
He drummed on the steering wheel. “Can’t the police get a warrant to search the plane?”
“As a member of our government, Jamal has diplomatic immunity.”
“So we find another way to get it.”
Her eyebrow arched. “We?”
He directed a steely gaze her way. “I told Wandarra I’d take responsibility for you, and I meant it. Whatever happens now, Princess, we’re in this together.”
Chapter 3
What had made him decide to get involved with her? he asked himself. The answer was in her fight with Jamal. Tom knew only too well how it felt to be threatened by someone with all the power on their side. At the very least, he wanted to help her even the odds.
Her beauty and courage had nothing to do with his decision.
Although Des’s homestead was over sixty years old, the Australian sense of irony meant it would be forever referred to as new, he told her as they neared it. The house sprawled across a ridge of grassland between river and rain forest, raised on a raft of concrete beyond the reach of the spreading floodwaters that would come with the monsoon rains of the wet season.
From the moment Des and Fran had taken Tom in, their house had felt welcoming. The only solid walls belonged to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The living areas were soaring, open spaces with vaulted ceilings and insect screens for walls. Translucent shutters could be pulled down over the screens to shield the house during the monsoon rains. A deep veranda shaded the house on all sides.
The room he’d first occupied was on this side, with a view of the McKellar Ranges. The gum tree he’d occasionally climbed down after lights-out leaned more toward the house these days, but was good for another hundred years.
Much as he liked his own home at Halls Creek, this house still gave him a sense of homecoming. Scared as he’d been arriving as a foster child, unmanageable as he’d acted toward Des and Fran Logan, he’d felt safe here. Fran had died from appendicitis six years after Tom arrived, but Des had made it clear the family would stay together no matter what. Tom wanted Shara to feel the same sense of security.
Shara watched Tom’s expression soften as they neared his former home. The palace where Shara had grown up was a low, sprawling complex of rooms opening into one another, with the main building at the heart of a cluster of other buildings. While far from palatial, the Logan homestead was also low and rambling, with the same sense of being the focal point of a small community, although her father’s thoroughbreds lived in more luxury than the Australian family. The Logans’ stock horses were corralled in a fenced yard with only basic amenities, but the sound of them whickering to one another as she passed made her feel homesick.
Accustomed to lavishly maintained homes, she was troubled by the signs of neglect visible everywhere on Diamond Downs. However rich Des Logan was in generosity and compassion, money was evidently in short supply. Shara’s heart ached. She hated adding to the strain on his resources. Her private fortune wouldn’t be hers to control until after she married, but one day she would return Des’s generosity, she promised herself.
At the sound of Tom’s car pulling up, Des appeared on the veranda. In his mid-sixties he was still a handsome man, the gray peppering his hair lending him an air of wisdom.
He was a couple of inches shorter than Tom, she saw when they greeted each other, but the older man had a commanding presence. His face was darkly tanned and creased, but she saw welcome and concern in the blue eyes behind his dark-framed glasses.
If Des was surprised to see her with Tom, he didn’t show it. He looked more alarmed when he saw Shara limping and Tom dragging out a substantial medical kit. From her interactions with Judy, Shara knew you had to be equipped to treat almost any medical emergency yourself in the outback.
“Should I put in a call to the flying doctor?” Des asked as he took them inside.
Tom intercepted Shara’s panicked look. “Not yet. Shara wants me to take care of it.”
Judy appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a towel. She took in the situation at a glance. “Let me. I’m the one with paramedic training.”
As a pilot she would be, Shara thought. Des’s daughter had inherited his perceptive blue eyes, but her coloring was lighter, perhaps from her mother’s side. She was about Shara’s height, with short blond hair, a trim figure and muscular legs shown off by denim cutoffs.
Shara didn’t miss the reluctance with which Tom handed her into Judy’s care, but refused to read anything into it.
Judy took her into the huge, airy bathroom and sat her down on a chair before op
ening the kit at her feet. “What happened to your leg?”
“I hurt myself while scrambling around a gorge looking at some cave paintings. Tom took care of me,” she said, wondering if he would tell them the rest.
Judy frowned. “Men! Did it occur to Sir Galahad that he might have rolled up your jeans instead of ruining them.”
“He did what he thought was right,” Shara said, referring to more than the clothes.
“He usually does,” Judy agreed, her hands busy. She frowned. “This doesn’t have anything to do with your friend Jamal, does it?”
“I haven’t seen or heard from him since I moved into the cottage.”
“But you expect to.”
She flinched as much at the prospect as at Judy’s ministrations. “He’s not a man who gives up easily.” Like Tom, came the unbidden thought, although Jamal’s motives were purely selfish. “I can’t stay much longer. I’m putting you all in danger from him.”
Judy finished fastening a bandage around Shara’s calf. “You’re not going anywhere just yet. Tom did a good job. The wound is clean and doesn’t need stitches, but it will take a few days to heal.”
She closed the kit and stood up to wash her hands. “You’ll stay to dinner tonight, at least?”
Royal reserve gripped Shara. “I can’t in this condition.”
Understanding lit Judy’s gaze. “Come with me. I’m sure something of mine will fit you.”
Shara felt color seep into her cheeks. “As soon as I’m able, I’ll repay you for all your kindness.”
“Put Jamal out of commission, and your happiness will be payment enough.”
Des waited until the two women disappeared into the bathroom, then turned to Tom. “What really happened out there?”