Deadly Intent

by Valerie Parv

  He reached over and poured water from his own glass into hers. “Maybe you just haven’t been told by the right man.”

  She sipped slowly. “The right man being you, I suppose?”

  He helped himself to tomato salad, but didn’t eat. “We’ve always known what was between us. Ignoring it hasn’t helped. So the logical solution is to have an affair and be done with it.”

  Her hands, usually so capable on the controls of her Cessna 182, fluttered helplessly. “Dad is seriously ill. We may not be able to hang on to Diamond Downs. And you want us to have an affair?”

  “Blake and Tom have the same worries, but I don’t see Blake living without Jo, or Tom holding off on marrying his princess. If we wait for everything to be perfect before dealing with what’s between us, we can’t move on.”

  “Blake and Tom are not…” Barely in time, she stopped herself from uttering the words long forbidden by her father. “Blood.” As Des saw it, his foster sons were as much family as his biological daughter.

  Ryan’s expression stayed impassive, but his eyes had hardened. “You can say it. Des isn’t here to jump on you. Blake, Tom, Cade and I are grace-and-favor Logans. I can’t speak for them, but the situation suits me fine.”

  Appalled at herself, she looked down at the plate. “I guess I don’t like thinking you actually prefer being an outsider.”

  He smiled wryly. “If I wasn’t, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I know Des means well but he can’t change history. All of us were born into other lives. He gave us a second chance and we respect him for it. But it doesn’t make us Logans. We can’t feel the same toward him and Diamond Downs as you who were born here of his flesh and blood.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A long pause preceded his reply. “Honest answer? I don’t know. When I was a teenager, I envied the other boys for belonging here when I felt as if I never would. Maybe they do feel more kinship with Des and the land than I want to think. One day, I may even ask them if we get drunk enough.”

  She gave a shaky smile and resumed eating. “Their answers may surprise you.”

  He attacked his steak as if it were his beliefs. “Wouldn’t be the first time. When I got here, I was so full of my own bull, thinking nobody knew the troubles I’d seen. Then I found out Tom’s dad was in jail for killing his mother in a fit of jealous rage, and Blake had been left on a doorstep when he was a baby. My problems seemed feeble by comparison.”

  “They were real enough to you. It wasn’t fun having to fend for yourself at fourteen.”

  “But I’d had my mother until then, and some happy memories of my father before he vanished without trace. It’s more than Blake ever had. And my dad may have run out on us, but while we lived as a family he never raised a hand to his wife.”

  She masked a smile, recognizing—as Ryan evidently failed to do—Des Logan’s words to the boy soon after he arrived. Reminding him to count what he had, rather than what he lacked. Her father had been more of an influence over Ryan than he knew.

  Finishing the steak, she pushed the plate away. “I’d like the marinade recipe one day, if the price comes down.”

  His expression said it wouldn’t where she was concerned. Then he said, surprising her, “You can have the secret for free. It’s wasabi, Japanese mustard. Just a touch makes all the difference.”

  She should have known. His home was in Broome, where the Japanese influence had been strong for a couple of centuries. The town even held a Japanese pearl festival each year, the Shinju Matsuri. “Wasabi, I’ll remember,” she said.

  “I’ll bring you some next time I visit,” he promised.

  She placed her knife and fork side by side on the plate. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  Steel settled in his gaze. “Shouldn’t bring wasabi, or shouldn’t come?”

  “Both. Having an affair might work for you, but it isn’t what I want. I only wanted you to come back because you’re part of the family.”

  He leaned closer. “What are you afraid of? If it’s my prospects, I’m a better catch than I’ve let you believe.”

  She stood up and started to pace, her movements constrained by the small room. “Your prospects aren’t the problem.” It was his overwhelming effect on her.

  “You can’t say you don’t feel anything for me.”

  She swung around, wrapping her arms around herself. She couldn’t lie. But she didn’t have to tell the whole truth. “There’s a complication.”

  His mouth thinned. “As in another man?”

  “I’m seeing Max Horvath.”

  Ryan looked thunderstruck. “You can’t be serious. I know he had a thing for you a few years back, but I thought you’d made it clear you weren’t interested in this or any other lifetime.”

  “I did. Then I—changed my mind. I shouldn’t even be here with you tonight. I broke a date with Max because I wanted this chance for us to talk privately.”

  Looking as if he’d rather shatter them to bits, Ryan gathered the plates and glasses with exaggerated care, but stayed standing at the table. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Max is the one with designs on your land and your legendary diamonds. Is this some kind of crazy self-sacrifice thing? Marrying him so he’ll let your father keep the land? Is that your bride price, Judy?”

  “No.” In fact, she had started seeing Max again against her family’s better judgment so she could keep an eye on his activities. They were all convinced Max was behind a string of suspicious incidents on Diamond Downs, but the police couldn’t pin anything on him without proof. She was hoping if he let his guard down with her, she could obtain the proof.

  The list of grievances was long and getting longer. No sooner had Tom and Shara discovered a cave of valuable rock art on the land than a crocodile attack had attracted negative publicity, threatening the income from tourism Des had hoped to bring in.

  Journalist Jo Francis had arrived to write a series of stories about surviving in the outback, her editor paying well for the access. Then Blake, an expert on crocodile behavior, had caught Max’s henchman Eddy Gilgai luring the crocodile dangerously close to Jo’s camp.

  The scheme had backfired when Eddy himself had been taken by a crocodile, but the resulting media coverage hadn’t done Diamond Downs’s fledgling tourism venture much good. With the wet season approaching, fewer tourists were visiting the Kimberley anyway. By the time the dry season came around again—assuming they could hang on that long—Judy hoped the fuss over the crocodile attacks would have subsided, and they could focus attention on the rock art caves again.

  She couldn’t tell Ryan what she hoped to achieve by dating Max, without letting him think she was available for a romantic fling with him. The very thought sent needs she didn’t want to acknowledge coiling through her. Right now he looked angry enough to break something, but the fire in his expression ignited an answering one inside her. What would it be like to feel his strong arms around her and his mouth hungry on hers?

  Since she couldn’t find out and keep faith with herself, she tore her gaze away. “I didn’t want to talk about this, Ryan. You don’t control me.”

  “I’m not going to stand back and let you barter yourself for a creep like Max Horvarth,” he said. “If finding that mine will keep you away from him, I’ll find it for you.”

  She had hoped to convince him to help, but not like this. “Are you offering to help so I’ll have an affair with you? If so, the price is too high.”

  “The price is the same as it’s always been—your body and soul. And the chance to get this…thing…between us worked out once and for all.”

  “Damn you, Ryan. Don’t do this to me.”

  “It’s done. All I did was up the ante. Unless you want me to go back to Broome and forget about helping you look for the mine.”

  Careful to avoid touching him, she took the plates from him and carried them to the kitchen, where she started to run hot water into the sink. Mechanically, she began to wash the plates.

&n
bsp; He came up beside her and picked up a dish towel, drying the plates as if the two of them were a couple doing their nightly chores. The image had more appeal than she wanted it to.

  “What’s it to be?” he asked as he put the plates away.

  She lifted dripping hands out of the water to gesture futilely. “You ask the impossible. I need your help if I’m to have any chance of finding the mine before the wet season cuts off access, but I can’t agree to…your terms.”

  He flicked the kettle on and lifted two coffee mugs down from a shelf. “What can you agree to?”

  Her voice struggled to rise above a whisper. “To think about your offer?”

  “Not good enough. Thinking’s too intangible.”

  Ryan knew he’d done enough thinking about her to drive a man crazy. Already he was regretting tonight. Arranging dinner in the isolated cottage had seemed like a good idea when he’d devised it. He hadn’t allowed for her effect on him. Seated across the table, knowing how easily he could carry her to the bedroom, had made this the most uncomfortable meal of his life. Before he’d known it, he’d suggested an affair in exchange for his help. Judy’s presence made him forget all gentlemanly behavior—forget everything but how badly he wanted her.

  “I’m sure Dad would agree to give you a share of the mine.”

  He slammed the coffee mugs onto the timber counter hard enough to startle them both. “I don’t want a share of the bloody mine.”

  “Then I’ll go looking alone.”

  “Am I so offensive to you that you’d risk your life, rather than consider a relationship with me?” he demanded.

  “Oh, Ryan, no. I could make love to you far too easily if I let myself.” Or fall in love with you.

  His hopes, almost throttled, began to rise. “Then if I’m not the problem, what is? You can’t tell me you’re in love with Max Horvath.”

  “I have my own reasons. If you really care about me, you’ll respect them and leave me alone.”

  He ran his hands up and down her arms, feeling the shivers of response. “What do you think I’ve been doing the last few years?”

  Caught by surprise, she turned, right into his embrace. “Is that why you come back so seldom?”

  He smoothed out the furrow in her brow with his lips. Her skin tasted of sun and heat. She rarely used perfume, but her natural scent swirled through his brain, dazzling him. He took her mouth much harder than he’d meant to, as a starving man might attack his first offering of food. The impact wound all the way to his gut and stayed there, urging him not to stop at a kiss but to plunder and take. Now. Now.

  Her arms wound around his neck and she pressed against him as if she also had trouble controlling her actions. When he’d claimed her mouth, her lips had parted instinctively and he flicked his tongue against the soft corners, gratified by her small indrawn gasps of pleasure.

  With his knee, he nuzzled her legs apart and pressed closer. Thinking they’d be dining in town, she’d exchanged her jeans for a long, batik-printed skirt, more like a length of cloth wound around her slender hips. The cloth parted at his probing, revealing long legs strengthened by years of outdoor work and handling heavy cargo on her own.

  As his body collided with hers, she opened her mouth as if to protest, but any objection she might have made was swallowed when he deepened the kiss. He’d found her core with his thigh and now he moved gently, seductively between her legs until she released a moan against his mouth. Through her skimpy white cotton top, he felt her nipples harden and almost moaned himself. Wanting her set his belly aflame and his blood roaring. It came to him that he could take her now and end this pointless argument once and for all. She would be his, end of story.

  But until he knew what kept her from giving herself to him of her own accord, he couldn’t in good conscience take what was within his grasp, although, heaven knew, he wanted to. He had never wanted anything—or anyone—more.

  Cursing Des Logan for instilling at least a few principles into him, he trailed kisses down her throat and stiffly, painfully lifted his head. Her eyes were cloudy with desire, her limbs shaky. He held her until he was sure she could stand on her own, then stepped back.

  “Now you know why I don’t return more often.”

  Her breathing became shallow. “I never guessed.”

  “You must have known I was attracted to you.”

  “But not—like this.”

  To give them both time, he finished making the coffee and carried the mugs to the living room. He was surprised nothing spilled, considering how unsteady his hands felt. She followed more slowly and sat across the table from him, her face pale.

  He disliked cornering her, but he’d had to show her what was at stake. Words could never have convinced her. He realized he’d taken a risk by showing her how strongly she affected him. Sharing his feelings wasn’t something he did easily, and he doubted he did it well. She might still reject him, but if she agreed to his proposition, they’d both have a chance of moving on.

  She cupped her hands around the mug he placed in front of her. “I admit I feel something for you, and it’s powerful. No, let me finish while I can,” she said as he moved to interrupt. “If I thought going to bed with you would get you out of my system I’d say yes.”

  “So what’s the problem?” he demanded, unable to stay silent.

  Lifting her head, she gave him a troubled look. “I prefer to keep my life the way it is, free of emotional entanglements. It isn’t personal.”

  “The hell it isn’t. Whatever you need or want from me to ease your fears on that score, tell me and I’ll make sure you have it.”

  “It isn’t that simple. What I want is to stay uninvolved.”

  “What you want?”

  She heard the disbelief in his tone. “All right, what I need. If you truly feel about me the way you claim, you’ll try to understand.”

  “I’ll never understand,” he stated. “And I will do everything in my power to change your mind.”

  Her faint smile was his reward. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. But I won’t change my mind. And I’ll find another way to go after the diamond mine.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Coffee sloshed over the edge of her cup. “You mean you’ll help me?”

  “I always intended to help you, no matter what your answer. I guess I hoped you’d fall for my bluff and give me more incentive to go looking for this blasted mine.”

  “Don’t you believe it exists?”

  “It’s a beautiful legend, and as tempting as that lottery win you mentioned before. And just about as likely.”

  “Then why look for it?”

  He couldn’t hold back his smile. “Because it gives me an excuse to stay close to you for the next month. How else can I work on changing your mind?”

  Chapter 3

  Judy wasn’t sure how she felt; everything was happening too fast. She didn’t need anything else on her plate. Least of all Ryan trying to pressure her into a hot and heavy affair.

  No, not an affair. She could have handled a fling. And she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t thought about becoming involved with him. But she doubted she could protect her heart if they took their attraction to the next level.

  He wasn’t the only one struggling to deal with the chemistry between them. She also remembered the awareness that had flashed between them like summer lightning when they were both too young to understand what was going on.

  Every time she’d seen him since then, she’d felt the pull growing stronger, more irresistible, until she’d found herself making excuses to fly to wherever she knew he was working, usually as a stockman on some outlying property. He’d greeted her cordially enough, but she’d never been able to tell whether he was pleased to see her. Once or twice, he’d acted as if he couldn’t wait for her to leave, making her wonder if there was another woman involved. Still she’d kept tabs on him. Some people never learned.

  Sometimes she wished she could forget all abou
t him, putting as much distance between them as humanly possible. Was that how he’d felt when he’d run away from Diamond Downs as a teenager? When he’d gone, she’d felt as if something precious had been taken away. She’d told herself she was worried about how he would cope on his own, although he’d been doing it long enough. The truth was she’d missed him.

  Not that she’d been short of companionship. Blake, Tom and Cade were good fun when they’d been persuaded to forget that she was—shock, horror—a girl. Ryan had never needed persuading; every look and casual touch acknowledged the inescapable fact. She’d missed that, too.

  Especially that.

  Yet now, facing him and hearing him say point-blank that he wanted her, she wished she were anything but female. Anything but the focus of his single-minded attention. What was going on with her?

  The feel of his kiss lingered on her mouth more strongly than the food they’d shared. She knew she would taste him long into this night.

  Ever alert to her moods, he pushed his coffee mug to one side and rested his forearms on the table. “Where do you want to start?”

  With her mind still on his kiss, she almost answered the wrong question. Then she realized he meant the diamond mine.

  She marshaled her scattered wits. “You went over the map with Blake and Tom, so you know roughly where they think the mine should be found.”

  “The hidden valley that leads off Cotton Tree Gorge,” he said, showing he’d done his homework.

  She smiled. “Blake wants Dad to call it Francis Valley after Jo.”

  “Sounds fair. I gather she took quite a tumble falling into the place while dodging Eddy Gilgai. Then she picked herself up and went exploring. Resilient as well as smart. She did well for herself snagging Blake.”

  Judy made a face at him. “Couldn’t he be the lucky one?”

  “Ideally, the benefits are mutual.”

  “Big of you to admit it,” she muttered under her breath.

  Ryan didn’t react. “They did us a favor finding the remnants of your great-grandfather’s canoe in the Bowen River,” he went on.