Damien looked across at her. She’d had a shower and changed into clean jeans and a white blouse. There was no doubt in his mind that she was trying to project a relaxed air, but he could see the tension beneath it.
He said, ‘Why don’t you have your grandparents living here with you?’
‘My grandmother really loves her home and garden and she’s prone to migraines if she gets too unsettled. They’re happy to look after the place for me if I need to be away, but I don’t want to uproot her if I can avoid it.’
‘But don’t you get lonely or feel unsafe?’
Lee looked around and whistled softly. Peach immediately came running round the corner of the house to sit adoringly at her feet.
Damien grinned. ‘OK, but what about lonely?’
‘I don’t think I’ve had time to feel lonely. And besides Peach I’ve got my birds.’
‘Tell me about them,’ he invited, studying the mixture of guinea fowl and chickens on the lawn.
‘The hens go by the names of Shirley, Hattie, Flojo and Merlene. The rooster is Henry, because he reminds me of Henry VIII—he’ll add any passing chook to his harem! The two dark grey guinea fowl are Hermione and Roly; the pale grey one is Lydia. Lydia hates Henry, and often chases him and pulls feathers out of his tail.’
He looked amused. ‘Why?’
‘Well…’ Lee gestured. ‘It’s rather sad. Unlike Henry, Roly is a one-girl man. He and Hermione are inseparable. They tolerate Lydia, but never let her get too close. So she’s a frustrated spinster and she often goes about haranguing the whole world. Arrogant males, which Henry definitely is, are anathema to her. Incidentally, guineas in haranguing mode are unmelodic and deafening, I should warn you!’
‘Thanks. Go on, this is fascinating.’
Lee glanced at him, but there was nothing about his expression to suggest he wasn’t being genuine. She chuckled softly. ‘That was my scenario, I should say, until I found out that Lydia, who was sold to me as a girl, is in fact a bloke.’
Damien sat up and studied the pale grey guinea fowl. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Male guineas have larger horns and wattles. But the one true test of femininity in Numida Meleagris, or the African Guinea Fowl, is in their call. Only the female utters the two-syllable call that sounds like “Go-back, Go-back!” And only Hermione makes that call here.’
He burst out laughing. ‘So Lydia is a Lionel?’
‘Except that I can’t stop thinking of him as a she and I can’t change his name. And he’s still the odd man out, although it does explain why he feels he can take Henry on.’ Lee stood up. ‘Should I check the pasta? I—’
‘Sit down,’ he recommended. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘But—’
‘But me no buts!’ He got up and strolled inside.
Lee sank back into her chair and examined the unreality of it all.
Here they were, just the two of them, a married couple in everything but reality. OK, it had been an easy enough day, she reflected. He’d been perfectly happy with the bedroom that she’d prepared for him at the opposite end of the house to hers. He’d expressed his appreciation of the desk she’d set up for him in the family room, which had a telephone line so he could access his e-mail and use his laptop computer. He’d spent most of the afternoon helping her grandfather to repair the pump that drew water from the creek to the nursery.
Then Bill and Mary had departed and he’d taken over the kitchen to prepare dinner, showing a culinary expertise that had caused her eyes to widen. But what was ahead? she wondered, uneasily. She rose with the sun, which was roughly five-thirty at this time of the year, and after a long full day went to bed at nine o’clock. For some reason she couldn’t picture Damien Moore being an early to rise, early to bed type, so…
‘Lee?’
She jumped, and turned to see him standing in the terrace doorway, studying her humorously.
‘What?’
‘Don’t look so worried! All you have to do is your own thing and I’ll do mine.’
‘I…I…’ She couldn’t go on, and could have killed herself as she twisted her hands awkwardly.
A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘Just think of us as housemates,’ he recommended. ‘And I’m ready to serve dinner if you’re ready to eat.’
‘I…thank you, yes,’ she said helplessly.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I’M GOING to spray the cows this morning,’ Lee said to Damien at breakfast. ‘It should be done every six weeks at this time of the year, for buffalo fly.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’ He passed her the toast.
Not only had he cooked the most divine pasta marinara the night before, he’d cooked breakfast this morning. Bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes. Her sole contribution had been a fragrant pot of percolated coffee. In fact it had been the aroma of bacon that she’d woken up to—she’d slept in and Damien had been up before her.
‘Did you sleep all right?’ she’d asked anxiously on encountering him shaved, showered and dressed in khaki shorts and shirt, although barefoot.
‘Like a baby,’ he’d replied. And he’d certainly looked relaxed, as well as very much at home. He’d let the chickens and guinea fowl out, collected the eggs and fed Peach.
It was rather difficult for Lee to associate him in this role with his other persona the hotshot lawyer. It even led her to reflect that this might not be such a disaster after all from the point of view of how he would fit in with her lifestyle at Plover Park.
The previous evening had been…comfortable, she thought. After dinner they’d gone for a walk in the extended twilight of daylight saving, then they’d watched television until she’d yawned and been told by him to go to bed and not to worry about him. She’d hesitated, then done as she was told. What he’d occupied himself with she had no idea; she’d fallen asleep as soon as her head had touched the pillow.
Now she said, ‘I can manage the cows. That’s one thing about Murray Greys; they’re very amenable.’
‘Surely two pairs of hands are better than one?’
They were eating on the veranda outside the kitchen. Peach was sitting beside Lee, thumping his tail now and then in case he should be forgotten in the matter of scraps. Lee handed him a bacon rind and picked up her coffee cup.
The garden was still sparkling beneath a diamond coating of dew as the rising sun cast its rays around. The sky was clear, birds were singing, and it was going to be a brilliant day. She cast her eyes contentedly along the rockery that bordered the drive. Six rose bushes, from deep velvety red through to a lovely clear yellow, were blooming extravagantly.
‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘Just be careful. I’ve got my neighbour’s bull here at the moment. He’s really a pussycat most of the time, but he is huge! A lot of accidents with bulls happen when people get crushed against fences and walls.’
‘Is that a fact? All right, I’ll take care. How long is he here for?’
‘Two months. His name—my name for him anyway—is Ferdinand.’ She looked mischievous. ‘He’s a very romantic bull.’
Damien blinked. ‘It would appear that nothing that moves escapes being named round here—how so romantic, though?’
‘Well, he chooses a cow and he never leaves her side. He even lies down next to her and—I don’t know—somehow projects the image of being in love with her.’
‘Really?’ The fine lines beside Damien’s eyes crinkled. ‘I gather it doesn’t last for ever, though?’
Lee dropped Peach another bacon rind from Damien’s plate. ‘Only a few days—but at least he knows how to make a girl feel special at the time.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Lee looked at him wryly. ‘I doubt Ferdy could teach you much, Damien. So,’ she continued, without giving him the opportunity to reply, ‘here’s how we do it. The yard, as you may have noticed, is next to the main gate, and the cows at the moment are in the furthest paddock from the road. I’ll mix the stuff up, then I’ll take the tractor and som
e lucerne to the middle gate—once they see me on the tractor, using the lucerne as the proverbial carrot, they generally come running and follow me into the yard.’
‘What would you like me to do?’
‘Open the middle gate. Why don’t you borrow Bill’s wellingtons?’ For as long as she could remember she’d called her grandfather by his first name, and she pointed to his pair of boots neatly lined up on the veranda. ‘Just in case you spook them and they take off across the creek.’
He grimaced. ‘Good thinking, Mrs Moore. When do we start?’
‘As soon as we’ve done the dishes—that is, I will do the dishes since you cooked brekky. Thanks.’ Lee patted her stomach. ‘I haven’t had that kind of breakfast for years.’
‘Let me guess,’ he murmured. ‘You’re a fruit and muesli girl? Yoghurt?’
‘Well—’ Lee shrugged ‘—it is healthy.’
He smiled into her eyes but it was a secretive smile. ‘It’s also nice to break out and live a bit once in a while.’
‘Why do I get the feeling you mean that in a—larger context?’ she asked cautiously.
He allowed his dark gaze to drift over her. She wore denim shorts and a faded pink T-shirt with Snoopy on the front and her feet were bare. Her hair was tied back severely and she wore no make-up. There was little evidence that this was the girl he’d taken to Ella Patroni’s party. His gaze narrowed on the thought that Lee Westwood was an enigma. Her wholehearted dedication to this project was somewhat at odds with the lifestyles of most of the twenty-four-year-old girls of his acquaintance.
Yet Cyril Delaney had read her right in that he couldn’t have put Plover Park into better hands, not to say brought her more pleasure—you couldn’t think anything else, he mused. Did that mean Cyril had done his own investigation of Lee Westwood?
And had he, Damien Moore, said what he’d just said to her in a larger context? For example trying to merge this dedicated horticulturist turned farmer with the girl who had been such a stunning partner at Ella’s party? If so, why? he asked himself. Because he knew he could unsettle her? Knew there were times when she was not as unaffected by him as she’d like him to think? His lips twitched at the thought. Even now he could see her growing restive and bothered beneath his regard…
All the same, what complications would he be adding to those he’d already invited? It had been an uncharacteristically quixotic gesture to suggest this marriage, but as a marriage of convenience it had presented him with little difficulty. Once it became anything more than a marriage in name only, how difficult was it going to be to walk away in ten months’ time? Which he had fully, and always intended to do… But was it too late to stem the sensual appreciation of Lee Westwood that had started to trickle into his blood?
He stood up and looked enigmatically at her upturned face with its expression of growing bewilderment that signified she had no idea what was going through his mind. And he had to smile slightly. Because although his wife could be a tiger in lots of respects, she was astonishingly naive in others…
‘A larger context?’ He shrugged. ‘I guess it doesn’t hurt anyone to live a little, that’s all. What say I meet you at the middle gate in half an hour?’
Lee hesitated as she sensed she was being fobbed off, but something warned her not to probe any further. She gathered the plates and stood up. ‘Yes, I should be ready by then. By the way, if you didn’t bring a hat—’
‘I did.’
‘Then you should wear it. It may be early but it’s going to be a scorcher.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said meekly.
She ignored this. ‘And take a stick. Not only for the cows but just in case you run across a snake. There’s a selection of them in the garage.’
‘Certainly, ma’am.’ He tugged his forelock.
‘That is the worst imitation of a serf I’ve ever seen!’ And she walked indoors, laughing at him out of those stunning green eyes.
It was nearly three quarters of an hour later by the time she jumped onto the tractor. Damien had disappeared, but she’d been delayed by a phone call.
She fired the ancient red Massey Ferguson, checked that her load of a biscuit of lucerne, spray and apparatus was secure on the carry-all, and trundled down the hill from the shed to the main drive, with Peach lolloping along behind her.
She drove over the first cattle grid, and was about to turn left off the drive into the paddock and head towards the middle gate when she looked ahead. There, on the right of the drive, next to the main gate, was the wooden sliprail yard where she’d planned to pen the cattle and spray them—full of cows.
She blinked and nearly stalled the tractor, for there also, lounging against the rails, was Damien Moore. She gritted her teeth. He had single-handedly, and without any inducement, successfully yarded five cows, five very active calves and one very large bull.
‘Peach,’ she said bitterly, as she recovered herself and drove towards the yard, ‘is there anything this man can’t turn his hand to?’
To Damien Moore she said, as she pulled up next to the yard and killed the motor, ‘I gather there’s something you haven’t told me? To do with not being the city slicker you appear to be?’ Her gaze was severe.
He looked amused from beneath his broad-brimmed Akubra. ‘I did a stint of jackerooing in my dim and distant youth, that’s all.’
‘All! You could have told me.’ She vaulted off the tractor. ‘I feel a right fool now!’
‘Sorry.’ His teeth glinted. ‘I couldn’t resist it. Why don’t you tell me their names? I’m sure they have names.’
Lee pulled on some rubber gloves, poured the mixture from the bucket into the spray gun and screwed the top on carefully. ‘And that makes me feel about ten years old.’
He straightened as she approached the yard and started to climb over the rails. ‘Lee…um…you don’t plan to get in there with them, do you?’
‘Of course I do!’ She balanced on the top rail and reached for the mask that was hanging around her neck.
‘I don’t know about a ten-year-old, but you’re mad,’ he said firmly, and wrested the spray from her. ‘You were the one that warned me about the dangers of getting crushed!’ He gestured impatiently towards the milling, mooing cows trampling around in the small yard.
‘But I can’t get to the calves properly unless I get in,’ Lee objected. ‘I’m fast and agile,’ she added proudly.
‘You may be, but you’re still only a slip of a girl.’ And he climbed over the rail into the yard.
‘I… Oh, well, take my mask.’ She held it out to him. ‘Watch out for Ferdy!’
But if she was fast and agile Damien did it all by authority, she saw over the next few minutes. Her cows—damn them, she thought acidly—recognised someone who knew what he was doing and reacted accordingly. Then it struck her that they were their cows, but it didn’t help much.
‘OK, mission accomplished,’ he said, and opened the yard to release the small herd.
Lee watched them drift out, then cross the drive and, with a sudden excess of spirit, gallop skittishly across the paddock with Ferdy lumbering along behind. She realised Damien was standing next to her.
‘Penny for them?’ he said.
She sighed. ‘I guess I thought there might be one thing I was better at than you are. So I’m feeling a little deflated, but I’ll get over it.’
He laughed softly. ‘If I’ve surprised you, you’ve also surprised me. What did you think of the photo in the paper?’
Her eyes widened and a tinge of colour warmed her cheeks. ‘It was…for the purpose of what the rest of the world thinks of us, it was perfect.’
‘It was that all right.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘But what do you think their reaction would be if they could see you now?’
She looked down at herself ruefully. She’d changed out of her shorts and she now had a khaki bush shirt on—purchased from a disposal store and several sizes too big—with faded, patched moleskins and short brown boots. Her hair was
tucked up into a floppy khaki hat. ‘They could be forgiven for thinking it was a different girl.’
‘Precisely. They could even be forgiven for thinking you were a boy, at the moment. But not necessarily a less interesting person.’
She looked into his eyes uncertainly.
‘What I’m trying to say is—you are a constant surprise to me.’ He sobered. ‘But promise me one thing. Don’t ever do this on your own again.’
His eyes, she realised, were almost black, and completely compelling. ‘I—’
‘Not because you’re incompetent,’ he overrode her, ‘but because accidents can happen, and with no one around it could be a disaster.’
‘I don’t usually do it without Bill around,’ she confessed.
‘Good. What’s next on the agenda?’
‘I need to spend some time in the nursery. It was a phone call that delayed me, by the way. Bill rang to say that Nan has woken up with a migraine so he’s going to keep her quiet and at home for the day. And then I was planning to tackle my bookwork. Why?’
‘Could you fit in a swim and lunch at Byron Bay? I’m taking over the new office today, but that’s only a matter of getting the keys and having a look around, as well as a short meeting with the interior decorator.’
The one thing Plover Park lacked was a swimming pool. The creek was no more than knee deep, and she already had sweat running down her face beneath her floppy hat as the sun beat down with quite some intensity, despite it only being eight-thirty in the morning. The thought of a swim in the surf at Byron Bay was almost irresistible.
‘Well…’ she temporised.
‘I could lend a hand in the nursery,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t mind going over your bookwork with you. I don’t see why we couldn’t fit it all in.’ He traced the droplets of moisture and tendrils of hair stuck to her cheek.
Lee moved for two reasons: the feel of his fingers on her skin and the hollow feeling within that told her Damien intended to get his way over this. He’d pushed his hat back, and because she was still sitting on the rail, with her heels hooked on the rung below, she had the unusual advantage of being able to look down at him. For a moment she was unbearably tempted to return the compliment—to trace the outline of his face, the line of his strong throat and run her fingers across the width of his shoulders beneath the khaki cotton.
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