‘I believe you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m only happy I’m not on the other side of a court to you. But what if he has proof that Cyril promised him Plover Park?’
‘If he had I’m sure he would have proceeded immediately.’
Lee ate in silence for a while. ‘He looked a lot like Cyril, you know, but he’s obviously a different kettle of fish altogether.’
Something sharpened in Damien’s gaze, but he didn’t explain it. Then the tough, dangerous lawyer receded and his lips twisted. ‘Are we any nearer to the bedroom from the kitchen?’
She picked up her knife and fork and started to eat again. ‘You must see… I mean that woman this morning alone… I don’t want to start anything I might regret,’ she said disjointedly.
‘OK.’ He finished his lunch tranquilly and pushed the plate away.
Lee regarded him frustratedly for a long moment.
He fielded her regard with casual unconcern, then grinned wickedly. ‘Was that not the response you hoped for, Lee?’
‘There are times when you can be incomprehensible and exasperating,’ she told him, annoyed.
‘There are times when I can be just the opposite.’
Comprehension came to Lee slowly as his dark gaze drifted down her body in the short pink dress. Then she understood exactly what he meant as her nerve-endings started to tingle and once again her body came alive with a longing to be in some private place with him. To be unclothed and caressed and made love to…
This was war, she thought chaotically. How could he do this? How could he tell her it was not a good idea then do this to her? Or—was it a test? What had he said about her lack of interest being refreshing? If only he knew, she reflected with some agony.
She swallowed and looked away. Then she suddenly remembered his tiger remark, and she looked back at him with wryly raised eyebrows. ‘If you want war, Damien, war is what you’ve got.’
CHAPTER SIX
FAMOUS last words, Lee mused a week later.
Far from war, peace had reigned at Plover Park. She’d girded her loins, she thought with a spark of black amusement, only to have nothing to ‘gird’ against. She’d gone into tiger mode but the opposition had been playful, helpful—even brotherly—leaving her with a considerable dilemma on her hands. She did not appreciate being treated like a kid sister but at the same time she was ready to scratch his eyes out should he treat her any other way.
It actually caused her to brood that she might be a little mad. It was only the strong suspicion he was toying with her that convinced her she was sane.
However, there were other less distressing aspects of the Plover Park Peace, as she thought of it. Damien had provided her with an awful lot of help. He didn’t seem to mind working in the nursery and he’d even suggested that Bill and Mary might like to take a week off—they’d acquiesced gratefully. He’d slashed the paddocks and fixed fences. He’d cleared a patch of lantana along the creek bank. He had an enormous amount of energy and his stint as a jackeroo had clearly provided him with plenty of skills outside the area of the law.
They’d gone through her books together too, and he’d complimented her on the profits she was showing.
Then there was the way they shared the house. They enjoyed a lot of the same television shows, they enjoyed the walk they always took after dinner with Peach, they had worked well together and they worked out a system of who would cook when. He kept his wing clear and tidy—he was a pleasant housemate, in other words.
And together they had extended the chicken house, when both Hattie and Shirley became broody. He’d also brought down an extensive collection of CDs, so there was often music in the background—all kinds, as he had eclectic tastes. To his amusement Lydia took to following him around and developed a taste for Mozart.
It was at night, when she often had difficulty sleeping, that Lee found it hard to resist her subconscious thoughts. Of course they weren’t subconscious in the true sense; they were thoughts she fought valiantly not to think. Because it was true to say she was falling more and more under the spell of Damien Moore…
He was a pleasure to watch when he was working. In fact he often took her breath away. Things she had to labour over mightily were a piece of cake to him, and it was obvious that despite being a deskbound lawyer for a lot of his life he was very fit.
It could be said, she mused one moonlit night, as she stared over the silvery paddocks when she should have been asleep, that she was becoming preoccupied with the magnificence of his body and his easy strength, but it was so much more. She saw his sense of humour, she shared the things that interested him, she was coming to know an awful lot about him.
They never lacked things to talk about over meals, at work or in the evening when they relaxed, often outside on the terrace as the magnificent summer weather favoured them. She discovered that he co-owned six racehorses, for example, and was a breeder in his own right. He showed her pictures of his mares and the current crop of foals, which she found fascinating. She even suggested names for the ones he intended to race himself. He told her he had acquired a helicopter licence when he was jackerooing and loved to fly but never had the time.
Then there was golf. To her amusement, he constructed a driving range on the farm, with the aid of the tractor, the mower and the slasher, and a putting green on the lawn. Each evening he hit dozens of balls and practised his putting. Lee and Peach watched most evenings, and blinked at his mastery of the little white ball. And Lee often chuckled at his expression of disgust at what she would have thought was a tremendous drive.
‘The man is a perfectionist,’ she often told Peach. ‘Don’t mess with him!’
But the most interesting conversations they had were generally over dinner. In light of his culinary expertise, Lee had set out to prove herself when it was her turn to cook, with the result that the evening meal at Plover Park became an elegant, delicious affair compared to the plain often hurried meals she was used to having on her own. She even took to using the good china and linen. And there was one thing she could do better than he, she discovered. Thanks to inheriting a gene from her grandmother, she made the lightest, melt-in-the-mouth pastry.
She turned this art into producing pizza, some filo pastry parcels with spinach and cheese, a steak and kidney pie, which earned his highest approbation, and an apple pie that he made her promise she would cook at least once a week.
So they talked food and wine over dinner, and swapped their experiences of international cuisine. She told him about the six months she’d spent backpacking around Europe and some of the marvellous gardens she’d seen. She told him a lot more, in fact, about her life as an only child and then an orphan, and how much her adored grandparents had done for her.
In return she gained some insights into his life and some of the things that drove him. There had, she gauged, been plenty of pressure to succeed. His grandfather had founded Moore & Moore, so there was the name to carry on. And of course there was his mother’s position. But there was also, she saw, a genuine fascination for him in the intricacies of the legal system as well as the law-making process.
It was over the decoration of his offices that the amnesty fell apart.
A week after their lunch at Byron Bay, Lee presented him with her final ideas. She’d got carpet samples, tile samples and paint charts. She’d taken him to the furniture factory, where they’d ordered not only a custom-made counter for the reception area but a couple of unique wood-framed mirrors and a hat and umbrella stand. She’d tracked down a distributor of Barcelona couches and put Damien in touch with a couple of local artists whose work, she felt, would be worthy of hanging on the walls of Moore & Moore. And she’d found a couple of lovely pottery urns for the palms she’d suggested.
She laid the paint charts and samples out on the dining room table and explained her preferences to him. She also gave him a fair estimation of the costs involved.
‘Barcelona couches don’t come cheap,’ she finished ruefully. ‘But
they are nice.’ She handed him an illustration.
He studied it thoughtfully, then her equally as thoughtfully. She’d just come home from doing the weekly shopping and wore a three-quarter-length green and white dotted sleeveless dress. Her hair was loose, the colour of polished mahogany, and her freckles were noticeable.
‘Too expensive?’ she asked at last, with some anxiety in her green eyes.
‘Not at all. You generally have to pay for class. Is that a new dress?’
‘Uh…why do you ask?’
His lips quirked. ‘I’ve never seen it before, that’s all.’
‘It’s so old I can’t remember how old it is,’ she said wryly. ‘I don’t wear a lot of dresses, and the last new one I had was—well, come to think of it there are two, and not that long ago.’
‘Would one of them be a little black number by any chance?’ he asked with a glint of amusement.
‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘Which I’ll probably never wear again.’
‘That would be a pity.’ He took in her uncertain expression and smiled inwardly. ‘This one also suits you, though.’ He turned back to the dining room table. ‘And all of this suits me—so…’ he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her… ‘this is for you.’
She unfolded what turned out to be a cheque and gasped at the amount. ‘Oh! No! I mean I couldn’t possibly accept this. Thank you very much.’ She went to give it back to him. ‘But I don’t want any payment at all.’
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans so she was left with the cheque, ‘Lee, don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t possibly pay you for all the work you’ve done around here, so I don’t expect to be paid for anything either, and…and…’ She paused and thought frantically. ‘It would be far too much even if I did.’
‘It’s what I would have paid an interior decorator,’ he said.
‘Maybe, but all I’ve done is get some samples!’
‘Listen to me, Lee,’ he said, in a way that told her he’d gone into lawyer mode and she was going to have to fight every inch of the way to get her way, ‘it’s not all you did. Anyone can assemble paints and samples, but it’s ideas interior decorators charge a small fortune for. I happen to think your ideas are brilliant, so I’m happy to pay for them.’
‘I still don’t want it.’ Her nose fined down and she eyed him defiantly. ‘I don’t need charity and that’s what this smacks of.’
‘For crying out loud, Lee,’ he said through his teeth, ‘it is not charity! Nor is it me personally paying you. It comes out of the budget the firm allocated to the new branch, and I can assure you it’s well within budget and perfectly legitimate.’
She disagreed. ‘How can it be? I’m a gardener, not an interior decorator!’
‘Didn’t you tell me you’d taken some courses? Don’t you have any faith in your ideas?’ he shot back.
She blinked. ‘Of course I do. That is—’
‘Don’t you design gardens, and did you not tell me your Lennox Head commission has been broadened into the design of an indoor pool room?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then you’re legitimate, Lee,’ he said coolly.
‘There’s a difference between a pool room and a suite of offices!’
‘There’s not,’ he disagreed. ‘It’s a matter of taste and discrimination, of which you obviously have plenty. Once the branch is finished, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get plenty of enquiries about who the decorator was. As for your argument about what I’ve done here—there is no argument. I own half this place, so any work I do is in my own interest.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Moreover,’ he interrupted grimly, ‘if you persist with this nonsense, I’ll do what you’ve been dying for me to do all week…’ He paused and looked humorous for a moment, ‘Something I’ve had a bit of trouble with myself.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s no other way to win an argument with you, anyway.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘This, Lee,’ he supplied, and pulled her into his arms. ‘This,’ he added barely audibly, and started to kiss her.
‘No,’ she breathed, but the feel of being in his encircling arms was intoxicating; it was, perversely, what she had wanted all week—although she’d fought so hard to stop herself from thinking about it. Not that she’d expected quite this, she thought confusedly. His mouth hard and demanding against hers, his body the same, intensely masculine and hungry. But conversely, after the first shock of it, her own hunger became demanding and allowed her to be carried away. As if she were flowering in his arms, as if she was the flame that had lit his ardour. It was a unique feeling.
‘So,’ he said when they pulled apart at last, ‘it was mutual.’
She laid her forehead against his chest, her breathing still ragged, her senses on fire. ‘Of course it was mutual. I don’t go around kissing men I don’t want to kiss like that.’
She felt his chest jolt and knew he was laughing at her. She raised her green eyes to his. ‘Perhaps I should qualify that—’
‘No. Don’t. It was pure Lee Westwood.’
‘Then perhaps I should say this, Damien. Have you fallen in love with me?’
‘I might have known you’d need to give it a name, Lee.’
She froze. He felt it, and after a moment tilted her chin so he could see her eyes, wide and stunned before she swiftly lowered her lashes.
‘Lee,’ he said quietly, ‘I didn’t mean to make fun of you.’
‘No. It’s not that. I mean…’ She tailed off confusedly.
‘Let’s look at this from another point of view,’ he said then. ‘Have you fallen in love with me?’
Her lashes rose, and for one mad moment she was tempted to say…I thought I had months ago, little to know that what I felt then was nothing compared to now. But where to go? Where to hide once she’d made that admission and found it wasn’t reciprocated? ‘I don’t…know,’ she said barely audibly. ‘I…it’s happened to me a couple of times before, so—’ She broke off awkwardly.
‘An attraction to a man who didn’t turn out to be the love of your life?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, although the truth of the matter was that her two previous encounters with what she’d thought was love had been pale imitations of what she felt for Damien Moore, what he did to her.
He smoothed her loose hair and smiled absently into her eyes. ‘Then could you believe that I’m in the same boat?’
‘Oh, yes, easily!’ Lee heard herself say, and flinched inwardly. What was she? she wondered. Her own devil’s advocate? ‘If anything I’m sure men have more of a problem with it than women—especially men like you.’ This time she flinched openly as his eyebrows shot up.
‘I’ll leave that unanswered for the moment,’ he said rather dryly, ‘in favour of another question. What do you suggest we do about it?’
A tangle of thoughts flew through Lee’s head. ‘You…kissed me,’ she said cautiously at last.
He grimaced. ‘Out of exasperation. But,’ he added, ‘it was something I had been thinking of all week.’
‘Something you wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t frustrated the life out of you, though?’ she asked.
He hesitated briefly. ‘No, Lee.’
She pushed herself away from him and walked over to stare out of the terrace doors. ‘I’ll have to take care I don’t frustrate you again,’ she said in a cool little voice. Then she turned and faced him. ‘Damien, there are enough complications in our lives already. An affair—’
‘We are married, Lee,’ he broke in.
‘Not really,’ she denied. ‘We both know that at the end of the twelve months we’ll go our separate ways, so it would be an affair and therefore a complication we don’t need.’
‘What if we find out that Cyril was right?’ He looked at her intently.
‘He wasn’t,’ she said steadily. ‘I’m not the right gir
l for you, Damien.’ A small smile lit her eyes, although inside she felt far from smiling. ‘You’ve been wonderful down here, better than I ever dreamt you could be, but it’s only an interlude for you—a break and a bit of a novelty.’ She looked at him questioningly.
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded after a moment.
‘Whereas this is my kind of lifestyle, even if it isn’t at Plover Park, so there’s a real chasm between us in that direction, and the other thing is—I suspect I’m a bit of a novelty for you as well.’
His lips twisted. ‘My one-woman SWAT team wife? Perhaps,’ he said again. ‘Though I didn’t feel as if I was kissing a SWAT team.’ He paused. ‘This chasm you talk about—different lifestyles may not be such a bar to a successful marriage.’
Lee blinked several times as she cast around for comprehension.
‘But,’ he continued before she could speak, ‘if that’s how you feel, Lee, I…bow to your wisdom.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and at the same time she wondered whether the pain that had gathered around her heart would ever go away.
‘On the other hand—’ Damien bent to pick up the cheque that had fluttered to the floor during their embrace ‘—I don’t want any arguments about this.’ He put it into her hand and closed her fingers over it. ‘Just do as you’re told and deposit it in your bank, Lee.’
‘I…’ She gathered herself, as if to take issue with him.
But he said gravely, ‘Don’t forget what the consequences could be.’
‘You wouldn’t…?’
He smiled fleetingly. ‘I’m a man, remember? You yourself told me only minutes ago how much worse these kind of things are for men to handle.’
Not sure if he was serious, not at all sure that her observation hadn’t been trite in the first place, Lee started to colour, and knew she looked confused and possibly even juvenile.
So it was no surprise when he started to laugh, but still bitter fruit for her to swallow—and there was worse to come. He stopped laughing, but his eyes were still alive with amusement as he patted her on the head. ‘OK, let’s call it quits. In view of this development, I think I might go back to Brisbane for a couple of days. As a matter of fact something has come up, and I was thinking of doing it anyway. But I’ll need to come back to tie up all the Byron Bay ends.’
Marriage on Command Page 11