She could think of absolutely nothing to say as a vista of Plover Park and her life there without him filled her mind’s eye—not a sunlight vista, but a cold and lonely one…
‘Lee?’
She blinked and refocused, to see that all the amusement had drained from his expression. Just don’t let him be able to read my mind, she prayed. ‘Um…yes—no, that’s fine,’ she said disjointedly. ‘Is it anything serious? Whatever it is that’s come up?’ she queried.
He hesitated, his eyes narrow and very probing. Then he said, ‘A very important client of mine has got himself into a spot of bother, that’s all.’
‘Oh. When will you go?’
‘Are your grandparents back?’
‘Yes. Nan rang earlier. She asked us to dinner, as a matter of fact.’
‘You go,’ he said quietly, and glanced at his watch. ‘I can be back in Brisbane in time for dinner.’
Her eyes widened.
‘It’s for the best, Lee. And I will be back; I’m just not sure when. My client has complicated matters by being in Vanuatu.’
‘Really? Oh, well, definitely—I mean, it’s for the best, I’m sure!’ She forcibly stirred herself into action. ‘Will I go ahead and order all this?’ She gestured towards the dining room table.
‘If you wouldn’t mind. I plan to open the branch four weeks from today, so anything you order has to be installed by then.’ He paused and frowned. ‘Look, I can take it with me and get someone from the Brisbane office to do all that—’
‘No way, José!’ Lee said. She opened her hand and smoothed out the cheque she was still clutching. ‘If I’m being paid this amount of money, I intend to earn it.’
‘Lee, it may mean many trips to Byron Bay that you wouldn’t normally make—’
‘Damien,’ she said with the light of battle in her eyes, ‘you can do your damnedest, you can kiss me out of exasperation until the cows come home, but this is one argument I intend to win!’
His lips twisted and something she couldn’t read came into his eyes as he studied her from head to toe in her pretty dress, her straight spine, her militant expression. Then he murmured, ‘I believe you this time. Never let it be said that I don’t recognise tiger mode when I see it.’
She couldn’t help relaxing and looking rueful.
‘That’s better,’ he said softly. ‘But just remember, you’re not a one-woman SWAT team, so no dicing with death on your own while I’m away.’
‘OK.’
He seemed about to say something, but Lee turned away as the phone rang.
Half an hour later, when he was ready to leave, she was able to be friendly and casual. But she stood staring after the blue Porsche for a long time. Then she breathed deeply and said to Lydia, ‘I’m sure I did the right thing. If it’s hard now, how much harder would it be after I’d slept with him?’
Lydia stood on tiptoe, stretched his wings, and subsided rather mournfully.
He was to be away for four days.
During that time Lee barely stopped to eat and sleep. Hard work seemed to be the only antidote for the crippling feeling of loss that plagued her. Hard work seemed to be the only way to still the circles of her mind.
But really there was only one way to look at it, she thought wearily that first night as she tossed in bed. She had presented him with a simple equation: they were not right for each other and they could only complicate their lives—unbearably for her, did he but know it—if they gave in to the attraction between them. And Damien had conceded the wisdom of it.
What that meant—and she couldn’t fail to grasp it—was that she could never be more than a passing affair to him. Perhaps if the real Lee Westwood was the kind of girl he’d taken to Ella Patroni’s party, rather than a one-woman SWAT team who wasn’t content unless she was growing things, she might have stood a chance…
She stilled on the thought. Did she honestly believe she wasn’t his type? Didn’t that imply that she knew what his type of woman was—but how? She’d never met any of his lovers…so how could she be so sure she wouldn’t be right for him? she thought suddenly.
It was four o’clock in the morning and a huge moon was setting to the west, casting an eerie light over the garden and lightening the outlines of her bedroom—she never closed her curtains because she loved to wake up to the sunrise, and the main bedroom at Plover Park had windows to the east and west.
She turned over and heard Peach stir in his basket outside the sliding veranda door. Shortly Henry would start crowing and the bird and animal kingdom would wake to greet a fresh new day. Not that long ago she would have bounced out of bed to grasp that fresh new day, but that was before Damien Moore had got into her blood and her heart.
The funny thing was, she mused, she knew so much more about him now—except, perhaps, for the vital element: what he was looking for in a soul mate.
Something his mother had said surfaced in her mind. I sometimes wonder if Damien isn’t quite content the way he is. Too many women have made fools of themselves over him. In fact a marriage of convenience might suit him admirably…
Lee stirred restlessly and sat up. Her response at the time had been to ask his mother why she thought that. Evelyn Moore had shrugged and said that properly set up, with both partners suffering no illusions, a marriage of convenience had been known to work—and anyway, the falling-in-love kind of marriage carried no guarantees of success, as she saw only too often in her court.
‘But what puts a man into that kind of mind-set?’ Lee had posed.
Evelyn had looked at her rather cynically out of Damien’s dark eyes and commented that monogamy was harder for men than women, that a primarily business arrangement which nevertheless ensured heirs and order was perhaps not to be sneezed at from a male point of view.
Lee had stared at her open-mouthed, and—possibly because she had felt sudden embarrassment about associating her only son with this kind of male mind-set—Damien’s mother had then said rather abruptly that she was only theorising in general and obviously this marriage was a different thing entirely.
Now, sitting up in bed with her head in her hands, Lee had to wonder if his mother hadn’t been more right than she knew. Not about Damien’s marriage to her, but could her own mysterious certainty that she wasn’t the right person for him come from an instinct that this was his mind-set after too many women had made fools of themselves over him?
It would explain a lot, she felt. And she was suddenly certain that if she had ever let her defences slip, let him know in any way how she’d felt about him up until Cyril’s will was contested, he would no more have suggested they get married than fly to the moon.
But was the awful irony of it the fact that their marriage of convenience was starting to look more attractive to him? Was that what his remark had been about—the remark she hadn’t understood at the time? Different lifestyles may not be a bar to a successful marriage…
She lifted her head and knew with a cold, sinking certainty that she could not survive the kind of marriage his mother had outlined to Damien Moore. Two separate individuals who came together only to ensure heirs and order but lived different lifestyles at other times…
No, don’t even contemplate it, Lee, she told herself. Even if it means losing Plover Park you need somehow to place yourself away from this kind of close contact with him.
But how? she wondered, and rubbed her face.
Three days later she hadn’t come up with an answer. In the meantime, the weather had broken, some much-needed rain had fallen and the temperature had dropped. Then fate intervened.
She took Peach for a walk after dinner. It was a cool evening, and wet underfoot although it wasn’t raining. They went up to the shed to close up the chicken house for the night, then crossed the paddock to stroll along the creek and inspect the Murray Greys, who were grazing contentedly along the banks. ‘All present and correct!’ she said to Peach. ‘The creek’s up a bit. OK—let’s go home.’
It was quite dar
k by then, so she flicked on her torch for the walk back to the house—and nearly died to see a large snake right in front of her.
She stepped backwards instinctively, slipped in the mud and fell into the creek. The shock of it took her breath away and she flailed around, slipping on the mossy rocks, getting soaked. Then one foot slid between two rocks and she couldn’t free it—and Peach was barking hysterically at the snake.
‘Leave it alone, Peach,’ she screamed. ‘It may be only a carpet snake but it could be a brown. Please, Peach,’ she begged. She cast around for the torch but couldn’t find it, then tugged desperately at her ankle but nothing happened.
‘Damn and frustration! This can’t be happening to me,’ she sobbed. But it was. For the next hour she was forced to sit on her bottom with creek water swirling up to her chest as she tried in vain to release her foot. She called for Peach, who came back to her repeatedly but only to lick her face before resuming his guardian role of keeping himself between her and the snake.
Her only consolation was that the snake must have started to move away, because Peach’s barking got further away and it took him longer to come back to her. Then it started to rain and she started to get cold.
Just as she’d tearfully decided she was going to have to spend the night in the creek, she saw a light bobbing across the paddock and heard someone calling her name. Damien.
It was Peach who led him to her, and as the light of his torch flickered over her he swore. ‘What the bloody hell have you been doing, Lee?’ he barked. ‘I thought I told you not to—’
He stopped abruptly, and then he was down on his knees beside her. ‘Sorry. What happened? When there was no one in the house and I could hear Peach barking I… What happened?’ He put his arms around her.
She sobbed out the whole comedy of errors into his shoulder and then couldn’t stop crying. ‘I hate snakes,’ she wept and shuddered.
‘Lee,’ he said gently, ‘you poor darling.’ And he hugged her until the storm of weeping subsided. ‘OK. Let me see if I can free you now.’
He pulled a hanky from his pocket. It was wet, but she could at least blow her nose. ‘Tell me if I’m hurting you,’ he warned. Nothing he did released her foot, and he finally said, ‘Lee, I’m going to have get a crowbar. I’ll be as quick as I can. Look—’ He ripped off his tie—he was as muddy and wet as she was—grabbed Peach and attached the tie to the dog’s collar. ‘Now he can stay right here with you to protect you. OK?’
She shuddered again, then nodded and buried her face in Peach’s fur. Damien stood up, studied her for a moment, then did a quick sweep of the bank. There was no sign of the snake. ‘I’ll be back before you know it, Lee.’
‘OK,’ she mumbled with her teeth chattering. ‘I’m OK. I may not look it now, but I am.’
‘That’s my girl!’ He came back into the water and planted a quick kiss on the top of her head.
He was no more than ten minutes and came back on the tractor. In only a few minutes more, with the tractor headlights bathing the scene, he’d moved one of the deeply embedded rocks and released her foot. Then he carried her to the bank and eased her boot off. Finally, after some manipulation, he said. ‘Not broken—a bit swollen, maybe a slight sprain. What do you think? Could you stand?’
She did so cautiously, with his help, and although her ankle was sore it was up to bearing her weight.
‘Good.’ He pulled a blanket out of a plastic bag and wrapped her up in it. ‘Can you hang on if I put you on the carry-all?’
She nodded, but her teeth were still chattering. All the same, she said, ‘I’ve…r-r-ruined…you. Sorry!’
He looked down at himself, formally dressed in grey trousers and a cream silk shirt, although minus his jacket and tie, and glinted a smile at her. ‘Who cares? OK, hang on—this is the last lap.’
The first thing he did when he got her into the house was administer a tot of brandy.
‘Now to get you warm,’ he said as he carried her into the bedroom. ‘How long were you there before I arrived?’
‘I don’t know. About an hour, I think. The trouble is I hate snakes. They can swim, you know.’ She was speechless for a moment, then, ‘That’s why I was less than my best—and I was petrified Peach would get bitten—what are you doing?’
Damien continued what he was doing, which was taking her out of her sodden clothes. ‘Getting you warm. Don’t worry about it.’ He went on conversationally, ‘Not to mention in your list of woes being soaked, with the creek rising, by the look of it, and catching pneumonia. But I know how you feel. I hate snakes too.’
Lee blinked at him through some dripping strands of hair. ‘I thought you said you could take them or leave them?’
He pulled her jeans down to her ankles. ‘Step out of them if you can.’
‘I…’ Lee hesitated and then did as she was bid, which left her in her bra and panties. ‘I…’
‘I think I said I didn’t like them.’ He picked her up before she could finish speaking and carried her into the bathroom. ‘But it would be more accurate to say I loathe them.’ He set her on her feet, deftly released her bra and slid her panties down, then switched the shower on. While she was still trying to cover herself up he lifted her into the cubicle beneath a spray of blessedly warm water.
She gasped, but it was wonderful and she closed her eyes for a moment. Then her lashes flew up and she saw he was still there. ‘Damien—’
He interrupted gravely, ‘Why don’t you reflect on a bit of macho evasion?’
‘You mean—over snakes?’
‘Yep.’ He looked wickedly amused and picked up her hand to rest it on the stainless steel bar installed on the shower wall. ‘In the meantime, hang on to this if you feel wonky. I’ll go and change—I’ll only be a minute.’
He came back in five, showered and wearing tracksuit pants and a plaid flannel shirt. Lee was still standing in the shower with a bemused expression on her face, but some warmth was trickling through to her bones at last.
‘Had enough?’ he queried, and picked up a towel.
What was wrong with her? she wondered. Why wasn’t she more flustered? Why hadn’t she got out and got dressed rather than standing like a naked statue beneath the stream of warm water until he came back and subjected her to that impersonal dark gaze?
Point one, she thought, that dark gaze was completely impersonal—as had been his earlier undressing of her. Point two, her will even to move and think seemed to be affected—she might as well be a naked statue. Of course it could be that she was still in shock, she reflected, but which had been the greater shock…?
‘Lee?’ He held the towel open.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured, and stepped out at last to be enfolded in it. Not long afterwards she was wearing a nightgown he had pulled from a drawer and slipped over her head, she was in bed, where he had put her, propped up against some pillows, and Peach had come to keep her company while Damien made them something to eat.
‘Peach deserves a medal,’ he’d said with a lurking smile before departing for the kitchen.
Now Lee stroked the dog’s silky ears and said to him softly, ‘Why do I feel like this, Peach? As if I’m a speck of dust floating in the wind? He was only doing what anyone would have in the circumstances—what did I expect? That he wouldn’t be able to control himself, faced with me in my birthday suit?’
No, she answered herself mentally, of course not. So what is this feeling I have?
It came to her gradually—she felt like a kid. A kid Damien Moore was fond of—fond enough to make sure she was all right and didn’t have any ill effects from a nightmare experience, but no more, and it hurt her.
‘Lee?’
She looked up with a start as he placed a tray across her knees. There was a fluffy, fragrant herb omelette, toast and a glass of wine.
‘Thanks, but I don’t think I can eat—’
He overrode her. ‘Yes, you can. Don’t be silly, just do as you’re told. I’ll bring mine in and we
’ll eat together.’
He left and Lee took up her wine, sipped it, and was amazed at what was going through her mind—especially considering what she’d been through not that long ago. Of course she wouldn’t do it, she mused—she wouldn’t get the opportunity for one thing—but the temptation was almost unbearable.
In the end, though, it was what she’d been through that did it for her…
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE ate it all.
Damien pulled an armchair up close to the bed and ate his omelette from a tray on his knees. They talked desultorily. He told her he’d only come back for the night, just to check out how she and the new office were doing, because he was off to Vanuatu the next afternoon.
Lee raised her eyebrows. ‘He must be a very special client.’
Damien shrugged. ‘He’s a loveable larrikin, but he’s always trying to bend the rules.’
‘How long will you be there?’
‘A couple of days. How are things going with the office?’
‘Good. Painter, carpet-layer and tiler all organised and they should be finished by the end of next week. Then the office furniture people can move in. The only thing that’s going to be a tight squeeze is the reception desk, but the cabinet-maker assures me he will get it done, come hell or high water.’
Damien smiled fleetingly. ‘You’re a clever girl.’
Lee looked around the comfortable lamplit bedroom. The bed was double, with a lovely cherrywood curved bedhead and she was ensconced beneath a cream quilt patterned with tiny roses, leaning against frilled cream pillows. The cream damask curtains, she noticed for the first time, were closed. But that didn’t stop her mind from taking a leap to the creek and the awful panic she’d suffered while trapped in it.
‘Not so clever a little while ago,’ she murmured.
‘It could have happened to anyone.’ He’d taken their trays away and made coffee. ‘However…’ He paused and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It is the problem about living here on your own, Lee.’
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