Her laughter was a little too shrill as she jerked away from him. ‘I think you enjoy teasing me, Mr. Cameron!’
‘Neil,’ he commanded. ‘Surely, if we’re to be cousins?’
‘Yes, Neil...’ She forced herself to remember she might just have two days to impress him as to the desirability of this and that she would never manage it if she continued to act like a naive little fool. ‘I think I’m tired,’ she glanced up at him slowly, making her long curling lashes flutter impressively. ‘Would you mind if I went to bed?’
He towered over her, giving her the impression she was very small and fragile, something which, if he so wished, he might crush. ‘A retreat?’ he quirked, mildly sarcastic. ‘It can’t be the Scottish blood in you, surely? Maybe mine hasn’t been so diluted by charming infiltration. I always advance.’
‘Not on helpless friends, I hope?’ she replied nimbly, yet feeling a fine flare of fright that turned her towards the door.
‘Don’t be too sure of that!’ he laughed, his eyes containing, in spite of his growling laughter, more than a hint of derisive speculation. ‘Goodnight, Petronella, sleep well. We still have things to discuss, but nothing that can’t wait until morning.’
That night Petra’s dreams were disturbed many times by the black shadow of a menacing Cameron and she woke repeatedly, bathed in perspiration, seeing his face looming above her like some ghostly threat. To add to this her wrist still hurt whenever she turned over in bed, and eventually she decided to get up and dress. The light of a new day glowed outside with the promise of heat to come, so she discarded her jeans in favour of a skirt and thin body shirt. Beneath the skirt, apart from a pair of brief panties, her long slender legs were bare as she declined on such a fine morning to wear tights, while her top clung to her enticing young figure like a second skin.
Looking in on David, to see if he wanted to accompany her on a short half hour’s exploration, she found him still sleeping. He must have been tired out, and, as it was still only seven, she thought it better to let him stay where he was. After tucking in the blanket which was trailing on the floor she pushed the fair hair gently back from off his hot forehead before leaving him.
Swiftly, making no sound, she ran downstairs and out the front door on to the soft grass. Still holding her worn sandals in her hand, she let the morning fresh dew soak her bare feet, exulting unconsciously in the pagan feel of it as she walked. Not having walked like this since she had left Redwell, the memory brought the dampness of nostalgic tears to her eyes.
Cautiously she sought her way around. She dared not go far on two counts. First she was frightened David would wake and be alarmed if he found her gone. Secondly she didn’t want to get lost. Everything seemed so vast that she had little doubt it could happen, and being naturally adventurous she might easily find herself in another awkward situation. Yesterday’s experience was something she wouldn’t forget in a hurry, and while Neil seemed disposed to overlook it, it might not do to try his patience too far, no matter whose fault it might be. If she wasn’t careful she might bump into his dictatorial foreman and, somehow, on such a beautiful morning she didn’t feel like another nerve-racking encounter!
Pausing beside a white-railed fence some way from the house, she gazed around. The size of the property looked immense. The house, from where she stood, huge and sprawling, and behind it, through the trees, cabins and stockyards covered acres of ground. At least, to Petra’s startled eyes, they appeared to, and over all the Rockies rose, majestically invulnerable, shadowing the foothills. Their peaks she could follow to the sky, the lower ones clad in green forest but the higher ones bleak and bare, impressive while as intimidating as Neil Cameron himself!
Petra felt a dry shiver run right over her, even as the brilliant sunshine grew warmer. For so long she had known Neil Cameron’s face, but to meet him in person had seemed to shatter all her preconceived illusions. He was altogether a more formidable figure than she had ever imagined and it seemed hopeless to try and convince herself he was not the same person as that in the portrait. Before arriving here she had vowed dramatically that she would be willing to sacrifice even herself in order to help David, but she realised now this had only been an idea she had liked to play with. Under all her wilder suppositions she had been convinced of a father figure, lonely and frail, willing and even eager to welcome a new daughter. Neil Cameron, in the flesh, had devastated such unworldly dreaming and shown her what a flagrant coward she really was!
Yet now, without money, her options had gone absolutely and she was aware, with a sinking heart, that there was only one way to enslave a man like Cameron. Only one way, if she could manage it, to get what she wanted!
Pushing this—another act of weakness, to the back of her mind, she decided to try and find her unfortunate car. This might help to take her thoughts off her lack of courage and her aching wrist. Maybe, she pondered, on a more optimistic note, Cameron’s stepmother might happen to turn up and save her? Then despondently she thrust such wistful hopes aside. Other women rarely seemed very kindly disposed towards girls who managed to find themselves in her position. Mrs. Cameron was unlikely to prove the exception!
There was no one about. Maybe Neil Cameron had been called away or hadn’t yet left his bed. He probably hadn’t retired until the early hours. Last night he had had the look of a man who rarely tired. Petra’s wandering footsteps took her in the direction of a large shed, where the sound of muted hammering came to her ears. To her utter surprise the shed contained not only a helicopter but a small, expensive-looking plane, and, at the very end of this impressive evidence of Cameron’s affluence, her car. Going closer, she could see a man, a young man, crouched beside it with a pile of wrenches behind him.
‘Excuse me.’ Slightly breathless, she hobbled towards him, impatient that she had left her shoes on the grass and forgotten about them. ‘Is it going to be all right?’
The young man stumbled to his feet, appearing both startled and sheepish to find Petra standing over him. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. Did you want something?’
Petra smiled at him because he seemed a pleasant young man. ‘I only asked if you could mend it.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ this time he grinned in a friendly manner, ‘I think so. In fact if it belongs to you, I’ll guarantee it, but I’ve only been working on it a couple of hours.’
‘Two hours? But it’s barely seven now!’
‘Sure, ma’am,’ the boy’s eyes, taking in her fair hair and slim figure, grew warmer, ‘we rise early.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She drew back a little from the boy’s rather obvious admiration, her defence mechanism, as always these days, too ready to object. ‘I wonder—’ she began, her smile warily fading.
It disappeared altogether to find a proprietorial hand descending on her shoulder from behind and Neil Cameron’s cool voice in her ear. ‘You should be helping, not hindering, Petronella!’
Hastily she turned, in doing so bumping right up against him and feeling absolutely covered in confusion beneath his smouldering blue gaze. Why should he look so annoyed? When, unable to sustain his ice-bound glance, her thick lashes dropped, she felt even worse as her eyes encountered his brown chest through the half-open front of his checked shirt. It was broad and bare and covered with fine, dark hair, the shocking maleness of it filling her with an alarming repulsion which must have shown in her eyes.
‘I’ve only just come,’ she choked, wondering why, when she felt such abhorrence, her heart should be beating so furiously. ‘I was merely asking about the extent of the damage. Surely it would seem unnatural not to?’
His eyes glittered slightly as hers remained, as if in fascinated horror, on his chest. He ignored her resentful query as if he hadn’t heard it and waved, the young man back to his job. ‘You seem rather too distraught to make sense,’ he mocked. ‘Have you had breakfast? You look as though you’d spent the last hour running through the dew.’
‘No, not yet.’ She was conscious that his steady gaz
e unnerved her. When he looked at her, she thought crossly, her breath still uneven, it was as if he was weighing up all her assets, but completely impassively, almost as he might study one of his priceless steers. But then he was probably used to a different kind of reaction from his woman friends. Possible antagonism, such as hers, didn’t interest him.
‘Come with me,’ he ordered, as if her fragile uncertainties didn’t hold his attention. ‘You look as if you could do with a little feeding up. Right now I think I could crush you very easily, and if you keep on looking at me as you are doing, cousin or no cousin, I might be tempted to demonstrate.’
Giving her no other option but to follow, he grasped her slender white arm and led her away. Petra, casting a glance of hidden anguish towards the small red car and the now industrious mechanic, decided not to struggle. Opposition, she sensed, was what men like Neil Cameron throve on, and she appeared to have displeased him enough this morning without chancing her luck any further.
Yet his grip on her arm was so tight as to actually hurt her and forced her, before they reached the house, to voice another half-strangled protest. ‘I only asked if he could mend it, nothing else!’
‘Quite, Petronella.’ He didn’t ease his long strides. ‘Didn’t I tell you last night your car would be taken care of? You would only distract a man by hovering around him. What had you in mind? The passing of an encouraging smile with every wrench?’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Hot indignation rose, but while she longed to express her resentment in a stronger fashion she had sense enough not to. There was too much at stake. ‘I can’t be wrong every time,’ she said instead. ‘I was only trying to help!’
‘You can do that best by keeping out of the way.’ He paused outside the screen door at the back of the house, turning his dark head to study her consideringly again. ‘You’re extremely decorative, little cousin, if this accounts for the degree of protectiveness I can’t recall feeling before. It almost convinces me there must be a blood tie between us, however slight, to produce such a sensation of having known you for a long time. An affinity if you like, but one you don’t necessarily have to share with others.’
Momentarily, as she stared up at him, her expression was completely unguarded. ‘I feel it too.’
‘But you’ve had my likeness, remember,’ he pointed out, reasonably enough. ‘I’ve had no such painting of you, yet you seem wholly familiar. Perhaps in a few years’ time, if you come back again, we might enjoy an even better relationship.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, while having no clear idea just what he was getting at. It was a strange remark to make, one she instinctively distrusted, but it might simply be a hint that he wasn’t interested if she sought to prolong her stay. As she had already guessed this it was nothing new!
In a way she was becoming accustomed to, he gave her no time to meditate but swept her inside, into a huge kitchen where breakfast was set out on a wide, white scrubbed table and large slices of pink ham were sizzling with an extremely appetising smell in an outsize pan. Mrs. Allen presided, in a mammoth, floury white apron, in which she was just removing a tray of sourdough biscuits from the oven.
Instantly, in this big kitchen, Petra felt at home. It was like being a child again at Redwell and she smiled at Mrs. Allen as the woman came to serve her after she had sat down. Neil Cameron, it seemed, had already had one breakfast but, as this had been hours ago, was quite ready to eat another.
Petra, while beseeching Mrs. Allen not to overload her plate, remembered David. ‘Would you mind,’ she asked Neil quickly, ‘if I go and get him?’
He glanced at her idly as he pulled out his own chair and reached for the coffee pot. ‘I think I can hear someone coming now. It can only be him.’
Seconds later, a scrubbed-looking David entered the room and, after wishing them all a polite good morning, slid into the seat Mrs. Allen indicated beside Petra. ‘You should have woken me up,’ he reproached her, in stiff undertones.
‘I thought you were in need of the extra rest,’ Petra fussed. ‘You were tired.’
‘You always think I’m tired,’ he retorted, his thin face mutinous, ‘but we’re not in London now!’
‘Last night you couldn’t stay awake.’
‘I’m all right this morning. You should have ...’
At this juncture, just as Petra began to look anxiously helpless, Neil chose to intervene. His eyes fixed keenly on David’s hot face. ‘There’s no hurry. I guess it’s still reasonably early by anyone’s standards. I’m taking your sister into town after breakfast, David, to let the doc see her arm. Would you like to come?’
‘I’m not sure.’ David looked back at Neil intently, then appeared to draw a deep breath. ‘I’d rather stay here, sir, if you don’t mind. That is, if you’ll promise to look after Petra?’
‘Oh, I’ll do that,’ Cameron agreed solemnly. ‘It will be a change for you not to have her on your mind.’
‘Well, it’s only men she’s scared of,’ David explained before Petra could restrain him.
‘You’re making it up!’ Trying to avoid Neil’s glance of studied interest, she almost glared at her brother, as if willing him to take it back. ‘David imagines a lot of things,’ she said, to no one in particular.
Neil ignored her as he turned, man to man, to David. ‘Just as long as you stay around the house, you won’t come to any harm. After lunch I’ll take you around myself, but until then I’d advise you not to go too far.’
As David nodded, obviously with Neil, prepared to be reasonable, Petra took a deep breath. This and more she might need to defy Cameron. ‘I don’t want to go to town this morning. My arm feels much better.’ It didn’t really feel that good, but she had no money to spare for doctor’s bills.
Neil pinned her with a steely, no-nonsense gaze. ‘Don’t argue, there’s a good girl. I’m responsible for your accident, or rather my steer was, which amounts to the same thing.’
‘Petra can’t afford it,’ David offered absently, being wholly occupied with spreading jam on his flapjacks.
‘Don’t be silly!’ Petra viewed his continued indiscretion with growing despair. Didn’t he remember anything she had told him? The flare of colour in her cheeks made her utter too emphatically, ‘Of course I can. In fact I’ll insist!’
‘But...? Oh, I’m sorry.’ David’s muttered apology, after glancing up at Petra’s pink face, only made it sound worse, but to her relief Neil, thoughtfully stirring sugar into his coffee, didn’t appear to have heard.
‘Do you have a jacket, Petronella?’ he asked, lifting his thick, rather feminine lashes, to let his eyes frown over her.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, deciding suddenly it might be wiser not to protest any more. There couldn’t be much wrong with her wrist, surely, or she wouldn’t have been able to bear it, and if he was prepared to waste time taking her all the way to town—well, this was up to him. And it was perhaps better that David wasn’t going with them as she was beginning to wonder what he was about to come out with next. She must do her best to keep the two of them apart until she had another talk with David.
Neil was on his feet. ‘Run along and fetch it, then,’ he commanded, as she made no move. ‘I’d like to get away as soon as possible. Meet me outside. I just want a quick word with my foreman.’
Halfway out of her chair Petra stopped. ‘Your foreman?’
‘That’s what I said, Petronella.’
She ignored his dryness, to say eagerly, ‘I wonder if I might come with you—to see him, I mean. I feel I ought to thank him properly for his help last night.’
‘Now that would really be something,’ Cameron drawled, ‘but don’t let it bother you—that wasn’t my foreman.’
‘No!’
‘No, Petronella. I’m afraid you might not see that particular man again. If it helps, I can assure you, he was quite satisfied with what he’d already received.’
Which was about as clear as mud, Petra decided crossly, smiling faintly at Mrs. Allen befo
re running upstairs.
CHAPTER FOUR
Some fifteen minutes later she was sitting beside Neil in the light aircraft, fastening her seat belt before they took off. She felt the jolt in her stomach as they became airborne, the familiar ache of tension she could never dispel, no matter how much she travelled. She glanced sideways, taking in Neil’s dark head, his indisputable expertise at the controls and, surprisingly, felt the tightness inside her relax. It was as if some part of her had acknowledged complete confidence in him, something she had never felt before with any other man, except perhaps her father.
She was watching the clouds, oddly content to let the tension drain out of her, and his question startled her. ‘Have you done much flying, Petronella?’
‘A little,’ she nodded cautiously, ‘on big aircraft. I’m afraid not many people in England have their own personal planes.’
‘You don’t have the distances we have here,’ deliberately he misunderstood her meaning. ‘You have to remember Canada is the second largest country. Even this province of Alberta is around 255,285 square miles, which is more than the whole of Great Britain.’
‘I realise,’ she retorted dryly, ‘this could account for it.’
‘It’s a geographical fact,’ he grinned. ‘You don’t have to resent it.’
‘But it’s a fact which allows you to develop and grow rich.’
His eyebrow quirked. ‘To come here I guess our mutual ancestor forsook all his home comforts and I doubt if he ever replaced them in his lifetime. To some extent we’re still a pioneer country, Petronella, but there’s reward enough for those prepared to work for it.’
A Man Called Cameron Page 6