‘All right, Miss Svenson,’ he said slowly. ‘You win.’ He hesitated, as though already regretting his agreement. ‘Mind, I expect hard labour for the luxury of sun, mud and surf.’
‘Surf?’
‘The water snakes make the surf,’ Riley said in a voice that was mock serious. ‘When they writhe in unison as they attack your toes, you can almost hang ten in the foam they churn. Are you still sure you want a swim?’
She fixed him with a look. ‘Are they poisonous?’
He opened his mouth to say yes, but her look was a challenge and he relented. ‘No. But they bite.’
‘Have you ever been bitten?’
‘No, but I might have been.’
‘You mean they’re more afraid of us than we are of them.’
‘They might be.’
She grinned. She was right to trust this man, she thought. He couldn’t lie to save himself.
‘We’ll swim fast,’ Jenna retorted. ‘Karli can swim like a fish and so can I. If they do bite us, then we’ll die happy, and you wouldn’t have said a swim was possible if it wasn’t.’
Riley stared at her, baffled. The corners of his mouth were twitching as if he was trying not to laugh, but there was still that deep caution embedded in his eyes. He was like a big cat, Jenna thought, wary of everything, but, deep down, downright dangerous.
‘All right, then, Miss Svenson,’ he said at last. ‘If that’s the way you want it, then you’ll get your mud-bath. If you work for it.’
Jenna had enjoyed her two days’ work with Karli. She enjoyed the work even more now. The steady sound of Riley’s carpentry and the interested hum of Karli’s gossip was great. It made her feel…at peace? It was weird and inexplicable, but it was a feeling Jenna hadn’t experienced before and she was savouring it.
The bedrooms were disgusting. Once more Jenna tied up her hair and attacked the dust with a shovel. Riley came in to help her drag the furniture clear so she could clean without hindrance, and then he disappeared fast. You’ll do your work by yourself and I’ll do mine, his body language said. We’re separate.
Separate was fine by Jenna, she decided. But not very separate. Karli was staunchly with Riley, her allegiance to this wonderful man unswerving, and it was as if by having Karli by Riley’s side a little bit of Jenna was there as well.
In the breaks between Karli’s questions, Riley whistled a fractured rendition of ‘Misty’, and Jenna started humming along in her head. The tune stayed there, a comfort all on its own. All morning, down on her hands and knees, scrubbing, she hummed right along.
Towards midday she heaved a bucket of water outside, tripped on the doorstep and her bucket of water poured down her bare legs onto her toes.
She stared down at her dust-and-water-sloshed toes and made a discovery. She was happier doing this than she’d ever been before. What she was doing here was pure fun.
She giggled.
She looked up from her toe contemplation-and found Riley watching her with bemusement.
‘You’re nuts,’ he told her.
‘Yep.’ She grinned.
‘Is your sister always nuts?’ he asked Karli, and Karli considered.
‘She’s funny.’
‘She’s got really funny toes,’ Riley conceded.
Karli followed Riley’s gaze to stare down at Jenna’s toes. ‘Yuk.’
‘Yuk’s right,’ Jenna told them. ‘I’m dirtier than you guys. That means I’ve been working harder so I get to swim the longest.’
‘Will you go back to nursing when you leave here?’ Riley asked. The question was unexpected and Jenna’s smile faded.
‘Of course. What else could I do?’
‘I bet your patients think you’re terrific.’
‘Yeah, they love me to bits,’ she said dryly. ‘I walk toward them with a syringe or an enema and they fall into my arms. Such devotion.’
He grinned, but that quizzical look was back. As if he didn’t have a clue what to make of her.
Good. She liked it that he was off balance. He surely had her off balance and that made them quits. She met his look with a trace of defiance.
‘Anyway, that’s another world,’ she told him. ‘Another time. What’s more important now is that you’re shirking work, Riley Jackson. We have a date with a swim this evening. So let’s get on with it.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She had courage.
All day as he worked Riley kept turning Jenna’s situation over in his mind. It was none of his business, but he couldn’t make his head ignore it. The tilt of her chin, her defiance where other women would have wept, and her capacity for sheer hard work-they combined to make this slip of a girl stand apart.
As she’d stood apart all her life, he conceded, and he found himself growing angry on her behalf.
She didn’t seem angry or bitter, though. It seemed Jenna had no wish to punish those who’d made her childhood miserable or who’d put her into this mess.
Riley wanted them punished, though. The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew.
Where the hell was her father? What was this Brian creep doing inheriting money that could make Jenna’s life easier?
Riley thumped another weatherboard home with so much force the one above loosened and fell. He wanted to swear, but Karli was sitting in the shade not two yards away, ready to absorb any new and interesting word he might let drop.
A child like this would be such a responsibility, he thought, yet Jenna had taken her on without a thought as to how it could affect her future.
This was nothing to do with him. Butt out of what doesn’t concern you, he told himself for the hundredth time. Get this place patched up and get out of here. Get the girl back to England before you go mad. Before you end up where you were before you learned sense.
They worked on, stopping only briefly for lunch. Karli snoozed for a while with her rock, but Riley and Jenna didn’t rest. It was as if they were driving each other.
Finally, as the sun lost the worst of its heat even Riley had to admit he was exhausted.
‘Okay, Karli,’ he told his right-hand man. ‘It’s swim time.’ He walked over to Jenna’s side of the house and called. She stuck her head out of the one functional bedroom window and raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Enough,’ he ordered. ‘I’m beat.’
‘Wimp,’ she teased.
Riley stared at her for a long moment. Did she have any idea how beautiful she looked?
Beautiful? How could she be described as beautiful? Covered in dust, her head tied up in rags and framed by a crooked window surround…
Yes, she was beautiful. There was no denying it. Jenna Svenson was lovely.
Hell!
‘If you want a swim we have to stop now,’ he said and his voice was rougher than he’d intended. ‘Anyway, I worked for two hours before you even woke up this morning.’
‘More fool you. Come inside and see what I’ve done.’
He did and was suitably impressed. It was great. It was nearly clean.
‘There’s a red line around the walls,’ Riley told her. ‘Is this English fashion? Beige to head height and red above?’
‘It’s as high as I can scrub,’ Jenna said with dignity. ‘If you want higher scrubbing, you need to find a higher slave.’
‘Hmm.’ Riley appeared to check Jenna’s diminutive figure-and Jenna flushed under his scrutiny. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he agreed thoughtfully. ‘I do seem to have structural problems with this model.’ He managed a twisted grin. ‘I wonder how much you’d bring as a trade-in. You’re more a sports coupé when I need something like a Ford Bronco.’
Mistake. At Jenna’s side was her bucket of water, red with dust. She swooped like lightning, retrieved the rag she’d been using and threw it straight at him. He fielded it like an expert, but water sloshed across his dust-streaked face.
He wiped his eyes with a sleeve-then stood, rag in hand. Considering.
Jenna backed.
‘
Don’t you dare.’
Riley looked again down at his hand, and then across to the dusty figure in front of him. He drew back his hand. Jenna backed some more…
He couldn’t do it. He wanted to, but there was a challenge lurking in her lovely eyes that had him retreating.
‘Okay, Miss Svenson,’ he said softly. Battles were dangerous territory. Battles with Jenna… Yeah, really dangerous. ‘I’ll let you off the hook just this once.’ He paused for a moment, then tossed the cloth back into the bucket. ‘There’s a spare ladder in the Land Rover.’
‘For tomorrow?’
‘For tomorrow,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ve done more than enough for today. If you have a bathing costume get it on fast. I’ll meet you at the Land Rover in two minutes.’
He walked out and left her to it, and only Riley knew just how close a call it had been. Because, instead of hurling sopping rags at the girl before him, it had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life to walk away. When all he’d wanted-all his body had screamed at him to do-was to walk over and gather Jenna Svenson to his heart.
The dam was three miles over bumpy track north of the house. The only sign of it as they approached was a decrepit windmill, moving lazily in the hot north wind. It was so late the sun had lost most of its heat, but even so it was hot enough to make a swim seem the most desirable thing in the world. Jenna sat beside Riley in his open Land Rover and her tongue was practically hanging out at the thought.
Same with Karli.
‘We’re going swimming. We’re going swimming,’ Karli chortled and her enthusiasm was appreciated by all of them. It eased the awkward silence-the tension that seemed to be building by the moment.
‘How come you have a truck here?’ Jenna asked, more to break the silence than anything.
‘It came with the farm. I spent the first day here getting it back into working order,’ he told her.
‘So you have a better truck at Munyering?’
‘Of course.’
Munyering. What was it like?
What was this man like?
Then they arrived and the questions stopped dead as Jenna gazed out in bewilderment.
This was certainly no luxury swimming pool. Here at last were the cattle Riley had talked about. The beasts stood in a forlorn-looking ring on the edge of the muddy water. There were a hundred or so head of cattle by the look of it-and that was just about all they were. Heads. Skin and bone and not much else. Jenna had never seen such pathetic-looking animals in her life.
‘Riley, they’re…’ Jenna fell silent, aghast. She looked out at the sad-looking animals and her heart lurched within her. Surely these beasts couldn’t live here?
Karli had stilled beside her and she knew the child shared her horror.
‘I know.’ Riley glanced over at Jenna and his look told her he understood what she was feeling. ‘They look terrible, and these are dreadful conditions for cattle. But they won’t be here much longer.’
‘What do you mean? You don’t mean…they’re dying?’
‘They were.’ Riley pulled up beside the dam. The cows nearest the truck made a desultory move away-but not too far. It was as if the herd as a whole had simply run out of energy. ‘Believe it or not, Jenna, these cattle are on the road to recovery.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe it,’ Riley said and his voice was suddenly grim. His face tightened. ‘I don’t want you thinking I caused this. I’ve only just bought this place. The man who owned it deserves to be shot. He walked off the place, abandoning it with a couple of thousand head of cattle still dependent on him for maintaining their water supply. He went bankrupt-he couldn’t afford the fees to transport his cattle to market, so he just left them to rot. When I heard the place was on the market I flew over and found dead and dying cattle everywhere.’
‘But how long-?’
‘That was three weeks ago.’ Riley’s voice was still grim.
‘I bought the place on the spot-in fact settlement’s not until next week, but I’ve spent the last weeks here getting the water going again. Mending pumps so the bores are flowing. This dam’s fed by an underground spring and mostly it’s higher than this, but the drought’s meant the spring’s dried and the water has to be pumped. This dam’s fine again, but others further out still need attention. That’s why I couldn’t leave until now. I’ve been getting the bores going again and making sure the dams and troughs are full. Some of the cattle were in such bad condition when I found them I had to put them down.’
‘But they don’t have anything to eat,’ Jenna whispered.
‘There’s forage enough. These cattle are tough. They’ll survive here as long as they have water.’ Then he managed a smile. ‘It’s not quite as intensive farming as back home in your Oxfordshire fields, though. If we run one head of cattle per square mile we reckon we’re doing well.’
Jenna took a deep breath. One cow per square mile? ‘So…so how big is this farm, then?’
‘About three thousand square miles.’
‘And yours? What did you call it? Munyering?’
‘Ten.’
‘Ten? Ten what?’
‘Ten thousand square miles.’
‘Ten thousand square miles!’ Jenna did some fast retrieval of schoolgirl maths. ‘That’s about three hundred miles across by three hundred miles wide.’
‘Something like that. It’s a bit splodgy at the edges.’
She subsided into staggered silence, the enormity of Riley’s landholding leaving her speechless. Yet…if it was all like this, was it worth anything? The man who’d owned this farm had walked off, and who could blame him?
‘I told you,’ Riley said gently, watching her face and seemingly guessing her thoughts. ‘My farm is better.’
It’d want to be, Jenna thought grimly, but she didn’t say it. Instead she looked out again at the cattle. Karli was gazing at a cow with interest and the cow was gazing back, her big brown eyes seeming almost mournful. ‘You said these cattle won’t be here much longer,’ she whispered. She glanced at Karli’s cow and then glanced away. ‘What did you mean?’
‘We’ll truck them out,’ Riley told her. ‘They can survive here but they won’t thrive. As soon as the house is habitable I’ll send men in to base themselves here while they work. They’ll bring trucks, they’ll build holding yards and they’ll muster this lot. Then they’ll bring them back to Munyering where they can recover. There’s feed enough on Munyering to make these beasts think all their Christmases have come at once. Munyering is south of here and we’re not drought-affected. I said it’s better, Jenna. Believe me.’
‘But this place is awful. How could it ever have been a farm?’
‘It’s in drought, Jenna,’ Riley told her. He’d drawn to a halt before the muddy bank, a sheet of hoof-marked mud leading to deep water. ‘This place isn’t always so awful. When the rains come I’ll bring cattle back here again. I won’t depend on this place for permanent pasture, though. The last owner did that. It worked for five years, but then he lost the gamble. If you gamble with nature you’ll always lose. If I can just use it in the good times, though, it makes a decent little addition to my own property.’
A decent little addition. Three thousand square miles. Jenna was trying hard to do some adjusting in her head, but all she could do was boggle.
Karli was trying to outstare the cow. Jenna was doing arithmetic. Riley climbed out of the truck and he grinned at them both.
‘Are you guys intending to sit in the truck all evening and commune with nature, or are you serious about that swim?’
Jenna stared out at the cows. The cows stared straight back.
‘I’m not sure I can swim with an audience,’ she said nervously and Riley chuckled.
‘Don’t mind them. They’ll love it. I bet they’ve never seen anything like you guys in their lives.’
‘This one likes me,’ Karli announced.
Jenna still had some qualms.
‘Won�
��t we stir up the water? Make it too muddy for drinking?’
‘You have to be kidding!’ Riley shook his head. ‘Lady, until two weeks ago this place was a muddy puddle. The pump had packed up completely and if I’d arrived three days later all these cattle would be dead. What they’re drinking now is cattle nectar. Mud and all.’
‘I’m not sure I want to swim in cattle nectar.’
‘Hey, I’ve driven three miles in the heat to give you a swim,’ Riley retorted, exasperated. ‘Now, are you going to get out of this truck and go for a swim or are you not? If not, then stay here while Karli and I swim. Karli, do you want to swim?’
‘Will I have to walk through the mud to reach the water?’ Karli asked.
‘Yes. It’ll ooze through your toes.’
‘Ooh,’ Karli gasped, and bounced out of the truck, heading for oozing mud.
‘What about it, Miss Svenson?’
‘I’m…I’m swimming.’
‘Then do it,’ Riley told her. ‘Before our audience starts slow-clapping in impatience.’
Going for a swim here wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded. Nor was the mud as inviting to Jenna as it was to Karli.
Jenna had her costume on-until now demurely hidden under shorts and shirt. She slipped off her outer garments, took two steps from the truck-and stepped right into a cow pat mixed with mud.
Jenna yelped.
‘Lesson one,’ Riley said, strolling round the truck to investigate and grinning in appreciation of her problem. ‘You’re in cattle country now, ma’am. Expect a little dung.’
Jenna stared down at her toes.
‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘that I’d like to go home now, Mr Jackson.’
‘What, back to the house?’
‘I mean back to England.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Riley’s laughter was not so subtly hidden behind the concern. ‘But now you need a swim more than ever.’ He hauled off his shirt and tossed it into the back of the truck. Then his boots. And then his jeans.
It was as much as Jenna could do not to yelp again.
Riley paused. ‘Is there something else wrong?’ he asked blandly.
‘Y…yes.’ Jenna swallowed. ‘I would have thought…well, you’re not exactly decent!’
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