Mac frowned. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got to go check some sheep out in the west pasture,’ she said, her gaze darting to her father before meeting his again. ‘You can come with me, and we’ll talk on the way.’
Mac glanced toward the house. He guessed anywhere they talked inside, there was the possibility that Tom might overhear. He felt that at some time Tom would have to be advised of what was going on, but for now, if Jacinta was more prepared to talk where her father couldn’t hear, he’d go along with it. For now.
Hell. The things he did for this woman. He nodded, and trotted down the steps toward her red, dust-covered ute. ‘Fine.’
She whistled, and her dog came bolting around the corner, tongue hanging out of his mouth. The dog jumped up into the back of the tray, and she slammed the tray gate shut, then got into the vehicle without further comment. He followed suit.
Mac twisted in his seat once they were underway. Jac had flung her hat on the window ledge between the cab and the tray behind. He could see her dog through the rear window, lurching from one side of the vehicle to the other as he surveyed the landscape. Mac turned back to Jacinta. She had donned her sunglasses, and her red shirt sleeves were rolled up. The top three buttons of her shirt were undone, and he saw the neckline of a green singlet.
Tendrils of hair framed her face. He noticed how some strands of her hair were lighter than others, touched by the sun and burnished a warm copper colour.
He noticed the faint lines around her eyes as she looked out through the windscreen. Whether they were born from the narrow focus of determination, or relaxed good humour, he couldn’t tell. Right now, though, she seemed determined.
He noticed the firm press of her lips, the lift to her chin that lengthened the line of her neck ... and the indent of her collarbone and the smooth skin of her chest. His gaze dropped and he noticed the swell of her breasts yet again. He frowned. He was noticing her breasts a lot.
He told himself he noticed these things because he was a detective, and that was his job. But the growing awareness of her body, the tightening in his groin—that had nothing to do with his job and everything to do with a physiological response of a man admiring an attractive woman. He needed to get out more. He’d been so involved with the drugs and related crime in the area that he’d let his social life slide into the background. Obviously that was a mistake, though, because now he was seeing Jac as a woman, and not the irritating brat he’d grown up with. Scott Neilsen definitely saw her as a woman, judging by the way the station manager had looked at her when he’d approached them earlier. Mac shook his head as he remembered the guy offering to help Jac with him. No. They’d known each other for that long, they could handle it, thanks. He wasn’t going to wonder why he was feeling so proprietary toward Jac. He just was.
‘So, you’ll handle me, huh?’ His voice was low, and he tried to keep it casual, enquiring, only it came out just slightly flirtatious to his ears.
It must have been flirtatious to Jac’s ears, too, because she shot him a quick glance, and he noticed the bloom of colour in her cheeks, the way her blue gaze brightened with the curiosity of a woman about a man.
He should have been mortified, should have just focused on the professional, but that little part of him that harkened back to his cave-man ancestors experienced a flare of satisfaction and triumph at her looking at him like something more than honorary family.
She gaped a little, then snapped her mouth shut and nodded. ‘Yep. I own Bulls’ Run, so I’m the one you take this up with.’
Her words made him frown. ‘When did you take over the farm? I don’t think any of us knew you were running it.’ At least, not by herself. He hadn’t spoken to Jamie for a few months—his mate being in a war zone meant regular communication was challenging.
Her lips curved in a wry half-smile that he found attractive, and all Jac. ‘I said I took on the mortgage. I didn’t say I run the farm.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘There’s a difference?’
Her smile subsided as she nodded, keeping her eyes on the track they were bouncing along. ‘When my father’s involved, you bet there is.’
Mac glanced out the window. Some of the paddocks they passed had a sheen of golden grass, but many were big red-dirt fields with patches of green scrub. The dams weren’t quite dry, but they were low. Hay bales spotted the area, and sheep and cattle grazed lazily, or lay in the shade of some of the trees, depending on the paddock.
He shook his head. ‘That’s a lot of responsibility for a—’
‘Careful,’ she warned, holding up a hand. ‘If you say woman, or girl, so help me I’ll smack you.’
‘I was about to say anyone under thirty,’ he told her airily, mentally making a note about her attitude to sexism. She’d always been a tomboy, always ready to show she could do as much, if not more, than her brother and their friends. He’d never considered her as a delicate desert belle—she had a right hook that could convince him otherwise—but perhaps that was his problem. His gaze toured over her body. She was long and lean, with curves that drew his eyes where his hands wanted to be. The day before, at the funeral, she’d worn a straight black skirt and a navy blouse, and it was probably the first time he’d seen her out of jeans in ... years.
He hadn’t realised how slender her waist was, or how curvy her hips were, when she wasn’t wearing the baggy guys’ shirts and the slim, straight jeans that showed off the long, firm line of her legs.
She shrugged, and he had to force himself to look away from the swell of her bosom. ‘When Dad lost his arm, we missed a few payments. We talked about re-financing, but the bank was taking the line that Dad was the owner of record, and was now no longer “able” to work the land,’ she said, emphasising the word with a twist to her lips. She changed gears when they hit a smooth section of track.
‘Like that was what he needed to hear after losing his arm, that he was technically disabled.’ She shook her head, then took a deep breath. ‘So I took on the farm.’
‘And Jamie?’
She flashed him a quick look, and he was struck by the sadness he saw in her eyes. ‘I had to borrow from him so I could purchase the farm. He was happy to give it to me. He’s got no interest in being a farmer, Mac. He’s bought a place down in Sydney. Near the beach, if you can believe it.’
Mac stared at her. ‘Seriously?’ He didn’t quite know how to react to that. He missed his best friend, but Jamie had been away for some time, had travelled ... he guessed he could understand why his friend didn’t want to come back home to Echo Springs. It wasn’t exactly a town of excitement and adventure, not after whatever Jamie would see serving in the Australian army.
‘Yeah. He didn’t tell you?’ She turned her attention back to the track. ‘He visits us when he can, but then spends some time at his place.’ She grimaced. ‘Dad doesn’t know, though.’
Mac’s eyes rounded. ‘You don’t think Tom needs to know your brother isn’t coming back home?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I think Dad has enough trouble coping with the fact his daughter is doing what he can’t. He’s never really seen me as being the one to take on the farm.’
‘He can be old-fashioned, sometimes,’ Mac allowed. ‘But it’s a hard life for anyone, Jac, man or woman.’
‘Can you see me behind a desk?’ Jacinta scoffed. ‘I like it here, Mac. I love it. This is my home, and I want to make a good go of it.’
He shook his head. Jacinta would be facing an uphill battle with Tom, with the banks, hell, any of the shearers that had to take orders from a woman...
‘What does Scott think?’ he asked carefully.
She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t know. He doesn’t need to know.’
‘You don’t think he’d like his girlfriend being his boss?’
She frowned. ‘I’m not his girlfriend,’ she said, surprised. ‘And it’s got nothing to do with me being a woman. Most of the men I come into contact with, I’ve already worked with for years, and they don’t really have too much o
f a problem. No, it’s not about gender.’
He blinked, trying to process what she was saying, but all he was focusing on was ‘I’m not his girlfriend’. But she had been so touchy about his comment before... ‘I don’t get it, then,’ he admitted.
She braked as they came up to a number of sheep huddled on the track, and pressed her hand to the horn. The sheep slowly started to shift.
‘It’s Dad. It’s not that a girl is taking over—although I’m sure he’d prefer to have Jamie working here than me,’ she said, and rested her elbows on the steering wheel as she turned her head to face him. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me being female. It’s the fact that I’m doing what he can’t. I think even if Jamie were here, there would be some friction, but Dad...’ She hesitated. ‘I’m his daughter. I think he feels guilty for not being able to do what he used to do, for not being able to look after me, and that I have to do it, and look after him. Losing his arm—he’s had to question what, exactly, he can do. He’s had to fight his way through so much pain, and yeah, there have been some really dark days…’ The shadows in her eyes hinted that perhaps even those words were an understatement for her experience. ‘I mean, can you imagine your whole livelihood hanging in the balance because of a freak accident, and possibly losing the land that generations before you built up... that you may not be able to pass on to generations to come... It’s screwed with his mind. Hell, do you know it took me being in hospital for him to try milking the cow again? That was a huge step forward.’ The sheep cleared the track enough for her to move the car forward, and they continued on their way.
He arched an eyebrow. ‘How did he do?’
She beamed. ‘He did good. Apparently it took him a while, but he now knows that’s something he can still do—one handed, no less.’ He heard the pride in her voice. Then she shrugged. ‘I’m just warming his seat. He’ll get there. He’ll figure out one arm doesn’t maketh the man. He just needs some time. Then he can tell the banks where to shove their disabilities.’
‘Well, I guess you were never one to take the easy way,’ he muttered, slightly in awe of her and her attitude. He’d never guessed things had been so dire, so dark out at Bulls’ Run. Sure, it was a known fact that Tom had gotten even grumpier, but whenever he’d seen Jac in town, she’d been smiling and chatting to folks, and seemingly happy.
She chuckled, a sound that was low and husky and curled deep inside him, grabbing his attention until the dust, the flies, the heat, the spring that poked him in the back every time they went over a bump or through a dip, all faded until there was just Jac and her sexy little laugh and seductive smile.
‘Yeah, well, the harder you work, the better the reward,’ she said.
He had to look away. She was beginning to sound like her own person, a person he wanted to talk more with, to understand a lot better.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, glancing about. She’d mentioned something about the west pasture, but if he had his bearings right, she’d driven slightly north.
The smile slid off her face, and he immediately noticed its absence.
‘We’re going to visit Harry,’ she told him.
‘Harry? As in the tunnel, Harry?’
‘What about the sheep?’
She nodded. ‘We’ll also check on the sheep,’ she said. ‘But I want to check on Harry first.’
She pulled the ute over to a fence that had run along the side of the track, then braked when she reached the old, rusty gate. She twisted in her seat to face him.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with what happened at Dick,’ she told him firmly. Her expression was so earnest that for the first time he found himself entertaining the possibility that maybe he’d gotten something wrong. ‘But something is going on.’ She glanced around, and his eyebrow rose as she leaned closer. ‘The other night, someone knocked me out—on my property,’ she said.
Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. Why, he had no idea, unless she didn’t want the sheep to be distressed by their conversation.
‘Do you sleepwalk?’ he asked abruptly, and she blinked and jerked back.
‘What?’
‘Do you sleepwalk, Jac?’
‘No.’
‘So you weren’t out driving around in your sleep?’
She frowned. ‘Uh, no. I was fully awake and aware of my surroundings—why would you think I was sleepwalking?’ She gasped. ‘Did Dad tell you the flu meds story? I swear, he tells that to everyone. It happened once, and I’ve never had that particular brand of meds since.’
‘Do you talk in your sleep?’
‘No.’ Her gaze flickered. She exhaled, a sound that conveyed her exasperation. She waved her hand casually. ‘Maybe. When I’m really tired, I might talk—but I don’t walk in my sleep. Why would you think that?’
Because your ‘boyfriend’ told me so. He wasn’t quite sure what to believe, and aside from coming straight out with ‘are you sleeping with Scott Nielsen?’—a question he would have to admit had nothing to do with his investigation and everything to do with a fast-developing fascination with this woman—he’d have to hold his own counsel until he could figure out the truth of the matter.
She waved her hand. ‘Anyhoo, when I got back from the funeral I went out to where I got hit—’
‘You what?’
Chapter Seven
This time it was Mac who leaned forward, stunned.
‘I went out to where it happened—’
‘Why did you do that?’ Didn’t she care about her own safety? If what she was saying was true—which meant putting aside Scott’s comments for the moment—she’d happened upon an intruder, who had struck her, and knocked her out cold. Anger, surprising and swift, roared through him at the thought of her defenceless and vulnerable to the likes of the men whose pictures were on his investigation board. These guys didn’t play around.
She frowned, confused. ‘Why wouldn’t I do that? Someone was on our land, Mac. Something is going on here, and I need to find out what it is.’
‘Then you call me,’ he exclaimed. ‘You don’t go playing amateur sleuth and start hunting down these people on your own.’
Her lips firmed. ‘Would you say that to Jamie? That he should call you in? Step back and let you do your “thing”?’ she said, making quote marks in the air with her fingers.
‘Jamie is a commando, Jac. I would step back and let him do his thing. He’d be way more dangerous out there than anyone he’d encounter.’
‘And he’s my brother. He’s taught me a thing or two about self-defence. So did you, remember? Stomp, jab and twist…?’
Instantly, he got a headache behind his eye. ‘The best self-defence is to avoid the situation where you’d need it,’ he muttered.
Her nostrils flared, and she actually looked like she was mentally counting to ten. ‘Mac, what do you expect me to do?’ She gestured outside the window. ‘Take a look. There is nobody out here.’
‘That’s my point,’ he exclaimed. ‘There is nobody out here. What if these guys came for another visit, and you’re out here all by yourself?’
‘What I mean is that you can pretty much see or hear them coming. I went out yesterday, knowing I was safe.’
He folded his arms. There might be an element of truth to what she was saying, but he didn’t have to admit it. Or like it. ‘And what did Miss Marple find on this little sleuthing excursion?’
She gave him an exasperated look, then sighed. ‘I found tyre tracks. At the time, I saw the car—it was a white four-wheel drive, with dark tinted windows. Imported,’ she sneered. ‘I reckon I could pick out the make and model,’ she offered.
He arched an eyebrow. ‘You want to pick the car out of a line-up?’
She smacked him lightly on the arm. ‘You know what I mean.’
He guessed he deserved that. ‘Okay, so you think you can identify what kind of car—was there something unique or interesting about it? Or do you think it looks kind of generic, and that you might find it’s a c
ommon vehicle for people to drive?’
Her shoulders sagged, and she glanced out the window. ‘I think it’s the kind of car lots of people would drive, but,’ she held up a finger, ‘it was new. No scratches, not so dirty… it was a new model.’
‘O-kay…’ he shrugged. Without a licence plate it would be hard to track, but he’d store the detail away for future reference. ‘Anything else?’
She nodded. ‘I reckon they came in through one of the gates on the highway, further down, so I went to check it out—’
‘Jac,’ he whined, pinching the bridge of his nose. She was killing him.
‘The gate is supposed to be locked—we generally only use it for a stock delivery, or some feed, and Dad, Scott and I all have keys. The gate is signposted for trespassers, but it’s not used often so we lock it. There are plenty of other gates for folks to come through…’
‘I take it it wasn’t locked?’ he surmised.
‘They must have picked it open, then just left it hanging so it looked like it was locked. I thought it was locked until I got right up to it.’
He tilted his head back against the car seat and gazed out of the window as he pondered her words. He looked at the rusty gate in front of them.
‘So why are we visiting Harry?’
‘Once we cross this fence, we’re on the back lot,’ she told him. ‘No paddocks, just free range. No gates, no cattlegrids… Lots of tunnels. I know where these guys are coming in—and when Scott gets back from town we’re going to make it a lot more difficult for them to get onto Bulls’ Run—but I don’t know where they were headed.’
He looked at her. ‘You want to search your property?’
She nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘That’s … twenty-three thousand acres,’ he said in surprise.
‘Twenty-seven thousand, actually—we have an easement beyond that.’
‘Twenty-seven thousand acres…’ he said, turning his gaze to the landscape. ‘You want to drive around twenty-seven thousand acres and look for criminals.’
‘Yep—unless you have a chopper at your disposal?’ she suggested hopefully.
Hope Echoes Page 7