Outback Bride. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ she hadn’t imagined was that he would behave as if he had never seen her before in his life and calmly offer her a cup of tea!

      Copper sighed inwardly. Perhaps it was just as well. She mustn’t forget that she was here to set up a vital deal, and trying to negotiate with a man who remembered the past as clearly as she did would have been more than a little awkward.

      Her clear green eyes rested on Mal’s back as he made tea in a battered enamel pot. The sureness of his every gesture tugged at her heart. Her gaze drifted from the broad shoulders down to lean hips, and she was suddenly swamped with the memory of how it had felt to run her hands over him. It was as if she could still feel the texture of his skin beneath her fingers, still trace the outline of his spine and feel his muscles flex in response to her touch.

      Memory pulsated like pain in her fingertips, and Copper drew a sharp breath and squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them just as Mal turned round, and across the kitchen their gazes locked.

      Copper wanted to look away, to make a light comment and laugh, but she couldn’t move. She was riveted by the current of awareness that leapt to life between them, held by those deep, deep brown eyes while her heart began to boom and thud in her ears. Why had she taken her sunglasses off? She felt naked and vulnerable without them. Her eyes had always been embarrassingly transparent. One look into them and Mal would know that her hands were still tingling with the memory of his body, that all those years, when he had forgotten her, his kisses had continued to haunt her dreams.

      Then Mal moved forward and set the teapot down on the table, and Copper jerked her eyes away with a tiny gasp. He looked at her narrowly. ‘Are you all right?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ said Copper, horribly conscious of how high and tight her voice sounded. She could feel the telltale colour blotching her throat and willed it to fade. ‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’

      Mal pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘You wouldn’t be tired if you’d taken the bus,’ he said, pouring the tea into two mugs.

      Copper sat up straighter at the implied criticism. She had, in fact, looked into doing the journey on the bus in case they wanted to offer it as option to their clients, but it would have taken forty-eight hours just to get to the nearest town—hardly a recipe for arriving fresh as a daisy! ‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ she retorted. ‘How long is it since you’ve been on a bus?’

      ‘Not for years.’ An intriguing half-smile dented the corners of Mal’s mouth as he acknowledged her point. ‘Now you come to mention it, I don’t think I’ve been on a bus since I was travelling in Europe—a long time ago now.’

      Seven years. For one awful moment, Copper thought she had spoken aloud, but a covert look at Mal showed that he was calmly drinking his tea. He looked cool and self-contained, a little watchful, perhaps, but certainly not like a man who had suddenly been brought face to face with embarrassment from the past. What would he say if she told him that she knew exactly when he had been in Europe? Oh, yes, she could have said. I remember you then. We spent three days making love on a beach.

      Great way to impress him with her professionalism.

      ‘Oh,’ she said weakly instead.

      She risked another glance at Mal, who was looking thoughtfully down into his tea, dark brows drawn together as if pondering an insuperable problem. Copper could see the lines of strain around his eyes and she wondered how long ago his wife had died. What had she been like, the woman who had shared his life and borne his child? All at once Copper was ashamed of herself for worrying about the past and whether Mal remembered her or not. He had more important things to think about than a girl he had met on a beach seven years ago.

      And, really, wasn’t that all it had been? A chance encounter, ships passing in the night? It had felt much more than that at the time, but it was all so long ago and they were different people now. Mal had changed and so had she. All she had to do was forget about that brief, magical interlude and pretend that he was a complete stranger.

      Easy.

      It didn’t stop her heart lurching when Mal looked up suddenly from his tea and found her watching him, but at least this time she was able to look away. ‘What... what a nice kitchen.’ she said brightly. It was the first thing that came into her head, but when she looked at it, it was a nice kitchen, cool and spacious and beautifully designed, although most of the equipment was hidden beneath a clutter of packets and jars, papers and unwashed dishes.

      ‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ said Mal, as if he had read her mind. He looked ruefully around him. ‘This is a busy time on the station and everything’s got out of control in the house since Kim left We really need a good housekeeper to sort everything out.’

      ‘I can see that,’ said Copper with feeling, averting her eyes from the dirty dishes piled high in the sink. She wasn’t obsessively tidy herself, but her business brain deplored the inefficiency.

      ‘Have you spent any time in the outback before?’ asked Mal abruptly, and Copper set down her mug. She had a feeling that some kind of interview was just beginning.

      ‘Not really,’ she said cautiously. Her father had warned her that Mal had been unimpressed by the idea of a city firm setting up luxury camping trips, so it would be up to her to convince him that they knew what they were doing. ‘A couple of camping trips in the Flinders Ranges, that’s all.’

      Mal sighed. ‘In other words, you don’t have any relevant experience?’

      ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Copper rather coldly. There was no need for him to write her off just yet! She had been organising tours for more than five years and it wasn’t as if she was going to be leading the groups herself. Her role was strictly administrative. ‘I don’t need to be Crocodile Dundee, do I?’ she added with a challenging look. ‘I’ve got more than enough experience to do my job, and it’s not as if I’m going to be roping bulls or doing any of that kind of stuff myself!’

      ‘True,’ said Mal. ‘But you do need to have some understanding of what we do, or you’ll just get in the way.’

      ‘I realise that,’ she said a little stiffly. ‘It’s one of the reasons I’m here, after all. I want to learn as much as I can about how things work out here.’

      There was a flicker of surprise in Mal’s eyes. ‘You may find it pretty boring,’ he warned.

      ‘I’m never bored,’ said Copper firmly.

      It wasn’t strictly true. She was a believer in living life to the full, and crammed as much as possible into every day, but on the few occasions when she found herself with nothing to do, her zest quickly degenerated into restlessness and she would end up inventing jobs for herself.

      ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Mal, but not as if he believed it very much.

      ‘I am.’ Copper decided it was time to start steering the conversation towards business. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing as much of Birraminda as I can,’ she said, rather pleased with her brisk tone. Now that she had got over the initial shock, it was easy to treat him as a stranger—a colleague, perhaps, or just someone to do business with.

      ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ he said, but he was looking at her so strangely that Copper rubbed a surreptitious finger under her eyes in case her mascara had smudged. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘you’re here now, so we’ll just have to make the best of it. If you’re prepared to put up with the state of СКАЧАТЬ