Partner for Love. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ unless you’d like to have it on your lap,’ said Cooper impatiently.

      ‘My clothes are going to be sodden,’ Darcy complained. ‘Couldn’t we cover it with something?’

      Muttering under his breath, Cooper unearthed a grubby tarpaulin from beneath the clutter of tools, jerricans and ropes and threw it over the case. ‘There! Happy now?’

      ‘I suppose so,’ said Darcy, gloomily contemplating a case full of damp clothes.

      ‘In that case, will you please shut up and get in? If the creeks keep rising, your wet clothes are going to be the least of our problems!’

      In the event, they made it across all the creeks—but only just. Each one was deeper and more alarming, until the water in the last was swirling over Darcy’s feet. She swallowed. The car she had hired would never have got through, and she would have been in real trouble if she had been stuck in the middle of the creek. Perhaps she ought to be a little more grateful that Cooper had come along after all.

      It was completely dark by the time they arrived at Bindaburra homestead, and Darcy was too relieved at having reached it safely to be disappointed that she couldn’t see more of the house. She had a confused impression of a long, low house with a deep veranda before Cooper led her down a dim corridor lit by a single naked electric light bulb and opened a door. ‘This is where the last housekeeper slept, so it shouldn’t be in too bad a state,’ he said, dumping her cases inside. ‘I’ll find you some sheets, and I presume you’d like a shower, but then we’d better talk.’

      He made it sound rather ominous. Left alone, Darcy sat rather uncertainly on the bed and looked around her. It was a plain room, with spartan, old-fashioned furnishings and that indefinable smell of emptiness. Suddenly she felt rather forlorn. She had imagined a bright, welcoming house bathed in bright sunshine, not rain and gloom and a hostile partner. She should have listened to her father and stayed at home, she thought glumly.

      She felt better after a shower. Lugging her suitcase over to the bed, she draped the damp clothes over a chair and burrowed down to find something dry. Eventually she pulled out a dress made of soft, fine wool that swirled comfortingly about her. It was a wonderfully rich colour, somewhere between deep blue and purple, with a narrow waist emphasised by a wide suede belt. Darcy pushed a selection of Middle Eastern bracelets up her arm and regarded herself critically in the mirror.

      The dim light gave her the look of a Forties film star, just catching the silky gleam of dark hair and making her eyes seem bigger and bluer than ever. Why was Cooper so determinedly unimpressed? True, she didn’t look like the most practical girl in the world, but she was pretty and friendly and—whatever he might think—not completely brainless. What was so wrong with that?

      Darcy gave herself an encouraging smile that faded as she remembered how Cooper had simply ignored it. She had never met anyone so resistant to her charms. It wasn’t that she wanted him to find her attractive, she reminded herself hastily, but he could have been a little more...welcoming.

      Her bracelets chinked against each other as she walked down the long, ill-lit corridor. She found Cooper in the kitchen, a large, old-fashioned room with a row of steel fridges and an antiquated-looking stove.

      Cooper was sitting at the scrubbed wooden table, turning a can of beer absently between his hands. His face was intent with thought and there was a slight crease between his brows, as if he was pondering some difficult problem, but he looked up at Darcy’s approach, his clear, cool grey gaze meeting her warm blue one across the room.

      Darcy stopped dead in the doorway, overwhelmed by a sudden and inexplicable sense of recognition at the sight of him. The line of his cheek, the curl of his mouth, the long brown fingers against the beer can, all suddenly seemed almost painfully familiar. It was as if she had always known him, had already traced the angles of his face with her hands and counted each crease at the edges of his eyes. Darcy felt jarred, breathless, quite unprepared for the peculiar certainty that her whole life had led to this moment, standing in a strange kitchen, staring into the eyes of this cool, watchful man while a clock ticked somewhere in the silence and outside the rain drummed noisily on the corrugated-tin roof.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ Cooper got to his feet, frowning.

      Thoroughly unnerved by her bizarre reaction, Darcy swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked, and cleared her throat hastily. ‘Should there be?’

      ‘You look a bit peculiar.’

      ‘I was under the impression that you thought that everything about me was peculiar,’ she said waspishly, desperately trying to recover herself and wishing that Cooper’s eyes weren’t quite so acute.

      ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked politely.

      Typically, Darcy couldn’t then think of a single thing he had said to hold against him. ‘It’s just an impression you give,’ she said a little sullenly. ‘You make me feel as if I’m a complete idiot.’

      Cooper looked amused. ‘Anyone would feel a complete idiot, carrying a ridiculous umbrella like that,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow at Darcy, still hesitating in the doorway. ‘Are you going to stand there all night, or would you like to come in?’

      That was exactly the kind of comment she had meant, Darcy thought crossly, but of course it was impossible to explain it to him. At least that odd feeling had gone. Obscurely grateful to Cooper for reminding her that he was simply a disagreeable stranger, she went over to the table and pulled out a chair. She was tired, still jet-lagged, lost and disorientated in a strange place. Nothing else could explain that brief, swamping sense of recognition when she had stood in the doorway and looked across at Cooper.

      ‘Like a beer?’ he asked.

      ‘I’d rather have tea if you have some,’ she said, proud of how cool she sounded.

      ‘Sure.’ Cooper crossed to the sink and filled the kettle, and Darcy found herself watching him as if she had never seen him before. There was a lean ranginess about him that hadn’t been so obvious in the ute. His body was compact and very controlled, and his movements had a sort of quiet, deliberate economy that was curiously reassuring.

      He could hardly have been more different from Sebastian, she thought. Sebastian was fair and flamboyant, Cooper dark and unhurried, and yet Darcy had a sudden conviction that if she put them in a room together it would be Cooper who was the focus of attention. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Sebastian, but there was something much more compelling about him than mere good looks, and for the first time she appreciated just how alone they were together. The outside world seemed a long, long way away.

      Darcy fiddled nervously with her bracelets, but the chinking silver sounded abnormally loud and she forced herself to link her hands together and think of something to say instead.

      Unperturbed by the silence, Cooper had propped himself against the cupboards while he waited for the kettle to boil, arms folded across his chest and long legs crossed casually at the ankles.

      ‘How did Uncle Bill die?’ Darcy asked at last. “The solicitor just said that he died suddenly, but he seemed so healthy when he was in England.’

      ‘It was a freak accident,’ said Cooper quietly. ‘He broke his neck when he came off his motorbike. He’d hit an anthill and must have fallen the wrong way.’ He paused and glanced at Darcy. ‘He died instantly.’

      Darcy closed her eyes. Her great-uncle had been СКАЧАТЬ