Partner for Love. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ want to work. Perhaps she had been a little quick to imply that she wanted to run Bindaburra herself, and she suspected that Cooper was going to call her bluff by setting her impossible tasks.

      ‘Will I have to brand cows and wrestle bulls to the ground?’ she asked nervously.

      Cooper looked as if he didn’t know whether to be exasperated or amused. ‘You’re welcome to try, but that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

      ‘What did you have in mind?’ said Darcy, trying to conceal her relief.

      ‘Bill always had a housekeeper who cooked for him and the men and kept this place in some sort of order. The last girl left a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had time to do anything about finding a replacement yet. One of the men has been doing the cooking since then, but he’s more useful to me outside, so if you took over the cooking you’d be making more than a token contribution.’

      Darcy toyed with the idea of objecting to the sexist way he had assumed that all she was good for was cooking and cleaning, but when she thought that the alternative might be fencing in the rain or much worse she decided that she might be better off in the kitchen after all.

      ‘I’m not a very good cook,’ she warned him, with judicious understatement. Her dinner parties made popular disaster stories among her friends and she had learnt that it was easier to buy prepared meals from the supermarket freezers to shove in the microwave.

      ‘You must be better than Darren,’ said Cooper. ‘They don’t want anything fancy, just roasts and stews, and a cake or a biscuit for smoko.’

      ‘Oh, well, I expect I could manage that,’ said Darcy optimistically. The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of working, even if it did have to be in the unglamorous role of housekeeper. Uncle Bill would have wanted her to stay, at least for a while, she told herself. If she could prove her worth to Cooper, it would be a way of showing that her great-uncle had not been mistaken in her. She would be doing it for him as much as for herself.

      Fired with enthusiasm, she beamed across the table at Cooper. Her hair was still tousled from sleep, but the dark blue eyes were wide awake now. ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

      If she had expected Cooper to look delighted, she was disappointed. Instead he sounded almost disapproving of her ready acceptance of his idea. ‘There are other things you should think about as well,’ he said.

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Can you afford to stay, for a start? Obviously it won’t cost you anything to stay here, but you won’t earn anything either. It would be a pity if you gave up opportunities at home just to prove a point out here.’

      ‘I don’t see that that’s a problem,’ said Darcy. ‘It’s not as if I had any responsibilities. I share a flat with a friend. We only pay a nominal rent because her father owns it, so I won’t be leaving her in the lurch. And as for work...well, as I said, I’ll let my agent know how to contact me just in case something unexpected comes up.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Cooper studied her critically, unimpressed by her insouciant attitude. ‘You should also consider how you feel about living alone with me.’

      Carried away by the prospect of proving that she wasn’t as useless as he thought her, Darcy had forgotten how she had sat fidgeting with her bracelets, overwhelmed by that strange sense of awareness. Now she uncrossed her legs and dropped her feet to the floor, conscious for the first time of the intimacy of the situation. She hadn’t thought twice before about the propriety of sitting opposite him with nothing on under her dressing-gown, but now she tightened the belt automatically. The silk slithered sleekly against her skin and she had a sudden disturbing awareness of her own body.

      She wished Cooper had never mentioned the prospect of living alone. She had been happily defiant before; now she couldn’t take her eyes off his hands, horrified by how easily she could imagine what it would be like to sit here like lovers, still sleepy and smiling after a night together, her body tingling with remembered desire. So vivid was the picture that Darcy’s skin seemed to burn as if she could feel his hands easing the dressing-gown apart to slide caressingly over her body and pull her against his tautly muscled strength...

      Darcy swallowed and pushed the vision aside with an effort. Living alone with Cooper suddenly seemed fraught with unsuspected dangers, none of which she could explain. ‘W-we won’t be alone, though, will we?’ she said in a voice that sounded ridiculously high even to her own ears. ‘The other men will be back as soon as the creeks go down, won’t they?’ There would be safety in numbers, she reasoned, and with three other men around there would be none of the intimacy that might lead to more dangerous fantasising about just one.

      ‘They’ll eat with us here in the homestead, but they sleep in their own quarters.’

      ‘Oh.’ Darcy looked down into her empty coffeemug. ‘Well, couldn’t you sleep in their quarters?’

      ‘I could, but I have no intention of doing so,’ said Cooper in an acerbic tone. He got up impatiently and carried his mug over to the sink. ‘I intend to make Bindaburra my home, and I don’t see why I should move out just to make you feel better.’

      ‘You were the one who brought up the subject,’ she pointed out with a touch of sullenness.

      ‘I’m just advising you to think about what’s involved,’ he said austerely, swirling the mug under the tap. ‘There’s no point in you agreeing to stay and then suddenly getting maidenly scruples.’

      ‘I haven’t got maidenly scruples!’ Darcy protested.

      ‘Oh? Then why did you suggest I move out to the ringers’ quarters?’

      ‘I just thought it would be...less awkward.’

      Cooper came back to the table. ‘Awkward for whom?’

      ‘Well, not exactly awkward—’ she began, wishing she’d never opened her mouth, but he interrupted her.

      ‘You mean you don’t trust me to keep my hands off you?’

      ‘No!’ Seeing Cooper raise his eyebrows, she hurried to correct herself. ‘I mean, no, I didn’t mean that. That you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me, I mean...’ Utterly confused about what she meant by now, Darcy floundered to a halt.

      ‘Could it be that you don’t trust yourself to keep your hands off me, then?’ he suggested provocatively.

      ‘Certainly not!’ Without thinking, she jumped to her feet, clutching her dressing-gown about her, dark hair bouncing around her face and blue eyes stormy and magnificent. ‘I’m hardly likely to have any interest in you!’

      ‘Why not?’ Cooper came round the table towards her, but Darcy was too angry to care.

      ‘Why? Why?’ she echoed, trying desperately to think of a convincing reason. ‘Because... because you’re just not my type, and even if you were I... I’m already involved with someone else,’ she finished in a rush.

      It didn’t seem to have much effect in halting Cooper’s advance, which she had belatedly noticed. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked, calmly taking her waist between his hands. They were hard and strong and seemed to burn through the silk on to her skin.

      ’S-Sebastian,’ she stammered, trying to push СКАЧАТЬ