The Enemy's Daughter. Linda Turner

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СКАЧАТЬ the air out of his lungs. The gown and robe she wore covered her body like a sack and were hardly flattering. But still, he was somehow seduced. It was her hair, he told himself. A woman with hair like that could tempt the devil himself. And Lord knew, he was no saint. All too easily, he could picture her naked in his bed, her fiery locks spread out, giving him tempting views of her body as she smiled and held out her arms to him.

      Then his gaze lifted to her face, and he realized it was a hell of a lot more than her hair that attracted him. She had an innocence about her, a total lack of awareness of her own beauty that he found incredibly appealing. With no effort whatsoever, she reached out and grabbed his attention just by breathing, and she didn’t even seem to know it.

      But he did, and alarm bells were going off all over the place in his head. Watch it, a voice cautioned in his ear. Remember who the lady is and why you’re here. You may have to seduce her before it’s all said and done. If you don’t keep your head about you, you may end up losing it. This is Simon’s daughter, for God’s sake!

      It took nothing more than that to pull him up short. Silently cursing himself for momentarily losing sight of his mission, he jerked himself to his surroundings—and his very precarious position. If she’d come down five seconds later, she’d have caught him boldly exploring the house.

      He watched surprise widen her eyes, then suspicion, and didn’t give her time to wonder any longer just what the devil he was doing in her back hall. Turning on the charm to distract her, he grinned at her. “Well, if it isn’t my lucky day. Good morning, boss lady. Were you looking for me? All you had to do was whistle, and I’d have come running.”

      Stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of him, Lise felt the physical stroke of his eyes and couldn’t, for the life of her, understand how he made her so breathless with just a look. Growing up around cowboys, she’d seen his kind all her life. She knew better than to take anything he said seriously.

      Not, she reminded herself, that she had any personal experience with flirtatious cowboys. The ones she knew had never even noticed she was a woman, and that had always been fine with her. She knew bull when she heard it, and she’d always wondered how the women in town and at parties could fall for one load of manure after another.

      Now she knew.

      Caught in the trap of his boyish grin, her heart was fluttering like a schoolgirl’s, and that irritated her no end. Her delicately arched brows snapping together in a scowl, she growled, “Stuff it, Trace. What are you doing in my house?”

      Not appearing the least bit offended, he held up the empty biscuit pan he’d brought with him from the bunkhouse and winked at her. “The boys want more biscuits. I’d rather have you.”

      She should have laughed at his outrageousness and put him in his place—it would have been no more than he deserved. But there was something about the glint in his eye that made her all too conscious of the fact that she stood before him in nothing but her nightgown and robe. Her mouth suddenly as dry as the outback itself, all she could manage was a nod toward the door on his right. “The kitchen’s through there,” she said hoarsely. “Excuse me. I need to get dressed.”

      Turning, she fled up the stairs, leaving Steve staring after her in a way that may have flattered her immensely if she’d only turned around and looked. She didn’t.

      “Did I hear somebody say something about biscuits?”

      Jerking his gaze from the top of the empty stairs, Steve turned to find a short, rail-thin Aboriginal watching him with small black eyes that missed little. Obviously, the man had seen Steve gazing after Lise like he’d never seen a female in her nightclothes before.

      His smile rueful, Steve made no apologies for his behavior. “There’s something about a woman who can put me in my place that really turns me on,” he said honestly. Holding out his hand, he grinned. “Hi. I’m Steve Trace. You must be Cookie. Do you think you could give my mama your recipe for biscuits? I’ve never eaten anything like them in my life.”

      He spoke nothing less than the truth, though he would have said the same thing if the biscuits had been as hard as rocks. In order to do his job, he needed to gain the confidence of everyone who could help him discover more information about Simon, and Cookie was right at the top of the list. A trusted servant who had his own room inside the house, he, unlike the cowboys, was in a position to know everything that was going on with Simon and his daughter.

      He wasn’t, however, a pushover. If he was flattered by Steve’s compliment, he didn’t show it. He shook his hand, but only briefly. “I don’t give out my recipes,” he said curtly. “Come in the kitchen. I just took another pan of biscuits out of the oven.”

      Not waiting to see if he followed, the other man pushed through the swinging door, leaving Steve silently swearing behind him. His last chance to look around now gone, he was left with no choice but to step into the kitchen.

      Standing in front of the mirror, Lise adjusted the collar of her cotton blouse for the third time in thirty seconds, only to realize that she, Lise Meldrum, was primping! “Oh, God!” she whispered. Horrified, she swore and quickly dropped her hand, leaving her collar just the way it was.

      “Quit being a ninny,” she scolded her image in the mirror. “The man’s playing with you and you’re falling for it. Look at yourself, for heaven’s sake! You’ve got lip gloss on!”

      Wincing, she couldn’t deny it. She’d definitely taken pains with her appearance, but not because she was trying to look pretty for Steve Trace, she assured herself. She was going into town later for supplies for the roundup, that was all, and she didn’t want to look like a hoyden. What was wrong with that? It wasn’t as if she was dressing for Steve. She had work to do in the study that would keep her busy all morning, and the trip to town and back would take all afternoon. If she was lucky, she’d be able to avoid him not only for the rest of the day, but from now until they left for the roundup. After all, organizing a roundup took a lot of work, and even though she’d been doing it for years, it didn’t get any easier. Between now and the morning when horses and men were loaded into trucks to begin the trek across the bush to the wildest regions of the station, she’d work every night until midnight and be up at dawn. She had too much to do to waste a single second between now and then thinking about Steve.

      Her chin set at a determined angle, she turned from the mirror, and hurried downstairs to the study. She had letters and e-mail to answer from charities and youth organizations she contributed to every year in her father’s name and that took all of her attentions. By the time she finished, it was noon and time to leave for town. Quickly dialing the bunkhouse she wasn’t surprised when Tuck answered. They spoke every day, rain or shine, about what needed to be done that day, and she didn’t know how she would have run the place without his help.

      “I’m leaving for Roo Springs in five minutes,” she told him. “Send one of the boys over to go with me. I’ll need help loading everything.”

      “Sure thing,” he said easily. “Oh, and don’t forget to add metal fence posts to the list,” he reminded her before she could hang up. “After that storm we had last winter, we’re bound to need them.”

      “I forgot about that,” she said, quickly jotting a note at the end of the extensive list of supplies she had to buy. “At the rate we’re going, I may have to make two trips to town and back just to haul everything.”

      “Take the diesel,” he suggested. “It holds more.”

      “Good idea. As soon as I gas it up, I’ll be ready to go.”

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