“I need to get more exercise,” he said, rotating his arm at the shoulder and grimacing with pain as he saw the sixteen-foot Hambone surface and make his first courtship moves.
“You need to get more of something,” Blake countered wryly. His head jerked toward the fence between them and the new couple. “Even a crocodile with a brain the size of a pea knows it’s not meant to be a solo act.”
“You think I should set something up with Delilah?”
Blake looked at the male crocodile arching his tail and head out of the water, and setting the water dancing with shivers from his powerful body, a ritual designed to arouse the female’s mating instincts. “She’s already spoken for. I was thinking of someone from your own species.”
Tom rotated the other arm the female croc had almost jerked out of its socket. “You wouldn’t have anyone specific in mind?”
Blake looked studiedly casual. “I don’t know. You seemed taken enough with a certain Middle Eastern princess.”
“She’s a stunning looker. I may not be involved with anyone right now, but I’m not dead.”
“Then the interest Judy detected at Des’s place the other night was purely academic?”
Tom kept his gaze averted but felt himself redden. Of his three foster brothers, Blake knew him the best. Soon after Tom joined the Logan family, Blake had managed to get through to him when nobody else could. Tom didn’t exactly endorse taking your new brother out to the woodshed and fighting him until he agreed to communicate, but it had worked. Tom had learned that he wasn’t the center of the universe. Nor was he such a bad apple that nobody would want to bother with him.
He owed Blake a lot, but some things weren’t meant to be shared. “Purely academic,” he insisted.
Blake nodded. “Like Tonia Winters.”
“Tonia was a mistake. A man’s entitled to one.”
“One? What about Susan and Jemma? You’re starting to look like a rolling stone, brother.”
“And you’re starting to sound like Judy. ‘When are you going to settle down? When are you going to get married?’”
His falsetto imitation of their foster sister didn’t deter Blake. “Tonia and Susan I can understand. They were only marking time until they could get away from the Kimberley to the bright lights. But what was with you and Jemma? She shared your interests and your lifestyle. You could have had a good thing going with her.”
“She was the one who ended it,” Tom stated flatly, his tone suggesting an end to this line of discussion.
Blake propped a booted foot on a crossbeam of the enclosure fence. “Her decision wouldn’t have had something to do with your real dad?”
Tom whirled on Blake, fists raised before he realized what he was doing. An icy sensation shafted through him as he studied his clenched hands before lowering them slowly. Over the years they’d had this conversation several times in different forms. It always pushed his buttons, and for the same reason. “If you must know, I was in love with her. When I told her, she said I scared her. She was afraid that if we got too involved, I could blow up and hurt her the way my father did my mother.”
“Did you give her a reason to think you might?”
“She said it was in my manner. What the blazes is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you probably came across to her the way you’re doing now, as if you’d like to take somebody apart with your bare hands,” Blake suggested.
“Then she was right to leave.”
Blake shook his head. “If she hadn’t known your background, she wouldn’t have read so much into it. You’re not the violent type, Tom. You could have slugged me just now but you didn’t.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t if I’m provoked far enough. My dad never meant to hit my mother and he always felt like a louse afterward. But sorry didn’t mend her bruises or broken bones. Any more than it could bring her back to life the day he used a knife instead of his fists.”
Blake watched the crocodile courtship ritual for a few minutes before saying quietly, “By now I know it doesn’t help to remind you that you’re not your father. But I’ll say it again anyway. You’re different. I’ve seen you risk your neck to rescue idiots who should know better than to cross a river in flood in an ordinary car. I’ve been around when you nursed sick animals for half the night, and suffered when they didn’t make it despite your best efforts. None of that suggests you’ll wind up in a prison cell for killing someone.”
Tom felt his features harden. “Jemma left me because she was afraid of what I might do. Can you guarantee she wasn’t right? Unless you can, there’s no point having this discussion. I won’t put any woman at risk of my mother’s fate.”
“Not even a woman you really care about?”
“Especially a woman I care about.”
Blake slapped him on the shoulder. “If you don’t get cleaned up, the problem will solve itself. No woman wants a man who smells as rank as you do right now.”
Tom wrinkled his nose, well aware of the fishy odor of crocodile clinging to him. “News for you, brother, that’s not a smell, it’s an echo. Race you to the shower.”
A short time later he was clean, wearing the change of clothes he’d brought with him and already tasting the beer Blake was opening, when his cell phone rang. He dug the muddied and battered object out of its holster. “McCullough.”
He ended the call as Blake placed two cans of Foster’s on the table. “Trouble?”
Tom gave his beer a regretful glance. “That was Judy. She was flying over Cotton Tree Gorge on the way back to the homestead airstrip when she spotted a truck heading for the old cottage. It belongs to Max Horvath.”
A slight sound outside made Shara almost drop the battered copper kettle she was filling to make coffee. From the window she saw a kangaroo leap away into the scrub. She told herself she had to stop jumping at every sound, but it was hard not to when Jamal was so close by. He wouldn’t leave her alone until she was his wife and couldn’t get in the way of his ambitions.
He needed to own things to prove his worth to himself. Palaces or people made no difference. First he would own her in marriage, then he would go after her country. Then a neighboring country. Every new conquest would sate his insecurity but only for a limited time.
She frowned, remembering a personal assistant Jamal had hired two years before. The young woman, Amira, had been fresh from the country, extraordinarily beautiful and naive. Shara had assumed the woman hadn’t been hired for her office skills.
Shara had no way of knowing what went on within the walls of Jamal’s apartments, but gradually Amira’s vivacious beauty had waned. She became painfully thin and edgy, shadows darkening her lovely hazel eyes. The fearful glances she gave Jamal were enough to tell Shara the reason. He had taken the young woman as his mistress and had mistreated her when the novelty wore off. The doctor Shara had ordered to check on Amira had diagnosed overwork, and sent her home to her province. Jamal had a new assistant the next day.
Shara felt her jaw firm. There was no way she would let any man bend her to his will until her inner fire was quenched and her spirit broken. Under Q’aresh’s ancient laws, a man could physically discipline the women in his household if they betrayed him in some way. Women had the same right, but their strengths were rarely equal, so it was inevitably the woman who suffered at the hands of the man. No matter that the law was rarely used these days. It had never been repealed and Jamal took every advantage of the fact. When she had petitioned her father to change the law he had readily agreed,