“Come along,” he coaxed. “Much more of this and you’d be badly sunburnt.”
“I don’t burn,” she told him, when she was seated in the vehicle and he was driving back onto the track. “I have olive skin. I spent years up here.”
“I know.” He grinned. “Bronte on horseback. Bronte feeding a joey that had lost its mother. Bronte holding a rifle of all things. You must have been ten?” He gave her a half amused half disproving glance. “Bronte in the rain forest amid the ferns. Bronte at speech night where she collected all the prizes.”
“Why would you bother to look at old photographs of me?” The air-conditioning was heaven! She closed her eyes briefly and arched her neck.
“They were kinda cute actually.” He allowed his eyes to rest on her. She was even more beautiful, more sensuous in the flesh than she was on television. And those eyes! What colour were they? The lilac-blue of the sacred lotus? The morning glories that decked Oriole’s fences? A crush of jacaranda blossom? “Gilly adores you,” he said.
“I adore Gilly.” She answered with a touch of belligerence as if he’d expressed doubts about her affection. “I would never have survived without her.” Immediately she made it she regretted the confidence.
“That’s a sad thing to say.” His voice, however, conveyed only empathy and genuine concern.
She didn’t need it. “I’m sorry I said it.”
“What is it about me you don’t like?” he asked, sounding like he wanted to get to the bottom of her antagonism.
Arrogant beast to keep challenging her! “I’m sure I have no opinion of you at all,” she lied. She’d been accumulating data from the instant she set eyes on him.
“Good grief! What will Gilly say when you tell her you can’t stand the sight of me. Do I remind you of someone?”
She felt her cheeks grow hotter with resentment. “Forgive me if I’m being rude.” She made a huge effort to get hold of herself. “It’s the heat.”
Her lovely skin was dewed with sweat. He found it incredibly erotic. He could see the tips of her nipples budded against her tight tank top with its low oval neck. A tiny trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts. Her yellow stretch jeans printed with flowers showed the length of her legs. “I thought you loved it?” he asked lazily.
“Not when I’m carrying a suitcase.”
“So the taxi driver offended you?”
“Determined to work this out?” She shot a quick glance at him. Bronte had never cared for cleft chins, and she hardened her heart against him to be on the safe side.
“Oddly enough I am.” He met her gaze with a slightly puzzled expression. She was being rather awful. His clear green eyes moved over her face and shoulders. It was a glance that didn’t linger. It wasn’t overtly sexual yet she felt a rush of something powerfully like sexual excitement. It would be the greatest folly to allow him to see it. A guy like that would only exploit the situation.
“I reacted—perhaps overreacted—to one of his remarks. He called Gilly a crazy old bat. When I think about it, it was more indulgent than anything. You know, the local character!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure I don’t want you to go after him. What do you do around here, Mr. Randolph?”
“Steven, please,” he pleaded, mockery in his voice. “Steve if you like. Gilly calls me Steven. I’m a developer of sorts.”
She almost hunkered down in her seat. “Not one of those!”
He gave a short laugh. “I don’t go around destroying the environment, Bronte. I’m a conservationist as well as a developer.”
Her expression was highly sceptical. “I thought they were mutually exclusive. I can’t imagine how you got to be friendly with Gilly who’s been a conservationist all her life. Unless she has something you want?”
“And what would that be?” He flashed a glance at her.
He wasn’t supposed to have that sexy a voice, she thought irritably. Wives might leave their husbands for a voice like that. “Oriole, maybe?” she suggested. “It might be run-down but these days with a thriving tourist industry and so close to the Reef it’s become a very valuable parcel of land. You might like to get it rezoned and put a back-packer’s place on it for all I know. I should put you straight. Gilly has left it to me.”
“I know!” He dragged the word out. “You must love her for it?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “Gilly told you that?” The fact Gilly liked this guy threw her off-balance. Okay he had charisma. Was that enough to make Gilly confide so much? He’d taken his akubra off, throwing it on the back seat where it appeared to be cuddling up to her straw hat. His hair was a dark mahogany colour with copper highlights put in by the sun. It was thick, straight, well behaved hair. A touch too full and long, but sexy.
“You’d be surprised how much Gilly and I talk.” He confirmed her worst fears.
“No kidding! Like I said, she’s never mentioned you.”
“Well, you have had a great deal on your mind. If it’s any consolation, you did the right thing. If I were a girl I wouldn’t marry Nat Saunders, either. Not in a million years!”
“It sounds more like you know him rather than know of him. Do you?” It wasn’t impossible.
“Kind of.” He grinned.
“More like you’re having me on,” Bronte snapped.
He didn’t deny it.
They were driving through Oriole’s open gates. “Someone’s fixed the hinge, that’s good,” she mumbled to herself. The last time she’d visited Gilly which had to be six or seven months ago, the sagging left side of the gate was propped back with a brick.
“I come in handy sometimes,” he said.
Bronte scarcely heard him. She was staring about her in amazement. “Good grief, a huge clean-up has gone on since I was last here!” The jungle that had threatened to engulf the entire plantation as well as devour the timber homestead had been slashed right back. A good section was actually mown! “Amazing!” She stared out at the grounds which even under jungle were so wildly beautiful they took the breath away.
The gravelled driveway, flanked by an avenue of magnificent poincianas formed a broad highway up to the plantation house. The branches of the great shade trees had grown so massive they interlocked in the middle, forming a long cool tunnel leading up to the house. In a month or so they would burst into glorious flower. An unforgettable sight!
Ancient fig trees on her left. Giants! Festooned with huge staghorns and elkhorns grown as epiphytes, climbing orchids with strongly scented cascading sprays of white and yellow; lacey ferns. One of the rain forest figs she had named Ludwig as a child—after the famous early explorer Ludwig Leichardt—had fourteen foot high buttresses. When she had first come here Gilly had cleaned them out so she could use Ludwig for a cubby house. The greatest miracle of all was she had never been bitten by a snake though she had seen plenty and took good care to tread carefully.
On her right were the magnolias and palms galore. Fan palms with fronds four feet across. There were always shrubs blooming; oleander, frangipani, hibiscus, gardenia, tibouchina, Rain of Gold, the colourful pentas grown en masse, as were the great clumping beds of strelitzias—Bird of Paradise, and the agapanthus. The unbelievably fragrant but poisonous daturas, called the Angel’s Trumpets, were in flower, the enormous white trumpets dangling freely from the branches.
Through