‘Is your mother around?’ she asked Megan, hoping to find someone she could introduce herself to properly while she waited for Matthew Standish to appear.
Megan looked at her as if she was stupid. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Copper inadequately, thrown as much by the matter-of-fact little voice as by the information. What did you say to a child who had lost its mother? ‘That’s very sad. I’m sorry, Megan. Er...who looks after you?’
‘Kim does.’
The housekeeper? ‘Where’s Kim now?’ she asked.
‘She’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ echoed Copper, taken aback. What was this place, the Marie Celeste? ‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know,’ Megan admitted. ‘But Dad was cross with Uncle Brett because now there’s no one to look after me.’
Copper’s heart was wrung as she looked down at the oddly self-possessed little girl beside her. Poor little mite! Had she been abandoned entirely? She opened her mouth to ask the child if there was anyone who knew where she was when a voice called Megan’s name, and the next moment a man came round the corner of the homestead from the direction of the old woolshed.
He was tall and lean, that much Copper could see, but in his stockman’s hat, checked shirt, jeans and dusty boots he looked, at a distance, just like any other outback man. And yet there was something about him, something about the easy, unhurried way he moved, that clutched at Copper’s throat. For a heart-stopping moment he reminded her so vividly of Mal that she felt quite breathless, and could only stare across the yard to where he had checked at the sight of her.
It couldn’t be Mal, she told herself as she struggled to breathe normally. She was being ridiculous. Mal belonged to the past, to Turkey and a few star-shot nights. It was just the outback playing tricks with her mind. She had been thinking about him so much over the last few days that now she was going to imagine that every man she met was him. This man just happened to have the same air of quiet strength. It didn’t mean he was Mal.
And then he moved out of the shadow of the house and came towards the steps to stand looking up at where she sat next to Megan, and Copper found herself getting shakily to her feet, her heart drumming in disbelief.
It couldn’t be Mal, but it was...it was! No one else could have that quiet mouth or those unfathomable brown eyes, steady and watchful beneath the dark brows. No other man could have just that angle of cheek and jaw, or make her bones dissolve just by standing there.
Would he remember her as clearly as she remembered him? Oh, God, what if he did? Or would it be worse if he didn’t?
Beneath his hat, Mal’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at Copper, clinging to the verandah post as if her legs were too weak to support her. She was wearing loose shorts and a matching short-sleeved linen jacket, an outfit she had chosen with care to impress the formidable Mr Standish. In the motel that morning it had seemed to strike the perfect balance between casual elegance and practicality, but the long, bumpy drive since then had left her looking instead hot, crumpled and ridiculously out of place, and the wavy brown hair that normally swung in a blunt cut to her jaw was dusty and limp.
All too conscious of the picture she must make, Copper was passionately grateful for the sunglasses that hid her eyes. Swallowing convulsively, she managed a weak ‘hello’, although her voice sounded so high and tight that she hardly recognised it as her own.
Before Mal had a chance to reply, Megan had launched herself down the steps towards him. ‘Dad!’
Copper’s mind, still spinning with shock, jarred to a sickening halt. Dad? All those times she had wondered about Mal and what he was doing, not once had she pictured him as a husband, as a father. And yet, why not? He must be thirty five by now, quite old enough to have settled down with a wife and child. It was just that he had been such a solitary man, Copper told herself, pretending that the hollow feeling in her stomach was due simply to surprise.
It was hard to imagine anyone so self-contained bogged down in a life of domesticity, that was all. Surely that was reason enough for her to feel as if someone had hit her very hard in the solar plexus? It had nothing whatsoever to do with any silly dreams that he might have stayed faithful to the memory of the few short days they had spent together. She hadn’t, so why should he?
Mal had caught Megan instinctively as she hurtled down the steps, and now swung her up into his arms. ‘I thought I told you to stay on the fence where I could see you?’ he said to her, but spoilt the stern effect by ruffling her dark curls before lowering her to the ground once more. Megan hung onto his hand as he turned his attention back to Copper, his expression quite unreadable.
‘At last,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
For one extraordinary moment Copper thought that he was telling her that he’d waited seven years for her after all. ‘For—for me?’ she stuttered, trying not to stare.
The angular face was just as she remembered, cool, rather quiet, but with strong, well-defined features and a mouth which could look almost stern in repose but which could relax too into an unexpected smile. Copper had never forgotten that smile, how it transformed his whole face and how the air had evaporated from her lungs the first time she had seen it.
He wasn’t smiling now. The years had etched harsher lines around his mouth and there was a shuttered look to his eyes. Copper thought he looked tired, and her shock was punctured at last by shame as she remembered that Megan’s mother was dead. It was no wonder that he looked harder, older than her memory.
‘You’re late,’ Mal was saying, apparently unaware of her inner turmoil. ‘I was expecting you at least four days ago.’
Had her father given him an exact date to expect her when he had written? Copper looked puzzled, but before she could ask him what he meant Megan had tugged at his hand. ‘Her name’s Copper.’
There was a tiny moment of silence. Surely he must remember her name, if nothing else, Copper thought wildly. She had sunglasses on and her hair was quite different now, but her name hadn’t changed. She waited for Mal to turn, recognition and surprise lighting his face, but he was looking down at his daughter.
‘Copper?’ he repeated, his voice empty of all expression.
‘It’s not a proper name,’ Megan informed him. ‘It’s a nickname.’
Mal did look at Copper then, but his brown eyes were quite unreadable. Could it be that he really had forgotten her? An obscure sense of pique sharpened Copper’s voice.
‘I’m Caroline Copley,’ she said, relieved to hear that she sounded almost her old business-like self. At least her voice had lost that humiliating squeak. ‘I was hoping to see Matthew Standish.’
‘I’m Matthew Standish,’ said Mal calmly, and all her newly recovered poise promptly deserted her as her jaw dropped.
‘You are? But—’ She broke off in embarrassment.
Mal lifted an eyebrow. ‘But what?’
What could she say? She could hardly accuse him of not knowing his own name, and if she did she would have to explain how they had met before. Copper had her pride, and she was damned if she was going to remind a man that he had once made love to her!
She didn’t remember telling him about her name, or asking him about his own. He might have told her his surname, but if he had, she hadn’t remembered it. She remembered only his slow, sure hands on her skin and the strange sense