What hope would she have against him? She might be able to handle a horse—although she had doubts about even that after her ignominious tumble a moment ago—but she had grave misgivings about her hopes of fighting off this man in a struggle.
She felt her bones dissolving at the thought of him overpowering her. But it wasn’t so much fear making her weak as a devilish, heart-racing excitement...the kind of excitement she felt when she urged her mount towards a seemingly impossible jump...the thrill of facing a danger that was truly challenging, and worth facing.
It was a feeling new to her. Dangerously new.
‘Trespassing?’ he repeated, his tone more sardonic, she noted edgily, than defensive. ‘I’ve been riding up in this forest for years, and this is the first time anyone’s accused me of trespassing.’
‘Riding?’ she echoed, glancing round. ‘I don’t see your horse anywhere.’ Even Ginger had deserted her, she realised in alarm. Where was he? Not that Fernlea was all that far away. She could always walk back if necessary. If this wild-haired stranger gave her the chance...
A shivery sensation brushed down her spine.
‘I left Caesar in the orchard. You do know about the orchard?’ he enquired coolly.
She lifted her chin, feeling her control slipping and this brazen trespasser gaining the upper hand. What did he mean, he’d been riding up here for years? Not in the past year he hadn’t. Who was he?
‘I know there’s an old fruit orchard in the forest—yes.’ She scrambled to her feet, deciding she was at a disadvantage sitting on the ground. ‘What were you doing there? Stealing fruit?’
‘Stealing fruit?’ Scorn spiked his voice as he rose to his feet too, causing her to step back, her hand fluttering to her throat ‘I’ve been picking fruit up here for as long as I’ve been riding up here. The powers-that-be at the paper company don’t mind. They’re happy for the residents around here to keep an eye on the forest and help maintain the fire breaks. If they weren’t, they’d have fenced it all off.’
‘The residents?’ she echoed weakly, feeling doubly weak now that he was towering over her. She took another step back, assuming her quelling tone again to bite out, ‘You don’t live around here!’ She’d met all the locals who did. ‘Do you?’ she added uncertainly, noting the mocking curve of his lips.
‘I haven’t lived here for a while, no, but my home’s here and my father’s a long-time resident. Who are you?’ he rapped without enlightening her further. ‘An over-zealous forest ranger? An employee of the paper company? If not, then you—if you wish to quibble about it—are trespassing yourself!’
She drew herself up to her full height of five feet six inches. Which was still several inches below the square jaw above her.
‘I own this forest,’ she said imperiously. ‘At least, my family does.’
His eyes turned to glinting aqua slits. ‘You’re saying Gippsland Paper has sold this pine forest? To your family?’
‘That’s right. My father made them an offer and they accepted.’ She felt a momentary qualm as something dark and dangerous flared in his eyes. ‘They’ve been selling off some of their smaller plantations, and this one wasn’t of much use to them anyway—it’s never been thinned out. Access would have been difficult too, with all those heavily timbered hills behind and no roads. They were happy to get rid of it, I think.’
‘Your father bought it, you said.’ Now there was pure ice in his eyes. ‘Your father wouldn’t happen to be Hugh Conway, the city big shot who bought Fernlea a year ago, by any chance?’ He waved a hand in the general direction of the hill opposite, across the sweeping green valley.
She shivered at the biting contempt in his voice. ‘My father did buy Fernlea...yes.’ From here, deep in the pine forest, the gabled two-storey house on the high side of the opposite hill wasn’t visible, though there was a clear view of the pine forest from the house. ‘You have some problem with that?’
He gave a mirthless smile. ‘I knew it was too good to be true. A fairy-tale beauty with raven hair and stunning black eyes and a face and figure you only see in your dreams... There had to be a catch.’
‘A catch?’ She heard the huskiness in her voice, and winced. Normally comments on her looks left her unmoved. She’d been fêted and fawned over all her life—either for her looks or her father’s money—and had come to mistrust extravagant compliments. She was never sure if they were genuine or merely empty flattery because of who she was.
But this man, she had a feeling, wouldn’t be the type to indulge in meaningless flattery. Back-handed compliments would be more his style.
‘If you’re Hugh Conway’s daughter, you can’t be the girl of my dreams,’ he said flatly, cynicism hardening his voice. ‘The girl of my dreams would never be a pampered city socialite, with a doting daddy who lavishes more money and worldly possessions on his daughter than she needs or is good for her.’
She seared him with a glance, anger hiding a quick flare of hurt. A pampered socialite? How her mother would laugh at that! Her horse-mad, country-loving daughter preferring the high life in the city? That would be the day! As for pampered, she’d always been determined not to let her father’s wealth or the privileges that came with it go to her head...vowing never to become the spoilt, superficial creature this man obviously thought she was. It had made her rather cool and aloof instead, except with friends she trusted.
Only now her coolness had deserted her.
‘My you do have a chip on your shoulder,’ she bit back. ‘Do you always leap to conclusions about the people you meet?’
‘Only when their name is Conway.’ He tilted his head at her, his lips taking on a sardonic curl. ‘I should have guessed who you were from the toffy accent. Not many people around here speak with a Toorak twang.’
She seethed inwardly, unable to refute the fact that she’d lived all her life in Melbourne’s exclusive Toorak. There were, she knew, some snooty, social-climbing Toorak types who put on a studied, syrupy ‘twang’ purely for effect, but her own clipped, polished accent was as natural to her as breathing...she hadn’t carefully cultivated it.
‘What do you have against the Conways?’ she hissed at him. He had a chip on his shoulder all right. A sizable one. ‘Who are you?’
‘The name’s O’Malley. My father owns the dairy farm across the river from Fernlea.’
‘You’re Patrick O’Malley’s son?’ Her eyes gleamed as she saw her chance to turn the tables on him. ‘You’re the son who turned up his nose at dairy farming, thinking it too lowly and commonplace for him—’ she felt a stab of satisfaction as she said it ‘—and walked out, leaving his poor widowed father in the lurch?’
The icy glitter in his own eyes showed the shaft had hit home. ‘Is that what my father told you? That I walked out and left him in the lurch?’
‘Your father and mine aren’t exactly on speaking terms—as I’m sure you must be aware.’ But she didn’t want to dwell on that. ‘No...it’s common talk around here. How your father wanted his only son—you—to help him run the family dairy farm once you’d qualified as a vet, but you chucked your course to join a chemical company and study engineering instead.’
‘Chemical engineering,’ he corrected her. ‘And I didn’t chuck vet school...I’m a qualified vet. I just didn’t practise...except as a part-time emergency vet for a while.’
‘Whatever.’ She shrugged, not feeling he deserved an apology. ‘And since then,’ she ploughed on, ‘you’ve been roaming round Australia, making money selling some kind of parasite-killing chemical...forcing your father to hire a local to help him. You