‘Perfect,’ he said.
‘Hand on? Who to?’ Chloe looked baffled, staring from one to the other in an effort to get them to divulge the secret.
‘Rory is compiling a cookbook to hand over to his future wife,’ Allegra said.
‘Good heavens! Are you really?’ Chloe looked fascinated by such a thing. After all she had a glory box.
‘I hadn’t been thinking of it,’ Rory confessed. ‘Now I’m convinced I should do it.’
‘Anyone special in your life, Rory?’ Valerie asked, irritated beyond measure by the constant exchanges between their visitor and Allegra and trying none too successfully not to show it.
He shook his head. ‘No, not really, Mrs. Sanders.’ He gave her an easy smile.
‘What’s wrong with all the girls then?’ Valerie favoured him with a girlish one of her own. ‘I would have thought you’d be fighting them off?’
Chloe, mouth slightly open, looked like she felt exactly the same way.
‘A man doesn’t get to meet too many where I come from,’ Rory explained. ‘The desert is about as remote as one can get.’
‘Well then I’m sure you’ll do better here,’ Valerie said with great satisfaction, aiming a fond glance in her daughter’s direction.
Rory vowed there and then not to give Chloe the slightest encouragement.
He took his leave of them thirty minutes later saying he’d have to think things over before getting back to them.
‘Naturally’ Valerie smiled and touched him gently on the arm. ‘We have to put our heads together, too.’
‘Walk out to the car with me.’ Rory managed to get off a quick aside to Allegra as Valerie wheeled about to have a word—never mind what it was—with her daughter.
‘Very well.’ Allegra led the way down the front steps, fully expecting Chloe to seize the moment and race after them. All right, Chloe didn’t normally race, but there was always the first time. She had obviously taken a shine to Rory. Even Valerie had broken out into sunny smiles. One had to be a good looking young man to get one.
Strangely Chloe didn’t come after them. There was only one explanation. It was too hot. ‘So do you want to tell me your thoughts now?’ she asked as Rory fell in alongside her. She really liked the way she had to look up to him. In her high heels she and Mark had been fairly level.
‘Your stepmother made a huge tactical error sacking your overseer,’ he commented in a crisp voice.
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Jack got on with everybody.’ Except Valerie.
‘Obviously he found it pretty hard going with your stepmother.’
Not wanting to criticise Valerie, Allegra said nothing.
‘Surely you have a big stake in seeing the place is run properly?’ Rory prompted, looking down at her flaming head. For some reason—again beyond him—he felt he could talk to her like he’d known her for ever. She was tall for a woman, around five-eight but to him she felt small. Indeed he’d had extreme difficulty keeping the feel of her out of his dreams. But there was no way he could volunteer that.
‘That’s why I’m here.’ She showed a little flash of temper. ‘Losing Dad was a great blow for all of us. Dad was the one who held us all together. With him gone I’m very much afraid I’ll be minus what family I have left. Val and I never did get on.’
‘Actually I can understand that,’ he said laconically.
When Val had been on her best behaviour, Allegra thought. He should come on them unexpectedly. ‘The thing is I was fatally blemished in my stepmother’s eyes because I resemble my mother. Val suffered from the second wife syndrome. It’s a very hurtful and wounding situation.’
Rory nodded. ‘Skewed by the dagger of jealousy! Have you all come to some agreement on an asking price?’
‘Not as yet,’ she said.
‘You are going to be able to work it out, right?’ he asked dryly.
‘Don’t worry, we will. I take it you feel you can do something with the place?’
‘Not feel, know,’ he said, sounding utterly confident.
‘Ah, the arrogance of achievement!’ she said. ‘Word is you ran your family station?’
‘Jay and I.’ He put her straight. ‘I love my brother.’
‘But he’s not the cattleman in the family?’
‘Would you believe he wanted to be a doctor?’
She picked up on the sadness, the regret. ‘So, what stopped him? What finer calling could there be?’
‘He’s my father’s heir, Allegra,’ he pointed out. ‘That says it all.’
‘Okay. I understand. And I don’t.’ For total strangers they had moved quickly to a very real communication, no matter how edgy. ‘It seems to me Jay should have fought for his dream, instead of letting it die a slow death.’
‘Only life has a way of falling short of our dreams,’ he said, ever sensitive to any criticism of his brother. ‘So what decided you to scuttle your dream?’ he questioned, combining a real desire to know with that little flash of sexual hostility.
‘Scuttle is entirely the wrong word.’ She gave him her own admonishing glance. ‘I wanted to cure the situation. My dream was to find harmony and fulfilment. I thought I had a fighting chance with Mark but it blew up in my face like Krakatoa.’
‘So you took the only course open to you. You bolted?’ He was determined to know.
‘What does anyone do when they find out they’ve made a big mistake,’ she asked, very soberly. ‘Now I’ve got to get my life back on track. Incidentally I’m stunned I’m talking like this to a near stranger.’
‘It is a bit eerie,’ he agreed. ‘I’m not always like this with strange women, either. Then again we can think of it as pouring out a life story to the person sitting next to us on a plane.’
She laughed. ‘I assure you I’ve never done it. There’s too much to you, Rory Compton. Darkness, Lightness. Now I think back, I realise I was running away. I love Naroom. I love station life. After all it’s what I was bred to. Yet I was impelled to change my life. It wasn’t the best reason to marry.’
‘You obviously weren’t prepared to stick it out for the next forty years.’
It was said in a voice that so infuriated her, she wanted to slap him. ‘It strikes me that’s none of your business.’
‘True. It’s just that I’m dying to know. How long was it again?’
‘I repeat. None of your business, Compton,’ she returned coolly. ‘You don’t approve of what I did, do you?’ She came to a standstill staring up into his dynamic face.
He almost reached out to tuck a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘I don’t approve of divorce in general, Allegra, being a child of divorce. Not unless there’s a very good and pressing reason. Which you may well have. Forgive me for not minding my own business.’
‘You know what they say. Curiosity killed the cat.’
‘Curiosity isn’t the right word. It implies a passing interest. I aspire to seeing more of you, Miss Allegra. For better or worse, we seem to have bonded. I haven’t as yet figured out why. There’s one thing jumps to mind. Your cooking. A woman’s ability to put out