‘You could say that.’ She turned to face him, filled with something very like joy. Where was all this leading? She only knew it was going too fast.
‘Would it be considered impolite to ask why?’ Rory stared back at her, drinking her in. She was wearing a mulberry coloured polo shirt over cream jodhpurs that showed off the slender length of her legs and her very neat butt. She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup at all. Just a touch of lipstick probably to protect her mouth, but her beauty was undiminished.
‘You’re loads better off not knowing!’ Her answer was wry.
‘Tell me. One would have to be massively insensitive not to pick up on the fact you women don’t have a warm relationship.’
‘Okay, we had an argument,’ she confessed.
‘I would never have guessed! It involved my offer and your decision not to accept it, of course.’
‘Clairvoyant as well.’ She turned to walk into the living room and he followed.
God, she could lead me anywhere, Rory thought, not altogether proud of the way he had fallen so easily for her. Did he actually need a mad passion? Surely he had decided he didn’t. Yet he was thrilled and apprehensive at the same time. Their being alone together could only draw them closer. He already knew he was going to go along with it, even though he recognised she had the capacity to hurt him badly. This was a woman who would want to go back to her glamour job in the city. That was something to be feared.
You fool, Rory! This is getting altogether too serious.
He was getting right into the habit of communing with himself. Now he glanced around the comfortable living room. ‘Family arguments are no fun.’ Boy, didn’t he have some experience!
‘You can say that again,’ she sighed. ‘My family doesn’t want me here anymore. That’s it in a nutshell.’
‘Okay let’s sit down,’ he said gently, seeing how much that hurt her.
‘We’re going to haggle?’ She settled into an armchair indicating he take the one opposite.
‘If you like. A cup of coffee would make me feel better.’
She sprang up as if remiss at not offering him one. ‘Me, too!’ She was becoming addicted to this man and in such a short while. Yet right from the beginning an intimacy had existed she had never shared with anyone else. Explain that? ‘Come through to the kitchen,’ she invited. ‘We can haggle in there.’
It was a big kitchen but his presence filled it up. Allegra busied herself hunting out the coffee grinder then taking the beans from the refrigerator.
‘I’ll do that,’ he offered, moving closer.
‘Fine.’ Even her pulses were doing an Irish reel. ‘Count to twenty, that should do it.’ She opened a cupboard and took out coffee cups and saucers, trying to tone herself down.
‘The rain was wonderful,’ he said when he finished grinding the beans and the kitchen was quiet again. ‘I found myself standing out in it.’
‘I can understand that.’ She smiled. ‘I did, too. I was purposely riding under the trees so I could get a shower from the wet branches. Do you think we’ll get more? Rain is so very unpredictable.’
‘Certain to,’ he said.
‘How do you know? Don’t tell me it’s your aching bones?’
‘I can feel it. I can smell it,’ he said. ‘Besides the rain is coming down in bucket loads in the North. The last report I heard a cyclone was forming in the Coral Sea. That’s all it will take. It’s either flood or drought. If the cyclone develops and we get torrential rain, the Big Three—that’s the Diamantina, the Georgina and the Cooper—will bring the floodwaters right down into our remote South-West corner. The Channel Country is one vast natural irrigation system as I’m sure you know. You’ve never been there?’
‘I regret to say, no. I spent years at boarding school, then university, then I married. But I will get there one day.’
‘It would be nice to take you,’ he said. ‘The whole region can flood without a drop of actual rain. Seen from the air it looks like the whole country is underwater.’
‘Of course!’ She looked across at him in quick realisation. ‘You would see it from the air. You have your own plane on Turrawin?’
He nodded. ‘A Beech Baron and a couple of Bell helicopters. We use the choppers a lot for mustering. We also use the services of an aerial mustering company from time to time. Choppers have revolutionised the whole business.’
‘I can imagine, with those vast areas.’ She stopped what she was doing to study him. ‘But it can be dangerous? I’ve heard of many instances of fatal light aircraft and chopper crashes.’
‘Very dangerous.’ He shrugged the danger off. ‘But it’s our way of life, Allegra. We have to keep our fears under control.’
‘That’s pretty amazing,’ she said dryly.
‘When fatalities happen our vast community shares in the heartbreak. We’re all in it together. I’ve been in ground searches and aerial searches in my time. We’ve had two major accidents in the last twelve years on Turrawin. One death I regret to say. A really good bloke, one of our regulars who could fly anything and land anywhere so no one worried about him for quite a while. The other was a crash landing, but mercifully the pilot walked away. I’ve had a close call myself. Once I came down in the middle of a big paperbark swamp. In the Territory I could have been taken by a croc, but we don’t have any crocs in the desert. Well not anymore.’ He smiled. ‘Though you can see them in our aboriginal rock paintings.’
She stared back at him fascinated. ‘You have cave paintings on Turrawin?’
‘We don’t advertise, but yes. Some of them are amazing. One cave in particular is guaranteed to make you believe in the Spirit Guardians. The hairs stand up on my forearms and I consider myself pretty cool.’
‘You are cool.’ She laughed. ‘I’d love to see that cave myself.’
‘I wish I could take you there.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ she admitted recklessly. ‘We don’t have anything like that around here.’
‘I know.’
His mouth, quirked as it was now, was framed by the sexiest little brackets. She realised she watched for those moments. That was what falling in love was all about. It seemed that for her this was the classic coup de foudre. Which by no means guaranteed things were going to turn out fine she reminded herself. As for it happening at such a turning point in her life she was beyond thought.
‘You’re very passionate about your desert domain, aren’t you?’ She said, knowing he would be passionate about most things.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ His crystalline eyes looked right into hers. ‘It’s like no other place on earth and Jay and I have managed to see quite a few. Australia is the oldest continent on earth. I think that accounts for a lot of the extraordinary mystique. It’s the timelessness, the antiquity, the aboriginal feel, the power of the Dreamtime spirits. Then there’s the colour of the place … the vivid contrast between the fiery red earth and the cloudless blue sky. Every country offers its great and its quiet wonders.
‘I’ve stayed a few times with friends, another cattle family, who own and run a magnificent ranch in Colorado. They have the Rocky Mountains for a backdrop. It’s like wow! Then we had a great trip to Argentina a couple of years back. Business and pleasure. A wonderfully colourful and exciting place. We loved it. We managed to get in a few games of polo while we were there. They’re the greatest as I’m sure you know. We even got to fly over