He shrugged. ‘Well you are much closer to civilisation. Turrawin on the other hand is right on the edge of the Simpson. The sand dunes there peak at around one hundred feet and they run for a couple of hundred kilometres unbroken the longest parallel sand dunes in the world. It’s really eerie the way they bring to mind the inland sea of prehistory. I’ve stood on top of our most famous dune, Nappanerica—’
‘The Big Red?’ She smiled, glad she knew the answer.
‘The very same. A Simpson traveller, Dennis Bartell named it. It’s closer to one hundred fifty feet. The most amazing little wildflowers come out after a shower. Not the gigantic displays we get after flooding. But it’s fascinating to study the little fellas up close. There are so many you can’t move without crushing them underfoot, but then they release the most wonderful perfume. You think you’ve died and gone to Heaven.’ He purposely didn’t say he thought the fragrance akin to the fresh fragrance that came off her body.
‘And after flooding?’ she asked. ‘I’ve seen marvellous photographic shots in calendars.’
‘Allegra,’ he said dryly, ‘You have to see the real thing.’ As he spoke he was imagining her with a diadem of yellow daisies around her head. As young boys he and Jay had fashioned them for their mother. ‘After heavy rain, the desert flora has no equal,’ he said with unmistakably nostalgia. ‘The landscape is completely carpeted by pink, white and yellow paper daisies. It’s like some great inland tide. They even sweep up to the stony hill country. Even the hills come alive with thousands of fluffy mulla mulla banners and waving lambs tails. So many varieties of desert peas come out, fuchsias and hibiscus, our exquisite desert rose. Nature’s glory confronts you wherever you look.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said, moved by the controlled emotion in his voice and face. Nostalgia was written all over him ‘The central plains must seem pretty tame to you after your desert home?’
He raised both his wide shoulders in a shrug, but he didn’t answer.
‘Is there no hope of a reconciliation between you and your father?’ she dared to ask the question.
His face angled away from her, looked grim. ‘I need to get as far away from my father as is humanly possible.’
Good God as bad as that!’ she said, pondering the no-holds-barred bitterness and hatreds in family life. ‘It seems to me you’re a son to be proud of.’
He looked up then to smile at her, the smile that was impossible to resist. ‘Why thank you, Miss Allegra.’
‘I’m not trying to butter you up,’ she said, a shade tartly to counteract that sexual radiance. ‘Just a simple statement of fact.’ Belatedly she put the coffee on to perk. He was just so interesting to talk to she had forgotten all about it. ‘Take a seat.’
He pulled out a chair, resting his strong tanned arms on the table. He was wearing a red T-shirt with his jeans, the fabric clinging to his wide shoulders and the taut muscular line of his torso. It was hard to look past his physical magnetism. In fact it was making her jumpy. So jumpy she felt if he touched her she would fall to pieces. Wisely she stayed on the opposite side of the table.
‘So what have you got to tell me?’
He was as aware as she was of the glittering sexual tension that stretched between them, but he tried to play it cool as befitting a serious man. ‘I can go a little higher with my bid.’
She raised an arched brow. ‘How high is a little?’
He turned up his hands. ‘We’ll split it between $3.5 and $4 million. My final offer, Mrs Hamilton, is $3.75.’
‘That Mrs Hamilton might cost you,’ she said frostily.
‘What did he do to you?’ The intense desire to reach for her—the desire he was endeavouring to keep on simmer—damned nearly boiled over.
‘What’s made you change your mind about me?’ she asked. ‘When we first met it was like—What did she do to her poor husband?’
‘I’ve had an epiphany,’ he said, deciding there was safety in being flippant. ‘For one thing, you’re a great cook.’
‘So the fact I can cook swung it?’ The coffee was perking away merrily. She turned away to shift it off the heat.
‘I’m joking!’ There was amusement in his eyes.
‘I know you are, Rory Compton,’ she said tartly, betraying her stretched feelings. There was only one answer to all this. The question was when?
‘So what did he do to you?’ Rory repeated, his gaze very direct. He didn’t think he could stop until he knew. That in itself was a danger.
She set his coffee down in front of him and pushed a plate of homemade biscuits his way. ‘Isn’t this too early in our relationship—for want of a better word—to ask a question like that?’
‘One doesn’t have to go together a long time to have a relationship.’ He let his gaze rest on her. ‘I thought we’d agreed we’ve well and truly bypassed the preliminaries?’ He stirred three teaspoons of raw sugar into his black coffee.
‘That’s way too much sugar,’ she murmured, unable to deny the truth of what he had just said.
‘I take sugar to rally my flagging spirits. Not that I actually need it right now.’ The little sexy quirks bracketed his mouth again. ‘If you won’t answer my question about your husband, answer this. What do you think of my offer?’
Her hand reached up to brush back a fallen thick coil of her hair. ‘Well, I have to see what Valerie and Chloe think.’
‘Stop being so damned evasive,’ he said swiftly. ‘Valerie and Chloe were ready to take $3.5 million.’
‘Don’t you dare look triumphant,’ she warned him, seeing the silver glint in his eyes. ‘I can’t bear it!.’ To her horror she felt tears swim into her own.
‘Hey!’ Rory reached across the table in consternation. He took hold of her satin smooth fingertips, curling his own work toughened hands around them.
Electricity pulsed the entire length of Allegra’s body. She felt the shock of it as much as if he had taken hold of her and thrown her down on a bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ Rory asked. ‘Have I upset you? I didn’t mean to. It’s honestly all I can offer, Allegra.’
She blinked furiously. God, what was the matter with her? She was a quivering mass of nerve endings. ‘I know that,’ she said, looking down at their joined hands. She had never seen such a contrast in skin tones. ‘You can let go of me now.’
‘Fine.’ He did so before he burst into flames. ‘You’ve got skin like silk. It’s your home is that it? In losing it to me you’d be cutting the last ties with your dad.’
‘You’re very perceptive,’ she said shakily, convinced of it.
‘Why else would you look so sad?’
The deep note of empathy, smote her heart. ‘The grieving never ends, does it? It goes away for a little while then it comes back.’
‘Old wounds never cease aching,’ he agreed with a philosophic shrug. ‘Some people are far less able to cope with the pain than others.’ He was thinking of Jay now.
‘I don’t have anyone anymore,’ she said as though it had suddenly occurred to her. ‘No father, no mother, no husband, no stepmother, no half sister. No family. At least you have your brother. Someone you know loves you and you love him back.’
His brooding expression was back in place. ‘It’s going to be damned difficult to see him if I can’t set foot on Turrawin.’
‘Your father must be a monster,’ she exclaimed, leaning her head in her palm.
‘Is