He regarded her lovely face, clear of that early expression of panic. “May I ask if you intend to rent it?”
“I don’t think I could if I had to get your approval,” She read his mind.
“On the contrary, I don’t care who moves in as long as they’re quiet. May I enquire too if you’ll be on your own?” He couldn’t keep the sardonic note out of his voice.
She stared back at him, trying to formulate an answer. He was formidable, but not threatening. Experienced. Tough. But never the sort of man to lift his hand in anger to a woman. Such a thing would only rouse in him revulsion. All this she saw even as she registered he would be very difficult to know. Very complex.
“It’s not a crime, is it?”
“It is if you play pop music very loudly.” Unexpectedly he smiled, sunlight from behind storm clouds.”
“I don’t know much about pop music at all,” she confessed, lulled by that smile. “I’m a classically trained pianist without a piano. I expect you’ll be grateful for that.”
“Not at all. I grew up in a house of music. My mother is a cellist.”
“Would I know of her?” she asked with genuine interest.
“Could be.” He looked away.
“I thought I might have a career as a pianist,” she found herself confiding.
“So what happened?”
“It didn’t work out.” She too changed the subject. “I’m a friend of Sarah Dempsey, by the way.” She said it as though Sarah’s name could offer safety and acceptance.
“She’s a very beautiful woman and a fine doctor. The town counts itself lucky to have her. I’ve met Dr Dempsey, most notably at her engagement party. I know her fiancé Kyall McQueen better. All in all they’re an extraordinary couple. You and Sarah were at school together? No, what made me say that? You’d be some years younger…”
“It’s not how old you are, it’s how old you feel,” she found herself saying dangerously.
“Really? And how do you feel, Miss Graham?”
“As though I’m being quietly interrogated.” She met the darkness of his eyes.
“‘Quietly’ and ‘interrogated’ are mutually exclusive.”
“You sound as if you know. Have you been in the Forces at some time? Secret Intelligence Service?” She was only half joking. Undeniably he had that sort of presence. Even standing perfectly still he give the impression he was at high alert, ready, engines running.
“I wonder how you ever thought that?” he answered smoothly, though her observation had thrown him.
“Am I right or wrong?”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.” He grimaced. “I’m a humble wood worker.”
“You surely don’t think yourself humble?” What was the matter with her? She was breaking all the rules.
“All right, then, you tell me?”
“I think you’re a casualty of battle.” My God had she said that?
He raised a large, sculpted hand. “Miss Graham, you’ve blown my cover.”
“Sometimes an emotional response can be quite unconnected to appearance or reason.”
“I just happen to agree.” Out of nowhere a complex intimacy was taking hold. “If you think you know something of me, may I ask if in coming out here to the desert you’re making a fresh start?”
His voice was deliberately bland, but it didn’t fool Laura. “I’ve made you angry.”
“You’ve thrown down a challenge. That’s different.” When she had cut through his barriers with frightening ease. Few people had ever done that. Even hardened professionals.
“I won’t bother you, Mr Thompson, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“When you’re the sort of woman who would always bother a man?” His watchful eye caught her tremble. “Forgive me. I’m quite sure we’re going to be good neighbours as long as we keep to ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’ over the fence. That’s if you’re going to stay?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” She gave him a tiny smile.
“I’m quite sure it’s not what you’re used to.”
“No more than you, in the old colonial next door. Actually, I was making some notes about what sort of furniture I’d need when you knocked.”
“There’s a good secondhand store in the main street,” he found himself telling her. “The cottage is sound structurally. You’ll need the fireplace from time to time. Desert nights can get very cold. Is this in the nature of a breathing space? Don’t you have people who will miss you?”
“My life can wait.’ She didn’t attempt to say it lightly. He wouldn’t be fooled. “As for you? Don’t you have a story to tell?”
“I suppose I should ask are you psychic?” His voice was deliberately dry. “You have a witch’s beautiful green eyes. Surely a give-away. Then again, you could be a spoilt little rich girl on the run.”
She visibly paled. “And if I were you wouldn’t protect me?”
He was silent for a moment, her words and that spontaneous intimacy hammering away at him. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes. You need have no fear of me, Miss Graham. I don’t know who you are, but I do know you’re taking a risk.”
“Is it possible you’re psychic yourself? You know nothing whatever about me.”
“Quite possibly I’m like you.” He shrugged. “Covering my tracks. I’ll keep quiet if you will.”
She watched him, watching her. “How did this all start?” she asked genuinely taken aback. “I don’t understand how we got into this conversation at all.” For all its curious liberation.
“I do,” he said with surprising gentleness. “Sometimes it happens like that. A shortcut to discovery.”
“It strikes me as very strange, all the same.”
“Have no fears. Though when I saw you in the garden I thought fear would be alien to you. You looked so innocent, I suppose.”
“So why have you changed your mind?”
“You’re too intense, and there’s a haunting in your eyes.”
“All right, you’re a psychiatrist?” She tried to cover her confusion with a banter. “A highbrow writer? Award-winning journalist? You’re very intense too.”
“That comes with things we have to guard.”
“Then both of us have been very revealing this morning,” she said. Certainly nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
“It would seem so. I don’t often meet a young woman so disconcertingly perceptive. Also, you’re something of an enigma. You’re too young to have had much life experience? How old? Twenty-one, twenty-two?” His eyes dipped from her face to take in her slender body in cool white skirt and ruffled top, a mix of cotton and lace. Refined. Virginal.
“Can you deal with twenty-three?” He was clearly much older, with a wealth of experience behind those dark eyes.
“A baby,” he concluded.
“I don’t think so.” Her fingers clenched white. She was quite old enough to have had bad experiences.
He didn’t miss the movement of her fingers. “You know about tragedy?”
“Tragedy