As he set the mugs and sugar bowl on the table, she said, ‘I can’t see why I need to go to the solicitor’s.’
‘You’re Angus’s blood relative. You should be there.’
‘My mother might be Uncle Angus’s sister, but she’s spent her entire life ignoring him.’
Noah simply shrugged. The kettle came to the boil and he turned to the stove to attend to it. Kate watched him pour boiling water into the teapot, and she couldn’t help admiring the way he managed to make a simple domesticated task look manly.
‘If you like,’ he said as he set the teapot on a cane table-mat, ‘I’ll give Alan Davidson, the solicitor, a quick call and ask if there’s any need for you to show up. It’ll only take a tick.’
Kate offered a mystified smile. ‘If you insist, but I hope I’m not needed. I’m dreadfully tired.’
‘The tea will refresh you. Do you mind helping yourself?’
‘Not at all,’ she told his departing back.
She poured a mug of tea. It was a strong brew and piping hot. She added milk and sugar, took her mug to the window and sipped hot tea while she looked out at the scattering of farm sheds and the dry, thirsty paddocks.
This property—named Radnor by Kate’s grandfather after his beloved Radnor Hills in England—didn’t look like a prize inheritance now, in the middle of a drought.
But she could remember her uncle’s boast that, when the rains returned, the Channel Country provided some of the best grazing land in Queensland. One good wet season could change the entire district in a matter of weeks.
Mighty river systems with strangely exotic names like Barcoo, Bulloo and Diamantina would bring water from the north, spreading into tributaries, into hundreds of creeks and billabongs, like blood filling arteries, drenching the hungry earth and bringing it back to life.
People who lived here needed faith to ride out the tough times until the good rains returned and thick feed covered the ground once more. Kate’s mother, sequestered in England, had never understood that.
Noah, on the other hand, knew it implicitly.
Kate drank more tea and sighed heavily. She was deathly tired. Jet lag was making her head spin. And she still felt a crushing disappointment at missing the funeral.
Footsteps sounded in the passage and she turned to see Noah coming through the doorway, his grey eyes unreadable, his mouth a straight, inscrutable line. ‘Alan Davidson was most definite. You should attend the reading of the will.’
Kate shook her head in annoyance. Didn’t people around here understand about jet lag? She couldn’t bear the thought of bouncing back down that bumpy road into Jindabilla. ‘I’m too tired,’ she said, and she yawned widely to prove it. ‘I’ll probably fall asleep in the middle of the reading.’
‘Take another mug of tea to your room and rest for an hour.’ Noah spoke quietly, but with an unmistakable air of authority. ‘Feel free to use the bathroom across the passage from your room. But be ready to leave at two-thirty.’
Kate knew she’d been given an order.
CHAPTER TWO
NOAH shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair in the solicitor’s office, and watched a lonely ceiling fan struggle to bring relief to the over-dressed group in the crowded room. Neck ties were a rarity in the summer heat, but he and Alan Davidson had worn them today out of respect for their good friend, Angus.
James Calloway, Liane’s city lawyer, had gone one better and was wearing a spiffy business suit and a striped bow-tie that looked suspiciously like those worn by the old boys’ clubs of Sydney’s private schools. James was, Noah noted, very red in the face.
Old Angus would be chuckling if he could see this mob, suffering on his behalf.
But Noah had little to laugh about. He’d been through one hell of a week—the shock of Angus’s sudden death, the heart-rending task of spreading the sad news, the struggle to focus on arrangements for the funeral and a fitting farewell. And then, everything had been soured by his ex-wife’s unexpected appearance in Jindabilla with her fancy lawyer in tow.
The nerve of Liane—showing up out of the blue and coming to the funeral, as if she didn’t know that old Angus had, in the end, despised her and blamed her for bringing unhappiness to the people he loved.
She was still causing trouble. Noah couldn’t forgive her for neglecting to pass on Kate Brodie’s message. It was beyond embarrassing that Angus’s niece had travelled all the way from England and had missed everything. The minister could easily have held the funeral off for another day or two.
But it was just as sickening to discover that Liane was here now for the reading of the will. What the hell did she think she was up to? She’d cleaned him out during the divorce. What more could she want? The question made Noah’s jaw clench so tightly his teeth threatened to crack.
Alan Davidson shuffled the papers on his desk and looked tentatively around at the gathering. He gave a quiet nod to Noah, and a poor attempt at a friendly smile to Kate, who was sitting stiffly to one side near the window, as if she wanted to separate herself from the rest of them. And who, thought Noah, could blame her?
He let his gaze rest on her—an extremely pleasant distraction. She was dressed simply in a cream blouse and a brown linen skirt. Sunlight, streaming through the wooden slats of the blinds, shot fiery lights into her whisky-coloured hair and added a pink glow to her delicate English complexion. Her eyes were the softest shade of green.
Back at the homestead, she’d looked washed out, a pale shadow of the lively, flirtatious girl who’d come here for a holiday. But, given her long journey and jet lag, that wasn’t surprising.
Now, sitting in the golden beams of afternoon light, with her autumn hair and her brown skirt, she looked tranquil and undeniably eye-catching. Like a sexy version of a Rembrandt painting.
Alan Davidson opened the folder in front of him, snapping Noah roughly back to the business at hand. Noah’s fingers reached for the knot of his tie, and he longed to loosen it to relieve the sudden strangling sensation that clawed at his throat.
He had no reason to be nervous, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Watching Noah’s restlessness, Kate wished she was anywhere but here. It wasn’t just jet lag making her so ill at ease. She could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. In spite of his suntan, Noah looked pale, and he kept shifting in his chair. Now he was sitting ramrod straight, with his jaw clenched and his hands fisted on his knees, his knuckles white.
Her heart went out to him. She knew he’d loved her uncle as deeply as any son could, and he was still grappling with his grief. But at least he would walk out of this office today as the new owner of Radnor cattle station. Uncle Angus had told her mother years ago not to expect anything from him because it would all go to Noah. So why did Noah look so worried now?
Did he sense, as she did, that something wasn’t right? Alan Davidson, the balding, middle-aged solicitor, shouldn’t have been worried, but he looked almost as uneasy as Noah. He kept adjusting his glasses and opening his document folder, then closing it again.
The cocky man in the city suit—who’d been introduced as James Calloway, Liane’s lawyer from Sydney—was on edge in a different way. He had an air of contained expectation, and he kept sending Liane sneaky sideways winks, almost as if he knew something the others didn’t. Kate disliked his smugness and the way he kept inspecting his super-clean fingernails.
The only person in the room who looked relaxed was Noah’s former wife. Liane had speedily found the most comfortable chair in the room, and she sat now with an easy elegance that displayed her long legs and expensive dress to their best advantage.
She was exceptionally pretty—very fair and very slim with