‘No,’ she whispered. ‘But I want to learn, Gabe.’ She pressed parted lips to his thumb again. The tip of her tongue touched his skin and she felt her skin flushing all over with a wild kind of excitement.
She was sure she was burning. Her face was hot. All over her body her skin felt aquiver with heat. Gabe’s face was so close, and she wanted to feel the midnight roughness of his beard against her cheek.
She suddenly knew that she needed his lips to roam her face the way his fingers had. Oh, yes, she wanted him to taste her. ‘Do you think you could kiss me?’ she whispered. ‘Just for practice?’
Somehow the gap between them seemed to be closing. Gabe was cupping her face with two hands now. He was so close. So wonderfully close. Was he going to kiss her?
She closed her eyes.
‘I mustn’t kiss you.’
Her eyes flashed open to see him pulling away.
‘What was I thinking?’ he cried, jumping to his feet.
One glance at the distress in his startled eyes and she felt exceedingly foolish. Embarrassed.
What was wrong with her? What had she been thinking? She’d been enjoying his touches so much she’d virtually thrown herself at him. How had she let herself be so carried away? With Gabe?
His hands rose to his head in a gesture of helplessness, then they dropped to his side as he let out an angry sound that was half-sigh, half-groan. ‘Piper, you have no idea how to protect yourself from men!’
Was he right? Her cheeks flamed as she watched him pace away from her, his boots crunching in the dirt. How on earth had this happened? When had their conversation taken such a dangerous turn? Had it been as Gabe described? Had her senses taken over before her brain could catch up?
He stopped pacing and turned abruptly, and she saw that his face was twisted with fierce emotion. ‘For heaven’s sake, Piper, if you go around offering yourself like that you’ll end up with the wrong man.’
Puzzled, contrite, she stared at him, while she forced her mind back over what had just happened. Minutes ago he’d been gently teasing her, then he’d been touching her with breathtaking tenderness and looking as if he wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to be kissed. And now he looked more angry and disturbed than she’d ever seen him.
But, hang it all, what did he have to get so fired up about? He’d been the one telling her how pretty her hair looked in the moonlight. He’d raised the subject of intimacy…
Heck! Gabe didn’t have a monopoly on anger. She was getting pretty mad, too. She’d been following his lead, trusting him completely while she let her senses take over.
Folding her arms very deliberately across her chest, she glared at him. ‘Heaven forbid that I should end up with the wrong man. I wouldn’t want a man like you, Gabriel Rivers.’
He didn’t reply at first. Just stood there with his hands shoved deeply in his pockets and his jaw set. For ages they stood facing each other without speaking, sizing each other up like gladiators in a ring.
Then Gabe gave a casual shrug of his shoulders and a fleeting grin twisted his mouth. Crossing back towards her, he settled onto the swag again. ‘Glad we got that sorted out,’ he said.
CHAPTER THREE
‘DID you catch the mongrels?’
Michael Delaney was waiting on the verandah when Gabe and Piper climbed wearily out of the ute shortly after dawn.
‘Didn’t see hide nor hair of them,’ Gabe grumbled.
Piper hurried across the verandah to kiss her grandfather. ‘How are you, darling?’ She studied him anxiously as she stood holding his frail hand in both of hers. ‘Did Roy spend the night here?’ she asked.
Roy was an ancient stockman, who was as old and frail as Michael. He’d passed his use-by date as a cattleman years ago, but, unable to face the thought of a retirement home, he’d stayed on in a small cottage on Windaroo and did odd jobs about the place.
‘He only slipped back to his cottage a minute ago when he heard your ute coming back,’ said Michael.
‘How did you sleep?’ Piper asked.
‘Well enough.’
‘And you remembered to take all your tablets?’
Her grandfather sighed. ‘Every blinking one of them. I’m so full of pills I’m rattling. Now, forget about me. I want to hear all about your night.’
Gabe caught the sudden tension in Piper as she flicked an annoying strand of hair out of her eyes. This morning she’d been furious when they hadn’t been able to find her elastic band. He knew Michael’s brain would be computing madly as his shrewd old eyes took in the uncharacteristic wildness of her loose, tousled locks.
In fact, the old man’s faded blue eyes were dancing as he swung his gaze from her to Gabe and back again. ‘It was a nice night to be out,’ he said. ‘With the full moon and all it must have been a sweet spring night.’
‘It’s still August,’ Piper huffed. ‘Won’t be spring until next week.’
Michael ignored her and, settling his frail frame more comfortably in his canvas squatter’s chair, smiled smugly.
Gabe wondered why the old fellow was looking so self-satisfied. His own night had been hellishly difficult, and although they hadn’t swapped notes, he was sure that Piper hadn’t had a wink of sleep either.
Now, for the life of him, he couldn’t look cheerful, and when Michael saw no change in Piper’s similarly dour expression his smile faltered.
‘I was so sure those cattle duffers would hit that paddock last night,’ she said. ‘I’ll be furious if I find out they struck in another spot.’ Angrily she shoved her hair behind her ears. ‘I dragged Gabe out there for nothing.’
Gabe dropped his gaze in case Michael caught his sudden flush of guilty embarrassment. Thank God nothing had happened out there. It had been a close call. Way too close for comfort.
What a fool he’d been to get tangled up in that discussion about flirting. But how could he have known Piper would respond so sensually to his slightest touch?
And how could he have guessed it would be so damn difficult to resist her tempting little mouth? He’d been on the brink of making a huge mistake. And the result had been an uncomfortable tension that had destroyed the easy camaraderie they’d always enjoyed.
‘We’re disgustingly hungry.’ Piper said. ‘So I’m going to make breakfast straight away.’
Without looking back at either of them she hurried into the house, and Gabe knew she was itching to get away from him.
‘Rest your bones,’ Michael ordered, and he patted the flat timber arm of the chair beside him. ‘Piper likes to be left alone when she’s working in the kitchen.’
Gabe grimaced as he lowered himself slowly into the seat. This morning, after a sleepless night on hard ground, his wounds were complaining. He was aching all over and he felt almost as doddering and brittle as old Michael.
At least he could relax with the old man. They sat in companionable silence for several minutes while they gazed out across Windaroo’s pastures.
And then it happened.
Just when he was starting to unwind memories pressed in, demanding his attention, and instead of sunlit, grassy plains he was seeing shattered glass scattering over the highway, buckled metal and his own broken limbs.
If only he could put it all behind him. But more often than he liked memories of the crash still hijacked his thoughts.
He’d