Her Outback Protector

“You don’t need to know,” she told him severely. “But I’m desperately missing my flat already.”

“Like the older man do you?” he asked, rather amused by her huffiness. It was fair to say she didn’t look like a considerable heiress. She didn’t dress like one, either. She was definitely not friendly when he was long used to easy smiles from women.

“The older the better,” she said with emphasis. “You seem awfully young to be overseer of a big station?” She eyed him critically. He radiated such energy it needed to be channelled.

“I grew up fast,” he answered bluntly. “I had a very rough childhood.”

“That’s hard to believe.” He really was absurdly good-looking. Hunk was the word. Stunning if you liked the cocky macho male always ready for the next conquest. “You look like you were born to the sound of hundreds of champagne corks popping…already astride your own pony by the time you were two.”

He smiled grimly. “You’re way off.” He watched the expensive suitcase tumble out onto the conveyor belt, getting exactly the same treatment as the most humble label.

“So there’s a story?” Why wouldn’t there be? He looked anything but dull.

“Isn’t there always? You’ve got one.” He pinned her with a glance and a rather elegantly raised eyebrow.

“Haven’t I just.” There was a forlornness in her eyes before the covers came down.

He hefted her heavy suitcase like it was a bundle of goose down. “Listen, how are you feeling?” he asked, noticing she had suddenly lost colour.

“Quite awful since you ask!”

Such a tart response but he didn’t hold it against her. “Did you have anything to eat on the plane?”

Dammit if he didn’t have a dimple in one cheek. “A big steak,” she answered in the same sarcastic vein. “Actually I had an orange juice. Plane food lacks subtlety don’t you think? Besides, I hate planes. I thought I might throw up. I didn’t really want to precipitate a crisis.”

He pondered for half a second. “Why don’t we grab something to eat now?” he suggested. “There are a couple of places to grab coffee and a sandwich. Come to think of it I’m hungry, too.”

She didn’t bother to argue. He was used to taking charge as well. He didn’t even consult her about what she wanted but saw her seated then walked over to the counter to order.

Two waitresses, one with a terrible hair day, sped towards him so quickly, the younger one, scowling darkly, was forced to fall back to avoid being muscled aside. No matter where you were good-looking guys managed to get served first, Sandra thought disgustedly.

Macho Man returned a few minutes later with a laden tray. “This might help you feel better,” he said, obviously trying to jolly her up.

“Thank you.” She tried to fix a smile on her face, but she was feeling too grim.

He placed a frothy cappuccino with a good crema in front of her, a plate of sandwiches and a couple of tempting little pastries. “We can share. There’s ham and whole grain mustard or chicken and avocado.”

“I don’t really care.”

He rolled his eyes. “Eat up,” he scolded, exactly like a big brother. “You’re not anorexic are you?” He surveyed her with glinting eyes. “Not as I understand it, anorexics admit to it.”

“I eat plenty,” she said coolly, beginning to tuck away.

“Pleased to hear it.” He pushed the plate of sandwiches closer to her. “What did you do to your hair, if it’s not a rude question? Obviously it’s by your own hand, not a day at the hairdressers?”

To his consternation her huge beautiful eyes turned into overflowing blue lagoons.

It made him feel really bad. “Look, I’m sorry,” he apologised hastily, remorse written all across his strongly hewn features. “You have a right to wear your hair any way you choose. It actually looks kinda cute and it must be cool?”

She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and took a gulp of air. This big macho guy looked so contrite she had an urge to tell him. A spur of the moment thing when she’d barely been able to speak of it. “A little friend of mine died recently of leukaemia,” she said, her expression a mix of grief and tenderness. “She was only seven. When she lost all her beautiful curly hair, I cut mine off to be supportive. Afterwards the two of us laughed and cried ourselves silly at how we looked.”

He glanced away, his throat tight. “Now that’s the saddest story in the world, Alexandra.”

“You just want to die yourself.”

“I know.”

The sympathy and understanding in his voice soothed her.

“But your little friend wouldn’t want that,” he continued.

“She’d want you to go on and make something of your life. Maybe you even owe it to her. What was her name?”

“Nicole.” She swallowed hard, determined not to break down. She could never ever go through something so heartbreaking again. “Everyone called her Nikki.”

“I’m sorry.” He sounded sad and respectful.

She liked him for that. It was oddly comforting considering he was a perfect stranger. “The death of a child has to be one of the worst things in life,” he mused. “The death of a child, a parent, a beloved spouse.”

A sentiment Sandra shared entirely. She nodded, for the first time allowing herself to stare into his eyes. He had the most striking colouring there was. Light eyes, darn near silver, fringed by long, thick, jet-black lashes any woman would die for. Jet-black rather wildly curling hair to match. It kicked up in waves on the nape. Strong arched brows, gleaming dark copper skin, straight nose, beautifully structured chin and jaw. For all the polished gleam of health on his skin she knew his beard would rasp. She could almost feel it, unable to control the little shudder that ran down her spine. He was the sort of guy who looked like he could handle himself anywhere, which she supposed would add to his attractiveness to women. A real plus for her, however, was that he could be kind. Kindness was much more important than drop dead good looks.

“I know what loss is all about,” he said, after a moment of silence, absently stirring three teaspoons of raw sugar into his coffee. “There are stages one after the other. You have to learn to slam down barriers.”

“Is that what you did?” Her voice quickened with interest, even as she removed the sugar. Obviously he had a sweet tooth and too much sugar wasn’t good for his health.

“Had to,” he said. “Grief can drain all the life out of you when our job is to go on. So how old are you anyway?” He tried a more bantering tone to ease the rather painful tension. “My first thought was about sixteen,” he said, not altogether joking.

“Try again.” She bit into another sandwich. They were good. Plenty of filling on fresh multigrain bread.

“Okay I know you’re twenty.” He concentrated on her intriguing face with her hair now all fluffed up.

“Nearly twenty-one.” She picked up another sandwich. “Or I will be in six months time when I inherit. If I’m still alive, that is. Once I’m on Moondai and at the mercy of my relatives who knows?”

He set his cup down so sharply, a few heads turned to see if he’d cracked the saucer. “You can’t be serious?”

“Dead serious,” she confirmed. “My mother and I left Moondai when I was ten, nearly eleven. She was a basket case. I went into a frenzy of bad behaviour that lasted for years. I was chucked out of two schools but that’s another story. We left not long after my dad, Trevor, was killed. Do you know how he was killed?”

“I’d like you to tell me.” Obviously she had to talk to someone about it. Like him, she appeared to have much bottled up.

“He crashed in the Cessna.”

He sat staring at her. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Her great eyes glittered. “Did your informant tell you the Cessna was sabotaged?”

“Dear oh dear!” He shook his head in sad disbelief.

“Don’t dear oh dear me!” she cried emotionally.

Clearly her beliefs were tearing her to pieces. “Sandra, let it go,” he advised quietly. “There was an inquiry. The wreckage would have been gone over by experts. There was no question of foul play. Who would want to do such a thing anyway?”

She took a deep gulp of her coffee. It was too hot. It burnt her mouth. She swore softly. “You may think you’re smart—you may even be smart—I’m sure you have to be to run Moondai, but that was a damned silly question, Daniel Carson. Who was the person with the most to gain?”

He looked at her sharply. “God, you don’t think very highly of your uncle, do you?”

“Do you?”

“My job is to run the station, not criticise your family.”

Tension was all over her. “So we’re on different sides?”

“Do we have to be?” He looked into her eyes. A man could dive into those sparkling blue lagoons and come out refreshed.

“I don’t want Moondai,” she said, shaking her shorn head.

“So who are you going to pass it on to, me?” He tried a smile.

She sighed deeply. “I’d just as soon leave it to a total stranger as my family.”

“That includes cousin Berne?”

She put both elbows on the table. “He was a dreadful kid,” she announced, her eyes darkening with bad memories. “He was always giving me Chinese burns but I never did let him see me cry. Worse, he used to kick my cat, Olly. We had to leave her behind which was terrible. As for me, I could look after myself and I could run fast. I bet he’s no better now than I remember?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself, Alexandra.” He kept his tone deliberately neutral.

“I won’t have one single friend inside that house,” she said then shut up abruptly, biting her lip.

He didn’t like that idea. “I work for you, Sandra,” he told her, underscoring work. “If you need someone you can trust you should consider me.”

She continued to nibble on her full bottom lip, something he found very distracting. “I certainly won’t have anyone else. I wasn’t going to offload my troubles onto you, not this early anyway, but I’m a mite scared of my folks.”

He was shocked. “But, Sandra, no one is going to harm you.” Even as he said it, his mind stirred with anxiety. The Kingstons were a weird lot, but surely not homicidal. Then again Rigby Kingston had left an estate worth roughly sixty million. The girl stood between it and them. Not a comfortable position to be in.

Frustrated by his attitude, Sandra dredged up an old Outback expression. “What would you know, you big galah!”

He choked back a laugh. “Hey, mind who you’re calling names!”

“Sorry. Galah is not the word for you. You’re more an eagle. But surely you realise they must have been shocked out of their minds by the will. Uncle Lloyd would have fully expected to inherit. He wouldn’t want to work the place. He’d sell it. Bernie would go along with that. Bernie disliked anything to do with station work. You must know that, too. Where do you live?” she asked abruptly.

“I have the overseer’s bungalow.”

“Roy Sommerville, what happened to him? He was the overseer when we left.”

“Died a couple of years back of lung cancer. He was of the generation that chain smoked from dawn to dark.”

“Poor old Roy! He was nice to me.”

“Anyone would be nice to you.” His response was involuntary.

She grimaced. “I don’t recall Uncle Lloyd ever bouncing me on his knee. His ex-wife, Aunty Jilly, used to dodge me and my mother all the time. No wonder that marriage didn’t work out. Bernie was always so darn nasty. Now they must all think I’m the worst thing that ever happened.”

He couldn’t deny that. “What was your grandfather like with you?” he asked, really wanting to know. “Any fond memories?”

“Hello, we’re talking Rigby Kingston here!” she chortled.

“The most rambunctious old son of a bitch to ride out of the Red Centre.”

He shook his head. “When you’d melt any man’s heart.” A major paradox here when Kingston had left her his fortune.

“I don’t want to melt men’s hearts,” she exploded, the blood flowing into her cheeks. “It’s all smiles and kisses one day. Rude shocks the next. I don’t like men at all. They don’t bring out the best in me.”

He held back a sigh. “I think you must have had some bad experiences.”

“You can say that again! But to get back to my dear old grandpop who remembered me at the end, I do recall a few pats on the head. A tweak of the curls before he was out the front door. I didn’t bother him anyway. He was happy enough when my dad was alive. After that, he turned into the Grandad from Hell. He seemed to put the blame for what happened to my dad on my mother.”

“How could she have been responsible?” he asked, puzzled.

“Uncle Lloyd blew the whistle on a little affair she had in Sydney,” she told him bleakly. “Mum used to go away a lot and leave Dad and me at Moondai. Uncle Lloyd said she was really wild, but then he was a great one for airing everyone else’s dirty linen.” She broke off, staring at him accusingly.

“You must have heard all this?”

Why pretend he hadn’t when an unbelievable number of people had made it their business to fill him in on Pamela Kingston’s alleged exploits? Lloyd Kingston wasn’t the only one who liked airing the world’s dirty linen. Apparently Sandra’s mother had been famous for being not only radiantly beautiful but something of a two-timing Jezebel. There had even been gossip about who Alexandra’s father really was. Alexandra didn’t look a bit like a Kingston which now that he had seen her Dan had to concede. The Kingstons were dark haired, dark eyed, tall people with no sense of humour. Pamela had routinely been labelled as an absentee wife and mother who spent half her time in Sydney and Melbourne living it up and getting her photo in all the glossy magazines. Dan knew she had remarried eighteen months after her first husband’s death. Wedding number two was no fairy tale, either. It too had gone on the rocks. Pamela was currently married to her third husband, a merchant banker with whom she had a young son. It seemed Sandra had moved out fairly early. He wondered exactly when? Not yet twenty-one the combative little Ms Sandra Kingston gave the strong impression she had looked after herself for some time. And possibly after her mother, the basket case. Hell, he knew as much about female depression and the various forms it took as the illustrious Dr. Freud.

“All right, what are you thinking about?” Sandra cut into Dan’s pondering.

“I was wondering when you left home?”

At the question put so probingly she began to move the salt and pepper shakers around like chess pieces. “To be perfectly honest, from which you might deduce I’m given to telling lies—I’m not—I’ve never really had a home.”

“You and me both,” he confessed, laconically.

Instantly she was diverted from her own sombre thoughts.

“So there’s more?” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, all attention.

“If you think I’m about to share my life story with you, Ms Kingston, I’m not!”

She shook her head. “Is that a hint I’m communicating too much?” she asked tartly, slumping back in her chair.

“Not at all. It strikes me you’ve spent a lot of time alone?”

She sighed theatrically, then stole one of his sandwiches.

“That’s what happens when your mother has had three husbands.”

“One of them was your dad,” he pointed out.

She nearly choked she was so quick to retort. “That son of a bitch Lloyd challenged that at least a dozen times before I was ten.’”

The muscles along his jaw tightened. He knew all about labels. “He’s not a very nice person,” he said shortly.

“He’s a bully,” she said. “And I’m going to prove that. He really really upset my mother. I know she wasn’t the woman to exercise caution but don’t you think she would have been completely insane to try to put one across my dad let alone my fearsome old grandpop. My dad always knew I was his little girl. He used to call me ‘my little possum.’ He told me every day he loved me. I think he was the only person in the entire world who did. Then he went off and left me. I was so sad and so angry. My mum and I needed him. It’s awful to be on your own.” She dug her pretty white teeth into her nether lip again, dragging them across the cushiony surface, colouring it rosy.

“So a man does come in handy?” he asked.

She looked into his eyes and he saw the sorrow behind the prickly front. “A dad is really important.”

Hadn’t he faced that all his life? Even a bastard of a dad.

“Getting killed was the very last thing your dad wanted, Sandra. Unfortunately death is the one appointment none of us can break. I’m sure your mother loves you. Your grandfather too in his own way.”

“God that’s corny!” Now she fixed him with a contemptuous glare. “In his own way. What a cop-out!”

“He made you his heiress,” he pointed out reasonably. “Do people who hate you actually leave you a fortune? I don’t think so. Your grandfather bypassed his son, your uncle, and his only grandson who is older than you by three years.”

“I can count,” she said shortly, hungrily polishing off another one of his sandwiches. “I actually got to go to university. I was a famous swot.”

“Head never out of a book?”

“Something like that.” She shrugged, picking away a piece of rocket. “In a locked room. My stepfather, Jeremy Linklatter, IV, developed a few little unlawful ideas about me.”

He who thought himself unshockable was shocked to the core.

“You can’t trust anyone these days,” she said in a world-weary fashion. “Certainly not men. There should be a Protection Scheme for female stepchildren.”

“Hell!” he breathed, hoping it wasn’t going to get worse.

“He didn’t touch you?”

Her expression showed her detestation of stepfather Jeremy. “Not the bad stuff.” How was she confiding all this to a stranger when she had never spoken about it at all? There was just something about this Daniel Carson.

“Thank God for that!” He released a pent-up sigh. “The guy must have crawled out from under a rock. So when did you leave home?”

She shrugged, licking a little bit of avocado off her fingertip. “I went to boarding school. Then I went on to uni and had on campus accommodation. It proved a lot safer than being at home.”

“Did your mother know what was going on?” Surely not. That would have been criminal.

She sighed. “My mother only sees what she wants to see. She can’t help it. It’s the way she’s made. Besides, Jem was pretty adept at picking his moments. I was always on high alert. Occasionally he got in an awful messy kiss or a grope. Once I pinched his face so hard he cried out. Then I took to carrying a weapon on my person.”

He could picture it. “Don’t tell me. A stun gun?”

“Close. A needle with a tranquillizer in it.”

“You’re joking!” That was totally unexpected. And dangerous.

“All right, I am. But I was desperate. I took to carrying my dad’s Swiss Army knife. You know what that is?’

“Of course I know what it is,” he said, frowning hard at the very idea of her needing to carry such a thing as a weapon. “I have one, like millions of other guys. It’s a miniature tool box.”

“You don’t have one like mine. It’s a collector’s item,” she boasted. “An original 1891 version.”

“Really? I’d like to see it.”

She laughed. “And I’d enjoy showing it to you only I couldn’t bring it on the plane.”

“I wish I could meet up with this Jem,” he said grimly.

“No need to feel sorry for me.” She tilted her chin.

“Nothing catastrophic happened. He’s such a maggot. He just had all these urges. Men are like that.”

“Indeed they’re not,” he rapped back. “Evil men give the rest of us ordinary decent guys a bad name. It’s utterly unfair. There’s something utterly disgusting about a predator.”

“That’s why I like my gay friends,” she announced, wiping her hands daintily on a paper napkin before brushing back the damp curls at her temple.

“How long was your hair?” he asked, his eyes following the movement of her small, pretty hands.

“That’s a funny question, Daniel Carson.”

He gave his dimpled, lopsided smile. “Oh, I dunno. I’m trying to visualise you as the girl you were.”

“If you must know, I had a great mop of hair. A lot of people thought it was lovely. Say, those sandwiches were good. I think I must have been starving. I might even have another one of those little pastries. Oh, it’s yours!” she observed belatedly.

“Take it,” he urged. “You’re the one paying.”

“What?”

“Just a little joke,” he said. “My shout this time.”

“Which reminds me,” she said in quite a different voice.

“I want you up at the house.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You can’t mean living there?”

“I can mean and I do mean.” She sat back, fiddling with her thumbs.

“Just forget about it,” he answered flatly.

“Might I remind you, Daniel, I’m the boss. I want you about two steps up the hallway from me. I don’t know you very well, but I’d find having a great big guy like you around—especially one with a Swiss Army knife—reassuring.”

He frowned direly. “Sandra, your fears are groundless.”

“Sez you!” she responded hotly, sitting up straight. “Do you know how many people get killed over money?”

“There could only be one in a million who don’t finish up in jail,” he told her in a stern voice.

“A few more than that filter through,” she struck back.

He studied the flare-up of colour in her cheeks. “Listen, Ms Kingston, if you’re under the impression your family would agree to that, you’re very much mistaken. Both your uncle and your cousin would see me gone only neither of them can do my job. It was your grandfather who hired me. It was your grandfather who gave me so much authority. As you can imagine your uncle and your cousin bitterly resented that fact, even if they didn’t want to take over the reins. After twelve months I’ll have no alternative but to quit.”

“You won’t quit while I need you,” she told him imperiously. “And you will shift your gear up into the house, if you’d be so kind. I may have been only ten when we were kicked out but I do remember it was so big you needed a bus to get around it.”

“Just leave it for the time being, won’t you?” he asked in his most reasonable voice. “See how the family reacts.”

“In that case, Daniel, you better be present,” she said. “So where did you come from anyway? Are you a Territorian?”

“I am now, but I come from all over.”

“You’re worse than I am,” she sighed. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

“Maybe not today.”

She looked at him searchingly. “So what about a compromise? Where precisely did you learn to manage a cattle station. You’re what?” Her blue eyes ranged over him.

“You want me to produce a birth certificate? I’m twenty-eight, okay?”

“Most overseers aren’t off the ground by then,” she observed, impressed.

“Then I must be the eighth wonder of the world. As it happened, I learned from the best. My mother and I lived like gypsies moving around Outback Queensland until we came to rest in the Channel Country when I was about eleven. A station owner there, a Harry Cunningham, offered her the job of housekeeper after his wife died and there we stayed until he died some years back. His daughter sold the station almost immediately after. Something that must have the old man still swivelling in his grave. But such is life!”

There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but the first was easy. “So where is your mother now?”

His handsome face instantly turned to granite. “I’m like you, Alexandra. I’m an orphan.”

“I’m sorry.” She saw clearly he had no more dealt with the loss of his mother than she had the loss of her father. Orphans. Hadn’t her mother been lost to her the day she married that rich, worthless scumbag, Jem?

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said.

“What happened to her?” She spoke as gently as she could, fearing she was about to be rebuffed.

“I think we’ll just leave it,” he said.

CHAPTER TWO

HE TOOK her on a journey that filled her with fascination. The landscape beneath them was so vast, so timeless in character Sandra found herself awestruck. The first hellish minutes, just as she expected, had been taken up with fighting down her fears. She would never be cured of them. Not just of helicopters. In a chopper one couldn’t look out on a fixed wing, causing not only in her, but in many people the sickening sensation the aircraft might simply drop out of the sky. She feared all aircraft. She’d been battling that particular phobia since she was a child and the family Cessna had taken a nosedive into the McDonnell ranges, not far from Moondai, with her father strapped into the pilot’s seat. That was the start of it.