‘No!’ That was definite. ‘Most circuses are nomadic and I can’t leave Gran and Grandpa. The only circus that works around here is Carvers and I won’t go near them in a pink fit.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘I’m a trained accountant,’ she said and he blinked because of all the unlikely professions …

‘I know,’ she added bleakly. ‘I’m a qualified accountant for a circus that’s gone bankrupt. What a joke.’

‘But how can you be a qualified accountant?’

‘Online university,’ she said curtly. ‘Doesn’t that fit the image? Circus folk. Inbred and weird.’

‘I never said that.’

‘You never thought that? Why the astonishment, then? Because we’re bankrupt? It’s not my fault. Professionally, this is a bombshell. I wasn’t given the facts.’

‘Which wasn’t fair.’

‘Maybe it was,’ she said wearily. ‘I wasn’t given the facts to protect me. Grandpa could never have afforded to keep our animals into their old age. He took on the debt for me. I loved those elephants, and even now I’ll never agree to have them put down, even though I foresee a lifetime of debt in front of me.’ She closed her eyes for a brief moment, as if gathering strength for a lifetime of elephant support, then took the document and sat at her table-in-miniature and read.

He stood and watched her read.

Her head was bowed over the paper. Her gorgeous curls were tumbled so he couldn’t see her face.

A lifetime of debt … A lifetime of bookkeeping for a girl in pink sequins.

‘There might be charities that’ll help with the animals,’ he ventured at last, and she nodded without looking up.

‘I’ll sort it. Not your problem. According to this, Bond’s owns this circus and all its assets as of today—and nothing we can do in the next two weeks changes it.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And we’re in receivership right now. You’ll sell us to Carvers?’

‘That’s up to us,’ he said gently and she bit her lip and went back to reading.

‘All this document says is that I promise not to try and extend the two weeks, and I don’t get rid of any assets in the interim.’

‘That’s the gist.’ She was good, he thought. What she was accepting must be a gut-wrenching shock, but he’d drawn it up in legalese, and she had it in one quick scan.

‘So no riding off into the sunset on camels?’

‘Um … no.’ Unbelievably, she was trying to smile, and something inside him twisted. Hurt.

She read on, then reached for a pen and signed.

‘We won’t do anything stupid,’ she said dully and the smile had gone again. He missed it.

‘Thank you.’ He took the document, checked the signature—some things were inbred—and tucked it into his pocket.

He should go.

‘This is not your fault,’ she said suddenly. ‘And you have promised to be ringmaster. There’s no reason for you to feel bad.’

‘I don’t.’ But he did and she knew it. How? She was watching his face and he had a strange feeling that she could see … much more than he wanted her to see.

‘I need to check on Pharaoh,’ she said abruptly, standing again, and in the confines of the tiny caravan she was way too close. She’d washed in something lemony, he thought. Citrus. Nice.

He could just reach out and touch those curls.

In his dreams. He was here on business.

‘Pharaoh?’

‘You met him this morning. Camel. Cough.’

‘Right,’ he said faintly. ‘Don’t you have anyone else to do the heavy work?’

‘The animals are mine,’ she said, suddenly protective. ‘I love them. How could I ask anyone else to care for them?’

‘ You love camels ?’

‘How can I not? Come and make their acquaintance. You’ve only met them in passing, and they’re special.’

He should leave—but the lady of the pink sequins was asking him to go chat to camels.

How could a banker resist an invitation like that?

The ground had dried a little since this morning, but not much. His brogues were suffering. Allie had her boots on again and was sloshing along like a farmer.

She graciously allowed him to carry the feed bucket.

The enclosure was made of cyclone fencing panels, bolted together to form a secure, temporary home. The panels started and ended at a huge truck, opened at the back with the ramp down.

‘That’s their retreat,’ Allie told him, seeing him checking the place out under the temporary lighting. ‘The van’s their security. The camels hardly use theirs but if they’re threatened—for instance we’ve had hoodlums break in and throw stones, and once we had dogs dig under the fencing—they’ll back into the van. The noise they make clattering up the ramp is enough to wake us and we’ll be out here in minutes, but we’re not worried. We seldom have problems.’

The camels didn’t look worried, Mathew thought, as he saw the great beasts greet Allie with what looked almost like affection. Even though he carried the feed bucket, it was Allie they headed for.

She greeted each of them in turn, scratching ears, slapping sides, and as one tried to nuzzle her neck she reached up and hugged him.

‘Pharaoh’s a softie,’ she told him. ‘He’s the oldest. His cough’s getting better. I think we might let him work tomorrow.’

‘It won’t be too strenuous?’ He thought back, remembering the clowns slipping and sliding from the camels’ backs.

‘They love it,’ she said simply. ‘These guys are designed to trudge through the desert, going without water for days at a time. I’ll take them for a decent workout in the morning, but without the circus work they’re bored. If they can’t work …’ She faltered. ‘I’m going to have to find them a desert to roam.’

‘On accountancy wages?’

‘That’s not your problem,’ she said again, and grabbed the feed bucket and sloshed it into the trough with something like violence.

‘We might be able to find you an accountancy position within the bank.’

He’d said it without thinking. He’d said it because … she seemed bereft. Alone. She seemed a slip of a girl with the weight of the circus on her shoulders.

He shouldn’t have said it, and he knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth.

She didn’t look at him, but she straightened and looked beyond the circus grounds, to the foreshore where the moon glimmered over the distant sea.

He saw her shoulders brace, just a little, as if she was preparing herself for what lay ahead.

‘Thank you,’ she said in a cool, polite voice that had nothing to do with the Allie he was beginning to know. ‘But I have Gran and Grandpa, and my two great-uncles—Fizz and Fluffy are really Harold and Frank and they’re Gran’s brothers. How can I leave them? I can’t. Between us we have two dogs, three camels and three ponies. So … an apartment within commuting distance of Bond’s Bank … Sydney, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘There you go, then. Impossible.’

‘Allie …’ He was supposed to be the stand-back, dispassionate banker here. Bankers didn’t get involved—had his grandfather taught him nothing? But right now …

He couldn’t bear it. He felt so responsible he felt ill.

He put a hand on her shoulder, but the moment he touched her she wheeled to face him. With anger.

‘For the third time, it’s not your problem,’ she snapped, and she was so close … so close …

‘I’d like to help.’

‘You already are. You’re ringmaster. You’ve extended our time. What else?’

‘I could do more.’

‘Like what?’ His hand was still on her shoulder and she wasn’t pulling away. ‘Extend the loan? Let us get deeper in debt? Even if you would, we couldn’t accept. I know when to call it quits and we’re calling it quits now. You’ve given us two weeks of getting used to the idea, of finding ourselves somewhere to live, of figuring out something. The caravans will be repossessed but they’re ancient, anyway. I now know why Grandpa’s been so reluctant to replace or even fix them. I’m thinking maybe an old farmhouse somewhere out of town, for a peppercorn rent, some place I can commute to a bookkeeping job for a local car yard or something. You don’t need to offer any more charity.’

‘It’s not charity.’ She was still so close. His banker barriers … his rule about non-involvement … were dissolving because she was so close.

‘Giving us that loan in the first place was charity,’ she said bleakly. ‘No more.’

‘Allie …’

‘What?’ she demanded, and glared up at him and it was too much. It was far too much.

She was too close. The moonlight was on her face. She looked frightened and angry and brave, all three, all at the one time, and quite simply he’d never seen a woman so lovely. She stood there in her ancient jacket and old jeans and her disgusting boots, but the memory of her slim, taut body flying through the air in her pink and silver sequins was with him still.

A bookkeeper for a car yard …

His hand was on her shoulder. He could feel her breathing.

She was glaring up at him, breathing too fast. She should break away. He expected her to, but she didn’t.

Why? The night held no answer. It was as if they were locked there, motionless in time and space.

One woman and one man …

Her face was just there. Her mouth was just there.

Don’t get involved.

How could he not? Something was happening here that was stronger than him. He didn’t understand it, but he had no hope of fighting it.

It’d take a stronger man than he was to resist, and he didn’t resist.

She didn’t move. She stood and looked up at him in the moonlight, anger and despair mixed, but something else … something else …

He didn’t understand that look. It was something he had no hope of understanding and neither, he thought, did she.

Loneliness? Fear? Desperation?

He knew it was none of those things, but maybe it was an emotion born of all three.

It was an emotion he’d never met before, but he couldn’t question it, for there was no time here or space for asking questions. There was only this woman, looking up at him.

‘Allie, I care,’ he said and it was as if someone else was talking.

‘How can you care?’

He had no answer. He only knew that he did.

He only knew that it felt as if a part of him was being wrenched out of place. He was a banker, for heaven’s sake. He shouldn’t feel a client’s pain.

But this was Allie’s pain. Allie, a woman he’d known for less than a day. A woman he was holding, with comfort, but something more. He looked down at her and she looked straight back up at him and he knew that now, for this moment, he wasn’t her banker.

In a fraction of a moment, things had changed, and he knew what he had to do. He knew for now, for this moment in time, what was inevitable, and she did, too.

He cupped her face in his hand, he tilted her chin—and he stooped to kiss her.

One minute she was feeling sick and sorry and bereft. The next she was being kissed by one of the most gorgeous males she’d ever met.

The most gorgeous male she’d ever met. Her banker.

Her ringmaster?

It had been an appalling day. She was emotionally gutted and he was taking advantage.

But, right now, she wasn’t arguing and he actually wasn’t taking advantage. Or if he was, she wanted him to take advantage. If taking advantage felt like this …

It did feel like this. It felt like … It felt like …

It felt like she should stop thinking and just feel. For this moment she could stop being lonely and fearful and bereft and block every single thought out with the feel of this man’s body.

His mouth was strong, warm, possessive. Persuasive. Seductive? Yes! She was being seduced and that was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to let go. She wanted to forget, and melt into this man’s body with a primeval need.

For there was no fear or loneliness or bereavement in this kiss. Instead she could feel a slow burn, starting at her mouth and spreading. There was another burn starting in her toes and spreading upward, and another in her brain, spreading downward.

In her heart and spreading outward?

She’d gone too long between kisses. In a travelling circus, the opportunities for romance were few and far between. How else to explain this reaction?

But did she need to explain? Stop thinking, she told herself frantically. This is here, this is now and there’s no harm. For now simply open your lips and savour.

And she had no choice, for her mouth seemed to be opening all by itself, welding to his, feeling the heat and returning fire with fire.

Her arms were wrapping round his gorgeous coat, tugging him closer, closer still. Sense had deserted her. For now all she needed was him. All she wanted was him.

Mathew.

His big hands held her, tight, hard and wonderful. Her breasts were moulding to his chest.

She could feel the faint rasp of stubble. She could smell the sheer masculine scent of him.

She could feel the beating of his heart.

She wanted … She wanted …

She didn’t know what she wanted, but what she got was a camel, shoving its nose right between them and braying like an offended … camel?

This was a kiss that needed power to break, but there was something about a camel that made even the most wondrous kiss break off mid-stride.

They broke apart. Allie staggered and Mathew gripped her shoulders and held—but Pharaoh was still between them, his great head looped over their arms, moving in, an impermeable barrier between them.

She heard herself laugh—sort of—or maybe it was more of a sob. At the end of a nightmare day, this had been quite a moment. It was a moment that had lifted her out of dreary and desolate into somewhere she hadn’t known existed. It had warmed her from the inside out. It had made her think …

Or not think. Just feel. That was what she’d wanted, she thought almost hysterically. It had been a miracle all by itself. For a moment she hadn’t thought at all.

But what now? Pharaoh had broken Mathew’s hold on her shoulders. She looked past the big camel and saw Mathew’s face and she thought, he’s as confused as I am.

Not possible. She was so confused she was practically a knot inside.

Or maybe she wasn’t confused. Maybe what she wanted—desperately—was to shove this great lump of a camel aside and will this guy to pick her up and carry her to her caravan. Or not her caravan—that was far too pedestrian for what she was feeling now. What about a five-star hotel, with champagne and strawberries on the side?

Um … not? Sense was sweeping back and she could have wept. She didn’t want sense. She wanted the fantasy. James Bond and the trimmings …

Not James Bond. Mathew Bond, banker.

‘Maybe … maybe that was a bit unwise,’ the banker said, in a voice that was none too steady. ‘I don’t make love to clients.’

And with that, any thought of luxury hotels and vast beds and champagne went right out of the window. Client.

‘And I don’t make love to staff,’ she managed.

‘Staff?’

‘With Grandpa in hospital, I’m in charge of the circus and you’re ringmaster. Staff,’ she snapped and saw a glint of laughter deep in those dark eyes.

Pharaoh nudged forward as if he anticipated the need to intervene again, and Allie leaned against the camel and shoved, so both of them backed a little away from Mathew. To a safer distance.

‘But the ringmaster has the whip,’ Mathew said softly and, to her amazement, he was grinning.

She gasped, half astonished, half propelled to laughter. But she was grateful, she conceded. He was making light of it. She needed to keep it light.

‘There’s a new prop edict as of tomorrow,’ she managed. ‘Whips are off the agenda.’

‘I guess they need to be,’ he said a trifle ruefully. ‘Allie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’

It needed only that. An apology.

‘I don’t normally … react,’ she said, trying to keep her voice in order.

‘To kissing?’

‘To anything. You caught me at a weak moment.’

‘As I said, I’m sorry.’

They were back to being formal. Absurdly formal.

‘You have your contract,’ she told him. ‘You need to get back to Margot.’

‘I do.’

‘Goodnight, then,’ she said and she clung to her camel. A girl had to hold on to something.

‘You don’t need more help?’

‘I don’t need anything.’

‘I suspect you do,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘You’re so alone. But I also suspect you don’t need me making love to you. You have enough complications on your plate already.’

‘It was a nice kiss,’ she managed. ‘I quite liked it. But if you think it causes complications you’re way out, Banker. One kiss does not complications make. Goodnight.’

He looked at her for a long moment and she looked right back. Firmly. Using every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep that look firm.

She was aware that Pharaoh had swivelled as well, so both of them were staring.

One girl and one camel … the man didn’t have a chance.

‘Goodnight, then, Allie,’ he said gently. ‘And to you, too, Pharaoh. Sleep well, and let any complications rest until tomorrow.’

‘You’re not a complication,’ Allie snapped.

‘I meant bankruptcy,’ he said, even more gently. ‘I mean the disbanding of your circus as well as your way of life. I didn’t mean me at all.’

And he reached out and touched her, a feather touch, a faint tracing of one strong finger down the length of her cheekbone.

‘I need to come early tomorrow to look through your books,’ he said softly, as if hauling himself back to reality. Hauling himself away from … complications? ‘I’m sorry, but you’re right, this is business. We’ll make it as easy as possible, though. No whips at all.’

CHAPTER FIVE

HE’D COME TO Fort Neptune to say goodbye to his great-aunt. Instead, he was watching her pack away a comprehensive breakfast and listening to her nudge him in the direction of romance.

‘She’s lovely. I’ve thought she was lovely ever since she was a wee girl. Her grandpa used to pop her on the back of the ponies in her pink tulle and she was so cute …’

‘I’m not in the market for a woman in pink tulle,’ he growled and she grimaced.

‘You’d prefer black corporate? Honestly, Mathew, that last woman you brought down here …’

‘Angela was caught up in a meeting and didn’t have time to change before leaving. She changed as soon as she got here.’

‘Into black and white corporate lounge wear. And she refused to go for a walk on the beach. Mathew, just because you lost your parents and sister, it doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love. Properly, I mean.’

‘There’s the pot calling the kettle black,’ he growled. ‘Your Raymond never came back from the war and you dated again how many times? And that guy who calls every morning and you refuse to see him … Duncan. He’s a widower, he’s your age, he has dogs who look exactly the same as Halibut …’

‘They are not the same. They’re stupid.’

‘They look the same.’

‘They come from the same breeder,’ she said stiffly. ‘Those dogs of Allie’s came from him, too. Allie got the smart ones. I got Halibut and he was the best. Duncan got what was left over.’

‘You’re changing the subject.’

‘You’re changing the subject,’ she retorted. ‘We were talking about your love life.’

He sighed. ‘Okay. We’re two of a kind,’ he said grimly. ‘We both know where love left us, so maybe we should leave it at that. But are you coming to watch today?’ But he thought … they’d never had a conversation like this. About love?

When he’d mentioned Duncan, Margot had looked troubled. Why? Had he touched a nerve?

A love life? Margot?

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘My knees are still wobbly.’

‘Because you’ve hardly eaten for months.’

‘My decision not to keep on living is sensible,’ she said with dignity, and he grimaced.

‘It’s dumb. There are always surprises round the corner.’

‘Like you’d notice them. Corporate …’

‘I am,’ he said in a goaded voice, ‘spending most of my day today with pink sparkles.’

‘So you are,’ she said, cheering up, and in silent agreement both of them put the moment of uncharacteristic questioning aside. ‘For two weeks. I hope I’ll be fit to come tomorrow and if I can I’ll come every day until the end.’

The end …

The words hung and emotion slammed back into the room again.

The end of the circus?

‘You won’t go back to dying at the end of the circus, will you?’ he demanded.

‘You won’t go back to corporate?’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘It is fair,’ she retorted. ‘What’s the alternative? Look at you, a banker all your life and nothing else, and will you look at an alternative? Why not get serious about some pink sparkles? It could just change your life.’

‘Like you’re changing your life?’

‘That’s not fair, and you know it.’ Then she hesitated. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘Just because I make mistakes, it doesn’t mean you need to join me.’

‘Margot …’

‘Shoo,’ she said. ‘Go. I’ve made my mistakes. You go right ahead and make yours.’

He needed to go to the circus, get into those books and make sure the structure was ready for handover, but the conversation with Margot had unsettled him. Instead, he decided on a morning walk and the walk turned into a run. He had energy to burn.

He had emotion to burn.

Margot was matchmaking. It needed only that. He’d spent half the night awake, trying to figure out how he was feeling, he was no closer now, and Margot’s words had driven his questions deeper.

Allie.

Why had he kissed her? There’d been no reason at all for him to take her face between his hands, tilt her lips to his and kiss her—and Mathew Bond didn’t do things without a reason.

Nor did he get involved.

Thirty years ago, aged six, Mathew had been a kid in a nice, standard nuclear family. He had a mum and a dad and a big sister, Elizabeth—Lizzy—who bossed him and played with him and made all right with his world. Sure, his father was a busy banker and his mum was corporate as well, but he and Lizzy felt secure and beloved.

That all changed one horrendous night when a truck driver went to sleep at the wheel. Mathew was somehow thrown out into the darkness. The others … Who knew? No one talked of it.

He’d woken in hospital, with his Great-Aunt Margot holding him.

‘ Mum? Dad? Lizzy?’

He remembered Margot’s tweed coat against his cheek and somehow even at six, he hadn’t needed her to tell him.

After that, his grandfather had simply taken him over. Mathew was, after all, the heir to Bond’s. From the warmth, laughter, the rough and tumble of family life, he’d been propelled into his grandfather’s austere existence, and he’d been stranded there for life.

He learned pretty fast to be self-contained. He had two weeks every summer with Margot, but even then he learned to stay detached. He needed to, because when the holidays ended he woke up once again in his great, barren bedroom in his grandfather’s mausoleum of a house. He’d learned some pain was unbearable, and he’d learned the way to avoid it was to hold himself in.

His aunt Margot cried at the end of each summer holiday but he didn’t. He didn’t do emotion.

And now … He’d come down here trying to figure how to keep himself contained while Margot died. Instead, Margot was dithering over whether to die or not, his self-containment was teetering and a girl/woman in pink sequins was messing with his self-containment even more.

So why had he kissed her?

Lunacy.

Margot was right, he conceded, in her criticism of the women he dated. Inevitably they were corporate colleagues who used him as an accessory, the same way he used them. Sometimes it was handy to have a woman on his arm, and sometimes he enjoyed a woman’s company, but not to the point of emotional entanglement.

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