Partner for Love

‘I suggest that we start again,’ Cooper went on. ‘You’ve said you’ve booked a flight for a month’s time, and I can’t make you leave before then. Since for reasons best known to yourself you seem determined to stay, I think we should try and forget about what Bill wanted and assume that we’re willing partners. It’il mean that we both have to make an effort, but we ought to be able to manage that if it’s just for a month.’

‘Why just a month?’ said Darcy.

He met her gaze directly. ‘I think a month will be quite long enough to persuade you that you’d be better off selling your share to me.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then we can talk again.’ He pushed his mug away from him. ‘If you agree to this, though, it’s on the understanding that we’ll treat each other as partners. That means that you do your fair share of the work. You won’t be a guest, and I won’t treat you as one—unless, of course, you decide to sell. If you stay, you work, and if you still want to stay after a month... well, I’ll admit that I was wrong.’

Darcy swirled her coffee in her mug and considered the proposal. She had a nasty feeling it wasn’t going to work to her advantage, but it was hard to find anything to object to. She could hardly refuse his overture of peace, nor would she be in a very strong position if she said she didn’t want to work. Perhaps she had been a little quick to imply that she wanted to run Bindaburra herself, and she suspected that Cooper was going to call her bluff by setting her impossible tasks.

‘Will I have to brand cows and wrestle bulls to the ground?’ she asked nervously.

Cooper looked as if he didn’t know whether to be exasperated or amused. ‘You’re welcome to try, but that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ said Darcy, trying to conceal her relief.

‘Bill always had a housekeeper who cooked for him and the men and kept this place in some sort of order. The last girl left a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had time to do anything about finding a replacement yet. One of the men has been doing the cooking since then, but he’s more useful to me outside, so if you took over the cooking you’d be making more than a token contribution.’

Darcy toyed with the idea of objecting to the sexist way he had assumed that all she was good for was cooking and cleaning, but when she thought that the alternative might be fencing in the rain or much worse she decided that she might be better off in the kitchen after all.

‘I’m not a very good cook,’ she warned him, with judicious understatement. Her dinner parties made popular disaster stories among her friends and she had learnt that it was easier to buy prepared meals from the supermarket freezers to shove in the microwave.

‘You must be better than Darren,’ said Cooper. ‘They don’t want anything fancy, just roasts and stews, and a cake or a biscuit for smoko.’

‘Oh, well, I expect I could manage that,’ said Darcy optimistically. The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of working, even if it did have to be in the unglamorous role of housekeeper. Uncle Bill would have wanted her to stay, at least for a while, she told herself. If she could prove her worth to Cooper, it would be a way of showing that her great-uncle had not been mistaken in her. She would be doing it for him as much as for herself.

Fired with enthusiasm, she beamed across the table at Cooper. Her hair was still tousled from sleep, but the dark blue eyes were wide awake now. ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

If she had expected Cooper to look delighted, she was disappointed. Instead he sounded almost disapproving of her ready acceptance of his idea. ‘There are other things you should think about as well,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Can you afford to stay, for a start? Obviously it won’t cost you anything to stay here, but you won’t earn anything either. It would be a pity if you gave up opportunities at home just to prove a point out here.’

‘I don’t see that that’s a problem,’ said Darcy. ‘It’s not as if I had any responsibilities. I share a flat with a friend. We only pay a nominal rent because her father owns it, so I won’t be leaving her in the lurch. And as for work...well, as I said, I’ll let my agent know how to contact me just in case something unexpected comes up.’

‘Hmm.’ Cooper studied her critically, unimpressed by her insouciant attitude. ‘You should also consider how you feel about living alone with me.’

Carried away by the prospect of proving that she wasn’t as useless as he thought her, Darcy had forgotten how she had sat fidgeting with her bracelets, overwhelmed by that strange sense of awareness. Now she uncrossed her legs and dropped her feet to the floor, conscious for the first time of the intimacy of the situation. She hadn’t thought twice before about the propriety of sitting opposite him with nothing on under her dressing-gown, but now she tightened the belt automatically. The silk slithered sleekly against her skin and she had a sudden disturbing awareness of her own body.

She wished Cooper had never mentioned the prospect of living alone. She had been happily defiant before; now she couldn’t take her eyes off his hands, horrified by how easily she could imagine what it would be like to sit here like lovers, still sleepy and smiling after a night together, her body tingling with remembered desire. So vivid was the picture that Darcy’s skin seemed to burn as if she could feel his hands easing the dressing-gown apart to slide caressingly over her body and pull her against his tautly muscled strength...

Darcy swallowed and pushed the vision aside with an effort. Living alone with Cooper suddenly seemed fraught with unsuspected dangers, none of which she could explain. ‘W-we won’t be alone, though, will we?’ she said in a voice that sounded ridiculously high even to her own ears. ‘The other men will be back as soon as the creeks go down, won’t they?’ There would be safety in numbers, she reasoned, and with three other men around there would be none of the intimacy that might lead to more dangerous fantasising about just one.

‘They’ll eat with us here in the homestead, but they sleep in their own quarters.’

‘Oh.’ Darcy looked down into her empty coffeemug. ‘Well, couldn’t you sleep in their quarters?’

‘I could, but I have no intention of doing so,’ said Cooper in an acerbic tone. He got up impatiently and carried his mug over to the sink. ‘I intend to make Bindaburra my home, and I don’t see why I should move out just to make you feel better.’

‘You were the one who brought up the subject,’ she pointed out with a touch of sullenness.

‘I’m just advising you to think about what’s involved,’ he said austerely, swirling the mug under the tap. ‘There’s no point in you agreeing to stay and then suddenly getting maidenly scruples.’

‘I haven’t got maidenly scruples!’ Darcy protested.

‘Oh? Then why did you suggest I move out to the ringers’ quarters?’

‘I just thought it would be...less awkward.’

Cooper came back to the table. ‘Awkward for whom?’

‘Well, not exactly awkward—’ she began, wishing she’d never opened her mouth, but he interrupted her.

‘You mean you don’t trust me to keep my hands off you?’

‘No!’ Seeing Cooper raise his eyebrows, she hurried to correct herself. ‘I mean, no, I didn’t mean that. That you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me, I mean...’ Utterly confused about what she meant by now, Darcy floundered to a halt.

‘Could it be that you don’t trust yourself to keep your hands off me, then?’ he suggested provocatively.

‘Certainly not!’ Without thinking, she jumped to her feet, clutching her dressing-gown about her, dark hair bouncing around her face and blue eyes stormy and magnificent. ‘I’m hardly likely to have any interest in you!’

‘Why not?’ Cooper came round the table towards her, but Darcy was too angry to care.

‘Why? Why?’ she echoed, trying desperately to think of a convincing reason. ‘Because... because you’re just not my type, and even if you were I... I’m already involved with someone else,’ she finished in a rush.

It didn’t seem to have much effect in halting Cooper’s advance, which she had belatedly noticed. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked, calmly taking her waist between his hands. They were hard and strong and seemed to burn through the silk on to her skin.

’S-Sebastian,’ she stammered, trying to push away his steely grip.

‘Sebastian? Is he an actor, too?’

‘Yes,’ said Darcy, preoccupied with her futile struggle to free herself.

Cooper himself hardly seemed to notice her efforts. ‘How involved is “involved”?’ he said.

‘I’m in love with him,’ she said defiantly. She was, she reminded herself, remembering how heartbroken she had been.

‘And is Sebastian in love with you?’

Darcy hesitated. ‘Yes.’ Much the safest answer, even if the least truthful. She had given up her attempts to wriggle free and had brought her hands up to his chest to ward him off. Beneath her palms she could feel the disturbingly warm solidity of his body through the brushed-cotton shirt, and she drew her hands away slightly.

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ said Cooper conversationally, a smile lurking around his mouth.

Darcy drew a steadying breath. ‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘Sebastian trusts me utterly.’

‘Really?’ he said, drawing her inexorably closer until her hands were jammed back against his chest. His eyes were alight with an expression that set her heart thudding in a treacherous combination of alarm and anticipation. ‘Sebastian sounds like a rash man to me. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t tempt fate by letting a girl like you out of my sight, let alone disappear off to Australia on her own.’

‘He knows I’d never be interested in another man,’ whispered Darcy, who could hardly hear her own voice above the booming of her heart and was fighting a desperate battle against the terrible temptation to lean into him.

Cooper’s smile was speculative. ‘Well, let’s see if Sebastian was right or not, shall we?’ he murmured, and slid his hands up to cup her throat and lift her face to his.

CHAPTER THREE

THE touch of Cooper’s mouth sent a lightning bolt of reaction through her, catching Darcy off balance. It was as if the floor had dropped away beneath her, plunging her into a maelstrom of conflicting emotions, and she gasped, clutching instinctively at the front of his shirt as her only anchor.

How had she known that his lips would be so warm, so sure, so treacherously persuasive? Darcy was caught between shock and the arrowing certainty that it had always been like this. Just as when she had hesitated in the kitchen door last night she had been swamped by that strange sense of familiarity, so now his kiss left her awash with recognition. It was almost like coming home; the touch and the scent and the hard, masculine feel of his body through the flimsy silk dressing-gown were all part of her, inseparable from the intoxicating rush of feeling that swirled through her senses and left her reeling and incapable of thought.

She was unaware of her hands slowly loosening their clutch on his shirt to spread and slide over his chest and up to his shoulders. Beneath the cotton, his body was tempered steel, solid and unyielding to her touch. Darcy clung to its reassuring strength, heedless of the instinctive arch of her body. Her head was tipped back invitingly so that her soft dark hair fell over his hand, which was smoothing seductively down her spine. She had forgotten her anger, forgotten Sebastian and the cold floor beneath her bare feet, forgotten everything but Cooper’s kiss, his mouth on hers, his hands burning through the silk on to her skin and the breathtaking thump of excitement that was beating ever louder and faster, drowning out the voice that should have been shouting at her to resist.

As her arms slid round his neck, Cooper lifted his mouth from hers, but only to gather her closer again into a kiss that was deeper and more demanding than before. Darcy was drowning, dissolving in a rising tide of desire, and her fingers tightened on his shoulders as the silk belt of her gown slithered apart and his hands slipped beneath to curve over her body. Darcy gasped aloud, electrified by their scorching exploration, and sheer, shameful pleasure shuddered over her skin.

Abandoned to the wash of sensation, Darcy hardly heard Cooper’s muttered exclamation or realised that his hands had stilled abruptly. They withdrew slowly, sliding reluctantly out from beneath the silk as he levered himself away from her. By the time Darcy had grasped what was happening, he was retying her belt with a wry smile.

‘I think Sebastian might have made a big mistake,’ he said. ‘A very big one.’

He might as well have dashed a bucket of cold water in her face. Darcy recoiled from the sharp slap of reality, aghast at her own response. White-faced, she pushed his hands away from her waist and retied the belt herself, pulling the sides of the dressing-gown together high around her throat with shaking fingers.

‘That wasn’t fair,’ she said unsteadily.

‘It wasn’t particularly fair of you to sit there with nothing on under that dressing-gown either.’ Quite unconcerned, Cooper propped himself against the table and calmly watched Darcy’s fumbling attempts to straighten herself.

It was impossible to believe that this cool, self-contained man eyeing her with faint amusement could be the same man who had been kissing her only moments ago, the same man who had buried his face in her hair, whose hands had explored the smooth softness of her body with such devastating skill. Darcy clutched her robe about her, her eyes huge and dark. She felt disorientated and lost, almost bereft. How could he look so indifferent? Hadn’t he felt anything?

She pulled herself together with an immense effort. If Cooper could appear so unmoved, she wasn’t going to let him know just how shattered she felt. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said, somehow managing to keep her voice steady. ‘You just want to make me leave and you’re prepared to do anything to make sure I go as soon as possible.’

‘If that were what I was trying to do, I would hardly have offered you a month’s truce,’ Cooper pointed out coolly. ‘However, now you mention it, it doesn’t sound like a bad policy. Have I persuaded you that you’d be better off leaving as soon as the creeks are down?’

‘No, you haven’t!’ said Darcy, who was regaining her temper with her composure. ‘If you think a paltry little kiss like that is enough to scare me into leaving, you’ve got another think coming!’

‘Does that mean you want to go ahead with a month’s trial partnership?’

Darcy felt as if she had been outmanoeuvred somewhere along the line. She wanted nothing better than to tell Cooper what he could do with his trial partnership, but then she would have little option but to leave, and she wasn’t going to give in that easily. ‘As long as there are no more... incidents... like the one that’s just taken place,’ she said.

‘But I thought paltry little kisses didn’t bother you?’

‘They don’t,’ said Darcy bravely and quite untruthfully. ‘That doesn’t mean I like them.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Cooper. ‘I was under the impression that you quite enjoyed it. I know I did.’

Darcy eyed him with acute resentment. ‘I’d rather it didn’t happen again,’ she said in a frosty voice.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said amenably. ‘I won’t kiss you again if you don’t provoke me again.’

‘I didn’t provoke you!’ she protested indignantly.

Cooper raised an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you? It felt that way to me.’

‘I can’t help the way you feel,’ said Darcy, ruffled as much by Cooper’s calm discussion of the kiss as by the kiss itself.

‘No,’ he agreed, straightening from the table. To her fury, his eyes held not embarrassment but an unmistakable glint of amusement. ‘You could try wearing more clothes in future, though. Now,’ he went on in a brisk tone before Darcy had time to think of a suitably dignified retort, ‘I suggest we abide by the terms of our truce and start work. Since there’s just the two of us here, this seems like a good opportunity to clear out Bill’s office. You could give me a hand—once you’ve changed, of course.’

Darcy made sure she covered herself from neck to toe. Her bones were still weak with remembered desire as she stood under the shower and she felt hollow whenever she thought about Cooper’s mouth and Cooper’s hands and the lean, hard strength of his body. She closed her eyes, wishing she could banish the memory of his touch, but he might as well have been standing there still, his fingers tracing irresistible patterns of desire on her skin, for all that she could forget.

She felt better after pulling on jeans and a bulky cardigan over a cotton polo-necked jumper. There, Cooper could hardly accuse her of being dressed revealingly now! Darcy had given herself a stern talkingto, but she was more nervous than she cared to admit about the coming month. If only she and Sebastian really were still in love, it would make it so much easier. She wouldn’t have responded to Cooper’s kiss like that for a start, Darcy told herself, choosing to ignore a little voice which told her that Sebastian’s kisses had never been like that. Well, she would just have to pretend that she still was, she decided; she wasn’t an actress for nothing, and she was determined that Cooper wasn’t going to get the better of her. Darcy had always had a stubborn streak along with a certain instinctive contrariness when faced with a will as strong as her own. She would stick out this month, just to show Cooper Anderson that she could, and what was more she would be so useful that in the end he would beg her to stay, and she would have great satisfaction in refusing!

It was a comforting thought, and Darcy enjoyed herself imagining exactly what she would say to Cooper, and how he would grovel to try and persuade her not to go, but when she had finished dressing and had to face him again suddenly the scene didn’t seem quite so likely. She had to muster all her acting skills to appear cool and poised as she made her way down the gloomy corridor to her great-uncle’s old office, a dark, poky little room at the back of the house, overflowing with piles of letters, accounts, catalogues and old farming magazines.

Cooper was sitting at the desk, trying to clear a space among the clutter. ‘What a horrible little room,’ said Darcy, wrinkling her nose. ‘How could Uncle Bill bear to sit in here?’

‘I don’t think he could,’ said Cooper drily. ‘He just used to throw all his papers in here and shut the door—hence the mess. No one knew the land better than Bill, but he wasn’t a businessman.’

‘And you are, I suppose?’ Darcy was unable to prevent herself saying snidely.

He gave her a cool look. ‘I own five properties in this part of South Australia, as well as several businesses in Adelaide—I have to be.’

‘If you’re such a good businessman, why do you want Bindaburra so badly?’ she asked, wrapping her cardigan more firmly about her as she wandered over to the tiny window. It was much easier to pretend to be cool and poised when she wasn’t looking at him, she discovered. Bulky layers didn’t seem to make much difference; under that cool, amused gaze, she might as well still be wearing the silken robe.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.