Interesting.
She stumbled to fill the awkward moment. ‘Do you still ride horses? Rodeo, I mean. The broncos?’
‘Rodeo, but not the broncs. I ride pick-up now.’
She sat back on her haunches. ‘What’s that?’
‘If anyone gets in any trouble, the pick-up guys ride in and help out.’
‘Does that include the livestock or just the riders?’
He tipped his head. That wasn’t the first sarcastic comment she’d made about rodeo. It was like she was trying to rev him up. He cleared his throat somewhat uncomfortably. ‘You don’t approve?’
‘Nope. Not a fan of rodeo. Two degrees from animal cruelty, in my book.’
His coffee mug practically frosted over in his hand. ‘Is that so?’
She took a deep breath, held his stare. Stood straighter. ‘In my book.’
It was strangely stimulating, that mix of fear and courage painted so honestly on her face. His voice dropped a few tones. ‘We must read different books.’
His comment triggered an unexpected laugh in Lea. ‘Reilly, I suspect we’re in completely different libraries.’
He blinked. She didn’t do enough of that—laughing. It tumbled from her lips like a waterfall and it birthed a vibrant sparkle in her hazel eyes. The sound warmed him, which made it unacceptable.
‘I’m not going to argue with you about the relative merits of rodeo, Lea. I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever agree on that point.’
‘I’m not looking for agreement. I just want to understand how you reconcile your passion for horses with rodeo riding—morally.’
His head snapped around to pin her with his eyes and he spoke softly. ‘Much the same way I imagine you reconcile having kept a child from its father…morally.’
He might as well have slapped her. She glanced away and flicked her stricken eyes over to Molly’s room to make sure she was still asleep, all brightness draining from her expression. He cursed under his breath. God, he wanted to just ask her, just once.
How did you do it, Lea? How did you convince yourself cheating someone out of a child was an okay thing to do?
That decision didn’t fit with the woman he’d seen these past weeks. A quiet, determined woman, entirely dedicated to her daughter. Capable of great sensitivity, nonetheless capable of such deceit. The sudden paleness in her skin silenced him. They weren’t yet at a place where he could ask. He’d have to wonder a little longer.
He frowned at that rogue thought.
It implied there’d be more between them than what they had now. But getting to know each other was not part of the contract. They were civil for Molly’s sake, and that was where it ended. Lea Curran had had no interest in knowing him over five years ago and if it weren’t for Molly’s condition she’d have no interest in knowing him now. She’d made her choice. She had her family.
The sperm donor was completely dispensable.
And that feeling was just a little too familiar.
Lea had set herself up for the crack about her morals—she’d practically attacked his first—but she needed to know that he was never going to treat her brumbies the way she’d heard they were treated in the rodeo arena.
The way a person treated an animal said a lot about how they would treat a child. ‘She’ll sleep for two hours now.’ Lea spoke guardedly. ‘It’s been a big morning.’
‘Do you leave her like this often?’
She glanced up, armed for a second accusation, but only saw concern. She reined in her desire to snap. ‘It’s just the two of us here and I have a property to run. I had to learn early to work fast and efficiently so I can get back to her.’
‘If she wakes?’
‘She won’t, but if she does she knows not to leave the house. She’ll play with her toys until we get back. But the heat will force us back long before she starts to stir.’
Reilly mulled that over. ‘I guess it’s not so different to the latch-key kids in the city. It’s just not ideal.’
‘There’s a lot about people’s lives that isn’t ideal. We all get by as best we can.’
His bottomless eyes hazed over. ‘True enough.’
That look got her attention. ‘I can’t see you as someone who had to get by much, growing up. The only child of rich and famous parents, heir to a country-and-western fortune.’
His snort was a good impression of Goff’s. ‘Everything you’ve just said is what I had to get by.’
Lea dropped her eyes. Who was she to make assumptions about his upbringing? Someone looking at hers from the outside might have thought it had been idyllic too.
They crossed the house-paddock down towards her small stables. Ten in the morning wasn’t the smartest time to be going out onto her land but life didn’t just stop because it got hot. Really, really hot. The brumbies were out there in the shimmering heat and they were going to have company. Pan and Goff whickered in horsey disbelief when Lea emerged with a saddle slung over her arm. She had a quad bike but, quite apart from finding the idea of sharing the single small vehicle with Reilly unthinkable, it felt like sacrilege to ride it out into the bush. Noisy, twenty-first century, overkill. The quiet communion of her horse would do fine.
Of course on a property the size of Reilly’s that was probably an unmanageable luxury. Lea wondered if he surveyed his vast lands by low-flying helicopter. She was very conscious that he’d been driving on his own land for at least a third of the three-hour drive here this morning.
She snuck a sideways glance at him. If she’d been thinking straight all those years ago, she never would have chosen Reilly to walk out of the bar with. In the sparsely populated Kimberley, the Martins were virtually neighbours, even though they lived three and a half hours away. Celebrity near-neighbours too. Everyone knew of them, while they knew almost nobody. But he was Reilly Martin. Exactly the sort of man someone in self-destruct mode would be drawn to.
Passionate. Hard. Casual.
She’d been a gonner the moment she walked into the pub and had seen him and his mates propping up the bar, his champion’s trophy amongst the discarded empties littering the bar top. She’d desperately needed to connect with someone in her grief, and he had been all too ready to connect with what he’d assumed was a willing out-of-towner.
While half the district knew Leanne Curran by reputation, less than a handful had actually met her. Only her grandfather knew her as Lea.
Grandad and now Reilly.
She’d relied on that anonymity and had doubled her efforts to lay low after she’d discovered she was pregnant. Molly was the gift she’d never realised she longed for. The healing she’d never thought she deserved. It had taken her a year to get over the anxious fear that Reilly would somehow learn of the unexpected pregnancy, piece together all her ramblings the night they had made love and track her to her doorstep, demanding answers. Demanding his daughter. Funny how things worked out.
Different circumstances, but eerily similar results.
Fifteen minutes later they had saddled up and were walking clear of the yards. Reilly was just about to swing up onto Pan when he paused and looked at Lea. ‘Do you…Are you all right to mount?’
Lea stared. ‘I’ve been riding my whole life.’
‘Is it safe?’
Oh.
Dawn was slow in coming. He was worried for his investment. His child. A thousand snappish replies crossed her mind,
but she refused to be played. She hoisted herself effortlessly onto Goff’s back, met Reilly’s cool eyes and matched them.
‘It’s safe. Let’s go.’
‘Not that one,’ Lea said, pointing to the alpha male. Then she picked out the alpha female from the grazing herd, the one he’d just had his eye on. ‘Or that one. Their loss would cripple the mob.’
‘Understood,’ Reilly said. ‘Shame, though. They’re both spectacular.’
They stood flank to flank, both appreciating the beauty of the scene before them. The brumbies picked at the dry grasses while their alpha stood guard.
Reilly moved Pan up and down, scanning the distant cluster of horses. Then he turned to Lea. ‘Can you get them running? I want to see their conformation.’
She didn’t hesitate; she squeezed Goff with her knees and set off towards the mob. Just loping in their direction was sufficient; the alphas turned and struck off across the clearing, drawing the rest of the mob behind them. It was hardly a stampede, more precautionary than panicked, so Lea was able to swing around the bottom of the group and turn them back the other way. They obliged and made a course straight across Reilly’s line of sight.
He should have been watching the horses, but he suddenly found himself thinking of ancient centaurs. Lea moved so fluidly with her mount it was as if they were joined at the pelvis. In return, her horse barely knew she was on his back; he was just happy running wild with the mob. Joy radiated off both of them.
There was something about a woman on horseback.
He tensed. Just not
this
one. The woman who’d kept his child from him.
He dragged his eyes back to the mob as Lea turned them across the clearing for a final pass.
Creating a new bloodline had started as a way to spend more time on Yurraji, to see Molly more intensively. Get to know her properly. But the professional in him couldn’t do a half-baked
job of it. Like everything he did, he did it to completion. It wasn’t hard to see the Arab origins in this lot. It meant they’d have the terrific endurance known in that breed. A quality that would cross well with his stock horses’ hardy courage. He picked out the three individuals that would suit best; the secondary stallion and two of the trimmest-moving mares. Careful breeding would bring out the best of all three in their descendants.
Lea cantered back towards him, colour high in her cheeks, a wide smile on her face.
That flushed bliss transported her from ordinary to something else. Her wild brown hair blew out behind her and those enormous eyes, green one minute, brown the next, stood out even in the shade of her akubra. She wasn’t going to grace a back-bar calendar any time soon, but as she cantered towards him, relaxed and glowing, he could definitely appreciate what he’d seen in her nearly six years ago. It was speaking to him just as loudly now.
He straightened uncomfortably as she drew close. He had no business appreciating anything about Lea Curran. Definitely not the way her smile transformed her face into something disturbingly beautiful.
‘I’ve made my choice.’ The snap was unintentional but he saw its instant impact on her. Her radiant grin bled away and she sat up stiffer in the saddle. Whatever joy she’d had running with the wild creatures, he’d just killed it.
Of course; his particular gift.
‘We should get back before it gets any warmer,’ she said coolly.
Reilly relaxed into Pan’s confident stride and let the mare pick her way behind Goff through the scrub. If Lea’s spine straightened any further, it would snap. She certainly harboured no desire for him to think well of her.
In fact, if her body language was any indication, all she was interested in was getting him the heck off her property.
Right now, that suited him just fine.
R
EILLY
returned two weeks after Molly’s birthday with a crew of three young ringers, striding down the drive with their saddles and tack balanced on their hips, their hats pulled low against the rising Australian sun. The sort of image that was best replayed in slow motion, Lea decided.
Over and over.
Molly had been just as excited, but for vastly different reasons. And her daughter’s rapid pulse wasn’t fuelled by pregnancy hormones.
That was all it was. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t have some appreciation for a handsome, fit man showcasing his skills on horseback. She didn’t have to like Reilly to acknowledge the sheer aesthetics of him.
Lea had watched the men closely, once in the bush astride their own rugged stock-horses, as they made short work of locating the mob and separating out the three animals Reilly had selected. The mounted men were poetry on sixteen legs; they seemed to know each other’s moves instinctively and they worked together like, well, like a well-coordinated herd.
Reilly was unquestionably the alpha stallion. The three other men responded to his subtle signals and looked to him for direction. Under his guidance, the whole muster took less than two hours, three horses roped while the rest of the mob had followed their leader far to safety at a gallop.
‘You want to name the mares after your sisters?’ Reilly
looked at her curiously in the mid-morning light. The captured brumbies were settling in Lea’s spare paddock for a week or two while he gentled them ready for the journey to Minamurra.
A few days more, with Reilly being a surly misery in her little piece of tranquillity. Here. With her and Molly.
Just fabulous.
‘Look at them. The small one’s slight and joyful, with that beautiful mane and tail, and those big eyes. Sapphire to a tee.’ She moved across to get a better look at the Dunn. ‘And Golden Girl’s caramel coloured, all legs and popular with the herd. That’s got to be Anna.’
‘Do I detect a note of bitterness?’
‘Not at all. I love my sisters. This is my way of honouring them.’
Reilly squinted at her. ‘Funny way of showing it.’
‘Don’t try to work us out. Better men than you have failed.’
He dropped his eyes away just as she saw a flash of interest—his instinctive response to a challenge, maybe? He was certainly fighting it hard enough, judging by the way his fingers worried the leather lead-rope he carried.
But then he said,
‘That
I have no trouble believing.’ He kept his eyeline suspiciously shy of hers. ‘So who do you have in your family that’s grumpy and hard to manage? We need a name for the male.’
If he could have called the male Leanne, she knew he would have. She gave him her sweetest smile. ‘How about God’s Gift?’
Her barely disguised reference to him was only satisfying for two seconds, about as long as it took Reilly to realise she was talking about him. And to smile. Just a hint.
Great.
Now he’d think she really thought he
was.
She glanced away.
He slapped his hat on his jeans and chuckled. ‘You’ve held their breakfast, yeah? I want them hungry for this morning’s training. Today’s all about trust. No thinking. No working. Just trusting.’
Over the next forty minutes that was exactly what it was. Reilly moved around the outside of the yard, approaching the horses with snacks, the fastest way to a horse’s heart. He rejected the buckets of carrots and oats at first, saying the
brumbies wouldn’t even recognise them as food, and he worked with clumps of sweet grasses Lea had cut from the boundary. He quite literally had the wild mares eating out of his hand in under an hour, albeit with wide, rolling eyes, slight trembles and a good deal of shying away. But they always came back. Even Lea had to admit that was something.
Pity he wasn’t as good with people as he was with horses. Her eyes kept coming back to him like a magnet to true north.
‘Are you going to watch me all day, or have you got something else to do?’
Fierce heat scrabbled up her neck, defensiveness in hot pursuit. But, before she could respond, he went on, ‘I realise you don’t trust me to have the brumbies’ best interests at heart, but it’s really not going to be productive if you supervise every moment, waiting for me to stuff up.’
Oh.
That was what he meant.
More heat.
Had she been this hot in the last pregnancy? Damn him for causing that defensiveness. She sat up straighter on the old log that was her seat. ‘I’ve never seen a horse being broken in. I’m interested.’
He seemed to consider that. Was he trying to work out if she was on the level? ‘I prefer to think of it as
gentling
them, rather than breaking them in.’ His hand worried his akubra. ‘I like my horses workable but spiritually whole.’
Spiritually whole. Not a sentiment she’d expected to hear today from him. He’d practically summarised her entire life philosophy in that one sentence. Her pulse kicked up.
The complexities of Reilly Martin weren’t getting any less as she got to know him.
She grew hypnotised by the slow, low tone of his voice as he went back to work, crooning the skittish horses into a relaxed state. She was entranced by the confident stroke of his long fingers along the horses’ trembling hides. More than once, she caught herself rubbing low on her belly in time with his measured, reassuring words, and even the now-daily nausea seemed to settle a bit in response. Maybe their child knew its father’s voice?
Her breath caught.
His
child.
Lea pulled her trembling hand away and tucked it into her pocket as she lurched to her feet, suddenly loath to stay a moment longer in his influence. The dainty Sapphire shied away violently from the sudden movement just as Reilly was reaching up to stroke between her ears.
He glanced his irritation at her. ‘How about some drinks, Lea?’
How about getting the heck away from these horses, Lea?
Her land. Her horses. Her training yard. But he was giving orders. Lea cursed him under her breath as she turned tail and stomped back to the house, cheeks flaming. She checked in on a napping Molly and then headed for the kitchen fridge. Bush code; a good host wouldn’t let a guest expire from dehydration on their property.
When she crossed the house-paddock back towards the training yards, a jug of icy juice weighing heavily in her hand, Reilly was nowhere to be seen. She hissed. The man was infuriating even when he wasn’t present. Did he want a drink or not?
She crossed around Goff’s stable and stumbled to a halt.
Reilly crouched by the horse trough in the yard next to the brumbies using his battered akubra to pour hatfuls of cold water over his searing head while Goff looked on, appalled to find a human in his water trough. The water ran down Reilly’s face and glued his T-shirt to his broad shoulders and chest like a wetsuit.
Lea scrabbled back out of view behind the stable wall, her heart pounding in seismic pulses. Again, it was just aesthetics. Reilly was a very handsome, very well built man, for all his many faults, and she’d explored that body up close once.
Blame it on muscle memory.
She just had to separate Reilly the memory from Reilly the actual man. Two very different people. The curious twisting deep down low would be funny if she wasn’t so very appalled. Damned hormones. You’d think she’d never met a good-looking man before.
Lea forced a smile to her face and walked out from behind the stable. If he saw her flushed cheeks, hopefully he’d discount
it as the heat talking. It was certainly a legitimate excuse. Sweat trickled down between her breasts even now.
‘Drink?’
‘Thank you.’ He took an empty glass from her and she filled it, maintaining a smile that would have done the Stepford wives proud. She leaned on the post-and-rail fence of the paddock, trying to look casual while he drank.
The drone of cicadas almost morphed into a mocking chorus in the awkward silence.
Conversation; normal people would be making conversation here. Not a single inspired thought popped into her head. Lea Curran—debating champion of Pymrose Ladies’ College and the girl voted most likely to defend herself in court—was left absolutely speechless.
Worse than speechless—
thoughtless.
Unless it was to think about how those lips currently wrapped around her best glassware had felt against hers. Shivers of memory converged, making her lips tingle. She licked them, half-expecting to taste him there. The thought caused a pang deep in Lea’s belly.
She gasped and shot her hand to her stomach.
Reilly stepped up to her in a flash, dropping her best glass. God’s Gift took off across the paddock, bucking his protest just once and setting the mares off.
‘Are you okay?’ His hands immediately went round her.
‘I’m fine…It’s nothing.’ Lea hoped it was nothing. Was that biting sensation a problem, or just her over-charged body’s response to Reilly? Too early for a kick, surely? The baby’s legs would barely be formed.
Not a baby, just cells. A treatment for Molly.
‘You should step back.’ He wrapped one large hand around her upper arm and drew her away from her own fence. It was gentle, yet not gentle.
She shrugged free of him. ‘I’m pregnant, Reilly. Not impaired.’ She bent to retrieve the glass and, when she stood, she glared at him, frustrated. ‘Do you wrap your mares up in cotton wool when they’re pregnant?’
His silence was telling.
‘Didn’t think so.’
She stomped off and felt Reilly’s eyes on her the whole way.
Travelling three hours daily for two weeks to train the brumbies must have been brutal on Reilly. He must have been leaving his own property at three in the morning in order to be trundling down her drive at sun-up. But Molly loved it and Lea could see no signs in Reilly of anything other than professional focus. He was in his element.
They worked together for five hours solid each morning until the Kimberley sun forced Lea into the relative cool of the house and Reilly back into his Land Rover and home to Minamurra for some time in the office, until early evening when it started to cool off again and he could work his own horses.
That was the beauty of the end of the dry season. The midday temperatures chased you indoors to deal with life’s admin. To catch up on all the work you’d let slide during the fertile, blue-skied dry season when all you wanted to do was swim in waterholes filled with fresh, cold water down off the plains or ride through wildflowers and lush, green growth that had sprung to life around about June. Trying to avoid the tourists.
It was the time Lea paid bills, studied her investments and planned her budgets for the coming year. That process was very different this year, excising the last of her investment income to go towards the ICSI, the extra medical. Molly’s treatment. Everything was planned down to the last detail. She liked to have her ducks more than in a row; she liked them lined up, labelled and with individual-output quotas.
She really didn’t do spontaneous.
Which was why she was bemused to find herself crossing the house-paddock halfway through the morning with a toasted bacon sandwich on a plate. An unexpected, unsolicited sandwich. It was enough to force her feet to a halt.
She was feeding Reilly.
Was it some kind of nurturing kick she was on because of the life growing inside her? She took a mortified step back towards the house, then stopped, thoroughly rattled. She moved
to the fallen log that doubled as a bench seat looking over her back paddocks and quietly laid the plate down. The worms in her worm-farm would devour it later.
She’d be damned if she was going to start catering for the likes of Reilly Martin. He was already making himself far too comfortable in her life.
He looked up as she approached, empty-handed. Her smile felt as tight as her chest. ‘What are you working on?’
He fiddled with a length of soft lead-rope. ‘I need to move faster with this training. I want them floatable by Friday. Today Sapphire’s going to learn about tethering.’
Lea frowned. Maybe he was as keen to get out of here as she was to have him gone. She stared at the beautiful, trusting mare.
‘Would you like to meet her? Officially?’
Her face must have given her answer, because he stepped aside and let her close. Was this some kind of apology for his overreaction yesterday? She gently moved up to the skittish brumbie and took the food Reilly offered.
He stepped in behind her. ‘Hold the food out, but don’t point it straight at her, let her come to you.’
Sapphire’s nostrils immediately started twitching and her ears turned towards Lea’s outstretched hand. Her long face followed and finally her front quarters gravitated unerringly towards the food.
Reilly reached around Lea as the horse moved over and his large hand ran gently along her twitching hide. Lea lifted hers alongside it. Together they stroked their hands gently down Sapphire’s long, furred coat, Lea crooning to the nervous mare all the while. Reilly shifted position so he could drop his arms around her and twist her into the safety of his body the second it might be necessary. His intent was subtle, but she didn’t miss it.
Lea forced herself to remember he was protecting his child, not her. Her hand dropped away. ‘I’m surprised how far they’ve come in just a couple of weeks.’
His voice was warm and close above her ear. ‘I’ve learned never to be surprised by the resilience and courage of these animals.’ He rounded a rub up over Sapphire’s ears. ‘Treat a
horse well and it will reward you with loyalty and affection for the rest of its life. They’re much better than humans in that way.’
Loyalty, honour, affection—not qualities she would have expected him to value. Judging by his body language, his displeasure was not, for once, directed at her. She glanced at the strong hands softly stroking the mare’s face, his mind a hundred years away. Yesterday it had all been about Reilly’s hard angles and pretty face; today it was his gentle patience. This appreciation yo-yo was becoming predictable.
But if he wasn’t having a crack at
her
, then…? She turned her head up to him. ‘Were your parents not like that?’