Read the book: «Partner for Love»

CHAPTER ONE

DARCY stood under her umbrella and lifted her feet in turn to inspect her shoes with a grimace. She could remember Uncle Bill boasting that Bindaburra was in the driest part of the driest state in the driest continent in the world, but after two days of rain Darcy was beginning to wonder if he had been pulling her leg. The Australian outback was supposed to be hot and parched, not cold and wet and extremely muddy.

Scraping her shoes against each other gingerly to remove the huge clods of mud that kept gathering around them, Darcy looked around her, profoundly unimpressed by the spindly gum trees that lined the track and the low, sparse scrub stretching interminably off towards the horizon. Although there was still nearly an hour to go before dark, the rain had cast a dull pall over everything. Had she come all the way from London just for this?

Darcy sighed and continued trudging along the track. It was like walking through concrete. Every time she put one foot in front of the other, she had to drag it up through the mud, half of which stayed clogged around her shoes until they were so heavy, she had to stop and knock it all off again. She just hoped Bindaburra wouldn’t be much further. She had been driving all day along slippery mud tracks like this one and she was tired and fed up. Why couldn’t the car have managed a few minutes more instead of getting bogged frustratingly close to her goal?

Just then the sound of a vehicle changing gear as it approached the creek made her dark blue eyes brighten with hope. Surely whoever it was would be able to give her a lift for the last mile or so? Tightening her grip on her umbrella, Darcy picked her way cautiously into the middle of the track and got ready to wave enthusiastically.

It seemed a long time before the engine growled out of the creek and the vehicle accelerated towards her, its headlights boring through the gloom. Darcy, swinging the umbrella around, was transfixed by the powerful beams, a slim, incongruously vivid figure in the inhospitable landscape.

For one awful moment she thought that the driver hadn’t seen her. Screwing up her eyes against the rapidly approaching light, she flapped her free arm frantically as she staggered out of the way.

To her relief, the car was slowing until she could see that it wasn’t a car at all but a mud-splattered ute. Hardly the most glamorous of vehicles to be rescued by, thought Darcy, but since she hadn’t seen another car for the last three hours she supposed she should be grateful it had come along at all.

The ute came to a halt beside her and the driver wound down the window as Darcy slithered towards it. The mud was so thick and slippery that she almost lost her footing and had to make a grab for the door to steady herself.

Slightly breathless but relieved still to be upright, she looked down into the cab with a winning smile. ‘Hello,’ she said, quite unconscious that her English accent was as incongruous out here as her appearance.

Her first thought was that the driver looked rather unfriendly. He had leant his elbow out of the window and was frowning at her with a mixture of exasperation and disbelief. Beneath his bushman’s hat his face was coolly angular with a firm nose and an unyielding look to his jaw. Darcy found herself looking into a pair of wintry grey eyes and hastily revised her first impression.

He looked very unfriendly.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked curtly, making no attempt to return her greeting.

Darcy looked at him in surprise, a little affronted by his tone. Men usually reacted to her smile quite differently. ‘I wanted to be sure you’d see me,’ she explained.

The man looked at her umbrella. It was bright yellow and green and cleverly designed as a banana tree with each spoke marking the point of a leaf and jolly bunches of bananas hanging from the middle. A friend had given it to Darcy for her birthday, and she loved it.

He didn’t look as if he shared her sense of fun. ‘I could hardly avoid seeing you,’ he said in a deep Australian drawl that still somehow managed to sound crisp, and his gaze left the garish umbrella to travel down over Darcy’s scarlet jacket and narrow striped trousers to the ridiculously unsuitable shoes that were now clogged with thick, orangey red mud. ‘You don’t exactly blend into the background,’ he added disapprovingly. ‘It’s over two hundred miles to the nearest town. I want to know what you’re doing wandering along here as if it were some shopping mall.’

Darcy wasn’t used to being treated with such brusqueness, but since this rude man appeared to be her only chance of a lift she decided that it was best to ignore it.

‘My car got stuck in the mud,’ she explained.

‘So that’s your car I passed before the creek?’

Beneath her banana leaves, Darcy nodded. ‘I’m sorry if it was in your way, but it was completely bogged. I couldn’t move it forwards or backwards, so I just had to leave it.’

The rain chose that moment to redouble its efforts, crashing down on the umbrella and on the roof of the car, and effectively drowning out his reply. ‘You’d better get in,’ he shouted, and leant across the bench seat to open the passenger door.

Darcy slipped and slid her way round the bonnet, too relieved at the prospect of getting out of the rain to object to the unenthusiastic invitation. ‘Thank you,’ she gasped, manoeuvring herself into the seat and shaking out her umbrella vigorously before attempting to scrape the worst of the thick mud from her shoes. They were utterly ruined, she noticed ruefully; if she had known the outback was going to be a sea of mud, she would have brought her gumboots with her.

The roar of the rain was deadened as she pulled the door closed, marooning them in the shelter of the cab, although it still drummed on the roof in frustration and sluiced down the windscreen. Darcy shivered and stored her precious umbrella down by her feet before turning to take stock of her rescuer.

He had switched on the overhead light and was regarding her with ill-concealed impatience. There was something austere about him, Darcy decided, studying him covertly. Used to the flamboyance of the theatrical world, she was struck by his air of cool reserve, a kind of quiet, contained strength that was somehow overwhelming. It wasn’t a face that gave much away. The planes of his face were lean, his features strong and sharply defined, and there was a distinctly cool set to his mouth. This wouldn’t be a man who showed his emotions easily, thought Darcy, who was fond of instant analysis. Even so, it wasn’t hard to tell that he was less than impressed with her. His mouth was turned down at the corners and the cold grey eyes were uncomfortably observant.

Under his disapproving gaze, Darcy felt herself flush, realising for the first time what an odd spectacle she must have presented, tripping along in the middle of nowhere beneath her banana umbrella. ‘I’m terribly grateful,’ she said, suddenly conscious too of how English she sounded, and tried her smile again.

It had no more effect than before. ‘You should never leave your car in country like this,’ he told her in a stringent tone. ‘Why didn’t you stay with your vehicle and wait for someone to come and help?’

‘I thought it would be quicker to walk,’ said Darcy.

‘Walk?’ echoed the man incredulously, staring at her as if she had proposed cartwheeling to the moon. ‘Where to?’

‘I’m on my way to a property called Bindaburra,’ she said with dignity.

‘You’d have been in for a long walk,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s a good thirty kilometres to the homestead from here.’

Darcy’s blue eyes widened in dismay. ‘But on the map it looks as if it’s just off the main track! I thought it would be just round the next bend.’

‘I can only suggest that you look at the scale next time you attempt a bit of map-reading,’ he said with a caustic look. ‘It would make better sense than heading off into the unknown like a complete idiot.’

‘How was I supposed to know it would be that far?’ said Darcy a little sulkily.

‘That’s the whole point—you don’t know, and in those circumstances you never leave your car, no matter how close you think you are. It’s very easy to get lost out here, even when the track looks obvious, and you’d have been wandering around in the dark, which would have made it even easier. We would have found your car eventually, but we might never have found you.’

‘Well, you did find me,’ Darcy pointed out crossly, beginning to wish that he hadn’t. A thirty-kilometre walk might have been preferable to being rescued by this disagreeably unsympathetic man. Why wasn’t he rushing chivalrously to tow her car out of the mud instead of lecturing her about outback safety?

‘Only by chance,’ he said dampeningly. ‘What do you want at Bindaburra anyway? There aren’t any camping facilities there, if that’s what you’re hoping.’

‘Camping?’ Darcy stared at him in astonishment. ‘Who would want to camp in this?’ she asked, gesturing largely at the rain.

‘I thought you might be looking for somewhere to spend the night instead of driving on to Muroonda,’ he said. ‘Obviously I was wrong.’

‘I’d rather drive back to London than camp,’ she assured him. She had never been near a tent in her life and she didn’t intend to start now!

He looked at her with some exasperation. ‘If you’re not looking for somewhere to stay, what are you doing here?’

‘What’s it to do with you?’ said Darcy, who was fed up with the inquisition.

‘Since I own Bindaburra, I think I’m entitled to an explanation, don’t you?’

Darcy stared at him. ‘I think I’m the one who’s entitled to an explanation,’ she said in a frosty voice. ‘I was under the impression that I owned Bindaburra!’

There was a moment’s frozen silence. His hand had closed convulsively on the steering-wheel at her announcement and the black brows snapped together.

‘What ... ?’ he began in disbelief, then stopped. To Darcy’s astonishment, his angry expression changed to one of exasperated resignation. ‘Don’t tell me!’ he said wearily. ‘You’re Darcy.’

‘Miss Meadows to you!’ Darcy’s eyes flashed dangerously blue. She could hardly believe the effrontery of the man. He didn’t even look embarrassed at having been caught blatantly lying! This must be some station hand who was taking advantage of Uncle Bill’s death. Well, he wouldn’t be taking advantage much longer; he had her to deal with now! ‘How dare you tell people that you own my property?’

‘Because it’s not your property—’ he began with infuriating calm, but Darcy interrupted him.

‘It most certainly is!’ She glared, digging into her bag to produce an envelope which she waved at him. ‘This is a letter from solicitors in Adelaide informing me of my great-uncle’s death and that I was his sole beneficiary. Read it if you don’t believe me!’

‘Oh, I believe you, Miss Meadows,’ he said with an edge of contempt. ‘I just wasn’t expecting you to rush out quite so quickly to see what you’d got out of the old man, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Darcy furiously. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s Cooper Anderson.’ He watched her closely for a reaction, but by now Darcy was too angry to notice.

‘Well, Mr Anderson, you can consider yourself unemployed as from now!’ she said with magnificent disregard for the fact that she had been relying on him to rescue her. She would rather walk, she decided, and was reaching for the door-handle when Cooper stopped her.

‘I hate to disappoint you, but you can’t sack me,’ he said.

‘Give me one good reason why not!’

‘If you’d let me finish earlier, I would have told you that Bindaburra isn’t your property, it’s ours. I’m your partner.’

Darcy looked at him, aghast. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said faintly. ‘I haven’t got a partner!’

‘I’m afraid you have,’ said Cooper. To Darcy’s chagrin, he seemed more amused than offended by her appalled expression. The cool eyes gleamed and there was an intriguing suspicion of a smile about his mouth. ‘I can assure you that I don’t like the idea any more than you do.’

Darcy wrenched her mind away from the lurking humour in his face and clutched the solicitor’s letter like a talisman. ‘But Uncle Bill left all his property to me! The solicitors said so.’

‘He did,’ Cooper agreed coolly, his smile vanishing. ‘But he only owned fifty per cent of Bindaburra. Unfortunately for you, I own the other half.’

The downpour had exhausted itself, and was now no more than a weary patter on the roof. Darcy looked at the rain dribbling down the windscreen and struggled to assimilate the idea of having a partner. ‘I suppose you can prove this?’ she said after a moment.

‘I should hardly have bothered telling you if I couldn’t,’ he pointed out with some acidity.

Darcy bit her lip. ‘I didn’t realise... Uncle Bill never said anything about having a partner...’

‘It might have been sensible to have found out a little more before you rushed out to claim your inheritance,’ said Cooper astringently as she trailed off.

This thought had already occurred to Darcy, but it didn’t make it any more welcome. She eyed her new partner with hostility. ‘I wanted to come and see if everything was all right,’ she said bravely. ‘There might have been any number of problems on the property, with nobody to deal with them. Given that I didn’t know I had a partner then, I thought the sensible decision was to come out as soon as I could.’

Cooper raised an eyebrow. Darcy didn’t look like a girl much given to sensible decisions. Her eyes were a huge midnight-blue in a vivid face, and the dark, wavy hair that tumbled to her shoulders was spangled with rain. She looked vibrant, glamorous, dazzling, but definitely not sensible.

‘It’s a nice thought,’ he said drily, reluctant amusement bracketing his mouth again. ‘But you don’t know anything about running a property like this. How did you propose solving any problems that you might find?’

Darcy didn’t like the way that lurking smile made her heart miss a beat. ‘I’m very adaptable,’ she said loftily, trying to ignore it.

‘Irresponsible is the word that springs to my mind,’ said Cooper. Darcy thought he sounded just like her father.

‘I am not irresponsible!’

‘How else would you describe turning up here out of the blue?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

‘How could I do that when I didn’t even know you existed?’

‘You could have thought to let someone know you were coming,’ he said with a gesture of impatience. ‘Or did you just assume that there would be someone at the homestead, the same way you assumed that Bindaburra would be round the next bend?’

This was pretty close to the mark, but Darcy had no intention of admitting it. ‘I remember Uncle Bill talking about the men who worked for him, and I thought they’d be there. Surely they won’t have left already?’

‘No, but it so happens that they’re working at one of the out-stations this week.’

‘What, all of them?’

‘There are only three at this time of year, but yes, all of them.’

‘But isn’t there anyone at the house? A cook, a housekeeper or somebody?’

‘The housekeeper left last week, and I haven’t got round to replacing her yet. I wasn’t planning on coming back myself, but if the rain keeps up like this all the creeks will be up, and I didn’t want to be stuck on the other side.’ He glanced at Darcy’s mutinous face. ‘If I’d decided to come back earlier, or not at all, you could have been stuck out here for a week before anyone else came along. You don’t know how lucky you are.’

‘How come I don’t feel very lucky?’ grumbled Darcy who was tired of men telling her how irresponsible she was. ‘It’s taken me two days to get here from Adelaide, most of it along roads that don’t seem to be much more than muddy swamps. I’m cold and I’m tired and I’m wet, and I’ve had to trudge for miles along this rotten track and I’ve ruined these shoes,’ she added, recalling another grievance. ‘They were my favourites too!’

‘You’re pretty lucky if ruining your shoes is the worst thing you can find to complain about,’ said Cooper with a complete lack of sympathy, starting the engine and swinging the ute round through the mud so suddenly that Darcy had to catch hold of the dashboard to steady herself.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked in some alarm.

‘You don’t want to sit here all night, do you? We’re going to get your car. If we don’t go now, the creeks will all be up and we’ll both be stuck here.’

Darcy supposed she ought to be glad he wasn’t intending to leave her there as he obviously wanted to, but the thought of wallowing around in the mud trying to extricate the car and then negotiate another thirty kilometres made her feel quite exhausted.

Fortunately, the creek had risen so dramatically since she had picked her way across it earlier that Cooper decided that they couldn’t afford to waste time towing out the car.

‘We’ll just collect your things and go,’ he said, peering out of his window at the water level as they bumped slowly across the creek bed.

‘Does it always rise this fast?’ asked Darcy nervously, taken aback by the power of the water swirling around the wheels.

‘It does when it rains like this. There are another five creeks between here and Bindaburra, too, so the sooner we cross them the better.’

The car sat where she had left it, ploughed into a deep trough of mud. In spite of her relief at not having to drive any further, Darcy eyed it doubtfully. ‘Do you think it will be all right just to leave it here?’

‘If it carries on raining like this, no one’s going to be along to steal it, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ said Cooper, looking resigned as Darcy put up her banana umbrella fastidiously before slithering through the mud to unlock the car. ‘No one would want a car like this, anyway,’ he added, and gave one of the tyres a disparaging kick. ‘This kind of thing is worse than useless out here. It’s a miracle you didn’t get bogged before this. Why didn’t you hire a four-wheel drive?’

‘I couldn’t afford it,’ she said simply, opening the boot to reveal a suitcase and a bulging stuff bag.

Cooper lifted out the suitcase. ‘You seem to have been able to afford a flight to Australia at short notice,’ he pointed out.

‘My father lent me the money for the ticket,’ Darcy confessed. ‘I didn’t know how long it would take to get here from Adelaide, so I had to hire a car, but I thought I should get the cheapest in case I couldn’t take it back after a few days.’ She hoisted out the stuff bag and banged the boot shut. ‘It’s just as well I did! I didn’t realise it would take two days just to get here!’

‘There seem to be a lot of things you didn’t realise about Bindaburra,’ said Cooper unpleasantly, tossing the case into the open back of the ute.

Darcy peered in after it. ‘It’s going to get a bit wet like that, isn’t it?’

‘Not as wet as we’re going to be if we don’t get moving,’ he said, but she was reluctant to give up on her case that easily.

‘Isn’t there room inside?’

‘Not unless you’d like to have it on your lap,’ said Cooper impatiently.

‘My clothes are going to be sodden,’ Darcy complained. ‘Couldn’t we cover it with something?’

Muttering under his breath, Cooper unearthed a grubby tarpaulin from beneath the clutter of tools, jerricans and ropes and threw it over the case. ‘There! Happy now?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Darcy, gloomily contemplating a case full of damp clothes.

‘In that case, will you please shut up and get in? If the creeks keep rising, your wet clothes are going to be the least of our problems!’

In the event, they made it across all the creeks—but only just. Each one was deeper and more alarming, until the water in the last was swirling over Darcy’s feet. She swallowed. The car she had hired would never have got through, and she would have been in real trouble if she had been stuck in the middle of the creek. Perhaps she ought to be a little more grateful that Cooper had come along after all.

It was completely dark by the time they arrived at Bindaburra homestead, and Darcy was too relieved at having reached it safely to be disappointed that she couldn’t see more of the house. She had a confused impression of a long, low house with a deep veranda before Cooper led her down a dim corridor lit by a single naked electric light bulb and opened a door. ‘This is where the last housekeeper slept, so it shouldn’t be in too bad a state,’ he said, dumping her cases inside. ‘I’ll find you some sheets, and I presume you’d like a shower, but then we’d better talk.’

He made it sound rather ominous. Left alone, Darcy sat rather uncertainly on the bed and looked around her. It was a plain room, with spartan, old-fashioned furnishings and that indefinable smell of emptiness. Suddenly she felt rather forlorn. She had imagined a bright, welcoming house bathed in bright sunshine, not rain and gloom and a hostile partner. She should have listened to her father and stayed at home, she thought glumly.

She felt better after a shower. Lugging her suitcase over to the bed, she draped the damp clothes over a chair and burrowed down to find something dry. Eventually she pulled out a dress made of soft, fine wool that swirled comfortingly about her. It was a wonderfully rich colour, somewhere between deep blue and purple, with a narrow waist emphasised by a wide suede belt. Darcy pushed a selection of Middle Eastern bracelets up her arm and regarded herself critically in the mirror.

The dim light gave her the look of a Forties film star, just catching the silky gleam of dark hair and making her eyes seem bigger and bluer than ever. Why was Cooper so determinedly unimpressed? True, she didn’t look like the most practical girl in the world, but she was pretty and friendly and—whatever he might think—not completely brainless. What was so wrong with that?

Darcy gave herself an encouraging smile that faded as she remembered how Cooper had simply ignored it. She had never met anyone so resistant to her charms. It wasn’t that she wanted him to find her attractive, she reminded herself hastily, but he could have been a little more...welcoming.

Her bracelets chinked against each other as she walked down the long, ill-lit corridor. She found Cooper in the kitchen, a large, old-fashioned room with a row of steel fridges and an antiquated-looking stove.

Cooper was sitting at the scrubbed wooden table, turning a can of beer absently between his hands. His face was intent with thought and there was a slight crease between his brows, as if he was pondering some difficult problem, but he looked up at Darcy’s approach, his clear, cool grey gaze meeting her warm blue one across the room.

Darcy stopped dead in the doorway, overwhelmed by a sudden and inexplicable sense of recognition at the sight of him. The line of his cheek, the curl of his mouth, the long brown fingers against the beer can, all suddenly seemed almost painfully familiar. It was as if she had always known him, had already traced the angles of his face with her hands and counted each crease at the edges of his eyes. Darcy felt jarred, breathless, quite unprepared for the peculiar certainty that her whole life had led to this moment, standing in a strange kitchen, staring into the eyes of this cool, watchful man while a clock ticked somewhere in the silence and outside the rain drummed noisily on the corrugated-tin roof.

‘What’s the matter?’ Cooper got to his feet, frowning.

Thoroughly unnerved by her bizarre reaction, Darcy swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked, and cleared her throat hastily. ‘Should there be?’

‘You look a bit peculiar.’

‘I was under the impression that you thought that everything about me was peculiar,’ she said waspishly, desperately trying to recover herself and wishing that Cooper’s eyes weren’t quite so acute.

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked politely.

Typically, Darcy couldn’t then think of a single thing he had said to hold against him. ‘It’s just an impression you give,’ she said a little sullenly. ‘You make me feel as if I’m a complete idiot.’

Cooper looked amused. ‘Anyone would feel a complete idiot, carrying a ridiculous umbrella like that,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow at Darcy, still hesitating in the doorway. ‘Are you going to stand there all night, or would you like to come in?’

That was exactly the kind of comment she had meant, Darcy thought crossly, but of course it was impossible to explain it to him. At least that odd feeling had gone. Obscurely grateful to Cooper for reminding her that he was simply a disagreeable stranger, she went over to the table and pulled out a chair. She was tired, still jet-lagged, lost and disorientated in a strange place. Nothing else could explain that brief, swamping sense of recognition when she had stood in the doorway and looked across at Cooper.

‘Like a beer?’ he asked.

‘I’d rather have tea if you have some,’ she said, proud of how cool she sounded.

‘Sure.’ Cooper crossed to the sink and filled the kettle, and Darcy found herself watching him as if she had never seen him before. There was a lean ranginess about him that hadn’t been so obvious in the ute. His body was compact and very controlled, and his movements had a sort of quiet, deliberate economy that was curiously reassuring.

He could hardly have been more different from Sebastian, she thought. Sebastian was fair and flamboyant, Cooper dark and unhurried, and yet Darcy had a sudden conviction that if she put them in a room together it would be Cooper who was the focus of attention. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Sebastian, but there was something much more compelling about him than mere good looks, and for the first time she appreciated just how alone they were together. The outside world seemed a long, long way away.

Darcy fiddled nervously with her bracelets, but the chinking silver sounded abnormally loud and she forced herself to link her hands together and think of something to say instead.

Unperturbed by the silence, Cooper had propped himself against the cupboards while he waited for the kettle to boil, arms folded across his chest and long legs crossed casually at the ankles.

‘How did Uncle Bill die?’ Darcy asked at last. “The solicitor just said that he died suddenly, but he seemed so healthy when he was in England.’

‘It was a freak accident,’ said Cooper quietly. ‘He broke his neck when he came off his motorbike. He’d hit an anthill and must have fallen the wrong way.’ He paused and glanced at Darcy. ‘He died instantly.’

Darcy closed her eyes. Her great-uncle had been such a strong, colourful character that it was impossible to imagine him killed by anything as small as an anthill.

‘Is that why you came?’ asked Cooper abruptly. ‘To find out how he died?’

‘Partly.’

‘And partly to see what he’d left you?’

There was an unmistakably sardonic edge to his voice and Darcy stiffened. ‘Uncle Bill always wanted me to see Bindaburra,’ she said defiantly.

‘He wanted you to see it; he didn’t want you to have it.’

‘That’s not what his will said,’ said Darcy in a cold voice. ‘I’m his great-niece and he was fond of me. Why shouldn’t he leave his property to me?’

‘Because he said he would leave it to me.’

‘To you? Why you?’

The kettle shrieked and Cooper turned calmly away to make a pot of tea. ‘I was his partner. He knew he could trust me to look after Bindaburra the way he had done.’

‘You can’t have been partners all that long,’ Darcy objected. ‘Uncle Bill never mentioned you when he was in England and that was only two years ago.’

‘He wouldn’t have done.’ Cooper put the lid back on the teapot and carried it over to the table. ‘Bill hated the fact that he couldn’t manage financially without a partner. I think he thought that if he didn’t talk about it it would mean that Bindaburra was still completely his.’

‘So were you a sort of sleeping partner?’ asked Darcy as he looked in one of the fridges for some milk.

‘In a way. I put in the capital he needed, but we agreed that Bill would continue to run Bindaburra without any interference from me. We had a tacit understanding that I would take over when he couldn’t manage any more, and that on his death the whole property would revert to me.’

He pushed the milk across the table towards Darcy, who poured some into a mug, frowning slightly. ‘Does that mean you’ve only taken over here since he died?’