Rescued By A Millionaire Page 5

  It was all just too hard. Despite the heat, Jenna suddenly felt cold. She gave a long, convulsive shudder, then pulled her hand away from Riley’s and started to rise. She lifted a plate, but Riley was before her, rising and taking the plate from her.

  ‘Leave it,’ he told her. ‘I’ll handle the washing-up. Seeing you cooked, it’s only fair. You go and take a shower. I’ll clean up and make coffee.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘It’s my one skill,’ he said with pride. ‘My coffee’s the best for miles.’

  ‘That’s not saying much,’ Jenna retorted, responding to the gentle smile in his eyes. He was encouraging her to lighten-and there was something about this man that did just that. He made her smile when smiling seemed impossible. ‘There’s nothing but saltbush for miles. Unless your cows make coffee.’

  ‘Don’t disparage my skills. You wait. And meanwhile…’ He turned and delved into a crate by the door, rising with an armful of linen. ‘Here you go, Miss Svenson. Don’t let it be said that Barinya Downs doesn’t provide its guests with luxury.’ At her look of amazement he grinned. ‘Maggie packs this for me, in case I ever want to change my sheets-which, I’ll admit, doesn’t happen so much as she hopes.’ His smile deepened. ‘You know where the shower is-you saw me come out of it. It works on bore water. You need to pump while you shower. Cold water only. And you found the toilet? I should have warned you that you need to watch out for spiders. Take the torch, and if you get bitten make sure it’s somewhere I can put a tourniquet.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  He relented. ‘I’m kidding. There was a redback spider nest when I arrived, so I did the hero thing with a can of insecticide.’ He eyed her clothes. ‘You want something to sleep in?’

  ‘I guess.’ She’d put Karli to bed in her knickers, but knickers were hardly appropriate nightwear for her. She was practically sharing a bedroom here. ‘I left our gear on the siding.’

  ‘Very wise.’ He smiled again. ‘The good thing about being the only humans for a hundred miles is that no one’s going to pinch your designer luggage.’

  Designer luggage? What did he think she was? She tried a glower but she was too tired and too confused and too…just too everything. The day was suddenly on top of her and he could see it.

  ‘I’ll put one of my shirts around the wash-house door,’ he told her, taking pity on her sudden confusion. He placed a hand on her shoulder-gently, reassuringly. It was the sort of gesture he might have used on Karli, and why it suddenly made her want to weep she had no idea.

  ‘Go take your shower, Jenna,’ he told her. ‘Worry about tomorrow tomorrow. For tonight, I think we all need to sleep.’

  She definitely wanted to sleep, but she also definitely wanted to shower.

  She made up the bed at the far end of the veranda and lifted Karli over. The little girl didn’t wake as she was shifted. Her tummy was full, she felt safe and cared for, and her body was taking all the sleep it needed.

  Karli still had a child’s ability to sleep whenever she needed. Jenna wasn’t quite so lucky. Dust was ingrained in every pore, and the thought of cold running water was even more appealing than sleep.

  Maybe she shouldn’t shower when the little girl was alone, she thought briefly, but Karli was deeply asleep. Even if she stirred… Jenna thought of Riley’s tone as he’d talked to Karli. The way he’d smiled and the way Karli had responded.

  ‘You’re nice,’ Karli had whispered. ‘Nicer than my daddy.’

  Karli was right. Jenna acknowledged it as truth, using a sixth sense that years of coping with an unkind world had taught her to trust. Riley Jackson was kind, with an ingrained sense of decency she knew she could depend on.

  She could depend on him?

  ‘I can,’ she whispered. The man might make her senses come alive as they’d never come alive before; he might make her feel as aware as she’d ever been aware of a man-but she knew that here in his house she’d found a haven for her little sister that she could trust absolutely.

  So, yes, she could take a shower. The concept was even appealing when she examined the wash house.

  It was definitely a wash house, she decided. Calling this place a bathroom would be a joke. The ramshackle lean-to at the side of the house consisted of four walls, a concrete floor and a pipe with a shower-rose at head height. Beside the pipe was a pump. If one pumped, Jenna guessed, the water would spray out over her head.

  The only problem was that the pump was designed for someone with muscles like Riley Jackson.

  Jenna stripped and pumped. And pumped. And pumped. The water trickled out, grudgingly.

  ‘There’s nothing like building up a sweat as you shower,’ she told herself as she tried to pump and lather at the same time. ‘No wonder the man has muscles.’

  ‘Are you talking to yourself or do you have company?’

  She froze. Naked and soapy, she crossed her arms uselessly across her breasts. The door had no lock-of course-and part of Jenna expected Riley to walk straight in.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she quavered.

  ‘Hey, it’s all right.’ He’d heard her fear, she thought, and, damn, there was suddenly laughter behind his concern. ‘We colonists know not to intrude on a lady’s ablutions. Even though you imperialists do wander round strange men’s bedrooms at will.’

  Damn the man, he was laughing at her! ‘Oh, go away,’ she snapped. She shoved the pump handle down so hard that a thoroughly satisfactory stream of water gushed down over her hot-and-bothered body. That was all it needed. Anger. Well, if that was all it needed, she had anger by the bucketload. ‘I can’t concentrate with you out there,’ she told him, pumping with a vengeance, and she could hear his grin broaden.

  ‘Do you need to concentrate?’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t handle the soap and the pump at the same time. This pump was built for Superman.’

  ‘You want me to come in and help?’

  ‘No!’ It was a yelp and there was a broad chuckle from outside the door. Which, strangely enough, seemed reassuring. Then the door opened a crack and Jenna went back to clutching her breasts. But all that appeared was a tanned, sinewy arm, holding a shirt. The arm reached up and hooked the shirt behind the door-and then the arm retreated.

  ‘Never let it be said that I didn’t offer,’ Riley told her, sounding wounded. ‘But if you don’t want help, then far be it from me to push. I’m off to bed. There’s coffee on your bedside table. Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘Privacy,’ she snapped, and again there was a chuckle.

  ‘What, no thank you?’

  She thought about that. Thank you. Okay, maybe he deserved one of those.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered and heard a sudden arrested silence on the other side of the door.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said at last.

  ‘I mean it,’ she managed. It was surreal, standing naked and dripping and talking to a complete stranger on the other side of the door. But she had to say it. ‘Without you we’d be in desperate trouble,’ she told him. ‘We’re incredibly grateful. Both of us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and the laughter was suddenly gone from his voice. ‘Yeah, well, that’s just fine. Goodnight.’

  And he left her to it.

  He left her disconcerted to say the least. She pumped on, but she was thoroughly confused.

  Why did he have this effect on her? Despite the cold water, her body seemed to be burning. The man had her unnerved, and it wasn’t just the strangeness and isolation that were making her jumpy.

  It was the way her body reacted to him, she decided. It was as if he had the power to flick a switch inside her, making her achingly aware of herself-of nerve endings she’d never imagined she had.

  Which was really, really dumb. She was here with Karli. As well as looking out for herself, she now had to look after a child. The responsibility was almost overpowering.

  The last thing she needed to do was to complicate her life by pretending she
was attracted to some yahoo cowboy in the Australian Outback.

  Pretending?

  ‘Okay, so you’re attracted,’ she conceded. ‘But you’re not stupid. Now stop fantasising and get your hair washed and get out of here.’

  Even that was easier said than done. Jenna’s hair was full of dust, but there was no shampoo and the soap refused to lather. No matter how she scrubbed, there were no suds. Finally she pumped the soap out, but her hair still felt stiff and matted.

  At least the worst of the dust had gone, and without Riley’s disturbing presence her body was finally cool. She towelled herself dry, put on Riley’s shirt-it hung almost to her knees-and tried to run a comb through her hair.

  She winced at the feel. Why wasn’t it clean? Puzzled, she pumped a little water into her hand and tasted. It was thick with salts-coarse, untreated bore water.

  At least the tap in the kitchen was connected to rainwater, she decided. She could rinse her hair there.

  She retrieved her kerosene lamp from the corner of the wash house, gathered her belongings and took a cautious step back onto the veranda.

  Riley was already in bed.

  There was a hump under the bedclothes on his end of the veranda and he didn’t stir as she came out. She thought back to the man’s face as she’d first seen him. One of her first impressions had been exhaustion. ‘I’ve been working in the sun for the past twelve hours,’ he’d told her.

  He deserved his sleep.

  Well, she wouldn’t disturb him. She checked on Karli, who was also sleeping soundly, dumped her filthy clothes at the foot of the bed she’d be sharing with her sister, drank her coffee-which tasted surprisingly good-then tiptoed past Riley and back out to the kitchen.

  Here was the rainwater. She gave a sigh of relief, turned on the tap and lowered her head under its flow. And let it run…

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  She bumped her head on the tap. She gasped, got a mouthful of water and choked. When she finally managed to raise her head, Riley was towering above her. The tap was firmly turned off and it didn’t take a genius to see that he was angry. More than angry. He was full-blown furious.

  ‘What…?’ Jenna tried to talk, coughed and tried again. ‘What do you mean?’ The man was dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts. He was almost as naked as Jenna felt. In Riley’s shirt, bra-less and with no knickers, she felt exposed and…and…

  Well, just plain exposed.

  ‘Bloody English twit.’ Riley placed his hands on Jenna’s arms and physically lifted her away from the tap. Then he tilted her chin, forcing her to face him. ‘Lady, there is one fact of life you learn here and you learn it fast. There is nothing-nothing!-more precious than rainwater. Rain water is the only thing we can drink and it hasn’t rained for six months. And here you are, letting it run all over your hair and down the drain. I reckon you’ve just used two weeks’ drinking water.’

  ‘But…’ Jenna’s voice faltered into appalled horror ‘…are you so short?’

  ‘Short enough that a couple more hair washes will make the place uninhabitable.’

  Jenna stared up at him in the flickering light cast by her lantern. She was appalled. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You’ll be a lot sorrier if you die of thirst,’ he said grimly. ‘All for the sake of clean hair.’

  Silence.

  ‘The cattle…’ she managed. ‘How do they survive?’

  ‘They have a stronger tolerance for salts than we do. They’ll drink bore water.’

  ‘Oh, help.’

  ‘Help’s right.’ He stared down at her for a moment longer. And then, before she realised what he intended, before she could possibly react, he bent and lifted her into his arms, tossing her against his bare chest as if she weighed nothing.

  ‘What…what are you doing?’ Jenna squeaked. ‘Put me down.’

  ‘You, Miss Svenson, have caused enough trouble for one day,’ Riley said grimly, only the sides of his mouth twitching as though he was suppressing laughter. ‘You may have come from a privileged background where everything you wanted you got, but there are rules in this place and you obey them or you pay the consequences.’ And holding her effortlessly against him, he stooped to turned down her lamp and then strode out to the veranda.

  She held herself rigid in his grasp. There was nothing she could do except clutch her dignity to herself as best she could and submit. She couldn’t fight him. If she wriggled…well, Riley’s shirt was making her respectable but only just, and there wasn’t a lot of wriggle room.

  But, the feel of this man’s arms, of this man’s skin against hers… What was happening to her?

  She trusted him, she told herself fiercely. She trusted him and her instincts weren’t wrong. Were they?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she managed as he kicked the door open before him and made his way unerringly through the darkened house.

  ‘I’m doing what everyone does with misbehaving juveniles,’ he told her, with only a hint of wicked laughter in his voice. ‘I’m sending you to bed.’

  He strode on with her speechless, rigid in his grasp.

  Finally he reached the bed on the veranda. Karli was sound asleep on one side, barely taking up any room at all. Riley stood, looked down at the sleeping little girl in the moonlight and his face twisted.

  ‘You’re nothing but trouble,’ he told Jenna. ‘The two of you.’

  He held her out over her side of the bed and let her drop. She landed with an ignominious bounce.

  He lifted a spare towel from the pile of linen beside the bed and he dropped it onto her head.

  ‘If I were you, I’d towel myself dry, then get into bed and stay there,’ he told her. ‘And if I catch you wasting rainwater again, then I will personally place you in the Land Rover and take you to the railway siding and leave you there until the next train comes through.’ He glanced across at Karli and once again his mouth twisted. His expression was one that almost might have been pain.

  ‘I should do it now,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t, of course, but I should.’

  He stood for a moment, still staring down, only now he was staring at Jenna, as if he was expecting her to defy him.

  She didn’t. She couldn’t. She lay staring up at him in the moonlight and she was absolutely speechless.

  And Riley’s mouth quirked into a rueful smile.

  ‘Goodnight, then, Miss Svenson,’ he said softly. His hand came down and he touched her face-fleetingly, in a gesture that was as unexpected as it was comforting. ‘Sleep well. Don’t let the traffic keep you awake.’

  And he was gone, striding purposefully back to his own bed as if rid of a pest. To her fury, as she heard him lower himself onto his bed she heard a low, throaty chuckle.

  Angry or not, Riley Jackson had just enjoyed himself.

  Toad!

  For ten minutes she lay still, her face burning with mortification. She was also trying to block out the knowledge that Riley was in bed not fifteen feet away from her.

  She sat up and towelled her hair, turned her pillow to the dry side, then lay and stared in the opposite direction to Riley, out into the night sky.

  Facing away from him didn’t help a bit.

  She was a fool. What must he think of her? From the moment she’d left the train she’d been nothing but a twit, and she should have guessed about the water.

  ‘Let it go,’ Riley growled and she almost jumped sky-high.

  ‘I’ll get over it and so will you,’ he told her, his voice weirdly intimate in the night. They were lying in the same bedroom like two lovers and his words were so soft that she almost might have been dreaming.

  ‘I…thank you,’ she whispered and once again she heard the chuckle.

  ‘You’re welcome. Go to sleep.’

  Sleep. How could she sleep? She wriggled down between the sheets and lay rigid. Karli slept on beside her, calmly oblivious of the turmoil her big sister was experiencing.

  It’d be great to be five y
ears old, Jenna thought bitterly, and then she thought of what she’d gone through from that age until now and thought, no. No, it wouldn’t.

  She put out her hand and took Karli’s in hers. The little girl’s fingers curled around hers, trusting even in sleep.

  She’d do whatever it took, Jenna thought. Whatever…

  Damn Brian.

  Men!

  She’d never sleep.

  She wriggled down further into the bed. Amazingly, the mattress and pillows were comfortable. ‘Not that it’ll make a scrap of difference,’ she told herself. ‘There’s no way I can sleep here.’

  Her damp curls sank deeper into the pillow. The warm night air caressed her tired body, soothing her fears. Beyond the veranda, the stars were brilliant in the outback sky.

  Karli held her hand, and Riley was asleep close by.

  ‘There’s no way I can sleep here,’ she repeated, but the words grew slower as she thought them. ‘There’s no way.’

  The world was still.

  Her eyes closed.

  She slept.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HE LEFT at dawn.

  Riley had work crowding in on him from all sides. He was desperate to be gone, but first he turned his battered truck towards the railway siding. They’d need their abandoned baggage and he didn’t want them trying to get it themselves.

  He slowed as he reached the siding. He pulled up on the south side, where there was a little shade from a sun that already had a sting to it. What on earth was this?

  He climbed from the truck and stared.

  Sandcastles? Dust-castles? What?

  The edifices were amazing. They-Jenna and Karli, for who else could have done this?-had built an entire little town. There were scores of little dust houses, made of packed-together dirt, adorned with twigs from the saltbush to form windows and doors and chimneys. There were roads in their little village and a scooped-out something that might be meant to resemble a pond. There were a couple of little twiggy things in the middle of the pond and he stooped to see.