LITMIR.BIZ

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The crowd had spotted her too. Never seen anyone so beatific in their whole lives.”

      “Beatific?” Clint laughed. “That’s a good word, Bess.”

      “Means angel, don’t it?”

      “Looking like an angel.”

      “Or mebbe a brolga in search of water. Jes’ standin’ there, she was.”

      Brolga? Olivia felt a wash of panic. What was a brolga, for heaven’s sake? Some sort of slang for bird brain?

      McAlpine’s body was disturbingly hot, hard and steely strong, the sweat on him clean—an arresting combination of pheromones and the vast outdoors, dead sexy in its way. For an insane moment she wondered what it would be like to know that body intimately. The next she wondered if it were possible she was on the verge of a spectacular mental breakdown. She had only set foot on this tropical outpost and already she was going troppo. She knew the term. Surely some Englishman who had spent too long in the tropics had invented it? She had never thought to experience it firsthand.

      “Relax, no one is going to hurt you,” McAlpine said, as though humouring a fractious filly. “You need to cool down.”

      “You’re gunna be OK, love.” Bessie gave her a big comforting smile, putting the plastic container to Olivia’s lips.

      It was sooo good! Nothing in the world could have tasted better than pure cold water.

      “Sip it,” McAlpine cautioned. “Don’t gulp.”

      Even physically reduced, she bridled. “Hang on. I’m not—”

      “Sip it,” he repeated, with a grimace of impatience.

      Feeling childish, she slowly finished off the container of water, becoming aware she was the centre of attention. “Please, I can sit up.”

      “Sure you can.” He was already in the process of helping her sit straight. Even with that loose wave of hair falling across her cheek, her shirt in slight disarray, the button of her skirt undone, she still managed to look elegant. No mean feat.

      “How do you feel now?” Her eyes were the exact colour of the beautiful blue glaze on a Sung Dynasty vase at the house.

      “Everyone is staring at me,” Olivia said worriedly. And so they were. Not rudely but sympathetically. She was sure the news had got about. The blonde lady fainted. A Pom. That explained it. Why wouldn’t she in the unaccustomed heat? The good news was she had Clint McAlpine, the Territory’s biggest cattle baron, to look out for her. The man might have been a national icon.

      “How do you know they’re not staring at me?” he countered, watching yet another silky swathe of her beautiful blonde hair fall from her impeccable up-do. The few times he had seen her she’d always had her long hair pulled back tightly from her face and fashioned into some kind of knot. This was one repressed female. It would probably take a surgical team to get her out of her suit.

      “So humiliating to faint!” Olivia murmured in embarrassment, as though it was on a par with jumping off a bridge only to land unhurt knee-deep in mud.

      “Don’t be ridiculous.” He was pleased to see a little of her colour had come back, warming her flawless skin. The fact her father had wanted to send her out to Australia, and to him in particular, had come as quite a shock and he didn’t shock easily. He knew about the scandal, of course. Even if it hadn’t made their newspapers, he had plenty of relatives, friends and contacts in the UK only too pleased to pass on the gossip. Frankly he couldn’t see her getting into a punch-up with her beautiful sister, the so-called “wild one.” Olivia was the ice princess, unwilling and seemingly unable to leave her marble pedestal. But for once she had lost it. From what little he knew of her she would be smarting badly.

      He knew she needed a good long sleep. As a seasoned traveller—he was aware of her jet-setting—he had thought she would take the last leg of her flight from Singapore to Darwin in her stride. He knew she had made an overnight stay at Raffles. Only the best for Ms Balfour. He couldn’t chance flying her to the station. Not today. Another overnight stay was called for. He could take her to the harbourside apartment the family maintained. McAlpine money had built the luxury complex. Or perhaps it would be advisable to book them into the Darwin International Resort Hotel. It was only a short distance away.

      On the face of it Ms Balfour didn’t seem right for any job he could easily set her. Probably she had never been inside a kitchen in her entire life. Not that any of the McAlpine operations needed a cook—even if he could send a woman like her to an outstation. Out of the question. He had Kath and Norm Cartwright, husband-and-wife team, running domestic affairs at Kalla Koori.

      Maybe Ms Balfour couldn’t cook, or keep house, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to tackle the hardest game of all, mustering cattle, but she looked far from stupid. In fact, she looked highly intelligent. As she would have to be.

      He knew she had often acted as her father’s hostess and done the usual things for a young woman in her privileged position: charity work, opening fetes and nursing homes, that kind of thing. If she could cut the swanning around bit, she would be quite an asset to him on the social side of things. He had functions to give, important guests to entertain. He fancied Ms Balfour would find acting organiser and hostess a piece of cake.

      She would, however, have to lighten up on the upper-crust hauteur. He seemed to remember he had told her, among other things, she had elevated snobbery to an art form. Ouch! He could hardly expect her to like him any more than he liked her.

      Yet she was here. Oscar Balfour had sent her. Oscar Balfour was a good man to have onside. His late father had liked the man immensely. Oscar Balfour did have patrician good looks and a great deal of charm. Also a great deal of money. Oscar Balfour was a significant shareholder in M.A.P.C. It followed that both of them, he and Ms Balfour, would have to make the best of things or kill off each other in the process.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MCALPINE had to be a celebrity.

      Everywhere they went he was waved at, smiled at, greeted with a mix of awe, respect and enthusiastic friendliness. He could have been a rock star in town for a huge open-air concert.

      Overnight the stubble had disappeared. Morning found him clean-shaven but still with that “wild man” look, ensuring women never took their eyes off him. She was sure what she was registering was plain primal lust. She didn’t know whether to feel disgusted or deprived. She had never seen anything like the combination of his thick, lustrous dark auburn hair, bronze skin—she’d never seen a tan richer, darker—and confronting golden eyes. He had even found time to have his hair trimmed. One couldn’t have said “cut.” No regimental short back and sides. Oh, well, it was beautiful hair after all. Most women would give up a valuable eye tooth to have hair like it.

      Why couldn’t the man have been ordinary? A good twenty years older? A father figure. Even uncle figure would have done. Her father’s choice of McAlpine was the worst of the worst. They had absolutely nothing in common. Even more upsetting was the fact they were basically hostile to each other. He certainly brought out the offensive in her. She was good for a joust. If one wanted peace, one prepared for war. But then again, war wasn’t good when she had to work for the man, and he no doubt would be reporting back to her father.

      There was one good thing, however. She had slept like the proverbial log. And he had let her. Until 9:00 a.m., that is, when he had called her hotel room to instruct her to come down for breakfast without delay, after which they were flying on. At least he had had the decency to enquire whether she had slept at all.

      “Thank you for asking about the quality of my sleep.” She willed herself to be cool. Not easy when there was some extraordinary heat at her centre. “I slept very well, Mr McAlpine.” Even as she answered she had thrown back the light bedclothes and leapt to her feet. “I hope you weren’t worrying about me?” She couldn’t prevent the note of sarcasm in her voice.

      “Not

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