Partner for Love

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?’