Partner for Love

‘What did you have in mind?’ said Darcy, trying to conceal her relief.

‘Bill always had a housekeeper who cooked for him and the men and kept this place in some sort of order. The last girl left a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had time to do anything about finding a replacement yet. One of the men has been doing the cooking since then, but he’s more useful to me outside, so if you took over the cooking you’d be making more than a token contribution.’

Darcy toyed with the idea of objecting to the sexist way he had assumed that all she was good for was cooking and cleaning, but when she thought that the alternative might be fencing in the rain or much worse she decided that she might be better off in the kitchen after all.

‘I’m not a very good cook,’ she warned him, with judicious understatement. Her dinner parties made popular disaster stories among her friends and she had learnt that it was easier to buy prepared meals from the supermarket freezers to shove in the microwave.

‘You must be better than Darren,’ said Cooper. ‘They don’t want anything fancy, just roasts and stews, and a cake or a biscuit for smoko.’

‘Oh, well, I expect I could manage that,’ said Darcy optimistically. The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of working, even if it did have to be in the unglamorous role of housekeeper. Uncle Bill would have wanted her to stay, at least for a while, she told herself. If she could prove her worth to Cooper, it would be a way of showing that her great-uncle had not been mistaken in her. She would be doing it for him as much as for herself.

Fired with enthusiasm, she beamed across the table at Cooper. Her hair was still tousled from sleep, but the dark blue eyes were wide awake now. ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

If she had expected Cooper to look delighted, she was disappointed. Instead he sounded almost disapproving of her ready acceptance of his idea. ‘There are other things you should think about as well,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Can you afford to stay, for a start? Obviously it won’t cost you anything to stay here, but you won’t earn anything either. It would be a pity if you gave up opportunities at home just to prove a point out here.’

‘I don’t see that that’s a problem,’ said Darcy. ‘It’s not as if I had any responsibilities. I share a flat with a friend. We only pay a nominal rent because her father owns it, so I won’t be leaving her in the lurch. And as for work...well, as I said, I’ll let my agent know how to contact me just in case something unexpected comes up.’

‘Hmm.’ Cooper studied her critically, unimpressed by her insouciant attitude. ‘You should also consider how you feel about living alone with me.’

Carried away by the prospect of proving that she wasn’t as useless as he thought her, Darcy had forgotten how she had sat fidgeting with her bracelets, overwhelmed by that strange sense of awareness. Now she uncrossed her legs and dropped her feet to the floor, conscious for the first time of the intimacy of the situation. She hadn’t thought twice before about the propriety of sitting opposite him with nothing on under her dressing-gown, but now she tightened the belt automatically. The silk slithered sleekly against her skin and she had a sudden disturbing awareness of her own body.

She wished Cooper had never mentioned the prospect of living alone. She had been happily defiant before; now she couldn’t take her eyes off his hands, horrified by how easily she could imagine what it would be like to sit here like lovers, still sleepy and smiling after a night together, her body tingling with remembered desire. So vivid was the picture that Darcy’s skin seemed to burn as if she could feel his hands easing the dressing-gown apart to slide caressingly over her body and pull her against his tautly muscled strength...

Darcy swallowed and pushed the vision aside with an effort. Living alone with Cooper suddenly seemed fraught with unsuspected dangers, none of which she could explain. ‘W-we won’t be alone, though, will we?’ she said in a voice that sounded ridiculously high even to her own ears. ‘The other men will be back as soon as the creeks go down, won’t they?’ There would be safety in numbers, she reasoned, and with three other men around there would be none of the intimacy that might lead to more dangerous fantasising about just one.

‘They’ll eat with us here in the homestead, but they sleep in their own quarters.’

‘Oh.’ Darcy looked down into her empty coffeemug. ‘Well, couldn’t you sleep in their quarters?’

‘I could, but I have no intention of doing so,’ said Cooper in an acerbic tone. He got up impatiently and carried his mug over to the sink. ‘I intend to make Bindaburra my home, and I don’t see why I should move out just to make you feel better.’

‘You were the one who brought up the subject,’ she pointed out with a touch of sullenness.

‘I’m just advising you to think about what’s involved,’ he said austerely, swirling the mug under the tap. ‘There’s no point in you agreeing to stay and then suddenly getting maidenly scruples.’

‘I haven’t got maidenly scruples!’ Darcy protested.

‘Oh? Then why did you suggest I move out to the ringers’ quarters?’

‘I just thought it would be...less awkward.’

Cooper came back to the table. ‘Awkward for whom?’

‘Well, not exactly awkward—’ she began, wishing she’d never opened her mouth, but he interrupted her.

‘You mean you don’t trust me to keep my hands off you?’

‘No!’ Seeing Cooper raise his eyebrows, she hurried to correct herself. ‘I mean, no, I didn’t mean that. That you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me, I mean...’ Utterly confused about what she meant by now, Darcy floundered to a halt.

‘Could it be that you don’t trust yourself to keep your hands off me, then?’ he suggested provocatively.

‘Certainly not!’ Without thinking, she jumped to her feet, clutching her dressing-gown about her, dark hair bouncing around her face and blue eyes stormy and magnificent. ‘I’m hardly likely to have any interest in you!’

‘Why not?’ Cooper came round the table towards her, but Darcy was too angry to care.

‘Why? Why?’ she echoed, trying desperately to think of a convincing reason. ‘Because... because you’re just not my type, and even if you were I... I’m already involved with someone else,’ she finished in a rush.

It didn’t seem to have much effect in halting Cooper’s advance, which she had belatedly noticed. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked, calmly taking her waist between his hands. They were hard and strong and seemed to burn through the silk on to her skin.

’S-Sebastian,’ she stammered, trying to push away his steely grip.

‘Sebastian? Is he an actor, too?’

‘Yes,’ said Darcy, preoccupied with her futile struggle to free herself.

Cooper himself hardly seemed to notice her efforts. ‘How involved is “involved”?’ he said.

‘I’m in love with him,’ she said defiantly. She was, she reminded herself, remembering how heartbroken she had been.

‘And is Sebastian in love with you?’

Darcy hesitated. ‘Yes.’ Much the safest answer, even if the least truthful. She had given up her attempts to wriggle free and had brought her hands up to his chest to ward him off. Beneath her palms she could feel the disturbingly warm solidity of his body through the brushed-cotton shirt, and she drew her hands away slightly.

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ said Cooper conversationally, a smile lurking around his mouth.

Darcy drew a steadying breath. ‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘Sebastian trusts me utterly.’

‘Really?’ he said, drawing her inexorably closer until her hands were jammed back against his chest. His eyes were alight with an expression that set her heart thudding in a treacherous combination of alarm and anticipation. ‘Sebastian sounds like a rash man to me. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t tempt fate by letting a girl like you out of my sight, let alone disappear off to Australia on her own.’

‘He knows I’d never be interested in another man,’ whispered Darcy, who could hardly hear her own voice above the booming of her heart and was fighting a desperate battle against the terrible temptation to lean into him.

Cooper’s smile was speculative. ‘Well, let’s see if Sebastian was right or not, shall we?’ he murmured, and slid his hands up to cup her throat and lift her face to his.

CHAPTER THREE

THE touch of Cooper’s mouth sent a lightning bolt of reaction through her, catching Darcy off balance. It was as if the floor had dropped away beneath her, plunging her into a maelstrom of conflicting emotions, and she gasped, clutching instinctively at the front of his shirt as her only anchor.

How had she known that his lips would be so warm, so sure, so treacherously persuasive? Darcy was caught between shock and the arrowing certainty that it had always been like this. Just as when she had hesitated in the kitchen door last night she had been swamped by that strange sense of familiarity, so now his kiss left her awash with recognition. It was almost like coming home; the touch and the scent and the hard, masculine feel of his body through the flimsy silk dressing-gown were all part of her, inseparable from the intoxicating rush of feeling that swirled through her senses and left her reeling and incapable of thought.

She was unaware of her hands slowly loosening their clutch on his shirt to spread and slide over his chest and up to his shoulders. Beneath the cotton, his body was tempered steel, solid and unyielding to her touch. Darcy clung to its reassuring strength, heedless of the instinctive arch of her body. Her head was tipped back invitingly so that her soft dark hair fell over his hand, which was smoothing seductively down her spine. She had forgotten her anger, forgotten Sebastian and the cold floor beneath her bare feet, forgotten everything but Cooper’s kiss, his mouth on hers, his hands burning through the silk on to her skin and the breathtaking thump of excitement that was beating ever louder and faster, drowning out the voice that should have been shouting at her to resist.

As her arms slid round his neck, Cooper lifted his mouth from hers, but only to gather her closer again into a kiss that was deeper and more demanding than before. Darcy was drowning, dissolving in a rising tide of desire, and her fingers tightened on his shoulders as the silk belt of her gown slithered apart and his hands slipped beneath to curve over her body. Darcy gasped aloud, electrified by their scorching exploration, and sheer, shameful pleasure shuddered over her skin.

Abandoned to the wash of sensation, Darcy hardly heard Cooper’s muttered exclamation or realised that his hands had stilled abruptly. They withdrew slowly, sliding reluctantly out from beneath the silk as he levered himself away from her. By the time Darcy had grasped what was happening, he was retying her belt with a wry smile.