Australian Outback Kings / The Cattle King's Mistress / The Playboy King's Wife / The Pleasure King's Bride (13 page)

“I hope it continues to be so,” Miranda replied, noting that Celine led the way up the path to the verandah, Bobby strolling a step behind. Detaching himself from his wife?

“Did you manage to make all the bookings I phoned through this morning?” Celine asked eagerly.

“Yes, everything has been arranged,” Miranda affirmed.

“Even the boat ride down Granny Gorge this afternoon?”

“The guide will be here by the time you've checked into your suite.”

She clapped her hands in glee. “I did not want these few hours wasted.”

Close up, Celine was younger than Miranda had imagined. She barely looked out of her teens, her pretty face framed by short black hair styled in a pixie cut, and dominated by big dark eyes, aglow with enthusiasm.

“I think I'll give the gorge a miss, Celine,” Bobby dropped casually as they mounted the steps to the verandah.

“But I've booked!” she protested, her face petulant with displeasure as she turned to him.

“You can go, pet,” he answered indulgently. “I'd like to have a look around the resort. See how it works.”

“Business!” She heaved a vexed sigh.

He ignored it, looking over her shoulder at Miranda, his amber eyes gleaming tigerishly. “I'd like a personal tour, Miranda.”

With her
, he meant, and every fighting instinct rose to the fore. He was not going to get at her. She would not let him. “As you like. I'll call a guide to come and show you what you want to see.”

“Come now, Miranda,” he cajoled, steering his wife onto the verandah so that he could step up for a direct confrontation, his body language emitting confident demand. “Don't I merit
you
as my guide?”

She tried to construct an apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. I'm not free this afternoon.”

“Oh, I'm sure you could delegate your responsibilities.”

“This isn't a big city hotel, Bobby, and doesn't run like one,” she explained reasonably. “All my staff have very specific responsibilities…”

“And I have a special request which I have no doubt your employers would understand and appreciate,” he cut in, his eyes as hard as gold nuggets.

The threat of blackmail had no teeth here, yet the vindictive ego behind it caused her heart to contract. The thought of Nathan standing by her gave her the courage to defy any pressure to fall in with Bobby Hewson's will.

“I can provide a guide,” Miranda repeated firmly. “However, if you wish to arrange something with the King family, I believe Nathan King will be here this evening.”

And he won't bend to your will, either
, she thought with savage satisfaction.

“Ah! So you can leave this business until then, Bobby.” Celine jumped in, curling her arm around his and pouting up at him. “I want you with me.”

“Well, if it's important to you, pet…” He patted his wife's hand, smiled at her, but there was no smile in the eyes he turned back to Miranda. They glittered with the promise of getting what he wanted, one way or another. “I shall look forward to meeting Nathan King tonight.”

“Guests usually gather around the bar from six o'clock onwards for pre-dinner drinks,” she informed them, then stood back to make way for the porter, a cheerful American lad who was working his way around Australia. “The Shiralee Suite, Eddie. The key is in the door.”

“Yes, ma'am. If you'll follow me, folks.”

A Jeep zoomed up to the homestead.

“There's your guide for the gorge trip,” Miranda pointed out. “When you're ready…”

“We will not be long,” Celine assured her, pulling Bobby with her in her zest to be off sight-seeing.

Miranda watched them follow their luggage inside, thinking Bobby's wife had no idea what she had married. Or maybe she did and was happy to go along with what he gave her anyway. She herself might have remained indefinitely in his charm-web if this marriage hadn't come up. It was a sickening thought.

As it was, her pulse was still galloping from the stressful encounter. She took a deep breath and headed down the path to give instructions to the guide in the Jeep. He could wait inside for the Hewsons. She didn't want to see them again until she had to. Hopefully Nathan would be with her by then.

Nathan…

As the afternoon wore on into early evening, her confidence in his support started wavering. Could she really trust her instincts about the kind of man Nathan was when she'd been so fooled by Bobby for three whole years?

He was different, she argued. He
felt
different. And he didn't emit a glamorous facade. There was nothing ephemeral about him, more solid substance that wasn't going to change. Or was that hope, more than reality?

Bobby could influence and manipulate people. He would not be so blatant in showing Nathan the ruthless dismissal of anything that stood in his way. He would appeal as to a peer who understood how the world really worked, man to man. And he would slyly undermine her credibility, dressing up lies with half-truths, perhaps even suggesting she had slept her way up in the trade.

Would Nathan still take her side against such supposedly confidential and authoritative information? What did he really know of her, apart from the little she'd told him?

Even if he did take her side, how could she be sure he was doing it because he believed her, or because he wanted to keep having sex with her?

And that was the most unsettling thought of all.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
EN PAST SIX
.

And Nathan wasn't here!

Miranda had finished introducing the Hewsons to the other new guests who had arrived before lunch, as well as suffered Bobby's smarmy hug of familiarity as he confided their former professional connection to the group. Her skin was still prickling with revulsion as she escaped his stroking fingers with the excuse of fetching a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

A mistake to have worn this dress. Its shoe-string straps left too much flesh exposed for wandering hands. She'd chosen it because it was a bright lemon colour and she had matching sandals and the outfit had always made her feel upbeat and confident. Tonight she needed all the confidence she could get.

And she had wanted to look good for Nathan!

Was it another mistake to count on him?

She was half-way to the bar to put in a call to the kitchen when she heard a vehicle pulling up outside. Not the sound of one of the resort Jeeps. A more powerful engine. Her heart did a flip and a heady mixture of hope and relief surged through her. It had to be Nathan arriving!

Forgetting the hors d'oeuvres, she did an about-turn and headed for the doors to the front verandah, her pulse skipping erratically. She wanted him. She needed him. Doubts about his motives were momentarily blotted out. The doors in front of her opened automatically to her approach. In a few blurred seconds she was at the head of the steps to the verandah, and there her swiftly moving feet came to a halt.

It
was
him.

He was rounding the bonnet of a Land Cruiser, his big solid frame silhouetted against the sunset. He paused as he caught sight of her waiting to welcome him, and her heart hammered wildly at the strong visual image of him, stamped on the vibrant colours of the outback sky—long horizontal streaks of yellow behind the black spindly trees on the flat horizon, red and purple clouds clustered above them—and this man…this man looking like a lord of it all, whom nature itself was glorifying.

Then he was striding up the path and the very same skin that had crawled at Bobby's touch started tingling as Nathan's electric energy poured towards her. A quiver ran down her thighs. Her toes curled. Her mind throbbed his name over and over…Nathan, Nathan, Nathan…

She didn't hear the doors slide open behind her.

But she heard the voice and the slimy confidence in it as it said, “Ah! Mr King arriving?” and her heart froze as Bobby Hewson stepped up beside her, once again hanging his arm around her shoulders in an insidious claim of ownership, right in front of Nathan!

The shock of it completely paralysed her. She saw Nathan's step slow, his gaze dart from her to Bobby and back to her, and her mind jammed in horror at what he might be reading from Bobby's action.

“Good evening, Miranda,” he greeted her coolly as he came to the end of the path.

His coolness jolted her tongue loose. “I expected you earlier, Nathan,” she snapped, hating the situation his tardiness had set up.

Suddenly goaded into not caring how it looked, she spun out of Bobby's hug and stepped aside, throwing out one hand in formal introduction. “This is one of our guests, Bobby Hewson…Nathan King. Bobby has expressed a wish to discuss resort business with you, Nathan. If you'll both excuse me, I have other guests to see to.”

She left them to it, her whole body seething with furious emotion. Let them have their man-to-man chat, her mind raged. Let Bobby do his worst behind her back. Let Nathan believe whatever he liked of her. She'd steel herself with all the armour she could summon so that neither man could touch her. It was stupid, stupid, stupid, to count on anyone to do right by her! Especially men who just wanted to feather their beds with a woman they fancied.

Terry, one of the waiters, was serving a selection of hors d'oeuvres to the guests. Bobby's wife was gaily chatting to another couple who had been to Granny Gorge that afternoon, displaying no disturbance of mind over her straying husband, not even a questioning glance at Miranda as she rejoined the group. But Celine's gaze did snap to Nathan when Bobby escorted him inside.

“
Ooooh…magnifique!
” she breathed in girlish awe, and Miranda sourly thought Nathan undoubtedly had the same effect on every woman. He wasn't only special to her.

Nevertheless, despite his drawing the attention of the whole group, it was she he looked at, his gaze boring straight through her defences, shaking her up again, even as she glared back at him, telling herself she wouldn't let him mean anything to her.

Bobby was talking at him in a confidential manner. There was no discernible response on Nathan's face. As they came within easy earshot, Nathan turned to him and said very clearly, “You have the wrong man. This resort is the business of my brother Tommy, and he's happy to leave its management in Miranda's very capable hands.”

So Bobby was already trying to go over her head, Miranda surmised, though Nathan
was
the wrong man for that, which meant he'd try Tommy next.

Bobby frowned. “Surely you network.”

“As a family, yes. But none of us interfere with each other's areas of special interests.” His face took on a hard arrogance as he pre-empted any reply from Bobby. “Though perhaps I should add that the whole family would swing in to protect any of our interests should they be threatened.” His gaze cut straight to Miranda. “We look after our own in the Kimberly.”

She was instantly thrown into more turmoil. Did he consider her
his?
Was he promising she was safe from Bobby, regardless of anything the man said to anyone?

“You're one of the Kings?” another male guest queried, obviously fascinated by this exchange.

Nathan swung to him with a little smile of acknowledgement. “Yes. Nathan King. The cattle station is my business. And you are…?”

A flurry of introductions and handshakes followed. A keen curiosity about the running of a cattle station prompted several questions at once.

“Well, one requisite is being ready to cope with any emergency,” Nathan answered. “This afternoon one of my stockmen was thrown from his horse and it looks as though his back may be broken.”

Expressions of dismay and sympathy rippled around the guests. Miranda frowned. Was this the cause of his late arrival? “Calling an ambulance is not an option out here,” he went on. “Under instructions from the flying doctor service, we trucked him in to the station airstrip, loaded him into a plane and flew him off to hospital.”

“Any news of him yet?” Miranda asked, guilty about her own selfish concerns when one of Nathan's men might well be fighting for his life.

“No.” His vivid blue eyes targeted her. “It was five-thirty by the time we had him safely on his way. I've arranged to be called here when information comes in.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes.” He nodded towards the bar. “Shall I help myself?”

The bar attendant was on his way to the group with a tray of cocktails.

“I'll make you whatever drink you'd like,” she offered, hoping to have a few private moments with him.

“Thank you,” he returned drily, as though no longer expecting anything from her.

Which made Miranda burn with more uncertainties.

As they both moved towards the bar, Celine called, “Bobby, why is it called a cattle station instead of a ranch?”

Miranda silently blessed the claim for her husband's attention.

“Probably because they use huge road-trains, up to fifty metres long, to take the stock to market,” someone else answered.

“Yes, and it's best to get off the road if you see one coming,” another guest chimed in, proceeding to recount his experience of road-trains, which occupied everyone else's attention.

A lively distraction from the injured stockman, Miranda thought, then reflected that it might have been Nathan thrown from his horse…and how would she have felt then? Even in her current state of violent confusion, he tugged at something vital in her.

“I'm sorry…about the stockman,” she blurted.
And for her rude greeting
, though she couldn't bring herself to say it.

“I'm sorry I wasn't here for you on time,” he returned quietly, causing her more inner writhing.

“The injured man was more important,” she asserted.

“Sometimes there are injuries that aren't so easily visible.”