Misplaced Hands: 4 (Foreign Affairs) (6 page)

Harper jumped at Marc Thompson’s deep voice, the pile of collage fodder on her lap sliding to her feet. She heard his chuckle. Heard Annie’s answering one. But for the life of her, she couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not until she got the flame in her cheeks under control.

The sound of the floorboards creaking told her Marc had entered her small classroom. “G’day, Ms. Prince. How’s the book going?”

“The book is going well, thank you. Revised chapter four last night.” Annie’s answer was directed above Harper’s head. Which meant Marc was standing directly behind her.

Her heart beat harder and faster, hammering against the vise trying to compress her chest.
Oh God.

“Still reckon you should dedicate it to me and Blue. We were the ones who told you to write it.”

Annie’s eyes twinkled. “If I recall correctly, Thomo, you told me to write ‘a book like that fifty shades of sex thing’, not a recount of growing up famous. And Blue told you to shut up and get back to work.”

The chuckle behind Harper was relaxed. Devilish. It made her pussy contract. “It was worth a shot.
I’d
read it.”

“Yes.” Annie’s smile turned into a smirk. “I bet you would. Now do you mind telling us why you’re here? Can’t we American women take a break for a while from all the Aussie testosterone?”

Marc laughed again. “Nope. ’Fraid not.”

Annie cocked an eyebrow.

“Actually,
you
can have a break if you like, Ms. Prince.” Marc’s voice stroked over Harper’s fraying composure. “It’s Harper I’m here to collect.”

Annie looked at Harper, her expression naughty. “Really now? And what do you plan on doing to Harper once you collect her?”

“Ah, you know us testosterone-filled Aussie blokes when it comes to American women. Take her somewhere private and—”

“Enough, Thomo.” Annie held up a hand, shaking her head. “Just tell me, okay?”

“Swimming,” he answered. “In the eastern billabong.”

Harper’s heart leaped up into her throat. Swimming. She hadn’t packed a bathing suit. Oh God, why hadn’t she packed a bathing suit?

“That sounds like a fantastic idea,” Annie said. “And it’s my cue to get back to writing. Chapter four isn’t going to revise itself, you know.”

And before Harper could say a word, the other woman rose and walked past her, out the door. Leaving her alone with Marc.

“So?” His deep voice seemed to envelop her. “You keen for a dip?”

Stealing herself against the inevitable tummy clenching that came at the sight of him, she twisted in her seat.

The tummy clenching came. As she knew it would. How could it not, when he looked so goddamn sexy? His hat was still on his head, its brim throwing a shadow over his brilliant sapphire eyes. His hands were on his hips, accentuating the broad expanse of his chest and the lean tapering of his torso. He was, simply put, sex in denim.

And waiting for her to say something.

“Err…” Her brain went blank. What had he asked?

“Swim?” Marc prompted. “In the billabong? With Blue and I?”

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” she answered, her cheeks heating again. God, since when did she sound so pathetic and lame?

Marc’s white teeth flashed. “And you think Blue and I do?”

Harper’s belly didn’t just flip-flop. It flip-flopped, sank, knotted and fluttered.

Skinny-dipping? With Keith and Marc? Oh boy, they may be gay and not interested in her sexually, but how was she to keep the abject lust out of her eyes when she stared at them naked? Which she would. A lot.

“C’mon,” he gave her shoulder a gentle nudge with the back of his hand, “it’ll be fun. Promise.”

Harper gazed up at him, her pulse doing an insane rendition of the Riverdance in her throat.

Do it. You wouldn’t do it at home, which means you have to do it here.

“You can wear your undies if you want,” Marc went on, the tone of his voice cajoling. Playful. “And if it helps, we promise we won’t look. Much.”

Before any rationality could stop her, Harper nodded. Goddamn it, she’d come to Australia to have an adventure. To prove to her brother—and herself—she was a woman capable of making her own decisions. Of living with those decision. Swimming naked with two gay Aussie cowboys was the perfect way to do that. Right?

“Bewdy,” Marc said. Harper assumed it was an approval of her acceptance. “Now, next question, do you want to go in the ute or on horse?”

Harper blinked. “I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”

Marc’s laugh was relaxed. “Yeah, we figured as much. Blue’s waiting in the ute outside. Ready?”

He didn’t let her ponder an answer. He reached down, threaded his fingers through hers and tugged her to her feet.

Harper’s heart smashed into overdrive. “But…but I-I have to lock up,” she blurted, tripping over her feet as he began to pull her toward the open door, through which she could see a dust-covered white Australian version of a pickup.

“Nah you don’t.” Marc tossed a smirk over his shoulder. “No one’s gonna steal anything. Trust me.”

And then they were outside, the warm breeze blowing over Harper’s arms and face feeling nothing like autumn.

“Up you go,” Marc said when they reached the side of the pickup.

Harper looked at him. “Up I go where?”

He nodded toward the empty pickup bed. “In the back.”

“I—”

He moved before she knew what he was doing, placing one open hand on her butt, the other around her upper arm. “In we go.”

Harper let out a yelp at his unexpected shove on her ass
and
her unexpected momentum upward. Her brain—stunned senseless for a split second—scrambled into gear and, with a laugh she also hadn’t expected, she tumbled into the back of the pickup.

“All right, Blue,” Marc called as he lobbed himself into the truck bed beside Harper. “Let’s go.”

The engine started with a deafening growl and as the pickup shot forward, propelling Harper backward onto her ass, squeals of delight burst past her lips.

Watch out, living. Here I come.

Keith shot his rearview mirror a quick look, his chest tight. Harper clung to the side of the ute’s tray, her smile stunning, her hair whipping about her head like strands of spun gold.

Fuck, she was beautiful.

Gone was the polished, all-in-black city woman he’d first laid eyes on two days ago. Today she was dressed in faded jeans and a loose white shirt left unbuttoned over a pale-pink tank. The outfit was simple and pretty—and made the way his body was responding all the more confusing.

He’d understood the purely sexual reaction when she’d first arrived on Farpoint. Hell, how could a bloke with a working dick
not
be turned-on by the way she’d looked on Saturday? He’d understood the undeniable lust surging through him when he and Thomo found her naked in her bedroom. He’d never been immune to a naked woman, especially one who looked as though she should grace the cover of
Sports Illustrated
in a bikini.

But the Harper in the back now, the one who looked sweet and innocent and very feminine…

Christ, his dick was so damn hard it was a wonder there was any blood left in his brain to drive.

When was the last time he’d been turned on by a sweet, innocent anything?

He flicked a look at Marc, who sat beside the American. The wind tugged at his shirt, giving Keith flashes of the tattoo on Marc’s chest. He’d been with the stupid bastard when Marc had gotten the tat. Paid for it, in fact, when Marc realized he’d left his wallet back at Cobar’s main pub.

It seemed Thomo was just as taken by Harper Shaw as Keith was.

The idea made his already throbbing cock throb harder.

He didn’t allow himself to think too much about that. In fact, he’d refused to think about Harper and her effect on his body since he’d kissed her.

Okay, that was bullshit. He’d jerked off the last couple nights to the thought of that kiss, keeping his actions clandestine. Thomo slept in the room next to his. The walls of the hired hands’ houses weren’t exactly soundproof and Keith didn’t want his mate, or the two new young jackaroos in the room on his other side, to hear him.

He didn’t consider himself the kind of man who took pleasure in the body of a woman he’d barely met. That wasn’t the kind of man his parents had raised him to be. His dad—Cobar’s police sergeant—saw firsthand how poorly a lot of women in the Outback were treated and certainly expected better of his son.

Life in the Outback wasn’t easy for anyone. It turned boys to men quickly. It turned men hard equally fast. Could turn them into bastards if they weren’t careful. Keith knew that all too well. He’d watched his uncle, Farpoint’s one-time horse-breaker, become bitter and violent and contemptuous. Had bore witness when his father had come to Farpoint thirteen years ago and arrested his own kid brother, Keith’s uncle, for domestic violence.

His dad had hated to do it, hated even more that Keith—who lived on the station with his mother, the station’s resident cook—had seen it all. The violence, the rage, the impotent self-hate.

For Keith, a young boy of fifteen, it had been a brutal lesson.

Nothing sweet or innocent belonged in the Outback.

And yet, here was Harper Shaw, looking sweet and pretty and innocent and so bloody feminine he could barely breathe.

No wonder he was messed up.

He looked at Marc in the rearview mirror again, the young man’s cheeky grin sending a tight, indefinable shard through Keith’s chest.

Marc was his best mate. They did everything together.

As if aware of his gaze, Marc swung his attention to the ute’s rearview mirror, his stare connecting with Keith’s in the glass.

Hurry up
, Marc mouthed before turning back to Harper.

Gritting his teeth, ignoring the pulse of straining pressure in his groin, Keith pressed his foot harder to the accelerator. The main billabong on Farpoint Creek Station was five kilometers up the road. The sooner he got into the cool water, the better.

Of course, that would be tricky while he was sporting a bloody inconvenient hard-on. He didn’t want to scare Harper. Stripping off and plunging into the water had seemed like a good idea when Marc suggested it an hour ago. “Let’s take Harper for a swim. Show her what life on Farpoint is like. She spent all day Sunday with the boss and all day today teaching. Bet she’s keen to blow off some steam.”

Neither Keith nor Marc addressed Big Mac’s claims the American woman was gay, and when Keith had tried to call Amy in Chicago yesterday to ask, she hadn’t answered. Didn’t surprise Keith in the slightest. It had been one a.m. where she was. She was either sound asleep or partying hard.

So here they were, with a woman who may or may not be gay, about to swim buck-naked together.

Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. How the fuck did he let Marc talk him into stuff like this?

Because he makes your life fun, dickhead. That’s why.

Chuckling to himself, his pulse pounding far too fast in his ears, his dick far too hard for his jeans, he directed the ute under the old ghost gum tree growing beside the billabong, applied the brakes and killed the engine.

“Here we are,” he heard Marc say a second before the ute dipped a fraction to the side and Marc jumped out of the tray.

He opened his door, watching Marc run toward the large body of still water, stripping as he went.

“Oh God, he’s…”

Keith leaned out of the driver’s seat and looked toward Harper. However she would have finished her exclamation, it never made it past her lips. She stood frozen in the ute’s tray, her stare locked on Marc’s naked backside.

The splash of Marc diving into the water, followed by his shouted “Holy fuck that’s cold!” jerked her from her stunned state.

She burst out laughing. “And you want me to swim in that?” She glanced at Keith, her eyes sparkling, her hair a wild tumble of golden-blonde waves around her face and shoulders. “Is he serious?”

Christ, she’s gorgeous.

The thought stole Keith’s reply. Thankfully, Harper returned her attention to Marc before his silence became obvious.

“Get your arse in here, Ms. Shaw,” Marc called.

Keith turned his gaze on his best mate, finding him standing waist-deep in the water, his upper body glistening in the sun’s rays. The tattoo on his chest—a red-back spider building its web in between the stars of the Southern Cross—seemed to ripple over his flesh.

As always, the sight of the ink made him remember the night Marc had gotten it. The night Marc had celebrated his eighteenth birthday in Cobar. The night Marc’s dad had been killed by a bike-gang member a mere block away from the tattoo parlor in which Marc and Keith sat, waiting for Marc’s turn to go.

The night Keith promised the devastated young man he’d always be there for him, that he was his mate, that he’d never let him down. And he’d proven it by getting a tattoo on his own chest—a red-back spider perched above his heart.

“You too, Blue.” Marc grinned at him from the billabong. “Before my dick shrivels up to nothing and you embarrass me with that—”