Southern Star: Destiny Romance (3 page)

‘The woman in the kitchen?’

He nodded. ‘My housekeeper.’

‘I slipped by while she was in the pantry.’

‘Right. I suppose it’s beneath you to speak to the help. Unless you want something.’

‘As I don’t plan on staying here, there was nothing to be said.’

‘Well, if you ask nicely she may feed you. You must be hungry.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But she goes at three so you’d best hurry.’

‘I don’t want to eat, I want to leave. Now.’

‘Well, too bad. I won’t finish till five or so.’ He turned on his heel and walked to the doorway. ‘If you still want a lift to Sweet Springs, I’ll take you then. In the meantime, stay out of my hair and away from my men.’

Blaze was waiting on the front step when Macauley Black drew up at five thirty in a dark-blue truck, covered – as was pretty much everything – by a thin film of red dust. No sports car today, then. She leaned languidly against the pillar supporting the porch roof, her well-shod foot tapping impatiently, as he came to collect her bags.

‘Put them inside, not in the back. They’re Louis Vuitton.’

He scowled in his familiar way and slung the bags ungently in the back, alongside coils of ropes and farm stuff Blaze had no hope of identifying.

She narrowed her eyes and steeled herself for the tricky job of charming Macauley Black. He was a tough customer but she’d had tougher.

‘Have you visited the US at all?’ she asked as she slipped into the passenger seat.

His dark look said he didn’t appreciate the attempt at small talk, but he nodded as he got into the driver’s side and started the engine. ‘Backpacked around both the Americas years ago. Now I’m too busy working.’

‘All work and no play make Mac a dull boy.’ Blaze turned the full wattage of her smile on him, and silently applauded herself as she saw his Adam’s apple move. He might despise her, but he wasn’t immune.

‘Lady —’

‘Blaze. We’re going to be neighbours so we might as well be on good terms.’

‘Ms Gillespie, to be honest, I hope you stay the hell away from Rosmerta. And I’ll steer clear of Sweet Springs.’ He hit a remote control on the dash and the wide gates of the property sprung open. ‘Talking of which, the place is a dump. You didn’t see it last night, but quite frankly it’s uninhabitable. Now, I can take you into town. The pub has rooms. Not fancy, but clean, all mod cons. You can stay there until you head back to the US.’

Blaze swivelled to smile at him. ‘But I’m not going back to the US. I’m going to be living at Sweet Springs,’ she said calmly, enjoying it when he swerved and then had to right the steering, cursing under his breath.

When he’d got a grip, he gave a long and gusty sigh. ‘No movie crews around here.’

It was a direct hit, intentional or not, and Blaze’s bravado wobbled. But it held. ‘Exactly,’ she said.

He muttered something she couldn’t make out, and when she snuck another glance, his jaw was rigid. But he held his silence for the remaining fifteen minutes of the journey to Sweet Springs.

The land became greener and more fertile the further they drove towards her grandparents’ place. Blaze remembered from what her grandfather had told her decades before that a system of underground springs fed the earth. Small waterholes dotted the landscape, shaded by willows, with a larger one close to the house that Blaze had played in as a child.

‘My land,’ she whispered once under her breath as they turned off the road on to the track that led to the homestead.

Macauley Black just grunted.

The old place loomed ahead. Blaze closed her eyes. From deep in her memory, she dragged out the gleam of the hardwood floors and sparkling windows, the smell of fresh lemon polish, Gram’s deep, cool larder and the old range that conjured up mountains of mouth-watering food.

As a little girl, she’d sit on the kitchen bench and watch Gram bake, or wander into Gramps’s study, where she’d stroke a finger down the spines of old books and play with his calculator until he gave up pretending to ignore her and lifted her up on his knee to ask her about her day or tell her about his.

At night, after hot chocolate in front of the open fire in winter or lemonade on the wide, deep veranda at other times of the year, Gram would take her up to the bedroom under the eaves, with its pink bedspread and the cane chair where Raggedy Ann held court amid a circle of favourite toys, and tuck her into bed.

In her mind’s eye she could see it all, feel the security of the visits to Sweet Springs like a warm blanket. Then, aware that the car was slowing to a halt, she opened her eyes, and let out a gasp at the ruin that lay before her.

Macauley Black’s gaze was on her, but she didn’t look at him as she climbed out of the ute and went to stand in front of what was left of Sweet Springs. The front door hung off its hinges, half open. Great jagged wounds in the window glass gave the place a soulless appearance as though the life had leached out of it. The distinctive cream and dark green paintwork had bleached to a sickly yellow, and sections of the decorative fretwork had crumbled to nothing.

Only vaguely aware of the crunch of boots on small stones behind her, she whirled round when Macauley placed his hat on her head.

‘The sun still burns even at this hour,’ he said in that low, raspy voice of his.

She smelt leather and sweat and horse, though from him or his hat, she wasn’t sure. The gesture was small, but coming just after seeing what Sweet Springs had been reduced to made Blaze want to tip her head forward to his shoulder and let the tears flow. It had been so long since anyone had done anything nice for her, even lending her a sweaty old cowboy hat. But showing any hint of vulnerability to Macauley Black would be akin to petting a shark.

She pulled the hat off her head and slammed it against his chest, tossing back her hair.

‘Do you know how much it costs me to keep my hair looking this good?’

Mac took his hat and placed it back on his head. Those black eyes bored into hers. ‘I could hazard a guess. But if the point is to remind me you look like a million dollars, don’t waste your time. I don’t give a shit.’

He looked towards the west where the sun’s rays lit up the land, then back to her with another of those insolent, raking, full-body scans that she’d experienced this morning.

‘That wasn’t —’

‘As you’re such an expensive piece to keep groomed and clothed, I’ve got a suggestion for a way you could make some easy money,’ he continued.

Blaze’s jaw dropped at what he was suggesting. Even if he’d read all those lurid magazine articles about her, did he really think she would —? With him?

He smiled as though he considered her mind as easy as the rest of her.

‘Sell me your land.’

It took Blaze a moment to catch up, so she did what she always did when caught off guard and looked down to screen her eyes with her lashes. Sliding as easily into the mantle of composure as she would a movie costume, she flicked him an amused look.

‘You want to buy Sweet Springs?’

A brusque nod. ‘Get an independent valuation. I’ll meet it, plus ten per cent.’

‘Generous.’

‘It’s good land.’

Blaze scanned the surroundings. At the moment it looked forlorn. Fences were down, and from what she could see of the barn that stood off to the side, one end was listing and part of the roof sagged. But the faults were superficial, easily fixed with money and hard work. The value lay in the underground springs, which kept the ground fertile when others in these parts were slowly dying from drought.

It was beautiful, too, with its little willow-screened oases and gently rolling hills instead of the dust bowls that many other properties had become. It wasn’t a big parcel of land – Blaze’s grandparents had bought it as a place to live rather than farm, although they’d had chickens and a couple of horses – but it was top drawer.

‘It is, isn’t it?’

‘Needs to be properly managed, though.’ He gave her slim shoulders and slender arms a long look. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but it needs a hardy type to transform it, not some exotic hothouse flower. This land deserves the best. Do the right thing and let me buy it.’

Blaze put up a hand to shade her eyes. The sun’s glow lit up the far horizon. As far as the eye could see there was earth, water and the vast blue sky. The land didn’t care about movie-set malice and ugly gossip. It didn’t give a toss about image or headlines or designer clothes. It was just here and it was hers. It felt right.

‘So we have a deal?’ Mac asked.

She didn’t take her eyes off the horizon. ‘This is Gillespie land, Mr Black, and it’s staying Gillespie land. So . . . no deal. Ever.’

Mac was still fuming when he wrenched the handbrake on and slammed his way into his house. Out of habit he slapped his hat against his thigh to remove the worst of the dust and pushed open the back door with so much force that it hit the wall behind it.

‘Fuck!’

It wasn’t often that he gave his temper free rein. He’d learnt the hard way that it paid to keep your cards close to your chest. And he certainly hadn’t given Blaze Gillespie any indication that he was pissed off, or just how much Sweet Springs meant to him. But now that he was alone in his own home, he could express his frustration. Mac was a man used to getting what he wanted, and he wanted that land. More than that, he wanted Blaze off it. And he wanted —

He wasn’t going there. In the kitchen he grabbed a beer from the fridge and took a generous slug before stalking into his office. From there he could see the stables and the bunkhouse. The boys had gone into town tonight, including Lewis, although Amos was probably there, holding the fort, playing his harmonica or watching some soap on TV.

Mac thought about wandering over with a six-pack and the chicken dish Peg had left for dinner, but he wasn’t in the mood. He thought about phoning Tanya Boone in town and inviting himself over. Maybe his mood was down to not having been laid in a while. When he’d bumped into Tanya in Meriwether a while back she’d made it pretty damned obvious that she wouldn’t mind a romp between the sheets any time he chose. But even an easy lay had no appeal right now. Uttering a self-deprecating laugh at the thought, he wondered if he was getting old, or just more discriminating.

On automatic pilot, he returned to the kitchen and turned on the oven to reheat the chicken. As he cracked open another beer, he wondered if Blaze Gillespie had found the little cool bag he’d placed with the Louis whoever luggage he’d taken inside for her and placed by the stairs. No pizza delivery way out here, so he’d packed some food and a couple of bottles of water before they’d left Rosmerta, knowing that otherwise she’d go hungry tonight.

She’d had been too busy wandering from room to derelict room to notice. He’d come up behind her in her grandfather’s old study where papers lay strewn across the desk, untouched in nearly a decade since Paddy had died and his widow, Flo, had gone into a nursing home for the last two years of her life. In the evening light, he’d noticed that an abandoned animal nest of twigs and leaves was tucked into one corner, and a large water stain darkened the ceiling.

Mac had made one last attempt to make her see sense and let him take her to town for the night. But those slim shoulders had squared before she’d turned to look at him with defiance written all over her face. There was at least water because he’d turned it on at the mains, but the power had still been off.

Well, maybe a night in a dark wreck of a house would be what it took to send her scurrying back to civilisation. He’d ride over or send one of his men out tomorrow or the day after to make sure she was safe, but otherwise she’d damn well made her bed – that’s if there was a bed left standing in that demolition job – so she could damn well lie in it!

Blaze’s bravado vanished the second Macauley Black stepped off the front porch, though she maintained the façade just long enough for him to send the ute in a wide circle, spraying grit as he bumped back over the rutted track towards the road.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

When he was out of sight, she wrapped her arms tight around her waist and gave in, letting her shoulders slump in despair. He was right. She was a hothouse flower: looked good, smelled good, absolutely no good to anyone.

Even before the pampered life of a Hollywood starlet had fallen in her lap, she’d been an over-indulged only child and grandchild. She’d never had to pick up after herself, let alone learn to shop or cook or maintain a home. And right now she had absolutely no idea of what to do with this ramshackle old homestead. Or even where to start. She didn’t even know if the homestead was salvageable. If a strong wind blew tonight, it might all just come crashing down around her ears.

Well, that would solve multiple problems, she thought with a burst of dark humour. It was ironic that over the past few hellish days, the one pinprick of light had been the thought of Sweet Springs waiting – a cosy sanctuary where she could lock the door and keep the world at bay while she licked her wounds. The reality was that the front door didn’t close properly, let alone lock. And far from being a sanctuary, Sweet Springs was – as Macauley Black had said – a wreck. In fact, it probably needed her more than she needed it.

It was the slight but clear tilt of the sun towards the west that put an end to her wallowing. With perhaps just an hour or so before sunset, she needed to either find some source of light, or get ready for bed while there was still some light. She wasn’t too keen on entering the dim kitchen. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot, the walls and counters were filthy and stained, and the stale air reeked of wild animal.
Please let there not be rats
.

If there were candles and matches, they were most likely to be there. But a hunt through the drawers turned up only some elegant if dull silver cutlery, yellowing linen tablecloths and tin foil that had rusted with age. She wasn’t game to grope on the high shelves, not knowing what might be lurking there, so she opted for an early night.

At the bottom of the stairs, she reached down to pick up the Louis Vuitton, and noticed two items placed on top that definitely weren’t hers. One of them was a slim torch with three brightness options. The second was a small cool pack containing food and water. Her stomach rumbled at the sight, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten since picking at an in-flight meal the previous day.

Maybe Macauley Black wasn’t a complete bastard. He just liked people to think he was.

Taking the cool pack into the kitchen, she rinsed one of her grandmother’s bone china plates and dried it on her shirt in the absence of towels. Brushing off a square of table and one of the old chairs, she sat down to eat in the mellowing light. The food was simple but delicious: a generous slice of meat and vegetable pie plus a banana and a mango. Ravenous, she wolfed down the pie. It tasted better than anything she’d had recently in the best LA hotels.