A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return: A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return

CHAPTER TWO

STRIPPING bare in an open paddock was the least of Kate’s concerns. The looming threat of every visit being her last made her suddenly want very much to visit her seals. Just socially, despite the timing being wrong.

Wrong shoes, wrong clothes, wrong time of day. But she was doing it anyway.

These animals were the most stable thing she’d had in her life in the past few years and the idea of losing them filled her mouth with a bitter taste.

An arctic gust blew in off the Southern Ocean as she peeled off her ruined skirt and blouse and hauled her wetsuit on in their place—the closest she’d ever get to being a seal, albeit twenty kilos too light. No wonder sharks sometimes mistook surfers for their favourite blubbery food-source when they were in full wetsuit. She’d relied on the same confusion to get closer to the Atlas colony the first time.

On a usual working day she ditched the wetsuit for serviceable, smelly overalls, about the most comfortable thing ever invented—warm, dry and snug. But also the least attractive.

Unless you were a male wool-sack.

Her beat-up old utility gave her the tiniest bit of privacy against the baleful stares of thirty sheep that scattered like freckles across the dry, crunchy paddock. It was not really suitable pasture for sheep grazing, but they had a ready food source in feed stations dotted around the farm. They were more interested in the engagement and social aspects of grazing as a flock than in what little nutrition the salt-stiffened grass afforded.

The sheep had seen her half-naked plenty of times and were about as uninterested as the rest of her team to whom boundaries, and gender, meant nothing. Sifting through seal vomit for six hours a day had a way of bringing a team closer together. But sift they did, and then they studied it. Such a glamorous life; no wonder gender and modesty came to mean nothing to any of them. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually felt like a woman.

How about twenty minutes ago?

Even angry, Grant McMurtrie had made her body resonate in places she hadn’t thought about for years. It was still thrumming now; something about the insolent way he’d sized her up. It had boiled her blood in one heartbeat then sizzled it the next. She’d been insanely pleased to be wearing a skirt and blouse for once, even if she’d been covered in paint. Imagine if his first impression of her had been her usual working attire …

The sheep turned away, bored, as she tossed her ruined clothes and shoes into the back seat of her car for later and reached back over her shoulder to snag the zip-tether and pull her rubbery wetsuit up tighter against her skin. She picked her way barefoot over the edge of the bluff and down a near-invisible crease of sand in the painfully sharp rocks, their oft-trodden pathway down the cliff face to the rocky cove below. The trail had been worn when they’d found it, hinting at use over generations. A mercy for her poor feet, but trickily narrow, just wide enough for a slight woman.

Or a small boy.

Her mind immediately went to one in particular. Grant McMurtrie must have come here a hundred times in his young life, hard as it was to imagine the imposing man as a child. What adventurous little soul wouldn’t find his way to the dangers of open cliff-face, gale-force wind gusts and wildlife galore? Envy as green as his eyes bubbled through her.

He might have had the seals before her, but she had them now. They’d been hers for the past two years and, if she played her cards right, they’d go on being hers for the next year. Longer, if the Conservation Council ruled in her favour. They were already extremely interested in her research.

Two-dozen dark heads lifted as she negotiated her way down the crease. These seals were used to the arrival of humans on their beach now. They were not trusting—definitely not—but accustomed. Only a couple of heads remained raised at the unusual sight of just a solitary human; the rest flopped back onto the rocks to continue their lazy sunning. Kate smiled at the typical scene. A gang of rotund pups mucked around by the water’s edge, vocalising and chasing each other and play-fighting, as though they needed to use up all their energy now before they grew up and became biologically sluggish like their mothers, scattered lazing around the rocks.

Or their older brothers, hanging out in bachelor groups further up the coast. Or their fathers, who did their own thing most of the year but came together with the females for breeding season.

Families. They came in all shapes and sizes, and if those pups got lucky they’d have theirs for a lot longer than she’d had hers. Kate frowned. She’d had a long time to grow accustomed to being on her own but it had never really grown any easier.

One of the pups squealed and drew her maudlin focus back to them.

It was amazing they tolerated human presence at all, given Kate and her team caught them up once a month and piled them into wool sacks for weighing. But the young seals seemed to view it as a regular part of their lives, a game to be had. More than one pup dashed straight back into the wool sack after release, keen to be back with its mates. Looking into the sack was one of the rare true pleasures of her job, as four pairs of enormous, melted-chocolate eyes in brown furry faces peered back out at her.

It got all her maternal instincts bubbling, yearning, until she shushed them. When your colleagues barely noticed you were female, and when colleagues were the only men you met, kids weren’t an immediate issue on the horizon, no matter what her biology was hinting.

Plus they were just one more thing to love and lose. And what was the point?

‘Hey, Dorset,’ Kate murmured to one of the seals she could recognise by sight as she settled herself on a suitably flat rock. The large female was one of five wearing the monitoring equipment this month. The time-depth recorder captured her position above sea-level every five seconds when she was dry and every two seconds when she was wet, twenty-four-seven. They rotated the expensive recorders monthly across the whole adult colony, to get a good spread of data from as many animals as possible, in order to determine information for their study: where the seals fed, for how long and how deep they went.

What they were eating was a different matter. There was no convenient machine for that, hence the vomit and poop-sifting.

Dorset gave an ungracious snort and turned her attention back out to sea, sparing the briefest of glances for Danny Boy, her pup. Seal mothers were shockingly fast to abandon their pups when threatened; that made it much easier to catch up the young for weighing, but it bothered Kate on a fundamental level that these babies were often left undefended.

She knew from experience how that felt.

She’d made a pledge to herself back when she was young that she’d never let herself get in that position again—exposed, vulnerable to the capricious decisions of others. Without control. Without any say.

It must have occurred to the seal species in the ancient past that the loss of the baby meant the loss of only one, but the loss of a fertile mother meant the loss of an entire genetic line. Pups were expendable. And entirely, tragically vulnerable.

Danny Boy looked straight at her and then dashed off, barking in grumpy high-pitched tones. Sad affection bubbled through her. As far as the fishing communities along the west coast were concerned, seals and man were hunting the same fishstocks. And, when that industry was worth millions of dollars a year, anything or anyone threatening supply would not be tolerated. Her research was showing that, whether by good design or dumb luck, seals were hunting totally different fish from humans. If only she could prove that to the people of Castleridge. To the government. To the world.

‘Don’t suppose you guys would consider going vegetarian?’ she quietly asked the wary mass of seals.

Close by, one mother trumpeted her displeasure at that idea, and Kate scrabbled away from the ensuing stench; beyond disgusting.

Her chuckle was half-gag. ‘Go on. Get it out of your system now. I need you guys to be charming the next time I come down.’

With McMurtrie junior in tow. It was the obvious next step. If he was going to throw legalese at her, then she’d fight back with the only thing she had—history. If Grant McMurtrie had cared for these seals as a kid, maybe she could use that and try to change his mind about her access. She wasn’t above begging, or conniving.

Whatever it took to snatch back a bit of control.

Not only did she have three funding grants riding on this, but her professional reputation as well. She didn’t want years of work to be wasted because somebody had a chip on their shoulder about conservation programs. She had her university, the Fisheries Department and the Castleridge Town Shire to remind her of that. They were expecting results in return for their contribution and it was her job to get them, come hell or high water.

Or hot, surly city lawyers. ‘So, what was the good news?’ Grant drained the last of his coffee and stared meaningfully at Castleridge’s mayor.

Alan Sefton chuckled. ‘Twelve weeks is pretty short for probate settlement, as you know. You should be thanking me.’

Three months before he could legally boot Kate Dickson and her team off his land.

‘Thank you for agreeing to be Dad’s executor,’ he allowed.

The older man smiled sadly. ‘I was aware that he wouldn’t … That you and he …’ Grant lifted one hand and Alan gratefully picked up the cue to move on. ‘Did you know he’d left you the farm?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘You were still his son. His only heir. Time couldn’t change that, nor distance.’

‘It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d left the farm to those greenies just to spite me.’

Alan frowned. ‘Spite is not a trait I connected with Leo. Belligerence, absolutely. Selective hearing, sometimes. But he was not a man who wasted time on petty grudges.’

Grant let that sink in. ‘Perhaps he mellowed in the twenty years we were apart.’

‘Or perhaps you did.’

Silence fell. With no other customers this early in the Castleridge café, the tinny radio coming from the kitchen was the only other noise.

Alan cleared his throat. ‘How are you doing, son?’

Son. It had been a long time since anyone had called him that—since his mother had died early in his life. His father had called him exclusively by his given name growing up, his school teachers by his surname, and his staff tended towards ‘sir’. Just hearing the phrase ‘son’ brought a certain familiarity to the discussion. If anyone else had asked him how he was getting on, he would have moved the conversation quickly on.

But discovering a body together had a way of forging a bond between strangers. The genuine question deserved a genuine answer.

‘I’m … getting by.’

‘How are you finding being in his house?’

‘It’s fine.’ And, surprisingly, it was, despite everything. ‘It’s been so long since I lived there with him; it’s not like the walls are infused with his spirit, you know?’

Alan nodded.

‘Unlike his tobacco,’ Grant said. ‘Twenty years didn’t change that habit.’ The memories of his distinctive brand made it too hard to sleep. ‘I had to repaint the whole place to get rid of the smell.’

A dark shadow crossed the mayor’s face before he masked it.

Grant moved the conversation on. ‘What else did you want to tell me?’

Alan caught the eye of the teenage waitress and interrupted her nail-varnishing session at a far table to indicate it was time for the bill. ‘Not tell, so much as ask,’ Alan hedged.

Grant waited but nothing further came. ‘Shoot.’

‘I know you don’t have a lot of connection to Castleridge these days.’

Not a lot, no. But he’d been floored by the number of people who had attended Leo’s funeral, and the amount of prepared dinners that had graced Leo’s freezer when he died. The locals were still looking after their own. ‘I grew up here, remember? There’s still a lot of familiar faces.’

‘Well … that’s good. Makes what I’m about to say that bit easier.’

Grant frowned. ‘Just say it.’

‘It’s about the research team …’

He snorted. ‘If you can call a bunch of science types counting seals research.’

Alan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Leo had reservations for a long time before deciding to work with them.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘It took him a year of discussions before finally relenting to—’

‘I’ve met Kate Dickson. I can well see what he relented to.’

Alan’s weathered face creased. ‘Kate came to see you?’

‘Last week.’

‘How did she seem?’

Seem? Too beautiful for a scientist. Too young to have shadows beneath her eyes. ‘She seemed hell-bent on getting her way.’

‘Yes. That would be Kate. She wouldn’t let her sorrow detract from the work she’s doing.’

Grant tightened his jaw. He had thought he had an ally in Alan Sefton but the man was every bit as smitten with Ms Dickson as his father had apparently been. ‘The only thing she was sad about was me shutting down her access.’

‘Ah.’ Alan nodded. ‘I wondered what your choice would be.’

‘There is no choice. Introducing the buffer zone will cut the farm’s profitable land by a third, and its valuable coast-access completely. I have no interest in helping the people who tore my father’s farm out from under him.’

Alan’s clear blue eyes held his. ‘Oh, now you care about the farm?

Grant had spent too many years across negotiating tables in the corporate world to let his shock show. Instead, he swallowed back the shaft of pain and fixed Alan with his hardest stare.

The older man glanced away first. ‘I’m sorry. That was unnecessary. But I’ll ask you to remember that twenty years of your father’s life may have passed for you, but I lived them. Here with Leo. Listening to his stories. His dreams.’

The lost dream of passing Tulloquay on to his son. A son with passion and aptitude for running stock. A son made of different stuff from the one fate had served him with. ‘Life wasn’t always his to dream with,’ Grant said simply.

‘True enough. But he made his choice freely when he decided to support the university’s program.’

Grant snorted. ‘Right. No-one wore him down …’

The older man flushed slightly. ‘I won’t apologise for the stance I took,’ Alan said, straightening and reaching for his wallet.

What? ‘You took?’

‘Your father has always been slow to change but, like this land, he responded best to consistent, evenly applied pressure.’

He leaned forward. ‘You support the conservationists?’

Alan tipped his head. ‘I support Castleridge and the people in it. This program comes with significant grant-monies. And, if it helps us to understand our fisheries better and protects our tourism, everyone wins.’

Are you serious? ‘Uh, except the McMurtries. We lose a third of our land.’

Alan pursed his lips. ‘To grazing, yes. But it opens up all kinds of possibilities for eco-tourism.’

Grant couldn’t help the sound that shot out of him. It was a cracking impersonation of one of Kate Dickson’s fur seals. Every disparaging thing his father had ever said about the landholdings in the district opening up to eco-tourism flashed through his mind. ‘My father would have died before letting a single tourist step foot on his property.’

And maybe he had.

Alan stared at him sombrely. ‘When was the last time you recall Leo McMurtrie doing something just because someone else wanted him to?’

Grant stared. He’d tried—and failed—his whole young life to get his father to budge once he’d set his mind on something. Maybe he’d just had the wrong tools. ‘I have a theory.’

Alan Sefton’s face said ‘enlighten me’.

‘Have you met Kate Dickson?’

The older man ignored his sarcasm. ‘Yes. Several times. Lovely girl. A little closed-in about her work …’

That threw him briefly. ‘“Closed in” how?’

‘Oh …’ Alan waved a careless hand ‘I just got the feeling that she doesn’t have a lot else going on in her life. You know—family. Children.’

Grant snorted again. He was becoming an honorary member of the Atlas colony. ‘I imagine Ms Dickson would take issue with your concerns in that regard.’

‘Never met a more dedicated and conscientious professional,’ Alan amended quickly. ‘But Leo knew people. And Leo saw something in her that … Well, in how she is with the seals—so fiercely protective. So single-mindedly determined to help their cause.’

‘What are you, the president of the Kate Dickson fan club? She’s the opposition, Alan.’

‘This is not about sides.’

‘It is when it’s your farm under threat.’

Oh, now you care about the farm? He didn’t need to say it again. It was glaringly obvious and not all that unreasonable a comment. Grant sighed.

‘I walked away from Tulloquay nineteen years ago because I knew I couldn’t be a farmer. My whole teenage life, I lived through my father’s recriminations that I wasn’t interested in the land he’d built up.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He let me leave rather than witness one more example of how useless I was with the most basic agriculture tasks. How much I had failed him. I cannot believe for one second that he left me the farm with any intent other than wanting me to sell it for the best possible price to someone who could make a go of it. Quite frankly, I’d believe he’d had a personality transplant before I’d believe he’d willingly excise off a third of it to a bunch of tree-huggers.’

And if he did he would have put it in his will.

Plus there was the glaring matter of his father taking his life over the pending conservation-order. What more evidence did he need? But he wasn’t ready to say the s word out loud just yet.

‘Alright, then.’ Alan sat up straighter. ‘Then, as you are the man who will soon inherit Tulloquay, I’d like to communicate to you my support as mayor—in fact, the town’s support—to this fisheries program and the investment it represents in regional relationships, science partnerships and eco-tourism. We urge you to give it—give us—your support.’

Grant lifted one brow. ‘That’s quite a speech. Take you long to prepare it?’

Alan smiled. ‘A couple of hours two years ago when I first had the discussion with your father.’

Grant blew out a carefully moderated breath. Did Kate Dickson and her fur seals have the whole town wrapped around their flippers? But Mayor Sefton was no more a soft touch than his father had been. In the short fortnight Grant had known him, he had seen an astute businessman and a strong leader. Which didn’t mean Alan didn’t have his own priorities.

Grant slid from the booth. ‘I’ll take that under advisement.’

The mayor dropped a handful of bills onto the table and stood, clapping Grant on the shoulder. ‘I can’t ask more than that.’

‘I’m sure you could.’

And probably will.

CHAPTER THREE

THICK arms crossed against a broad chest, which was thankfully fully covered this time, less likely to distract. Grant glared at her from his barrier position in the doorway. Still hostile. Still handsome.

‘Why would I need an invitation to visit my own cove?’

Kate’s mouth opened and closed like a stranded fish. ‘Not your cove, our work. I thought if you saw it …’

‘I might be overcome with fascination and empathy?’ His grin was tight. ‘You don’t know me that well, Kate, so I’ll forgive the assumption that I would have the slightest interest in what you’re doing down there.’

Kate glared. ‘I’m sure you didn’t get where you are in business without knowing the first step in a successful negotiation is to know thine enemy.’

‘We’re not negotiating.’ But he didn’t deny they were enemies. ‘That would imply some leverage on your part. As far as I’m aware, you have none.’

She stiffened her back. ‘I have twelve weeks.’

His eyes darkened. ‘News travels fast.’

‘It’s an important time frame for my team. Of course I checked.’ She’d been calling the probate authority every few hours until the timeline had been announced.

‘What’s stopping me from shutting this door and only opening it in three months when your time is up?’

Kate’s heart hammered. Absolutely nothing. ‘The hope that there’s a decent human being in there. And that bullying people is just what you do for giggles these days.’

His left eyelid twitched but he didn’t move otherwise. ‘You came to me. Twice now.’

A hiss squeezed out past tight lips. ‘Mr McMurtrie, I don’t enjoy debasing myself. I don’t have the luxury of walking away from all of this, much as I might like to.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I’m fighting for my life’s work here.’

It’s all I have.

Her heart pounded the words out in Morse code and she shoved the prickle of concern down deep. Somewhere in her subconscious, she knew that she needed to get some life balance back. That she’d put her whole life on hold for this project and that, somewhere in the past three years, it had started to feel normal.

But life balance could wait. Changing Grant McMurtrie’s narrow mind was what mattered now.

He stared at her long and hard. ‘I’ll give you one hour.’

Kate almost sagged with relief. ‘Thank you.’

He turned for the house. ‘I’ll just get my keys.’

Her hand shot out to curl around his wrist. Warmth pinballed between them. ‘Uh, can I ask you to take a shower first?’

He turned back slowly. Deliberately. She swallowed hard.

‘I’ve been battling the artesian pump,’ he said darkly. ‘I wouldn’t have expected the seals to be bothered by a little honest sweat.’

‘Actually, it’s the opposite. You smell too good.’ Heat blazed high into her cheeks as the words tumbled from nervous lips. ‘I mean, too human. We don’t wear deodorant or fragrance or even perfumed shampoo in the field. It helps stop the seals from scenting us coming.’

If any more blood rushed to her head she was going to pass out. Ground, open up and swallow me now.

‘That explains a lot.’ Those green eyes bored into her, but then they softened. ‘If I have to smear seal dung all over myself to disguise my scent, I’m not coming.’

The humorous murmur was like a lifeline tossed into the Sea of Mortification; Kate grabbed it with both hands. ‘Of course not. That would be a criminal waste of a perfectly good sample.’

His straight lips opened to speak and then twisted in the closest thing to a smile she’d seen him offer. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

‘I’ll see you out there.’ Standing around compliantly while Adonis took a shower was not part of her plan. ‘Do you know where to come?’

‘Dave’s Cove?’

Kate nodded and turned for her car but, before she could relax even a bit, he called after her.

‘The shower is coming off your sixty minutes.’

With every breath, the power seemed to shift further and further away from her. Sheer bravado kept her walking. She flicked her hand in the air as though dealing with gorgeous, clever, angry men was an everyday occurrence and called back over her shoulder.

‘Bill me!’

No deodorant. No perfume.

Grant hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that explained a lot. He’d been trying to pin down something about Kate Dickson since the day she’d stood in his house covered in paint. Back then the paint had masked it but today, as she’d stood just feet away from him in the spring sunshine, it niggled at him. She looked completely different today from her last visit. The power-suit was gone and she’d replaced it with a baggy T-shirt and cargo shorts. Really dirty cargo shorts. All that thick, dark hair was pulled back in the most serviceable of ponytails. No make-up. No deodorant. No perfume.