A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

The Army

Ranger’s Return

Soraya Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

About the Author

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night – the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

For the real McMurtrie family and for the Cape Saunders colony of New Zealand Fur Seals.

To my friend Kate, whose research formed the basis of the background for this story. Her family farm sits on a stunning peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand and is home to abundant wildlife, including a colony of seals as depicted in this story.

CHAPTER ONE

RESPECTFULLY yours … Kate.

Grant snorted. Since when had any part of Kate Dickson’s dealings with his father been respectful? She and her travelling band of greenies were single-handedly responsible for crippling Leo McMurtrie’s farm. And for his death that had followed.

The town might believe old Leo had had a dicky heart, but there were three people who knew otherwise: Leo’s best mate the mayor, the town doctor and Grant—the only child who had found his father in the front seat of his idling vehicle. It hadn’t even run out of fuel yet.

Kate Dickson’s letter was still open on Leo’s kitchen bench-top. Grant had left it, and everything around it, untouched until the doctor had made his declaration and the funeral was over.

He ran his eye over it now.

Negotiate the buffer zone … Protect the seals … Limit farming activity … Regretfully …

First respect, now regret.

Right.

What was respectful about hounding an old man into letting you onto his land and then putting the wheels in motion to have tight conservation restrictions slammed on twenty-eight kilometres of his coastline? About repaying a favour by screwing over the man that had given it to you? Kate Dickson called herself a scientist, labelled her work research, but she was nothing more than a bleeding heart with her eyes on making a name for herself.

At his father’s expense.

The irony that he found himself in his father’s corner for the first time now, only after he was dead, that their only common ground should be beyond the grave, didn’t escape Grant. Or was it that he just hadn’t been willing to appreciate his father’s perspective while he’d been alive and so staunchly defending it?

He balled the delicate handwritten letter—who wrote by hand these days?—and erased the irritating Kate Dickson from his conscience. Then he let his head fall forward onto the hands that fisted on his bench top and took a shuddering breath.

And then another.

A shrill call made him lurch; he snatched up the phone before thinking. ‘McMurtrie.’

The uncertain pause sounded long-distance. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Grant understood the confusion immediately. ‘McMurtrie junior.’

‘Oh, I … I’m sorry. Is your father there, please?’

A road-train slammed hard into his guts. The man who’d raised him had never really been there for him and never would be now. ‘No.’

‘Will he be back today? I was hoping to discuss …’

Breathless. Young. There was only one female that he could think of who hadn’t been at Leo McMurtrie’s packed funeral yesterday, that hadn’t brought a massive plate of country cooking for his orphan son. That would be oblivious to his death. His eyes fell on the letter. ‘Miss Dickson, I assume?’

‘Ms.’

‘Miss Dickson, my father passed away last week.’

Her shocked gasp sounded genuine. So too the agonising pause that followed and the tightness of her voice when she finally spoke. ‘I had no idea. I am so sorry.’

Yeah, I’m sure you are. Just as you’d been getting somewhere with your crazy plans. If he made a sound, he would say exactly that. So he said nothing.

‘How are you?’ she asked quietly. ‘Can I do anything?’

The country courtesy threw him for a second. This woman didn’t know him from Adam but her concerned tone was authentic. That boiled him more than anything else. ‘Yeah. You can keep your people far away from this property. You and your microscope brigade are no longer welcome.’

The voice sucked in a shocked breath. ‘Mr McMurtrie—’

‘You may have sweet-talked my father into letting you on his land but that arrangement is now void. There will be no renegotiating.’

‘But we had a commitment.’

‘Unless your commitment is in writing, and has the words “in perpetuity” in bold print, then you have nothing.’

‘Mr McMurtrie.’ Her voice hardened.

Here we go …

‘The arrangement I had with your father was not just about him. It has the backing of the Shire Council. There’s district funding attached to it. You cannot simply opt out, no matter how tragic the circumstances.’

‘Watch me.’

Slamming the phone down was the most satisfying thing he’d done all week. It gave him an outlet. It gave him focus. Blaming someone helped; it meant he didn’t have to blame the man he’d lost. The man he’d been estranged from for nineteen years.

Nothing Grant did could bring back the father he’d walked away from as soon as he’d hit legal age. But he could do one thing for him—the thing his father had died wanting.

He could save the farm.

He could not run it. He was no more equipped to do that now than the day he had walked away from it when he’d been sixteen. But he could keep it ticking over. A week, a month, however long it took to get it ship-shape and ready for sale to someone who could make it great. Probably not what his father had left Tulloquay to him for, but he’d never buckled to his father’s demands before and he wasn’t about to start now.

He’d never been farmer material growing up and Leo McMurtrie dying hadn’t changed one part of that.

Kate Dickson had stood on this rustic porch one time too many, readied herself for this argument once too often. It had taken twelve solid months of negotiating—almost pleading—for Leo McMurtrie to agree to let her team conduct their three-year research study on his property. And now in the final, crucial year of operations she was right back where she had started.

Up against a lawyer, no less.

An hour on the internet had tracked down Leo McMurtrie’s only son, Grant. He was some contract specialist from the city, and he was angry and still grieving, if his manner on the phone last week was any indication.

Hopefully the personal touch would do the trick.

She knocked on the freshly painted timber door then smoothed her hands down her best business outfit. Pencil skirts and fitted blazers weren’t really her thing but she had two of them in her wardrobe for occasions just like this one.

The door didn’t move. Kate glanced around nervously. Should she have called ahead or would he have just ignored that? Someone was home; she could hear the thump of loud music coming from deep inside the farmhouse. She knocked again and waited.

‘Come on, McMurtrie …’ she mumbled.

When the son still didn’t materialise, Kate tested the door. It swung happily open and the music-level surged.

‘Hello?’ she shouted down the long hallway over the doofdoof of heavy metal. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Nothing.

Cursing under her breath, Kate moved down the hallway towards the deafening noise. The smell of paint hit her immediately and she saw old floral-patterned sheets draped over furnishings in the freshly coated rooms that she passed. The sheets struck her as incongruous on a property belonging to a man’s man. Leo McMurtrie had been as tough as nails. Even once they’d finally come to an arrangement regarding access for her team, he’d still been as surly as a mule, with a sailor’s vocabulary. The fact he slept on old-fashioned, floral sheets just didn’t fit with the man she knew.

Then again, she barely knew him at all. Leo hadn’t wanted to be known.

‘Hello?’ Jeez. Lucky there wasn’t an emergency or something. She tiptoed forward.

‘What the hell—?’

Out of nowhere, a solid-rock wall stepped out and slammed into her, sending her reeling backwards, a damp weight dragging on the front of her suit. Kate lunged for the paint bucket that tipped between them just as a pair of masculine hands did the same, and the two of them ended up half-crouched on the floor like a badly-gone-wrong game of Twister. But they did manage to right the bucket and stop any more paint from sluicing down onto the timber floorboards.

The second thing Kate noticed—after subliminally absorbing the sensationally manicured pair of hands that relieved her of the bucket—was the intensity of a pair of eyes the colour of sea grass. They blazed at her from under a deep frown.

She struggled for something else to focus on. Paint pooled at her feet, dripping wildly off her clothes onto the floor.

‘Oh …’

‘Don’t move!’ Leo McMurtrie’s son barked, blocking her passage with his body and placing the tin carefully to one side. It took him a few minutes to wipe up the worst of the mess at her feet with a series of cloths but, as fast as he wiped, she dripped. Paint thickened and blobbed off the pointed seams of the tailored fabric.

‘Get that jacket off.’

Kate bristled at his autocratic tone but couldn’t ignore the fact that her jacket had taken most of the paint and it was very clearly still streaming onto the floor. She stripped it off, bundled it up with no further concern and tossed it over to the growing pile of paint-covered rags in the corner.

Two sets of eyes went to her beige-stained skirt.

‘That stays on,’ she said unequivocally.

His tight lips wanted to twitch but his scowl wouldn’t let them. Kate saw it all play out on his face in the seconds before he masked it. He crouched before her and, without so much as a word, he hand-scraped the paint off the tight fabric of her skirt, off the thighs underneath that stiffened with surprise, reaching around behind her legs to hold her steady as he did it.

Kate stood compliant and mortified until he’d finished, feeling every bit like the child she’d worked so hard to grow out of. The girl who just did what others told her. McMurtrie junior straightened up and glared at her. Those captivating eyes were evenly set in an oval face framed at the top by short, sandy-blond hair and at the bottom by a matching two-day growth. His eyes perfectly matched the khaki shirt that flared open halfway down his chest and which revealed a gold band hanging by a leather thong around his neck. More sandy-blond hair scattered across his tanned collarbone.

His lips tightened further as he noticed the direction of her gaze.

Desperate to get things back on a professional footing, Kate pushed her thick hair back from her face and wedged her ‘game on’ glasses more firmly up her nose. She straightened as best a paint-covered woman could and held out her hand to shake his.

Too late, she noticed the slap of wet paint on her right hand—which meant it was on her hair and probably her glasses too. The hand dropped limply.

Nice one, Kate.

But the pragmatist in her whispered that what was done was done. Nowhere to go but up. ‘Mr McMurtrie …’

‘Never heard of knocking?’ He glared at her, unimpressed.

Her eyes narrowed. Maybe he wasn’t grieving. Maybe he was just an ass most of the time. Like father, like son. Even if she’d come to feel great affection for McAss senior, he’d been pure hard work at the beginning.

‘Never heard of a perforated ear-drum?’ she shouted back, eyebrows lifted.

It was only then he seemed to realise that the stereo was still pounding out. He turned away and killed the sound with the flick of a nearby switch. It took her heart a few beats to realise it had lost its synching rhythm. When he returned, his shirt was fixed two buttons higher. The tiniest part of Kate mourned the loss of that manly chest.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice overly loud in the new silence. ‘Do you always enjoy your rock at full blast?’

‘Better than drinking.’

Kate frowned. How were the two remotely connected? She took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m Kate Dickson. I assume you’re Grant McMurtrie?’

‘You must be top of your game with scientific deduction like that.’

She ignored the sarcasm. ‘You haven’t returned my calls.’

‘No.’

‘Or my email.’

‘No.’

‘So I came in person.’

‘I can see that.’ His eyes drifted lazily over her paint-spattered blouse. ‘Sorry about your suit.’

Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t like it anyway.’

‘Then why wear it?’

‘Societal expectation.’

He stared at her, assessing. ‘What would you prefer to wear?’

‘A wetsuit.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Your seals.’

Kate quietly congratulated herself for getting things neatly back on topic. She had a lot to lose if this meeting didn’t go well—more than just her project. ‘I need to continue my research, Mr McMurtrie.’

‘Then you’ll need to find another beach, Miss Dickson.’

‘All the early research was done here, I can’t simply change locations. Neither can the colony I’m studying. They’ve been returning to that little cove for years.’

‘I know. I grew up here.’

Oh, that’s right. A spark of excitement flared through her. ‘Do you remember the colony when you were a boy?’

His lids dropped. ‘I should. I spent part of every day with them.’

Kate froze. ‘No. Did you?’

He stared at her overly long. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Miss Dickson. It doesn’t mean I have any information for you and it doesn’t mean I’m going to say yes. My answer is still no.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t need a reason. It’s the beauty of Australia’s freehold system—my land, my rules.’

Kate brought out her big gun. Her only gun. ‘Actually, it’s not.’ His face grew thunderous but she pushed on. ‘Technically speaking, it’s not your land. Not yet.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘I’ve been told it will take six to eight weeks for probate and to settle the estate according to the terms of Leo’s will. Until then, this farm still belongs to your father. And the contract stands.’

God, she hoped so. She’d had to have dinner with a loathsome octopus in order to get some certainty on that. His price for helping her.

The fury on Grant McMurtrie’s face had her crossing her arms across her chest, just in case he reached right through her ribcage and snatched at her heart with that big fist. He glared at her and it fluttered even faster.

‘You doubt I have enough connections to get it pushed through? I’m a lawyer, Miss Dickson.’

‘Ms!’ she hissed.

‘Actually, I imagine it’s Dr Dickson, if we’re being formal. Why not use that?’

‘Because Dr Dickson was my father. And because I prefer Ms. If you can’t manage that, then just call me Kate.’ She took a breath. ‘But that’s besides the point. I’ve been told that even with fiddling probate won’t take less than six weeks.’

The hostility switched to offence. ‘I do not fiddle, Miss Dickson. I merely apply the law.’

Uh-huh. The octopus had been a lawyer, too.

His expression changed. ‘What do you imagine will change in six weeks?’

‘Maybe nothing. But maybe you’ll come to see that the work we are doing is important.’

‘To whom?’

‘To science. To understanding the role of predators on fish stocks. To the future ecology of the oceans.’

‘To you.’

Her chest rose and fell twice. ‘Yes, to me. This is my life’s work.’

And all she had.

His half-smile, half-snort managed to be engaging and offensive at the same time. ‘Play that tune in a few years when life’s work means something more than five or six years.’

‘You’re not exactly Methusela. What are you … forty?’ She knew he wasn’t.

His nostrils flared. ‘Thirty-five.’

Young, to be the success the internet hinted he was. He must have been very driven. She appealed to that part of him. ‘When you were younger, didn’t you care about something enough to give up everything for it?’

Grant glared and buried his paint-encrusted hands in his pockets. When he’d been young all he could think about was getting away from this farm and the certain future that had felt like a death sentence. Finding his own path. It had taken him the first ten years to realise he hadn’t found it. And the next nine waiting for some kind of sign as to which way to go next.

That sign had come in the form of a concerned, late-night call from Castleridge’s mayor that his father had missed the town’s civic meeting and wasn’t answering his phone or his door. He’d driven a three-hour drive in two and they’d broken his father’s door down together.

Grant stopped short of the door in question—newly replaced, newly painted—and let Ms Kate Dickson walk ahead. Without her destroyed jacket, her opaque crème blouse hid little as the Western Australian light blazed in the doorway. Her little power-suit had given him a clue to the fit, lean body beneath. Now here was exhibit A in all its silhouetted glory.

His gut tightened.

Not that she’d played it that way. Her attire was entirely appropriate for a business discussion. Professional. His shirt had revealed more than hers, even though she had cleavage most women in her position would have been flashing for leverage. It had felt positively gratuitous as her eyes had fallen on his exposed chest. He certainly wasn’t dressed for company.

Then again, she wasn’t invited, so she’d have to take what she got. ‘Don’t ask me to empathise with you, Miss Dickson.’

‘Ms!’

‘Your life’s work destroyed my father.’

The sun was too low behind her for him to see whether she lost colour at that, but her body stiffened up like the old eucalypts in the dry paddock. She took an age to answer, low and tight. ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

She seemed genuinely thrown for a moment. Her blouse rose and fell dramatically and his conscience bit that he’d struck that low a blow. He’d only just stopped short of saying ‘took my father’s life’.

But that was a secret for only three people.

She ran nervous hands down her skirt and it reminded him instantly of the soft feel of her legs under his hands just moments before. He shoved the sensation away.

Her voice, when it came, was tight and pained. ‘Mr McMurtrie, your father was a difficult man to get to know, but I respected him. We had many dealings together and I’d like to think we finally hit an accord.’

Accord. More than he’d had with his father at the end. All they’d had was estrangement.

‘The suggestion that my work—the work of my team—may have contributed to his death is …’ She swallowed hard. ‘For all his faults, your father was a man who loved this land and everything on it. He came to care for the Atlas colony in the same way he cared for his livestock. Not individually, perhaps, but with a sense of guardianship over them. Responsibility. I believe the seals brought him joy, not sadness.’

‘Wishful thinking, Kate?’

She turned enough that he could see the deep frown marring her perfect face.

He struck, as he was trained to. ‘My father was served a notice just a month ago that said sixty square-kilometres of coastland was to be suspended while its conservation status was reconsidered—a two-kilometre-deep buffer for the entire coastal stretch. That’s a third of his land, Kate.’

Her body sagged. She chose her words carefully. ‘Yes. I was aware of the discussions. Aware our findings were being cited as—’

‘Then it should be no surprise to you that it might have pushed him—’

Grant clamped his mouth shut, suddenly aware of what it might do to a person to be told they were responsible for someone’s suicide. Someone like Kate. Especially when he didn’t know that for a fact. Yet. ‘That it might have stressed him unduly.’

Her nod was slow, her face drawn. ‘If it wasn’t what he wanted, yes, I could imagine. But he was working with us.’

For what reason, only his father would know. But Alan Sefton had a thorough and detailed will sitting in his office, completed just weeks before Leo’s death, that gave Grant responsibility for Tulloquay. And that will didn’t say one single word about seal protection or participating in research. And, where Grant came from, legal documents like that spoke infinitely louder than words.

‘There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that my father would have willingly signed over one third of his land to a bunch of greenies. He loved this farm.’

Her eyes dropped. ‘He was not a man to do anything by halves.’

It dawned on him finally that his father and this woman had had some kind of relationship. Not conventional, he was sure—his father just wasn’t that easy to get on with—but her shock on the telephone and her sadness now finally registered. And his own grief and long-repressed anger lifted just enough for him to see how the passing of Leo McMurtrie might impact a young woman who’d spent several days a week for two years on his farm.

But he couldn’t let compassion get the better of him. That was probably what his father had done in the end—compassion and a healthy dose of male paternalism. He looked again at the small, naturally beautiful woman before him. Possibly male something else.

And look what it had led to.

He stiffened his back. ‘The moment probate goes through, your team needs to find somewhere else to do your study. Ask some of the farmers up the coast for access.’

‘You don’t think I would have done that rather than negotiate with your father for so long? This site is the only one suitable. We need somewhere accessible that allows us to get quickly between the seals and the water. The cliff faces to the north are even less passable.’

‘Then you’ll have to get creative. The moment it’s in my power, I’ll be closing my gates to your seal researchers. Fair warning.’

Even without being able to clearly see her face against the glare, he knew she was staring him down. ‘Warning, yes. But fair? For all his faults, your father was at least a man of integrity.’

She turned and gracefully crossed the veranda, down the steps to her beat-up old utility truck. Hardly the sort of vehicle he would expect a beauty to travel in. She slid in carefully and swung her long legs modestly in before quietly closing the door.

In that moment he got his first hint as to why his father might have relented after a year of pressure. Not because she’d used her body and face to get her way … but because she hadn’t.

Kate Dickson was an intriguing mix of brains, beauty and dignity and she clearly loved the land she stood on.

No wonder his father had caved. It was exactly what he had loved about Grant’s mother.

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.

Just one-hundred-percent clean, pure woman. With killer bone-structure.

She had to be the most natural, open woman he’d ever met. And as she’d stood there, playing the worst game of negotiation he’d ever witnessed, showing her entire hand in an easy second, he’d found himself wanting to help her. To teach her how the game was played. To save her from herself.

Kate Dickson and her greenies needed someone like him in their corner or they were going to get absolutely screwed by this world. But the idea of playing Sir Galahad to her helpless maiden appealed a little bit too much—given what she’d done. What she was still doing.

He shut off the water with a slam and yanked a towel from the rack.

Yet she’d walked out of here with the very thing she’d come for. He might disagree with her technique, but he couldn’t fault her results. Maybe he had more of his father in him than he realised if a few nervous smiles and a charming blush from an ingénue could have him eating out of her hand. Or maybe she had more of him in her than he gave her credit for. An innate talent for spotting someone’s weakness.

In his room, he yanked on a fresh set of jeans and a denim shirt before shoving his feet into well-worn paddock boots. His father’s, but a reasonable fit. Leo McMurtrie would flip in his grave to see his city son pulling on his battered work-boots and heading out into the paddocks.

He snatched his keys off the kitchen bench, slid an expensive pair of sunglasses on and sprinted to his car, eager to catch up with the virginal Ms Dickson and get the balance of power back on track between them. She and her team might sit on beaches all day getting a killer tan and counting bobbing seal-heads in the water—or something—but he was about to show them just how pointless it all really was. Probably better in the long run, given they’d be moving on soon, regardless of what the district mayor wanted. If Alan Sefton was so fired up about their success, then he could work with them to find a new location.

Tulloquay was off-limits.

He pulled his car up next to Kate’s battered ute right on the fifteen-minute mark and looked around. There was no sign of anyone up here, but a third vehicle was parked a few metres away. Six sheep sat curled happily in its shade, the only shade as far as the eye could see. He’d forgotten what a barren, blustery spot this was.

A healthy gust blew the fine sand from the cliff face back up at his skin and he found himself tempted to turn his rump to the wind like the sheep did. So much for the royal treatment. Looked like he’d have to show himself around.

He peered over the edge of the bluff and then gaped at what he saw below.

Kate lay full-bodied on a big, round seal, kitted up in elbow-and knee-pads, her dirty cargos and the filthiest shirt he’d ever seen. Her long, brown legs were hiked up hard and pressed into the sides of the seal, pinning its powerful flippers to its side and holding it immobile. Two rangy young men, as mucky and wet as Kate, worked hard at the front of the seal, fitting something to the vacant space between its shoulder blades. She contained the protesting seal just long enough for them to fit the small black box and test its fixings. Then the men backed off across the cove to join two other researchers there. Nearer to them a couple of other seals looking after a group of babies shifted nervously from side to side.

Grant held his breath.

These weren’t bull seals, but females could still give a nasty bite and they were known to carry toxic bacteria in their mouths. One bad contact and Kate would be under medical attention for the rest of her three months. Even he knew that, and it had been twenty years. She worked with these animals every day.

What the hell was she thinking?

Below him, Kate seemed to gather herself for a moment, and then in one lithe move she sprang sideways, rolling and crashing onto the rocky outcrop as the seal lurched away from her into the sea and disappeared under the waves. Grant felt the crack of bone against rock from his eagle-nest position, and was sure he heard her agonised groan as she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the sky.

Right at him.

From his high position, he could see the small track he used to take to get down to the water where it came out near the waterline of the rocky inlet known as Dave’s Cove. Two decades dissolved away as muscle memory took him to where he knew the top opening of that trail was. It was a lot harder getting down as a grown man than it had been as a fearless, fleet-footed boy but he stumbled out onto the rocky base just as Kate was pulling off an elbow pad. Bloody scrapes marred those perfect legs.

Adrenaline made itself known at last. ‘What the hell was that?’ he growled.

She stopped, stunned. Three of her team looked up. ‘What?’

‘Seal-riding is part of your research protocols, is it?’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘I wasn’t riding it, I was restraining it.’

‘Kitted out in rollerblading gear?’

She stopped and looked down at herself for a moment, astonished. Then she straightened and stared at him as though he were mad. Which at this moment he’d be prepared to believe.

‘I got back from your place and Stella was onshore. We’ve been waiting to get her alone for a week now. I didn’t have time to change into overalls.’

That was when he noticed the rest of her team was dressed alike in terrible blue overalls. At least, it could be blue, under all the filth. Hard to tell.

‘What were you doing to her?’ His seals. From years ago. Hisseals. Just when he would have sworn he didn’t care for any part of this farm.

‘We were fixing the TDR to her back. She’ll carry it for the next month’

Feeling like an idiot didn’t help his mood any, and it was starting to sink in that he’d made a mistake. A big one. He frowned, but softened his voice with effort. ‘The what?’

She eyed him cautiously. ‘Time-depth recorder. It collects data on their foraging habits.’

He looked out to sea where Stella had disappeared and then back at Kate. An odd feeling very close to grudging respect began to nibble in his belly. ‘That was dangerous, Kate.’

‘Don’t worry, you’re not liable; we have our own insurance. We know what we’re doing. And it doesn’t hurt her.’ At his sceptical look, she relented. ‘Well, maybe her pride. A little. She’ll forgive me; they always do. They’re very resilient. We’ve been doing this a couple of times a month for two years.’

‘So this is what you do down here? Track seals?’

Kate laughed and someone on the other side of the cove joined her. ‘Uh, no. That was the exciting part.’ She glanced at the huddling young who were starting to relax again now that the drama was over. They opened their dark mouths in a belated show of group bravery. ‘Sometimes we catch up the pups to weigh them and check their condition. But mostly we just take samples.’

‘Samples?’

Kate stripped the other elbow pad off but left the knee pads in position. ‘Come on over, we’ll show you. You might like to help.’

Let the sell-job begin. He had sudden visions of lifting traces of fur samples from the rocks, CSI style, and studying them for genetic variation under multi-million-dollar microscopes. Or extracting blood samples from the cute little fur-balls blinking at him. ‘Sure, why not?’

Kate threw him a pair of rubber gloves and a couple of plastic bags then handed him a large spatula as he grew close. ‘What do you want—vomit or scats?’

One of her team snorted. Grant just blinked at her.

‘Sorry.’ She was all innocence. ‘You did say you wanted to help?’

He had a sudden recollection of her joking about not wasting a valuable sample on smearing him with seal poop. ‘You cannot be serious?’

She sank onto one hip and braced long slim wrists on her waist. ‘Were you hoping for something sexier? Sorry; seal riding’s all done for the day.’

With a sarcastic smile, she bent down and artfully scooped a mountainous pile of silvery black gunge into her plastic bag, taking care to get every last bit. Grant’s stomach turned. She handed the bag to an assistant who labelled it for her and put it into one of three eskies over near the limestone cliff-face.

‘You’re not kidding.’

She straightened and looked at him. ‘Do I strike you as a comedian?’

No. Not at all. But he was damned if he was going to be shown up by a greenie. He glanced around the rocky beach. The way he figured it, what came back up had to be better than what had gone all the way through. ‘I’ll take vomit.’

Her smile, instant and genuine, was at least as dazzling as the sun burning down on them. It stole his breath almost as much as the odour from her sample, which reached him in the same moment. His stomach lurched again.

‘If you puke, do it away from our samples. We don’t want any contamination.’ With no further discussion, Kate turned back to her collection and left him in the dubious care of one of her team, who showed him the basics of vomit scooping.

He only gagged twice, which he was pretty proud of. And he collected three whole samples before he reluctantly gave in to his curiosity.

‘Why are we doing this?’

Kate worked hard to disguise the tiny, triumphant smile. But she wasn’t fast enough. Weirdly, it didn’t bother him. Instead, it birthed a warm kind of glow that something he’d done had finally pleased her. A rare enough sensation, when it came to her.

‘Our study relates to the foraging habits of these females so we can determine what level of threat the seals pose to commercial-fishing harvests.’

‘And collecting the foulest substance known to humankind will tell you that how, exactly?’

Kate straightened and zip-locked a particularly feral sample into containment. ‘Beaks and ear bones.’

Don’t ask. Curiosity, real and genuine, blazed. Do not ask! He stared at her, burning, determined not to speak.

‘OK, go ahead and tell me,’ he blurted and the power slipped further.

Kate’s face exploded with life, earnest passion glowing past the smears of dirt and goodness knew what else on her flawless skin. ‘We sift the faecal samples to isolate the otoliths—ear bones—of the food in their stomach. Then we pair the otoliths up, identify and count them, and it tells us how many fish each seal ate and of what species.’

There was no chance on this planet he was going to admit to the unconventional brilliance of the plan. How else could you figure out what the black goo once was? ‘You do realise it’s absolutely disgusting?’

‘Oh, completely. But sensationally effective.’ She shrugged. ‘Everything else digests.’

He scraped another sample into a fresh bag, mouth-breathing the whole time, still fighting back the stomach heaves. When he spoke, he sounded vaguely like he’d been sucking helium. ‘And the vomit?’

She moved to the next sample, closer to him, and squatted to attend to it. ‘Squid and octopus beaks get stuck in their sphincters. Make the seals regurgitate.’

Of course they do. When had his ordinary day taken such a surreal twist?

‘Wouldn’t want to miss any ear bones.’ His voice sounded tight, even to him, as he lifted a sample bag and braved a look.

She seemed genuinely pleased that he’d caught on so quickly. ‘Exactly. Let me show you something.’

If it wasn’t from a seal’s body, and if it got him away from this stench, he would follow her into the mouth of hell. He offloaded his sample to one of Kate’s assistants and followed her over to a far dry corner of the cove. She rummaged a moment and produced a laminated photograph of a small, glossy fish with googly eyes and fluorescent spots on its dark silver face. A particularly unattractive fish, but from the distant recesses of his memory he realised he knew that animal.

‘Lanternfish.’

Her brown eyes widened. ‘Right.’

‘You forget, I grew up around here.’

‘Still, not a common catch. It’s a deep-sea fish. How do you know it?’

Grant frowned. His father’s face swam in and out of his memory just as fast, but he couldn’t hold the elusive memory. ‘I have no idea. Why are they special?’

‘My research shows that ninety percent of the fish coming out of these seals is lanternfish.’

‘And?’

‘And humans don’t eat lanternfish. Too oily.’

It hit him then, why this mattered to her so much. ‘The seals are no threat to human fisheries.’

‘None. In fact they probably help it, because our fish and their fish prey on the same smaller species. So by keeping lanternfish numbers down the seals help ensure there’s more smaller-prey fish to support the fish we haul up by the netful.’

‘Thus protecting a multi-million-dollar industry.’

‘Exactly.’

Well, damn. The seals were probably essential to Castleridge’s thriving fishing industry. The same kind of feeling that he got when he found the weak link in a competitor’s contract hit him, a mini-elation. Except hot on the heels of the rush came a dismal realisation, and this one sank to the bottom of his gut. ‘Who knows about this?’ he asked carefully.

‘So far? My team. Leo knew. And now you know.’

‘Is that why my father gave you his support?’

‘It was your father that put me onto the lanternfish in the first place.’

His gut clenched and it had nothing to do with the stench. ‘Bull.’

She seemed surprised by his vehemence. ‘He never believed the seals were a problem. He’d watched their habits. He grew up with them too.’

True. How could he have forgotten that? Had Leo spent the same lazy days he had as a boy, hanging out with the forbidden seals? Had he sought sanctuary there when his father went off at him?

Her eyes gentled. ‘He was stoked when the results started coming in showing he was right.’

That was what she’d want him to believe, to improve her case. ‘You’re telling me he was happy his land was going to be accessioned?’

Her eyes dropped.

‘I thought not.’ Look at what he’d done as a result.

Brown almond eyes lifted to his. ‘He was conflicted, Grant. He wanted to do what was right. But he knew what it would do to the value of the farm.’

The almighty farm, the god to which Leo McMurtrie prayed. It had always been his beginning, middle and end. ‘And now you expect me to simply follow suit?’

Kate frowned and clutched the photograph. ‘I thought …’

‘You thought this would make a difference? Why?’

‘Because you’re a lawyer. You pursue justice. These animals are being unjustly persecuted and we hold the evidence in our hands.’

‘I’m a contracts lawyer, Kate. I don’t do the whole “scales of justice” thing. I lock down minor details, I screw down better deals, I hunt for loopholes and make sure no-one can get out of something they’ve committed to. Or, in this case, I’ll be doing my best to get out of the agreement my father had with you.’

Kate paled. ‘But how can you, now that you know? You can protect these seals. Help save them. Your whole property could become a sanctuary.’

Her naïve idealism was like a foreign language to him. ‘I can’t protect anyone, Kate. They won’t be mine to protect.’

She blinked. ‘What do you mean? I’ve been watching you improve the place. Getting it back in shape. Giving Tulloquay its life back.’

‘To sell, Kate. I’m doing it up to sell it as soon as it passes into my name.’

She seemed to stumble briefly but caught herself on a rocky outcrop. ‘You’re selling your farm?’

She said it as though he’d announced he was going to slaughter the seals for their coats. ‘My father’s farm. It was never mine, even when I lived here. I’m not a farmer. I’m a lawyer. I never wanted this.’

And Dad knew it. The final irony—leaving it to a son who wouldn’t want it, making all of this his problem.

‘But the seals …’

‘Three months, Kate. I did warn you. You’ll just have to wrap up early.’

The panicked glitter to her eyes wheedled its way straight into his subconscious. He didn’t like distressing her. ‘We can’t wrap up early. Breeding season starts in two months and we need to establish where that happens. It’s a key piece of the cycle to ensure we have a full year of foraging behaviour established for this year.’

‘Then you should have done it before now.’

Colour roared high along her cheekbone. ‘Do you think we didn’t try? We’ve been searching for two seasons to work out where they go. It’s unusual for any group to breed somewhere other than their rookery, but these ones do. The TDR’s don’t record positioning, only depth. We’ve lost the colony two seasons running during breeding season.’

‘Then who’s to say you wouldn’t have lost them again this year? I’m sure the bulk of your research will still stand. Whatever you have now has got to be more than science has ever had before. Two years is not a bad innings.’

She stared at him with eyes as big as the seal pups’. ‘How can you be so different to your father?’

His head came up like whiplash, his gut sucking up as tight as the vacuum-seal lid on the eskies. ‘Whatever you think you know, Kate, you’re wrong. My father gave his life to this farm. He wouldn’t have stood by and watched it get carved up.’

Her mouth gaped. ‘Yet you’re going to sell it off to some stranger?’

‘As a going concern. To someone who’ll work it the way it was meant to be.’

Her colour rose with her voice. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a farm. It’s meant to be a delicate coastal ecosystem for all creatures to enjoy, except we came along and colonised the south coast for ourselves and filled it with hard-hoofed livestock!’

‘People don’t buy delicate ecosystems.’

Hurt and disappointment washed over her face. ‘Shutting us down early makes it harder for me to get my results finalised, but it doesn’t invalidate the study completely. The research will still go through. You can’t stop it.’

In the moment when he should have been saying something, he saw the lightbulb come on over her head.

She gasped. ‘But it will stall ratification by the conservation commission. You’re going to rush this sale through before the conservation status changes.’

His choices were reflected back to him in the disgust in her pale expression. Infinitely worse than the hard, callused glares of some corporate types he routinely nailed down. At least there the playing field was relatively equal. Discomfort burned low in his throat.

‘I told you, Kate. Loopholes and weaknesses are what I do. You’ve shown your hand too early.’ He peeled off his gloves and tossed them into the bag at her feet, feeling about as worthy as the slimy muck that splattered off them.

‘You have three months.’

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR the next month, Kate’s days started at half-past four in the morning as she drove out daily to Tulloquay, arriving just after sunrise and staying until dark. The looming deadline of the settlement of Leo’s probate pressed down on her relentlessly—and now the addition of a possible new owner to negotiate with. How many times would she have to fight this battle? How many times would she see her world slide into disarray?

She hated it. When her parents had died, her life had been ripped comprehensively out of her hands. She’d been voiceless amongst strangers making decisions for her, people who’d thought a pre-teen wouldn’t have a problem with having a brand-new life mapped out for her. But she had.

A big problem.

It was why she’d picked science for a career—cause and effect. Logical progression. Predictable results. Her work rarely spun out of control the way her life had.

Until now.

Not that she wasn’t doing her best to drag it back into some kind of order. She’d split her team into half so that three of them could stick to the analysis of the samples in their lab in the city while she and two others continued collecting what samples they could on ever-lengthening shifts. She assigned herself the longest ones of all. It was exhausting and discouraging work and she was dreading the day they’d have to walk away, unfinished, from their study. From the seals. From everything they’d built. All on the very unlikely maybe of a future owner letting them resume their work.

But she backed up the new team rotation by working on a report late into the night that would hopefully show the Conservation Commission that the seal population was no threat to Castleridge’s fisheries, and, by extension, the rest of the region. Maybe that would be enough to get some protections put in place for the seals.

She tried hard not to think about the better use that her team could be putting all that driving time to—three hours in the morning and three in the evening. But, unless Grant McMurtrie planned to relent on his determination to sell Leo’s farm, there was no real option. They needed to increase the number of field days and they just couldn’t afford the kind of trailer-based accommodation infrastructure that went with remote postings.

It was bad enough fretting about the twenty-thousand-dollar TDR still fitted to the back of Stella, who was missing. It would eventually fall off the seal as her fur grew out, but for Kate’s project it would be a significant financial blow if it wasn’t recovered. Plus it carried a month’s worth of crucial data.

The most useful thing she could do to try and put the brakes on her madly spinning world was to stay down here overnight, mitigate all that time lost to travelling. She had a tent but last night she’d had no energy to erect it. She’d sat awake, long after her team mates had gone home, staring out at the glittering sky and watching the reflection of the stars shift on the ocean surface. Exhausted and discouraged, she’d curled up in the cramped back seat of her ute. She’d knocked off a whole report chapter—freehand, on her lap—before falling asleep, chilled and miserable, in her sleeping bag.

Now she stumbled back up over the edge of the cliff where she’d found a private spot to relieve her bladder after a long night in the car.

‘Tell me you didn’t sleep on the beach.’

She leaped clean off the ground at the unexpected voice, deep and close. She was more conscious than ever of her smelly seal-clothes, extra rumpled after a night squished up in her car. And the fact he’d just busted her peeing, albeit out of view.

‘Grant.’ Her hands went to her loose hair, blowing in the ever-present wind, before she could stop them. She scanned the desolate coastal paddocks until she spotted his truck in the far distance over near the sheep’s water supply. ‘What are you doing out here so early?’

‘I wanted to check the drinkers before it got too blustery. I saw your ute.’ He glared into the tiny extra-cab of the ute. ‘Did you sleep here, Kate?’

‘I was just too tired to drive last night.’

He narrowed his eyes and really studied her. ‘You look terrible.’

Again her hands twitched to attend to her shabbiness. He, of course, looked every bit the fresh-from-the-shower Aussie farmer, even though she knew he wasn’t. Clothes, it appeared, really did maketh the man. Every time she saw him those shoulders seemed to get wider. ‘We have so much to try and finish. Every minute counts.’

His lips thinned. ‘Where’s your team?’

‘I’m only bringing half of them; the other half are in the lab rushing the samples through.’ She could hear the tension in her own voice and smiled brightly. ‘But we’re getting there. It’s all good.’

He pulled his hat down harder over his eyes against the rising morning sun. ‘No, it’s not. Not if you’re wearing yourself out and sleeping in your car.’

Frustration hissed out of her. ‘Sadly, my budget doesn’t really run to portable labs and campers. I’m just working with the parameters I’ve got.’

‘Would that help? A lab down here?’

‘Talking in hypotheticals sure won’t.’

He stared at her steadily.

‘Fine. Yes, it would help. We would run the samples during the hottest part of the day and move our contact hours to morning and late afternoon. I could get my whole team back down.’

Grant looked out to sea for moments and then brought his clear green eyes back to hers. ‘What sort of a building do you need? Does it have to be hospital-grade?’

Her heart-rate picked up. Was he serious? Was Grant McMurtrie offering to help her? He was built near enough to a gift-horse. ‘No. Just dry, lockable and pest-free. As long as the equipment can be sterile we can work anywhere with power.’

‘How about my garage? It needs a good clean-out but I’m not using it.’

Grant drove a top-of-the-range Jeep Wrangler and it sat out weathering most days. ‘You need that for your car.’

His eyes darkened. ‘No. It’s not … suitable.’

She stared at him. ‘It’s a garage.’ Of course it’s suitable.

‘Do you want it or not?’

Kate’s breath whooshed out of her. ‘Why would you do that? You want us gone.’

His gaze was steady. ‘Despite what you believe, I’m not completely heartless. I grew up with these seals and don’t want to see them persecuted any more than you do. The way I figure it, you can’t get a complete year’s worth of data no matter what happens, so me making your daily tasks more comfortable isn’t going to hurt me, particularly.’

He was right. Volume made all the difference in the world to her, to the validity of her research. But depressingly little difference to him or to the Commission, who were holding out for something more persuasive.

‘What if you’re wrong?’

‘I wouldn’t be offering if I thought there was a chance of that.’

The smug confidence should have infuriated her. But all it did was remind her how much she was drawn to a capable man, with a good mind.

His eyes softened. ‘And I don’t like seeing you hurt yourself. Have you even had a day off since I last saw you?’

And a kind heart, as it turned out.

Kate shuffled. She didn’t want to think well of the man whose self-interest was sending her life into chaos. ‘The clock’s ticking. I’ll have nothing but time off when it’s all over.’

He frowned, knowing full well he was the cause of the rush. ‘You’re welcome to my garage, Kate. Make the best of it that you can.’

Relief hung, suspended and pendulous, waiting for her mind to make a decision. She briefly tossed around the idea of declining, maintaining a high moral ground. But practicality won out; she was nothing if not practical.

The relief released its iron grip as soon as she had the thought and whooshed in a free-fall through her body. ‘Thank you, Grant. That will really help.’ She chewed her lip.

He saw it. ‘What?’

In for a penny … ‘Would it be okay if I set up a camp in one of your sheltered paddocks? With the lab here it would make more sense for me to stay, too. My team can bring things in and out as I need them. Most of them have families to get home to.’

‘You don’t?’

Kate kicked herself mentally for opening the door to that line of enquiry. Gentle warmth flamed up her throat and the contrast between it and the arctic breeze sent a blizzard of tiny lumps prickling down her flesh. ‘Only my Aunt Nancy,’ she hedged. ‘And I don’t really see her all that often these days.’

Mad old Aunt Nancy. She’d got Kate to adulthood after her parents’ accident, but only barely, and mostly by luck. It had been more a case of reverse parenting in the end. Still, Nancy had provided food and shelter and access to a decent school after Kate had lost everything. She’d done the rest herself, miles from the town and countryside she’d loved so much. It had been the beginning of a lifetime trend. She didn’t like to leave anything to chance. Chance had a way of turning around and biting you.

‘Your parents?’ His words were casual enough, but his gaze was intense.

How had they got here? She shook her head knowing there was no way to not answer such a direct question. But her chest still tightened like a fist. ‘Died when I was a kid. Road accident.’

Grant said nothing for a moment. ‘Where were you?’

‘School. I didn’t know until the principal came to collect me at the end of the day.’

‘Lucky you weren’t with them.’

Kate felt the familiar stab deep inside. Her voice thickened. ‘That’s the consensus.’

But some days her personal jury was still out on that one.

She’d stayed with the country-school principal for three days until Aunt Nancy had arrived from the city to collect her—her mother’s whispered-about sister. A woman she’d never met. Someone had packed all Kate’s belongings for her and shipped her up to the big smoke in a matter of days. Her family farm and everything in it was sold by solicitors and the money left over after the debts were settled had been put into trust for when she was eighteen. She’d never even been allowed to set foot on her property again. As an adult, she realised everyone had done what they thought was the best thing at the time. But losing your parents, your home and your community in one hit had been brutal on a young girl.

Although, it had taught her how to plan, how to make sure there were never any variables outside of her control. And how good it felt to be standing on land again.

‘It’s tough, being on your own so young.’

She looked at him. Really looked. ‘You sound like you’re speaking from experience.’

‘I left the farm when I was sixteen. Dad and I … It was time for me to make my own way.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Anything I could for the first couple of months. I worked part-time in a timber yard to keep a roof over my head and I put myself through the final year of high-school at a community college. An advisor there got me into a scholarship program for business and law and the rest is history.’

Self-schooled, self-housed, scholarship grades and partner by twenty-eight. This man knew something about being driven. And about being busy.

‘Look at that—something in common! Who’d have thunk it?’ Awkward silence fell and Kate blew the cobwebs away. ‘Anyway, are you happy for me to camp?’

‘No.’ Grant seemed almost surprised by the word he’d uttered. He shoved his hands into deep pockets. ‘I have room in the house. You’ll be more comfortable.’

Kate stared. ‘I can’t stay in your house. I barely know you.’

He shrugged. ‘So? It’s a working arrangement.’

‘But what will people say?’

‘Do you care?’

The glint in his eye said he already knew the answer.

‘No.’ Not when her deadline ticked maddeningly in her head.

‘Look, Kate, I put the toilet seat down and I’m kind to puppies. Despite being on different sides on this, I’m not actually trying to sabotage your work.’

So her jibe from a month ago had stung. Good. She chewed her lip. ‘It would make things go much faster here.’

His eyes narrowed again. ‘How much faster?’

Her lips twisted in a sad smile. ‘Don’t panic. Even if we worked twenty-four-seven we can’t get the buffer ratified. Not without identifying the breeding ground.’

‘That would make that much difference?’

Why did she keep trusting this man with information? He stood between her and her project. Her mouth opened without her consent. ‘I believe so, yes. The Conservation Commission would accept partial research results if we could also hand them a site of significance.’

He looked undecided. Was he about to change his mind about helping her?

‘Don’t worry; I’m no closer to knowing where it is than I have been for two years. Your plans for world domination are safe.’

He matched her smile and the sorrow reached all the way to his eyes. ‘This isn’t personal, Kate. It’s business.’

She looked at him long and hard. ‘I’m prepared to believe it’s not personal between us, but this is very personal between you and your father. Why are you selling the farm? He left it to you.’

His face shut down hard before her eyes. ‘Because I’m no farmer. That’s become abundantly apparent to me this month.’

‘You’ve kept the place running for weeks now.’

‘Barely. I know nothing about stock. Short of feeding them and keeping them watered.’

‘I’m sure there are people who can help you. Teach you.’

‘Like who?’ he said.

‘Like any of the farmers in the district. Leo was a very popular man.’

‘I’m hoping one of those farmers will be champing at the bit to get an outfit this size when it comes on the market. I don’t want to seem desperate.’

Kate realised. ‘You’re trying to build the farm up, make them think you have it all under control, so you get a good price.’ She had to give him points for controlling his environment.

‘Bingo. If they sense the vulnerability, they’ll go for the jugular.’

‘You’re trusting me not to tell them?’

His regard was steady but tainted with a hint of confusion, as if it hadn’t occurred to him until that very second what he was trusting her with. ‘You don’t strike me as someone to play games.’

‘Unlike you, you mean?’

‘Very unlike me. We couldn’t be more different, Kate.’

She shook her head. ‘Crazy world you live in.’

‘It’s human nature, Kate. If they know how much I need to sell, the price will drop.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you needed the money.’

‘This isn’t about the money. This is my family’s farm. It’s about dignity. The Tulloquay name. Keeping the farm intact. Making sure the person that buys it values it.’

Conservation restrictions would reduce the size of the landholding and diminish the forward-investment value. Who would want a coastal farm with no usable coastal strip? Apart from her, that was. Without the valuable coastal kilometres, the remaining land would most likely get carved up for paddocks for adjoining farms.

He wanted Tulloquay to stay a farm, no matter who ran it, even if he didn’t want the property for himself. Leo McMurtrie would have approved of that part, at least.

‘Maybe I could help you? As a thank you for the lab space and room.’

His sceptical expression shouldn’t have surprised her. ‘You know about farming?’

‘My father was the town doctor but we lived on my mum’s dairy farm. I remember the seasonal rotations, the basic preventative care for the stock.’

‘You barely have time for your own work.’

‘I’m not proposing I do it all; you’re a big boy. I’ll just give you some pointers. The rest is up to you and the internet if you’re so determined on the smoke and mirrors.’

It was his turn to frown. ‘Why would you help me? You think I’m a jerk.’

Ass, actually. Kate held his gaze against the flush she could feel rising. ‘It’s in my best interests to keep you amenable. And your father gave me two years of access to the Atlas colony, which I consider priceless. I owe it to him to help you.’ She glanced around. ‘Plus, I’ve grown fond of these sheep and don’t want to see them starve.’

‘Have they starved yet?’

Her laugh was gentle. ‘No. But they’re going to need drenching soon. Have you got that one covered?’

He tipped his head back as he realised he hadn’t. ‘How do I know you won’t sabotage me?’

Oh, Grant. Is that really the world you live in?

‘You don’t,’ she sighed. ‘You’ll just have to trust me.’

Intense eyes blazed into hers as his mind worked with that concept. He had a lot to lose if she betrayed him. Kate fought the tremor that fluttered up her spine and forced her body to remember that this was the man that stood between her and her project. Possibly between the seals and their survival.

There could be no flutters. And if she had to hold her breath then it would be awaiting the outcome of his decision, not waiting to see if he trusted her.

‘Room and lab space in return for some farming advice. Confidential.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘If you think it’s necessary.’

‘It’s necessary.’ His eyes grew serious. ‘You specialise in seal vomit, I specialise in human nature.’

‘Interesting analogy.’ Kate took a deep breath. ‘But you have yourself a deal. On one condition.’ His left eye twitched and its brow lifted. Did no-one challenge him in his world? ‘The AC-DC stays below eighty decibels.’

In the split second before he remembered who he was and who he was with, Grant gifted her with the most spectacular of smiles. She saw more perfect, pearly teeth in that brief moment than she’d seen the whole time she’d known him. A throaty chuckle escaped, and his green eyes creased and reached out and whomped Kate clean in the solar plexus. She couldn’t even suck in a shallow breath, let alone a deep one.

Just when she’d wondered if he couldn’t do more than twist those serious lips.

But as quickly as the smile came it died, and Grant dropped his head so that the sparkling eyes were lost in the shadow cast by his akubra hat. Kate felt the temperature drop around them. As if to punish himself—or maybe her—for the smile, he gravely thrust out his hand toward her and barked a curt, ‘Deal.’

Goose bumps prickled all over her skin as she slid her chilled hand into his furnace-warm, Goliath one. It swallowed hers completely and Kate had a moment of unease; the image aptly represented their parts in this situation.

He might tolerate her presence, he might humour her research, he might even help her in ways that didn’t hinder him. But ultimately Grant McMurtrie held all the power here.

For now.

Her mind went to the nearly finished report for the Conservation Commission, sitting in the back seat of her ute. She straightened her spine and closed her fingers defiantly tighter on his. ‘I’ll move in tonight.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘YOU do realise you smell appalling?’ Grant scrunched his nose.

Her grin was way too sexy to be good for him. After only a few days, Kate’s presence felt as ingrained in the house as his father’s tobacco.

‘Occupational hazard. The smellier we are, the better the seals like us.’

His nostrils flared. ‘Then they must be ready to adopt you as one of their own today.’

The grin burbled over into a full laugh and those dimples flashed enticingly beneath a layer of dirt and muck. His gut kicked over, and not from the smell. That was happening way too often. He swallowed past the tight ball.

‘We had a good day today, got a heap done. Enough that I can spend all of tomorrow setting up the lab.’

An overflowing carful of her gear had been dropped off by two of her team earlier in the day. It sat intriguingly on the verandah now. As though realising that sharing her joy about having made good progress was not entirely appropriate, two frown lines formed between her brows. The dimples flattened out.

‘I’ll go take a shower and leave my work clothes in the lab,’ she said. ‘Hopefully that’ll keep it contained.’

The lab formerly known as the garage.

He’d thought about making it a store room, but then realised he wouldn’t be able to go in and out of there for stuff, so he’d left it empty. Better a science lab than empty as a tomb—although, the latter was more appropriate. Would Kate freak out if she knew? Part of him thought no—she was a scientist and used to much more grisly things than that—but part of him remembered that she’d been fond of Leo.

‘How often did you see my father?’ he asked a little later, when she was back to smelling like a clean, natural woman. She was trucking things from the verandah around to the double-doors of the garage. He lumped one of the bigger boxes as he followed her.

Kate paused and thought about it. ‘Maybe three times a week?’

For two years. That was a lot—compared to him. Yet she could still whack on the pressure when she had to. ‘Must have been tough while he was against your project.’

Kate smiled, and he realised how much he waited for those peek-a-boo dimples to show up. How he lightened just for seeing them.

‘He was no picnic even after he came round.’

I’ll bet. ‘Came round?’

‘Reconciled himself,’ Kate corrected.

Grant’s feet locked up at the roll-door to the garage. No way he was going a step further into that space. ‘To giving up his land?’

Kate dropped her box and straightened, frowning. ‘To giving up his dogged stance. I think he was just being belligerent out of habit toward the end there.’

Grant snorted. ‘He always was contrary.’

She thought about that. ‘No, I think he was lonely. Dragging out the negotiations gave him regular contact.’

Pain sliced unexpectedly low in his gut. He shot up straight.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate rushed to make good. ‘That’s none of my business.’

‘My father didn’t really do lonely, Kate,’ he said, lowering his voice, critically aware of their location. Leo McMurtrie had liked nothing better than to be alone with his thoughts when Grant was a boy, sitting out high on a bluff somewhere. Leaving his son to find his own amusement.

‘I know he filled his spare time with committees and doing odd jobs for friends,’ she said. ‘But I think you can be busy and still lonely.’

‘Speaking from experience, Kate?’ Her eyes rounded and darkened with pain, then flicked away carefully. Grant gave himself the fastest of inner lectures.

She rushed on. ‘Just as some people can be bored but think they’re content.’

Was that a dig at him? No, she couldn’t know … ‘Bored is not a phrase I associate with Dad, either.’

‘No.’ Did that gentle smile mean she forgave him his snappy response? ‘No shortage of tasks when you’re running a farm single-handed.’

Grant winced. Everywhere he turned there were reminders of the future that his father had wanted for him. He should have been here with his dad, running the farm. Maybe then he could have headed Kate’s research off before it had even started. Maybe then there would have been no question of the surety of their property. Maybe then his dad would still be alive.

And maybe he’d be arguing loudly with an impossible man right now instead of talking quietly with a woman who was intriguing the hell out of him.

They added two more loads of gear to the pile at the roller-door. Grant knew the moment was coming when he’d need to press the remote and open it. There was nothing in there now but dust and storage boxes. But still his pulse began to hammer.

Kate turned to him. ‘Could I ask …?’

His heart squeezed painfully. No, don’t ask. Don’t make me say no.

She nodded towards the garage. ‘Just some of the bigger pieces?’

An icy sweat broke out along his spine. He called on every boardroom tactic in his arsenal to keep it from showing on his face, and then he really scraped the barrel and called on desperate humour.

Not his strong suit.

‘What happened to your fiery independence Ms Dickson? Does it only last until there’s heavy lifting to be done?’

He saw the impact of his words in the dimming of her eyes, in the stiffness of her shoulders. He kicked himself, while at the same time acknowledging that his sarcasm was still better than what he wanted to do: turn and sprint for the hills.

It was stupid not to have anticipated this moment. He should have left her to her unpacking and made himself scarce instead of hanging around like a blowfly waiting for her to smile again. Now he either had to forever position himself as a jerk in her mind or walk into the room he’d found his father in.

‘Sorry,’ she said, clipped, frosty and calm. ‘You must have things to do. I’ll be fine.’

He knew that. If he hadn’t been here, she would have managed. All she had to do was take a few things out of the heaviest boxes. She didn’t actually need the help. Whether she knew it or not, she’d been making overtures of friendship since she’d walked in his front door with her paltry belongings two nights ago.

And he’d just thrown it back in her face.

Suck it up, kid. The voice in his imagination was a hybrid of his father’s and his own.

‘Kate, wait.’ He stopped her as she would have turned completely away. ‘That was a bad joke. I’m sorry.’

‘No.’ She shook his hand free, her eyes low. ‘You’ve been more than generous with your offer of lab space and a room. I don’t want to take advantage any more than—’

Grant silenced her by bending and intentionally taking the biggest of the equipment boxes. ‘Can you get the door?’ While he had an armful of box, he couldn’t operate the remote; something told him that was a button-press he simply could not make.

Even if Kate was with him.

That thought brought his head up sharply. Since when had Grant ‘the Closer’ McMurtrie needeed someone to hold his hand? Since never. But, as he watched Kate’s delicate indexfinger activate the remote control and that enormous door began to rumble upwards, he’d never in his life been so grateful for the presence of another human being.

With no chance of stopping himself, he moved one step closer to Kate. Sweat broke out across his top lip.

‘Oh, it’s fabulous!’ She swept in ahead of him, into the large, open space. His heart pounded against his ribs and he forced his feet into action. Alan had rallied some volunteers to tow his father’s car away and help clean the garage out after his death. Only the mayor had known the significance of what they were doing. The resulting space was clean, empty and entirely innocent of the terrible thing that had happened here. The garage was as much a victim of his father’s decision as all of them.

It was due a reinvention.

‘Will this do?’ Only those who knew him best would spot the slight break in his voice.

‘Do? It’s perfect. It’s fully plumbed.’ Kate moved around the large space, checking out the features. ‘It has a fridge.’

‘Dad’s old beer-fridge.’ Beer and, for some reason, bowls of the most disgusting liquid covered in damp tea-towels and foaming away beneath a pancake layer of thick fungi. ‘I think Dad was working on his own laboratory experiment in here.’

At Kate’s quizzical look, he explained what he had found. Not when or why, but what.

Her face softened. ‘Kombucha tea. I’m glad he finally gave it a try. I put him onto it.’

‘What tea?’

‘Kombucha. It’s a fungus. It grows on the top and the tea below ferments and forms a naturopathic cider. It’s good for you.’

‘I can’t imagine how. It looked and smelled disgusting. I imagine the only thing it was good for was the compost heap.’

Why the hell had a grumpy, acerbic old farmer been talking herbal recipes with a gorgeous greenie? How much had the man changed in twenty years? And what kind of a relationship had he had with Kate Dickson? Every conversation Grant had with her led him to imagine the two of them had been more than just business colleagues.

Friends.

Kate’s enthusiasm for her new lab chased more of the shadows away from this place; she was just so excited. But still she turned to him, eager to give him a last chance, presumably.

‘You’re sure you don’t want to use this for your Jeep?’

Not in a million years. ‘It’s all yours. Just don’t blow anything up.’

‘I think you’re over-imagining what kind of work we do here. It’s mostly microscopes and sifting.’

Ah, yes—the vomit. Charming.

Wide brown eyes turned to him. ‘You’re welcome to come in and have a look any time you want.’

He crunched his nose as she turned back to the mountainous boxes. ‘Don’t be offended if I pass.’ For more reasons than one. He couldn’t imagine himself ever getting comfortable in here.

Kate smiled as she hauled more boxes into the lab.

This really was perfect. She couldn’t imagine why Grant wouldn’t want to keep his precious car in here, but his loss was her gain. She’d downplayed the difference having an on-site lab would make to her program, because he was still so sensitive to their progress and because his offer really was a gift from the research gods. The truth was it would make an enormous difference to their ability to process samples and with the hours saved she could dedicate some time to searching up the coast for the seals’ primary breeding-site.

All she needed was a boat. And someone to sail it.

How hard could that be to find in a fishing community? First chance she got, she’d head into town and see who she could rustle up. Things were beginning to go her way again. Kate could feel rightness returning to the world.

‘So when do farming lessons begin?’

His voice was still tight but his body looked more relaxed than when he’d first entered. You’d have thought he was being escorted to the gallows. She’d given him one last chance to opt out if he was that reluctant to have her lab in his house—or maybe to help her project out, after all—but he hadn’t taken it. And, although he’d been painful about helping her move her stuff in, he was certainly applying himself and all those compounding muscles admirably to the task. Super-quick, in fact. Like he couldn’t wait to get out of here.

Kate sighed. It would be easy to trust him and believe that he had the Atlas colony’s interests at heart; that he was trying to offer a compromise that meant they both got what they needed. But at the end of the day that was navïely futile. No way could they both walk away from this situation equally happy. Grant was going through the motions out of courtesy, but everything in his manner said he couldn’t wait to be out of here. After the rocky start they’d had, courtesy was something, but just because she was starting to like the man didn’t mean it was mutual.

This was Leo all over again. Look how long it had taken him to warm to her—although once he had it had almost been like becoming family. When the McMurtrie men bonded, they really bonded.

Which was not something she should be thinking in Grant McMurtrie’s presence. Not when he stood between her and her nicely ordered world, her nicely ordered future.

So when should farming lessons begin—if at all?

‘Without the travelling time I should have a few hours each evening,’ she said carefully. Dinner. Conversation. The intricacies of sheep castration. Nice and neutral. ‘Could that work for you?’

‘Night school …’ Jade eyes considered her. ‘I like it. It’ll fill those long evenings.’

Right. Another subtle reminder that this was business to him. As it should be to her.

‘Would you mind if we postponed Friday night’s tutorials? I was hoping to go into Castleridge.’

His reply was immediate. ‘Into town? Sure. I’ll come in with you.’

That brought her head around. ‘Why?’

Charming lines furrowed his brow. ‘Uh …’

Kate smiled. ‘Getting used to the company, Grant?’

He slid one last box onto the work bench. ‘Maybe I’m looking for a better class of company.’

She would have been offended if she’d thought for a moment that was true. While she might not be the best reader of men on the planet, she did know sharp conversation when she found it, and her discussions with Grant so far had been diverse and free-flowing. Almost scintillating. Especially when you threw in the healthy dose of chemistry that zinged around between the words.

In between remembering they were on opposite sides of this awkward situation.

Her smile widened into a full tease. ‘Well, then, perhaps we’ll both get lucky in that regard.’

He muttered something she couldn’t hear but then decided she didn’t want to. She’d kid herself a little longer that there was a mini-friendship brewing here; she wouldn’t go bursting her own bubbles just yet. Life had a way of doing that for her—with terminal impact.

‘I’ll come along to keep you out of trouble with the locals. They might not take kindly to a conservationist in their territory.’

Kate grinned. Finally something they agreed on. ‘If there’s something I know all about, it’s territorial mammal behaviour. Especially the bulls.’ She kept her gaze innocent and open, but his narrowed eyes told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. ‘Do you think we’ll need some kind of secret signal if I get in trouble?’

‘No need,’ he assured her, a tasty twist to his full lips. ‘I’ll hear the sounds of the gallows being erected and come running.’

Kate bent for the final box of equipment. ‘To help them with the finishing touches?’

His gaze smoothly shifted from her back end to her face as she straightened. ‘That remains to be decided.’

She held a cupped hand to her ear and tipped her head towards the floor. ‘Why, I do believe that’s the sound of ice cracking in hell.’

His indulgent smile shouldn’t have been steamy, but it was. Somehow teasing Grant was turning into a specialty of hers, even when she didn’t mean to. How could it not be, with positive reinforcement like that? When she teased, he smiled. And those smiles were rewarding in a way she was only just beginning to understand.

‘The only thing cracking around here is my back under the weight of these boxes,’ he grumbled. ‘What’s in this stuff? Gold bullion?’

Kate paused a moment, deciding whether to let him retreat from their flirtatious exploration. But then reality came creeping back in and she realised that putting things back on a professional footing was not only wise but overdue.

Even if it was also a lot less fun.

Grant stood directly between her and her project. He was the man robbing her of the choices she’d worked so hard to assure, taking control out of her hands.

And no-one was doing that again.

No-one.

CHAPTER SIX

EVEN though they’d joked about the townsfolk stringing her up, Kate hadn’t actually believed it would happen. But here she was, metaphorically at least, being marched to the gallows by the fishing fraternity of Castleridge. She’d come to find a man with a boat. What she’d got was a whole lot more complicated.

‘Not a single hour free in the next month?’ She gaped. ‘Seriously?’

Joe Sampson was the fourth fisherman she’d tried. How could they all be busy?

‘Not for the sort of job you want.’

Oh, here we go. ‘You charter your vessel. Isn’t a job a job?’

‘Not around here, love. I can afford to pick and choose.’

Another person ripping options out from under her. ‘So why are you choosing to turn down my charter?’

Joe turned his grizzled face and his beer breath her way. The whites of his eyes were stained as yellow as his nicotine teeth. ‘I told ya. I’m busy.’

Kate narrowed her eyes and raised herself to her full height. She raised her voice, too. ‘Not too busy to find time to get drunk with your mates, I see.’

Two of those mates laughed, booming, gusty guffaws; Joe Sampson turned and glared at them. When he came back to her, his eyes were sharp like a fox. ‘That’s right, love, I like a drink. The last sort of person you want driving you up the coast.’

She’d heard that about him. She planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

His friends burst into fits of laughter again, one of them coughing and spluttering with the effort. Kate distantly wondered whether he’d ever tried kombucha for his lungs.

Out of nowhere, a steely hand closed around her upper arm and pulled her away from the fuming Joe Sampson. ‘Kate,’ a familiar, velvety voice said. ‘Sorry I’m so late, got a call from the city. Let’s get our table, shall we?’

The words triggered a delicious tingling through her body. She spun around to face Grant. Table? What was he doing here?

‘She’s a guest on your land, McMurtrie,’ the old fella wheezed. ‘And it’s out of respect for your father that I haven’t told her exactly what she can do with her request to charter my vessel.’

‘Joe …’

Grant and the bar manager spoke at the same time but the older man wasn’t deterred. ‘Leo might’ve gotten himself all addled by a piece of city skirt, but not everyone is as easily swayed as he was.’

Kate spun around again, not sure which insult boiled her blood more. ‘Easily swayed? Had you met Leo McMurtrie?’

Joe finally put down his beer, ready for a battle. ‘I grew up with him, love.’

Then something else hit her. ‘And I am not a piece of city skirt. I grew up in a town smaller than this one.’

‘Good for you,’ Joe snapped. ‘Why don’t you head back there? Your kind is not wanted here.’

Even his own mates stepped in then, taking Joe’s beer from the bar and moving away from their seats as if he’d follow, pied-piper style. They underestimated him.

She straightened to her full height. ‘Is that so?’

‘Kate …’

Grant’s warning was warm against her ear but she was too far gone to care. She ignored his plea and shot back at Joe. ‘And what kind is that, exactly?’

The whole bar stopped to listen. People peered in from the dining area next door.

‘You greenie mob. More interested in saving a bunch of thieving sea-dogs than the lives and livelihoods of the people living here.’

Grant’s hand tightened further on her upper arm. He slipped his body closer to hers and tried to nudge her away from the bar with it.

Kate leaned around him. ‘Those sea-dogs have more right to be here than you do. They’ve been fishing here for millennia.’

‘Rubbish! I’ve been around a lot longer than you have, love, and there were hardly any when I was a boy. Just those few out on the McMurtrie farm.’

‘That’s because morons like you hunted them nearly to extinction. They’re only just now getting back to—’

‘Kate! Enough.’ Grant physically pushed his way between the two opponents and forced her back a step.

‘Get out of my way.’ Her verbal warning was for Grant, but her narrowed gaze and her furious attention were all for the ageing fisherman at the bar. Although not so much she didn’t feel the strength of Grant’s body pushing back against hers.

He dropped his head low against her jaw and whispered warm against her skin, ‘Don’t do this, Kate. You’re not going to do yourself any favours.’

Behind him Joe Sampson snorted. ‘Oh, not another bloody McMurtrie man addled by a nice pair of legs,’ he sneered, before turning back to the bar and speaking too loudly to be to himself. ‘Or what’s between them.’

Grant spun faster than Kate could blink and his body was hard up against Joe’s. Both the old man’s friends stepped in, hands raised, to head off the conflict. Joe stumbled backwards off his chair and looked every year of his considerable age.

Grant caught him and held him with the steeliest grip Kate had ever seen. ‘Apologise.’ His voice was low and hard, and she got her first inkling of what he might be like as a boardroom opponent.

‘I’m not apologising to no city skirt.’

Grant shook the older man and spoke low and hard. ‘I’m not talking about Kate. She can look after herself. Apologise for what you implied about my father.’

Kate held her breath. So did the rest of the pub.

Joe Sampson eventually dropped his gaze from Grant’s. ‘Yeah, all right. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I s’pose.’

Kate stepped up behind Grant and put her hand gently on his back, moral support, for what it was worth. He didn’t even notice. Furious heat radiated through his shirt.

‘My father negotiated access with Kate’s team. As was his right on his land. Nothing more.’

‘That we know of,’ Joe threw out stupidly.

Grant’s whole body tensed but one of Joe’s mates stepped into the simmering tension. John Pickering, the one with the bushy beard. ‘Look, I’ll take her out. I don’t mind,’ he said.

Joe turned on his mate. ‘Traitor!’

‘Let it go, Joe. What’s one boat trip to keep the peace?’ Pickering looked past Grant at Kate. ‘This has gone far enough. Take this as my way of saying sorry for not stopping it sooner. I’ll take you out tomorrow afternoon if that suits. Half price.’

Kate just nodded dumbly. The bearded man matched it and then steered the belligerent Joe Sampson away from her. Grant straightened up but didn’t turn back to her. He spoke quietly to the bar manager over the counter, who nodded and then wandered off to wipe down a surface at the far end of the bar.

Kate stared pointedly at Grant’s back. Eventually, he turned and faced her. She lifted both eyebrows.

To his credit, he didn’t even pretend to misunderstand. ‘You would have made things so much worse.’

‘You were right when you said I can look after myself. I don’t need your help.’

‘Kate, you were warming up to a bar fight. With one of Castleridge’s longest-standing residents.’

‘He’s an idiot.’

‘Moron I think was your professional estimation.’

Smiling now would be a mistake, but Grant with his super-solemn face was hard to take seriously. Her lips twitched.

‘I’m serious, Kate. You could have ruined everything you’ve worked for.’

‘By having a vigorous discussion on a subject I can argue convincingly in a room full of potential allies?’

He stopped and stared at her. ‘You did it on purpose?’

‘Not stir up Joe Sampson—although I’m glad I’m not getting on a boat alone with him now that I know what a misogynist he is. But it wouldn’t hurt if word began to spread in town that the seals aren’t threatening human fish-stocks.’

Green eyes blazed. ‘You actually think that’s a good idea?’

Whose side was he on? Oh, wait … stupid question. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked irritably.

‘I told you I’d come if I heard the sounds of scaffolding being erected.’

‘From the other room? You were supposed to be at the movies.’

‘A man’s got to eat.’

‘Dine alone often, do you?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s Friday night. Always someone to meet.’

He looked entirely innocent. If he was lying, he was good at it. ‘There really is a table?’

‘There was. If you haven’t got us banned.’

Kate smiled and followed him into the dining hall. All eyes were on them, which barely registered, because her eyes were entirely on Grant.

Kate can look after herself.

Uncertainty nibbled. On one hand, it was enormously validating to have someone like Grant McMurtrie display such confidence in her ability to handle herself, after years of being talked down to as a pretty, young woman in the male-dominated scientific community. But, on the other hand, feeling Grant’s hard body slide in between her and danger had generated a heady, primitive kind of rush, and the tingles it caused were still resonating. Kate stared at the back of those broad shoulders crossing the dining room and remembered how they’d shielded her from Joe Sampson.

She smiled. Or perhaps protected Joe from her.

‘Table for two?’ A tall, toothy waitress appeared from nowhere with two menus. She gave Kate an approving wink before placing the menus on a neatly laid table and parting on, ‘Hope the company’s more agreeable in here.’

It couldn’t be hard. Still, for all the drama, at least she was walking away with a boat and someone to captain it. So something positive had come from the evening.

A few moments later they were settled and seated and everyone in the bar had gone back to minding their own business. Mostly. Kate could feel Joe Sampson’s malevolent stare on her back from across the adjoining bar-room. Her heart slowly got back to its normal rhythm.

‘So, you weren’t kidding about being farming blood. You’re a country girl,’ Grant said by way of a conversation-starter.

Kate looked up. ‘Sunbrook. We ran dairy, mostly, but had sheep and some alpacas.’

‘What happened to the stock when you moved to the city?’

‘Sold, apparently.’

‘Apparently?’

Her hands tightened under the table. ‘I never asked. I never wanted to know. Two of those alpacas were like pets to me.’

Grant shook his head. ‘And no-one asked your permission? Asked you what you wanted?’

Defensiveness surged through her for the people who’d been left with the awful task of sorting out her life. The people who’d done their best. But deep down she knew that Grant only voiced the same question she’d had her entire adult life. How hard would it have been to ask her what she needed?

She shrugged and studied the menu. ‘I was twelve. What was I going to say? There was no way Aunt Nancy would have moved onto the farm, so what choice did I have?’

Conversation stalled while they ordered meals and their drinks arrived—a tall beer for Grant and a wine and soda for Kate.

‘It’s funny,’ he finally said, breaking the silence. ‘While I was doing everything I could to get out of this place, you would have given your life to go back to your farm.’

Kate sipped carefully then lowered her glass. ‘I still would.’

‘Did you ever go back?’

She’d driven south especially to see it a few years back but, even with the shielding of time past, it hurt too much. ‘Only once. I couldn’t bear to see someone else’s children climbing my trees. Someone else’s washing on Mum’s line.’ Her voice cracked slightly and she took another sip. He hadn’t touched his beer; his attention was completely on her.

‘What did you do with the money?’

‘Most of it went back to the bank to pay off the agricultural loan. Some of it went to Nancy for taking me in. What little was left I got when I was eighteen. I used it as a down payment on my apartment.’ She folded her hands on the table and leaned towards him. ‘Grant, why are you selling Tulloquay? I completely understand your desire to keep it in one piece, but why sell it at all? Why not lease it, or get a caretaker in? Keep it in your family?’

His lips thinned. ‘What family?’

That was right; he had as little as she did now that his father was gone. ‘Your future family. Someone should look after it. Until you need it.’

‘Angling for a new job, Kate?’

She didn’t laugh. ‘No. But I would give anything for a chance to come back to country living, to have something to call my own: land. A future. A home. I can’t understand how selling it is better than keeping it. Even if you kept it empty.’

‘An empty farm is soulless, Kate. I’d rather see a stranger take it and make it great than let it run fallow.’

Her heart softened. She considered not voicing her thoughts. ‘Every now and again I look at your face and I see Leo staring back at me.’

He stiffened.

‘I meant that as a compliment, Grant. He was a complicated but dedicated man. And he was determined to strengthen Tulloquay, to keep it relevant.’

‘Then he should have left it to someone else.’

‘Because you’re not interested?’

‘Because I’m not a farmer.’

‘That’s not the first time you’ve said that. Do you think farmers are born knowing what to do?’

‘They’re raised. Trained.’

She frowned at him. ‘Leo didn’t teach you?’

He thought about that long and hard, staring into his beer. Eventually he lifted his head. ‘I didn’t want to learn.’

The dark shadows in his eyes called out to her. ‘You didn’t want the farm—even then?’

‘I didn’t want my future mapped out for me. If he’d said he wanted me to go into the army, I probably would have wanted to be a farmer. He pushed too hard.’

The two lines that creased his forehead told her he’d said more than he meant to. She nodded. ‘I can see that. He had a very forceful way about him. Particularly after he … Well, at the end there. When he thought he was out of time.’

Grant’s forehead creased further. ‘What do you mean?’

Kate rushed in to fix her insensitive gaffe. ‘I’m sorry. I just meant that he must have felt the pressure following his diagnosis. The urgency to get things in order.’

Grant’s face bleached in a heartbeat. His body froze.

Kate’s stomach squeezed into a tiny fist. Oh please, Leo … Please have told your son …

His already deep voice was pure gravel. ‘What diagnosis?’

Kate’s eyes fell shut. ‘Grant, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you—’

‘Kate!’ The bark drew stares from the other diners. ‘What diagnosis?’

Empathy bubbled up urgently. Memories of that awful discussion in her principal’s office bled through her. Memories of Mrs Martin’s pale face. Her shaking fingers, having to break a child’s heart with unspeakable news.

She groaned. ‘Grant …’

‘Tell me, Kate.’

‘Lung cancer.’ The words rushed out of her. ‘Terminal.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t know?’

Grant’s chest rose and fell roughly and his gaze dropped to the table.

Damn you, Leo … To tell a stranger and not his son …

She reached across the table and slid her fingers around Grant’s icy ones. His Adam’s apple worked furiously up and down as he struggled to compose himself. Her focus flicked nervously around the dining room and caught the cheerful waitress as she smiled her way towards them with two steaming meals balanced carefully on her forearm. Kate’s eyes flew wide and she shook her head subtly.

Effortlessly, the waitress spotted it, interpreted the tension at the table, turned on the balls of her feet and whipped the meals back into the kitchen. Kate had a horrible feeling they wouldn’t be eaten tonight—at least, not by them. She slid Grant’s untouched beer towards him. Then she just waited, her fingers still wrapped tightly around his. He clutched them back, holding on tight.

Holding himself together.

‘Are you ok, Grant?’

When he finally lifted his shaking head, his colour was back but his eyes had faded. ‘I didn’t know, Kate. I’m sorry that you had to …’ His words ran out.

Tears prickled embarrassingly behind her eyes. She shook her head, unable to speak.

He seemed to realise where his fingers were and he gently extracted them, sliding them into his lap, dragging the napkin with them to disguise their trembling. Distancing himself.

Kate cleared her throat. ‘He told me last August—in case anything happened to him. Because I was on the farm so often.’ It sounded exactly as lame as it was.

He told me. But not you.

‘Something did happen to him. But you weren’t there.’

Kate’s eyes dropped, her guilt surging back. ‘No. I was on a conference. It was terrible timing.’

His frown was tortured and angry at the same time. ‘You weren’t his nurse. He wasn’t your responsibility.’

‘He was my friend.’ Grant’s loud snort drew more eyes. ‘You doubt me, but you weren’t there.’

His eyes blazed. ‘I had a life to lead.’

She gentled her tone and didn’t bite. The man was suffering enough right now. ‘I meant you weren’t there to judge the friendship. But clearly you two weren’t—’ she changed direction at the last second ‘—in touch, so he told … a friend. I imagine Mayor Sefton knows, too.’

Grant’s nostrils flared wildly and his eyes darkened. ‘If he does, he’ll have some explaining to do.’

Kate frowned. This was more than just a horrible surprise. Grant was really struggling. What did he think his father had died of? ‘Let me take you home, Grant.’

His distracted eyes scanned the dining room. ‘Our meals …’

‘I’ll make you something at home.’

She stood and held out a hand to him; it hovered, ignored, in space and Kate fought the flush that rose as she let her fingers drop back to her side. The gesture had been automatic, but now, more than ever, was the last time a man like Grant McMurtrie would accept a gesture like that from her. Yet his world had just imploded so very publically and he was desperately trying to pull himself together.

She softened her voice. ‘Come on.’

He stood unsteadily on his feet and dropped a handful of notes—way too much for what they’d ordered—on the table. Kate smiled an apology to the waitress through the servery window and led Grant out into the cool night.

At the car she stopped him. ‘Keys.’

‘I’ll drive.’

‘You’ll drive us into a ditch. I have a research study to finish and I imagine you have—’ she suddenly faltered ‘—someone to get safely home to when this is all over.’

He tossed her his keys with an accuracy that suggested he was quickly recovering his wits. ‘No someone. No family. Not now.’

Lord, did she sound that morose when speaking of her long-dead family?

‘Well, aren’t we just a pair of poster children for “misery loves company”?’ she offered lightly. It seemed to work; his face defrosted a hint more. She pulled open her door. ‘In the car, McMurtrie.’

Grant desperately needed a few minutes in the darkness to gather his composure. He slid into his passenger seat and sank into the familiar, comfortable leather, breathing deeply.

Cancer. Lung cancer.

A whole bunch of things flashed through his mind and suddenly made sense: Alan’s awkwardness when Grant had mentioned the stink of tobacco in his father’s house. The freaky, hippy health-concoction in his beer fridge. The fact he’d more or less got his affairs in order before …

Grant took a deep breath.

He’d even waited until Kate was away before taking his life. He glanced at the face, so serious with concentration, watching the road ahead. Had Leo not wanted such a gentle woman to find him? To discover the horror? He was willing to bet big bucks that his father wouldn’t have expected his only son to find him, either, in a million years. Grant had a sinking suspicion he’d been counting on his old mate Alan Sefton to do the honours.

Cancer.

It had had nothing to do with Kate’s project or the land grab. Something very close to relief rushed through him, stumbling and falling over the latent grief still clogging his arteries. He should have been here. He should have made more than one call a year. He should never have let so many years go by. And neither should his father.

I see Leo staring back at me. Were they truly that similar? Would he end up grumpy and alone and sick enough to end it all? There wasn’t much else stopping him, just his work. Just the same rigid discipline about his job that his father had had. That Kate had.

He cleared his throat and turned to the woman whose hands gripped the steering wheel brutally. She knew, first hand, how he was feeling yet she hadn’t taken advantage of his weakness. She’d just been there for him. Is that the kind of quality his father had seen in his young friend’s character?

He cleared his throat. ‘Kate, thank you.’

Her eyes flicked to his, wide and anxious. ‘How are you?’

He nodded slowly. ‘I’ll survive.’ She wanted to ask something. He could see it in the way her teeth worried her lips. ‘Go ahead, Kate. Ask.’

The words practically exploded from her. ‘Did it not say on the certificate—the cause of death? Or did you not see it?’

His chest tightened up. Could he tell her? She and Leo had been friends. ‘I saw it,’ he answered carefully.

‘Yet tonight was still a surprise?’

Anxiety ravaged her sweet face. Knowing would only hurt her, and lying couldn’t hurt Leo. Or him; not any more. Yet he couldn’t let her go on feeling bad for letting the truth slip, either. He reached over and slid a hand onto her cool arm.

‘I’m glad you told me. Imagine if you hadn’t …’

Her brows dropped and she thought about that. ‘I just … I would have approached it so much more carefully if I’d known. Obviously,’ she finished flatly and shook her head.

‘It hasn’t been the best night for you—assaulted by the local fishing mafia, accosted by me and now digging your way out of the deepest of social faux pas.’

Kate’s laugh shriveled. ‘Oh no; that’s pretty typical of a Dickson night out. It’s why I prefer to stay in.’

‘Well, looks like you’ve got your wish.’

She hit the indicator and turned off the highway into Tulloquay’s long access-road.

‘It feels weird, coming here at night.’

But also strangely right. Grant had the sudden flash of them driving home from a night out at the community centre, grey and old, chatting about town affairs, about their grandchildren. Their hands old and weathered, tightly entwined. Just like his father must have always wished for with the wife he had lost so young.

And then to lose a son, too …

They didn’t speak until Kate pulled up in front of the house. She killed the ignition and then turned to peer at him from the half-shadows. ‘What did he die of, Grant?’

Damn her intuition and her curiosity. ‘Kate …’

‘I’ve been thinking about it all the way home. I assumed it was the cancer—but there should have been hospitals, a decline. His lungs weren’t really any worse when I saw him the week before.’ Beautiful brown eyes appealed to him. ‘Please, Grant. I know you must not want to talk about it but the question is going to eat at me.’

He studied her hard. No matter what he said, she was going to sit on her guilt for not being here. That Leo had died alone. The same guilt he was nursing. ‘It was the cancer, Kate.’

Tears filled doe eyes. ‘You’re lying—which means it was worse. Was it his heart? Did something happen to him? Was he hurt?’

Her anxiety was only going to increase if he didn’t put an end to this. He tightened his lips and swore inwardly. ‘Did Leo ever lose stock?’

Thrown off-balance momentarily, she blinked back at him. ‘Sure. Sometimes. He hated finding them out in the paddock, suffering. He hated shooting them, too, but he did what he had to do.’

‘He never could abide anything suffering. Anyone.’

Kate frowned and waited for him to continue, but in his steady, loaded silence her beautiful face blanched and the liquid wash of her eyes spilled over as she pieced together Leo’s puzzle.

‘He did what he felt he had to do, Kate.’

She fought so hard to keep from losing it in front of him, almost visibly willing those tears back under the privacy of her eyelids. But she couldn’t sustain it; they leaked, unauthorised, down her face. Grant cursed and reached out to gently curl his hand around the back of her neck. She let herself fall into the support of his shoulder. Immediately his nostrils filled with the scent of clean, unadorned woman. Even going into town, Kate hadn’t broken the no-perfume rule. Her hands slipped up to control her descent, one curling around his bicep and the other bracing on his chest. They burned through his wool-blend sweater and branded his skin, setting off a chain reaction of tingles.

But his hormones weren’t his priority right now.

He threaded his fingers through the thickness of her hair and pressed her against his shoulder, murmuring comforting sounds. She wasn’t a sobber, but her silent tears were almost worse. They matched her perfectly—stoic and dignified.

‘I should be comforting, you,’ she mumbled between tight shudders.

‘It is comforting, knowing he had a friend who would cry like this for him. Honour him.’

She sniffed. ‘I hate that he felt he had to do it, but I understand why.’ Grant stroked her hair. ‘Maybe it was the last thing he could control—how he left us?’

Us. That sounded way too good on Kate’s tear-puffed lips. His eyes lingered on them—fuller and redder than usual—even in the half-darkness.

The tears surged back. ‘He was so difficult,’ she squeezed out. ‘But so lovely.’

‘I know,’ he murmured against her hair.

Except he didn’t. ‘Lovely’ was not a word he ever would have associated with his father.

‘It’s like losing Dad all over again,’ she croaked.

Nothing she said could have cut him more deeply. Here was a woman who would give anything to have her father back, to have a farm to call her own, to have sheep and alpacas and … bloody seals. And he’d thrown it all away decades before, as though it had no value.

To him, it hadn’t.

‘I was born into the wrong family,’ he murmured, not really expecting her to hear. She curled her fingers tighter in his sweater and it was strangely reassuring. ‘I bet you would have traded with me in a heartbeat.’

She nodded silently against his chest. His next words crawled out of his deepest subconscious. ‘I might have stayed if you’d been here.’ Tear-streaked eyes raised to his, but she didn’t speak. She just studied him in that all-seeing way of hers. His explanation was more for his own benefit than hers. She wasn’t asking anything of him, not tonight. ‘Having someone who I could connect with—identify with—it would have helped.’

‘Helped how?’ It was more hiccup than anything else.

‘Made me feel less alien.’

Her sympathetic hand slid up to his shoulder. ‘You didn’t feel like you belonged here?’

Not until this month. ‘Never.’

Kate sighed, long and deep. ‘So sad. We’ve both lost so much of our lives.’

Somewhere deep in his brain he knew what she meant—that they’d both suffered loss. But the words echoed around the car, blew a trail through her loose hair, mingled with the wholesome scent of Kate, and all he could think about was not wasting one second more …

His left hand cupped the back of her head more comfortably and his right pressed against her cheek and tipped her face up towards his. He knew then that he’d been thinking about this for days—specifically not thinking about this for days. About how she would feel. How she would taste.

How she would react.

But she surprised him. Although her body stiffened against his initially, she didn’t pull back as he lowered his mouth gently onto hers. It was soft and salty from her tears, but full, honest and courageous like the woman it belonged to.

Kate’s head spun a lurching figure of eight at his closeness. His strong, distinctive cologne seemed to shimmy around her like scent released from the heat of a candle. She held herself suspended, lips gently parted against his first touch, assessing, and then leaned infinitesimally towards him, gently increasing the pressure of their kiss. Heat burst through her and crackled out to lick at the place their lips joined. Her mouth slid across his, tasting, breathing his air, melding perfectly.

He nipped and nibbled, sucking her bottom lip between his, then releasing it to slide across the neglected top lip. His big hands forked up through the waves of her hair, messing it around her face until it hung, wild and natural, like it sometimes did at the end of a long day on the rock-shelf.

She pulled back to gaze into eyes darkened with green heat. His thumbs learned the delicate line of her cheekbones and rubbed the last of the tears from her damp lashes.

She sucked in a breath to speak, but he slid one thumb down to silence her lips, closing the gap between them and taking her mouth with his again. It blazed against hers, his tongue hot, confident and branding its possession. Her skin burned wherever it rubbed against his which, squeezed as they were in the front of his car, was just about everywhere.

Her breath grew thin and desperate deep in her chest, but freeing herself for air was the last thing on her mind. Grant’s hands slid down over her shoulders and found their way to the sides of her ribs and under her arms. Then he pulled her more comfortably against him, sliding himself sideways to give her more room, freeing her to climb that masculine chest and latch on more firmly to his talented lips.

Heavy eyes simmered into hers and Kate suddenly grew shy, uncertain. His large, work-roughed hand stroked up her throat to rest under her chin and encourage her gaze back to his.

‘You will always look like this to me,’ he murmured thickly, kissing her brow, her jaw, her lips. Making her lashes fall to her cheeks. ‘Wild. Hot.’

Kate let her head fall back and Grant mouthed his way up her throat. Just as well she was lying half-across him, because there was no way she could have kept standing. Feelings she’d begun to think she’d forfeited for life came surging forth in sharp, exquisite lances deep in her body. Her fists clenched high on his open-necked sweater, giving her strength but letting her fingers spread to tangle in the scattered hair there, against the furnace that was his flesh. The forbidden feeling of the skin she’d tried not to ogle that first day made her smile and Grant’s lips moved instantly to the deep dimple that formed on her left cheek.

His tongue dipped in and out, his smooth teeth sliding against her cheek as he matched her smile. ‘I’ve wanted to touch those since I first saw you.’

Not that she wasn’t unexpectedly thrilled to hear such sentiments but, while she was busy making sense of words, she wasn’t drowning in the pleasure sensations of his body moving against hers. His mouth feasting on hers. She speared her fingers up into his short hair and forced his head back so she could glare into his eyes meaningfully. ‘That’s lovely, but you want to talk or you want to kiss?’

His answer was practically a growl.

And then it was on—both of them clamouring for the best position, the most access, surging, devouring and consuming each other. Grant reached down to the side of his seat and activated the recliner and both of them mechanically lowered until they stretched almost into the back seat. Kate lay across Grant’s chest, along his straining body; his hands had free access, at last, to the rest of her. They slid up and down her length, from shoulder to hip, rib to thigh, learning her contours. Blood rushed, thick and molten, through her arteries keeping her hyper-sensitive cells acute and full of oxygen, and keeping her grey matter thoroughly distracted about what the rest of her was doing.

And with whom.

Then suddenly, with no warning, the vehicle shot forward with a lurch.

Kate managed to suck in a breath and expel a scream at the same time. Grant yanked on the handbrake, crunching into Kate’s hip painfully, and then jammed the automatic gearstick into park position. Dimly, between the heaving breaths she drew in, she realised she’d pushed the automatic vehicle into gear with her hip as she crawled more fully onto Grant’s prone body.

Oh my God …

Heat surged into her cheeks as the full picture they presented finally dawned on her: sprawled out in his Jeep like a pair of sexed-up teenagers, her dress hiked up, shoes kicked off. She reached blindly for the steering wheel, anchored herself to it to haul herself back into the driver’s seat and then sat, puffing, as Grant moved his seat back up into the upright position.

Reality ran in rivulets down the car’s windows where they’d seriously fogged them up in the hot, sultry minutes that had just passed. Kate cracked her door open and sucked in the cold night air. There were two ways out of this and neither of them offered much in the way of a dignified exit. She could cry foul and leap from the car with indignation or she could be flippant about what had just happened and try to extract herself with as much dignity as possible, as though she did this kind of thing every day.

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