yourself, keeping an eye on everything.'
'It's a big step from administrator to wife,' Copper pointed out, still hardly able to credit that they were actually talking about the crazy idea.
'You can look on it as doing two jobs at the same time,' said Mal. 'It's not even as if I'm asking you to choose between your husband and your business, am I?' He folded his arms across his chest, about at Copper's eye level, and she found herself staring at the dark hairs on his forearms where his blue checked shirt was rolled up from his wrists.
'Look,' he went on, as if talking about the most reasonable thing in the world, 'I wouldn't have thought of suggesting it if you hadn't told me how things were in Adelaide. As it is, you're alone, your boyfriend's gone off with someone else and your friends are feeling uncomfortable. Marrying me would be the perfect excuse to move away for a while.'
'You don't think marriage is rather an extreme solution to a bit of awkwardness?' Copper asked, her tone edged with irony. 'I could get a job in another state if I was that desperate to get away.'
'I'm offering you that job,' he said. 'You don't have to be madly in love to work successfully with someone.'
'No, but it helps when you're married to them!'
'Not in my experience.' The corners of Mal's mouth turned down. 'You've said that all you're really interested in is your business. Well, that's fine by me-I'm offering you the chance to prove it. You can stay here as my wife and make sure that your project is a success or you can find some other station owner willing to put up with all the hassle. Either way, I'd bet that you're going to spend most of your time sorting out problems on site, so you might as well be here at Birraminda where you'd have a lot more influence.'
Copper sat bolt upright. 'Can we get this quite clear?' she said coldly. 'You'll let Copley Travel use Birraminda if I agree to marry you, but if not, the whole project's off?'
'That's it,' he agreed, as if pleased with her quick comprehension.
'But that's blackmail!'
Mal shrugged. 'I prefer to look on it as a question of priorities. I've already decided mine-Megan. All you have to do is decide what yours is.'
It was a challenge. Angry green eyes stared into impassive brown in an almost audible clash of wills, while the air between them jangled with tension. Copper didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry or simply haul off and hit him for standing there so coolly while she felt as if the whole world was reeling. All she knew was that if her father's dreams weren't to fall apart there and then, she couldn't throw Mal's offer back in his face with the contempt it deserved and stalk out of the room.
Her gaze dropped and she lurched to her feet. 'I-I'll have to think about it,' she said, gathering the rest of her files from the desk with fumbling fingers.
'All right.' Mal levered himself upright as well and walked over to open the door for her. 'Let me know when you've made a decision,' he said, and shut the door behind her.
That was it? Copper stared incredulously at the closed door, her files clutched in her arms. No word of encouragement, no suggestion of reassurance, no attempt at persuasion. Would it have killed him to show a little more interest in her? Mal was obviously never going to declare undying love after his first marriage, but he could have said that he found her attractive or that he liked her, or even just that he felt they would get on together. That would have been better than nothing. At least it wouldn't have left her feeling as if her most important attributes in his eyes were availability and a susceptibility to blackmail!
Anyway, the whole idea was ridiculous. She would say no, of course. Of course she would.
Copper was distracted through dinner, oblivious to Brett's teasing comments about what she and Mal had been up to in the office for so long, and aware only of Mal sitting at the head of the table. If he was worried about her decision, he gave absolutely no sign of it. He must have known that she would still be reeling after his extraordinary proposal, but did he make the slightest effort to make her feel as if he cared one way or the other? A smile, a reassuring look, even an effort to include her in the conversation was all it would take, but no! He just sat there and talked about cows. She wasn't even going to think about marrying him!
The trouble was that she was thinking about it, Copper realised as she tossed and turned in futile search of sleep that night. On her way to bed, she had checked automatically on Megan. A restless sleeper, she always ended up sprawled half-in and half-out of bed. Copper straightened her and tucked the bedclothes around her, stroking the soft curls away from the child's face. Megan mumbled in her sleep and sighed and Copper felt her heart contract. Maybe there were worse ways to spend three years than in making sure that a child was loved and secure.
She had thought, too, about going back to England to work for a couple of years once the Birraminda project was up and running. They had recently recruited a promising new member of staff to run the agency office, so she would hardly be abandoning her father. It would give her a break from Adelaide and the humiliating sympathy of friends. Why shouldn't she spend those years at Birraminda instead? What difference would it make?
Mal would make the difference. The very thought of marrying him clutched at the base of Copper's spine. You couldn't live with someone for three years and not become part of their life. 'A business arrangement', Mal had said, but just how business-like did he intend their marriage to be? Would they calmly go off to their separate rooms at night, as they did now, or would they share a room? Would he expect her to go to sleep lying next to him every night, to wake up next to him every morning? That was what a real wife would do-but then, Mal didn't want a real wife, Copper remembered bleakly.
Or did he? Housekeeper or wife-which did he really want? And which could she bear to be?
Copper fell into an exhausted sleep at last, surprised to find when she woke that she felt much calmer. She was even able to have a cool discussion with Mal about what time they would be back from the muster that evening and whether or not Naomi would provide sandwiches for their lunch. The really important issue, she had woken up realising, was not whether Mal would sleep with her or not, but the effect on her father if she refused to marry him and he carried out his threat to deny them access to Birraminda.
Dan would be bitterly disappointed at losing what he considered the perfect site. He would be frustrated at the delay in getting the project off the ground, and depressed at the thought of starting again and finding somewhere else. Already desperately worried about the future of Copley Travel if they couldn't break into a new market, the last thing her father needed at the moment was the additional stress of seeing his beloved project crumbling before his eyes. If she went home without Mal's agreement, Copper would feel that she had failed him miserably, and she already knew what that felt like.
Once before, fresh out of college, she had had a choice between spending two years working and travelling in Europe, or helping her father out at the agency during a particularly difficult period. Dan had urged Copper to go while she had the chance, and it had been the best time of her life, but her father had soldiered on alone and when he had had his first heart attack everyone had been surprised that it hadn't happened sooner. Copper, though, just back from England, had never forgiven herself. It wouldn't have killed her to have put off her trip for a few months, but it had nearly killed her father, who had loved her and protected her and cared for her, just as Mal did his own daughter.
No, she had failed her father once, but she wouldn't do it again.
Megan was ensconced at the kitchen table, breathing heavily over a work of art provisionally entitled 'Two Horses in a Paddock'. An identical scribble, which Copper had assumed was a third horse, was scornfully described by the artist as 'a house-no, a crocodile-no, it's Dad', which just went to show how much Copper knew.
Copper couldn't help thinking that a house or even a crocodile would be a lot easier to deal with than the particular dad in question as she dialled her parents' number on her mobile phone. She wasn't going to ask their advice-they would be appalled if they knew what she was considering-but she needed to talk to them before she made up her mind one way or the other.
'Dad's much better,' said Jill Copley in answer to Copper's determinedly casual enquiry. She lowered her voice so that Dan couldn't hear from the bedroom, where he was resting. 'You know what a worrier he is, and he'd been fretting about what would happen if you didn't manage to set up this deal with Matthew Standish, but ever since you rang and told us you were staying on up there for a while he's been so much more relaxed. He seemed to think that it was a good sign and he's been driving me mad with plans for once the site's agreed. I haven't seen him this positive for a long time,' she confided. 'It's done him so much good and we're both so grateful to you, dear.'
'Mal-Mr Standish-hasn't committed himself to any definite agreement yet,' Copper said. She felt she had to warn her, but her mother was apparently in as confident a mood as her father.
