'What do you mean?' she said, puzzled. 'You are on your own.'
'No, I'm not. I've brought you a housekeeper. Although I don't think she's going to be very impressed when she sees what kind of state you get into as soon as I leave you alone!'
Copper exchanged a baffled glance with Brett. 'You've brought a what?'she said stupidly.
'A housekeeper,' Mal confirmed, and then turned at the light step on the verandah outside. 'Here she is now.'
Even as he spoke a very slender, very neat girl with honey-coloured hair and intensely blue eyes stepped into the kitchen and smiled at Brett and Copper, who were staring at her, slack-jawed with surprise. 'Hi,' she said.
'This is Georgia,' said Mal.
Copper could hardly wait for Mal to close the bedroom door before she rounded on him. 'How dare you bring that girl here without consulting me?' she stormed. 'I thought you were going to Brisbane on business?' Mal's jaw tightened ominously. 'I was.'
'And you just happened to find a pretty girl to bring home with you, is that it?'
'I explained all this when I introduced Georgia,' he said impatiently. 'I had to go and see our accountant, who's an old friend. He told me about a friend of his daughter's who was looking for a job in the outback and asked me if I knew of anyone who might need someone.'
'So you said you did?' said Copper with a withering look, and he clenched his teeth, keeping his temper with difficulty.
'No, I said you did. You were the one who was complaining that you had too much to do. It seemed a good opportunity to find a girl to help you, if only to prevent any more accusations of treating you like a slave! And Georgia's an outback girl. She should be really useful.'
'Oh, yes, she's ideal,' said Copper jealously.
Over dinner, Georgia had told them that her father had been manager of a station very similar to Birraminda, so she had grown up in the outback. Once he had retired, she had gone to the city to find work, but she hadn't been happy and had jumped at the chance to come back. She was friendly and pretty and obviously competent, judging by the way she had rescued the disaster Copper had made of dinner, and the more she had talked, the more inadequate Copper had felt. Georgia could ride and lasso a calf and fly a plane…and she was a good five years younger than Copper.
'What a pity you didn't visit your accountant before I turned up here,' she added nastily as she began to get undressed. Mal was stripping off his clothes too, both of them too angry to feel any of the awkwardness that had existed in the past.
'Look, what's the problem?' he demanded. 'You said you had too much work to do and I've found someone to help you. Georgia was free this afternoon, so it made sense to bring her back straight away. I thought you'd be grateful!'
'We do have a phone,' snapped Copper, stepping out of her jeans. 'You might have asked me if I wanted some help!'
Mal swore under his breath as he tossed his shirt aside. 'It never occurred to me that you'd be this unreasonable!'
'I would have liked to have been consulted,' she said stubbornly. 'I am supposed to be your wife.'
'Only when you feel like it!'
'Only when I feel like it?' Copper echoed incredulously. 'You're the one that treats me like a housekeeper, and not a very satisfactory one at that!'
He restrained himself with an effort. 'I wouldn't have gone to such lengths to find a housekeeper if I thought that's all you were, would I?'
'I don't know.' She peeled off her top and shook her hair irritably out of her eyes. 'It doesn't leave me much to do as a wife, does it? I don't even get to be a wife in bed.'
'And whose fault is that?' said Mal unpleasantly. 'You made it very plain at the time that you only wanted me for that one night. I agreed that I wouldn't touch you unless you asked me to, and you certainly haven't done any asking.'
'A real wife wouldn't have to put in a request,' said Copper, unclipping her bra and reaching for her nightdress. 'Why can't we just behave normally?'
'All right.' Mal walked naked round the bed and twitched the nightdress from her fingers. 'Let's go to bed.'
'What?'
'Let's go to bed,' he repeated. 'You want us to be a normal couple. Normal couples make up in bed.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said Copper tightly, and tried to snatch back the nightdress.
'Oh, no!' said Mal, chucking it out of reach and sweeping her up into his arms to carry her over to the bed, where he dumped her unceremoniously.
The electric shock of his bare flesh against hers had momentarily deprived Copper of speech, and she could only sprawl there as she struggled for breath. Before she could roll away, Mal had pinned her beneath him, her arms outstretched and her green eyes stormy.
'You're the one who wants to be normal,' he reminded her. 'I'll start, shall I?'
The feel of his flesh was indescribably exciting, and Copper's feeble attempts to wriggle out from underneath him only snarled her further in a treacherous tangle of desire. Mal must have felt the instant response of her body, for he released her arms and lifted one of her hands to his mouth instead.
'A normal husband would apologise with a kiss,' he murmured, planting a warm kiss in her palm and then letting his lips move lovingly to her wrist. 'I'm sorry I didn't consult you about employing a new housekeeper,' he went on as his mouth traced a delicious path over the soft skin of her inner arm, nuzzling into the shadow of her elbow before drifting on along her shoulder, lingering at the wildly beating pulse at the base of her throat and reaching her lips at last. 'I'm very sorry,' he breathed against them, and then he had captured her mouth with his own and there was no more need for words as everything exploded into intoxicating delight.
Copper had forgotten that she had meant to resist. She had forgotten the anger and the jealousy and the terrible tension of the last few weeks. Nothing mattered now but the fire that sparked along her veins and gathered into a flame that melted her bones and ravished her senses, consuming everything but the hunger. She wound her arms around Mal's neck and her lips opened to the sinfully seductive exploration of his tongue as she stretched voluptuously beneath him.
'Now it's your turn,' Mal whispered, smiling against her skin.
It was so wonderful to be able to touch him again, to ran her hands over the powerful muscles and luxuriate in the warm, taut flesh. Copper's eyes gleamed greenly and she rolled onto him, exhilarated by her own power over the lean, brown body that lay deceptively quiescent beneath her. 'I'm sorry for being so grumpy and ungrateful,' she said obediently as she began to tease kisses along his jaw.
'How sorry?' said Mal indistinctly.
Her lips moved lower and she smiled. 'I'll show you.'
CHAPTER NINE
Copper shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted across the yard. Yes, there they were, Megan bobbing up and down beside her father, her small face animated, and Mal, head bent to listen to her, slowing his rangy stride to her short little legs. His expression was hidden beneath his hat but, as if sensing Copper's presence, he glanced up and saw her standing there, and their eyes met with an instinctive smile. He was too far away for Copper to hear what he said, but he must have pointed her out to Megan, who spotted her with a cry of pleasure and came running towards her. Mal followed, still smiling, and Copper's heart turned over as she caught the little girl in a hug.
The last few days had been good ones. The terrible tension between her and Mal had crumbled in the face of the mutual need that had set them afire the night he had brought Georgia home. By day, Mal was as coolly self- contained as ever, but something in him had relaxed and, although he rarely touched Copper in front of the others, when the door closed behind them at night the quiet reserve dropped and he would pull her into his arms and make love to her with a tenderness and a passion that left her vibrant and glowing with joy.
He hadn't said that he loved her, but for the time being Copper was content to leave things as they were. It
