A Millionaire For Molly

‘You’re wearing a crown of seaweed, King Neptune.’

‘Ditto for you.’ He lifted a strand from her shoulder and tossed it aside. ‘Hell. We must look like…’

‘Shipwreck victims?’ She was still laughing, glorying in the moment. ‘But for what better reason? Oh, Jackson, wasn’t that marvellous?’

‘Marvellous,’ he agreed, and he couldn’t agree more.

Her eyes were dancing with joy. ‘Want to do it again?’

‘I suspect our kangaroo won’t be that stupid!’

‘Was I talking about the ’roo?’ But she chuckled, letting him off the hook. ‘Okay. I was talking about the ’roo.’ She’d pulled right back from him and was hauling up the leg of her jeans. ‘And I definitely don’t want to do that again. I hit my leg on a stump as I came up the bank. Look at the size of this bruise!’

Damn, it was as if the kiss had never happened. Despite himself Jackson couldn’t help feeling a little piqued. After all, he had kissed the girl. He wasn’t accustomed to kissing a woman and having no reaction at all.

Especially when the kiss had felt so perfect.

It was because it was the result of triumph, he told himself. Nothing more. It was the emotion of the moment. Molly would know as well as he did that the kiss could mean nothing-that they’d move back to business from this point on.

So keep it light, he told himself. Despite the fact that he quite suddenly-quite desperately-wanted to reach for her again. Wanted to take her in his arms again…

‘I have matching bruises,’ he told her, and only he knew what an effort it was to keep his voice light.

‘Can I see?’

That brought a laugh. ‘Nope. They’re in places a good realtor shouldn’t look.’

‘Uncharted territory, eh?’

‘Something like that.’ They were grinning at each other like fools, and then the tension sprang back and he didn’t know what the hell to do with it. Because he couldn’t kiss her again-could he?

No. He couldn’t. Not without starting something he couldn’t stop. Because having a light flirtation with Molly Farr…

No! The thing was impossible, and he didn’t know why. It would be like starting a wild fire, he thought. He wouldn’t know how to put it out or even if he’d want to.

What was he thinking of? Of course he’d want to put it out. Had he learned nothing over the last few months? Hadn’t he and Cara made a pact? No relationship with anyone they could fall in love with-that was the deal.

He shook his head as if dispelling a dream, then managed a smile at Molly as he hauled himself to his feet. He held out a hand to help her to hers.

She looked at the hand for a long moment, then placed hers in his. It was as if she was coming to some sort of decision. Her hand in his felt warm and strong and sure-and…right?

Yeah. Pigs might fly, he told himself harshly. Right? Hardly. Wrong and wrong and wrong.

‘We’d best get back to the house,’ he managed, and she smiled up at him as if she was unaware of the tumult of emotions running through his head. He looked across the river, concentrating on anything but Molly, and found something there to concentrate on. ‘Oh, hell. Your horse is gone. You mustn’t have tethered it.’

‘Then we go back fast. She’ll head to the homestead unbridled and start a panic.’

‘And that would never do.’

‘I won’t scare Sam,’ she said bluntly, and started walking back along the bank to where the river narrowed and it would be quicker to swim across.

He fell in by her side, his pique increasing by the minute. He wasn’t accustomed to being treated as this woman was treating him. ‘But you’ll jump into the river to save a kangaroo and risk drowning yourself into the bargain? How does that equate with not scaring Sam?’

She stopped then and turned back to him, responding to the note of anger in his voice with bewilderment. ‘I was never in danger. If I couldn’t have saved the ’roo I would have swum back.’

‘And if the current had been too strong?’

‘You know very well the river broadens at the mouth. The water becomes shallower and the current less strong. If I’d been in danger of going past the point of no return I could have swum back before I reached the rocks.’

‘Damn, Molly, you could have died.’

‘I couldn’t. Don’t make me out to be some sort of heroine.’

‘Isn’t that what you are?’ Still there was anger in his voice, and he couldn’t figure it out himself. ‘Doing rugby tackles to save a frog? Leaping into the breach to save a drowning ’roo? Taking on an orphan-’

‘Don’t do this.’ There was no mistaking her matching anger. It was blazing from her brown eyes, slashing at him with fury. ‘I took in Sam for me. Me. Sure, Sam needs me. But I need him, too. I lost my sister and my brother-in-law and my way of life. I don’t have anyone but Sam. I took Sam in for me-if you want to cast anyone as a heroine then go find yourself a storybook damsel, but don’t pick on me. I’m not it.’

‘I-’

‘And don’t think I’ll fall trembling into your arms like good heroines should,’ she threw at him before he could recover.

‘I never thought that.’

She forestalled him. ‘So why did you kiss me?’

‘Hey, it wasn’t just me. You kissed me back.’

Her hands were on her hips, her curls were sodden and awry, there was still a streak of seaweed in her hair- and again he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful. ‘I might have kissed you, but I didn’t mean it,’ she snapped. ‘I was cold.’

‘You were trembling.’

‘So were you.’

That made his eyebrows rise. ‘Me? Tremble?’

‘Yes.’ Her grin surfaced, anger receding. ‘You were definitely trembling. So there, Mr Hero Baird. Heroes shake, too.’

The woman was incorrigible. ‘I did not shake.’

‘You did, and I couldn’t have you dying of shock. It’d do me all sorts of damage.’

‘Worried you’ll lose a valuable client?’

‘Certainly I am. I’ve told you. Trevor would kill me if I brought you back dead. So that’s the only reason I kissed back.’

‘Yeah, right.’

There was nothing else to say. They slithered down the riverbank into the water and struck out for the opposite shore, side by side.

There was still this intimacy between them. It was unbelievably intimate to swim with her, matching stroke for stroke. It was sort of…two becoming one.

Which was crazy…

Then they gained the point where one horse still stayed tethered. They reached for their boots and he looked doubtfully down at them. At last: a topic of conversation that wasn’t fraught with tension.

‘My socks are squelchy.’

‘I’m taking mine off.’ She sat on the riverbank and proceeded to do just that, then swivelled to find him watching her with a very odd expression on his face. ‘What? Haven’t you seen bare feet before?’

He had. Of course he had. And why the sight of a sodden Molly hauling off even more sodden socks had his insides turning handsprings he didn’t know. All he knew was that it did.

‘Unimaginably erotic,’ he murmured, and she gave one of her lovely low chuckles.

‘That’s me. Mata Hari has nothing on me. Dance of the seven veils be damned. This is the saga of two soggy socks.’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘You’re not joining me?’

‘In a striptease? I hardly think so.’ He sat and hauled his boots over his socks regardless, and she looked at him in astonishment.

‘There’s modesty and there’s modesty. And then there’s plain stupidity. You know, I won’t faint if I see bare toes.’

‘No, but my boots will feel like the very devil on bare skin.’