He wanted her. The ache was a fierce physical pain that threatened to overwhelm him. He could just walk forward to say goodnight, lean over, lift the sheet and kiss…
He did no such thing.
Instead he swore savagely under his breath, then walked back into his newly cleaned sitting room and threw himself onto the old settee. There was no way he could sleep on the veranda. Not feeling how he was feeling.
He’d do the house maintenance tomorrow and then he’d get the hell out of here. Back to his bores. Outback, where the only thing to concentrate on was sheer hard work.
Where a man could forget about women.
She heard him go.
She knew what he was doing. He didn’t want to sleep on the veranda.
She knew how he was feeling.
She turned on her side and stared out into the starlit sky and tried to think why life had suddenly become more bleak.
Why life had suddenly become desperate.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘JENNA, Mr Jackson’s hammering.’
Jenna surfaced with reluctance. It had been hours before she’d slept the night before, finally falling into uneasy slumber some time before dawn, but Karli was bouncing beside her, big with news.
‘He’s working and working and we should be up and helping him.’
Jenna groaned. Karli was immediately concerned.
‘Are you sick?’
‘No. I’m tired.’
‘How can you be tired? We’ve slept for hours.’
‘Hours.’ She rolled over to check her watch and she landed on a rock. ‘Ouch!’
‘My fossil. Don’t bend my starfish.’
‘Your starfish bent me.’
There was no sympathy from Karli. ‘We should get up and help Mr Jackson.’
‘You help Mr Jackson.’
‘I will,’ Karli announced. ‘You look after my starfish.’
It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. By rights Jenna should disappear back into sleep. But the hammering continued. She heard it pause as Karli obviously approached. There was an intense conversation, a few giggles and then the hammering resumed. Only now there were two hammers.
Hammering before seven o’clock was surely against union rules. Where was a union when she needed one?
But sleeping with a rocky starfish was losing its attraction. If she only had two more days with Riley Jackson…well, she was darned if she was wasting them by sleeping with a rock.
They were outside. All she had to do was follow the sound of the childish questions, the low, gruff answers and the rhythmic hammering. He had her intrigued. He was so good to Karli. She slowed as she approached, listening in.
‘Will we fly in your aeroplane?’
‘Yes.’
‘To your other house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is your other house as horrible as this one?’
Jenna winced, but Riley chuckled.
‘It’s different.’
‘Does it have as much dust?’
‘We have much nicer dust at Munyering. And Maggie is a dust fixer, just like Jenna is a dust fixer. They’re very similar women.’
‘Is Maggie nice?’
‘She’s very nice.’
‘Jenna’s nice, too. Do you think Jenna’s nice?’
Did she imagine it or was there a moment’s hesitation. And then a certain amount of wariness. ‘She’s very nice.’
‘She’s not always dusty.’
‘I can see that.’ The laughter was back in Riley’s voice.
Enough. Eavesdroppers heard no good of themselves and she was playing with fire. She ducked under a makeshift clothesline where six shirts and assorted socks and jocks were flapping in the wind. They were already dry. Laundry day on the farm?
They didn’t see her approach and for a moment Jenna stood among the laundry and watched them. Riley had ceased hammering. He was sawing ancient weatherboards to size. Karli was sitting in the dust in her nightgown, banging a board onto the house with a nail as big as her hand and a hammer that was huge. She was concentrating absolutely and the nail was going in true.
And Riley was stripped to the waist, his broad chest was glistening with sweat as he sawed, and he looked…he looked…
Like the sort of guy you should run a mile from, she thought. An outback hero in a romance novel of the bodice-ripper variety. Toe-curlingly gorgeous.
Her toes were definitely curling.
He looked up from his work, he saw her and he grinned.
‘Well, well. Sleeping Beauty rises. Karli and I decided you may well snooze for another hundred years.’
‘There’s something not very companionable about a rock,’ she told him. ‘Which is all Karli left me to sleep with. And might I remind you that it’s not yet seven o’clock. Aren’t there rules about industrial noise in residential areas before seven?’
‘Is it almost seven?’ he demanded. ‘Heck. Almost lunch time.’
‘What time did you wake?’
‘Five.’
‘So you’ve done your laundry.’
‘Well noticed.’
‘Won’t Maggie do it for you?’
‘Yep, but I’m fresh out of clean shirts and I need to keep myself nice for Miss Karli here.’
‘They’re hardly whiter than white,’ she said, eying them with caution. ‘Don’t they dry hard in this water?’
‘We outback men are tough,’ he told her and grinned-and the bodice-ripper image intensified. So did the toe- curling.
Drat the man.
Riley handed a weatherboard to Karli, then squatted down and helped her fit it. Together they nailed. He was treating the child as if she were really a help, Jenna thought, and, damn, here came that stupid lump in her throat that was never far away when this man was close. Why?
She knew why.
With the weatherboard fitted, Riley rose and surveyed his handiwork. ‘Enough,’ he told Karli. ‘It’s time for lunch.’
‘We haven’t had breakfast yet.’
‘How about brunch as an alternative?’ He grinned. ‘Seeing I’ve declared this as a day of domesticity I’ve even
