the place was on the market I flew over and found dead and dying cattle everywhere.’
‘But how long-?’
‘That was three weeks ago.’ Riley’s voice was still grim.
‘I bought the place on the spot-in fact settlement’s not until next week, but I’ve spent the last weeks here getting the water going again. Mending pumps so the bores are flowing. This dam’s fed by an underground spring and mostly it’s higher than this, but the drought’s meant the spring’s dried and the water has to be pumped. This dam’s fine again, but others further out still need attention. That’s why I couldn’t leave until now. I’ve been getting the bores going again and making sure the dams and troughs are full. Some of the cattle were in such bad condition when I found them I had to put them down.’
‘But they don’t have anything to eat,’ Jenna whispered.
‘There’s forage enough. These cattle are tough. They’ll survive here as long as they have water.’ Then he managed a smile. ‘It’s not quite as intensive farming as back home in your Oxfordshire fields, though. If we run one head of cattle per square mile we reckon we’re doing well.’
Jenna took a deep breath. One cow per square mile? ‘So…so how big is this farm, then?’
‘About three thousand square miles.’
‘And yours? What did you call it? Munyering?’
‘Ten.’
‘Ten? Ten what?’
‘Ten thousand square miles.’
‘Ten thousand square miles!’ Jenna did some fast retrieval of schoolgirl maths. ‘That’s about three hundred miles across by three hundred miles wide.’
‘Something like that. It’s a bit splodgy at the edges.’
She subsided into staggered silence, the enormity of Riley’s landholding leaving her speechless. Yet…if it was all like this, was it worth anything? The man who’d owned this farm had walked off, and who could blame him?
‘I told you,’ Riley said gently, watching her face and seemingly guessing her thoughts. ‘My farm is better.’
It’d want to be, Jenna thought grimly, but she didn’t say it. Instead she looked out again at the cattle. Karli was gazing at a cow with interest and the cow was gazing back, her big brown eyes seeming almost mournful. ‘You said these cattle won’t be here much longer,’ she whispered. She glanced at Karli’s cow and then glanced away. ‘What did you mean?’
‘We’ll truck them out,’ Riley told her. ‘They can survive here but they won’t thrive. As soon as the house is habitable I’ll send men in to base themselves here while they work. They’ll bring trucks, they’ll build holding yards and they’ll muster this lot. Then they’ll bring them back to Munyering where they can recover. There’s feed enough on Munyering to make these beasts think all their Christmases have come at once. Munyering is south of here and we’re not drought-affected. I said it’s better, Jenna. Believe me.’
‘But this place is awful. How could it ever have been a farm?’
‘It’s in drought, Jenna,’ Riley told her. He’d drawn to a halt before the muddy bank, a sheet of hoof-marked mud leading to deep water. ‘This place isn’t always so awful. When the rains come I’ll bring cattle back here again. I won’t depend on this place for permanent pasture, though. The last owner did that. It worked for five years, but then he lost the gamble. If you gamble with nature you’ll always lose. If I can just use it in the good times, though, it makes a decent little addition to my own property.’
A decent little addition. Three thousand square miles. Jenna was trying hard to do some adjusting in her head, but all she could do was boggle.
Karli was trying to outstare the cow. Jenna was doing arithmetic. Riley climbed out of the truck and he grinned at them both.
‘Are you guys intending to sit in the truck all evening and commune with nature, or are you serious about that swim?’
Jenna stared out at the cows. The cows stared straight back.
‘I’m not sure I can swim with an audience,’ she said nervously and Riley chuckled.
‘Don’t mind them. They’ll love it. I bet they’ve never seen anything like you guys in their lives.’
‘This one likes me,’ Karli announced.
Jenna still had some qualms.
‘Won’t we stir up the water? Make it too muddy for drinking?’
‘You have to be kidding!’ Riley shook his head. ‘Lady, until two weeks ago this place was a muddy puddle. The pump had packed up completely and if I’d arrived three days later all these cattle would be dead. What they’re drinking now is cattle nectar. Mud and all.’
‘I’m not sure I want to swim in cattle nectar.’
‘Hey, I’ve driven three miles in the heat to give you a swim,’ Riley retorted, exasperated. ‘Now, are you going to get out of this truck and go for a swim or are you not? If not, then stay here while Karli and I swim. Karli, do you want to swim?’
‘Will I have to walk through the mud to reach the water?’ Karli asked.
‘Yes. It’ll ooze through your toes.’
‘Ooh,’ Karli gasped, and bounced out of the truck, heading for oozing mud.
‘What about it, Miss Svenson?’
‘I’m…I’m swimming.’
‘Then do it,’ Riley told her. ‘Before our audience starts slow-clapping in impatience.’
Going for a swim here wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded. Nor was the mud as inviting to Jenna as it was to Karli.
Jenna had her costume on-until now demurely hidden under shorts and shirt. She slipped off her outer garments, took two steps from the truck-and stepped right into a cow pat mixed with mud.
Jenna yelped.
‘Lesson one,’ Riley said, strolling round the truck to investigate and grinning in appreciation of her problem. ‘You’re in cattle country now, ma’am. Expect a little dung.’
Jenna stared down at her toes.
‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘that I’d like to go home now, Mr Jackson.’
‘What, back to the house?’
‘I mean back to England.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Riley’s laughter was not so subtly hidden behind the concern. ‘But now you need a swim more than ever.’ He hauled off his shirt and tossed it into the back of the truck. Then his boots. And then his jeans.
It was as much as Jenna could do not to yelp again.
Riley paused. ‘Is there something else wrong?’ he asked blandly.
‘Y…yes.’ Jenna swallowed. ‘I would have thought…well, you’re not exactly decent!’
‘I’m wearing shorts.’
‘Yeah, but…’
‘But what? These are as respectable as swim gear.’
They were too. They were aged boxers. They shouldn’t be enough to make her gasp.
Every time she saw this man’s body she wanted to gasp.
‘When I packed to come here, I thought any possible audience would be cows,’ Riley told her. ‘If I’d known you were coming maybe I’d have packed my neck-to-knees. But I didn’t know, so I didn’t bring them.’ His eyes ran over her body in its not-so-demure one-piece and his smile deepened. ‘And I’m almost as decent as you are. Not as noticeably eye-candy, but almost as decent.’
Then as her colour started to mount he grinned down to Karli who, in her own cute pink bathing costume, was tentatively exploring the mud with one small toe. ‘Karli’s not shocked. My cows aren’t shocked.’ He turned again, his gaze cruising from Jenna’s toes to her face, his eyes so warm that she felt her blush extend from the toes up. ‘I’m not even shocked at what you’re wearing,’ he told her. ‘Just deeply appreciative. May I remind you, you have seen me in less. Get over it.’
Oh, great. She really needed reminding of how much of him she had seen. She was the colour of beetroot. He turned away then, thankfully, so she could get her face together again. But…
She risked another peek.
