He was magnificent. His body…
Will you stop thinking like this? she told herself desperately. You’re in dangerous territory. You have to walk away from this man.
You shouldn’t have come swimming. She was talking to herself.
Of course you shouldn’t have come swimming. You shouldn’t have even come to Australia. What on earth are you doing, swimming with an almost-naked man in the middle of the Australian Outback-watched by a hundred or more cows?
She had no answer.
There was no answer.
‘Come on, Karli. Let’s leave your sister to tut-tut over my lack of dress in private.’ Riley and Karli were already at the water’s edge. Riley was holding Karli’s hand, with Karli gasping in delight as mud oozed to their ankles. The mud was surrendering each foot with a delicious slurp as the pair moved forward.
But beyond the mud there was deep water.
She was in deep water already, Jenna thought desperately. Deeper water than she’d ever been in in her life. So…
So Jenna Svenson took a deep breath. She threw caution to the wind and squelched across to the water’s edge.
The mud was disgusting, but suddenly she didn’t care at all. The water was cool and delicious. She waded in to waist-deep. It was just plain wonderful.
Who needed swimming pools?
Forget how she was feeling, she told herself. Forget Riley.
Her body knifed forward into deep water as caution was thrown away on the hot north wind.
She’d enjoy her swim. She’d block him out somehow.
And if she couldn’t?
Whatever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE water was unbelievably cool.
Away from the edge, the dam sank to eight or nine feet-deep enough to allow Jenna’s whole body to sink. She promptly sank. She stayed under until she ran out of air, then she surfaced and promptly sank again. Karli was safely with Riley so she could concentrate on getting herself cool. On getting herself together.
‘Does she always bob up and down like this? It’s very distracting.’
He was too close. Jenna surfaced, spluttered and looked wildly round to find Riley’s face immediately behind her left shoulder. He was floating on his back, and Karli was seated happily astride his broad chest.
For the life of her she couldn’t think what to do. Or what to say.
So she sank again. She stayed under for as long as she could.
When she rose to the surface he was waiting. Riley had swung Karli onto a floating log, and as Jenna rose he caught her shoulders and held her above the surface.
‘This is very unrestful,’ he complained.
‘Unrestful for who?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Let me go.’
‘Only if you promise not to sink again. It’s making Karli and me nervous. We keep thinking you’re being eaten by yabbies.’
‘Yabbies?’ Unconsciously Jenna’s toes lifted so she was floating with drawn-up knees.
‘Yabbies.’ Riley smiled. ‘Little lobsters.’ His face was glistening with water, and his streaming hair was plastered in curling tendrils across his forehead. He looked wickedly attractive. And his eyes were inches from hers. Too close for comfort.
Far too close.
And then suddenly he was not close enough for Jenna’s liking. There was an almost unbearable temptation to put out a hand and touch that laughing face. To push back the streaming hair. To press herself closer in the water- press herself against her man.
That was how she was thinking of Riley Jackson, she knew, with a sudden fierce realisation of how her heart was working. There was something deep inside that was telling her that Riley was her man. Her home. Whether he knew it or not.
‘I’m not scared of yabbies,’ she told him. She pulled away, and something of the way she was feeling must have come through. Riley released her and stayed treading water, his face watchful.
‘You don’t need to be scared of yabbies,’ he agreed. ‘And you don’t need to be scared of me. I won’t hurt you, Jenna,’ he said softly across the water now dividing them. ‘I have no dishonourable intentions.’
I wish you did, Jenna thought desperately. Because I certainly do.
She didn’t say it out loud. Instead she managed to smile at Karli, then gave her log a shove that had the little girl sailing across to the far side of the dam. Jenna followed, kicking hard, sending up a spray, propelling the log until she was about twenty feet from Riley. She was trying desperately to make herself relax.
‘Push me into the mud,’ Karli commanded. ‘I need to make mud pies.’
‘Certainly, my lady.’ She shoved until Karli’s craft beached itself. Karli proceeded to roll herself into waist-deep water, scoop up handfuls of mud and arrange them with care on her log-raft.
Karli had always been a self-contained child, a talent born of necessity. She’d never needed to be entertained. It worried Jenna at times, but she’d learned not to press. She didn’t press now, even though making mud pies with Karli might have lessened the tension. Instead she lay back in the water, floating with the warmth of the evening sun on her face.
It was glorious.
But all she could think of was Riley.
What if she’d stayed in his grasp? she thought. What if, instead of pulling away, she’d let herself be drawn closer?
Nothing would have happened, she told herself bitterly. How could he be attracted to her? He’d never asked her to come here. And she wasn’t exactly free. She had Karli.
She came with strings.
As far as Riley was concerned, Jenna must be a nuisance of an English girl who’d climbed off the train and demanded his help. A nuisance with a child attached who he felt sorry for. And that was it.
Like her, Riley was floating on his back, but he’d remained on the far side of the dam. There was as much distance as possible between the two of them. It was the way he obviously wanted it.
But she didn’t want distance. She desperately didn’t want distance.
What to do about it?
Nothing.
Nothing was for cowards. Nothing was…unthinkable.
Tomorrow morning he’d leave again and be gone for another interminable day. Then he’d put her in his aeroplane and take her back to civilisation. That would be that.
She’d leave here for ever, she thought bleakly. She and Karli would go back to England to her hospital bedsitter, and figure out how she could afford to keep Karli. Her life had been bleak before as she’d struggled to pay off the debts she’d incurred to get her professional qualifications. How much more bleak would it be now?
At least she’d have Karli.
That was a good thought. It settled her. She glanced over at her little sister who was concentrating on mud-pie making as if she were performing brain surgery. Life would be better with Karli.
It’d be even better if she’d never met Riley, she thought dully. If she’d never known such a man existed.
Jenna’s eyes left Karli. She very carefully didn’t look at Riley, but she let her gaze wander everywhere else.
There were those who would say this was the bleakest place on God’s earth. The water she was swimming in was mud-brown. The dam was surrounded by a low bank of churned-up mud and there was one ancient, gnarled
