The Cattle King's Mistress (4 page)

“More, please,” she answered, not grudging those words to him.

He flew the helicopter over the range in a criss-cross pattern, giving her every aspect of it. The narrow canyons or gorges had been carved by water, so she’d read, yet the rock-face it had carved was so smooth and sheer in places, the impression of narrow streets running deep down beside blocks of petrified, window-less skyscrapers kept flowing through Miranda’s mind. If this was the work of nature, it had been wrought in incredible patterns.

“Time we landed if we’re to keep our schedule,” Nathan informed her.

“Okay,” she conceded, realising he’d seen all this before and had been pandering to her interest, probably indulging her so she would be more ready to indulge him. And on the ground she would be more accessible to whatever he had in mind.

He set the helicopter down close to a group of buildings beyond the massif, presumably the park rangers’ headquarters. Intensely wary of his intentions, Miranda swiftly unfastened her seat-belt, whipped off her headphones, opened the door on her side and was out before Nathan could
help
her, thereby avoiding any macho familiarity he might take, being bigger and stronger than she was.

“Forgot your hat and bag,” he said, handing her the items as he joined her on the ground.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, deeply vexed she hadn’t thought of them in her hurry to get out. The omission revealed her distracted state of mind. “That was so fantastic from the air, I’m eager to see more of it from ground level,” she rolled out as an excuse, not wanting him to think
he
was the cause of her haste.

“Worth catching the sunrise?” he remarked, his blue eyes glinting with amused mockery.

“Very much so.”

“Sorry if I offended your dignity by bundling you into the helicopter back at the resort, but we were running short of time. Nature doesn’t wait on anything. If we want it working for us we have to follow its dictates.”

Which was a double-edged excuse if she’d ever heard one! If he thought she was going to take sexual dictation from nature, he could think again.

“I didn’t ask for a delay to our departure, Nathan,” she said pointedly.

“True!” He had the gall to grin. “But I didn’t hear or feel any protest for quite some time. Which leaves us with a promising area to explore, doesn’t it?”

“Only if the wish is there to explore it,” she flashed back at him with a look that should have shrivelled his confidence.

It merely raised a quizzical eyebrow. “No problem on my side. Is there one on yours?”

She fixed some mockery of her own directly on him. “Just where do you see this exploration leading to?”

He made a playful frown. “Well, the start of it suggested we’re onto something special together. And now you’re throwing in some mystery. No doubt about a strong dash of excitement. Who can tell what will come out of it?”

He was laughing at her, making light of any possible reservations she might have about an open-ended future. Except it wasn’t open-ended to her. She saw a very inevitable end.

“That sounds quite romantic. Except you know and I know there won’t be any romance involved. I bet right now you’re figuring on a two-year convenient affair. And I tell you right now—” her voice hardened as she delivered the bottom line “—I won’t play.”

“Play?”

Nathan King’s incredulous repetition of her word gave Miranda a queasy moment of doubt. Had she let her own fears paint a crass picture of what he intended?

She watched, with galloping trepidation, while his expression underwent several changes... disbelief shifting to reassessment, then distaste.

He couldn’t have had anything serious in mind with her, she fiercely told herself. He just didn’t like having his motives baldly laid out. Probably no other woman had ever knocked him back quite so bluntly or abruptly. New experience for him!

Just as his eyes took on a laser-like probe, a greeting rang out. They both turned to see a lean bearded man strolling towards them. The interruption was silently welcomed by Miranda. It broke the imminent threat of further confrontation with Nathan King and gave her the chance to regroup her defences.

The newcomer looked to be only in his early thirties and he viewed Miranda with speculative interest as Nathan introduced them. “Jim Hoskins, head park ranger, Miranda Wade, the new resort manager at King’s Eden.”

They shook hands but there was no opportunity for any conversation between them. Nathan claimed Jim’s attention, withdrawing a parcel of books from his bag. “The diaries. Take good care of them, won’t you?”

Jim took the parcel, handling it with reverential care. “I’m much obliged, Nathan. I’ll treat them with the utmost respect. Hard to get any history on this area.”

“Personal diaries aren’t exact historical fact,” Nathan drily warned. “My great-grandmother might have been fed tall tales by the Aborigines of the time. Generally white people weren’t let into tribal secrets.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll find them interesting anyway.”

Miranda thought she would, too, but she could hardly ask for a loan of old family diaries from a man she was intent on rejecting.

“Come along,” Jim invited, waving to the building. “I’ll put tea or coffee on for you.” He smiled at Miranda as she and Nathan fell into step with him. “Your first time here?”

“Yes. This is an amazing place.”

“Unfortunately we’re short of time, Jim,” Nathan interjected.

Miranda tensed. Was that true, or was he impatient to get her to himself again?

“I promised to show Miranda Cathedral Gorge and have her back at the resort at noon,” he explained. “I know she’s eager to get on with the sight-seeing, so we’ll pass up the coffee, if you don’t mind. I’ve got some packed.”

Which neatly cut the park ranger out of the agenda, using her own excuse for hurrying out of the helicopter. It was clear Nathan was not going to allow her to use Jim Hoskins as a buffer between them. Not even for a short time. Though to be fair, she didn’t know how long it took to get to Cathedral Gorge.

Jim shrugged, accepting the argument without question. “Pity you’re so rushed.” He pointed to a heavy duty four-wheel-drive vehicle parked beside the road. “The Land Cruiser’s ready to go. Keys in the ignition.”

“Thanks, Jim. We’ll be off then.”

“No problem.”

He parted company with them with a cheery wave and Miranda resigned herself to being alone with Nathan again.

They headed straight for the Land Cruiser, neither of them offering conversation. Miranda didn’t look at Nathan but she was extremely conscious of purposeful energy radiating from him and knew he was going to contest her “no play” decision. But if he kept it to only words, she would cope, and she didn’t have to be more than polite in her replies. Let him think whatever he liked. The only important tiling was to maintain a safe distance.

He opened the passenger door for her. She stepped past him with a cool “Thank you,” and heaved herself into the high cabin, noting that he didn’t attempt to assist. Her independent exit from the helicopter had at least made that point.

He didn’t speak even when they were on the road. In fact they travelled a considerable distance, the silence in the Land Cruiser growing more and more nerve-racking as the track they were taking got rougher and rougher, the four-wheel drive ploughing through deep sand, bumping over corrugations, traversing a rocky creek bed where running water could have made the crossing more perilous if he hadn’t known which way to go.

There was no sign of anyone else now, no trace of any humanity in the ancient land around them. The clumps of spinifex and the high conical termite mounds added to the sense of life reduced to a minimal state. It was a far different world from the one she’d known all her life and she began to sense she was with a very different kind of man, too...a man who made his own rules.

She wasn’t running this game.

He was.

At his own pace and on his own terms.

And that realisation sent a chill down Miranda’s spine. His patient silence at the dinner table that first night, his patient silence in the helicopter, now in this Land Cruiser, waiting...waiting for what?

“You’re right,” Nathan said abruptly. “I’m not offering romance. I’ve been there, done that, and come out empty every time. Fool’s gold.”

The edge of contempt in his voice startled her into looking at him. He sliced her a hard, challenging glance, searing in its intensity. “Look around you,” he directed, turning his gaze back to the hazardous track. “My life is bound up in this land. It comes down to basic needs and that is pervasive if you live here long enough. I have a great respect for basic needs. And sharing them makes sense to me.”

Miranda frowned, realising he was talking of a stark reality he faced day after day. If basic needs weren’t respected—and shared—survival could very well be at risk. She’d read stories of people who had perished in the outback, not appreciating all that could go wrong, nor comprehending the sheer isolation of great, empty distances—no ready help to call upon.

“Now I’d say there’s something very basic between us that we could answer for each other,” he went on.

One could survive without
sex,
Miranda silently argued, gritting her teeth against saying so, determined not to invite or encourage any conversation on that subject.

“A sharing. Not a taking,” he emphasised.

Miranda remained stubbornly silent, her gaze trained out the side window, but she felt the hot, penetrating blast of his eyes on her and couldn’t stop her muscles from tensing against it.

“I’m not interested in the games men and women play in the world you come from,” he continued with a relentless beat that seemed to drum on her mind and heart. “I don’t make promises I can’t or won’t keep. I’ll say how it is for me. I want you, yes.”

She didn’t actually need that blunt honesty, having no doubts herself on mat score.

“And you want me, Miranda.”

That stung her into whipping her head around. “Oh, no, I don’t!” she shot at him.

His eyes instantly and sharply derided her contention. “Deny it as much as you like, for whatever reasons you have, but it’s not going to go away.”

“Is that how you argued your last mistress into bed with you?”

“Mistress?”

His incredulity and the subsequent shake of his head left Miranda furious with herself at having let those words slip. She snapped her gaze back to the road, willing him not to pick up on them, to simply let
the
whole matter drop.

No such luck!

“I don’t know where you’re coming from, Miranda,” he said tersely, “but I am
not
married, and if I had a wife, I certainly wouldn’t be seeking a mistress.”

Mistress...lover...what was the difference when the arrangement was for sex on tap?

“The relationships I’ve had with women were all mutually desired and not one of them was an adulterous affair,” he went on, his voice gathering an acid bite. “I happen to respect the commitment of marriage. A pity you don’t.”

“I beg your pardon!” Miranda hurled at him in bitter resentment of his judgement of her.

“So what happened?” he threw back at her. “The guy wouldn’t leave his wife for you? Is that why you took the job at King’s Eden, burning your boats?”

It was so close to the truth, a wave of humiliating heat scorched up Miranda’s neck.

Nathan didn’t miss it. He turned on more heat. “Or maybe you threw down the gauntlet and you’re hoping he’ll follow you up here. Which explains the no-go with me.”

“This is none of your business!” she seethed.

“Well, I take exception to being coupled with a sleaze-bag who plays a game of deceit with the women in his life.”

“Then please accept my apology.” She managed to get frost into her voice even though her face was still flaming.

“And it most certainly is Tommy’s business if you’re counting on breaking the two-year contract, should your lover toe your line.”

“I have no intention of breaking it,” she grated out. “And I do not appreciate all this supposition on your part.”

“You opened the door, Miranda.”

“And I’d take it kindly if you’d respect my choice to close it.”

Blue eyes clashed with green in an electric exchange that sizzled the air between them. Miranda’s heart thumped erratically. She could hear it in her ears, feel the strong throb of it in her temples. Goose-bumps rose on her skin.

“It’s not a choice I can respect, but so be it,” he said tersely, and broke the connection with her.

The ensuing silence was incredibly oppressive. Miranda felt totally drained of energy and miserable over the impression she’d left him with by not correcting his assumptions. Not that he had any right to make them!

Okay, she shouldn’t have used the word,
mistress,
but it had been what Bobby had wanted of her, not what she had been. As for Nathan King, maybe she’d let her experience with Bobby Hewson colour her reading of his last relationship. On the other hand, he wasn’t promising anything other than sex, which was all a mistress got from a man.

If there was one thing Miranda had learnt, it was she wanted to be valued for more than a roll in the hay. A roll with Nathan King might be...an interesting experience. Even special, she grudgingly conceded. But that wasn’t enough for her. Especially not after Bobby Hewson. She wanted the kind of sharing that encompassed everything, the kind that led to marriage because no one else could fulfil that very special equation of wanting to be with each other. Exclusively! Which was hardly a likely prospect with Nathan King of the legendary King family.

Miranda was still brooding over this when the Land Cruiser came to a halt in an open camping area on the outskirts of the Bungle Bungle Range. A four-wheel-drive wagon was parked close to four tents but they all seemed abandoned, no one in view anywhere.

“We hike in from here,” Nathan stated. “The camping amenities block is kept clean. If you want to use it before we set out...”

“Yes, I will. Thank you.”

She didn’t wait for him to open her door. As she strode away from the Land Cruiser, she thought he probably hadn’t intended to extend that courtesy to her anyway. A woman who didn’t care about committing adultery didn’t deserve his respect. Except she did care, and she hated having him think that of her.

No use telling herself it didn’t matter, so long as it kept him away from her. It was a point of pride. And reputation. Though it went deeper than that, right down to her sense of self-worth.

She was not like her mother.

She was never going to be like her mother.

She needed to live her life on her own terms and somehow she had to make Nathan King understand that. And respect it.