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'Why does he have to be up to anything?' She managed to speak normally but her voice trembled with the effort.

'Because I know him. This romance of yours is too sudden to be true. He's up to his old trick of coming
between me and anything I want, but he isn't getting away with it this time.'

'Don't I have something to say in this?' she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

He traced a finger along her jawline and she flinched in spite of herself. At her involuntary gesture, his frown deepened. 'I know you want me, Keri. Your protests are for Ben's benefit, but once I'm master of Casuarina you won't have to fear him. I'll be able to protect you. It'll be good, you'll see.'

His colossal conceit and his total misunderstanding of the situation almost robbed her of the power of speech. She found her voice with an effort. 'You're wrong. I'm not scared of Ben. I'm going to marry him.'

'You heard Keri. Now maybe you'll take no for an answer.'

They both jumped, Keri most of all. When she spoke, it was with no idea that Ben was within earshot, although he probably thought her declaration was as much for him as for Rick. 'Haven't you got work to do?' he asked Rick.

'If I hadn't, you'd think of something,' Rick shot back. But he sauntered away, head down, his boots scuffing patterns in the dust as if he was mentally kicking Ben all the way back to the homestead.

Relief made Keri sag against the fence. 'I'm glad you arrived when you did.'

His brows met in a frown of disapproval. 'I thought you told me you would keep away from Rick until the wedding.'

'Too bad you didn't tell him the same thing,' she rejoined.

'I will, tonight at dinner,' he vowed. 'In the meantime, I've brought you this.'

She took the small box he held out to her and opened it. Inside was the most stunning ring she had ever seen. A Cabochon emerald in the same deep green as the waters of Crocodile Creek glowed in a setting of diamonds and yellow gold. Overwhelmed, she stared at it.

'Go ahead. Put it on.'

'I couldn't. It's far too valuable.'

His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. 'I wouldn't have thought you'd consider its value a problem. It's an heirloom, passed on to me by my grandmother.'

The veiled insult barely registered, or perhaps she was growing accustomed to hearing them from him. 'She obviously intended you to give this to your wife,' she demurred.

'Which is precisely why I'm giving it to you.'

It would add weight to their supposed engagement, but she didn't want to compound the lie by wearing it. She held the box out to him. 'Buy me something cheap. It will do the same job.'

His eyes held a dangerous glint. 'It would be a dead giveaway—unless you want Rick to find out. Is that it?'

Her hair haloed around her head as she shook it decisively. 'Of course I don't.'

With a satisfied smile, he closed the trap. 'Then wear the ring. '

When she made no move to comply, he took the jewel box from her stiff fingers, opened it and removed the ring. With his eyes fixed on her face, he lifted her hand and slid the ring on to her engagement finger.
'There, now we're officially engaged.'

A lump rose in her throat and threatened to choke her. Such a beautiful ring was meant to seal a real engagement, not a sham like theirs. So that he wouldn't see her distress, she turned away and held her hand up to the light while she pretended to admire the ring. 'It's lovely. Thank you.'

'And you needn't worry about giving it back,' he said gruffly. 'It's yours to keep.'

Her eyes flew wide. 'I wouldn't dream of keeping it.'

'Am I so repulsive to you?'

In truth, it was the opposite which made her determined to return the ring. It would make a shambles of her intention to keep him at arm's length if she had such a tangible reminder of him after they parted. 'I wasn't thinking about you,' she denied. 'I was worried about the value of the ring.'

He arched an eyebrow. 'You surprise me. I told you I didn't expect you to co-operate for nothing. Consider the ring your payment.'

'For doing what I didn't want to do in the first place?' she asked, hurt by his words but determined not to let him see how much.

'If you like.' Without warning, the cynical mask dropped away to reveal such unhappiness that she was shaken. 'I know it must be difficult for you to stay here and see Rick marry someone else, but I'm grateful that you agreed to do it for Robyn's sake. Now I don't know if I did the right thing by suggesting it.'

She had never seen Ben like this before, vulnerable and willing to admit that he could be
wrong. He was, but not in the way he thought.

The silence grew but Ben made no move to leave. He seemed to have something else on his mind. She waited for him to speak. After a while, he did. 'Let's go for a drive before dinner. I have something to show you.'

She understood his reasoning. To the rest of the family, it would look odd if they didn't spend some time together. It wasn't because he wanted to be alone with her. 'All right,' she said, her depression projecting into her voice.

'It was an invitation, not an order,' he said, sounding irritated.

'If it wasn't, I wouldn't have accepted,' she assured him. On an impulse, she touched his arm then let her hand drop as she recognised the danger in such intimacies. 'Can't we try to be civil to each other, for Robyn's sake if not for our own?'

'For Robyn's sake,' he echoed, but she couldn't tell from his tone what he thought of the idea.

They drove in silence for several miles across the unending plains, their surfaces corrugated after the long dry season. Most of the rivers had dwindled to a series of billabongs with dry river bed in between. They crossed several of these, lurching down one side and up the other at angles which made her feel as if they could tumble backwards at any moment. Ben was a skilful driver, however, and was in full control of the powerful vehicle. 'Where are we going?' she asked after their third creek crossing.

'To see a pet project of mine,' he informed her. He gave her no more clues. Her curiosity was piqued as they drove into a settlement on the banks
of a creek which she recognised as part of Crocodile Creek.

She made her own assessment of the pens, buildings and fenced-off stretch of riverbank. 'You're farming crocodiles.'

He nodded. 'I've had a permit for several years, but this is the first year I've been able to put so much time into making it work.'

She didn't try to mask her pleasure. 'Crocodile- farming has been a hobby-horse of mine since . . .' She let her voice tail off. 'I'm forgetting, you've been keeping tabs on me in Darwin.'

'Enough to know you've written several articles for Australian Natural History magazine on how managed farming of crocs can help the conservation cause. One of your pieces gave me the idea to try it here.'

She was inordinately pleased. She had long been an advocate of egg-ranching and had helped to collect the eggs from wild nests so that they could be incubated under ideal conditions and the young raised on farms under special licence. The need to monitor the areas from which the eggs were taken was the reason for her survey of Crocodile Creek but she hadn't guessed that Ben was the holder of the licence, nor that he shared her enthusiasm for the idea. 'Show me everything,' she insisted.

Their differences might not have existed as he took her on a tour of the project. Large sheds accommodated the generators needed to run the incubators where the eggs were hatched. 'We have two spares for back-up in case the main one fails,' he explained.

'What's your survival rate?' she asked with brisk professionalism.

'Eighty per cent of hatchlings,' he informed her with evident pride. 'We had some trouble getting the young crocodiles to start feeding, but now they're supplied with warm, clean water, heat lamps around each pen, and a diet of fish, beef, chicken and vitamins.'

They reached a fenced-off stretch of dark water flecked with leaves and floating twigs. Patches of reeds rimmed the man-made billabong. 'What's in here?' she queried.

'My pride and joy.' He opened a metal locker alongside the pen and lifted out a pair of fat, very dead mullet which smelled ripe in the oven-like heat. At the sound of the locker opening, a prehistoric head lifted out of the reeds. It was shaped like an elongated triangle with yellowed teeth each as long as a man's finger, overhanging the jaw. As the great head lifted, its dark, noduled body emerged from the water.

Ben had attached the fish to a long pole and he held it out over the pen. With a lightning-fast movement, the cavernous jaws closed over the fish and the crocodile sank from sight beneath the water.

The leafy pool was soon tranquil again and Keri released the breath she had been holding. 'He must be at least fifteen feet long.'.

'Sixteen and female,' Ben supplied. 'I'm going to find a mate for her and raise my own eggs right here.'

'Have you been in touch with the Commission? We might be able to help you locate a mate for her.'

He inclined his head. 'The Conservation Commission has offered to help, but I'd rather do things my way.'

Which explained why she hadn't heard any talk about his project at headquarters. 'Still the independent type,' she breathed softly.

'Always,' he confirmed. 'I don't believe in calling on the government for everything.'

'I hope you'll let me help at least,' she offered, adding, 'in a private capacity if not an official one.'

He looked pleased. 'I was hoping you'd offer. You're the only person I know whose enthusiasm for crocodiles is a match for mine.'

His comment was absurdly warming. To cover her reaction, she said, 'What about Rick? Isn't this his land?'

'It will be. The farm straddles both properties but he hasn't shown any interest so far. Luckily he has plenty of acreage left for whatever he decides to farm.'

'What makes you so sure he'll take to any kind of farming?'

His mouth tightened. 'I'm not. But the choice wasn't mine to make.'

Her surprise was ill-disguised. 'I thought the land was left entirely to you.'

A shadow darkened his even features. 'Remember, I was with Dad when he died. He felt badly about changing his will in my favour but by then it was too late. He begged me to sign Casuarina over to Rick when he married. I'm sure he believed Rick would have settled down by then.' His gaze was filled with irony. 'You didn't know that when you gave Rick, up, did
you?'

'I suppose it's no use saying it wouldn't have made any difference to me?'

He shook his head. 'None at all.'

It was late by the time they headed home and the sun had begun to paint the mountains with red and blue haze. As the light faded outside, the atmosphere in the vehicle became more intimate. She felt emboldened to ask, 'Ben, why didn't you ever marry?'

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. 'I might have done once, but it didn't work out.'

'What happened?' she asked, her voice soft.

His expression became distant and he spoke as if to himself. 'She let me down badly, I didn't feel like trying again after that experience.'

She cast her mind back to the parade of young women who used to visit Kinga Downs when Jake was still alive. There was Persia, of course, and the secretary from Red River and a young radio operator from Katherine. A few starry-eyed jillaroos had set their caps at the Champion brothers, but Keri couldn't remember Ben showing an interest in any of them. She was puzzled. Maybe the woman he referred to had appeared on the scene after Keri left.

'What about you?' he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

'I thought you said you'd been following my exploits in the newspapers/ she challenged him.

Immediately she was conscious of a sharp drop in temperature inside the vehicle. 'What about Theo Strathopoulos?' he asked.

'What about Theo?' she asked, trying to recapture the light mood.

But Ben was angry again for some reason. 'I suppose you're going to tell me you were just good friends?' he quoted.

'It's exactly what we were,' she confirmed. 'I met him by chance, when I was called to remove a venomous snake from his house, and we got on well from the first. Because he's a millionaire, the papers made a big deal out of it, but he was never more than a friend.'

'A rich, middle-aged one,' Ben commented, his tone scathing.

'So what,' she snapped. 'I know what you think of me, but Theo's money had nothing to do with our friendship.'

They drove on in moody silence during which she could almost hear him condemning her in his mind.

Then, without warning, he brought the car to a halt and she saw that they had reached the mile-long dam which supplied the homestead with its water. 'Feel like a swim?' he suggested.

A surge of anxiety rippled through her. She couldn't go swimming with him. 'I didn't bring my swimsuit with me,' she demurred.

'So what? You swam in your underwear often enough when you lived here before.'

But that was before, when she had nothing to hide from him. 'No, I don't want to,' she said firmly.

There was another long silence which grew steadily colder. 'Would you swim with Rick if he invited you to?'

'Of course not.'

'But you were willing to spend time with him until
I intervened.'

For a moment, it sounded almost as if he was jealous of Rick, which was crazy, surely? 'If you must know, I loathe Rick,' she confessed. 'So you see, I don't need a fake engagement to keep my distance from him.'

His mouth tightened into a grim line. 'Evidently he feels differently.'

She wrapped her arms around her body, feeling cold in spite of the heat still stored inside the car. 'I can't help what he does. I've told you how I feel. I can't make you believe me.'

His breath escaped in an explosive sigh. 'Damn it, I wish I could.'

Her head came up and she fixed him with a defiant look. 'Didn't you once tell me that a Champion can do anything he wants?'

'ONLY
in Australia would you think nothing of travelling hundreds of miles to buy a dress,' Keri mused, keeping her eyes on the corrugated road ahead.