lifted her hands slightly and let them fall in a gesture of acceptance. ‘I promised,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And here I am.’
Gray got to his feet and walked over to lean on the verandah rail, looking out. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you,’ he said at last, ‘but can you prove that Alice is Jack’s daughter?’
‘Why would I make it up?’ she asked, bemused.
He turned to face her, folding his arms and leaning back against the rail. ‘Money?’ he suggested with a cynical look.
‘What money? From all Pippa ever told me, you don’t exactly live in the lap of luxury at Bushman’s Creek!’
‘We don’t, but between us Jack and I own a fair chunk of land. As Jack’s daughter, Alice would have a claim on that.’
Clare could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘I’m not interested in your land!’ she said furiously, eyes blazing. ‘What do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the whole point,’ he said with infuriating calm. ‘Until last night I’d never heard of you, or your sister, and now you expect me to believe that my brother is father to a child he knows nothing about. How do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘The photograph—’ she began, but he interrupted her.
‘A photograph isn’t proof of paternity.’
‘If Jack wants to have DNA tests, he can,’ said Clare, ‘but I think that once he looks at Alice, he’ll know that she’s his daughter. You only have to look at the photo to see what he and Pippa had together, and I don’t believe that Pippa would have loved anyone who could turn his back on that completely.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gray, clearly unconvinced, ‘but that’s a decision only Jack can make. You can’t expect me to accept responsibility for a baby on his behalf.’
‘I understand that.’ Clare was feeling very tired, but she forced herself to her feet and went to lean next to him at the verandah rail. ‘All I want is for you to contact Jack and ask him to come home as soon as he can. That’s not too much to ask, is it?’
He looked from her to the baby, kicking her feet against the floor and squealing at the excitement of a new sensation. ‘No,’ he conceded, ‘but it may take some time to track him down. He didn’t have a fixed itinerary, so I’ll have to ring round a few contacts and hope that he turns up and gets the message sooner rather than later.’
Gray’s gaze came back to rest on Clare. The straight dark hair that swung below her jaw was pushed wearily behind her ears, and there were shadows beneath the great silvery eyes. She looked bruised and exhausted, and when she looked up at him it was clear that only the stubborn strength of her will was keeping her going.
‘I think it would be better if you went back to England and waited for Jack there,’ he said gruffly.
Clare straightened from the rail. ‘I’m not going to do that,’ she told him quite simply. ‘Alice and I only arrived yesterday, and even if I could face turning round and getting back on that plane for another twenty-three hours, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t afford to bring Alice back to Australia again when Jack finally turns up, and if he does decide to accept responsibility for her, I’d want to be able to stay with her for a while until she settles.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Can’t we come back to Bushman’s Creek with you?’
There was a pause. Gray looked down into pleading eyes the colour of pale smoke and ringed with black, as if someone had taken a dark pen to outline each iris, and turned almost abruptly away.
‘Bushman’s Creek isn’t a suitable place for you or the baby,’ he said brusquely.
‘Are you trying to tell me that there are no women or children in the outback?’
‘I’m trying to tell you that conditions on the station are very different to what you’re used to,’ said Gray with an edge to his voice. ‘It takes nearly forty minutes to fly there from here, and it’s over two hours by road. In the Wet, the only way you can get in and out is by plane. You’d be a very long way from shops and doctors and all the other things you probably take for granted, and, quite frankly, I haven’t the time to look after you at the moment. This is one of the busiest times of the year.
‘I’ve got fifteen thousand head of cattle out there,’ he went on, nodding his head at the distant horizon. ‘They’ve all got to be mustered in so that we can deal with them and draft out the sale cattle. The last cook-cum-housekeeper left several weeks ago, and nobody’s done any cleaning since. We’re taking it in turns to cook, and the kindest way to describe meals at the moment is “basic”.’
He shook his head. ‘I think you’d find the conditions too uncomfortable,’ he told Clare bluntly. ‘If you don’t want to go home, you’d be better off taking Alice to one of the resorts on the coast and waiting there until Jack gets back.’
‘I don’t think I can afford to do that, either.’ Clare flushed, humiliated at having to admit how precarious her financial situation was. ‘I’ve got a good job at home, but Pippa had never managed to save any money, and babies are expensive little things. And then when Pippa was ill, and I had to take time off to look after her and Alice, I used up the savings I had. I bought our ticket out here on credit as it was.’ She bit her lip. ‘I just don’t see how I could manage staying in a hotel or renting a house without knowing when Jack was going to get your message.
‘Besides,’ she went on bravely, ‘it sounds as if I could be useful to you.’
Gray’s unsettling brown gaze travelled from her earrings down over the stylishly simple dress to her strappy sandals. ‘Useful?’ he echoed, lifting one brow in a way that brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘In what way?’
His expression didn’t change, but she knew that he was amused. It was something to do with the deepening of a dent at the corner of his mouth, a creasing at the edges of his eyes, the faintest of glimmers in the unfathomable eyes. If he thought she was funny, she thought illogically, he might at least have the decency to smile properly!
She put up her chin. ‘I could be your housekeeper,’ she said with a shade of defiance. ‘I’m perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning.’
In response, Gray reached out and took hold of her hands. Turning them over, he ran his thumbs consideringly over her palms. ‘It doesn’t look as if you do very much rough work.’
His touch was quite impersonal, but Clare was disconcerted to feel her skin tingling. His hands were strong, cool and callused and very brown against the paleness of her English skin. It was as if his fingers were charged with electricity, sending tiny shocks shivering all the way up her arm, and she snatched her hands away, furious to find herself blushing.
‘Herding a few cows around is easy compared to looking after a baby for twenty-four hours a day,’ she snapped, to cover her confusion. ‘I’m used to getting my hands dirty.’
‘You’re not used to the heat and the dust and the flies and the boredom,’ Gray pointed out, apparently unperturbed by the way she had pulled her hands out of his. ‘I’m not sure you realise how tough things can be out there.’
Not
