apart, at home in the bush, although she imagined he’d look equally good wearing black tie in a ballroom. Longish hair the color of antique brass, turned up slightly at the collar, gave him a bad-boy aura. His warm hazel eyes were deep-set and creases radiating from them suggested he spent a lot of time staring across vast distances. Right now, his gaze was narrowed on Nigel, and what she saw in his expression wasn’t approval.
She hoped Nigel’s adrenaline-charged state wouldn’t drive him to challenge Blake physically. No amount of loyalty to Nigel could convince her he was a match for Blake in a fight.
Nigel balled his hands into fists. “When the truth about this experience comes out, we’ll see who your readers think is stupid, won’t we, Jo?”
Blake fixed her with a glare that could have melted stone. She was proud of not quailing beneath his scrutiny, but it took some effort. “We were warned not to get water from the same place every day,” she said with scrupulous fairness.
A glimmer of something like surprise flashed in Blake’s hazel gaze. She didn’t like the answering shiver that shook her.
“Crocs are cunning creatures. They wait and watch until they judge they can grab an easy meal,” Blake said in a tone that suggested that this explanation was part of a much-repeated lecture. “You might get away with it the first or second time, but try it a third and you’re history.”
He illustrated the point by extending his arms and crashing his hands together like the jaws of a crocodile, and she saw Nigel flinch.
Instinctively, she moved closer to offer the comfort of her nearness, but he remained coldly aloof. His pride was stung, she thought in amazement. Not only by his brush with death, but by the fact that Blake was right and he was wrong.
“Are you okay?” she asked, pitching her voice low.
Wrong question, she saw as Nigel’s jaw hardened. “I’m fine for someone who was almost eaten.”
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Blake suggested. “One of our people can drive you to Halls Creek.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me that the sight of a dead crocodile won’t fix. If you can’t handle it, I’ll do something about it myself.”
Nigel turned toward the tent but in a move so fast she barely registered it, Blake put himself between Nigel and the equipment. “There are penalties for killing protected species out here.”
Halted in his tracks, Nigel curled his lip into a sneer. “Oh, yeah. Your brother is a ranger, isn’t he? Between you, you’ve got the Kimberley sewn up. If one Logan doesn’t get me, the other will. Oh, I forgot. You’re not Logans, either of you. You’re a bunch of mongrels Des Logan took in and tried to civilize, without much success evidently.”
Blake didn’t move. “You’re going the right way to get yourself thrown off this land, Wylie.”
“He doesn’t mean it. It’s the shock of the attack.”
Both men turned hard glares on her, but Jo wasn’t about to back down. This was her show, whether Nigel accepted it or not. She needed this assignment. From her research into Des Logan’s situation, he suffered from a heart complaint and was having trouble keeping Diamond Downs going. The discovery of the ancient rock art on the land had started to bring in tourist dollars, but he also needed the substantial fee her magazine was paying to use the site.
Without quite knowing how she knew, she saw the knowledge reflected in Blake’s gaze. He shifted his attention to her. The ferocity of it sent shafts of heat through her, surprisingly difficult to ignore. “I’ll overlook the personal insults this time.” His tone made it clear there would be no second chance. “I still think this is a damn fool stunt. If you were really surviving, you wouldn’t have so many frills. You have no business coming to the outback for the titillation of a few magazine readers.”
She anchored her palms on her hips. “A moment ago, you mentioned respect. Yet you’re not willing to accord us the same privilege even though those magazine readers you dismiss so readily number in the thousands. And my editor is paying your foster father a lot of money for us to be here, correct?”
“Correct.”
She ignored the grudging tone. It was enough that he accepted her right to be here. “Our inexperience in the outback is the whole point of the exercise—to see how well we cope, also correct?”
He nodded tautly. “True enough.”
“Then I don’t see a problem. This isn’t your land. You might have grown up here, but you live at your crocodile farm, don’t you?”
“While we’re playing twenty questions, I have one for you.”
He was entitled. “Go ahead.”
“Why the hell is this so important to you? Surely there are other subjects you can write about without risking your neck?”
Not subjects her editor was passionate about, she thought. She still wasn’t sure why Karen had been so determined to send her on this assignment. Jo knew why she herself wanted to be here, but Blake didn’t need to know. “I have my reasons,” she said evenly.
Blake jerked his head toward Nigel, standing at Jo’s shoulder, fuming but, for the moment, having the sense to keep quiet. “And your friend here?”
“I’m here because I refused to let her carry out this crazy assignment alone,” he supplied.
So much for keeping quiet. “Our motivations are none of Blake’s business,” she demurred, not wanting to argue with Nigel in front of the crocodile man. “Part of the deal is for Blake to teach us how to survive in the outback, not to interfere.”
The reminder didn’t sit well with Blake, she saw, as his gaze darkened. He must feel strongly loyal to his foster father to have agreed to be part of a scheme he plainly opposed. “There’s not much point in me giving you advice unless you have enough sense to take it.”
The gibe was clearly aimed at Nigel and she felt him bristle at her side. “You can stop worrying, Stirton. I’ve had it up to here with this insane project. When you turned up, I was packing to leave.”
“It didn’t look like that to me.”
Blake’s reminder that Nigel had been kissing her when he’d arrived brought heat surging into her cheeks. “Again, none of your business,” she insisted. “Nigel, I know the attack was a shock, but you can’t mean to throw in the towel? It’s only been three days.” Two, if she didn’t count the orientation day spent with Blake.
“Three days when I’ve been bitten to death by mosquitoes, sunburned gathering materials to build a stupid shelter when there’s a perfectly good tent standing there and had my life threatened by a man-eater that Stirton thinks has more right to live than I do.”
Blake’s mouth thinned. “The crocodile was only defending its territory.”
Was something similar going on between him and Nigel? “Why did you recommend we set up camp here if you knew it was dangerous?” she asked.
“I didn’t know,” he said surprising her. “We’ve had no problems with crocodiles in this area for years. I don’t know why it happened now.”
