he put the phone down, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. It struck him Miss De Campo’s effect on him had been dangerously seductive. Either that or it was the effects of a glancing blow to the head in the scrub.
CHAPTER TWO
JUST over a week later Angelica stepped onto the tarmac of an Outback airport terminal into a shimmering landscape of heat. Waves of it bounded up from the ground at her. For an instant it almost took her breath away, like a sudden blast from an oven, until she decided to confront it head-on, moving her long legs purposefully, eyes straight ahead, not drawing in all the admiring glances, so she was among the first to reach the air-conditioned cool of the terminal building. There she snapped her dark mane of hair back from her heat-pricked forehead. She thought of the challenging weeks ahead of her; the amount of work she had to do even with help.
Isobel had cautioned her about the heat but she didn’t quite understand until it hit her. She was thankful for her olive skin and Mediterranean heritage, otherwise she thought her skin might have melted. Not that she wasn’t used to heat, living in Brisbane. But there it was the languid golden heat of the tropics, with high humidity. This heat was different. It felt more like a dry bake. Still, it couldn’t diminish her excitement about the project.
She was exuberant about the whole thing. She couldn’t wait to get to Coori Downs, which she’d heard was remarkable. Isobel had been meaning to show her a magazine which featured quite a spread on the historic homestead but Malcolm’s hospitalisation had naturally preoccupied her mind. Pity! There was supposed to be a great shot of the current cattle baron, a man, from all accounts, to turn heads. Promising!
The scope of the functions would establish what she could do, enhancing her career, but she had to say as well as the Outback venue, she’d been mightily attracted by the prospect of meeting Isobel’s cousin, Jake. He’d sounded so sexy over the phone, the memory still made her knees go weak. His father, according to Isobel, had been a regular fire-eater, but the son sounded very easy in his power, as though it fitted him like a great pair of jeans. The nicest, most considerate thing was, he was actually flying in from his desert stronghold to pick her up. She had been expecting to catch a charter flight but it was Jake who suggested he collect her. She loved people who did favours.
In the rest room she freshened up, piling her extravagant mass of hair into a knot of sorts at the back. She had no idea how long it would stay there. Her hair had a mind of its own. For the trip she’d kept her outfit simple. A white sleeveless top in a softly clingy fabric, teamed with her favourite denim mini. It showed yards of leg but she wore it unselfconsciously.
She had learned to take comfort in her jaunty thoroughbred legs even if their length did turn her into a very tall woman. She stood six feet in high heels and she wasn’t one for flatties. Her height had made her a basketball star in high school. Even so she never slumped—for that she had to thank her mother who was also tall—and she held her head high even though there were lots of guys who had to look up to her. The man to sweep her off her feet, and she just knew he was out there, would have to be a latter day John Wayne. Despite that, she’d been hotly pursued for years. What did they call her in the columns? The luscious Angelica De Campo. Not that she carried an ounce of fat but she had inherited an eye-catching bust from the Italian side of the family.
Men saw her as a challenge. She remembered one in particular. A married man, a powerful, destructive, merchant banker—she had helped out catering a party for his wife—who simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. As he saw it, he could have anyone with his fat wallet. In the end, exercising her discretion—God knows what boundaries her father would have crossed for his “little” girl—she told her brother, Bruno, who was six-six. Bruno managed to convince the banker to stay away or the outlook would be lousy. She hadn’t asked Bruno to explain his methods. Whatever they were, they’d worked. Probably the banker thought Bruno was a paid-up member of the Mafia. Still the experience had left a nasty taste in the mouth.
Certain men could be quite frightening when they developed a fixation on a woman. Mr. Merchant Banker had been one of them, but that was a few years back. She did occasionally agonise over it, if only because she and the banker had been caught out getting physical in a near frenzy of a wrestle, she, even at her superior height fighting hard for her honour. She wished she’d seen that guy again. The one who’d looked at her so contemptuously from his extraordinary lion’s eyes. She’d soon put him straight. Only she never laid eyes on him again. Not once during the intervening years and she had to admit she’d never grown tired of looking.
Embarrassments and scandals. She was very careful these days men being what they were. It seemed they only had to look at a well-endowed woman. And she came from a decent, normal, well-adjusted family.
Jake saw her before she saw him. She was staring out the plate-glass window, watching a private jet fly in. Even if the excited female attendant hadn’t pointed her out—apparently Miss De Campo had made any number of appearances on television—he’d have picked her. Despite the extreme simplicity of her dress—her skirt seemed to end at her armpits—he couldn’t fail to recognise the quality people generally called style. It oozed out of her and he was only looking at her side-on. She looked incredibly sexy in that unique way European women had, she seemed innocently seductive without being sultry, with her lashings of dark, mahogany hair with a decided curl. She had to have dark Italian eyes. She couldn’t have looked better had he dreamed her up. He didn’t even mind her height, which would have her towering over Stacy and Gillian. She wouldn’t tower over him. This was a woman he could meet face-to-face.
“Miss De Campo?”
She reacted instantaneously, as if he had pushed a button, swinging around, a lovely buoyant smile on her face, sparkle of beautiful teeth; a smile that ludicrously…froze.
They stared at one another transfixed. Horror, fascination, disbelief flitted across both their faces. To put it mildly, both were shocked into a near paralysis as they began to track one another down. That party! One of those horribly mortifying incidents that reverberate forever.
She was the last woman in the world he expected. Jake was suddenly, violently, fathoms deep into the past. He felt anger and disappointment along with the most profound scarcely rational disillusionment. After all, she hadn’t arrived as his mail-order bride. But over the phone she had intrigued him to the extent he had gone about his work all week with a warm secret feeling lurking in his heart; the idea she just could be the woman to fulfil his dreams. He still believed in the idea. Now all his daydreams had been swept away. Miss Angelica De Campo had a very bad habit. She played erotic games that got out of control. Memory clicked in, all the more mysterious because such picture of her he had, had only lasted a few moments. Afterwards, defiantly he had blocked her out, but other images of her were locked in his subconscious.
This was another one of those woman who drew men like bees. Women like Michelle who these days scarcely seemed to count. Even Michelle had never looked like this! Such women often gave exquisite joy before they delivered the body blows. His big problem was Miss De Campo, like Michelle, didn’t adhere to his idea of decent principles. Miss De Campo was a home wrecker. A woman who got an emotional fix out of seducing married men.
It had to be almost three years since he’d attended that party thrown by Trevor and Carly Huntley. He’d had little to do with Huntley, barely making a connection. Trevor Huntley was a wealthy merchant banker, but Carly was a relative. He was in town on business. Carly had run into him coming out of his hotel, expressed her delight and surprise at seeing him, and invited him to their party that night. He’d had nothing else to do, so he’d gone along, waiting until the party was well under way before he made an appearance.
The Huntleys lived in style in a mansion on the river. Theirs was an over-the-top splendour he didn’t envy. Although he’d met
