he was obviously a world away from the difficult teenager she’d once known.
For one thing, he was all man. Taller, fuller in body and so broad-shouldered she’d had to look twice to assure herself he really was Ryan Smith. His red-gold hair and hair-trigger temper had convinced her. There couldn’t be two men with that blend of startling good looks and fiery temperament in the Kimberley.
Since their reunion three years before, she’d persuaded him to return to Diamond Downs a number of times, although he’d never stayed as long as she’d hoped he would. She looked forward to his visits, but no more than those of her other foster brothers, she assured herself. She blamed the fact that Ryan’s arrival made her heart beat faster on his dynamic personality and raw masculinity, enough to turn any woman on.
Judy wasn’t immune to male appeal. She relished her physicality, whether piloting her plane, mustering cattle on horseback or enjoying a relationship to the full, provided a man accepted that she could want him without needing him. She couldn’t imagine Ryan playing by this rule. He was the type to want more than she was prepared to give, so she kept a safe emotional distance.
Ryan and her father got along tolerably well these days in spite of the undercurrent simmering between them. After all this time, Judy wouldn’t allow that it had anything to do with her. More likely, the mistrust mirrored two bulls in the same paddock. They were similar in temperament, neither giving an inch.
Pleasing Ryan with feminine fripperies should be the last thing on her mind. To prove it, she cast the dress a withering look and flounced out of the homestead. Passing the bunkhouse and cottages occupied by the dwindling number of staff still on the station payroll, she found him in the hard-baked earth area used for car parking.
The only sign of him was a pair of jeans-clad legs protruding from under the ancient car he’d jacked up and supported on blocks. Long, long legs betrayed his height as over six feet. His scuffed R. M. Williams boots were a size eleven at least, and she felt a blush starting as she remembered the supposed connection between men and large feet.
Automatically she frowned at the sight of tools scattered over the ground. As a bush pilot, she hated to see good tools mistreated. Evidently Ryan’s drifter ways extended to the care of his equipment.
She hunkered down in time to see him lower the transmission pan in both hands and tilt it to spill the fluid into a drain tray beside him. “Need a hand?”
Without looking he said, “You can pass me the awl so I can get this grommet out.”
Surveying the tangle of tools around her, she said, “What patch of dirt do you suggest I look in?”
He angled his head to stare at her and she suppressed a shiver. Fourteen years on, his eyes still had the power to mesmerize. They were so dark and deep-set that looking into them was like looking into a bottomless pool. The sun was low and shone under the car, turning his hair to flame. The devil would look like this if she caught him working on a car, she thought.
“By your left foot,” he said shortly.
She blinked to banish the vision. Devil, indeed. He was nothing but a pain in the—awl. He didn’t care for anyone or anything but himself. Why he was bothering to talk about Des’s problems with her, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if there were an inheritance at stake.
Without telling the rest of the family, her father had mortgaged Diamond Downs to a neighbor, Clive Horvath, who’d been Des’s best friend for most of their lives. Clive had intended to forgive the debt but Des had insisted on proper documentation, never suspecting that Clive would be thrown from a horse and killed less than a year after they shook hands on the deal. Now his son Max, owned the neighboring property and had made it clear he intended to collect on the mortgage.
It would be bad enough if Max only wanted the money, but he had his sights set on a diamond mine Judy’s great-grandfather was said to have found on Logan land. Jack Logan had disappeared before revealing the exact location of his find to anyone except the elders of the local indigenous people. Their descendants refused to talk about it, believing Jack’s spirit haunted the site.
At considerable risk to themselves, her foster brothers, Tom and Blake, had recently narrowed down the location to an area of Cotton Tree Gorge. But both men had fiancées now, and lives they couldn’t neglect indefinitely. So it was up to her and Ryan to finish the job before their neighbor did it for them. Some sixth sense told her they were close to finding the mine. All she had to do was persuade Ryan to help her before either Max Horvath’s own financial woes spelled the end of Diamond Downs or the fast-approaching wet season made the search impossible.
Spotting the tool he needed, she handed it to him. “I’ve never seen a car held together by rust before.”
“It goes, that’s all I ask.”
“Dad won’t mind if you use one of the station cars while you’re here.”
“I’d mind.”
“You would.” Not sure he’d heard the sotto voce comment, she watched him work the point of the tool up inside the filter neck, pushing it against the outside of the grommet. “Want a hammer to drive that in?”
“I’ll manage, thanks.”
At least he’d said thanks. But did such a puny gesture merit the surge of pleasure rippling through her? This would have to stop. Ryan had barely been at Diamond Downs for two days and already she could hardly think straight around him.
She was a bush pilot, for pity’s sake. She flew solo around the outback in a single-engine plane she largely maintained herself. Turning to jelly because of the way a man looked at her was for females in frilly clothes who spent hours at the hairdresser primping to impress.
She could write off the blond highlights as an aberration. But what about the slinky dress? Thank goodness she’d decided against wearing it tonight on their nondate.
Ryan walked his feet out from under the car and uncoiled disturbingly close to her. For a giddy moment, she thought he meant to touch her face till she saw the oily washer clutched in his fingers. “If you want to help, how about cleaning this?” he asked.
With an inward sigh, she accepted the magnet from the transmission pan and hunted among the tools for a scraper to clean it with. She welcomed the excuse to avoid his gaze, afraid he’d see into her soul.
What an idiot, she thought as her fingers closed around a putty knife. By the time she straightened, Ryan was sluicing the drain pan clean, careful not to spill any of the residue onto the ground. Could his preference for an old car be on environmental grounds? she wondered.
She was tempted to ask but he’d already slid back under the car and she heard the sound of a gasket being scraped off the bottom of the transmission.
Glad of something to occupy her hands, she set to work scraping the magnet clean. “I’ll say this for you, you’re thorough.”
“Might as well do the job right,” he agreed, his rich, deep voice muffled by his position. “One thing your dad taught me.”
She replaced the magnet in the pan and pushed it under the car to him. “So you admit he did some things right?”
“Never said he didn’t. Your folks meant well.”
She couldn’t resist. “Am I hearing an admission that you
