“I’m a humble wood worker.”
“You surely don’t think yourself humble?” What was the matter with her? She was breaking all the rules.
“All right, then, you tell me?”
“I think you’re a casualty of battle.” My God had she said that?
He raised a large, sculpted hand. “Miss Graham, you’ve blown my cover.”
“Sometimes an emotional response can be quite unconnected to appearance or reason.”
“I just happen to agree.” Out of nowhere a complex intimacy was taking hold. “If you think you know something of me, may I ask if in coming out here to the desert you’re making a fresh start?”
His voice was deliberately bland, but it didn’t fool Laura. “I’ve made you angry.”
“You’ve thrown down a challenge. That’s different.” When she had cut through his barriers with frightening ease. Few people had ever done that. Even hardened professionals.
“I won’t bother you, Mr Thompson, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“When you’re the sort of woman who would always bother a man?” His watchful eye caught her tremble. “Forgive me. I’m quite sure we’re going to be good neighbours as long as we keep to ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’ over the fence. That’s if you’re going to stay?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” She gave him a tiny smile.
“I’m quite sure it’s not what you’re used to.”
“No more than you, in the old colonial next door. Actually, I was making some notes about what sort of furniture I’d need when you knocked.”
“There’s a good secondhand store in the main street,” he found himself telling her. “The cottage is sound structurally. You’ll need the fireplace from time to time. Desert nights can get very cold. Is this in the nature of a breathing space? Don’t you have people who will miss you?”
“My life can wait.’ She didn’t attempt to say it lightly. He wouldn’t be fooled. “As for you? Don’t you have a story to tell?”
“I suppose I should ask are you psychic?” His voice was deliberately dry. “You have a witch’s beautiful green eyes. Surely a give-away. Then again, you could be a spoilt little rich girl on the run.”
She visibly paled. “And if I were you wouldn’t protect me?”
He was silent for a moment, her words and that spontaneous intimacy hammering away at him. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes. You need have no fear of me, Miss Graham. I don’t know who you are, but I do know you’re taking a risk.”
“Is it possible you’re psychic yourself? You know nothing whatever about me.”
“Quite possibly I’m like you.” He shrugged. “Covering my tracks. I’ll keep quiet if you will.”
She watched him, watching her. “How did this all start?” she asked genuinely taken aback. “I don’t understand how we got into this conversation at all.” For all its curious liberation.
“I do,” he said with surprising gentleness. “Sometimes it happens like that. A shortcut to discovery.”
“It strikes me as very strange, all the same.”
“Have no fears. Though when I saw you in the garden I thought fear would be alien to you. You looked so innocent, I suppose.”
“So why have you changed your mind?”
“You’re too intense, and there’s a haunting in your eyes.”
“All right, you’re a psychiatrist?” She tried to cover her confusion with a banter. “A highbrow writer? Award-winning journalist? You’re very intense too.”
“That comes with things we have to guard.”
“Then both of us have been very revealing this morning,” she said. Certainly nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
“It would seem so. I don’t often meet a young woman so disconcertingly perceptive. Also, you’re something of an enigma. You’re too young to have had much life experience? How old? Twenty-one, twenty-two?” His eyes dipped from her face to take in her slender body in cool white skirt and ruffled top, a mix of cotton and lace. Refined. Virginal.
“Can you deal with twenty-three?” He was clearly much older, with a wealth of experience behind those dark eyes.
“A baby,” he concluded.
“I don’t think so.” Her fingers clenched white. She was quite old enough to have had bad experiences.
He didn’t miss the movement of her fingers. “You know about tragedy?”
“Tragedy spills into lots of people’s lives. Maybe not on the level of what happened to you. What did happen to you?” she asked after a pause.
“Miss Graham, I’d have to know you a whole lot better before you could ever make that breakthrough,” he answered sardonically. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you’re not willing to tell your story.”
“Investigative reporter? Something tells me I should know you.” He had far too much presence to be an ordinary everyday person.
“You don’t,” he assured her briskly. “Anyway, we’re not adversaries. Are we?”
“I hope not, Mr Thompson. It’ll be a whole lot safer to be on your side.”
“You amaze me,” he offered freely. And she did.
“You amaze me,” she admitted in wry surprise. “I hadn’t bargained on more than a brief introduction. Are you always like this with strangers?”
“You’re not a stranger,” he said, with a dismissive shrug of his powerful shoulders. “I hadn’t bargained on liking you either.”
“Ah, so I wasn’t wrong. I could feel the hostility when you first arrived.”
“You assumed that,” he corrected.
“No. It’s true.”
“All right,” he shrugged. “For a few moments you reminded me of someone I used to know.”
“Someone no longer in your life?” At his expression her smile faded.
“Exactly.” The brilliant dark eyes became hooded. “Anyway, apart from a few similarities you’re not like her at all.”
“That’s good. You had me worried until you smiled.”
“That’s it? A smile?” he questioned, with a faint twist of his mouth.
“Yes,” she said simply, almost with relief. She didn’t add that as a big man
