being kind, aren’t you?” Kindness was there, behind the brooding front. People mattered to him. As they did to her.
“Kind has nothing to do with it,” he said crisply. “I’m hungry.”
“Okay, that would be very nice.” She walked towards him as he rested his powerful body against the doorjamb. “Why don’t you call me Laura?” She gave him a spontaneous smile that would have had Colin enraged. Her normal smile, or so she thought. Uncomplicated.
Evan found it captivating. “Then you must call me Evan.” He held out his hand. After a slight hesitation she took it, her hand getting lost in the size of his.
It was warm and firm, but never hurting.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “You didn’t really think I was going to crack your fingers?” He turned her hand over, examining it. “Delicate, but strong. Are you any good as a pianist?”
The effect of his skin on hers was the most electrifying thing that had ever happened to her. She couldn’t pull away. It was as though she was held by a naked current. “People seemed to think so.”
“Conservatorium trained?”
“Wh-a-t?” It was so hard to concentrate when every nerve seemed to be jumping.
He released her hand. “I asked if you were Conservatorium trained?”
“I graduated. I’d begun studying for my Doctorate of Music.” She managed to speak calmly.
“So what happened?”
“Life.”
“An unhappy love affair?” Something had overwhelmed her.
“Desperately unhappy,” she admitted. “But that’s all you’re getting out of me.”
“There are worse things than unhappy love affairs,” he said.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS market day in the town. A day to be enjoyed. Street stalls sold their produce: fruit and vegetables, all sorts of pickles, home-made pies and cakes, the town’s excellent cooks vying with one another to come up with some surprises. Stall after stall featured crafts. The town’s two cheerful little coffee shops, one hung with red gingham curtains, the other with ruffled pink and white, were crowded.
“Let’s get some sandwiches and have a picnic in the park?” Evan suggested. “Would you like that?” He glanced down at her as she stood at his shoulder. No, not his shoulder. A way down from there. More like his heart. Hell, if he wanted to he could pick her up and put her in his pocket.
“Why not?” She smiled at him as if she were treasuring every moment. “Koomera Crossing is such a pretty place. I didn’t expect it to be so peaceful and picturesque. The pure air! It’s on the edge of the desert, yet lovely warm aromatic breezes are spiraling around us. It’s like a thawing of the heart.”
“Your heart needs thawing?” he asked, dipping his dark head to her.
“Well, I’m relaxed and comfortable here.” she said, looking towards the park, where small children were playing with the balloons they’d been given at the road stalls. “The bauhinia trees are lovely. They’ll protect us from the sun while we eat.”
“So shall I be mother?” Humour lit his fine eyes. “We don’t want to give people too much to talk about.” A trained observer, he already knew tongues had been set wagging at their appearance together.
“You know the town better than I do,” she conceded, happy when the passing townsfolk nodded to her and Evan in their friendly Outback fashion. “Besides, I might get you something you don’t like.”
“Would that matter?”
She was conscious of his penetrating glance on her. “Some people are very hard to please,” she said by way of explanation.
“Like the boyfriend?” After years of dodging bullets and destruction she seemed too young, too innocent, too unseasoned, to survive.
“We’ll have to agree not to talk about him.”
“Right. You stay here and soak up the healing sunlight. I’ll get the sandwiches and some coffee. Black or white?”
She considered sweetly. “Cappuccino, if they have it.”
“Look, you can have a cappuccino, a latte, a mini-cino, a Vienna, a short black, a long black—”
“Thank you. I get the message.” She smiled. It was the most incredible thing to be at peace with a man. For all his height and breadth of shoulder, the dark smoulder, he was surprisingly easy to warm to.
“Won’t be long.” He strode away, glimpsing the town sticky beak, Ruby Hall, peeking through the window of the general store.
He lifted a sardonic hand to wave, but instead of waving back she unsuctioned her nose from the glass.
Dr Sarah Dempsey had come a long way from when she was a girl helping her widowed mother run the store, he thought. After Sarah had left town, Ruby assisted Muriel part-time, inundating everyone who went into the store—which was just about the whole town—with suggestive little questions designed to translate in to hot gossip.
Ruby Hall, nosy parker, really should be stopped, he thought—not for the first time. What she didn’t know she made up.
He had attended Mrs Dempsey’s funeral—as had most of the town—and shortly after that Sarah had taken over at the hospital from its long-time resident Dr Joe Randall, who had died of cancer at Wunnamurra homestead, stronghold of the McQueen pioneering family, one of the most powerful landed families in the country.
Now Sarah was shortly to marry Kyall, the heir, as good a man as any woman was likely to get. If his new neighbour had Sarah Dempsey for a friend she had made the right connection.
They sat in rustic wooden chairs beside a bench in the shade of flowering orchid trees and a grove of ancient white gums. White gums flanked the curving banks of the creek, the iridescent green water eddying around small boulders that dotted the stream.
“The stream is the colour of your eyes,” he pointed out casually. “A sparkling green.”
What a voice he had! Deep, warm, sexy, with that interesting little cutting edge. He even had a slight foreign accent, or was she imagining it?
“It’s lovely here,” she said happily, incredibly comforted by his presence and the fête-like atmosphere of the town centre. “And to top it off these sandwiches are delicious. Fresh bread, lovely thick ham, just enough lettuce, whole-grain mustard. Perfect.” With a total stranger she felt safe.
“Don’t forget your cappuccino. It’s not terribly good, I’m afraid. I can do better.” He reached out a long arm to position it nearer her. “And there’s a couple of little cakes.”
“One each?”
“They’re for you. You seem a tad underweight.”
“No
