had been having such a lovely time at Wirrindago. Employed as a cook-cum-housekeeper, she had been thrilled by the isolation and the fact that the men still found horses the easiest way to move around the wild country. It was all so different from the way she had grown up in England, and she had been quite carried away by the romance of it all.
Until Guy had turned up.
Lucy wasn’t used to not liking people but from the moment Guy had strolled into the kitchen a few days ago and introduced himself with that smile—the one that seemed to assume that any woman on the receiving end would instantly swoon at his feet—her normally sunny nature had deserted her. There was just something about him that rubbed her up the wrong way, leaving her irritated and edgy.
Guy might be Hal Granger’s cousin, but it was hard to imagine anyone more different or more out of place in the outback. He was so…so…so English, Lucy decided in frustration. He just didn’t belong, and she wished he would go back to London and stop getting on her nerves.
The way he was doing right now.
‘I wouldn’t have thought rodeos were your kind of thing,’ she said.
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ Casually, Guy leant on the rails next to her. The sleeves of his pristine white shirt were rolled up to reveal surprisingly powerful forearms, covered with a fuzz of golden hairs that drew Lucy’s eyes in spite of herself as they glinted in the bright light. There was something overwhelming about him when he was that close, and she found herself edging away.
‘I spent quite a lot of holidays at Wirrindago when I was a kid,’ he was saying, apparently oblivious to her unease. ‘I remember coming to rodeos like this one with Hal. They used to lay on bareback sheep riding and catching the greasy pig for the youngsters.’
He grinned at the memory and she glimpsed a flash of strong white teeth in his brown, too-handsome face. ‘We had some good fun. I used to want to be like those guys over there,’ he went on, nodding to where the stockmen taking part in the rodeo were sitting on the rails looking for all the world like extras in a classic Western. ‘I told my parents I wanted to be a rodeo rider when I left school.’
Lucy stared at him. ‘A rodeo rider?’ His shirt was dazzlingly white in the glare, and she could see the riders on the rails reflected in his sunglasses. There was a sheen to him, she thought, a kind of glamour that belonged on a yacht in St Tropez or skiing off piste in Gstaad, not here at a ramshackle local rodeo with bull-riding and steer-wrestling and greasy pigs. ‘You?’
Still leaning on the rail, Guy glanced up at her with another of those film-star smiles. ‘Funny, that’s exactly what my father said—and he said it in just that tone of voice too!’
Lucy wished he would stop smiling like that. It was too much. He was too much. Too vibrant. Too good-looking. Too charming. Too everything. She looked away, annoyed to find that the smile seemed to have been imprinted on her vision so that it was just as vivid even when she wasn’t looking at him.
‘What did your mother say?’
‘She told me not to be so silly.’
His imitation of his mother’s crisp tones was no doubt wickedly accurate and, in spite of her determination not to find him the slightest bit amusing, Lucy was betrayed into a laugh, which she tried to cover by adjusting the old stockman’s hat on her head. She had borrowed it that morning and it was a little big, but it made her feel authentic, unlike Guy Dangerfield, smile or no smile. He might have a closer connection to the outback than she did, but at least she tried to fit in. He just stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.
‘I’m surprised you’re not having a go today if you were that keen,’ she said.
‘I know better now,’ said Guy. ‘I leave the hard stuff to the experts like Prince Charming over there.’
He nodded across the ring to where Kevin was sitting on the rails, looking quietly confident as another wild horse pawed the ground in the chute, impatient for release into the ring. ‘You need to be tough to take on bareback bronc riding.’
‘I know,’ said Lucy, deciding to ignore the Prince Charming jibe. ‘Kevin says it’s the supreme rodeo challenge,’ she was unable to resist adding. She was at that stage of infatuation when just saying Kevin’s name was a thrill.
‘Kevin said something?’ Guy straightened from the rail in mock astonishment. ‘When? I didn’t know he could talk!’
‘Very funny,’ said Lucy coldly.
‘You’ve got to admit that he’s not exactly chatty,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly heard him say a word at meals since I arrived. I mean, we all know about strong silent types, but that’s ridiculous!’
‘There’s nothing ridiculous about Kevin,’ Lucy flared up. ‘He just doesn’t say anything unless it’s worth saying. It’s one of the things that makes him a real man—unlike some,’ she added pointedly.
Guy leant back against the fence and folded his arms, but Lucy was sure that behind those stupid sunglasses, his eyes were dancing.
‘So you think a real man incapable of making conversation?’
‘No, he just doesn’t waste his time spouting stupid rubbish—like giving people silly nicknames, for instance!’
‘Cinders, are you by any chance implying that you don’t think I am a real man?’ Guy tsk-tsked. ‘I’m hurt!’
If Lucy had believed for a moment that he had been really offended she would have been embarrassed, but, as it was, she just lifted her chin at him.
‘You’re not like Kevin,’ she said.
‘Apart from the fact that I can string more than three words together at a time, what’s the real difference between us?’
‘Kevin’s tough,’ said Lucy. ‘He’s steady, he’s sensible and he works hard.’ Belatedly, she realised that she hadn’t made him sound much fun, and she waited for Guy to point it out, but he only grinned.
‘How do you know you couldn’t say the same thing about me?’
She eyed him with frustration. Surely he must know how frivolous and superficial he appeared next to someone like Kevin? ‘You don’t seem to take anything very seriously,’ she said at last. ‘Do you even have a job?’
‘Of course I do!’ He pretended to sound affronted. ‘I’m in investment banking.’
‘Oh…banking,’ said Lucy disparagingly. ‘That’s not a real job.’
‘Hey, it’s not all late lunches and corporate jollies, you know!’
‘How did you get into banking?’
Guy smiled crookedly. ‘I have to admit that it’s a family firm.’
Just as she’d thought. No doubt he’d been given a token job with a plush office to sit in while everyone else did all the work, Lucy decided. He probably rolled up at ten and spent most of the day at lunch catching up with pals on the old boys’ network.
‘I don’t think you can compare working in a bank with what Kevin does,’
