to flutter. A good sign. He moved his hand to undo a few buttons on her silk shirt. She had done it up almost to the neck despite the pressing heat which today was climbing to near forty degrees Celsius. Did she have no sense at all? Next he slipped the waist button on her tight pencil-slim skirt. “Cold water, Bessie, chop, chop.”
“Sure, boss!” Bessie spun on her thongs to obey, just as a terminal staff member hurried towards them, a very attractive brunette who had waited her moment to zoom over to them, physically beating off another female attendant in the process. She carried a plastic container of ice-cold water.
“Is she all right?” the brunette enquired, looking not at the faint victim as perhaps she should have, but full into the cattle baron’s extraordinary big-cat topaz eyes. They were stunning in his bronze face. She had been told he was a hunk. She wasn’t at all disappointed. Hunk was too tame. He was drop-dead gorgeous!
“She’s coming around.” Clint frowned slightly, taking Olivia’s pulse. A bit rapid but not overly weak. “Thanks for that.” He took the container from the attendant without really seeing her.
“No problem, Mr McAlpine.” Long heavily mascaraed eyelashes batted away, her fingers tingling deliciously from the brief contact with his. Gosh, he was awesome! And he was unattached. Everyone in the Territory knew his marriage hadn’t worked out. Unbelievable! The ex-wife had to be a blend of near blind and mentally challenged. “Could she need medical attention?” she asked helpfully. “I can arrange it.”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Gently Clint tapped Olivia Balfour’s cheeks. They were cool and damp and not worryingly hot and dry. “She’s exhausted from the long flight and she’s overdressed. The cold water will cool her down.” He realised after a moment the brunette was lingering on. He had got used to this kind of thing. Women worked hard at attracting him, often outrageously. Amazing how much more attractive having money made a man. “Thank you.” He gave her a smile that held a pleasant dismissal and reluctantly the airline attendant tore herself away, heading back to her mundane duties.
Olivia opened her eyes, trying desperately to reorientate herself.
Dear God, had she died and been transported to hell or what passed for it? She made a grab for someone’s shirt. Heat was swirling all around her. Surely she didn’t deserve this?
Full consciousness swiftly returned. She was looking straight into McAlpine’s lion’s eyes. She uncurled her fingers which were twined like tentacles of a vine around his arm. “God help me, did I faint?”
“Ah, the princess awakens from her slumbers!” he murmured suavely. “God help you, you did, Ms Balfour.” He rose to his impressive height. “Look, I’m going to lift you so your head is resting back against my shoulder. Then I want you to drink some cold water. Bessie will help.”
“Oh, good, Bessie …” She was enormously grateful Bessie, her Good Samaritan, hadn’t left her.
“I’m here, love, don’t you worry.” Bessie, who had already decided to take this beautiful, fragile lady under her wing, had moved in close, clucking like a mother hen. Why, the willowy creature had eyes as blue as a Ulysses butterfly’s wing and skin so white she might have been zoomed down from a celestial planet. Bessie took the container in hand.
“Really, I’m all right!” Olivia protested, when she felt like a rag mop.
“Really, you aren’t,” McAlpine drawled. He sat behind her, drawing her upper body against him. Immediately she slumped her golden head gratefully against his shoulder, clearly needing assistance. She might be terribly hot and bothered, he thought, but her skin gave off the most exquisite scent of roses. “Right, Bessie. Let’s get it into her.”
“Always wanted to be a nurse.” Bessie chuckled. “Like takin’ care of people.”
“Well, now’s your chance.”
“She’s lucky I sensed her,” Bessie said with satisfaction. “Not that me antennae bin flyin’ solo. The crowd had spotted her too. Never seen anyone so beatific in their whole lives.”
“Beatific?” Clint laughed. “That’s a good word, Bess.”
“Means angel, don’t it?”
“Looking like an angel.”
“Or mebbe a brolga in search of water. Jes’ standin’ there, she was.”
Brolga? Olivia felt a wash of panic. What was a brolga, for heaven’s sake? Some sort of slang for bird brain?
McAlpine’s body was disturbingly hot, hard and steely strong, the sweat on him clean—an arresting combination of pheromones and the vast outdoors, dead sexy in its way. For an insane moment she wondered what it would be like to know that body intimately. The next she wondered if it were possible she was on the verge of a spectacular mental breakdown. She had only set foot on this tropical outpost and already she was going troppo. She knew the term. Surely some Englishman who had spent too long in the tropics had invented it? She had never thought to experience it firsthand.
“Relax, no one is going to hurt you,” McAlpine said, as though humouring a fractious filly. “You need to cool down.”
“You’re gunna be OK, love.” Bessie gave her a big comforting smile, putting the plastic container to Olivia’s lips.
It was sooo good! Nothing in the world could have tasted better than pure cold water.
“Sip it,” McAlpine cautioned. “Don’t gulp.”
Even physically reduced, she bridled. “Hang on. I’m not—”
“Sip it,” he repeated, with a grimace of impatience.
Feeling childish, she slowly finished off the container of water, becoming aware she was the centre of attention. “Please, I can sit up.”
“Sure you can.” He was already in the process of helping her sit straight. Even with that loose wave of hair falling across her cheek, her shirt in slight disarray, the button of her skirt undone, she still managed to look elegant. No mean feat.
“How do you feel now?” Her eyes were the exact colour of the beautiful blue glaze on a Sung Dynasty vase at the house.
“Everyone is staring at me,” Olivia said worriedly. And so they were. Not rudely but sympathetically. She was sure the news had got about. The blonde lady fainted. A Pom. That explained it. Why wouldn’t she in the unaccustomed heat? The good news was she had Clint McAlpine, the Territory’s biggest cattle baron, to look out for her. The man might have been a national icon.
“How do you know they’re not staring at me?” he countered, watching yet another silky swathe of her beautiful blonde hair fall from her impeccable up-do. The few times he had seen her she’d always had her long hair pulled back tightly from her face and fashioned into some kind of knot. This was one repressed female. It would probably take a surgical team to get her out of her suit.
“So humiliating to faint!” Olivia murmured in embarrassment, as though it was on a par with jumping off a bridge only to land unhurt knee-deep in mud.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He was pleased to see a little of her colour had come back, warming her flawless skin. The fact her father had wanted to send
