Outback bride - Hart Jessica - Страница 9

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Without waiting for an answer, Mal reached down and put a firm hand beneath her arm to lift her easily to her feet. Copper was very conscious of the strength in his fingers and the whiteness of his teeth against his brown skin as he grinned. She jerked her arm away and made a great show of brushing the dust off the seat of her jeans. ‘I think so,’ she said a little sulkily. Much he would have cared if she had broken her leg! That would have been really funny, wouldn’t it?

‘Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t ride?’ Mal asked, his voice still warm with amusement.

‘I didn”t think you’d put me on a beastly wild horse!’ snapped Copper, almost disappointed to discover that the only injury was to her pride. It would have served him right if she had had to be stretchered back to Adelaide!

Mal only laughed. ‘Wild? Old Duke here is the laziest horse we’ve got. I picked him specially for you.’

‘Sweet of you,’ she said between her teeth. ‘Remind me never to ask you for anything else special!’

‘How did you think you were going to manage with a file under your arm when you’d never ridden before?’ He shook his head. ‘Wish I’d seen it, though! It would have made quite a story to keep us going in the wet!’

‘Perhaps I’ll just take a notebook,’ said Copper coldly. ‘I can put it in my shirt pocket-or is that too bizarre for you?’

‘You want to have another go?’

Copper looked over at the grinning jackaroos. The youngest cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Hey, Copper!’ he shouted. ‘We’re going to enter you for the bucking bronco at the rodeo! Better get in some more practice!’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I’d hate to deprive you all of such good entertainment!’

‘Good girl.’ Mal smiled at her and turned to send one of the boys for a leading rein. ‘We’ll keep good hold of you this time,’ he said, and gave her a leg up back into the saddle. ‘Look, you hold the reins like this.’ He looked up at her and her heart seemed to stop. She saw his face in sudden and startling detail: the grooves at either side of his mouth, the smile crinkling his eyes, the prickle of stubble along his jaw. ‘Relax!’ he said, giving the strap a final tug to secure it and slapping Duke’s rump affectionately.

Copper smiled weakly and managed to look away. ‘I think I’ve got altitude sickness!’ she said. That would account for the queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, anyway.

Mal rolled his eyes, but his smile burned behind her eyelids as he swung himself easily onto an enormous chestnut horse with a star on its forehead. The jackaroo attached a leading rein to Duke’s bridle and handed the end up to Mal, who moved his horse up beside her. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’ Copper cleared her throat. ‘Yes,’ she said again, more firmly this time.

Megan was already on her pony, trotting it around in circles with humiliating ease. The gate was swung open. Mal touched his heels to his horse’s flanks, clicked his tongue behind his teeth to urge Duke forward, and Copper found herself riding.

They took it very slowly at first. Megan trotted ahead on her pony, but the two horses ambled contentedly together. The lack of speed didn’t seem to bother Mal, but then it wouldn’t, Copper thought. He was never hurried, never flustered, never nervous. She was very conscious of him sitting relaxed in the saddle, his eyes creased as he scanned the horizon instinctively and his outline uncannily distinct in the fierce outback light.

Copper felt very safe knowing that he could control her horse as well as his own, and after a while she, too, began to relax and look around her. They were following the line of the creek, picking their way through the spindly gums that spread out from the watercourse. It was very quiet. In the heat of the afternoon the birds were mostly silent, and there was just the creak of the saddles and the rustle of leaves beneath the horses’ hooves as they kicked up a distinctive dry fragrance. Copper breathed it in as it mingled with the smell of leather in her hands.

She was very aware of Mal, overwhelmingly solid beside her. Unlike her, he wore no sunglasses, but the brim of his hat threw a shadow that divided his face in two. Above, his eyes were hidden, but below, his mouth was very clear, cool and firm and peculiarly exciting.

It was just a mouth, just two lips. Copper stared desperately ahead between Duke’s ears, but it tugged irresistibly at the corner of her vision and her eyes kept skittering sideways in spite of herself. Every time they rested on his mouth, the breath would dry in her throat and she would look quickly away.

She was so taken up with keeping her eyes under control that she didn’t notice at first that Mal had brought the horses to a halt in a clearing beside the creek. He swung himself off his horse and looped its reins around the branch of a fallen tree before lifting Megan off her pony. She ran happily down to the water’s edge, where there was a tiny sandy beach, and Mal turned to Copper, who was wondering how she was going to get off. Perhaps she should just try falling off like before?

‘Take your foot out of the stirrup,’ he said. ‘Then swing your leg over the saddle. I’ll catch you.’

He held his arms up as he spoke but a paralysing shyness had Copper in its grip once more and she could only stare helplessly down at him and wish that he had never been married, that the last seven years would simply dissolve and leave them as they had been then, a man and a girl bound briefly by magic.

‘Come on,’ said Mal as she hesitated still. ‘You’re going to have to get off some time!’

Somehow Copper managed to wriggle one leg over the saddle, and the next thing she knew she was slithering clumsily to the ground, Mal’s hands hard at her waist. He held her for a moment and she stood with her hands resting on his shoulders for support, struggling against the overwhelming temptation to slide them round his neck and lean against him.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered, unable to meet his eyes in case he read the longing in her own, and after a tiny moment he let her go.

‘This is where your father wanted to put the camp,’ said Mal, looking around him at the tranquil scene.

‘It looks perfect.’ Copper cleared her throat and moved away from him in what she hoped would look a casual way. ‘Well, I

I’d better take some notes.’

She threw herself into looking busy. She paced out the site and stopped to make notes, but her mind wasn’t on siting tents or camp kitchens. It was on Mal, leading the horses down to the creek to drink before he tethered them in the shade. He looked tough and self-contained and somehow right, she thought, watching him move through the splintered light beneath the trees with his deliberate, unhurried tread. There was something uncompromising about him that belonged with this unrelenting landscape.

Then Mal turned to see her watching him, and Copper hurriedly bent her head back over her notebook. She couldn’t take notes for ever, though, and when she thought she had impressed him enough with the fact that she only cared about business, she went to join him on the fallen tree.

Mal moved along to make room for her. There was an ironic look about his mouth as she put her notebook away. He made no comment but Copper had the feeling that he knew perfectly well that all her rushing around had just been for show, and she avoided his eye as she sat down beside him.

For a while they sat without speaking, watching Megan who was busily scooping water from the creek for some unseen project that seemed to involve a good deal of mess and mud. Behind them, the horses shifted their legs and blew softly. Slowly the peace settled around Copper, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders.

‘It’s a beautiful place,’ she said at last.

‘Yes.’ Mal looked around him, and then at her. ‘It wouldn’t be so beautiful with a clutter of tents and a busload of tourists, though, would it?’

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