Barbara Hannay – Her Happy-Ever-After Family: The Cattleman's Ready-Made Family / Miracle in Bellaroo Creek / Patchwork Family in the Outback (страница 13)
Then Tess came tripping around the side of the house and all rational thought stopped for more beats of his pulse than he had the wit to count. Shorts. Tess wore a pair of scarletcoloured shorts and a pale cream vest top. Her bare arms, bare legs and shoulders all gleamed in the autumn sunlight. She made him think of fields of ripening wheat, of cream and honey and nutmeg, of spiced apples and camping under the stars. She made him think of his mother’s sultana cake—his favourite food in the world. He curled his fingers against his palms to stop from doing something daft and reaching out to stroke a finger down her arm.
‘Hello, Cameron.’
He swallowed and then simply nodded, unsure if his voice would work.
‘Auntie Tess said Barney did really good for a puppy. We’ve only had one accident.’
Cam winced. ‘I, uh…’
Her eyes danced. ‘Apologise again and I’ll thump you. That puppy has been a source of pure joy.’ She glanced at his ute and then planted her hands on her hips and sent him a mock glare. ‘Where’s my lawnmower?’
He grimaced. ‘My station manager is currently lying beneath it trying to fix a fuel leak.’
‘Ouch.’
‘It should be fixed in the next day or so.’ He didn’t want her using it if it wasn’t a hundred per cent safe.
She gestured with her head and turned. ‘Come and join the party.’
He followed her. He didn’t even try to keep from ogling the length of her legs or taking an inventory of the innate grace with which she moved. She was like some wonderful and exotic creature who’d deigned to live among the mundane and the humdrum. A creature whose beauty took one out of the mundane and humdrum for a few precious moments.
He wondered what she’d done for a living before she’d moved to Bellaroo Creek—maybe she’d been a dancer. He opened his mouth to ask, but they’d rounded the house and Krissie sat on a blanket with that darn chicken on her lap and when she glanced up and saw him she sent him a grin of such epic proportions it cracked his chest wide open.
He had to swallow before he could speak. ‘Did Fluffy have a good night?’
‘She slept in her cage in the laundry, but I think she’d be happier sleeping in my bedroom.’
Tess sent him a bare-teethed grimace that almost made him laugh. One could toilet train a puppy, but a chicken…? ‘Well, honey, I’ve come around to build Fluffy her very own house.’
Krissie’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘Barney slept in Ty’s room.’
He crouched down beside her. ‘The thing is, Krissie, chickens aren’t like puppies or kittens. They like the fresh air and they like to see the stars at night and be able to come and go as much as they please. So, as much as Fluffy loves you, she’ll be happier out here in the yard.’
She stared at him and he held his breath. ‘She’ll get her very own house, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘A nice one?’
‘One that she’ll love,’ he promised.
Her face cleared. ‘I can show you a picture of Fluffy’s dream house!’ She plonked Fluffy down on the grass and raced inside.
‘Oh, good Lord.’ Tess groaned. ‘I have no idea what she has in mind, Cameron.’
He had sudden visions of a hot-pink Barbie house and gulped. And then he glanced around. A collection of plastic planters in assorted shapes and sizes battled for space from the back of the house to the lemon tree. ‘Where on earth did all these seedlings come from?’
Tess planted her hands on her hips. Sweet hips…long, lovely legs…pretty arms. Cam curled his fingers into his palms again. With a silent curse he uncurled them and shoved them into his pockets. Deep into his pockets.
‘Everyone has been so kind. At Saturday’s luncheon Ty, Krissie and I mentioned we’d like to start our own veggie garden and asked for advice on what vegetables we should grow.’
He shook his head, but he couldn’t help grinning. ‘I guess you got your answer.’
She grinned back. ‘I guess we did.’
Her plum-coloured lips gleamed temptingly in the sunlight. His heart thumped. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets. The itch started up again with a vengeance.
Krissie reappeared brandishing a magazine. ‘This one!’ She held it up for them to see.
‘That’s an awful lot of house for one chicken, Krissie,’ Tess said.
Krissie’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘But we’ll get more chickens, remember? Fluffy will need friends for when I’m at school.’
She turned liquid eyes to Cam and they melted him on the spot. He rolled his shoulders, risked removing his hands from his pockets to take the magazine and survey the picture more fully. ‘Oh, I think we can manage something like this.’ He frantically recalculated the amount of wood in his ute with the amount he still had at the homestead.
‘Give me a list of what we need and I’ll go into the stock and station store to get supplies,’ Tess said, as if reading his mind.
It wouldn’t be cheap. He grimaced. He should’ve found a way to talk Krissie into something less grand and—
‘We’re good for it, Cameron. It isn’t a problem,’ Tess said, again as if reading his mind, which unsettled him. He normally maintained a quiet reserve that made him hard to read. It had been one of the things Fiona had complained about. But this woman, it seemed, had only to glance at him to know what he was thinking.
But her plump dusky lips curved up with such promise he found he didn’t mind at all…or, at least, not as much as he suspected he should.
‘Can I help you build it?’ Ty breathed, his eyes alight.
‘I’ll definitely need a helper—a foreman. It’s a big job, Ty, and I’ll need your help.’
Ty’s eyes grew as big as cabbages, his chest puffed out. That awe hit Cam again as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Surveying Krissie’s dream chicken coop, and doing his best to keep his eyes from the plump temptation of Tess’s lips, he placed an order at the stock and station store.
They spent the afternoon on Phase One of the chicken coop. Tess couldn’t believe Cam’s patience with Ty or the way her nephew blossomed under his quiet but authoritative guidance. He’d lacked a male role model for so long.
Eventually, though, both children wandered off to check on Old Nelson. And then Ty set about teaching Barney how to play fetch while Krissie fell asleep on the blanket beneath the shade of the lemon tree, leaving Fluffy free to scratch about the yard.
Tess glanced at Cam whistling idly as he nailed boards to the frame he’d built. Something inside her shifted. Ever since that moment yesterday when she’d hugged him, she’d grown increasingly aware of the breadth of his shoulders, of the flex and play of the muscles in his arms, and of the fresh-cut-grass scent that followed in his wake and stirred something to life inside her. Something she desperately tried to ignore.
The sun shone brightly, but not too fiercely, picking out the lighter highlights in his chestnut hair. Fiona had thrown this man over for Lance? Tess snorted. What a loser! The woman quite obviously had her head screwed on backwards. Lance might dazzle with those playboy good looks of his, but when a woman looked at Cam she was left in no doubt that he was all man.
One hundred per cent fit and honed man.
And the longer Tess stared at him, the more that thing inside her stirred and fluttered and stretched itself into heartbeating, mouth-drying sentience.
Thoughts of Lance, though, slid an unwelcome reminder through her. The expression on Lorraine’s face—that mixture of anxiety, regret and heartbreak—rose in her mind and she bit back a sigh.
‘You want to tell me what’s on your mind?’
She blinked, and then realised Cam had caught her out blatantly staring at him. The skin on her face and neck burned. ‘Oh…I…nothing.’
‘Why don’t I believe you?’
He wielded a hammer as if he’d been born to it. She dragged her gaze from muscled forearms lightly dusted with hair, and the pull of lean brown hands. She tried desperately to dispel thoughts of what else those hands might be expert at.
She clenched her eyes shut and counted to five. For pity’s sake! She didn’t need this at the moment—this wild, desperate ache. She needed to remain focused on the children. On not letting Sarah down. On making amends.
‘Tess?’
She went back to tacking chicken wire to the frame of their mansion of a chicken house, the way he’d shown her, but she couldn’t resist another glance at him. The brilliance of his eyes struck her afresh. She swallowed and shrugged. ‘Oh, I was just thinking about stuff you’d no doubt declare me nosy for contemplating.’
He set his hammer down. ‘Like?’
He stiffened as if she’d slapped him.
‘I said it was nosy,’ she muttered, though she wasn’t certain she was actually apologising.
‘You’re not wrong there.’
Minding her business was the wisest course of action. She knew that. Cam was a grown-up. He knew what he was doing. She swallowed. She used to be really good at minding her own business.
‘You must really hate Lance if you haven’t spoken to him in ten months.’ She shivered. She understood his bitterness. She really did, but…‘How can you stand to live in the same town as him when you bear that much resentment?’