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Her intelligent, expressive eyes moved, though, over his face, something shifting in their depths that showed she understood more than he was saying.

‘I look forward to meeting her.’

He nodded once, not able to explain why that thought did something strange to his insides.

* * *

After a whole day with Sarah, the day before, he should have learned his lesson. He had the reprieve of getting out on the land, with his team, talking about the muster, checking the herd near the house, managing water levels.

But after lunch down in the sheds, with the prospect of a helicopter ride on his horizon, to check the outer edges of the station, he found himself driving back up to the house, swinging out of the ute and going in search of her.

When she didn’t answer his calls, something heavy lodged in his chest. He’d seen her car parked to the side of the house; he knew she was still here. But he couldn’t fight the strange, tightening sense that maybe she’d found a way off the station. That she’d left him.

She wasn’t his prisoner. Only, the fact she might have felt that, and been looking for an opportunity to escape, filled him with dread.

But a hint of movement—disjointed from the gentle sway of trees—had his attention focusing on the back windows of the house, towards the swimming pool. Where Sarah was sitting, on the edge of the coping, her legs dangling into the water, eyes focused on the little currents that were being formed by the gentle kicking motions.

He stopped walking and stood completely still, simply staring at her. Seeing her like this, so beautiful and lost in thought. So still—any hint of nervousness of combativeness wiped from her features, as she simply existed, every bit as much a part of his landscape as the gums behind her.

She glanced up then, towards the house, almost as though some instinct had alerted her to his presence, so he moved again quickly, rather than having been caught standing there and staring.

He opened the glass sliding doors and called out casually, as though he didn’t care one way or another: ‘I’m going up in the chopper, to take a look around. Want to come?’

Her eyes widened, and her delicate throat shifted as she swallowed hard, but then she was nodding quickly, elegantly shifting her legs out of the water and standing, the short shorts she wore making his cock strain hard against the seam of his well-worn jeans. He cursed, inwardly. Suddenly, the only thing he wanted to be flying was high on cloud nine, as they spent the afternoon in bed together.

He turned on his heel and stalked back into the house, as though distance alone could drive temptation from his mind.

* * *

‘I had no idea it was so vast,’ she murmured, after they’d been flying for thirty minutes. Mainly to fill the silence. Because the longer they went without talking, the more aware she was of his every single damned movement. The way his fingers were so long and confident as they ran over the controls and kept the helicopter safe above the station.

‘You saw it yesterday,’ he pointed out, voice disembodied, as hers had been, by the earphones they both wore.

‘But this is—’ She searched for the right word as her eyes tracked the incredible landscape, from the red dusty fields to the creek that snaked its way south, still heavy with water after the major rain event of a few months earlier. In contrast to the browns and yellows of the station, the edges of the river were crowded with green, and she could make out a dozen or so cows lazily munching at the greenery there. ‘It’s incredible.’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

He tacked the helicopter away from the river then, towards a gentle undulation in the landscape, over one of the wrought-iron water tanks that sat proudly on a timber stand. They were dotted across the property, a source of irrigation. The fields here were greener, and when she asked why, he explained about the crop they’d chosen to grow, to feed the cows, which was more drought resistant.

‘And then, there’s this,’ he said, so she leaned forward, trying to follow his gaze. But it wasn’t until they’d cleared another small hill that she saw the watering hole, resplendent and magical, surrounded by gums and thick grasses. ‘It’s big enough to irrigate a lot of this,’ he said. ‘It’s artesian fed, which is why it’s so clear.’

The sky was a pale, blistering blue, the sun shining like a white fireball, and the watering hole suddenly looked impossibly irresistible. She thought longingly of the pool back at the house, the beautiful shape of it, the way it had been made to look like a natural lagoon. Yet, even then, it was still clearly a facsimile, whereas this was the real deal, the perfect placement of water in the midst of this property.

As though he could read her thoughts, Tate began to drift the helicopter lower, to a flat patch of land, so as they came close, red dust burst up around them, making Sarah squint despite the fact they were safely inside the helicopter’s luxurious cockpit.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You looked like you wanted a dip,’ he said, quirking a brow, a challenge in his eyes that made her stomach go all loopy.

‘I—’ She hesitated. She knew she should deny it. Her gaze slid sideways, to the billabong, then back to Tate. ‘Is it safe?’

His lips quirked, but there was too much heat in his face for there to be humour as well. ‘We’re about eight hundred klicks too far south for crocs, if that’s what you mean.’

It had been. She was enough of a tourist to know that the Australian Outback was the kind of place that could kill you if you did the wrong thing. Even if she hadn’t fully appreciated that a couple of months back, when she’d driven across the desert without checking the forecast.

‘I’m not exactly dressed for swimming.’

It had been a blatant invitation to inspect her clothing, but when his attention drifted downwards, to the skimpy singlet and shorts she wore, heat flooded her entire body, and her breasts tingled all over, tightening her nipples, so they ached for him to touch them as he had when they’d made love.