Partner for Love. Jessica Hart

a wonderfully rich colour, somewhere between deep blue and purple, with a narrow waist emphasised by a wide suede belt. Darcy pushed a selection of Middle Eastern bracelets up her arm and regarded herself critically in the mirror.

      The dim light gave her the look of a Forties film star, just catching the silky gleam of dark hair and making her eyes seem bigger and bluer than ever. Why was Cooper so determinedly unimpressed? True, she didn’t look like the most practical girl in the world, but she was pretty and friendly and—whatever he might think—not completely brainless. What was so wrong with that?

      Darcy gave herself an encouraging smile that faded as she remembered how Cooper had simply ignored it. She had never met anyone so resistant to her charms. It wasn’t that she wanted him to find her attractive, she reminded herself hastily, but he could have been a little more...welcoming.

      Her bracelets chinked against each other as she walked down the long, ill-lit corridor. She found Cooper in the kitchen, a large, old-fashioned room with a row of steel fridges and an antiquated-looking stove.

      Cooper was sitting at the scrubbed wooden table, turning a can of beer absently between his hands. His face was intent with thought and there was a slight crease between his brows, as if he was pondering some difficult problem, but he looked up at Darcy’s approach, his clear, cool grey gaze meeting her warm blue one across the room.

      Darcy stopped dead in the doorway, overwhelmed by a sudden and inexplicable sense of recognition at the sight of him. The line of his cheek, the curl of his mouth, the long brown fingers against the beer can, all suddenly seemed almost painfully familiar. It was as if she had always known him, had already traced the angles of his face with her hands and counted each crease at the edges of his eyes. Darcy felt jarred, breathless, quite unprepared for the peculiar certainty that her whole life had led to this moment, standing in a strange kitchen, staring into the eyes of this cool, watchful man while a clock ticked somewhere in the silence and outside the rain drummed noisily on the corrugated-tin roof.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ Cooper got to his feet, frowning.

      Thoroughly unnerved by her bizarre reaction, Darcy swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked, and cleared her throat hastily. ‘Should there be?’

      ‘You look a bit peculiar.’

      ‘I was under the impression that you thought that everything about me was peculiar,’ she said waspishly, desperately trying to recover herself and wishing that Cooper’s eyes weren’t quite so acute.

      ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked politely.

      Typically, Darcy couldn’t then think of a single thing he had said to hold against him. ‘It’s just an impression you give,’ she said a little sullenly. ‘You make me feel as if I’m a complete idiot.’

      Cooper looked amused. ‘Anyone would feel a complete idiot, carrying a ridiculous umbrella like that,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow at Darcy, still hesitating in the doorway. ‘Are you going to stand there all night, or would you like to come in?’

      That was exactly the kind of comment she had meant, Darcy thought crossly, but of course it was impossible to explain it to him. At least that odd feeling had gone. Obscurely grateful to Cooper for reminding her that he was simply a disagreeable stranger, she went over to the table and pulled out a chair. She was tired, still jet-lagged, lost and disorientated in a strange place. Nothing else could explain that brief, swamping sense of recognition when she had stood in the doorway and looked across at Cooper.

      ‘Like a beer?’ he asked.

      ‘I’d rather have tea if you have some,’ she said, proud of how cool she sounded.

      ‘Sure.’ Cooper crossed to the sink and filled the kettle, and Darcy found herself watching him as if she had never seen him before. There was a lean ranginess about him that hadn’t been so obvious in the ute. His body was compact and very controlled, and his movements had a sort of quiet, deliberate economy that was curiously reassuring.

      He could hardly have been more different from Sebastian, she thought. Sebastian was fair and flamboyant, Cooper dark and unhurried, and yet Darcy had a sudden conviction that if she put them in a room together it would be Cooper who was the focus of attention. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Sebastian, but there was something much more compelling about him than mere good looks, and for the first time she appreciated just how alone they were together. The outside world seemed a long, long way away.

      Darcy fiddled nervously with her bracelets, but the chinking silver sounded abnormally loud and she forced herself to link her hands together and think of something to say instead.

      Unperturbed by the silence, Cooper had propped himself against the cupboards while he waited for the kettle to boil, arms folded across his chest and long legs crossed casually at the ankles.

      ‘How did Uncle Bill die?’ Darcy asked at last. “The solicitor just said that he died suddenly, but he seemed so healthy when he was in England.’

      ‘It was a freak accident,’ said Cooper quietly. ‘He broke his neck when he came off his motorbike. He’d hit an anthill and must have fallen the wrong way.’ He paused and glanced at Darcy. ‘He died instantly.’

      Darcy closed her eyes. Her great-uncle had been such a strong, colourful character that it was impossible to imagine him killed by anything as small as an anthill.

      ‘Is that why you came?’ asked Cooper abruptly. ‘To find out how he died?’

      ‘Partly.’

      ‘And partly to see what he’d left you?’

      There was an unmistakably sardonic edge to his voice and Darcy stiffened. ‘Uncle Bill always wanted me to see Bindaburra,’ she said defiantly.

      ‘He wanted you to see it; he didn’t want you to have it.’

      ‘That’s not what his will said,’ said Darcy in a cold voice. ‘I’m his great-niece and he was fond of me. Why shouldn’t he leave his property to me?’

      ‘Because he said he would leave it to me.’

      ‘To you? Why you?’

      The kettle shrieked and Cooper turned calmly away to make a pot of tea. ‘I was his partner. He knew he could trust me to look after Bindaburra the way he had done.’

      ‘You can’t have been partners all that long,’ Darcy objected. ‘Uncle Bill never mentioned you when he was in England and that was only two years ago.’

      ‘He wouldn’t have done.’ Cooper put the lid back on the teapot and carried it over to the table. ‘Bill hated the fact that he couldn’t manage financially without a partner. I think he thought that if he didn’t talk about it it would mean that Bindaburra was still completely his.’

      ‘So were you a sort of sleeping partner?’ asked Darcy as he looked in one of the fridges for some milk.

      ‘In a way. I put in the capital he needed, but we agreed that Bill would continue to run Bindaburra without any interference from me. We had a tacit understanding that I would take over when he couldn’t manage any more, and that on his death the whole property would revert to me.’

      He pushed the milk across the table towards Darcy, who poured some into a mug, frowning slightly. ‘Does that mean you’ve only taken over here since he died?’

      ‘Exactly. I haven’t had time to sort out the homestead yet, but Bindaburra will be my base.’

      ‘Doesn’t that rather depend on me?’ said Darcy coolly, reaching for the teapot.

      Cooper looked grim. ‘It does now. Bill was a man of his word, but he obviously never got round to changing his will. I can assure you, though, that he intended Bindaburra to go to someone who could continue to look after it as he would have wanted.’

      ‘I’ve only got your word for that,’ she pointed out.

      ‘You needn’t worry,’ said Cooper contemptuously. ‘I