Her Outback Protector. Margaret Way

at all. It strikes me you’ve spent a lot of time alone?”

      She sighed theatrically, then stole one of his sandwiches.

      “That’s what happens when your mother has had three husbands.”

      “One of them was your dad,” he pointed out.

      She nearly choked she was so quick to retort. “That son of a bitch Lloyd challenged that at least a dozen times before I was ten.’”

      The muscles along his jaw tightened. He knew all about labels. “He’s not a very nice person,” he said shortly.

      “He’s a bully,” she said. “And I’m going to prove that. He really really upset my mother. I know she wasn’t the woman to exercise caution but don’t you think she would have been completely insane to try to put one across my dad let alone my fearsome old grandpop. My dad always knew I was his little girl. He used to call me ‘my little possum.’ He told me every day he loved me. I think he was the only person in the entire world who did. Then he went off and left me. I was so sad and so angry. My mum and I needed him. It’s awful to be on your own.” She dug her pretty white teeth into her nether lip again, dragging them across the cushiony surface, colouring it rosy.

      “So a man does come in handy?” he asked.

      She looked into his eyes and he saw the sorrow behind the prickly front. “A dad is really important.”

      Hadn’t he faced that all his life? Even a bastard of a dad.

      “Getting killed was the very last thing your dad wanted, Sandra. Unfortunately death is the one appointment none of us can break. I’m sure your mother loves you. Your grandfather too in his own way.”

      “God that’s corny!” Now she fixed him with a contemptuous glare. “In his own way. What a cop-out!”

      “He made you his heiress,” he pointed out reasonably. “Do people who hate you actually leave you a fortune? I don’t think so. Your grandfather bypassed his son, your uncle, and his only grandson who is older than you by three years.”

      “I can count,” she said shortly, hungrily polishing off another one of his sandwiches. “I actually got to go to university. I was a famous swot.”

      “Head never out of a book?”

      “Something like that.” She shrugged, picking away a piece of rocket. “In a locked room. My stepfather, Jeremy Linklatter, IV, developed a few little unlawful ideas about me.”

      He who thought himself unshockable was shocked to the core.

      “You can’t trust anyone these days,” she said in a world-weary fashion. “Certainly not men. There should be a Protection Scheme for female stepchildren.”

      “Hell!” he breathed, hoping it wasn’t going to get worse.

      “He didn’t touch you?”

      Her expression showed her detestation of stepfather Jeremy. “Not the bad stuff.” How was she confiding all this to a stranger when she had never spoken about it at all? There was just something about this Daniel Carson.

      “Thank God for that!” He released a pent-up sigh. “The guy must have crawled out from under a rock. So when did you leave home?”

      She shrugged, licking a little bit of avocado off her fingertip. “I went to boarding school. Then I went on to uni and had on campus accommodation. It proved a lot safer than being at home.”

      “Did your mother know what was going on?” Surely not. That would have been criminal.

      She sighed. “My mother only sees what she wants to see. She can’t help it. It’s the way she’s made. Besides, Jem was pretty adept at picking his moments. I was always on high alert. Occasionally he got in an awful messy kiss or a grope. Once I pinched his face so hard he cried out. Then I took to carrying a weapon on my person.”

      He could picture it. “Don’t tell me. A stun gun?”

      “Close. A needle with a tranquillizer in it.”

      “You’re joking!” That was totally unexpected. And dangerous.

      “All right, I am. But I was desperate. I took to carrying my dad’s Swiss Army knife. You know what that is?’

      “Of course I know what it is,” he said, frowning hard at the very idea of her needing to carry such a thing as a weapon. “I have one, like millions of other guys. It’s a miniature tool box.”

      “You don’t have one like mine. It’s a collector’s item,” she boasted. “An original 1891 version.”

      “Really? I’d like to see it.”

      She laughed. “And I’d enjoy showing it to you only I couldn’t bring it on the plane.”

      “I wish I could meet up with this Jem,” he said grimly.

      “No need to feel sorry for me.” She tilted her chin.

      “Nothing catastrophic happened. He’s such a maggot. He just had all these urges. Men are like that.”

      “Indeed they’re not,” he rapped back. “Evil men give the rest of us ordinary decent guys a bad name. It’s utterly unfair. There’s something utterly disgusting about a predator.”

      “That’s why I like my gay friends,” she announced, wiping her hands daintily on a paper napkin before brushing back the damp curls at her temple.

      “How long was your hair?” he asked, his eyes following the movement of her small, pretty hands.

      “That’s a funny question, Daniel Carson.”

      He gave his dimpled, lopsided smile. “Oh, I dunno. I’m trying to visualise you as the girl you were.”

      “If you must know, I had a great mop of hair. A lot of people thought it was lovely. Say, those sandwiches were good. I think I must have been starving. I might even have another one of those little pastries. Oh, it’s yours!” she observed belatedly.

      “Take it,” he urged. “You’re the one paying.”

      “What?”

      “Just a little joke,” he said. “My shout this time.”

      “Which reminds me,” she said in quite a different voice.

      “I want you up at the house.”

      His eyebrows shot up. “You can’t mean living there?”

      “I can mean and I do mean.” She sat back, fiddling with her thumbs.

      “Just forget about it,” he answered flatly.

      “Might I remind you, Daniel, I’m the boss. I want you about two steps up the hallway from me. I don’t know you very well, but I’d find having a great big guy like you around—especially one with a Swiss Army knife—reassuring.”

      He frowned direly. “Sandra, your fears are groundless.”

      “Sez you!” she responded hotly, sitting up straight. “Do you know how many people get killed over money?”

      “There could only be one in a million who don’t finish up in jail,” he told her in a stern voice.

      “A few more than that filter through,” she struck back.

      He studied the flare-up of colour in her cheeks. “Listen, Ms Kingston, if you’re under the impression your family would agree to that, you’re very much mistaken. Both your uncle and your cousin would see me gone only neither of them can do my job. It was your grandfather who hired me. It was your grandfather who gave me so much authority. As you can imagine your uncle and your cousin bitterly resented that fact, even if they didn’t want to take over the reins. After twelve months I’ll have no alternative but to quit.”

      “You