The Outback Affair. Elizabeth Duke

slipped out. ‘Mr. Scanlon won’t be staying.’

      Her eyes raked coldly over her unwanted visitor. She narrowed her gaze, a tremor quivering through her.

      This wasn’t the Tom Scanlon she’d known and fallen in love with. This was a stranger—a cleanshaven stranger with a brand-new look, a brand-new vitality. Where was the ruffianly beard and the untamed mane of long brown hair that had curled over his collar and tumbled over his brow? Where were the washed-out jeans and the bush shirt with the rolled-up sleeves? Where were the dusty old boots, the knockabout slouch hat?

      And where was the constant cigarette in his hand?

      He was wearing pale moleskins, leather shoes and a neat pale grey shirt—admittedly without a tie. That would really be something—to see Tom Scanlon in a tie. The shirt had a trendy Neru collar, with the top button left undone. But only the top button—not slashed open as so often in the past, uncaringly showing an expanse of bronzed, muscular chest.

      His hair, though still curly, still wild—nothing could completely tame those unruly curls—now barely reached the top of his collar. It was neatly brushed back from his deeply tanned face, although a wayward lock was already slipping forward over his brow.

      She swallowed, gathering her strength. ‘Well…Tom Scanlon.’ Her tone was as withering as she could make it. ‘The man who decided marriage wasn’t for him.’ Or had his new girlfriend changed his mind?

      ‘Tash—’

      Tash. Her heart twisted, bitterness coiling through her. Tom was the only one who’d ever called her that. It had been a special name…once. Now she couldn’t bear to hear it.

      ‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ She balled her hands into white-knuckled fists, her eyes spitting fire. ‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to come back and face me—as if nothing ever happened.’ Just when I was beginning to get over you…beginning to think I could survive without you.

      His chest expanded in a deep indrawn breath that hissed out through his teeth. ‘A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, Ta—Natasha.’

      There was to be no apology then, no begging for forgiveness. No…that wouldn’t be Tom Scanlon’s style. Water under the bridge…that was all the past eighteen months had been to him. She tilted her chin, the blue of her eyes turning to cold, glinting silver. No matter what it took, she wasn’t going to show him how much he’d hurt her.

      ‘Yes, one moves on,’ she agreed coolly.

      She didn’t ask what he’d been doing with himself. He and his new love. Or if he was still in Sydney. Or what kind of work he’d taken on since tossing in his job as a helicopter pilot. Knowing Tom, he could turn his hand to just about anything. Before he’d become a pilot, he’d worked as a jackaroo, a horse-breaker, a dynamiter, a roof tiler, and heaven knew what else, but he’d never, as far as she knew, worked in a city office. He’d always preferred the outback, the wide open spaces. Freedom…

      Had his new girlfriend tamed him enough to put him behind a desk? He had some accounting qualifications, he’d told her once, which would come in handy, he’d said, when he owned his own cattle station—his long-time dream.

      A pipedream. A beautiful, remote pipedream.

      She composed her face into a stony mask, to cover a surge of bitterness. Everything about Tom Scanlon had been a pipedream. Pie in the sky. Ambitious daydreams. Nothing he did or said or promised had been real. When you find the love of your life, you want to seize her with both hands and never let her go, he’d told her on the night he’d proposed.

      Her heart wrenched at the thought of the love they’d shared; the laughter and the long talks about everything under the sun. Although their busy lives had kept them apart for much of their whirlwind two-month courtship, they’d been as close as any two people could be…or so she’d thought.

      It had never struck her for a second that anything could ever come between them….

      ‘A lot can happen in a year and a half,’ Tom mused aloud. His eyes searched hers—or tried to. She snapped her gaze away before they could delve too deeply. ‘I didn’t just go off and forget you, Tash. I’ve been concerned about you.’

      Concerned? How gullible did he think she was?

      When she made no comment he didn’t pursue it. ‘I flew into Brisbane this morning,’ he said conversationally. ‘I wanted to see how you were doing. How your paintings were going. How life has been…treating you.’

      And to find out if she was still pining for him; still heartbroken at losing him? Or if she’d managed to crawl out of her misery yet and find someone else…the way he had?

      Ice clawed at her heart. Perhaps he would feel less guilty if she had taken up with another man, the way he’d taken up with—and presumably found happiness with—another woman. Or was he hoping she hadn’t found anyone else? No doubt he’d get a the perverse satisfaction of assuming he was irreplaceable.

      ‘Well, as you can see, I’m fine.’ He didn’t need to know any more than that. He didn’t deserve to know. Let him stew. Let him wonder all he liked.

      ‘That’s good. I’m glad. You look great, Tash.’ She felt his eyes rake over her, as hers had flicked over him a moment ago. It was such a searing scrutiny that she felt suddenly exposed and raw, as if his hot gaze was stripping her bare.

      It made her feel self-conscious, uncomfortably aware of her paint-spattered smock, the frayed shorts underneath, the paint splodges on her bare legs and feet. Her own untidy mane of layered honey-blond hair was caught back in a black scrunchie, but long wisps had come loose and were trailing over her flushed cheeks and down her bare neck. And she had an uneasy feeling, as his piercing blue eyes came to rest on her face, that she had a dob of paint on the tip of her nose.

      ‘I can do without the flattery, thanks,’ she snapped, but her voice was lamentably unsteady. ‘And I told you to stop calling me Tash!’ Knowing what a sorry mess she must look made it even harder to accept his glib compliment. She wondered what the new woman in his life looked like…the irresistible siren who’d ‘swept him off his feet’, as he’d put it when he’d called her from Sydney to break off their engagement eighteen months ago.

      The thought of his shock betrayal galvanised her into action. She tossed back her head, her gaze coldly scathing, showing none of the churning havoc behind, none of the harrowing emotions she’d buried for the past eighteen months and could now feel quivering to life again.

      ‘Well, you’ve seen me now,’ she scraped out. ‘You’ve seen that I haven’t slit my wrists or fallen in a heap. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m busy. Charlie, would you see Tom out?’ She had to get rid of her treacherous ex-fiancé before he realised what the sight of him was doing to her.

      Her father sighed, and turned to Tom. ‘Sorry, mate, it’s a bad time. Nat’s busy. Come on, I’ll see you out.’

      Mate? A bad time? Natasha glowered at her father. Traitor, she thought bitterly. Charlie had always liked Tom. Despite Tom’s wild, rough-diamond looks and adventurous, freewheeling lifestyle, he’d taken to Tom like a house on fire, succumbing to the same irresistible macho charm that had demolished her own defences. Her father couldn’t understand why they’d broken up so suddenly, when they’d appeared to be so crazy about each other.

      She’d felt too hurt and humiliated to tell Charlie that Tom had fallen for another woman, and in the weeks and months that had followed their break-up she’d refused to mention Tom at all. She’d simply told her father what Tom had told her before she’d forced him into admitting he’d met someone else…that he’d decided he wasn’t cut out for marriage after all and had wanted his freedom.

      Tom began to leave, then paused, his gaze flicking to the painting on her easel. ‘You’ve captured it perfectly,’ he murmured. ‘The spectacular colours at sunset…the clouds…the shadows. It’s just as I remember it that evening.’

      That