Lindsay Armstrong - At the Cattleman's Command

Chas started to say something about a monumental understatement but confined herself to murmuring, ‘You could say so. I get the feeling he’s not an easy person to handle at the best of times, however.’

Rupert considered and shrugged. ‘He does have the final say around here. He is very successful.’

‘Perhaps he needs more than a cup of coffee for breakfast?’ she suggested with a tinge of frivolity she was far from feeling.

‘Oh, he would have been up and about hours ago. He always breakfasts first then goes out to the horses.’

‘I see. One of those?’

Rupert smiled. ‘In a word.’

Chas finished her breakfast but not with great enjoyment. Then she made a point of cleaning her teeth before asking her way to Tom Hocking’s study.

He was on the phone to, it emerged, Birdie Tait. He waved her to a chair and continued his conversation, giving Chas ample time to look around. Like the dining room the study was panelled and, like the rest of the house, was beautifully furnished with antiques—a marvellous old oak desk, two winged chairs with linen covers and a lovely array of art on the walls.

So impressed by the art was she, she got up to have a closer look and didn’t realise he’d finished his phone call until he said her name.

‘Oh!’ She moved back to the chair and sank into it.

They stared at each other across the desk for a long moment.

He was now showered and shaved and wore khaki trousers and a blue sweater with military-style patches on the elbows and shoulders. Unfortunately, Chas discovered, these clothes did not prevent her from seeing him in her mind’s eye wearing nothing but a pair of sleep shorts.

To her further confusion, from the light of pure devilry in his grey eyes, she had no doubt that his mind’s eye had swept away her blue jeans and apricot jumper and he was seeing her in only a flimsy slip of a nightgown.

She prayed that she wouldn’t blush but she did, and it got worse than that. Her nipples tingled, causing her to move abruptly.

There was no way he could have known this had happened to her, not beneath a bra and jumper, but she got the feeling, as his eyes narrowed, that he did. Her awkward movement must have given her away.

‘Yes, well,’ he drawled, ‘you remind me of a long-legged, skittish filly, but what have you to say for yourself this morning, Ms Bartlett?’

Chas drew on all the composure she possessed and remembered her determination to eschew all mention of the events in his bed. ‘I don’t think this is a very good idea, Mr Hocking,’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t believe we could work together, so—’

‘It’s my sister and my mother you’d be working with,’ he interrupted. ‘Incidentally, Birdie has cleared up a lot of the confusion. Apparently she left all sorts of messages for me regarding your metamorphosis into a woman that I never got.’

‘Never got?’ Chas frowned.

‘You will find, should you accept this commission, that it helps to be a horse around here.’ This time he studied her hair caught back at the nape of her neck.

Chas blinked.

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘all the best treatment is reserved for the horses. Other things, like answering machines, mobile-phone messages and the like get short shrift. Someone borrowed my mobile phone; someone accidentally deleted the message tape on the answering machine. I must admit, I just forgot to check my emails. Birdie is at her wits’ end with us.’

Chas shrugged. ‘I’m not surprised. But that actually makes me more sure that this would be an impossible wedding to organise, Mr Hocking, and—’

‘Why? You appear to have slayed my mother and my sister with your ideas.’

Chas hesitated. ‘That’s the other thing. They did lead me to believe you—uh—might not appreciate the costs involved.’

He smiled somewhat grimly and named a figure.

Chas’s eyes widened and her lips parted.

‘That obviously surprises you, Ms Bartlett. Not enough?’

‘Plenty,’ Chas said, then bit her lip.

He lay back in his chair. ‘I may run a tight ship, which they like to interpret, occasionally, as me being cheap, but I wouldn’t expect Vanessa to marry Lord Weaver without all the trimmings.’

Chas was lost for words.

‘Look…’ He sat forward. ‘I apologise for everything that led up to you feeling you’d been made a fool of last night. But it was me they were taking the mickey out of, not you.’

‘And you didn’t feel you were making fun of me when—?’ She stopped exasperatedly on the thought that she hadn’t planned to mention that.

‘When I was…? Talking about mistress material?’ he suggested. ‘Actually—’ his eyes glinted ‘—I was serious, and that was a compliment.’

‘Well, that depends entirely, Mr Hocking,’ Chas said, ‘on your reputation with women. Was your family maligning you there, do you feel?’

‘I don’t know what they said.’ He still looked amused.

‘That you’d sloped off last night, with a woman, no doubt,’ she elucidated.

His amusement changed to injury. ‘I did not! Well, I guess there was a female involved, actually. Two, as it happens.’

Pure blue scorn beamed his way.

‘I was called out, Ms Bartlett,’ he continued, ‘to help with a difficult foaling. Both the dam and a filly foal survived and are doing well now.’

For a moment Chas wished she could fall through the floor. ‘So…so why did they say that?’

He shrugged. ‘I may have forgotten to mention it to anyone.’ He waited for a moment then said softly, ‘Don’t you have a sense of humour, Chas?’

‘I have a very well-developed sense of humour normally,’ she said slowly. ‘Climbing into a strange man’s bed seems to have dampened it somewhat.’

‘Why don’t we start again?’

She swallowed.

‘You may have carte blanche within the limits of your budget. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this but Rupert’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Wickham, will be attending. So will several other lords and ladies. I’m quite sure this wedding will find its way into some English magazines and papers, not to mention Australian ones.’

Chas clicked her tongue. ‘That’s blackmail.’

He said nothing.

‘But I do run a business,’ she added a little helplessly.

He nodded in serious agreement.

‘Oh, all right!’ Chas was goaded into flinging at him.

He sat back and made a steeple of his fingers. ‘I thought it might be.’

‘Look here, if you’re as successful as they say you are, why take exception to my commercial instincts?’ Chas challenged.

‘I’m not. It’s your other instincts I’m wondering about.’

‘Such as?’

‘How much…’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘How much of your decision was based on curiosity? A mutual curiosity, I do admit, but one stemming from your inability to tell your left hand from your right last night?’

Chas rose. ‘None whatsoever! I happen to be the ultimate career girl.’

‘Who said anything about interfering—’ his gaze drifted down her figure ‘—with your career?’

‘I’m saying it now. I never mix business with pleasure, Mr Hocking—not that I would classify you as pleasure—and I have no intention of joining a long line of peachy blondes!’

He looked askance at her. ‘Peachy blondes?’

‘That was the other detail your family imparted last night. Peachy blondes, such as the riding-school owner who has supposedly taken to haunting this place.’

He opened his mouth to reply but she turned on her heel and walked out.

He said, just before she reached the door, ‘If you’d left your hair loose you could have tossed your head just like an exasperated filly.’