Lindsay Armstrong: The Unconventional Bride

He grinned at her, although a touch ashamedly, and presently took himself off to bed, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

She began to tidy up absently, but one thing Justin had said stuck in her mind. It was something she’d never admitted to herself in so many words but there had been a time when Etienne had occupied her dreams. At fifteen, for a while, she’d thought about him rather a lot. However, she’d been so sure she was beneath his notice, it had all died a natural death.

She stopped what she was doing with a tennis racket in one hand and a pair of roller-blades in the other—or had it? Perhaps she’d resented being completely beneath his notice and it had been a contributing factor to her so-called dislike of him?

She put the racket in a wooden locker and the roller-blades on a shelf. Not an edifying thought, she conceded. But did that explain the effect he was having on her at the moment?

She couldn’t come up with an answer so she took herself to bed, not dreaming that she would have to encounter Etienne Hurst the very next day.

It started out like any other spring day.

Cool, dry and crisp but giving promise of becoming hot and glorious. Until she noticed a plume of smoke coming from one of the ‘resting’ paddocks, and raced down to find a bush fire. She called the fire brigade immediately but the difficulty was water; no convenient mains to hook up to, only a small dam a fair way from the fire.

And she worked as frenziedly as any of the firemen to contain it. There were no casual hands working on the property that day to help so she deployed a bag and a shovel with the best of them, resisting Mrs Bedwell’s entreaties to leave it to the men, until her bag was taken out of her fingers and she was bodily removed from the area of flames.

‘Who…? What?’ she spluttered. ‘Let me go! If I lose this feed—’

‘Shut up, Mel,’ Etienne Hurst said. ‘You’ve done enough.’

‘I haven’t!’

But she was clamped into a strong pair of arms and held there until she subsided, panting, against his chest.

‘How did you know about the fire?’ she asked hoarsely.

‘Mrs Bedwell rang me. She was convinced you were killing yourself.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You don’t look too good.’ He held her away and raised his eyebrows.

‘If you think I care how I look—’ But before she could finish tears welled in her eyes and brimmed over, making rivulets in the soot on her cheeks.

He pulled her back into his arms. ‘I think you’re extraordinarily brave. Why don’t you have a good cry?’

‘I will,’ she wept, ‘but only because I’m…I don’t know what! I never cry,’ she added in extreme frustration.

But cry she did for a couple of minutes. Then it occurred to her that she didn’t feel like crying any more; she felt, on the contrary, safe and secure and as if she could stay in Etienne Hurst’s arms for a lot longer.

She moved her cheek against his shirt and was visited by an extraordinary mental image—rather than being hot, tired and dirty, she pictured herself rising out of a woodland stream in filtered sunlight, naked and with water streaming off her body. Natural enough since she was hot, tired and dirty, she conceded, but how on earth did Etienne get into the picture?

Why was he there, waiting for her at the edge of the pool and taking the slim, satiny length of her into his arms?

‘Er—’ she blinked rapidly and cleared her throat as she desperately tried to clear her mind, and she looked up at him bemusedly ‘—th-thank you. How’s it going?’

He studied her pink cheeks then glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s out. But they’ll stay a while to keep an eye on it. What you need is a wash and a drink.’

He picked her up and carried her over to her ute. ‘Since we’re both dirty this time,’ he said to her with his lips quirking, ‘we’ll use yours.’ He set her on her feet.

Mel gasped as she realised that she’d transferred a considerable amount of her dirt to him. There were black streaks on his otherwise pristine white shirt and mud on his moleskins and shoes. ‘I’m so sorry!’

‘That’s OK,’ he said easily. ‘In you get.’

She climbed in and he drove them up to the house, commenting along the way that she needed to get her suspension and brakes checked.

‘What I need,’ she said ruefully, ‘is a whole new vehicle.’

‘There must be other vehicles—what about the cars your father and Margot drove?’ he queried.

She hesitated. ‘I had to sell them to pay some bills.’

‘You should have consulted me first, Mel.’

‘To be honest, it didn’t cross my mind,’ she replied, ‘but what could you have done? The bank manager explained to me that, whereas my father had a credit rating, I have none. Oh, he was very kind and concerned and he explained that, while he’d been quite sure Dad would have pulled Raspberry Hill through this reverse, I was a different matter.’ She tipped a hand and sighed.

‘I see,’ he said slowly.

‘Not that it’s any of your—’

‘Any of my business,’ he agreed sardonically. ‘Don’t you think you’ve worn that one a bit thin, Mel?’

She glanced across at him and for a moment it crossed her mind to tell him that to have someone like him to lean on during these awful times would be like the answer to prayers she’d yet to pray. But the realisation of this came rather like a blow to her solar plexus and she moved restlessly and sighed in relief when the house came in view. Because it offered the hope of refuge from all the conflicting, bewildering emotions—not to mention strange fantasies—she was subject to.

It was not to be. Mrs Bedwell received her with open arms and immediately began to shepherd her away to get cleaned up.

‘A brandy might be appropriate,’ Etienne murmured.

‘Good thinking, I’ll bring you one too,’ Mrs Bedwell said over her shoulder as Batman screamed out of the house and took a flying leap into Etienne’s arms. ‘Glory be, if nothing else you’ve made a hit with the damn dog!’ she added.

‘This is becoming a habit,’ Mel said as she rejoined Etienne half an hour later. They were on the veranda because, although he’d washed up and scraped the mud off his shoes, his clothes were still dirty.

‘Mmm,’ he agreed and poured her a brandy from the decanter on a silver tray Mrs Bedwell had provided along with a dish of nuts and olives.

Her hair was still wet and she wore her clean jeans and floral blouse. Her feet were bare and her expression was still somewhat dazed.

Etienne waited until she’d sipped some of the brandy before saying, ‘Mel, are there any other unpaid bills?’

‘A couple.’ She shrugged.

‘Why isn’t your accountant helping you to deal with them?’

She looked at him over the rim of her glass. ‘His bill is one of them.’

He paused for a beat, then, ‘I’d like to see them.’

Her gaze clashed with his and she squared her shoulders but he said with soft menace, ‘Don’t.’

‘What?’ she uttered crisply.

‘Tell me it’s none of my business.’

‘It isn’t,’ she insisted.

He looked around, through the French doors to the elegant sitting room that opened onto the front veranda with its beautiful Persian carpet, its antiques and graceful chairs. ‘She was my sister,’ he said, with the planes and angles of his face suddenly hard.

‘She may have been but I don’t want any charity.’ Mel fortified herself with another sip of brandy and raised her chin.

‘You infuriating…’ He drew a breath and forced himself to relax. What was it, he wondered at the same time, that attracted him to this often prickly, difficult girl? Other than the obvious, he thought drily, such as a gorgeous figure she seemed to be unaware of, long, shapely legs she persisted in covering up and a lovely face.