Nikki Logan - A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return - A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return

‘Come on, McMurtrie …’ she mumbled.

When the son still didn’t materialise, Kate tested the door. It swung happily open and the music-level surged.

‘Hello?’ she shouted down the long hallway over the doofdoof of heavy metal. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Nothing.

Cursing under her breath, Kate moved down the hallway towards the deafening noise. The smell of paint hit her immediately and she saw old floral-patterned sheets draped over furnishings in the freshly coated rooms that she passed. The sheets struck her as incongruous on a property belonging to a man’s man. Leo McMurtrie had been as tough as nails. Even once they’d finally come to an arrangement regarding access for her team, he’d still been as surly as a mule, with a sailor’s vocabulary. The fact he slept on old-fashioned, floral sheets just didn’t fit with the man she knew.

Then again, she barely knew him at all. Leo hadn’t wanted to be known.

‘Hello?’ Jeez. Lucky there wasn’t an emergency or something. She tiptoed forward.

‘What the hell—?’

Out of nowhere, a solid-rock wall stepped out and slammed into her, sending her reeling backwards, a damp weight dragging on the front of her suit. Kate lunged for the paint bucket that tipped between them just as a pair of masculine hands did the same, and the two of them ended up half-crouched on the floor like a badly-gone-wrong game of Twister. But they did manage to right the bucket and stop any more paint from sluicing down onto the timber floorboards.

The second thing Kate noticed—after subliminally absorbing the sensationally manicured pair of hands that relieved her of the bucket—was the intensity of a pair of eyes the colour of sea grass. They blazed at her from under a deep frown.

She struggled for something else to focus on. Paint pooled at her feet, dripping wildly off her clothes onto the floor.

‘Oh …’

‘Don’t move!’ Leo McMurtrie’s son barked, blocking her passage with his body and placing the tin carefully to one side. It took him a few minutes to wipe up the worst of the mess at her feet with a series of cloths but, as fast as he wiped, she dripped. Paint thickened and blobbed off the pointed seams of the tailored fabric.

‘Get that jacket off.’

Kate bristled at his autocratic tone but couldn’t ignore the fact that her jacket had taken most of the paint and it was very clearly still streaming onto the floor. She stripped it off, bundled it up with no further concern and tossed it over to the growing pile of paint-covered rags in the corner.

Two sets of eyes went to her beige-stained skirt.

‘That stays on,’ she said unequivocally.

His tight lips wanted to twitch but his scowl wouldn’t let them. Kate saw it all play out on his face in the seconds before he masked it. He crouched before her and, without so much as a word, he hand-scraped the paint off the tight fabric of her skirt, off the thighs underneath that stiffened with surprise, reaching around behind her legs to hold her steady as he did it.

Kate stood compliant and mortified until he’d finished, feeling every bit like the child she’d worked so hard to grow out of. The girl who just did what others told her. McMurtrie junior straightened up and glared at her. Those captivating eyes were evenly set in an oval face framed at the top by short, sandy-blond hair and at the bottom by a matching two-day growth. His eyes perfectly matched the khaki shirt that flared open halfway down his chest and which revealed a gold band hanging by a leather thong around his neck. More sandy-blond hair scattered across his tanned collarbone.

His lips tightened further as he noticed the direction of her gaze.

Desperate to get things back on a professional footing, Kate pushed her thick hair back from her face and wedged her ‘game on’ glasses more firmly up her nose. She straightened as best a paint-covered woman could and held out her hand to shake his.

Too late, she noticed the slap of wet paint on her right hand—which meant it was on her hair and probably her glasses too. The hand dropped limply.

Nice one, Kate.

But the pragmatist in her whispered that what was done was done. Nowhere to go but up. ‘Mr McMurtrie …’

‘Never heard of knocking?’ He glared at her, unimpressed.

Her eyes narrowed. Maybe he wasn’t grieving. Maybe he was just an ass most of the time. Like father, like son. Even if she’d come to feel great affection for McAss senior, he’d been pure hard work at the beginning.

‘Never heard of a perforated ear-drum?’ she shouted back, eyebrows lifted.

It was only then he seemed to realise that the stereo was still pounding out. He turned away and killed the sound with the flick of a nearby switch. It took her heart a few beats to realise it had lost its synching rhythm. When he returned, his shirt was fixed two buttons higher. The tiniest part of Kate mourned the loss of that manly chest.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice overly loud in the new silence. ‘Do you always enjoy your rock at full blast?’

‘Better than drinking.’

Kate frowned. How were the two remotely connected? She took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m Kate Dickson. I assume you’re Grant McMurtrie?’

‘You must be top of your game with scientific deduction like that.’

She ignored the sarcasm. ‘You haven’t returned my calls.’

‘No.’

‘Or my email.’

‘No.’

‘So I came in person.’

‘I can see that.’ His eyes drifted lazily over her paint-spattered blouse. ‘Sorry about your suit.’

Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t like it anyway.’

‘Then why wear it?’

‘Societal expectation.’

He stared at her, assessing. ‘What would you prefer to wear?’

‘A wetsuit.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Your seals.’

Kate quietly congratulated herself for getting things neatly back on topic. She had a lot to lose if this meeting didn’t go well—more than just her project. ‘I need to continue my research, Mr McMurtrie.’

‘Then you’ll need to find another beach, Miss Dickson.’

‘All the early research was done here, I can’t simply change locations. Neither can the colony I’m studying. They’ve been returning to that little cove for years.’

‘I know. I grew up here.’

Oh, that’s right. A spark of excitement flared through her. ‘Do you remember the colony when you were a boy?’

His lids dropped. ‘I should. I spent part of every day with them.’

Kate froze. ‘No. Did you?’

He stared at her overly long. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Miss Dickson. It doesn’t mean I have any information for you and it doesn’t mean I’m going to say yes. My answer is still no.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t need a reason. It’s the beauty of Australia’s freehold system—my land, my rules.’

Kate brought out her big gun. Her only gun. ‘Actually, it’s not.’ His face grew thunderous but she pushed on. ‘Technically speaking, it’s not your land. Not yet.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘I’ve been told it will take six to eight weeks for probate and to settle the estate according to the terms of Leo’s will. Until then, this farm still belongs to your father. And the contract stands.’

God, she hoped so. She’d had to have dinner with a loathsome octopus in order to get some certainty on that. His price for helping her.

The fury on Grant McMurtrie’s face had her crossing her arms across her chest, just in case he reached right through her ribcage and snatched at her heart with that big fist. He glared at her and it fluttered even faster.

‘You doubt I have enough connections to get it pushed through? I’m a lawyer, Miss Dickson.’