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

A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

The Army

Ranger’s Return

Soraya Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

NIKKI LOGANlives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night – the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

For the real McMurtrie family and for the Cape Saunders colony of New Zealand Fur Seals.

To my friend Kate, whose research formed the basis of the background for this story. Her family farm sits on a stunning peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand and is home to abundant wildlife, including a colony of seals as depicted in this story.

RESPECTFULLY yours … Kate.

Grant snorted. Since when had any part of Kate Dickson’s dealings with his father been respectful? She and her travelling band of greenies were single-handedly responsible for crippling Leo McMurtrie’s farm. And for his death that had followed.

The town might believe old Leo had had a dicky heart, but there were three people who knew otherwise: Leo’s best mate the mayor, the town doctor and Grant—the only child who had found his father in the front seat of his idling vehicle. It hadn’t even run out of fuel yet.

Kate Dickson’s letter was still open on Leo’s kitchen bench-top. Grant had left it, and everything around it, untouched until the doctor had made his declaration and the funeral was over.

He ran his eye over it now.

Negotiate the buffer zone … Protect the seals … Limit farming activity … Regretfully …

First respect, now regret.

Right.

What was respectful about hounding an old man into letting you onto his land and then putting the wheels in motion to have tight conservation restrictions slammed on twenty-eight kilometres of his coastline? About repaying a favour by screwing over the man that had given it to you? Kate Dickson called herself a scientist, labelled her work research, but she was nothing more than a bleeding heart with her eyes on making a name for herself.

At his father’s expense.

The irony that he found himself in his father’s corner for the first time now, only after he was dead, that their only common ground should be beyond the grave, didn’t escape Grant. Or was it that he just hadn’t been willing to appreciate his father’s perspective while he’d been alive and so staunchly defending it?

He balled the delicate handwritten letter—who wrote by hand these days?—and erased the irritating Kate Dickson from his conscience. Then he let his head fall forward onto the hands that fisted on his bench top and took a shuddering breath.

And then another.

A shrill call made him lurch; he snatched up the phone before thinking. ‘McMurtrie.’

The uncertain pause sounded long-distance. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Grant understood the confusion immediately. ‘McMurtrie junior.’

‘Oh, I … I’m sorry. Is your father there, please?’

A road-train slammed hard into his guts. The man who’d raised him had never really been there for him and never would be now. ‘No.’

‘Will he be back today? I was hoping to discuss …’

Breathless. Young. There was only one female that he could think of who hadn’t been at Leo McMurtrie’s packed funeral yesterday, that hadn’t brought a massive plate of country cooking for his orphan son. That would be oblivious to his death. His eyes fell on the letter. ‘Miss Dickson, I assume?’

‘Ms.’

‘Miss Dickson, my father passed away last week.’

Her shocked gasp sounded genuine. So too the agonising pause that followed and the tightness of her voice when she finally spoke. ‘I had no idea. I am so sorry.’

Yeah, I’m sure you are. Just as you’d been getting somewhere with your crazy plans. If he made a sound, he would say exactly that. So he said nothing.

‘How are you?’ she asked quietly. ‘Can I do anything?’

The country courtesy threw him for a second. This woman didn’t know him from Adam but her concerned tone was authentic. That boiled him more than anything else. ‘Yeah. You can keep your people far away from this property. You and your microscope brigade are no longer welcome.’

The voice sucked in a shocked breath. ‘Mr McMurtrie—’

‘You may have sweet-talked my father into letting you on his land but that arrangement is now void. There will be no renegotiating.’

‘But we had a commitment.’

‘Unless your commitment is in writing, and has the words “in perpetuity” in bold print, then you have nothing.’

‘Mr McMurtrie.’ Her voice hardened.

Here we go …

‘The arrangement I had with your father was not just about him. It has the backing of the Shire Council. There’s district funding attached to it. You cannot simply opt out, no matter how tragic the circumstances.’

‘Watch me.’

Slamming the phone down was the most satisfying thing he’d done all week. It gave him an outlet. It gave him focus. Blaming someone helped; it meant he didn’t have to blame the man he’d lost. The man he’d been estranged from for nineteen years.

Nothing Grant did could bring back the father he’d walked away from as soon as he’d hit legal age. But he could do one thing for him—the thing his father had died wanting.

He could save the farm.

He could not run it. He was no more equipped to do that now than the day he had walked away from it when he’d been sixteen. But he could keep it ticking over. A week, a month, however long it took to get it ship-shape and ready for sale to someone who could make it great. Probably not what his father had left Tulloquay to him for, but he’d never buckled to his father’s demands before and he wasn’t about to start now.

He’d never been farmer material growing up and Leo McMurtrie dying hadn’t changed one part of that.

Kate Dickson had stood on this rustic porch one time too many, readied herself for this argument once too often. It had taken twelve solid months of negotiating—almost pleading—for Leo McMurtrie to agree to let her team conduct their three-year research study on his property. And now in the final, crucial year of operations she was right back where she had started.

Up against a lawyer, no less.

An hour on the internet had tracked down Leo McMurtrie’s only son, Grant. He was some contract specialist from the city, and he was angry and still grieving, if his manner on the phone last week was any indication.

Hopefully the personal touch would do the trick.

She knocked on the freshly painted timber door then smoothed her hands down her best business outfit. Pencil skirts and fitted blazers weren’t really her thing but she had two of them in her wardrobe for occasions just like this one.

The door didn’t move. Kate glanced around nervously. Should she have called ahead or would he have just ignored that? Someone was home; she could hear the thump of loud music coming from deep inside the farmhouse. She knocked again and waited.