Jessica Hart - Partner for Love

She gave him a cold look. ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’

‘What happens if a starring role comes up while you’re away?’

That was about as likely as one of his cows jumping over the moon, but Darcy didn’t feel like telling Cooper that. She had spent the last six weeks sitting by the phone, but no call to instant stardom had come, and, while she was normally the most optimistic of souls, she couldn’t help thinking that a month or two away wouldn’t mean missing more than a couple of television adverts. Still, it wouldn’t do for Cooper to guess that she was something less than a household name.

‘Naturally, I’ll have to let my agent know how she can contact me,’ she said grandly.

‘I hope she knows how to use a radio,’ said Cooper in a dry voice. ‘Bill didn’t have a phone, but if it’s an emergency she can always leave a message with the Flying Doctor Service.’

Darcy tried to imagine her perennially harassed agent coping with the Flying Doctor Service. ‘I’ll send her the details,’ she said, avoiding the sceptical glint in Cooper’s eye. ‘There’s nothing to stop me staying here as long as I want.’

‘So you won’t reconsider your decision not to sell?’

‘I didn’t decide not to sell,’ said Darcy. ‘I decided not to make a decision yet, and I have no intention of changing my mind about that!’

To her surprise, Cooper looked resigned rather than angry. ‘I didn’t think you would,’ he said. ‘You may not have had much in common with Bill, but you seem to be just as stubborn as he was. It seems to me that the sooner I accept that the better.’

Darcy eyed him suspiciously. Cooper Anderson hadn’t seemed to her the sort of man who gave in that easily. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘A truce,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been out to check the creeks, and they’re way up. Whatever you decide to do, we’re stuck here for the next few days at least, so we may as well make the best of it. I think that means facing facts.’

‘What sort of facts?’ she asked cautiously.

‘The fact that we’re not going to agree about what Bill wanted for Bindaburra, for instance. I think—I know—that he wanted me to have it and you think he intended to leave it to you. It’s obvious that neither of us is going to change our mind.’ He paused and looked thoughtfully across at Darcy. ‘We got off to a bad start last night. You were tired, and I wasn’t expecting to have a partner thrust into my plans. Let’s say that neither of us was at our best. You didn’t like me and I didn’t like you, and we both think the other is being unreasonable.’

He quirked an eyebrow at her, obviously waiting for her to agree. Trying to ignore an unpleasant sinking feeling at the cool way he had admitted that he didn’t like her, Darcy nodded. She didn’t like not being liked, and she wasn’t used to such brutal candour.

‘I suggest that we start again,’ Cooper went on. ‘You’ve said you’ve booked a flight for a month’s time, and I can’t make you leave before then. Since for reasons best known to yourself you seem determined to stay, I think we should try and forget about what Bill wanted and assume that we’re willing partners. It’il mean that we both have to make an effort, but we ought to be able to manage that if it’s just for a month.’

‘Why just a month?’ said Darcy.

He met her gaze directly. ‘I think a month will be quite long enough to persuade you that you’d be better off selling your share to me.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then we can talk again.’ He pushed his mug away from him. ‘If you agree to this, though, it’s on the understanding that we’ll treat each other as partners. That means that you do your fair share of the work. You won’t be a guest, and I won’t treat you as one—unless, of course, you decide to sell. If you stay, you work, and if you still want to stay after a month... well, I’ll admit that I was wrong.’

Darcy swirled her coffee in her mug and considered the proposal. She had a nasty feeling it wasn’t going to work to her advantage, but it was hard to find anything to object to. She could hardly refuse his overture of peace, nor would she be in a very strong position if she said she didn’t want to work. Perhaps she had been a little quick to imply that she wanted to run Bindaburra herself, and she suspected that Cooper was going to call her bluff by setting her impossible tasks.

‘Will I have to brand cows and wrestle bulls to the ground?’ she asked nervously.

Cooper looked as if he didn’t know whether to be exasperated or amused. ‘You’re welcome to try, but that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ said Darcy, trying to conceal her relief.

‘Bill always had a housekeeper who cooked for him and the men and kept this place in some sort of order. The last girl left a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had time to do anything about finding a replacement yet. One of the men has been doing the cooking since then, but he’s more useful to me outside, so if you took over the cooking you’d be making more than a token contribution.’

Darcy toyed with the idea of objecting to the sexist way he had assumed that all she was good for was cooking and cleaning, but when she thought that the alternative might be fencing in the rain or much worse she decided that she might be better off in the kitchen after all.

‘I’m not a very good cook,’ she warned him, with judicious understatement. Her dinner parties made popular disaster stories among her friends and she had learnt that it was easier to buy prepared meals from the supermarket freezers to shove in the microwave.

‘You must be better than Darren,’ said Cooper. ‘They don’t want anything fancy, just roasts and stews, and a cake or a biscuit for smoko.’

‘Oh, well, I expect I could manage that,’ said Darcy optimistically. The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of working, even if it did have to be in the unglamorous role of housekeeper. Uncle Bill would have wanted her to stay, at least for a while, she told herself. If she could prove her worth to Cooper, it would be a way of showing that her great-uncle had not been mistaken in her. She would be doing it for him as much as for herself.

Fired with enthusiasm, she beamed across the table at Cooper. Her hair was still tousled from sleep, but the dark blue eyes were wide awake now. ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

If she had expected Cooper to look delighted, she was disappointed. Instead he sounded almost disapproving of her ready acceptance of his idea. ‘There are other things you should think about as well,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Can you afford to stay, for a start? Obviously it won’t cost you anything to stay here, but you won’t earn anything either. It would be a pity if you gave up opportunities at home just to prove a point out here.’

‘I don’t see that that’s a problem,’ said Darcy. ‘It’s not as if I had any responsibilities. I share a flat with a friend. We only pay a nominal rent because her father owns it, so I won’t be leaving her in the lurch. And as for work...well, as I said, I’ll let my agent know how to contact me just in case something unexpected comes up.’

‘Hmm.’ Cooper studied her critically, unimpressed by her insouciant attitude. ‘You should also consider how you feel about living alone with me.’

Carried away by the prospect of proving that she wasn’t as useless as he thought her, Darcy had forgotten how she had sat fidgeting with her bracelets, overwhelmed by that strange sense of awareness. Now she uncrossed her legs and dropped her feet to the floor, conscious for the first time of the intimacy of the situation. She hadn’t thought twice before about the propriety of sitting opposite him with nothing on under her dressing-gown, but now she tightened the belt automatically. The silk slithered sleekly against her skin and she had a sudden disturbing awareness of her own body.