Alison Kelly - Irresistible Attraction

‘Wow! I love your hair!’

‘Thanks!’ Alessandra smiled pleasantly at the teenage girl, who hadn’t waited for a formal introduction.

‘Is it bleached?’

‘Lisa!’

‘Only by the sun,’ Alessandra replied, ignoring Bart’s apologetic expression at what he considered rudeness on his daughter’s part.

‘I wish I was a blonde!’ Lisa Cameron sighed, pushing savagely at her waist-length dark hair.

‘I dyed mine black once when I was thirteen,’ Alessandra confessed, and laughed at the teenager’s horrified expression. ‘My parents’ facial reaction was pretty much similar to yours now!’

‘Dad would kill me if I changed mine!’ she said with more than a trace of resentment.

‘You’ve got that right,’ Bart Cameron stated.

‘Why?’ Alessandra asked, causing both heads to swing in her direction. ‘It’s her hair.’

‘That’s what I keep telling him !’ Lisa said.

Bart sent a controlled glare across to his most recent employee.

‘Lisa is only seventeen years old,’ he replied, as if that explained everything.

‘Nearly eighteen!’ his daughter responded.

‘With luck you might make it.’

The tone of the exchange between father and daughter told Alessandra she had walked into a struggle of awakening independence versus old-fashioned discipline. The atmosphere wouldn’t be dull around here, that was for sure, even if the cutlery was. Cripes! How was a person expected to cut steak with a blunt knife? She diverted her plan of attack to the creamed potatoes, only to wish she hadn’t as the half-cooked vegetable caused her to gag.

‘You OK?’ Bart Cameron enquired, and Alessandra wasn’t sure whether she imagined the hint of humour she saw in his eyes.

‘Eh, sure! A bit just went down the wrong way,’ she lied, now suspecting that the inability to cut the steak lay in its cooking and not the knife. ‘Do you kill your own meat?’ she asked, in an effort to forestall having to take another mouthful.

‘Usually. The Rough Rivers Brand has the reputation of producing some of the finest beef cattle on either side of the Pacific.’

Alessandra tried to look impressed, while wishing that it hadn’t lost quite so much of its reputation on the way to her plate!

‘We have beef for dinner every night when the housekeeper is on vacation. It’s the only thing Lisa feels confident about cooking.’

God help us if she ever tries to tackle anything else! Alessandra prayed silently as she managed to sever another piece of meat and insult her taste-buds with it.

From then on conversation was limited to enquiries about the health of Marilyn and her family, and Alessandra explained how she had met Bart’s sister in California and become firm friends with the older woman and her husband and children. It was Marilyn, knowing that Alessandra was planning to return to Australia for the summer, who had suggested that she apply for the job at Rough Rivers.

When Bart began to talk to Alessandra about the ranch’s accounting system, Lisa announced she had a date and excused herself from the table in the wake of a paternal instruction to be home before midnight.

Through it all Alessandra continued to try and force herself to eat; finally she gave in and pushed the plate aside. She looked across the table to find her employer leaning back in his chair watching her. His gaze caused a pool of warm liquid to settle in her lower abdomen.

‘Well, that was certainly…filling,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t eat another bite.’

‘Not many people would,’ Bart replied drily. ‘Lisa isn’t exactly overly talented in the kitchen.’

His humour was no longer only hinted at, but bursting out in a smile so dazzling that Alessandra felt almost giddy.

‘Now there’s an understatement! May I ask what perverse pleasure you get out of watching visitors choke on raw vegetables and charred steak?’ she asked, having no intention of making polite noises about how it wasn’t that bad.

‘I figure it’s about time Lisa learnt to cook…’

‘At what cost? A manslaughter charge?’

‘She’ll get better with practice,’ Bart stated.

‘It would be healthier for everyone if she got better with instruction ! Besides, cooking isn’t absolutely essential to a woman’s armoury these days. Wouldn’t you be better off hiring a replacement while your regular housekeeper is away?’

‘Lisa wouldn’t make any effort at all then. Can you cook?’ he asked.

‘No. But I’m sure as hell better than your daughter! Which isn’t to say I’m prepared to take over the task, if that’s what you have in mind.’

‘It wasn’t,’ he assured her, standing and commencing to clear the plates from the table. ‘Would you care for dessert?’

‘Only if it comes out of a tin.’

‘What about frozen pecan pie and ice-cream? I’ll even defrost the pie first,’ he promised. ‘Though I’m not sure Lisa would.’

Alessandra wondered whether he would use the microwave or simply conserve power by directing his denim-blue eyes on it; for a man who wasn’t good-looking he certainly had some powerful extras!

‘Suddenly I’m starving again! And as a dedicated, card-carrying member of the women’s movement I feel obligated to enjoy having a man cook for me!’

By mutual consent they ate their dessert in the kitchen.

‘What made you decide to become a rancher? Marilyn told me you both grew up in Dallas.’

‘Even as a kid I always preferred country life over the city. My uncle used to let me spend every vacation on his ranch, working for him. When I was old enough to quit school I did and moved out there for good. When my uncle died he left the ranch to me. Twelve months ago I decided to take a chance and began looking around for an Australian property.’ He shrugged. ‘So here I am.’

‘You don’t regret it?’ she queried, sensing the conversation would end there if she didn’t.

‘Why should I? Do I look as though I have regrets?’ he returned, holding her vivid blue gaze. Not because he wanted to, but because it was hard not to be drawn into the peacock-blue depths of her eyes.

‘No. But few people can claim to have no regrets about their lives.’

‘Do you have regrets?’

Alessandra grinned. ‘No! Not for the last nine years, at any rate. I can honestly say I’ve done everything I have ever wanted to do so far with my life, and I can’t see that changing in the future. Mind you, other people have spent a great deal of time regretting things on my behalf! My girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers, brothers, parents…’

Realising this woman needed very little encouragement to talk, Bart made no comment as he began to stack the dishwasher.

‘Boy! Have my parents spent some time regretting some of the things I’ve done. Like the time I was arrested for assaulting a police officer…’

Bart swung around, not certain he’d heard her correctly.

‘For what?’

‘For assaulting a police officer,’ she repeated calmly.

‘You see, I was taking part in a protest at White Bar, in Sydney, about the shipping of yellow cake…uranium,’ she qualified, ‘when the guy I was with was suddenly hit by a copper. I mean, Rick—that was the guy’s name— wasn’t doing anything worse than casting aspersions on the copper’s bloodlines when— whammo !’

She swung a clenched fist at an imaginary figure and winced.

‘The boys in blue suddenly wanted to exercise their fists on Rick’s face! Well, hell, what was I supposed to do? Stand back and not even try to help him? Don’t say yes, because that’s exactly what the judge thought too. But I was lucky, I only got fined a couple of hundred bucks. Even though it was the second time I’d been picked up by the cops.’