Outback bride - Hart Jessica (читать книги без регистрации полные TXT) 📗

‘I’ve just got no taste,’ said Copper, shaking her head in mock sorrow. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

‘It does seem a waste,’ agreed Brett, blue eyes dancing. ‘A beautiful girl like you should be in love with someone. You haven’t done anything silly like falling in love with Mal, have you? He’s a hardened case, and you’d have much more fun with me!’

It was obvious that he was joking, but Copper sprang away from him as if he had jabbed her with a hot poker. ‘In love with MalT she spluttered, with quite unnecessary vehemence. ‘What a ridiculous idea! Of course I’m not in love with Mal!’

‘Now that we’ve cleared that up, do you think you could come and say goodnight to Megan?’ Mal’s cool voice from the doorway made Copper spin round, her cheeks aflame. ‘Then, if you’re ready, we could have that talk-or are you and Brett busy?’

‘No-no, of course not,’ stammered Copper, but Brett only grinned.

‘Yes, we are,’ he said gaily. ‘I’m extremely busy trying to persuade Copper to fall in love with me, but so far we’ve only established that she’s not in love with you!’

Mal’s expression was unreadable. ‘So I heard.’

‘I’ll-um- I’ll just say goodnight to Megan,’ said Copper hurriedly. She tried to gather up her files from the kitchen table, but she was so flustered that she managed to drop most of them on the floor, and then had to scrabble around picking them up again.

Mal held the door open for her with ironic courtesy. ‘I’ll be in my office,’ he said.

What did it matter if he had heard her tell Brett that she wasn’t in love with him? Copper asked herself as she bent down to kiss Megan. It was perfectly true. OK, there had been Turkey, but that had been youthful infatuation, and anyway, he had been different then. He wasn’t in love with her now and she wasn’t in love with him.

Absolutely, definitely not.

So why are you lurking in here as if you don’t want to face him? an inner voice enquired. Copper drew a deep breath. The whole future of Copley Travel was at stake while she was dithering in here. Stop being pathetic, she told herself. Just go out there and show Mal what you’re made of!

‘Come in,’ said Mal as she knocked at the open door with an assumption of confidence. He came round his desk to shut the door behind her. ‘Sit down.’

The formality was a little disconcerting, but Copper took it as encouragement. Mal was just making it clear that this was a business meeting like any other. Trying to ignore the undertow of tension in the room, she opened a file and drew out the plan of the waterhole site that her father had drawn and a sheaf of artists’ impressions of what the camp would look like.

She talked for nearly an hour. And all the time she was excruciatingly aware of Mal leaning over the plans, of the taut power of his body close to hers, the brown finger running down a list of figures and the hard, exciting line of his cheek tugging at the edge of her vision.

At length Copper talked herself to a standstill. She had done the best she could and now all she could do was wait for Mal’s decision. ‘I’m not sure that there’s anything else I can tell you at this stage,’ she said carefully as she began to stack the papers back together. ‘Obviously there are still a lot of details to be worked out, but at this stage we’d really just like to reach an agreement with you in principle.’

There was no way of telling what he thought of her arguments. His face gave nothing away as he straightened from the desk and walked over to the window. ‘This project means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?’ he said, turning back to face her at last.

‘Yes, it does,’ she said honestly.

‘I’m just wondering how much you’re prepared to do to get me to agree to it.’

‘Well, the figure I suggested is open to negotiation,’ Copper began with caution, but Mal waved that idea aside.

‘I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about what you personally are prepared to do.’

‘Personally?’ What was he driving at? Copper gave a rather uncertain laugh. ‘I guess it rather depends on the sort of thing you’ve got in mind.’

‘Let’s say marriage, for instance.’

She froze in the middle of shoving papers back into their file, wondering if she had misheard. ‘Marriage! Whose marriage?’

‘Yours and mine,’ said Mal calmly.

Copper had the oddest feeling that the floor had tipped beneath her feet, and she sat down abruptly on her chair, still clutching the file. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked, in a voice that sounded quite unlike her own.

‘Believe me, I’ve never felt less like joking,’ said Mal. ‘I’m offering you a straight deal. Here it is: you can use the waterhole to do whatever you want with your tourists if you agree to marry me. I’m not talking about a lifetime commitment,’ he went on when Copper just gaped at him. ‘I’m thinking of an agreed period of three years-but that figure is open to negotiation, as you would say.’

Copper moistened her lips surreptitiously. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she had blundered into a play to discover that she had no idea of her own lines. ‘But-but this is crazy!’ she stuttered. ‘You don’t even want to get married. You said so!’

‘I don’t want to, but I will. I need a wife.’ Mal picked up a fax message from a pile on his desk. ‘I got this from the agency today. They’ve found a girl who’s prepared to come out on a short-term contract, but I can see already what’s going to happen. She’ll be keen for a week or so and then she’ll get bored, and Brett will think it’s his duty to entertain her, and before we know where we are she’ll be in tears and booking herself on the first bus back to Brisbane. Meanwhile Megan is left, abandoned by yet another stranger just when she’s got used to her.’

He dropped the fax wearily back onto the desk. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said at the waterhole that day, and I’ve decided that you’re right.’

‘Something I said?’ echoed Copper, surprise helping her to find her voice. ‘What did I say?’

‘You said that marriage didn’t have to be the way it was with Lisa, and the more I think about it, the more I think you’re right. A business arrangement where both sides know quite clearly what’s involved would be a different sort of marriage altogether.’

‘That wasn’t exactly the different kind of marriage I had in mind,’ she said with a tiny sigh, but Mal wasn’t listening.

‘It makes sense,’ he said, getting up to prowl around the room as he ticked the advantages off on his fingers. ‘Even Brett would draw the line at seducing his brother’s wife, so I get a permanent housekeeper and Megan gets a mother figure. Three years isn’t ideal, but it’s more security than she gets at the moment, and-who knows?-the marriage might be a success and we could renegotiate terms for a longer period.’

‘I don’t believe this!’ said Copper incredulously. ‘You’re not seriously asking me to marry you just to solve your housekeeping problems?’

‘Why not? You’re perfect.’ Mal stopped striding and came to prop himself against the desk beside her so that he could study her dispassionately. ‘The first and most important thing is that you’re good with Megan and she likes you.’

‘I’m not being asked to marry Megan, though, am I?’

‘Second,’ he said, ignoring her sarcastic interruption, ‘you don’t seem to take Brett too seriously. And third, as you were so busy telling Brett, you’re not in love with me.’

Copper looked down at the file in her lap. She was very aware of the soft material of her skirt hanging against her bare legs and there was a cold knot gathering deep inside her. ‘Most husbands would think of that as a disadvantage,’ she said, amazed that she could sound so composed when her blood was still booming at the shock of his proposal.

‘It’s not as far as I’m concerned,’ said Mal. ‘I’ve had one wife who said she loved me, and I don’t want another. No, you’ve told me that you’re not romantic, and that suits me fine. I want someone who’ll treat the marriage like a business deal, with no messy emotions or false expectations of what it’ll be like.’