Jodie Marshall whirled at the sound of the strong clear voice and faced a man astride a great chestnut stallion. He rode out from the surrounding bush, his dog keeping pace at his side. A hermit-like eccentric, the woman at the shop had said of the naturalist who operated the only animal shelter in the area. Rarely seen in town, he would cause quite a sensation whenever he appeared and set tongues wagging. But nothing she’d heard had prepared her for this. Her breath locked in her throat as she watched the rider approach. His features were striking and strong. He wore nothing but shorts, was even barefooted, and had a heavy fall of long raven hair that reached well below his shoulders. A film of perspiration shimmered on his bronzed powerful limbs and broad bare chest, all hard muscle beneath a light shadowing of hair.

‘Pushing open a strange man’s back door can be dangerous. Don’t you know what I could do to you?’ he said, assessing the intruder. Her snugly fitting shorts, tapering legs, and explicit lines of her breasts thrusting against the soft material of a T-shirt brought a sweet, subtle surge of stimulation.

Dumb-founded, Jodie stood glued to the ground. Her first day in Australia's Northern Territory and, by sheer instinct, she knew it was one she wasn’t going to forget.

‘It was already ajar, I called out—there was no answer...’ she faltered, as shock slowly slipped into fear.

 Dismounting, he stood by the horse, his eyes riveted on hers. He reached to touch the dog’s head. ‘Stay, Gus,’ he commanded, bringing the animal to instant obedience.

‘People come looking for me for only one reason, and they phone first, so why have you intruded on me? Didn’t you see the notice at the gate?’ he demanded, not tremendously impressed with what he was sure was an attempted subterfuge.

Jodie had seen a notice and now wished she’d read it more thoroughly. But expecting a friendlier welcome than this, she’d just come bicycling in. She eyed the man stalking toward her, slowly closing the distance between them. Six-foot-four undoubtedly, a commanding figure, and at least ten years her senior, he had lines of experience on that handsome face confirming his maturity.

She looked up, way up. Steel-grey eyes under dark eyebrows were coldly magnetic. And, though the coldness she saw there chilled her, she met his gaze steadily. He looked stern and forbidding. Despite the injured bird in her bicycle basket, Jodie decided she wouldn't hang about to find out what sort of ‘eccentric’ this man was likely to be. Edging back a step on the verge of panicked flight, she stammered, ‘Well... I’ll... I’ll be off—’ but in a lunge he snared her wrist and pulled her to him.

‘Not so fast!’ he cut in.

Outraged at her ignominious and powerless position, Jodie exploded in fury. She tore at his steel-like fingers. ‘How dare you —!’

‘Oh, but I do,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve had trouble with a bunch of young holiday campers who broke in and terrorized the wildlife so unless you can convince me otherwise, I’ll assume that you’re one of them. Why are you snooping around?’

 Realizing he was making no move to release her, Jodie’s fear edged forward to dread. ‘I am not one of your campers!’ she lashed out. ‘I'm trying to find the man who runs an animal shelter, for God’s sake!’ 

His eyes searched hers. There was a ring of truth in her voice and the clean, fresh fragrance of that mop of wild auburn curls sailing by his nostrils was hardly synonymous with the little troublemakers he envisaged. He released his grip and she swung away to face him, rebuke poised on her lips, but he got there first.

‘I’m the one you’re looking for and I take it pretty personally when it comes to harassing wildlife,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I apologize.’ 

‘And so you damn well should!’ 

The naturalist eyed her with a touch of amusement. Barely out of her teens, if anything, and so full of cheek. 

She cocked her head to one side and unleashed her outrage. ‘Is this what visiting young women can expect from men in these parts? Get your kicks this way?’

He'd seen blue eyes before, but none quite as lovely as these. A deep corn-flower and blazing in anger, they made his pulse quicken and his gut tighten. But that refined accent and cultured manner smacked of only one thing. Class. Breeding. He knew the sort. He'd tangled with her kind once before and the consequences still haunted him.  Softly alluring though she was, he certainly had no intention of conceding to her whims. He snorted with derision.

‘I don’t know about other men, but as far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t flatter myself if I were you.’  His bearing grew stiff, distant, and hostile. 'Look lady, I've apologized for my lapse in manners, and I think I’ve humored you enough, so, if you have an injured animal let me have it or please leave.’ Hands on his hips, he waited for her to comply. 

‘Bird!’ she corrected, with a withering look. ‘Tell me, are you just naturally rude? Or do you work at it?’  

A sardonic smile touched his hard mouth. ‘Your directness is admirable, but think what you like. I'm not concerned about your opinion of me,’ he said, and, leaving Jodie barely a moment to bristle at his terse remark, he walked the few paces to a clothesline and un-pegged a shirt. Shucking into the sleeves of the garment, but leaving it hanging casually out of his shorts and unbuttoned, he proceeded to roll the sleeves, fold over fold, until they came to rest on the edge of his biceps. Retracing his steps, he asked in a more civil tone, ‘Now, where is the injured bird?’  

Jodie jerked with the sudden familiar stab of pain in her knee. With a quick massage of thumb and forefinger, she stepped lightly, favoring her good leg to protect the old injury. She made her way to the far end of the house where she'd parked the hired bicycle from Blue Springs. She stopped and indicated the basket on the handlebars. ‘In here. Looks like a stork of some sort—black and white plumage and brilliant scarlet legs.’ She pushed aside the rumpled hand towel in the basket to reveal its contents. The stork with its long legs tucked under it struggled to get out.  She held it still with one hand, while clasping her knee with the other. That rough bush track had played havoc with it, she realized, gently massaging the affected area.

The naturalist came up behind her and peered into the basket. ‘Come on, little fella, let’s have a look at you,’ he said, in a tone that amazed Jodie. He seemed hardly capable of such tenderness.

‘This is a Black-neck stork, or Jabiru. Australia’s native stork...’ he said absently, and picked up the basket. ‘We'll get him comfortable at the shelter and find out what's wrong.’

‘Fella? Him? How do you know it’s a boy?’

‘Black eyes; the female has yellow eyes.’

style='color:black'>‘Well, you seem to know your stuff,’ she conceded, grudgingly.

A smile creased the corner of his mouth. ‘I should hope so,’ he replied, with a trace of sarcasm. ‘I also have a license to care for injured wildlife and release them into the wild, in case you’re concerned.’

‘Well, even if you didn’t, I have nowhere else to leave the poor thing,’ Jodie shrugged.

The dark brows drew together as he regarded her closely. ‘Next time, please phone first. That way if I’m not here, the call can be transferred to someone else who can take care of the animal or bird,’ he said, his tone implying a reprimand.

Jodie felt chastened. ‘Well, I’ll remember that,’ she returned, fully aware that a repeat of anything like this would be highly unlikely. ‘Regarding the... the jabiru, if you need to contact me, I'm Jodie Marshall. I'm staying at The Summer House and I have a holiday job with John Steele.  The man who owns the fishing and sightseeing tours.’

The Summer House. Well he hadn't been wrong about her.  It was the fancy new place especially constructed for the rising number of affluent visitors seeking a taste of bush-life—in opulent style, of course. But what was she doing working for John? He pushed his hair from his face and held it back in his fist.  From his pocket, he drew out a length of a fine leather thong. In a flash, he’d bound the unruly mass at the nape of his neck bringing the clear lines of his face into view.

Jodie recovered from the shock of the sudden revelation taking place before her eyes, only to be followed by another. 

‘I’m Brad Steele, John's older brother,’ he announced.

John's brother! She almost choked. In staggering contrast to the mild, blond John, Brad's darkly sensual good looks were the stuff of a woman’s ultimate fantasy.

Brad took the basket off the handlebars.

‘I’d like to come with you—get some idea of the stork’s injury,’ she said.

He eyed her briefly, debating the idea. ‘Well, through there to the shelter, if you want to follow me,’ he said, nodding in the direction of another fence a few meters away.

‘Leave your bike here,’ he added, and kept walking, wondering why she was using a bicycle at all; the track was rutted and rough. Besides, John had said The Summer House provided complimentary use of 4-wheel-drive vehicles for its guests.

A short, piercing whistle had Jodie shooting out of her skin. Brad had summoned his horse. She watched as Flame trotted up from where he’d moved off to graze. Taking hold of the reins, Brad gave the great animal a few strokes along the neck while it nuzzled him. He put down the basket, removed the saddle from the horse's back, and tossed it over a fence-rail.

‘Go on Flame, you beat it to the paddock, mate,’ he urged, with the smack of a cupped hand on its rump, the cracking sound magnified in the quiet of the bush. The horse needed nothing more to send it galloping into the fenced-off area across the dirt road. ‘Good boy,’ he called, watching until the animal had cantered away to the grassy, lightly wooded slopes, quite obviously in high spirits. He shut the security gate and started back. 

Jodie picked up the basket and casually scanned her surrounds. The long low brick house wasn't too different from the usual tropical style of the north timber houses elevated on piers. This had the same sheet metal roof, but built at ground level. French windows, encompassing the house, opened to capture every drift of breeze. Sprays of bougainvillea in rust and white edging the wrought-iron arches rivaled the blatant colors of other tropical flora, so unlike the gentle blooms she’d been used to in England. Everything was neatly maintained, the lawn and gravel pathways, even a small vegetable patch. Self-sufficient, no doubt. 

‘That’s a fine chestnut stallion you have,’ she commented, as he walked up. 

 ‘He is. Unfortunately, Flame had a previous owner who neglected him, so I bought him for two hundred dollars and a bottle of whiskey. I got the blue-heeler thrown in for free.’ 

‘Well, he seems happy now,’ she said, taking in the dog lying stretched out comfortably on the veranda. 

Jodie followed Brad to the fence where he unlatched the gate and let her through. They were in the paddock he’d reserved for the shelter. A short expanse of eucalyptus trees and small palms with scorched blackened trunks lay before them, and recuperating kangaroos roamed freely beneath. She made her way slowly, ahead of Brad, still favoring her bad knee. But now it wasn’t just her knee, but her head. It throbbed like a trip-hammer. The intense heat wasn’t something she was used to. She’d been feeling under par ever since her arrival. They threaded their way along the dirt track, their footfalls leaving imprints in the damp soil. ‘I’d love to ride Flame sometime,’ she said. ‘When I was a small child, my father owned a stud farm just out of Sydney. I loved the racehorses he bred and trained, but I loved riding the mare he’d given me more.’ 

Brad had drawn level with her by now and threw her a sidelong glance. ‘You lived in Australia?’ he asked, somewhat surprised. 

‘I was born here. But when I was just five years old my father, an Englishman, decided to sell up and return to England.

‘Anyway,’ she said cheerily, ‘I’ve fulfilled a cherished dream—a yearning to visit the land of my birth.’

‘That makes you an Aussie. True Blue.’ 

She smiled in his direction. ‘Dinki Di,’ she added, catching a softening of his hard features at her use of the colloquial expression. ‘Or, at least, I should be, but Dad officially changed the rest of us to British.’

He smiled at that, and it spurred her on to loosen up.  ‘Would you mind if I rode Flame?’ she ventured, once more.  

‘Sorry. He’s suspicious of strangers, so nobody rides him but me.’

What did he mean by ‘nobody’? He seemed to be alone—there wasn’t anybody else here that she could see and, now that he seemed less confrontational since discovering she wasn’t one of the miscreants he’d spoken of, Jodie let herself relax further. ‘Does someone else live here?’ she asked, wondering if there was a woman who went with this wilderness lifestyle. There was that washing on the clothesline. Bed linen and towels, all crisp and clean, hinted to the presence of one.

‘No, just me, but my brother comes sometimes when he wants to have a beer and a discussion of some sort,’ he said, with undisguised affection. ‘Tony, the general help at the shelter, comes daily, and then there's the veterinarian who drives out from Blue Springs once a week and gives his time free of charge.’

‘So, apart from them, does everyone else have to phone? Even visitors?’

‘I don't have visitors. I prefer my own company.  People in these parts know I value my privacy.’ 

‘And along comes me,’ she said, flippantly. ‘Mr. Steele, I don’t usually go around opening people’s doors, so I apologize.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Accepted, Miss Marshall. Perhaps you've heard in town, some folk even refer to me as reclusive and eccentric.’ 

‘Well, that’s your business,’ she said, recalling the lady at the shop and the gossip she was hell-bent on passing on to newcomers. She’d even told Jodie that the remote, vast Outback of the Northern Territory was a haven for eccentrics and fugitives from all over the southern states. Men fleeing from one thing or another: law, debts, a nagging wife, or even a love affair gone wrong.

Jodie tried to figure out the tall, impressive, and barefooted stranger now striding a step ahead of her and wondered what category he fit into. And value his privacy? Well, for one thing, if he could ride his horse practically naked, he certainly would.

A large building came quite unexpectedly into view as they approached, its brick walls colored a leaf-green, blending it in with the bush.  ‘How do you know it was campers who broke in?’ she asked.

‘Tony was here, he just caught sight of them piling into a car and driving away at top speed.’

‘They didn't hurt the animals, did they?’

Touched by her concern, Brad turned toward her and caught the gentleness in her face.  ‘No. Or I would have gone to the police. They just let them out from their holding pens. It’s school holiday time, and some kids are just looking for fun.’

‘But all the way out here?’  Jodie’s tone rose, ‘why, unless you come right up, you can’t see the place from the bush track, let alone the main road.  I mean, had I not been told to look for a beer can hanging on a branch to mark the track where you live, I’d have had trouble finding the place.’ 

    ‘Well, obviously, somebody did,’ he said.

Something else the woman at the shop had divulged crept into Jodie’s mind. When the naturalist had arrived some twelve years before and bought five square kilometers of rough bush-land, and paid cash, there had been much speculation. It was known that, before he arrived, he’d amassed quite a little fortune, but nobody knew how and probably never would. Brad Steele remained an enigma for the little town of Blue Springs. 

They arrived at the building and Brad paced ahead. He sprinted up the steps to unlock the door, but Jodie fell behind. She stood frozen, not from the knife-like jab stressing her knee or the thrumming in her head, but the scathing message scrawled across a bulletin board that hung by the door.

YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET

Left by the pranksters? It probably had been, but Brad stood there right by the board and seemed totally indifferent to the vicious words. Maybe he preferred not to offer any explanation. Well, he owed her none.  He turned, unlocked the door, and entered the building. After leaving the basket inside, he stepped out again. ‘This way, Miss Marshall,’ he said, expecting her to come straight up. 

Jodie flicked another glance at the board. Perhaps the whole thing was a kind of ‘getting even’ for his terse and aloof attitude, but why would anyone bother if they already knew what he was like? 

Deftly, she stepped over a large muddy puddle left by the previous night’s rain, but got no further. She swayed as giddiness swept through her. Was it the heavy pace of travel that was catching up?  She crumpled, pawing the air for support.

‘My knee, Oh... Oooh!  God, my head it...’ her sentence trailed, and embarrassment swept through her last conscious moment before blackness took over, throwing her down straight into the puddle. 

Brad made a dash down the steps to grab her. Knee? Head? Which was it? What on earth was wrong with the girl?

 ‘Miss Marshall, wake up!’ He slapped lightly at her cheeks in an attempt to revive her. ‘Wake up! Miss Marshall, open your eyes...’ 

Jodie’s eyelashes fluttered. She heard herself moan, and, when she was finally able to focus her gaze, it seemed like she’d been passed out for ages. A fuzziness lurked at the corners of her eyes, but a gentle strength supported her. She was in Brad’s arms.

‘Uh... ’ a moan rose from her throat and, lost in a daze, she slowly forced her way back to reality. She looked up, straight into Brad Steele’s eyes.

‘Wha...?’

‘It’s okay,’ he cut in. ‘Your legs just gave way. And your knee, does it hurt?’ His husky tone, almost caressing, diminished her fear, but darkness slid over her again. Once more, after what seemed like ages, she returned to consciousness to find Brad’s concerned face hovering over hers. 

‘I’ll get you back to my place,’ he said, sweeping her up into his arms. 

‘I’ll walk,’ she muttered, and he laughed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I’m strong enough,’ he countered with a hint of attempted levity at the strange turn of events.

The next thing Jodie knew, she was being carried through a lounge room and into a bedroom. He laid her across a bed and she sighed at its comfort. 

‘I’ll get a bandage or cold compress for your knee.’

Feeling a fool at all the fuss she was causing, she tried to explain. ‘It’s just an old... bicycling injury. …pain never lasts long; it’s on the mend. I think I’m just all washed out with traveling and very little sleep,’ she added, effecting nonchalance, but she didn’t fool Brad.

There was a dazed look in her eyes, and it worried him. He placed his palm across her forehead. ‘Seems to me it’s a bit more than that,’ he said, noting the exhaustion and stress showing on her stricken face. ‘I think you have a touch of the sun. Just hold on a minute,’ he added, and left the room. Minutes later, he returned with a First Aid box and a glass of water.  Wordlessly, he set them down on the table beside her. He opened the box and took out some tablets.

Jodie lifted her hand to check the reason for her forehead’s smarting.

‘...Scraped. Probably when you fell,’ he muttered, and took her hand, resting it palm-up in his.

‘I’ll take care of it,’ he added, still holding her hand. She closed her eyes and might have allowed herself to indulge in the exciting feeling of that warm and strong hand, but a wad of cotton, dabbed with alcohol, touched the graze.

‘Ouch!’ Her eyelids flew open at the stinging and met steel-grey eyes focused on measuring the extent of her reaction.

He blew on the wound to cool it. ‘There, that should fix it.’ He handed her some tablets and the glass of water. ‘Are you okay with analgesics?’

She nodded, rose shakily to her elbow, but flopped helplessly back to the pillow. Brad sat on the edge of the bed and eased in behind her. With his arm draped over her shoulders, he helped her to a sitting position and brought her head to rest against his chest. He picked up the glass of iced water and raised it to her lips.

    Jodie reached for the glass, but he kept holding it and she took a sip.  She marveled at the sensitivity with which he tended her; it was so at odds with his earlier brusque attitude.  Still cradled in his arms, she could feel and hear him breathe and it was impossible not to be stirred by the sensuousness of the moist male scent of his chest. She trembled against him, held like a captive in the smoldering embrace of a lover, but fever and weakness allowed little room for sensations other than sheer fatigue. 

‘The tablets will make you feel better,’ he said, helping her lie back again. He returned the glass to the table and watched until her light breathing told him she was asleep. 

   

*  *  *  *

Pink streaks of daybreak tinted the sky, nudging away the purple remnants of the night before.  It took a moment for Jodie to wake up fully and adjust to her whereabouts. Clearing the cobweb of dreams from her mind, she drew a breath that brought a faint male scent—it was from the pillow. She rose on one elbow, then sat bolt upright. Realization slowly emerged. ‘Oh, hell’s fury...’ Jodie made the throaty imprecation in horror. She was lying in a king-size bed, and it wasn’t hers. She took in the expensive dark green and maroon candlewick bedspread neatly draped over the foot of the bed and observed a shirt lying across a chair. She scrambled to get up, but sank back to the pillows just as fast.  Though she seemed rid of the headache and fever, she still felt weak and the best thing to do was to lie there for a little while longer. She relaxed and let her eyes roam the room appraising it. Mud-spattered boots lay by the far French window. At least a size eleven. Extraordinary! Something compelled her eyes to the clothesline, and she drew a sharp breath through half-parted lips.  Gone were the sheets and towels, and, there, fluttering in the cool morning air, were her clothes—right down to her lacy bikini underwear, all washed and hung out to dry. And she? Tearing at the sheet she shot a glance under it—naked! Clad only in one of his shirts.