Partner for Love
Darcy stopped dead in the doorway, overwhelmed by a sudden and inexplicable sense of recognition at the sight of him. The line of his cheek, the curl of his mouth, the long brown fingers against the beer can, all suddenly seemed almost painfully familiar. It was as if she had always known him, had already traced the angles of his face with her hands and counted each crease at the edges of his eyes. Darcy felt jarred, breathless, quite unprepared for the peculiar certainty that her whole life had led to this moment, standing in a strange kitchen, staring into the eyes of this cool, watchful man while a clock ticked somewhere in the silence and outside the rain drummed noisily on the corrugated-tin roof.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cooper got to his feet, frowning.
Thoroughly unnerved by her bizarre reaction, Darcy swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked, and cleared her throat hastily. ‘Should there be?’
‘You look a bit peculiar.’
‘I was under the impression that you thought that everything about me was peculiar,’ she said waspishly, desperately trying to recover herself and wishing that Cooper’s eyes weren’t quite so acute.
‘What makes you say that?’ he asked politely.
Typically, Darcy couldn’t then think of a single thing he had said to hold against him. ‘It’s just an impression you give,’ she said a little sullenly. ‘You make me feel as if I’m a complete idiot.’
Cooper looked amused. ‘Anyone would feel a complete idiot, carrying a ridiculous umbrella like that,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow at Darcy, still hesitating in the doorway. ‘Are you going to stand there all night, or would you like to come in?’
That was exactly the kind of comment she had meant, Darcy thought crossly, but of course it was impossible to explain it to him. At least that odd feeling had gone. Obscurely grateful to Cooper for reminding her that he was simply a disagreeable stranger, she went over to the table and pulled out a chair. She was tired, still jet-lagged, lost and disorientated in a strange place. Nothing else could explain that brief, swamping sense of recognition when she had stood in the doorway and looked across at Cooper.
‘Like a beer?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather have tea if you have some,’ she said, proud of how cool she sounded.
‘Sure.’ Cooper crossed to the sink and filled the kettle, and Darcy found herself watching him as if she had never seen him before. There was a lean ranginess about him that hadn’t been so obvious in the ute. His body was compact and very controlled, and his movements had a sort of quiet, deliberate economy that was curiously reassuring.
He could hardly have been more different from Sebastian, she thought. Sebastian was fair and flamboyant, Cooper dark and unhurried, and yet Darcy had a sudden conviction that if she put them in a room together it would be Cooper who was the focus of attention. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Sebastian, but there was something much more compelling about him than mere good looks, and for the first time she appreciated just how alone they were together. The outside world seemed a long, long way away.
Darcy fiddled nervously with her bracelets, but the chinking silver sounded abnormally loud and she forced herself to link her hands together and think of something to say instead.
Unperturbed by the silence, Cooper had propped himself against the cupboards while he waited for the kettle to boil, arms folded across his chest and long legs crossed casually at the ankles.
‘How did Uncle Bill die?’ Darcy asked at last. “The solicitor just said that he died suddenly, but he seemed so healthy when he was in England.’
‘It was a freak accident,’ said Cooper quietly. ‘He broke his neck when he came off his motorbike. He’d hit an anthill and must have fallen the wrong way.’ He paused and glanced at Darcy. ‘He died instantly.’
Darcy closed her eyes. Her great-uncle had been such a strong, colourful character that it was impossible to imagine him killed by anything as small as an anthill.
‘Is that why you came?’ asked Cooper abruptly. ‘To find out how he died?’
‘Partly.’
‘And partly to see what he’d left you?’
There was an unmistakably sardonic edge to his voice and Darcy stiffened. ‘Uncle Bill always wanted me to see Bindaburra,’ she said defiantly.
‘He wanted you to see it; he didn’t want you to have it.’
‘That’s not what his will said,’ said Darcy in a cold voice. ‘I’m his great-niece and he was fond of me. Why shouldn’t he leave his property to me?’
‘Because he said he would leave it to me.’
‘To you? Why you?’
The kettle shrieked and Cooper turned calmly away to make a pot of tea. ‘I was his partner. He knew he could trust me to look after Bindaburra the way he had done.’
‘You can’t have been partners all that long,’ Darcy objected. ‘Uncle Bill never mentioned you when he was in England and that was only two years ago.’
‘He wouldn’t have done.’ Cooper put the lid back on the teapot and carried it over to the table. ‘Bill hated the fact that he couldn’t manage financially without a partner. I think he thought that if he didn’t talk about it it would mean that Bindaburra was still completely his.’
‘So were you a sort of sleeping partner?’ asked Darcy as he looked in one of the fridges for some milk.
‘In a way. I put in the capital he needed, but we agreed that Bill would continue to run Bindaburra without any interference from me. We had a tacit understanding that I would take over when he couldn’t manage any more, and that on his death the whole property would revert to me.’
He pushed the milk across the table towards Darcy, who poured some into a mug, frowning slightly. ‘Does that mean you’ve only taken over here since he died?’
‘Exactly. I haven’t had time to sort out the homestead yet, but Bindaburra will be my base.’
‘Doesn’t that rather depend on me?’ said Darcy coolly, reaching for the teapot.
Cooper looked grim. ‘It does now. Bill was a man of his word, but he obviously never got round to changing his will. I can assure you, though, that he intended Bindaburra to go to someone who could continue to look after it as he would have wanted.’
‘I’ve only got your word for that,’ she pointed out.
‘You needn’t worry,’ said Cooper contemptuously. ‘I don’t expect you to honour Bill’s agreement. I’ll give you a good price for your share.’
Darcy stirred her tea vigorously and laid down the spoon with a click. ‘Suppose I don’t want to sell?’
‘What else can you do?’ he said with an irritable look. ‘You’re surely not proposing to stay here yourself?’
He made it sound such a ludicrous idea that Darcy, who hadn’t got as far as proposing anything other than proving to Cooper Anderson that she had no intention of meekly giving in to whatever he suggested, sat back in her chair and pushed the chinking bracelets defiantly up her arm.
‘Why not?’ she said.
CHAPTER TWO
‘DON’T be ridiculous!’ said Cooper impatiently. ‘You can’t stay here.’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Darcy was looking mutinous. ‘It’s my house, isn’t it?’
He sucked in his breath, obviously having trouble controlling his temper. ‘If this is a way of trying to get me to force up my price, you can forget it, Darcy...sorry, Miss Meadows.’
‘I’m not interested in the money,’ she said with a glare at his sarcastic reminder of the way she had mistaken him for an employee. ‘I’m interested in doing what Uncle Bill would have wanted, and that doesn’t include handing it over to you as soon as you wave a cheque-book under my nose!’
‘Are you sure you want to turn your back on that kind of money?’
‘I loved Uncle Bill,’ Darcy said fiercely. ‘That means far more to me than anything, and if you thought I came out here just to bump up the price of some crummy little outback station you’ve got another think coming!’
‘Is that what you think Bindaburra is? A “crummy little outback station”?’
Darcy shifted a little uncomfortably at the sting in his voice. ‘I know it didn’t seem like that to Uncle Bill,’ she admitted sulkily. ‘I only meant that the property isn’t likely to be of any interest to me financially.’
‘Bindaburra covers over ten thousand square kilometres,’ said Cooper coldly. ‘It’s a very valuable property,’ he went on, ignoring Darcy’s dropped jaw. ‘You should consider that before you claim not to have any financial interest. Personally, I think you would be mad not to accept my offer to buy your share from you. You’re unlikely to be able to sell it as easily with a hostile partner already in place.’
‘I had no idea it was that big,’ said Darcy, struggling to convert kilometres into miles to try and work out just how big ‘big’ was. Not that she needed to bother. The answer was obviously huge.
‘Perhaps now you’ll realise how impossible it would be for you to stay!’
Darcy lifted her chin stubbornly. ‘No.’
‘Bindaburra can’t support someone who just sits around looking decorative,’ said Cooper with a scathing look, and she bristled.
‘I don’t just sit around! I’m used to working.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He didn’t even bother to hide his disbelief. ‘Doing what?’
‘I’m an actress.’
‘Oh, an actress ... that’ll be handy!’ Cooper was predictably sarcastic. ‘I’m talking about real work.’
‘Acting is work,’ she protested. ‘It’s much harder work than most people realise. It only looks easy.’
‘It’s still not exactly relevant experience for running a cattle station, is it?’
Darcy took a defiant sip of her tea. ‘I could learn.’
‘We’re not talking about a part in some play!’ A muscle hammered in Cooper’s lean jaw. ‘Bill worked hard all his life to build up Bindaburra into one of the finest properties in this part of Australia. I’m not going to let you throw it all away. Quite apart from anything else, I’ve got my investment to consider. That’s why I am now running Bindaburra, and I’m more than capable of running it without assistance from you!’
‘And I’ve got my inheritance to consider,’ she retorted. ‘What about all these other properties you said you owned? How do I know that you won’t be so busy that you’ll end up neglecting Bindaburra?’
Cooper clenched his teeth together. ‘There’s no question of that. I have managers who deal with problems on a day-to-day basis, and I’ve already made arrangements to come and live here permanently.’
‘That was a bit premature, wasn’t it? You could at least have waited to see what I wanted to do!’
‘It never occurred to me that you would want to do anything other than sell,’ he snapped. ‘I certainly didn’t think you would drop everything and hotfoot it out from England to see exactly what the old man had left you!’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Darcy protested, stung.
‘It looks like that from where I’m standing. You and your family ignored Bill for forty years. It was only when he went over to England and looked you up that you suddenly discovered that he owned a cattle station and you started making a fuss of him. Oh, there have been plenty of letters since then but it’s funny how you’ve only kept in touch since you thought you might get something out of him—as you have.’
Darcy banged her mug down on the table so hard that tea slopped over the edge. ‘I’ve told you, I had no idea that Bindaburra was worth anything!’
‘So you say. I’ve only got your word for that.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to take it, then, won’t you?’
‘I will if you’ll take my word that Bill intended to leave Bindaburra to me,’ said Cooper in a hard voice.
There was a hostile silence as they glared stubbornly at each other. It was Darcy who spoke first. ‘It sounds as if you’ve got other properties. Why do I have to sell up just so that you can have another one?’
He hesitated. ‘Bindaburra’s special,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve waited for this property a long time. I want all of Bindaburra, and I don’t care what I have to do to get it. If that means paying you a fair and generous price for something that’s rightfully mine, then that’s what I’ll have to do, but I’m not prepared to play silly games with you about it.’
‘I’ve got no intention of playing games,’ said Darcy, angrily shaking back her dark hair. ‘What makes Bindaburra rightfully yours? If Uncle Bill had wanted you to have Bindaburra, then he would have left it to you, but he didn’t. I came out here not because I wanted to see what I’d “got out of him”, as you put it, but because I felt I owed it to Uncle Bill to come. If he left Bindaburra to me, it’s because he wanted me to have it, not you, and I’m not going to casually hand it over on your say-so, no matter how fair and generous you think your offer is!’
Cooper crunched his empty beer can in his hand with an angry exclamation. ‘Fine words, but why don’t you face facts? A cattle station is no place for someone like you. It’s a hard, uncomfortable life, and you wouldn’t last five minutes out here on your own.’
‘Perhaps, but I’m still not going to be bullied into selling,’ said Darcy, draining her tea and pushing back her chair to stand up. ‘You’ve made it very plain that you don’t want me here, but you’re not going to get rid of me that easily. I may well decide to sell, but I’ll make up my own mind in my own time, and until I do I’m going to stay, so you’ll just have to lump it, won’t you?’
In spite of her brave words, Darcy lay awake wondering what on earth she had got herself into. It was wet and miserable, the house was cold and dingy and she was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a man who apparently both disliked and distrusted her. If she had any sense, she would take whatever Cooper Anderson was offering and head back for civilisation as soon as she could.
No, Darcy corrected herself gloomily. If she had any sense she wouldn’t have come at all.
Cooper was right—there was nothing for her here. She was an actress—she needed lights, music, people, an audience. Cooper was very unsatisfactory. He wasn’t in the least bit sympathetic, and showed no inclination to admire or applaud. Darcy longed to ring up half a dozen friends and ask their opinion; she was already getting withdrawal symptoms from not having a phone. It would be easy to describe her arrival at Bindaburra, more difficult to explain what Cooper was like.
Drawing the blankets up round her chin, Darcy rolled over on to her side and stared into the darkness. At first sight he seemed a typical outback type, with that lean, rangy body and the air of unhurried deliberation, but there was nothing typical about those penetrating eyes or that mouth...
Darcy clamped down firmly on thoughts of Cooper’s mouth and threw herself on to her other side with much readjustment of blankets. Much better to think about how arrogant and disagreeable he was. She frowned as she remembered how contemptuous he had been about her relationship with her great-uncle. It was true that the family had ignored him for forty years, but that was because they hadn’t known that he was still alive. Bill had left for Australia in 1924 after a bitter row with Darcy’s grandfather, and nothing had been heard from him since their mother had died just after the war. Until two years ago, that was, when Bill had turned up at the house that Darcy’s parents still lived in. They had been surprised, but delighted to welcome him back into the family. When Darcy had met him, she had been amazed that this stocky, pugnaciously colourful Australian could possibly be related to her grandfather, whom she dimly remembered as a stiff and punctiliously correct figure.
Both her parents had been occupied with other things that summer, so it had been Darcy who had spent the most time with her great-uncle. They could hardly have been more different, but each had struck a chord in the other, and much to everyone’s surprise, not least their own, they had enjoyed each other’s company. Darcy had swept her great-uncle off to parties and introduced him to all her friends with a complete lack of inhibition, and Bill had been in turns alarmed, astounded, suspicious and finally charmed.
Remembering her uncle made Darcy glad she had come. He had always wanted her to see Bindaburra, and see it she would, Cooper Anderson or no Cooper Anderson! She knew perfectly well that she wasn’t capable of running the property by herself, but she was damned if she was tamely going to hand everything over to Cooper. She would have to sell in the end, she supposed, but in the meantime she had a perfect right to be here, and it wouldn’t do him any harm to sweat a little!
It was still raining the next morning. Darcy had finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep which left her feeling jaded and disorientated and she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand as she wandered down the corridor to the kitchen, pulling her dressing-gown about her. It was an old one of her father’s, a dark red Paisley-pattern silk that had become a little worn over the years but which was still Darcy’s favourite. She hadn’t thought to bring any slippers, though, and her feet were cold on the polished wooden floor.
It was so dark that Cooper had the light on in the kitchen. He was standing looking out at the rain as he drank a mug of tea, but he turned as Darcy came yawning into the kitchen. She was never at her best in the morning. Her blue eyes were still smudgy with sleep and the thick dark hair tumbled wildly about her face.
An unreadable expression flickered over Cooper’s face as he watched her pad over to the kettle, but his voice was as astringent as Darcy remembered. ‘You’ll have to get up earlier than this if you’re planning to run the property,’ he said, looking pointedly at his watch.
‘It’s only half-past nine,’ said Darcy, squinting at her own watch.
‘It’s quarter to ten.’
‘Oh, well, that’s more or less half-past nine.’ Oblivious to Cooper’s stare, she peered into a cupboard. ‘Is there any fresh coffee?’
‘I doubt it very much,’ said Cooper. ‘Bill lived a very frugal existence. If you’re looking for luxuries, you’ve come to the wrong place. You’ll find some instant in the cupboard below,’ he added. ‘Do you want some breakfast?’
Darcy shook her dark head. ‘I can only cope with coffee at this time of the morning,’ she confessed. ‘You go ahead and have some, though.’
Looking up from stirring her coffee, she caught the gleam of amusement in his grey eyes. ‘I’ve already had breakfast, thank you,’ he said. ‘Four hours ago. I’ve just come in for a cup of tea.’
With some difficulty, Darcy mentally subtracted four hours. ‘You had breakfast at five-thirty?’ she asked incredulously.
‘You’d better get used to it if you’re still planning to stay. Or has a good night’s sleep made you see things in a more sensible light?’
‘I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you mean,’ said Darcy, although privately she doubted that she would be able to bear any regime which meant getting up at five o’clock, and as for eating breakfast then...! She shuddered at the thought.
Shifting from foot to foot on the cold floor, she made herself a coffee and went to sit cross-legged on a chair, tucking her feet up beneath her. ‘It’s freezing,’ she grumbled and cradled her hands around the mug. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a desert?’
‘It is mid-winter,’ Cooper pointed out. ‘You should be glad it’s like this.’
‘How do you work that one out?’ she asked, still grumpy with sleep.
‘If you’re going to be part-owner of a property like Bindaburra, you’re going to have to learn to pray for rain. If we don’t have rain, we don’t have feed for the cattle, and if we can’t feed our stock we’ll both be selling up.’
Darcy stared morosely at the rain pouring off the roof of the veranda outside the kitchen window. Surely they had had enough rain in the last two days to be going on with? It was June, summer at home. Everyone would sitting outside the pubs in the sunshine, walking across the parks in bare feet, drinking Pimms in the garden. Of course, it might be raining at home, too, she admitted honestly.
Cooper came over to the table and pulled out a chair. Darcy watched him a little warily. He looked bigger in daylight, and everything about him was more pronounced. She was very conscious suddenly of his solidity and the latent power of his body, and she thought of the French expression—being at ease in one’s skin. It described Cooper perfectly. He was quiet and controlled and somehow centred.
He must have been outside for his face had a damp sheen and his eyelashes were still wet. Darcy found herself staring at them. They were short and thick and the rain had emphasised how their darkness contrasted with the startling lightness of his eyes. For no reason, a tiny shiver slid down her spine and she pulled her dressing-gown closer around her.
‘How long had you intended to stay?’ he asked abruptly.
‘As long as necessary,’ said Darcy, irritated by that ‘had’. She put up her chin. ‘I booked a return flight to London in a month’s time, but I can easily change it if I decide to stay longer.’ ‘I wouldn’t have thought a busy actress could afford to be away that long.’
‘It just so happens that I don’t have any commitments at the moment,’ said Darcy in a dignified way. She was rather sensitive about the fact that the play that had given her her first big break had turned out to be a flop, and had folded after a disastrous two weeks.
‘Ah,’ said Cooper with one of his disquieting gleams of humour. ‘So you’re...what’s the word...resting?’
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.