“So you won’t marry me?”

“No.”

“What about your financial problems?”

“I’m looking for a job, not a meal ticket,” Lizzy said coldly. “I’m sorry if you feel you’ve wasted an expensive bottle of champagne on me, but you’re going to have to look elsewhere for a wife. I’m not for sale.”

Wearily, she made to push back her chair, but Tye caught her wrist.

“Lizzy, wait! You want a job? I’ll give you a job. If you won’t marry me yourself, you can find me someone who will.”

In the hot, dusty Australian Outback, the last thing a woman expects to find is a husband….

Clare, the Englishwoman, Ellie, the tomboy and Lizzy, the career girl, don’t come to this harsh, beautiful land looking for love.

Yet they all find themselves saying “I do” to a handsome Australian man of their dreams!

Baby at Bushman’s Creek

Wedding at Waverley Creek

A Bride for Barra Creek

Welcome to an exciting new trilogy by rising star

Jessica Hart

Celebrate three unexpected weddings, Australian-style!

A Bride for Barra Creek
Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Annie, with love on reaching Chapter Ten.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU may kiss the bride.’

Smiling, Lizzy watched as Jack cupped Ellie’s face between his hands and bent his head to kiss her. It was only a brief kiss, but Lizzy was sure that for that moment the two of them had completely forgotten their audience and existed only for each other.

Lucky Ellie, thought Lizzy as she saw Jack’s hand close firmly around her sister’s, and she couldn’t help wondering a little wistfully if it would ever be her turn. When was she going to find someone who belonged with her the way Jack belonged with Ellie?

Not that she didn’t have more important things to worry about, Lizzy reminded herself. Like finding a job. Falling in love would be wonderful, but it wouldn’t pay off her credit card bills, would it?

Lizzy’s mind flickered towards the likely total, and veered away like a startled horse. She shouldn’t have bought those shoes, she thought, glancing down at them a little guiltily. They had been an extravagance, but they were perfect with the dress, and she’d had to look nice for Ellie’s wedding. It wasn’t every day your little sister got married.

Anyway, Lizzy decided firmly, she wasn’t going to think about her overdraft today. This was Ellie’s day.

Blue eyes warm with affection, Lizzy looked around the old woolshed. It looked as if the entire district had turned out to see Ellie marry Jack Henderson. How could their marriage fail to be a success when so many people were there to wish them well? All the faces were familiar to Lizzy, all were smiling.

Except one.

He was standing on his own, not talking, not smiling, just surveying the scene with an air of detached cynicism that made him stand out from the crowd far more than his height or his dark, harsh features.

As a child, Lizzy had been sent a book of fairy tales from England. It had been illustrated with green fields and dense, dark forests that had meant little to a child growing up in the outback. One of the pictures had shown a wolf, barely disguised beneath a fleece, prowling through a field of sheep. It had conveyed the same sense of lurking menace that Lizzy felt now, staring at the stranger, and a tiny shiver tiptoed down her spine.

The photographer was busily arranging family groups and Lizzy was called just then to stand next to her sister. Smiling obediently for the camera, she craned her neck slightly to keep the mysterious stranger in view over the photographer’s shoulder, and her interest deepened when she saw the way the other guests eyed him askance and were careful to give him a wide berth. Clearly she wasn’t the only one who sensed something different about him, something dangerous, yet strangely compelling.

Released by the photographer, Lizzy manoeuvred her way to the edge of the group where she could greet guests waiting to congratulate Jack and Ellie and watch the man at the same time. He had acquired a glass of the champagne that was circulating, and judging by the curl of his lip he didn’t think much of it.

Lizzy was intrigued. Who was he? His hair was dark and cut close to his head, his face angular, with strong features and a forbidding expression. He might be dressed like all the other men in the room, but there was an unmistakably maverick quality about him. It was something to do with the hardness of his mouth, with the coiled power that was evident in the way he held himself, with the cool, watchful eyes.

Her mother must know who he was, Lizzy reasoned. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would drive thirty miles from the nearest sealed road to gatecrash an ordinary outback wedding, so presumably he had been invited.

She turned to ask, but her mother was talking to the celebrant, and when she glanced back to the stranger she found herself looking straight into his eyes. They were piercingly pale in his dark face, and so cold that Lizzy’s heart jerked and the breath dried in her throat.

She had the oddest feeling that the floor of the woolshed had dropped away beneath her feet and only that unnervingly light gaze was holding her above an abyss. It could only have been for a moment, but to Lizzy it felt as if she hung there for ever, her gaze locked with his.

And then he smiled, a swift, mocking smile that for some reason sent the colour surging into her cheeks. Lizzy wrenched her eyes away and pointedly turned her back, furious to find that her heart was hammering in her chest.

It hadn’t been a nice smile. Not really. She wasn’t even going to ask who he was. From now on, she decided, she would ignore him.

Only somehow she couldn’t. Lizzy threw herself into her role as bridesmaid, flitting between groups, hugging old friends, laughing, kissing, agreeing that Ellie looked beautiful and that she and Jack were perfect for each other, but no matter how many times she tried to turn her back, the stranger always seemed to be there, lurking irritatingly at the edge of her vision.

Perversely, the moment she couldn’t see him any more, she missed him. On her way back from the bar that had been set up at one end of the woolshed, Lizzy paused and sipped her champagne, surveying the crowd with a slight frown between her brows. Where had he gone?

‘Looking for me?’ a voice said in her ear, and Lizzy started, the champagne sloshing out of her glass as she swung round.

Sure enough, it was the stranger, looking even more sardonic at close quarters. Close to, Lizzy could see that his eyes were grey, but so light they seemed glacial against the darkness of his hair and lashes, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that they could see right through her.

‘Why should I be looking for you?’ she asked, with what she thought was creditable coolness considering that her heart seemed to have taken up residence in her throat, where it was jumping and fluttering and generally making it ridiculously hard for her to breathe.

‘I’m the only person here you haven’t kissed,’ he said. He had an unusual accent, not wholly Australian nor completely American, but somewhere in between. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss anyone out, would you?’

Lizzy swallowed her heart firmly. ‘I only kiss people I know,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know you.’

‘We could introduce ourselves,’ he pointed out. ‘Although I already know exactly who you are.’

Lizzy, opening her mouth to reply to his suggestion, was thrown. ‘You do?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘I’ve been asking around about you. You’re Elizabeth Walker, always known as Lizzy, elder sister of the bride and all round nice girl.’

For some reason this description annoyed Lizzy. ‘That’s not quite how I’d describe myself,’ she said with something of a snap.

‘Oh? How would you describe yourself?’

‘As a professional woman,’ said Lizzy loftily and not very accurately. ‘I’m in PR.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded down at her feet. ‘That explains the shoes.’

In spite of herself, Lizzy warmed to him. He was the only person who had noticed her shoes. Following his gaze downwards, she couldn’t help smiling. There was just something about shoes, Lizzy felt. You couldn’t put on a pair like this and not feel good.

‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ she said, forgetting for a moment that she didn’t like him.

His eyes travelled slowly up from the shoes to her face. Lizzy was tall and built on generous lines. Whenever she grumbled about losing weight, her friends would roll their eyes and assure her that her figure was perfectly proportioned to her height and her personality. Deep down, Lizzy knew that this was true, but it didn’t stop her grumbling. She was normal, after all.

For Ellie’s wedding she had found a fabulous dress that emphasised her warm curves and glowing, opulent skin. Kingfisher-blue, its colour intensified the blueness of her eyes and made a wonderful foil for her wavy blonde hair, bluntly cut to her chin, and her stylishly bold lipstick.

There was no way that Lizzy could be described as a classical beauty, but her face was so vivid that no one ever noticed that her nose was too big and her mouth too wide or that there were already lines starring the edges of her eyes.

‘Wonderful,’ Tye agreed. His face was quite straight, but something in his voice set a blush stealing into Lizzy’s cheeks, and she looked quickly away. It was a relief when his gaze dropped back to her shoes. ‘But not very practical,’ he added.

They certainly weren’t. She had nearly twisted her ankle several times on the uneven woolshed floor. To her chagrin, Lizzy realised that she had been holding her breath and let it out. ‘There are more important things in life than practicality,’ she said firmly, and a disconcerting gleam of amusement lit the cool grey eyes.

‘You must be the only person in this woolshed to think so!’

That was probably true too, Lizzy reflected, glancing around at the people she had grown up with. They were all wonderful, and she loved them deeply, but they didn’t understand about shoes.

‘You have to be practical if you live in the outback,’ she said, her gaze coming back to meet his almost defiantly. ‘I don’t. I’m a city girl now.’

‘So I gathered.’

Lizzy didn’t quite know what to make of that. There had been an odd undercurrent to his voice that she couldn’t interpret. ‘You seem to know all about me,’ she pointed out with a challenging look, ‘but I still don’t know who you are.’

‘I’m Tye Gibson,’ he told her, and he smiled sardonically at the expression on her face. ‘Yes, that Tye Gibson,’ he answered her unspoken question. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you that the black sheep of the district was back?’

‘No,’ admitted Lizzy, too surprised to think what she was saying.

She couldn’t help staring. Tye Gibson! No one had seen him since he had walked off his family property nearly twenty years ago, but of course they all knew about him. Breaking off all contact with his father, Tye had turned his back on the bush and gone on make his fortune. Not just an ordinary little fortune, not just millions, but serious money.

Lizzy had never been absolutely sure what Tye Gibson did—something to do with communications, she thought—but she knew that his company, GCS, was a global giant, and that his name was a byword for ruthlessness around the world. It wasn’t bad going for a boy from Barra Creek, but nobody wanted to claim him as a local hero. However Tye had made his fortune, it hadn’t been by being nice.

It seemed that anyone who ever had to do business with him regretted it, and the press didn’t like him any better. Refusing to be interviewed or photographed, Tye Gibson was apparently content for people to think of him as heartless and amoral, and the richer and more reclusive he became, the more the myths about him proliferated.

Nor did the district he had grown up in have anything good to say for him. Lizzy had been a little girl when he’d left his father to struggle on his own, and anyway had never met him, but gossip travelled fast around the outback and she knew all about his unsavoury reputation. Nobody had been sorry to see him go.

But now it seemed that he was back—and it wasn’t hard to guess why.

‘Aren’t you a little late?’ she said.

Tye’s dark brows lifted. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father’s funeral was a week ago,’ said Lizzy pointedly.

‘So?’

‘So couldn’t you have made the effort to get here in time for that?’

His face hardened. ‘I think that would have been a little hypocritical, don’t you? My father and I hadn’t spoken for twenty years. What would have been the point of me weeping crocodile tears over the coffin? Besides,’ he went on, glancing around him, ‘I doubt if I would have been very welcome. That’s been made very obvious today.’

‘Are you surprised?’

‘Not in the slightest.’ There was a cynical twist to Tye’s lips. ‘Nothing’s changed round here. I never expected to be greeted as the prodigal son.’

‘Perhaps if you’d come back to see your father when he was alive, you would have been,’ said Lizzy tartly.

She must have drunk more champagne than she’d thought. She wasn’t usually like this. Normally she had the sunniest of natures and wanted everyone to like her, but there was something about Tye Gibson that got under her skin and left her feeling ruffled and somehow aggravated.

‘He wanted to see you,’ she told Tye, who lifted a disbelieving eyebrow.

‘Did he?’

Lizzy lost some of her assurance. ‘Well…that’s what I heard. I heard that he’d begged you to come home so that he could see you before he died.’

Tye laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘I’d like to have seen my father begging for anything!’

It didn’t ring that true with what Lizzy remembered of Frank Gibson either, now that he mentioned it. Frank had been a proud man.

‘You mean it’s not true?’

‘Asking me to post a letter would have been giving in as far as my father was concerned,’ said Tye flatly.

Lizzy hesitated. ‘If he was dying, he might have looked at things differently,’ she suggested, but Tye only smiled ironically.

‘You didn’t know my father very well, did you?’

She looked at him in some puzzlement. ‘What are you doing here, then?’

‘I’ve come to sort out my father’s affairs,’ he said. ‘And to see Barra again.’

‘But I thought—’

Lizzy stopped, uncomfortably aware that she was repeating gossip.

‘You thought what? That my father had disinherited me?’

‘Well…yes,’ she admitted awkwardly.

Frank had made no secret of the fact that he had been bitterly hurt by his son’s rejection, and when Tye hadn’t come back when he was dying everyone had naturally assumed that he would do as he had long threatened and cut Tye out of his will.

‘No, he didn’t do that,’ said Tye, but his mouth was set in a grim line and Lizzy wondered what he was thinking about. It wasn’t anything nice, that was for sure.

What kind of man would refuse to visit his dying father? That had been cruel. She eyed him speculatively from under her lashes. No one had been the least bit surprised at his non-appearance, but it seemed to Lizzy that his face didn’t really live up to his reputation. It was guarded, yes, shuttered and stubborn, but it wasn’t cruel. He had the dark, difficult look of a wild horse that had refused to be broken, she thought. His mouth was hard, but maybe it hadn’t always been that way.

Maybe it would look quite different if he were happy. Lizzy’s blue eyes rested on his mouth, trying to imagine him smiling—not a cynical, mocking smile, but a real smile. What would make him smile like that? A woman? Maybe love? Lizzy found herself imagining what it would be like to see his face soften and his mouth curve, and something stirred treacherously inside her.

Jerking her gaze away, she took a slug of champagne. This was Tye Gibson, remember? Rumour was that he had had his heart surgically removed a long time ago. His idea of happiness was probably a nice day spent asset-stripping a company, followed by a relaxing hour of currency speculation.

A spoon was being banged against a glass for attention, and her father was climbing onto a chair to make a speech. Lizzy’s eyes softened as she watched him. Dear old Dad, so calm and quiet and unflappable. She would be lost without him. She couldn’t imagine not speaking to him for twenty years.

Her father was followed by Jack, who was very funny and made everyone laugh. He finished by toasting Lizzy as bridesmaid and they all clapped and cheered, turning to lift their glasses to where she stood with Tye at the edge of the woolshed.

‘To Lizzy!’ they cried, but she was uneasily aware that Tye was not included in their smiles.

Laughing, she blew a kiss of acknowledgment to Jack, but she was glad when everyone turned back to the bride and groom once more.

She slid a glance from under her lashes at Tye. In his place she would have been mortified by the obvious way he had been ignored, but Tye’s expression gave absolutely nothing away. Lizzy was sure that he had noticed, though. Those watchful eyes would miss nothing.

‘Lizzy!’ Ellie was calling her over the crowd, and Lizzy looked quickly away from Tye to see her sister waving her bouquet. ‘Catch!’ she shouted.

The flowers came sailing through the air towards her, ribbons fluttering. Instinctively, Lizzy thrust her glass into Tye’s hand and jumped, catching the bouquet between both hands, and the room cheered as she flourished them triumphantly.

‘Your turn next!’ someone called, and she laughed.

‘I wish!’

Her face was still alight with laughter as she turned back to Tye. He was watching her with an expression so peculiar that her smile slowly faded. ‘Thanks,’ she said, looking at the glass he still held, and he gave it back to her as if he had forgotten that he had it.

There was a pause. Lizzy was very conscious of Tye’s eyes boring into her face, and she put her glass down so that she could fiddle with the flowers. For some reason she couldn’t look at him.

‘I suppose you think this kind of thing is all very silly,’ she said, a defensive edge to her voice.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You don’t believe in marriage.’

‘How do you know that?’

Lizzy thought of all the beautiful women who had been out with Tye and then appeared in the gossip columns, complaining about his coldness, his selfishness, his callous refusal to commit to a relationship. It had always been a wonder to Lizzy that they could all sound so aggrieved by their failure to turn a heartless recluse into a party-going romantic. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t have known exactly what to expect.

‘I’ve read about you in the papers,’ she admitted.

‘Oh, the papers!’ Tye didn’t even bother to conceal his sarcasm. ‘It must be true, then!’

‘Isn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s say that I have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about.’ His disparaging glance swept the woolshed. ‘Weddings are all the same,’ he told her contemptuously. ‘Everyone looks the same; everyone says the same thing. The same tired old rituals every time. The dress, the photographs, the speeches, the bouquet.’

He sneered at the flowers that Lizzy held in her hand, and she pulled them protectively closer to her. ‘I love all the wedding traditions,’ she said with a defiant look. ‘If I ever got married, I’d have the lot!’

‘But what’s the point?’ Tye asked, and Lizzy could practically see his lip curling at the idea of her in a long white dress.

‘You can cut all the cakes and toss all the bouquets you want,’ he went on, ‘but it won’t change the fact that when it comes down to it marriage is a transaction like any other, and the moment one party thinks it’s not getting its fair share of the deal the whole thing falls apart. Before you know where you are, all the people who forked out for a wedding present are being sent notices about the divorce!’

‘You’re just a cynic,’ Lizzy accused him.

‘A realist,’ he corrected her.

‘Marriage isn’t a transaction! It’s about love and commitment and sharing.’

‘You’re just a romantic,’ mocked Tye.

‘Why do people always sneer when they say that?’ demanded Lizzy hotly, forgetting that she had accused him in exactly the same tone of voice. ‘There’s nothing wrong with believing in love!’

Tye shook his head. ‘It never fails to amaze me how otherwise intelligent people persist in the starry-eyed belief that a wedding is the beginning of happy-ever-after! Haven’t you ever come across the statistics about divorce in those papers you read?’

‘Of course I have,’ she said with dignity. ‘That’s why you should wait until you’re absolutely sure that you’re marrying the right person. And “wait” does seem to be the operative word,’ she added, only half joking. ‘I’m thirty-three, and I’m still waiting! I should never have agreed to be Ellie’s bridesmaid.’ She looked glumly down at the flowers. ‘You know what they say—three times a bridesmaid, never a bride.’

‘Don’t despair,’ said Tye, irony and something else that she couldn’t identify in his voice. ‘You caught the bouquet.’

‘I don’t think it counts if it’s thrown straight at you.’ Lizzy sighed, and then blushed slightly as she caught Tye’s eye. He obviously had her down as a desperate thirty-something. She really must make an effort to sound more positive.

‘Anyway,’ she hurried on, ‘I’ve decided that I’m not getting married until I know it’s going to be perfect, and in the meantime I’m concentrating on my career.’

‘Ah, yes.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘The professional woman. Did you say that you were in PR?’

‘Yes. I’m a freelance consultant,’ she said grandly, hoping that Tye wouldn’t guess that her efforts to establish herself had so far amounted to precisely nothing.

‘There can’t be much scope for public relations around here,’ he commented.

Lizzy shook her head so that the blonde hair bobbed around her face. ‘No, I don’t think anyone in Mathison even knows what PR stands for! I live in Perth,’ she explained. ‘I’ve only come home for Ellie’s wedding, and I’m going back on Monday.’

‘I see.’ For some reason Tye was studying her with a new kind of interest. ‘Are you busy at the moment?’

‘I’ve got several projects in the pipeline,’ she said with feigned nonchalance.

Her project for Monday involved buying the paper and scanning it for a job—any job—that would pay her bills and mean that she didn’t have to go crawling back to her old boss to ask for her old job back. No need to tell Tye Gibson that, though.

‘I don’t suppose you know of anyone who might be interested in a…special assignment?’ he asked casually.

Lizzy stared at him. ‘You’ve got a job?’

‘I guess you could call it that.’

There was a distinctly dry note to his voice, but Lizzy was too excited to notice. Tye Gibson might not be the most popular boss in the world, but there was no doubt that GCS was a hugely prestigious company. If she could put GCS in her portfolio, clients would be queuing up to employ her as a consultant.

‘What kind of a job?’ she asked, trying desperately not to sound too eager.

Tye hesitated slightly. ‘It’s highly confidential,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want to give too much away until I’m sure I’ve got the right person.’

Confidential? That sounded promising. Lizzy moistened her lips. ‘As it happens, I’ve got a window coming up,’ she said airily. ‘I might be interested.’

The cool grey eyes studied her, and she forced herself to meet his gaze calmly. ‘We’re talking about an important position,’ he said eventually. ‘I need somebody with the right instincts.’

Lizzy bridled at his dubious expression. ‘I’m completely professional!’

‘Professional is easy.’ Tye waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’m looking for someone who isn’t afraid to stand out from the crowd. Someone with ambition. Someone who’s prepared to do anything to get the job done.’

‘I’m all of those things,’ she assured him.

‘Are you? I asked around about you earlier, and all anybody would tell me was that you were a nice girl. Now, there’s nothing wrong with nice girls, but they don’t last long in a competitive commercial situation. I think you’re too nice for me,’ he told her bluntly.

‘Not always.’ Lizzy was dismayed. It looked as if the fantastic opportunity that had arisen so unexpectedly was already fading from her grasp. Working for GCS would be the end of all her problems, she thought grimly. She couldn’t let it go.

‘It’s my sister’s wedding,’ she said crisply. ‘Of course I’m being nice today, but I’m quite different when I’m at work.’

Tye looked unconvinced. ‘I haven’t got time to deal with tears and tantrums and wounded feelings,’ he warned her. ‘I’ve only got time for results. Are you telling me that you’re hard-nosed enough to play ball with me?’

‘I know I am,’ said Lizzy with a show of confidence that effectively disguised her inner qualms. She wasn’t going to back down now. She needed that job. ‘What do I have to do to convince you?’

Tye didn’t answer immediately. He considered the matter, looking around the woolshed before his gaze came back to settle speculatively on Lizzy’s face.

‘I’ll do anything,’ she said rashly.

‘OK,’ said Tye. ‘Kiss me.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘KISS you?’ Lizzy flushed in embarrassment as she heard her voice rise to a squeak, and she cleared her throat quickly.

‘Why should I do that?’ That was better. Deeper, steadier, just a touch of amusement to show that she recognised that he was joking. Much more like the sophisticated PR consultant she was supposed to be.

‘You said that you would do anything,’ Tye pointed out.

Without quite knowing why, Lizzy’s assurance began to trickle away, and she eyed him uneasily. ‘Well, I know I did, but…’

‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re not prepared to do anything?’

‘You’re not serious!’

‘Don’t I look serious?’

He did. Absolutely serious.

Lizzy swallowed. ‘Do you interview all your prospective employees like this?’

‘Only those with the potential to fulfil a very special role.’ Tye’s face was still perfectly straight, but Lizzy seized on the glimmer of amusement she could see in the grey eyes.

‘You are joking!’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘You asked what you could do to convince me that it was worth giving you a chance, and I’ve told you. You can kiss me.’

‘But how can you possibly tell anything about my PR skills from a kiss?’ Lizzy objected, trying to ignore the way her heart was racketing around her chest at the mere thought of kissing him.

‘I’m not interested in your skills,’ said Tye. ‘I want to know whether you’re the kind of person who’s prepared to stand out from the crowd—and I don’t just mean by wearing ridiculous shoes. Look around you, Lizzy,’ he went on, nodding his head in the direction of the other guests. ‘See how many people are watching us while trying not to make it obvious. They don’t like the fact that you’re talking to me.’

It was true. Lizzy, following his glance, noticed how friends that she had known for years averted their eyes while others were eyeing her covertly. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and she turned back to Tye, an uncharacteristic frown in her blue eyes.

OK, so he wasn’t the most charming man in the world, and his reputation certainly didn’t bear close scrutiny, but he wasn’t that bad. Lizzy wouldn’t go so far as to say that she liked him. He was cold and callous, and he had made little attempt to conceal his contempt for her family and friends, but there was something intriguing about him, something that stimulated and provoked and disconcerted her all at the same time.

‘I’m not welcome here,’ Tye was saying, not sounding at all bothered by the fact. ‘No one has been prepared to come right out and say it, but it’s obvious. I don’t belong here, and if I’d given them the slightest excuse there would have been plenty of people more than happy to throw me out. It’s been bad enough for them to see you standing here with me all this time. How do you think they’d react if you kissed me?’

Lizzy tried to picture the scene, but although she could imagine kissing Tye with startling clarity, somehow she couldn’t get past that to visualise the reactions of anyone watching.

‘You’d be breaking ranks big time,’ Tye answered for her. ‘You’d be saying you didn’t care what anyone thought, that you’d do whatever it took to get what you want.’ He looked into Lizzy’s face, a faint smile on his lips as doubt wrestled with determination to prove herself in the blue eyes. ‘And that’s the kind of person I’m looking for,’ he said.

‘And if I don’t want to break ranks?’

Tye shrugged carelessly. ‘You walk away. I leave. I find someone else.’

He might at least sound as if he cared one way or another, thought Lizzy with something suspiciously close to petulance. She looked away from him, edgily running a finger around the base of her glass.

She had always prided herself on her refusal to fit the mould. As a young girl she had grumbled endlessly about the old-fashioned attitudes of her parents and their friends. The district might cover vast distances but it had a distinctly small town mentality.

Lizzy hadn’t been able to wait to leave home for the city. She thought of herself as cosmopolitan, and whenever she came home she made a point of looking as stylish as possible. Her transformation into city girl was treated as something of a standing joke in the community, and Lizzy played up to it. She knew that the teasing was affectionate, and she liked the fact that they thought of her as unconventional.

You’d be saying you didn’t care what anyone thought. Tye had issued a challenge, and she longed to take it up, but deep down Lizzy knew that she did care. These people were her family and friends. She might not choose to live in the outback, but that didn’t mean she wanted to shock or offend them unnecessarily. When it came down to it, Lizzy just wanted everyone to like her.

There would be uproar if she kissed Tye Gibson, and in spite of her assertion of confidence Lizzy quailed inwardly at the thought.

‘I can hardly fling myself into your arms in the middle of my sister’s wedding,’ she prevaricated, unaware that her thoughts were written clearly in her expressive face. ‘It would cause a scene. While it might prove your point, I’m not prepared to do anything to spoil her day. It wouldn’t be fair.’

Tye looked faintly bored by her dithering. ‘I wasn’t thinking of a passionate clinch,’ he said with a sardonic look. ‘I know you’re much too nice a girl to go in for anything like that!’

‘Oh.’

Lizzy wasn’t sure she liked the way he’d said that word ‘nice’. It wasn’t that she wanted to kiss him—God forbid!—but she didn’t want to be the kind of girl who didn’t dare either. She stood feeling foolish, unable to decide whether she was relieved or offended at Tye’s lack of interest in being kissed by her.

‘What were you thinking of?’ she asked him uncertainly.

‘More along the lines of a peck on the cheek,’ said Tye, lifting his brows in a way that made Lizzy feel ridiculous for having thought that he could possibly mean anything else. ‘A quick kiss to say goodbye, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ said Lizzy again.

She bit her lip. Between the crowds, she caught a glimpse of her parents, greeting friends on the other side of the woolshed. They wouldn’t like her kissing Tye at all, and nor would anyone else.

Perhaps no one would notice. It would be dark by then and the party would be well away. Everyone would be too busy enjoying themselves to wonder what she was doing with Tye Gibson, and anyway, it would only take a second.

And it would be worth it. A very special role, wasn’t that what Tye had called it? Quite apart from what it would do for her CV, an important job with a company like GCS was bound to be lucrative, Lizzy calculated.

It was all very well not wanting to upset anybody, but the hard fact was that she needed the money. Since Stephen had moved out she had had all the bills to pay, and Ellie’s wedding had proved expensive, too, what with flying backwards and forwards between Perth and Mathison, buying presents and searching out the perfect bridesmaid’s dress.

Not to mention the shoes.

Lizzy contemplated the champagne in her glass with an inward grimace at the thought of her credit card bill. Face it, her only other choice was to get a bar job of some kind to tide her over. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done it before, but it certainly wasn’t what she had planned to be doing at thirty-three, and the prospect was humiliating when she thought about how she had boasted about her grand new career.

She could ask her parents for help, but it wouldn’t be fair right now when they had all the expense of Ellie’s wedding to cope with. No, Lizzy decided, she wouldn’t go to them. It was her own fault that she had given up a perfectly good job, and it was up to her to find a way out of her financial problems.

She could settle for a bar job.

Or she could kiss Tye Gibson.

A choice between scraping together enough money to pay the bills and seizing the opportunity of an important job with a prestigious organisation that could relaunch her career. Why was she even hesitating? Lizzy wondered.

Tye had been watching the conflicting emotions flitting across her face, but now he looked ostentatiously at his watch and put down his glass. ‘I might as well go,’ he said.

‘What, now?’ Lizzy regarded him with dismay. She had thought that she would have the rest of the evening to build up courage.

‘No point in hanging around,’ said Tye. ‘I’ve done what I came to do. I thought it would be interesting to see if things had changed round here, but obviously they haven’t.’ The grey eyes gleamed with mockery as he looked at Lizzy. ‘Shall I see myself out, or are you coming?’

How hard could it be? It was ridiculous to make such a fuss about a tiny kiss. All she had to do was walk across the woolshed with him, say goodbye and press her cheek to his.

Piece of cake.

Lizzy put down her glass. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

Something flickered in Tye’s eyes, and was gone. ‘Good,’ was all he said.

Turning, he headed across the middle of the woolshed floor to the wide wooden doors that stood open to the night. No creeping round the edges for Tye Gibson, thought Lizzy with a mixture of exasperation and admiration as she hurried to keep up with him. He went straight for what he wanted, and to hell with anyone who got in his way.

He walked with the long, deliberate stride of a man used to walking alone, appearing not to notice the almost tangible hostility of the crowd, or the way it parted uneasily before his ruthless self-assurance. Struggling to keep up with him in her frivolous shoes, Lizzy was very conscious of the eyes following her. So much for not being noticed. They might as well have had a brass band and ticker tape.

A murmuring rose behind them as the guests closed back into their groups, but she didn’t hear. Tye had paused at the doors and was waiting for her to catch up. Lizzy told herself that her sudden breathlessness was due to hurrying on unsteady heels, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that any moment now she was going to kiss him.

Outside, it was already dark. Two more steps would have taken them into the shadows, but he had stopped deliberately in the doorway so that they were framed against the darkness in the brightness of the light that shone directly above their heads. It was like being on stage.

‘I’ll say goodbye,’ said Tye, and held out his hand. His face was quite straight, but the startlingly light eyes glinted with a mocking challenge.

He thought that she would lose her nerve, Lizzy realised, and it was enough to bring her chin up. This was her chance to prove herself.

She took his outstretched hand. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded.

The press of his palm was cool and firm, and as his fingers closed around hers she felt something uncurl alarmingly inside her, but she made herself look directly into his eyes, her own very blue and sparkling with defiance.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ she went on deliberately, and without releasing her grip she brought her other hand up to rest against his chest.

She could feel the power of his body through his jacket. It seemed to reverberate through her palm, tingling along her arm and deep into the core of her being, and she had a sudden, vivid sense that time had slowed while her senses simultaneously speeded up. She was acutely aware of the texture of the material beneath her hand, of Tye’s fingers imprisoning hers, of the sound of her own heart thudding in her ears.

Lizzy was a tall girl, but Tye was taller still, and when he made no effort to bend his head she had to lift herself onto her toes to bring her face close to his, balancing herself by spreading her hand against his chest. She pressed her cheek against Tye’s cool skin, feeling its roughness, breathing in his clean, masculine smell, grazing it with her lips, shivering at the sensation.

Everything seemed to be happening hazily, as if in slow motion. Lizzy had forgotten their audience, but she hadn’t forgotten what she was doing, and when she felt Tye’s fingers begin to loosen their grip she tightened her hold. If she was making a point, she might as well make it properly. She would show Tye just how willing she was to stand out from the crowd!

Tye tensed questioningly as her hand slid up from his chest to his shoulder, and she turned her head. For a fleeting moment blue eyes looked into grey, and then Lizzy smiled, lowering her lashes, and all at once it seemed perfectly natural to touch her mouth to his.

She was prepared for his lips to feel as cold and unyielding as the rest of him, but they weren’t like that at all. They were firm, yes, but they were warm, warm and inviting and exciting, and Lizzy was jarred by a deep, instinctive sense of rightness that was as undeniable as it was disturbing.

Perturbed by the feeling, she would have pulled away if Tye hadn’t chosen that exact moment to put his free arm around her and lift her hard against him. Lizzy found herself pinioned between the massive solidity of his body and the steel strength of his arm, and she felt at once helpless and disconcertingly secure.

His mouth returned the pressure of hers for a long, giddying moment, his lips searingly persuasive, and his hand burning through the silky dress onto her skin—the briefest of touches, but enough to galvanise Lizzy’s senses in a single, incandescent instant so electric that she gasped.

It was enough to break the kiss. Tye’s arm fell, his hand released hers, and Lizzy was left, dizzy and disorientated, somehow managing to stand upright on legs that twitched and trembled with a life of their own. The blue eyes were dazed, and she blinked furiously to clear her head.

What had happened? One second she had been coolly determined to impress him, and the next…oh, the next there had been that scorching whoosh of sensation, thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Lizzy couldn’t have even said how long it lasted. She knew only that it had been long enough to jolt the world out of its usual orbit and that nothing was quite the same as it had been before.

Shaken, she focused at last on her hand. It was clutching Tye’s shoulder, crumpling his jacket between her fingers, and the belated recognition that she was still clinging to him was enough to make Lizzy snatch it away, although she could have done with the support.

She had kissed him because she needed a job, not a shoulder to lean on. Remember?

‘Will—?’ She stopped, horrified by the huskiness of her voice. ‘Will you consider me now?’ she managed croakily after having to clear her throat humiliatingly a couple of times.

‘I certainly will,’ said Tye, and then he demolished all Lizzy’s desperate attempts to pull herself together by smiling.

He had smiled at her before, but his smiles had been mocking at best. This smile was different. It softened the grim lines of his face and warmed the cool eyes with a blithe charm that was as devastating as it was unexpected, and Lizzy’s heart did a peculiar somersault that left her even more breathless than she had been before. It was as if she had blinked to find someone completely different standing before her.

‘Wh—wh—when…?’ she stammered, trying to ask him about the interview, but her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth, so thick and unwieldy that she couldn’t get the words out.

Tye seemed to understand. Reaching into his inside pocket, he pulled out a business card and offered it to Lizzy, who took it with nerveless fingers.

‘Give me a call,’ he said, and turned to walk out of the woolshed and away into the starry outback night, leaving Lizzy to stare after him, his card clutched unread in her hand.

Five to eight. Lizzy looked at her watch for the umpteenth time, and wondered if it was too late to change her shoes.

She had been pleased with her reflection when she left her room. Having dithered for ages about what she should wear, Lizzy had settled at length on a plain shift dress which was flattering without being too revealing. It was very simply cut, relying on the vibrant turquoise colour and the softness of the material for its effect. Lizzy thought it made her look stylish and professional, without making it seem as if she had tried too hard to impress Tye.

Maybe it was a bit shorter than she would normally wear to an interview, but then most interviews didn’t involve being flown to Sydney and collected from the airport by limousine, or being put up in a hotel so luxurious her eyes had popped when she saw the room.

It had taken Lizzy ages to pluck up the courage to ring Tye on the Monday after Ellie’s wedding. She’d sat by the phone, tapping his card against her teeth, wishing she could put that kiss from her mind and feeling ridiculously, pathetically nervous at the idea of seeing him again. Even the thought of his voice at the other end of the phone had been enough to set the nerves jittering and jangling underneath her skin.

What had been the point of going through all that to get his number if she wasn’t even going to call him? Lizzy had asked herself sternly. Chances were that Tye would simply put her in touch with the personnel department and she would never have anything else to do with him.

She had to pay for those shoes somehow, didn’t she?

And after all that, when she’d finally dialled the number, she’d got not Tye but his icily efficient assistant, who had told her that she would make arrangements for Lizzy to fly to Sydney. Mr Gibson, she’d said, would see her for dinner the following Friday at eight o’clock. It seemed a funny time for an interview, but Lizzy had been too intimidated by the PA’s manner to question her further.

Her spirits had risen on the flight over to Sydney. A first-class ticket, limousine service from the airport, a luxurious suite in a top-class hotel…Tye must have been serious about it being an important job. Lizzy congratulated herself on having had the courage to kiss him. It had been awkward afterwards, to say the least, but clearly it had been worth it.

To celebrate, Lizzy had taken herself shopping as soon as she’d arrived in Sydney, and had found a pair of shoes so perfect for her dress that she hadn’t been able to resist buying them to wear instead of the elegant black ones that she had brought with her. Now, sitting beside an elaborate fountain in the lobby as she waited for Tye to arrive, Lizzy wondered if they had been such a good idea.

They were beautiful, just the right colour and decorated with mock peacock feathers fixed into place by a glass jewel, but perhaps they were, after all, a bit much?

Everybody else in the hotel was dressed so discreetly you just knew their clothes had cost a fortune, and Lizzy had seen one or two glances at her shoes, usually followed by disparagingly raised eyebrows. The gesture reminded her sharply of Tye.

He would be here any minute. Lizzy looked at her watch again, trying to ignore the churning sense of anticipation and nerves. Beside her, the water trickled into the fountain in a way that was meant to be soothing but instead was having the opposite effect. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them, drummed her fingers on the edge of her seat, resisted the urge to check her makeup.

Really, she was being ridiculous! Lizzy sat upright. This was an interview, not a date. She would be fine. All she had to do was be cool and professional, and let Tye know that as far as she was concerned the kiss had been no more than a mildly unusual interviewing technique.

‘Cool…professional…’ she muttered to herself, only to find her eyes drawn back to her shoes.

No, they weren’t the right image! She would have to go and change. If she hurried, she could get up to her room and back before he arrived.

Jumping to her feet, Lizzy turned towards the lifts, but she had only taken three steps before the glass doors hissed open and Tye strode into the lobby.

The air leaked out of Lizzy’s lungs at the sight of him, and she stopped dead, conscious of a sense of recognition so sharp that it was almost a shock. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected to recognise Tye, it was just that she hadn’t been prepared for him to seem quite so…familiar. It was as if she had always known that dark, guarded face, the watchful eyes, that air of barely leashed power.

Pausing in the middle of the lobby, Tye let his piercing gaze sweep round until he found Lizzy. Skewered by his eyes, she could only stand frozen by the fountain, her heart beating frantically in her throat as he came towards her.

‘Hi!’ She smiled nervously, wincing inwardly as she heard her own voice. Cool and professional? Yeah, sure!

Clearing her throat, Lizzy held out her hand. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

An improvement. Composed, competent, in control. Well, fairly.

There was an odd look in Tye’s eyes as he inspected her, subjecting her to an intense but strangely impersonal scrutiny. His gaze travelled from the soft mass of blonde hair framing her face, with its tilting blue eyes and wide, humorous mouth, skimming over the vivid dress and down the long, slender legs, ending at the shoes with their jaunty feathers and gaudy jewels.

One corner of his mouth quirked, and he lifted his eyes to Lizzy’s. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said.

He took her hand, and the moment his fingers closed around hers Lizzy felt her composure wobble. His clasp was warm and firm, and the touch of his palm sent little tingles down her arm. All he had to do was shake her hand and she was drowning in giddying sensation, as if they’d kissed all over again. It wasn’t fair.

‘You’re very formal,’ said Tye, and his eyes glinted. ‘We kissed last time we met,’ he reminded her.

As if she would have forgotten. As if she couldn’t still feel his jacket beneath her fingers, his lips on hers, the deep, dangerous twist of excitement. As if she hadn’t relived every second of that kiss and how it had felt as his arm came round her like an iron bar and lifted her effortlessly against him.

Lizzy moistened her lips surreptitiously. ‘That was just because I wanted an interview,’ she said, raising her voice above the bumping and thumping of her heart.

She wished he would let her hand go, but when she tried to pull it away Tye’s grip tightened. ‘It worked,’ he said, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he drew her inexorably towards him, ‘but this time let’s kiss because we’re pleased to see each other.’

It was just like the wedding, only this time it was Tye who made the first move, Tye whose lips brushed the edge of her mouth and lingered against her cheek.

To anyone watching it must have seemed the coolest of kisses, but Lizzy’s senses were drumming beneath her skin, preternaturally alert to the smell of his hair, to the touch of his lips, to the feel of his cool, masculine skin, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by an inexplicable urge to lean into him, to turn her head and let their mouths meet, so that they could kiss just as they had kissed before.

For one dizzying moment she was sure that Tye was going to do just that, and she closed her eyes, bracing herself against the terrifying jolt of response, but after the tiniest of hesitations Tye lifted his head and let her go.

A polite kiss, a mere grazing of cheeks; that was all it had been. Lizzy’s eyes snapped open and her cheeks burned with a mixture of disappointment and fury at her own foolishness in thinking it might have been anything else.

Had Tye guessed how close she had come to making a complete idiot of herself? Lizzy slid a glance at him from under her lashes, but his expression was impossible to read. He looked as sardonic and indifferent as ever, she thought with a spurt of resentment. If the touch of their cheeks had set his senses spinning, he was giving absolutely no sign of it.

‘Come,’ said Tye, taking her arm. ‘We’ll have a drink before we go.’

He steered her towards a bar that was discreetly hidden behind lush potted palms, and Lizzy, burningly aware of the touch of his hand against her bare arm, let herself be led. Her legs felt ridiculously unsteady and she was glad to sink down into one of the plush armchairs.

A barman materialised in response to Tye’s barely lifted finger. ‘Champagne,’ ordered Tye without even looking at him.

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Champagne?’ Lizzy made an enormous effort to pull herself together. Cool and professional, right?

Right.

‘What are we celebrating?’ she asked, hoping that she sounded like the kind of person who was only ever interviewed over a glass of champagne.

‘The fact that you came.’

Lizzy stared at him. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting him to say. Perhaps a billion-dollar deal closed, or a rival company crushed. Anything except what he had said.

Belatedly aware that her jaw was hanging open, Lizzy snapped her mouth shut. ‘Did you think that I wouldn’t?’ she asked cautiously.

Tye seemed to consider the matter. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ he said eventually.

‘I wouldn’t have kissed you if I hadn’t really wanted you to consider me for the job,’ Lizzy pointed out, and was then afraid that it might seem as if she was protesting just a little too much.

‘True.’ Tye was unperturbed by her unflattering motives. ‘But I did wonder if you might have changed your mind once I’d left. There must have been plenty of people there trying to persuade you that it would be a terrible mistake to have anything to do with me. Or are you going to tell me that nobody noticed the affectionate farewell you gave me?’

‘They noticed all right,’ said Lizzy with feeling, remembering the moment when she had turned from the woolshed doors to face the avid or outraged stares. ‘Mum wasn’t very pleased.’

That was understatement of the year. Her mother hadn’t actually seen the kiss, but she had heard plenty about it and she had been appalled.

‘It was bad enough him turning up at the wedding at all, without you kissing him! What on earth possessed you to make such an exhibition of yourself?’

‘I felt sorry for him,’ Lizzy had said.

She had been strangely reluctant to admit the truth about that kiss. If she’d told her mother that she had had to kiss Tye to get him to consider her for a job, it would only have added to his reputation, and that was bad enough as it was. Lizzy couldn’t think of any good reason why Tye’s reputation should matter to her; she just knew that she didn’t want to be responsible for blackening it any further.

‘Sorry for Tye Gibson? You must be the first person ever to feel that!’

That was probably true, Lizzy had thought wryly. It wasn’t easy to pity a man like Tye. He was too tough, too competent, too indifferent to what people thought of him.

‘He wasn’t exactly made to feel welcome,’ she’d tried to explain to her mother. ‘I felt as if I ought to make an effort to talk to him. We did invite him, after all.’

‘That was your father’s fault,’ her mother had grumbled. ‘Why did he come, anyway? He didn’t talk to anyone except you.’

‘Maybe that’s because nobody except me bothered to talk to him,’ Lizzy had said with a shade of defiance, even as she’d wondered what on earth she was doing defending Tye Gibson.

‘Nobody except you would have thought they had to fling themselves into his arms just to be polite!’ her mother had retorted, clearly baffled by Lizzy’s behaviour. ‘It’s absolutely typical of you, Lizzy! You always go too far!’

Lizzy had given up then. She did feel a little guilty about having caused a scene at Ellie’s wedding, but it wasn’t as if she had hurt anyone’s feelings. And she certainly didn’t feel guilty enough to give up her best chance yet of a real job.

Muttering vaguely about the possibility of a job in Sydney as she’d left, Lizzy had prudently kept Tye Gibson’s name out of it. Her mother would have a fit when she heard, but Lizzy would deal with that when—if—she got the job.

‘She doesn’t approve of me?’ Tye broke into her thoughts. It was more of a statement than a question.

Her mother’s words rang in Lizzy’s ears: ‘That Tye Gibson is no good! He never was and he never will be! He broke his poor father’s heart, Lizzy, and he’ll break a lot more hearts before he’s finished, you mark my words. Don’t you have anything to do with him!’

‘Well…not really,’ she said cautiously.

‘Good,’ he said coolly. ‘I have to confess when I met you at your sister’s wedding I thought you would be too nice. I had you down as the kind of person who has to be liked, but if you’re prepared to meet me again in the face of family disapproval, that means you’ve got what it takes after all.’

Lizzy couldn’t imagine anyone else being pleased to hear that they were thoroughly disliked. ‘It means I need a job,’ she told him honestly.

‘I know.’ Tye leant forward and looked straight into her puzzled blue eyes. ‘I’ve got a feeling that it also means you could be just the girl I’m looking for!’

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