Linda Turner - The Enemy's Daughter

Then his words registered.

Outrage sparked in her eyes like a summer thunderstorm. The nerve of the man! This was her station, dammit, and if he thought she was going to stand there and let him yell at her like she was a two-year-old who didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, he could think again!

“Hold it right there, mister! I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but for your information, I had everything under control until you came charging in here like Indiana Jones!”

“The hell you did!”

“And Thunder’s not a monster! He was just startled. If you hadn’t blown your damn horn—”

“I didn’t! That was the mailman’s idea. But don’t go blaming him. He thought the place was deserted. If you hadn’t been in the corral in the first place, this never would have happened. Anyone with eyes can see that that horse is wild, and you’ve got no business going anywhere near him!”

That was the wrong thing to say. Lise considered herself an easygoing woman, but no man was going to tell her where she could and couldn’t go on her own station. Her blue eyes narrowing dangerously, she almost purred her words. “Oh, really? We’ll see about that!” And before he could stop her, she slipped through the wooden rails of the corral fence and approached the still spooked horse without an ounce of fear.

Behind her, she heard her rescuer swear and start to follow her into the corral, but she never took her eyes off the mustang. Still half wild, he could, if he chose, pound her into the dust if she made one wrong move. She didn’t. Talking to the animal soothingly, she sweet-talked him into letting her touch him, and before he knew what she was about, she had him bridled.

Triumphant, she turned to her visitor with an arch look. “You were saying?”

Russell couldn’t help but be impressed, and too late he realized he may have stepped over the line. This had to be Lise Meldrum, Simon’s daughter and the manager of the place. He’d planned to charm her into liking him so he could get on her good side and pump her for everything he could about her father, and here he was yelling at her, instead! Talk about a bonehead move. What the devil was wrong with him? He was good at what he did—he didn’t usually make those kind of mistakes. But then again, he didn’t usually come across a beautiful woman caught under the hooves of a frightened horse, either.

Which has nothing to do with anything, a voice in his head growled. Remember your mission.

Silently cursing himself for the reminder he shouldn’t have needed, he forced himself to relax and step into the cover of Steve Trace. For the rest of his stay in Australia, he would answer to nothing but Steve. And it would help him assume his new identity by convincing himself that his name was Steve—not Russell.

Giving her a teasing smile, he said wryly, “Did I say what I thought I just did? It must be the heat—it’s fried my brain. Can you forgive me? Obviously you know what you’re doing. Of course, I would have won Thunder’s trust with some sugar before I took a chance on stepping back into the corral when he was still so skittish, but I know women like to do things their own way. And that’s okay,” he said, grinning when steam practically poured from her ears. “You’re the boss.”

Stepping over to the corral fence, he extended his hand to her over the top rail, his gray eyes glinting devilishly. “You must be Lise. Your father told me you’d be running the place. I’m Steve Trace, your new cattle drover. Or at least, I am if you don’t can my hide for this stunt. You just scared the hell out of me, and I overreacted. Can you forgive me?”

Gritting her teeth, Lise looked him over, taking in his chiseled good looks, the long chestnut hair worn in a ponytail, the bold glint in his gray eyes and told herself she shouldn’t forgive him. She knew his kind. He was a charming flirt who’d been talking his way out of tight situations from the time he was a little boy and he’d first learned he could get his way with a woman by flashing a smile. He was trouble, and she had a feeling that if she let him stay, he was going to give her plenty of it.

Right then and there, she should have sent him packing. It would have been the smart thing to do, and her father wouldn’t have cared. She was in charge of running the station and had full authority to hire and fire. But she was, as usual, shorthanded. Life in the outback was harsh, and finding good men wasn’t easy. The work was hard, the pay minimal, the hours long. Cowboys had a tendency to drift with the wind, never staying anywhere very long. If you found a good one, you hung onto him with both hands.

And something told her the Yank would be a good one. Big and strapping, with the shoulders of an American football player and a strength that had stolen her breath, he appeared to have what it took to do the work and do it well. And she needed him, dammit. With the annual fall roundup just around the corner and only a handful of men to work tens of thousands of acres, she could use all the help she could get.

Left with no choice, she reluctantly gave his hand a firm, businesslike shake, but if he thought she was going to let him off that easy, he was in for a rude awakening. “Of course,” she retorted coolly. “As long as you understand that things are done my way around here, there shouldn’t be any problem, should there?”

Just that easily, she laid down the ground rules and dared him to question them.

Not the least intimidated, Steve only grinned. “Whatever you say, boss lady.”

“You just remember that, and we’ll get along fine, Yank. Grab your things. I’ll show you to the bunkhouse.”

The battle lines were drawn. Enjoying himself, Steve couldn’t help but be pleased. He liked a woman who stood up for herself, who had the confidence to hold her own with a man and challenge him at every turn. SPEAR had been able to give him very little information about Lise Meldrum other than that she managed the place because her father was gone a lot on what, to the rest of the world, appeared to be business trips. Other women might have handled the business end of the station from the comfort of an air-conditioned office and left the real work to her cowboys, but that didn’t appear to be Lise’s way. She wasn’t a hothouse flower, but a hands-on manager who apparently worked right alongside her men, and he liked that. This mission was going to be much more interesting than he’d expected.

Adrenaline pumping through his veins, Steve thanked the mailman, who’d watched the exchange between him and Lise with a wide grin of appreciation, then retrieved his duffel bag from the back seat of the mail car. He hadn’t brought much with him—he’d learned a long time ago that in his business, it paid to travel light. Sometimes you had to move fast. If you had to abandon a mission in the middle of the night, the last thing you wanted was baggage slowing you down.

“All set,” he told Lise as the mailman waved at Lise and drove off in a cloud of dust. “Lead the way, ma’am.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “It’s Lise,” she corrected him. “Just Lise. We don’t stand on ceremony around here.”

He’d already figured as much, but he could see that pushing her buttons was going to be an enjoyable pastime he hadn’t expected. “Whatever you say, ma’am. Your father told me I’d get along fine here as long as I followed orders. Where is he, by the way? I’d like to thank him in person for the job.”

He glanced around casually, but inside, every nerve ending was standing at full alert. He’d been on the move nonstop for the last twenty-four hours in hopes of catching Simon unaware on his own turf. One phone call to Belinda, his contact at SPEAR, and he could have backup there in fifteen minutes or less.

Any hope of capturing the bastard that easily, however, died a swift death when Lise said just as casually, “You could if he was here, but he had to leave early this morning for a business meeting in London. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

Yeah, right, Steve thought cynically. Who the hell did she think she was fooling? She might appear to be as honest and straightforward as Mother Teresa, but only a fool bought into that act. And Steve was nobody’s fool. She was Simon’s daughter, for God’s sake, and probably the only person in the world he really trusted completely. Of course she knew when the bastard was coming back. She was just protecting him. Steve couldn’t allow himself to forget that she would, no doubt, continue to do that at all cost.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to thank him another time,” he said easily, and silently promised himself it wouldn’t be long.

They reached the bunkhouse, and she preceded him inside. Far from disappointed that things at the station weren’t quite as he’d expected, Steve glanced around his new home and decided that this wasn’t going to be so bad. Granted, there was little privacy, but he could find a way to work around that. Especially if it meant uncovering Simon’s dirty little secrets. This was the one place in the world where the traitor felt safe. With any luck, he kept records here not only of his illegal activities, but also of the network of contacts he used around the world to carry out his evil plans. If Steve could uncover that kind of information, SPEAR could not only finally capture Simon, but finally shut down his entire operation worldwide.

“It’s not the Ritz,” Lise said stiffly, “but I haven’t heard any of my men complaining. They have their own space, and they eat good. I make sure of that. The cook here is one of the best in the country.”

Realizing he was frowning in concentration and she’d taken that for disapproval of the accommodations, he blinked, and just that quickly flashed a grin at her. “Now you’re talking, boss lady. I think I’m going to like it here.”

She bristled at the title he’d labeled her with, and it was all he could do not to chuckle. He wasn’t teasing—he only had to look around to know that he really was going to like it there. As a kid, he hadn’t been able to wait until the day he could leave the dairy farm he’d grown up on in Wisconsin, but deep down inside, he’d been missing the place ever since. Lately, he’d been thinking maybe it was time to go back. He’d worked for SPEAR a long time, and the world of intrigue and adventure could be addictive, but there was a part of his soul that ached to get back to his roots, to a place where he could relax and get back to nature. For now, this just might be that place. Granted, he still had to be on guard, and the outback wasn’t Wisconsin, but there was something about the whisper of the wind across the dry, parched, endless land that called to him. It wasn’t home, but it felt like it.

He didn’t fool himself into thinking his mission—or the cover he’d adopted—would be easy. On a station the size of the Pear Tree, there was a lot of work to be done and never enough time in the day to do it all. The men put in a long day, and if Steve needed proof of just how hard the work was, he got it later that evening when the rest of the crew returned to the bunkhouse when their shift was over.

Straggling in, their faces baked as brown as the land by the hot, unforgiving desert sun, they were dirty and sweaty and sporting various cuts and bruises. They wanted a shower and food, in that order, and nothing was getting in their way. Taking time only to greet Steve and introduce themselves, they headed for the showers, then the dining hall.

Far from offended, Steve knew they would loosen up some after they had a chance to clean up and fill their bellies, and he was right. The long table in the dining hall of the bunkhouse had barely been cleared off before Nate, the oldest of the six cowboys, pulled out a deck of cards. Thin and wiry and weathered from years spent working in the elements, he had the kind of face that didn’t give away his age. With a thatch of gray at his temples and brown hair that was naturally thin, he could have been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty.