Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty — Clarissa by Mel Teshco Read Free Book Online

Episode 5—Clarissa
    Clarissa Langdown ignored the relentless heat of yet another summer in outback Queensland. Just the same way she ignored the red dust and patchy yellowed grass that desperately needed soaking rain.
    Instead, she scraped a wisp of platinum-blonde hair back under her Akubra hat, hooked a worn boot between the post and rail fence of the round yard, and focused all her attention on Brandon Flynn.
    Head stockman and all round good guy.
    She swallowed back a gusty sigh of admiration as she watched him ride her once-skittish paint mare with gently voiced commands and soft hands. He didn’t break in horses. He used natural horsemanship to work with the animal’s instincts rather than against them.
    With quality stockmen in such high demand, she knew Brandon was worth his weight in gold. After her husband, Dean, had been killed when his motorbike hit a kangaroo on the Landsborough highway, she’d assumed the head stockman would leave for better pickings and less stress. Instead he’d thrown his lot in with her, become indispensable in every way.
    Except one.
    Despite the heat, she shivered. She’d been a widow a little over twelve months now and loneliness had crept up on her like a thief, stealing what little comfort and passion she’d once found in her husband’s arms. Though, in the end, even that had faded as they’d grown apart, and it’d only been their shared love of the land that had kept them together.
    Little wonder she’d taken the time to appreciate the supple strength of the stockman, his soft yet firm hands on the reins. She could only imagine what his touch would feel like on her bared skin, her breasts and her—
    ‘Clarissa, is everything okay?’
    Brandon’s drawled query snapped her back to the present with a start. He’d brought the mare to a standstill a metre away, and his long, denim-clad legs straddled the saddleless mare with practised ease. She gulped and dragged her stare past the blue of his light cotton shirt and the golden-brown of his moist throat, before snaring his dark eyes, with their long sweep of even darker lashes.
    She managed a smile and adjusted the brim of her hat. ‘Of course, everything is fine. I just wanted to check on your progress with Gem.’
    He nodded. ‘She’s coming along great.’ He cocked his head to the side. ‘You’d make a nice profit from her at the sales.’
    ‘No.’ She shook her head. She’d already sacrificed far too much to keep the twenty-two thousand hectare cattle station viable. But the drought was sucking dry the landscape as well as her bank balance. It had only been her husband’s life insurance that had kept things going.
    Gem was one of a dozen stock mares she wouldn’t be selling, mares she hoped to breed to Brandon’s black standard-bred stallion. Because without decent riding stock, she might as well kiss her home and all her hard work goodbye.
    She swallowed back the dismal thought. For now she still had a station to run and bills to pay. But the cattlemen she employed were no longer enough. She needed another set of capable hands. A handyman willing to help out with the thousand-and-one odd jobs around the homestead.
    Apparently that someone was a long-time friend of Brandon’s. Adam Marshal had agreed to haul arse from the rodeo circuit to lend a helping hand, with the added benefit of giving his battered body a well-earned break.
    She only hoped he was as competent as Brandon claimed.
    At least her new handyman wouldn’t need to fix the home paddock fence. She’d ticked that off her to-do list a few days ago, and had the aching muscles in her shoulders and the cuts on her hands to prove it.
    Brandon shrugged, though his stare seemed to see right through her. ‘She’s your horse.’ He swung off the mare and brushed the reins over her head, before leading the mare the short distance to the post and rail fence where Clarissa waited. ‘But I think you’re right. She’d make a perfect mount for you.’
    She