The Cattle King's Mistress by Emma Darcy Read Free Book Online Page B

now, no trace of any humanity in the ancient land around them. The clumps of spinifex and the high conical termite mounds added to the sense of life reduced to a minimal state. It was a far different world from the one she’d known all her life and she began to sense she was with a very different kind of man, too...a man who made his own rules.
    She wasn’t running this game.
    He was.
    At his own pace and on his own terms.
    And that realisation sent a chill down Miranda’s spine. His patient silence at the dinner table that first night, his patient silence in the helicopter, now in this Land Cruiser, waiting...waiting for what?
    “You’re right,” Nathan said abruptly. “I’m not offering romance. I’ve been there, done that, and come out empty every time. Fool’s gold.”
    The edge of contempt in his voice startled her into looking at him. He sliced her a hard, challenging glance, searing in its intensity. “Look around you,” he directed, turning his gaze back to the hazardous track. “My life is bound up in this land. It comes down to basic needs and that is pervasive if you live here long enough. I have a great respect for basic needs. And sharing them makes sense to me.”
    Miranda frowned, realising he was talking of a stark reality he faced day after day. If basic needs weren’t respected—and shared—survival could very well be at risk. She’d read stories of people who had perished in the outback, not appreciating all that could go wrong, nor comprehending the sheer isolation of great, empty distances—no ready help to call upon.
    “Now I’d say there’s something very basic between us that we could answer for each other,” he went on.
    One could survive without sex, Miranda silently argued, gritting her teeth against saying so, determined not to invite or encourage any conversation on that subject.
    “A sharing. Not a taking,” he emphasised.
    Miranda remained stubbornly silent, her gaze trained out the side window, but she felt the hot, penetrating blast of his eyes on her and couldn’t stop her muscles from tensing against it.
    “I’m not interested in the games men and women play in the world you come from,” he continued with a relentless beat that seemed to drum on her mind and heart. “I don’t make promises I can’t or won’t keep. I’ll say how it is for me. I want you, yes.”
    She didn’t actually need that blunt honesty, having no doubts herself on mat score.
    “And you want me, Miranda.”
    That stung her into whipping her head around. “Oh, no, I don’t!” she shot at him.
    His eyes instantly and sharply derided her contention. “Deny it as much as you like, for whatever reasons you have, but it’s not going to go away.”
    “Is that how you argued your last mistress into bed with you?”
    “Mistress?”
    His incredulity and the subsequent shake of his head left Miranda furious with herself at having let those words slip. She snapped her gaze back to the road, willing him not to pick up on them, to simply let the whole matter drop.
    No such luck!
    “I don’t know where you’re coming from, Miranda,” he said tersely, “but I am not married, and if I had a wife, I certainly wouldn’t be seeking a mistress.”
    Mistress...lover...what was the difference when the arrangement was for sex on tap?
    “The relationships I’ve had with women were all mutually desired and not one of them was an adulterous affair,” he went on, his voice gathering an acid bite. “I happen to respect the commitment of marriage. A pity you don’t.”
    “I beg your pardon!” Miranda hurled at him in bitter resentment of his judgement of her.
    “So what happened?” he threw back at her. “The guy wouldn’t leave his wife for you? Is that why you took the job at King’s Eden, burning your boats?”
    It was so close to the truth, a wave of humiliating heat scorched up Miranda’s neck.
    Nathan didn’t miss it. He turned on more heat. “Or maybe you threw down the gauntlet and