What of the rest of the house? She hadn’t been invited to look-but she couldn’t keep holding Karli for ever. She had to find somewhere she could lay her down.
The kitchen door led to a sitting room-of sorts. It held a few chairs and an old settee. In the corner was an ancient gramophone. But one of the window-panes was smashed, and dust was everywhere.
What next? There were two rooms leading off the sitting room. Jenna pushed the doors wide and reacted again with horror. These must be the bedrooms. Iron bedsteads stood as islands in the dust, with lumpy mattresses on sagging springs. Both rooms had broken windows, and once again they were thick with dust.
Surely Riley didn’t sleep here? Neither room looked as if it had seen a human for years. She retreated in haste, Karli growing heavier by the minute.
Riley must sleep somewhere. Where was he now?
She returned to the sitting room and stared out. Beyond the filthy windows was a veranda, and a door opened out to it. This must be the formal front door.
Did anyone ever come here?
She shoved the door open and walked outside, wary of broken floorboards, but there was no need for caution. In the lee of the house, the veranda was out of the wind and thus protected from the all-pervading dust.
In the fading light, Jenna could see a big bed at each end of the veranda, one made up with sheets and what looked like comfortable pillows. This, then, must be where Riley slept.
Riley’s bed or not, it was the most inviting place in the house. She laid Karli down with care, and watched as the little girl snuggled contentedly into the pillows. Karli had no cares to stop her sleeping. Jenna would take care of her.
Would she? Could she?
What had she got them both into?
This was such a mess, she thought ruefully. How had it happened? Jenna had taken such care to be independent, but Karli had been catapulted into her life with a vengeance, and how could she walk away?
She ran a finger down Karli’s dust-stained face, aching with tenderness for a child she was starting to love in a way she’d never thought possible. Where to go from here? How could she cope with this situation? With Riley Jackson? With her future?
One step at a time, she thought. Just live in the moment, otherwise you’ll go mad.
She turned and stared at the other bed at the far end of the veranda. It had a mattress and a couple of pillows. It looked almost comfortable.
It was too close to Riley’s bed.
The alternative was the railway siding, she told herself, and grimaced. It wasn’t an alternative at all. But to share sleeping quarters with that man…
The door opened at the end of the veranda-and that man was right in front of her.
Naked.
He’d obviously just emerged from the shower. His hair was still dripping. His towel was draped over his shoulder-but it wasn’t covering what needed to be covered.
She was a nurse, she told herself desperately. She was used to naked men.
She wasn’t used to this one.
There was no mistaking the magnificence of Riley’s body. He was built like a Rodin sculpture, she decided as she bit back an exclamation of dismay and moved swiftly to block the line of sight between Riley and the sleeping child. Then, with her complexion fast changing colour, she made herself look at his face-which was a better place to focus on than where her eyes were automatically drawn.
Her colour deepened further. The man was laughing!
‘Whoops,’ he said as he slung his towel around his waist to make himself respectable. Almost respectable. ‘I’m not used to visitors. Um…welcome to my bedroom.’
Which made Jenna’s flushing face turn to beetroot. She was in his bedroom. What else did she expect?
‘I…I’m sorry,’ she muttered. She motioned back to Karli who was thankfully still soundly asleep. ‘I needed… She needed…’
He followed her gaze and his face softened with understanding. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I should have thought of that before I showered.’
‘I’ll move her.’
‘There’s no need.’ He snagged his clothes from the bedside chair, then caught his towel as it started to slip. ‘I’ll dress in the wash house. Meet you in the kitchen in five minutes.’
He disappeared and she had a fleeting thought that suddenly he was as discomposed as she was.
Was that possible?
Five minutes later when they met again back in the kitchen, her colour still hadn’t subsided. The gathering dusk helped, but then Riley produced a kerosene lantern and turned the little kitchen’s darkness to light. Her colour rose all over again.
He was respectable now, but only just. He was wearing faded jeans and nothing else. When he’d been covered in grimed clothes and dust, Jenna had thought the man was seriously good-looking, but now he was naked from the waist up, his broad chest was tanned and rippled, and his strongly boned face was rid of its dusty coating. The whole package meant Jenna had to fight not to gasp.
That and the memory of what she’d just seen…
She wasn’t interested in men, she told herself desperately. She’d never been interested in men. She’d seen what so-called romance did to women’s lives and she wanted no part of it. She’d been independent for ever and she intended to stay that way.
But the sight of Riley…
You can appreciate a good body without wanting it, she told herself fiercely, but still her face burned. She was way out of her comfort zone here. She was half a world out of her comfort zone.
Where was a magic carpet when she needed one?
‘I’m sorry we went into your bedroom,’ she managed and he smiled, a gentle, quizzical smile that was strangely at odds with the image she had of him as a man’s man. A threatening specimen of the male species. His smile was almost tender.
‘You hadn’t thought I might come out starkers.’ He took in her burning colour and grinned. ‘My apologies. I’m not used to women in my house. I’ll see that I stay respectable in the future.’
In future. Help. Jenna’s breath caught in panic as she stared across at this large, disconcerting male. She was stuck here for three days.
‘Can I interest you in baked beans?’
It was a thoughtful drawl from Riley and she looked up at his face, sharply suspicious. It was as if he could read her thoughts. She didn’t like the sensation.
Food. Concentrate on food. In truth, she must be hungry. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She needed to wake Karli and persuade her to eat as well. But baked beans? Karli hardly ate anything and to persuade her to eat beans seemed impossible.
Once more her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Riley’s dark eyes creased into laughter.
‘This place is not a five-star restaurant, lady,’ he told her.
‘No.’ Trying to get her face in order, she knelt by the crate that seemed to hold all the food cans. ‘Do you have nothing but beans? You’ll get scurvy.’
‘Yeah, but I’ll die happy.’ He was standing above her, disconcertingly male. Disconcertingly big. ‘I like beans.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Lady…’
‘And neither does Karli,’ she said, unconscious of the fact that he was staring down at her with a very strange expression on his face. ‘I need to make her eat. Surely you don’t just exist on baked beans. No one could.’
‘I’m tough.’
‘Yeah, but surely not stupid. Or not that stupid.’ She was lifting cans out and inspecting their labels. Spaghetti. Baked beans. Spaghetti. Baked beans. But at the bottom were a few different labels, tossed in as if the packer hadn’t expected them to be used but had put them in as if to satisfy a conscience. They were cans of interesting things like water chestnuts, snow peas and capsicum. There were a few packets of herbs and spices. A few withered onions lay ignored underneath, and there was also a large packet of rice.
‘Can I use these?’ she asked, and Riley stooped beside her to take a look. His bare chest brushed her arm. He was so close. She edged away and almost toppled over. His hand came out and steadied her-which didn’t steady her in the least.