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A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

The Army

Ranger’s Return

Soraya Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Kiss to Seal

The Deal

Nikki Logan

About the Author

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night – the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

For the real McMurtrie family and for the Cape Saunders colony of New Zealand Fur Seals.

To my friend Kate, whose research formed the basis of the background for this story. Her family farm sits on a stunning peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand and is home to abundant wildlife, including a colony of seals as depicted in this story.

CHAPTER ONE

RESPECTFULLY yours … Kate.

Grant snorted. Since when had any part of Kate Dickson’s dealings with his father been respectful? She and her travelling band of greenies were single-handedly responsible for crippling Leo McMurtrie’s farm. And for his death that had followed.

The town might believe old Leo had had a dicky heart, but there were three people who knew otherwise: Leo’s best mate the mayor, the town doctor and Grant—the only child who had found his father in the front seat of his idling vehicle. It hadn’t even run out of fuel yet.

Kate Dickson’s letter was still open on Leo’s kitchen bench-top. Grant had left it, and everything around it, untouched until the doctor had made his declaration and the funeral was over.

He ran his eye over it now.

Negotiate the buffer zone … Protect the seals … Limit farming activity … Regretfully …

First respect, now regret.

Right.

What was respectful about hounding an old man into letting you onto his land and then putting the wheels in motion to have tight conservation restrictions slammed on twenty-eight kilometres of his coastline? About repaying a favour by screwing over the man that had given it to you? Kate Dickson called herself a scientist, labelled her work research, but she was nothing more than a bleeding heart with her eyes on making a name for herself.

At his father’s expense.

The irony that he found himself in his father’s corner for the first time now, only after he was dead, that their only common ground should be beyond the grave, didn’t escape Grant. Or was it that he just hadn’t been willing to appreciate his father’s perspective while he’d been alive and so staunchly defending it?

He balled the delicate handwritten letter—who wrote by hand these days?—and erased the irritating Kate Dickson from his conscience. Then he let his head fall forward onto the hands that fisted on his bench top and took a shuddering breath.

And then another.

A shrill call made him lurch; he snatched up the phone before thinking. ‘McMurtrie.’

The uncertain pause sounded long-distance. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Grant understood the confusion immediately. ‘McMurtrie junior.’

‘Oh, I … I’m sorry. Is your father there, please?’

A road-train slammed hard into his guts. The man who’d raised him had never really been there for him and never would be now. ‘No.’

‘Will he be back today? I was hoping to discuss …’

Breathless. Young. There was only one female that he could think of who hadn’t been at Leo McMurtrie’s packed funeral yesterday, that hadn’t brought a massive plate of country cooking for his orphan son. That would be oblivious to his death. His eyes fell on the letter. ‘Miss Dickson, I assume?’

‘Ms.’

‘Miss Dickson, my father passed away last week.’

Her shocked gasp sounded genuine. So too the agonising pause that followed and the tightness of her voice when she finally spoke. ‘I had no idea. I am so sorry.’

Yeah, I’m sure you are. Just as you’d been getting somewhere with your crazy plans. If he made a sound, he would say exactly that. So he said nothing.

‘How are you?’ she asked quietly. ‘Can I do anything?’

The country courtesy threw him for a second. This woman didn’t know him from Adam but her concerned tone was authentic. That boiled him more than anything else. ‘Yeah. You can keep your people far away from this property. You and your microscope brigade are no longer welcome.’

The voice sucked in a shocked breath. ‘Mr McMurtrie—’

‘You may have sweet-talked my father into letting you on his land but that arrangement is now void. There will be no renegotiating.’

‘But we had a commitment.’

‘Unless your commitment is in writing, and has the words “in perpetuity” in bold print, then you have nothing.’

‘Mr McMurtrie.’ Her voice hardened.

Here we go …

‘The arrangement I had with your father was not just about him. It has the backing of the Shire Council. There’s district funding attached to it. You cannot simply opt out, no matter how tragic the circumstances.’

‘Watch me.’

Slamming the phone down was the most satisfying thing he’d done all week. It gave him an outlet. It gave him focus. Blaming someone helped; it meant he didn’t have to blame the man he’d lost. The man he’d been estranged from for nineteen years.

Nothing Grant did could bring back the father he’d walked away from as soon as he’d hit legal age. But he could do one thing for him—the thing his father had died wanting.

He could save the farm.

He could not run it. He was no more equipped to do that now than the day he had walked away from it when he’d been sixteen. But he could keep it ticking over. A week, a month, however long it took to get it ship-shape and ready for sale to someone who could make it great. Probably not what his father had left Tulloquay to him for, but he’d never buckled to his father’s demands before and he wasn’t about to start now.

He’d never been farmer material growing up and Leo McMurtrie dying hadn’t changed one part of that.

Kate Dickson had stood on this rustic porch one time too many, readied herself for this argument once too often. It had taken twelve solid months of negotiating—almost pleading—for Leo McMurtrie to agree to let her team conduct their three-year research study on his property. And now in the final, crucial year of operations she was right back where she had started.

Up against a lawyer, no less.

An hour on the internet had tracked down Leo McMurtrie’s only son, Grant. He was some contract specialist from the city, and he was angry and still grieving, if his manner on the phone last week was any indication.

Hopefully the personal touch would do the trick.

She knocked on the freshly painted timber door then smoothed her hands down her best business outfit. Pencil skirts and fitted blazers weren’t really her thing but she had two of them in her wardrobe for occasions just like this one.

The door didn’t move. Kate glanced around nervously. Should she have called ahead or would he have just ignored that? Someone was home; she could hear the thump of loud music coming from deep inside the farmhouse. She knocked again and waited.

‘Come on, McMurtrie …’ she mumbled.

When the son still didn’t materialise, Kate tested the door. It swung happily open and the music-level surged.

‘Hello?’ she shouted down the long hallway over the doofdoof of heavy metal. ‘Mr McMurtrie?’

Nothing.

Cursing under her breath, Kate moved down the hallway towards the deafening noise. The smell of paint hit her immediately and she saw old floral-patterned sheets draped over furnishings in the freshly coated rooms that she passed. The sheets struck her as incongruous on a property belonging to a man’s man. Leo McMurtrie had been as tough as nails. Even once they’d finally come to an arrangement regarding access for her team, he’d still been as surly as a mule, with a sailor’s vocabulary. The fact he slept on old-fashioned, floral sheets just didn’t fit with the man she knew.

Then again, she barely knew him at all. Leo hadn’t wanted to be known.

‘Hello?’ Jeez. Lucky there wasn’t an emergency or something. She tiptoed forward.

‘What the hell—?’

Out of nowhere, a solid-rock wall stepped out and slammed into her, sending her reeling backwards, a damp weight dragging on the front of her suit. Kate lunged for the paint bucket that tipped between them just as a pair of masculine hands did the same, and the two of them ended up half-crouched on the floor like a badly-gone-wrong game of Twister. But they did manage to right the bucket and stop any more paint from sluicing down onto the timber floorboards.

The second thing Kate noticed—after subliminally absorbing the sensationally manicured pair of hands that relieved her of the bucket—was the intensity of a pair of eyes the colour of sea grass. They blazed at her from under a deep frown.

She struggled for something else to focus on. Paint pooled at her feet, dripping wildly off her clothes onto the floor.

‘Oh …’

‘Don’t move!’ Leo McMurtrie’s son barked, blocking her passage with his body and placing the tin carefully to one side. It took him a few minutes to wipe up the worst of the mess at her feet with a series of cloths but, as fast as he wiped, she dripped. Paint thickened and blobbed off the pointed seams of the tailored fabric.

‘Get that jacket off.’

Kate bristled at his autocratic tone but couldn’t ignore the fact that her jacket had taken most of the paint and it was very clearly still streaming onto the floor. She stripped it off, bundled it up with no further concern and tossed it over to the growing pile of paint-covered rags in the corner.

Two sets of eyes went to her beige-stained skirt.

‘That stays on,’ she said unequivocally.

His tight lips wanted to twitch but his scowl wouldn’t let them. Kate saw it all play out on his face in the seconds before he masked it. He crouched before her and, without so much as a word, he hand-scraped the paint off the tight fabric of her skirt, off the thighs underneath that stiffened with surprise, reaching around behind her legs to hold her steady as he did it.

Kate stood compliant and mortified until he’d finished, feeling every bit like the child she’d worked so hard to grow out of. The girl who just did what others told her. McMurtrie junior straightened up and glared at her. Those captivating eyes were evenly set in an oval face framed at the top by short, sandy-blond hair and at the bottom by a matching two-day growth. His eyes perfectly matched the khaki shirt that flared open halfway down his chest and which revealed a gold band hanging by a leather thong around his neck. More sandy-blond hair scattered across his tanned collarbone.

His lips tightened further as he noticed the direction of her gaze.

Desperate to get things back on a professional footing, Kate pushed her thick hair back from her face and wedged her ‘game on’ glasses more firmly up her nose. She straightened as best a paint-covered woman could and held out her hand to shake his.

Too late, she noticed the slap of wet paint on her right hand—which meant it was on her hair and probably her glasses too. The hand dropped limply.

Nice one, Kate.

But the pragmatist in her whispered that what was done was done. Nowhere to go but up. ‘Mr McMurtrie …’

‘Never heard of knocking?’ He glared at her, unimpressed.

Her eyes narrowed. Maybe he wasn’t grieving. Maybe he was just an ass most of the time. Like father, like son. Even if she’d come to feel great affection for McAss senior, he’d been pure hard work at the beginning.

‘Never heard of a perforated ear-drum?’ she shouted back, eyebrows lifted.

It was only then he seemed to realise that the stereo was still pounding out. He turned away and killed the sound with the flick of a nearby switch. It took her heart a few beats to realise it had lost its synching rhythm. When he returned, his shirt was fixed two buttons higher. The tiniest part of Kate mourned the loss of that manly chest.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice overly loud in the new silence. ‘Do you always enjoy your rock at full blast?’

‘Better than drinking.’

Kate frowned. How were the two remotely connected? She took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m Kate Dickson. I assume you’re Grant McMurtrie?’

‘You must be top of your game with scientific deduction like that.’

She ignored the sarcasm. ‘You haven’t returned my calls.’

‘No.’

‘Or my email.’

‘No.’

‘So I came in person.’

‘I can see that.’ His eyes drifted lazily over her paint-spattered blouse. ‘Sorry about your suit.’

Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t like it anyway.’

‘Then why wear it?’

‘Societal expectation.’

He stared at her, assessing. ‘What would you prefer to wear?’

‘A wetsuit.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Your seals.’

Kate quietly congratulated herself for getting things neatly back on topic. She had a lot to lose if this meeting didn’t go well—more than just her project. ‘I need to continue my research, Mr McMurtrie.’

‘Then you’ll need to find another beach, Miss Dickson.’

‘All the early research was done here, I can’t simply change locations. Neither can the colony I’m studying. They’ve been returning to that little cove for years.’

‘I know. I grew up here.’

Oh, that’s right. A spark of excitement flared through her. ‘Do you remember the colony when you were a boy?’

His lids dropped. ‘I should. I spent part of every day with them.’

Kate froze. ‘No. Did you?’

He stared at her overly long. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Miss Dickson. It doesn’t mean I have any information for you and it doesn’t mean I’m going to say yes. My answer is still no.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t need a reason. It’s the beauty of Australia’s freehold system—my land, my rules.’

Kate brought out her big gun. Her only gun. ‘Actually, it’s not.’ His face grew thunderous but she pushed on. ‘Technically speaking, it’s not your land. Not yet.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘I’ve been told it will take six to eight weeks for probate and to settle the estate according to the terms of Leo’s will. Until then, this farm still belongs to your father. And the contract stands.’

God, she hoped so. She’d had to have dinner with a loathsome octopus in order to get some certainty on that. His price for helping her.

The fury on Grant McMurtrie’s face had her crossing her arms across her chest, just in case he reached right through her ribcage and snatched at her heart with that big fist. He glared at her and it fluttered even faster.

‘You doubt I have enough connections to get it pushed through? I’m a lawyer, Miss Dickson.’

‘Ms!’ she hissed.

‘Actually, I imagine it’s Dr Dickson, if we’re being formal. Why not use that?’

‘Because Dr Dickson was my father. And because I prefer Ms. If you can’t manage that, then just call me Kate.’ She took a breath. ‘But that’s besides the point. I’ve been told that even with fiddling probate won’t take less than six weeks.’

The hostility switched to offence. ‘I do not fiddle, Miss Dickson. I merely apply the law.’

Uh-huh. The octopus had been a lawyer, too.

His expression changed. ‘What do you imagine will change in six weeks?’

‘Maybe nothing. But maybe you’ll come to see that the work we are doing is important.’

‘To whom?’

‘To science. To understanding the role of predators on fish stocks. To the future ecology of the oceans.’

‘To you.’

Her chest rose and fell twice. ‘Yes, to me. This is my life’s work.’

And all she had.

His half-smile, half-snort managed to be engaging and offensive at the same time. ‘Play that tune in a few years when life’s work means something more than five or six years.’

‘You’re not exactly Methusela. What are you … forty?’ She knew he wasn’t.

His nostrils flared. ‘Thirty-five.’

Young, to be the success the internet hinted he was. He must have been very driven. She appealed to that part of him. ‘When you were younger, didn’t you care about something enough to give up everything for it?’

Grant glared and buried his paint-encrusted hands in his pockets. When he’d been young all he could think about was getting away from this farm and the certain future that had felt like a death sentence. Finding his own path. It had taken him the first ten years to realise he hadn’t found it. And the next nine waiting for some kind of sign as to which way to go next.

That sign had come in the form of a concerned, late-night call from Castleridge’s mayor that his father had missed the town’s civic meeting and wasn’t answering his phone or his door. He’d driven a three-hour drive in two and they’d broken his father’s door down together.

Grant stopped short of the door in question—newly replaced, newly painted—and let Ms Kate Dickson walk ahead. Without her destroyed jacket, her opaque crème blouse hid little as the Western Australian light blazed in the doorway. Her little power-suit had given him a clue to the fit, lean body beneath. Now here was exhibit A in all its silhouetted glory.

His gut tightened.

Not that she’d played it that way. Her attire was entirely appropriate for a business discussion. Professional. His shirt had revealed more than hers, even though she had cleavage most women in her position would have been flashing for leverage. It had felt positively gratuitous as her eyes had fallen on his exposed chest. He certainly wasn’t dressed for company.

Then again, she wasn’t invited, so she’d have to take what she got. ‘Don’t ask me to empathise with you, Miss Dickson.’

‘Ms!’

‘Your life’s work destroyed my father.’

The sun was too low behind her for him to see whether she lost colour at that, but her body stiffened up like the old eucalypts in the dry paddock. She took an age to answer, low and tight. ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

She seemed genuinely thrown for a moment. Her blouse rose and fell dramatically and his conscience bit that he’d struck that low a blow. He’d only just stopped short of saying ‘took my father’s life’.

But that was a secret for only three people.

She ran nervous hands down her skirt and it reminded him instantly of the soft feel of her legs under his hands just moments before. He shoved the sensation away.

Her voice, when it came, was tight and pained. ‘Mr McMurtrie, your father was a difficult man to get to know, but I respected him. We had many dealings together and I’d like to think we finally hit an accord.’

Accord. More than he’d had with his father at the end. All they’d had was estrangement.

‘The suggestion that my work—the work of my team—may have contributed to his death is …’ She swallowed hard. ‘For all his faults, your father was a man who loved this land and everything on it. He came to care for the Atlas colony in the same way he cared for his livestock. Not individually, perhaps, but with a sense of guardianship over them. Responsibility. I believe the seals brought him joy, not sadness.’

‘Wishful thinking, Kate?’

She turned enough that he could see the deep frown marring her perfect face.

He struck, as he was trained to. ‘My father was served a notice just a month ago that said sixty square-kilometres of coastland was to be suspended while its conservation status was reconsidered—a two-kilometre-deep buffer for the entire coastal stretch. That’s a third of his land, Kate.’

Her body sagged. She chose her words carefully. ‘Yes. I was aware of the discussions. Aware our findings were being cited as—’

‘Then it should be no surprise to you that it might have pushed him—’

Grant clamped his mouth shut, suddenly aware of what it might do to a person to be told they were responsible for someone’s suicide. Someone like Kate. Especially when he didn’t know that for a fact. Yet. ‘That it might have stressed him unduly.’

Her nod was slow, her face drawn. ‘If it wasn’t what he wanted, yes, I could imagine. But he was working with us.’

For what reason, only his father would know. But Alan Sefton had a thorough and detailed will sitting in his office, completed just weeks before Leo’s death, that gave Grant responsibility for Tulloquay. And that will didn’t say one single word about seal protection or participating in research. And, where Grant came from, legal documents like that spoke infinitely louder than words.

‘There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that my father would have willingly signed over one third of his land to a bunch of greenies. He loved this farm.’

Her eyes dropped. ‘He was not a man to do anything by halves.’

It dawned on him finally that his father and this woman had had some kind of relationship. Not conventional, he was sure—his father just wasn’t that easy to get on with—but her shock on the telephone and her sadness now finally registered. And his own grief and long-repressed anger lifted just enough for him to see how the passing of Leo McMurtrie might impact a young woman who’d spent several days a week for two years on his farm.

But he couldn’t let compassion get the better of him. That was probably what his father had done in the end—compassion and a healthy dose of male paternalism. He looked again at the small, naturally beautiful woman before him. Possibly male something else.

And look what it had led to.

He stiffened his back. ‘The moment probate goes through, your team needs to find somewhere else to do your study. Ask some of the farmers up the coast for access.’

‘You don’t think I would have done that rather than negotiate with your father for so long? This site is the only one suitable. We need somewhere accessible that allows us to get quickly between the seals and the water. The cliff faces to the north are even less passable.’

‘Then you’ll have to get creative. The moment it’s in my power, I’ll be closing my gates to your seal researchers. Fair warning.’

Even without being able to clearly see her face against the glare, he knew she was staring him down. ‘Warning, yes. But fair? For all his faults, your father was at least a man of integrity.’

She turned and gracefully crossed the veranda, down the steps to her beat-up old utility truck. Hardly the sort of vehicle he would expect a beauty to travel in. She slid in carefully and swung her long legs modestly in before quietly closing the door.

In that moment he got his first hint as to why his father might have relented after a year of pressure. Not because she’d used her body and face to get her way … but because she hadn’t.

Kate Dickson was an intriguing mix of brains, beauty and dignity and she clearly loved the land she stood on.

No wonder his father had caved. It was exactly what he had loved about Grant’s mother.

CHAPTER TWO

STRIPPING bare in an open paddock was the least of Kate’s concerns. The looming threat of every visit being her last made her suddenly want very much to visit her seals. Just socially, despite the timing being wrong.

Wrong shoes, wrong clothes, wrong time of day. But she was doing it anyway.

These animals were the most stable thing she’d had in her life in the past few years and the idea of losing them filled her mouth with a bitter taste.

An arctic gust blew in off the Southern Ocean as she peeled off her ruined skirt and blouse and hauled her wetsuit on in their place—the closest she’d ever get to being a seal, albeit twenty kilos too light. No wonder sharks sometimes mistook surfers for their favourite blubbery food-source when they were in full wetsuit. She’d relied on the same confusion to get closer to the Atlas colony the first time.

On a usual working day she ditched the wetsuit for serviceable, smelly overalls, about the most comfortable thing ever invented—warm, dry and snug. But also the least attractive.

Unless you were a male wool-sack.

Her beat-up old utility gave her the tiniest bit of privacy against the baleful stares of thirty sheep that scattered like freckles across the dry, crunchy paddock. It was not really suitable pasture for sheep grazing, but they had a ready food source in feed stations dotted around the farm. They were more interested in the engagement and social aspects of grazing as a flock than in what little nutrition the salt-stiffened grass afforded.

The sheep had seen her half-naked plenty of times and were about as uninterested as the rest of her team to whom boundaries, and gender, meant nothing. Sifting through seal vomit for six hours a day had a way of bringing a team closer together. But sift they did, and then they studied it. Such a glamorous life; no wonder gender and modesty came to mean nothing to any of them. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually felt like a woman.

How about twenty minutes ago?

Even angry, Grant McMurtrie had made her body resonate in places she hadn’t thought about for years. It was still thrumming now; something about the insolent way he’d sized her up. It had boiled her blood in one heartbeat then sizzled it the next. She’d been insanely pleased to be wearing a skirt and blouse for once, even if she’d been covered in paint. Imagine if his first impression of her had been her usual working attire …

The sheep turned away, bored, as she tossed her ruined clothes and shoes into the back seat of her car for later and reached back over her shoulder to snag the zip-tether and pull her rubbery wetsuit up tighter against her skin. She picked her way barefoot over the edge of the bluff and down a near-invisible crease of sand in the painfully sharp rocks, their oft-trodden pathway down the cliff face to the rocky cove below. The trail had been worn when they’d found it, hinting at use over generations. A mercy for her poor feet, but trickily narrow, just wide enough for a slight woman.

Or a small boy.

Her mind immediately went to one in particular. Grant McMurtrie must have come here a hundred times in his young life, hard as it was to imagine the imposing man as a child. What adventurous little soul wouldn’t find his way to the dangers of open cliff-face, gale-force wind gusts and wildlife galore? Envy as green as his eyes bubbled through her.

He might have had the seals before her, but she had them now. They’d been hers for the past two years and, if she played her cards right, they’d go on being hers for the next year. Longer, if the Conservation Council ruled in her favour. They were already extremely interested in her research.

Two-dozen dark heads lifted as she negotiated her way down the crease. These seals were used to the arrival of humans on their beach now. They were not trusting—definitely not—but accustomed. Only a couple of heads remained raised at the unusual sight of just a solitary human; the rest flopped back onto the rocks to continue their lazy sunning. Kate smiled at the typical scene. A gang of rotund pups mucked around by the water’s edge, vocalising and chasing each other and play-fighting, as though they needed to use up all their energy now before they grew up and became biologically sluggish like their mothers, scattered lazing around the rocks.

Or their older brothers, hanging out in bachelor groups further up the coast. Or their fathers, who did their own thing most of the year but came together with the females for breeding season.

Families. They came in all shapes and sizes, and if those pups got lucky they’d have theirs for a lot longer than she’d had hers. Kate frowned. She’d had a long time to grow accustomed to being on her own but it had never really grown any easier.

One of the pups squealed and drew her maudlin focus back to them.

It was amazing they tolerated human presence at all, given Kate and her team caught them up once a month and piled them into wool sacks for weighing. But the young seals seemed to view it as a regular part of their lives, a game to be had. More than one pup dashed straight back into the wool sack after release, keen to be back with its mates. Looking into the sack was one of the rare true pleasures of her job, as four pairs of enormous, melted-chocolate eyes in brown furry faces peered back out at her.

It got all her maternal instincts bubbling, yearning, until she shushed them. When your colleagues barely noticed you were female, and when colleagues were the only men you met, kids weren’t an immediate issue on the horizon, no matter what her biology was hinting.

Plus they were just one more thing to love and lose. And what was the point?

‘Hey, Dorset,’ Kate murmured to one of the seals she could recognise by sight as she settled herself on a suitably flat rock. The large female was one of five wearing the monitoring equipment this month. The time-depth recorder captured her position above sea-level every five seconds when she was dry and every two seconds when she was wet, twenty-four-seven. They rotated the expensive recorders monthly across the whole adult colony, to get a good spread of data from as many animals as possible, in order to determine information for their study: where the seals fed, for how long and how deep they went.

What they were eating was a different matter. There was no convenient machine for that, hence the vomit and poop-sifting.

Dorset gave an ungracious snort and turned her attention back out to sea, sparing the briefest of glances for Danny Boy, her pup. Seal mothers were shockingly fast to abandon their pups when threatened; that made it much easier to catch up the young for weighing, but it bothered Kate on a fundamental level that these babies were often left undefended.

She knew from experience how that felt.

She’d made a pledge to herself back when she was young that she’d never let herself get in that position again—exposed, vulnerable to the capricious decisions of others. Without control. Without any say.

It must have occurred to the seal species in the ancient past that the loss of the baby meant the loss of only one, but the loss of a fertile mother meant the loss of an entire genetic line. Pups were expendable. And entirely, tragically vulnerable.

Danny Boy looked straight at her and then dashed off, barking in grumpy high-pitched tones. Sad affection bubbled through her. As far as the fishing communities along the west coast were concerned, seals and man were hunting the same fishstocks. And, when that industry was worth millions of dollars a year, anything or anyone threatening supply would not be tolerated. Her research was showing that, whether by good design or dumb luck, seals were hunting totally different fish from humans. If only she could prove that to the people of Castleridge. To the government. To the world.

‘Don’t suppose you guys would consider going vegetarian?’ she quietly asked the wary mass of seals.

Close by, one mother trumpeted her displeasure at that idea, and Kate scrabbled away from the ensuing stench; beyond disgusting.

Her chuckle was half-gag. ‘Go on. Get it out of your system now. I need you guys to be charming the next time I come down.’

With McMurtrie junior in tow. It was the obvious next step. If he was going to throw legalese at her, then she’d fight back with the only thing she had—history. If Grant McMurtrie had cared for these seals as a kid, maybe she could use that and try to change his mind about her access. She wasn’t above begging, or conniving.

Whatever it took to snatch back a bit of control.

Not only did she have three funding grants riding on this, but her professional reputation as well. She didn’t want years of work to be wasted because somebody had a chip on their shoulder about conservation programs. She had her university, the Fisheries Department and the Castleridge Town Shire to remind her of that. They were expecting results in return for their contribution and it was her job to get them, come hell or high water.

Or hot, surly city lawyers. ‘So, what was the good news?’ Grant drained the last of his coffee and stared meaningfully at Castleridge’s mayor.

Alan Sefton chuckled. ‘Twelve weeks is pretty short for probate settlement, as you know. You should be thanking me.’

Three months before he could legally boot Kate Dickson and her team off his land.

‘Thank you for agreeing to be Dad’s executor,’ he allowed.

The older man smiled sadly. ‘I was aware that he wouldn’t … That you and he …’ Grant lifted one hand and Alan gratefully picked up the cue to move on. ‘Did you know he’d left you the farm?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘You were still his son. His only heir. Time couldn’t change that, nor distance.’

‘It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d left the farm to those greenies just to spite me.’

Alan frowned. ‘Spite is not a trait I connected with Leo. Belligerence, absolutely. Selective hearing, sometimes. But he was not a man who wasted time on petty grudges.’

Grant let that sink in. ‘Perhaps he mellowed in the twenty years we were apart.’

‘Or perhaps you did.’

Silence fell. With no other customers this early in the Castleridge café, the tinny radio coming from the kitchen was the only other noise.

Alan cleared his throat. ‘How are you doing, son?’

Son. It had been a long time since anyone had called him that—since his mother had died early in his life. His father had called him exclusively by his given name growing up, his school teachers by his surname, and his staff tended towards ‘sir’. Just hearing the phrase ‘son’ brought a certain familiarity to the discussion. If anyone else had asked him how he was getting on, he would have moved the conversation quickly on.

But discovering a body together had a way of forging a bond between strangers. The genuine question deserved a genuine answer.

‘I’m … getting by.’

‘How are you finding being in his house?’

‘It’s fine.’ And, surprisingly, it was, despite everything. ‘It’s been so long since I lived there with him; it’s not like the walls are infused with his spirit, you know?’

Alan nodded.

‘Unlike his tobacco,’ Grant said. ‘Twenty years didn’t change that habit.’ The memories of his distinctive brand made it too hard to sleep. ‘I had to repaint the whole place to get rid of the smell.’

A dark shadow crossed the mayor’s face before he masked it.

Grant moved the conversation on. ‘What else did you want to tell me?’

Alan caught the eye of the teenage waitress and interrupted her nail-varnishing session at a far table to indicate it was time for the bill. ‘Not tell, so much as ask,’ Alan hedged.

Grant waited but nothing further came. ‘Shoot.’

‘I know you don’t have a lot of connection to Castleridge these days.’

Not a lot, no. But he’d been floored by the number of people who had attended Leo’s funeral, and the amount of prepared dinners that had graced Leo’s freezer when he died. The locals were still looking after their own. ‘I grew up here, remember? There’s still a lot of familiar faces.’

‘Well … that’s good. Makes what I’m about to say that bit easier.’

Grant frowned. ‘Just say it.’

‘It’s about the research team …’

He snorted. ‘If you can call a bunch of science types counting seals research.’

Alan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Leo had reservations for a long time before deciding to work with them.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘It took him a year of discussions before finally relenting to—’

‘I’ve met Kate Dickson. I can well see what he relented to.’

Alan’s weathered face creased. ‘Kate came to see you?’

‘Last week.’

‘How did she seem?’

Seem? Too beautiful for a scientist. Too young to have shadows beneath her eyes. ‘She seemed hell-bent on getting her way.’

‘Yes. That would be Kate. She wouldn’t let her sorrow detract from the work she’s doing.’

Grant tightened his jaw. He had thought he had an ally in Alan Sefton but the man was every bit as smitten with Ms Dickson as his father had apparently been. ‘The only thing she was sad about was me shutting down her access.’

‘Ah.’ Alan nodded. ‘I wondered what your choice would be.’

‘There is no choice. Introducing the buffer zone will cut the farm’s profitable land by a third, and its valuable coast-access completely. I have no interest in helping the people who tore my father’s farm out from under him.’

Alan’s clear blue eyes held his. ‘Oh, now you care about the farm?

Grant had spent too many years across negotiating tables in the corporate world to let his shock show. Instead, he swallowed back the shaft of pain and fixed Alan with his hardest stare.

The older man glanced away first. ‘I’m sorry. That was unnecessary. But I’ll ask you to remember that twenty years of your father’s life may have passed for you, but I lived them. Here with Leo. Listening to his stories. His dreams.’

The lost dream of passing Tulloquay on to his son. A son with passion and aptitude for running stock. A son made of different stuff from the one fate had served him with. ‘Life wasn’t always his to dream with,’ Grant said simply.

‘True enough. But he made his choice freely when he decided to support the university’s program.’

Grant snorted. ‘Right. No-one wore him down …’

The older man flushed slightly. ‘I won’t apologise for the stance I took,’ Alan said, straightening and reaching for his wallet.

What? ‘You took?’

‘Your father has always been slow to change but, like this land, he responded best to consistent, evenly applied pressure.’

He leaned forward. ‘You support the conservationists?’

Alan tipped his head. ‘I support Castleridge and the people in it. This program comes with significant grant-monies. And, if it helps us to understand our fisheries better and protects our tourism, everyone wins.’

Are you serious? ‘Uh, except the McMurtries. We lose a third of our land.’

Alan pursed his lips. ‘To grazing, yes. But it opens up all kinds of possibilities for eco-tourism.’

Grant couldn’t help the sound that shot out of him. It was a cracking impersonation of one of Kate Dickson’s fur seals. Every disparaging thing his father had ever said about the landholdings in the district opening up to eco-tourism flashed through his mind. ‘My father would have died before letting a single tourist step foot on his property.’

And maybe he had.

Alan stared at him sombrely. ‘When was the last time you recall Leo McMurtrie doing something just because someone else wanted him to?’

Grant stared. He’d tried—and failed—his whole young life to get his father to budge once he’d set his mind on something. Maybe he’d just had the wrong tools. ‘I have a theory.’

Alan Sefton’s face said ‘enlighten me’.

‘Have you met Kate Dickson?’

The older man ignored his sarcasm. ‘Yes. Several times. Lovely girl. A little closed-in about her work …’

That threw him briefly. ‘“Closed in” how?’

‘Oh …’ Alan waved a careless hand ‘I just got the feeling that she doesn’t have a lot else going on in her life. You know—family. Children.’

Grant snorted again. He was becoming an honorary member of the Atlas colony. ‘I imagine Ms Dickson would take issue with your concerns in that regard.’

‘Never met a more dedicated and conscientious professional,’ Alan amended quickly. ‘But Leo knew people. And Leo saw something in her that … Well, in how she is with the seals—so fiercely protective. So single-mindedly determined to help their cause.’

‘What are you, the president of the Kate Dickson fan club? She’s the opposition, Alan.’

‘This is not about sides.’

‘It is when it’s your farm under threat.’

Oh, now you care about the farm? He didn’t need to say it again. It was glaringly obvious and not all that unreasonable a comment. Grant sighed.

‘I walked away from Tulloquay nineteen years ago because I knew I couldn’t be a farmer. My whole teenage life, I lived through my father’s recriminations that I wasn’t interested in the land he’d built up.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He let me leave rather than witness one more example of how useless I was with the most basic agriculture tasks. How much I had failed him. I cannot believe for one second that he left me the farm with any intent other than wanting me to sell it for the best possible price to someone who could make a go of it. Quite frankly, I’d believe he’d had a personality transplant before I’d believe he’d willingly excise off a third of it to a bunch of tree-huggers.’

And if he did he would have put it in his will.

Plus there was the glaring matter of his father taking his life over the pending conservation-order. What more evidence did he need? But he wasn’t ready to say the s word out loud just yet.

‘Alright, then.’ Alan sat up straighter. ‘Then, as you are the man who will soon inherit Tulloquay, I’d like to communicate to you my support as mayor—in fact, the town’s support—to this fisheries program and the investment it represents in regional relationships, science partnerships and eco-tourism. We urge you to give it—give us—your support.’

Grant lifted one brow. ‘That’s quite a speech. Take you long to prepare it?’

Alan smiled. ‘A couple of hours two years ago when I first had the discussion with your father.’

Grant blew out a carefully moderated breath. Did Kate Dickson and her fur seals have the whole town wrapped around their flippers? But Mayor Sefton was no more a soft touch than his father had been. In the short fortnight Grant had known him, he had seen an astute businessman and a strong leader. Which didn’t mean Alan didn’t have his own priorities.

Grant slid from the booth. ‘I’ll take that under advisement.’

The mayor dropped a handful of bills onto the table and stood, clapping Grant on the shoulder. ‘I can’t ask more than that.’

‘I’m sure you could.’

And probably will.

CHAPTER THREE

THICK arms crossed against a broad chest, which was thankfully fully covered this time, less likely to distract. Grant glared at her from his barrier position in the doorway. Still hostile. Still handsome.

‘Why would I need an invitation to visit my own cove?’

Kate’s mouth opened and closed like a stranded fish. ‘Not your cove, our work. I thought if you saw it …’

‘I might be overcome with fascination and empathy?’ His grin was tight. ‘You don’t know me that well, Kate, so I’ll forgive the assumption that I would have the slightest interest in what you’re doing down there.’

Kate glared. ‘I’m sure you didn’t get where you are in business without knowing the first step in a successful negotiation is to know thine enemy.’

‘We’re not negotiating.’ But he didn’t deny they were enemies. ‘That would imply some leverage on your part. As far as I’m aware, you have none.’

She stiffened her back. ‘I have twelve weeks.’

His eyes darkened. ‘News travels fast.’

‘It’s an important time frame for my team. Of course I checked.’ She’d been calling the probate authority every few hours until the timeline had been announced.

‘What’s stopping me from shutting this door and only opening it in three months when your time is up?’

Kate’s heart hammered. Absolutely nothing. ‘The hope that there’s a decent human being in there. And that bullying people is just what you do for giggles these days.’

His left eyelid twitched but he didn’t move otherwise. ‘You came to me. Twice now.’

A hiss squeezed out past tight lips. ‘Mr McMurtrie, I don’t enjoy debasing myself. I don’t have the luxury of walking away from all of this, much as I might like to.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I’m fighting for my life’s work here.’

It’s all I have.

Her heart pounded the words out in Morse code and she shoved the prickle of concern down deep. Somewhere in her subconscious, she knew that she needed to get some life balance back. That she’d put her whole life on hold for this project and that, somewhere in the past three years, it had started to feel normal.

But life balance could wait. Changing Grant McMurtrie’s narrow mind was what mattered now.

He stared at her long and hard. ‘I’ll give you one hour.’

Kate almost sagged with relief. ‘Thank you.’

He turned for the house. ‘I’ll just get my keys.’

Her hand shot out to curl around his wrist. Warmth pinballed between them. ‘Uh, can I ask you to take a shower first?’

He turned back slowly. Deliberately. She swallowed hard.

‘I’ve been battling the artesian pump,’ he said darkly. ‘I wouldn’t have expected the seals to be bothered by a little honest sweat.’

‘Actually, it’s the opposite. You smell too good.’ Heat blazed high into her cheeks as the words tumbled from nervous lips. ‘I mean, too human. We don’t wear deodorant or fragrance or even perfumed shampoo in the field. It helps stop the seals from scenting us coming.’

If any more blood rushed to her head she was going to pass out. Ground, open up and swallow me now.

‘That explains a lot.’ Those green eyes bored into her, but then they softened. ‘If I have to smear seal dung all over myself to disguise my scent, I’m not coming.’

The humorous murmur was like a lifeline tossed into the Sea of Mortification; Kate grabbed it with both hands. ‘Of course not. That would be a criminal waste of a perfectly good sample.’

His straight lips opened to speak and then twisted in the closest thing to a smile she’d seen him offer. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

‘I’ll see you out there.’ Standing around compliantly while Adonis took a shower was not part of her plan. ‘Do you know where to come?’

‘Dave’s Cove?’

Kate nodded and turned for her car but, before she could relax even a bit, he called after her.

‘The shower is coming off your sixty minutes.’

With every breath, the power seemed to shift further and further away from her. Sheer bravado kept her walking. She flicked her hand in the air as though dealing with gorgeous, clever, angry men was an everyday occurrence and called back over her shoulder.

‘Bill me!’

No deodorant. No perfume.

Grant hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that explained a lot. He’d been trying to pin down something about Kate Dickson since the day she’d stood in his house covered in paint. Back then the paint had masked it but today, as she’d stood just feet away from him in the spring sunshine, it niggled at him. She looked completely different today from her last visit. The power-suit was gone and she’d replaced it with a baggy T-shirt and cargo shorts. Really dirty cargo shorts. All that thick, dark hair was pulled back in the most serviceable of ponytails. No make-up. No deodorant. No perfume.

Just one-hundred-percent clean, pure woman. With killer bone-structure.

She had to be the most natural, open woman he’d ever met. And as she’d stood there, playing the worst game of negotiation he’d ever witnessed, showing her entire hand in an easy second, he’d found himself wanting to help her. To teach her how the game was played. To save her from herself.

Kate Dickson and her greenies needed someone like him in their corner or they were going to get absolutely screwed by this world. But the idea of playing Sir Galahad to her helpless maiden appealed a little bit too much—given what she’d done. What she was still doing.

He shut off the water with a slam and yanked a towel from the rack.

Yet she’d walked out of here with the very thing she’d come for. He might disagree with her technique, but he couldn’t fault her results. Maybe he had more of his father in him than he realised if a few nervous smiles and a charming blush from an ingénue could have him eating out of her hand. Or maybe she had more of him in her than he gave her credit for. An innate talent for spotting someone’s weakness.

In his room, he yanked on a fresh set of jeans and a denim shirt before shoving his feet into well-worn paddock boots. His father’s, but a reasonable fit. Leo McMurtrie would flip in his grave to see his city son pulling on his battered work-boots and heading out into the paddocks.

He snatched his keys off the kitchen bench, slid an expensive pair of sunglasses on and sprinted to his car, eager to catch up with the virginal Ms Dickson and get the balance of power back on track between them. She and her team might sit on beaches all day getting a killer tan and counting bobbing seal-heads in the water—or something—but he was about to show them just how pointless it all really was. Probably better in the long run, given they’d be moving on soon, regardless of what the district mayor wanted. If Alan Sefton was so fired up about their success, then he could work with them to find a new location.

Tulloquay was off-limits.

He pulled his car up next to Kate’s battered ute right on the fifteen-minute mark and looked around. There was no sign of anyone up here, but a third vehicle was parked a few metres away. Six sheep sat curled happily in its shade, the only shade as far as the eye could see. He’d forgotten what a barren, blustery spot this was.

A healthy gust blew the fine sand from the cliff face back up at his skin and he found himself tempted to turn his rump to the wind like the sheep did. So much for the royal treatment. Looked like he’d have to show himself around.

He peered over the edge of the bluff and then gaped at what he saw below.

Kate lay full-bodied on a big, round seal, kitted up in elbow-and knee-pads, her dirty cargos and the filthiest shirt he’d ever seen. Her long, brown legs were hiked up hard and pressed into the sides of the seal, pinning its powerful flippers to its side and holding it immobile. Two rangy young men, as mucky and wet as Kate, worked hard at the front of the seal, fitting something to the vacant space between its shoulder blades. She contained the protesting seal just long enough for them to fit the small black box and test its fixings. Then the men backed off across the cove to join two other researchers there. Nearer to them a couple of other seals looking after a group of babies shifted nervously from side to side.

Grant held his breath.

These weren’t bull seals, but females could still give a nasty bite and they were known to carry toxic bacteria in their mouths. One bad contact and Kate would be under medical attention for the rest of her three months. Even he knew that, and it had been twenty years. She worked with these animals every day.

What the hell was she thinking?

Below him, Kate seemed to gather herself for a moment, and then in one lithe move she sprang sideways, rolling and crashing onto the rocky outcrop as the seal lurched away from her into the sea and disappeared under the waves. Grant felt the crack of bone against rock from his eagle-nest position, and was sure he heard her agonised groan as she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the sky.

Right at him.

From his high position, he could see the small track he used to take to get down to the water where it came out near the waterline of the rocky inlet known as Dave’s Cove. Two decades dissolved away as muscle memory took him to where he knew the top opening of that trail was. It was a lot harder getting down as a grown man than it had been as a fearless, fleet-footed boy but he stumbled out onto the rocky base just as Kate was pulling off an elbow pad. Bloody scrapes marred those perfect legs.

Adrenaline made itself known at last. ‘What the hell was that?’ he growled.

She stopped, stunned. Three of her team looked up. ‘What?’

‘Seal-riding is part of your research protocols, is it?’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘I wasn’t riding it, I was restraining it.’

‘Kitted out in rollerblading gear?’

She stopped and looked down at herself for a moment, astonished. Then she straightened and stared at him as though he were mad. Which at this moment he’d be prepared to believe.

‘I got back from your place and Stella was onshore. We’ve been waiting to get her alone for a week now. I didn’t have time to change into overalls.’

That was when he noticed the rest of her team was dressed alike in terrible blue overalls. At least, it could be blue, under all the filth. Hard to tell.

‘What were you doing to her?’ His seals. From years ago. Hisseals. Just when he would have sworn he didn’t care for any part of this farm.

‘We were fixing the TDR to her back. She’ll carry it for the next month’

Feeling like an idiot didn’t help his mood any, and it was starting to sink in that he’d made a mistake. A big one. He frowned, but softened his voice with effort. ‘The what?’

She eyed him cautiously. ‘Time-depth recorder. It collects data on their foraging habits.’

He looked out to sea where Stella had disappeared and then back at Kate. An odd feeling very close to grudging respect began to nibble in his belly. ‘That was dangerous, Kate.’