A Parisian Proposition
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Barbara Hannay
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17,8K
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Camille Devereaux: she's sexy, successful and single. Jonno Rivers: ruggedly handsome outback landowner, rated one of Australia's most desirable bachelors. When Camille meets Jonno, sparks immediately fly! Their very different lifestyles can't change the fact that they find each other irresistible. But Camille soon finds there is nothing more terrifying than the uncertainty of a new relationship, and she flees to Paris. But Jonno is hot on her heels, and he's going to do everything it takes to convince her to accept his proposition!
CHAPTER ONE
āHEY, Jonno, thereās a woman asking for you.ā
Jonathan Rivers dragged his attention from a first-class pen of Angus steers and shot a quick sideways glance down the muddy alley of the cattle sale yards.
A woman, dressed in a pale city suit and high heels, hovered at the far end of the pens where the concrete path ended and the sloppy mud began.
He stifled an urge to curse. āNot another husband-hunter?ā
āI guess so,ā Andy Bowen, his stock and station agent, admitted with a shrug. āBut this oneās a cut above the rest. You should check her out, mate.ā
Jonno groaned and shook his head in disbelief. āI was hoping I wouldnāt have to go through this again.ā
āAt least this oneās got class,ā chuckled Andy. āAnd I reckon sheās as stubborn as you are. Classy, sexy and stubborn as the devil. Could be your lucky day.ā
āIf youāre so impressed, you go see what she wants.ā
Andy winked. āIāve spoken to her and I know exactly what she wants.ā He raised his voice to reach Jonno above the crescendo of the auctioneerās calls in the adjacent stall. āShe wants you!ā
Against his better judgement, Jonno let his gaze slide sideways again. He caught a fleeting impression of contrastsāof a sophisticated female in smart city clothes amidst rough-clad country folk and cattle. A mass of exotic dark hair, dark eyes and dark mouth, set dramatically against pale skin. Physical slenderness offset by a proud carriage that hinted at inner strength.
She wants you.
āIām not bloody available,ā he growled.
āCourse youāre available. Youāve sold most of your cattle. Iāll look after this last pen. I know the price you want for them. Get going, Jonno. You canāt leave a lady like her in all that mud and cattle muck.ā
The woman was still watching him intently and Jonno knew she would be aware that Andy had delivered her message. He let out a noisy sigh. āI suppose I should be good at this rejection caper by now.ā
Over the past months heād literally lost count of the number of women whoād come chasing him since that crazy story turned up in the womenās magazine. Blondes, brunettes, redheads and all shades in betweenā¦older women and young girlsā¦plain, beautifulā¦cautious, reckless, politeā¦rudeā¦
Heād sent them all packingā¦
As he strode grimly towards this latest contender his gumboots squelched in the mud. Recent rains and the pounding of thousands of cattle hooves had turned the dirt floor of the sale yards into a quagmire.
The woman, dressed in a soft beige wool suit with pale stockings and neat beige, high-heeled shoes, was eyeing the smelly mud warily as she waited for him at the edge of the walkway.
He surprised himself by slowing his steps as he drew near so he didnāt splash her, but that was as far as his concessions went. He refused to smile. āYouāre looking for me?ā
āYes.ā She smiled cautiously and held out her hand. There was a small dark mole just above her upper lip. It was maddeningly distracting. āHow do you do, Mr Rivers? Iām Camille Devereaux.ā
Her curly hair was dark chocolate and glossy, her eyes and lashes closer to black than brown, and her nose and chin were saved from sharpness by an indefinable elegance. Camille Devereaux. It occurred to Jonno that she matched her French name perfectly.
As he extended a brief, reluctant handshake, she studied him with disturbing directness, her gaze intensely curious and not at all shy.
And damn it, her perfume drifted towards him, teasing his senses for a tantalising instant before it was overpowered by the prevailing stench of mud and cattle.
Her hand in his felt soft and cool. Jonno snatched his own rough and callused hand away, shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans and tried to ignore the fact that Andy had been right.
This one was a cut above the othersā¦
She had the intriguing allure of an exotic stranger. Very Mediterranean. Unexpectedly sexy.
His mistake was to allow his gaze to connect with hers for just a shade too long. For a fraction longer than was wise, heād stared into her eyes andā
And hell. Heād never experienced anything like the sudden certainty that he and this stranger shared an unwilling reaction, that theyād both felt the same helpless stirring. A deep shudder inside.
An involuntary leap of awareness.
āLook,ā he said quickly. Too quickly. Although Camille Devereaux hadnāt told him why she was here, and although she looked different, he knew she would be the same as all the others. āI canāt help you. Thereās been a mistake. The magazine got it wrong. Iām not looking for someone to date and Iām certainly not looking for a wife.ā He whirled away. āSorry to disappoint.ā
āNo, donāt go,ā she cried.
But he kept walking. Heād done this countless times and it was always embarrassing.
āIāve no intention of dating or marrying you,ā she called loudly. Way too loudly.
The bunch of cattlemen who were gathered around the nearby pen of heifers swung their fascinated gazes from Jonno to Camille and back to Jonno and grinned like mad.
āAnother one?ā someone called. āWhatās the count now, Jonno?ā
Teeth gritted, Jonno refused to turn. He kept hurrying through the mud.
āJonno!ā she yelled. āMr Rivers, weāve got to talk!ā
There was a hint of desperation in that last cry but he didnāt look back. There was nothing more to say. Heād delivered his message and he wasnāt going to hang around chatting to a beautiful stranger while he fuelled the entire Mullinjim community with a monthās worth of gossip and cheap laughs.
Camille blamed the lack of coffee.
That was why sheād stuffed up. It had never happened before. She had never missed her mark. It was unprofessional.
It had nothing to do with meeting Jonathan Rivers in the flesh after weeks of trying to make contact. It was caffeine withdrawal that had made her hollow and shivery, brain-dead and tongue-tied. Not Jonno.
And it was lack of caffeine plus too much squelchy, smelly mud that had stopped her from running after the obstinate cattleman and forcing him to listen to her.
But what kind of experienced, hard-nosed journalist was she if she let him get away before sheād had a chance to explain anything? To ask anything! OK, maybe thinking of herself as hard-nosed was over-the-top, but she was experienced and competent.
And yet sheād stood there like a ninny and watched him walk off without unearthing one measly reason for his lack of co-operation in āThe Bachelor Projectā.
It had been so unrealā¦the way heād looked at herā¦andā¦
She shook her head and shrugged. Sheād lost it. For some reason, meeting Jonno had shrivelled her synapses. Which was pretty silly considering sheād seen his photo and had been expecting the magnetic intensity of his eyes, the rough, chiselled cheekbones and the dangerous mouth.
The heartthrob, half-mast smile.
It was his smile that had sealed Jonno Riversās fate. Wellā¦if she was honestā¦it was the crooked smile and the huge shoulders and the breathtaking fit of his low-slung jeans.
For the team at Girl Talk magazine, choosing Jonathan Rivers for inclusion in āThe Pick of Australiaās Eligible Bachelorsā had been a no-brainer. And theyād decided that the pic heād submitted was so good there was no need to send a professional photographer.
That had been Girl Talkās first big mistake.
If theyād sent someone out at the beginning, Camille might have been saved this vexing journey now.
The second mistake had been Camilleās. When sheād been put in charge of āThe Bachelor Projectā sheād made a serious error of judgement. After selecting a range of bachelor volunteers from various walks of life, sheād taken the fellows sheād expected to be difficult as her personal responsibilityāthe high-powered lawyer from Perth, the owner of the construction company in Sydney and the executive chef in Melbourne.
Sheād left the lower-profile contenders for more junior journalists to deal withāfellows like the tourist operator in Tasmania, the crocodile-hunter in the Northern Territoryā¦and the cattleman in Queenslandā¦
And it was only recently sheād discovered that the cattleman hadnāt been playing the game.
Now sheād had to travel all the way from Sydney to North Queensland to get to the bottom of his problem and after several false leads sheād finally, finally tracked him down. And sheād barely managed three words of conversation before sheād let him go.
But if Jonno Rivers thought sheād give up after such a brief, unsatisfactory exchange, he was in for a nasty surprise. Or three.
It was her mission to tell him he couldnāt back out of the bachelor story now. She wasnāt going to let him wreck her magazineās project and she certainly wasnāt going to let him jeopardise her job.
He might have refused to return phone calls, e-mail, faxes and letters. And he might have put padlocks on the gate to his cattle property, Edenvale, as sheād discovered this morning when sheād driven all the way out there.
Sheād crawled along muddy outback roads while her little hire car scraped its underbelly on every bump, only to find his front gate one hundred per cent, in-her-face locked.
But she hadnāt let smug, fat padlocks and rusty chains stop her.
And she hadnāt been deterred when she tracked down Jonnoās brother, Gabe, only to have him refuse to take her by helicopter over the locked gate and into Edenvale.
And now that she had tracked him down to these sale yards and had finally set eyes on the infamous and elusive Jonathan Rivers, she certainly wasnāt going to let sloppy mud stop her! Not when she had knee-high boots and an oilskin coat in the back of her car.
She hurried back through the car park, where the sight of men on horseback and enormous road trains the size of locomotives with triple decks of cattle pens on the back rekindled the unsettling sense of alienation sheād felt ever since sheād arrived in Mullinjim.
It was weird. Sheād always thought of herself as a true-blue Aussie, but this was her first trip from Sydney to the real outback and she couldnāt have felt more of an outsider if sheād been on assignment in an exotic foreign country.
She was relieved that at least she was much less conspicuous when she prowled back through the disgusting mud of the sale yards camouflaged by her coat and boots.
Let Jonno hide. She would find him.
She scanned the lanes between the pens of bellowing cattle. Each lane was filled with cattlemen in look-alike wide-brimmed akubra hats, oilskin coats and jeans.
A sudden clomping of hooves forced her to turn and every organ in Camilleās body lurched when she saw a mob of cattle being herded down the lane towards her by a man on horseback. Help! The beasts were massive and their hooves looked heavy and hard enough to crush and maim!
Sheād never seen a cow that wasnāt safely on the other side of a fence! And there were dozens of them bearing down on her. Some were snorting, others bellowing. Some had horns! Would there be enough room for them to pass?
Oh, God! Heart pounding, she squashed herself hard against the timber rails of the nearest pen, but even so one black beast eyeballed her fiercely as it drew close. She held her breath and squeezed in her stomach muscles, trying to flatten herself even more.
Glued to the fence like a fridge magnet, she felt her heart thrash. What would the girls in the office think if they could see her now? Surely this deserved some kind of bravery award. It was above and beyond the call of duty.
CITY GIRL SQUASHED FLAT BY FAT CATTLEā¦
Sydney journalist Camille Devereaux, faced a stampeding herd of wild beasts in the Mullinjim sale yards earlier todayā¦Vale, Camilleā¦Trampled to death while chasing a vital story for Girl Talk magazineā¦
She was so busy fighting her panic by composing more tributes to her bravery and courage that it was some time before it finally sank in that the animals were trotting past without paying her any particular attention. The man on horseback acknowledged her with a brief nod as he went by, then turned his mob into another lane.
Camille sagged against the pen as her breath escaped. She was still alive. She hadnāt spooked the cattle. The guy on the horse had given her a casual nod as if she had every right to be here.
How about that? Her coat and boots must have done the trick. She looked as if she belonged. She felt inordinately pleased with herself.
Something nudged her elbow and she whipped around to discover a large, damp and very bovine nose sniffing her sleeve. Oh, God! The pen sheād been leaning against was full of another lot of cattle! She suppressed the urge to panic again. It was OK. These four-footed fellows were securely inside the pen. Nothing to worry about here. A snap.
She allowed a few minutes for her heartbeats to steady and her breathing to settle and realised that the pen sheād chosen to lean against was becoming a matter of some interest. Half a dozen or more cattlemen were joining her to stare over the fence at the beasts.
But the men hardly gave Camille a second glance.
Wow! This confirmation that she looked like a country girl gave her fresh confidence. Now she could track down Jonno Rivers through any amount of mud.
There was a rising babble of voices around her and the excited chanting of an auctioneer calling cattle prices. āOne-forty, one-forty! Hup! One-forty-five!ā
She paid little attention. She was scanning the metal walkways above the pens for signs of Jonno and she thought she glimpsed him. This time she wouldnāt let him go till she got what sheād come for.
Her view was blocked by the press of men around the pen and she stood on the bottom rung of the fence to get a better view. Above her, a promising set of shoulders and a slow, almost insolent stride came into her line of sight. Yes, it was Jonno.
āOne-fifty-five!ā the auctioneerās voice shouted.
She had no idea how to get up to that suspended walkway. If she could at least get Jonnoās attentionā¦Standing on tiptoes, she waved.
āHup! One-sixty!ā
Jonno was looking at a point just beyond her. She waved again.
āOne-sixty twice!ā
Camille glanced briefly in the direction of the strident voice. The auctioneer was standing on the same walkway as Jonno but directly above her, pointing straight at her. All around her, men were moving away from the pen, heading off down the lane.
A ghastly suspicion sent shivers chasing down her back and arms. No, he couldnāt think that sheā
āOne-sixty!ā the auctioneer shouted, staring straight at her. āHup! Iāve got one-sixty! Going for one-sixty. Sold!ā
āCongratulations,ā said a voice at her side.
She whirled around to find the ruddy-faced man whoād fetched Jonno for her.
āOh, good grief!ā She gulped. āYouāre not congratulating me, are you?ā
His beaming, slice-of-watermelon smile widened. āSure am. Youāve bought a fine pen of weaner steers.ā
āI have not!ā She gasped. āI canāt have. Tell me youāre joking.ā
The man slapped his hand on the top rail of the pen. āThis mob of little beauties here. All yours.ā
āBut I was waving to Jonno Rivers. Iā¦ā She flashed a frantic glance back to the auctioneer, but he simply gave a curt salute to the man at her side, then headed towards another pen. āIt canāt happen like that,ā she spluttered. āIām not a genuine buyer. Howāhow on earth could he have thought I wanted a pen of cattle?ā
āYou were standing next to me.ā
āWhatās that got to do with anything?ā
āIām a stock and station agent. Brian must have assumed you were one of my clients.ā
āOh, my God!ā She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. āYouāll go and tell him itās a mistake, wonāt you?ā
āYou donāt want these steers?ā
āOf course I donāt want them.ā She sent a scathing glance over the pen of cattle and let out a laughing groan. āWhat on earth would I do with them? I live in a one-bedroom flat in Kings Cross. My courtyard is smaller than this pen.ā
āYou could put them out on agistment.ā
A deep voice sounded at her back. āIs this woman hassling you, Andy?ā
Camille spun around to find a scowling Jonno Rivers close behind her. His suspicious gaze was cold enough to freeze an ocean. Two oceans.
āJonno,ā greeted the ever cheerful Andy. āYouāre just the man we need.ā
Camille wasnāt so sure. Sheād had about as much as she could take of this pesky cattleman and his sulky silence and his stinking cattle. Her fists curled against her thighs and she felt an overwhelming urge to thump him on the nose.
āThis young lady seems to have a little problem,ā the agent explained calmly. āBut Iām sure you can help her, mate.ā He glanced at his watch. āSorry, Jonno, Iāve got to see a man about a bull. Catch you later.ā With a brief salute, he hurried away.
Camilleās stomach and head were spinning as she gaped after him. She felt exhausted as she turned back to Jonno. āAt least youāve had the guts to show up,ā she muttered. āThis is all your fault, so youāll have to do something about it.ā
