done all that and more, but it’s not the work I do,” he said.
She turned to him curiously, unwillingly admiring the way the starlight turned his hair to burnished gold and made his eyes seem darker and more unreadable. “I’ve seen you do all those jobs,” she insisted.
“What you saw was my cover story.” He reached for his wallet and flipped it open to show her a card in a window-faced pocket. “This is what I do for a living.”
In the pale light spilling from the house she examined the document. Credit-card-sized, it had an unflattering photo of Ryan on the left with a date beneath it. The words Security and Related Activities Control Act 1996 were printed across the top. But it was another word in large red type that jumped out at her. “Investigator? Wait a minute. This says you’re a private investigator.”
“Duly licensed by the Commercial Agents Squad of the Western Australian Police Service,” he agreed. “Among other activities, I can run surveillance on individuals and organizations, conduct asset and liability checks, investigate insurance claims and gather information for legal proceedings.”
She wondered if she looked as foolish as she felt. “I always thought you moved around so much because you couldn’t hold down a job.”
He made a wry face. “In the beginning you were right. Then I met an old friend from Broome who turned out to be working undercover at a cattle station where I was a jackeroo. I didn’t know it when I got there, but the station was being used as a holding center for supposedly stolen cattle while their owners filed dodgy insurance claims. After I helped my mate shut the operation down, he offered me regular work. I qualified for my investigator’s license. Later, when he decided to retire, I obtained my Inquiry Agent’s license and bought him out.”
Ryan rested a booted foot on the lower railing and his arms on the topmost one. “My home and office are in Broome and I travel around the Top End and to the Torres Strait islands, wherever the job takes me.”
“My hero, the P.I.,” she said on a note of wonder.
“We can skip the hero part,” he growled. “This doesn’t make me some sort of glamorous secret agent. Most of the work involves tedious evidence-gathering for companies or the courts.”
“With an element of risk,” she pointed out.
He slanted a grin at her. “Some of the people I investigate don’t take kindly to the attention.”
“I can see why they wouldn’t. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“Being looked on as a no-hoper, even by the people closest to you, has advantages. Your attitude toward me helped convince quite a few people that I was no more than what I seemed.”
She straightened. “What attitude?”
“I call it your Mother Teresa thing, trying to help the poor and oppressed.”
Denial coursed through her. “I never acted like that.”
“You were forever checking on my welfare, wherever I was working, and bringing me stuff you thought I needed.”
He thought she’d been dispensing charity. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that he hadn’t worked out the real reason. She’d welcomed—craved—the excuse to keep in touch with him. Now that she’d discovered the truth, what would be her excuse? “They were only books, CDs, clothing, nothing valuable. I didn’t mean you to take my gestures the wrong way,” was the nearest she dared come to admitting the truth.
Fortunately he didn’t probe, saying, “Admit it, I was one of your good causes, like that art foundation you and Shara are so committed to.”
When Shara Najran had first accompanied her father, King Awad of Q’aresh on a cattle-buying expedition to The Kimberley, the young Middle Eastern princess had been bored and lonely. Drawn together as the only teenage girls in the vicinity, she and Judy had discovered they shared a passion for ancient rock art. They’d stayed in touch for years. Then Shara had persuaded her father to set up an exchange program for indigenous artists between their two countries. These days, Judy represented the foundation locally. She looked forward to having Shara as her sister-in-law when she married Tom.
Heat flushed through Judy, making her wish she could be more honest about her motives for checking on Ryan. On the other hand, there had been times when she had considered him in need of uplifting, so he wasn’t entirely off track. “The Art Bridge Foundation is not a charity,” she denied.
“But I was.”
“Maybe a little.”
He touched her shoulders, moving her to face him. The heat of his hands burned through her cotton T-shirt. “I didn’t mind because it kept me in your thoughts,” he said.
She felt her vision start to blur. “I was always thinking of you, although at times you seemed angry when I turned up and couldn’t wait to get rid of me. That was when you were working on a case, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t want you in any danger.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re mixing with Max Horvath and I can’t get it through your head that the man is high-risk.”
She tossed her head, wishing that her short-cropped hair didn’t make the gesture so ineffectual. “All men are high risk.” Another thought occurred to her. “Have you been checking Max out? If you have, I don’t want to hear about whatever you turned up.”
Ryan’s face had turned to stone. “Because you’re in love with him?”
“I’m not…” The betraying admission was out before she could stop it. “Damn you, Ryan. You know I could never love Max. I’m seeing him because it’s the best way to get close to him and find out what other tricks he has up his sleeve.”
Ryan extended his hand, palm upward. “I want to see it.”
“See what?”
“Your private investigator’s license.” When she didn’t move, he placed his hand against her cheek. “You’re not licensed or qualified to conduct an undercover operation, yet you’re prepared to put yourself on the line. For your father? For Diamond Downs? Does inheriting this place mean that much to you?”
She struggled to find the words, not least because his hold on her was clouding her thinking. “I love my dad. I’d do almost anything for him. And I love this land, but not because of any inheritance value. Andy Wandarra and the other indigenous people here would say it’s my country. They’ll travel thousands of miles to die in their own place, their own country. This is mine.”
“So you’d never want to leave?”
The bitterness she heard in his tone had her wondering. “I didn’t say that. One’s country isn’t necessarily where you spend your whole life. But it is the land where you’re born and where you hope to return before you die, what Andy would call your dreaming place.”
She saw some of the tension leave him. “I understand. I may not have a dreaming place of my own, but I understand.”
“Everyone has a dreaming place.”
His shoulders lifted. “I was born in Kalgoorlie and lived there until my dad disappeared. My mother came from Irish stock and had no relatives in Australia, only a pen friend in Broome. When she realized Dad was never coming back, we moved there to be closer to her friend. So is my dreaming place Kalgoorlie, Broome or where my parents originated?”
“It’s wherever you feel you belong.”
His bladed hand dismissed the sentiment. “When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
“This could be your dreaming place,” she suggested quietly. “You may not have chosen to remain at Diamond Downs, but I thought you were happy here.”
“I was for a time.” Until