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  Once the money was back in her wallet, Kelsey felt better. There was little she could do about Jake right now. There was little she could do about her dwindling funds. The only thing she could do anything about was the empty feeling in her stomach. Earlier she had showered and washed her hair, obeying all the cautionary signs about water shortages. Now she slipped on wheat-colored jeans and a soft peach-colored shirt and ran a brush through her long tangled curls.

  Outside the air was cooler. At home in December, the ground was sometimes touched with snow. Here, December was the beginning of summer, and red dust caressed everything she saw. Even without the dust, the town was anything but scenic. Coober Pedy consisted of starkly simple block and pre-fab buildings placed along a narrow blacktop road. There were a few cultivated trees softening the harsh view, and the silver gleam of water tanks with thirsty mouths that yawned at the cloudless night sky.

  Kelsey had come thousands of miles to a place not unlike the old American West. For a moment the idea caught her fancy. The happiest home she had known after her mother's death had been with a classmate's parents who had invited Kelsey to spend the weekend when she was seven and kept her for six months. Eventually, when her friend's family had moved to Colorado, Kelsey's relatives had been shamed into bringing her back to live with them. But Kelsey had been left with warm memories of a cowgirl costume made just for her and rides on a pony at the park. For months afterward she had secretly vowed to escape to Deadman's Gulch or Tombstone, where cowgirl costumes and pony rides were the status quo and little girls could whoop and holler without being punished.

  Kelsey wondered if Jake had escaped to Coober Pedy for any of the same reasons. There were few frontiers left in the world, but this was certainly one of them. With the moon reflecting off corrugated iron roofs and the ghostly outlines of desert hills against the horizon, she could be in nineteenth-century Nevada or California.

  She felt a brief surge of excitement. Jake's blood certainly ran through her veins. She wondered if he would be proud or appalled to find that his daughter was a dreamer, too.

  She had wandered both sides of the street, sidestepping for the occasional truck that flashed by, when she noticed the hotel at the rise of the hill. The parking lot was crowded with cars and pickups, and rock music drifted through the closed door. A hotel promised food and the clatter of other people, both of which she needed.

  Kelsey was through the door and four steps into the room before she realized her error. If she'd been thinking clearly she would have realized that rock music and sedate dining didn't go hand in hand. Rock music and hard-drinking men did, however. She was standing in a pub, and except for one lone female behind the bar, she was the only woman in the spacious room.

  She was outside again when she felt strong arms catch her. Flustered, she realized she had walked right into a man coming in the door. She lifted her head, stepping backward away from him. The man was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. "Dillon." She stepped back again, taking a good long look.

  "You're looking better. Did you get some rest?" Dillon's tone was polite, but only just.

  "Apparently you did." Kelsey marveled at the difference a shower, a shave and some rest had made in the man in front of her. She hadn't realized just how attractive he was, but now the truth was unmistakable. Dillon was a man any woman would be proud to claim. His features were rugged—she would bet anything his nose had been broken at least once—but they added up to strength and unashamed masculinity. With his mane of brown curls and deep green eyes, he radiated a healthy yet disturbingly vitality, a vitality that had been hidden earlier by his exhaustion.

  "I slept," he said. He didn't say that he had slept restlessly, tossing and turning while the image of Jake wedged in a mine drive tormented him. He didn't say that he had thought of Kelsey more than once, too, and cursed the suspicion he had seen in her eyes. "I decided I needed to eat more than I needed to sleep."

  Kelsey noticed the way the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled back to expose tanned, muscle-roped forearms. Before she lifted her eyes she quelled the desire to notice more. He might look like a different man, but he was still the same man a cop had as much as accused of trying to murder her father.

  Dillon knew what her silence said, but he ignored the message. "Have you eaten, then?"

  "I...no, I came in here but...." She stopped, not willing to admit that the crowd of men had scared her away. "I wasn't sure they served food."

  "Counter meals. It's a little late, but I can sweet talk Melly into two if you're game." He listened to his own offer and wondered why he had made it. Kelsey Donovan had fallen hook, line and sinker for Eugene Newberry's slander. Dillon was no longer under any obligation to help her.

  There were few women in the world who wouldn't treat this situation with the greatest caution. There were few women in the world with the resources to feel safe, even when threatened. Kelsey was one of them. She lifted her chin, thrusting it outward in a movement bigger men than this one had learned to respect. "Fine. Thank you."

  Kelsey climbed one notch in Dillon's estimation. She was no longer the wilting flower of the afternoon, but a woman willing to take a chance. She was also a female who could make a man grovel at her feet. Earlier she had tugged at all the right places inside him, even through his exhaustion. Now he felt her fragile beauty wrap around his guts like the scent of lavender.

  "Let's go see," he said gruffly, not happy about his own response.

  "And while we're at it, maybe you can tell me why you or someone else wants to murder my father."

  One more notch. Kelsey was already through the door, but Dillon stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "What gives you the courage to say something like that?"

  "Faith in my ability to protect myself," she said, shrugging off his hand. "And remember that, Dillon." She flashed him a smile that could chill a heart so it froze mid-beat. "Because I only give one warning."

  Chapter 3

  “WHAT'LL IT BE? Pork or rump steak?"

  Kelsey stared at the woman across the bar, not only because the accent had been American, but because the woman was one of the most flamboyant Kelsey had seen. She recovered quickly. "Steak."

  "Another Yank, huh?" The woman extended her hand over the counter. "Melanie Morel. Melly to my friends, and you and I are destined to be friends. There's nothing else to do here."

  "Kelsey Donovan." Kelsey felt the rasp of jewelry against her skin. She lowered her eyes and saw that Melly wore a huge opal on each finger, two on her pinky. "That's an impressive collection of rings."

  "My boyfriend, Gary, owns the Opal Showcase. I advertise." She waved her hand in demonstration.

  Melly advertised more than opals. Everything about her was a neon sign. Her black hair was clipped Marine Corps short on the sides and back, but the top was longer and spiked into a riotous thatch. She augmented the look with one chin-length earring and a red and gold metallic tank top. No makeup marred her perfect magnolia petal skin except for a dusting of powder that glittered like tiny stars under the fluorescent lights.

  "Where are you from?" Kelsey asked, fascinated by this gaudy cockatoo in a land too desolate for sparrows.

  "Nebraska." Melanie struck an exaggerated pose. "Can't you see the farm girl in me?"

  Kelsey just smiled, and it was answer enough.

  "What about you, Dillon?" Melly asked, turning to flutter her eyelashes. "What would you like?"

  "The steak and a schooner."

  "Don't you love his voice?" Melly almost purred the words. "Dillon has the deepest voice in Coober Pedy."

  "I'm starving, Melly, me love." Dillon reached over the counter and affectionately touched her nose with the tip of his finger. "Feed me."

  "I'm at your command," she said with good-natured flirtatiousness. "Always." She turned and filled two large glasses with beer, setting them in front of Kelsey and Dillon. "My shout," she explained to Kelsey. She laughed at Kelsey's blank look. "That's Australian for 'my treat.' They
're words you'll never need to say yourself. There's not a man in this bastion of chauvinism who'll let you shout him a drink, but you'll be shouted plenty."

  Kelsey tasted the beer. It was dark and rich and absolutely to her liking. It also went straight to her head. "Thanks," she said, toasting Melly with her glass. "I think I'll have to sit to drink this."

  Dillon motioned toward a table, and Kelsey wound her way in that direction. The pub was large and modern, with wooden tables on one side and pool tables on the other. One area with a small stage and sound equipment was obviously set aside for dancing.

  "The town social center?" Kelsey asked as she set her glass on the table. She wasn't oblivious to the approving male looks aimed in her direction, just uninterested.

  "One of them. We also have churches, a school with a community swimming pool, sports fields, a golf course—" Dillon stopped, noting the surprise on her face. "Did you think we holed up like bats in a cave? This is a town of five thousand, give or take away a thousand at any one time. We have a newspaper, a hospital—"

  "I know about your hospital."

  Dillon was momentarily silent. When he spoke, there was no emotion in his voice. "Have you heard anything more about Jake?"

  "He made it to Adelaide."

  "Jake's a tough old bird. He'll walk out of there on his own two feet."

  "And come back to what? Another murder attempt?"

  Dillon sprawled in his chair, slowly sipping his beer. "Why don't you ask me why I tried to kill him?"

  Kelsey choked in the middle of a swallow.

  "Don't you want to know?" he prompted.

  Kelsey recovered after a fit of coughing into a napkin thoughtfully provided by Dillon. "Why did you?" she asked at last. "I would be interested."

  "First you have to understand the way our claims work." He observed her reaction. "For the grand total of fifteen dollars, each person who applies for a Precious Stones Prospecting Permit—a Miner's Right—gets to peg a claim fifty meters by fifty meters. After he registers it, the claim is his to work, and if he wants, he renews it a year later. The law allows up to four permit holders to peg adjoining claims and consolidate them."

  "So why did you try to kill Jake?"

  "Obviously because we found opal on his claim and not on mine."

  Kelsey had finished half her beer before she spoke again. "Is that your story, or the sergeant's?"

  "Will it matter if I tell you?"

  She couldn't tell a lie. "I don't know."

  "Fair enough."

  The conversation was interrupted by Melly, who arrived with two plates covered with steak, salad and fries. "I forgot to ask you how you liked it, so it's medium," she said, setting the plate in front of Kelsey. "And I know how you like yours," she said, smiling provocatively at Dillon.

  Kelsey glimpsed the longest, most elegant legs she had ever seen beneath the shortest black skirt. "As good as a Nebraska sirloin?"

  "I'll never tell." Melly winked. "Don't leave before we talk. I should get a break sometime."

  The steak was good, although Kelsey was so hungry she could hardly judge. Neither she nor Dillon said a word until both had finished their meal.

  "Well, we had starvation in common," Dillon said finally.

  Kelsey observed the way his casual posture pulled his shirt tight against his broad chest and shoulders. She glimpsed a heavy gold chain that she hadn't noticed before and wondered what lay hidden under the top button of his shirt.

  "If nothing else," he added.

  Kelsey was torn between sympathy for the meals he had missed while he searched for her father and suspicion that it might have been his own doing. She kept both out of her voice. "Tell me why the sergeant believes you tried to kill Jake."

  "He wants to suspect me of something. He's got a personal grudge."

  She raised one eyebrow.

  "A month ago I caught the good sergeant out on another miner's claim. Fossicking."

  "Fossicking?"

  "Looking for opal someone else has missed. Sifting through mullock." Dillon saw that she didn't understand and back tracked. "When you dig a shaft or a drive, the dirt and rock you remove is called mullock. Somehow or other, depending on the method you use, it ends up on the ground above in heaps. Sometimes people noodle through the dirt for fun, trying to find pretty potch or opal chips the miner missed. That's all right on abandoned claims, but to do it on an active one, you need the miner's permission. Newberry wasn't doing it for fun, and he didn't have permission."

  "What do you mean, he wasn't doing it for fun?"

  "There was a rumor he was spending more time digging through other people's claims than doing his job. Looking for early retirement, I guess. We handle things ourselves here. We're not a bunch of sniveling dobbers who run around and tell tales. When I found out what Newberry was doing, I told him to stop."

  "You told him to stop?"

  "Let's just say I told him in such a way as to make him listen."

  "And that's why he's accusing you of murdering my father?"

  "You decide."

  The story seemed straightforward enough. Kelsey imagined it wouldn't be difficult to check it out. Coober Pedy was probably a town where everyone knew everyone's business. "The sergeant intimated that you had something to gain from Jake's death. Something like opals?"

  Dillon was tired of explanations, but he figured he'd better finish what he'd started. "Coober Pedy is a town of instant rich men. One morning you go down into your mine, just like you've gone down into it every day for a year. You tap a little, pry out a little stone, and the next thing you know you're holding a miracle in the palm of your hand. That's one story. Then there's the other one. One morning you go down into your mine, just like you've done every day for years. You tap a little, pry out some more potch, and suddenly it hits you. The mine's a duffer and you're a failure. You've always been a failure, and you always will be. You put a gun to your head, and a week later, somebody finds you at the bottom of your mine,"

  Kelsey shuddered at the graphic picture.

  Dillon saw the shudder, but he wasn't sorry. She had to know how it was. "Jake and I have always fallen somewhere in the middle. We find opal, but nothing to add to the crown jewels. Triplet opal. It's worth something, but nothing like the opal that makes an instant rich man. The opal we've dug has kept us going and kept us hoping. Nothing more."

  "Then you're saying there's nothing to Sergeant Newberry's accusations except revenge?"

  Dillon tried to decide whether to finish the story. He doubted that anything he could tell Kelsey would change her opinion, but he owed her the truth solely because she was Jake's daughter. "About three months ago," he said finally, "Jake started a new drive on his claim. I helped him, but after a while, it looked like a duffer. Jake wouldn't give up on it, so I let him work on it alone while I worked on a more promising drive. I wasn't getting much, but I thought I might be getting close. Jake got lucky before I did."

  Kelsey sipped the last of her beer, her brown eyes dissecting each expression that crossed Dillon's face. "Go on."

  "Jake found a small pocket of precious opal. As far as we could tell, it wasn't part of a bigger vein, but the few stones that were there promised to be good ones. Jake has a mate in Sydney, a jeweler who's asked him to bring his best finds. This bloke cuts and polishes the stones, then sells them, giving Jake a commission. It's a slightly riskier way of doing business, because he could ruin the stones. But Jake trusts him, so he took the stones there, knowing he would make more money if everything went as planned. We should make a bit when they sell."

  "We?"

  "Jake and I split everything fifty-fifty. We're mates."

  "What is this mate bit?"

  Dillon knew there was no easy way to explain it. The vast interior of Australia might never have been settled by Europeans if they hadn't adopted the concept of mateship. "We stand by each other. You might say it's an outback tradition."

  "Just like you stood by and pushed him down a
mine shaft so you'd get the money from the stones my father found?"

  Dillon knew that he had seen Kelsey at her most vulnerable. Now her emotions were out of reach. Or almost. He had seen the slight flicker of doubt in her desert-brown eyes. She didn't know what to think, but she didn't want to believe he had been the one to harm Jake.

  He leaned forward. As he had expected, she didn't back away.

  "I came to Coober Pedy with a diploma in engineering and a chip on my shoulder. Your father laughed at the diploma and knocked the chip all the way to Darwin the first night we met. Six months later he saved my life. He shoveled me out of a shaft he'd warned me not to go into alone and poured a bottle of Foster's over my head. I still owe him for that."

  Kelsey struggled against believing Dillon. She was in a strange country, in a frontier town much like her childhood fantasies of Deadman's Gulch. If life had taught her one thing, it was to trust only herself.

  "You two look much too serious." Melly draped herself over a chair beside Kelsey, arranging her long legs to their best advantage. "I'd better shout you both another schooner."

  "I'll pass." Kelsey realized she and Dillon were still staring at each other. The impact of his unflinching green eyes was almost physical. Reluctantly she turned her gaze to Melly. "Thanks anyway."

  "So tell me where you're from."

  "North Carolina. Raleigh."

  "Kelsey Donovan," Melly said, reflecting. "Related to Jake?"

  Kelsey nodded. "His daughter."

  "I didn't know old Jake had a family. Nobody but Dillon here, that is." Melly shot Dillon a flirtatious smile; then she sobered. "Lord, I forgot. He's been hurt, hasn't he?" She turned back to Kelsey. "That's why you're in town. How is he?"

  "He's in Adelaide now. They say he made the trip well."

  "He'll be fine. Old Jake's too ornery to stay in a hospital."

  "So I've been told."

  "You'll be going down to be with him?" Melly asked.

  Kelsey started to say yes, but without good reason she switched her gaze back to Dillon. He was nodding, as if answering for her. He wanted her to go to Adelaide and wait until Jake recovered enough to see her. She could see it in his eyes, read it in the impatient nods. Dillon Ward wanted her out of Coober Pedy.