A Kiss to Seal the Deal Read Free Page A

as—’
    â€˜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 forsomeone’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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜You don’t think I would have done that rather than negotiatewith 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.’
    â€˜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
    S TRIPPING 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