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She had hardly seen Rick since Robyn's collapse.
His
visits to his sister had been infrequent and Keri had taken care not to be alone with him, to avoid giving Ben any more ammunition against her.

So she was surprised when he stormed in unannounced one afternoon and all but hauled her to her feet. 'This is your doing, Miss Know-all,' he swore, thrusting a piece of paper under her nose.

Startled, she backed away. 'I don't know what you mean, Rick.'

'Oh no? Then tell me you didn't go and visit Persia Redshaw and meddle in our affairs.'

'I did go to see her,' she admitted, still confused. 'But I didn't meddle, as you put it. We talked about the development, that's all.'

'And you convinced her it was a terrible thing, didn't you?'

'No, I didn't. She was in favour of it, as it happened. I couldn't persuade her to change her mind. She was on your side, ' she repeated, wanting him to understand her clearly.

'That's not the way I read this,' he said, shaking the paper at her again. 'Read it for yourself.'

It fluttered to the ground at her feet and she picked it up with shaking fingers. When she began to read it silently, he insisted she read it aloud. 'Dear Rick,' she began then looked up as her eye fell on the signature at the bottom. 'It's personal, Rick. Are you sure you want me to read it?'

'I want you to see the harm you've done with your interfering,' he said.

With an effort, she managed to steady her breathing and read the letter aloud. 'Dear Rick, I'm sorry I don't have the courage to tell you this to your face. My father has undergone heart surgery for his angina and is making a splendid recovery. He should be back to full health in a few weeks.' She looked up, smiling. 'Surely that's good news, Rick?'

'Go on,' he urged. 'You haven't got to the best part yet.'

Puzzled, she read on. 'As soon as my father recovers, we shall be travelling -to Europe on an extended holiday. I shall be taking my parents to Switzerland to meet some friends I made while I was at school there. One of them is a man I came to care for very deeply. It is him I wish to marry, so I am returning your ring. I am sorry to bring you this news but I could not have been a good wife to you when my heart was elsewhere. Thank you for your patience and understanding, Persia.'

When she looked up, Rick was glaring at her. 'You still don't understand, do you?'

'Of course I'm sorry about your wedding, but you admitted you didn't love her. What else is there to say?'

'You're forgetting brother Ben's terms. No wife, no land,' he growled. 'Now do you see what you've done?'

She let the letter drop to the floor. 'I didn't do anything, Rick. Persia loves someone else. It had nothing to do with my visit. She was in love with him before I went near her.'

'But she wasn't going to do anything about it until you showed up.' His mouth twisted into an ugly smile. 'I'll bet you gave her some sisterly advice about following her heart.'

Keri's temper snapped. 'She couldn't do any such thing as long as her father was ill. It would have killed him to know she was in love with a man from another country. She couldn't say anything until he was well.'

Rick ground the letter under his heel. 'You have an answer for everything, don't you? Well, let's see you answer this one. The bulldozers are already starting work on the Crocodile Creek site. By the time Ben finds out the wedding's off, it will be too late to halt the development and I'll have won anyway.'

He left her standing open mouthed, shaking with the shock of what he had just told her. Surely he was bluffing? He couldn't have started work on the casino site without clear title to the land? If only she could get in touch with Ben, but he was out on the property somewhere. He wouldn't be home until sundown. And she couldn't leave Robyn alone in the house until Jessie got back from her Country Womens' Association meeting. There had to be something she could do.

The clutter around her feet caught her eye and she looked at the label she had been writing when Rick came in. She had been packing the last of Robyn's paintings to ship to Theo and the label with his address lay at her feet. Picking it up, she went to the telephone.

'Please be there, please be there,' she repeated to herself as his number began to ring.

His secretary told her he was in a meeting but reluctantly agreed to disturb him when Keri insisted that the matter was urgent.

'What is it, Keri, you sound upset,' said Theo when he answered the phone at last.

'I am, and I'm sorry to take you away from your meeting, but I need your help.' She went on to explain Rick's visit and ended by asking him to halt further work on the project until Ben could be informed.

At the other end of the line, there was a long silence punctuated by Theo's laboured breathing. 'I wish I could help you, my dear, but there's nothing I can do,' he said, his tone gentle.

'You mean because they've already started?' she asked, hearing herself sounding shrill and on the verge of losing control.

'No, no. Calm yourself,' he said urgently. 'You can't do anything because I'm not involved. After your last call, I looked more closely at the project and decided that you were right. The outback needs a crocodile farm more than it needs another casino. I had my lawyers find me that loophole.'

'Oh, Theo, I should have had more faith in you,' she said. 'I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion.'

'But it was partly the right one,' he intervened. 'If work has already started on clearing the site, Rick must have found another backer for his project, so you are no better off.'

'Yes, I am,' she assured him. 'This way, whatever happens I haven't lost a friend.'

It was a wonderful discovery but it didn't solve the immediate problem, she realised as she hung up the telephone. She was immeasurably relieved that Theo wasn't involved in the destruction of Casuarina, but evidently someone else was, probably another of the financial wizards Rick knew in Darwin. There was no shortage of people to whom wilderness was less important than development. Rick wouldn't have had to look far.

Whoever it was must have accepted Rick's word that Casuarina belonged to him, and was willing to start work on the strength of it. By the time their mistake was pointed out, it might be too late to save the property from destruction.

In an agony of indecision, Keri paced up and down, scattering the packing material for Robyn's pictures as she paced. Fortunately, Robyn was asleep. The last thing she needed was to be burdened with this problem when she was starting to get well.

Then the sound of the front door opening and closing announced that Jessie Finch was back. Thanking her stars that the housekeeper hadn't chosen this particular day to linger with her friends at the CWA, Keri ran up and flung her arms around the startled woman. 'I'm so glad to see you.'

'I wasn't gone that long,' Jessie said, laughing. 'Is Robyn all right?'

'She's fine. She slept most of the afternoon. ' Keri looked around at the mess she was leaving behind. 'Don't worry about all this, I'll finish the job and clear up when I get back.'

'Get back from where?' Jessie asked, bewildered.

'Crocodile Creek,' Keri flung over her shoulder as she hurtled out of the door.

The dusty track to the crocodile farm seemed endless as she bumped and jerked her way along in low gear, the wheels plunging in and out of pot-holes until she felt like a rodeo rider trying to stay on a bucking brumby. Mobs of doe-eyed buffaloes watched her pass from under the sparse shade of gum trees and lancewoods.

At last she drove between the sliprails marking the entrance to the reserve. A sense of relief swamped her. Instead of the roar of land-clearing equipment, she heard only the chirrup of cicadas and the monotonous drone of mosquitoes along the riverbank. Maybe Rick had been bluffing after all.

There was no one around as she approached the pens holding Ben's crocodiles. Most of the smaller animals lay unmoving in the sun, half in and half out of their pools. Not an eye blinked as she passed the pens but she knew that her movements were marked. Without the reinforced wire fencing, she . would have been dragged into a pool in an instant.

The thought made her shiver as she reached Fang's pen. There was no sign of the big crocodile but a careful search of the lilies thronging the surface of the water revealed two dark nodules, Fang's nostrils as he came up for air. Then she drew a sharp breath as she noticed a jagged tear in the wire netting which separated Fang's pen from Matilda's. She rushed to Matilda's pen and peered over the fence.

She let out the breath she had been holding as she caught sight of the female crocodile, her body S-bent around a tree, and her long tail trailing into the water. 'What have you two been up to?' she asked the motionless creature.

Matilda's eyelid lowered fractionally. She was chasing flies from her eyes but it looked uncannily like a wink. Keri cast a professional eye around the dense grass and sedges surrounding her pool. Sure" enough, she spotted several mounds of vegetation dug along the bank and felt a thrill of excitement as she recognised the trial nests Matilda had been building. No one knew why crocodiles built such nests weeks before they laid their eggs, unless it was to make sure that the site finally chosen was sufficiently moist to protect the eggs.

Although it was far from the first time that crocodiles had nested in captivity, Keri was proud of the achievement. She and Ben had provided Matilda with a safe, natural environment in which she felt secure enough to breed. How pleased Ben would be when she told him the news.

A throaty roar burst upon her eardrums, shattering the quiet of the riverside. Startled, she spun around to see a huge earth-moving machine rumbling into the clearing. Her joy at finding the nest turned to despair as she realised Rick hadn't been bluffing after all. He really meant to destroy this paradise.

Acting on instinct, she ran towards the machine, waving her arms and shouting at the top of her lungs. The driver couldn't hear her over the roar of his machine, but he had to see her and stop. He
had
to.

For a heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to drive right over her but he rumbled to a stop just feet away.

'What are you doing, lady?' he called down. 'Trying to get yourself killed?'

'I'm trying to stop you making an expensive mistake,' she called back. 'You have no right to clear this land.'

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. 'That's not what it says here. My authority comes from Mr Champion who owns this place. He wants it cleared, I clear it.'

'I take it you mean Mr Ben Champion,' she said firmly.

He glanced at the document. 'Well, no, it says Richard Champion. Is there a difference?'

'Richard doesn't own this land. Ben does.'

Pulling out a vast square of cloth, he mopped at his face. 'Good grief! How was I to know? Are you Mrs Champion?'

She showed him her identification. 'Ranger Donovan of the Crocodile Task Force.'

At the use of her full title, he blanched. 'Jeepers. I think I'd better check this out before I do any more work.'

'I think you had, too,' agreed a masculine voice.

The bulldozer had claimed her entire attention so that she hadn't heard Ben arrive in his Range Rover. When he saw Ben approaching, the bulldozer-driver looked uncomfortable. 'Look, mister, I didn't know there were two of you.'

Ben offered the man his hand. 'Ben Champion, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding. You were only doing your job. If you call my office I'll see you're compensated for the wasted time.'

The driver accepted the card Ben offered him and started his machine up again. This time, he steered it out of the reserve and they heard it rumbling away into the distance. Ben turned to Keri. 'It looks as if I got here just in time.'

Reaction caught up with her and she began to tremble. 'Rick really meant to destroy the reserve. When he came to the house this morning and told me what he intended to do, I was sure he was bluffing.'

'Well, he wasn't,' Ben confirmed grimly. 'Even though he had no claim to this land now Persia has returned his ring.'

Her eyes widened. 'You know about that?'

'Persia called me for advice before she wrote to Rick. That gave me time to check with my solicitor and revoke the existing agreement which gave Casuarina to Rick. I thought he might pull something like this. Next time, I'll make sure I write in a caveat against large-scale development.'

'Oh, Ben, that's wonderful news.' Before she realised what she was doing, she had thrown her arms around him in sheer joy and relief that the nightmare was over.

She was unprepared when he stiffly disengaged her arms and took a step away from her. 'I'm glad you're pleased.'

Hurt by the gesture of rejection, she said, 'Of course I'm pleased. Now your crocodile farm is safe for ever.'

'It's safe, and I'm thankful, since it's about all I have to be thankful for now.'

Her startled gaze flew to his face. 'What do you mean, Ben?'

His eyes softened then shadows claimed them again. 'Don't you know what it will be like for me, to live here and watch you and Rick build a life together on my doorstep?'

She opened her mouth to tell him how wrong he was but before she could get the words out she choked on a cloud of dust as a car barrelled up to them. Rick jumped out. 'What the hell are you doing? I passed the bulldozer on its way out of here. He's working for me, not you.'

Ben swung his attention to Rick. 'Then he's working for you somewhere else.'

'This is my land. You can't stop me clearing it.'

'Yes, I can. Persia told me she had changed her mind so I changed the conditions of the title deed. You can still have the land when you marry, but to farm, not to destroy.'

Rick glared at Keri, his hands balling into fists. 'You bitch, this is your doing, isn't it?'

Ben stepped between them. 'Don't blame Keri. God help her, she loves you.'

The admission was wrung from Ben but only elicited a hard burst of laughter from Rick. 'Loves me? That's rich, considering she's never had eyes for anyone but you.'