The Pleasure King's Bride by Emma Darcy Page A

had to be given about her destination, she held back the flood that threatened. Later, when they were in the sky, she could give way to her grief for a while.
    Her heart cramped when she saw Jared walking back to the plane. Alone. Was there trouble? More delay? Wrapped in dread of last-minute complications, she didn’t realise his intention, even when he walked around the other side of the plane and hauled himself into the pilot’s seat and closed the door behind him.
    “Do we have a problem?’’ she croaked out.
    “None that won’t get sorted,” he answered, and switched on the ignition.
    “Jared?” Bewilderment crashed into horror. “You can’t...”
    “This is my plane, Christabel, and I’m flying you to a safe place. As I promised.”
    “But you agreed...”
    “The Cherokee will be brought to the airport to buy us more time, but when time runs out, my mother knows how to deal with your visitors.”
    Overwhelming panic. He was drawing his family into her mess! “Your mother doesn’t know what she’s dealing with.”
    “Doesn’t matter. She knows I’m taking you somewhere untouchable. Where the only law is Lachlan’s law,” he said with grim satisfaction. “We deal from strength, Christabel, a strength that belongs uniquely to the outback.”
    “You don’t understand their resources,” she cried. “Nor they ours,” he retorted, totally unmoved by her protests, taxiing the plane towards a take-off position.
    “Please, please listen,” she begged. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”
    “But I will know, Christabel. Either from them or from you.”
    She heard the ruthless, relentless tone in his voice, knew the purpose he’d hidden behind the hard, flat eyes, and finally comprehended that Jared had no intention of letting her go before finding out everything he wanted to know.
    “You might as well settle back and relax now,” he instructed, facing the plane down the runway.
    “Where do you think they can’t get at us?” she asked in bleak resignation.
    “King’s Eden. We fly to King’s Eden, Christabel. Tommy will monitor the airways. Nathan rules the ground. No-one can get to King’s Eden without our knowing it, and if they come, it will be on our terms.”
    He was so sure, so confident. Maybe it was true. The Kings of the Kimberly virtually had a legendary status, having ruled their territory for over a hundred years. Were they impregnable in that majestic old homestead that had housed generation after generation of a family bonded to a hard, primitive land?
    Primitive... the word stuck in her mind. For all Jared’s sophisticated polish, he came from pioneering stock, people who fought for what they held, people who endured any and all adversity, people who survived and went on prospering.
    She remembered the aborigines at Nathan’s wedding, calling on the spirits of the Dreamtime with their didgeridoos. She remembered the timeless feel of the place, the daunting distances, the sense of a strong, unbreakable destiny embodied in Nathan King and his brothers, standing shoulder to shoulder, and the pride on their mother’s face, looking at them with the bearing of a queen who knew she had given birth to kings... kings of the outback.
    The plane lifted off, control in Jared’s hands now.
    Could this formidable family do it...break the chains of the Kruger juggernaut of power? She shook her head at the fanciful thought. Why should they when she and Alicia were not their responsibility? Nor did they owe her anything.
    She had to tell them what they’d taken on, lay out the whole picture for Jared to see not only what he was embroiling his family in now, but what he could expect in any future with her. Then he could decide if the fight was worth fighting.
    His choice.
    He’d overridden her choice.
    She gave up worrying and let the blocked tears swim into her eyes. Jared might believe King’s Eden was the perfect escape. He meant well. But Christabel couldn’t believe it