He observed the wrathful turmoil he was exciting in her with another smile, this time dry.
‘So that’s what you do for a—shall we say hobby? But it so happens you’re wrong, Miss Trent,’ he said. ‘I was also contacted by the owners. They want to know if this property has development potential.’
Maggie closed her eyes in sheer frustration. ‘They didn’t say a word about that to me!’
He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to check back with them.’
She reached for her phone, but put it down on the roof of her car again as her emotions ran away with her. ‘You can’t—you wouldn’t! It’s so lovely. It would be a crying shame.’
‘To destroy it and cover it with little boxes?’ he suggested, and strolled into the shed.
Maggie followed him. ‘Yes!’
‘Listen.’ he turned on his heel towards her and she nearly ran into him. ‘A lot of you do-gooders amaze me.’
She backed away a step.
It was impossible not to be slightly intimidated by Jack McKinnon. He was tall, for one thing, and he moved with superb co-ordination. His grey gaze was boring right into her and the lines and angles of his face were set arrogantly beneath that dark fair hair. The arrogance was compounded by a beaky nose and a well-cut but hard mouth and—at such close quarters there was even more to contend with.
He was so essentially masculine it was impossible to be in his company without a sense of man versus woman coming into the equation.
That translated, she realized, to a competitive form of self-awareness that took her by surprise. An ‘I can be just as judgmental of you, Jack McKinnon, because I can be just as alluring, sexy and damned attractive as—as Lia and Bridget are!’
She blinked as it shot through her mind. Could she? She doubted it. She had never mentally stripped a man the way he had stripped her and she was quite sure she couldn’t render him as hot and bothered— and stirred up, she acknowledged honestly—as his lazy, sensual summing-up of her had. Not to mention—how dared he do that to her? Who did he think he was?
There was also, if all that weren’t bad enough— and she wondered why she hadn’t taken this into account before because even her mother had mentioned it!—the distinct impression that he was diabolically clever, as he proceeded to demonstrate.
‘If you have real concerns about the environment and the impact of urban sprawl, take them to the city council. If you object to rural zonings being overturned do something positive about it,’ he said contemptuously.
‘Something?’ she echoed unwisely.
‘Yes. Campaign against it. Stand for council yourself Use your ballot power to vote for a ‘greener’ council. It can be done. But don’t rail against me in a virtually uneducated fashion, because I’m not breaking any laws at all.’
‘What about moral and philosophical laws?’ she challenged. ‘What about enriching yourself at the expense of the environment and people like the Smiths?’
‘I have no idea who the Smiths are but…’ he paused and once again that grey gaze roamed over her, although this time clinically and coldly ‘… it’s often the wealthy, the old money entrenched in their ivory towers and open green spaces, who lack concern and understanding for the less fortunate majority of the population.’
Maggie gasped. ‘That’s not true, of me anyway!’
‘No?’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘You should try being one of that majority, Miss Trent. You should experiment with existing as a couple and raising a family on a single income because the kids are too small to leave, or child-care is too expensive—and see what it means to you to have your own roof over your head.’
‘I—’
But he continued scathingly, ‘You may think they’re little boxes, but they’re affordable and they’re part of the great Australian dream, owning your own home. Come to that, it’s a vast continent but inhospitable, so suburbia and the fact that we cling to the coast is another fact of life.’
He paused and eyed her. ‘How much does your privileged background stop you from understanding some basic facts of life?’ he asked her then. ‘How many acres does your father own all green, untouched and lovely?’