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Page 170

| outback with him? He is your husband?" |

| Sasha's eyes wavered and she felt another blush troubling her cheeks. "Yes, I have come to the outback with Ashton," she murmured, slipping off one shoe, and then the other. "But we are not married. Ours is aa business relationship only. That is all." |

| Bianca studied Sasha closely, not believing that any woman could live with Ashton York as no more than a business partner. Sasha was trying to hide her true feelings just as Bianca was forced to hide hers! Oh, but she wanted to open up and tell Sasha exactly why she was in the outback, that she had accompanied Stanford with the hope of bettering herself. In truth, it was becoming a living hell with the man who had no true feelings for her, but wanted only her body. |

| Now barefoot and wearing only her cotton shift edged with eyelet lace, Sasha dunked her dress in the river, then spread it out on a rock and scrubbed it with her bar of soap to get the stench out. She then rinsed it thoroughly, hung it on a branch, and slipped into the water herself, the soap clutched in her hand. She immediately relaxed and enjoyed the soothing caress of the water as she waded in, to stand at shoulder level in it. |

| "You say that you live at a nearby sheep station," she said, gliding the soap up and down an arm. She looked guardedly at Bianca, who was also running a bar of soap up and down an arm. "Is that Stanford Sidwell's sheep station that you are speaking of?" She winced when Bianca's eyes reflected a true fear in their depths at the question, and she had to wonder again why Bianca was there. |

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