Outback Boss, City Bride

CHAPTER NINE

‘HOW does it feel?’ Hal asked, much, much later when they were lying entangled with the sheet, his hand smoothing lazily over the dips and curves of her body.

Meredith smiled. She felt utterly replete and relaxed. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t the slender beauty she had always longed to be. She wasn’t dumpy and plain any more. Hal had made her feel beautiful and desirable, and she was glowing with the knowledge of her own gorgeousness.

She turned on her side to run her own hand over his lean flank. ‘It feels wonderful,’ she said.

‘I meant not being sensible,’ he said with mock severity.

‘That too.’

That leap into the bright air above the water hole had been nothing compared to the tumbling, glittery rush of making love, of Hal’s lips on her skin, of the sureness of his hands, of the taste of him and the hard possession of his body.

They had been sensible enough to take some precautions, Meredith remembered, but otherwise, no, she hadn’t been at all sensible and it had been glorious.

‘I think I could get used to not being sensible,’ she said, stretching luxuriously and looking around her for the first time.

Hal’s room was as plain and masculine as she would have expected, with little furniture apart from the bed, a chair and a solid chest of drawers. Tucked into the mirror that sat on top of it was the photograph Meredith had found. She was glad to see that he had kept it, but it was a timely reminder too of just how determined Hal was to avoid anything more than a temporary relationship.

‘Never,’ Hal was saying. ‘I know you. You’ll be back to practical, sensible Meredith soon. Aha!’ he said, seeing the flicker in her eyes and smoothing the hair tenderly away from her face. ‘I can tell you’ve had a sensible thought already! Come on, out with it!’

Meredith would have loved to have denied it, but she couldn’t. ‘I was just thinking that I mustn’t get too used to it,’ she admitted. ‘Tonight was so lovely, but it’s not going to last for ever, is it? Lucy will be coming back soon.’

Hal’s drifting hands stilled. ‘Has she said so?’

‘No, her messages are all a bit vague, but she has said Richard is getting better.’ There was a tiny crease of concern between Meredith’s brows. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Every time I hear from her I expect her to tell me that she’s getting the next plane back. She was so desperate to come back to Kevin, but she hasn’t mentioned him so much recently, and he’s stopped asking about her. Have you noticed?’

‘Kevin isn’t that chatty,’ Hal pointed out, resuming his delicious exploration.

His hand moving possessively over her made Meredith arch with pleasure, but she couldn’t quite push her concern about Lucy from her mind. ‘Do you think I should tell her that he doesn’t seem to be missing her that much and suggest that she comes back as soon as she can?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Hal firmly. ‘I don’t think you should tell anybody anything. Lucy can sort out her own life,’ he told her.

‘But what if she doesn’t come back?’ Meredith voiced the thought that had been nagging her at last. ‘What then?’

There was a pause. ‘Then…I guess you’d want to go home,’ he said after a moment.

‘Of course I would,’ said Meredith a little too quickly.

And she would, she reminded herself. She had a house, friends, a career. Of course she would want to go back to them all.

She couldn’t help wondering what she would have said if Hal had asked her to stay, but caught herself up almost immediately. There was no point in wondering. He would never have asked her that. Not once had he ever talked about the possibility of her staying. Hal didn’t want anyone to stay, remember?

And, even if he did, she certainly wasn’t going to give up her life in London for an outback man with major commitment issues, no matter how heart-shaking a lover he was.

That really wouldn’t be sensible.

‘I don’t think you need to worry about that anyway,’ said Hal. ‘Lucy was pretty adamant she wanted to come back.’

‘That’s true.’ Meredith tried to feel more relieved at the prospect of Lucy’s return.

‘So you’ll be able to go home when she does,’ he went on, forcing himself to remember all the reasons why it would be better if she did. He wasn’t going to tie himself down to anyone, let alone a city girl. And certainly not a city girl whose idea of the perfect man was one who hadn’t even had the sense to realise that beneath that brisk exterior lay a creature so sweet and passionate that the breath had stopped in his throat.

No, Meredith would be leaving, and he wouldn’t forget it. But he was allowed to hope that it wouldn’t be too soon, wasn’t he?

He rolled her beneath him, savouring the feel of her. She was every bit as warm and as soft and spirited as he had imagined. ‘And in the meantime…’

‘In the meantime?’ Meredith prompted, smiling as she twined her arms around his neck and brought his head down for a lingering kiss.

‘In the meantime…there’s just you and me and a few weeks to enjoy each other.’

‘Then let’s do that,’ she whispered against his mouth. ‘It’s not for long. Let’s make the most of it.’

Of course, keeping the temporary nature of their relationship in mind was a lot easier said than done. A few weeks…not for long… Periodically, Meredith would remind herself of the reality, but it was all too easy to forget.

She had never felt so uninhibited, so unfettered, so selfish. It was only now that she realised how much time she’d spent fretting about other people-usually Lucy and recently Richard-but other friends too. Hal had been right, Meredith realised. There was no reason for her to feel responsible for everyone else’s happiness.

It was a strange feeling to think now only about her own. Meredith had never felt so at home in her body, had never felt so desired, so relaxed.

So happy.

The pattern of her days didn’t change. She still got up in the darkness of the early morning to make breakfast. Now that Emma and Mickey had gone, she had more time to work, but there was still smoko and lunch and supper to prepare, still dust to be swept from the verandas. The chooks still had to be fed and clients had to be emailed and translations had to be done.

But, after supper, there was Hal. Meredith was in thrall to his touch and to the long nights of honeyed sweetness when it seemed impossible that this time would ever end. Every now and then, she would tell herself that she really ought to be sensible and think about the future, but the future meant saying goodbye to Hal, never holding him again, never touching him again, and she didn’t want to think about it. She had now, and while they lay together and talked and laughed and made love and felt complete, that was enough.

‘We’re mustering in near the paddocks tomorrow,’ said Hal one night as they cleared up after supper. ‘It’ll mean an early start.’

‘How early?’ asked Meredith, who was having trouble wrenching herself away from him in the mornings as it was.

‘We’ll need breakfast at four thirty.’

‘I’ll have to go to bed now if I need to get up at four o’clock,’ she grumbled, but she didn’t really mind.

Meredith loved being part of station life and she was thrilled when Hal suggested the next morning that she meet them on the muster. She had heard about the way they rounded up the cattle from a wide area and herded them back to the yards and she was longing to see it for herself. Hal had explained that if the paddocks were open enough they would use helicopter contractors to help push the cattle in the right direction, but that day’s muster began in rocky country and they would be doing it the old-fashioned way, on horseback.

‘Can you drive?’ he asked her.

‘Of course.’ Meredith wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved to discover that she wasn’t supposed to get herself there on horseback.

‘Do you think you could bring smoko out when you meet us? We’ll need a break by then and I don’t particularly want to take anything with us.’

‘How will I find you?’ she asked a little doubtfully.

Hal drew an imaginary map on the kitchen table with his finger. ‘Go through the third gate on the track and then follow the fence till you come to the creek. You’ll be able to get across at this time of year, then just keep going until you meet us.’

‘What if I miss you? Those are big paddocks!’

‘Just look for a lot of cattle,’ said Hal. ‘We’ll be there.’

Meredith smiled to herself as she drove the truck over the bumpy paddock later that morning. She was thinking about the night before and the night to come, and enjoying the light and the huge sky above her. Funny to remember how oppressive she had found all the space at first. Then, she had felt small, crushed by the size of everything. Now, instead of feeling dwarfed, she felt taller, much taller and more complete than she had been when she’d arrived.

Hal had taken her out riding several times and, while she didn’t think she would ever master the art of getting on and off a horse gracefully, Meredith had enjoyed it far more than she had expected. Hal’s eyes were always moving and he had taught her to count any cattle that she saw, to note where they were and what they were doing and what kind of condition they were in.

Now she cast a knowledgeable eye over two cows that stood by the fence, their floppy ears flickering the flies away, eyeing her incuriously as she closed the gate behind her and got back into the truck. Shorthorns crossed with Brahmins, she decided, not like the fat cattle at home, but their coats had a lovely sheen to them. Hal would be pleased.

Then she laughed at herself. Who would have thought that the ultimate city girl would ever have found herself looking at cows with interest? That she would actually enjoy bumping slowly over a dried creek bed and thinking that the ghost gums were beautiful? Well, it was just part of this time out of time, Meredith reassured herself. It was like a holiday, where she could pretend to be someone completely different, someone joyous and open and not sensible at all.

Someone else, not her.

As Hal had promised, it was impossible to miss them. At first, all Meredith could see was a great cloud of dust churned up by thousands of hooves drifting in the distance. She had never seen so many cattle together at one time, she thought, driving very carefully through the leaders who had blundered to a halt as they realised that the whooping and chivvying that had kept them moving all morning had stopped. The dust was slowly settling and the cattle had started to graze or simply stand, grateful for the rest.

Kevin had spotted her in the truck and came riding over to point towards a clearing, where some of the other men had already dismounted. Slouched in his saddle in his hat and checked shirt, he looked so much the archetypal cowboy that Meredith could suddenly see why Lucy had fallen for him. Kevin might be tongue-tied at the table, but out here he was in his element.

It was clearly a favourite stopping place, for there were several fallen trees, worn smooth with use, arranged around a cleared area where once they had obviously built a careful fire to boil up tea. Fire was a terrible risk, though, and Meredith had a gas burner with her this time. She took it out of the trunk along with a big, battered billy that Kevin filled from the big water carrier.

‘Where’s Hal?’ she asked as one of the stockmen lit the gas expertly and settled the billy to boil on top.

‘He was at the back, bringing along the stragglers,’ said Kevin. His eyes narrowed, recognising the familiar figure appearing through the dust haze. He pointed behind Meredith.

‘There he is.’

Meredith had a sudden sharp memory of Bill, the publican in Whyman’s Creek, pointing at Hal behind her shoulder and saying, ‘That’s the man you want’. She turned, as she had turned then, and saw Hal.

This time, he wasn’t in a bad mood. He was pulling up a big snorting horse, and it seemed to Meredith that his smile was just for her, and when he swung off his horse and walked towards her it was as if she had taken an unwary step and tripped over the edge of a cliff. She could feel herself falling, falling, tumbling uncontrollably into the reality she hadn’t wanted to face.

So that was why they called it falling in love, she thought with a strange, detached part of her mind. It was an extraordinarily physical sensation-the lurch of the stomach, the catch of the breath, the clutch at the heart and that strange, dizzying sensation, like a kind of vertigo, pulling her down by some irresistible force. And at the end, smashing into the truth so hard that there was no way you could pretend it wasn’t there any more.

She was in love with Hal.

It wasn’t just chemistry, it wasn’t just sex. It was this man-this one-Hal and only Hal. He wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t even nearly perfect, but he was the one. Meredith felt very odd. It didn’t make sense, but at the same time it was so blindingly obvious that she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t realised before.

She must have replied to Hal, but later she couldn’t remember what she had said. She knew that she had made tea. She had poured it out into battered enamel mugs and handed around a tin of rock cakes she had made, but it was almost as if an impostor called Meredith who looked like her and sounded like her was going through the motions.

The real Meredith couldn’t think of anything but how she was going to deal with this new knowledge. It made her feel strangely clumsy, as if she had acquired an extra limb that was throwing her off balance. How could she have let this happen? She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Hal. That hadn’t been the plan.

Meredith wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. She wanted to pretend that it wasn’t there at all, but she couldn’t. She wanted to tell Hal, but she couldn’t do that either. That was the last thing she could do. And what would have been the point?

He could hardly have been more clear about what he wanted, after all. No commitment, no talk of forever, no love. Just for now, he had said, and she had agreed. It would be a temporary thing, fun while it lasted, but they both knew that it would never be any more than that.

It wasn’t Hal’s fault that she had fallen in love with him, and she wouldn’t embarrass him by telling him either. It would only make things awkward when the time came to go, as come it would. Even if by some chance Lucy changed her mind, she wouldn’t be able to stay for ever. Hal didn’t want her. Her visa would run out. She would have no choice but to go home.

She was going to have to find a way to say goodbye without Hal guessing how she felt, Meredith realised. She was going to have to find a way of convincing herself that it was what she needed to do, and really that shouldn’t be hard. If there was no future with Hal, the sooner she left and got on with the rest of her life, the better.

‘Is something wrong?’ Hal asked that night as Meredith lay close but quiet beside him.

‘No,’ said Meredith. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘You seem a bit…withdrawn.’

‘I was just thinking about home,’ she said.

It was true. She had been thinking about how it would feel to be back in her own house, with no screen door, no raucous galahs, no silent creek in the distance, no Hal. She had been wondering how she was going to bear it.

‘Ah,’ said Hal. ‘Is there news of Richard?’

‘Nothing new. He’s sitting up in bed now and he can have a proper conversation.’

‘It sounds as if he’s getting better, then.’

Hal tried his best to sound encouraging, but he suspected he didn’t do it very well. Ever since Meredith had told him how perfect she had thought Richard was, he had found the idea of the other man vaguely irritating.

No, deeply irritating.

‘You must be pleased,’ he said, trying to smooth the jealousy from his voice.

‘Yes, yes, of course I am.’ Meredith took a breath. ‘You should be pleased too,’ she said. ‘Once Richard’s better, Lucy will be coming back. You should have your cook back soon.’

There was a tiny silence. ‘I’ll miss your pastry,’ said Hal after a moment, deliberately keeping it casual. ‘Can you teach Lucy to make it before you go? Her pies aren’t nearly as good as yours.’

Meredith’s jaw ached with the effort of smiling. ‘I’ll leave her the recipe,’ she said.

After a moment, Hal took her hand and entwined his fingers with hers. ‘Your pastry isn’t all I’m going to miss,’ he said quietly, and she made herself smile again as she let him pull her close.

‘I know,’ she whispered into his throat.

It was true, Meredith thought the next morning as she picked lemons for a drizzle cake she planned to make later. He would miss her. She believed him about that. They had had a wonderful time together.

But he wouldn’t miss her enough to ask her to stay. He wouldn’t take that risk. His mother’s abandonment had scarred him too deeply.

Whenever Meredith thought of what his mother had done to her children, she wanted to weep. Hal deserved the happiness of a family of his own. He deserved to be loved, even if it wasn’t by her. He might have been gruff with Emma and Mickey, but he had looked after them, had played in the water hole and taken them riding. They would have felt safe with him. You’d always feel safe when you were with Hal. When he held you, you felt he’d never let you go.

But he would let her go.

Meredith jerked another lemon free, then stopped in surprise as she heard the phone ring in the office. There were rarely any calls at this time. Most people who wanted to get in touch knew that Hal was out most of the day and tended to ring at mealtimes. She had better get it in case it was important.

But, as she turned to run for the veranda, the ringing stopped. Hal must still be there, she thought with relief. He had come back from the yards a little earlier saying something about road trains and agisment as he’d headed into the office and Meredith had just nodded, understanding that he was going to make some calls but nothing more than that.

Slowly, she made her way back to the lemon tree. It was such a treat to pick your own lemons. She wouldn’t be able to do that in London.

There were a lot of things she wouldn’t be able to do in London, Meredith realised sadly. She wouldn’t be able to watch Hal walk across the yard with a thrill of possession, knowing that when everyone else had gone he would be all hers. She wouldn’t be able to slide her hands over him and kiss her way down the long, lean body. She wouldn’t be able to sleep curled into his solid back and wake with the safe weight of his arm across her.

Inside the office, Hal held the phone to his ear and watched Meredith reach up for a lemon. She pulled it from the tree, then held it to her nose to breathe in its freshness and its scent. She was wearing his old shirt, and the thought of the lush body beneath the soft material made his body tighten.

It was hard to remember now how brisk and unappealing she had seemed at first, before he knew her sweetness and her warmth and her strength. She moved more slowly now and she had a glow, a bloom, that hadn’t been there before. She didn’t look like a city girl any more. She looked as if she belonged here.

God, he was going to miss her.

With an effort, he dragged his attention back to the phone call.

‘So you see,’ Lucy was saying, ‘it’s really important that Meredith comes home as soon as possible.’ She hesitated. ‘Has she told you how she feels about Richard?’

‘A bit,’ said Hal.

‘She probably told you that she’s not in love with him any more,’ said Lucy. ‘She insists that she’s over it, but Meredith isn’t the kind of person who loves easily, and if she does love you, she doesn’t just stop. She’s just not like that. I know she comes across as a bit brisk sometimes, but underneath she’s the warmest and kindest person you could ever hope to meet.’

Hal looked at Meredith through the window. He didn’t need Lucy to tell him that. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘The thing is, I think Richard’s perfect for her and he’s been talking about her so much…Well, I’m sure that if she came home now she’d find that everything had changed. He keeps saying how much he misses talking to her.’

He would miss talking to her, Hal wanted to shout, and it hadn’t taken an accident to make him appreciate Meredith.

‘I know this might cause problems for you, Hal,’ Lucy was saying. ‘I’m really sorry to let you down.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s all a bit complicated, but…well, I don’t think I’ll be coming back after all. But if I tell Meredith that, she’ll insist on staying until you’ve found someone else and I really think she should come home now. I owe this to her. She’s the best person in the world and she deserves to be happy.’

‘Yes,’ said Hal slowly. ‘She does.’

Lucy seemed so determined to prove to him how perfect Richard was for Meredith and how Meredith would have her heart’s desire if only Hal would let her go, that in the end Hal could stand it no longer.

‘I’ll get Meredith for you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You should really talk to her.’

He went out on to the veranda and called to Meredith, who was on her way back from the lemon tree. ‘It’s Lucy,’ he said, wondering if he looked as bleak as he felt. ‘For you.’

Meredith stiffened and Hal suddenly realised that he did look that bleak. She probably thought that Lucy had bad news. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Richard’s fine.’ He forced a smile. ‘It’s good news.’

Meredith hadn’t been thinking about Richard, in fact. One look at Hal’s face and she had known that the golden time was over and that everything was about to change.

Her heart was heavy as she picked up the phone. ‘Lucy? It’s me. What’s happened?’

It was some time before she finally managed to say goodbye to Lucy and, by the time she did, Meredith was feeling completely numb. Very carefully, she put the receiver back in its cradle and went along to the kitchen, where Hal was waiting for her.

His grey eyes sharpened with concern at her expression. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I think so…yes…’ But Meredith didn’t sound too sure.

Hal tried a hearty smile. ‘That was good news, wasn’t it?’

‘Lucy obviously told you.’

She needed to do something with her hands. For want of anything better, Meredith found the zester and started to zest the lemons she had picked.

‘She said that Richard has realised that it’s you he really wants.’

‘Not exactly,’ said Meredith quickly. ‘She said she thinks I’m the one he really wants to see, but she doesn’t know for sure. I gather Richard was quite embarrassed when he realised that Lucy had come all the way back from Australia for him. That was my fault,’ she said with an edge of bitterness, putting one lemon aside and starting on the next.

Hal didn’t know how to help her. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Meredith.’

‘It was,’ she insisted. ‘I just assumed that was what he wanted and I made it happen. You were right,’ she acknowledged dully. ‘I should just let people get on with their own lives.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.’

Meredith’s hands stilled on the lemon. She glanced at him and then away. ‘Lucy’s sure that I’m still in love with Richard,’ she confessed suddenly, ‘but I really don’t think I am.’

How could she be in love with Richard when she was in love with Hal?

She couldn’t tell Hal that, of course. It would sound as if she wanted him to ask her to stay. And, if she did, Hal might even say yes, even though they both knew that it would end in disaster, no matter how much they might want to stay together now. They had different lives, different expectations, different futures.

Meredith couldn’t even complain that this had come as a surprise. She had always known that this was going to happen sooner or later. The trouble was that she wasn’t ready for it to happen just yet.

Some time in the hazy future, but not yet.

‘Maybe when you see Richard again, you’ll realise why you loved him before,’ Hal suggested with difficulty.

‘I hope so,’ said Meredith, really wanting to believe it, but not quite convincing herself. She reached for another lemon and mustered a smile. ‘I mean, Richard’s perfect for me, isn’t he?’

‘You said once that he was everything you’d ever wanted.’

Everything he wasn’t, Hal reminded himself. Richard was sensitive and artistic and cultured. He was a city man and Meredith was a city girl. He could offer Meredith the kind of life she was used to, the kind of life she wanted.

Hal thought about what Lucy had said. She deserves to be happy. He wanted Meredith to be happy too, and the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach came from realising that Richard would make her happier than he could.

How could he promise her happiness when he knew how hard outback life could be, especially when he was-how was it she had put it?-a man with major commitment issues? Meredith was too important to him for him to start making promises that neither of them might be able to keep.

He swallowed. ‘I promised Lucy I wouldn’t stop you going home,’ he told her. ‘I told her I’d make sure you got the first flight possible.’

Meredith nodded without speaking. She was still zesting with a kind of desperation, but she stopped suddenly and stared from the lemon in her hand to the growing pile of bright yellow strips on the table before her.

‘Oh, God, I don’t need all this!’ she exclaimed, only to find her voice breaking.

Pressing her lips tightly together in a perfectly straight line to stop her mouth wobbling, she scowled ferociously and willed herself not to cry. She never cried. She hadn’t cried when her father had left her with Lucy all those years ago, and she wasn’t about to start crying now. Crying wouldn’t help.

Hal couldn’t bear the look on her face. Stepping forward, he pulled her hard into his arms, where he didn’t have to look into her eyes and he wasn’t tempted to beg her to stay and make things even more difficult for her than they were already.

‘Meredith,’ he said, his mouth in her hair, breathing in the fresh, clean scent of her. ‘Maybe this is for the best. You did love Richard,’ he reminded her. ‘Remember how you told me you were prepared to wait for someone perfect? You said you weren’t prepared to settle for anything less, and Richard was perfect once. He probably will be again when you get back, especially now that he’s come to his senses and realised what a special person you are.

‘He can make you happy,’ Hal went on raggedly, ‘and I…I don’t think I can.’

Meredith nodded wordlessly against his shoulder. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but hold on to him.

‘I’ll miss you,’ he told her, his voice cracking. ‘I’ll miss you more than I can say, but there’s no future for us. You know that.’

‘I know,’ she managed, muffled by his shirt, her arms around his back, clutching him. ‘I know.’

‘You’re a city girl, and I live in the outback. If you stayed, you’d get bored, sooner or later, and then you would want to go.’

And you couldn’t take being abandoned again, Meredith thought to herself. She couldn’t take the risk of hurting him. She nodded again. ‘I know, Hal. You’re right.’

‘Richard lives the same kind of life as you,’ Hal went on, as if determined to prove to himself that saying goodbye was the right thing to do. ‘You told me that you liked the same things. You both like music and food and going to Italy, all that kind of stuff. You’d miss all that eventually.’

‘Yes, I probably would.’ Meredith struggled to help him. She knew he was finding this as hard as she was. ‘And we always said it was just a temporary thing, didn’t we? That was what we both wanted.’

‘Yes.’ Just at that moment, Hal couldn’t remember why he’d wanted it, but he knew that it was right.

‘I just…don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to you,’ she burst out.

Hal’s arms tightened around her. ‘It’s going to be hard,’ he acknowledged, ‘but we were always going to have to say it some time.’

‘You’re right.’

Meredith pulled herself determinedly away from him and forced her wobbly mouth into an approximation of a smile. ‘It looks like it’s time to start being sensible again,’ she said.

‘That’s my girl,’ said Hal, although his throat felt so tight it was hard to get the words out.

‘So…’ She straightened her shoulders. The last thing Hal needed was her turning weepy and clingy at this point.

She found another smile, a better one this time. ‘You go back to the yards and I’ll make this cake, and then I’ll find out about flights back to London. And we’ll find a way to say goodbye when the time comes.’