Outback Boss, City Bride

CHAPTER FOUR

MEREDITH was so tired by the time they sat down to the meal that night that it was all she could do to lift her knife and fork. She had been travelling for days, and had been so worried about Richard before she’d left that she had barely slept all week. But now she had found her sister, Lucy was going home, and that meant that at last Meredith could simply stop for a while.

Stop she did, literally flaking out over her roast beef and vegetables, and the next morning barely remembered Lucy helping her to bed. She was left with no more than a blurry impression of taciturn stockmen and sulky children. Hal was looking dour, and the only sunny natures there appeared to be Lucy, glowing happily up at a quiet young man-Kevin, Meredith assumed-and Hal’s cousin, Guy Dangerfield.

Guy, to Meredith’s surprise, proved to be as English as she was, defying the national stereotype even more than his cousin. Where Hal was dark and reserved and buttoned-up, Guy oozed a kind of lazy, good-humoured charm that even Meredith, normally charm-proof, found impossible to resist. It wasn’t just that Guy was attractive, with dark blond hair and dancing blue eyes, he was funny, not so much in what he said but in the way that he said it. His dry delivery even made Hal laugh, and that was quite something to see.

The first time it happened, Meredith was caught unawares. She was helping Lucy to carry in the vegetables and was just setting a dish of carrots on the table when Guy said something that made Hal throw back his head with a crack of laughter. The transformation of his face was so extraordinary that Meredith actually dropped the dish.

Fortunately, it didn’t have far to fall and only a few carrots spilled out, but of course they all stopped to look at her.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, hastily scooping up carrots. ‘It was just a bit hot.’

Please God none of them would think to reach out and touch the dish or they’d discover it was barely warm. Lucy had never got the hang of warming plates. She would just have to plead jet lag if that happened, Meredith decided, pink with embarrassment. There was no way she was going to admit how startled she had been by the way Hal’s whole expression had lightened with a smile, the way the cool grey eyes had warmed and the cheeks had creased with amusement. His teeth had been strong and white, and he had looked at once much younger and much, much more attractive.

Perhaps it was a good thing that he didn’t smile more often, Meredith reflected. It was just as well that Guy was leaving tomorrow and taking his humour with him.

Guy, in fact, had solved the final problem about getting Lucy home. ‘Your timing couldn’t be better,’ he told Meredith. ‘I spend a couple of weeks here every year and I’ve been putting off going home as long as possible, but I really do have to go now. My mother, who is not the easiest person at the best of times, is having her hip replaced, so I need to be there.’

He rolled his eyes with a rueful smile, but Meredith guessed that he was very fond of his mother, difficult or not. ‘I’ll probably just annoy her but, if I know my mother, she’ll be even more annoyed if I’m not there.’

A plane had been chartered to take him to Darwin the next morning and the pilot would be picking him up at the Wirrindago airstrip, Guy explained. It would make perfect sense if Lucy went with him. They could travel together and save Hal another trip into Whyman’s Creek, and Lucy might as well catch the same plane to London. He would even have a car meeting him at Heathrow so she could go all the way to central London without having to worry about a thing.

It sounded a great plan to Meredith and Hal had no objection. The only person who wasn’t happy was Lucy herself, although she could hardly insist on Hal making another trip to Whyman’s Creek so that she could travel separately from Guy.

Oddly, she alone seemed to be immune to Guy’s charm. ‘He’s just a trust fund baby,’ she said dismissively when she and Meredith were on their own in the kitchen. ‘He’s not a real man like Kevin.’

Real man or not, it seemed to Meredith that Guy was brighter, better-looking and a lot more fun than Kevin. There was no accounting for taste. Personally, she approved of Guy, who was a lot more practical than one would guess from a first impression. It was Guy who got things organised and who sorted the flights while Lucy was saying an emotional farewell to Kevin.

Meredith woke late that morning with the sick feeling that she had left something vitally important undone. Scrambling out of bed, she rushed along to try and book Lucy on to the London flight from Darwin and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Guy had already done it all. For someone used to dealing with everything herself, it was a huge treat to find that she could relax for once.

Now she stood on the dusty airstrip next to Hal and waved as the little plane that Guy had chartered sped down the runway. Looking like a toy, it lifted up into a sky so blue and so enormous that it made Meredith’s eyes ache behind her sunglasses.

Beside her, Hal wore a hat, his eyes narrowed against the glare as he watched the plane disappear into the blueness. The red dust churned up by the take-off was drifting back to earth and the silence once they had gone seemed to settle around them like an immense weight.

The sheer size of the horizon and the stillness of the landscape was overwhelming. Meredith felt tiny in comparison and she thought that if Hal hadn’t been standing beside her she would have been almost frightened by the uncanny sensation that the land was waiting for something.

As it was, Hal’s solid, self-contained presence was immensely reassuring. Outlined against the dusty backdrop of spindly gum-trees and scrub, his profile was extraordinarily distinct in the crystalline light. Meredith was sure that she could see every pore in his skin, every quirk in the battered felt hat. He wore a pair of faded jeans and scuffed boots, his sleeves were rolled up above his wrists, and his hands were brown and steady. He looked completely at home in this strange, alien place and Meredith was suddenly conscious of a childish urge to hold on to him and feel safe.

‘We’d better get on,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Meredith briskly. Enough of this. She was a sensible woman. Of course she didn’t need Hal to feel safe. Whatever next? This was Australia, not the end of the world.

It just felt like it.

She put her shoulders back as Hal turned to the truck parked in the meagre shade. Beside it, Meredith had been chagrined to notice earlier, stood a small plane with a propeller on its nose.

‘Why didn’t you fly into Whyman’s Creek yesterday?’ she had asked when Hal admitted that it was his. ‘It would have been a lot more comfortable than two hours in that truck!’

‘I want Jed to have a look at the tail rudder,’ Hal said. ‘He’s the mechanic, but he hasn’t got time at the moment. He’s been checking the water pumps, which is more important than being comfortable on a trip into town.’

That, thought, Meredith, was a matter of opinion.

The plane looked awfully small, she decided, eyeing it askance as she followed Hal to the truck. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have set foot in it, but she couldn’t help hoping that Jed got round to fixing it before Lucy came back. A flight would be much more comfortable, and a lot less dirty, than another bone-shaking trip into Whyman’s Creek before she caught the plane home.

Home…Meredith looked around her at the eerily silent scrub and sighed. Her cosy house in Tooting seemed very far away.

‘You can get in the cab this time,’ Hal pointed out as he opened his door.

‘Big of you,’ muttered Meredith. The airstrip was about half a mile from the homestead and there hadn’t been room for more than three in the front seat. Meredith had wanted to say goodbye to Lucy at the plane, and as Hal had to drive and Guy and Lucy had a long trip ahead of them, it had made sense that she’d been the one who had sat in the back with the suitcases. By the time they had jolted down to the end of the track, she had been wishing that she’d said goodbye at the homestead as Hal had suggested.

He must have known that she would end up covered in dust-again!

‘I’m not sure that sitting inside is going to make much difference to this outfit now,’ she said, grimacing down at her pale trousers and sleeveless white top. Well, it had been white when she had put it on that morning.

‘Haven’t you got anything more practical to wear?’ Hal asked as she climbed into the cab anyway.

‘No,’ said Meredith, who thought she had done well to find these trousers.

He switched on the engine and the truck juddered into life. ‘I’d have thought you could have packed something a bit more sensible,’ he said disapprovingly.

‘My wardrobe is perfectly sensible for what I thought I’d be doing,’ Meredith objected. ‘I didn’t realise I would be put in the back of an open truck and driven through a dust bowl! So far I’ve ruined two outfits,’ she remembered glumly. ‘At this rate, I won’t have anything to wear at all next week! I’ll be cooking in my underwear.’

Hal raised his eyebrows. ‘That sounds interesting,’ he said.

His voice was dry but when he glanced at her Meredith realised with a tiny shock of recognition that the cool eyes held a distinct gleam of amusement and a shiver of something that was perilously close to excitement skittered down her spine.

More worryingly, her palm was actually tingling with the memory of how it had felt to touch his hand last night. ‘Deal,’ they had said, and his fingers had closed around hers. She shouldn’t be able to remember exactly how that had felt, Meredith chided herself. She shouldn’t be wondering what it would be like to feel the warmth and sureness of his hands on her again.

Her mouth dried at the very idea, but luckily Hal was changing the subject without waiting for her to think of a suitably pithy answer.

‘Did Lucy have time to show you round?’ he asked, sounding so prosaic that Meredith wondered if she had imagined the awareness that had sparked in that brief glance a moment ago.

Embarrassed by what felt like a betraying flush in her cheeks, she clutched the dashboard and looked out of the window. ‘No. She was busy cooking the meal last night and I’m afraid it was all a bit of a rush this morning. She had her own stuff to pack, and I’d slept late.’

‘You were tired.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about last night,’ said Meredith a little stiffly. ‘One minute I was eating beef and the next my head was in the gravy. I was completely zonked.’

‘Are you going to be OK to do lunch today?’

‘Of course,’ she said quickly, reading criticism in his tone. ‘I said I could do Lucy’s job, and I will.’

Hal glanced at her. ‘I’d better show you where everything is, in that case. It’ll save you a bit of time.’

Emma and Mickey were still in bed, in spite of strict instructions to be up and dressed by the time Hal and Meredith got back from the airstrip. Hal hauled them up and sent them grumbling along to the kitchen to find their own breakfast while he gave Meredith a brisk tour of the homestead.

Some of it she remembered from the night before. There was the austere dining area that opened out from the kitchen. A long, rectangular table sat on the painted concrete floor, dominating the room, but for Meredith the most noticeable feature was the way an entire wall had been left open to the air, but screened off to keep the insects out.

Another screened veranda led from the other side of the kitchen. It was more comfortable-looking, with a number of old wicker chairs ranged in a rough semicircle facing the screen. Lucy had told her that they all gathered there for a cold beer before supper but, having watched her sister at work, Meredith couldn’t imagine ever having the time to sit down herself.

Hal pointed out the store rooms, the laundry room and a whole wall of stainless steel fridges and freezers of varying temperatures.

‘And this is the cold store,’ he said, opening a door.

‘Ugh!’ Meredith recoiled at the sight of the carcass hanging from a butcher’s hook. ‘What’s that?’

‘It was a cow and now it’s food,’ said Hal.

‘I hope you’re not expecting me to chop it up!’

‘No.’ Hal gritted his teeth and hung on to his patience. ‘One of the men will butcher it for you when you need more meat. There’s still a couple of joints left,’ he went on, indicating some smaller cuts hanging at the side. ‘Those are for roasting or steaks. There’s a mincing machine as well, if you want it, and I think Lucy should have some diced meat for stewing in the freezer.’

Meredith grimaced. She was used to her meat wrapped in nice sanitised packets at the supermarket, where you never had to think about where it had come from or what it had once been.

‘What happens when that one’s finished?’ she asked, averting her eyes from the carcass.

Hal looked at her. ‘What do you think?’

Meredith’s mouth turned down even further. She didn’t like to think of some poor cow being slaughtered on her say-so. ‘What do you give vegetarians?’

‘We don’t get a lot of those on a cattle station,’ he said, closing the door. ‘We eat beef. Beef, beef and more beef.’

‘I do a very nice spinach quiche, you know,’ she said provocatively.

‘I’m sure you do, but I wouldn’t waste my time making it here, if I were you. The men don’t like anything fancy, so keep meals plain. They do like their puddings, though, the more old-fashioned the better.’

‘Right.’ Meredith sighed inwardly. She had the feeling that she was going to get awfully tired of cooking beef and fruit crumble.

‘There’s a vegetable plot over there,’ Hal went on, pointing through the window, ‘but when anyone gets the chance to go to Townsville they’ll bring back fruit and vegetables that we can’t grow here, so we do get some variety.’

But Meredith wasn’t listening. She had looked obediently in the direction Hal was pointing, but her gaze was snagged by something much more incredible than a vegetable patch. ‘Is that a lemon tree?’ she asked in delight.

‘Yes,’ said Hal cautiously, wondering what all the excitement was about.

‘Wow!’ Meredith’s face was alight with pleasure. ‘I’ve never seen one of those before. I can’t wait to go and pick my own lemon!’

Hal regarded her with surprise. He hadn’t expected her to be pleased by something so simple. She looked suddenly vivid and her eyes were bright with interest. They really were an extraordinary colour, he found himself thinking. A deep, dark blue, almost purple, they were eyes you could lose yourself in if you weren’t careful.

‘I’ll show you the rest of the homestead,’ he said brusquely, wrenching his gaze away.

Meredith hadn’t taken in much the day before, but in daylight it was clear that the kitchen area was a relatively modern extension, while the main part of the homestead seemed to date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. It was something of a surprise to Meredith, who had been expecting everything to be as functional as the kitchen and the bedroom wing where she had slept the night before. Here, the ceilings were high, the doors solidly made and the rooms had the fine proportions of a more gracious era. How on earth had they managed to build a house like this in the middle of nowhere, without any of the benefits of modern technology?

‘We don’t use these rooms much,’ Hal said, opening a door into an old-fashioned dining room with a beautiful antique dining table, and then into an elegant sitting room. Long windows looked out past the deep veranda to the garden and the tree-lined creek in the distance.

‘Oh, this is a lovely room!’ exclaimed Meredith, walking in and looking around with pleasure. ‘At least, it could be if it had a good clean.’ She wiped a finger along the top of a rosewood cabinet and wrinkled her nose. ‘That and a fresh lick of paint and it could be wonderful.’

‘It doesn’t need painting,’ said Hal bluntly. ‘I never sit in here.’

‘What a shame.’ Meredith wandered over to the windows and fingered the faded curtains. ‘No wonder it feels unloved. Someone must have loved this room once, though, someone with a lot of taste, by the look of it. Your mother?’

‘I don’t remember,’ said Hal, his voice curt to the point of rudeness.

‘Oh?’ She hesitated, not wanting to pry, but it was odd that he didn’t remember at all. ‘Did you lose your mother quite young?’

‘I was twelve,’ he said after the tiniest of pauses.

‘I was five when my mother died,’ Meredith offered. ‘My father remarried, though, a couple of years later.’

She looked around the tranquil room. If Hal was in his thirties now, and his mother had died when he was fourteen, this room probably hadn’t been used for nearly a quarter of a century. How sad, she thought. And how strange that he didn’t remember his mother sitting here.

‘It doesn’t look as if your father married again,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘You can tell,’ said Meredith. ‘The whole house needs a woman’s touch.’

‘None of the housekeepers stay long, but they generally keep the place clean,’ said Hal stiffly.

‘It’s not about dusting,’ she said. ‘A room like this needs someone to love it and live in it. A quick run round with a vacuum cleaner isn’t going to bring it back to life!’ She glanced at him curiously. ‘You’ve never thought of getting married?’

‘Once.’ Hal was wishing that he hadn’t brought Meredith in here. The room brought back too many memories at the best of times. Now it seemed dingier and sadder than ever in contrast to Meredith’s vibrancy. ‘It didn’t work out.’

Now, to his dismay, she perched on the arm of a sofa, frankly interested. ‘Why not?’

Hal shrugged. ‘I met Jill through mutual friends in Darwin. We got on well and had a good time when we were together. I used to go up to Darwin to stay with her and she came down here a couple of times, but after we got engaged she decided to come and spend more time here.

‘She only lasted a couple of weeks,’ he remembered grimly. ‘It made her realise how isolated her life would be if she married me, and she decided she couldn’t go through with it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Meredith, wondering what Jill had been like. Was she sweet? Was she pretty? There must have been something special about her to capture a heart as hard as Hal Granger’s. What did a woman have to have to get him to let down that guard and smile and laugh and love?

Not that she was interested personally. It was just intriguing to see what made people fall in love.

‘Don’t be.’ Hal leant against the back of an armchair and crossed his long legs at the ankle. Meredith was struck anew by his physical presence. He looked strong and solid and incredibly male in this faded, feminine room. No wonder he never sat in here.

‘At least Jill was honest,’ he said. ‘It was much better for her to decide that it wasn’t going to work then than after we were married and might have had children to complicate matters.’

‘It must have hurt, though. Rejection’s never any fun,’ said Meredith with feeling, but Hal only shrugged.

‘It was a mutual decision. We’re still friends,’ he said. ‘She’s in Melbourne now. She married a doctor and they’re very happy as far as I can tell.’

‘And you haven’t met anyone since?’

‘No one who could deal with the isolation. No one I could face being isolated with either, come to that.’

‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’

‘Do you?’ he countered.

‘Me?’

‘You told me that you live on your own,’ he reminded her. ‘I don’t. There are usually at least seven other men here and you’d be surprised how often we have other people passing through. Government inspectors, scientists, journalists, visitors, road train drivers, helicopter pilots…Sometimes there are twenty people sitting round the table in the evening. I don’t get much chance to be lonely.’

‘Yes, but that’s not the same as having someone special,’ said Meredith.

Hal cocked a brow at her. ‘Are you by any chance asking what I do for sex?’ he asked.

The colour rushed into Meredith’s cheeks. ‘Of course not!’ she said, aghast.

‘Because that’s what it sounded like,’ Hal finished, but Meredith was too embarrassed to hear the amusement threading his voice at first.

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you that! God, of course not! I just meant whether you ever wanted someone…well, someone close, someone to talk to and laugh with and-’

‘Sleep with?’ he suggested, and this time she did hear the undercurrent of mockery.

She tilted her chin at him, refusing to rise. ‘Well, don’t you want someone like that?’ she challenged him.

‘Sometimes I do, but not for long,’ Hal told her frankly. ‘I never get involved with a woman who’s looking for “commitment”.’ He made hooks with his fingers to emphasise his distaste for the word.

Meredith hoped she looked as if she took attitudes like that in her stride. ‘And where do you find women who aren’t looking for that?’ she asked.

‘We do have a social life in the outback, you know. Balls, races, rodeos, weddings and parties…You might have to travel a couple of hundred miles to get there, but you still go and you’d be surprised how many people you meet.’ His eyes rested on Meredith’s face, still pink with embarrassment. ‘And then, of course, there are girls like you.’

‘Like me?’ Meredith’s voice went up a notch. ‘What do you mean, like me?’

‘Like you in that they’re cooks and housekeepers,’ Hal explained. ‘We get a very high turnover out here. Girls usually only stay two or three months, which is why I had to tie Lucy to that contract to make sure she was still here when the kids came. Often, the girls who come out want to experience outback life for a while, but they don’t want to live here for ever. Sometimes we have a nice time together for a while, and then they leave with no regrets on either side.’

‘I hope you’re not telling me that sleeping with you is part of my duties,’ snapped Meredith, who was not nearly as sophisticated as she looked, and didn’t quite know how to deal with Hal’s frankness. More rattled by the idea than she wanted to admit, she crossed her arms in an unconsciously defensive gesture.

‘No,’ said Hal. ‘Not unless you wanted to, of course,’ he added after a tiny pause.

‘Unless I…?’ Meredith leapt to her feet, hardly able to credit what she had heard. Unless she wanted to! The cheek of it!

She glared at Hal, who looked back, one eyebrow lifted as if in surprise, and she had the sudden, sickening feeling that she had overreacted to what had probably been a joke. Tossing her head, she made a big deal of brushing down her trousers. ‘Certainly not!’ she said, as coolly as she could.

‘I didn’t think so.’ Hal didn’t sound particularly bothered, which perversely annoyed Meredith even more.

Presumably it had been a joke.

‘You’re not telling me that you would actually consider a relationship with me?’

‘A temporary one,’ Hal clarified. ‘From my point of view, you’d be ideal. I can be sure you don’t want commitment, after all. I know you can’t wait to get on that plane back to England.’

Meredith was outraged. ‘And so I’d do, would I? I’d be convenient for you?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ said Hal, ‘but if you liked the idea, I certainly wouldn’t say no.’

‘I can assure you that the idea has no appeal for me whatsoever!’ she said in her most quelling voice.

Not that Hal seemed the slightest bit quelled. ‘Well, let me know if you change your mind,’ was all he said, casually uncrossing his legs and straightening from the chair. ‘Shall we get on?’

Meredith could hardly believe it. The nerve of the man! He had barely smiled at her since she’d arrived and now here he was, casually suggesting they might sleep together if she felt like it!

How was she supposed to respond to something like that? Meredith wondered as she followed him out of the room. Had Hal really expected her to say, ‘Oh, OK, then,’ as if it were no big deal?

And if she had, then what would he have done? Would he have kissed her then, or would he have waited until later that night, when the children were in bed and the stockmen had gone back to their quarters? He might have smiled at her then. He might have drawn her to him…and what would that have been like?

Meredith was annoyed to find that her mouth was dry and she swallowed. How on earth had they started this stupid conversation? Now, infuriatingly, in spite of her furious efforts to keep looking straight ahead, her eyes kept skittering sideways to his hands, his mouth, his throat, and then back to his mouth, before she could wrench them back…

Yesterday they had shaken hands to seal their deal. She could remember the feel of his fingers closing around hers exactly. If that had been enough to send a secret thrill through her, what would a kiss do? What would a whole night together do?

This time, Meredith actually gulped. Stop it, she scolded herself as she stalked along the corridor beside Hal, frowning with the effort of keeping eyes and mind under control. Stop it, stop it, stop it! You said no and you meant no.

Thank God she was sensible and not impulsive like Lucy, who lived for the moment and might easily tumble into an affair like that without giving a thought to the consequences. Well, the subject was closed now. She wouldn’t even think about it any more.

‘Did you ask Lucy if she wanted to sleep with you?’ she heard herself demanding.

If Hal was surprised at her abrupt question, he gave no sign of it. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Would you believe me if I said that Lucy wasn’t my type?’

‘No,’ said Meredith without hesitation. She had never yet met a man who didn’t fall for Lucy. Hal’s words implied that her dumpiness appealed to him more than Lucy’s slender, golden beauty and not for a minute did Meredith believe that.

Hal glanced down at her. ‘If you won’t believe that, will you believe that Lucy fell for Kevin the moment she laid eyes on him, and after that it was obvious that none of the rest of us were in with a chance?’

‘That sounds more like it,’ said Meredith.

There was no way that she, rather than Lucy, would be Hal’s type. Sensible girls like her were rarely anyone’s type.

Meredith only just caught her sigh in time. Horrified, she gave herself a mental slap on the cheeks. It was very lucky that she was the sensible sister or she might even now be embarking on an affair with Hal Granger and what would that get her?

Excitement? a little voice inside her suggested.

It would be stupid.

It might be fun. No commitment, no strings attached, just a good time until Lucy came back and she could go home.

Excitement and fun…How long was it since she had had either? Meredith thought wistfully and then had to remind herself hastily that it wouldn’t be worth it. Besides, she wasn’t that kind of girl. She was practical and sensible and thought things through. She certainly wasn’t going to get involved in any casual affair with Hal Granger, thrill or no thrill.

Still, it wouldn’t have killed him to have seemed a bit more disappointed by her firm refusal, would it?

The last room Hal showed her was the office. ‘You can work in here,’ he said, opening the door into a room piled high with files and papers and magazines and alarming-looking veterinary ointments.

‘How?’ asked Meredith, appalled. ‘You can’t even see the desk for the mess!’

‘Just put those papers on the floor,’ he said, demonstrating with a pile. ‘You can unplug the computer if you’d prefer to use your own, and the phone is in here too. There’s only one line, but most people call at mealtimes when they know I’ll be around, so there shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘How long is it since anyone tidied up in here?’

‘My father wasn’t much good at paperwork and I’ve never had time to sort it all out.’

‘Right, so there’s at least twenty years of junk in here?’

Hal looked round him as if seeing the office for the first time. It had got a bit out of hand, he supposed, but he knew where to find what he needed.

Meredith sighed and pulled the hair back from her face. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to work in a tip like this,’ she said. ‘But I will need to use the phone line to get on to the Internet. Can I clear things up and give it all a good clean?’

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some order into it all. ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Hal. ‘Just don’t throw anything away without asking.’

Back in the kitchen, Hal reached for his hat. ‘Think you know what you’re doing?’ he asked.

Meredith looked around the kitchen, piled high with dishes that Lucy hadn’t had time to wash that morning, and thought of all the meals to prepare and the rest of the homestead crying out for a good clean. Where did she start? And when was she going to have five minutes to open her laptop, let alone do any work?

‘It’s under control,’ she lied.

‘Good.’ Hal settled his hat on his head and opened the screen door. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’