Outback Boss, City Bride

‘There isn’t anybody special at the moment,’ said Meredith after a tiny pause. ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ she added.

‘It is if you start getting yearning phone calls, begging you to come home,’ Hal pointed out. ‘It is if you end up distracted and having to choose between your sister and your boyfriend. That wouldn’t be an easy choice to make.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t think you need to worry,’ said Meredith, with just the slightest trace of bitterness. ‘I’m not exactly overwhelmed with yearning lovers, and even if I were, I wouldn’t find it at all difficult to make my choice. I’ve said that I’ll stay here and take Lucy’s place, and I will.’

‘I don’t know…’ Hal regarded her with a brooding expression. ‘It’s easy to say that, but what happens when you’re struggling to get everything done and you hate the heat and the flies and you’re bored and lonely? There’ll be nothing to stop you changing your mind and running back to England the moment the going gets tough.’

‘Nothing except my word,’ said Meredith, lifting her chin at him. ‘I’m not expecting to like it here. I’m quite sure I will be bored and I hate the heat and flies already, but none of that matters. I’ve promised Lucy that I’ll stay as long as necessary so that she can come back to her job, and I always keep my promises.’

‘I’ve heard that before.’ Hal’s voice was hard. ‘As far as I can see, the promises women make don’t seem to mean much.’

‘Then you’re just going to have to trust me, aren’t you?’ said Meredith, wondering who had made him that bitter. ‘You might as well. If you don’t, you won’t have a cook at all. I know Lucy. She’s someone else who always keeps her promises, and she’s promised Richard’s mother that she’ll go back to see if she can help. She won’t stay now, so if you’re sensible you’ll take me in her place,’ she went on crisply. ‘At least then you’ll have someone to help, as opposed to no one at all.’

Hal eyed her with frustration. He knew that she was right, but he couldn’t help resenting the way she appeared to be rearranging his life to suit herself. ‘Are you always like this?’ he demanded, scowling.

‘Like what?’

‘This…managing,’ he said, having searched for the right word. ‘I don’t like being managed,’ he warned her. ‘I’ve been running this property for nearly fifteen years. If there’s any managing to be done, I’m the one that likes to do it!’

‘I’m not managing you,’ Meredith objected. ‘I’m just offering a practical solution to the problem.’

‘There wasn’t any problem until you came along,’ he grumbled.

‘Well, there is now,’ she said in a brisk voice, ‘so, one way or another, you’re going to have to deal with it.’

‘Oh, very well,’ he conceded irritably. ‘If you’re so determined to stay, stay!’

‘Thank you,’ said Meredith, cool as ever. ‘There is just one thing more, though.’

Hal muttered under his breath, ‘What now?’

‘I want you to promise that Lucy can have her job back whenever she wants.’

‘You’re pushing it a bit, aren’t you?’ he said, his eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think you’re in a position to demand promises from me.’

‘That’s the deal,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’ll only stay if you’ll promise to keep Lucy’s job for her.’

With an irritable gesture, Hal pushed himself away from the rail. ‘Fine, I’m prepared to promise that, but you’re not leaving a second before she gets back. If you leave, the deal’s off.’

‘Good,’ said Meredith. ‘We’ve got a deal.’

‘Deal.’

Without thinking, Hal held out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took it. His fingers closing around hers, warm and strong, sent a strange sensation down Meredith’s spine. It was too dark to read the expression in his eyes properly, but something in his face as she looked up at him made her pull her hand away rather too quickly and she was suddenly, unaccountably, breathless.

‘Deal,’ she said.

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.