Outback Boss, City Bride

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