Outback Boss, City Bride

CHAPTER FIVE

IT TOOK Meredith an hour to restore the kitchen to some semblance of order. Emma and Mickey slipped away as soon as they suspected jobs might be in the offing, but trailed back after a while, complaining that they were bored.

‘You can help me make a cake if you like,’ Meredith offered. She felt sorry for the poor kids, dumped out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and only a grim uncle and a bunch of taciturn stockmen for company. ‘You choose what kind.’

‘Can we make a chocolate cake?’

‘You can if we can find some cocoa.’ She peered into the larder, which was next on her list for a major clear out. ‘I’m sure I saw some in here.’

By the time Hal came in later that morning, the cake was in the oven, Meredith had heard all about the children’s lives in Sydney and the carefully tidied kitchen was once more looking as if the proverbial bomb had hit it. Emma and Mickey were licking out the cake bowl, measuring how much the other had taken with eagle-eyed precision, and Meredith was resignedly wiping up the debris when the clatter of the screen door announced Hal’s arrival.

Her body was still strumming with a mixture of indignation and something that was shamefully like excitement in spite of her best efforts to work it out of her system. She had thrown herself into a frenzy of cleaning all morning, but she might as well not have bothered judging by the way her heart jerked at Hal’s appearance. The strange buzzing sensation in the pit of her stomach immediately ratcheted itself up to full vibration.

It wasn’t the kind of thing sensible stomachs did. Crossly, Meredith scrubbed at a sticky patch with renewed vigour.

Hal sniffed appreciatively as he hung up his hat. ‘Something smells good.’

‘We made a cake,’ said Mickey importantly.

‘It’s for smoko this afternoon,’ Emma added, anxious not to miss out on the glory.

‘That sounds great.’ Hal looked around the kitchen and his eyes came to rest on Meredith, still rubbing industriously. ‘You’ve been busy.’

‘Just doing my job,’ said Meredith, horrified to hear that her voice was positively squeaky. She rinsed out the cloth under the tap and willed her nerve endings to stop carrying on as if it were party time. Honestly, anyone would think that she was attracted to him!

Or that she wished she’d accepted his offer.

Wringing out the cloth rather more forcefully than necessary, she laid it by the sink and turned to Hal, disguising her unaccustomed nervousness in brisk practicality.

‘You don’t know if there’s an apron around, do you?’ There, that was much better. Nobody whose nerves were fluttering frantically with awareness under their skin would even be able to think about aprons, let alone care whether they were wearing one or not, would they? ‘I couldn’t find one anywhere.’

‘An apron?’ Hal made it sound as if she had asked for an intergalactic spaceship, and there was probably about as much chance that she would find one of those out here, Meredith reflected. ‘What do you want an apron for?’

‘Why does anyone ever want an apron? To protect my clothes, of course,’ she said sharply. ‘Look at the state of me!’

Hal looked. She looked fine to him. Overdressed as usual, and perhaps not as well-groomed as she might have been after this morning’s trip in the back of the truck, but she was gesturing fastidiously at her front as if she’d been castrating bullocks. Hal didn’t care to think how she would react to what went on in the yards. He made a mental note to keep her away from there.

‘I can’t lay my hands on an apron, but I could find you an old shirt,’ he said. ‘Would that help?’

‘It would be better than nothing,’ she accepted as graciously as she could.

Hal was back a few minutes later. ‘It’ll be too big for you,’ he told her, handing her a shirt that was soft and faded from repeated washings. It had once had a blue check that now looked more like a smudgy grey. ‘At least it might cover you up, though.’

‘Thank you,’ said Meredith, taking it from him and lifting it to her face without thinking. ‘Mmm, it smells nice,’ she said, breathing in the clean fragrance of sun-dried cotton and something else that she couldn’t quite identify.

Hal raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s one of my old shirts, but it’s perfectly clean. It shouldn’t smell of anything.’

‘I know.’ Meredith flushed at the realisation that the lovely, clean but unmistakably masculine scent was Hal’s. Please God he didn’t guess that she had recognised it. She cleared her throat. ‘I just like the smell of clean clothes,’ she excused herself and then regretted it. Now she sounded like some kind of pervert who went around sniffing laundry.

‘Whatever turns you on,’ he said and the children sniggered. It was obvious they all thought that she was deeply weird. ‘Anyway, the shirt’s yours. I haven’t worn it for a while and it doesn’t matter how dirty you get it.’

Mortified, Meredith clutched the shirt to her chest and wished that Hal hadn’t mentioned being turned on. The mere feel of the shirt in her hands was enough to make her think about how he would have looked, bare-chested, as he shrugged it on. How many times had this material rested against his skin? God, she was actually stroking it, she realised, appalled, and dropped it on to the table as if it had burnt her.

‘Ready for smoko?’ she asked crisply.

‘We are, but I wasn’t sure if you’d have had time to make tea.’

‘Of course.’ She might be sadly lacking in control on the shirt front, thought Meredith, but let no one suggest that she wasn’t efficient. ‘Lucy left some biscuits, so I’ve put them on the veranda there with some mugs. I’ll just put the kettle on.’

Screened in like the dining veranda, this was the most comfortable part of the homestead where they came for smoko or to sit with a cold beer at the end of a long, hot day. It was a man’s place. There were no knick-knacks or pictures or matching upholstery. Instead there were tatty wicker chairs, some limp, stained cushions and the occasional table decorated with ring marks from countless mugs and scattered with a motley assortment of magazines dating back as long as Hal could remember. No rugs, nothing fancy, just a scarred and stained concrete floor so you weren’t afraid to walk in with your boots on.

At least it had been comfortable. When Hal stepped through from the kitchen, he hardly recognised it. The tables were clean, the floor shining and the chairs all lined up, the cushions plumped and realigned with military precision.

He stared around him, appalled. ‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve given it a good clean,’ said Meredith as she carried in the huge teapot. ‘The place was filthy.’ She set the teapot on table-newly scrubbed. ‘And I tidied up a bit.’

‘A bit? This is supposed to be a place we can relax,’ Hal complained. ‘Now it looks as if we’ll have to march in time and salute before we ask permission to sit down. What are you, woman-a frustrated sergeant major?’

‘No, I’m a housekeeper,’ she said tightly. ‘At least, that’s what I understood you wanted me to be. And housekeepers keep houses clean. This place was a tip!’

‘I liked it being a tip,’ said Hal, scowling. ‘And what have you done with the magazines?’

‘I put them in the box of papers to be incinerated.’

‘What? You’d better not have burnt them!’

‘Not yet, no,’ Meredith admitted reluctantly, although she wished that she had now. What a fuss about a lot of old magazines!

‘In that case, you can bring them back right now!’

‘But they’re all years out of date!’ she protested.

‘I don’t care,’ he snarled. ‘Bring them back.’

‘Fine.’ Tight-lipped, Meredith marched out to the kitchen and retrieved the magazines. ‘There you are,’ she said, dumping them on a table. ‘Happy now?’