Outback Boss, City Bride

‘Yes,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Perhaps you’d better tell me where else is to be preserved as a dusty tip,’ she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Or shall I assume that you don’t actually want me to do any cleaning. Clearly nobody else has done any for a very long time!’

‘You can clean,’ said Hal, eyeing her with dislike. ‘Just don’t change anything.’ Deliberately, he pulled a chair out of its neat line and sat down in it as the rest of the men began trooping in, all equally aghast at finding themselves somewhere clean and tidy. ‘I don’t like change,’ he said.

Meredith drank her tea in a huff. Honestly, she fumed to herself, what was the point of having a housekeeper if you were only going to complain when she kept house? No wonder Hal Granger had such a high turnover of cooks and housekeepers. He obviously never let them do their jobs.

The men were uneasy until they had restored the veranda to its habitual mess, which took surprisingly little time compared to how long it had taken her to clean it up, Meredith thought vengefully, but someone eventually started a conversation about something called agistment, not a word of which Meredith understood. She was heartily relieved when they all stood up to go back to work.

Still stroppy, she followed them out to where they were collecting their hats by the kitchen door. Hal was the last to go.

‘What were you planning for supper?’ he asked, obviously preparing to pre-empt any further disasters like them actually eating something different for a change.

‘Well, let’s see…’ Meredith put her head on one side and pretended to consider. ‘I thought I would do something simple since it’s my first night,’ she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. ‘Perhaps filet mignon with timbales of aubergine and red pepper served with a rosemary and redcurrant coulis?’

There was a moment’s silence. Deep blue eyes met cool grey in an unspoken challenge, and that should have been the end of it. But then something happened. Afterwards, Meredith couldn’t really explain it to herself, but it was as if someone somewhere had flicked a switch, making the air crackle alarmingly, and she could practically see the spark jumping between them.

Whatever it was, it unnerved her enough to make her jerk her gaze away, unaccountably shaken. She moistened her lips.

‘Or perhaps a bowl of mince,’ she finished.

Hal settled his hat on his head in a gesture that was already familiar to her. ‘Mince sounds good,’ he said.

He turned to reach for the screen door, but not before Meredith had glimpsed a tell-tale dent at the corner of his mouth and that the elusive smile that never quite seemed to reach his lips was gleaming in his eyes.

The next moment he had gone, letting the door clatter shut behind him, but it was as if that smile were still there, tingling in her blood, and her huff evaporated like mist on a summer morning. To Meredith’s disgust, she found herself thinking about the smile rather than about how totally unreasonable Hal had been as she cleared the mugs from the veranda.

What on earth was the matter with her? Meredith gave herself a mental shake. She wasn’t the kind of girl who went all fluttery at a smile-not that you could really call that gleam in his eye a real smile. She was a sensible, down-to-earth woman, who didn’t go in for imagining sparks or smiles or anything silly like that and, even if she were, it wouldn’t do her any good.

She certainly wasn’t about to go weak at the knees for a man who was to all intents and purposes her employer. That would be a stupid thing to do, and Meredith didn’t do stupid. She didn’t do reckless or romantic. She did careful and considered, so that was quite enough nonsense about non-existent smiles!

No, she reminded herself, she had agreed to do this job. She didn’t have to like it, she just had to get on with it. Jet lag might excuse some uncharacteristic behaviour, but that was enough now. It was time to pull herself together.

And she would start off by changing into the shirt he had provided, instead of letting herself be unnerved by its scent or the fact that Hal had worn it. Pulling off her top in her bedroom, she slipped on the shirt. It felt cool and comfortable, the soft material almost caressing her skin, the way it must have caressed Hal’s.

Meredith’s fingers fumbled at the buttons, imagining him doing the same, imagining what it would be like if he were there now, watching her, brushing her clumsy hands aside and slowly unbuttoning the shirt with deft fingers until it slid from her shoulders.

All right! Meredith told herself fiercely as her insides promptly melted at the mere thought. She had to stop this, she had to stop it now. It was just a shirt and she was a sensible woman. Just do up the buttons and go and get lunch.

Being sensible didn’t stop her being agonisingly aware of the feel of Hal’s shirt against her body, but at least she avoided having to explain to Hal just why she had taken his shirt off after being so insistent that she wanted to protect her own clothes.

The thing is, she would have had to say to him, I keep thinking about you wearing it. I keep thinking about it against your bare back, and that gives me this awful, squirmy feeling in my stomach, so I decided I’d rather ruin my own clothes.

No way was Meredith having that conversation.

Still, it was a relief when she had supper under control that evening and could go and change into her own clothes once more. She put on a black skirt and a flattering pale blue top that hugged her curves without being too revealing, and slipped her feet into strappy sandals with vertiginous heels. Add some lipstick, and Meredith immediately felt more herself-confident and competent.

The feeling lasted until the stockmen shuffled in from their quarters for the evening meal. They had a beer on the veranda first, and stared at her as if they had never seen a woman in high heels before.

In spite of her determination not to care if she seemed out of place, Meredith was desperately self-conscious and she despised herself for it. It was true that, like Hal, the men all seemed to have showered and changed their shirts at least, but it was clear that the notion of dressing for dinner had not yet reached this part of the outback.

‘You look…very…smart,’ said Hal, who really wanted to say something like sensational or sexy-or both-but thought she would probably bite his head off if he did. But those shoes…!

To Meredith, ‘smart’ sounded like an insult. ‘I’m allowed to change in the evenings, aren’t I?’ she snapped. ‘Or is a change of clothes too much change for you to deal with?’

Hal held up his hands. ‘We’re just not used to it, that’s all. Lucy never changed in the evenings.’

No, well, if she had Lucy’s figure and could look fabulous in jeans and a T-shirt, she probably wouldn’t either, Meredith reflected with a touch of bitterness. She would love to be slender and long-legged like her sister instead of short and round. It was no surprise that people often found it hard to believe that the two of them were related. She had often wondered if there had been some mix-up at the hospital when she was born as she appeared to have no genetic connection to the rest of her family.

She didn’t care anyway, Meredith reminded herself, sitting at the end of the table opposite Hal and lifting her chin defiantly. Let them think of her as strange. She didn’t want to be accepted here, the way Lucy obviously had been. She didn’t want to belong.

Meredith’s first meal could not be said to have been a raving success. There was nothing wrong with the mince or the vegetables, all perfectly cooked, or with the apple pie she had made for pudding, but the atmosphere was distinctly awkward. Meredith was defensive, the children sullen, and Hal was having so much trouble concentrating on anything except how she looked in those shoes that he barely knew what he was eating.

Never the chattiest of company, the stockmen left immediately after pudding, leaving Meredith alone with Hal and the two children.

‘What do you two do with yourselves in the evening here?’ she asked Emma and Mickey, since it seemed hardly fair to them to sit in silence and she couldn’t think of a thing to say to Hal, who had been looking distracted all evening.

‘Nothing. It’s so boring,’ sighed Emma.

‘There isn’t even a TV,’ Mickey added in the incredulous tones of a child unable to imagine anywhere without this most basic of technologies.

‘There’s a record player,’ Hal offered in his defence, and they looked at him blankly.