Outback Boss, City Bride

Richard was charming and sensitive and not afraid to talk about his feelings. Hal was cool and self-contained. In fact, when he wasn’t there, Meredith could almost persuade herself that she didn’t really find him that attractive, but all he had to do was walk through that screen door and take off his hat and her heart would perform sickening somersaults while every sense in her body tautened as if she were walking a tightrope. Yes, thought Meredith wryly, her body was a regular circus routine when Hal was around.

Still, that was no reason to fall into bed with him. Hal belonged in this strange, red land under this immense sky and she…well, she didn’t.

Meredith looked around her. Overlooked by the kitchen, the dusty yard was shaded by a big gum-tree, where the dogs drowsed in the shade, and framed by an odd assortment of out-buildings, whose purpose was obscure, at least as far as Meredith was concerned. There were a couple of huge water tanks, the chicken run and a rickety wind tower, its arms unmoving in the still, shimmering heat. To Meredith, city girl incarnate, it was all profoundly alien.

Australia was so big it was almost scary. The space and the light were so overwhelming that she was afraid that she would lose herself, crushed by the heat and the eerie silence. Meredith could practically feel herself diminishing, and she didn’t like it. She liked to be in control of things, but how could she control this huge, wild place?

She had hardly given Lucy or Richard a thought either, she had realised guiltily last night. The sense of urgency that had possessed her since Richard’s accident had deserted her since she had arrived at Wirrindago. She really must check her email. Lucy had promised that she would let her know when she was safely back in London.

Swinging the empty scrap bucket, Meredith climbed the steps to the kitchen with a renewed sense of purpose. It was high time she set up her computer and got down to some work too. It would be easier then to remember who she was and what she was doing here.

But she had to clean that office first. If she opened her laptop in there now it would be choked in dust in five minutes. There was no way she could work in that mess. Hal would probably have a fit, but she didn’t care. It wouldn’t kill him to have one tidy room.

With everything under control in the kitchen, Meredith rolled up her sleeves and prepared to get dirty. The desk was piled so high with papers that she could hardly see the phone, and the desktop computer was shrouded in dust. She wiped it down, unimpressed. She had seen more up-to-date technology in a museum. Thank God she had brought her laptop with her.

Fine red dust lay in thick layers over everything. Meredith’s eyes were soon watery from sneezing, and she was very glad of Hal’s shirt which, disturbing or not, kept the worst of the dirt from her own clothes. She would have to borrow another so that she could wash this one.

Mindful of Hal’s reaction to her removal of the old magazines from the veranda yesterday, Meredith was careful not to throw anything away, but she tidied and straightened and did her best to put everything in date order. Methodically, she worked through pile after pile of assorted papers and, in spite of not knowing anything about station business, she thought she did a pretty good job of sorting it out. Everything that looked similar she stacked together in date order, her eyebrows climbing as she saw some papers going back twenty-five years. Didn’t these people understand the notion of filing?

It was the kind of job that appealed to Meredith’s organised nature and, although she tutted, she secretly enjoyed restoring order. When it was tidy, the office would be a great place to work, she decided. On a corner, it had one window that looked out over the kitchen yard and another with a view of the garden and the lemon tree she had been so thrilled to see. A bright pink bougainvillaea scrambled over a pergola built into the garden, keeping the room cool and shady without cutting out too much of the light, and it was very quiet.

Yes, she could happily work here, Meredith thought.

She was sitting on the floor, sorting through an old cardboard box which had clearly functioned as a rudimentary filing drawer, when Hal came in, and her heart promptly began its usual impression of a trapeze artist.

Look! Up it soared into the air to perform-gasp!-a triple somersault before catching on to a pair of ankles just in time and-yes!-managing a neat flip before settling into a breathless swing from one side of her chest to another.

Desperately hoping that her internal acrobatics didn’t show in her face, Meredith did her best to keep her expression cool. ‘Hi,’ she said, delighted at how casual she sounded.

Hal was staring suspiciously around the office. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ she said. ‘I’m tidying up. You told me I could,’ she reminded him before he could object. ‘“Knock yourself out”, you said. And you don’t need to panic,’ she added, correctly interpreting his expression of dismay. ‘I haven’t thrown anything away! But there is a pile of stuff over there that looks like complete junk to me.’ She pointed. ‘Since you’re here, could you please check it and take out anything you want to keep? The rest is going in the incinerator.’

‘I’ll never be able to find anything again!’ grumbled Hal, but he didn’t actually tell her to put everything back as he had done the day before.

Encouraged, Meredith scrambled to her feet. ‘Nonsense, you’ve got a system now,’ she said and showed him how she had arranged things into piles. ‘You know, if you invested in a couple of decent filing cabinets, you could get all this stuff out of the way.’

Hal’s down-turned mouth showed how much he thought of that suggestion, but he did pick up the first few papers from the junk pile and flicked through them briefly before tossing them aside. ‘They can be burnt.’

Just as Meredith had thought, in fact.

Hal picked up another sheaf of papers. ‘Why are you so determined to reorganise me?’ he asked.

‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ Meredith pointed out astringently. ‘I can’t work in the kind of mess this office was in. I wanted to use the computer to check my email in case Lucy had been in touch, but it took me an hour just to find the keyboard! A tidy office is just a bonus for you. You ought to be grateful.’

‘Funnily enough, grateful is not what I feel when I find my home is being turned upside down,’ said Hal, discarding another handful, but he wasn’t really cross.

The truth was that he didn’t really know how he felt. It certainly wasn’t grateful. When he saw her sitting on the floor, her face smudged with dirt, with those dark, beautiful eyes and that curving mouth and his shirt caressing her generous curves…no, grateful wasn’t the word.

He couldn’t get used to how someone who looked so warm and soft and sexy could so often sound so tart and be so briskly competent. It made for an arresting combination and Hal wished that he hadn’t blown it yesterday by so casually suggesting a temporary relationship to her. He had handled it badly, but he had been thrown as ever by the disjunction between the way Meredith looked and the way Meredith actually was.

He found her exasperating and intriguing and seductive and sometimes downright infuriating. She was interfering and managing and uncompromising, but…he liked her, Hal realised. He liked her intelligence and her sharp tongue. He liked the combative lift of her chin and the challenge in her eyes and the way she rolled up her sleeves and got on with what had to be done. He liked coming into the homestead and finding her there, her mouth turned down in disapproval at the state of things. Look at him now, coming to find her on the flimsiest of pretexts when he should still be out in the yards.

It was all a bit unexpected. Hal had been prepared to dismiss her as a shallow city girl. He had wanted to disapprove of her-and in lots of ways he did-but the liking had crept up on him in spite of everything she did that infuriated him, in spite of the fact that they had absolutely nothing in common.

Hal couldn’t help thinking that the next few weeks would be a lot easier if he didn’t like her.

‘Did you hear from Lucy?’ he asked, feeling the fool that Meredith obviously thought him.

Meredith nodded. ‘Yes, just a quick message to say that she had arrived, but she hasn’t been to see Richard yet. She seems to be staying with Guy.’ There was a crease between her brows as she sat down on the revolving chair by the desk and bit her lip. ‘That’s my fault.’

‘Why?’ Hal’s voice was unnecessarily harsh, but he had to distract himself somehow from the way she was chewing her lip, unaware of the effect it might be having on anyone else. Him, for instance.

‘I completely forgot to give her the keys to my house.’

‘I still don’t understand why it’s your fault.’

‘Well…because Lucy hasn’t got anywhere else to stay in London,’ Meredith explained. ‘She gave up the house