Outback Boss, City Bride

she was sharing when she left for Australia. I had it all planned that Lucy could stay in my house, and now she can’t.’

‘Will Lucy be saying that it’s her fault that she forgot to ask you for the key?’ asked Hal.

‘No…probably not,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Why do you assume that Lucy can’t do anything for herself?’

‘I don’t!’

‘Lucy would have organised her own flight if you and Guy had let her,’ Hal said. ‘She’s perfectly capable, but you treat her like a child.’

Meredith bridled. ‘I do not!’

‘Don’t you? I’m not surprised that Lucy wanted to come out to Australia and live her own life,’ he said in the same hard voice, ‘and you can’t even let her do that on her own.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ Meredith pushed her hair angrily away from her face, leaving another smear of dust on her cheek. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Richard’s accident.’

‘Yes, and whose idea was it to come and get her to go back? Who made sure it happened, even when Lucy didn’t particularly want to go?’

Hal didn’t know why he was pushing her so hard. He had a nasty feeling it was to punish her in some way for always taking charge, for leaving him out of control, and he regretted it when he saw that Meredith was staring at him, appalled, the violet blue eyes clouded with distress.

‘Is that how it seems?’ she said, and her voice sounded suddenly small.

Hal felt terrible. He wanted to take back what he had said, but he couldn’t, not now. ‘Lucy can look after herself, you know, Meredith,’ he said more gently.

‘I know, it’s just…’ Meredith sighed, realising too late how controlling she had been. Poor Lucy. Had she really come all the way to Australia to get away from her? It was a horrible thought.

‘I suppose I’ve always been used to looking after her,’ she said slowly, trying to explain. ‘I was always big sister, and she was little sister, and she felt like my responsibility, especially when we had to go to boarding school.’ Her mouth twisted at the memory. ‘Lucy was only seven, poor little kid.’

Hal hooked a stool out with his foot and sat down on it, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. ‘How old were you?’

‘Nine.’

Nine. The same age as Emma. She had just been a little girl. ‘You were a poor little kid too, then,’ he said.

Meredith half smiled. ‘I can see that now, but at the time I felt much older than Lucy. I just knew that I had to look after her.’

‘You were a bit young for boarding school, weren’t you?’ he said curiously. ‘We had to go away to school too, but not that early.’

‘It was just the way things worked out.’ She straightened the edges of a pile of bills on the desk. ‘My father worked for an oil company and he was often posted overseas in places that weren’t suitable for children. He remarried a few years after our mother died and understandably our stepmother didn’t want to stay at home with two small children who weren’t even her own, so the next time he was posted she went with him and Lucy and I were sent away to school.’

Hal frowned. ‘That must have been hard for you. You can’t have been very pleased when your father remarried.’

‘I just accepted it. I was only five when my mother died and I don’t really remember her, to tell you the truth. I’ve got an impression of her more than anything else…her perfume, how thrilled I was when she used to come in and kiss us goodnight when she was all dressed up to go out. We’ve got some photos, though, and we know that she loved us. That means a lot.

‘And Fay isn’t a wicked stepmother,’ she told Hal. ‘She really loves Dad, and she’s a great expatriate wife. We’d go out in the holidays-we used to like travelling as unaccompanied minors-or she and Dad would come back to the UK, and she was always nice to us. It’s not like we had a tragic life or anything.’

Maybe not, but Hal didn’t think that losing your mother at five and being sent away to school at nine sounded like much of a childhood either.

‘It can’t have been much fun going to boarding school at that age,’ he said, and Meredith grimaced.

‘No, it was terrible at first,’ she agreed, her hands stilling at last. ‘I didn’t really understand what was happening. I mean, they’d told us about school, and I thought it sounded quite exciting until I realised that my father was actually going to go away and leave us there. I thought we were going on a visit and then we’d be able to go home with him.’

She smiled sadly at her childish innocence. ‘I was about to get into the car when my father told me I had to stay. He said I had to be a good girl and not cry, as I had to look after Lucy for him…so that’s what I did.’ She gave a little sigh, remembering. ‘I guess that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.’

‘Poor kid,’ said Hal quietly. He had hated being sent away to school at twelve and he knew how desolate it could feel when you were left on your own.

‘I’ll never forget watching my father drive away that day,’ said Meredith. ‘I can still feel Lucy’s sticky little hand in mine and wishing I could let it go and run after him. I kept telling myself that he’d stop and turn round and tell us it was all a mistake, but it wasn’t. He didn’t come back.’ She shook her head with pity for her smaller self.

‘Lucy was crying. She didn’t understand what was happening either, and all I could do was hold on to what my father had told me. So I kept telling her that everything would be all right, and that I’d look after her. And I didn’t let myself cry, in case that upset her even more.’

Hal’s throat ached at the thought of the sturdy little girl, abandoned in a strange place, holding on to her little sister, her mouth trembling with the effort of not crying.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Oh, don’t be.’ Embarrassed at having fallen into something very close to self-pity, Meredith was once more all briskness. ‘It wasn’t so bad.’ She made the bills into a neat pile and put them to one side before pulling a set of incomprehensible veterinary notes towards her. ‘We got used to it eventually, and in lots of ways it was easier for me because I had Lucy to look after. I was so busy making sure that she was OK that I didn’t have time to think about myself.’

She glanced at Hal. ‘I can cope with anything as long as I have something to do,’ she told him, ‘but yes, you’re probably right. I do look after Lucy too much. It’s second nature now. We used to fly out to see our father and stepmother in the holidays and it was always me that had to think about tickets and getting to the airport on time when we were old enough to travel unaccompanied.’

‘No wonder you’re so sensible now,’ he said, returning to his own task of going through the junk pile.

‘I sometimes wish I could be reckless and interesting and exciting,’ she confessed, ‘but I just can’t be.’

Hal thought she had looked pretty exciting in the high heels she had worn the night before, but decided he had better not say so.

‘Do you ever try?’ he asked instead.

‘Of course not,’ said Meredith primly. ‘I’m much too sensible for that!’

They both laughed, then both realised at the same time that it had been a mistake to let their eyes meet like that. The air was suddenly tight between them and there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room to breathe properly.

So much for being sensible! With an effort, Meredith wrenched her eyes away from Hal’s and concentrated on taking a proper breath, something that had never presented her with any difficulties before.

Mindlessly, she tidied another pile of papers and sought desperately for something to say to break the fizzing tension. Her gaze skittered around the room, resting on anything except Hal, falling at last on the creased photograph that she had pulled out of the cardboard box earlier and propped against the computer. Meredith reached for it, seizing on the change of subject.

‘Talking of being children, I meant to ask you about this,’ she said, swinging round on the chair and leaning forward to show him the picture without actually meeting his eyes. ‘It’s a lovely photo. Is that you on the right?’

The lingering smile was wiped from Hal’s face. ‘Where did you get that?’

His voice was like a lash and Meredith jerked back in surprise. She had wanted to change the atmosphere, but she hadn’t counted on such spectacular success. The temperature in the room had plummeted and when she looked