Outback Boss, City Bride

‘It was worse for Hal,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I don’t remember much about that time, but Hal was older. He remembers everything, and I think he feels responsible, as if he should have somehow known what Jack was going to do. Dad was broken up and it was Hal who had to hold everything together until our aunt arrived.’

‘It must have been hard for him,’ said Meredith. ‘For all of you.’

Lydia shrugged practically. ‘We did all right. And you have to move on. It’s such a pity Hal’s engagement to Jill didn’t work out. It made him think that no woman would ever stick it at Wirrindago, and that if he did get married, history would repeat itself, but lots of people have very happy marriages out here, and you can have unhappy marriages in a city. It’s nothing to do with the place.’

‘Still, you’d have to love somebody a lot to be prepared to live somewhere like Wirrindago all the time,’ said Meredith.

‘Yes,’ said Lydia, looking at her seriously. ‘You would.’

Meredith was sad to see them go the next day. ‘It’s going to be quiet without you,’ she told Emma and Mickey as she hugged them goodbye.

‘I wish we could stay,’ said Emma, clinging to her.

‘Now, don’t start that again,’ said Lydia briskly. ‘You know you’re looking forward to getting home and seeing Dad and it’s not as if it’s goodbye for ever. We’ll come out and see Uncle Hal again next year.’

‘And you,’ said Emma loyally to Meredith, who found that her throat was suddenly tight.

‘No, I won’t be here,’ she said, but she couldn’t imagine not being there. She couldn’t imagine being back in her London house, with no galahs screeching in the trees, no fierce blue sky, no red earth.

No Hal.

But she couldn’t imagine staying here for ever either. She would go nuts with boredom. OK, she hadn’t had time to be bored yet, but if she was here all the time…of course she would get bored.

Wouldn’t she?

Not that there was any question of staying for ever. Even if Lucy hadn’t been coming back, Hal had made it clear that any relationship would be a strictly temporary one, so getting involved would be pointless.

Wouldn’t it?

Completely pointless, Meredith told herself, but she was very aware of Hal standing next to her as they waved off Lydia and the children. When the car had disappeared and the dust had settled, they still hadn’t moved. They weren’t even looking at each other, but the air around them was so taut that Meredith had to suck in extra oxygen. Funny to be standing out here with hundreds of miles of space around them and to feel that there wasn’t enough air to breathe.

‘Well,’ she said, as the silence threatened to smother them.

‘Well,’ said Hal.

He turned and looked at her for a moment. Her hair had grown out into a softer style since she’d arrived. It was curling now around her face, the sun picking up gold at its tips, and she had a hand to her forehead to shade her face. She was wearing the old shirt that he had given her for cooking, and she looked warm and alluring and somehow right standing there beside him.

I won’t be here, she had told Emma.

Hal tried to imagine how it would be when she had gone, when he wouldn’t be able to walk inside and find her in the kitchen, or hard at work in the study, or quiet and still on the veranda at night, but his mind shied away from the image of emptiness and loneliness.

Which was ridiculous. He’d never been lonely before, and he certainly wasn’t about to start now.

‘We’ll be back for lunch,’ he said gruffly and strode off.

Meredith watched him go and felt the familiar roil of desire in her entrails before she made herself go back inside. And be sensible.

But, no matter how hard she concentrated on all the reasons why it would be stupid-more than stupid, ridiculous-to get involved, Meredith couldn’t stop her heart crashing into her throat when she heard Hal’s boots on the wooden steps at lunch time. All the men came in for lunch, but she was only aware of him. She felt as if her whole body was charged with electricity, and kept waiting for him to stare at her and ask her why she was buzzing and humming.

He wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t Richard. He wasn’t perfect. But she wanted to touch him more than she could ever remember wanting anything before. She wanted to be able to go round to the end of the table, to put her arms around him from behind and bend down to kiss the side of his neck. She wanted to run her hands over his back, under his shirt, to whisper that she didn’t care if they both had work to do and that it was the middle of the day, she just wanted him to take her to bed…

Meredith swallowed hard and wondered if she was actually running a fever. That would account for the heat that kept washing through her, the light-headedness, the churning in her stomach, the way her bones had turned to liquid. She needed to lie down.

Or she needed to sort herself out.

Think of it as a fever, she told herself. It just needs to work its way through your system. And you can help it on its way. All you have to do is tell Hal that you’ve changed your mind.

The more Meredith thought about it, the more she thought that was exactly what she needed to do. Why was she even hesitating? She was twenty-eight, for heaven’s sake, and she had never had a passionate physical affair. At this rate, she was never going to have any kind of affair, and she would dwindle into a sensible, practical middle age knowing that she had never been wild or reckless or simply taken what had been offered.

It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t going to last with Hal-they both knew that-but surely that made it even better? Meredith persuaded herself. Neither of them would have any false expectations. It would just be…a physical thing.

At the thought of just how physical it might be, a shiver of pure desire snaked down Meredith’s spine. She was supposed to be working but the words on the screen kept blurring as she pictured Hal instead, settling his hat on his head, the way the stern mouth relaxed into a smile, the unself-conscious grace with which he swung himself into the saddle. And she remembered his face as he had turned to her and said that he wanted her-the creases around those strangely light eyes, the planes of his face, the line of his mouth, the faint stubble on his jaw-and the mere memory was enough to turn her entrails into a churning, molten mass.

She could do it. Meredith was half scared by her own daring, by acting so out of character. All she had to do was say it, and she could give in to this longing to press her lips to his throat, to kiss her way along his jaw, to taste his mouth and feel his body, lean and hard beneath her hands…

If you ever change your mind, Meredith, all you have to do is let me know.

There was something about the light here, something about the space that made her want to cast off the shackles that usually held her, made her want to do something different, be different. She was sick of being sensible, sick of thinking about the long term. She wanted to be rash and impulsive. She wanted to follow her heart instead of her head for once.

Maybe it would be a mistake. Maybe it would be humiliating. Maybe she would be hurt, but she didn’t care. She was going to try.

If she could find the words.

By the time supper ended, Meredith was so jittery and jangly with nerves that she couldn’t eat-and that was a first!

‘Not hungry?’ asked Hal as she pushed her plate aside.

Her eyes, which had been skittering around looking everywhere except at him, met his, and her heart lurched. ‘No,’ she said huskily.

It seemed an age before the stockmen got up to go. They had all wanted second helpings of the apple pie she had made, which would have been flattering if she hadn’t wanted to scream at them to eat up and go away!

But at last they were gone. Meredith’s pulse was booming and thumping so loudly that she could hardly hear the clink of dishes as she gathered them up.

‘I’ll do this,’ said Hal. ‘Why don’t you have a night off? Go and sit on the veranda and I’ll bring you some coffee.’

Meredith didn’t want any coffee, but she thought it might be a chance to compose herself and think about what