Outback Boss, City Bride

my house,’ she added, remembering it wistfully.

If only she could be there now. She could have a bath, pull the curtains in her pretty bedroom, snuggle under the duvet and sleep for a week. Bliss.

‘This…’ She took a hand off the dashboard to wave vaguely at the land stretching out interminably in every direction around them. ‘This is just…alien.’

‘What are you doing here, then?’ Hal heard the harshness in his own voice and was alarmed to realise that he sounded almost disappointed.

It wasn’t as if he was surprised. She had city girl written all over her, and an English city girl at that. It would be hard to find anyone who would look more out of place out here than she did.

Still, she was a stranger, and a stranger who had foisted herself upon him at that. After all that determination to get herself to Wirrindago, she could at least pretend to be interested in it.

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I need to see Lucy.’

‘Is she expecting you? She didn’t mention anything about you coming.’ Hal frowned. Lucy might be a bit scatty, but he was pretty sure she would have told him if her sister was on her way.

Meredith was shaking her head, though. ‘She doesn’t know,’ she told him. ‘I’ve tried to get in touch with her, of course, but there’s never any reply on her phone and she hasn’t responded to any of the messages I’ve left.’

‘Her phone won’t work at Wirrindago,’ said Hal as if it were something any fool knew. ‘There’s no signal out here.’

‘What, none at all?’

Meredith tried to imagine life without a mobile phone, but it was like trying to imagine a thousand square kilometres. It was a different world out here, that was for sure. Her laptop felt like the only bit of normality, and she held it protectively against her side as the truck juddered over the bumpy road.

‘Well, that explains why I haven’t heard from Lucy for so long,’ she said. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Worried enough to fly all the way out to Australia?’ asked Hal incredulously. ‘Lucy’s a little old for you to be checking up on her just because you haven’t heard from her for a few weeks, isn’t she?’

‘I’m not checking up,’ said Meredith, slightly on the defensive. ‘I was just concerned in case something was wrong.’

Hal was unimpressed. ‘Lucy’s…what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? I can’t believe you’ve come chasing to the other side of the world just because she hasn’t dropped you a postcard for a couple of months!’

‘It’s not just that.’ Meredith bit her lip. ‘A friend of ours was badly injured in a car accident about ten days ago. I wanted to tell her. I tried ringing, but I didn’t realise mobile phones wouldn’t work out here, and when I didn’t get a reply to any of my messages, of course I began to worry.’

‘So you’ve come all this way just to give Lucy some bad news?’ Hal frowned. ‘Couldn’t it have waited till she got home? I dare say she’ll be sorry, but there’s not much she can do about it out here.’

‘But there is,’ said Meredith. She turned her head slightly, as if looking out of the window so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Richard needs her.’

Lucy. He needed Lucy, not her.

If she had expected Hal to be sympathetic, she was due for a disappointment. ‘Richard’s the guy who had the accident?’ he said. ‘Sounds to me as if he needs good medical care. Lucy’s not a nurse. I don’t see what she can do.’

‘She can help him out of a coma.’ Meredith had hoped to be able to explain all this to Lucy first, but Hal was going to have to know why her sister was leaving. ‘Richard’s been unconscious ever since the accident and the doctors suggested that familiar voices might help.’

Swallowing, she stared straight ahead, one hand clutching at the window, the other the bare metal dashboard, but she wasn’t seeing the outback. Instead she was in the intensive care ward, looking at Richard lying terrifyingly still in that bed, and the white, strained faces of his parents.

‘Richard’s parents are distraught,’ she went on. ‘They’ve been with him continually and the rest of his family have been talking to him too, but nothing seems to be working. They’re convinced that Lucy’s voice is the one that will help him regain consciousness.’

‘It sounds to me as if they’re grasping at straws,’ Hal commented and Meredith turned slightly to look at him, suddenly desperate to make him understand how important it was for Lucy to go back.

‘No, I’m sure they’re right,’ she said. ‘Richard adores Lucy.’ There, not even a betraying wobble in her voice, she thought, relieved. Hal wouldn’t know how much it had once cost her to acknowledge that truth.

‘She’s the most important person in the world to him,’ she went on. ‘He was devastated when she left for Australia. All he wanted was for her to come back to him. If anyone can bring him back,’ she assured Hal, ‘Lucy can.’

‘If he’s going to regain consciousness he will, regardless of whether Lucy’s there or not,’ said Hal. ‘And if he doesn’t, there’s not much point in her haring back to London, is there? I gather that’s what you want her to do?’

Meredith nodded. ‘We have to try, at least.’

‘I don’t see why. It sounds a lot of sentimental nonsense to me. Your Richard may “adore” Lucy, but she clearly doesn’t adore him. She wouldn’t have come out to Australia if she had, and I have to tell you that she hasn’t been showing any signs of pining. She’s been consoling herself very nicely with one of my ringers.’

Meredith wasn’t entirely sure what a ringer was, but she guessed that it was probably someone who worked for Hal. She might have guessed that Lucy would have found someone else, she thought with an inward sigh. Her sister was always in love with some man or other. She had even been in love with Richard for a while, until Meredith had somehow given herself away one day.

If only she’d kept a closer guard on her expression! Richard had never guessed how she felt, and Lucy wouldn’t have either if she hadn’t happened to catch sight of Meredith’s face in that mirror.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you loved him?’ she had demanded, stricken.

But how could she have said anything when it was obvious that Richard was head over heels in love with Lucy?

With an effort, Meredith dragged herself back to the problem in hand, all grim-featured, six-foot male of it.

‘Lucy may well have found someone else, but she’s still very fond of Richard,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll want to help him.’

‘Maybe she will, but she’s not jaunting back to London to do it,’ said Hal flatly. ‘She’s got a job to do here.’

‘You can’t stop her going!’ protested Meredith.

‘Can’t I? She’s on a six-month contract, and so far she’s only done two. If she wants to leave when her six months are up, that’s up to her, but until then she’s committed herself to staying at Wirrindago.’

Meredith stared at him in disbelief. ‘But you can’t mean to hold her to that when Richard’s so ill! Couldn’t you at least give her some compassionate leave?’

‘Look, it might be different if you’d come to me and said that a member of your family was dangerously ill but, from what I can make out, this guy is just an ex-boyfriend,’ said Hal callously. ‘Presumably Lucy had her reasons for breaking off that relationship. I don’t see why she should be expected to drop everything now and rush back to some man she’s already decided she doesn’t want to be with. The whole thing stinks of emotional blackmail!’

‘It isn’t blackmail!’ How could he be so unfeeling? wondered Meredith furiously. If he could only see how ill Richard was…! But he probably wouldn’t care. He obviously didn’t have any feelings at all. ‘I’m sure Lucy won’t think that, anyway,’ she told him with a defiant look that bounced right off him.

‘It doesn’t matter what she thinks,’ he said in an uncompromising voice. ‘She’s not going anywhere. The men need feeding and someone’s got to look after the children. Who’s going to take care of them if she goes?’

‘Well, let’s see…’ Meredith put her head on one side and pretended to consider the matter, too cross with him to care about the fact that he was evidently married after all. Or had been. ‘I know! What about you?’ she suggested acidly.

‘I’ve got a million acre property to run,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got time to look after two children.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you had them!’

‘They’re not mine,’ said Hal, effectively taking the wind out of her sails. ‘They’re my sister’s kids.’

‘Oh.’ Ready to be outraged at the way he was prepared to shrug aside his responsibilities as a father, Meredith was left feeling a little foolish. ‘Do they live with you all the time?’