Outback Boss, City Bride

disappointed if I turned up instead?’

‘But he’s in a coma, you said. He won’t know. He’ll just be aware that there’s someone there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Meredith. ‘That’s why it has to be Lucy. Richard wants to see her so much, I’m quite sure that as soon as he senses she’s there, it will give him the strength to come round. If he wakes up and sees me sitting there, he would be so disappointed he’d probably have a relapse, and that’s not what we want at all!’

She was making it into a joke, but Hal wondered about the underlying note of bleakness in her voice. He wasn’t a particularly perceptive man, but it was obvious that this Richard meant a lot more to her than she was letting on.

‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself,’ he said.

‘No, I don’t.’ Meredith shook her head firmly. ‘Richard’s not interested in me.’

She was protesting a bit too much, Hal thought. ‘You seem to be going to a lot of trouble for someone who’s not interested in you,’ he commented mildly.

Meredith averted her face. ‘He’s a friend,’ she said.

‘Would you fly all the way out to Australia for all your friends?’

‘I would if they needed me.’ She turned back to him, pulling a stray strand of brown hair distastefully from her face. ‘And if I could afford it. To be honest, Richard’s parents paid for my ticket. They’re desperate for anything that will help Richard get better, and they’ve pinned all their hopes on me finding Lucy.’

Hal’s mouth turned down disapprovingly. ‘It was a lot to ask you to do that.’

‘They didn’t. I offered,’ said Meredith. ‘I’m self-employed-I’m a freelance translator-so as long as I’ve got my laptop and can connect to the Internet, I can go wherever and whenever I want.’ She patted the computer by her side. ‘I couldn’t stand sitting around waiting for news about Richard, and told them I’d rather be doing something. I was worried about not hearing from Lucy too, and it seemed a good opportunity to find out if she was OK.’

‘So this is all your idea, in fact?’

She looked away again. ‘Richard’s parents kept saying how much they wished Lucy was there and it seemed like something useful I could do,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I would have paid for the tickets, but they insisted, and I let them pay because it made them feel that it was something they could do too, and obviously they can’t leave Richard at the moment.’

‘I see,’ said Hal.

He thought he did. Meredith West was obviously one of those managing women who always thought they knew best and who decided what everyone else wanted without ever bothering to actually ask. He wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that it was Meredith who had put the idea of bringing Lucy home into Richard’s parents’ minds.

Well, she wasn’t going to manage him.

They drove on in silence. Meredith was so tired by this stage that her eyeballs seemed to be revolving in her head and her eyelids were so heavy that it was a huge effort to keep them from clanging down on to her lower lashes, and even that wasn’t enough. Incredibly, given all the jolting and bouncing, her head kept lolling to one side until a rough lurch of the truck jerked her awake again.

To Meredith it was as if they had been driving for ever. Every now and then, they would come to a creek bed and Hal would pause, shift gears and then bump cautiously down one side and up the other. It was funny to think that sometimes these creeks would be full of water. Meredith couldn’t imagine it at all. She had never been anywhere so brown and dry.

‘Nearly there,’ said Hal at long last, and Meredith shook herself awake and looked around her.

The landscape had changed, she realised. The dust was still that strange reddish-brown, the light still glaring, but it was rockier around here and there were sparse, spindly trees on either side of the track which made it look positively lush compared to the flat emptiness they’d been travelling through earlier.

After a while the trees thinned again and they came out on to more open land. ‘That’s the homestead up ahead,’ said Hal, pointing into the distance.

Meredith squinted, but couldn’t make out much more than a smudge of green and she was suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation of just how isolated they were, how far she was from home. This wasn’t a place you could just walk away from. If Hal stuck by his refusal to allow Lucy to break her contract, how on earth would they be able to get away?

It was almost impossible to judge distances here. One minute the homestead was no more than a shimmering mirage, the next, it seemed, they were bowling past fenced paddocks and a motley collection of what seemed to Meredith to be little more than sheds with corrugated iron roofs but which Hal told her were the stockmen’s quarters.

He had intended to drive through the yards and round to the side of the homestead where they could unload the stores in the back of the truck directly into the kitchen, but Meredith’s expression was so unimpressed that on an impulse he changed his mind and headed round to the front of the house instead where there was a little patch of grass, lovingly irrigated to an almost startling green.

This was the best view of the old homestead, with its deep veranda and the elegant lace ironwork that was left from a less practical age, but Meredith didn’t seem particularly impressed.

Why should she be? Hal wondered, annoyed with himself for even trying to give her a good impression of Wirrindago. Anyone would think he cared what she thought.

He jerked the truck to a halt at the bottom of the steps and for a moment Meredith sat numbly staring at the house in front of her, unable to believe that they had actually stopped moving.

It was a much bigger building than she had imagined, somehow. Bigger and older and more substantial in spite of the iron roof. The walls, almost hidden in the shadows of the veranda, were of solid stone and the door and windows hinted at a faded grandeur. This had once been a gracious home, she realised in surprise, but times had evidently been less gracious for a long time now. There were distinct signs of neglect-or perhaps of an ungracious owner, she thought, sliding a sidelong glance at Hal.

He seemed to be in a bad mood again. Getting out of the truck, he slammed the door as he spotted two sulky- looking children on the veranda. The girl was slumped in the chair, while the little boy’s head was bent intently over a computer game.

‘Uncle Hal’s back,’ Meredith heard one of them shout inside the house, but neither of them made any move to come down and greet them.

Bad move, thought Meredith as she saw Hal’s brows snap together in that forbidding frown.

‘You two can come and help take all this stuff to the kitchen,’ he snapped, moving round to the back of the truck.

‘Oh…do we have to?’ moaned the girl.

‘Yes, you do. You too, Mickey.’

‘I’m just finishing this game-’

‘Now!’

Evidently Hal didn’t believe in reasoning with children. No wonder the children looked sulky, thought Meredith. It worked, though. Mickey put down his computer game and trailed down the steps after his equally reluctant sister, but both stopped dead and stared when Meredith got stiffly out of the truck and stretched.

Hal followed the children’s glances. She looked decidedly the worse for wear. Her suit was rumpled, her hair a wild bush around her head and she was swaying with tiredness, but he had to admit that there was a certain style about her. Putting a hand to the small of her back, she stretched and winced at the soreness of her muscles.

‘Emma and Mickey, you’d better come and say hello to-’ he began, only to find himself interrupted by Lucy, who had come out of the door and was standing at the top of the steps, staring in disbelief at her sister.

‘Meredith?’ she said, astounded.

‘Hi, Lucy.’ Thousands of miles she had travelled, and that was all she could say!

Shaken out of her trance, Lucy came hurrying down the steps to sweep Meredith into a warm hug.

‘I can’t believe it’s really you!’ she cried. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ Then she pulled back to hold Meredith at arm’s length as her beautiful blue eyes darkened with puzzlement. ‘But what on earth are you doing here?’