Christmas with her Boss

smoke. ‘I propose to base myself here. No, wrong, I propose we base ourselves here, because I need you, Meg, in business, in every facet of my life. You’re smart and intuitive and funny and I want you with me every step of the way. So what I’d really like is to build here, set up headquarters here. Keep the farm but add to it. We’d need a helicopter pad. I fancy a swimming pool. And I bet a gymnasium would really help Scott.’

‘Scott…’

‘He’s part of it. He’s part of your life. Family.’

‘William…’

‘I know,’ he said hurriedly, afraid to stop, afraid of how she’d respond. ‘It’s just it was a really long train ride back to Melbourne, and making plans is what I’m principally good at. I thought we could restore the old cottage on the other side of the dairy and ask Kerrie if she’d consider living here. Letty told me it was a dream of yours and it sounds good to me. That means we’d always have a milker on hand. Then…maybe we could employ a nanny…’

‘A nanny,’ she said, astonished.

‘For Kerrie’s kids,’ he said hurriedly. ‘And for…for whoever else might come along. That means you and I can travel, whenever we wish. There’s so much… It’ll take us years to sort it out, but we will. We can. If we want to. If you want to. What…what do you think?’

There was a long, long pause. The enemy alien cow poacher was still in the back of her mind, he thought, but slowly, slowly, he watched her expression change. She was searching his face and what she saw seemed to change things.

‘I think…’ she whispered, but then her voice firmed. ‘I think I’d never leave our kids with a nanny,’ she said, and suddenly the woman in the pink silk pyjamas was smiling.

His heart gave a leap. I’d never leave our kids… There were all sorts of assumptions in that statement, and he liked them all.

‘How many kids would you like?’ he asked tenderly.

‘William!’

Maybe he had to throw in a few more inducements. Maybe he still didn’t have it right. How to talk of love… It seemed so fragile-and all he had was words. Not now.

‘You know, Letty and Scotty could travel with us too, if they like,’ he said hurriedly. ‘They could see Manhattan. And London and Hong Kong. I think they’d like it. But I’m serious about only travelling when I must.’ He hesitated. ‘You know, I didn’t get this right. My parents taught me personal stuff was a disaster so I buried myself in work. But you…you enjoy what you do for me, yes?’

‘I love it,’ she said simply.

‘Yet you love the farm.’

‘Yes.’

‘As I like pulling silencers off cars.’

‘Do you?’

‘I do,’ he said and it was a vow. She was looking at him very strangely but he’d started-he had to explain. And he was struggling to explain it to himself.

Words… Find the right words, he told himself. Get it right.

Say the love word.

‘I’ve been thinking…if I could mix grease guns with business, then maybe I could mix loving in there somewhere as well,’ he tried, but it didn’t sound right.

‘In the spare bits?’

‘No,’ he said, sure of himself on this one. ‘In all my bits. In my business. In my spare time, in my hobbies, in my dreams. I want loving in all of it. Meg, I want you.’

She looked stunned. She looked star-struck. ‘You’re truly serious?’

And there was only one answer to that. ‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,’ he said simply. ‘No matter what happens, at the end of every day of my life I want to lie in bed with you.’

‘And…talk?’ she managed, and there was the beginning of laughter in her lovely eyes.

‘Or anything else that might occur to us,’ he told her, smiling, loving her with all his heart, and suddenly she chuckled, a lovely deep ripple of wonder, and he thought he might just have got this right.

‘So will you marry me?’ he asked, for what else was there to say?

She gasped. ‘You want to marry me?’

‘Yes.’ Then… ‘But I do have a problem,’ he was forced to admit. ‘Try as I might, Christmas night is not a time to buy a ring.’

‘Not?’ she said and she laced her voice with such a depth of disappointment that he wasn’t sure where the chuckle ended and sincerity began.

Aargh. He had everything right except this. But then Killer took a leap from the chopper and lumbered over. Dangling from his collar was his dog tag. It was a ring-of sorts.

‘Excuse me, Killer,’ he said and flicked off the collar and removed the tag. ‘Can I borrow this until the shops reopen?’

‘I don’t believe this,’ Meg said faintly.

‘We need to organise new tags, anyway,’ William said, refastening the collar. ‘I’m shipping Sheeba out here as soon as I possibly can.’

‘You’re shipping Sheeba…’

‘I figure you have one dog; Letty has two and Scott has two. When I decided to stay, I took out my Christmas card and stared at the picture of Sheeba and thought-how could I turn my back on such a fine gift? But I’m not doing part-time anything any more, so she gets to be full-time. I’m hoping she likes being a farm dog, but how could she not?’ And then, because this seemed as good a time as any, he dropped on one knee and held out the dog tag. ‘So, Miss Jardine…’

‘Meg,’ she said sharply.

‘Meg,’ he said, suitably chastened. ‘My love.’

‘That’s much better.’ She was smiling mistily down at him. ‘My love is way better than Meg.’

‘Hey!’ It was a piercing shout and he turned, groaning. But the shout and the associated rumble couldn’t be ignored.

For it was Letty and Scott, bouncing over the paddocks towards them on the ancient farm tractor. ‘Don’t you dare propose until we get there,’ Letty yelled in a voice that was truly scary.

‘Am I so obvious?’ he demanded of his love and his love chuckled and behind them Steve laughed and Killer started barking.

‘My love…’ he started urgently, but Meg put her finger on his lips and hushed him. She tugged him up and she smiled.

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she whispered. ‘In front of witnesses.’

‘You have to be joking.’

‘You’ve been a loner all your life, William McMaster. No more.’

So he waited. With a promise like that, a man could wait. He waited until Letty and Scott were in full earshot and they’d introduced themselves to Steve and they were holding the dogs back and then Letty said, ‘Okay, get on with it.’

And William, who was feeling absurdly self-conscious, suddenly thought no.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’ Meg said.

‘Steve, how many does that chopper hold?’

‘Six,’ Steve said.

‘Three people and five dogs?’

‘At a push.’

‘Then there are free chopper flights on offer,’ he said. ‘Starting now. You guys can watch, but from above. Take it or leave it. Witnesses from above, but not right here.’

‘Oh, cool,’ Scotty said, high with excitement. ‘Come on, Grandma, who wants to listen to a soppy proposal when we can ride in a chopper? And it is,’ he added conscientiously, ‘their business anyway.’