‘Where did you learn to do this?’ Peta demanded and he told her. That felt odd, too-talking about the past to a woman who looked as if she was really interested. Who looked as if she really cared.
She didn’t. She couldn’t, he told himself. This farm was her life and she had no part in his. He knew that, but as the last of the curry was finished and she rose to go, he was aware of a sharp stab of loss.
‘I’ll make coffee,’ he told her but she shook her head.
‘I have milking in the morning. Five a.m. I need to go to bed. And it’s back to routine for Harry. He has school.’
‘Aw…’
‘Come on, Harry.’ Peta hauled Harry to his feet and whistled the dogs. ‘Come on, guys. We need to go home and let Mr Benson get his sleep.’
‘It’s just after eight o’clock,’ Marcus said, startled. ‘Even Prince Charming got a better look-in than that.’
‘You left Cinderella in New York,’ Peta said firmly. ‘And she’s staying there.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE silence was deafening.
Peta and Harry left, the dogs followed, and Marcus was left in his little pink house with his thoughts.
His thoughts weren’t exactly little and pink. They were large and black. He cleaned the kitchen and polished the pink bench-tops. He unpacked, put his clothes on the pink clothes hangers, stared at the pink walls, thought about how many hours there were in two weeks and how much pink a man could stand.
Not much more than this.
He set up his laptop and logged into his work space. It was nine at night, which meant it was five in the morning in New York. No one was online.
He’d expected a sheaf of correspondence from Ruby. There was nothing.
A man could go crazy.
Where was everyone? He stared at his cellphone. He could ring. There were plenty of things he could discuss.
He’d wake everyone up.
They worked for him. They’d get over it.
But…
‘Have a holiday,’ Ruby had told him. ‘I mean it, Marcus. No work. Take two weeks. We don’t want to hear from you. See if you can do it.’
She’d said it as a challenge and he’d reacted as if she’d been stupid. But now, staring at his cellphone and at his idle computer, he knew Ruby wasn’t stupid. Ruby knew him better than he knew himself.
Maybe because she’d walked the same lonely road.
Tonight had been good, he thought. Tonight had been…excellent. Teaching a twelve-year-old to cook a curry.
It was more than that, he conceded. His pleasure had come from watching a twelve-year-old enjoy himself. And more than that. Watching a twelve-year-old’s big sister enjoy her little brother’s pleasure. Giving his Cinderella more.
Tonight Peta had been happy and it had felt good. It was a strange sensation but it had felt right. Making Peta happy.
Caring.
Whoa! He caught himself and gave himself a mental swipe to the side of the head. He was getting soppy here. This whole situation was for two weeks, he told himself. Only two weeks. Two weeks, Benson, and you’re out of here.
He was going nuts.
But what the heck was a man to do? He flicked on the television and watched an inane American sitcom. What on earth was this country doing, importing this stuff? Was it funny?
How the heck would he know when he couldn’t concentrate?
How had he ever got himself into this mess? he demanded of himself. The world seemed to be going to bed, but how could he go to bed? His head said it was six a.m. New York time and every single part of him was awake.
Peta had adjusted to New York time, he thought, so maybe she’d be feeling like he was. How could Peta be calmly going home to bed?
On her veranda?
That was another thing to think about. To chew over. To make a girl sleep on the veranda…
This set-up was dreadful, he thought. Appalling. She must have had the pits of a childhood. He thought of her lying in a bed-probably with broken springs-probably with thread-bare blankets-setting the alarm for the crack of dawn or earlier, so she could get up to milk her cows.
She was a real Cinderella, he decided, whether she admitted it or not. And he… He’d volunteered to rescue her.
No, he hadn’t. Offering to marry someone for two weeks out of practicality hardly turned him into Prince Charming.
There must be more he could do.
She couldn’t be asleep. Not if the bedsprings were sticking into her. And…what was that fairy story about the pea? The princess sleeping on a hundred feather mattresses, yet still disturbed by one pea underneath the bottom layer.
Fairytales! He was losing his mind.
But the image refused to go away and he found himself opening the back door and staring outside. You’re going to rescue her from a pea?
I’m not going anywhere.
But he was. He refused to stay one minute longer in this little pink room in this little pink house.
He’d just wander by her veranda, he told himself. Just to make sure. And if there were any peas that needed removing…
Well, maybe he was just the man to do it.
Don’t do it, he told himself. Just go for a walk. And if you end up close…
Sleep was nowhere. Peta lay and stared into the dark and tried to conjure up the pure contentment she’d always felt in this bed. In this place.
When their father had died the boys had conducted a vote and had decreed the inside bedroom was Peta’s. She’d refused. For as long as she remembered she’d lain in this little bed at the far end of the veranda while the boys lay in the bigger bed at the other end. They were not too far away, but not too near. This was her private place. Here she could haul the bedclothes up to her nose and disappear into her thoughts, while out in the wide world cows chewed their cuds, trees rustled in the wind, the sea did its thing, owls hooted, frogs croaked…
This farm was alive at night and it was her company. She’d missed it so much while she was in New York.
She should be revelling in it now.
She should be sleeping. She should. Instead she lay and stared out into the starlit sky and all she could see was Marcus.
Marcus did a circuit of his little house and decided to extend his tour. The moon was full. He could see the shapes of the cows in the paddocks, the shadowy trees and the mountains in the background. He could hear the soft hush-hushing of the surf below the house. He could smell the eucalypts and the salt of the sea.
All of which should make Marcus, a city boy born and bred, scurry back to his little house and close the door against the elements. Instead he found himself wandering in a wider arc from the house. Just walking. Following the tracks made by generations of Peta’s family as they went about their business on the farm.
Getting closer to Peta?
