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‘Bushman’s Creek isn’t a suitable place for you or the baby,’ he said brusquely.
‘Are you trying to tell me that there are no women or children in the outback?’
‘I’m trying to tell you that conditions on the station are very different to what you’re used to,’ said Gray with an edge to his voice. ‘It takes nearly forty minutes to fly there from here, and it’s over two hours by road. In the Wet, the only way you can get in and out is by plane. You’d be a very long way from shops and doctors and all the other things you probably take for granted, and, quite frankly, I haven’t the time to look after you at the moment. This is one of the busiest times of the year.
‘I’ve got fifteen thousand head of cattle out there,’ he went on, nodding his head at the distant horizon. ‘They’ve all got to be mustered in so that we can deal with them and draft out the sale cattle. The last cook-cum-housekeeper left several weeks ago, and nobody’s done any cleaning since. We’re taking it in turns to cook, and the kindest way to describe meals at the moment is “basic”.’
He shook his head. ‘I think you’d find the conditions too uncomfortable,’ he told Clare bluntly. ‘If you don’t want to go home, you’d be better off taking Alice to one of the resorts on the coast and waiting there until Jack gets back.’
‘I don’t think I can afford to do that, either.’ Clare flushed, humiliated at having to admit how precarious her financial situation was. ‘I’ve got a good job at home, but Pippa had never managed to save any money, and babies are expensive little things. And then when Pippa was ill, and I had to take time off to look after her and Alice, I used up the savings I had. I bought our ticket out here on credit as it was.’ She bit her lip. ‘I just don’t see how I could manage staying in a hotel or renting a house without knowing when Jack was going to get your message.
‘Besides,’ she went on bravely, ‘it sounds as if I could be useful to you.’
Gray’s unsettling brown gaze travelled from her earrings down over the stylishly simple dress to her strappy sandals. ‘Useful?’ he echoed, lifting one brow in a way that brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘In what way?’
His expression didn’t change, but she knew that he was amused. It was something to do with the deepening of a dent at the corner of his mouth, a creasing at the edges of his eyes, the faintest of glimmers in the unfathomable eyes. If he thought she was funny, she thought illogically, he might at least have the decency to smile properly!
She put up her chin. ‘I could be your housekeeper,’ she said with a shade of defiance. ‘I’m perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning.’
In response, Gray reached out and took hold of her hands. Turning them over, he ran his thumbs consideringly over her palms. ‘It doesn’t look as if you do very much rough work.’
His touch was quite impersonal, but Clare was disconcerted to feel her skin tingling. His hands were strong, cool and callused and very brown against the paleness of her English skin. It was as if his fingers were charged with electricity, sending tiny shocks shivering all the way up her arm, and she snatched her hands away, furious to find herself blushing.
‘Herding a few cows around is easy compared to looking after a baby for twenty-four hours a day,’ she snapped, to cover her confusion. ‘I’m used to getting my hands dirty.’
‘You’re not used to the heat and the dust and the flies and the boredom,’ Gray pointed out, apparently unperturbed by the way she had pulled her hands out of his. ‘I’m not sure you realise how tough things can be out there.’
Not quite sure what to do with her hands now that she had freed them, Clare folded her arms in an unconsciously defensive pose. ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ she said.
Gray was unimpressed. ‘I’m talking about physical toughness, and right now you don’t look very tough to me.’ He eyed Clare critically. ‘You look as if you’re about to collapse.’
‘I’ve got jet-lag,’ she said, wondering why she could still feel her hands burning where he had touched her. ‘We only arrived in Australia yesterday morning, and I haven’t been able to rest much since then. I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.
‘Look,’ she went on persuasively, seeing that Gray still looked unconvinced, ‘I may not be your ideal housekeeper, but you said yourself that you haven’t the time to find anyone else, and I’m prepared to work hard in return for accommodation. I won’t get in your way. To be honest, I’d rather have something to do to keep my mind off things.’
She hesitated. ‘You’ve been very frank about the conditions on the station. I can’t say I’m going to like it out there—I’m not like Pippa; I’ve never enjoyed roughing it—but I’ll do whatever I have to to get to Bushman’s Creek.’
‘Why are you so keen to get there if you don’t think you’re going to like it?’ he asked.
‘Because I can’t afford to do anything else,’ said Clare, pushing her hair wearily behind her ear. ‘Because I want to see the place that meant so much to Pippa. If conditions are as unsuitable as you say, it may be that I’ll have to take Alice home with me, but I need to see for myself. If, on the other hand, I think it’s somewhere she could grow up safely and happily, I could make sure that she’s settled by the time Jack gets back. And, to be perfectly frank,’ she finished, ‘because I just want to stop for a while. I want to stop travelling, stop thinking, just…stop.’
‘If I let you come, I don’t want you to take anything for granted,’ Gray warned, but she could see that he was relenting. ‘Jack will have to make a decision about Alice when he gets home. Nobody else can do it for him.’
‘I know.’ Clare tried a smile. ‘Please…?’
‘Oh, all right,’ he said almost irritably. ‘You can come—but on one condition.’
Clare would have agreed to anything just then. ‘What is it?’
‘Alice’s relationship to Jack has to remain secret until he chooses to tell people about it. I don’t want him coming home to find that everyone knows that he’s supposedly a father except him. As far as anyone else you meet there is concerned, you’re just at Bushman’s Creek as a housekeeper. You rang me up last night to ask if there might be a job, and I’ve come in to pick you up.’
Clare thought about it. It seemed fair enough, under the circumstances. ‘All right,’ she agreed. It sounded a little grudging. She couldn’t blame Gray for being cautious and wanting to protect his brother’s interests, but at least he hadn’t rejected Alice out of hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully, and she smiled at him.
Something flickered in the brown eyes, and he looked away as he put his hat on his head. ‘If you’re coming, you’d better come now,’ he said in a brusque voice. ‘I need to get back to the yards.’
Clare was too relieved at his agreement to object to his lack of enthusiasm. ‘I just have to pack a few things,’ she said hastily. ‘I won’t be more than a few minutes.’
Scooping Alice out of her chair, she sniffed at her cautiously. ‘At least she doesn’t need her nappy changing,’ she said in some relief. She glanced hesitantly at Gray. ‘It would be quicker if I could leave her with you,’ she suggested.
After the tiniest of pauses, Gray nodded, and Clare handed Alice to him. Her hands brushed against his and she had to resist the temptation to pull them away. ‘I hope she’ll be OK,’ she said, a little worried now as she stood back. ‘She’s getting to the stage where she doesn’t really like being handed over to strangers.’
She lingered, uncertain whether to leave them together or not, watching as Gray held Alice at arm’s length and man and baby regarded each other dubiously. Gray’s eyes were intent, and Clare wondered if he were searching Alice’s small, round face for signs of a resemblance to his brother.
She was about to suggest that she took Alice with her after all when, as if at some unspoken signal, the two of them broke into simultaneous smiles. Clare was used to the way Alice’s beaming smile twisted her heartstrings, but she was unprepared for the effect of Gray’s. It transformed him from a brown, expressionless stranger into someone younger and warmer, someone disturbingly, unexpectedly attractive, and Clare felt oddly jolted.
There was a strange expression on Gray’s face as he drew Alice into his chest and held her against him, his strong hands absurdly big on the little body. His gaze slid past the baby to Clare, who was watching them as if transfixed.
‘Alice will be fine with me,’ he said.
CHAPTER TWO
THE hotel was the only two-storey building in town, but its refinements went no further than a serviceable flight of stairs. There was certainly no truck with any namby-pamby nonsense like lifts or porters. Clare dragged her heavy case along the corridor and paused for breath at the top of the stairs, looking down at the scene in the entrance hall below.
Alice was looking quite at home in Gray Henderson’s arms, and he was managing to carry on a conversation with the hotel manager while she explored his face with fascination, testing the texture of his skin and hair, patting his cheek and pulling at his lips.
Clare was conscious of a faint twinge of envy as she watched. It must be nice to be Alice, to be able to relax against a shoulder as firm as Gray’s and to feel his hands holding her safe and secure. What would it be like to run her fingers over his face, as Alice was doing, to lean against that lean, hard body?
A slow shiver snaked its way down Clare’s spine at the thought, and she swallowed, disconcerted by her own reaction. How odd, she found herself thinking, that the first man she should feel even a twinge of awareness for since Mark should be someone so completely different. Mark had been dark and intense and passionate. Gray didn’t look as if he even knew what passion meant!
Except…Clare’s gaze rested for a moment on his mouth. She was going to spend the next few weeks alone with this man, she realised, as if for the first time, and the shivery feeling intensified into a tight knot at the base of her spine.
Hastily, she bent to pick up the case. She was being ridiculous. There was no question of being physically attracted to Gray Henderson! Any amateur psychologist would tell her that his appeal was obvious. She was tired and vulnerable with the strain of coping alone for so long, and there was something very reassuring about his air of quiet strength. He might not have the looks to set her pulse racing, as Mark had, but right now the sense that he could deal calmly and competently with any situation that might arise was more appealing than any handsome face!
The hotel manager gave them a lift out to the airport in his truck. Clare was taken aback to see her things tossed unceremoniously into the back, while she was expected to squeeze into the front seat with Alice between the two men. ‘How far are we going?’ she asked nervously, remembering Pippa’s stories about long, bumpy drives across the outback.
‘Only to the airport,’ said Gray, resting his arm along the back of the seat behind her head. ‘It’s quicker to fly than to drive, and there’s usually someone around to give me a lift in to town from there.’
‘Oh.’ Clare was pleased to discover that she wasn’t going to have to spend the next two or three hours trying not to notice the strength of his thigh pressed against hers. Not that Gray seemed to find the situation at all uncomfortable. He was talking easily across her, and Clare might as well have been a bag of shopping on the seat between them for all the notice he took of her.
It was a relief when they reached the airport and she could move away from him, although she was not impressed by the single runway set for some reason in the middle of nowhere. Clare could turn around completely and see nothing but flat brown scrub stretching off to the horizon in every direction. It was like a toy airport, she thought disparagingly, with a windsock hanging limply in the midday heat and the ‘terminal’ no more than a hut offering shelter from the sun.
Gray seemed to know everybody. Even as they drove along the road, she had noticed the two men lifting fingers in greeting to the passing cars, and now, having exchanged words with the few passengers waiting for an incoming flight, he led the way across the tarmac to where a tiny plane with a propeller on its nose was parked.
‘We’re not going in that?’ said Clare involuntarily.
‘We certainly are.’ Gray patted the plane affectionately. ‘This old girl’s more reliable than any car over this kind of country, and she’s done this flight so often she could practically take herself home.’
Clare wasn’t sure that the great age and experience of the plane was that reassuring, and in spite of her belief in Gray’s competence she couldn’t help closing her eyes as they sped along the airstrip, propeller blurring, and lifted lightly off the ground. She felt the plane bank and continue climbing until after a couple of minutes they levelled off.
‘You can open your eyes now,’ said Gray in a dry voice.
Very cautiously, Clare unscrewed her eyes. ‘I’ve never been in such a small plane before,’ she confessed. She touched the door as if afraid it would fall off. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much keeping us up here.’
‘You’re safe as houses,’ he said. ‘Relax and enjoy the view.’
What view? Clare wanted to ask. Spread out below them, the land stretched out to the distant horizon, as flat and featureless as a piece of sandpaper, and almost exactly the same rusty-brown colour. The sky was a huge blue glare, arching over a vast expanse of nothingness. Clare looked down at it and wondered what on earth Pippa had found to love in such barren, intimidating country.
‘Is it all this…’ she searched for a tactful word ‘…this empty?’
‘It’s not empty at all,’ said Gray. ‘It just looks that way from up here. You’d be surprised how different things are when you’re on the ground. There’s lots to see—you just have to learn to look at it in the right way.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Her voice dripped polite disbelief, but Gray was unperturbed. ‘You can tell you’ve never been outback before,’ he said.
‘No,’ Clare sighed in agreement. This wasn’t her kind of place at all. ‘Municipal parks are the wildest places I usually see.’
‘Not an outdoor girl, then?’
‘Absolutely not,’ she said, smiling faintly at the very idea. ‘I’ve always been a city girl. Pippa was different. She couldn’t wait to bump along dusty tracks and pit herself against the elements, but I never saw the appeal. Cities seem much more interesting places to me. There’s always something happening, something to do, something to see.’
Gray glanced at her. ‘That’s what I feel about the bush.’
‘It’s not the same,’ objected Clare. ‘When you finish work, you can’t go out for a meal, or a glass of wine with friends. You can’t go to the theatre or a concert or an art gallery. You can’t wander around the streets watching people and seeing how different they all are.’
‘Is that what you do?’
She pushed her hair behind her ears with a sigh. ‘It’s what I used to do. I’ve had to put my life on hold for a bit.’
‘Because of the baby?’
‘Yes. She’s more important at the moment.’ Clare shrugged. ‘I’m lucky. I’ve got good friends, a great flat, a job I love and a wonderful boss who’s keeping my job open for me until I can go home. They’ll all still be there when I get back.’
There was a defensive, almost defiant undercurrent to her voice, as though she were trying to convince herself rather than Gray. He made no comment, asking only what she did as his eyes moved steadily between the instrument panel and the horizon and the ground below them.
‘I work for an agency that represents singers and musicians,’ she told him. ‘I’m not musical myself—I wish I were—but I am good at organisation, so I deal with the administrative side of things. I love working with creative people…’
She trailed off, assailed by a rush of nostalgia. If only she were there now, in the clean, familiar office, with the gossip and the jokes and the constant, exciting buzz of activity! She was the sensible, practical one in the office, and she wondered if anyone at work would be able to imagine her now, suspended above an alien landscape in this tiny plane with a man whose stillness made her look edgy and frivolous in comparison.
‘It sounds like being housekeeper on a cattle station is going to be a shock for you,’ said Gray, and Clare pushed her hair wearily away from her face.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, too tired and homesick to make the effort to sound enthusiastic at the prospect.
‘I can see why you’re anxious to contact Jack,’ Gray went on with something of an edge. ‘The sooner you can hand over the baby, the sooner you can get back to your job.’
Clare cast him a resentful look. ‘You make it sound like I can’t wait to get rid of her!’
‘Can you?’
Clare looked down at Alice on her lap. She was heavy with sleep, utterly relaxed as she lay in the curve of Clare’s arm, the ridiculously long baby lashes fanned over her round cheeks and her mouth working occasionally, as if she were dreaming about food. Clare could feel her breathing, and her heart ached with love for her.
‘I always thought I didn’t want children,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought a baby would be too messy, too demanding, too difficult to adapt to my job. And Alice is messy, and she’s exhausting and all the things I was afraid she would be, but…somehow none of that matters when you’ve got a baby to look after. I can’t imagine my life without her now.’
‘If you feel like that about her, why didn’t you keep her in England?’ asked Gray.
‘Because Pippa made me promise that I would take her to her father,’ said Clare, turning in her seat to look at him. ‘And because, deep down, I think it would be better for Alice to be here with him. I couldn’t afford the childcare which I’d need if I wanted to look after her the way Pippa would want and continue to do my job.’
‘You could give up your job,’ he suggested with a cool look.
‘And live on what? Pippa never had a chance to make any financial provision for Alice, and I’ve used up all the savings I had. I love my flat, but it’s tiny. It’s OK for a baby, but it would be hopeless for a toddler, and there’s no garden, and I don’t see how I could afford to move unless I kept my job, which takes me back to square one.’
Clare sighed. ‘Believe me, I have thought about it! It’s going to break my heart to say goodbye to Alice,’ she said, stroking the sleeping baby’s head, ‘but I have to think about what’s best for her. I wouldn’t have brought her all the way out here unless I thought that the best thing for her was to be with her father.’
‘And if Jack doesn’t accept that she’s his daughter?’
‘Then I’ll think again,’ said Clare. ‘But I think he will, and so do you.’
Gray’s brown eyes rested briefly on her face. ‘Do I?’
‘I don’t believe you would have agreed to let us come anywhere near Bushman’s Creek if you didn’t think that Jack was Alice’s father,’ she told him. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
Gray didn’t answer immediately. His gaze dropped to Alice, and then returned to the instrument panel. ‘She looks like Jack,’ he admitted after a moment. ‘She’s got the same eyes, the same sort of look about her.
‘I was away the time you said your sister was working at Bushman’s Creek, so it could have happened the way you said,’ he went on, as if justifying his instinct to himself. ‘And Jack’s been different since then. He always used to be very laid-back, but if he felt strongly about your sister and she left, that might explain why he’s been moody and restless for the last year or so.’
‘Didn’t you ever try asking him what was wrong?’ asked Clare.
‘Jack’s a grown man, not a kid,’ said Gray repressively. ‘If he had wanted to tell me what the matter was, he would have.’
Exasperated at the typically male response to any suggestion that they might discuss anything even vaguely connected to emotions, Clare rolled her eyes. ‘He might just have needed you to show some interest!’
At least she had the satisfaction of provoking a reaction from Gray. His mouth tightened and the glance he gave her was distinctly unfriendly. ‘I know Jack a whole lot better than you do,’ he said in a curt voice. ‘I would have expected him to have at least mentioned your sister when I came back, and the fact that he didn’t means that I’m not prepared to make any commitment on his behalf. As far as I’m concerned, Alice is your niece, and not mine, and until such time as Jack comes home and can decide for himself, you are just a housekeeper. Is that understood?’
Clare put up her chin. ‘Perfectly,’ she said.
The propeller droned remorselessly on, but inside the cabin there was a tense silence. At least, Clare felt tense. Gray looked exactly the same. He was relaxed in his seat, his hands steady on the joystick, and she eyed him resentfully.
Just a housekeeper. She wasn’t sure why the comment had ruffled her. If she had to spend weeks stuck out in the middle of nowhere, she would much rather have something to do, even if it was just cooking and cleaning. Still, there was no need for Gray to make it quite so clear that he thought that was all she was good for, was there?
Why did he need a housekeeper, anyway? He obviously wasn’t a romantic type, and she would have thought he would have married long ago, if only to sort out his domestic arrangements. He must be nearly forty, Clare decided, studying him from under her lashes. Surely he could have found someone to marry him? It wasn’t as if he was bad-looking either, if you liked the rugged, outdoor type. His features were too irregular to be handsome, but his skin was weathered brown by the sun, and his eyes were very creased at the corners, as if he had spent long years squinting at a far horizon.
Clare’s gaze travelled speculatively over the planes of his face to rest on his mouth. Nothing particularly special about his mouth either, she told herself, but then she remembered how he had looked when he had smiled, and something stirred strangely inside her, and she jerked her eyes away to stare out of the side window, as if fascinated after all by the view.
To her annoyance, the image of Gray smiling seemed to be burnt on her vision, shimmering between her and the aching blueness of the sky no matter how hard she tried to blink it away. She might as well have been staring straight at him, Clare thought crossly.
By the time she had managed to focus on the land below, she saw that the flat expanse of scrub had given way to a range of rocky hills. The little plane climbed over them and dropped down the other side.
‘Are we almost there?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Not yet, but we’re over Bushman’s Creek land now.’
To Clare’s consternation, Gray dipped the nose and let the plane drop until it was barely skimming the top of the spindly gum trees. ‘What are you doing?’ she squeaked, clutching at Alice.
‘Just having a look,’ he said casually, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to take a nose-dive into the bush.
‘What on earth for?’ said Clare, annoyed to find that her voice was still high and squeaky with alarm.
‘I want to see how many cattle are up here. There are always a few that get away from the mob when we muster.’
‘Oh, we’re looking for cows?’ she muttered sarcastically. ‘Great!’
Gray ignored her, banking the plane and swooping low over the trees. His hands were completely steady, and he seemed so in control that insensibly Clare began to relax and look around her.
At this level the featureless brown expanse resolved itself into dry, reddish earth out of which grew tussocks of grass, scrubby silver-barked gums and the occasional boab tree with its odd swollen trunk. Every now and then, a small group of cattle would blunder away at the sound of the plane, leaving clouds of dust to settle behind them, and Clare spotted several wallabies bounding effortlessly between the trees and the towering termite mounds.
‘See how much more there is to see down here?’ Gray asked as they dipped down over a spectacular rocky outcrop.