Australian

Bachelors

Out Back Heroes

Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride

Melanie Milburne

A Wedding in Warragurra

Fiona Lowe

The Outback Doctor’s Surprise Bride

Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

These masters of the outback are strong, sexy men who know the way to a woman’s heart

Australian

Bachelors

OUT BACK HEROES

Men as rugged and untamed as the wild landscape that surrounds them

Three favourite authors bring you three fabulous stories!

Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride

Melanie Milburne

About the Author

MELANIE MILBURNE says: ‘I am married to a surgeon, Steve, and have two gorgeous sons, Paul and Phil. I live in Hobart, Tasmania, where I enjoy an active life as a long-distance runner and a nationally ranked top ten Master’s swimmer. I also have a Master’s Degree in Education, but my children totally turned me off the idea of teaching! When not running or swimming I write, and when I’m not doing all of the above I’m reading. And if someone could invent a way for me to read during a four-kilometre swim I’d be even happier!’

To my dear friend and confidante

Fiona Abercrombie-Howroyd.

You never fail to amaze me with how you take life on with both hands, and when someone raises the bar you don’t balk but leap right over it. I am so proud of you and both of your gorgeous boys.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WASN’T the worst flight Kellie had ever been on but it certainly came pretty close. The three-hour delay at Brisbane airport had been annoying enough, but when she had finally boarded the twenty-seat regional service area plane she found a man was already sitting in her window seat.

‘Er … excuse me,’ she said, holding her boarding pass up. ‘I think you are in the wrong seat. I am 10A, you must be 10B.’

The man looked up from the thick black book he was reading. ‘Would you like me to move?’ he asked in a tone that seemed to suggest he thought it would be totally unreasonable of her to expect him to unfold his long length from the cramped space he was currently jammed into.

Something about the slightly arrogant set to his features made Kellie respond tartly, ‘I do, actually, yes. I always have a window seat. I specifically ask for it each time. I feel claustrophobic if I can’t see outside.’

Using his boarding pass as a bookmark, the man got to his feet and squeezed out of the two-seat row, his tall figure towering over Kellie as he brushed past her to allow her room to get in.

She felt the warmth of his body and her nostrils began to flare slightly as she tried to place his aftershave. Living with six men had made her a bit of an expert on male colognes, but this time she couldn’t decide if the primary citrus scent was lime or lemon based.

She gave him a cool little smile and wriggled past him to sit down, but just as he was about to resume his seat she realised she didn’t have enough space under the seat in front for her handbag as well as her hand luggage. ‘Um …’ she said, swivelling back around to face him. ‘Would you mind putting this in the overhead locker for me?’

He did mind, Kellie could tell. He didn’t say a word but his impossibly dark blue eyes gave a small but still detectable roll of irritation as he took her bag and placed it in the compartment above.

He sat back down beside her and, methodically clipping his belt into place, returned to his book, his left arm resting on her armrest.

Kellie inwardly fumed. It happened just about every time she flew and it was always a man, although she couldn’t help noticing that this one was a great improvement on any of the passengers she’d been seated next to in the past. He even smelt a whole lot better too, she decided as she caught another faint but alluring whiff of lemon-lime as she leaned down to stuff her handbag underneath the seat in front.

While she was down there she noticed he was wearing elastic-sided boots. They weren’t dusty or particularly scuffed, which probably meant he was a cattle farmer who had dressed in his best to fly down to the big smoke on business and was now returning home. His long legs were encased in moleskin trousers and the sleeves of his light blue cotton shirt were rolled halfway up his lean but strong-looking and deeply tanned forearms.

Yep, definitely a farmer, Kellie decided, although she couldn’t see any sign of him having recently worn a hat. Didn’t all Queensland cattle farmers wear hats? she mused. She noted his dark brown hair wasn’t crumpled but neatly styled, so neatly styled, in fact, she could make out the tiny grooves from a recent comb that had passed through the thick wavy strands.

She sat back in her seat and for the sake of common politeness forced herself to give him a friendly smile. ‘Thank you for moving. I really appreciate it.’

His dark eyes met hers and assessed her for a moment before he grunted, ‘It’s fine,’ before his head went back to the book he was holding.

Right, then, Kellie thought sourly as she searched for both ends of her seat belt. Don’t make polite conversation with me, then. See if I care.

She gave the left hand belt end a little tug but it wouldn’t budge from where it was lodged. ‘Er … excuse me,’ she said with a frosty look his way. ‘You’re sitting on my seat belt.’

The man turned to look at her again, his tanned forehead frowning slightly. ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ he asked.

Kellie pointed to the unclipped device in her hand. ‘I need the other end of this and, rather than go digging for it myself, I thought it would be polite to ask you to remove it yourself,’ she said with a pert tilt of her chin.

Another faint flicker of annoyance came and went in his gaze as he removed the buckle and strap from the back of his seat and handed it to her silently.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her fingers brushing against his in spite of her effort to avoid doing so. She gave her fingers a quick on-off clench to remove the tingling sensation the brief touch had caused, but still it lingered under the surface of her skin as if he had sent an electric charge right through her body.

That he wasn’t similarly affected couldn’t have been more obvious. He simply returned to his book, turning the next page and reading on with unwavering concentration, and even though the flight attendant asked for everyone’s attention while she went through the mandatory safety procedure, he remained engrossed in whatever he was reading.

Typical thinks-he-knows-it-all male, Kellie thought as she made a point of leaning forward with a totally absorbed expression on her face as the flight attendant rattled off her spiel, even though Kellie knew she herself was probably better qualified if an emergency were to occur given what had happened two years ago on another regional flight.

But, then, after four years in a busy GP practice she felt she had enough experience to handle most emergencies, although she had to admit her confidence would be little on the dented side without her well-equipped doctor’s bag at hand. But at least it was safely packed in the baggage hold along with her four cases to tide her over for the six-month locum in the Queensland outback, she reassured herself.

Once the flight attendant had instructed everyone to sit back and enjoy the one-and-a-half-hour flight to Culwulla Creek, Kellie took a couple of deep calming breaths as the plane began to head for the runway, the throb and choking roar of the engines doing nothing to allay her fears. She scrunched her eyes closed and in the absence of an available armrest clasped her hands in her lap.

You can do this. She ran through her usual pep talk. You’ve flown hundreds of times, even across time zones. You know the statistics: you have more chance of being killed on the way to and from the airport than during the actual flight. One little engine failure in the past doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again. Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice, right?

The plane rattled and rumbled down the runway, faster and faster, until finally putting its nose in the air and taking off, the heavy clunk of landing gear returning to its compartment making Kellie’s eyes suddenly spring open. ‘That was the landing gear, right?’ she asked the silent figure beside her. ‘Please, tell me that was the landing gear and not something else.’

The bluer-than-blue eyes stared unblinkingly at her for a moment before he answered. ‘Yes,’ he said, but this time his tone contained more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘That was the landing gear. All planes have it, even ones as small as this.’

‘I knew that,’ Kellie said huffily. ‘It’s just it sounded as if … you know … something wasn’t quite right.’

‘If everything wasn’t quite right, we would have turned back by now,’ he pointed out in an I-am-so-bored-with-this-conversation tone as he returned his attention to his book.

Kellie glanced surreptitiously at the book to see if she recognised the title but it wasn’t one she was familiar with. It had a boring sort of cover in any case, which probably meant he was a boring sort of person. Although he was a very good-looking boring person, she had to admit as she sneaked another little glance at his profile. He was in his early thirties, thirty-two or -three, she thought, and had a cleanly shaven chiselled jaw and a long straight nose. His lips were well shaped, but she couldn’t help thinking they looked as if they rarely made the effort to stretch into a smile.

Her gaze slipped to his hands where he was holding his book. He had long fingers, dusted with dark hair, and his nails were short but clean, which she found a little unusual for a cattle farmer. Didn’t they always have dust or cattle feed or farm machinery grease embedded around their cuticles? But perhaps he had been away for a week or two, enjoying the comforts of a city hotel, she thought.

Kellie shifted restlessly in her seat as the plane gained altitude, wondering how long it would be before the seat-belt sign went off so she could visit the lavatory. She mentally crossed her legs and looked down at her handbag wedged under the seat. She considered retrieving the magazine she had bought to read but just then the flight attendant announced that the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign so it was now safe to move about the cabin.

Kellie unclipped her belt and got to her feet. ‘Excuse me,’ she said with a sheepish look at the man sitting beside her. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

His gaze collided with hers for another brief moment before he closed the book with exaggerated precision, unclipped his seat belt, unfolded himself from the seat and stood to one side, his expression now blank, although Kellie could again sense his irritation. She could feel it pushing against her, the invisible pressure making her want to shrink away from his presence.

She squeezed past him, sucking in her stomach and her chest in case she touched him inadvertently. ‘Thank you,’ she said, feeling her face beginning to redden. ‘I’ll try not to be too long.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ he said with a touch of dryness.

Kellie set her mouth and moved down the aisle, her back straight with pride, even though her face was feeling hot all over again. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. Don’t let him intimidate you. No doubt you’ll meet thousands … well, hundreds at least … of men just like him in the bush. Besides, wasn’t she some sort of expert on men?

Well … apart from that brief and utterly painful and totally embarrassing and ego-crushing episode with Harley Edwards—yes, she was.

When Kellie came back to her seat a few minutes later she felt more than a little relieved to find her co-passenger’s seat empty. She scanned the rest of the passenger rows to see if he had changed seats, but he was up at the front of the plane, bending down to talk to someone on the right-hand aisle.

Kellie sat back down and looked out of the window, the shimmering heat haze of the drought-stricken outback making her think a little longingly of the bustling-with-activity beach-side home in Newcastle in NSW she had left behind, not to mention her father and five younger brothers.

But it was well and truly time to move on; they needed to learn to stand on their own twelve feet, Kellie reminded herself. It was what her mother would have wanted her to do, to follow her own path, not to try and take up the achingly empty space her mother’s death had left behind six years ago.

The man returned to his seat just as the refreshment trolley made its way up the aisle. He barely glanced at her as he sat back down, but his elbow brushed against hers as he tried to commandeer the armrest.

Kellie gave him a sugar-sweet smile and kept her arm where it was. ‘You have one on the other side,’ she said.

The space between his dark brows narrowed slightly. ‘What?’

She pointed to the armrest on his right. ‘You have another armrest over there,’ she said.

There was a tight little silence.

‘So do you.’ He nodded towards the vacant armrest against the window.

‘Yes, but I don’t see why you get to have the choice of two,’ she returned. ‘Isn’t that rather selfish of you to automatically assume every available armrest is yours?’

‘I am not assuming anything,’ he said in a clipped tone, and, shifting his gaze from hers, reached for his book in the seat pocket, opened it and added, ‘If you want the armrest, have it. It makes no difference to me.’

Kellie watched him out of the corner of her eye as he read the next nine pages of his book. He was a very fast reader and the print was rather small, which impressed her considering how for years she’d had to bribe and threaten and cajole each of her brothers into reading anything besides the back of the cereal packet each morning.

The flight attendant approached and, smiling at Kellie, asked, ‘Would you like to purchase a drink or snack from the trolley this afternoon?’

Kellie smiled back as she undid the fold-down table. ‘I would love a diet cola with ice and lemon if you have it.’

The flight attendant handed her the plastic cup half-filled with ice and a tiny sliver of lemon before passing over the opened can of soda. ‘That will be three dollars,’ she said.

Kellie bit her lip. Her bag was stuffed as far under the seat in front as she could get it and, with the tray table down, retrieving it was going to take the sort of flexibility no one but Houdini possessed. ‘Er … would you mind holding these for me while I get my purse from my bag?’ she asked.

He took the cup and can with a little roll-like flutter of his eyelids but didn’t say a word.

Kellie rummaged in her bag for her purse and finally found the right change but in passing it over to the flight attendant somehow knocked the opened can of cola out of the man’s hand and straight into his lap.

‘What the—’ He bit back the rough expletive that had come to his lips and glared at her as he got to his feet, the dark bubbles of liquid soaking through his moleskins like a pool of blood.

‘Oops …’ Kellie said a little lamely.

‘I’ll get some paper towels for you, Dr McNaught,’ the flight attendant said, and rushed away.

Kellie sat in gob-smacked silence as the name filtered through her brain.

Dr McNaught?

She swallowed to get her heart to return to its rightful place in her chest. It couldn’t be … could it?

Dr Matthew McNaught?

She blinked and looked up at him, wincing slightly as she encountered his diamond-hard dark blue glare. ‘You’re Dr Matthew McNaught?’ she asked, ‘from the two-GP practice in Culwulla Creek?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his lips pulled tight. ‘Let me guess,’ he added with a distinct curl of his top lip. ‘You’re the new locum, right?’

Kellie felt herself sink even further into the limited space available. ‘Y-yes,’ she squeaked. ‘How did you guess?’

CHAPTER TWO

THE flight attendant came bustling back just then with a thick wad of paper towels and Kellie watched helplessly as Dr McNaught mopped up what he could of the damage.

‘I hope it doesn’t stain,’ Kellie said, trying not to stare too long at his groin. ‘I’ll pay for dry-cleaning costs of course.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘Besides, there’s no dry cleaner in Culwulla Creek. There’s not even a laundromat.’

‘Oh …’ Kellie said, wondering not for the first time what she had flung herself into by agreeing to this post. ‘I’m not usually so clumsy. I have a very steady hand normally.’

He gave her a sweeping glance before he resumed his seat. ‘You’re going to need it out here,’ he said. ‘The practice serves an area covering several hundred square kilometres. The nearest hospital is in Roma but all the emergency or acute cases have to be flown to Brisbane. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, I can tell you.’

‘I never for a moment thought it would be,’ Kellie said, a little miffed that he obviously thought her a city girl with no practical skills. ‘I’m used to hard work.’

‘Have you worked in a remote outback area before?’ he asked.

Kellie hesitated over her answer. She was thinking her six-week stint in Tamworth in northern New South Wales probably wouldn’t qualify. It was a regional area, not exactly the outback. ‘Um … not really,’ she said. ‘But I’m keen to learn the ropes.’

His eyes studied her for a moment. ‘What made you decide to take this post?’ he asked.

‘I liked the sound of working in the bush,’ she answered. And I desperately needed to get away from my family and my absolutely disastrous love life, she mentally tacked on. ‘And six months will just fly by, I imagine.’

‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The hours are long and the cases sometimes difficult to manage, with the issues of distance and limited resources.’

‘So who is holding the fort right now?’ she asked.

‘There’s a semi-retired GP, David Cutler, who fills in occasionally,’ he said. ‘He runs a clinic once a month to keep up his skills but his health isn’t good. His wife, Trish, is the practice receptionist and we have one nurse, Rosie Duncan. We could do with more but that’s the way it is out here.’

Kellie let a little silence slip past before she asked. ‘How long have you been at Culwulla Creek?’

His gaze remained focused on the book in the seat pocket in front of him. ‘Six years,’ he answered.

‘Wow, you must really love it out here,’ she said.

He hesitated for a mere sliver of a second before he answered, ‘Yes.’

Kellie watched as his expression closed off like a pair of curtains being pulled across a window. She had seen that look before, far too many times, in fact, on the faces of her father and brothers whenever she happened to nudge in under their emotional radar. It was a male thing. They liked to keep some things private and somehow she suspected Dr Matthew McNaught, too, had quite a few no-go areas.

‘By the way, I’m Kellie Thorne,’ she said offering him her hand.

His hand was cool and firm as it briefly took hers. ‘Matthew McNaught, but Matt’s fine.’

‘Matt, then,’ she said, smiling.

He didn’t return her smile.

‘So …’ She rolled her lips together and began again. ‘Do you have a family out here with you? A wife and kids perhaps?’

‘No.’

Kellie was starting to see why he hadn’t been successful thus far in landing himself a life partner. In spite of his good looks he had no personality to speak of. She felt like a tennis-ball throwing machine—she kept sending conversation starters his way but he didn’t make any effort to return them.

Not only that, he hadn’t once looked at her with anything remotely resembling male interest. Kellie knew she was being stupidly insecure thanks to her disastrous relationship—if you could call it that—with Harley Edwards, but surely Matt McNaught could have at least done a double-take, like the young pilot had on the tarmac before they had boarded the plane.

Kellie had looked in enough mirrors in her time to know none of them were in any danger of breaking any time soon. She had her mother’s slim but still femininely curvy figure and her chestnut brown hair was mid-length, with just a hint of a wave running through it. Her toffee-brown eyes had thick sooty lashes, which saved her a fortune in mascara. Her teeth were white and straight thanks to two and a half years of torture wearing braces when she’d been in her teens, and her skin was clear and naturally sun-kissed from spending so much time with her brothers at the beach.

Maybe he was gay, she pondered as she watched him read another chapter of his book. That would account for the zero interest. Anyway, she wasn’t out here on the hunt for a love life, far from it. So what if her one and only lover had bludgeoned her self-esteem? She didn’t need to find a replacement just to prove he was a two-timing sleazeball jerk with …

OK. That’s enough, Kellie chided herself as she wriggled again to get comfortable. Get over it. Harley probably hasn’t given you another thought since that morning you arrived to find him in bed with his secretary. Kellie winced at the memory and looked out of the window again, letting out the tiniest of sighs.

This locum position couldn’t have come at a better time and the short time was perfect. Living in the outback for a lengthy time was definitely not her thing. She would see the six months out but no longer. She had been a beach chick from birth. She had more bikinis than most women had shoes. Not only that, she was a fully qualified lifesaver, the sound of the ocean like a pulse in her blood. This would be the longest period she had been away from the coast but it would be worth it if it achieved what she hoped it would achieve.

The seat-belt light suddenly came on and the captain announced that there might be some stronger than normal turbulence ahead.

Kellie turned to Matthew with wide eyes. ‘Do you think we’ll be all right?’ she asked.

He looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. ‘You have flown before, haven’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but not usually in something this small,’ she confessed.

He let out a sound, something between derision and incredulity. ‘You do realise you will be flying in a Beechcraft twin engine plane at least once if not three or four times a month, don’t you? It’s called the Royal Flying Doctor Service and out here lives depend on it.’

Kellie gave a gulping swallow as the plane gave a stomach-dropping lurch. ‘I know, but someone will have to stay at the practice surely? Tim Montgomery said it in one of the letters he sent,’ she said. Biting her lip, she added, ‘I was kind of hoping that could be me.’

His eyes gave a little roll. ‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ she asked, wincing as the plane shifted again.

His blue eyes clashed momentarily with hers. ‘This is no doubt Tim and his wife Claire’s doing,’ he said. ‘I asked for someone with plenty of outback experience and instead what do I get?’

‘You get me,’ Kellie said with a hitch of her chin. ‘I’ve been in practice for four years and I’m EMST trained.’

‘And you have a fear of flying.’ He settled his shoulders back against the seat. ‘Great.’

Kellie gritted her teeth. ‘I do not have a fear of flying. I’ve been on heaps of flights. I even went to New Zealand last year.’

She could tell he wasn’t impressed. He gave her another rolled-eye look and turned back to his book.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked, after the turbulence had faded and the seat-belt light had been turned off again. Talking was good. It helped to keep her calm. It helped her not to notice all those suspicious mechanical noises.

‘It’s a book on astronomy,’ he said without looking up from the pages.

‘Is it any good?’

Matt let out a frustrated sigh and turned to look at her. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Anything to shut you up, he thought. What was it with this young woman? Didn’t she see he was in no mood for idle conversation? And what the hell was she doing, arriving a week earlier than expected?

She shook her head. ‘Nope, I don’t do heavy stuff any more. The only things I read now are medical journals and magazines and the occasional light novel.’

‘I’m doing a degree in astronomy online through Swinburne University,’ Matt said, hoping she would take the hint and let him get on with his chapter on globular clusters. ‘There’s a lot of reading, and I have an exam coming up.’

‘You’re a very fast reader,’ she said. ‘Have you done a speed-reading course or something?’

Matt’s eyes were starting to feel strained from the repeated rolling. ‘No, it’s just that I enjoy reading,’ he said. ‘It fills in the time.’

‘So it’s pretty quiet out here, huh?’ she asked.

Matt looked at her again, really looked at her this time. She had a pretty heart-shaped face and her eyes were an unusual caramel brown. He couldn’t quite decide how long her hair was as she had it sort of twisted up in a haphazard ponytail-cum-knot at the back of her head, but it was glossy and thick and there was plenty of it, and every now and again he caught of whiff of the honeysuckle fragrance of her shampoo.

She had a nice figure, trim and toned and yet feminine in all the right places. Her mouth was a little on the pouting side, he’d noticed earlier, but when she smiled it reminded him of a ray of bright sunshine breaking through dark clouds.

‘No, it’s not exactly quiet,’ he answered. ‘It’s different, that’s all.’

She gave him another little smile. ‘So no nightclubs and five-star restaurants, right?’

Matt felt a familiar tight ache deep inside his chest and looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No nightclubs, no cinemas, no fine dining, no twenty-four-hour trading.’ And no Madeleine, he added silently.

‘What about taxis?’ she asked after a short pause. ‘Do you have any of those?’

His eyes came back to hers. ‘No, but I can give you a lift to Tim and Claire’s house. I take it that’s where you’re staying?’

She nodded. ‘It was so kind of them to offer their house and the use of their car while I’m here. They sent me the keys in the mail. Believe me, that would never happen in the city. People don’t lend you anything, especially virtual strangers.’

Matt wondered again what had attracted her to the post. He even wondered if Tim and Claire and Trish had colluded to make the job as attractive as possible in order to secure a female GP, a young and single female GP at that—or so he assumed from her ring-free fingers.

‘So what do people do out here in their spare time?’ she asked. ‘Apart from reading, of course.’

‘Most of the locals are on the land,’ he said. ‘They have plenty to do to keep them occupied, especially with this drought going on and on.’

‘That’s what I thought you were at first,’ she said. ‘I had you pegged as a cattle farmer.’

‘I’ve actually got a few hectares of my own,’ he said, doing his best to ignore the brilliance of her smile. ‘I bought them a couple of years back off an elderly farmer who needed to sell in a hurry. I’ve got some breeding stock I’m trying to keep going until we get some decent rain.’

‘Is that where you live?’

‘Yes, it’s only a few minutes out of town.’

‘So do you have horses and stuff?’ she asked.

Matt looked longingly at his book. ‘Yeah, a couple, but they’re pretty wild.’

‘I love horses,’ she said, snuggling into her seat again. ‘I used to ride a bit as a child.’

The captain announced that they were preparing to land and she looked out of the window at the barren landscape. ‘So where’s the creek?’ she asked, and, turning back to him, continued, ‘I mean, there has to be a creek somewhere. Culwulla Creek must be named after a creek, right?’

Matt only just managed to control the urge to roll his eyes heavenwards yet again. ‘Yes, there is, but it’s practically dry. There’s been barely a trickle of water for more than three years.’

Her face fell a little. ‘Oh … that’s a shame.’

‘Why is that?’ he found himself asking, even though he really didn’t want to know.

‘I live by the beach,’ she said. ‘I swim every day, rain or shine.’

Matt felt his chest tighten again. Madeleine had loved swimming. ‘That’s one hobby you’ll have to suspend while you’re out here,’ he said in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘That is, unless it rains.’

‘Oh, well, then,’ she said with a bright optimistic smile. ‘I’d better start doing a rain dance or something. Who knows what might happen?’

Who indeed, Matt thought as the plane descended to land.

Kellie unclipped her seat belt once the plane had landed and reached for her handbag. Matt had risen to retrieve her bulging cabin bag from the overhead locker and silently handed it to her before he took out his own small overnight travel case.

‘So how far is it to town?’ she asked as they walked across the blistering heat of the tarmac as few minutes later.

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Tim and Claire’s house is a couple of streets away from the practice, isn’t it?’ she asked as they waited for her luggage to be unloaded.

‘Yes.’

She waved away a fly. ‘Gosh, it’s awfully hot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Right, Kellie thought, that’s it. I’m not even going to try and make conversation. She’d spent the last six years with a house full of monosyllabic males—the last thing she needed was another one in her life.

She looked up to see an older woman in her mid-fifties coming towards them. ‘How did the weekend go, Matt?’ she asked in a gentle, concerned voice.

Kellie watched as Matt moved his lips into a semblance of a smile but it was gone before it had time to settle long enough to transform his features.

‘It was OK,’ he said. ‘John and Mary-Anne were very welcoming as usual, but you know how it is.’

The older woman grimaced in empathy. ‘It’s tough on everyone. Birthdays are the worst.’

‘Yeah,’ he said with another attempt at a smile. ‘They are.’

Kellie was intrigued with the little exchange but before she had time to speculate any further, the older woman glanced past Matt’s broad shoulder and smiled. ‘Well, hello there,’ she said. ‘Welcome to Culwulla Creek. Are you a tourist or visiting a friend?’

‘I’m the new locum filling in for Tim Montgomery,’ Kellie said, extending her hand. ‘I’m Kellie Thorne.’

‘Oh, my goodness, aren’t you gorgeous?’ the woman gushed as she grasped both of Kellie’s hands in her soft motherly ones. ‘I had no idea they had someone so young and attractive in mind.’

Kellie felt her face go hot but it had nothing to do with the furnace-like temperature of the October afternoon. She smiled self-consciously as she felt the press of Matt McNaught’s gaze as if he was assessing her physical attributes for the first time.

‘I’m Ruth Williams,’ the older woman said. ‘It’s wonderful you could come to fill in for Tim while he and Claire are overseas. So tell me, where are you from?’

‘Newcastle, in NSW. I did my medical training and internship there as well,’ Kellie answered.

Ruth smiled with genuine warmth. ‘What a thrill to have you here. We’ve never had a female GP before, have we, Matt?’

‘No,’ Matt said, frowning when he saw the luggage trailer lumbering towards them. In amongst the usual assortment of black and brown and battered bags with a few tattered ribbons attached to various handles to make identification easier, there were four hot pink suitcases, each of which looked as if their fastenings were being stretched to the limit.

Kellie followed the line of his gaze and mentally grimaced. Maybe she had overdone it on the packing thing, she thought. But how was a girl to survive six months in the bush without all the feminine accoutrements?

‘I take it these are yours?’ Matt asked, as he nodded towards the trailer.

She captured her bottom lip for a second. ‘I have a problem travelling lightly. I’ve been working on it but I guess I’m not quite there, huh?’

He didn’t roll his eyes but he came pretty close, Kellie thought but she also thought, she saw his lips twitch slightly, which for some inexplicable reason secretly delighted her.

‘It’s all right, Dr Thorne,’ Ruth piped up. ‘Dr McNaught has a four-wheel-drive vehicle so it will all fit in.’

‘Er …great,’ Kellie said, watching fixatedly as Matt’s biceps bulged as he lifted each case off the trailer.

‘I’m afraid there are no basic foodstuffs at Tim and Claire’s house,’ Ruth said with a worried pleat of her brow. ‘I would have bought you some milk and bread but we thought you were coming next week so I didn’t organise anything, and the corner store will be closed by now.’

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie assured her. ‘I had lots of nibbles in the members’ lounge while I waited for the flight to be called and I’ve got some chocolate in one of my bags. My brothers gave it to me. That will tide me over.’

‘That was sweet of them,’ Ruth said. ‘How many brothers do you have?’

‘I have five,’ Kellie answered, ‘all younger than me.’

Ruth’s eyes bulged. ‘Five? Oh, dear, your poor mother. How on earth does she cope?’

Kellie concentrated on securing her handbag over her shoulder as she reached for one of the pink suitcases. ‘She died six years ago,’ she said, stripping her voice of the raw emotion she—in spite of all her efforts—still occasionally felt. ‘That’s why I took this outback post.’ Or, at least, one of the reasons, she thought. ‘My father and brothers have become a bit too dependent on me,’ she said. ‘I think they need to learn to take more responsibility for themselves. It’s well and truly time to move on, don’t you think?’

Matt still wore a blank expression but Ruth touched Kellie on the arm and gave it a gentle comforting squeeze, her warm brown eyes misting slightly. ‘Not everyone moves on at the same pace, my dear, but it’s wise that you’re giving them the opportunity,’ she said. ‘It’s very brave of you to come so far from home. I hope it works out for you and for them.’

‘Thank you,’ Kellie said, glancing at the tall, silent figure standing nearby, his expression still shuttered. ‘I hope so, too.’

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS quite a juggling act, getting the whole of Kellie’s luggage into the back of Matt’s vehicle, even though he had only his carry-on bag with him. But there were other things in the rear of his car—tow ropes, a spare tyre and what looked to be his doctor’s bag, as it was very similar to hers, and a big box of mechanical tools, as well as a few pieces of hay scattered about.

Kellie stood to one side as he jostled everything into position and once the hatchback was closed she moved to the passenger side, but before she could open the door he had got there first and opened it for her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, feeling a little taken aback by his courteous gesture. Over the years she had become so used to her brothers diving into the family people-mover, each vying for the best seat with little regard for her comfort, that his gallantry took her completely by surprise.

‘Mrs Williams seems like a lovely lady,’ she said as she caught sight of the older woman driving off ahead of them to the road leading to town. ‘Did she come out to the airport just to see you? She doesn’t appear to have picked anyone up.’

‘Ruth Williams comes out to meet every flight,’ Matt said as he shifted the gears. ‘She’s been doing it for years.’

‘Why is that?’ Kellie asked, turning to look at him.

His gaze never wavered from the road ahead. ‘Her teenage daughter disappeared twenty years ago. Ruth has never quite given up hope that one day Tegan will get off one of the thrice-weekly flights, so she meets each one just in case.’

Kellie frowned. ‘How terribly sad. Did her daughter run away or was it likely to have been something more sinister?’

His dark blue eyes met hers for a moment before returning to the long straight stretch of road ahead. ‘She went missing without trace,’ he said. ‘As far as I know, the case is still open.’

‘Did she go missing from here?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘She was fourteen, nearly fifteen years old. She caught the bus home from school, she was seen walking along the main street at around four-thirty and then she disappeared. No one has seen or heard from her since. The police lost valuable time thinking it was just another bored country kid running away from home. Tegan had run away a couple of times before. Ruth’s now late husband, Tegan’s stepfather, apparently wasn’t the easiest man to live with. It was understandable that they assumed the girl had hitched a ride out of town. She was a bit of a rebel around these parts, truanting, shoplifting, driving without a licence, that sort of thing.’

‘But no one’s ever found out what happened to her?’ Kellie asked with a frown.

He shook his head. ‘There was no sign of a struggle or blood where she was last seen alive and her stepfather had an iron-clad alibi once the police got around to investigating things a little more thoroughly. And, of course, even after two decades there has been no sign of her body.’

Kellie was still frowning. ‘So after all these years Ruth doesn’t really know if her daughter is alive or dead?’ she asked.

‘No, but, as I said, she lives in hope.’

‘But that’s awful!’ she said. ‘At least when my mum died we had a few months’ warning. I miss her terribly but at least I know where she is. I was there when she took her last breath and I was there when the coffin was lowered in the ground.’

Matt felt his gut clench but fought against it. ‘What did your mother die of?’ he asked.

‘Pancreatic cancer,’ she said. ‘She became jaundiced overnight and started vomiting and within three days we had the diagnosis.’

‘How long did she have?’

‘Five months,’ she said. ‘I took time off from my surgical term to nurse her. She died in my arms …’

Matt felt a lump the size of a boulder lodge in his throat. ‘At least you were there,’ he said, his tone sounding rough around the edges. ‘Spouses and relatives don’t always get there in time.’

‘Yes …’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘At least I was there …’

Silence followed for several minutes.

‘So where did you go on the weekend?’ Kellie asked.

Matt’s hands tightened fractionally on the steering-wheel. ‘I went to visit some …’ He paused briefly over the word. ‘Friends in Brisbane. It was their daughter’s thirtieth birthday.’

‘It was my birthday a week ago,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m twenty-nine—the big one is next year. I’m kind of dreading it, to tell you the truth. My family wants me to have a big party but I’m not sure I want to go to all that fuss.’ She swung her gaze his way again. ‘So was your friend’s daughter’s party a big celebration?’

His eyes were trained on the road ahead but Kellie noticed he was gripping the steering-wheel as if it was a lifeline. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was very small.’

Another silence ticked away.

‘How old are your brothers?’ Matt broke it by asking.

‘Alistair and Josh are twins,’ she said. ‘They’re four years younger than me at twenty-five. Sebastian, but we always call him Seb, is twenty-three, Nick’s twenty and Cain is nineteen.’

‘Do they all still live at home?’

‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘They’re a bit like homing pigeons—or maybe more like locusts—swooping in, eating all the food and then moving on again.’

Matt noticed her fond smile and marvelled at the difference between his life and hers. He had grown up as an only child to parents who had eventually divorced when he’d been seven. He had never quite forgiven his mother for leaving his father with a small child to rear. And his father had never quite forgiven him for being a small, dependent, somewhat insecure and shy boy, which had made things even more difficult and strained between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to either of his parents. They hadn’t even met Madeleine.

‘What about you?’ Kellie asked. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

‘Are both your parents still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you ever answer a question with more than one word?’ she asked.

The distance between his brows decreased. ‘When I think it’s appropriate,’ he said.

‘You’re not the easiest person to talk to,’ she said. ‘I’m used to living in a household of six men where I have to shout to get a word in edgeways, unless they’re in one of their non-communicative moods. Talking to you is like getting blood out of a stone.’

Matt felt his shoulders tensing. ‘I’m not a chit-chat person. If you don’t like it, tough. Find someone else’s ear to chew off.’

She sent him a reproachful look. ‘The least you could do is make some sort of an effort to make me feel at home here. This is a big thing for me. I’m the one who’s put myself out to come here to fill a vacancy, a vacancy, I might add, that isn’t generally easy to fill. Outback postings are notoriously difficult to attract doctors to, especially given the timeframe of this one. You should be grateful I’ve put my hand up so willingly. Not many people would.’

‘I am very grateful, Dr Thorne, but I had absolutely nothing to do with your appointment and I have some serious doubts about your suitability.’

‘What?’ she said, with an affronted glare. ‘Who are you to decide whether I’m suitable or not?’

‘I think you’ve been sent here for the wrong reasons,’ he said.

Kellie frowned at him. ‘The wrong reasons? What on earth do you mean? I’m a GP with all the right qualifications and I’ve worked in a busy practice in Newcastle for four years.’

He was still looking at the road ahead but she noticed his knuckles were now almost white where he was gripping the steering-wheel. ‘This is a rough-and-tough area,’ he said. ‘You’re probably used to the sort of facilities that are just not available out here. Sometimes we lose patients not because of their injuries or illnesses but because we can’t get them to help in time. We do what we can with what we’ve got, but it can do in even the most level-headed person at times.’

Kellie totally understood where he was coming from. She had met plenty of paramedics and trauma surgeons during her various terms to know that working at the coal face of tragedy was no picnic. But she had toughened up over the years of her training and with the help of her friends and family had come to a point in her life where she felt compelled to do her bit in spite of the sleepless nights that resulted. She had wanted to be a doctor all her life. She loved taking care of people and what better way to do that than out in the bush where patients were not just patients but friends as well?

‘Contrary to what you think, I believe I’ll manage just fine,’ she said. ‘But if you think it’s so rough and tough out here, why have you stayed here so long?’

‘I would hardly describe six years as a long time,’ he said, without glancing her way.

‘Are you planning to stay here indefinitely?’ she asked.

‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

He threw her an irritated look. ‘Has anyone ever told you you ask too many questions?’

Kellie bristled with anger. ‘Well, sor-ry for trying to be friendly. Sheesh! You take the quiet, silent type to a whole new level.’

He let out a sigh and sent her a quick, unreadable glance. ‘Look, it’s been a long, tiring weekend. All I can think about right now is getting home and going to bed.’

‘Do you live alone?’ she asked.

His eyes flickered upwards, his hands still tight on the steering-wheel. ‘Yes.’

Kellie looked out at the dusty, arid landscape; even the red river gums lining the road looked gnarled with thirst. ‘I guess this isn’t such a great place to meet potential partners,’ she mused. Swivelling her head to look at him again, she added, ‘I read this article in a women’s magazine about men in the bush and how hard it is for them to find a wife. It’s not like in the city where there are clubs and pubs and gyms and so on. Out here it’s just miles and miles of bush between neighbours and towns.’

‘I’m not interested in finding a wife,’ he said with an implacable edge to his tone.

‘It seems a pretty bleak existence,’ she remarked as the tiny township came into view. ‘Don’t you want more for your life?’

His dark blue eyes collided with hers. ‘If you don’t like it here, there’s another plane out at five p.m. on Saturday.’

She sent him a determined look. ‘I am here for six months, Dr McNaught, so you’d better get used to it. I’m not a quitter and even though you are the most unfriendly colleague I’ve ever met, I’m not going to be run out of town just because you have a chip on your shoulder about women.’

His brows snapped together irritably. ‘I do not have a chip on my shoulder about women.’

Kellie tossed her head and looked out at the small strip of shops that lined both sides of the impossibly wide street. It was certainly nothing like she was used to, even though Newcastle was nowhere near the size of Sydney or Melbourne, or even for that matter Brisbane.

Culwulla Creek had little more than a general store, which was now closed, a small hardware centre, a hamburger café, a service station, a tiny school and a rundown-looking pub that was currently booming with business.

‘The clinic is just over there in that small cottage,’ Matt said, pointing to the left-hand side of the road just before the pub. ‘I’ll get Trish to show you around in the next day or so once you’ve settled in at the Montgomerys’ house.’

As they drove past the pub, people were spilling out on the street, stubbies of beer in hand, squinting against the late afternoon sunlight.

‘G’day, Dr McNaught,’ one man wearing an acubra hat and a cast on his right arm called out. ‘How was your weekend in the big smoke?’

‘Shut up, Bluey,’ another man said, elbowing his mate in the ribs.

Matt slowed the car down and leaned forward slightly to look past Kellie in the passenger seat. ‘It was fine. How’s your arm?’

The man with the hat lifted his can of beer with his other arm and grinned. ‘I can still hold my beer so I must be all right.’

Kellie witnessed the first genuine smile crack Matt’s face and her heart did a funny little jerk behind her chest wall. His dark blue eyes crinkled up at the corners, his lean jaw relaxed and his usually furrowed brow smoothed out, making his already attractive features heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

‘Take it easy, Bluey,’ he said, still smiling. ‘It was a bad break and you’ll need the full six weeks to rest it.’

‘I’m resting it,’ Bluey assured him, and peered through the passenger window. ‘So who’s the little lady?’

‘This is Dr Thorne,’ Matt said, his smile instantly disappearing. ‘She’s the new locum.’

Kellie lifted her hand in a fingertip wave. ‘Hi, there.’

Bluey’s light blue eyes twinkled. ‘G’day, Dr Thorne. How about joining us for a drink to get to know the locals?’

‘I have to get her settled into Tim and Claire’s house,’ Matt said before Kellie could respond. ‘She has a lot of baggage.’

Kellie glowered at him before turning back to smile at Bluey. ‘I would love to join you all,’ she said. ‘What time does the pub close?’

Bluey grinned from ear to ear. ‘We’ll keep it open just for you, Dr Thorne.’

Matt drove on past the tiny church and cemetery before turning right into a pepper corn-tree-lined street. ‘Tim and Claire’s house is the cream one,’ he said. ‘The car will be in the garage.’

Kellie looked at the cottage with interest and trepidation. It was a three-bedroom weatherboard with a corrugated-tin roof, a large rainwater tank on one side and a shady verandah wrapped around the outside of the house. There was no garden to speak of, but not for want of trying, she observed as she noted the spindly skeletons of what looked to be some yellowed sweet peas clinging listlessly to the mid-height picket fence. There were several pots on the verandah that had suffered much the same fate, and the patchy and parched lawn looked as if it could do with a long soak and a decent trim. There were other similar cottages further along the street, although both of the houses either side of the Montgomerys’ appeared to be vacant.

Fixing an I-can-get-through-this-for-six-months expression on her face, Kellie rummaged for the keys she had been sent in the post as Matt began to unload the luggage. She walked up to the front door and searched through the array of keys to find the right one, but with little success. She was down to the last three when she felt Matt come up behind her.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me.’

Kellie felt the brush of his arm against her waist as he took the keys and her heart did another little uncoordinated skip in her chest. She watched as his long, tanned fingers selected the right key and inserted it into the lock, turning it effortlessly before pushing the door open for her.

‘You go in and have a look around while I bring in your bags,’ he said as he opened the meter box near the door and turned a switch. ‘The hot water will take a couple of hours to heat but everything else should be OK. There’s an air-conditioning control panel in the lounge, which serves the main living area of the house.’

Kellie looked guiltily towards his car where her bags were lined up behind the open hatchback. ‘I don’t expect you to be my slave,’ she said. ‘I can carry my own bags inside.’

‘Then you must be a whole lot stronger than you look because I nearly bulged a disc loading them in there in the first place.’

She put her hands on her hips as if she was admonishing one of her younger brothers. ‘I am here for half a year, you know,’ she said. ‘I need lots of stuff, especially out here.’

‘I hate to be the one to tell you this but the sort of stuff you need to survive out here can’t be packed into four hot pink suitcases, Dr Thorne,’ Matt said, stepping back down off the verandah to his car.

‘What is it with you?’ she asked, following him to his car in quick angry strides. ‘You seem determined to turn me off this appointment before I’ve even started.’

Matt carried two of her cases to the verandah as she yapped at his heels like a small terrier. She was exactly what this town didn’t need, he thought. No, strike that—she was exactly what he didn’t need right now. He wasn’t ready. He wondered if he ever would be ready and yet …

‘Give me that bag,’ she demanded. ‘Now.’

Matt mentally rolled his eyes. She looked so fierce standing there with her hands on her slim-as-a-boy’s hips, her toffee-brown eyes flashing. For a tiny moment she reminded him of …

He gave himself a hard mental slap and handed her one of the bags. ‘I’ll bring in the rest,’ he said. ‘And watch out for snakes as you go in.’

She stopped in mid-stride, her hand falling away from the handle of her bag. ‘Snakes?’ she asked. ‘You mean …’ She visibly gulped. ‘Inside?’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SNAKES are attracted to water,’ he said as he picked up another one of her bags. ‘This has been one of the longest droughts in history. They can slink in under doors in search of a dripping tap. One of the locals had one come in under the door a few blocks from here. They lost their Jack Russell terrier as a result. I just thought I’d warn you. It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

Kellie eyed the open front door with wide, uncertain eyes. Snakes were fine in their place, which for her had up until this point been behind a thick sheet of glass at a zoological park. She had never met one in the wild, and had certainly never envisaged meeting one in her living space. She was OK with rats and mice; she was even fine with spiders—but snakes?

She suppressed a little shudder and straightened her shoulders as she faced him coming up the verandah steps with a bag in each hand. ‘I suppose the next thing you’ll be telling me is the house is haunted.’

Something shifted at the back of his eyes. ‘No, it’s not haunted,’ he said, and moved past her to take the bags he was carrying to one of the bedrooms off the passage.

Kellie followed him gingerly down the hallway, her eyes darting sideways for any sign of a black or brown coil lying in wait to strike, but to her immense relief nothing seemed to be amiss. It looked and felt like any other house that had been unoccupied for a while—the air a little hot and stale and the blinds down over the windows, which added to the general sense of abandonment.

The sudden wave of homesickness that assailed her was almost overwhelming. A house was meant to be a home but it couldn’t be that without people in it and she—for the next few months—was going to be the only person inside this house.

It was a daunting thought, Kellie realised as she wandered into the kitchen. The layout was modern but very basic, as if Tim and Claire Montgomery had not wanted to waste money on top-notch appliances and joinery.

The rest of the house was similar, tasteful but modestly decorated, the furniture a little dated though comfortable-looking.

Matt came back in with the last of her bags and put them in the largest of the three bedrooms before he came back out to the sitting room where she was trying to undo one of the two windows. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

‘I want to air the house but I think this window is stuck,’ she said giving it another rattle.

‘Here, let me have a go.’

Kellie stepped back as he worked on the latch and pushed the window upwards with his shoulder, the timber frame creaking in protest.

‘It needs to be shaved back a bit,’ he said, inspecting the inner section of the window. ‘I’ll send someone around to fix it for you.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it.’

He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he pulled out a business card and handed it to her. ‘Here are my home and mobile and the clinic numbers.’

Kellie caught a brief glimpse of a photograph of a young woman just before he closed his wallet. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

His expression closed down and his tone was guarded and clipped as he responded, ‘Who is who?’

‘The woman in your wallet,’ she said.

His brows moved together in a frown. ‘Do you make it a habit of prying into people’s wallets?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t prying,’ she protested. ‘You had it open so I looked.’

‘Would you like to count how much money I have in there while you’re at it, Dr Thorne?’ he asked with a sardonic curl of his lip.

Kellie glared up at him. ‘If that is your girlfriend in your wallet then I don’t know what on earth she sees in you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxiously unfriendly man I’ve ever met and let me tell you I’ve met plenty. I just didn’t realise I had to travel quite this far to meet yet another one.’

Blue eyes battled with brown in a crackling-with-tension silence that seemed to go on indefinitely.

Kellie was determined not to look away first. She was used to the stare-downs of her brothers but something about Matthew McNaught’s midnight-blue gaze as it wrestled with hers caught her off guard. She found herself blushing and averted her head in case he saw it. ‘Thank you for the lift and bringing in my bags,’ she said in a curt tone. ‘No doubt I’ll see you at the clinic some time.’

‘Yes, I expect you will.’ His tone was equally brusque.

Kellie listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall. She heard the screen door squeak open and close and then the creak of the weathered timber of the verandah as he stepped on it before going down the three steps leading to the pathway to the gate. She heard his car start then the grab of the wheels on the gravel as he backed out of the driveway and the growl of the diesel engine as he drove back the way they had come, turning right, away from town at the corner.

And then all Kellie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. It seemed faster than normal and her heart felt like it was skipping every now and again just to keep up.

She turned from the window and looked at the space where moments before Matt had been standing, frowning at her, those incredibly blue eyes searing and yet shadowed at the same time …

A sudden knock on the front door made her nearly jump out of her skin but when she heard Ruth Williams’s friendly voice calling out, her panic quickly subsided. ‘Dr Thorne? I managed to get some milk and bread for you. I rang Cheryl Yates who runs the general store and she made up a survival pack for you. You can pay her later.’

Kellie pushed open the screen door. ‘That was very thoughtful of you both.’

‘Not at all,’ Ruth said, handing over the basket of groceries.

‘Please come in,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m still finding my way around but I can rustle us up a cup of tea if you’d like one.’

‘I would love one,’ Ruth said, puffing slightly. ‘I think Cheryl’s even put some of those fancy teabags in here somewhere and some chocolate biscuits. You’d better put them in the fridge, though, as this heat would melt stone.’

‘Yes, it is rather hot, isn’t it?’ Kellie answered as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘But I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a day or two.’

‘You know when you first stepped off the plane with Dr McNaught I thought I was seeing a ghost,’ Ruth said as she started to help unpack the groceries.

Kellie turned and looked at her. ‘A ghost?’

Ruth’s smile had a hint of sadness about it. ‘Yes. Although your hair is a different colour, you reminded me a bit of Madeleine,’ she said, ‘Dr McNaught’s fiancée.’

Kellie felt her eyes widen in surprise. No wonder he’d said he wasn’t looking for a wife, although she couldn’t imagine who would be brave enough to take him on. ‘Dr McNaught is engaged?’ she asked.

‘Was engaged,’ Ruth corrected. ‘She was killed in an accident two days before their wedding.’

‘Oh, dear …’ Kellie said, a wave of sympathy washing over her, followed by a rising tide of insight into why Matt was so standoffish and formal. She mentally cringed at his dislike of her prying into the photograph in his wallet.

‘He doesn’t talk about it much, of course,’ Ruth went on. ‘But that’s the male way, isn’t it?’

Kellie nibbled at her lip. ‘Yes … yes, it certainly is …’

Ruth handed her a carton of milk. ‘It was her birthday on Saturday,’ she said. ‘That’s why he went to Brisbane—to visit her parents.’

‘That was nice of him,’ Kellie offered, still feeling utterly wretched about her rapid judgement of him.

Ruth gave her another sad smile. ‘Yes, he does it every year.’

Kellie put the milk in the fridge and filled the kettle before she sat down opposite the older lady. ‘Dr McNaught told me about your daughter,’ she said. ‘It must be very hard for you … you know, not knowing where Tegan is or what happened to her.’

Ruth let out a little sigh. ‘It is hard,’ she said. ‘The hardest thing after all this time is that no one is actively searching for her any more. I feel that I’ll go to my grave without knowing what happened to her.’

‘The police keep most missing-person files open, though, don’t they?’ Kellie said. ‘I’ve seen a few news stories about old cases that have been solved, using DNA to match perpetrators to crimes.’

‘That’s true,’ Ruth said, ‘but out here there isn’t the manpower to do any more than maintain law and order. Doctors aren’t the only people who resist remote country appointments—police are pretty thin on the ground out here, too.’

Kellie met the older woman’s brown eyes. ‘You don’t believe she’s dead, do you?’ she asked.

Ruth held her gaze for several moments. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I feel it in here.’ She placed a hand over her heart. ‘She’s out there somewhere, I just know it.’

Kellie felt deeply for the poor woman. She had a pretty clear idea of the process of denial—she had witnessed it in her father for the last six years. He still acted as if her mother was going to walk in the door. He even occasionally spoke of her in the present tense, which made the job of getting on with his life so much harder for him and his family, not to mention Aunty Kate.

‘Well, I must let you settle in,’ Ruth said a few minutes later after they had finished the tea. ‘It’s an isolated place out here—but it’s not an unfriendly one.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that,’ Kellie said with genuine feeling. ‘This is a leap into the unknown for me. I’m right out of my comfort zone but I need the challenge right now.’

‘Well, it will certainly be challenging, it always is when the unexpected happens in places as far out as this,’ Ruth said as she gathered up her bag. ‘But Matthew McNaught is a very capable doctor. He’s experienced and caring. I am sure you’ll enjoy working with him, especially once you get to know him. This last weekend was a tough one for him. It’ll take him a few days to get back to normal.’

‘I think we’ll get along just fine,’ she said to the older woman with a smile. ‘In any case, I’ve got a week up my sleeve to get a feel for the place. I kind of figured it would be wise not to rush headlong into a close community like this.’ ‘You might not have any choice, my dear,’ Ruth said with a sombre look. ‘Things can happen out here in a blink of an eye.’

Soon after Ruth left Kellie decided to walk the short distance to the pub. She had always enjoyed male company and while the pub looked nothing like the family-friendly bistros she was used to, she didn’t see any harm in getting to know some of the locals in a relaxed and casual atmosphere.

She was barely in the door before Bluey, the man with the broken arm, came ambling over. ‘What would you like to drink, Doc?’

Kellie smiled so as not to offend him. ‘It’s fine, really. I’ll get my own.’

‘Nah,’ he drawled as he winked at his two mates. ‘It’s been a long time since I bought a pretty lady a drink. Don’t spoil it for me. What’ll you have?’

Kellie agreed to have a lemonade, lime and bitters and sat at the table with Bluey and his cronies, who turned out to be two other farmers looking as though they had spent many a long day in the sun.

‘So what brings a nice girl like you out to a place like this?’ Jeff, the oldest of the three, asked.

‘I saw Tim Montgomery’s advertisement in the Australian Medical Journal and thought it would be a great chance to do my bit for the bush,’ she answered. ‘A house, a car and a job all rolled into one sounded too good to miss.’

‘It sounds too good to be true, right, Jeff?’ Bluey said with a gap-toothed grin.

Kellie wasn’t sure what he meant and didn’t have time to ask as just then she heard a commotion from behind the counter of the pub.

‘Quick, call the doctor!’ a female voice shrieked. ‘I think I’ve cut off my finger!’

Kellie leapt to her feet and approached the bar. ‘Can I help?’ she asked. ‘I’m a doctor.’

The face of Bruce, the barman, was ashen as the woman was clutching a blood-soaked teatowel to her right hand. ‘It looks pretty bad,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better call Matt McNaught.’

Kellie stood her ground. ‘By the time Dr McNaught gets here I could at least stem the bleeding and assess the damage.’

‘Good point, but I’ll give him a call in any case. He’ll know what to do, you being new in town and all,’ Bruce said, and lifted a section of the bar to allow her access to where the woman was sitting visibly shaking as she cradled her hand against her chest.

Kellie introduced herself to the woman, Julie Smithton, who told her she had been using a sharp knife to cut up some lemons when the knife had slipped and cut through the top of her finger.

‘Let me have a look at the damage,’ Kellie said, gently taking the woman’s hand in hers. She carefully unpeeled the teatowel to find a deep laceration across the palmar surface, indicating there was a possibility the flexor tendon could be severed.

‘Have I cut it off?’ Julie asked in a thread-like voice.

Kellie smiled reassuringly. ‘No, Julie, you haven’t. The finger’s completely intact. But it looks like you might have damaged a tendon. Do you think you can try and bend your finger, like this?’ She demonstrated the action of moving her index finger up and down in a wave-like action.

Julie gingerly lifted her hand but even though she was clearly trying to move her finger there was no flexion response. ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried.

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie said gently. ‘It’s something that can be easily fixed with a bit of microsurgery. You’ll be back to normal in no time.’

Julie’s eyes flared in fear. ‘Microsurgery?’

‘Yes,’ Kellie said. ‘It’s done by a plastic surgeon, but it will soon be—’

‘But can’t Dr McNaught do it?’ Julie asked. ‘I don’t want to travel all the way to Brisbane. I’ve got three kids.’

‘Who’s looking after them now?’ Kellie asked.

Julie lowered her eyes. ‘They’re on their own at the house,’ she mumbled. ‘They’re not little kids any more. I guess they might be all right for a day or so.’

‘What about their father?’ Kellie asked. ‘Couldn’t he look after them?’

A dark, embittered look came into the young woman’s eyes. ‘He left us close to three years ago. Got himself a new family now in Charleville, last I heard.’

Kellie looked at the woman’s prematurely lined and weather-beaten face and wondered how old she was. She wasn’t sure but she didn’t think she was that old, but clearly the strain of bringing up three children on her own had taken its toll, not to mention the unforgiving outback climate.

‘You’ll only be in hospital a few days, five at the most,’ Kellie said. Turning to the hovering Bruce, she asked, ‘Do you have a first-aid kit here, Bruce? My doctor’s bag is back at the cottage. And I’ll need the number of the flying doctor service. I left the card Dr McNaught gave me with all the contact numbers on it back at the cottage.’

Once the call had been made Julie asked to be taken to her house to see her kids and organise things before the flying doctor arrived.

‘I’ll take you,’ Bluey offered as he came to where they were gathered.

‘Yeah, right,’ Julie said with a look of disdain. ‘You’re exactly what I need right now, a broken-armed drunk to come to my rescue in a beat-up hulk of a car.’

Bluey looked affronted. ‘I’m no drunk, Jules. I’ve only had two light stubbies. Sure, there’s a spot of rust or two in the old Holden, but I can drive it with one arm tied behind my back …’ he grinned and added, ‘or my front.’

‘What’s going on?’ Matt’s voice sounded deep and controlled as he came in, carrying a doctor’s bag in one hand.

‘Julie has a lacerated flexor tendon and I’ve organised transport to Brisbane with the flying doctor service,’ Kellie informed him. ‘I called them and they’re only half an hour away on another trip from the station out at Gunnawanda Gully.’

Matt took Kellie aside and, looking down at her seriously asked, ‘I notice you have blood on your hands,’ he said. ‘Do you realise you should be wearing gloves? You could put yourself at risk of infection.’

Kellie felt a little tremor of unease pass through her. ‘I didn’t have my doctor’s bag with me,’ she said. ‘I simply responded to a call for help and acted accordingly.’

‘There’s no point putting yourself at risk,’ he admonished her. ‘Once you had established it wasn’t a life-threatening injury you should have taken universal precautions. You should have called me and met me at the clinic where we could have explored the wound, gloved up at the very least.’

‘I realise that but—’

‘Furthermore, if it turns out Mrs Smithton doesn’t have a tendon injury, you would have wasted thousands of dollars of community money, getting an air ambulance out here for nothing.’

Kellie was incensed. She knew a tendon injury when she saw one—her brother Seb had severed his during an ice-hockey match when he’d been sixteen—so she considered herself somewhat of an expert on that particular injury.

‘Not only that …’ Matt was still dressing her down like a junior colleague. ‘You are not officially on duty until next week.’

‘I don’t see why that should make any—’

Matt ignored her to turn back to the group surrounding Julie. He opened his bag and, putting on some surgical gloves, gently inspected the wound. ‘What about if I call Ruth Williams?’ he asked Julie. ‘She’ll be happy to help you out with the boys.’

‘I called her a few minutes ago,’ Bruce piped up. ‘She’s gone to the house to get some things together for Julie for the hospital. She said she’ll meet you at the airstrip.’

‘Good,’ Matt said, and stripped off his gloves. ‘You’ll be OK, Julie. It’s a bit of bad luck but it could have been a lot worse.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Julie said with a despondent set to her features. ‘I won’t be able to work for a couple of weeks and I need the money right now.’

Matt put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. ‘The boys will be fine, Julie. Ruth will love being with them, don’t worry. I’ll keep my eye on things as well, OK?’

Julie gave him a grateful look. ‘The new doctor’s nice, isn’t she?’ she said. ‘Very pretty too, don’t you think?’

Matt concentrated on zipping up his doctor’s bag. ‘I hadn’t really noticed.’

Kellie felt that all too familiar ache of inadequacy as she overheard the exchange. Maybe she should do something about her hair, she thought, tucking a wayward strand behind one ear. A few highlights, maybe even a trim, or even a new style would give her ego a much-needed boost. Not that she’d noticed a hairdresser’s anywhere in town. Culwulla Creek was hardly the place to prepare for a Miss Universe line-up, Kellie realised, but a girl—even a girl living in the dry dusty outback—needed a lift now and again, didn’t she?

‘I think she’s just what this town needs,’ Julie said. ‘Tim and Claire will be delighted to know they chose exactly the right person to fill the position.’

‘The flying doctor’s just landed,’ Bluey announced as he popped his head around the door. ‘Do you want me to come with you and hold your hand, Jules?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got nothing planned for the next few days.’

Julie gave him another scornful look. ‘That’d be the blind leading the blind, wouldn’t it?’

Bluey grinned boyishly. ‘You break me up, Jules.’

Kellie looked at Matt, who was smiling at the exchange. It wasn’t a broad smile by any stretch of the imagination but it was enough to make his dark blue eyes crinkle up at the corners and his normally rigid mouth relax. Kellie couldn’t help thinking how sensual it looked without its tightened contours.

He turned and caught her staring at him and his smile instantly faded. ‘Is there something wrong, Dr Thorne?’ he asked.

Kellie met his gaze. ‘No,’ she said, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed under his frowning scrutiny.

He held her look for a tense moment. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I have a patient to see to. I’ll let you get back to your socialising.’

Kellie couldn’t help thinking there was a hint of criticism in his tone. He made it sound as if she had nothing better to do than sit around and drink cocktails with the locals while he got on with the job of being the only reliable, hard-working doctor in town. ‘I’d like to come with you to the airstrip,’ she said with a little jut of her chin. ‘I need to learn the ropes and now is as good a time as any.’

He looked as if he was about to disagree, but perhaps because of the assembled group nearby he appeared to change his mind. ‘All right,’ he said, letting out a sigh that sounded like something between irritation and resignation. ‘Follow me.’

CHAPTER FIVE

KELLIE thought the airstrip looked even smaller than when she had arrived there only hours earlier. The arrivals building was no bigger than a suburban garden shed, and the red gravel runway looked too small for a car to brake suddenly, let alone an aircraft.

Before the plane had landed a team of locals had performed the mandatory ‘roo shoo’ which involved a couple of cars driving up and down the strip to clear away any wildlife such as kangaroos, emus or possums. Kellie could see one or two of the drivers standing chatting to the pilot as she and Matt approached.

Once Julie was settled on board, Brian King, the pilot, Nathan Curtis, the doctor, and Fran Bradley, the nurse, quickly introduced themselves.

‘It’s great to meet you,’ Fran said with a friendly smile. ‘I know of a few women out on the land who’ll be glad to know you’ve joined the outback clinic team.’

Kellie swallowed as she looked at the aircraft. ‘Er … yes, I’m sure it will be heaps of fun …’

‘Dr Thorne isn’t too keen on flying,’ Matt said with an unreadable expression.

Kellie glowered at him. ‘I’m sure I’ll get used to it if it’s not too rough.’ She turned back to the nurse. ‘I had a scary trip back from a rotation I did in Tamworth a few years ago. We had to make an emergency landing when one of the engines failed. A few of the passengers were seriously injured. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a coward ever since.’

Brian smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll do our best to keep you safe out here,’ he said. ‘We don’t take unnecessary risks. I’ve only had to make one emergency landing in twenty years of flying in the outback.’

‘That’s very good to know,’ Kellie said, with another nervous glance towards the plane which, in her opinion, looked like it wouldn’t look out of place in a child’s toybox.

Julie was soon loaded on board and everyone stood back as the engine turned over in preparation for take-off. On the way back to his car Matt stopped to chat to Ruth. ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to manage Julie’s boys?’ he asked with a concerned pleat of his brow.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Ruth assured him. ‘They’ll keep me on my toes, no doubt, but it will be good for me. Take my mind off things.’

‘Can I help in any way?’ Kellie asked. ‘It’s not as if I’m not used to handling boys and I don’t start at the clinic until next week.’

‘If you’d like to, that would be lovely,’ Ruth said. ‘Julie’s house is on Commercial Road, number fifteen, I think it is from memory—no one really bothers with numbers out here. Anyway, it’s the house next door to the old community centre.’

‘I’ll find it,’ Kellie said with a confident smile.

Matt opened the car door for Kellie once Ruth had driven off. ‘You may have had plenty of experience handling your brothers but I can assure you Julie’s boys are something else. They’ve been running wild for years. I’ve had each of them for patients with every injury imaginable. How one of them hasn’t been killed before now is little short of a miracle.’

Kellie waited until he was behind the wheel before asking, ‘How old are they?’

He frowned as if searching his memory. ‘Ty is fifteen, Rowan fourteen and Cade is twelve.’

‘And how old is Julie?’

‘She’s not long turned thirty-one, I think.’

Kellie lifted her brows. ‘Gosh, she did start young. She was, what, just sixteen when she had the oldest boy.’

‘Yes, but out here that’s not unusual,’ he said. ‘I have several patients who are teenage mothers. It’s tough on them as they can’t really get out of the cycle of poverty without an education to fall back on. They end up having a couple more kids and living on welfare for years on end.’

Kellie couldn’t help thinking of how different her life had been in spite of her mother’s untimely death. She at least had been able to complete her training even while juggling her father’s and brothers’ needs. She hadn’t really realised until now how lucky she was to have done so. She could so easily have chosen another path, like so many others did in times of grief and trauma.

‘Ruth told me about your fiancée,’ she said after a lengthy silence. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t realise how tough this weekend must have been for you.’

All the air inside the car seemed to be sucked out on the harshly indrawn breath he took. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m over it. Life moves on. It has to.’

Kellie glanced at his white-knuckled grip on the steering-wheel and wondered if that was entirely true. He reminded her of her father, stoic and grittily determined to ignore how much life had changed, pretending he was coping when each day another part of him seemed to shrivel up and die.

‘What did she do?’ she asked, after she’d let another little silence pass. ‘Was she a doctor, like you?’

‘No,’ he said, staring at the road ahead. ‘She was a teacher.’

‘What grade?’

‘First grade.’

‘How did you meet?’

He glanced at her as if he found her questions both annoying and intrusive. ‘We went to school together.’ He looked forward again and paused for a second or two before adding, ‘We dated since senior high school.’

Oh, boy, Kellie thought. Losing a childhood sweetheart was a tough call. So many memories were intertwined. It was almost impossible to move forward without some sort of survival guilt. Her father was living proof of it. He and her mother had met on the first day of high school and had never had eyes for anyone else but each other.

Kellie, on the other hand, had had plenty of casual male relationships during her adolescence but after her mother had died her only serious relationship had been with Harley Edwards. It worried her that with just under a year until she turned thirty she was way behind her peers in terms of experience. But with the responsibilities of juggling both her studies and her needy family she hadn’t had time to socialise in the same way her peers had done.

When Harley had come along, with his easygoing charm, she hadn’t given the relationship enough thought before she had committed herself to being his lover. She had known enough about her body and its responses to know she had often been a little short-changed when it had come to their very occasional intimate moments. She had always put it down to overwork and tiredness on her part, but after feeling the fine sandpaper-like touch of Matt McNaught’s hands earlier, she wondered if had more to do with not meeting the right person.

She glanced at Matt’s hands again and suppressed a tiny shiver. They looked like the sort of hands that would know their way around a woman’s body. Long fingered and strong, capable and yet gentle when he needed to be. She had seen that when he had examined Julie’s wound earlier.

‘Look, if you’re really not keen about flying out here, I’m quite happy to do the remote clinics while you hold the fort in town,’ Matt said into the silence. ‘I hadn’t realised you’d had such a frightening experience. An emergency landing would be enough to shake anyone’s confidence.’

Kellie felt her heart swell at his gesture of consideration for her feelings. ‘Thank you, but I really think I need to conquer my demons,’ she said. ‘That’s part of the reason I came out here. I hate being beaten by something. I knew it would be tough and that there would be flying involved, but patients have to take priority over personal feelings, right?’

He met her gaze briefly. ‘Out here patients always take priority,’ he said. ‘Our feelings don’t come into it at all.’

‘I guess they don’t if you’ve got them locked away so tightly no one can even get close,’ she commented wryly.

His mouth tightened into a flat white line. ‘If I choose not to wear my heart on my sleeve, that’s surely my business and no one else’s,’ he said in a curt tone. ‘Ruth had no right to tell you all the details of my private life. She was way out of line.’

‘She cares for you,’ Kellie countered. ‘In fact, I think she understands more than most what you’re going through.’

He was still looking straight ahead. ‘I suppose you mean because we’ve both lost someone we loved.’

‘Yes. She’s a mother who has lost her daughter,’ she said. ‘You’re a man who has lost his fiancée. You have a lot of common ground. Grief is a great leveller—sure, we experience it in different ways but it’s still grief. Take Julie, for instance. She’s lost the father of her children, not from death but because her husband decided he wanted something other than what she could offer. She’s left to bring up three boys on her own. In some ways she might have coped better if her husband had died rather than being left to live with the stigma of being rejected for another woman.’

Matt frowned as he thought about what Kellie had said. He had tried over the years to move on from his grief and each year he felt as if he had taken a few more important steps away from it. But then as Madeleine’s birthday crept up on him each October he felt the guilt start to gnaw at him, like a tiny pebble inside one of his shoes. It didn’t help that Madeleine’s parents expected him to be the same broken man he had been six years ago.

For the first time since he had been travelling to Brisbane each year, Matt had felt like a fraud. He had felt almost sickened this time by the way John and Mary Donaldson persisted in maintaining their daughter’s bedroom like a shrine to her memory. It was as if Madeleine’s parents had never quite accepted their daughter was finally gone. Madeleine’s clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, even her wedding dress and veil this time had reminded Matt of that scene out of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations where the jilted Miss Haversham lived in a constant state of wearing her wedding finery, even as it creased and rotted around her aging form.

Madeleine’s bed was still made up as if she was coming home to slip in between the neatly pressed sheets, her school trophies and certificates and university degree were on the wall, and her bedside clock was plugged in as if her slim hand would reach out and switch off the alarm the next morning …

Matt gripped the steering-wheel even tighter, fighting against the groundswell of feeling rising inside him. He realised it wasn’t grief but frustration that Madeleine’s parents were not just holding onto their daughter, but to him as well. ‘I’m dealing with it in my own way and in my own time,’ he said. ‘I don’t like talking about it—it brings it all back.’

‘I felt the same about my mother’s death for ages,’ Kellie said. ‘I could barely mention her name. But I’ve come to realise it’s much healthier to deal with what you’re feeling at the time rather than push it aside. It festers under the surface otherwise, and you can’t move on with your life.’

‘As a child, no matter what age you are, you more or less expect to outlive your parents,’ he said tightly. ‘It’s not the same thing at all, losing the person you were expecting to marry a couple of days later. There are issues that crop up from time to time, reminders, that sort of thing. It never seems to go away.’

Kellie took a moment to absorb what he’d said to consider if she agreed with it or not. Losing her mother had been devastating. It had been devastating for her father and brothers as well as it had come right out of the blue. One moment their forty-seven-year-old active and energetic mother had been happy and healthy, doing all the things loving mothers did, and the next she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

It had felt at the time like the family had suddenly slammed head first into a brick wall. Life was never going to be the same again and each of them had known it. Yes, they’d had a few months to say what had needed to be said so their mother could die in peace, but it hadn’t really lessened the grief. If anything, it had prolonged it, as they had watched her waste away before their eyes, each of them watching helplessly until she’d taken her final breath and slipped away.

‘I’m not sure I totally agree with you,’ she said. ‘I miss my mother terribly. There are still days when I reach for my phone to call or text her about something and then I realise she’s not here any more. I know for a fact it will get worse if or when I become a mother myself. I have my father, of course, who is absolutely wonderful but no one can ever replace your mother.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve managed without one for the last twenty-six years so I’m not sure I totally agree with you,’ he returned.

Kellie looked at the embittered set of what she could see of his features as he continued to focus fixedly on the road ahead. ‘You lost your mother when you were a kid?’ she asked, frowning.

‘She left when I was seven,’ he said taking the turn into the street where the Montgomerys’ cottage was situated. ‘Apart from the occasional birthday card and cheap Christmas present up until I was about ten, I haven’t seen or heard from her since.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said, biting her lip as she thought of how hurt he must have felt at such a young age. Her experience with her younger brothers made her very much aware of how incredibly sensitive young boys were. They hid it to protect themselves but it didn’t mean they were incapable of deep feelings.

‘What about your father?’ she asked.

‘My father?’ His mouth twisted cynically. ‘My father still likes to think if it hadn’t been for me my mother wouldn’t have run off with another man. The burden of looking after a small child, or so he thinks, was the reason she took off for greener pastures. I see him when duty calls, which basically means when he runs short of money, but other than that I keep my distance.’

‘That’s so sad,’ she said with deep sincerity. ‘Do you have any siblings?’

‘No.’

Soon after that he pulled into the driveway of the cottage but he didn’t kill the engine. Kellie knew he had probably regretted revealing as much as he had and was keen to get away before she got even further under his carefully guarded emotional radar.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ she said, opening the passenger door before he could stride around to do so.

‘No trouble,’ he said, not even looking her way. ‘I’ll send someone around tomorrow to fix that window for you. They’re probably all a bit stiff. It’s the heat at this time of year. It practically melts the paint.’

‘Thanks,’ she said with a little smile. ‘I’d really appreciate it.’

She stood and watched as he drove away in a cloud of dust, the fine red particles his car stirred up making her eyes suddenly start to water.

Kellie spent a restless night in the cottage. The heat, in spite of the air-conditioning, was oppressive and there were noises throughout the night that had her senses constantly on high alert. First she thought she heard footsteps on the roof, but after she heard the distinctive territorial screech of a possum she settled down again.

A few minutes later she heard two cats spitting and yowling just outside her bedroom window. She got out of bed and, pulling aside the curtains, gritted her teeth as she opened the stiff window just enough to lean out and shoo the snarling cats away.

She was just about to close the window when she caught sight of a shadow moving stealthily across the neighbouring vacant property. Her blood stilled in her veins, her heart missed a beat, her throat closing over with fear as she saw the figure disappear into the scrub at the back of the block.

Sleep was almost impossible after that. The old house seemed to be full of squeaks and creaks; even the sound of the refrigerator intermittently regulating its thermostat was enough to have Kellie springing upright in bed each time in wide-eyed terror.

She hadn’t realised living alone would be so … so … creepy.

What if someone was inside the house right now? What if they were not aware it was currently occupied and were on their way in? Kellie had heard of intruders reacting violently when confronted by the occupant of a residence they had assumed was vacant.

‘I need to get myself a dog,’ she said, not even realising she had spoken out loud until she heard the eerie echo of her voice in the stillness of the darkness.

The cats started up again outside her bedroom window and Kellie lay back on her pillow and began counting all the different breeds of dogs she could until through sheer exhaustion she finally drifted off to sleep …

CHAPTER SIX

THE morning sun was bright but without the sting of the day before so Kellie decided to use the cooler air to get in some exercise. Although the rolling ocean was her usual choice she was no stranger to jogging, and out here where the roads were seemingly endless and with little traffic she felt she could clear her head and prepare herself mentally for the months ahead.

She was well on her way when she realised it might have been a good idea to bring a water bottle with her and maybe even a map of the local area. She had taken a few left and then right turns on side roads to break the monotony of the long straight road but now she wasn’t quite sure which way led back to town. The flat dry landscape all looked the same. An occasional gnarled gumtree offered a landmark now and again but as soon as she turned in another direction there was another one just like it.

The sun was beating down with increasing force and her mouth started to feel like she had been sucking on a gym sock for hours. The thought of something wet and cold was almost enough to make her begin to hallucinate. She even thought she could hear the rattle of ice cubes in a glass and the slight tang of a twist of lemon …

She bent down, her hands on her knees as she dragged in a couple of dry, rasping breaths. Her brand-new running shoes were no longer pristine and white. Instead, they were stained with the ochre-coloured dust of the outback.

She gradually became aware of the sound of a motorbike on her left and she straightened to see a man approaching from behind a fenced property, where a herd of cattle was watching from the limited shade of a cluster of gumtrees, their wide eyes seeming—along with the motorbike rider and the kelpie riding on the back—to be seriously questioning her sanity.

Matt’s first words confirmed her impression. ‘What the hell are you doing this far out here without water?’ he barked.

Kellie hated the ditsy, helpless female role. There was no way she was going to admit she had made a mistake, even if she knew she had indeed made one and a potentially life-threatening one at that. ‘It’s barely seven in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been running for half an hour or so.’

He frowned at her darkly. ‘Then you must be an Olympic champion because you’re at least nine kilometres from town. If you turn back now that will be a eighteen-kilometre round trip, which is just asking for muscle meltdown without adequate fluids in this sort of heat.’

Kellie narrowed her gaze to take in the acubra hat on his head. ‘Well, now, Dr McNaught,’ she said in a pert voice. ‘Aren’t you a fine one to be preaching health and safety issues with me when you’re not wearing a helmet? You could have a fall off that bike of yours and end up concussed or brain injured.’

His jaw clenched slightly as his dark blue eyes tussled with hers. ‘I’m on private property and driving at less than forty kilometres per hour.’

Kellie planted her hands on her hips and continued to stare him down. ‘You could be driving at ten kilometres an hour and still come off and hit your head against a rock or something,’ she pointed out.

He took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah, well, it’s too hot to wear one.’

‘I’m afraid that excuse won’t quite cut it with the cops if they pull you over on the road,’ she countered, trying not to stare at the bulge of his biceps as his hands returned to grip the handlebars of the bike.

His eyes nailed hers. ‘I don’t ride my bike on the road.’

The dog, who up until this point had been perched—somewhat precariously in Kellie’s opinion—on the back of the bike jumped off, and with an agility she could only envy wriggled on its belly underneath the fence and came over to nuzzle against her.

She bent down in delight and gave his velvet ears a gentle stroke, crooning to him softly. ‘Well, hello, there, gorgeous boy. Have you been helping your daddy on the farm? What a good dog you are, and very clever too. I saw you balancing there like a gymnast on the back of that big bad old bike. Not many of the city dogs I know could do that.’

Matt felt like rolling his eyes but secretly he was a little impressed. Spike wasn’t usually so good with strangers. He was a cautious dog, leaning a little towards the anxious if anything, but that was because he had been badly mistreated before Matt had rescued him from the dogs’ home in Brisbane.

He watched as the dog melted under her touch, Spike’s brown eyes turning to liquid as Kellie tickled him under the chin.

‘Here, Spike,’ he called, and whistled through his teeth.

Spike pricked his ears and looked at him, but then turned back to Kellie and rolled over in the dust, exposing his belly for a scratch.

‘Oh you darling, darling boy,’ Kellie gushed, scratching and stroking him simultaneously. ‘You like that, huh? Yeah, well, I’ve never met a man yet who didn’t like his stomach stroked, or his ego, too, for that matter. But you don’t strike me as the overblown-ego type. You’re a real sweetie, aren’t you?’

Matt could feel his blood surging to places it hadn’t surged to in years as he watched Kellie’s hand move over his dog’s exposed belly. But then the long length of her toned legs in those shorter-than-short running shorts was enough to set anyone’s blood boiling, he thought. Her soft, sensual voice was like a whispery caress along the stiffness of his spine, and his deep abdominals switched on with a deep clench-like kick as he thought of how it would feel to have those slim, soft fingers skating over his naked flesh …

Kellie grinned as she straightened, the dog still nudging her hand with its head. ‘He’s so cute,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking last night how much I’d love to have a dog. Do you know anyone who’s got one for sale?’

Matt hastily assembled his features into a stern frown. ‘Dogs are not like toys to be picked up and played with at random. It takes commitment and patience to own and train one, especially a working dog. Besides, what would you want with a dog? You’re only here for a few months. What will you do with it when you leave?’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Duh! I’ll take it with me, of course,’ she said. ‘I love dogs. We’ve had dogs ever since I was a toddler. Our last one only died a few months ago. That was another reason I took this post. I couldn’t bear to leave before Sadie lived her last days. I wanted to be there when she died.’

‘And were you?’

Kellie couldn’t quite read his expression due to the angle of the morning sun. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was the one who took her to the vet when I realised things were rapidly going downhill. When she was put down the vet left me alone with her and she died cradled in my arms. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. It reminded me of my mother’s death. It made me realise no one should ever die alone, not even the family pet.’

Matt looked at Spike, who was still licking Kellie’s fingers as if they were coated in thick chocolate. ‘If you want to share the space with Spike on the back, I’m willing to give you a lift back to the homestead and then on to town,’ he said gruffly.

She raised her brows at him. ‘On the bike?’

‘Only back to the homestead,’ he clarified. ‘After that you can have the assurance of airbags, stability control and ABS brakes all the way into town.’

‘We-ll,’ she said, shifting her lips from side to side as she considered his offer.

‘I promise to drive extra-slowly,’ he added.

‘OK, then,’ she said, and moved towards the fence with the dog at her side. ‘Now, then, Spike, I’m not sure I’m going to do it your way. I think I’ll go over the top.’

Matt propped his bike on its stand so he could offer his assistance but she had already snagged her jogging shorts on the top rung of barbed wire by the time he got there.

She looked down at him sheepishly, her perfect small white teeth sinking into her plump bottom lip. ‘Oops,’ she said, giving her shorts a little tug.

‘Here,’ he said, moving closer. ‘Hold onto my shoulders and I’ll unhitch you.’

Kellie put her hands on his shoulders, her belly giving a little quiver of reaction as she felt his hard muscular warmth seeping through the palms of her hands. Her fingers dug in a little further as she felt one of his hands releasing the fabric against her bottom and a shiver ran up like a startled mouse the entire length of her spine. Wow! Those hands of his sure had some magic about them, she thought as she hastily tried to disguise her reaction.

‘There,’ he said, his voice sounding a little scratchy. ‘You’re undone.’

‘Th-thanks,’ she said, locking gazes with him, her hands still on his shoulders.

The sounds of the bush seemed to Kellie to intensify the fact that apart from the dog and the herd of cattle they were not only totally alone but still physically touching.

Her fingers splayed experimentally, relishing the feel of toned male flesh, her belly doing another little flip-kick movement when she saw the dark unshaven stubble on his jaw. She suddenly wanted to run her fingers over the prickle of his skin, to feel it against the softness of hers, on her face, her mouth, her breasts and the silk of her inner thighs.

She looked back into his deep blue gaze and saw the unmistakable flare of male desire burning there. Her chest began to feel as if a moth was fluttering inside the soft cage of her lungs.

His hands went to her waist, the long fingers resting against her for perhaps a second or two longer than necessary before he lifted her from the fence. Kellie felt every angle and plane of his tall lean body on the way down, her breasts brushing against his pectoral muscles, her belly against the hard buckle of his belt, her trembling thighs against the rock-hard length and strength of his.

He set her on the ground and stepped back from her, his expression instantly shutting her out. ‘Come on, then, hop on,’ he said tonelessly, kicking the bike stand with his foot before straddling the bike.

Kellie had never realised how arrantly masculine such a simple action could be. ‘Um … where’s Spike going to sit?’

she asked, trying to sound calm and cool and totally unaffected when inside she felt every secret place pulsing with a need she had never felt in such strong, insistent waves before.

‘He’ll run alongside,’ Matt said, and gave the dog a signal with one of his hands. ‘It’s not far and he’ll enjoy the exercise.’

Kellie put one leg over the bike and moved as close to him as she dared, her inner thighs having to stretch to accommodate the muscular width of his. ‘R-rightio,’ she said a little uncertainly. ‘I’m all set.’

He started the bike with a downward thrust of one booted foot. ‘Put your arms around my waist,’ he instructed. ‘The ground’s pretty rough in spots.’

‘Er … right …’ Kellie said, and nestled closer, her arms going around his trim taut middle, while her mind went to places she wasn’t sure it should be going.

For instance, she knew if she inched her fingers just a teeny bit closer she could touch his male outline, the unmistakably hard male outline of him she had felt on her little sensual slide down his body. Or if she nudged herself even closer against his back, her feminine mound would be able to feel the tautness of his buttocks …

‘Everything all right back there?’ Matt asked after a journey of about fifty metres.

‘Er … yes … fine … just fine …’ she answered, wriggling back a bit.

Within a few minutes Kellie could see the homestead in the distance, the colonial design with its wrap-around veranda and large rainwater tanks an iconic image of rural life on the land.

The effects of the longstanding drought, however, were clearly visible. The gardens surrounding both residences looked worn down by thirst and the various trees offering what they could in terms of shade had a thick coat of red dust on their leaves.

Matt brought the bike to a standstill near one of the large sheds a short distance from the homestead and Kellie dismounted even before he had turned off the engine.

‘How far behind will Spike be?’ she asked.

‘He’ll probably stop for a quick dip in the home paddock dam,’ he said, taking off his hat and brushing back his hair with his hand. ‘And speaking of water, let’s get you inside and rehydrated.’

Kellie followed him up the four well-worn steps to the front door, the cooler shade of the veranda an instant relief from the now fierce heat of the sun. Inside the house was even cooler, the long hallway with its polished timber floors and the smell of furniture polish and cedar making her feel as if she was stepping back in time to a previous era.

She looked around with interest as he led her to the kitchen. ‘Wow, this is such a lovely house, Matt,’ she said. ‘It must be, what, a hundred and fifty years old?’

‘Something like that,’ he said, handing her a tall glass of water he had poured from a covered jug in the fridge.

Kellie felt the brush of his fingers as she took the glass and, averting her gaze, took a few sips even though she felt like throwing her head back and downing the contents in one gulping swallow.

‘Help yourself to more water and feel free to make yourself tea or coffee,’ he said as he headed to the door. ‘Everything’s there on the bench near the kettle. I’m just going to have a quick shower before we head into town.’

‘Thanks,’ she said and once he had left the room she quickly refilled her glass and drank deeply.

Kellie heard the sound of water being lapped thirstily outside. She looked out of the window and was pleased to see Spike had made his way back and after his drink was making himself comfortable in the shade of the rainwater tank.

She wandered from the kitchen to the comfortable-looking sitting room across the hall, the sound of an ancient grandfather clock ticking yet again reminding her of how many generations of farmers had lived here.

Her gaze went to the mantel above the fireplace where there was a photograph of a young woman, the same woman she had caught a glimpse of in Matt’s wallet the day before. She picked up the frame and looked into the features of his late fiancée, her long ash-blonde hair, almond-shaped green eyes and wide happy smile marking her as a stunningly beautiful woman.

The floorboards creaked as Matt stepped into the room and Kellie turned around, suddenly feeling like a child who had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. ‘I was just … um … having a look around,’ she said, still holding the photograph.

He walked across the room, took the frame from her hands and looked down at it for an infinitesimal moment, before turning and carefully setting it back on the mantel in exactly the same position. Kellie got the impression he thought she had deliberately desecrated his shrine for his fiancée. She could see the tension in his shoulders as he stood with his back to her, still looking at the photograph.

‘What was her name?’ she found herself asking.

‘Madeleine,’ he answered after a slight pause.

‘She was very beautiful,’ Kellie said, not sure what else to say to fill the awkward silence.

‘Yes …’ He turned around to look at her, his expression showing none of the emotion she could hear in his voice. ‘Yes, she was …’

The grandfather clock timed the next silence.

Kellie breathed in the clean scent of Matt, the tantalising combination of citrus-based shampoo and soap and aftershave activating all her senses. His dark brown hair was still wet, although it looked as if he had used his fingers rather than a comb to push it into place. His jaw was cleanly shaven now but it looked as if the razor had nicked him just below his chin on his neck. She could see the pinkish graze and she felt an almost uncontrollable urge to close the small distance between their bodies and salve the tiny wound with the tip of her tongue.

She ran her tongue over her parched lips instead, more than a little shocked at how she was reacting to him. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so physically aware of a man. Her whole body was on high alert, her skin tingling to feel more of his touch. She could still feel the warm imprint of his hands where they had rested on her waist earlier, the nerve endings still fizzing like thousands of champagne bubbles under her skin.

‘Matt, I was—Oh, sorry,’ a gruff male voice said from the door. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’

‘It’s all right, Bob,’ Matt said, turning to face the man. ‘This is Kellie Thorne, the new GP filling in for Tim Montgomery. Kellie, this is Bob Gardner, my manager.’

Kellie smiled and took the older man’s heavily calloused hand in hers. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Bob,’ she said with a bright and friendly smile.

‘Nice to meet you, Dr Thorne,’ Bob said. ‘My wife Eunice would like to meet you some time. She’s away at the moment, visiting our daughter in Cairns, but when she gets back I’m sure she’ll invite you over for a meal or something.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Kellie said still smiling.

‘What did you want to talk to me about, Bob?’ Matt asked.

‘That heifer we were worried about has delivered her twin calves without any dramas,’ Bob said. ‘But I thought we should still get a couple of antibiotic injections from Jim Webber just in case she comes down with milk fever.’

‘Good idea,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll drop in on my way home from the clinic, unless you’re going to town.’

‘I’ve got to see about that pump part so I can get them then,’ Bob said. He turned again to Kellie and smiled. ‘I hope you settle in quickly, Dr Thorne, and enjoy your time with us. Lord knows, Matt here could do with the back-up. He works too hard but that’s life in the bush, I guess.’

‘I’m looking forward to helping out in any way I can,’ she said. ‘In fact, the sooner the better.’

‘Well … be seeing you,’ Bob said, and, brushing off his hat, stepped out of the room.

Matt pushed back his partially dry hair with one hand. ‘Wouldn’t you like a couple more days to look around a bit first?’ he asked. ‘To settle in and find your way around?’

She shook her head, making her glossy chestnut ponytail swing from side to side. ‘No, I’ve seen enough. I more or less know what I’m in for. I’m itching to get started.’

Matt felt a tiny wry smile lift one corner of his mouth. ‘You really like diving into things boots and all, don’t you?’

She gave him one of her high-wattage smiles in return. ‘No point in living life unless you live it to the full, right?’

Matt had to force himself not to glance back at Madeleine perched on the mantel in her silver frame, but he felt her rainforest-green eyes watching him all the same. He had been promising himself he would put her away … well, not exactly in that sense. But he had come to realise recently there would always be a part of him that would think of Madeleine with deep affection. What? Not

love? That tiny voice of conscience spoke inside his head, louder than it had in years.

Matt had thought he had loved Madeleine. They had been together for so long it was hard to say when the feelings he had assumed were love had started. As a young couple together for such a long time they had sort of gradually drifted into a deeper and deeper relationship. One thing had followed another and before he’d known it they’d been having an engagement party, and then a little while after that they had started planning a wedding …

He gave an inward grimace. Perhaps it was well and truly time to send Madeleine’s photograph back to her parents. No doubt they would find a space for it among the unopened wedding presents and uncut wedding cake.

He gave himself a mental shake and reached for his keys. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said, and led the way out to his car.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY had barely travelled a kilometre or two on the way into town when Matt got a call on his mobile. Because he used his hands-free device to answer while he was driving, Kellie heard every word of the exchange.

‘Matt, there’s been an incident at Coolaroo Downs,’ a female voice said. ‘Apparently one of the jackaroos had some sort of altercation with a bull. I’m not sure how serious it is. You know what Joan Dennis is like these days—she panics if someone falls off a fence. It might be just a graze for all we know. The volunteer ambos are on their way but I thought you should see what gives before we call in the flying doctor.’

‘Thanks, Trish,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll head back that way now. I have the new GP with me but rather than drop her in to the clinic I think she’d better come with me just in case this is serious. Can you let the clinic patients know I might be half an hour or so late?’

‘Sure,’ Trish said. ‘So …’ An element of feminine intrigue entered her voice. ‘What’s she like?’

Matt tried to ignore the way Kellie’s toffee-brown gaze turned towards him. He couldn’t see it but he sure as hell could feel it. ‘She’s … er … with me right now,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know, that but what is she like?’ Trish probed. ‘Is she good-looking?’

‘All right, I guess,’ he said, wincing when he felt the laser burn of Kellie’s look.

‘All right as in what?’ Trish kept on at him. ‘As in girl-next-door or model material?’

Matt mentally rolled his eyes. ‘Somewhere in between,’ he answered, chancing a glance Kellie’s way and then wishing he hadn’t. Didn’t he know enough about women to know they all wanted to be considered the most beautiful woman that ever walked the planet? Not that Kellie wasn’t beautiful or anything. She was absolutely gorgeous now that he came to think about it. She had a natural elegance about her—in fact, he reckoned she’d look as fabulous in a slinky evening gown with full make-up and exotic perfume and glittering jewellery as she did in a ripped pair of running shorts with her hair limp with perspiration and her cheeks pink from exertion.

Ever since Matt had felt the slim slide of Kellie’s body down his that morning out by the fence, he had been having some very disturbing and rather erotic thoughts about her. But he didn’t like being manipulated and it seemed to him the whole town was conspiring to hook them up as a couple. When it came time for him to think about another relationship he would do it his way, the old-fashioned way, not because everyone felt sorry for him and had brought in their version of a mail-order bride.

Trish’s voice cut through his private thoughts. ‘So do you think you might ask her on a date or something?’ she asked.

‘Trish, I’m on hands-free here and Dr Thorne is hearing every word,’ he said, wishing he’d thought to say it earlier, like about three sentences back.

‘Oh … Well, then …’ Trish quickly recovered and added, ‘Hi, there, Dr Thorne. I’m Trish, the receptionist. We’ve been looking forward to having you join us.’

‘I’ve been looking forward to being here, too,’ Kellie said. ‘In fact, so much so I’m prepared to get my hands dirty straight away. Dr McNaught has asked me to start a few days early.’

‘Well, thank the Lord for that,’ Trish said. ‘We’ve been run off our feet while Matt was away on the weekend, and my husband David is supposed to be taking it easier these days. You’re just what this place needs—a bit of new blood and young and single and female to boot.’

‘Got to go, Trish,’ Matt said curtly. ‘Keep the phone line as free as you can until we see what gives.’

‘Will do,’ Trish promised, and promptly hung up.

Matt drove a few more kilometres down the seemingly endless road before he took a right turn into a property marked as Coolaroo Downs, the car rumbling over each of the cattle grids making Kellie rock from side to side in her seat.

He frowned as the cattle yards eventually came into view. ‘This looks a little more serious than I thought,’ he said. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he added, ‘I hope to God the ambulance isn’t too far behind us.’

Kellie felt a tight knot of panic clutch at her insides as Matt parked the car a short distance from the small cluster of people hovering around the body of a young man lying on his back, a dark stain of blood spreading from his abdomen to the dusty ground beneath him.

Matt went round to the rear hatch to retrieve his emergency bag and drug pack. ‘Here, take this,’ he said, handing Kellie the drug pack, as they were met by Jack Dennis, the property owner.

‘It’s Brayden Harrison, our junior jackaroo,’ Jack said, his face pale beneath his leathery tan. ‘Didn’t see our stud bull coming straight for him. When he turned, he got gored and thrown into the air. It’s bad, Doc. I don’t think he’s going make it.’

From what Kellie could see, she thought Jack could be right, and sending a quick glance at Matt she could see he thought the same. Brayden was on his back, as white as a sheet and unconscious, hardly breathing. There was a large pool of dark blood still collecting by his side, coming from a wide slash in his abdomen, with a loop of bowel visible through the torn flannelette shirt.

Matt set his emergency pack down beside Brayden, and opened it out to reveal the colour-coded sections for trauma management. ‘Jack, has the air ambulance been called?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Joan called them soon after she called you, but they told her they were on another call to Roma.’

‘Have someone go up to the house and tell Joan to ask them to divert here now. There’s every chance this is going to be a fatality unless we can pull off a miracle here,’ Matt said. Turning to Kellie, he went on, ‘He’s in shock and unconscious. Put on gloves and goggles and come round to the side and stabilise his neck while I intubate him.’

Kellie held the neck steady, while Matt, now also with gloves and goggles on, gathered the laryngoscope and size 7 endotracheal tube. There was no suction, and the sun was bright, flooding out the light of the laryngoscope.

‘Jack, hold this space-blanket over his head to make it darker so I can see down his throat,’ Matt instructed with a calm confidence Kellie couldn’t help admiring.

Under the cover of the blanket, Matt inserted the endotracheal tube, inflated the cuff and attached the respirator bag. There was no oxygen, only air to ventilate with.

‘OK, I’ll ventilate while you fit a hard cervical collar, Kellie. They’re in the airway section,’ Matt instructed.

Kellie retrieved and fitted the collar, then under Matt’s instruction took over ventilation with the bag. Matt listened to the chest with his stethoscope, and then percussed the chest.

‘There’s very little air entry on the right and it’s dull to percussion. I’d say he’s got a haemothorax. He’s also losing a lot of blood from the abdominal wound.’

Taking a pair of scissors, Matt cut away the front of the patient’s shirt to reveal a ragged gash in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, with a loop of bowel protruding and dark blood oozing out. Taking a pack of gauze dressings and a few ampoules of saline, Matt covered the bowel and compressed it back into the abdomen, then covered the whole wound with several large dressing packs and taped them down. He then inserted a 14-gauge cannula into a vein in the arm, and attached it to a litre bag of normal saline.

‘Jack, here, squeeze this bag firmly to push the fluid in,’ Matt directed, handing over the IV set to the cattle farmer.

One of the station hands came back down from the house to inform them, ‘The flying doctor’s diverting here. They should be overhead in about ten minutes.’

‘Good,’ Matt said, and inserted a second IV line into the other arm, and got the station hand to hold up the IV fluid bag.

Matt knew he had two more bags of saline in the kit which would hopefully be enough till help arrived. The flow of blood had now stopped, at least externally.

‘OK, all we can do now is hold the fort and support his airway and circulation till we get more gear,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll take over ventilation, Kellie. Can you do his obs?’

‘Sure,’ Kellie answered, becoming even more impressed at Matt’s level-headedness under intense pressure and circumstances that were far from ideal. The dust and heat was bad enough but with the stickiness of blood the bush flies were starting to swarm around. ‘Pulse is 120, BP 80 systolic,’ she said. ‘The first bag’s through. I’ll put up the next one.’

Seemingly from nowhere, the roar of a plane at low altitude passed directly overhead, en route to the airstrip on the other side of the homestead.

‘Thank God.’ Matt breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We might just pull this off yet.’

The final bag of saline was almost through when one of the station’s four-wheel-drive vehicles arrived with the air ambulance crew in the back, together with a stretcher and several emergency kits. One of the ambulance crew jumped out, carrying two packs of equipment.

‘Hi, I’m Marty Davis. We haven’t got a doctor—he’s in Roma with a placenta praevia. They’ve got things under control there but we’re on our own here. What have you got?’

‘Brayden Harrison, one of the jackaroos, has been gored by a bull and is in very bad shape,’ Matt informed him. ‘He’s in haemorhagic shock, he’s got a haemothorax and an open abdominal wound. Have you got any plasma expander? We’ve just exhausted our normal saline and we’re still way behind.’

Kellie connected both of the bottles Marty produced to the IV lines while Matt instructed Marty and his partner, Helen, to position the stretcher beside the patient. While Kellie took over ventilation, Matt supervised the transfer onto the trolley and into the back of the four-wheel drive.

‘He’s still bleeding internally. I want to get him to the plane and put in a right intercostal catheter to re-expand his right lung. Have you got underwater drainage?’ Matt asked.

‘Yes, we’ve got a full set of stuff for chest wounds on the aircraft,’ Helen said.

‘Let’s go, then,’ Matt said. Exchanging a quick glance with Kellie, he asked, ‘Are you OK to fly with me to Brisbane? I’ll need you to ventilate him while I manage his IV fluids and abdominal wound.’

‘Of course,’ she said, although she could feel her stomach already beginning to tighten in apprehension.

Once they reached the aircraft, the two ambulance personnel loaded the patient, while Kellie and Matt set up the intercostal tray.

Kellie helped Matt wash his hands with some sterile water and surgical scrub solution.

‘Thanks,’ he said, locking gazes with her momentarily before he donned sterile gloves.

She watched as Matt prepped the right side of the chest before performing the necessary procedure that would stem the flow of blood. Some tense minutes later when he unclamped the tube, about 300 ml of blood drained into the bottle, with a small ongoing leak of blood after that.

‘Hopefully his chest bleed will stop,’ Matt said as he fixed the tube to the skin with a heavy suture and sticky plaster.

‘You did an amazing job back there,’ Kellie said, meeting his eyes across the now relatively stable patient. ‘You stayed so calm and in control.’

Matt gave her a quick movement of his lips that could have almost passed for a smile. ‘You were a damned good assistant,’ he said. ‘It makes a huge difference when everyone knows what to do and when to do it.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, feeling a blush spreading over her cheeks. ‘But I was glad you were the one in charge.’

‘I’m sure you would have coped just as well,’ he said, checking the patient’s condition again. ‘Come on, Brayden, hold it together, mate. Not long now.’

Kellie heard the slight note of desperation in Matt’s voice. ‘Do you know him personally?’ she asked softly.

His eyes connected with hers before looking away again to focus on the young man lying between them. ‘I met him a few months ago. He came to see me about a plantar wart on his foot.’ His frown deepened as he continued, ‘He’s nineteen years old. He was a little undecided about what to do after he finished school, so rather than waste his parents’ money at university doing a course he might never use he came out to the bush for a gap year.’ He let out a ragged sigh as his eyes came back to hers. ‘He’s just a kid …’

Kellie put her hand on his arm. ‘He’ll make it, Matt,’ she said. ‘You’ve done everything possible to get him this far. He has to make it.’

Matt looked down at her smooth hand resting against the dark tan of his skin. She had pretty fingers, long and slender with short but neat nails. The skin of her palm was soft and warm, and he found himself wondering what it would feel like to have her massage the aching tension out of his neck.

He pulled his hand away as if by doing so he could tug himself away from where his thoughts were wandering. It had been so long since he had felt a woman’s touch. He had locked his physical needs away the day Madeleine had died. For six long lonely years he had ignored the natural and instinctive stirrings of his body, distracting himself with work until there hadn’t been time or energy to think about what he was missing.

No one in all that time had made his skin lift and tighten simultaneously at the merest touch. No one’s eyes had met his and seen more than he’d wanted them to see. No one’s smile had melted or even chipped at the stone of sadness that weighed down his soul.

But Dr Kellie Thorne with her feather-light touch and brown eyes and beautiful smile certainly came close.

Perhaps a little too close.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ONCE the patient was transferred in Brisbane to the nearest trauma centre, Matt looked up at the flight information board and frowned. ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this but it looks like we’re going to have to cool our heels here for a while.’

Kellie looked up at the screen. ‘Why?’

Brian King, the pilot who had flown the patient down, came over to where they were standing. ‘There are electrical storms all over the region,’ he explained. ‘Most of the regional flights have been grounded overnight.’

‘Overnight?’ Kellie blinked a couple of times. ‘But I’ve got nothing with me. Look at me.’

Both men turned and looked at her.

Kellie felt her face go red when Matt’s dark blue gaze lingered the longest. ‘I’m covered in blood and dust,’ she said, and added mentally, And I’m wearing a pair of ripped high-cut running shorts and a vest top, and I haven’t had a shower and I’ve never felt so unfeminine and unattractive in my life. ‘Anyway, where would we stay?’ she asked.

‘There’s a hotel close to the airport we use at times like this,’ Brian said. ‘They do a cheap rate for medical personnel. I’d offer you a bed at my place but we’re in the middle of renovations.

There’s barely room for the wife and kids.’ He turned to Matt. ‘Will you stay at your … er … fiancée’s parents’?’

‘No,’ Matt said, his expression as blank as a bare wall. ‘They’ve got relatives staying with them this week. I’ll be fine at the hotel with Dr Thorne.’

‘I reckon the flights will be back to normal in the morning,’ Brian said. ‘Are you guys right to get a taxi? I’ve got to go through a couple of checks with the safety crew.’

‘Sure,’ Matt said. Giving Kellie a follow-me nod, he led the way outside to the taxi rank.

Kellie could feel every person’s eyes on her as she stood beside Matt in the queue. An older couple in front had even made a point of stepping away from her, their wrinkled brows frowning in disapproval as they’d taken in her dishevelled appearance.

She felt Matt’s broad shoulder brush against her. ‘Ignore them,’ he said in a low voice.

She looked up at him and asked in an undertone, ‘Do I smell?’

His expression contained a hint of wryness. ‘I’ve smelt worse.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s very reassuring.’

A flicker of a smile lit his gaze. ‘Believe me, you’ll feel like a million dollars after a shower and something to eat,’ he said, as he led her to the next available taxi.

It was a short trip to the hotel, where the receptionist at the front desk smiled apologetically at Matt’s request for two rooms. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we only have one room available.’

Matt frowned. ‘One room?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she answered. ‘With so many regional flights being cancelled at short notice, we filled up very quickly.’

‘I don’t mind sharing a room,’ Kellie piped up helpfully.

Matt’s frown brought his brows almost together as he looked down at her for a moment.

‘It’s only for one night,’ she said, conscious of the receptionist’s speculative look.

‘It’s a queen-sized suite,’ the receptionist chipped in. ‘But if you would like a roll-out bed brought in I can organise Housekeeping to have one delivered to your room.’

‘Yes,’ Matt said. ‘That would be very much appreciated.’

‘We’re not a couple,’ Kellie explained.

‘Brother and sister?’ The receptionist took a wild guess.

‘No,’ Kellie said with a little laugh. ‘I’ve already got five brothers. The last thing I need is another one.’

The receptionist smiled as she handed Matt a form to sign. ‘It’s room four hundred and twenty-five,’ she said. ‘You’ll need your swipe card. I hope you enjoy your stay.’

When the doors of the first available lift opened Kellie stared in dismay at her reflection in the mirrored wall at the back. ‘Oh, my God!’ she wailed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I looked like this?’

Matt reached past her to press the button for their floor. ‘You don’t look that bad,’ he said with what he hoped was an indifferent look.

She groaned as she rubbed at the smear of blood over her right cheek with the bottom of her top. ‘I look like an extra from a horror movie,’ she said. ‘The least you could have done is said something. No wonder people were staring.’

‘Yes, well, they probably weren’t staring at your face,’ Matt said dryly, doing his level best not to stare at the strip of tanned and toned abdomen she had exposed by lifting her top to clean her face.

She let the top fall back down. ‘What do you mean?’

He put an arm out to hold the lift doors open. ‘I think that rip in your shorts is getting bigger,’ he said. ‘I hope for the sake of your dignity there’s a complimentary sewing kit in the room.’

Kellie clutched at her behind and felt the lace of her knickers. ‘Oh, no!’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, leading the way down the hall. ‘There’s no one about. This is our room right here.’

Our room.

Matt felt himself flinch as he said the words. Those words … How many times had he and Madeleine used them over the years? Our first date, our love, our engagement, our future …

He stared at the swipe key in his hand, wondering if he should have tried another hotel. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? It wasn’t as if the whole of Brisbane would have been booked out. There were numerous hotels all over the city and even if some of them were beyond the health department budget, he could have paid for a couple of rooms himself.

‘Hurry up!’ Kellie said at his side. ‘Open the door. I don’t want anyone else to see like me this.’

He drew in a breath and opened the door, but before he could reach for the light switch she had rushed past him and headed straight to the bathroom.

While she was in the shower someone from Housekeeping arrived with a roll-out bed, which, once it was set up, shrank the space to give the room an alarmingly intimate feel.

Matt swung away and looked out of the window, trying not to think of Kellie’s naked body standing under the shower next door. His whole body felt tense, his blood surging to his groin at the thought of spending the night in the same room as her with less than a metre of space to separate them. He was angry at himself, angry that he was allowing sheer animal attraction to override his common sense.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of Madeleine, but her features seemed less defined, blurry almost, as if she was slowly but inexorably moving out of focus. He clenched his fists and tried to recall the scent of her perfume but even that, too, had drifted out of his reach.

‘I’m all done,’ Kellie said as she came out of the bathroom.

Matt slowly turned from the window, his lower belly kicking in reaction at the sight of her in one of the hotel’s fluffy white bathrobes, her wet hair loose about her shoulders, the fresh orange-blossom fragrance of the shampoo and shower gel she had used filling his nostrils.

‘I’ve washed out my things and left them to dry over the shower screen,’ she said. ‘I hope they won’t be in your way while you shower.’

‘Right …’ he said, moving past her. ‘Er … do you want to have a look through the room-service menu? It takes them about forty minutes to deliver it. You can order for me.’

‘What would you like?’ she asked.

Matt wasn’t sure he could even admit that to himself without another pang of shame slicing through him. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Surprise me.’

Kellie frowned as the bathroom door closed and locked behind him. After a moment or two she let out a little sigh, reached for the room-service menu and started reading.

Matt told himself he wasn’t even going to look at the tiny pair of black lace knickers hanging over the glass shower screen, but as he blindly reached for the bath gel they fell off and landed at his feet. He waited a beat or two before bending to pick them up, his fingers almost of their own accord squeezing the moisture out of them.

He hung them back up with careful precision and quickly finished his shower, but somehow the thought of Kellie standing where he was standing just minutes before, the water coursing over and caressing her slim form, unsettled him far more than he wanted to admit.

She was sitting with her legs curled underneath her on the roll-out bed, reading a tourist brochure, when he finally came out of the bathroom. She looked up and smiled at him in that totally engaging way of hers and informed him, ‘I’ve ordered you a steak with kipler potatoes and green vegetables. Is that OK?’

His stomach grumbled in anticipation. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said as he rubbed his wet hair with his towel. ‘What are you having?’

‘I couldn’t decide between the barramundi fillets with mango chilli salsa or the chicken with pesto and pine-nut stuffing or the loin of lamb with rosemary and garlic.’

He tried not to stare at the soft plumpness of her mouth. ‘So … what did you decide?’ he asked.

She tilted her head at him. ‘What do you think I chose?’

‘The fish,’ he said, feeling an involuntary smile pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘Definitely the fish.’

Her eyes went wide with surprise. ‘How on earth did you guess that?’

He gave his head another quick rub with the towel. ‘You’re a beach chick,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably grown up with fish bones between your teeth.’

She grinned at him. ‘I did, too,’ she said. ‘My brothers and I were taught to fish when we were still in nappies. I think I still hold the record for the most flathead caught in one outing.’

Matt marvelled yet again at how different their family backgrounds were. His father had taken him fishing once but it had been a disaster from start to finish. If the rain hadn’t been bad enough, the seasickness Matt had felt on the way home across the bay had made it a day to remember for all the wrong reasons. He could still recall his father’s scowling expression, as if Matt had been personally responsible for both the lack of fish and the inclement weather.

‘You sound like you had a very happy childhood,’ he said as he tossed his towel over the back of a chair.

‘I did,’ she said with another little smile. ‘I hope when I get married and have kids, I’ll be able to give them the sort of childhood I had.’

A stretching silence made the room seem ever smaller.

‘I’m sorry….’ Kellie said, biting her lip. ‘I guess that was a bit insensitive of me.’

He gave her an unreadable look. ‘No, not at all.’

Another beat or two of silence passed.

‘Tell me about her,’ Kellie said softly.

‘Tell you about who?’

‘Madeleine. Your fiancée. What was she like?’

Matt felt his chest start to tighten but after a moment’s hesitation he found himself telling her more than he had told anyone. ‘She was beautiful, a bit on the shy side but when she got to know you she would come out of her shell a bit more. She was an only child like me so we had a lot in common right from the start. We both found it hard to make friends easily. It took us time to learn to trust people.’

He took in a breath and continued, ‘She loved music, not that techno modern stuff but mostly classical. She played the piano and the flute like a pro but she couldn’t cook for peanuts.’ He gave a ghost of a smile that barely touched his mouth and went on, ‘I think it was because her mother and father did everything for her. Being their only child, it was understandable she was treated like a princess.’

‘Her parents must miss her dreadfully,’ Kellie said into the small silence.

His eyes met hers. ‘Yes …’ He released a long, rough-around-the-edges sigh. ‘She was their life, their entire focus for living. They’re like empty shells now.’

Kellie moistened her dry lips. ‘It’s nice that you keep in contact with them,’ she said. ‘Not many men in your situation would think to do that.’

He gave a rueful twist of his mouth but it wasn’t anywhere near a smile. ‘I’m not sure if it helps or hinders them, to tell you the truth,’ he confessed. ‘If I don’t call them regularly I feel guilty, but when I do call it sort of stirs it all up again for them, you know?’

She nodded. ‘I do know …’

He ran a hand through his still damp hair and sighed again. ‘It’s been six years and yet it sometimes feels as if it was yesterday.’

‘What happened?’ Kellie asked.

He sat on the end of the queen-sized bed, his legs so close that Kellie knew if she uncurled hers from beneath her they would touch his, knee to knee.

She watched the pain of remembering moving like a shadow over his face. It thinned his mouth, it tightened his jaw and it left his dark blue gaze achingly empty as it connected with hers.

‘We had an argument the night before,’ he said, a frown bringing his brows almost together over his eyes. ‘I don’t even remember what it was about now, something silly to do with the wedding seating arrangements, I think. She left in a huff and I was my usual pigheaded self, brooding over it for hours without doing anything to sort things out.’

Kellie sat in silence, somehow sensing he was letting his guard down in a way he had never done before. It made her feel an intimate connection with him, unlike anything she had felt with anyone else in the past.

His mouth contorted again as he continued, ‘She was spending the week with her parents so I didn’t bother ringing her the next morning. I planned to go round that evening with flowers and an apology but, of course, I was too late. A car ran a red light and ploughed straight into her on her way to school that morning. She died a few minutes later at the scene.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Kellie said in a voice whisper soft.

He brought his gaze back to hers, the bleakness of it making her ache for him. ‘I often lie awake at night and wonder what she was thinking in those final moments as her life ebbed away,’ he said. ‘I wonder if she was thinking about me, our wedding and all the plans we’d made.’

Kellie brushed at her eyes. ‘It must have been an absolute nightmare for you. I don’t know how you coped.’

He gave her a crooked smile but it was grim, not humorous. ‘It felt like a nightmare at the time,’ he said. ‘I kept thinking surely someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder and say “April Fool” or something, but each day was the same as the one before. The grief was like a thick fog, I couldn’t see through it and no one could get to me through its black heavy shroud. I even thought about … you know … ending it all.’

‘What stopped you?’

His gaze meshed with hers. ‘See these?’ he asked, holding out his hands palms upwards.

Kellie nodded.

He looked down at his outstretched hands. ‘These hands have been trained to save lives. I gave up years of my life to train to be a doctor. I had to work harder than most as I didn’t have the support of my parents, who were too busy feuding with each other to take much notice of me. I thought it would be selfish of me to end it all when I could put my life to much better use.’

‘So you came out to the bush.’

His eyes came back to hers. ‘Yes. Out here I can make a difference. My life counts for something, even though it is not the life I had originally planned for myself.’

Kellie leaned forward and took his hands in hers and gently squeezed. ‘You are an absolutely amazing doctor, Matt,’ she said. ‘You saved Brayden Harrison’s life today.’

‘He’s not out of the woods yet,’ he reminded her, but Kellie couldn’t help noticing he didn’t pull out of her tender hold.

‘Perhaps not,’ she said. ‘But he’s in with a chance, a chance he wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t been there to do what needed to be done.’

His fingers curled around hers, his slightly rough touch against her smooth one sending her pulse skyrocketing. She ran her tongue over her lips again, mesmerised by the dark intensity of his gaze as it held hers.

The doorbell of the suite sounded, announcing the arrival of their meals, and broke the moment. Matt dropped her hands as if they were hot coals and strode over to the answer the door.

The trolley was wheeled in and Matt gave the young attendant a tip on his way out before coming back to where Kellie was still curled up on the makeshift bed.

‘We should eat this before it gets cold,’ he said, without meeting her gaze.

Kellie knew he was regretting his earlier outburst of guilt and grief. She had experienced it so many times with her brothers, the way they let their guard down and then pulled away from her as if they were worried she would exploit their brief vulnerability. ‘Matt?’ she said softly.

He took the lid off one of the plates. ‘This is your fish,’ he said, and handed it to her with a closed-off expression.

‘Don’t shut me out,’ she said, ignoring the outstretched plate. ‘Come on, Matt, you just let me into your deepest pain and now you’re shoving me away.’

He blew out a breath and slapped the plate back down on the trolley. ‘Don’t eat it, then, see if I give a damn.’

She got to her feet and tugged at his arm. ‘Matt, look at me,’ she said. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You can’t bring her back no matter how much you want to. It wasn’t your fault she died. You weren’t to blame.’

He brushed off her arm, his eyes blazing as they hit hers. ‘What would you know?’ he barked at her savagely. ‘What the hell would you know about how I feel?’

‘I know more than you realise,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I know that you feel somehow responsible for Madeleine’s death. I also know you are punishing yourself as if in some way that will make things right, but it won’t, Matt. You won’t make things right by doing wrong things.’

‘What wrong things am I doing?’ he asked, still glaring at her heatedly.

She came over to where he was standing, so close he had no where to go but back up against the wall. ‘You didn’t die in that accident with her, Matt,’ she said. ‘You’re still alive and entitled to live a fulfilling life. You have the right to enjoy what life has to offer, you don’t have to be a hermit out there in the bush. You can have a new love, maybe even a happy future, with marriage and babies.’

His lip curled in a sneer. ‘Is that why you came out here?’ he asked, ‘to find a husband and sperm donor?’

Kellie flinched away from his crude bitterness. ‘I came out here because I needed a change of scene. My family has become too dependent on me and my love life totally sucks, so all round it seemed like a good solution.’

He moved past her to lift the lid off the other plate. ‘I’m not interested in auditioning for the role of fill-in partner while you sort out your relationship and family issues. When I feel ready to look for another relationship I will do so in my own good time and not a minute before.’

‘Only because you’re afraid of being hurt again,’ she said. ‘It’s understandable. My father is the same but it doesn’t mean either of you don’t deserve to live life to its fullest potential. You are, what, thirty-three or -four? You have more than half your life ahead of you. What are you doing, locking yourself away from all that life has to offer?’

He picked up the napkin-wrapped cutlery and sat on the bed with his plate balanced on his lap. ‘I’m happy with my life the way it is. I work, I eat and I sleep.’

Kellie gave her eyes a roll of exasperation. ‘Yes, but you do it all alone.’

‘Only the sleeping part,’ he said, sticking his fork into a floret of broccoli and popping it into his mouth.

Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve been celibate for six years?’

Matt frowned at her. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked. ‘Lots of people choose to be celibate.’

‘I know but don’t you think it’s time you lived a little?’

‘I told you, Kellie, I like my life the way it is for the moment,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if Trish and the Montgomerys gave you the impression I was a likely candidate for a six-month fling but I prefer to choose my own partners, not have them thrust on me.’

Kellie glared at him. ‘You think I would agree to a matchmaking scheme like that?’ she asked. ‘Get real, Matt. I like to choose my own partners too, not that I’ve been particularly good at it or anything, but don’t for a moment think I would consider you as a potential lover, far from it.’

He pushed his half-eaten meal to one side and got to his feet. ‘I’m going out for some fresh air,’ he said, tossing his napkin down on the bed. ‘Don’t wait up.’

Kellie blew out a frustrated sigh and pushed her half-eaten meal away. OK, so maybe that had been a bit harsh, she thought. The truth was she had more than once considered Matt as a potential lover, but after Harley’s brazen two-timing Kellie was damned if she was going to play second fiddle to another woman again: dead or alive.

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN Matt came back to the suite at close to two a.m. Kellie was sound asleep, her small body curled up like a child’s, one of her hands underneath her cheek, the other hanging down over the side of the bed.

He stood looking at her in the lamplight, feeling guilty for drinking in the sight of her while she was totally unaware of his presence. It seemed voyeuristic, exploitative even, but he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away.

She had obviously dispensed with the bathrobe for it was now hanging off the edge of the bed near her feet. Somehow the thought of her naked beneath that thin cotton sheet stirred his senses more than he would have thought possible. She had such a neat body, lean and athletic but unmistakably feminine.

He went rigid when she suddenly rolled over with a little murmur, the sheet slipping to reveal the creamy curve of one small but perfect breast. He knew he shouldn’t be staring—he was a doctor, for pity’s sake! He’d seen more breasts than he could count, and yet the sight of that creamy globe with its dusky brown nipple took his breath away.

Her soft mouth opened slightly on a sigh and she nestled back down into the pillow, but just when Matt thought it was safe to draw in a breath she suddenly opened her eyes. She sat bolt upright, her mad scramble for the sheet to cover herself affording him an even better view of her body than she had probably intended.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she railed at him. ‘You scared me half to death!’

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled gruffly. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just …’

‘You were just what?’ She glared at him. ‘Having a little peek while you thought no one was looking?’

He raked a hand that wasn’t quite steady through his hair. ‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he lied, a tide of colour heating the back of his neck. ‘I was trying to get to my bed without disturbing you in the process.’

‘How long have you been standing there?’

His eyes shifted away from her accusing narrowed ones. ‘Not long.’

‘How long?’

‘Can we, please, drop this?’ he asked. ‘Look, I have no designs on you so you can rest easy.’

She hugged her knees under the sheet, her expression looking a little downbeat. ‘So … what you’re saying is you don’t find me in the least bit attractive?’

Matt frowned at the edge of insecurity in her tone. ‘Of course I find you attractive,’ he said. ‘You’re very attractive—gorgeous, in fact. Why on earth would you think otherwise?’

She gave her bottom lip a bit of a nibble before she answered. ‘I don’t know … I guess I’m not all that confident on the dating scene. I think I spent too much time sweating over making dinner for my father and my brothers instead of getting hot and sweaty in a nightclub with the rest of my friends. I keep thinking there must be something wrong with me. My ex certainly made it clear I wasn’t enough to hold his interest.’

‘Yeah, well, if you ask me, your ex was a jerk,’ Matt said, pulling down the covers on the queen-sized bed in case he was tempted to cross the floor and pull her into his arms and show her how achingly beautiful she was.

A little silence passed.

‘If the tables had been turned, would you have expected Madeleine to put her life on hold indefinitely?’ Kellie asked.

‘Look, Kellie,’ he said injecting his tone with impatience at her persistence over his lack of a love life. ‘I’m not putting my life on hold. But even if I was, it’s not the same thing. It’s so much harder for women.’

‘How?’ Kellie asked. ‘Grief is grief. I don’t think either gender has an exclusive take on it.’

‘The issue of fertility puts a very definite take on it,’ he pointed out. ‘As a man, if I chose to I can have children at almost any age. Of course, in my twenties, thirties or forties would be ideal, but for women that isn’t the case. They have limited time in which to select a suitable partner to father their child or children.’

‘Did you and Madeleine plan to have children?’

Matt turned from the bed to look at her. ‘It was something we discussed once or twice.’ He looked away again, not comfortable adding how often he had shied away from the topic. Madeleine had been a few more steps ahead of him, now that he thought about it. It had been her idea to get engaged, her idea to bring the wedding forward and very definitely her idea to begin a family straight afterwards. It wasn’t that Madeleine wouldn’t have made a great mother, it was just he had never really seen himself settling down into suburbia in quite the way she had planned. It was a disturbing realisation that two people who had claimed to be in love had not really been in tune with each other’s wants and desires. Was that why he was still punishing himself? he wondered. It wasn’t that he had loved Madeleine too much—it was more that he hadn’t loved her enough …

Kellie lay back on her pillow with her hands propped behind her head. ‘My mother would have loved to be a grandmother,’ she said on the end of little sigh. ‘She told me that being a mother was great but it was so exhausting she couldn’t wait to be a granny so she could hand back the little ones at the end of the day. I feel sad she won’t be around for my babies, to love and indulge them as a doting granny should. My dad will do his best but it won’t be the same, will it?’

Matt sat on the edge of his bed. ‘I’m sure he will do what he can to be a good grandfather,’ he said, rather unhelpfully.

She turned her head to look at him, a soft smile curving her mouth. ‘I’m hoping my time away in the bush will bring about a romance.’

He automatically tensed. ‘So I was right about Tim and Claire?’ he said, clenching his jaw. ‘I knew it. I just knew they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.’

She gave him a blank look. ‘What have Tim and Claire got to do with my father and my aunt?’

It was Matt’s turn to deliver the blank stare. ‘Your father and your aunt?’

‘Yes,’ Kellie said. ‘My aunt has been in love with my father for the last five years, ever since she watched him nurse my mother through her illness. Aunty Kate’s husband left her for another woman years ago, and for as long as I can remember she has always been there for all of us, working tirelessly in the background, dropping in meals or doing loads of washing and ironing without being asked. My father has more or less been oblivious to it because I’ve been there to pick up where she left off. I thought it would be best if I moved out so she could show Dad how much she does for us and for him. He’s a bit on the slow side, if you know what I mean.’

‘He’s probably not quite ready to move on,’ he said pragmatically. ‘You can’t force him.’

‘I know, but Aunty Kate loves him,’ she said. ‘She’s loved him for years. I’ve known it, my brothers have known it even though they are about as emotionally deficient as boys can be, but my father seems completely ignorant of it.’

‘Then perhaps it was a good move of yours to come out to the bush,’ he said. ‘You sound to me like the glue that holds your family together.’

‘I’d never thought of it quite like that. That’s great way to put it.’ Her smile faded a little as she asked, ‘But what if they fall apart while I’m gone?’

‘I’m sure they won’t,’ Matt said. ‘They’ve probably got into a pattern of learned helplessness. They’ll soon snap out of it.’

‘Yes, well, that’s the plan,’ she said with another little smile.

Matt could see that Kellie was a warm-hearted person who had a mission in life to spread love and goodwill to others. He also knew from what she had briefly intimated that her love life was lacking something, but it didn’t mean he was the person to step up to the plate to take the next ball, certainly not with the whole of Culwulla Creek on the sidelines, cheering him on.

Anyway, life was so damned capricious.

Doctors knew that more than most. They diagnosed terminal illnesses on a weekly, sometimes even daily basis. He had done it himself. So many faces drifted past him, shocked faces, devastated faces, faces that communicated their frustration in their but-I’ve-not-done-all-I’ve-set-out-to-do expressions of despair.

They were all the same, just like him: cheated of what life had promised but had failed to deliver.

Was it his fault?

No, and the rational part of him knew Madeleine’s death wasn’t really his fault. It was the driver running the red light, it was the rush hour, it was a hundred other things that had been going on in the universe at that particular moment, but yet still he felt somehow responsible. What if she had been thinking about him at that moment and not seen the car on her right? What if she had been thinking about the seemingly endless list of jobs to do before their wedding? Or, like him, having last-minute doubts? It had been a stressful time, especially as Madeleine hadn’t wanted to take any time off school and therefore everything had had to be packed into those last couple of days before the term finished. What if he had done more of those little jobs for her so she hadn’t been so rushed off her feet?

The what-ifs had been what had kept him awake most nights in those early days and tortured far too many of his days as well. Work out here in the bush was his only panacea and so far it had done a reasonable job … well, it had until Kellie had come to town with her big smile and adorable dimples.

‘We’d better get some sleep,’ he said, feigning a yawn. ‘The first flight is at eight. I organised it when I went out earlier. We were lucky as there were only two seats left.’

‘I hope I get the window one,’ she said, turning on her side and propping herself on her elbow.

Matt decided it would be wise to turn out the lamp as soon as he could so he didn’t have to keep staring into those beautiful brown eyes. The soft light in the room made her gaze melting and soft, so soft he could feel himself drowning in it every time she looked at him. He muttered something about using the bathroom and came out a few minutes later dressed in the other bathrobe provided by the hotel. She was still lying facing him, her eyes widening slightly when he got between the covers without taking off the bathrobe.

‘You’re going to cook, wearing that to bed,’ she informed him knowledgably. ‘I had to toss mine off hours ago.’

I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that, Matt thought as he turned off the lamp and flopped down on the pillow. The thought of her satin skin covered only by the thin threads of a cotton sheet was almost too much for his mind to cope with.

There was barely a beat of silence before her voice split the silence.

‘Matt?’

He affected a bored, I’m-almost-asleep tone. ‘Hmm?’

‘Do you think you could leave the lamp on?’ she asked in a beseeching whisper.

Even though his eyes were closed Matt still rolled them behind his eyelids. ‘What on earth for? Do you want to read or something? It’s close to three in the morning.’

‘No but it’s so dark in here …’

He thumped the pillow to reshape it. ‘It’s supposed to be dark,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Yes, but I like to be able to see my way to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to break a leg or something, stumbling in the dark.’

‘Do you need the bathroom?’

‘Not right now, but I might later.’

Matt removed his bathrobe under the cloak of darkness and placed it over the nearest chair before switching on the bedside lamp, turning the dimmer switch as low as it could go. ‘There, it’s on now so close your eyes and go to sleep.’

There was another beat or two of silence.

‘Matt?’

He inwardly groaned. ‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be totally blind?’ she asked.

He counted to five. ‘Not lately, no.’

He heard the rustle of the bedclothes as she shifted her position. ‘I do, a lot,’ she said. ‘I had a young female patient who was blind from retinoblastoma. She had lost both eyes by the time she was two years old. She told me what it was like, how she has to read people not by their faces or body language but by using other senses. She has to memorise every place she visits. No one can move a single piece of furniture at her house otherwise she’ll bump into it. I think about it a lot—you know how you would have to adjust in so many little ways.’

‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ he asked, smothering a weary yawn, not a feigned one this time.

‘No, it’s just ever since I met her I feel like I have to have light around me,’ she said. ‘It reminds me of what so many people, me included, take for granted.’

‘You do realise you are contributing unnecessarily to global warming?’ he asked.

Kellie turned to look at him. He had dispensed with the bathrobe and was now lying on his back with his eyes closed, his arms propped behind his head, his biceps bulging, and his stomach flat and naked to his waist where the thin cotton sheet was resting. His chest was as tanned as the rest of his body, not entirely hairless but not overly so. The trail of black curly hair burrowed below the sheet to where it loosely covered his groin.

Kellie knew she shouldn’t be staring but it had been a very long time since she had seen a man in such fabulous physical condition. Her pulse fluttered like a trapped moth beneath her skin.

She was less than a metre away from him. She could reach out with one of her hands and slide it down his ridged abdomen; her fingers could splay over his maleness, stirring it to fervent life with the merest brush of her fingertips.

‘It’d be tough, though, don’t you think?’ she asked, forcing her mind away from the temptation of his body. ‘Being blind, I mean.’

Matt opened his eyes and turned to look at her and then wished he hadn’t. The shadow of her cleavage was right in his line of vision and the delicious curves of her breasts were outlined by the sheet tucked against her. Even if he closed his eyes again he knew it would be impossible to erase that vision from his mind.

Possibly for ever.

‘Aren’t you exhausted?’ he said. ‘You’ve had a tough day, by anyone’s standards.’

She wriggled under the bedclothes again and let out a tiny sigh. ‘I guess I am a bit tired …’

Thank God, Matt thought as he watched her eyelids start to droop. He watched as she drifted off, her mouth relaxing into a soft plump curve, her slim form covered by the sheet making him wish he could run his hand over her, exploring every dip and curve of her body.

He clenched his hands into fists, scrunching his eyes shut, but the gentle sound of her breathing kept him awake for most of the night.

Bright morning sunlight pierced Kellie’s eyelids and she sat bolt upright and rubbed at her eyes. ‘Hey,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Aren’t we supposed to have left by now?’

Matt dragged his head off the pillow and looked at the bedside clock through slitted eyes. He muttered a stiff curse and threw off the bedclothes without thinking.

He suddenly saw Kellie’s eyes go wide and then the delicate rise of colour rush up over her face. He reached for the bathrobe he’d discarded the night before and, tying it with more haste than security, lunged for the phone.

Kellie overheard every word of the exchange, realising as the heated conversation went on they would have to hurry or they would miss the only flight to Culwulla Creek that day, which would mean a long road trip in a hire car from Brisbane.

Using the sheet as a cover, she scuttled into the bathroom and tried not to think about what she had seen in that brief lapse when he had leapt from the bed, although she knew it was going to be very hard to erase it from her mind.

Matt was built like a bodybuilder, not the over-the-top anabolic steroids type but the type that sent female pulses soaring. Pumped muscles, leanness where leanness looked best, like on the flat planes of a stomach that looked as if it had been carved from a slab of marble.

When she came out dressed in her rinsed-out shorts and top and running shoes he was dressed and ready to go. ‘We have to hurry,’ he said, scooping up his doctor’s bag. ‘They’re holding the flight for us but only because we’re medical personnel.’

The attendant smiled at Matt as he led the way up the gangway. ‘Well done, Dr McNaught,’ she said, ‘and with three minutes to spare.’

Matt gave her a brief smile in return and, nodding in apology to the already seated and belted passengers, indicated for Kellie to precede him. ‘You can have the window seat,’ he said with a deadpan expression. ‘And the armrest too, if you want it.’

Kellie grinned up at him as she wriggled into the seat. ‘Is that a sense of humour I see peeking out from behind that gruff exterior of yours?’ she asked.

His expression remained bland but she saw his lips twitch slightly as he took his seat and began rummaging for his end of the seat belt.

‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ she asked, holding up the clip-in end of the belt, her eyes twinkling mischievously.

Matt took it from her slim warm fingers, his body tingling all over at that merest of touches. She was smiling at him in that impish way of hers, the mixture of tomboy and sexy siren that befuddled his brain and other parts of his anatomy. He could feel the way his groin was already tightening, the ache building even more when she ran her tongue over the pink sheen of her lips in that slightly nervous, uncertain manner of hers. He thought of that soft mouth exploring him, the tip of her tongue tasting the essence of him, licking from him the life force that was banked up inside him to the point of bursting. All night he had thought of her hands skating over him, discovering his contours, feeling the length and deep throbbing pulse of him in the slim sheath of her body, the feminine heart of her convulsing around him as he drove himself to paradise …

Kellie peered at him curiously. ‘Are you all right, Matt?’ she asked.

Matt gave himself a mental shake and resettled in his seat, wincing as he had to accommodate a little more of himself than normal. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered. ‘These seats are so damned uncomfortable. There’s not enough leg room.’

‘That’s because you’re so tall,’ she said, pushing his elbow off the armrest and smiling at him playfully.

Matt reached for the in-flight magazine in the seat pocket, even though he’d read it a thousand times before. Those long legs of hers were still in his line of vision. He couldn’t help imagining them looped around his, her mouth on his, her tongue mating with his as they strove for mutual fulfilment.

He felt her shoulder lean into him. ‘Interesting article?’ she asked.

He schooled his features into impassivity as he looked at her. ‘Absolutely riveting,’ he said, and turned back to the piece on emu-oil investment.

CHAPTER TEN

RUTH WILLIAMS was at the airstrip when they alighted from the plane. ‘I organised one of Jack Dennis’s boys to take your car to the clinic,’ she said to Matt. ‘I didn’t want to leave it out here overnight, especially with your medical equipment on board. I can give you a lift back into town.’

‘Thanks, Ruth,’ Matt said. ‘That was thoughtful of you.’

Ruth turned to Kellie. ‘You must be exhausted. What a drama to face on your first official day with us.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Kellie said, looking down at herself ruefully. ‘That’s the longest run I’ve ever been on. Next time I’m going to take an overnight backpack just in case.’

Ruth gave her a rueful look. ‘I did warn you things can happen out here in the blink of an eye.’

‘Yes, well, I’m a believer now,’ Kellie said as they made their way to Ruth’s car.

The clinic was fully booked so Ruth dropped off Matt before taking Kellie to the Montgomerys’ cottage so she could get changed and drive herself back to town.

By the time Kellie made it back to the clinic the waiting room was full. Every available chair was taken and three male patients were standing. A small child was howling piteously in one corner, his harried mother doing what she could to placate him while nursing an infant at her breast.

Trish gave Kellie a relieved smile as she ended the call she was on. ‘Welcome to Mayhem Medical Clinic,’ she said. ‘I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s not always as busy as this.’

Kellie straightened her shoulders. ‘I’m ready for a challenge,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘Good,’ Trish said, handing her the file on top of the stack on the reception counter. ‘Angela Baker is your first patient. You won’t get much more challenging than that.’

Kellie suppressed a frown, hoping the patient hadn’t overheard Trish’s comments. She hadn’t appeared to, although perhaps it was because her son was now having a full-on tantrum in the middle of the waiting-room floor.

‘Angela?’

The young flustered woman got to her feet, almost dropping the baby in the process.

‘Here,’ Kellie said as she reached for the baby and the nappy bag the young mother was carrying. ‘Let me help you.’

‘Thanks,’ Angela mumbled as she reached for one of her toddler’s flailing arms. ‘Come on, Charlie. It’s time to see the doctor.’

The little boy opened his mouth even wider, his reddened eyes streaming with tears. Kellie felt sorry for both the toddler and his poor mother, who looked like she was close to tears herself. She looked far too thin for someone who had not long had a baby. Her cheeks were sunken and her hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a couple of days at least.

It took a bit of cajoling but eventually Charlie shuffled in with his mother and sat down on the floor to play with the small basket of toys in Tim Montgomery’s room.

Kellie was glad she had come to the post with experience as she hadn’t had time to check the facilities out first. The room was fairly well equipped and organised in such a way that she didn’t think she would have too much trouble finding what she needed.

The baby became restless as it was still hungry so Kellie handed her back to Angela so she could run her eyes over the file to familiarise herself with the young woman’s history. There wasn’t a great deal of information, apart from the two pregnancies which had both progressed more or less normally. Tim’s writing was a little difficult to read in places but she could see that Angela was a nineteen-year-old girl. She wasn’t married but lived with the father of her children on the edge of town.

‘Right.’ Kellie smiled as she looked up from the notes. ‘What can I do for you, Angela?’

‘I think there’s something wrong with Charlie,’ Angela said, not quite meeting Kellie’s gaze. ‘He’s been crying a lot and keeps trying to hit the baby.’

‘Lucy is, what …?’ Kellie glanced at the notes again. ‘Just ten weeks old and Charlie is nineteen months old. It’s perfectly normal for him to be a little put out by the presence of a new baby. He’s had you to himself for all that time. He’s only a baby himself so it will take him a little while to adjust, but I’ll run a few standard tests to reassure you.’

Charlie was surprisingly obliging when Kellie approached him. She crouched down to his level, brushed back his dark brown hair from his face and told him she was going to see how much he had grown over the past few months.

Once she had finished her examination she handed him one of the more colourful toys and he played contentedly while she turned her attention to Angela and the baby.

Lucy was as cute as a button. Kellie felt every maternal urge pulling cathedral-like bells on her biological clock as she examined the tiny wriggling infant.

Lucy, like her brother, had big brown eyes and beautiful skin. Her weight and length were normal and she even gave Kellie a gummy smile, which sent the clanging bells inside Kellie’s head into overdrive.

Once the baby was settled back in Angela’s arms Kellie asked a few questions about the young woman’s health and diet, suggesting she might need to eat a bit more because she was breastfeeding. ‘I imagine it’s a difficult time, juggling the needs of two small children, but you need to take care of yourself. I’d like to run a few tests just to make sure your haemoglobin is fine and your thyroid function is normal.’ She waited a beat before adding, ‘I notice you have a slight tremor in your hands. How long have you had that?’

Angela’s eyes moved away from hers. ‘I don’t know … A little while, I guess …’ She brought her head back up after a moment and said somewhat defensively, ‘I don’t drink. As soon as I knew I was pregnant I stopped.’

‘That’s good, Angela,’ Kellie said with an encouraging smile. ‘That was a very sensible thing to do. Alcohol crosses the placenta and it also passes through breast milk so it’s best to avoid it.’

‘It’s hard … you know?’ Angela said, looking down at the baby. ‘There’s no one to help me. Shane doesn’t see it as his thing. He thinks it’s women’s work to look after the kids. I never get a break.’

‘Would you be interested in being part of a mothers’ group if I set one up?’ she asked.

Angela gave a one-shoulder shrug. ‘I guess.’

Kellie smiled. ‘I’ll make some enquiries and let you know.

You’ll need to come back and see me if the blood tests show up anything abnormal.’

Once she had drawn up the blood for testing she helped Angela back out to Reception with the children before reaching for the next patient file.

The rest of the morning whizzed by as patient after patient came in and out. Kellie saw Matt only twice, once when she was out at Reception, quizzing Trish on facilities available for an elderly patient, and then again when she went in search of the toilet. He had been coming out of his consulting room and briefly asked how she was settling in.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I have a couple of patients I wouldn’t mind talking over with you when you’ve got a minute.’

‘Trish usually leaves a thirty-minute gap for lunch so we can go over them then,’ he said. ‘The kitchen’s out the back. I’m not sure if Trish has had time to show you around. It’s been a full-on morning due to yesterday’s cancellations.’

The thirty-minute gap became a ten-minute one because Kellie was held up with another young single mother who was finding it difficult to cope with her three young children. Kellie spent most of the consultation handing over tissues as Gracie Young told her of her woes, but it made her all the more determined to try and sort out something for these unfortunate girls.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Kellie said as she came into the clinic kitchen after seeing Gracie out.

Matt looked up from the paper he was reading. ‘That’s fine. Trish told me you’ve seen some of our more difficult patients.’

Kellie frowned as she flicked on the still warm kettle. ‘Where is Trish now?’ she asked.

‘I think she said something about going to the general store for something,’ he answered. ‘Why?’

She leaned her hips back against the counter and faced him. ‘She made a comment about a patient that I thought was a little inappropriate,’ she said. ‘The waiting room was full and anyone could have heard. The patient hinted that she had heard it as apparently it’s quite a common occurrence.’

‘Which patient was it?’

‘Angela Baker.’

‘Do you want me to have a word with Trish about it?’ he asked.

She let out a sigh as the kettle clicked off. ‘I probably need to talk to her myself.’

‘Angela is a hard case, Kellie,’ he said. ‘Gracie Young is even worse. They both have pretty sad backgrounds, lots of violence and drinking while they were growing up.

‘She told me she’s stopped drinking.’

His expression took on a cynical edge. ‘And you believed her?’

Kellie stood up straighter. ‘Yes, I did, as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘She loves those kids. She’s doing the best she can. It’s not easy for her, you know.’

‘You won’t be able to fix anything in the short time you’re here,’ he said, lifting his cup to drain its contents.

‘As far as I can see, no one is doing anything to turn things around.’ She threw back.

Matt stood up and pushed in his chair. ‘Listen, Kellie,’ he said. ‘You’re not a social worker or a psychologist or indeed a drug and alcohol counsellor. You’re a GP. Your job is to diagnose and treat illness. You’ll end up doing more harm than good.’

‘I want to start a support group for the young mothers,’ she said with a defiant jut of her chin. ‘Once or twice a week for just a couple of hours for them to have a cup of tea or coffee together and chat, sort of like a playgroup. I can do some workshops on parenting or cooking classes even. Anything will be better than nothing.’

‘I don’t want to rain on your campaign to save the world but you really would be wasting your time,’ he said. ‘Before you’re in the air on your way home they will go back to what they’re familiar with.’

‘How can you be so cynical?’ she asked. ‘You’ve lived out here for this long—surely you realise the issues they face?’

‘Of course I do, and I do what I can when I can,’ he said as he went to the sink to rinse his cup. ‘It’s heartbreaking to see the destruction of so many young lives.’

‘Is there a community centre I could use?’

Matt turned to look at her. ‘You really are serious about this, aren’t you?’

Her brown eyes glinted with determination. ‘Yes.’

He shoved his hands in his pockets, to stop himself from reaching to brush back a wayward strand of her hair off her face. She looked strong and determined but that chestnut strand lying across her left eyebrow gave her a look of endearing vulnerability. Even the pillowed softness of her mouth made him want to bend his head to press his lips against hers. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, but somehow his voice came out a little croaky.

She smiled and before he could do anything to stop it—even if he had wanted to—she reached up on tiptoe and pressed a little soft-as-a-summer-breeze kiss to his cheek. ‘Thank you, Matt.’

His eyes locked on hers, the silence stretching and stretching until Matt thought the room would burst. He knew he should say something but he couldn’t get his mind into gear. He was standing too close to her. Her perfume had bewitched him. He could feel the drugging of his senses as each pulsing second passed.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ Trish said in a singsong tone as she came in carrying a packet of tea bags.

‘No, not at all,’ Matt said brusquely, stepping away from Kellie. ‘We were just discussing Angie Baker.’

Trish’s gaze flicked to Kellie’s before returning to Matt’s. ‘Oh?’

‘I know you’ve had some run-ins with Angie in the past, but I would prefer it if you’d refrain from making your opinions of her public,’ he said. ‘That’s not how this practice is run.’

Trish’s mouth tightened for a moment before she released it on a sigh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right, of course. I just get so frustrated. David and I spent years trying to have a child and it never happened. She just seems to fall pregnant just looking at a man.’

Matt gave her shoulder a little pat. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Trish. You’re doing a great job. Thanks for rescheduling all those patients yesterday. I owe you.’

‘Then promise you’ll come to this year’s bachelors’ and spinsters’ ball,’ Trish said. ‘You never been to one before and it’s about time you did.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Will you come too, Kellie?’ Trish asked with a broad smile. ‘You’d have a great time, I’m sure. People come in from miles around.’

‘It sounds like fun,’ Kellie said. ‘When is it?’

‘It’s next month,’ Trish said, ‘I’ll give you an invitation with all the details on. You’ll have a great time and, you never know, you might even meet the love of your life. Believe me, it’s happened before. We’ve had four marriages in four years so you never know whose turn it will be next.’

Kellie carefully avoided looking at Matt in case he saw the blush she could feel creeping along her cheeks. ‘I can’t see that happening,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m not intending to stay out here any longer than six months.’

Trish’s hazel eyes began to twinkle as she bustled out to answer the phone. ‘You’ll have to change her mind, Matt,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you could do it.’

There was a flicker of irritation in Matt’s gaze as it met Kellie’s. ‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ he said. ‘She, along with just about everybody else in town thinks it’s time I found myself a wife. I’m sorry if you were embarrassed by her—she means well in spite of her rather obvious and clumsy attempt to matchmake.’

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie said. ‘I understand. I have heaps of friends and colleagues who do the same thing to me. I’ve been on so many blind dates over the past few years I reckon I could almost qualify for a guide dog.’

The smile that pulled at his mouth made Kellie’s heart skip in her chest. It made his dark blue eyes soften and the tight set to his jaw disappear completely.

He held her gaze for a moment or two before turning away, his smile gradually fading. ‘I have patients to see,’ he said in a gruff tone.

Kellie drew in a breath and let it out in a long unsteady exhalation as the door clicked shut on his exit. You’re in deep trouble, my girl, she thought as she tipped her undrunk tea down the sink.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AFTER she had finished at the clinic Kellie called in at the general store to pay for the things Ruth had bought on her behalf.

Cheryl Yates introduced herself and showed her around the store. ‘Of course, it’s not up to your city standards, but if you want anything special I can order it in,’ she said. ‘We’re not flash but we’re friendly.’

‘Thanks, Cheryl.’

Cheryl narrowed her gaze as she looked in the mirror positioned above the cash register. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment, Dr Thorne?’

‘Sure,’ Kellie said, and watched as Cheryl sternly approached a youth of about fifteen who was lingering near the back of the store.

‘OK, Ty Smithton,’ Cheryl’s broad twang bounced off the walls. ‘What have you got in your pockets this time?’

‘Nuffin’, Mrs Yates. I got nuffin.’

‘You want me to call the cops or do you want to deal directly with me?’ she asked, placing her hands on her hips in a don’t-mess-with-me manner.

Kellie couldn’t help feeling a carload of burly cops might be preferable to facing the ire of the large-framed woman. The youth scowled and emptied his pockets just as someone came into the store.

‘What’s going on, Cheryl?’ Matt asked.

‘Ty here decided he wanted to borrow a few items but he’s since changed his mind,’ Cheryl said as she escorted the boy to the front door. ‘Haven’t you, Ty?’

Ty’s expression was all brooding surly teenager but Kellie could see beyond it to the lost little boy inside. He reminded her of her brother Nick who had often wound up in trouble in an effort to draw attention to himself.

‘How’s it going with Mrs Williams looking after you guys?’ Matt asked Ty.

‘All right, I s’pose,’ the boy mumbled.

He gave Ty’s shoulder a quick squeeze. ‘Go easy on her, mate,’ he said. ‘She’s not as young as your mum, you know.’

‘I know …’

Kellie stepped forward. ‘Hi, Ty, I’m Kellie Thorne, the new doctor in town. I was thinking about coming to visit Ruth at your place. I can give you a lift if you like then you can show me the way.’

‘All right,’ Ty said in a grudging tone. ‘But it’s not far. I can easily walk.’

‘Then why don’t we do that?’ she suggested. ‘I need the exercise. I’ve been cooped up inside all day. A walk in the fresh air is just what I need, and I have no idea where your house is. Ruth did tell me but I’ve completely forgotten.’

The boy gave an indifferent shrug, which Kellie took to be an affirmative. She turned to Cheryl and snatched up three chocolate bars from the counter. ‘I’ll take these as well,’ she said with a little smile as she handed over some money.

Cheryl turned to Matt once Kellie had left the store with the boy at her side. ‘Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ she commented.

‘Stop it, Cheryl,’ he growled. ‘You’re starting to sound like Trish. I’m sure Tim and Claire have colluded with her about appointing Dr Thorne. In fact, I think the whole town’s been in on it. Everywhere I go people give me a knowing look.’

‘But she is very pretty,’ she said. ‘And it’s well and truly time you moved on. You’re young, Matt. Too young to be denying yourself a bit of fun. Why don’t you ask her out to your place for a meal?’

Matt schooled his features into a blank mask. ‘I’m not interested.’

Cheryl chuckled as she handed him the groceries she had got ready for him earlier. ‘You can’t fool me, Matt, any more than Ty Smithton or his wayward brothers can. You’re interested all right, it’s just your head hasn’t caught up with your body and your heart.’

Matt frowned as he made his way back to his car. He didn’t want to be interested but he just couldn’t help it. Kellie was like a magnet he couldn’t resist. He felt himself being drawn towards her in spite of his efforts to keep his distance. She exuded life and hope and joy. He had never met someone with such an exuberant boots-and-all mentality before. She went at everything like a bull at a gate, which made him realise how much he had shut himself away over the years. He was lonely, there was no point denying it. He craved the easy companionship of a secure relationship, having been denied it during his formative years.

Madeleine had been so stable, so dependable and reliable.

But totally predictable, a little voice piped up, seemingly from nowhere.

He got behind the wheel and gripped it with both hands until his knuckles turned white.

He liked predictable, at least in his private life. He liked knowing what was going to happen next.

Matt couldn’t imagine Kellie being predictable, or at least not from what he had seen from her so far. She was impulsive, for one thing. Her scheme to bring the single mothers together was well meaning but fraught with disaster. She was new to the community. She had no idea of how things worked out here. She would no doubt go in with all her social-conscience guns blazing and end up with some of her bullets ricocheting back to hurt her.

He gunned the engine and put the car into gear. It wasn’t his problem if she got hurt. What did he care? He had only met her a couple of days ago. She was a city chick who was here for six months and six months only.

But somehow as he drove towards his property he couldn’t quite rid himself of the image of Kellie walking alongside the spotty-faced, scowling Ty Smithton. She had taken the time to stop and speak in a respectful way to a troubled young boy who was hell bent on ruining his life. She hadn’t turned up her nose or shrunk away in fear. She had faced the young boy as an equal and asked him to help her.

The least Matt could do was support her during the time she was here, which reminded him he had promised to organise for someone to fix that sticking window.

No reason why it couldn’t be him.

Kellie couldn’t believe the chaos at the Smithtons’ house. Ruth had clearly made some headway but there was still a lot to be done. There was a roomful of clothes that had been washed and dried but not sorted. Kellie had never seen such a mould-ridden bathroom and the boys’ rooms were like war zones.

Ruth was clearly finding it harder than she had expected and communicated that once the boys had retreated to their rooms. ‘I can’t believe how messy they are,’ she said as she wiped the benchtops yet again. ‘I no sooner clean up after them and they’re at it again. And eat! I can’t believe what they can put away.’

‘They’re boys and they’re fully loaded with testosterone,’ Kellie said, ‘It’s entirely normal for them to eat like gannets, believe me.’

Ruth gave a sigh. ‘Tegan was the opposite. She hardly ate a thing, especially after I married Dirk. I often wonder if things would have been different … you know, if I hadn’t gone ahead with the marriage. Tegan missed her father—he died when she was eight. I was lonely and then Dirk came along and we got along quite well. I hadn’t worked since before Tegan was born so I think I might have been looking for security more than anything. It was a disaster from the word go.’

‘Stepparenting is a difficult task for most people,’ Kellie offered.

‘Yes,’ Ruth said, sighing again. ‘Dirk wasn’t the most patient of men and he had rather strict ideas on what girls should and shouldn’t do. There have been rumours over the years that he had something to do with her disappearance but I wouldn’t have thought him capable of something like that. But even now I lie awake at night and wonder if I missed something somewhere.’

‘I really don’t know how you’ve remained so strong,’ Kellie said.

‘The first few years were the worst,’ Ruth said. ‘Dirk passed away eighteen months after Tegan disappeared. He had a massive heart attack. I had to keep myself together in case Tegan came back. I kept thinking what if she had run away and then came back only to find her mother had given up on life? I could so easily have ended it all. I wanted to end the torture of not knowing but I think I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I might never know the truth.’

‘I think it’s amazing how you help people in spite of your own suffering,’ Kellie said. ‘Look at what you’ve done for Julie and the boys for instance.’

‘I spoke to Julie this afternoon and her hand is recovering well,’ Ruth said. ‘She is being released the day after tomorrow.’

After she had helped Ruth bring some sort of order to the house and spent a few minutes helping the youngest boy, Cade, with his homework, Kellie asked if the three boys were interested in doing some yard work for her.

Ty, the oldest at fifteen, grunted something unintelligible but fourteen-year-old Rowan and twelve-year-old Cade showed a bit of interest, although it was somewhat guarded.

‘I thought it might be nice for when Dr and Mrs Montgomery come back if the garden was spruced up a bit.’ Kellie explained her plan. ‘I know the drought makes things difficult, but if we start now there are still things that can be done to make the place look neat and tidy by the time they return.’

‘Are you going to pay us, Dr Thorne?’ Cade asked with a wary expression.

‘Of course!’ Kellie said. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?’

She told them how much she was prepared to pay them and arranged to meet them at the Montgomerys’ house on Saturday morning.

Driving into the Montgomerys’ driveway a few minutes later, she caught sight of a slinking shape near the rainwater tank at the side of the house. At first she thought it might have been a fox or even a dingo, but when it moved away into the shadows of the night she could see its tail was long and thin not bushy and the colour not golden but more like a patchwork of brown and black and white.

She turned on the back light once she got inside and looked out over the yard but there was no sign of any movement.

A few minutes later her mobile phone rang just as she had taken her last mouthful of her daily allowance of chocolate. ‘Hello?’ she answered from a full mouth.

‘Kellie, it’s Matt …’ He paused for moment. ‘Have I caught you having dinner?’

‘No, I had a snatch-and-grab meal with Ruth and the boys. That was my chocolate hit for the day. What can I do for you?’

There was a little silence.

She heard him draw in a deep breath before he spoke. ‘I promised to fix that window for you. When would be a convenient time?’

‘I thought you were going to get someone else to fix it. I didn’t realise you were going to do it yourself.’

‘I had to do the same to one of the windows at my place a while back,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble really.’

‘What about tomorrow after work?’ she suggested. ‘That way I can cook you dinner in payment.’

‘I don’t expect to be paid,’ he said quickly.

‘Nevertheless, I insist on cooking you a meal. Besides, you’ll be doing me a favour by keeping me company for a few hours. I’m not used to being on my own in such a quiet house. It’s sort of creeping me out.’

‘Perhaps a dog might be a good idea after all,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard there’s one hanging about the school, looking for scraps.’

‘I think it was here when I got home a while ago. I saw it slink around the back of the tank.’

‘You could leave out some food for it and see if it’s friendly,’ he said. ‘But don’t approach it unless you’re sure. It might take a nip at you.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ she promised.

There was another silence.

‘Well …’ he said. ‘I’d better let you get some sleep. It’s been a rough couple of days for you. You must be totally wiped out.’

‘I’m pretty used to hard work.’

‘You’ll certainly get plenty of it out here. You’ll have to run the clinic singlehandedly tomorrow as I’m flying out to do the clinic at Warradunga Crossing.’

‘You don’t need me to come with you?’ she asked.

‘Although the appointment book isn’t full, I thought you’d be better to stay in town in case there’s anything urgent,’ he said. ‘The clinic at the Crossing isn’t a big one.’

‘And I don’t suppose the plane is either, right?’

Matt felt a smile tug at his mouth. ‘Not as big as the ones you’re used to but it does the job.’

‘So what time will you get back?’

‘About five,’ he said. ‘I’ll go home, have a shower and get back to your place at about seven, unless you want me to come later?’

‘No, that will be fine.’

‘Good. I’ll look forward to it.’

Not as much as I will, Kellie thought as she placed her phone back on the kitchen bench.

Her skin lifted in a faint shiver of anticipation. She knew the old adage about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach might not apply to someone like Matt McNaught, but she was going to have a damn good try.

CHAPTER TWELVE

KELLIE was putting the last-minute touches to her make-up when she heard the sound of Matt knocking on the front door. She put the pot of lipgloss down and quickly slipped on her high heels and click-clacked her way down the hall.

She opened the door wide and smiled. ‘Hi.’

Matt felt as if he had been zapped with a stun gun. He stood there for several seconds, trying to keep his jaw from dropping at the vision of loveliness in front of him. She was wearing a red-and-white sundress with shoestring straps, nipped in at the waist with a shiny patent-leather belt, emphasising her trim body. Her hair was loose about her shoulders; she had done something to enhance the slight wave in it, the cascade of bouncy curls framing her heart-shaped face giving her a casual but elegant look. She smelt of summer, the delicate notes of honeysuckle—or was it orange blossom?—danced around his nostrils like invisible sprites.

‘Um … won’t you come in?’ she asked.

‘Er … right,’ he said, stepping over the threshold and thrusting a bottle of wine at her. ‘I don’t know if you like red or white but this is from the Roma vineyard. I thought you might like to try it. It’s the oldest vineyard in Queensland. It began in 1863.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said, and closed the door. ‘I’ll open the wine while you play handyman with the window. I got the bedroom one open the other night but it’s still a little stiff.’

Yeah, well, it’s not the only thing feeling that way, Matt thought as she brushed past him. He was glad he was holding his toolkit so he could hide his physical reaction to her.

He went through the house and checked each window, listening to her singing along to the CD player. She had a nice voice, light and pure and enthusiastic as she was about seemingly everything.

I wonder what she’s like in bed.

The thought was like an intruder inside his head. He tried to evict it but it wouldn’t leave. It made it even worse when the last window he had to check was in her bedroom. The intoxicating fragrance of her permeated everything. Even the lightweight curtains smelt of her as he pulled them aside to work the latch.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked from just behind him.

Matt hadn’t heard her approach and nicked his finger on the blade of the chisel. ‘Er … fine,’ he said. ‘I’m just about done.’

Kellie frowned when he turned around and began to wind his finger around his handkerchief. ‘Have you cut yourself?’ she asked.

‘It’s just a scratch.’

‘Let me see.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I told you, it’s just a little scratch. It will stop bleeding in a second.’

Kellie gave him a reproving look as she reached for his hand. ‘You don’t need to go all macho on me, Matt,’ she said. ‘If I can handle what Julie Smithton did to her finger, I think I’ll cope with what you’ve done with yours.’

She unpeeled the handkerchief and inspected the flesh wound. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘It looks like it needs some pressure for a bit longer. I’ll cleanse it for you and put on a sticky plaster.’

‘There’s really no need …’

Her eyes met his. ‘Why are you being so stubborn about such a little thing?’ she asked. ‘When was the last time you allowed someone to help you for a change?’

He held her gaze for a moment or two. ‘All right,’ he said, blowing out of sigh of resignation. ‘Do what you need to do. I won’t put up a struggle.’

Kellie led him by the hand to the bathroom and making him sit on a small stool, attended to his finger with meticulous care. She was acutely aware of his long legs, she had to step around them a couple of times to reach the first-aid cupboard. She was also intensely aware of his hand in hers as she cleansed and dressed the wound. She imagined how it would feel to have those strong, long-fingered hands on her body, touching her face, tilting her head to claim her mouth with his own …

Matt met her brown gaze on a level. She was wearing mascara, which made her long eyelashes even more lustrous. His eyes went to her mouth. This close he could see the tiny sparkles in her lipgloss, making her lips all the more tempting to taste. He watched as the point of her tongue sneaked out to paste a film of moisture on top of the gloss and his insides gave a sudden kick of reaction. It would be so easy to lean forward and—

‘There,’ she said briskly, scrunching up the wrapping of the sticky plaster. ‘I’m all done.’

Matt got to his feet. ‘Thank you, but it was totally unnecessary to go to all that fuss over nothing.’

‘It wasn’t nothing and, besides, I didn’t want you to bleed all over the place. Imagine if Tim and Claire come back to find bloodstains all over their bedroom carpet?’

‘Good point.’

She turned from the basin, where she had been washing her hands. ‘Ready for dinner now?’

‘Sure.’

Kellie led the way to the kitchen where she had an Italian chicken dish simmering. She poured two glasses of wine and handed him one. ‘Thanks for fixing the windows. I really appreciate it. I’m hopeless at household maintenance. I guess it comes from living with six men. They did that sort of stuff while Mum and I got on with the cooking and housework.’

He took the glass with a brief brush of his fingers against hers. ‘Did you resent having to do that?’

She cradled her glass in her hands. ‘Not at first. I took over the cooking when Mum got sick. It was hard once she’d gone to stop doing it. Dad and the boys were devastated. The last thing they needed was a huge shopping list and a week’s menu thrust in their hands.’

Matt thought about how caring she was, how she had put her needs aside for the sake of her father and younger brothers. ‘All the same, it must have been hard, not having a life of your own,’ he said. ‘What about boyfriends and so on? How did you juggle your professional and social life with your family taking up so much of your time?’

Her smooth brow furrowed slightly. ‘It wasn’t easy. I’m nearly thirty years old and I’ve only had one lover. I guess you think that’s pretty pathetic, huh?’

He felt his mouth tip upwards in a rueful smile. ‘I’m hardly one to criticise. I haven’t exactly been out there sowing my wild oats.’

She smiled back at him but he noticed her cheeks were a little pink. ‘I guess I should check on dinner …’

Matt watched as she deftly sorted out plates and garnishes and steamed vegetables as if it was second nature to her. He couldn’t help wondering what she would think of his micro-waved single-serve meals or his two-recipe repertoire of macaroni cheese or savory mince on toast. ‘You obviously enjoy cooking,’ he said into the silence.

‘I love it,’ she said handing him a plate loaded with food.

‘Was your mother a good cook?’ he asked once they were both seated at the small pine table.

‘She was fabulous,’ she said, passing him the pepper grinder. ‘I stood on a step-stool by her side for as long as I can remember. I think she would have loved to have been a chef but she didn’t get the opportunity. She got pregnant with me while she was at college so that put an end to that.’

‘Was she bitter about it?’

She met his gaze across the table. ‘No, of course not. She loved being a mother.’

He looked into the contents of his glass. ‘My mother was the opposite. She also fell pregnant by mistake but it was made very clear to my father and me that it had ruined her life.’

Kellie felt her heart contract. ‘Did she tell you that?’

He forked up some of the casserole. ‘I seem to remember it was a recurrent theme before she finally left.’

‘You must have been so hurt.’

He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t dwell on it much. It happened and I can’t change it. My father, on the other hand, lets it eat away at him even now. He hasn’t moved on. He talks about nothing else whenever I call him, which isn’t often. He can’t seem to accept that she’s not coming back.’

‘And you don’t think you’re a little bit like him in that regard?’

He frowned as he met the challenge of her gaze. ‘What are you saying?’

She put down her fork and picked up her wineglass. ‘If you can’t see it, I’m not going to hit you over the head with it.’

His frown deepened. ‘I suppose by that you mean Madeleine.’

‘You’re still carrying a photo of her in your wallet,’ Kellie said. ‘You have a shrine built to her in your home. You visit her parents every year on her birthday. If that doesn’t demonstrate how stuck you are then what will?’

‘I can hardly wipe her from my memory as if she never was a part of my life,’ he bit out.

‘No, of course not, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted you to live the way you are doing,’ Kellie argued.

‘You know nothing of how I live my life.’ Or how I’m about to change it, he added silently.

She gave him a wry look. ‘Going on what I’ve seen so far, I think I’ve got a pretty clear idea.’

He put down his knife and fork, his top lip lifting mockingly. ‘So you think you can do something about my sad and sorry situation, do you, Dr Thorne?’

Kellie kept her eyes trained on his. ‘I don’t see anything wrong in you getting out a bit more, having some fun, dating now and again. What harm would it do?’

He leaned back in his chair, still with his mouth tilted. ‘So is this what this is all about?’ He waved his hand over the meal between them. ‘Is this yet another one of your do-good missions to achieve while you’re here?’

Kellie frowned at the veiled insult he had thrown at her. ‘I know you think I’m wasting my time with Angie and Gracie but it’s not just the young mums around here that need help. Julie’s boys do, too. They’re bored and restless, that’s why they’re in trouble all the time. They have low self-esteem and the only way they can get attention is to do something bad. I’ve arranged for them to do something good for a change. They’re coming to help me here on Saturday to clean up the yard a bit. Who knows? It might inspire them to do the same at their house or others in the area.’

Matt looked at the bright sparks of enthusiasm in her eyes and wondered when the last time had been that he had been passionate about anything, truly passionate. For most of his life he had taken a back seat when it had come to eagerness. Every time he had been excited about something he had been let down. He remembered one time, not long after his mother had left, he’d thought he’d seen her coming up the front path. He had dashed downstairs, his heart beating like a bass drum in his chest, only to throw open the door to see it was a complete stranger, selling raffle tickets for a charity. The disappointment had been totally devastating. He hadn’t realised until then how much he had hoped his life would go back to what it had been. But it was never going to go back and it was up to him now to move forward.

‘You think I’m wasting my time, don’t you?’ she asked.

Matt picked up his wineglass and twirled the contents. ‘I think you mean well but you’re likely to get swamped with the endless needs of people you can’t help in any significant way.’

‘I don’t care about the destination as much as the journey,’ she said. ‘I know I haven’t got long here but just the fact that someone is taking the time and making the effort to make a difference in someone’s life is surely a worthwhile enterprise.’

He put his glass down and met her brown eyes. ‘Even if you get hurt in the process?’

‘I’d rather get hurt trying. At least it proves I care, and it could make a difference, maybe in just one life but it’s still worth it.’

A warm feeling spread like heated honey through Matt’s chest as he held her gaze. ‘Do you make it a habit to nurture absolutely everyone who crosses your path?’ he asked.

She gave him a self-conscious smile. ‘It’s my mother complex. It’s showing, isn’t it? I just can’t seem to help it. I pick up every lame duck or stray. I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.’

‘Speaking of strays, I thought I saw that dog you were talking about on my way to the front door,’ Matt said. ‘It was sniffing around the tank stand. I forgot to tell you earlier.’ Only because I was completely taken aback by your amazingly sexy appearance, he tacked on mentally.

‘I left some food and water out at the bottom of the back veranda,’ she said. ‘I hope it hangs around now. That way I can gradually teach it to trust me.’

‘My dog Spike was from the dogs’ home,’ he said. ‘He had been treated cruelly by some idiot who thought a working dog should be confined to a small back yard in the city. The guy had him tied up day in, day out and whenever Spike made a sound he would get whipped with whatever was handy.’

‘Oh that’s terrible,’ Kellie gasped. ‘How can people be so cruel?’

He gave her a grim look. ‘I don’t know, but animal cruelty is one thing that truly sickens me.’

‘Me, too,’ she said with fervour. ‘And children. I hate the thought of little kids being hurt. There are so many people who are desperate to have kids and yet others treat their children like punching bags. Why have kids if you can’t be patient and loving towards them?’

‘Do you want kids?’ Matt asked, surprising himself at asking such a candid question.

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