Outback Boss, City Bride
Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Stella and Julia, my City Screen plotting team

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘THAT’S the man you want.’

Meredith’s dubious gaze followed the pointing finger across the road to where a grim-looking man was just getting out of a battered truck. Not your typical Australian, was her first thought. He was very dark, for a start, and while everyone else out here seemed to radiate a kind of laconic good humour, his face was set in severe, almost intimidating, lines.

As she watched from her vantage point on the pub veranda, he jammed a hat on his head and slammed the truck door. He looked as if he were in a very bad mood.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Course I’m sure.’ Bill, owner of the pub and self-appointed guide to Whyman’s Creek, hoisted his trousers up over a substantial stomach. ‘I know everyone round here,’ he pointed out proudly. ‘We don’t get many strangers passing through.’

Meredith could believe it. Whyman’s Creek appeared to consist of a pub, a store, an airstrip and not much else. There were a few houses set in dusty, treeless yards dominated by water tanks and a road that ran straight through the town—if you could call it a town—its tarmac wavering in the brutal heat.

And that was it. Meredith knew, because she had explored every inch of it. She had been in Whyman’s Creek for eighteen hours, and that was seventeen and a quarter hours too many in her book.

‘This guy works at Wirrindago, does he?’ she asked Bill as the man turned towards the store.

‘He does more than work there. He owns it,’ said Bill. ‘All one thousand square kilometres of it.’

Meredith tried to imagine a thousand square kilometres, but couldn’t do it. Not that it mattered; she had got the point. Wirrindago was a lot bigger than the backyard of her tiny terraced house in London. You’d think if you owned all that land you’d look a bit happier, she thought, eyeing Hal Granger critically.

Still, she didn’t need him to tell jokes. She just needed him to take her to Lucy.

‘Thanks, Bill,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and have a word with him.’

But before she could decide how she was going to approach him, Bill had put his fingers in his mouth and produced a piercing whistle that made her flinch. ‘Hal!’ he called. ‘Over here, mate!’

The man called Hal stopped with a hand on the screen door of the store and Meredith could feel his exasperation from the other side of the road. ‘What is it, Bill?’ he demanded irritably.

Not at all put out by the ungracious response, Bill beamed and pointed at Meredith with his thumb. ‘Young lady here wants you,’ he shouted back, not that there was any need to raise his voice, Meredith reflected. There wasn’t exactly a deafening roar of traffic.

Meredith couldn’t actually hear Hal’s sigh, but it might as well have boomed out over the outback as he turned and headed across the road. He stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the pub’s veranda and frowned up at her, just in case he wasn’t looking intimidating enough already.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ said Bill comfortably. ‘Hal’ll see you right,’ he added to Meredith, blissfully unaware of Hal’s obvious irritation, or perhaps too familiar with his scowl to notice. With a final hoist of his trousers, he disappeared into the gloom of the pub, leaving Hal and Meredith regarding each other.

Neither was impressed.

Meredith felt at a distinct disadvantage. It was perfectly obvious that Hal Granger was in no mood to grant favours. Beneath his hat, his eyes were a startlingly light grey and very cold and the dark, frowning brows did nothing to alleviate the impression of barely leashed temper she had sensed when she’d watched him get out of the truck. With that fierce scowl, beaky nose and stern mouth, he could hardly be called a good-looking man, but there was no denying the force of his personality.

Hal Granger, she guessed, was someone to be handled with care. It would have been much better if she had gone over and introduced herself, rather than let Bill whistle him over like a dog.

On the other hand, at least he was there. She couldn’t do anything about it now, and if she dithered any longer about the best way to approach him, he would get even more cross. Putting on her best smile, Meredith took off her sunglasses, with the vague idea that it might make her seem friendlier and more approachable, although not wearing them didn’t seem to have that effect on Hal Granger.

‘I’m so sorry to interrupt you,’ she began, absurdly conscious of her English vowels. She had never realised that she sounded so like the Queen before. ‘But Bill was telling me that you own a cattle station called Wirrindago.’

Hal ignored his cue to ask her what he could do for her. ‘Yes,’ he said again unhelpfully.

Meredith kept her smile fixed in place and ploughed on. ‘I’m Meredith West. I believe my sister’s working for you…Lucy,’ she prompted and the strange light eyes narrowed slightly.

‘Yes, Lucy’s at Wirrindago. I’d forgotten that her surname was West,’ he admitted.

‘Is she OK?’ asked Meredith anxiously.

‘She was fine when I left this morning.’

‘Oh, thank goodness for that!’ Meredith’s shoulders slumped in relief.

In spite of Bill’s assurances that Lucy often came into town on Saturday night with the Wirrindago stockmen and was, according to him, the life and soul of the party, she hadn’t been able to help thinking of all sorts of horrible reasons why her sister hadn’t been in touch. Lucy was sick, had been kidnapped, had an accident, lost her memory, been taken over by aliens…Meredith had run through all the possibilities countless times and the longer she didn’t hear from Lucy, the more plausible they all seemed.

Something about Hal Granger’s cool indifference reassured her in a way that Bill’s friendly concern hadn’t been able to and Meredith could relax at last.

For as long as it took her to wonder why, if Lucy really was OK, her sister hadn’t been in touch. Surely Lucy wasn’t still feeling awkward about the way they had parted? Meredith fiddled anxiously with the arm of her sunglasses.

Hal watched relief warring with worry in her face as she gnawed uncertainly at her lip. It was rather a nice lip too, he was annoyed with himself for noticing. She had a soft, generous mouth that sat oddly with sharp intelligence in her eyes and a certain briskness in her expression.

He would never have guessed that she and Lucy were related. Lucy was blonde and slender and lovely. Her sister was darker, with a round, curvaceous figure and brown hair that looked as if it had been ruthlessly cut to restrain any tendency to unruly curls.

Hal wouldn’t have said that she was pretty—not exactly—but even to his inexpert eye she was immaculately groomed. She had on a pair of well-cut trousers and a tailored pale blue shirt that she wore with a string of pearls—pearls, for God’s sake!—and her shoes had little peep toes so that he could see her painted toenails from his vantage point at the bottom of the steps.

She looked cool and capable and utterly ridiculous. If she were holding up a card screaming ‘city girl’ in glaring letters, she could hardly have made it clearer that she was completely out of place.

Hal had no time for city girls.

He settled his hat on his head. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

Meredith’s head jerked up at that and she stared at him. Her eyes, Hal realised with an odd jolt, were a deep, dark blue and very beautiful.

‘I’d hardly have come all the way out from England to ask one question, would I?’ she said tartly before she could stop herself. ‘Of course that’s not it!’

Hearing the irritation in her voice too late, Meredith made herself stop and draw a breath. She had to ask him a favour and she wasn’t going the right way about it, but honestly! It must be perfectly obvious she needed more than to hear that Lucy was OK.

She had been travelling for what seemed like days and she was hot and worried and woozy with jetlag. Why couldn’t he just be nice and offer to take her to Lucy, preferably on a magic carpet that would transport her there in an instant because if she had to travel an inch more she was going to crumple into a heap and cry with exhaustion?

But crumpling wasn’t an option and nor was crying. It never was, in Meredith’s experience, although other people she knew seemed to get away with both on plenty of occasions.

So she straightened her shoulders, folded her sunglasses and pinned what she hoped was a conciliatory smile on her face.

‘The thing is, I need to see Lucy,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped to hire a car to get me to Wirrindago, but Bill tells me that’s not practical.’

‘It’s more than not practical. It’s irresponsible and stupid,’ said Hal flatly. ‘You weren’t seriously planning to set off on your own into the bush?’

‘I presume there are roads,’ said Meredith, hating the fact that she sounded defensive.

‘Not the kind of roads you’re used to,’ he said. ‘There aren’t a lot of signs either. You wouldn’t last five minutes.’

Meredith stiffened. If there was one thing she hated, it was being told that she couldn’t do something, but she folded her lips on a snappy retort just in time. She couldn’t afford to alienate him any more than she had apparently done just by standing there, or she would be stuck here in Whyman’s Creek, and that was the last thing she wanted.

‘No, well, that’s more or less what Bill said,’ she conceded. ‘Which is why I need your help.’ She drew a breath. ‘I was wondering if you could take me with you when you go back to Wirrindago.’

‘You want to come to Wirrindago?’ His hard grey gaze swept dismissively over her and Meredith stiffened. There was no need for him to make it quite that clear what he thought of her. ‘I don’t think it’s your kind of place,’ he said.

‘I don’t think it’s likely to be my kind of place either,’ she retorted sharply, given that conciliation didn’t seem to be getting her anywhere. ‘That’s not the point. The point is that I need to talk to my sister, and unless I want to hang around here until the weekend on the off-chance that she’ll come in to town, I’ll just have to get myself there, and you seem to be my best chance.’

She stared down at him with angry blue eyes. ‘I’ll pay for petrol if it helps,’ she told him, and Hal’s black brows drew even closer together at the thinly veiled contempt in her voice.

‘There’s no question of payment,’ he snapped. ‘Of course I’ll take you back with me, since you insist, but you’re going to have to wait. I’ve got several jobs to do while I’m here.’

‘Perhaps I could help you?’ suggested Meredith, not much liking the idea of yet more waiting. She had been hanging around Whyman’s Creek long enough. ‘Jobs are usually quicker with two,’ she pointed out. ‘If you’ve got a list, I could do your shopping, or—’

‘I don’t think so.’ Hal cut her off.

He could think of nothing worse than trying to get through everything he had to do with this woman trotting along beside him in her stupid shoes and no doubt trying to organise him with that English voice. She looked the bossy type, and Hal didn’t like bossy women any more than he liked city girls.

‘You stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished.’

‘Well, then, could we arrange a time for you to pick me up?’ suggested Meredith, who liked to have a plan.

‘No, we couldn’t,’ said Hal as he turned to go. ‘If you want to come back to Wirrindago with me, you’re just going to have to wait.’

Charming.

Huffily, Meredith watched him stride off. It wouldn’t have killed him to give her some indication of how long he was going to be, would it?

She turned back to the veranda with a sigh. It looked like being a long wait.

And it was. Meredith couldn’t believe how one man could contrive to spend so much time in Whyman’s Creek. Five minutes had been enough for her, but Hal Granger seemed capable of keeping himself busy there for hours.

It felt like hours anyway.

Anxious in case he forgot about her, Meredith brought out her suitcase and stayed on the pub veranda to keep a vigilant watch on the street. It wasn’t hard to follow him as he moved between the store and the bank and what Bill had told her was the stock agent’s office. Whyman’s Creek wasn’t the kind of town where crowds thronged the streets. In fact, sometimes Hal Granger was the only person in sight and Meredith was sure he was deliberately taking his time to keep her waiting.

Irritably, she waved the flies from her face. It was incredibly hot, even in the shade, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down somewhere cool and go to sleep for a week. In spite of the discomfort, her eyelids kept closing and she had to jerk herself awake. The moment she fell asleep she knew Hal Granger would have driven off to Wirrindago without her, claiming that she ‘wasn’t ready’.

So she took out her laptop and tried to concentrate on some work, but it was hard when Hal’s tall, austere figure kept catching at the corner of her eye as he crossed the street or came out of the store, and his grim features seemed to shimmer between her eyes and the computer screen. Those pale, almost silvery eyes were definitely striking and while Meredith didn’t think that she had noticed the angular planes of his face or the set of his mouth particularly, it was amazing how clearly she could picture them now.

Amazing and more than a little disturbing.

She had managed to download her emails in Brisbane the night before, but she was so tired that the words blurred on the screen and she was very close to dozing off in spite of everything when Hal came out of the store opposite and got into the truck.

Jerking upright, Meredith got ready to run after him, but it turned out that he hadn’t forgotten her after all. He threw the truck into a wide U-turn and stopped at the bottom of the pub steps.

Hastily, Meredith shoved her laptop into its case and reached for her suitcase but, to her surprise, Hal Granger was already there.

‘I’ll take it,’ he said abruptly.

‘Really, I can manage perf—’ she began, but he ignored her, carrying the case down the steps and tossing it into the back of the truck with insulting ease.

‘—fectly well,’ Meredith finished under her breath as she followed him. She had already taken a fond farewell of Bill, who was delighted to hear that she expected to be back again very soon. She would be back with Lucy or she would be on her own, but either way she didn’t intend to spend any longer in the outback than she had to.

‘Do you want me to take that?’ Hal nodded at her laptop.

Meredith eyed the back of the truck askance, where her suitcase sat in a thick layer of dust between a couple of sealed boxes and a jumbled collection of farm machinery. At least, she guessed it was farm machinery.

There was no way she was putting her precious laptop in there.

‘I’ll keep it with me, thanks,’ she said, clutching it protectively to her chest as if afraid that Hal would wrest it from her.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, opening his door.

Meredith hurried round to the other side and clambered awkwardly up into the cab, where there seemed to be just as much dirt as in the back. Fastidiously she brushed at the seat but it didn’t seem to make much difference and she suppressed a sigh as she sat down and searched around her for a seat belt. Her trousers were going to be ruined.

‘Sorry about the dust,’ said Hal, not sounding particularly sorry. ‘The air-conditioning’s broken.’

Great. Meredith’s heart sank. So much for her magic carpet, she thought, brushing at her trousers in a futile attempt to clean them. It looked like being an uncomfortable journey.

Not that that would probably bother Hal Granger. Comfort didn’t seem to be very high on his agenda. The truck was basic, to say the least. Meredith was used to cars with comfortable bucket seats separated by a gear stick. Here, the gear shift was set oddly in the steering wheel column and the seat was a single hard bench, its plastic covering torn in places and oozing some mean brownish foam.

Still, perhaps she was lucky there was any padding at all, Meredith reflected. She’d thought bench seats like this went out in the Sixties before seat belts were enforced. Weren’t these the kind of car seats just made for making out on? Not that she had ever been the kind of girl who was taken out for a date that ended in a clinch in some secluded parking spot, but she’d read plenty of novels where teenagers got carried away and took advantage of the lack of obstructions to get horizontal.

Meredith sighed. Typical that her only experience of turbulent teenage passion was through books.

Or of roaring-towards-thirty-verging-on-middle-age-ifshe-wasn’t-careful passion, come to that.

She glanced at Hal Granger as he put the truck into gear and wondered if he had ever put the bench seat to good use. He must have been a teenager once, although it was hard to imagine now that he was all grim, solid man and, anyway, where would he have found a heavy date living out here in the middle of nowhere?

Presumably people did meet and marry, though. Hal might even be married himself. It was a thought that made Meredith pause. Was he married? He was a few years older than her—pushing forty, she guessed—so it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, although she couldn’t quite picture it, somehow. He seemed so closed and stern, it was impossible to think of him happy and smiling, falling in love, making love…

Which was a shame, really, with a mouth like that.

The thought came out of nowhere, like an unexpected poke in the stomach, and Meredith was so shocked by it that she actually gasped. It was little more than an indrawn breath, in fact, but the next instant she found herself skewered by Hal’s cold, oddly light, grey gaze as he turned his head to look directly at her.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, frowning, his hand stilling on the gear shift.

To her horror, Meredith found herself blushing. ‘Yes, fine,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just…a bit hot, that’s all.’

Oh, God, what had she said that for? She had made it sound faintly suggestive, and if it had seemed like that to her, what would Hal have made of it?

‘I’m fine,’ she added again, ridiculously flustered.

To her intense relief, Hal didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. ‘There’ll be a bit of a breeze once we get going,’ he said.

‘A bit of a breeze’, Meredith discovered as they bowled along the tarmac, was his way of describing the constant buffeting of the air through the open windows. In no time at all it had snarled her hair into an impenetrable tangled mess and deposited what felt like an inch-thick layer of red dust on her face. When she lifted her hand to touch her cheek it felt like sandpaper and she grimaced.

‘How long will it take us to get to Wirrindago?’ she asked, raising her voice above the sound of the rushing air.

Hal shrugged. ‘Couple of hours,’ he suggested.

‘A couple of hours?’ Appalled, Meredith stared at the tarmac, stretching remorselessly straight ahead until it vanished into the shimmering heat haze. ‘I didn’t realise it would take so long,’ she confessed.

‘Two hours is a good trip.’ He glanced at her as she struggled to keep her dark hair from blowing about her face. ‘It can take a lot longer in the Wet when there’s water in the creeks,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes we can’t get across at all and have to fly in and out.’

‘It seems a long way to go for some shopping,’ Meredith commented, thinking longingly of the supermarket just round the corner from her London house. That was a three minute walk, max. ‘Isn’t there anywhere closer?’

‘No,’ said Hal. ‘Whyman’s Creek is as local as it gets. We don’t come in unless we absolutely have to.’

‘I can see why,’ said Meredith. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go to Whyman’s Creek if they could possibly avoid it. Bill had made it sound as if a trip into town was a regular Saturday night jaunt for the stockmen at Wirrindago, but what on earth did they do when they were there? There was nothing to see, nothing to do, just the crushing heat and the flies and the fine red dust that seemed to settle over everything.

Presumably the pub was the draw, although its appeal was rather lost on Meredith.

One thing, she surely wouldn’t have any problems persuading Lucy to leave with her, Meredith consoled herself. If anything could have cured her sister of her romantic ideals, it would have to be working for a man like Hal Granger in this awful, empty place.

‘The outback’s beautiful,’ Lucy had raved. ‘I can’t wait to get out there and find some real men! Outback men, Lucy had assured her sceptical elder sister, were universally strong and silent. They rode horses and wore hats and checked shirts, and they were all slow quiet charm and rangy grace.

Meredith’s mouth quirked as she glanced sideways at Hal Granger. He was rangy, yes, and he had a hat, she’d give him that, but he was clearly short in the charm and grace department. Of course, he might look different if he smiled, she conceded to herself, but he didn’t look as if he did that very often. He might smile at Lucy though, Meredith reminded herself. Men usually did.

Not that Lucy was likely to be impressed if he drove this clapped-out truck instead of riding a wild stallion. He didn’t even have the decency to wear a checked shirt. Poor Lucy’s illusions must have been shattered, thought Meredith, amused. If she were Lucy, she would leap at the chance to escape.

But if she were Lucy, she would be the one Richard wanted to see and she wouldn’t be here at all.

Meredith’s smile faded at the thought of Richard. She wished she knew how he was. She hadn’t been able to get a signal to call his mother that morning. It seemed weeks since she had stood by that hospital bed and promised to find Lucy, but it couldn’t have been more than two—three?—days ago. Tiredly, Meredith wiped the dust from her cheek with the flat of her hand. She had been through so many time zones she had lost track of the days completely.

Hal heard her sigh and glanced at her. She looked tired, he thought with a touch of compunction. Judging by the pallor of her skin, she was fresh off the plane from London and she was probably exhausted.

He should have been more helpful, he thought. He wasn’t normally that ungracious. It was unfortunate that she’d got him on a bad day.

Everything seemed to be going wrong recently. Someone only had to look at a piece of machinery for it to break at the moment. They hadn’t had enough rain. Fences were down and bank charges up, and on top of that he had the kids to deal with…Meredith’s glossy assurance as she’d stood at the top of the pub steps, literally looking down on him, had caught him on the raw. At first glance, she had seemed to represent everything that Hal least liked and least trusted.

But she wasn’t complaining, he noticed with grudging respect, even though she was obviously not enjoying herself. Her mouth—that surprisingly lush mouth that didn’t seem to go at all with the astringency of her personality—was turned down at the corners as she surveyed the road ahead, evidently profoundly unimpressed by the road that cut across the vast plain of unvarying dust and scrub to a huge, empty horizon.

‘You’re not very like your sister, are you?’ he said abruptly and she turned to look at him with a resigned sigh.

‘It’s been said before,’ she told him. ‘Lucy’s the pretty one. I’m the clever one,’ she explained, a sardonic edge to her voice. ‘Or so we’ve always been told.’

‘Lucy doesn’t strike me as stupid,’ he said and Meredith laughed.

‘You know, you missed your chance there to say, Oh, but you’re pretty too, Meredith!’

Disconcerted by how much prettier she did look when she smiled, Hal returned his gaze firmly to the road ahead. ‘Would you have believed me if I had?’

‘Probably not,’ Meredith agreed. Who was she kidding? Of course not. She would have despised Hal if he’d pretended that he thought she was pretty when she patently wasn’t, so she was glad that he’d at least had the decency to be straight with her.

Honestly, she was glad. And it wasn’t as if she cared whether he thought she was pretty or not in any case.

‘That’s not what I meant, anyway,’ said Hal. ‘I wasn’t talking about looks when I said that you weren’t like Lucy. I was thinking about the way Lucy loves the outback. She loves Whyman’s Creek. She loves Wirrindago and the fact that we’re so isolated. If she were here now, she’d be hanging out of that window with a big smile on her face.’

Meredith’s heart sank. She told herself it was because her sister had clearly not yet outgrown her romantic ideals. Lucy’s enthusiasms normally waned after a couple of months, but if she were still as starry-eyed about the outback as Hal suggested, Meredith might have a harder time persuading her to leave than she had anticipated.

She would rather her heart was sinking because of that than at the realisation that even the dour Hal Granger was not immune to her sister’s sunny charm.

‘Yes, well, Lucy’s always been a romantic,’ she said.

‘And you’re not?’

She turned away to look out of the window once more. Her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, but Hal guessed that they were as cool as her voice. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not.’

‘Just as well,’ he said. ‘The outback can be a harsh place. Romantics don’t tend to last very long.’

There was a distinctly dismissive note in his voice and Meredith found herself leaping to her sister’s defence. ‘Lucy’s been here a while now,’ she pointed out.

‘A couple of months.’ Hal brushed the idea aside with a gesture. ‘I’m talking about a lifetime. In the long run, a sensible person like you would probably last longer out here than someone like Lucy with a head full of romantic ideas.’

‘Frankly, I can’t understand how anyone sensible would want to spend a lifetime here,’ said Meredith, looking at the dreary landscape, the mile upon mile of nothingness unrolling towards the horizon. ‘Is it all this…empty?’

Hal’s gaze followed hers. ‘I don’t see emptiness,’ he said. ‘I see space. I see a big sky and no crowds. I see good grazing ground if we had a bit more rain.’ He paused. ‘I see home.’

‘I thought you weren’t a romantic?’ she said with a curious glance and Hal shrugged, half embarrassed by his eloquence.

‘I’m not,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m under no illusions about how difficult life in the bush can be.’

He was braking as he spoke and Meredith looked around in surprise. There seemed no reason to slow down on a dead straight road like this. ‘Where’s this?’

For answer, Hal indicated a tyre that had been cut in half and set on the corner between a dirt track and the sealed road. ‘Wirrindago’ had been painted around the curve of the tyre in white.

Meredith brightened and sat up straighter. ‘We’re here already!’ she exclaimed in relief. A glance at her watch showed her that they had been driving for less than thirty minutes. ‘That’s much quicker than I expected. I thought you said it would take a couple of hours.’

‘It will—to the homestead,’ said Hal, half shaking his head at her ignorance as he swung the truck off the tarmac and on to the track.

‘So this isn’t your drive?’ said Meredith, deflated, but reluctant to let go of her fantasy that they were almost there.

Hal thought of the track that ran across the plain, through the scrub, up into the low hills, across the creeks and paddocks and led finally to the heart of Wirrindago. He suspected Meredith’s idea of a driveway was somewhat shorter.

‘In a manner of speaking it is,’ he told her. ‘It’s not a sealed road and it only goes to Wirrindago.’

That sounded promising. Meredith relaxed a little. ‘Oh, well…’

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ said Hal, seeing her imagine an early arrival. ‘You might as well make yourself comfortable,’ he added. ‘There’s a long way to go yet.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE truth of this was demonstrated barely seconds later as the truck jolted over a deep rut and Meredith found herself flung against Hal. Instinctively, she put out a hand to brace herself and realised too late that she was clutching his thigh.

‘You’ll have to hang on,’ he told her briefly as the truck crashed into another rut.

‘Hang on to what?’ snapped Meredith, snatching her hand away, more ruffled than she cared to admit by the feel of his hard body, and even crosser to realise that the unexpectedly close encounter had made absolutely no impression upon Hal. He had brushed her away as if she were one of those millions and millions of annoying flies that swarmed around you the moment you stopped anywhere out here.

Flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and indignation, Meredith grabbed on to the open window and tried to brace her feet against the floor to stop herself skidding back across the seat to Hal again, but it was hard work when the truck was bouncing and lurching from side to side.

‘Is it like this the whole way?’

Hal sent her a sideways glance. She looked hot and uncomfortable and her hair was sticking to her head in wind-blown clumps. Her smart outfit was covered in dust and her jaw was clenched with the effort of holding on, but she still had a certain style about her, he thought with grudging respect.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you can’t expect all the roads out here to be as good as this one, you know.’

Meredith’s jaw dropped and she stared at him in appalled disbelief. ‘Good?’ she echoed, her voice rising. ‘This is a good road?’

Then she saw a faint dent at the corner of his mouth. He was obviously amused by her ignorance of the outback. Well, let him laugh. She wasn’t trying to be accepted. She didn’t want to belong here. She just wanted to find Lucy and leave him to his heat and his dust and his horrible roads as quickly as possible.

‘Very funny,’ she said sourly.

‘It’ll get better in a minute,’ Hal offered by way of an apology.

‘Better’ was a matter of opinion, Meredith decided. The track did indeed flatten out, but instead of jolting slowly up and down the ruts, Hal put his foot down and sent the truck juddering over the corrugations at alarming speed.

‘Do we have to go this fast?’ she asked nervously, clinging to the window.

‘It’s easier at speed,’ he told her. ‘If you go fast enough you skip over the top of the corrugations rather than going up and down each one. Believe me, it’s a lot more comfortable this way.’

‘I’ve forgotten what comfortable means,’ sighed Meredith. Her back was aching and her arms and legs were stiff from being braced at awkward angles and, as for her backside…Even its admittedly substantial padding hadn’t protected it from the effects of being slammed up and down on the hard seat! She would be black and blue tomorrow.

She would never get the tangles out of her hair, she thought morosely, and that dust got everywhere. It was in her ears, under her nails, making her eyes gritty and insinuating itself into places she would rather not think about. The thought of sinking into a deep bath and soaking herself clean was so alluring that she found herself sighing again, until she caught Hal’s eye.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said tartly, ‘Lucy would be loving this!’

The dent in his cheek deepened. Didn’t he ever smile properly? Meredith wondered irritably.

‘She probably would,’ he agreed, and then he slanted her another of those disconcertingly keen looks. ‘What about you? What do you love? Not the bush, obviously.’

‘No.’ She clutched her laptop to her as she looked out of the window. There were some sparse, spindly trees breaking the monotony of the low scrub and an occasional termite mound soared out of the ground but she couldn’t understand how anyone could love this landscape. It was all so bare. So brown. So empty.

It was just dust and glare and silence. What was there to love about that?

‘No,’ she said again. ‘I’m a city girl. I like buildings and pavements and lights and people and noise. And I love my house,’ she added, remembering it wistfully.

If only she could be there now. She could have a bath, pull the curtains in her pretty bedroom, snuggle under the duvet and sleep for a week. Bliss.

‘This…’ She took a hand off the dashboard to wave vaguely at the land stretching out interminably in every direction around them. ‘This is just…alien.’

‘What are you doing here, then?’ Hal heard the harshness in his own voice and was alarmed to realise that he sounded almost disappointed.

It wasn’t as if he was surprised. She had city girl written all over her, and an English city girl at that. It would be hard to find anyone who would look more out of place out here than she did.

Still, she was a stranger, and a stranger who had foisted herself upon him at that. After all that determination to get herself to Wirrindago, she could at least pretend to be interested in it.

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I need to see Lucy.’

‘Is she expecting you? She didn’t mention anything about you coming.’ Hal frowned. Lucy might be a bit scatty, but he was pretty sure she would have told him if her sister was on her way.

Meredith was shaking her head, though. ‘She doesn’t know,’ she told him. ‘I’ve tried to get in touch with her, of course, but there’s never any reply on her phone and she hasn’t responded to any of the messages I’ve left.’

‘Her phone won’t work at Wirrindago,’ said Hal as if it were something any fool knew. ‘There’s no signal out here.’

‘What, none at all?’

Meredith tried to imagine life without a mobile phone, but it was like trying to imagine a thousand square kilometres. It was a different world out here, that was for sure. Her laptop felt like the only bit of normality, and she held it protectively against her side as the truck juddered over the bumpy road.

‘Well, that explains why I haven’t heard from Lucy for so long,’ she said. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Worried enough to fly all the way out to Australia?’ asked Hal incredulously. ‘Lucy’s a little old for you to be checking up on her just because you haven’t heard from her for a few weeks, isn’t she?’

‘I’m not checking up,’ said Meredith, slightly on the defensive. ‘I was just concerned in case something was wrong.’

Hal was unimpressed. ‘Lucy’s…what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? I can’t believe you’ve come chasing to the other side of the world just because she hasn’t dropped you a postcard for a couple of months!’

‘It’s not just that.’ Meredith bit her lip. ‘A friend of ours was badly injured in a car accident about ten days ago. I wanted to tell her. I tried ringing, but I didn’t realise mobile phones wouldn’t work out here, and when I didn’t get a reply to any of my messages, of course I began to worry.’

‘So you’ve come all this way just to give Lucy some bad news?’ Hal frowned. ‘Couldn’t it have waited till she got home? I dare say she’ll be sorry, but there’s not much she can do about it out here.’

‘But there is,’ said Meredith. She turned her head slightly, as if looking out of the window so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Richard needs her.’

Lucy. He needed Lucy, not her.

If she had expected Hal to be sympathetic, she was due for a disappointment. ‘Richard’s the guy who had the accident?’ he said. ‘Sounds to me as if he needs good medical care. Lucy’s not a nurse. I don’t see what she can do.’

‘She can help him out of a coma.’ Meredith had hoped to be able to explain all this to Lucy first, but Hal was going to have to know why her sister was leaving. ‘Richard’s been unconscious ever since the accident and the doctors suggested that familiar voices might help.’

Swallowing, she stared straight ahead, one hand clutching at the window, the other the bare metal dashboard, but she wasn’t seeing the outback. Instead she was in the intensive care ward, looking at Richard lying terrifyingly still in that bed, and the white, strained faces of his parents.

‘Richard’s parents are distraught,’ she went on. ‘They’ve been with him continually and the rest of his family have been talking to him too, but nothing seems to be working. They’re convinced that Lucy’s voice is the one that will help him regain consciousness.’

‘It sounds to me as if they’re grasping at straws,’ Hal commented and Meredith turned slightly to look at him, suddenly desperate to make him understand how important it was for Lucy to go back.

‘No, I’m sure they’re right,’ she said. ‘Richard adores Lucy.’ There, not even a betraying wobble in her voice, she thought, relieved. Hal wouldn’t know how much it had once cost her to acknowledge that truth.

‘She’s the most important person in the world to him,’ she went on. ‘He was devastated when she left for Australia. All he wanted was for her to come back to him. If anyone can bring him back,’ she assured Hal, ‘Lucy can.’

‘If he’s going to regain consciousness he will, regardless of whether Lucy’s there or not,’ said Hal. ‘And if he doesn’t, there’s not much point in her haring back to London, is there? I gather that’s what you want her to do?’

Meredith nodded. ‘We have to try, at least.’

‘I don’t see why. It sounds a lot of sentimental nonsense to me. Your Richard may “adore” Lucy, but she clearly doesn’t adore him. She wouldn’t have come out to Australia if she had, and I have to tell you that she hasn’t been showing any signs of pining. She’s been consoling herself very nicely with one of my ringers.’

Meredith wasn’t entirely sure what a ringer was, but she guessed that it was probably someone who worked for Hal. She might have guessed that Lucy would have found someone else, she thought with an inward sigh. Her sister was always in love with some man or other. She had even been in love with Richard for a while, until Meredith had somehow given herself away one day.

If only she’d kept a closer guard on her expression! Richard had never guessed how she felt, and Lucy wouldn’t have either if she hadn’t happened to catch sight of Meredith’s face in that mirror.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you loved him?’ she had demanded, stricken.

But how could she have said anything when it was obvious that Richard was head over heels in love with Lucy?

With an effort, Meredith dragged herself back to the problem in hand, all grim-featured, six-foot male of it.

‘Lucy may well have found someone else, but she’s still very fond of Richard,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll want to help him.’

‘Maybe she will, but she’s not jaunting back to London to do it,’ said Hal flatly. ‘She’s got a job to do here.’

‘You can’t stop her going!’ protested Meredith.

‘Can’t I? She’s on a six-month contract, and so far she’s only done two. If she wants to leave when her six months are up, that’s up to her, but until then she’s committed herself to staying at Wirrindago.’

Meredith stared at him in disbelief. ‘But you can’t mean to hold her to that when Richard’s so ill! Couldn’t you at least give her some compassionate leave?’

‘Look, it might be different if you’d come to me and said that a member of your family was dangerously ill but, from what I can make out, this guy is just an ex-boyfriend,’ said Hal callously. ‘Presumably Lucy had her reasons for breaking off that relationship. I don’t see why she should be expected to drop everything now and rush back to some man she’s already decided she doesn’t want to be with. The whole thing stinks of emotional blackmail!’

‘It isn’t blackmail!’ How could he be so unfeeling? wondered Meredith furiously. If he could only see how ill Richard was…! But he probably wouldn’t care. He obviously didn’t have any feelings at all. ‘I’m sure Lucy won’t think that, anyway,’ she told him with a defiant look that bounced right off him.

‘It doesn’t matter what she thinks,’ he said in an uncompromising voice. ‘She’s not going anywhere. The men need feeding and someone’s got to look after the children. Who’s going to take care of them if she goes?’

‘Well, let’s see…’ Meredith put her head on one side and pretended to consider the matter, too cross with him to care about the fact that he was evidently married after all. Or had been. ‘I know! What about you?’ she suggested acidly.

‘I’ve got a million acre property to run,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got time to look after two children.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you had them!’

‘They’re not mine,’ said Hal, effectively taking the wind out of her sails. ‘They’re my sister’s kids.’

‘Oh.’ Ready to be outraged at the way he was prepared to shrug aside his responsibilities as a father, Meredith was left feeling a little foolish. ‘Do they live with you all the time?’

‘No—thank God!’ he added with feeling. ‘Lydia—my sister—grew up at Wirrindago with me, but she married a city type and has been living in Sydney ever since.’

His tone made it clear what he thought about ‘city types’, thought Meredith, who couldn’t help thinking that Lydia had probably made a good decision. If she had to choose between this godforsaken place and the buzz of a city like Sydney, she knew which direction she would be heading.

‘Lydia and Greg have been having some problems,’ Hal went on, a tinge of distaste in his voice. ‘Greg travels a lot on business, and Lydia thinks it would help if they were able to spend more time together, so she’s arranged to go with him on a two month trip to Europe.’

‘So you get to look after the kids while they’re away?’ And she thought she’d been asking for a big favour when she’d begged a lift to Wirrindago! Meredith reflected. Hal’s sister must be a brave woman.

Hal nodded, but it was clear that the prospect of having nieces and nephews to stay left him less than enthralled. ‘Lydia couldn’t wait to leave Wirrindago for the city herself, but she likes the idea of an outback property, and she decided this trip was an ideal opportunity for the kids to connect with their “outback heritage”, as she calls it, and for me to get to know them properly.’

The stern mouth was turned down at the corners and Meredith felt sorry for the two children sent off to stay with a grim uncle in the back of beyond. Poor kids!

‘My sister and I spent a lot of time with our aunt when we were kids, so I guess she’s hoping that I’ll have the same kind of relationship with her children,’ Hal added wryly.

‘And do you?’

He lifted a shoulder. ‘They’ve only been here a couple of days. It’s obvious they don’t want to be in the outback any more than I want to run a crèche but beyond that I don’t really know what they’re like. It’s a busy time for us too, so I haven’t had the chance to spend much time with them.’

‘It doesn’t sound very suitable,’ said Meredith disapprovingly. ‘Why didn’t you just say no?’

‘It’s what I should have done,’ Hal conceded, ‘but once my sister gets an idea in her head, it’s hard to shift her. She can be difficult, but she hasn’t had an easy time of it and…well, I guess I just didn’t know how to refuse,’ he admitted in what Meredith imagined was a rare moment of weakness. ‘I was the eldest, so I always had to look after her when we were growing up, and I think she’s fallen into the way of relying on me.’

Meredith could sympathise with that, at least. She had been the eldest too, and had got used to protecting Lucy.

‘How old are these children?’ she asked.

‘Emma’s nine and Mickey—Michael, I’m supposed to call him—is seven.’

Meredith frowned. ‘Shouldn’t they be at school?’

‘They’re going to do School of the Air while they’re here, and Lucy’s going to do some lessons with them. I made it clear in her contract that she would have to be a governess as well as a cook once the children arrived.’

‘Lucy? A governess?’ Meredith couldn’t help laughing. ‘Really?’

Damn, there was that smile again. Hal wished she wouldn’t do it. It made her look vivid and interesting and much, much harder to ignore.

‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded gruffly.

‘It just seems so unlikely,’ she tried to explain. ‘Governess makes me think of a Jane Eyre figure, all prim and proper, and Lucy’s certainly never been that!’ When you thought about Lucy, you thought about warmth and fun and laughter and a sparkling zest for life. She paused, not wanting to drop her sister in it. ‘Did she tell you about her teaching experience?’ she asked carefully and Hal cast her a dour smile.

‘You don’t need to worry; she was very open about the fact that she’d never done any. That doesn’t matter to me. She doesn’t have to teach them anything, just make sure that they do the work and help them with their reading and so on. It’s not hard, but someone’s got to be there with them. You can’t leave two kids on their own all day.’

‘Of course not,’ said Meredith, wondering if he was expecting her to disagree.

‘So you see, I can’t let Lucy go now,’ said Hal firmly. ‘Lydia and Greg won’t be back for another couple of months.’

‘Couldn’t—’ Meredith broke off and winced as the truck went over a particularly nasty bump that shot her up in the air and then slammed her back down on to the seat. ‘Couldn’t you find someone else?’ she tried again when she had got her breath back.

‘Where?’ he asked. ‘It’s not that easy to find people who are prepared to live on an isolated property, away from their family and friends.’

Meredith couldn’t say that she was surprised. There was no way she would come and live out here, no matter how fat a salary was offered.

‘I was lucky to find your sister,’ Hal told her. ‘Lucy’s got a romantic idea about what life is like in the outback, but that’s fine by me. I needed a cook anyway, and once I knew Lydia was going to dump the kids on me about now, I made sure I tied her to a contract that would cover the whole time they were here. Lucy was perfectly happy to sign it,’ he added.

That sounded like Lucy, thought Meredith wearily. Her sister had always been prone to wild enthusiasms, throwing herself into things with abandon before her interest waned and she was enthralled by something else entirely. It was a characteristic that exasperated Meredith even while a secret bit of her envied Lucy’s ability to live for the moment.

‘Lucy’s never been a believer in wait and see,’ she said to Hal. ‘It would never occur to her to suggest a trial period before she committed herself to six months.’

‘Is that what you’d have done?’

‘In the unlikely event that I’d be applying for a job I’d never done before in a place I couldn’t easily leave and living with people I’d never met…yes, I would certainly have insisted on a trial!’

‘Then perhaps it’s just as well it’s Lucy who wanted the job and not you. She’s certainly not regretting it, so even if she had been sensible like you, she would be long past the trial period by now. I think you’ll find that Lucy is more than happy to stay. She’s a grown woman and she can make own decisions without her big sister telling her what to do.’

Meredith flushed. She had always hated that bossy big sister image, but if even Hal Granger could see it, perhaps it was true.

But she wasn’t bossy, she reminded herself. She wasn’t always trying to tell other people what to do. She just wasn’t someone who sat around waiting for things to happen. She certainly wasn’t going to simply sit back and hope that Richard got better if she could make a difference by taking Lucy back to him.

‘Well, let’s see what Lucy has to say first,’ she said, lifting her chin.

She couldn’t give up now, not when she’d got this far!

Meredith stole a glance at Hal. He wasn’t someone you’d want to cross if you didn’t have to, she acknowledged to herself. He was toughly built and there was a competent, purposeful air about him that, as a practical person herself, she couldn’t help appreciating. The trouble was that you really wanted someone like Hal on your side, rather than squaring up for a battle of wills.

Still, what could he do? He could hardly keep her and Lucy prisoners…could he? Meredith shook off the sudden doubt. Of course he couldn’t. And if he did, they would just have to think up an escape plan.

Looking at the inhospitable terrain around her, Meredith wasn’t quite sure what that would be—they certainly wouldn’t be walking!—but she would just have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

Beside her, Hal saw her chin set at a stubborn angle and his eyes narrowed slightly. Meredith West seemed like someone who was used to getting her own way, and she clearly hadn’t given up. If she thought she and Lucy would be able to talk him round, she was in for a disappointment, though. She had come all this way for nothing.

He felt a bit sorry for her, in fact.

‘There must be other people who can talk to your Richard,’ he offered. ‘Why not you?’

Meredith looked at him. ‘If you were longing with all your heart to see Lucy, don’t you think you’d be a bit disappointed if I turned up instead?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘So this is all your idea, in fact?’

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

‘I see,’ said Hal.

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

Well, she wasn’t going to manage him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh…do we have to?’ moaned the girl.

‘Yes, you do. You too, Mickey.’

‘I’m just finishing this game—’

‘Now!’

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

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

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

‘Meredith?’ she said, astounded.

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

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

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

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