‘Say you have a horse with no markings—no white socks or nose blaze—and it’s trained to race but isn’t very fast. Then you find another horse that looks just the same, but races well. You go to the races, and your first horse, which is no good, gets really good odds from the bookies—fifty or a hundred to one. But you’ve done a swap and brought the better horse to race in its place. You back it and rake in the money.’
‘But that’s cheating!’ Penny protested, and Tom laughed.
‘Not only cheating but against the law, and more than one horse trainer has ended up in jail for doing it.’
‘But can you stop that kind of thing happening, even with the horse’s DNA registered somewhere?’ Anna was interested in spite of herself. ‘I imagine horse DNA tests take as long to run as human ones, so the stewards at a racecourse can’t be doing it prior to a race. And once the race is over, and the punters have their money, no one could take it back from them.’
They turned into a stable complex as she finished speaking, and Tom pulled up in a clean-looking yard.
‘It’s illegal to profit from crime, so if the fraud’s discovered later, and the perpetrators caught and proved guilty, any money they made from the hoax can be recouped.’
He’d turned towards Anna to explain, but though the words were practical enough—no way could words like ‘hoax’ and ‘recouped’ be considered even vaguely flirtatious—they started a quivery kind of chain reaction in Anna’s skin cells, so she shivered in the warm afternoon air.
Bad move when the man involved was so tactile. He immediately reached out to touch her arm.
‘Are you all right? You can’t possibly be cold. I know I’ve had the air-conditioning on but it’s not making much of an inroad on the temperature, given it’s about forty degrees Celsius today.’
The blue eyes raked across her, as if some physical symptom might reveal the cause of her shiver.
Anna wanted to tell him she was fine—just fine—but the concern in his eyes diverted her momentarily and before she found even the easiest of answers, Penny interrupted.
‘Aren’t you coming?’
She’d disembarked immediately they’d stopped and was now pounding on the driver’s side window.
‘Bloody child!’ Tom muttered, touching Anna lightly on the back of her hand before turning to respond to his sister.
He climbed out of the car, ignored Penny, urging him towards the stables, and came around to open the passenger door. He might be temporarily muddled by his extreme reaction to the new doctor—and no one would blame him, given she was an utterly beautiful woman—but that was no excuse to forget his manners.
Anna slid to the ground, her long, golden-tanned legs gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, and images of those legs wrapped around his body swam in Tom’s head. A cool, slim-fingered hand touched his.
‘My turn to ask if you’re all right,’ she said, her voice lowered so it sounded like unfamiliar music in his ears.
‘Of course I’m not all right,’ he grumbled, pulling himself together sufficiently to make the words sound brusque. ‘But it’s not something a doctor could cure, so you can put away the black bag.’
He caught a glimpse of hurt in the green eyes before she swung away and strode towards the stables, where Penny waited in a patch of shade. Following more slowly, he thought about the peculiarities of attraction. He had four bags of mail from women wanting to meet him, and hadn’t felt interested enough in meeting any woman to bother opening more than ten or twelve of the letters. Then a blonde-haired beauty had swanned into his life, messing with his practical, sensible mind—hurt green eyes, yet—and reminding his body of its sexual needs.
Bob must have heard their arrival, and by the time Tom reached the stables he’d come out and introduced himself, then, practically drooling over Anna, had led the two females inside. Tom cursed himself for dawdling. He should have realised how a woman-chaser like Bob would react to Anna.
By the time Tom entered the cool shady building, grumbling only slightly to himself, Bob was already making a pass.
‘I’d be delighted to have you ride any of these horses,’ he said—oh, so smooth! It certainly wasn’t Penny being favoured with this offer.
‘Want to try your hand at track work?’ Bob continued.
‘Riding them on the track as part of their training?’ Anna asked, running her hand down over the velvety muzzle of Bob’s race-winning gelding. ‘I don’t know that I’m good enough for that.’
‘Nonsense! I’d show you what to do,’ Bob assured her, reaching out to pat the horse himself. Some excuse! It was obvious all he wanted to do was touch Anna’s hand.
‘Let’s go!’ Tom said, determined to interrupt the flirtation before it went any further. He’d have liked to have pointed out the engagement ring to Bob, but it was a bit hard to bring it casually into the conversation.
‘Right!’ his friend replied. ‘You got your gear?’
Looking down at his hand when Tom knew full well it wasn’t carrying his bag was a stupid act, but he did it anyway, then muttered all the way back to the car to fetch the damn thing.
He returned to find Penny and Anna in the small yard beyond the building, cooing and carrying on over the newly broken-in filly—which was, he had to admit, a little beauty.
‘She’s bred for distance and one day she’ll win the cup,’ Bob said.
‘The cup? They have a Merriwee Cup race?’
Bob laughed at Anna’s question—far too heartily!
‘Well, they do, but I’m talking about the Melbourne Cup—biggest horse race in Australia. It’ll be on in a couple of months. The whole country stops for it.’
‘For a horse race,’ agreed Anna, rolling her eyes.
‘It’s not just a horse race,’ Penny explained. ‘It’s the cup!’
Anna looked comically baffled by this sporting enthusiasm—a look she did delightfully, of course—and when Bob started to explain again, Tom decided he’d had enough and turned the conversation firmly back to business and the task of branding the young filly.
‘I don’t think I’ll watch,’ Anna said. ‘Is it OK if I go back to the stables?’
Bob assured her it was and looked as if he was about to escort her there, so Tom reminded him he’d have to hold the filly still.
‘I’d have asked Anna to help,’ he added, seeing a small window of opportunity, ‘but she’d probably put the poor horse’s eye out with the rock she wears on her left hand.’
Bob flashed a look towards the stables, then turned back to Tom.
‘Engaged, is she? Well, that should make things doubly interesting!’
‘She’s engaged to Tom!’ Penny announced, and the look on Bob’s face told Tom they were both equally flabbergasted, though Bob managed to put it into words.
‘She is? Wow! Sorry, mate, I didn’t realise. Are you ever a dark horse, going on about being off women and enjoying a bachelor existence, when all along you’ve got a beauty like that stashed on the sidelines!’
Tom opened his mouth to explain that was only a ruse, then closed it again, deciding he wouldn’t mention it. Though Penny knew it wasn’t true, so why had she said it?
‘He was all over Anna like a rash,’ Penny explained a little later, while Tom was using liquid nitrogen on the brand and Bob had made an excuse to go across to the stables. ‘And I could see it made her uncomfortable. I thought if he thought she belonged to you, he’d back off.’
‘People don’t ‘‘belong’’ to each other, Pen,’ Tom said carefully, hoping his internal reaction to Anna ‘belonging’ to him hadn’t been obvious on the outside.
‘Actually, I think they do,’ Penny argued. ‘I don’t remember our father, but Patience said he and Mum belonged together, and now I see Mum with Keith I understand because there’s a kind of belonging thing happening there as well. It’s as if some people are just meant to be together, actually, like bread and butter, or fish and chips!’
‘I can’t wait to tell
Pat you think her relationship with Keith is like fish and chips!’ Tom said, chuckling at the idea and ruffling his sister’s hair. ‘But maybe you’ve got something. During all those years after Dad died, Pat met a lot of men, and none of them clicked until Keith came along. But I think that’s a different kind of belonging, Pen. It’s a sharing kind of belonging. There’s no element of ownership in it.’
Penny looked puzzled, which didn’t surprise Tom. He felt a little that way himself because he had no idea where the thoughts he’d just put into words for his sister had come from. It wasn’t as if he’d ever spent a lot of time thinking about relationships. In his life, they just seemed to happen.
Usually disastrously!
However, the conversation didn’t faze Penny for long. With a cheerful, ‘I’ll go and chase him away from her,’ she departed for the stables, leaving Tom alone with the filly.
‘Stallions don’t have half the trouble human males have,’ he told the beautiful animal. ‘Though I don’t doubt you’ll cause some excitement on the racetrack when you’re older.’
All three humans reappeared while the filly was still considering her reply, Anna explaining she’d been roped in to assist in the branding.
So Bob would get a chance to jostle against her—Tom’s thoughts were growing positively poisonous!
He calmed himself enough to do what had to be done, and though Bob did try a few obvious—at least to Tom—manoeuvres, Anna avoided contact so skilfully Tom realised she’d probably been putting up with infantile stuff like that most of her life.
‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, when they’d said goodbye to Bob and were walking back to the car. ‘Thanks to both of you.’
‘It was fun,’ Penny assured him. Then she turned back as if to check she wasn’t going to be overheard. ‘But if you go over there to ride his horse, I’d watch that Bob, Anna. Even though I told him you were engaged to Tom, he was still trying to flirt with you.’
Anna stopped dead and turned to the young girl. ‘You told him I’m engaged to Tom? But you know I’m not, Penny. I explained that. It was just a ruse to get Tom out of a tricky situation.’
Penny grinned at her.
‘I know that—it’s why I thought of using it again when he was coming on to you so strongly.’
Anna shook her head. It was OK for a couple of women just visiting the town to think she was engaged to the vet, but for locals to hear this story?
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Tom must have sensed her dismay, for he touched her lightly on the shoulder then, with his hand still resting warmly against her shirt, guided her towards the passenger side of the car.
‘Even if Bob mentions it to anyone, it will be a nine-day wonder then die a natural death.’
He smiled, the laughter in his eyes reminding her of Penny’s cheeky grin.
‘And if it doesn’t, we could stage a spectacular ‘‘breaking off the engagement’’ scene in the middle of the main street. You could even fling that monstrous engagement ring at me if you liked.’
Anna closed the fingers of her right hand around the ring. Talking of it, feeling its sharp edges, reminded her of Philip—and that she shouldn’t be feeling the things she was feeling in the presence of another man.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said quietly, silently praying he was right about the nine-day wonder and hoping that’s all it was for her as well as the locals.
‘Anna’s real fiancé has his own jet,’ Penny announced as they drove back towards town.
Anna saw Tom glance sideways at her, as if querying this statement, but she was too busy trying to remember how she could possibly have talked so much on the trip between Three Gorges and Merriwee that she’d mentioned Philip’s plane.
‘He has offices all around the world,’ she said, feeling a need to defend what some might see as extravagance on Philip’s part. ‘It’s easier to get around to all of them with a private jet, rather than relying on commercial flights. Getting the right connection with commercial flights can often mean overnighting somewhere you don’t need to be and cause a day or two’s delay.’
Again a glance, but this one openly sceptical.
‘And would that be disastrous? Would stock markets crash? The world oil price sky-rocket? Gold shares plummet? Is he so important, your Philip?’
Anna decided to ignore both the supercilious questions and the snide way in which they had been asked. It was none of Tom Fleming’s business what Philip did, and if Penny hadn’t been in the car with them, Anna would have told him so in such a way it would have left no room for error.
She folded her arms and turned pointedly away from him, looking out the window at dry ploughed fields awaiting rain for planting. But Penny answered for her, surprising Anna again at the amount of information the child had wheedled out of her on the trip to Merriwee.
Tom absorbed the information, telling himself it was only natural a woman as beautiful as the one who sat in stony silence beside him in the car would attract the attention of a rich and powerful man.
‘It’s because of Philip she’s a doctor.’ Penny finished her recital on a note of triumph, but what he’d heard already had soured Tom’s stomach and he certainly wasn’t going to ask either of the females to explain this remark.
What he was going to do was avoid all further contact with the older of the two—and possibly strangle the younger if she insisted on telling him more details he didn’t want to hear.
Avoiding Dr Talbot was easier thought than done, Tom realised when he bumped into Anna for the fourth time in the next three days, though on this occasion—they were standing together in the queue at the supermarket—they had enough time to do more than exchange polite hellos.
Enough time for him to register her clothes as well. Had she sewn two skirts together that this one reached almost to her knees? And the cheeky daisy thongs were gone, replaced by sedate sandals.
Though there was a tiny flower adorning the bright red nail polish on her big toe. She wasn’t going to conform too much to country standards!
‘I suppose we could make a ‘‘we should stop meeting like this’’ joke,’ she said, drawing his attention back to her face. Big mistake, as her flashing smile made his heart gallop around in his chest while her light-hearted tone told him she was over the snit his asking about Philip had caused.
He was trying to think of some extraordinarily witty reply when she suddenly leaned back against him.
‘Enemy women at ten o’clock!’ she murmured, and looked with rapt devotion into his eyes. He glanced in the direction she’d indicated and saw Grace and Carrie—he’d confirmed that was the reporter’s name when the intrusive woman had arrived on his doorstep at eight on Sunday morning—zeroing in on them.
The bright glare of flashbulbs temporarily blinded him, and caused a flurry of excitement among the checkout girls.
‘Damn,’ the woman who was disentangling herself from his arms muttered crossly. ‘I should have learnt by now that getting involved in doing a favour for you—no matter how small—always leads to complications.’
She slid behind him and muttered her curses into his back, adding, with a fair amount of pique, ‘Couldn’t you have shopped earlier in the day?’
He was about to remind her that it had been she who’d leaned against him, making the photo possible, when the customer in front of him moved on, and it was his turn to unload his groceries onto the counter.
‘We heard you were engaged, Tom,’ the checkout girl, Barbara, was cooing at him as he shuffled into place across from her. ‘Is your fiancée someone famous that you’re having your photo taken?’
Tom quickly considered, and equally quickly discarded various replies—such as She’s not my fiancée, but apparently her fiancé is famous—eventually settling on a bland, ‘Oh, haven’t you met Anna? She’s the new medical superintendent at the hospital.’
‘You’re a doctor?’ If he’d said she was an astronaut Barb wouldn’t have sounded more surp
rised. She studied Anna, still cowering cravenly behind him, before pronouncing solemnly, ‘You look more like a model or an actress.’
By this time Grace and Carrie were waiting at the end of the narrow aisle where he and Anna would eventually exit, both wearing the identical looks of women who were not about to be denied whatever it was they were after.
His skin, most probably!
Barbara was cheerfully shuffling his groceries past the scanner so escape was impossible, though Anna hadn’t given up hope of avoiding a confrontation.
‘I think I might turn around and put my groceries back on the shelves,’ she whispered. Her earlier animosity was obviously forgotten as she sought an ally in this awkward situation.
‘Don’t you dare,’ he told her, then, to ensure she didn’t escape, he told Barb to add the cost of Anna’s groceries to his total.
‘I’ll pay for the lot,’ he said expansively, with a mental ‘so there’ to the absent Philip.
But eventually they had to leave, and then put up with Grace and Carrie falling into step with them, one on either side, like some bizarre kind of guard frog-marching them out of the shopping centre.
‘We know who Anna is,’ Grace announced.
‘And that she only arrived in town on Thursday,’ Carrie added, a note of triumph in her voice.
‘So how can you possibly be engaged?’ This from Grace who was on Tom’s side, so close her shoulder was brushing against his body on one side, while on the other he could feel Anna’s angry rigidity as she marched stoically forward.
‘Haven’t you heard of the internet?’ she snapped at Grace. ‘Internet meeting rooms, internet dating, internet sex. I would have thought an up-to-date woman like yourself would know all about the latest technological advances in the mating game.’
‘Internet sex!’ Carrie barely breathed the words, but Tom’s heart quailed as he thought of the spin an imaginative reporter could put on that! It was all right for Dr Talbot, she was only visiting this country and, anyway, she was beautiful enough to bluff her way through anything, but he’d have to leave town if such an article came out—and change his name before he resettled somewhere else.
Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter Page 8