Now, the eucalyptus smell of gum trees and a faint whiff of cow manure reminded Alice that not only did she have a flat tyre, she was also many kilometres from the nearest service station. She let out a heavy sigh and felt the afternoon sun, bright and hot on her neck and arms. She was a pale-skinned redhead and she hadn’t brought a hat.
She didn’t risk a glance back to the homestead. With luck, Seth Drummond hadn’t witnessed this debacle. She didn’t want his help. She didn’t need it. She knew what to do, or at least she knew in theory how to change a tyre, though the last time this had happened she’d been on a busy Brisbane road in peak-hour traffic. Her gran had been a passenger and they’d called the RACQ.
She would be embarrassed to call the RACQ now, especially when part of her reason for moving north had been to prove to herself and to the world that she was independent and strong.
Okay.
These trials were supposed to be character-building.
With deliberate calm, Alice selected a wrench from the toolbox in the back of the ute. It was awkward trying to free the spare wheel that was bolted to the back of the cabin, but she persisted.
Luckily, the bolts weren’t too tight, and once the spare was free, she set it with the jack, the wrench and a screwdriver on the grass. Step one was complete.
She was crouching beside the deflated tyre, levering the screwdriver behind the rim of the hub cap, when she heard footsteps on the track. Then Seth’s voice.
‘That’s bad luck.’
Alice grimaced, and she was tense as she turned to him. ‘I’m afraid it’s more like bad management. I hit the cattle grid too hard.’
Seth gave an easy shrug as he strolled towards her. In no time he was crouching beside her, examining the tyre. ‘This tread looks pretty worn. There’s a good chance it was about to go anyway.’
Which still amounted to bad management as far as Alice was concerned. She should have checked the condition of her tyres after the long journey north.
‘I can change it in no time,’ Seth offered.
Alice flushed. ‘That’s a kind offer, but it’s okay, thanks. I know what to do.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure you do.’ His smile was friendly rather than patronising. ‘But you might find those wheel nuts hard to loosen. Garages often put them on with a rattle gun and it takes sheer brute force to shift them.’
‘Oh.’ Alice didn’t fancy the embarrassment of rejecting Seth’s help and then having to knock on his door and ask for it five minutes later. ‘Well, all right.’ She tried to sound gracious, despite the dent in her pride. ‘Thank you. That – that would be helpful.’
‘There’s only one hitch.’ As Seth took the screwdriver and freed the hub cap with impressive ease, he shot Alice a quick, almost apologetic glance. ‘I need a favour from you in return.’
She went very still, suddenly uncertain and uncomfortably aware that she was alone in the bush with a towering man who was virtually a stranger.
‘I’ve left my son asleep up at the house,’ Seth said.
His son? Her mind had been travelling down a completely different track. It took a moment to regroup, to realise that Seth wasn’t putting the hard word on her.
Instead, he had a son, which meant he was probably also married, and, to her annoyance, this brought a flurry of stupid disappointment. And confusion.
She could have sworn that just a few minutes ago, this guy’s manner had been borderline flirtatious.
That lingering smile . . .
Might see you around some time.
‘Charlie’s sixteen months. He’s due to wake up any minute,’ Seth said. ‘Would you mind nipping up to the house and keeping an eye on him?’
‘I . . .’ Alice knew nothing about children. Not a thing. For her own very good reasons, she avoided them. But really, in this situation, what choice did she have? ‘I – I guess.’
Seth grinned. ‘That’d be great. There’s no one else home, so just go right in. Charlie’s in a room down the hall. Second doorway on the left.’
With that, he picked up the wheel wrench and began to attack the first bolt. Alice gulped, and felt helplessly manipulated as she turned and hurried back up the track to the house.
The front door was still open and she stepped inside, walking on tiptoe. The house was lovely and old, with large rooms that opened onto deep shaded verandahs. It had a quiet charm about it that spoke of another era. It was the kind of place she adored.
Under other circumstances she would have taken her time, lingering over details – the deep, six-paned, casement windows, the leadlight panels in the front door, the soaring ceilings, the carved timber fretwork above the internal doorways.
Today, however, she stuck to her mission and continued resolutely onwards, past the big lounge room on the right and the bedroom on the left. Seth had said the baby was in the second room on the left and Alice expected to find a nursery, but when she reached this doorway she realised it was an office.
A large, vintage, silky-oak desk with a green leather top stood squarely in the centre of the room. On it were a very modern laptop and printer and a basket overflowing with opened mail.
The baby was in a portable cot in the corner. Alice wondered if Seth and his wife had another house on the property. Perhaps the baby’s mother was at work in town, but those details became irrelevant as Alice stood in the doorway.
From here she could see him, a small figure, still asleep and lying on his back, dressed in a pair of denim overalls and a long-sleeved navy and white striped T-shirt.
A lightning-quick flash of fear zapped through her.
She couldn’t help it. She knew it was irrational, but it was an instinctive reaction, a phobia really, that she’d carried from childhood and had never been able to shake off.
She was calmer about getting close to a giant spider than to a human baby, but she forced herself to be sensible now. She took a step into the room, just to make sure that Seth’s little son was still breathing.
His chest was moving softly and Alice let out her own breath that she’d been holding. Charlie was cute, a toddler, a proper little boy. Charlie Drummond.
Unlike his father who had thick dark hair that curled at the ends, Charlie’s hair was straight and glowing golden in the sunlight that streamed through the window. His skin was clear and looked incredibly soft and baby-smooth. His cheeks were flushed with sleep, his eyelashes long and fair. One chubby little foot was bare and the other was covered by a black and yellow striped sock. The discarded sock lay in a rolled-up ball in a corner of the cot.
He was cuteness personified.
And for Alice, that was a problem.
All babies were cute. Cute and vulnerable and helpless. Just as her baby sister, Daisy, had been as she’d lain in hospital after the car accident that had killed their parents.
Alice had been eight when Daisy was born. Such a thrill it had been to have a tiny sister and Alice had always felt protective of her, like a second mother. All these years later, she was still plagued by the terrifying memory of her little sister wreathed in bandages, with IV and monitor tubes everywhere. Every day for a week her grandmother had taken her to sit in the scary hospital room. Watching Daisy. Watching Daisy’s pale sleeping face and her one, tiny, unbandaged hand.
Even though Daisy had been drugged and asleep, Gran had read her stories in her lovely gentle voice. Beatrix Potter and A A Milne. The stories were too old for Daisy really, but Alice had listened while she stared at her sister’s delicate fairy fingers, at their pearly miniature nails. She hadn’t been allowed to touch, so she’d sat very still, willing those fingers to move.
And she’d watched the only part of Daisy that did move – her stomach – going slowly up and down, up and down, up and down. But after a week, the movement had stopped and the monitors had begun to beep madly. Nurses had come running.
‘Daisy, Daisy!’
‘Call for Dr Knowles!’
‘Ring Pharmacy!’
At the age o
f ten, Alice had been well aware of the change in the nurses. She’d seen the way their usual calm confidence gave way to distress and alarm. She’d seen the raw anxiety in their eyes, had been able to hear it in their voices.
Alice had known they were on the edge of panic as they shooed her and her gran from the room and firmly shut the door. Alice had never been allowed back in. She never saw Daisy again, only a tiny white coffin covered in flowers.
Now, she pressed a hand against her thumping heart and took a step back from the cot. She would wait in the lounge room. If Charlie woke he would no doubt cry out and she would hear him.
As she backed away, she distracted herself by taking a curious glance around at the Drummonds’ office. One wall was filled with shelves holding thick ledgers and serious-looking tomes that seemed to be mainly about cattle management. There were also photos of men on horseback, their faces shaded by wide-brimmed Akubras, and pictures of enormous bulls with prize ribbons around their necks.
On the desk sat a silver-framed photo of Jackie with a pleasant-looking man who was probably her husband. The shot looked like a holiday snap. A sunny blue sea with sailing boats sparkled in the background. It had been taken somewhere in Europe perhaps. The couple had their arms around each other and looked incredibly happy.
And the envelope that Alice had handed over to Seth for safekeeping now lay next to the computer, one corner resting on the keyboard, as if Seth had dropped it there ever so casually. Alice wondered if Magnus H Drummond had sat at this very desk to write his instructions for his lawyer.
Thinking about that, she felt an inexplicable, uneasy shiver.
She looked again to the cot in the corner. And froze.
Charlie’s eyes were open. His eyes were light blue like his father’s and he was lying there, staring at Alice. Then, as he continued to stare, he frowned at her and his bottom lip trembled.
Oh, no. Was he going to cry?
She didn’t know what to do. Should she speak to him? Go to him and pick him up?
It must be terrible to be a baby and have to lie there helpless, waiting for a stranger to pick you up.
Charlie, however, was far from helpless. With the ease of a monkey, he rolled over to his knees and a moment later he was standing, clutching the sides of the cot. But he was still staring at Alice with those huge blue eyes. And she was sure that he didn’t trust her. She didn’t blame him.
‘Hello, Charlie.’ She tried not to sound nervous. Babies were probably like animals and could tell if you were nervous. ‘Have – have you had a nice sleep?’
The little guy continued to stare at her in silence, while keeping a death grip on the edge of the cot.
Alice tried again. ‘Your daddy’s fixing my car,’ she said.
This time his face crumpled and he let out a wail. ‘Daddy!’ he bellowed, showing two small white teeth in his lower gum. ‘Dadda! Daddeee!’
Oh, help. Clearly the mention of his father had been a major mistake.
Alice didn’t have a clue what to do now, but she had no choice but to try to soothe him. Hurrying forward, she picked him up. He was heavier than she’d expected, and strong. He twisted and squirmed.
‘Hey,’ she said in her most soothing tone as he tried to hurl himself out of her arms. ‘It’s okay. I’ll take you to your father.’
‘Daddy!’ he cried again, and this time his sturdy little body trembled with a shuddering sob.
Alice tried to jiggle him up and down, as she’d seen other people do with babies. To her relief it seemed to work. Charlie stopped crying and stared at her, but his eyes were still glistening, and his long lashes were wet with tears. It was an unnerving sight.
‘You’re okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
It didn’t work. Charlie wriggled and squirmed again.
‘Down!’ he demanded.
Alice wondered if he could walk.
‘Down!’ he screamed, kicking fiercely into her. She set him down carefully.
Charlie could walk, all right. He took off at a great pace, running out of the room with one foot in a sock and the other bare, wailing as he went. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
Alice hurried after him, terrified he would slip as he tottered precariously over the polished timber floorboards. She could picture him with a bruised forehead, a split lip.
‘Charlie,’ she called as she caught up. ‘It’s okay. Please don’t cry.’ She couldn’t bear this. She was almost in tears herself. ‘I’ll take you to Daddy.’
She had no idea if the baby understood, but he must have realised that his father wasn’t anywhere close by, and he allowed her to scoop him up once again. His soft, tear-stained cheek bumped damply against hers and his little hands clutched at the fabric of her smock. He smelled of shampoo – baby shampoo, she guessed – and her heart might have melted if she hadn’t been so nervous.
She hurried outside. From the verandah she could see her white ute on the side of the track and a figure crouching beside it.
‘See?’ she said, pointing. ‘There’s your daddy.’
Charlie’s lip protruded and he frowned again, obviously not sure if he should believe her, so she took off at once, across the verandah, down the steps, taking a shortcut over the grassy lawn. The sooner she delivered Seth’s son to his father the better.
Luckily, Seth had worked quickly and by the time they reached him he was tightening the bolts on the new wheel.
He rose from his task and grinned at Alice and Charlie. ‘Were you making all that racket?’ he accused his son, and he gave the little boy a playful poke in the stomach.
‘Dadda!’ Charlie was all smiles now and holding out his arms.
‘Are you behaving yourself for Alice?’
‘Dadda,’ he wailed, once again trying to hurl himself earthwards.
‘Hang on a sec, little mate.’ Seth was sterner now. ‘Be a good kid for Alice for just a bit longer and let me finish fixing her car.’
‘Why don’t you take him now?’ Alice said. ‘I can finish the wheel.’
This brought a puzzled smile from Seth. Clearly, he thought she was crazy to suggest swapping the task of holding a baby for tightening wheel nuts.
He had a point, of course. Her avoidance of small people was crazy and, as often as possible, she hid that side of herself from the rest of the world. If she was brutally honest, she’d moved away from Brisbane in a bid to escape babies.
With all her friends either getting married, or on the verge of settling into long-term relationships, babies had started to arrive in her social circle. Currently, at least three of her girlfriends were pregnant and Alice hadn’t wanted to hang around for the births. While she was in awe of her friends, who approached motherhood with no apparent trepidation, she’d felt compelled to flee from those happy family scenes.
From the safety of Far North Queensland, she planned to morph into a kind of modern-day fairy godmother. One who sent her friends’ children lovely gifts from afar.
Right now, however, she could hardly dump Charlie. In response to Seth’s questioning gaze, she gave a carefully nonchalant shrug and left him to finish with the wheel nuts while she wandered, with his son still in her arms, over to the barbwire fence at the edge of a paddock.
‘Cows,’ she told the tiny boy, pointing to a herd of grazing silvery beasts.
Charlie grinned. ‘Moo!’
‘That’s right. Good boy.’
But even as she said this, an unwanted memory stirred, smoke from a witch’s cauldron, and she heard her mother’s voice, light and loving, echoing down the years . . .
What does the cow say, Daisy?
Moooooo.
Good girl.
A shiver ran through Alice. She gave a fierce shake of her head, trying to dismiss the memory, but she couldn’t hold back the emotions that accompanied it.
‘Okay, that’s done.’ Seth was grinning as he approached them.
Alice blinked hard, hoping to hell that no tears showed.
He fro
wned at her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure.’ She dredged up a smile. ‘Thanks so much for doing that. It probably would have taken me hours.’
‘No problem.’
She held Charlie out, keen to hand him over. Seth looked down at his hands and gave them a swift wipe on the back of his jeans.
‘Thanks,’ he said as the little fellow leaped gleefully into his arms, but he shot Alice another thoughtful, searching look.
He’d probably never met a woman who was so eager to hand back his super-cute son.
Alice’s arms felt strangely empty and she folded them over her chest. ‘I guess I’d better get going then.’
Seth nodded.
‘Bye, Charlie.’ Alice reached out, almost but not quite touching the baby’s bare toe with her fingertip, and she tried not to notice the charming picture the two of them made, the dark-haired, big-shouldered man holding the sweet, golden-topped cherub. But she did notice that Seth was still frowning.
The look in his eyes might have been puzzlement. Or disappointment. Which didn’t really make sense. Why should he give a toss about her motherly instincts?
She wondered again about Charlie’s mother. Was she at the CWA with Jackie? Working in town?
Alice chose not to ask. Her work here was done.
Hastily, she stowed the tools and the damaged tyre in the back of the ute. ‘Well, thank you again,’ she told Seth. ‘I’ll ring Jackie when the mirror’s ready.’
‘Yeah, sure. The spare looks okay, but don’t forget to get your old tyre replaced.
‘I won’t.’
He raised a hand as she slipped behind the wheel.
Charlie waved too. ‘Bye, bye,’ he called, all smiles now that he was with his dad.
‘Bye, Charlie.’
She drove off without looking back, annoyed with herself for wasting even so much as a moment on fancying a man who was a father and, more importantly, in a relationship.
She’d made that mistake once before, only that time she and the lowlife had been on five dates before she’d discovered he had a wife and two kids.
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