by Gloria Bevan
‘Like I said, I can put you on to something else if you’re interested.’ She was too intent to notice the irony in his voice. ‘My dad seems to think you might be.’
Immediately she broke all her resolutions of being offhand, of telling him just where he could take his job. Instead she heard herself saying eagerly, ‘Oh, I am. I am! What would I have to do?’
‘Whatever happens to be going, actually. What would you say to giving a hand with shifting stock, checking the dams and the waterholes, riding work mostly.’
‘Riding!’ She could scarcely believe her luck. Dimples flickered at the comers of her soft mouth. ‘Why, that would be super!’
‘Award rates, of course,’ came the controlled tones, ‘plus your keep. You can share the outside quarters with Edna, if that’s okay with you?’
‘Oh yes!’ Suddenly she was feeling wildly elated. He had conceded her riding ability, so maybe he really needed her to help him round up cattle on the sandhills, and wouldn’t that be fabulous! Bless you, Edna, for cancelling your trip to the wedding over in England! Eyes bright with anticipation, she said eagerly, ‘When do I start? Tomorrow?’
‘That’s right.’ He stopped her with his hard tone. ‘Daybreak, actually. I’ll need you around to give me a hand in the woolshed tomorrow.’
‘Me?’ She was so surprised the word came out as a squeak.
‘Why not?’ She surprised a gleam of amusement in his eyes, then it died away as swiftly as it had come and a cool satirical note tinged his tones. ‘I have to have someone in the shed with me to sweep up and sort the fleeces.’
‘Oh!’ She felt a strong desire to kick something. There he went again, cutting her down to size, or trying to. How could he be so lean and tough and heartbreakingly good-looking, yet so deliberately hateful, and only towards her? She said slowly, ‘You mean you want me in the shed as rouseabout?’
‘That’s it. I’ve got a job on tomorrow for a neighbour, an elderly guy on his own who isn’t the best since he copped a tractor accident last year. He’s got a few sheep that I shear for him in the season. It’ll only take a day and I’ll need someone to give me a hand to push sheep into the pens—’
‘P-push them?’
‘You could handle it,’ he bent on her his mesmeric gaze that played havoc with her emotions, ‘anyone could.’ Unfeeling brute! Lanie jerked her mind back to the cool tones. ‘Sandy seems quite confident you can cope.’
Sandy! Oh, she might have known it was only because of his father that he was keeping her on his payroll. The thought sparked her to say defiantly, ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic about the idea?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Like I said, anyone could do it—another thing I need to know—’ he shot her a swift enquiring glance from penetrating grey eyes, ‘do you happen to hold a current driver’s licence?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Now she felt herself on familiar ground. ‘I’ve never owned a car, but I used to take the van sometimes at work when the office manager wanted samples delivered around the city.’
‘Tremendous!’ He didn’t appear, she thought, to be all that excited about her driving ability.
Hope rose in her anew. ‘Where would you want me to go? I’d love to drive along the beach—’
‘All I want you to do,’ his tone was definitely deflating, ‘is to take a run up to the house and bring down the smoko.’
‘I get it.’ She managed to recover herself. ‘Well, I guess if I’m going to be rouseabout—’
Jard’s voice was deadpan. ‘Over to you.’
If he was throwing challenges about, she thought hotly, she would accept them! She schooled her voice to a nonchalant tone. ‘Daybreak, you said?’
‘Right. That’s settled, then.’ He rose from his chair and strode forward to open the door for her.
‘’Night, Lanie.’
She hesitated, sending him a quick upward glance. If only you’d smile when you say it, Jard, the way you smile for other folk, for Paula! Just once. Bui taking in the hard unyielding lines of his face she knew it was wishful thinking. She turned away. ‘Goodnight.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lanie was so fearful of sleeping in in the morning that she awoke long before the time set on her small travelling alarm clock. Swiftly she dressed, pulling on shabby jeans, a loose shirt of white cotton, slipping her feet into rubber thongs. Her bright hair she coiled in a knot on top of her head to give some protection from the dust and wool of the shearing shed.
Through the window she could see a tumble of pink clouds that heralded the sunrise, hear the boom of the surf on the sands that mingled with the lowing of cattle and the crying of seabirds. For no reason at all she felt a surge of happiness. Today, on this freshest of mornings, where the bush in the gullies was veiled in mist and the hills sharply outlined against the translucent tender blue of the sky, just being here was sufficient to send her spirits soaring. It’s a new world to me, the thought sang through her mind, and I love it! Even the prospect of working under the directions of the boss in the hot shed down on the beach couldn’t dim her newly-found happiness. She picked up her denim cap and pulled it over her hair. Tendrils of red-gold escaped and she tucked them determinedly out of sight.
As she reached the back door of the homestead she ran into Jard, and for a moment their glances held. In that instant some irresistible force quivered between them, something that made Lanie’s pulses leap and sent vibrations quivering along her heartstrings. To break the moment of awareness she jerked her peaked cap over one eye, planted her feet together and raised a hand to her forehead in a mocking salute. ‘Reporting for duty—sir!’
A reluctant smile played around his lips and almost she could read his thoughts. She won’t be feeling so cheeky after a gruelling day’s work in the hot woolshed.
‘I was just on my way over to give you a call. Edna’s got breakfast on the table.’ This time he sent her a real grin. ‘How does that strike you?’
‘Just fine.’ She smiled back at him. It must be the effect of the breathless morning air, she told herself, that was giving her this sense of heightened perception as if everything in the world were suddenly fresh and new, even Jard’s feeling for her.
Edna, who evidently believed in a rouseabout being fed in the same manner as the rest of a shearing gang, had dished up a. massive meal of chops, sausages and egg. Lanie did her best with the egg and tried to avoid Edna’s disapproving glance.
Presently she went with Jard to the car waiting in the driveway, eyeing his well-shaped hands as he worked the controls. She was trying to memorise the gear movements which fortunately appeared to be the same as the van she had driven. With Jard, she reminded herself, you had to be one step ahead. She had a suspicion that his present pleasant mood wasn’t going to last for ever. It didn’t. The next moment his tone was definitely that of a boss giving orders to one of his staff. ‘I’d better give you the run-down on what you have to do—’
‘I know,’ she cut in, and rattled off quickly: ‘Push sheep into the pens for you to shear, sweep up the wool and sort it out on the table, go up to the house in the car and bring back smoko—’
‘You’ve got it.’ They were taking a curving track cut through sandhills and leading to the grassy flats by the sea. As they swept down the rise Lanie glimpsed the bleached logs piled up on black sandhills of glittering irons and the tossing surf and the fiery ball of the sun flaming over the horizon.
Presently they were approaching the drafting pens adjoining the old timbered woolshed Jard braked to a stop and soon they were mounting the kauri steps leading up to the shed. At that moment however a truck came roaring down the slope and Lanie went with Jard down to the yards where the driver was unloading sheep from his truck.
‘Right.’ He was a young man with twinkling dark eyes and a friendly grin. They’re all yours, Jard—’
He couldn’t seem to take his gaze from Lanie’s face.
Briefly Jard made the introduction. ‘Mervyn, this is Lanie.’ He
added carelessly, ‘Lanie’s my rouseabout.’
The stranger looked surprised. ‘You could have fooled me!’ His appreciative glance was taking in Lanie’s clear skin and trim figure, the expression of excitement that lit her small face. ‘I would never have thought—’
‘Let’s get cracking, shall we?’ Jard cut in impatiently. He was giving some ‘hurry-up’ to the ewes he was guiding into a pen.
‘See you.’ With a lingering glance in Lanie’s direction and a lift of his hand, the driver swung the truck around and took the sandy track along the beach.
Lanie had already forgotten him. She was moving with Jard up the steps of the shed once again. She glanced up into his closed face and once again the inexplicable surge of wild sweet happiness coursed through her. It must be something about the freshness of this magical morning, alive with birdsong from the trees around them. ‘He didn’t look geriatric to me!’ she teased. She mocked in her sweet husky tones, ‘ “Not up to doing much around the place” was the impression I got, from what you told me about your neighbour.’ Jard glanced down at the lively little face beneath the jauntily set cap and a flash of humour chased across his features. ‘True, true.’ In the end it was Lanie who dropped her lashes and looked away. At last, she thought triumphantly, she had got through to him, and couldn’t resist the temptation of adding, ‘The way he was tossing those sheep about, he looked healthy enough to me!’
‘Oh, he is.’ Jard’s voice was deadpan.’ Only thing is, he’s a lawyer who works in Wellington and drops in now and again to spend holidays with his uncle. Shearing sheep isn’t his thing.’
‘I see.’ Privately she was of the opinion that at least Mervyn was pleasant and outgoing. His admiring glance for her had beamed an unmistakable message: ‘I’d like to get to know you better.’ He had a smile for her too, not like Jard, she mused vindictively, who was nice to her only once in a while and then you could see it was only because he had forgotten to put up his guard. Unconsciously she sighed. If only Sandy hadn’t suffered that heart attack!
Jard flung open the heavy doors of the shearing shed and they moved together into the shadowy interior of the building. Her gaze moved over the five stands with their electrical equipment, the great presses and piles of wool bales. ‘Right! Let’s get on with it!’ Jard had paused to pull his T-shirt over his head, emerging with rumpled dark-blond hair, and looking, she thought, more approachable, younger, less Jard-like. Seeing him stripped to the waist, the rippling muscles of his chest and sinewy body tanned as deeply as arms and face, made her aware all over again of the aura of powerful masculinity he emanated. Thank heaven he couldn’t read her thoughts.
‘Lanie!’ Lost in her thoughts, she blinked as his stern tones recalled her to her reason for being here.
‘Sir!’ She straightened and opened her eyes wide in mock alarm. ‘Orders are—?’
He eyed her narrowly, that mesmeric gaze she found so difficult to sustain. ‘You know what you have to do?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve got a fair idea. At least, I’ve read all about it.’
‘Read about it?’ He bent on her his formidable stare. ‘This is for real, and you’d better pay attention!’
‘Sir!’
He refused to be amused He was wearing his familiar ‘must-keep-young-Lanie-under-control’ look, she reflected as he went on in the inexorable tones he seemed to keep just for her. ‘For starters, you’ll need this—’
Striding away, he returned a few moments later with a straw broom. ‘When I’ve freed the fleece and released the ewe then you move in with your broom to clear the stand and take the fleeces over to the sorting table. Dags, bellies and pieces all go into separate piles—I’ll show you how it goes with the first lot and after that it’s over to you—think you can handle it?’
Lanie wrinkled her nose at him. ‘It looks as if I’ll have to,’ she told him with spirit.
‘That’s my—the ideal’ She could have sworn he had been about to say ‘that’s my girl’ and had hurriedly changed the words. The suspicion went to her head and all at once she felt confident of carrying out the unfamiliar tasks.
‘It’s a bit different today from when the gangs are in action,’ she brought her mind back to his tones, ‘then the pace is always on, but all the same it’s the team spirit that counts. It’s a matter of timing and working together.’ He bent on her one of his swift penetrating glances. ‘You did say you’d have a go at anything?’
‘It’s good experience, I think,’ she declared warmly, ‘being part of a team. Especially,’ she couldn’t resist the opportunity of getting something of her own back, ‘when it’s a man-and-woman team!’
The moment the words left her lips she knew she had gone too far. For something leaped in his eyes, kindling flames he couldn’t hide from her gaze, and she knew it was only with an effort he was restraining himself from physical retaliation. A kiss, another kiss in the intimacy of the shadowy surroundings—was that what he imagined she was angling for? At the thought she felt her cheeks flame and hurriedly she averted her face.
He said tautly, ‘You’d better give me a hand to get sheep into the pen.’ She was only too glad to do as he said.
Before long Jard was bent over a ewe, one hand holding the animal while with the other he sheared away the heavy fleece. As Lanie watched his expert movements she realised why shearing was regarded as the hardest seasonal farm chore, depending on the shearer’s physical strength combined with a coordination of eye and hand. Intent on watching his rippling muscles under the mahogany tanned skin, it was only as the fleece fell to the slippery floor that she recalled her own job of work in the team. A man-and-woman team with a difference, she thought wryly, and began to pick up fleeces and carry the armfuls of soft; wool to a long table. Soon she was sorting out the wool for impurities as he had shown her. Before she had made much headway, however, it was time to clear the stand, and she picked up the straw broom and swept away the scraps of wool from the littered floor, while Jard went to the back door to bring another sheep to the stand.
It was a pattern of work repeated again and again. As the hours wore on the sun mounted in a cloudless sky, its rays beating down on the iron-roofed shed. Now Lanie’s white shirt, sleeves rolled above her elbows, was streaked with dust, her forehead beaded with perspiration, and in her nostrils was the musky smell of sheep under strain. Now there was no opportunity for talk or for anything else, for that matter. Jard worked hard and fast, maintaining a smooth steady pace and somehow it had become very important for her to keep up with him.
Head bent over the sorting table, she classed the fleeces as best she could, hoping feverishly that she wasn’t making any frightful blunders, for if so she would hear about them from Jard, no doubt about that!
‘Smoko!’ The cry rang through the shed and Jard, returning after releasing a sheep in the pen outside, strode forward.
‘Am I welcome or aren’t I?’ called a cheerful masculine voice, and Lanie paused in her task. Wiping a hand over her wet forehead, she met Mervyn’s grin.
‘Are you ever!’ Lanie didn’t know when she had been so glad to see anyone. ‘If I wasn’t such a mess. I’d throw my arms around your neck to thank you, I’m so glad to have a break!’ She perched on the table, swinging a bare foot, for she had long since kicked off her rubber thongs.
‘I don’t mind about your being a mess—’
Grinning, he set down on the table a wooden tray with a long handle, then placed beside the tray a billy of tea. ‘You look fine to me! Hi,’ he called as Jard returned from the side door where he had released a newly-shorn sheep, and came to join them. ‘Your lady cook roped me on this job,’ he explained cheerfully, ‘told me if I was just going to hang around the house all day waiting for the sheep to be shorn and something else,’ he threw Lanie a laughing glance, ‘but I won’t go into that. I might as well make myself useful.’ He was pouring steaming tea into cups and handing one to Lanie. ‘Your Edna isn’t the sort of woman one argues with. Seems I�
��ve got myself a job in the catering department!’ His warm glance went to Lanie, her face flushed and hot from the soaring temperatures of the shed and tendrils of red-gold hair lying damply against her forehead. ‘Not that I’m complaining—just hoping that if I stick around long enough—’ He had a pleasant way of speaking, Lanie thought, slow and sort of smiling.
‘Make it quick, Lanie!’ Jard’s terse tones cut across the lazy accents. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
She took a gulp of hot tea that burned her lips. The sudden harshness of Jard’s tone took her by surprise, and even Mervyn appeared somewhat taken aback. Had she not known Jard to be incapable of such an emotion concerning his new shed-hand, almost she could have imagined he was displaying jealousy, just as he was in the habit of doing with dear old Sandy. Sandy, of all men! It was absurd, of course—she shook the thought away. He was the big boss of Rangimarie and accustomed to ordering people around to suit himself, dam him! The maddening thing was that in situations such as this he happened to be in the right. All the same, she mused resentfully, he had no reason to look so stern and somehow ... angry. Mervyn hadn’t done a thing to merit Jard’s displeasure, except to pay her some attention.
Soon, however, Mervyn had picked up the box with the empty cups and left the shed, and there was no time to think of anything except the matter in hand.
In the heat and hurry-up of the shearing shed, it seemed to Lanie to be no time at all before Mervyn was back once more, his tray loaded with freshly baked scones—scones that were soft and fluffy. Why hadn’t her baking efforts ever turned out like this? The lunch box contained as well a pizza pie and, surprisingly, small apple pies. Lanie breathed a sigh of relief. So she hadn’t after all sneaked all Edna’s hoard in the deep freeze. Or had the cook tossed off a fresh batch of apple pies?