by Jessica Hart
What on earth was the matter with her? Meredith gave herself a mental shake. She wasn’t the kind of girl who went all fluttery at a smile-not that you could really call that gleam in his eye a real smile. She was a sensible, down-to-earth woman, who didn’t go in for imagining sparks or smiles or anything silly like that and, even if she were, it wouldn’t do her any good.
She certainly wasn’t about to go weak at the knees for a man who was to all intents and purposes her employer. That would be a stupid thing to do, and Meredith didn’t do stupid. She didn’t do reckless or romantic. She did careful and considered, so that was quite enough nonsense about non-existent smiles!
No, she reminded herself, she had agreed to do this job. She didn’t have to like it, she just had to get on with it. Jet lag might excuse some uncharacteristic behaviour, but that was enough now. It was time to pull herself together.
And she would start off by changing into the shirt he had provided, instead of letting herself be unnerved by its scent or the fact that Hal had worn it. Pulling off her top in her bedroom, she slipped on the shirt. It felt cool and comfortable, the soft material almost caressing her skin, the way it must have caressed Hal’s.
Meredith’s fingers fumbled at the buttons, imagining him doing the same, imagining what it would be like if he were there now, watching her, brushing her clumsy hands aside and slowly unbuttoning the shirt with deft fingers until it slid from her shoulders.
All right! Meredith told herself fiercely as her insides promptly melted at the mere thought. She had to stop this, she had to stop it now. It was just a shirt and she was a sensible woman. Just do up the buttons and go and get lunch.
Being sensible didn’t stop her being agonisingly aware of the feel of Hal’s shirt against her body, but at least she avoided having to explain to Hal just why she had taken his shirt off after being so insistent that she wanted to protect her own clothes.
The thing is, she would have had to say to him, I keep thinking about you wearing it. I keep thinking about it against your bare back, and that gives me this awful, squirmy feeling in my stomach, so I decided I’d rather ruin my own clothes.
No way was Meredith having that conversation.
Still, it was a relief when she had supper under control that evening and could go and change into her own clothes once more. She put on a black skirt and a flattering pale blue top that hugged her curves without being too revealing, and slipped her feet into strappy sandals with vertiginous heels. Add some lipstick, and Meredith immediately felt more herself-confident and competent.
The feeling lasted until the stockmen shuffled in from their quarters for the evening meal. They had a beer on the veranda first, and stared at her as if they had never seen a woman in high heels before.
In spite of her determination not to care if she seemed out of place, Meredith was desperately self-conscious and she despised herself for it. It was true that, like Hal, the men all seemed to have showered and changed their shirts at least, but it was clear that the notion of dressing for dinner had not yet reached this part of the outback.
‘You look…very…smart,’ said Hal, who really wanted to say something like sensational or sexy-or both-but thought she would probably bite his head off if he did. But those shoes…!
To Meredith, ‘smart’ sounded like an insult. ‘I’m allowed to change in the evenings, aren’t I?’ she snapped. ‘Or is a change of clothes too much change for you to deal with?’
Hal held up his hands. ‘We’re just not used to it, that’s all. Lucy never changed in the evenings.’
No, well, if she had Lucy’s figure and could look fabulous in jeans and a T-shirt, she probably wouldn’t either, Meredith reflected with a touch of bitterness. She would love to be slender and long-legged like her sister instead of short and round. It was no surprise that people often found it hard to believe that the two of them were related. She had often wondered if there had been some mix-up at the hospital when she was born as she appeared to have no genetic connection to the rest of her family.
She didn’t care anyway, Meredith reminded herself, sitting at the end of the table opposite Hal and lifting her chin defiantly. Let them think of her as strange. She didn’t want to be accepted here, the way Lucy obviously had been. She didn’t want to belong.
Meredith’s first meal could not be said to have been a raving success. There was nothing wrong with the mince or the vegetables, all perfectly cooked, or with the apple pie she had made for pudding, but the atmosphere was distinctly awkward. Meredith was defensive, the children sullen, and Hal was having so much trouble concentrating on anything except how she looked in those shoes that he barely knew what he was eating.
Never the chattiest of company, the stockmen left immediately after pudding, leaving Meredith alone with Hal and the two children.
‘What do you two do with yourselves in the evening here?’ she asked Emma and Mickey, since it seemed hardly fair to them to sit in silence and she couldn’t think of a thing to say to Hal, who had been looking distracted all evening.
‘Nothing. It’s so boring,’ sighed Emma.
‘There isn’t even a TV,’ Mickey added in the incredulous tones of a child unable to imagine anywhere without this most basic of technologies.
‘There’s a record player,’ Hal offered in his defence, and they looked at him blankly.
‘What’s that?’
In spite of her determination to stay aloof, Meredith couldn’t help catching Hal’s eye and she smothered a smile at his expression. ‘It’s been a very long time since anyone played records,’ she said. ‘Even I never had a record player. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of CDs?’
‘Of course I have,’ said Hal. ‘But, in case you hadn’t noticed, music shops are few and far between out here. I just never got round to buying CDs or anything to play them on.’
‘Don’t you listen to music?’ asked Meredith, trying to imagine a life without music. ‘I always have it on in the background, even when I’m working.’
His mother had been the same, Hal remembered. There had always been music when she was around.
‘I listen to the night,’ he said.
Emma and Mickey exchanged a glance. Hal pushed back his chair and got to his feet, glad to get off the subject of music.
‘If you two are so bored, you can come and give me a hand with the washing-up,’ he said and watched their faces crumple in consternation.
‘Oh, that’s not fair!’
Meredith looked puzzled. ‘I was expecting to clear up,’ she said.
‘No, the cook doesn’t wash up the main meal,’ said Hal. ‘This is your time off. You can relax now and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee in a minute.’
He bore the children, still protesting, off to the kitchen and Meredith was left in sole possession of the table.
Well, it was a nice idea, but what did you do with time off in a place like this? Meredith wondered. If she were at home in London, she could stretch out on the sofa and watch telly, or ring a friend and go out for a drink. She could go to a film or catch an exhibition or see if she could get a ticket to the latest play everyone was talking about.
What was there to do here? A big, fat nothing.
Of course, she could do some work, but somehow the thought of going into that cheerless office-that was next on her list for a revamp!-and sitting at her laptop was too depressing to contemplate. Catching herself in the middle of a huge yawn as she got up from the table, Meredith reasoned that she was still suffering from jet lag and could therefore be excused from working this evening. She would get down to it tomorrow.
It was too early to go to bed, though. The children had portable DVD players, but Meredith didn’t rate her chances of being able to borrow one now that they were having to wash up, and besides, she didn’t think her eyes could cope with the tiny screen.
For want of anywhere else to go, she went to sit on the back veranda where she had seen that incredible sunset the day before. It was quite dar
k now, with no light to discourage the flying insects who hurled themselves at the blue light trap instead. Meredith was a bit disconcerted by the way it would spit and fizzle every few seconds as another insect was caught by its deadly lure.
She looked outwards instead. The night sky was quite different in the Southern Hemisphere, Meredith realised, and certainly very different from the starless yellow glow that hung above London. Here, the darkness wasn’t black or grey but a deep, dark blue and blurry with brilliant white stars.
Meredith thought about Lucy, who was up in that sky somewhere at thirty thousand feet, flying, flying, flying. The memory of that long journey made Meredith shudder. Then she thought about Richard, lying still in his hospital bed, but London seemed unimaginably distant, here in the vastness of the Australian outback. It was hard to remember exactly what Richard looked like.
Or why she had loved him so much.
Behind her, the screen door creaked, jolting her out of her thoughts, and through the dim light she saw Hal looming with two mugs.
‘So this is where you are,’ he said, an odd note in his voice.
‘Is it OK for me to be here?’
‘Of course. I was just surprised to find you here. This is where I like to sit at night too.’
‘Oh.’ Meredith felt as if she ought to move, but it seemed rude to leave the moment he had arrived and, besides, he had brought her coffee.
She took it with a murmur of thanks and after a second’s hesitation Hal sat down in the chair next to hers. There was a table between them where she could put down her mug, but he still felt overwhelmingly close and she was suddenly reminded of how she had felt when she had put his shirt on earlier that day. The thought brought a flush to her cheeks and she was very glad of the dim light that hid her expression.
‘You’re not working tonight?’ he asked after a moment.
‘I should be,’ she said, ‘but I can’t face it until I’ve cleared that desk.’
‘You’re entitled to sit down and do nothing for a bit. You’ve been working all day and it’s all strange to you.’
‘It’s certainly that,’ said Meredith ruefully.
Hal’s eyes rested on her profile. In the dim light he could see little more than the pearly gleam of her skin and the outline of that lush mouth, but he could still picture exactly how she had looked as she had walked into the veranda that night in those ridiculously unsuitable and sexy shoes and announced that supper was ready. Her chin had been up at its usual combative angle and her eyes had been sharp and bright, but the rest of her was all warm curves and soft lines.
Hal pushed the memory firmly aside.
‘I’m sorry, I was probably a bit abrupt with you earlier about the veranda,’ he apologised. ‘I’m not very good with change.’
‘I gathered that,’ she said dryly.
‘I’m only thirty-five, but I guess I’m set in my ways,’ he said, trying to explain. ‘I’ve lived here at Wirrindago all my life, and I’ve been running the station on my own for the last fifteen years. I’m used to things being a certain way.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s probably why I’m finding the kids a bit difficult.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Playing some computer game in their rooms and recovering from drying up a few dishes. You’d think holding a tea towel was a form of torture.’ Hal sighed and swirled the coffee round in his mug. ‘I don’t understand them,’ he admitted. ‘I feel as if I’ve let them down, but I don’t know what to do with them. They seem to be bored the whole time. We were never bored when we were children.’
Meredith eyed him over the rim over her mug. ‘What did you used to do?’
‘We used to have to help around the station, for a start,’ said Hal, ‘but when we’d done our jobs, we’d ride or go fishing or mess around by the creek. We’d go off exploring on our own for hours.’
His voice trailed off as he realised how long it was since he’d let himself talk about his childhood. Since he’d let himself think about it.
‘That was you and Lydia?’
And Jack. Hal wasn’t ready to talk about Jack.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Meredith drank her coffee thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you should show Emma and Mickey what you used to do?’ she suggested. ‘After all, their mum grew up here. She must have talked about it.’
Lydia wouldn’t have talked about Jack.
‘Maybe,’ Hal agreed. But how could he show them the creek and the rocks and the water hole and not think about Jack?
A silence fell, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. The blue light fizzled and snapped, but above it Meredith could hear insects shrilling and the strange cracks and rustles of the darkness, and she thought about what Hal had said about listening to the night.
A creeper that looked much too exotic to survive in the British climate was climbing up the veranda post, its scent heady on the night air. In the starlight, she could see a frangipani tree, recognised from holidays in Greece, its fragrant white blooms almost glowing in the dark, but beyond that there was nothing, just an ancient, immense darkness crouching in the silence.
Meredith shivered and sipped her coffee, glad that Hal was there.
‘Haven’t you ever wanted kids of your own?’ she asked, wanting the reassurance of his voice.
Hal’s face closed. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Well…I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose I’d expect you to want to pass the land on to your children. Farmers are always supposed to think in terms of generations, aren’t they?’
‘This farmer doesn’t,’ said Hal flatly. ‘Wanting children means wanting a mother for those children.’
‘The two usually go together,’ Meredith agreed.
‘I’m not going to take the risk of marrying someone and having children. There’s no guarantee that the marriage would last. It’s hard enough under normal conditions, but when you add in isolation and drought and all the other things you have to contend with in the outback…no.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not a risk I’m prepared to take.’
‘There’s no guarantee that a marriage wouldn’t last either,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘Some marriages are very happy.’
‘None that I know of,’ said Hal.
‘If I were talking to one of my friends in London, I’d say you had real commitment issues,’ said Meredith with one her acerbic looks.
‘What about you?’ Hal countered. ‘I don’t see you having committed yourself to marriage either.’
‘That’s because I haven’t met the right man yet, not because I’m afraid of commitment.’
Hal raised a brow in disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me you’re waiting for Mr Perfect?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Only that you strike me as a sensible woman, and it doesn’t seem like a very sensible thing to do. You must know as well as I do that no one will ever be perfect, which gives you commitment issues too,’ he said. ‘Instead of admitting that you don’t want to take the risk, you pretend you’re waiting for someone who doesn’t exist.’
‘Who says he doesn’t?’ demanded Meredith fiercely. ‘I’m not waiting for a man who’s perfect, just a man who’s perfect for me.’
‘I can’t believe a sensible girl like you would fall for that happy-ever-after fantasy,’ said Hal with a snort of contempt.
‘Actually, it’s a perfectly sensible approach.’ Meredith’s voice was cool. ‘Lucy falls in and out of love the whole time, and it always seems to me that it’s a waste of time and energy and emotion when any fool can see that it’s not going to last. It’s much more sensible to wait until you’re sure that you’ve met someone who’s going to make you happy before you let yourself fall in love.’
‘But how can you tell?’
‘You just can. I’m looking for someone kind and sensitive and intelligent. Someone with integrity. Someone I can talk to…a friend.’
Richard had been all those thin
gs. He was everything Meredith had ever wanted in a man, so of course she had fallen for him. It wasn’t Richard’s fault that he hadn’t felt the same about her. He had been quite happy being friends, and she had been terrified of scaring him away by telling him how she felt.
And then he had seen Lucy, and that had been that.
Meredith sighed.
‘It sounds to me as if you’ve got very high expectations,’ Hal commented.
‘That’s what Lucy says. She says I’m too picky, but I think you should be picky when it comes to choosing someone you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. It’s important. You and Lucy might call it having unreasonably high expectations, but I call it being sensible.’
‘And you’re not prepared to compromise?’ asked Hal, who hadn’t been able to avoid noticing that her wish list for a man didn’t include many characteristics that would apply to him. He hadn’t been particularly kind or sensitive as far as she was concerned, he had to admit.
Meredith finished her coffee and put the mug down with a little click. ‘Not on the important things,’ she told him. ‘I’ve seen lots of my friends going to enormous lengths to change themselves and their expectations when they meet a man and decide he’s The One, but I’ve never yet seen a man changing. Women will accept that their man is unreliable or reluctant to commit because they love him. They accept being taken for granted and never being made to feel that they’re special because if they didn’t accept it the relationship would be over and they’re afraid of that.
‘They can accept that if they want to,’ said Meredith, ‘but I don’t see why I should. I’m not perfect, far from it. I know I’m bossy and prickly and uncompromising and I’m never going to win a beauty contest, but I don’t want to change, and I want a man who doesn’t want me to change either. I want someone who’ll love me the way I am, someone I don’t feel the need to change for.’ She sent Hal one of her challenging looks. ‘That’s sensible, isn’t it?’
‘If you really think you’re going to meet someone who lives up to all those expectations,’ he said in a sceptical voice. ‘Have you ever met anyone who did?’