by Jessica Hart
She hesitated and then held out the photo. ‘You should keep this picture, Hal,’ she said. ‘Don’t tear it up. Keep it and remember what you had, not what you lost.’
There was such a long pause while Hal just looked at the picture that Meredith lost her nerve. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything; it’s not my business. And I’m sorry if I brought back bad memories today. I should have left the office alone.’
‘No,’ said Hal abruptly and took the photo from her. ‘I was angry earlier, but now I’m glad that you did find it. I haven’t talked about Jack for years, and maybe I should have done.’
He put the picture in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘That coffee’s cold,’ he said, nodding down at her mug. ‘Want another one?’
Meredith shook her head with a smile, tacitly accepting the change of subject. ‘I’m used to drinking cold coffee.’
Hal straightened from the desk. ‘I’d better leave you to get on with some work,’ he said, and started to head for the door before changing his mind. He stopped and turned back to her.
‘Thank you for tonight, Meredith,’ he said quietly.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘I think you did,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say more about what it had meant to talk about Jack again, but she must have understood. She looked at him with compassion in her dark blue eyes.
‘In that case, I’m glad it helped,’ she said and, on an impulse that took her by surprise as much as him, she reached out and hugged him.
For a moment Hal tensed, then his arms came round her and he held her tight, as tight as a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his mother and his brother might have clung to comfort.
But this was no twelve-year-old. This was the body of a man in his prime, and it was wonderfully solid. Meredith rested her face against his shoulder and allowed herself the luxury of being held for once. His back was broad and firm, and warm beneath her hands.
‘Thank you for telling me about Jack,’ she murmured into his neck. Her face was very close to his throat. She could see the prickle of stubble, the steady pulse beneath his ear, and she was gripped by a longing to touch her lips to it, to taste his skin, to kiss her way along that firm jaw to his mouth.
She really mustn’t do that, though. She absolutely mustn’t. This was supposed to be a friendly hug, nothing else. It was just that he smelt so good, that he felt so good, so lean, so strong, so safe.
‘I’m glad you know.’
When Hal spoke Meredith could feel his deep voice vibrating through her. His cheek was resting on her hair. It would be so easy to turn her face just a little more, to tip it up so he could find her mouth with his.
Do it! Do it! her senses urged her. Look how close he’s holding you! He won’t mind. You can kiss him if you want to. He’ll kiss you back, and you don’t need to stop. You can tug his shirt out from his jeans and run your hands over his back and find out if it’s as smooth and solid as it feels. And, if you do that, he’ll pull you even tighter against him. His lips will be warm and sure, you know they will. His kisses will be hot and slow, his hands hard-
Oh, God, she had to stop this right now! Aghast at how near she had come to letting her fantasies lead her astray, Meredith swallowed hard and, with a superhuman effort, pulled herself away like the sensible woman she was.
Her body was clamouring with disappointment, her cheeks burning, and her eyes slid away from his. She couldn’t meet that grey gaze and realise that he had known exactly what she’d been thinking as she’d clung to him.
It was very lucky that she had never taken up counselling, Meredith told herself as she fumbled her way back to her chair. She would be struck off. It simply wasn’t fair to pretend to be a friend, to let a man tell you about the childhood experiences that had scarred him, and then jump him to make yourself feel better. Meredith cringed at how close she had come to doing just that.
From somewhere she produced a bright smile. ‘I must get on with some work,’ she said, still without meeting his eyes.
‘Of course.’ After the slightest hesitation, Hal moved to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight, Meredith,’ he said, and then he was gone.
‘How would you kids like to go swimming this afternoon?’
It was the following Saturday, and the stockmen had left to finish their jobs that morning. They were free after lunch until Monday and had been discussing plans for the weekend over breakfast. Meredith had gathered that they would all be going to the pub in Whyman’s Creek as usual and would spend the night there.
Which meant she would be alone with Hal and the children.
She had been at Wirrindago over a week now, a week in which she had grown accustomed to so much that had seemed strange when she’d first arrived. Cooking steak at five in the morning while the homestead was still dark and cool, listening to the clatter of boots as the men came up the steps, walking through the shimmering heat to feed the chickens…even the creak of the screen door was so familiar to her now that she hardly noticed it. She was used to the vast sky and the brilliant light and the echoing silence, broken only by the cawing of crows and the occasional squabble of corellas down by the creek.
It was only Hal she couldn’t get used to. The circus antics of her heart whenever he walked in the door still left her breathless. She wasn’t used to the clutch of her entrails when he turned or smiled or simply put on his hat, or the warm feeling that would steal up from her stomach and start to shiver somewhere just below her skin whenever she thought about how it had felt to hold him.
Lucy had emailed with the good news that Richard was out of the coma, but still very ill. She had written:
But you were wrong about it being me he really wanted to see. He’s been really sweet about it, but he told me yesterday that he’d already realised before the accident that he was over me. Still, I’ll stay until I know he’s definitely on the mend.
Meredith was puzzled to hear about Richard’s apparent change of heart and she couldn’t help wondering if Lucy was telling her everything that was going on, but there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it out here. More worrying was just how glad she was to discover that her sister wasn’t coming back just yet.
And that was in spite of working harder than she ever had before. Meredith had always been a hard worker, but she had never worked like this. She was up early to cook breakfast every morning, and she barely stopped until she sat down at her laptop after supper to do the equivalent of another day’s work. She wasn’t getting as much done as when she’d been at home, of course, but she was still on top of things.
It was lucky that she thrived on being busy, Meredith reflected, or she would be on her knees. Sometimes she did think that it would be nice just to sit down at the end of the day, but she never allowed herself to consider that as an option for too long. It would mean sitting alone in the dark with Hal, and Meredith didn’t trust herself to do that.
Something very strange was happening to her. When Hal was there, she couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth, his hands, the pulse in his throat, and when he wasn’t she would find herself thinking about how he looked from behind, or that easy, unself-conscious way he moved that dried the breath in her throat.
Meredith had never thought of herself as a particularly sensual person before, but now all she could do was wonder what it would be like to lie next to Hal, to kiss her way along his jaw, to slip her hands beneath his shirt, to feel him smile and roll her beneath him…
She hadn’t felt like this about Richard. In spite of his good looks, her attraction to Richard had been mental rather than physical, and her overwhelming sensation had been one of astonished delight at having come across a man who really was everything she’d ever wanted.
Hal most definitely wasn’t. He could be nice, but a lot of the time he was taciturn and difficult, and he lived on the other side of the world in the kind of isolation Meredith wouldn’t even have been able to imagine two weeks ago. Bu
t it was Hal who made her senses leap and sent the heat roiling through her body. He hadn’t mentioned the idea of a brief affair again and Meredith told herself she was glad. It was getting harder and harder to remember how sensible she was, and just why that would have been a bad idea.
‘What about you, Meredith?’
‘What?’ Startled out of her thoughts, Meredith almost spilt her tea.
‘I’ve just been telling Emma and Mickey about the water hole further along the creek that’s always deep enough for swimming,’ said Hal. ‘We thought we’d go this afternoon. Do you want to come?’
A swim sounded incredibly appealing, but Meredith thought that the less time she spent with Hal at the moment, the better it would be for her peace of mind.
‘I think I should catch up with some work,’ she said.
‘Oh, come on, it’s the weekend!’
‘It’ll be fun if you come too,’ said Emma and Mickey nodded.
‘Come on, Meredith!’
Flattered by their enthusiasm for her company, Meredith dithered. ‘I haven’t got a swimming costume,’ she remembered, but Hal dismissed that as irrelevant.
‘You don’t need a cossie.’
‘I’m not swimming naked!’
Hal allowed himself to picture that for a moment. ‘I wasn’t going to suggest that, although it’s an idea…Haven’t you got a T-shirt or something you could wear?’
‘I wasn’t expecting to be here long enough to go swimming,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘I haven’t really got anything that casual.’
‘Why don’t I lend you one, then? It won’t matter if you get it wet.’
‘I can’t keep raiding your wardrobe,’ Meredith protested, aware that she had somehow been led astray from the idea of staying at home and working to the practicalities of swimming. How had that happened?
‘Rubbish.’ Hal pushed back his chair. ‘I’ll find you something when I get back. We’ll all be back for lunch, but maybe you could pack some biscuits or something for afternoon smoko and we’ll take it with us.’
It seemed churlish to insist on working after that and, besides, she deserved a break, Meredith decided, although she was ready to change her mind when she discovered that she was expected to ride as well as swim.
‘You’re not serious?’ she said when Hal broke the news.
‘Of course I am. You were the one who said I should give Emma and Mickey a taste of what we used to do as kids,’ he said. ‘That means taking the horses.’
‘It would be much more sensible if we all went in the truck.’
‘But would it be as much fun?’ he asked, selecting a hat for her.
‘It would for me. I’m a city girl, and everyone knows city girls don’t ride.’ Meredith decided to take a stand. ‘There’s no way I’m getting on a horse!’ she declared, and he looked at her with one of those infuriating almost-smiles of his.
‘Scared?’
‘Of course I’m scared!’
‘I’ll put you on the oldest, slowest horse we’ve got,’ he promised, and handed her a hat to put an end to the discussion. ‘Put that on,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and saddle up.’
Meredith had been hoping that Emma and Mickey would lobby for the truck too, but perversely they decided they liked the idea of riding and went out to help Hal catch some suitable horses, while she wrapped some flapjacks she had made that morning and wondered how she could convince them to leave her to work after all.
But Hal was having none of it. ‘Come on, up you get,’ he said as Meredith hung back when faced with what looked to her an enormous horse.
‘I’m really not sure this is a good idea,’ she prevaricated. ‘What if I fall off?’
‘You won’t fall off. Duke here can’t do more than plod and, anyway, I won’t let you. Put your foot here,’ he ordered, pointing at a stirrup. ‘No, not that one unless you want to end up riding backwards!’
Meredith jumped around a bit while the horse stood placidly, then she felt Hal’s hard hands on her, lifting her bodily into the saddle. She flopped into it, grabbing for the pommel, and hoped he would put the fiery colour in her cheeks down to exertion.
Emma and Mickey were already on two ponies, laughing at her awkwardness, and looking more animated than she had ever seen them.
True to his word, Hal set off very slowly. He had Duke on a leading rein, so that Meredith just had to concentrate on not falling off.
And on not thinking about how strong his hands had been, or how warm the brush of his fingers as he’d handed her the reins.
For the first few minutes she was too nervous to do more than clutch on and stare straight ahead, but after a while the rhythmic sway of the horse began to soothe her and she let herself relax enough to look around.
The horses were ambling through the fractured shade of the silvery-barked gums that spread out on either side of the homestead creek bed. It was hot and still and beyond the trees the light was so diamond bright that even the smallest detail seemed etched with extraordinary clarity: the peeling bark, the dried leaves carpeting the red dust, the worn leather reins in her hand.
And Hal, of course, sitting so easily on his horse beside her. He was wearing jeans, boots and a checked shirt so faded it was impossible to guess what the original colours might have been. His hat was tipped forward to shade his face and Meredith could just see the firm line of his jaw and the set of his mouth. Just looking at it gave her a hollow feeling inside and she forced her gaze forwards once more to stare instead at Duke’s lazily flickering ears.
Emma and Mickey were enjoying themselves and, after a while, Meredith began to think that she might be enjoying herself as well. Being so high off the ground was alarming, but exhilarating too. When a flock of galahs took off from a tree with an explosion of sound, she watched the flash of silver to pink as they turned against the brassy blue sky and was conscious of a pang of awareness so sharp that it almost hurt.
‘Do you ever think, I’ll never forget this moment?’ she asked Hal, who turned to look at her.
‘I suppose this is all too familiar for me to think that,’ he said, thinking about it. ‘I just take it for granted. It’s funny to think that it isn’t normal for you.’
‘No, it’s not normal,’ she said with a smile. ‘Normal is pavements and people and traffic and buildings.’
‘Are you missing London?’
‘Funnily enough…I’m not,’ she realised slowly.
‘Well, you’re not here for long. You might as well enjoy it while you’re here.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed after a moment, but, oddly, the thought of not being there for much longer didn’t seem as reassuring as it once had.
The creek bed was so dry that Meredith was beginning to think the idea of swimming was some kind of joke, but at length it fed into a much wider, deeper river whose still green waters cut so unexpectedly through the parched land that she gasped with surprise when she saw it.
‘This is Whyman’s Creek,’ said Hal and nodded his head eastwards. ‘Follow it down from here and you’ll get to the town.’
‘Is this where we’re swimming?’
‘No, it’s just a little further down.’
He took them to the old water hole where he and Jack had swum so often when they had been small boys. The creek turned and dipped into some smooth red rocks at that point, and over the aeons had worn a deep green pool that stayed wet in the driest of seasons. Half hidden in the shade of gnarled old ghost gums, it was easy to miss unless you knew the way.
Hal checked his horse as it came into sight. He hadn’t been here for a very long time, he realised, and the memory of Jack was suddenly, painfully vivid. He could picture his brother so clearly-scrambling fearlessly up the rocks, whooping with delight if he ever managed to beat Hal to the top-that Jack’s high, boyish laugh seemed to be ringing still over the water hole.
‘Can we dive off those rocks?’ Mickey asked eagerly, and Hal started, brought abruptly back to the present. Clicking his teeth, he urged
his horse on. Jack was gone, but there was another boy here now, other children to have fun here the way they had done.
‘You can,’ he told Mickey. ‘That’s what Jack and I used to do.’
He made himself say Jack’s name deliberately, and it wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s swim.’
He swung off his horse in one fluid movement that Meredith could only envy, while the children scrambled less elegantly off their ponies.
Humiliatingly, Meredith was forced to sit there. ‘How do I get down?’ she asked, and Hal came over to take the reins from her and explain what she needed to do. He held up his hands to help her down and, burningly aware of her clumsiness, Meredith ended up sliding down the hard length of his body.
Her hat fell off somewhere along the way and Hal bent to pick it up. Almost thoughtfully, he settled it back on her head. His eyes held an unfathomable expression and for one crazy moment Meredith thought that he might be about to kiss her.
But Emma and Mickey were shouting with excitement and in the end he stepped back. ‘I’ll tie up the horses,’ was all he said.
Meredith was furious with herself. Of course he hadn’t been going to kiss her, right there in front of the children. What a stupid idea! But her heart was hammering so loudly as she followed the sound of the children’s voices on to the worn rocks surrounding the pool that she half expected them to turn and demand what all the noise was about.
They had already stripped down to their costumes. ‘Can we go in now?’
Emma shrieked as she put a foot in the water. ‘It’s cold!’
Hal grinned. ‘Didn’t I tell you? You’ll have to jump in.’
‘You do it!’
‘I’m going to.’ Casually Hal tossed off his hat and pulled off his shirt before unfastening his jeans to reveal a pair of faded swimming shorts. He glanced at Meredith, who was doing her best not to stare at his body. His back was just as smooth and powerfully muscled as she had imagined.