The Australians Convenient Bride Page 7

  ‘On your present record, Chattie, which in my estimation is that you cook like an angel,’ he said dryly, ‘just keep on the way you’ve been going.’

  She looked genuinely frustrated. ‘But are they young, old, middle-aged or what?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘In my experience, unless you’re of Italian origin, for example, pasta and pizza are young to middle-aged dishes. The same goes for Thai, Chinese and Indian cuisine—it doesn’t do much for older people who’ve been reared on roast beef unless they’ve done a stint in the Middle to Far East. Salads can be another touchy generational issue. A lot of older people would far rather have vegetables.’

  ‘I see. You obviously take these things very seriously.’ He looked amused for the first time.

  ‘I do.’ This was quite true too. ‘So, although I can be a very traditional cook, it would be nice to know if I didn’t have to stick to roast beef and three veg,’ she said.

  He grimaced. ‘They’re a mixed bag, I’m afraid. One couple—he’s the local vet—are in their middle thirties. The second couple—they run the neighbouring property—are fiftyish but quite “with it”. So are Harriet and Jack. The shire chairman and his lady, however—’ he tilted his chair back and looked amused ‘—would definitely fit into the “roast beef, three veg” clan.’

  Chattie wrinkled her brow. ‘OK, so apart from the formal dinner, I can be a little adventurous, by the sound of it. What about the single? And you yourself?’

  ‘I’m easy. The single? She’s in her mid-twenties and very “with it”. She’s a journalist and she’s doing a piece on the station.’

  ‘Uh-huh!’ She sat up, thoroughly on her mettle now. ‘Would you like me to prepare a list of menus for your consideration?’

  He laughed softly. ‘No, thank you. Since there is no lady of the house, consider yourself the ultimate authority—just don’t kill yourself in the process, Chattie,’ he warned. ‘We’re not trying to be a five-star hotel.’

  ‘All I’ll be doing is making sure they’re comfortable and well fed.’ She got up. ‘Oh, one other thing. I seem to be in the best guest bedroom—shall I move out?’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ve got plenty of bedrooms. Stay put.’

  ‘Thank you. Well—’ she got up ‘—back to the mill.’

  They exchanged glances. Then she added softly but intently, ‘I meant it.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ he responded. ‘Are you the terror teacher of your TAFE College?’

  ‘No, but you’d be wise to take me seriously, Steve Kinane.’

  ‘Oh, I do, Chattie. Well, until this blasted house party is over you’ve got me on a good behaviour bond so to speak.’ He looked torn between supreme irritation and some wryly self-directed humour.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said gravely, and departed.

  But Steve Kinane stared at the wall for some moments after she’d left and asked himself a few pointed questions. Why had he not sent this intriguing, mysterious, infuriating girl packing at the first opportunity despite being left in the lurch with Brett and no Slim? What was she hiding? How was he going to cope with living in the same house with her and not laying a finger on her?

  ‘Bridget,’ Chattie said into her phone, later in the day, ‘as I explained, the problem is that no one knows where Mark is at the moment. He just took off apparently. But everyone seems to think that he will get in touch with the station so a few more days may be all I need. How are you?’

  ‘Sick as a dog,’ Bridget replied, then requested a reassurance from Chattie that she hadn’t revealed the truth to Steve Kinane.

  Chattie bit her lip. ‘Bridge, no, I haven’t, but if I can’t find Mark I may have to. It—well, I won’t do it without consulting you, so just hang in there. Listen, you’re not going to believe this,’ she said in a bid to cheer her sister up, ‘but I’ve got a temporary job on the station. Which is just as well because I would have outworn my welcome well and truly by now otherwise!’

  Several minutes later she ended the call feeling somewhat reassured that the rather comical account she’d given of being the temporary housekeeper at Mount Helena had cheered Bridget up.

  The next couple of days were extraordinarily busy, but all the appearances of a truce between herself and Steve Kinane existed.

  She wasn’t sure how she did it—then it occurred to her he must have contributed—but she concentrated on being as natural as she could in his company. Deep thought had convinced her it was the only way to go, since she’d made the—insane? Angry certainly—decision to stay on. Being busy and doing the things she loved had to have helped, of course. And it was a particularly satisfying house to be in charge of.

  Still, it was strange, she acknowledged, that they could be in such discord on one level yet, outwardly, almost ‘matey’ so that her natural liveliness, very much on the back burner until now, began to reappear. But he did provide her with one break that turned out to be a real treat, although it also provided a true test of their truce.

  She and Brett got a tour of the property by helicopter and her enthusiasm for the flight, piloted by Steve, was almost as great as the little boy’s—Brett’s greatest ambition was to become a helicopter pilot.

  It was a Sunday, the day before Jack and Harriet were due back, and Chattie had been asked to pack a picnic and bring along swimming costumes for herself and Brett.

  ‘It’s so big,’ she said to Steve in wonderment as Mount Helena unfolded below her. They were wearing headphones and mikes so they could talk over the noise. ‘Do you know every inch of it—is it possible?’

  ‘Well, not every inch, but I’ve been flying over it since I was eighteen,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you muster by helicopter?’ she asked as she spied a mob of cattle on the move towards a thread of green winding across the plain, indicating, she guessed, a water course.

  ‘Sometimes. Over the really rough country it’s easier but we also use motor bikes and ringers on horses or a combination of the three.’

  ‘I would love to see a muster,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘If you’re here long enough you will. OK—’ he pointed through the wind screen ‘—see that big patch of green? It’s a billabong and it has to be a pretty serious drought for it to dry up. We’ll have lunch there.’

  So they landed and spent a lovely couple of hours exploring the billabong, revelling in the shade of the gum-trees that lined it and splashing in the shallows.

  ‘This is a very unique experience,’ Chattie said as she set out her lunch on a rug. ‘Let’s see, egg and lettuce sandwiches, ham and tomato, Vegemite, which I happen to know goes down well with young Mr Barlow but you don’t have to partake of them.’ She glinted a dancing look at Steve. ‘Uh—and some cold chicken. Do help yourselves. There are lamingtons and tea to follow.’

  She’d slipped a white T-shirt over her swimming costume and she sat down cross-legged on the rug.

  Steve and Brett wore only their swim wear, in Steve’s case dark green board shorts. He’d helped Brett construct an elementary raft with branches and some rope from the helicopter, and Brett was lying tummy down on it, scanning the depths of the billabong as he paddled it with his hands.

  ‘Leave him,’ Chattie said as Steve was about to call him to lunch. ‘He’ll come when he’s hungry.’

  ‘Tell me what’s so unique about this?’ he invited as he helped himself to a drumstick and several sandwiches.

  ‘Well, I’ve got this picture in my mind of the map of Australia spread out all around us, and just the three of us on it.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘Maybe some cattle as well, but that’s all.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ he said slowly. ‘I sometimes get the same feeling.’

  ‘Do you enjoy the feeling?’

  ‘I do enjoy the sensation of space, I sometimes revel in solitude, not that this is precisely solitude.’

  She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched the way the sunlight filtered through the leav
es above was dancing on the water. ‘So do I.’

  He glanced narrowly at her. ‘Didn’t you tell me you had a sister?’

  Chattie tensed inwardly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you live with her?’

  ‘Yes. We’re pretty close, actually, but this is different,’ she said slowly.

  He studied her thoughtfully, and suddenly realized he was on the receiving end of a similar, rather absorbed contemplation.

  ‘What?’ he queried, looking comically alarmed.

  A faint blush stained her cheeks because she’d found herself musing on the subject of just how much of a true loner he was; and how much the memory of the kiss they’d shared had occupied her mind ever since it had happened.

  Of course, they had to be related topics, she realized. Nor was she in any way helped to forget that second topic as he lounged back in his board shorts on the rug.

  If it weren’t for Brett, I could happily do it again.

  The thought raced through her mind and made her quite dizzy but a relaxed, slightly damp Steve Kinane, tanned, muscular and beautifully proportioned, was almost too much to bear. Then there was the desire she identified as a growing longing to get to know him better…

  Be still, my crazy heart, she told herself, then leapt to her feet with a cry of pain as what felt like a very fine but red-hot skewer pierced the tender flesh under her arm. ‘Ouch!’ She swatted at the area frantically then felt another sting.

  Steve was on his feet in a second and he picked her up with his hands about her waist and jumped into the billabong with her.

  ‘What…why?’ she gasped and swallowed some water.

  ‘Green ants. They bite like the devil. Here. You can stand.’

  She found her feet and he wrestled her T-shirt off, then unceremoniously pulled the straps of her swimming costume down, exposing her breasts.

  ‘No…don’t,’ she spluttered. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘No choice,’ he said laconically and pushed her below the water to the level of her chin.

  The relief was blessed. ‘Holy smoke,’ she said, forgetting her nakedness for the moment, ‘that hurt!’

  ‘They do,’ he agreed. ‘The longer you stay like that, the better.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Brett called.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Chattie remarked, folding her arms over her chest, ‘but they must be drowned by now and modesty prevents me from—’

  ‘They would be drowned by now but the cold water will help soothe the sting and modesty is—well, you’re quite safe from me if that’s worrying you,’ Steve said gravely.

  She shot him a look. ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘Not,’ he responded with an entirely wicked glint in his eyes, ‘that it’s easy to be unmoved by such sheer feminine perfection, but I am on a good-behaviour bond.’

  Chattie’s hair was dripping into her eyes and she raised her hands to smooth the water out of it.

  ‘Even harder if you do that,’ he added barely audibly.

  She clamped her arms around herself speedily. ‘Will you go away?’ she requested sotto voce, but with her grey eyes growing stormy. ‘You were the one who…got me like this.’

  ‘Only in your best interests.’ He looked quite serious but she knew he was laughing at her.

  ‘Well, they’ve been well and truly served now!’

  ‘Maybe.’ He grimaced. ‘Mine, however, are another matter. Still—’ he shrugged ‘—I’m told cold water helps there too.’

  Chattie took a breath as their gazes locked.

  His dark hair was plastered to his head and his eyelashes clumped together—but he was breathtakingly attractive with his broad, wet shoulders and his white teeth. And for a moment it was impossible not to imagine them alone in the billabong. Alone, and matching her paler skin to his strong, tanned body, her curves to his lines and angles as the cool water swirled over and around them.

  She closed her eyes for a long, sensuous moment and when she opened them it was to find that all humour, wicked or otherwise, had gone from his expression. She tensed. But he looked away first, then turned away and climbed out, calling to Brett at the same time, and things got back to normal.

  Well, almost normal, she was to think later that evening. Nothing more had been said but there’d been one occasion when they’d been caught in a little world of their own again, she and Steve. When he’d helped her climb out of the helicopter his hand had lingered on her elbow.

  It was the lightest pressure but she’d paused as her whole body had been invaded by an awareness of him and a strange but lovely sensation at the pit of her stomach had made her feel as if the world had tripped…

  She’d stared into his eye with her heart starting to beat heavily but Brett had intervened, by jumping down beside her, and Steve had released her without a word—and the world had righted itself.

  ‘You seem to know quite a few tricks of the trade,’ Merlene said the next morning when they were dusting and polishing guest bedrooms and making up beds.

  Chattie explained about her domestic-science training then straightened from the perfectly made bed with her hands on her hips. ‘These guest bedrooms are kind of bare. No ornaments, no vases or that kind of thing.’

  ‘Kid, when you got a house with six bedrooms excluding the annexe, and five bathrooms, it takes a powerful lot of work to keep it all dusted and clean. So Slim keeps one guest bedroom up to date, yours, and only breaks out the others when necessary, which ain’t often.’

  ‘Breaks out?’ Chattie wrinkled her brow.

  ‘There’s a store room next to the linen press you may not have come across. It’s full of knick-knacks and things.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’ Chattie asked with a tremor of excitement.

  Merlene shrugged. ‘Maybe Steve woulda mentioned it if he’d wanted—’

  ‘He did say to consider myself the ultimate authority, well, below you, of course,’ she hastened to assure Merlene quite untruthfully but most diplomatically.

  ‘OK! I must say it all used to look lovely when his mum was alive and of course when—’

  But she stopped as they heard a vehicle drive up to the garden gate. ‘Who would that be?’

  Brett solved the mystery by dashing past, yelling, ‘Mum, Dad, guess what? You just have to buy me my very own dog or else I’ll come and live with Steve and Chattie permam-m-m-ently!’

  Merlene looked heavenwards. ‘Her ladyship has returned. You watch yourself with her—she can be a right bitch.’

  But Harriet Barlow had a glow about her of a woman deeply in love. She wafted into the house on the arm of a lean, freckled, fair-haired man and they shared an affectionate reunion with Brett, got introduced to Rich then became aware of Chattie—Merlene had retreated to the kitchen.

  ‘You must be the godsend Steve mentioned—I’m Jack Barlow.’ Brett’s father extended his hand to Chattie. ‘Thanks so much for looking after this young tyke!’

  ‘It was my pleasure, but actually it was Rich who did most of it,’ Chattie responded with a grin.

  ‘Anyway, thanks,’ Harriet remarked. ‘I must say I got the impression the other night that you were just passing through but I may have been mistaken.’

  ‘I was until Slim collapsed,’ Chattie explained, then decided to get it over and done with. ‘Actually I came up to see Mark but—we had a few crossed wires, I guess you could say.’

  Harriet raised her eyebrows but that was all and they gathered Brett and his belongings and left.

  ‘Tra-la, tra-la!’ Merlene re-emerged. ‘Until the next time.’

  Chattie laughed. ‘OK, lead me on to Aladdin’s cave.’

  The store room did turn out to be a bit like Aladdin’s cave and Chattie had a marvellous time with all the neatly stored items she found: pretty scatter cushions for the armchairs, thick, thirsty monogrammed towels in jewel-bright colours, vases, ornaments and so on.

  ‘That looks so much better,’ she said to herself as she wandered through each bedroom on the
afternoon the guests were due to arrive.

  She’d consulted with the hand who looked after the house garden and, although there weren’t a lot of flowers to be had, there were some interesting shrubs with variegated or coloured leaves, tiny star-like blossoms and gum tips that filled the air with either a lemony or honey fragrance that she’d been allowed to plunder. She’d made up arrangements for each room and several for the lounge and dining room.

  She was also confident she had everything else under control, and she’d taken an initiative. In a corner of the dining room she’d set up a trolley with a coffee machine she’d found, cups, milk, sugar, home-made biscuits in a barrel and a kettle for those who preferred tea.

  She was studying it while trying to do up her fine gold chain necklace she always wore when Steve came up soundlessly behind her. ‘Good thinking,’ he pronounced. ‘They can help themselves.’

  She jumped.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, Miss Winslow,’ he said with a smile growing at the back of his eyes, ‘but I must say you look the part. Can I help with that?’

  Chattie looked down at herself, then at the necklace in her hand. She wore a chic slim corn-coloured three-quarter-length linen skirt and a sleeveless navy-blue top. Her hair was tied back with a colourful yellow and navy scarf and strappy low sandals completed her outfit.

  ‘The part?’

  ‘You look,’ he paused, ‘like the lady of the house.’

  Colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘I…only intend to be the housekeeper and to stay in the background as much as possible. Am I too—dressy?’ she asked with concern.

  He shook his head, took the chain from her and stepped round her to deal with the clasp. ‘You’re always dressy,’ he said with his fingers lingering on the back of her neck, and causing the fine hairs to stand up all over her body. Then he went on his way—leaving Chattie electrified but frowning in confusion as she watched him go.