Читать онлайн книгу «The Cattleman′s English Rose» автора Barbara Hannay
The Cattleman's English Rose
Barbara Hannay
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Southern Cross, a vast Australian cattle property in the Star Valley and home to Reid, Kane and Annie McKinnon.
There really is a beautiful and remote Star Valley and it’s situated to the north of Townsville where I live. The Broken and Star Rivers flow through this district and the cattle stations there have wonderful names like Starlight, Starbright and ZigZag. However, there are no towns in the valley and although I have made Southern Cross Station and the township of Mirrabrook as authentic as I can, they are entirely my creations.
I am thrilled to be bringing you three linked stories about the McKinnon family’s secrets. In this book, Kane’s secret is the first to be exposed, when Charity Denham arrives from England searching for her missing brother.
Little does Kane know that once Charity comes into his life, his heart is also at risk….
Happy reading and my warmest wishes,
Family secrets, Outback marriages!
Deep in the heart of the Outback, nestled in Star Valley, is the McKinnon family cattle station. Southern Cross Station is an oasis in the harsh Outback landscape and a refuge to the McKinnon family—Kane, Reid and their sister Annie. But it’s also full of secrets…
Kane’s keeping a secret, but little does he know that by helping a friend he’ll also find a bride!
The Cattleman’s English Rose (#3841)
Then it’s Annie’s turn. How’s a young woman supposed to find love when the nearest eligible man lives miles away? Easy, she arranges a blind date on the Internet! But her date has a secret…
The Blind Date Surprise (#3845)
And lastly, Reid. He’s about to discover a secret that will change his whole life! Luckily his childhood sweetheart is determined to help him to discover the mysteries of his past—and help him find love along the way!
The Mirrabrook Marriage (#3849)
The Cattleman’s English Rose
Barbara Hannay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Elliot, who inspired me
with his stories about the real Star Valley.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#ud1b4e351-a7c2-5ff2-bce0-9cc9c95f1257)
CHAPTER TWO (#u69977792-ef3e-5653-a0f5-1a0b1153dab9)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc1e80dd2-a285-57ec-ae0f-3f8de095043f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHO’S that?’
The woman on the stool beside Kane McKinnon gave his thigh an impatient squeeze as she squinted towards the bar-room doorway.
‘Who’s what?’ Kane refused to look and took a lazy sip of his beer instead.
‘That girl, of course.’ She tugged at Kane’s jeans and he knew she wanted him to turn and join her in a scrutiny of someone who’d just come into the Mirrabrook pub. Perversely, he let his gaze linger on his glass.
There was nothing on earth quite so important as the first icy-cold drink on a stinking hot day, especially when a man had been out in the bush on a cattle muster for three weeks. Besides, Marsha’s possessive touch was bugging him.
Admittedly, he’d been in a bad mood all day, thanks to the shocker of a bombshell his little sister had dropped that morning.
He and his brother, Reid, had arrived back at Southern Cross homestead just after dawn, ready for breakfast, their stomachs primed for a good feed of steak and eggs, and they’d been greeted by a cold, empty stove and a note propped against the sugar bowl in the middle of the kitchen table.
They’d read their little sister’s note twice before it had sunk in that Annie had taken off to the city for a week—maybe two…for a date with destiny, she had written. But don’t worry about me, I’ll be quite safe. I’ll be staying with Melissa Browne.
It was totally out of character for Annie to up and leave them without warning. Not that the kid didn’t deserve a trip to the city now and then, but she knew that her brothers would need time to find a replacement housekeeper while she was away.
As it was, Kane had been forced to waste a good few hours driving into Mirrabrook today to track down someone to help them out at short notice. And, damn it, there was no one available.
At least, there were no ‘safe women’ available—sensible women, who wouldn’t view a chance to work at Southern Cross for the McKinnon brothers as an open invitation to start dreaming about a long white dress and a trip to the altar.
‘I’ve never seen her before, have you?’ Marsha was still talking about the woman who’d just walked in and her voice sounded as disgruntled as Kane felt.
He shrugged. Marsha regarded every woman as competition, which perhaps explained why her shorts kept getting shorter and her necklines lower. The top she was wearing today wasn’t much bigger than a Band-Aid.
It was another thing that added to his irritation. He didn’t like women to be prudes, but Marsha’s recent taste in clothes and her increasingly possessive body language smacked of desperation. And that was a definite turn-off.
‘Why is she staring at you?’ Marsha hissed.
‘I have no idea.’ Kane sighed, hoping she would catch his not so subtle hint that he found her question tedious.
‘Well, you’re about to find out.’
Slipping from her stool, Marsha moved close, so close that her bosom bumped against Kane and he turned to see why she was making such a fuss.
Struth.
Every sunburned, jeans-clad local in the Mirrabrook pub was gaping at the newcomer.
And Kane saw why.
To start with, she was wearing a dress—a soft, summery, knee-length number, the colour of ripe limes. And her skin was milk-white, her hair long and wavy, the colour of expensive brandy.
Against a backdrop of empty beer glasses, barstools and outback ringers draped over a pool table, the young woman looked as if she’d walked off the set of an elegant, old-fashioned romantic movie and found herself in the wrong scene.
But the most surprising thing about her was that she was heading straight for him, her smoky green eyes resolute and unflinching, and Kane thought of Joan of Arc facing up to the Brits. A woman on a mission.
He felt an urgent need to slide off the bar-stool and stand tall. His right hand was damp from the condensation on his beer glass and he gave it a surreptitious wipe on the back of his jeans.
‘Kane McKinnon?’ the girl said when she reached him. With only a slight nod of acknowledgement towards Marsha, she held out her slim white hand. ‘I’m Charity Denham. I believe you know my brother, Tim.’
Tim Denham’s sister. This was a surprise. Her green eyes were watching him carefully, but Kane made sure his gaze didn’t falter. She didn’t look much like her brother, although they both had the same well-bred English accents.
‘Tim Denham?’ he said. ‘Sure, I know him.’
They exchanged cautious handshakes.
‘I understand that Tim worked for you on Southern Cross station,’ she said.
‘That’s right. He was on one of our mustering teams. Are you out here on a holiday?’
‘No.’
She dropped her gaze and pressed her lips together, as if she were gathering strength for what she had to say next and he decided that her bravado had been a front. Then she looked up at him again.
Her eyes were the dusky green of young gum leaves and her skin so fine and pale he could almost see through it.
‘I’m looking for my brother,’ she said.
‘Any special reason?’
She seemed startled by his question, as if the answer was as obvious as Marsha’s cleavage. ‘Tim’s missing. My father and I haven’t heard from him in over a month.’
Beside him, Marsha let out an impatient snort. ‘A month? That’s nothing. Tim Denham’s old enough to look after himself. He doesn’t need his sister chasing halfway across the world to look out for him.’
‘Let me introduce Marsha,’ Kane cut in.
The two women exchanged cool, cut-glass smiles.
‘Can we get you a drink?’ he asked.
‘A lemon lime and bitters would be nice, thank you.’
‘I’ll get it,’ offered Marsha.
Her eagerness surprised Kane, but he pushed some notes towards her from the pile of change on the table. ‘Thanks, Marsh.’
As he drained his glass, Marsha said to Charity, ‘You don’t want that drink. I’ll get you a gin and tonic. That’s what you English girls drink, isn’t it?’
‘Oh.’ There was a momentary hesitation. ‘Well, just a small one then, thank you.’
Marsha sashayed off to the other end of the bar and the English girl watched her thoughtfully.
‘Pull up a pew,’ Kane said, nodding towards a bar-stool.
She sat on it gingerly and kept her neat white hands folded demurely in her lap, while he resumed his usual position, with the heel of one riding boot hooked over the rung of the stool and the other leg stretched out comfortably.
‘How did you track me down?’ he asked.
‘I asked for directions to Southern Cross at the post office. The woman there told me you were in town today and that I’d find you here.’
That would be right. It wasn’t possible to blow your nose in this town without Rhonda at the post office knowing about it and passing the news on to everyone else.
‘Mr McKinnon.’ The determination in the girl’s voice suggested that she planned to interview him rather than conduct a pleasant conversation. ‘I’m hoping that you can help me to find my brother.’
‘You shouldn’t worry about him. He can look after himself.’
‘But we haven’t heard anything in over a month and Tim knew how much Father and I would worry. Father made him swear on the Bible that he’d keep us posted about his whereabouts.’
‘On the Bible?’ Kane had difficulty in hiding his surprise.
‘Didn’t Tim tell you that our father is the rector of St Alban’s, Hollydean?’
‘Ah—no.’
‘Father only agreed to pay Tim’s airfare to Australia on the condition that he stayed in touch. And up until a month ago we received regular updates, but since then there’s been total silence.’
‘You mustn’t worry. He’s okay.’
Excitement sparked in her eyes. ‘Do you know that for sure? Do you know where he is?’
He winced. ‘What I meant was Tim’s an okay bloke. He can look after himself.’
‘But he knows so little about Australia.’
‘You underestimate your brother. When he worked for me he picked things up quickly and he fitted in well. Of course, he copped a bit of a ribbing from some of the boys about his toff accent, but he’s a good worker. He was good with horses.’
‘But where did he go from here? When did he leave?’
‘He took off about four or five weeks ago, but I can’t tell you where.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Her quick question almost caught him off guard. Almost. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said in a take-it-or-leave-it tone. ‘All I know is he’s left the district.’
She frowned. ‘It just doesn’t seem right. Didn’t Tim tell you anything about where he was going, or what he was going to do?’
Kane shrugged. ‘This is a free country.’
She shook her head and dragged in a deep, dissatisfied breath through her nose.
‘Out here, people can come and go as they please,’ Kane said in defence. ‘It happens all the time. Isn’t that what travelling is all about? Being free to take up whatever opportunities arise?’ He shot her a deliberate, searching glance. ‘Maybe your brother wants to cut the apron strings.’
Her response was to glare at him, but he merely smiled.
‘You can’t keep a young bloke like Tim on a short chain for ever.’
She gave an impatient toss of her bright brandy hair. ‘That’s more or less what the police said, but I won’t accept that.’
‘So you’ve already been to the police?’
‘Of course. I spoke to them in Townsville. They’ve listed Tim as missing, but they were far too casual for my liking. They spun me the line that young people go missing all the time. They said that most of the youngsters are deliberately running away, but I know that Tim wouldn’t do that.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
There was a warning flash of green fire in her eyes. ‘I know my brother. I’ve raised him since our mother died when he was seven years old.’
This time Kane couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘You must have been very young to take on that kind of responsibility.’
‘I was fourteen.’
‘You’ve done a grand job.’ He switched his gaze from her earnest face to the bottom of his beer glass. ‘So what else did the police tell you?’
She sighed. ‘Not much. They’ve checked Tim’s bank account and there haven’t been any withdrawals. They say that’s good, because his account hasn’t been stripped and that suggests that there hasn’t been foul play. But if Tim hasn’t used his money, couldn’t it mean that he’s had an accident? He might have perished somewhere and no one knows about it.’
‘I wouldn’t start panicking just yet,’ Kane said gently. ‘I paid him in cash, so he would have been well stocked up when he left here.’
The clip-clip of Marsha’s heels sounded on the wooden floor. As she reached their table and handed out glasses, she eyed them both with a sweet-and-sour smile. They thanked her and took their time sampling grateful sips of their cold drinks.
The silence was broken by the clink of ice against glass and then another sigh from Charity. ‘I know I must look like a fussy mother hen, but I can’t help worrying,’ she said. ‘Tim’s so young. He’s only just turned nineteen.’
There was a short gasp of surprise from Marsha. Kane shot her a sharp, silencing frown.
‘Out here, if a boy’s nineteen, he’s old enough to vote, old enough to drink and old enough to fight and die for his country,’ he said.
‘That may be so, but I intend to find him. If you can’t help me, could you suggest where I should start looking?’
He shrugged. ‘He could be anywhere.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m sure you can do better than that.’
Kane sighed. He should have known from the moment she walked in that this girl was a crusader who wouldn’t give in easily.
‘Okay, I’ll give it to you straight.’ With a forefinger, he ticked off the fingers on his left hand. ‘Your brother could have taken another mustering job on a property farther out, or he could be droving cattle up north in the Cape, which would mean spending six or eight weeks on horseback. He could be fishing for barramundi up in the Gulf, or he could be on a prawn trawler out of Karumba.’ He eyed her slowly. ‘You want some more?’
When she didn’t answer, he gave a slight shake of his head before continuing. ‘He might be gold prospecting out the back of Croydon, or fossicking for sapphires down at Annakie, or he could be sitting on a bar-stool chatting up a Swedish backpacker on Magnetic Island.’
As she listened to his list she chewed her lower lip—her soft, petal-pink lip—and he couldn’t help staring.
She shook her head. ‘But if Tim was doing any of those things he could have phoned us, emailed or written a letter.’
Kane shrugged again. ‘I’d say he’s too busy, or too remote.’
Charity stared into her glass, swilled the ice cubes and took another thoughtful sip of her drink.
‘Trust me,’ Kane said quietly, keeping the expression on his face deadpan. ‘Your brother’s okay.’
‘But how do you know that?’
Abruptly he drained his second beer. ‘Look, you don’t want to hang around here. This isn’t the place for you. You should head back to the coast. Why don’t you see a bit of Australia? Have a bit of a holiday while you’re out here. I have Tim’s home address. I’ll contact you if I hear something.’
He knew she wouldn’t be happy to be dismissed so soon, but she’d asked her questions, he had answered them and now he wanted her to leave.
To his surprise she accepted this.
With a series of nervous gulps she finished her gin and tonic. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you could help me, Mr McKinnon, but as you can’t I’ll try to find someone else in this district who might have known Tim.’
Then she jumped to her feet and was just a little unsteady. How much gin had Marsha put in that drink?
Holding out her hand, she said, ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Just remember my advice,’ he said. Her hand felt soft and he was conscious of her delicate bones as he clasped it. ‘Don’t hang around here. Get back to the coast and have some fun.’
She turned to Marsha, who looked decidedly chipper all of a sudden. ‘It was nice to meet you, Marsha.’
‘You, too, Charity,’ she said, giving a little wave.
Holding her head high, Charity turned and walked very carefully across the bare wooden floor to the bar’s entrance. Kane remembered the conviction in her eyes when she’d entered the bar not so long ago, and he wasn’t proud that he’d managed to knock the stuffing out of her so easily.
Thanks for nothing, Mr McKinnon.
As soon as Charity reached the little foyer at the front of the pub, she slumped on to a wooden bench, swamped by anger and disappointment.
She’d come all this way and she’d pinned so much hope on Kane McKinnon’s help and all he would tell her was to get out of the district.
There’d been an air of secrecy about him that disturbed her. Was it a natural reticence or a wall of defence because he had something to hide? She couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d been warning her off or, worse still, that his words had been a threat.
But if he wouldn’t help, where else could she go for assistance? The police had been next to no help and she had no one else to turn to. She was in a strange country as vast and alien as the moon and she couldn’t think what to do next.
Kane McKinnon had suggested that Tim was having such a wonderful time that he’d simply forgotten to keep in touch. Could that be true? Had she been expecting too much of her brother? Perhaps the boy had fallen head over heels in love. It was possible, but it didn’t really explain his silence.
‘Your Tim was a cutie.’
Startled, Charity turned to see Marsha. ‘Oh, hello.’
‘He was a real gentleman,’ Marsha said, stepping closer. The huge silver loops in her ears made soft tink-tink sounds when she moved.
‘Did you know Tim very well?’
‘Well enough.’ The woman’s face was a picture of sympathy as she plonked down on the seat next to Charity. ‘To be honest, I thought Kane was a bit rough on you. After all, you’ve come such a long way and you don’t know anyone here.’
Charity’s eyes widened, signalling her deepening surprise.
‘Why don’t you come with me? We can have a nice little chat about your problem. Girl to girl.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Charity, trying to hide her surprise.
Marsha was very different from the kind of women who normally befriended her and the last person she’d expected to offer the hand of friendship was Kane’s woman. At least, she assumed Marsha was Kane McKinnon’s girlfriend. No doubt he had a string of girlfriends. She supposed that most women would find his silver-blue eyes and hard packed, lean body attractive.
Marsha smiled. ‘Why don’t we go and have a quiet drink in the beer garden?’
‘Oh, thank you…’
How could she refuse? She had so few options it would be foolish to do so. Charity rose and followed the other woman through a side door into a surprisingly pretty, shaded courtyard. The area was paved with black and white tiles and protected from the sun by a vine-covered pergola. A border of huge fern-filled hanging baskets made the area feel very secluded.
‘It’s quieter out here,’ Marsha said, nodding towards the only other couple, who were seated at a far table.
‘It’s lovely.’
‘You take a seat while I get us another drink.’
‘Please, let me pay.’ Charity pulled her purse from her handbag, but Marsha dismissed her with a wave of her hand. ‘You can get the next round,’ she said with a grin.
Charity doubted that she could handle a third round. Perhaps it was the heat, but the first drink had left her feeling just a little unsteady but, before she could say so, Marsha disappeared.
She returned very quickly. ‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass against Charity’s.
‘Cheers.’ Charity took a small sip. ‘Do you work in Mirrabrook?’
‘Sure do. I have my own hairdressing salon. I’ve stacks of clients. Most days I’m run off my feet.’
‘You must be good.’ After another sip, she set her glass down. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me about Tim?’
The silver earrings tinkled as Marsha leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘Just between you, me and the gate post, I’m a bit worried about the dear boy. Tim promised to see me on my birthday, but he didn’t turn up.’
‘He promised to see you?’ Shocked, Charity picked up her glass and drank deeply.
Marsha smiled slowly. ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘I—er—it does a bit.’ She didn’t want to think why Tim would visit Marsha. She couldn’t even begin to let her mind go there.
‘It didn’t make sense that he disappeared,’ Marsha said.
‘So you think something’s happened to him?’
Marsha frowned. ‘I’m not sure, but I’m happy to help you find out.’
‘That’s so kind.’ Charity wondered if she’d misjudged this woman. Perhaps she’d been leaping to all the wrong conclusions.
Marsha smiled again and reached out and squeezed Charity’s hand. ‘Drink up. I’m sure we women can work something out.’
CHAPTER TWO
CHARITY looked for Tim everywhere.
Racing through the rectory on winged feet, she searched every room, under every bed and inside every cupboard. She flew up to the attic, then charged back down to the kitchen to check the pantry. As a last resort she checked the study, although she was quite sure her little brother would never venture uninvited into the hallowed sanctum where their father wrote his sermons.
Tim wasn’t there.
Outside, a storm raged—a noisy, boisterous storm that rattled the window frames and sent tree branches thudding on the roof.
Dashing to the window, she peered frantically into the black night and saw the stained glass windows of St Alban’s church glowing like gemstones through the dark, driving rain.
Grabbing a raincoat, she ran out into the storm. She tried to call Tim, but the wind and the rain whipped the words away and she hadn’t thought to bring a torch, so she had to feel her way forward like a blind person.
‘Tim, please, where are you? I can’t bear this awful worry.’
Then, somehow, she knew the answer to her own question. He was in the graveyard.
A bolt of lightning lit up the churchyard, showing her the way through the dark night. On legs rubbery with fear, she scurried past the yew tree behind the church, ducking between the gravestones, slipping on the wet grass and trying not to think of ghosts.
She found Tim huddled on the grave where their dear mother lay.
Such a forlorn, shivering, little boy of seven, clinging to a block of cold marble, his black hair plastered to his head and his pyjamas soaked through.
Her heart broke as she swept him into her arms. He clung to her and he was as wet and slippery as a frog, with bony elbows and knees.
‘I want Mummy,’ he sobbed. ‘I want her. I want her to come back.’
‘Oh, darling.’
She couldn’t be angry with him. All she could do was cuddle him close and cover him with kisses. ‘I’m here, sweetheart. I love you. You must let me be mummy now.’
To her horror the boy struggled out of her arms and took off, running away from her into the stormy night.
‘You’re no good. You keep losing me,’ he cried.
And he disappeared into the black.
‘Tim! No! Please don’t go. Come back!’
Charity’s terrified cry woke her.
She tried to open her eyes. Ouch! Blinding stripes of sunlight blasted through the Venetian blinds and she snapped her eyes shut again as the trauma of her dream was replaced by reality.
Tim was missing. In Australia.
And then she was aware of physical pain. Her head. And yuck! Her mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird’s cage.
What had happened?
All she could remember of the previous night was having a long, cosy chat with Marsha. Actually…it had been rather a one-sided chat. She had listened while the other woman talked. Marsha had told her about Tim…about what a lovely fellow he was…And Charity had a vague memory that Marsha had insisted they keep drinking if she wanted to hear everything about her brother.
But if she’d learned anything significant it was lost to her now. At some point the conversation had shifted to Kane and his brother, Reid…but she couldn’t remember anything much. Except Marsha’s clear warning to stay away from Kane…
She felt vile. Awful. This had to be a hangover. Her first. And where on earth was she?
Keeping her eyes closed, she lay very still while she explored her surroundings with her hands. There was a mattress, a pillow beneath her head and a sheet covering her. Carefully she turned her head away from the bright window, opened one eye and squinted and discovered that the light on this side of the room was more hangover-friendly.
Okay. There was no doubt that she was in a bedroom. But where was this room?
Bravely, she opened the other eye and took in details. The room was simply furnished, its only decoration a dried arrangement of Australian wildflowers on an old-fashioned pine dresser. The walls were a dingy off-white and an ugly mustard and brown striped rug covered most of the floor. A doorway led to an adjoining room.
It had to be a bathroom, because she could hear the sound of running water. And splashes.
Splashes? Good grief. Splashes meant someone was in the bathroom. It meant…
Before she could come to terms with what it meant, the running water stopped.
For five seconds there was silence except for the desperate thumping of her heartbeats in her ears. And then footsteps.
And a tall figure appeared in the doorway.
Kane McKinnon.
She felt deprived of oxygen. How on earth had she ended up in a bedroom with him?
He was wearing nothing but blue jeans and, although she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help staring at him—at his bronzed skin, which looked as if it had been polished to a high sheen—at his broad shoulders, his taut torso, and his muscles—his exceptional muscles.
Kane and his muscles strolled into her room and he stood at the end of her bed, looking down at her.
She tried to ask him what he was doing in her room—what she was doing there—but when she opened her mouth no words came.
‘Good morning,’ he drawled.
So it was morning.
Which meant…there’d been a night. But where and when and…how?
‘Good—’ Charity gulped. ‘Morning.’ If only her mouth wasn’t so parched. ‘W-where are we?’
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘We’re in a cabin at the back of the Mirrabrook pub. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’ Pain pounded behind her eyes and she closed them, but she felt too vulnerable with her eyes closed while Kane towered at the foot of her bed, so she squinted at him. ‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Denham, but you should rephrase that question.’
‘Why?’ she asked faintly, dreading the answer.
‘This is my room.’
Her eyes flashed wide again. ‘Then how—?’ She had to stop and wet her lips with her tongue. ‘Why am I—’ Oh, help. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I carried you.’
Lord have mercy.
A mocking smile tweaked his lips. ‘I found you in the beer garden with Marsha, tossing back drinks like a ringer. Marsha’s used to grog, but you were on the verge of passing out and in need of a bed, and—’ He shrugged his massive bare shoulders. ‘This was the only room left.’
‘I see. I suppose I should thank you.’
He walked the length of the bed to her side and her breath caught. It was unnerving to have Kane McKinnon so undressed…and so close to her bed. What was he doing here? What had happened last night?
She shivered at the thought that this mega-masculine body might have lain next to her, that she might have…they might have…
Had she touched that satiny skin?
No. Surely not.
She realised he’d brought her a glass of water and two pain-killers.
‘I imagine you’ll need these.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, but she didn’t take them. There were too many important questions that had to be clarified. ‘You didn’t sleep here—with—with me, did you?’
His eyes were the silvery-blue of an early morning sky and now they glinted with suppressed amusement. ‘I didn’t have any choice. I told you this was the only cabin left.’
‘But why couldn’t you have gone home? Why did you stay here?’
‘I had to make sure you were okay.’
Was that true? Was she supposed to be grateful? What kind of man was Kane McKinnon? She had no idea whether he was trustworthy. The tanned skin on his face was cut by a pale scar that sliced through his right eyebrow and almost reached his eyelid and she couldn’t help wondering what had caused it.
‘What did we—? We didn’t—Did we—um—’ How on earth did she ask this? ‘We didn’t—make love or—or anything, did we?’
She saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. ‘Make love? Hell, no.’
‘Thank heavens,’ she whispered and felt some of her tension let go.
‘I don’t think I’d call it love,’ he said in a slow drawl.
Charity braced herself for the worst. The tension returned one hundred fold.
‘What we had was more like straight out lust—’
‘No!’
‘Simple, uncomplicated sex,’ he said and the blue eyes gleamed.
A horrified moan escaped her. Wrenching the sheet over her, she cowered beneath it. But now, with her eyes closed, she saw a vision of all the devout women in her father’s parish staring at their rector’s reprobate, drunken daughter with scandalised, open-mouthed horror.
Kane’s voice reached her through her shame. ‘Don’t worry, sweet Charity. It was wild.’
‘Go away!’
‘You were fabulous—sensational.’
Her head shot above the sheet. ‘Stop it! You’re despicable.’ She hated him.
But she was also beginning to suspect that he was lying. Surely he was teasing her?
Emboldened by the thought, she lowered her gaze…and saw…
…that she was fully dressed.
Every bit of clothing was still in its proper place, except for her shoes. Thank heavens.
She spun sideways to check the other side of the room and winced because the movement made her head hurt. There was another bed beneath the window, a twin of hers, and its rumpled sheets indicated that Kane had slept there.
He’d definitely been teasing her…which made him even more despicable, because she was left feeling foolish for leaping to assumptions.
‘If that’s Australian humour, I don’t think much of it,’ she snapped.
‘Come on, take these,’ he said again, pressing the tablets into her hand.
She had little choice but to sit up and accept the tablets and glass of water and to swallow obediently, but she wouldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see that mocking amusement in his eyes.
He said, ‘I’ve brought your bags up, so be a good girl and hop into the shower. Then you need a big recovery breakfast before you leave.’
‘But I don’t plan to leave.’ She couldn’t let this embarrassing situation throw her. No doubt Kane McKinnon was still trying to scare her away, but she had to remember her mission—why she was here. Tim was still out there in all that terrible outback. Still missing.
‘Of course you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘You should have left yesterday when I told you to.’
Running frantic fingers through her hair, she tried to tame its tousled disarray. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Mr McKinnon. I mean it. I have no plans to leave Mirrabrook. I’m here to find my brother and I’m not taking orders from anyone, especially from you.’ She remembered something she’d learned during her conversation with Marsha. ‘I understand you have a brother and a sister, so if you won’t help me I’ll talk to them. That’s what I plan to do next.’
‘Do you indeed?’
‘Yes, I do indeed. I assume Tim had dealings with them as well as you?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really and Annie’s away in the city at the moment, so she won’t be able to help you.’
She was determined not to be put off. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not leaving.’ Throwing off the sheet, she gripped the bedside table for support while she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood carefully. ‘I have a strong feeling that I’m going to get the answers I need right here in Mirrabrook. I’m not budging until I get to the bottom of all this.’
The phone rang, cheating her of the opportunity to hear Kane’s reaction to her brave little statement.
He snatched it up. ‘McKinnon speaking…Oh, hello, Reid…Yeah, I’m still in town…No, I didn’t have any luck, mate…There’s no one available. Yeah, of course, I really tried.’
Over his shoulder, he scowled at Charity and she hurried to her suitcase, grabbed the first items of clothing she found and disappeared into the bathroom.
As she closed the door behind her, she heard Kane snap into the phone, ‘What choice do we have? You and I will just have to manage on our own, won’t we? We’ll have to become New Age types and discover our feminine sides.’
In the privacy of the shower, Charity rested her aching forehead against the cool ceramic tiles and let warm water pour over her.
What was she going to do now? It was all very well to toss off some grand sounding words to Kane about her plans to stay in the Mirrabrook district to search for Tim, but who would help her and where was she going to stay?
She wondered how much a cabin like this one would cost her. She didn’t have much money and had been hoping to clear the problem up quickly.
When she emerged from the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a huge white towel, she was dressed rather inappropriately in the first clothes she’d grabbed—her best cream trousers and pale blue silk blouse. Kane had hidden his muscles beneath a cotton shirt and he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his expression morose.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Just a stubborn brother.’ He looked up at her and stared hard at the towel on her head.
She felt frozen by the sudden intense spark in his eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was wondering what colour your hair is when it’s wet.’
Surprised and flustered, she said, ‘I don’t know. It’s just red, I think.’
He stood and seemed to tower over her. ‘No, not red, Charity. Your hair could never be just red.’
For a moment she thought he was going to reach out and unwind the towel. But he didn’t. He just stood there and the intense way he looked at her caused a shivery pang—an empty hollow, deep inside her.
‘I came out to find my hairbrush,’ she said, sounding more panicky than she meant to. No man had ever looked at her with such unsmiling, focused attention. At home in Hollydean she’d had a few boyfriends—some unimpressive, others a little more serious. There’d even been a marriage proposal. But none of those men had made her feel so—so aware.
She dashed to her handbag, grabbed her hairbrush and hurried back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her again.
Safely inside, she used the electric hair-dryer to blow her hair dry. At home she usually let her hair dry naturally, encouraging it to fall into soft waves, but today she didn’t care if it went as straight as sticks as long as it stopped Kane McKinnon from looking at her that way.
The intensity in his eyes had awoken a strange longing deep inside her—a need so acute that it left her with the fear that it might never be eased.
Shocked by her reaction, she wound her flamboyant hair into a prim knot and secured it with several pins before she ventured back into the bedroom.
‘Now you look like a Sunday school teacher,’ he said, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were less intense.
‘Perhaps that’s because I am a Sunday school teacher,’ she replied with necessary dignity.
‘Fair dinkum?’
‘Yes. I’m a genuine Sunday school teacher.’
He cocked his head to one side and studied her. ‘What else do you do?’
What else did she do? Annoyed by the underlying taunt in his manner, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin to an even more dignified angle. If only she could offer this man an impressive answer. If only she could manage to lie without feeling guilty.
What else she did was less than impressive.
While most of her school chums had gone away to travel, or to university, or to jobs in London, she’d stayed behind in Hollydean to help her father and Tim. Whenever her friends came home, they took pains to point out that she’d been living in a time warp since she left school.
She knew Kane McKinnon wouldn’t be impressed by the news that she played a vital role in the parish—taking care of the rectory household, accompanying the choir practice, teaching at Sunday school, visiting the elderly and the sick…
And it was of no use to point out to him that she was so indispensable to the running of the parish that the ladies in the Mothers’ Union had organised themselves into a roster to take over her tasks while she was away.
Nevertheless, her green eyes flashed and she cast him a look ablaze with haughty pride. ‘I am an excellent housekeeper,’ she said.
His lips pursed as he released a low whistle. ‘Are you now? That’s very interesting…’
Letting out an impatient huff, she folded her arms across her chest. She’d had enough of his teasing. ‘I seem to remember you mentioned breakfast?’
‘That’s right. I did. Are you ready?’
‘I could be if I knew what you’ve done with my shoes…’
Bending down, he fished for something under the end of her bed, then he straightened and held out her sandals, dangling them by the straps. ‘These do?’
‘They’ll be fine, thank you.’ With icy composure she accepted them and slipped her feet into them, but she felt strangely self-conscious and fumble-fingered while he waited and watched her lean down to do up the buckles.
‘Now I’m ready,’ she said crisply.
‘Good. Let’s go down to the dining room.’ He opened the door and stood aside to let her past. ‘Once you’ve got some decent tucker inside you, we should have a chat. I’ve got a suggestion that might interest you.’
‘Your housekeeper?’
The way she said the word your set Kane’s teeth on edge. She might as well have come right out and said she’d be happy to take care of any other house on the planet—except his.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he said, spearing a juicy sausage with his fork then attacking it with his knife. ‘If you’re going to insist on looking for your brother, you need somewhere to stay, and Reid and I need someone to cook and do the housework.’
‘It would probably do your brother and you the world of good to fend for yourselves for a week or two,’ she said in a preachy voice that he supposed she’d perfected during her years as a Sunday school teacher.
‘It would probably do your brother the world of good if he was left to carry on with his life without his sister breathing down his neck.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘And neither do you.’
They scowled at each other across the table, green eyes and blue sparking with equal ferocity. Then Kane gave a resigned shrug and resumed eating while Charity pushed the food around on her plate. Apart from sipping daintily at her pineapple juice and nibbling at her toast, she’d hardly touched the rest—only a little of the mushrooms and tomatoes.
‘You may as well eat up,’ Kane said. ‘A big pile of greasy food is good for a hangover.’
She looked ill, but he ate steadily on, relishing every speck of food on his plate—softly scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and sausages with tomato sauce, a lamb chop, mushrooms—
‘Very well, I’ll do it.’
Her sudden statement caught him by surprise. He looked up to find her watching him with a deadly earnest expression.
‘I’ll take the job as your housekeeper because it serves my purpose as well as yours,’ she said. ‘But I’m putting you on notice, Mr McKinnon. The only reason I’m coming out to your homestead is because I need accommodation and because I believe that someone in this district will be able to explain my brother’s disappearance.’
‘I can’t promise you anything on that score.’
‘I know you’ve tried to deter me, but that doesn’t change my opinion.’
Kane shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘And I’ll come to look after your home on the strict condition that you—’ In mid-sentence her composure crumpled. A tide of colour swept up her neck and into her cheeks.
Not for the first time, Kane wondered how a clergyman’s daughter could have such pagan prettiness. This girl’s lissom figure, vibrant hair and dewy green eyes would distract any red-blooded man.
And now this rosy blush…pretty as a sunrise. A Sunday school teacher out of her depth shouldn’t look so damn appealing.
His throat seemed to close and he had to swallow. ‘What was that? You mentioned a strict condition.’
She took a sip of pineapple juice and looked at him over the rim of the glass and her eyes seemed to plead with him to understand.
‘What condition?’ he repeated.
She still didn’t answer. But, as her blush deepened, Kane understood.
Pushing his plate to one side, he propped an elbow on the edge of the table and rested his chin on his hand. ‘Perhaps I should explain my conditions,’ he said.
‘You have conditions?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Then by all means, please explain.’
‘There are very few women I would ask to move into my home.’
Her eyes were huge and she nodded without speaking.
Leaning forward, he said quietly, ‘Apart from Annie, there are no women living on Southern Cross. There’s an old stockman who looks after the yard and he and my brother Reid and I are all bachelors—bachelors, living on an isolated cattle property.’
‘Oh,’ she said very softly and her pink mouth stayed in the shape of a circle.
‘Three men and a pretty young lady living alone could start tongues yapping from one end of Star Valley to the other. A hint of scandal runs through this district like a bushfire. So it needs to be made clear right from the start that there must be no involvement of—how can I put this delicately?’
‘You don’t need to,’ she cried. By now her face was fire truck red. ‘I understand perfectly and I wouldn’t dream—’
Keeping his face solemn, Kane offered his hand to shake hers. ‘Our arrangement is strictly business.’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. That is exactly what I was trying to say.’
‘Then it seems we’re perfectly suited, Miss Denham.’
She looked as if she’d swallowed a grasshopper.
‘Oh, and one other thing,’ he said. ‘Try to stay away from the gin while you’re working for me.’
Charity fumed as she helped Kane load the back of his utility truck with stores. It had been completely unnecessary for him to spell out the need for propriety. And she knew that he knew that. Which meant that once again he’d been deliberately teasing her. And, indirectly, he’d also been making sure she understood that he didn’t desire her.
As if that wasn’t obvious! One look at Marsha had told her she would never be Kane McKinnon’s type.
‘I thought there was only yourself, your brother and one other man on Southern Cross,’ she said as she carried a box rattling with bottles of various sauces and mayonnaise to the truck. ‘Just how many will I be cooking for?’
She was stunned by the quantity of food Kane had ordered. Crates of oranges and apples, bags of flour, rice and sugar, a drum of olive oil, packets of pasta, boxes of tinned vegetables and fruit juice and crates of beer all had to be stowed away along with her suitcase.
‘There will probably be just the three of us—plus yourself, at least for the first few days,’ he said. ‘But we have to stock up properly.’ He took the box from her and stowed it next to a stash of toilet paper rolls. ‘You can’t come running back into town every five minutes.’
‘I realise that.’
‘There’s always a chance that the fencing team we’re expecting later in the month could arrive early,’ he said. ‘It depends on how their previous jobs pan out. But you could handle cooking for a few extras, couldn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ She was determined to sound confident, no matter how many challenges this man threw at her. At least she was getting to Southern Cross where she’d be able to speak to Reid McKinnon. And perhaps in time she would find a way to get more information out of Kane. She was sure he hadn’t told her everything he knew about Tim.
It was a pity his sister Annie had gone to the city; but Charity was sure that if she was patient she would find people in the district who were prepared to answer a few discreet questions.
Kane threw a tarpaulin over the load and began to secure it with rope. ‘That should keep most of the dust out,’ he said when he’d finished. He turned to her.
‘Okay, that’s it. Let’s hit the road, Chazza.’
‘I beg your pardon? Who’s Chazza?’
He dropped his gaze to the dusty toes of his riding boots and grinned. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. We’re an uncouth lot in this country. We do terrible things to names. Barry becomes Bazza; Kerry is Kezza. So you’ll find yourself getting called Chazza. Or would you prefer Chaz?’
‘Do you have a problem with my real name?’
‘No. But I’m afraid nicknames tend to happen out here whether you like it or not.’
‘Then in that case I’ll take Chaz.’
‘Chaz it is then.’
He grinned again, but her own attempt to smile faltered.
Australians were very in-your-face. Tim had mentioned in his letters that the ringers liked to toss him teasing jokes to see how he handled them. No doubt it was their way of testing a newcomer. And as a new chum she was expected to throw one back.
Her brother would have been able to handle it. She, on the other hand, had always been too earnest to be good at witty exchanges.
She repeated the word Chaz softly under her breath and decided she probably liked it. Chaz. Chaz Denham. It sounded upbeat and trendy. She had never in her life been trendy. But no way would she admit to Kane that she quite liked the idea of being Chaz.
After she had climbed up into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut and buckled her seat belt, she said, ‘I have to admit an old-fashioned name like Charity can be something of a burden. Tim is lucky he isn’t my sister.’
‘Do you think a sister might have been christened Faith or Hope?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Perhaps.’ It was time to give him a taste of his own medicine. ‘My father excelled himself when he chose my middle name.’
‘Yeah?’ An unmistakable spark of curiosity flashed in his blue eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘Chastity.’
His jaw dropped. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ For almost a minute he sat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the key in the ignition, staring at her, his expression cagey, as if he were sizing her up. Then a knowing smile dawned. ‘This is payback time, isn’t it, Sunday school teacher?’
‘For the way you’ve teased me mercilessly all morning?’
‘Rubbish. I’ve shown lots of mercy.’
‘Forgive me for not noticing, Mr McKinnon.’
He grinned and turned the key in the ignition and as the motor revved he said, ‘So are you going to tell me your real middle name?’
His arrogant assumption that she would tell him was so annoying—especially when he wouldn’t tell her one measly thing about Tim. And, although it was trivial by comparison, the thought that he really wanted to know her middle name was exquisitely satisfying.
‘Never,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY took off down Mirrabrook’s main street, passing a little wooden church, the police station and the tiny post office, several shops and offices, a freshly painted café, and a larger modern building which housed the library and the Mirrabrook Star, the local newspaper.
Then followed a row of little timber houses with iron roofs, deep, shady verandas and front gardens bright with flowers, and suddenly gum trees crowded close to the narrow blue bitumen and the road plunged into bush again.
Shortly after that they came to a signpost pointing to Breakaway Station and Southern Cross Station and they took a dogleg turn off the main road and were rattling along a dusty and bumpy outback track.
Beneath a startling blue sky the stark landscape flashed past in a blur of brown and khaki streaks—dusty green foliage, grey-brown tree trunks and pink-red earth showing through a scant covering of dry grass. In the distance menacing mountains loomed, studded with black granite boulders. The Star Valley was nothing like the pretty valley Charity had expected. She didn’t understand how civilised people could give this wilderness such a charming name. The valleys of her experience were pleasant green and grassy dips in a gentle English landscape, more like folds in a green velvet skirt.
Of course, she had known that a valley in Outback Queensland would be different from one in Derbyshire. Her brother’s letters had told her about the vast and rugged outback, but somehow she’d never quite grasped how very vast and how exceedingly rugged it was.
And now, as she looked out into the rushing bush, she shuddered. It was into this wild, hostile wilderness that Tim had vanished. Seeing the inhospitable landscape for herself made his disappearance even more impossible to accept, too awful to believe. Where, oh, where was her fearless, daredevil little brother?
The truck hit a deep wheel rut and she was forced to clutch the door handle and brace herself with her feet against the floorboards. Why on earth had Tim been so eager to come to Australia? If she had had the chance to travel, she would have chosen to visit elegant European cities like Paris or Venice, Vienna or Prague.
Not this endless bush.
She’d read an article on the plane that said Australia was twenty-four times the size of Great Britain—and Tim could be anywhere in this enormous country.
They travelled on and on over the winding dirt road, dipping down to cross rocky, dry creek beds, climbing out on the other side between steep red banks and then continuing across the plains till they reached yet another dry creek crossing.
What startled Charity most was that there were no signs of human habitation. And yet there had to be people somewhere because someone had placed a sign that said:
Beware
Cattle on the road.
And not far past that sign she saw a mob of strange-looking, droopy-eared cattle lying in the inadequate shade cast by dusty gum trees. The grass around them looked dead. ‘How on earth do you raise cattle in this country?’ she asked.
‘Your British breeds don’t do well here, but we have Brahman cross cattle that are bred for the tropics.’
‘But what do the poor things eat?’
‘Dried grass still has nutrients in it—a bit like dried fruit for us, but we give them supplements as well. The hard part is keeping enough water for them. We have to pump water out of the creeks up into troughs. When the dams and creeks dry up completely, we’re in trouble.’
‘Living out here must be hard work.’
He shrugged. ‘Who wants a cushy job?’
A well-paid cushy job was the goal of most of the fellows she’d met. A cushy job, a pretty little wife…
Apparently, Kane McKinnon wanted neither.
‘Of course, you’re seeing this country at its worst—at the end of the dry season,’ he said.
‘Is it very different after rain?’
‘You wouldn’t recognise it.’ After a bit he added, ‘We don’t hold the cattle here for too long. These properties are for breeding stock. You wouldn’t try to fatten them here. We’ve shipped all our young beasts over to our other property near Hughenden. With luck, they’ll fatten up nicely there.’
‘They certainly couldn’t grow very fat on this grass,’ Charity commented, but already her thoughts were straying from the plight of cattle and back to Tim. Was he lost and starving? ‘In England we often hear about people dying in the outback.’
‘Yeah, it happens.’ Kane stared ahead of him at the yellow track. ‘This is a tough country, but the people who perish are usually folk who don’t have a clue what they’re doing and should never have left the city in the first place. Your brother was a quick learner and I’m sure he’d be okay in the bush.’
She turned to look out through the side window and saw a grey kangaroo hopping with an easy, fluid bounce-bounce-bounce as it made its way between the trees. It was her first kangaroo sighting, and she might have been excited if she wasn’t so worried.
‘What was Tim’s state of mind?’ she asked. ‘Did he seem happy?’
‘He was fine. Look, the one thing I like about your brother is his ability to keep to himself. He quietly got on with the job and he didn’t have to be the centre of attention. He fitted in well out here. I’m sure he’s still doing well wherever he is.’
Kane sounded so certain that Tim was fine that Charity wondered again if he knew more than he was letting on. Was he hiding the truth from her? She turned to study him. His eyes met hers and he sent her a quick, reassuring smile and she realised with something of a start that she wanted him to do it again. In that momentary flash of friendly warmth, the mockery had left his eyes and his mouth had softened and she’d felt a queer little kick in the stomach.
They stopped under the shade of trees beside a creek to drink from their water bottles.
‘At least you’ll be safe from Marsha out here,’ Kane said as Charity took more tablets to keep her headache at bay.
She was surprised to hear him make such an ambiguous comment about his girlfriend. ‘When will we reach Southern Cross?’
‘We’ve been travelling on the property for the past half hour. Won’t be too much longer now.’
She had no idea what to expect when they finally reached the McKinnon’s home, but five minutes later they pulled up outside a tiny, tumbledown shack, and Kane jumped out of the truck and began to untie the tarpaulin covering the load in the back.
Her heart sank as she stared at the house. This was Southern Cross homestead? It was a sorry sight, crouching in a dusty paddock beneath a rusty iron roof, with a sagging front veranda and unpainted timber walls left to weather to a silvery-grey. And Charity started to question her impulsive decision.
Her headache returned as she pushed the passenger door open and stepped down into the dirt. The heat of the sun beat on to the back of her neck and her unsuitable clothes stuck to her. With every step, her feet picked up fine red dust that slipped between her sandals and the soles of her feet and caught between her toes.
Kane hefted two boxes of groceries from the truck and balanced them on his shoulders.
‘Can I help?’ she asked.
‘Could you grab that box of tinned stuff?’
‘Certainly.’
As she followed him into the hut the wooden front steps creaked ominously. A dog barked and she saw that a blue speckled dog had been tied up to one of the veranda posts.
‘G’day, Bruiser,’ called Kane. ‘Is the boss home?’
The dog seemed to go back to sleep as Kane shoved the front door open with one elbow. Charity couldn’t suppress a shudder as she followed him inside. Surely Kane’s sister Annie couldn’t be responsible for this untidy interior? The floors looked as if they hadn’t been swept for weeks. An old coffee table was littered with beer cans, magazines and filthy ash trays. There were no curtains at the windows and a piece of fraying hessian had been tacked over one frame in place of glass.
The floor of the narrow passage leading to the back of the house was covered by cracked linoleum that looked a thousand years old. Kane carried the groceries through to the kitchen and dumped them on a rickety table before opening the fridge.
Charity gasped. ‘It’s full of beer!’
He sent her a withering glance over his shoulder. ‘Blokes in the bush have to get their priorities right.’
‘But what about your sister? How could she live here?’
Slamming the fridge door shut again, he turned to her and rested his hands lightly on his hips. ‘I take it you’re not too impressed with this place?’
Charity gulped. She couldn’t bear the thought of living here, but her upbringing had made her excruciatingly tactful and she didn’t want to hurt Kane’s feelings.
His upper lip curled and his voice grew cold as he said, ‘Maybe you don’t have what it takes to look after a place like this.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ she croaked. ‘But, to be honest, I can’t see much evidence that this house has been carefully looked after.’
He laughed then. Actually laughed. And she wanted to hit him. Her hands clenched and she drew in a sharp, angry breath. She was hot and headachy and worried about Tim and the thought of living in this messy, tiny, shabby hut was the last straw.
‘Chill, Chaz,’ he said.
‘Chill?’ she almost shouted.
‘Calm down. This isn’t Southern Cross homestead. This is an outstation, a camp the ringers use as a base when they’re mustering. One of the guys has stayed on here, keeping an eye on this neck of the woods, and I’m just topping up his supplies.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ She glared at him. ‘You can’t resist teasing me, can you?’
‘You left yourself wide open for that one.’
Again, she wanted to hit him.
‘Sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t look the slightest bit sorry. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been teasing Annie since she was knee high to a mosquito. It’s a bad habit.’
‘It certainly is. I feel very sorry for your sister and I’d appreciate it if you’d desist.’
‘Annie has a good sense of humour.’
‘Good for her. Mine disappeared along with my brother.’
That took the smug smile from his face.
Casting a quick eye over the kitchen, Kane shrugged. ‘It doesn’t look as if Ferret’s here, so I’ll leave this on the table and we may as well keep going.’
‘To Southern Cross?’
‘Yes.’
The ringers’ hut had shaken Charity’s fragile confidence and as they continued their rattling journey along the dirt track that wound its way through more dusty bush she prepared herself for more disappointment. She supposed that if people lived in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t much need to have a nice home to impress visitors, but she hadn’t realised that outback people managed with so few creature comforts.
How did women like Annie McKinnon cope?
‘This is our place coming up now.’ Kane’s voice broke into her thoughts. She peered ahead through the dusty windscreen and caught snatches of white and fresh green flashing between the trees.
Then they rounded a bend in the track and she saw iron gates painted pristine white and, beyond them, an expanse of green lawn flanked by lush palm trees and clumps of white bougainvillea, as pretty as bridal veils.
And then she saw Southern Cross homestead.
It was a huge, sprawling low-set house, built of timber painted snowy-white and wrapped around by deep, shady verandas. A garden of green shrubbery and white flowers fringed the verandas.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said, knowing she couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and found herself in Wonderland.
‘This place more to your taste?’ Kane asked.
It was like coming across an oasis in the desert. ‘It’s fantastic.’ Unable to contain her amazement, she asked, ‘How do you manage to keep the lawn so green?’
‘That’s old Vic’s job.’ Kane nodded towards the tree-lined watercourse that had run parallel to the road for the last part of their journey. ‘He pumps water up from the creek,’ he said. ‘But when the creek runs dry, we lose the lawn.’
‘Does that happen very often?’
‘Every few years we get a bad drought. If we don’t get a good wet season this year, we’ll be in trouble.’
He drove on around to the back of the house so that they could unload the stores directly to the kitchen pantry. As they pulled up a chorus of barking greeted them.
Dogs—a black Labrador, a blue and white spotted dog and a Border collie—came racing from several directions. Kane shot a sharp look in Charity’s direction.
‘Do dogs bother you?’
‘No, not at all. I love them. We have a Border collie at home.’
She noticed, however, that the collie, after peering hopefully up at the truck, turned and retreated to the veranda where it lay with its head on its paws, paying them no more attention.
‘That’s Lavender,’ Kane told her. ‘She’s Annie’s dog and she always mopes if Annie goes away.’
‘Oh, the poor thing.’
They climbed down from the truck. ‘The blue-heeler cattle dog’s mine,’ he said. ‘His name’s Roo.’
‘Hello, Roo.’ She gave his speckled head a friendly scratch.
‘And the Labrador’s Gypsy. She’s Reid’s dog.’
‘Oh, Gypsy, you’re very beautiful.’
A wizened, sunburned fellow, bowlegged no doubt from years astride a horse, ambled around the side of the house, and Charity was introduced to Vic. He beamed at her when she complimented him on the beautiful garden.
‘If you enjoy having flowers in the house, miss, pick as many as you like,’ he told her.
‘You’ll have a friend for life if you keep feeding him compliments,’ Kane said, as Vic left them. Then, with the greetings over, he ordered Gypsy and Roo to clear off. ‘We’ve got work to do,’ he told them. ‘So give us some room.’
The dogs retreated happily to lie in the shade and Kane and Charity unloaded the truck. As they carried boxes of groceries through to the pantry room, Charity stole curious glimpses down hallways and through doorways to the rest of the house. She gained an impression of unexpected coolness and casual elegance—of very high ceilings and polished timber floors, antique furniture and beautiful rugs.
The last thing she’d expected was to be charmed by Southern Cross. What a pity she was so worried about Tim.
If she wasn’t continually haunted by his disappearance she might have been able to enjoy working here.
Kane found his brother in the machinery shed, working on the diesel motor of one of the station’s trucks.
‘I’ve found us a housekeeper, so you don’t have to worry about getting dishpan hands.’
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Barbara Hannay
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Southern Cross, a vast Australian cattle property in the Star Valley and home to Reid, Kane and Annie McKinnon.
There really is a beautiful and remote Star Valley and it’s situated to the north of Townsville where I live. The Broken and Star Rivers flow through this district and the cattle stations there have wonderful names like Starlight, Starbright and ZigZag. However, there are no towns in the valley and although I have made Southern Cross Station and the township of Mirrabrook as authentic as I can, they are entirely my creations.
I am thrilled to be bringing you three linked stories about the McKinnon family’s secrets. In this book, Kane’s secret is the first to be exposed, when Charity Denham arrives from England searching for her missing brother.
Little does Kane know that once Charity comes into his life, his heart is also at risk….
Happy reading and my warmest wishes,
Family secrets, Outback marriages!
Deep in the heart of the Outback, nestled in Star Valley, is the McKinnon family cattle station. Southern Cross Station is an oasis in the harsh Outback landscape and a refuge to the McKinnon family—Kane, Reid and their sister Annie. But it’s also full of secrets…
Kane’s keeping a secret, but little does he know that by helping a friend he’ll also find a bride!
The Cattleman’s English Rose (#3841)
Then it’s Annie’s turn. How’s a young woman supposed to find love when the nearest eligible man lives miles away? Easy, she arranges a blind date on the Internet! But her date has a secret…
The Blind Date Surprise (#3845)
And lastly, Reid. He’s about to discover a secret that will change his whole life! Luckily his childhood sweetheart is determined to help him to discover the mysteries of his past—and help him find love along the way!
The Mirrabrook Marriage (#3849)
The Cattleman’s English Rose
Barbara Hannay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Elliot, who inspired me
with his stories about the real Star Valley.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#ud1b4e351-a7c2-5ff2-bce0-9cc9c95f1257)
CHAPTER TWO (#u69977792-ef3e-5653-a0f5-1a0b1153dab9)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc1e80dd2-a285-57ec-ae0f-3f8de095043f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHO’S that?’
The woman on the stool beside Kane McKinnon gave his thigh an impatient squeeze as she squinted towards the bar-room doorway.
‘Who’s what?’ Kane refused to look and took a lazy sip of his beer instead.
‘That girl, of course.’ She tugged at Kane’s jeans and he knew she wanted him to turn and join her in a scrutiny of someone who’d just come into the Mirrabrook pub. Perversely, he let his gaze linger on his glass.
There was nothing on earth quite so important as the first icy-cold drink on a stinking hot day, especially when a man had been out in the bush on a cattle muster for three weeks. Besides, Marsha’s possessive touch was bugging him.
Admittedly, he’d been in a bad mood all day, thanks to the shocker of a bombshell his little sister had dropped that morning.
He and his brother, Reid, had arrived back at Southern Cross homestead just after dawn, ready for breakfast, their stomachs primed for a good feed of steak and eggs, and they’d been greeted by a cold, empty stove and a note propped against the sugar bowl in the middle of the kitchen table.
They’d read their little sister’s note twice before it had sunk in that Annie had taken off to the city for a week—maybe two…for a date with destiny, she had written. But don’t worry about me, I’ll be quite safe. I’ll be staying with Melissa Browne.
It was totally out of character for Annie to up and leave them without warning. Not that the kid didn’t deserve a trip to the city now and then, but she knew that her brothers would need time to find a replacement housekeeper while she was away.
As it was, Kane had been forced to waste a good few hours driving into Mirrabrook today to track down someone to help them out at short notice. And, damn it, there was no one available.
At least, there were no ‘safe women’ available—sensible women, who wouldn’t view a chance to work at Southern Cross for the McKinnon brothers as an open invitation to start dreaming about a long white dress and a trip to the altar.
‘I’ve never seen her before, have you?’ Marsha was still talking about the woman who’d just walked in and her voice sounded as disgruntled as Kane felt.
He shrugged. Marsha regarded every woman as competition, which perhaps explained why her shorts kept getting shorter and her necklines lower. The top she was wearing today wasn’t much bigger than a Band-Aid.
It was another thing that added to his irritation. He didn’t like women to be prudes, but Marsha’s recent taste in clothes and her increasingly possessive body language smacked of desperation. And that was a definite turn-off.
‘Why is she staring at you?’ Marsha hissed.
‘I have no idea.’ Kane sighed, hoping she would catch his not so subtle hint that he found her question tedious.
‘Well, you’re about to find out.’
Slipping from her stool, Marsha moved close, so close that her bosom bumped against Kane and he turned to see why she was making such a fuss.
Struth.
Every sunburned, jeans-clad local in the Mirrabrook pub was gaping at the newcomer.
And Kane saw why.
To start with, she was wearing a dress—a soft, summery, knee-length number, the colour of ripe limes. And her skin was milk-white, her hair long and wavy, the colour of expensive brandy.
Against a backdrop of empty beer glasses, barstools and outback ringers draped over a pool table, the young woman looked as if she’d walked off the set of an elegant, old-fashioned romantic movie and found herself in the wrong scene.
But the most surprising thing about her was that she was heading straight for him, her smoky green eyes resolute and unflinching, and Kane thought of Joan of Arc facing up to the Brits. A woman on a mission.
He felt an urgent need to slide off the bar-stool and stand tall. His right hand was damp from the condensation on his beer glass and he gave it a surreptitious wipe on the back of his jeans.
‘Kane McKinnon?’ the girl said when she reached him. With only a slight nod of acknowledgement towards Marsha, she held out her slim white hand. ‘I’m Charity Denham. I believe you know my brother, Tim.’
Tim Denham’s sister. This was a surprise. Her green eyes were watching him carefully, but Kane made sure his gaze didn’t falter. She didn’t look much like her brother, although they both had the same well-bred English accents.
‘Tim Denham?’ he said. ‘Sure, I know him.’
They exchanged cautious handshakes.
‘I understand that Tim worked for you on Southern Cross station,’ she said.
‘That’s right. He was on one of our mustering teams. Are you out here on a holiday?’
‘No.’
She dropped her gaze and pressed her lips together, as if she were gathering strength for what she had to say next and he decided that her bravado had been a front. Then she looked up at him again.
Her eyes were the dusky green of young gum leaves and her skin so fine and pale he could almost see through it.
‘I’m looking for my brother,’ she said.
‘Any special reason?’
She seemed startled by his question, as if the answer was as obvious as Marsha’s cleavage. ‘Tim’s missing. My father and I haven’t heard from him in over a month.’
Beside him, Marsha let out an impatient snort. ‘A month? That’s nothing. Tim Denham’s old enough to look after himself. He doesn’t need his sister chasing halfway across the world to look out for him.’
‘Let me introduce Marsha,’ Kane cut in.
The two women exchanged cool, cut-glass smiles.
‘Can we get you a drink?’ he asked.
‘A lemon lime and bitters would be nice, thank you.’
‘I’ll get it,’ offered Marsha.
Her eagerness surprised Kane, but he pushed some notes towards her from the pile of change on the table. ‘Thanks, Marsh.’
As he drained his glass, Marsha said to Charity, ‘You don’t want that drink. I’ll get you a gin and tonic. That’s what you English girls drink, isn’t it?’
‘Oh.’ There was a momentary hesitation. ‘Well, just a small one then, thank you.’
Marsha sashayed off to the other end of the bar and the English girl watched her thoughtfully.
‘Pull up a pew,’ Kane said, nodding towards a bar-stool.
She sat on it gingerly and kept her neat white hands folded demurely in her lap, while he resumed his usual position, with the heel of one riding boot hooked over the rung of the stool and the other leg stretched out comfortably.
‘How did you track me down?’ he asked.
‘I asked for directions to Southern Cross at the post office. The woman there told me you were in town today and that I’d find you here.’
That would be right. It wasn’t possible to blow your nose in this town without Rhonda at the post office knowing about it and passing the news on to everyone else.
‘Mr McKinnon.’ The determination in the girl’s voice suggested that she planned to interview him rather than conduct a pleasant conversation. ‘I’m hoping that you can help me to find my brother.’
‘You shouldn’t worry about him. He can look after himself.’
‘But we haven’t heard anything in over a month and Tim knew how much Father and I would worry. Father made him swear on the Bible that he’d keep us posted about his whereabouts.’
‘On the Bible?’ Kane had difficulty in hiding his surprise.
‘Didn’t Tim tell you that our father is the rector of St Alban’s, Hollydean?’
‘Ah—no.’
‘Father only agreed to pay Tim’s airfare to Australia on the condition that he stayed in touch. And up until a month ago we received regular updates, but since then there’s been total silence.’
‘You mustn’t worry. He’s okay.’
Excitement sparked in her eyes. ‘Do you know that for sure? Do you know where he is?’
He winced. ‘What I meant was Tim’s an okay bloke. He can look after himself.’
‘But he knows so little about Australia.’
‘You underestimate your brother. When he worked for me he picked things up quickly and he fitted in well. Of course, he copped a bit of a ribbing from some of the boys about his toff accent, but he’s a good worker. He was good with horses.’
‘But where did he go from here? When did he leave?’
‘He took off about four or five weeks ago, but I can’t tell you where.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Her quick question almost caught him off guard. Almost. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said in a take-it-or-leave-it tone. ‘All I know is he’s left the district.’
She frowned. ‘It just doesn’t seem right. Didn’t Tim tell you anything about where he was going, or what he was going to do?’
Kane shrugged. ‘This is a free country.’
She shook her head and dragged in a deep, dissatisfied breath through her nose.
‘Out here, people can come and go as they please,’ Kane said in defence. ‘It happens all the time. Isn’t that what travelling is all about? Being free to take up whatever opportunities arise?’ He shot her a deliberate, searching glance. ‘Maybe your brother wants to cut the apron strings.’
Her response was to glare at him, but he merely smiled.
‘You can’t keep a young bloke like Tim on a short chain for ever.’
She gave an impatient toss of her bright brandy hair. ‘That’s more or less what the police said, but I won’t accept that.’
‘So you’ve already been to the police?’
‘Of course. I spoke to them in Townsville. They’ve listed Tim as missing, but they were far too casual for my liking. They spun me the line that young people go missing all the time. They said that most of the youngsters are deliberately running away, but I know that Tim wouldn’t do that.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
There was a warning flash of green fire in her eyes. ‘I know my brother. I’ve raised him since our mother died when he was seven years old.’
This time Kane couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘You must have been very young to take on that kind of responsibility.’
‘I was fourteen.’
‘You’ve done a grand job.’ He switched his gaze from her earnest face to the bottom of his beer glass. ‘So what else did the police tell you?’
She sighed. ‘Not much. They’ve checked Tim’s bank account and there haven’t been any withdrawals. They say that’s good, because his account hasn’t been stripped and that suggests that there hasn’t been foul play. But if Tim hasn’t used his money, couldn’t it mean that he’s had an accident? He might have perished somewhere and no one knows about it.’
‘I wouldn’t start panicking just yet,’ Kane said gently. ‘I paid him in cash, so he would have been well stocked up when he left here.’
The clip-clip of Marsha’s heels sounded on the wooden floor. As she reached their table and handed out glasses, she eyed them both with a sweet-and-sour smile. They thanked her and took their time sampling grateful sips of their cold drinks.
The silence was broken by the clink of ice against glass and then another sigh from Charity. ‘I know I must look like a fussy mother hen, but I can’t help worrying,’ she said. ‘Tim’s so young. He’s only just turned nineteen.’
There was a short gasp of surprise from Marsha. Kane shot her a sharp, silencing frown.
‘Out here, if a boy’s nineteen, he’s old enough to vote, old enough to drink and old enough to fight and die for his country,’ he said.
‘That may be so, but I intend to find him. If you can’t help me, could you suggest where I should start looking?’
He shrugged. ‘He could be anywhere.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m sure you can do better than that.’
Kane sighed. He should have known from the moment she walked in that this girl was a crusader who wouldn’t give in easily.
‘Okay, I’ll give it to you straight.’ With a forefinger, he ticked off the fingers on his left hand. ‘Your brother could have taken another mustering job on a property farther out, or he could be droving cattle up north in the Cape, which would mean spending six or eight weeks on horseback. He could be fishing for barramundi up in the Gulf, or he could be on a prawn trawler out of Karumba.’ He eyed her slowly. ‘You want some more?’
When she didn’t answer, he gave a slight shake of his head before continuing. ‘He might be gold prospecting out the back of Croydon, or fossicking for sapphires down at Annakie, or he could be sitting on a bar-stool chatting up a Swedish backpacker on Magnetic Island.’
As she listened to his list she chewed her lower lip—her soft, petal-pink lip—and he couldn’t help staring.
She shook her head. ‘But if Tim was doing any of those things he could have phoned us, emailed or written a letter.’
Kane shrugged again. ‘I’d say he’s too busy, or too remote.’
Charity stared into her glass, swilled the ice cubes and took another thoughtful sip of her drink.
‘Trust me,’ Kane said quietly, keeping the expression on his face deadpan. ‘Your brother’s okay.’
‘But how do you know that?’
Abruptly he drained his second beer. ‘Look, you don’t want to hang around here. This isn’t the place for you. You should head back to the coast. Why don’t you see a bit of Australia? Have a bit of a holiday while you’re out here. I have Tim’s home address. I’ll contact you if I hear something.’
He knew she wouldn’t be happy to be dismissed so soon, but she’d asked her questions, he had answered them and now he wanted her to leave.
To his surprise she accepted this.
With a series of nervous gulps she finished her gin and tonic. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you could help me, Mr McKinnon, but as you can’t I’ll try to find someone else in this district who might have known Tim.’
Then she jumped to her feet and was just a little unsteady. How much gin had Marsha put in that drink?
Holding out her hand, she said, ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Just remember my advice,’ he said. Her hand felt soft and he was conscious of her delicate bones as he clasped it. ‘Don’t hang around here. Get back to the coast and have some fun.’
She turned to Marsha, who looked decidedly chipper all of a sudden. ‘It was nice to meet you, Marsha.’
‘You, too, Charity,’ she said, giving a little wave.
Holding her head high, Charity turned and walked very carefully across the bare wooden floor to the bar’s entrance. Kane remembered the conviction in her eyes when she’d entered the bar not so long ago, and he wasn’t proud that he’d managed to knock the stuffing out of her so easily.
Thanks for nothing, Mr McKinnon.
As soon as Charity reached the little foyer at the front of the pub, she slumped on to a wooden bench, swamped by anger and disappointment.
She’d come all this way and she’d pinned so much hope on Kane McKinnon’s help and all he would tell her was to get out of the district.
There’d been an air of secrecy about him that disturbed her. Was it a natural reticence or a wall of defence because he had something to hide? She couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d been warning her off or, worse still, that his words had been a threat.
But if he wouldn’t help, where else could she go for assistance? The police had been next to no help and she had no one else to turn to. She was in a strange country as vast and alien as the moon and she couldn’t think what to do next.
Kane McKinnon had suggested that Tim was having such a wonderful time that he’d simply forgotten to keep in touch. Could that be true? Had she been expecting too much of her brother? Perhaps the boy had fallen head over heels in love. It was possible, but it didn’t really explain his silence.
‘Your Tim was a cutie.’
Startled, Charity turned to see Marsha. ‘Oh, hello.’
‘He was a real gentleman,’ Marsha said, stepping closer. The huge silver loops in her ears made soft tink-tink sounds when she moved.
‘Did you know Tim very well?’
‘Well enough.’ The woman’s face was a picture of sympathy as she plonked down on the seat next to Charity. ‘To be honest, I thought Kane was a bit rough on you. After all, you’ve come such a long way and you don’t know anyone here.’
Charity’s eyes widened, signalling her deepening surprise.
‘Why don’t you come with me? We can have a nice little chat about your problem. Girl to girl.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Charity, trying to hide her surprise.
Marsha was very different from the kind of women who normally befriended her and the last person she’d expected to offer the hand of friendship was Kane’s woman. At least, she assumed Marsha was Kane McKinnon’s girlfriend. No doubt he had a string of girlfriends. She supposed that most women would find his silver-blue eyes and hard packed, lean body attractive.
Marsha smiled. ‘Why don’t we go and have a quiet drink in the beer garden?’
‘Oh, thank you…’
How could she refuse? She had so few options it would be foolish to do so. Charity rose and followed the other woman through a side door into a surprisingly pretty, shaded courtyard. The area was paved with black and white tiles and protected from the sun by a vine-covered pergola. A border of huge fern-filled hanging baskets made the area feel very secluded.
‘It’s quieter out here,’ Marsha said, nodding towards the only other couple, who were seated at a far table.
‘It’s lovely.’
‘You take a seat while I get us another drink.’
‘Please, let me pay.’ Charity pulled her purse from her handbag, but Marsha dismissed her with a wave of her hand. ‘You can get the next round,’ she said with a grin.
Charity doubted that she could handle a third round. Perhaps it was the heat, but the first drink had left her feeling just a little unsteady but, before she could say so, Marsha disappeared.
She returned very quickly. ‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass against Charity’s.
‘Cheers.’ Charity took a small sip. ‘Do you work in Mirrabrook?’
‘Sure do. I have my own hairdressing salon. I’ve stacks of clients. Most days I’m run off my feet.’
‘You must be good.’ After another sip, she set her glass down. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me about Tim?’
The silver earrings tinkled as Marsha leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘Just between you, me and the gate post, I’m a bit worried about the dear boy. Tim promised to see me on my birthday, but he didn’t turn up.’
‘He promised to see you?’ Shocked, Charity picked up her glass and drank deeply.
Marsha smiled slowly. ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘I—er—it does a bit.’ She didn’t want to think why Tim would visit Marsha. She couldn’t even begin to let her mind go there.
‘It didn’t make sense that he disappeared,’ Marsha said.
‘So you think something’s happened to him?’
Marsha frowned. ‘I’m not sure, but I’m happy to help you find out.’
‘That’s so kind.’ Charity wondered if she’d misjudged this woman. Perhaps she’d been leaping to all the wrong conclusions.
Marsha smiled again and reached out and squeezed Charity’s hand. ‘Drink up. I’m sure we women can work something out.’
CHAPTER TWO
CHARITY looked for Tim everywhere.
Racing through the rectory on winged feet, she searched every room, under every bed and inside every cupboard. She flew up to the attic, then charged back down to the kitchen to check the pantry. As a last resort she checked the study, although she was quite sure her little brother would never venture uninvited into the hallowed sanctum where their father wrote his sermons.
Tim wasn’t there.
Outside, a storm raged—a noisy, boisterous storm that rattled the window frames and sent tree branches thudding on the roof.
Dashing to the window, she peered frantically into the black night and saw the stained glass windows of St Alban’s church glowing like gemstones through the dark, driving rain.
Grabbing a raincoat, she ran out into the storm. She tried to call Tim, but the wind and the rain whipped the words away and she hadn’t thought to bring a torch, so she had to feel her way forward like a blind person.
‘Tim, please, where are you? I can’t bear this awful worry.’
Then, somehow, she knew the answer to her own question. He was in the graveyard.
A bolt of lightning lit up the churchyard, showing her the way through the dark night. On legs rubbery with fear, she scurried past the yew tree behind the church, ducking between the gravestones, slipping on the wet grass and trying not to think of ghosts.
She found Tim huddled on the grave where their dear mother lay.
Such a forlorn, shivering, little boy of seven, clinging to a block of cold marble, his black hair plastered to his head and his pyjamas soaked through.
Her heart broke as she swept him into her arms. He clung to her and he was as wet and slippery as a frog, with bony elbows and knees.
‘I want Mummy,’ he sobbed. ‘I want her. I want her to come back.’
‘Oh, darling.’
She couldn’t be angry with him. All she could do was cuddle him close and cover him with kisses. ‘I’m here, sweetheart. I love you. You must let me be mummy now.’
To her horror the boy struggled out of her arms and took off, running away from her into the stormy night.
‘You’re no good. You keep losing me,’ he cried.
And he disappeared into the black.
‘Tim! No! Please don’t go. Come back!’
Charity’s terrified cry woke her.
She tried to open her eyes. Ouch! Blinding stripes of sunlight blasted through the Venetian blinds and she snapped her eyes shut again as the trauma of her dream was replaced by reality.
Tim was missing. In Australia.
And then she was aware of physical pain. Her head. And yuck! Her mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird’s cage.
What had happened?
All she could remember of the previous night was having a long, cosy chat with Marsha. Actually…it had been rather a one-sided chat. She had listened while the other woman talked. Marsha had told her about Tim…about what a lovely fellow he was…And Charity had a vague memory that Marsha had insisted they keep drinking if she wanted to hear everything about her brother.
But if she’d learned anything significant it was lost to her now. At some point the conversation had shifted to Kane and his brother, Reid…but she couldn’t remember anything much. Except Marsha’s clear warning to stay away from Kane…
She felt vile. Awful. This had to be a hangover. Her first. And where on earth was she?
Keeping her eyes closed, she lay very still while she explored her surroundings with her hands. There was a mattress, a pillow beneath her head and a sheet covering her. Carefully she turned her head away from the bright window, opened one eye and squinted and discovered that the light on this side of the room was more hangover-friendly.
Okay. There was no doubt that she was in a bedroom. But where was this room?
Bravely, she opened the other eye and took in details. The room was simply furnished, its only decoration a dried arrangement of Australian wildflowers on an old-fashioned pine dresser. The walls were a dingy off-white and an ugly mustard and brown striped rug covered most of the floor. A doorway led to an adjoining room.
It had to be a bathroom, because she could hear the sound of running water. And splashes.
Splashes? Good grief. Splashes meant someone was in the bathroom. It meant…
Before she could come to terms with what it meant, the running water stopped.
For five seconds there was silence except for the desperate thumping of her heartbeats in her ears. And then footsteps.
And a tall figure appeared in the doorway.
Kane McKinnon.
She felt deprived of oxygen. How on earth had she ended up in a bedroom with him?
He was wearing nothing but blue jeans and, although she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help staring at him—at his bronzed skin, which looked as if it had been polished to a high sheen—at his broad shoulders, his taut torso, and his muscles—his exceptional muscles.
Kane and his muscles strolled into her room and he stood at the end of her bed, looking down at her.
She tried to ask him what he was doing in her room—what she was doing there—but when she opened her mouth no words came.
‘Good morning,’ he drawled.
So it was morning.
Which meant…there’d been a night. But where and when and…how?
‘Good—’ Charity gulped. ‘Morning.’ If only her mouth wasn’t so parched. ‘W-where are we?’
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘We’re in a cabin at the back of the Mirrabrook pub. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’ Pain pounded behind her eyes and she closed them, but she felt too vulnerable with her eyes closed while Kane towered at the foot of her bed, so she squinted at him. ‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Denham, but you should rephrase that question.’
‘Why?’ she asked faintly, dreading the answer.
‘This is my room.’
Her eyes flashed wide again. ‘Then how—?’ She had to stop and wet her lips with her tongue. ‘Why am I—’ Oh, help. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I carried you.’
Lord have mercy.
A mocking smile tweaked his lips. ‘I found you in the beer garden with Marsha, tossing back drinks like a ringer. Marsha’s used to grog, but you were on the verge of passing out and in need of a bed, and—’ He shrugged his massive bare shoulders. ‘This was the only room left.’
‘I see. I suppose I should thank you.’
He walked the length of the bed to her side and her breath caught. It was unnerving to have Kane McKinnon so undressed…and so close to her bed. What was he doing here? What had happened last night?
She shivered at the thought that this mega-masculine body might have lain next to her, that she might have…they might have…
Had she touched that satiny skin?
No. Surely not.
She realised he’d brought her a glass of water and two pain-killers.
‘I imagine you’ll need these.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, but she didn’t take them. There were too many important questions that had to be clarified. ‘You didn’t sleep here—with—with me, did you?’
His eyes were the silvery-blue of an early morning sky and now they glinted with suppressed amusement. ‘I didn’t have any choice. I told you this was the only cabin left.’
‘But why couldn’t you have gone home? Why did you stay here?’
‘I had to make sure you were okay.’
Was that true? Was she supposed to be grateful? What kind of man was Kane McKinnon? She had no idea whether he was trustworthy. The tanned skin on his face was cut by a pale scar that sliced through his right eyebrow and almost reached his eyelid and she couldn’t help wondering what had caused it.
‘What did we—? We didn’t—Did we—um—’ How on earth did she ask this? ‘We didn’t—make love or—or anything, did we?’
She saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. ‘Make love? Hell, no.’
‘Thank heavens,’ she whispered and felt some of her tension let go.
‘I don’t think I’d call it love,’ he said in a slow drawl.
Charity braced herself for the worst. The tension returned one hundred fold.
‘What we had was more like straight out lust—’
‘No!’
‘Simple, uncomplicated sex,’ he said and the blue eyes gleamed.
A horrified moan escaped her. Wrenching the sheet over her, she cowered beneath it. But now, with her eyes closed, she saw a vision of all the devout women in her father’s parish staring at their rector’s reprobate, drunken daughter with scandalised, open-mouthed horror.
Kane’s voice reached her through her shame. ‘Don’t worry, sweet Charity. It was wild.’
‘Go away!’
‘You were fabulous—sensational.’
Her head shot above the sheet. ‘Stop it! You’re despicable.’ She hated him.
But she was also beginning to suspect that he was lying. Surely he was teasing her?
Emboldened by the thought, she lowered her gaze…and saw…
…that she was fully dressed.
Every bit of clothing was still in its proper place, except for her shoes. Thank heavens.
She spun sideways to check the other side of the room and winced because the movement made her head hurt. There was another bed beneath the window, a twin of hers, and its rumpled sheets indicated that Kane had slept there.
He’d definitely been teasing her…which made him even more despicable, because she was left feeling foolish for leaping to assumptions.
‘If that’s Australian humour, I don’t think much of it,’ she snapped.
‘Come on, take these,’ he said again, pressing the tablets into her hand.
She had little choice but to sit up and accept the tablets and glass of water and to swallow obediently, but she wouldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see that mocking amusement in his eyes.
He said, ‘I’ve brought your bags up, so be a good girl and hop into the shower. Then you need a big recovery breakfast before you leave.’
‘But I don’t plan to leave.’ She couldn’t let this embarrassing situation throw her. No doubt Kane McKinnon was still trying to scare her away, but she had to remember her mission—why she was here. Tim was still out there in all that terrible outback. Still missing.
‘Of course you’re leaving,’ he said. ‘You should have left yesterday when I told you to.’
Running frantic fingers through her hair, she tried to tame its tousled disarray. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Mr McKinnon. I mean it. I have no plans to leave Mirrabrook. I’m here to find my brother and I’m not taking orders from anyone, especially from you.’ She remembered something she’d learned during her conversation with Marsha. ‘I understand you have a brother and a sister, so if you won’t help me I’ll talk to them. That’s what I plan to do next.’
‘Do you indeed?’
‘Yes, I do indeed. I assume Tim had dealings with them as well as you?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really and Annie’s away in the city at the moment, so she won’t be able to help you.’
She was determined not to be put off. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not leaving.’ Throwing off the sheet, she gripped the bedside table for support while she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood carefully. ‘I have a strong feeling that I’m going to get the answers I need right here in Mirrabrook. I’m not budging until I get to the bottom of all this.’
The phone rang, cheating her of the opportunity to hear Kane’s reaction to her brave little statement.
He snatched it up. ‘McKinnon speaking…Oh, hello, Reid…Yeah, I’m still in town…No, I didn’t have any luck, mate…There’s no one available. Yeah, of course, I really tried.’
Over his shoulder, he scowled at Charity and she hurried to her suitcase, grabbed the first items of clothing she found and disappeared into the bathroom.
As she closed the door behind her, she heard Kane snap into the phone, ‘What choice do we have? You and I will just have to manage on our own, won’t we? We’ll have to become New Age types and discover our feminine sides.’
In the privacy of the shower, Charity rested her aching forehead against the cool ceramic tiles and let warm water pour over her.
What was she going to do now? It was all very well to toss off some grand sounding words to Kane about her plans to stay in the Mirrabrook district to search for Tim, but who would help her and where was she going to stay?
She wondered how much a cabin like this one would cost her. She didn’t have much money and had been hoping to clear the problem up quickly.
When she emerged from the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a huge white towel, she was dressed rather inappropriately in the first clothes she’d grabbed—her best cream trousers and pale blue silk blouse. Kane had hidden his muscles beneath a cotton shirt and he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his expression morose.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Just a stubborn brother.’ He looked up at her and stared hard at the towel on her head.
She felt frozen by the sudden intense spark in his eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was wondering what colour your hair is when it’s wet.’
Surprised and flustered, she said, ‘I don’t know. It’s just red, I think.’
He stood and seemed to tower over her. ‘No, not red, Charity. Your hair could never be just red.’
For a moment she thought he was going to reach out and unwind the towel. But he didn’t. He just stood there and the intense way he looked at her caused a shivery pang—an empty hollow, deep inside her.
‘I came out to find my hairbrush,’ she said, sounding more panicky than she meant to. No man had ever looked at her with such unsmiling, focused attention. At home in Hollydean she’d had a few boyfriends—some unimpressive, others a little more serious. There’d even been a marriage proposal. But none of those men had made her feel so—so aware.
She dashed to her handbag, grabbed her hairbrush and hurried back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her again.
Safely inside, she used the electric hair-dryer to blow her hair dry. At home she usually let her hair dry naturally, encouraging it to fall into soft waves, but today she didn’t care if it went as straight as sticks as long as it stopped Kane McKinnon from looking at her that way.
The intensity in his eyes had awoken a strange longing deep inside her—a need so acute that it left her with the fear that it might never be eased.
Shocked by her reaction, she wound her flamboyant hair into a prim knot and secured it with several pins before she ventured back into the bedroom.
‘Now you look like a Sunday school teacher,’ he said, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were less intense.
‘Perhaps that’s because I am a Sunday school teacher,’ she replied with necessary dignity.
‘Fair dinkum?’
‘Yes. I’m a genuine Sunday school teacher.’
He cocked his head to one side and studied her. ‘What else do you do?’
What else did she do? Annoyed by the underlying taunt in his manner, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin to an even more dignified angle. If only she could offer this man an impressive answer. If only she could manage to lie without feeling guilty.
What else she did was less than impressive.
While most of her school chums had gone away to travel, or to university, or to jobs in London, she’d stayed behind in Hollydean to help her father and Tim. Whenever her friends came home, they took pains to point out that she’d been living in a time warp since she left school.
She knew Kane McKinnon wouldn’t be impressed by the news that she played a vital role in the parish—taking care of the rectory household, accompanying the choir practice, teaching at Sunday school, visiting the elderly and the sick…
And it was of no use to point out to him that she was so indispensable to the running of the parish that the ladies in the Mothers’ Union had organised themselves into a roster to take over her tasks while she was away.
Nevertheless, her green eyes flashed and she cast him a look ablaze with haughty pride. ‘I am an excellent housekeeper,’ she said.
His lips pursed as he released a low whistle. ‘Are you now? That’s very interesting…’
Letting out an impatient huff, she folded her arms across her chest. She’d had enough of his teasing. ‘I seem to remember you mentioned breakfast?’
‘That’s right. I did. Are you ready?’
‘I could be if I knew what you’ve done with my shoes…’
Bending down, he fished for something under the end of her bed, then he straightened and held out her sandals, dangling them by the straps. ‘These do?’
‘They’ll be fine, thank you.’ With icy composure she accepted them and slipped her feet into them, but she felt strangely self-conscious and fumble-fingered while he waited and watched her lean down to do up the buckles.
‘Now I’m ready,’ she said crisply.
‘Good. Let’s go down to the dining room.’ He opened the door and stood aside to let her past. ‘Once you’ve got some decent tucker inside you, we should have a chat. I’ve got a suggestion that might interest you.’
‘Your housekeeper?’
The way she said the word your set Kane’s teeth on edge. She might as well have come right out and said she’d be happy to take care of any other house on the planet—except his.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he said, spearing a juicy sausage with his fork then attacking it with his knife. ‘If you’re going to insist on looking for your brother, you need somewhere to stay, and Reid and I need someone to cook and do the housework.’
‘It would probably do your brother and you the world of good to fend for yourselves for a week or two,’ she said in a preachy voice that he supposed she’d perfected during her years as a Sunday school teacher.
‘It would probably do your brother the world of good if he was left to carry on with his life without his sister breathing down his neck.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘And neither do you.’
They scowled at each other across the table, green eyes and blue sparking with equal ferocity. Then Kane gave a resigned shrug and resumed eating while Charity pushed the food around on her plate. Apart from sipping daintily at her pineapple juice and nibbling at her toast, she’d hardly touched the rest—only a little of the mushrooms and tomatoes.
‘You may as well eat up,’ Kane said. ‘A big pile of greasy food is good for a hangover.’
She looked ill, but he ate steadily on, relishing every speck of food on his plate—softly scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and sausages with tomato sauce, a lamb chop, mushrooms—
‘Very well, I’ll do it.’
Her sudden statement caught him by surprise. He looked up to find her watching him with a deadly earnest expression.
‘I’ll take the job as your housekeeper because it serves my purpose as well as yours,’ she said. ‘But I’m putting you on notice, Mr McKinnon. The only reason I’m coming out to your homestead is because I need accommodation and because I believe that someone in this district will be able to explain my brother’s disappearance.’
‘I can’t promise you anything on that score.’
‘I know you’ve tried to deter me, but that doesn’t change my opinion.’
Kane shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘And I’ll come to look after your home on the strict condition that you—’ In mid-sentence her composure crumpled. A tide of colour swept up her neck and into her cheeks.
Not for the first time, Kane wondered how a clergyman’s daughter could have such pagan prettiness. This girl’s lissom figure, vibrant hair and dewy green eyes would distract any red-blooded man.
And now this rosy blush…pretty as a sunrise. A Sunday school teacher out of her depth shouldn’t look so damn appealing.
His throat seemed to close and he had to swallow. ‘What was that? You mentioned a strict condition.’
She took a sip of pineapple juice and looked at him over the rim of the glass and her eyes seemed to plead with him to understand.
‘What condition?’ he repeated.
She still didn’t answer. But, as her blush deepened, Kane understood.
Pushing his plate to one side, he propped an elbow on the edge of the table and rested his chin on his hand. ‘Perhaps I should explain my conditions,’ he said.
‘You have conditions?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Then by all means, please explain.’
‘There are very few women I would ask to move into my home.’
Her eyes were huge and she nodded without speaking.
Leaning forward, he said quietly, ‘Apart from Annie, there are no women living on Southern Cross. There’s an old stockman who looks after the yard and he and my brother Reid and I are all bachelors—bachelors, living on an isolated cattle property.’
‘Oh,’ she said very softly and her pink mouth stayed in the shape of a circle.
‘Three men and a pretty young lady living alone could start tongues yapping from one end of Star Valley to the other. A hint of scandal runs through this district like a bushfire. So it needs to be made clear right from the start that there must be no involvement of—how can I put this delicately?’
‘You don’t need to,’ she cried. By now her face was fire truck red. ‘I understand perfectly and I wouldn’t dream—’
Keeping his face solemn, Kane offered his hand to shake hers. ‘Our arrangement is strictly business.’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. That is exactly what I was trying to say.’
‘Then it seems we’re perfectly suited, Miss Denham.’
She looked as if she’d swallowed a grasshopper.
‘Oh, and one other thing,’ he said. ‘Try to stay away from the gin while you’re working for me.’
Charity fumed as she helped Kane load the back of his utility truck with stores. It had been completely unnecessary for him to spell out the need for propriety. And she knew that he knew that. Which meant that once again he’d been deliberately teasing her. And, indirectly, he’d also been making sure she understood that he didn’t desire her.
As if that wasn’t obvious! One look at Marsha had told her she would never be Kane McKinnon’s type.
‘I thought there was only yourself, your brother and one other man on Southern Cross,’ she said as she carried a box rattling with bottles of various sauces and mayonnaise to the truck. ‘Just how many will I be cooking for?’
She was stunned by the quantity of food Kane had ordered. Crates of oranges and apples, bags of flour, rice and sugar, a drum of olive oil, packets of pasta, boxes of tinned vegetables and fruit juice and crates of beer all had to be stowed away along with her suitcase.
‘There will probably be just the three of us—plus yourself, at least for the first few days,’ he said. ‘But we have to stock up properly.’ He took the box from her and stowed it next to a stash of toilet paper rolls. ‘You can’t come running back into town every five minutes.’
‘I realise that.’
‘There’s always a chance that the fencing team we’re expecting later in the month could arrive early,’ he said. ‘It depends on how their previous jobs pan out. But you could handle cooking for a few extras, couldn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ She was determined to sound confident, no matter how many challenges this man threw at her. At least she was getting to Southern Cross where she’d be able to speak to Reid McKinnon. And perhaps in time she would find a way to get more information out of Kane. She was sure he hadn’t told her everything he knew about Tim.
It was a pity his sister Annie had gone to the city; but Charity was sure that if she was patient she would find people in the district who were prepared to answer a few discreet questions.
Kane threw a tarpaulin over the load and began to secure it with rope. ‘That should keep most of the dust out,’ he said when he’d finished. He turned to her.
‘Okay, that’s it. Let’s hit the road, Chazza.’
‘I beg your pardon? Who’s Chazza?’
He dropped his gaze to the dusty toes of his riding boots and grinned. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. We’re an uncouth lot in this country. We do terrible things to names. Barry becomes Bazza; Kerry is Kezza. So you’ll find yourself getting called Chazza. Or would you prefer Chaz?’
‘Do you have a problem with my real name?’
‘No. But I’m afraid nicknames tend to happen out here whether you like it or not.’
‘Then in that case I’ll take Chaz.’
‘Chaz it is then.’
He grinned again, but her own attempt to smile faltered.
Australians were very in-your-face. Tim had mentioned in his letters that the ringers liked to toss him teasing jokes to see how he handled them. No doubt it was their way of testing a newcomer. And as a new chum she was expected to throw one back.
Her brother would have been able to handle it. She, on the other hand, had always been too earnest to be good at witty exchanges.
She repeated the word Chaz softly under her breath and decided she probably liked it. Chaz. Chaz Denham. It sounded upbeat and trendy. She had never in her life been trendy. But no way would she admit to Kane that she quite liked the idea of being Chaz.
After she had climbed up into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut and buckled her seat belt, she said, ‘I have to admit an old-fashioned name like Charity can be something of a burden. Tim is lucky he isn’t my sister.’
‘Do you think a sister might have been christened Faith or Hope?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Perhaps.’ It was time to give him a taste of his own medicine. ‘My father excelled himself when he chose my middle name.’
‘Yeah?’ An unmistakable spark of curiosity flashed in his blue eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘Chastity.’
His jaw dropped. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ For almost a minute he sat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the key in the ignition, staring at her, his expression cagey, as if he were sizing her up. Then a knowing smile dawned. ‘This is payback time, isn’t it, Sunday school teacher?’
‘For the way you’ve teased me mercilessly all morning?’
‘Rubbish. I’ve shown lots of mercy.’
‘Forgive me for not noticing, Mr McKinnon.’
He grinned and turned the key in the ignition and as the motor revved he said, ‘So are you going to tell me your real middle name?’
His arrogant assumption that she would tell him was so annoying—especially when he wouldn’t tell her one measly thing about Tim. And, although it was trivial by comparison, the thought that he really wanted to know her middle name was exquisitely satisfying.
‘Never,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY took off down Mirrabrook’s main street, passing a little wooden church, the police station and the tiny post office, several shops and offices, a freshly painted café, and a larger modern building which housed the library and the Mirrabrook Star, the local newspaper.
Then followed a row of little timber houses with iron roofs, deep, shady verandas and front gardens bright with flowers, and suddenly gum trees crowded close to the narrow blue bitumen and the road plunged into bush again.
Shortly after that they came to a signpost pointing to Breakaway Station and Southern Cross Station and they took a dogleg turn off the main road and were rattling along a dusty and bumpy outback track.
Beneath a startling blue sky the stark landscape flashed past in a blur of brown and khaki streaks—dusty green foliage, grey-brown tree trunks and pink-red earth showing through a scant covering of dry grass. In the distance menacing mountains loomed, studded with black granite boulders. The Star Valley was nothing like the pretty valley Charity had expected. She didn’t understand how civilised people could give this wilderness such a charming name. The valleys of her experience were pleasant green and grassy dips in a gentle English landscape, more like folds in a green velvet skirt.
Of course, she had known that a valley in Outback Queensland would be different from one in Derbyshire. Her brother’s letters had told her about the vast and rugged outback, but somehow she’d never quite grasped how very vast and how exceedingly rugged it was.
And now, as she looked out into the rushing bush, she shuddered. It was into this wild, hostile wilderness that Tim had vanished. Seeing the inhospitable landscape for herself made his disappearance even more impossible to accept, too awful to believe. Where, oh, where was her fearless, daredevil little brother?
The truck hit a deep wheel rut and she was forced to clutch the door handle and brace herself with her feet against the floorboards. Why on earth had Tim been so eager to come to Australia? If she had had the chance to travel, she would have chosen to visit elegant European cities like Paris or Venice, Vienna or Prague.
Not this endless bush.
She’d read an article on the plane that said Australia was twenty-four times the size of Great Britain—and Tim could be anywhere in this enormous country.
They travelled on and on over the winding dirt road, dipping down to cross rocky, dry creek beds, climbing out on the other side between steep red banks and then continuing across the plains till they reached yet another dry creek crossing.
What startled Charity most was that there were no signs of human habitation. And yet there had to be people somewhere because someone had placed a sign that said:
Beware
Cattle on the road.
And not far past that sign she saw a mob of strange-looking, droopy-eared cattle lying in the inadequate shade cast by dusty gum trees. The grass around them looked dead. ‘How on earth do you raise cattle in this country?’ she asked.
‘Your British breeds don’t do well here, but we have Brahman cross cattle that are bred for the tropics.’
‘But what do the poor things eat?’
‘Dried grass still has nutrients in it—a bit like dried fruit for us, but we give them supplements as well. The hard part is keeping enough water for them. We have to pump water out of the creeks up into troughs. When the dams and creeks dry up completely, we’re in trouble.’
‘Living out here must be hard work.’
He shrugged. ‘Who wants a cushy job?’
A well-paid cushy job was the goal of most of the fellows she’d met. A cushy job, a pretty little wife…
Apparently, Kane McKinnon wanted neither.
‘Of course, you’re seeing this country at its worst—at the end of the dry season,’ he said.
‘Is it very different after rain?’
‘You wouldn’t recognise it.’ After a bit he added, ‘We don’t hold the cattle here for too long. These properties are for breeding stock. You wouldn’t try to fatten them here. We’ve shipped all our young beasts over to our other property near Hughenden. With luck, they’ll fatten up nicely there.’
‘They certainly couldn’t grow very fat on this grass,’ Charity commented, but already her thoughts were straying from the plight of cattle and back to Tim. Was he lost and starving? ‘In England we often hear about people dying in the outback.’
‘Yeah, it happens.’ Kane stared ahead of him at the yellow track. ‘This is a tough country, but the people who perish are usually folk who don’t have a clue what they’re doing and should never have left the city in the first place. Your brother was a quick learner and I’m sure he’d be okay in the bush.’
She turned to look out through the side window and saw a grey kangaroo hopping with an easy, fluid bounce-bounce-bounce as it made its way between the trees. It was her first kangaroo sighting, and she might have been excited if she wasn’t so worried.
‘What was Tim’s state of mind?’ she asked. ‘Did he seem happy?’
‘He was fine. Look, the one thing I like about your brother is his ability to keep to himself. He quietly got on with the job and he didn’t have to be the centre of attention. He fitted in well out here. I’m sure he’s still doing well wherever he is.’
Kane sounded so certain that Tim was fine that Charity wondered again if he knew more than he was letting on. Was he hiding the truth from her? She turned to study him. His eyes met hers and he sent her a quick, reassuring smile and she realised with something of a start that she wanted him to do it again. In that momentary flash of friendly warmth, the mockery had left his eyes and his mouth had softened and she’d felt a queer little kick in the stomach.
They stopped under the shade of trees beside a creek to drink from their water bottles.
‘At least you’ll be safe from Marsha out here,’ Kane said as Charity took more tablets to keep her headache at bay.
She was surprised to hear him make such an ambiguous comment about his girlfriend. ‘When will we reach Southern Cross?’
‘We’ve been travelling on the property for the past half hour. Won’t be too much longer now.’
She had no idea what to expect when they finally reached the McKinnon’s home, but five minutes later they pulled up outside a tiny, tumbledown shack, and Kane jumped out of the truck and began to untie the tarpaulin covering the load in the back.
Her heart sank as she stared at the house. This was Southern Cross homestead? It was a sorry sight, crouching in a dusty paddock beneath a rusty iron roof, with a sagging front veranda and unpainted timber walls left to weather to a silvery-grey. And Charity started to question her impulsive decision.
Her headache returned as she pushed the passenger door open and stepped down into the dirt. The heat of the sun beat on to the back of her neck and her unsuitable clothes stuck to her. With every step, her feet picked up fine red dust that slipped between her sandals and the soles of her feet and caught between her toes.
Kane hefted two boxes of groceries from the truck and balanced them on his shoulders.
‘Can I help?’ she asked.
‘Could you grab that box of tinned stuff?’
‘Certainly.’
As she followed him into the hut the wooden front steps creaked ominously. A dog barked and she saw that a blue speckled dog had been tied up to one of the veranda posts.
‘G’day, Bruiser,’ called Kane. ‘Is the boss home?’
The dog seemed to go back to sleep as Kane shoved the front door open with one elbow. Charity couldn’t suppress a shudder as she followed him inside. Surely Kane’s sister Annie couldn’t be responsible for this untidy interior? The floors looked as if they hadn’t been swept for weeks. An old coffee table was littered with beer cans, magazines and filthy ash trays. There were no curtains at the windows and a piece of fraying hessian had been tacked over one frame in place of glass.
The floor of the narrow passage leading to the back of the house was covered by cracked linoleum that looked a thousand years old. Kane carried the groceries through to the kitchen and dumped them on a rickety table before opening the fridge.
Charity gasped. ‘It’s full of beer!’
He sent her a withering glance over his shoulder. ‘Blokes in the bush have to get their priorities right.’
‘But what about your sister? How could she live here?’
Slamming the fridge door shut again, he turned to her and rested his hands lightly on his hips. ‘I take it you’re not too impressed with this place?’
Charity gulped. She couldn’t bear the thought of living here, but her upbringing had made her excruciatingly tactful and she didn’t want to hurt Kane’s feelings.
His upper lip curled and his voice grew cold as he said, ‘Maybe you don’t have what it takes to look after a place like this.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ she croaked. ‘But, to be honest, I can’t see much evidence that this house has been carefully looked after.’
He laughed then. Actually laughed. And she wanted to hit him. Her hands clenched and she drew in a sharp, angry breath. She was hot and headachy and worried about Tim and the thought of living in this messy, tiny, shabby hut was the last straw.
‘Chill, Chaz,’ he said.
‘Chill?’ she almost shouted.
‘Calm down. This isn’t Southern Cross homestead. This is an outstation, a camp the ringers use as a base when they’re mustering. One of the guys has stayed on here, keeping an eye on this neck of the woods, and I’m just topping up his supplies.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ She glared at him. ‘You can’t resist teasing me, can you?’
‘You left yourself wide open for that one.’
Again, she wanted to hit him.
‘Sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t look the slightest bit sorry. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been teasing Annie since she was knee high to a mosquito. It’s a bad habit.’
‘It certainly is. I feel very sorry for your sister and I’d appreciate it if you’d desist.’
‘Annie has a good sense of humour.’
‘Good for her. Mine disappeared along with my brother.’
That took the smug smile from his face.
Casting a quick eye over the kitchen, Kane shrugged. ‘It doesn’t look as if Ferret’s here, so I’ll leave this on the table and we may as well keep going.’
‘To Southern Cross?’
‘Yes.’
The ringers’ hut had shaken Charity’s fragile confidence and as they continued their rattling journey along the dirt track that wound its way through more dusty bush she prepared herself for more disappointment. She supposed that if people lived in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t much need to have a nice home to impress visitors, but she hadn’t realised that outback people managed with so few creature comforts.
How did women like Annie McKinnon cope?
‘This is our place coming up now.’ Kane’s voice broke into her thoughts. She peered ahead through the dusty windscreen and caught snatches of white and fresh green flashing between the trees.
Then they rounded a bend in the track and she saw iron gates painted pristine white and, beyond them, an expanse of green lawn flanked by lush palm trees and clumps of white bougainvillea, as pretty as bridal veils.
And then she saw Southern Cross homestead.
It was a huge, sprawling low-set house, built of timber painted snowy-white and wrapped around by deep, shady verandas. A garden of green shrubbery and white flowers fringed the verandas.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said, knowing she couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and found herself in Wonderland.
‘This place more to your taste?’ Kane asked.
It was like coming across an oasis in the desert. ‘It’s fantastic.’ Unable to contain her amazement, she asked, ‘How do you manage to keep the lawn so green?’
‘That’s old Vic’s job.’ Kane nodded towards the tree-lined watercourse that had run parallel to the road for the last part of their journey. ‘He pumps water up from the creek,’ he said. ‘But when the creek runs dry, we lose the lawn.’
‘Does that happen very often?’
‘Every few years we get a bad drought. If we don’t get a good wet season this year, we’ll be in trouble.’
He drove on around to the back of the house so that they could unload the stores directly to the kitchen pantry. As they pulled up a chorus of barking greeted them.
Dogs—a black Labrador, a blue and white spotted dog and a Border collie—came racing from several directions. Kane shot a sharp look in Charity’s direction.
‘Do dogs bother you?’
‘No, not at all. I love them. We have a Border collie at home.’
She noticed, however, that the collie, after peering hopefully up at the truck, turned and retreated to the veranda where it lay with its head on its paws, paying them no more attention.
‘That’s Lavender,’ Kane told her. ‘She’s Annie’s dog and she always mopes if Annie goes away.’
‘Oh, the poor thing.’
They climbed down from the truck. ‘The blue-heeler cattle dog’s mine,’ he said. ‘His name’s Roo.’
‘Hello, Roo.’ She gave his speckled head a friendly scratch.
‘And the Labrador’s Gypsy. She’s Reid’s dog.’
‘Oh, Gypsy, you’re very beautiful.’
A wizened, sunburned fellow, bowlegged no doubt from years astride a horse, ambled around the side of the house, and Charity was introduced to Vic. He beamed at her when she complimented him on the beautiful garden.
‘If you enjoy having flowers in the house, miss, pick as many as you like,’ he told her.
‘You’ll have a friend for life if you keep feeding him compliments,’ Kane said, as Vic left them. Then, with the greetings over, he ordered Gypsy and Roo to clear off. ‘We’ve got work to do,’ he told them. ‘So give us some room.’
The dogs retreated happily to lie in the shade and Kane and Charity unloaded the truck. As they carried boxes of groceries through to the pantry room, Charity stole curious glimpses down hallways and through doorways to the rest of the house. She gained an impression of unexpected coolness and casual elegance—of very high ceilings and polished timber floors, antique furniture and beautiful rugs.
The last thing she’d expected was to be charmed by Southern Cross. What a pity she was so worried about Tim.
If she wasn’t continually haunted by his disappearance she might have been able to enjoy working here.
Kane found his brother in the machinery shed, working on the diesel motor of one of the station’s trucks.
‘I’ve found us a housekeeper, so you don’t have to worry about getting dishpan hands.’
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