‘Who looked after you and Lydia?’

‘We ran pretty wild for a time, then my father’s sister got wind of the situation and came to sort us out. She’d grown up at Wirrindago but met Guy’s father when she was in England and stayed there. She and my father were always close, and I think she hated seeing how broken he was by what had happened, but she’s a very practical person too. In fact, you remind me of her a lot,’ Hal said with a half smile.

‘She arranged for a housekeeper and tried to get us back to our schooling. I went to boarding school and she took Lydia to live with her in England until she was old enough to go to boarding school as well.’

Meredith hated the thought of Hal, losing his mother and his brother, and then his little sister too before being sent off to school on his own. Poor boy.

‘Going to boarding school must have been horrible for you,’ she said compassionately.

‘No worse than for you,’ said Hal, ‘and I was nearly thirteen, not nine.’

‘I had Lucy,’ she pointed out. He hadn’t had Jack or Lydia.

But Hal refused to be pitied. ‘It was the right decision. I missed Wirrindago, but at least I got some education, and it was easier for Dad not to have to worry about who was looking after Lydia and me. I’d come back in the holidays and once a year my aunt would come out, bringing Lydia and Guy with her.’

‘So that’s why you’re so close to Guy?’

He nodded. ‘Guy was like another brother for me and Lydia. It wasn’t that he replaced Jack, but we didn’t miss Jack so badly when he was there. He was always fun.’

Meredith’s memory of the evening she had arrived was somewhat hazy, but she still had a clear impression of Guy’s dancing eyes and the way Hal had laughed with him. Guy must have been very good for Hal and his sister.

‘What about Lydia?’ she asked. ‘Are you still close to her?’

‘I’d say so. I suppose I feel responsible for her, and Lydia’s quite capable of taking advantage of that. You see,’ he added, ‘I’m in no position to criticise you and Lucy!’

‘Is that why you agreed to look after Emma and Mickey?’

‘It’s certainly why I feel guilty about not giving them a better time.’ Hal rubbed his face. ‘I think you’re right. I should take them out and show them what we used to do when we were kids.’ His eyes took on a faraway expression as he remembered. ‘We had some good times.’

‘You should remember those.’ Meredith got up and picked up the photo from the desk. ‘Maybe your father remembered them too,’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s why he kept this.

‘You all look so happy,’ she said, looking down at the picture. ‘Jack’s there, and your mother. He must have wanted something to remind him that it hadn’t all been bad. You have to believe that however terrible things are, there have been times when it was all worth it; otherwise it would be too hard to bear.’

She hesitated and then held out the photo. ‘You should keep this picture, Hal,’ she said. ‘Don’t tear it up. Keep it and remember what you had, not what you lost.’

There was such a long pause while Hal just looked at the picture that Meredith lost her nerve. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything; it’s not my business. And I’m sorry if I brought back bad memories today. I should have left the office alone.’

‘No,’ said Hal abruptly and took the photo from her. ‘I was angry earlier, but now I’m glad that you did find it. I haven’t talked about Jack for years, and maybe I should have done.’

He put the picture in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘That coffee’s cold,’ he said, nodding down at her mug. ‘Want another one?’

Meredith shook her head with a smile, tacitly accepting the change of subject. ‘I’m used to drinking cold coffee.’

Hal straightened from the desk. ‘I’d better leave you to get on with some work,’ he said, and started to head for the door before changing his mind. He stopped and turned back to her.

‘Thank you for tonight, Meredith,’ he said quietly.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘I think you did,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say more about what it had meant to talk about Jack again, but she must have understood. She looked at him with compassion in her dark blue eyes.

‘In that case, I’m glad it helped,’ she said and, on an impulse that took her by surprise as much as him, she reached out and hugged him.

For a moment Hal tensed, then his arms came round her and he held her tight, as tight as a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his mother and his brother might have clung to comfort.

But this was no twelve-year-old. This was the body of a man in his prime, and it was wonderfully solid. Meredith rested her face against his shoulder and allowed herself the luxury of being held for once. His back was broad and firm, and warm beneath her hands.

‘Thank you for telling me about Jack,’ she murmured into his neck. Her face was very close to his throat. She could see the prickle of stubble, the steady pulse beneath his ear, and she was gripped by a longing to touch her lips to it, to taste his skin, to kiss her way along that firm jaw to his mouth.

She really mustn’t do that, though. She absolutely mustn’t. This was supposed to be a friendly hug, nothing else. It was just that he smelt so good, that he felt so good, so lean, so strong, so safe.

‘I’m glad you know.’

When Hal spoke Meredith could feel his deep voice vibrating through her. His cheek was resting on her hair. It would be so easy to turn her face just a little more, to tip it up so he could find her mouth with his.

Do it! Do it! her senses urged her. Look how close he’s holding you! He won’t mind. You can kiss him if you want to. He’ll kiss you back, and you don’t need to stop. You can tug his shirt out from his jeans and run your hands over his back and find out if it’s as smooth and solid as it feels. And, if you do that, he’ll pull you even tighter against him. His lips will be warm and sure, you know they will. His kisses will be hot and slow, his hands hard-

Oh, God, she had to stop this right now! Aghast at how near she had come to letting her fantasies lead her astray, Meredith swallowed hard and, with a superhuman effort, pulled herself away like the sensible woman she was.

Her body was clamouring with disappointment, her cheeks burning, and her eyes slid away from his. She couldn’t meet that grey gaze and realise that he had known exactly what she’d been thinking as she’d clung to him.

It was very lucky that she had never taken up counselling, Meredith told herself as she fumbled her way back to her chair. She would be struck off. It simply wasn’t fair to pretend to be a friend, to let a man tell you about the childhood experiences that had scarred him, and then jump him to make yourself feel better. Meredith cringed at how close she had come to doing just that.

From somewhere she produced a bright smile. ‘I must get on with some work,’ she said, still without meeting his eyes.

‘Of course.’ After the slightest hesitation, Hal moved to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight, Meredith,’ he said, and then he was gone.

‘How would you kids like to go swimming this afternoon?’

It was the following Saturday, and the stockmen had left to finish their jobs that morning. They were free after lunch until Monday and had been discussing plans for the weekend over breakfast. Meredith had gathered that they would all be going to the pub in Whyman’s Creek as usual and would spend the night there.

Which meant she would be alone with Hal and the children.

She had been at Wirrindago over a week now, a week in which she had grown accustomed to so much that had seemed strange when she’d first arrived. Cooking steak at five in the morning while the homestead was still dark and cool, listening to the clatter of boots as the men came up the steps, walking through the shimmering heat to feed the chickens…even the creak of the screen door was so familiar to her now that she hardly noticed it. She was used to the vast sky and the brilliant light and the echoing silence, broken only by the cawing of crows and the occasional squabble of corellas down by the creek.

It was only Hal she couldn’t get used to. The circus antics of her heart whenever he walked in the door still left her breathless. She wasn’t used to the clutch of her entrails when he turned or smiled or simply put on his hat, or the warm feeling that would steal up from her stomach and start to shiver somewhere just below her skin whenever she thought about how it had felt to hold him.

Lucy had emailed with the good news that Richard was out of the coma, but still very ill. She had written:

But you were wrong about it being me he really wanted to see. He’s been really sweet about it, but he told me yesterday that he’d already realised before the accident that he was over me. Still, I’ll stay until I know he’s definitely on the mend.

Meredith was puzzled to hear about Richard’s apparent change of heart and she couldn’t help wondering if Lucy was telling her everything that was going on, but there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it out here. More worrying was just how glad she was to discover that her sister wasn’t coming back just yet.

And that was in spite of working harder than she ever had before. Meredith had always been a hard worker, but she had never worked like this. She was up early to cook breakfast every morning, and she barely stopped until she sat down at her laptop after supper to do the equivalent of another day’s work. She wasn’t getting as much done as when she’d been at home, of course, but she was still on top of things.

It was lucky that she thrived on being busy, Meredith reflected, or she would be on her knees. Sometimes she did think that it would be nice just to sit down at the end of the day, but she never allowed herself to consider that as an option for too long. It would mean sitting alone in the dark with Hal, and Meredith didn’t trust herself to do that.