‘Lucy…’ said Meredith a little helplessly when she had put down the phone.

‘It’s OK.’ Lucy smiled at her. ‘Richard being ill didn’t seem quite real when you told me about it, but hearing Ellen so upset brought it home to me. Of course I’ll go back.’

‘What about Kevin?’

‘He’ll wait for me,’ said Lucy, determinedly bright. ‘I know he will. I’ll come back to him. Something will turn up. Maybe he could find a job on another station and I could join him there.’

‘Or,’ said Meredith slowly, ‘you could come back here.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘I wish I could, but Hal is a man who means what he says. If I break my contract now, there’s no way I’d ever be able to come back. Don’t worry about it, Meredith. It’s Richard that matters, really, and there’s nothing you can do about Hal.’

But Meredith wasn’t a girl who liked to be told that there was nothing she could do. Her lips pressed together in a determined way and there was a look in her eye as she thought through her plan that Lucy recognised with a little lift of her heart. When Meredith looked like that, Meredith made things happen.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she said.

The homestead was much bigger and more rambling than it seemed from outside, and it took Meredith some time to find Hal. Preoccupied by supper and the decision she had just made, Lucy had waved vaguely in the direction of the back of the house and said he would probably be on the back veranda.

He was. At least, Meredith assumed that it was the back veranda, since that was where she found him. He had showered and shaved and was wearing clean jeans and a faded red shirt, although she didn’t notice at first.

‘Oh,’ she said as the screen door that separated every room from the outside clattered to behind her and she found herself staring at quite the most spectacular sunset she had ever seen.

The kitchen was on the other side of the house and, although she had been vaguely aware that the light was fading, nothing had prepared her to step through the door into a blaze of gold and red and orange. It was so dramatic that for a long moment she could just stand and gape.

‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ Hal’s voice from the end of the veranda startled her out of her trance and she walked slowly down to join him, her eyes still on the sunset.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she acknowledged. ‘But a bit overwhelming too. It’s so big and so…so there. You feel like you could almost reach out and touch it.’

‘Watch,’ said Hal, and she stood next to him in silence as the golden sky flushed deeper and deeper until it was a fiery red and the range of bare hills in the distance darkened into purple and then black. A strange hush marked the moment when the great ball of the sun sank behind below the horizon, and the breath caught at the back of Meredith’s throat. It was as if the earth itself had stopped turning and the whole world was waiting for a sign that the evening could begin.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over. An insect rasped somewhere. She could hear Lucy clattering dishes in the kitchen and Emma and Mickey’s voices raised in a squabble.

Meredith let out a shaky breath and cleared her throat. ‘Gosh,’ she said weakly.

Hal was glad that the sunset at least had impressed her. Nothing else about the outback had. Then he wondered why he cared whether she was impressed or not.

And why he was so aware of her standing next to him.

‘You’re looking better,’ he said gruffly.

Meredith put a hand up to her clean hair, remembering with a grimace how long it had taken her to wash out the dust and the tangles. ‘I certainly feel better,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long it will take to get all the sand out of the shower, though. I’ve never been that gritty before!’

She didn’t look gritty now. She looked soft and warm and voluptuous, and Hal could actually feel his hand tingling with the temptation to reach out and see if her skin felt as smooth as it looked.

Averting his eyes, he leant on the veranda rail and wished she hadn’t mentioned being in the shower, wished he wasn’t finding it quite so easy to picture her there. In spite of keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the darkening sky ahead, he was very conscious of her body as she stood beside him, which was strange as she was doing absolutely nothing to draw attention to it.

The loose, flowing skirt and top with its V-neck and three-quarter-length sleeves could hardly have been less revealing. The skirt was a little out of place, but otherwise Hal had to admit that she was dressed sensibly enough, certainly more so than she had been earlier.

So there was no reason to notice that the top outlined curves that he hadn’t noticed before. No reason to find her feminine and somehow alluring, in spite of the fact that her expression was perfectly composed. She was cool and businesslike and not in the least interested in trying to attract him.

Any more than he wanted to be attracted.

‘I was wondering if I could have a word,’ she said, sounding exactly as if she had popped her head round an office door to talk to a colleague.

The realisation that she was all business while he was struggling like an awkward adolescent to keep his eyes off her riled Hal.

‘If you’re going to try and talk me into changing my mind about Lucy, forget it,’ he said brusquely. ‘I made the situation clear when I hired her and she accepted the conditions.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Meredith, ‘but I do have a proposal to put to you.’

Hal scowled. Why did she have to make everything sound like a business strategy? Why couldn’t she sound sultry and seductive, the way that mouth should sound? ‘What sort of proposal?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘A sensible one, I think.’

It would be, of course. She might have a body meant for fun and flirtation, but Hal was prepared to bet that Meredith’s head would always stay cool and clear.

‘As far as I’m concerned, the only sensible solution is for Lucy to stay and do the job she’s contracted to do,’ he said.

‘But it’s getting the job done that’s important to you, rather than who does it?’

‘I guess so,’ he said grudgingly, wondering where all this was going.

‘Then it wouldn’t matter to you if I took Lucy’s place and did the job for her, would it?’

‘You?’ Hal straightened from the rail in surprise. He wasn’t quite sure what he had been expecting her to say, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

‘Why not?’ said Meredith coolly. ‘I’m quite capable. I can do everything Lucy can do. I can cook and, while I don’t have much experience of children either, I don’t see why I shouldn’t help Emma and Mickey with their lessons. I’ve got a degree and they’re not going to be studying brain surgery, are they?’

She looked, thought Hal, completely serious, and for a moment he could only stare at her, trying to think of a reason why it was so obviously a ridiculous idea. ‘You would hate it out here,’ he said at last and Meredith shrugged.

‘I’m not proposing to stay long,’ she pointed out. ‘Just long enough for Lucy to get to England, do what she can for Richard and come back as soon as possible.’

‘And how long will that be?’

‘That depends how Richard is. We can’t tell until she gets to the hospital. Maybe two or three weeks?’

Two or three weeks with Meredith. The thought was unaccountably unsettling and Hal frowned.

‘You’re determined for her to go, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Do you always get your own way?’

‘If I had my way, I would be leaving with Lucy,’ said Meredith tartly. ‘The fact that I’m offering to stay here is entirely due to the fact that you are determined to have your way.’

She met Hal’s gaze, her own bright with challenge. ‘Lucy loves it here,’ she told him. ‘More than anything else, she wants to be able to come back, but you’ve made it clear that she can’t do that if she chooses to help Richard. I know she’s only agreed to that for my sake, so the least I can do is to keep her job open for her. I don’t see what difference it makes to you, anyway,’ she finished. ‘I’ll do everything Lucy does.’

Hal couldn’t really think what difference it would make either. He just knew that it would. Lucy fitted easily into the homestead. She was friendly and relaxed and everything was the same when she was around.

Meredith was different. She would change things, Hal knew she would. She was changing things just by standing there. There was something challenging about her, something that made him feel edgy and slightly defensive, and Hal didn’t like it.

‘What about your job?’ he prevaricated. ‘Can you take three weeks off just like that?’

‘You’ve got a phone line, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Well, then.’ Meredith seemed to think that solved the problem. ‘I’m freelance, as I told you,’ she said. ‘If I can connect to the Internet, I can work. I’ve got all my files on my laptop and I can contact clients by email. They won’t know that I’m in Australia. It’s not ideal, but it’s perfectly possible for me to carry on as normal.’

‘Except that you’re not going to have time for working if you’re planning to do everything Lucy does,’ Hal pointed out. ‘You’re going to have to provide proper meals for seven men and two children every day, and often there’ll be other people around as well. You could be cooking for twelve or fifteen or even twenty people sometimes. They’ll all need breakfast, lunch and supper, and then there’s smoko twice a day.’

‘Smoko?’ Meredith echoed dubiously, her heart sinking at the thought of all those meals. She was used to cooking for one, not ten!

‘It gets hot out there,’ said Hal. ‘The men start early and traditionally they stop for a cup of tea and smoke halfway through the morning, and then again in the afternoon. They like a bit of cake or biscuit or something then too. Personally, I’m very fond of a rock cake.’