Читать книгу Outback Husband - Jessica Hart - Страница 7

‘MUMMY, someone’s coming!’

Wiping her hands on her apron, Juliet came out of the kitchen and shaded her eyes against the glare as she watched the tell-tale column of red dust that signalled a vehicle speeding towards them along the dusty track.

‘Who is it?’ asked Kit, secure in a three-year-old’s belief that his mother would know everything.

Andrew looked up at that. ‘It’s a car,’ he said scornfully, and returned to the toy digger that he was pushing through the dust at the bottom of the verandah steps. Like his twin, he was a sturdy little boy, with Hugo’s angelic blond hair and her own dark blue eyes, but Juliet knew that the identical looks concealed quite different personalities. Andrew was single-minded, stubborn, happy to play the same game for hours while quicksilver Kit was easily distracted, always asking questions and much more inclined to lead his twin into trouble.

‘It is,’ Juliet agreed as Kit opened his mouth to object, ‘but there’s someone in it, so Kit’s right too.’ She watched the dust cloud moving closer, a slight frown between her brows. ‘Perhaps it’s the new manager,’ she said slowly.

‘What’s a manager?’ That was Kit again, of course, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

‘He’s going to help us run the station.’

If there was one thing she needed, it was help, but Juliet couldn’t help wondering if she had made the right decision. On the face of it, Cal Jamieson had sounded ideal. ‘Cal?’ the owner of the neighbouring station had said, when she had rung to ask him for a reference. ‘You won’t find anyone who knows more about running a property like yours. He’s a good man.’

Cal Jamieson might know what he was doing, but whenever Juliet remembered their telephone conversation she was conscious of a faint feeling of disquiet. He had heard that she was looking for a manager, he had said, and he was looking for a job. What was there in that to make her uneasy?

He had sounded brusque, but Juliet had learned not to expect outback men to ooze charm, and in any case Hugo had made her wary of superficial charisma. No, it was something about the way he had taken charge of the conversation. Of course, she had wanted to know that he was competent, but surely it had been up to her to suggest that he came out for a trial period? And there had been something more than competence in that deep Australian voice. Looking back, Juliet couldn’t pick on any one thing, but she had been left with the uncomfortable feeling that there was a hostile undercurrent to everything he had said.

It was probably just her imagination, Juliet tried to reassure herself. She had never met the man, so what reason could he possibly have to dislike her?

Her eyes rested on the two little boys playing in the dust below her, and, as always, she was conscious of a surge of love so intense that it tightened her throat. Her boys. They were worth every aching bone, every day fighting tears of sheer exhaustion, every sleepless night spent worrying about their future. Wilparilla was their inheritance and she would fight to keep it for them. She didn’t care how hostile Cal Jamieson was as long as he helped her to do that.

Still, there was no point in letting him think he could walk all over her. Juliet had no intention of repeating the mistake she had made with the last manager. She would make sure right from the start that Cal Jamieson knew just who was boss!

Pulling off her apron as she went, Juliet went back into the homestead to splash cold water on her face and run her fingers through her dark hair. She grimaced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The stress of the last year and the aching exhaustion in her bones had left her looking much older than her twenty-five years and hardly capable of bossing a three-year-old around, let alone a man as tough and self-assured as Cal Jamieson had sounded on the phone. If it came to a contest of vigour, competence and sheer bravado, the much-squeezed tube of toothpaste sitting on the edge of the basin would probably put up a better show than she could at the moment!

For an incongruous moment, she allowed herself to remember the girl she had been in London, so pretty, so vivacious, so certain that everything would work out for the best. That had been before she married Hugo, of course. Now here she was, on an isolated cattle station on the other side of the world, and the only thing she was certain of was that she would do whatever it took to keep Wilparilla safe for her boys. Even if it meant dealing with the unknown Cal Jamieson.

‘Mummy, Mummy, the manager’s here!’ cried Kit, running into the bathroom and bursting to use the new word that he had learnt.

‘Well, we’d better go and say hello, then,’ said Juliet. Now that the moment had come, she felt ridiculously nervous. Wilparilla’s future rested with the man waiting outside, but she mustn’t let him realise how desperately she needed someone to help her.

Kit rushed self-importantly ahead of her onto the verandah and down the steps to find his twin. A man was hunkered down next to Andrew, apparently engaged in serious conversation. All Juliet could see of him as she followed Kit more slowly through the screen door was that he was wearing moleskins and a dark blue shirt. His face was mostly hidden by his hat, but as he turned his head to smile at Kit’s eager arrival she caught a glimpse of white teeth beneath the shadow of its brim.

It seemed like such a nice smile that her hopes lifted, but when he glanced up and saw her watching him, it switched off so abruptly that Juliet felt as if she had been slapped. He straightened and took off his hat. ‘Mrs Laing?’

Her first impression was of a rangy, quiet-looking man, with a lean face, a cool mouth and cool grey eyes. No, not cool, Juliet corrected herself. Those eyes were cold, icy even, and something in their expression made her want to turn on her heel and bolt back into the homestead.

Mustering a smile from somewhere, she walked down the steps towards him instead. He was even taller than she had thought when she got close to him, and she was conscious of being at a disadvantage as she looked up at him. ‘Juliet, please,’ she said, and held out her hand. ‘You must be Cal Jamieson.’

‘Juliet, please,’ Cal mimicked her crystal-clear English voice to himself. It sounded just as it had on the telephone, so composed, so self-assured, with that nerve-grating suggestion of superiority, but otherwise she wasn’t at all as he had imagined her. That voice didn’t seem to belong to the girl who stood before him.

He hadn’t realised that she would be so young. She couldn’t be much more than twenty-five, Cal thought, eyeing her unsympathetically. Much too young to own a property like this. A station needed someone who knew the outback, not this girl with her brittle smile and her careful manners.

She was prettier than he had expected, too, Cal admitted grudgingly to himself. Very slender, almost thin, she had dark hair, exquisite cheekbones and wide eyes of so dark a blue they seemed almost purple. He might even have described her as beautiful if it hadn’t been for the bruised look about her. There were shadows under her eyes and she held herself warily. She reminded him of a racehorse, skittish and trembling with nerves before a big race. Cal didn’t have anything against racehorses, but they didn’t belong in the outback. This was brumby country, a place for tough, half-broken horses that could work. They might not be beautiful, but at least they were useful.

Looking at Juliet Laing, Cal doubted if she had ever been of use to anyone other than herself.

‘Yes, I’m Cal,’ he said in his deep, slow voice, and, because he had little choice, he took her outstretched hand. He had had plenty of time on the long drive from Brisbane to wonder if he was making a terrible mistake coming back to Wilparilla, but now that he had met Juliet for himself he was sure that he had done the right thing after all. This nervy, fragile-looking woman would never last out here. She would run back to England as soon as things got difficult and he would be back where he belonged at long last.

Her handshake was surprisingly firm, though. Cal looked down into her eyes and then wished he hadn’t. They were extraordinary eyes, the kind of eyes that could seriously interfere with a man’s breathing, and they held besides an expression that gave him pause. There was nothing weak or nervous about the look in Juliet’s eyes. It was steady and stubborn.

For a long moment they measured each other, and it seemed to Juliet that an unspoken challenge was issued between them. Quite what the challenge was, she couldn’t have said, but she knew that Cal Jamieson thought she didn’t belong here. Well, if he thought she was going to turn tail and run, he had another think coming!

‘Shall we talk on the verandah?’ she asked coolly.

Cal raised his brows. ‘Talk?’ He made it sound as if she had made an indecent proposal.

‘It wasn’t much of an interview on the phone,’ said Juliet, trying to keep the defensiveness from her voice.

‘It’s a little late for an interview, isn’t it?’ said Cal. ‘We agreed that I should come for a trial period as manager.’

What did he mean, we agreed? thought Juliet crossly. She had agreed to employ him on a trial basis.

‘I’ve been driving for the last four days to get here and do just that,’ he was saying, unaware of her mental interruption. ‘What happens if I don’t pass this “interview”? Do you expect me to turn round and go straight back to Brisbane?’

‘Of course not.’ Juliet set her teeth. This was going to be worse than she had thought. She hadn’t been imagining that undercurrent of hostility when she’d spoken to him on the phone. Not that he was aggressive. No, he just stood there looking calm and quiet and utterly implacable.

‘Look,’ she said, making a big effort to sound reasonable, ‘Pete Robbins has vouched for you, but all I know is that you’ve come from Brisbane and that you need a job. All you know about me is that I need a manager. Given that we’re going to be working so closely together, I think we should find out a little more about each other.’

He knew a lot more about her than that, Cal thought grimly. He knew that she and her husband had come out from England and bought this place on a whim. He knew that they’d alienated their neighbours, sacked the experienced stockmen and neglected the property he had worked so hard to build up, and that now, when her husband was dead and she had no reason to stay, she was stubbornly refusing all offers to buy the station from her. Holding out for more money, he decided in disgust, as if she didn’t have more than enough already. She was a spoilt, silly woman, and she was in his way.

Cal didn’t need to know any more about Juliet than that, just as she didn’t need to know exactly what he was doing here.

He would humour her for now, Cal thought as he shrugged an acceptance and followed Juliet up the steps to the verandah. Let her think that he was desperate for a job if that was what she wanted.

He sat down in one of the cane chairs and laid his hat on the floor, glad that Pete Robbins had warned him about the changes the Laings had made to the old homestead. Hugo Laing’s mad scheme had apparently been the talk of the district. Instead of pouring badly needed money into the property, he had squandered thousands on rebuilding the homestead from scratch. The idea had been to create the kind of luxurious accommodation that would attract a higher class of tourist, but as far as Cal knew no visitor had ever stayed in it.

The stark contrast between the pretentious style of the homestead and the state of the station, crumbling with neglect around it, made Cal angry, but in other ways he was glad. Seeing someone else living in the simple homestead he had shared with Sara would have been hard, and at least now he wouldn’t be confronted with the ghosts of the past whenever he came to the house—which wouldn’t, he hoped, be that often.

Now Cal looked at Juliet, who had sat on the other side of the cane table. There was an unstudied elegance about her that made her look as if she were posing for a lifestyle spread, in spite of her jeans and simple sand-coloured shirt.

‘What kind of things do you want to know?’ he asked her.

The bored resignation in his voice grated on Juliet’s nerves. He wasn’t even trying to be pleasant! She had envisaged a casual chat so that they could sum each other up, but Cal made it sound as if she was preparing an interrogation, and, of course, now that they were sitting down, she couldn’t think how to begin. She was so tired the whole time that even a simple conversation was beyond her.

‘Well, how long have you been in Brisbane, for instance?’ she asked at last, horribly conscious of how inane the question sounded.

Cal made no effort to disguise the fact that he thought so too. ‘Nearly four years.’

About the same time that she had been out here, Juliet thought. A lifetime. ‘What have you been doing there?’ she persevered, forcing herself to sound pleasant and relaxed, although something about the way Cal sat there looking completely at home was making her tense. This was her home, and he had no right to make it look as if he belonged there and she was the stranger.

Cal hesitated. ‘I had my own company,’ he said eventually, hoping that she wouldn’t ask any more. If she found out how successful it had been, she would wonder what he was doing looking for a job as a manager.

Juliet misinterpreted his hesitation. The company couldn’t have been very successful if he was so desperate for a job that he was prepared to come out here and work for her. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it, anyway.

‘Peter Robbins said that you were originally from this area,’ she said instead. ‘What made you go to Brisbane in the first place?’

‘Personal reasons,’ said Cal, taciturn.

‘So…er…how do you feel about coming back?’

He stared at her. ‘What do you mean, how do I feel?’

‘I mean, how do you feel?’ snapped Juliet. ‘Are you happy to be back? Are you sad to leave friends behind in the city? Are you worried about working for a woman?’ She sighed. ‘You’re not very forthcoming, are you?’

What did she think this was, a cocktail party? ‘I don’t see that it matters,’ said Cal, equally exasperated. ‘If I were looking for a station manager, I wouldn’t waste my time asking him how he felt, I’d want to know what he could do. If we have to go through this farce, why don’t you try asking me something relevant?’

‘I’ve been trying to find out something about your experience,’ said Juliet angrily.

‘Experience of what?’ he asked with an impatient shrug. ‘A station manager’s got to be able to do more than sit in an office and manage.’

‘OK,’ she said, tight-lipped. ‘What would you ask, since you seem to know so much about it?’

‘If I was employing a manager? I’d want to know if he could fly a plane and drive a road-train. Could he build a dam and fix a generator and sink a bore? Did he understand accounts? And that’s before all the obvious stuff like mustering, roping cattle, catching bulls, castrating, branding, dehorning, building fences—’

‘All right, all right!’ Juliet interrupted him. ‘You’ve made your point. Do I take it you can do all that?’ she went on, not without some sarcasm, and he looked her straight in the eye.

‘You’ll find that out over the next three months, won’t you?’

Juliet’s dark blue eyes kindled dangerously, and her chin went up as she glared back at him. ‘I don’t see any point in having a trial at all if your attitude doesn’t change,’ she said sharply. ‘You have made absolutely no effort to be co-operative, or even courteous, since you arrived. Instead you’ve made it plain that you think I know nothing about running a station.’

Cal opened his mouth, but she swept on before he had a chance to speak. ‘Well, that may be true, but one thing I do know is that I’m not prepared to pay good money for a manager who’s going to talk to me as if I’m stupid! I’m an intelligent woman trying to deal with an extremely difficult situation. I want a manager who can build this station up, run it efficiently and take the time to explain to me what he’s doing and why, so that I can learn eventually to run it myself.

‘Now, the last manager here couldn’t be bothered to do that. He made the mistake of thinking that my opinion didn’t count,’ Juliet went on grimly, ‘so I sacked him.’ She fixed Cal with a look, and he was annoyed to find himself noticing how the temper flashing in her eyes had banished that wary, nervous look, leaving her suddenly vivid. Roused out of her brittle poise, she was a force to be reckoned with—and more attractive than he had realised.

‘And I’ll sack you,’ she was saying, ‘if you forget for one minute that I’m the boss round here. This is my property. I’m prepared to pay whatever it takes for someone to help me, but I’m sure as hell not going to pay to be patronised!’

The expression in Cal’s grey eyes was hard to read. If he felt embarrassed or ashamed or intimidated by her outburst, he was certainly giving no sign of it. He wasn’t the kind of man she could imagine being intimidated by anything, Juliet thought with an inward sigh.

‘I just thought we should know where we stood,’ she finished lamely, when Cal didn’t say anything. ‘It’s better to be clear about things from the beginning.’

Cal looked at her. ‘The only thing that’s clear to me is that you want a manager, a miracle-worker, a slave and a teacher all rolled into one,’ he said sardonically. ‘I could tell just driving along the track how much work needs to be done here. If I’m going to run this place properly, I won’t have time to explain everything to you.’

‘I’m not asking for a minute by minute account,’ said Juliet. ’I won’t be able to spend much time with you with two small children to look after. But I want to know what’s going on, and I want to learn what I can.’

‘And when you’ve learnt what you can?’

‘Then you’ll be out of a job,’ she said with a direct look. ‘But I’m not a fool. I know how long that will take me, so the job is secure for a while yet, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

It wasn’t security that was worrying Cal, it was the realisation that Juliet Laing was going to be trickier to deal with than he had anticipated. He had expected a spoilt, helpless widow, all ready to be persuaded—in the nicest possible way—that her only option was to sell up and go back to England where she belonged, but the more he looked at Juliet, the less persuadable she seemed. There was a wilful set to that lovely mouth, a stubborn tilt to her chin, a steadiness in the deep blue eyes that was almost unsettling.

Well, he didn’t have a reputation for handling difficult horses for nothing, Cal thought. At least he was here, in the best position to influence her to give up and to step forward with the money to buy his station back when she finally accepted the inevitable. He would have to be careful not to antagonise her too much at this stage. It might go against the grain to kow-tow to a woman like Juliet Laing, but she had already sacked one manager, and he wouldn’t put it past her to replace him with another man who might be quick to spot the advantages of the situation. Attractive, single women with half a million acres at their disposal weren’t that easy to come by. Who was to say some other manager might not decide that he might as well make his position permanent by marrying Juliet and getting a cattle station thrown in as part of the bargain?

Cal’s mouth set into a hard line at the thought. He would never get Wilparilla back if that happened. No, he would have to grit his teeth and take Juliet’s orders for now, but he would make sure she understood how hopeless her situation was, and with any luck she would soon be gone.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘As long as you don’t want a detailed report in triplicate every day, I’ll let you know what’s going on.’

Anyone would think he was doing her a favour! Juliet suppressed a sigh. It was hardly the most gracious acceptance of her terms, but she suspected that it was all she was going to get. ‘OK,’ she said.

‘So, have I passed the interview?’ Cal asked, and she stiffened at the sarcastic edge to his voice. She would have loved to have told him to go back to Brisbane, but she was desperate for a manager, and Cal knew it. It could take weeks to find another manager, and she couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The station was already falling apart before her eyes as it was. And although he might rub her up the wrong way, there was no denying that he looked reassuringly capable and competent. Now he would have to prove it.

‘You’ve passed the interview, yes,’ she told him with a cool look. ‘We’ll see how things work out over the next three months. Needless to say, the trial period we agreed works both ways. If you don’t like working for me, you’re free to leave whenever you like.’

So she didn’t think he’d last the course, did she? Cal smiled grimly to himself as he picked up his hat and got to his feet. Juliet Laing might be tougher than she looked, but they would see who left Wilparilla first!

‘Whatever you say,’ he drawled, and then added after a pause that made the word sound somehow insulting, ‘boss.’

Cal had evidently decided to put an end to the discussion, thought Juliet, vaguely resentful, but as she could hardly order him to sit down again, she stood up too and forced a smile.

‘Now we’ve got over the formalities, would you like a beer?’

He settled his hat on his head. ‘I think we’d better go and settle in first.’

‘We?’ said Juliet idly, thinking that he must have brought his dog with him.

Cal nodded over to the dusty four-wheel drive parked in the shade of a huge gum tree. ‘My daughter’s with me,’ he said.

For a moment Juliet wondered if she had heard right. ‘Your daughter? You didn’t say anything about bringing a daughter!’

‘I didn’t see what difference it would make to you,’ Cal told her, quite unperturbed. He gestured out at the distant horizon. ‘It’s not as if you don’t have the room.’

‘But…how old is she?’

‘Nine.’

Juliet stared at him. ‘You can’t bring a nine year-old girl out to a place like this! What about her mother?’

‘My wife died six years ago.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Juliet, thrown by the bald statement, ‘but it still doesn’t seem a very suitable arrangement. Wouldn’t she have been better off staying in Brisbane?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Natalie stays with me.’

Juliet refrained from pointing out that in that case he should have stayed in Brisbane too. ‘What were you planning to do with her while you were out during the day?’ she asked instead.

‘You said yourself that this is just a trial. She can come with me to begin with, and if it works out I’ll arrange for my own housekeeper to keep an eye on her while she does her schoolwork. Natalie’s a sensible child, she knows what life is like out here.’

‘And am I expected to accommodate all these extra people?’ Juliet demanded angrily.

If rumour was correct, there were enough rooms in the homestead for three times as many people, but Cal had no intention of staying with her. ‘There’s a perfectly adequate manager’s house,’ he said. ‘Or so Pete Robbins told me when he said you were looking for a manager,’ he added quickly, before Juliet could wonder how he was so well-informed about the accommodation.

‘There is a house used by managers in the past,’ Juliet agreed, ‘but it’s in no fit state for a child, and I doubt if you’d get a housekeeper anywhere near it!’

Cal frowned. ‘What do you mean? You didn’t mention a problem about the house on the phone.’

‘That’s when I thought you would be on your own. I’m afraid the last manager left it in a terrible state, and I haven’t had a chance to go and clear it up. I didn’t think you’d mind sleeping in the stockmen’s quarters until then, but you can’t take a little girl there. Go and see for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ she said, when Cal looked unconvinced.

‘I will,’ he said grimly. It had never occurred to him that there would be a problem with the manager’s house. It was small, just two bedrooms, and not what Natalie was used to, but he had only ever thought of it as a temporary measure until Juliet sold him the station and they could move back into the homestead. Now what was he going to do?

‘You’d better bring…Natalie, is it?…over,’ said Juliet, as if answering his unspoken question. ‘She can stay with me while you go and look at the house.’

Cal hesitated, then nodded briefly. ‘All right,’ he said.

Natalie had short curly brown hair, brown eyes and a shy, solemn face. Juliet smiled at her. ‘Hello, Natalie. Welcome to Wilparilla.’

Natalie murmured a shy greeting, and Juliet took her over to meet the twins. ‘The grubby one on the left is Kit,’ she told the little girl, ‘and the even grubbier one beside him is Andrew. They’re nearly three.’

‘How do you tell them apart?’ whispered Natalie, eyes wide as she looked from one to the other, and Juliet smiled.

‘I always know which one is which, but it’s difficult for everybody else. I make sure they’re wearing different clothes, so that makes it easier. Kit’s got the blue top on and Andrew’s is yellow.’ She glanced down at Natalie. ‘You must be thirsty after your long drive. Would you like a drink while Dad goes to look at the house?’

Kit scrambled up at that. ‘Mummy, my want a drink!’

‘Please may I have a drink,’ Juliet corrected him automatically.

‘Please my want a drink,’ said Kit obediently, and Natalie giggled behind her hand as Juliet sighed and settled for that.

‘Come on, Andrew, you can have a drink too,’ she said and turned to tell Cal how to find the manager’s house. But he had ruffled Natalie’s hair in farewell and was already striding away. She watched him for a moment, puzzled by the way he seemed to know exactly where he was going, but then shrugged and forgot about it as she ushered the three children through the screen door.

Natalie had lost her shyness entirely with the twins by the time Cal came back. She was sitting at the kitchen table showing them how to blow bubbles in their drinks when he walked into the kitchen. Juliet, leaning by the sink and watching the children indulgently, straightened abruptly as he appeared and her heart gave an odd jump.

Cal was tight-lipped with anger. ‘The house is disgusting,’ he said furiously, without any preliminaries. ‘I wouldn’t ask a dog to live in there! How was it allowed to get into that kind of state?’

‘I never even went there until last week.’ Juliet was immediately on the defensive. ‘Hugo—my husband—always dealt with the men.’ Not that he had been around to do much dealing, she remembered bitterly, and when he had been there all he had done was set the men’s backs up, until all the good ones had left and only the men who didn’t care were left at Wilparilla.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said helplessly, ashamed but tired, too, of apologising for Hugo’s mistakes.

Cal took an angry turn around the kitchen. ‘Natalie can’t stay there,’ he said. ‘And the men’s quarters aren’t much better. I checked.’

‘That’s what I tried to tell you before,’ Juliet pointed out. She paused, desperately trying to think of an alternative, but there simply wasn’t anywhere else for a child to go. ‘Look, I think the best thing you can do is to stay here at the homestead,’ she said eventually. ‘There are plenty of spare rooms.’

Cal hesitated, raking his fingers through his brown hair in frustration. The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to Juliet Laing, and if it had been just him he would have slept in his swag under the stars, but Natalie couldn’t do that. He didn’t have any choice, he realised heavily.

‘Thank you,’ he said with evident reluctance, adding quickly, ‘It will just be until we can fix up the house. We’ll go as soon as we can.’