The Cattleman's English Rose

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: