The Wedding Challenge

From his hands on the steering wheel and the tingling where his touch seemed imprinted still on her skin.

Bea shivered, and Chase shot her a curious glance. ‘Julie’s married to one of the stockmen,’ was all he said. ‘He’s known as the married man, which means he gets a house on the property. Julie’s got two kids of her own, but she’s been keeping an eye on Chloe until you got here.’

He pulled up outside a low house which looked to Bea as if it had been plonked down in the middle of the bush with an arbitrary fence thrown around it to create a yard otherwise indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub. Three children were playing in the shade of the long veranda, but when they saw the ute pull up at the gate, a little girl detached herself and came tumbling down the steps.

‘Uncle Chase! Uncle Chase!’

Glad of the excuse to get out of the car, Bea had slid out after Chase, just in time to see him smile at the child who threw herself at him.

It gave Bea a horrible fright. For one terrible moment she thought that her heart had actually stopped beating, but the next instant it had slammed back into action, thudding painfully against her ribs and sucking all the oxygen from her lungs so that it was difficult to breathe properly.

For God’s sake, she scolded herself. It was only a smile! You’ve seen a man smile before, haven’t you?

Not like that, an inner voice answered.

She was so taken up with breathing again that it took a minute to realise just what she had heard. Uncle Chase?

Bea swallowed. ‘Uncle?’ she repeated in a hollow voice.

Chase looked at her over the top of the cab. There was no mistaking the glint of mockery in his eyes. ‘Uncle Chase,’ he confirmed, the little girl hanging off one hand.

Even Emily was diverted from Baz for a moment. ‘You’re Nick’s brother?’ she said, staring.

‘I’m Chase Sutherland,’ he agreed.

‘We thought you were the manager!’ Emily put her hand to her mouth and giggled. ‘You must have thought Bea was weird when she insisted on calling you Mr Chase!’

Bea gritted her teeth. ‘I’m sure Mr Sutherland knew perfectly well what we thought,’ she said tightly, glaring at Chase. ‘Why didn’t you tell us Chase was your first name?’ she demanded.

‘I told you to call me Chase,’ he pointed out with what she was sure was a smirk. ‘But you seemed pretty set on calling me Mr. I thought maybe things were more formal where you come from.’

He hadn’t thought anything of the kind, Bea thought savagely. He had just enjoyed seeing her making a complete idiot of herself.

Chase put one hand on the shoulder of the little girl in her denim dungarees. Her blonde hair was tied up in bunches and she had an angelic face belied by the expression in her sharp green eyes.

‘This is Chloe,’ said Chase. ‘Say hello to Emily and Bea, Chloe. Oh, I’m sorry!’ He caught himself up and looked at Bea in mock apology. ‘Would you prefer her to call you Miss Bea? I know how keen you are on formality!’

‘Bea’s fine,’ she said grittily and forced herself to smile at the child as Emily was doing. ‘Hello, Chloe.’

Chloe eyed her warily. ‘Hello,’ she said without enthusiasm.

Bea and Emily exchanged a glance. Even inexperienced as they were, they recognised the mutinous set to that little mouth.

‘Emily and Bea are going to look after you until Dad comes home,’ said Chase.

‘Emily is going to look after you,’ Bea put in firmly. She knew absolutely nothing about children, and she had no intention of getting roped in to looking after one. ‘I’m just the cook.’

Chloe studied her with suspicious green eyes. ‘Why do we have to call you Miss Bea?’ she demanded.

‘That was just your uncle’s idea of a joke,’ said Bea.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve no idea. It wasn’t very funny, was it?’

A smile twitched at the corner of Chase’s mouth as he went over to speak to Baz. To Emily’s dismay, the stockman nodded, tipped his hat again in their direction, and walked off.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Chase drily, correctly interpreting the look on Emily’s face. ‘You’ll see him again this evening. If you get in the ute, I’ll be back in a minute,’ he added. ‘Chloe, you get in too.’

The three of them squeezed into the front seat and, when Chase reappeared, they set off down a fork in the track. Bea could feel the dust gritting her skin already, and her hair felt awful. She couldn’t believe why anyone would choose to live out here. There was nothing but scrub, a few spindly trees and the bare earth, cracked and baking in the heat.

And then Chase swung off the main track, and they suddenly found themselves in an oasis of green. It was so unexpected that Bea actually gasped. Tall trees cast fractured shade over a lawn where a sprinkler flickered. There were lemon trees and great clumps of pink oleanders and purple bougainvillea, and set amidst it all the homestead, a solid, stone building with a deep veranda running around all sides and an air of gracious calm.

‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ Emily cried.

Bea said nothing, but she had to admit to herself that things might not be quite as bad as she had feared.

Chase drove round the back to a big, dusty yard and parked the ute under a gum tree. From this view the homestead was less impressive. Nobody was wasting water on the working side of the house, with its collection of sheds, its water tanks and windmill.

Inside, though, the homestead was cool and quiet. The floors were of polished wood and the furniture was a comfortable mixture of the antique and the modern. Someone, thought Bea, had a lot of style.

And a lot of money.

Chase dumped their cases in a room with twin beds and looked at his watch. ‘I’ll show you the kitchen,’ he said to Bea, ‘and then leave you to get on with it.’

Leaving Emily to cope with Chloe on her own, he strode back down the corridor, with Bea forced to trot to keep up with him.

‘This is the kitchen,’ he said, opening a door into a large room equipped, to Bea’s relief, with what looked like the latest technology. He pointed through a door on the other side of the room. ‘We eat on the veranda through there.’

‘What, outside?’

‘It’s cooler out there.’

‘Yes, but what about the flies?’

‘It’s screened in,’ said Chase impatiently, as if she was supposed to know that everyone in the outback ate on their verandas. ‘Now, you should find everything you need over there,’ he went on, pointing at a wall of steel fridges and freezers. ‘There’s a larder and a cold store as well. I suggest you keep opening doors until you find what you need. The stockmen will come over for supper at seven o’clock, so you’ll need to have a meal ready by then. Any questions?’

‘“What am I doing here” springs to mind!’ sighed Bea.

Chase frowned. ‘I understood you were a qualified cook.’

‘I am. That doesn’t make me a mind reader!’

He glanced irritably at his watch, impatient to be gone. ‘What do you need to know?’

‘How many I’m cooking for, for a start.’

‘Oh.’ It was a reasonable enough question, Chase allowed grudgingly. ‘Nine of us, plus you two. Chloe eats separately in the evening. She should be in bed by seven.’